I feel it's about time to write a new journal, so here goes.

Life

Life has been plodding along as usual. I usually have about 4 projects on the go and just as I get done with on, another two come along. But it keeps me busy.

I have made sure to take some free time to enjoy myself. I recently went to see Iron Man 3 and the new Star Trek films at the cinema as well as going to a Ludovico Einaudi concert last month. I can't tell you how awesome I found it to listen to this live: [link] I've also been playing quite a bit of Minecraft and enjoying Mindcrack's latest UHC series.

I also reached my 3rd Cubing anniversary this week. One side of me can't believe it has been 3 years, whilst the other side feels it has been a lot longer. I kinda feel like I should treat myself to a new Rubik's cube to celebrate.

The biggest piece of personal news is the fact I gained a nephew a little over a week ago. His name is Dominic and he's kinda adorable. That said, I won't be meeting him in person until June/November 2014 so it's hard to form any sort of bond with him. But that is always the downside of family living far away and at least we have Skype in the meantime.

Art

As you may have seen, I've had a little more art coming through my gallery. I finally finished my dithering tutorial that I planned a year ago and was pleasantly surprised to see the community's reaction to it. It turns out using the news system worked in my favour as it hit the deviantART footer and gained close to 2000 views instead of the 200 I expected. So thank you for all the support. It certainly makes the time and effort I put into it worthwhile.

I've also worked on a couple of pixel pieces. There seems to be a wealth of epic contests for emoticonists around at the moment. Whilst I haven't really been in a great pixelling mood, it seems a shame to miss out on them so I have designated some time to get some pieces done. I've entered 2 out of the 3-4 I want to enter, so expect some more art pieces in the near-ish future.

Community

Quite a bit has been happening recently in the emote community.

Please check out ^SparklyDest's journal about the Gallery Makeover project. She has reviewed the feedback from my Discussion journal and proposed some slight variations on the initial suggestions. Take a look here and leave some feedback.

As mentioned earlier, there is a great selection of contests and projects around right now for the community right now. You can check out ^SparklyDest's journal above for a full list

I also have a few other community related things to promote. I have now joined the admin team of #Emoticon-Stamps and would like to give a shout out to say we are fully back up and running and would love to see some more submissions.

I have also teamed up with `Mirz123 to run an event over at #NaNoEmo in June. The details will be released in a couple of days, so if you are interested go and join/watch the group account now.

Features

I offered to feature the winners of the latest #EmoticonOpus contest. They have just been announced and check out the winning entries below.