Mandala Arancia

I am glad you found a positive focus for your intellect and creative energy. Sometime the challenge is in making the hard decisions and remaining a decent human being. As usualy, the image is flawless. It feels warm and very crystaline. It has an almost divine touch. Excellent.

AH! An old timer! I figured you for one of those. ;-) The first computer I ever laid my hands on was a Data General Nova 210 when I was in high school in 1974. This was one of the first desktop computers because it covered the major portion of the top of a desk. It didn't have any disk drives, which back then were the size of washing machines. It had a whopping 64k of magnetic core memory and a row of toggle switches on the front panel, with which an operator had to 'toggle in' a bootstrap loader that would then pull in a binary loader via an ASR33 teletype's 8 level punch tape reader, which would then pull in a command line Basic interpreter. I spent most of my time playing the old Basic 'Star Trek' game. Then there was the 'Lunar Lander' and 'Knight's tour of the Chess Board' program I wrote. What memories this brings back. ;-) There was also the Control Data 3150, a true second generation dinosaur system composed of transistors and diodes on 3" by 3" circuit cards that filled a good sized room, that I learned on at Control Data Institute back in 1976/77. I graduated #2 in a class of 25 students. At one point they barred me from the computer room after I had been granted free reign of the place - because I was that good ;-) - when I wrote a machine language program to read and print a stack of Holorith cards I found in a card punch machine in the back of the room that no one paid any attention to. It turns out that these cards held the answers to the multiple choice tests we took and were spit out every time they used the system to grade the tests. I wound up with the answers to about 60 different tests. I made the mistake of letting a couple of buddies know what I had and eventually someone in the class ratted on me. I'm sure it took quite a few years before they forgot about me. ;-) ROFLMAO At least I had the good sense to stay away from hacking. Back then I had the potential to become the most notable hacker on the planet, but I know that by now I'd be either locked up in Leavenworth for the rest of my days or a non-entity hacking for the CIA or the NSA, in which case I'd probably be filthy rich but no one would know I existed. I'd rather be just what I am now, a poverty sticken digital artist with a small global audience (perhaps soon to be significantly larger). What probably makes me more unique than most artists is that I have no desire to use my creativity to make make myself rich. Enough income to allow me to live in modest comfort, and buy top of the line equipment/software to work with, for the rest of my days is all I want. That and recognition by a growing global audience. If history is any indicator of the future I probably won't become truly famous, if that is to be my legacy, until I'm gone from this realm of existance. Most great artists aren't truly appreciated until after they're dead. [Spek gazes off into some unseen place while fully submitting to his present delusion] ;-)

I'll find a way around that copyright and get immensely rich with your artwork. Then I visit you and waggle the $-bills in front of your nose. Just kidding. I started on - what was then called - BBS with a 2400 bps modem and paied $8 a minute to upload the source code for the figFORTH79 compiler/interpreter I translated from Z80 to the iAPX8086 - long before there was such a thing like GNU.

By the way, just in case any lurkers decide to try and steal my club name, like so many have stolen my handle 'Spektyr', which I've been using on the Internet since before the general public knew there [I]WAS[/I] an internet and it cost about $10 an hour for a 28.8 bps (Or was it 14.4? I can't remember) dial up connection, I'm having it copyrighted. I absolutely despise copycats. ;-)

Ok. I'll build a nightclub called Spektryl Dymenshun on secondlife.com and we can all have a Publication Party. ;-) LOL

` GOOD LUCK SPEKTYR!!! HOPE YOU GET IN :D and how bout throwing a party hahaha Good job!

Thanks, Adrian! "We'll keep our fingers crossed couse if you get published, you'll have to buy us all a drink. ;-)" OH NO! don't tempt me like that. I've been sober for over 4 years while I fight for my SSD income and then get myself back into an independant living situation. Once that's all out of the way I 'might' have a beer now and then. I'll ponder that decision when I come to it. ;-) As for the rest of you all I can offer is maybe some 'virtual Mojitos' or something like that. LOL

Hey Spectyr! This is a very fine render. Warm, clean and beautiful. I like Chain Reaction 1 the most. That's a 'strong' image. We'll keep our fingers crossed couse if you get published, you'll have to buy us all a drink. ;-)

Thanks Guys! It looks like they are not finished with the Shortlist yet. Zoloc has also been selected. So far I have three works going into final judging. Chain Reaction 1 Mandala Arancia Zoloc Considering the fact that I submitted 30 entries this time it's still a big improvement over last year. Still, I shouldn't let my expectations get the better of me. Expectations invite disappointment. ;-)

Congrats man! Well done. This one is very nice, very detailed and good colour composition.

Congradulations! this is awesome! I love the colors.