The wait in the hospital was excruciatingly long, but the emergency hospital staff was friendly and helpful. Sonia had her bloodwork done, and was strapped to an IV to replenish her fluids. Our hospital ordeal ended at 2AM on Friday morning. Our hospital had wireless, so I would post occasional tweets to update my friends on our status.

During this time, neither Aarti and I had our cell phones. Three days before, both our mobile phones inexplicably died. We’re not avid cell phone users, but at a time where we needed them the most, they weren’t working. The VOIP client Skype played a very important role, essentially serving as our communication channel with my parents, to keep them updated on our situation.

It was difficult to sleep, but I had to wake up 3 hours later and go into work. I had to wait an excruciating 12 hours before coming back home. Couple that with the fact that I didn’t have breakfast or much of a lunch, for that matter.

Thankfully, upon my return – Sonia was feeling better. One of our family friends cooked us a delicious Indian dinner at their place. Let me tell you, there’s nothing better than a hot, home cooked meal. I devoured it like there was no tomorrow. After we ate, we returned home – I took a shower and promptly passed out on my bed – waking up at 8AM this morning. Aarti and Sonia are both doing well.

I’m behind on all my e-mails, but rest assured, if you wrote me, you’ll get a reply. I would like to thank everyone for their concern and well-wishes. Your notes buoyed our spirits during an especially difficult time. Thank you.

-Krishna

Friday’s Sequential Artists’ Pub featured Jerzy Drozd filling in for me, hosting a discussion with a roundtable of cartoonists on the subject of fear. Specifically, what we fear most as cartoonists.

The cartoonists who participated on the call included:

• Garrett Williams
• Scott Story
• JT Shea
• Tom (AxoniteV3)
• Carlisle (Steal This Comic)
• Ryan Dow
• Deano_inabiskit
• Dungeon Warden
• Frumph
• KSelkelsky

The next show is in two weeks: November 14th. Be there!

-Krishna

Here are a handful of notable links I found interesting this evening:

Overcoming the Fear of Having Kids While Being a Full-Time Artist (Artcast #14 by Stephen Silver). It was very reassuring to listen to Stephen. In his latest Artcast, he addresses a common fear most artist’s have when it comes to raising a family. Stephen’s artcasts are always inspirational, educational, and fun to listen to. (He draws pretty good, too.)

Jillian Tamaki answers the perennial question: Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?. Nicely summarized, and well worth the read.

Conceptual Artist Bjorn Hurri has posted a series of “Steampunk” versions of Star Wars characters. He also has quite a number of sketches showing weird and imaginative designs of monsters, creatures, and alien figures.

That’s it for now. Enjoy!

-Krishna

Regular readers of Villaintech are familiar with my preoccupation with zombies. I’m particularly fond of the fast ones, ala Dawn of the Dead, or the rage-infected in 28 Days Later. Left 4 Dead, therefore, looks to be a very promising thriller of a game. (more…)

Here are some face sketches I drew last night while watching the election coverage. Just a little warm-up…

And below are the inks for today’s strip.

Outside of creating Guest Star comics, I’m also available for custom avatar design and podcast album art. Get in touch with me for pricing details!

-Krishna

From time to time, I run across some truly useful Macintosh utilities and applications that help me in my workflow. I’d like to share my latest discovery:

Hyperspaces

Spaces, Apple’s virtual desktop environment, isn’t complete without this $13 shareware application. Currently in Public Preview, Tony Arnold’s application allows you to customize each Space the way you want – via desktop pictures, colors, text labels, and even the name of each Space.

For instance, you can assign a separate desktop background for each space. You can also assign individual text labels, via custom fonts and colors. You can even adjust the position of the text label for each desktop. I prefer to have my text labels for each desktop on the upper left side.

When you switch between Spaces, the transition between each desktop is smooth. The unregistered version allows you to customize 2 Spaces – perfect for test driving this program. The registered version allows you to customize additional Spaces. After installing and using this app for two days, I registered my copy to support the developer’s efforts.

I evaluated my copy on a Macbook Pro and MacPro.

There are some niggles with this application, but given that it hasn’t officially hit 1.0, but the developer has been good about keeping users posted with updates.

In my usage of the app, I discovered that HyperSpaces doesn’t work with CocoaTech’s newest version of Path Finder. That’s because Path Finder draws its own Desktop on the screen. The workaround I’ve found is to uncheck “Hide Finder’s Desktop” within the Path Finder preferences.

Through SpaceSwitcher, an option within HyperSpaces, you can see a custom view of all your desktops by holding Option-` (backwards tick). See screenshot below:

As far as my wish list, here’s what I’d like to see in future versions:

1) multiple monitor support
2) pure Path Finder integration
3) application / window views within each SpaceSwitcher window, similar to the way virtual desktop apps of yore (CodeTek’s Virtual Desktop, etc.)

HyperSpaces has behaved well on my system. No crashes or slow-downs were caused by this application. I have confidence in the future of this app, as it was developed by the author of the late, lamented VirtueDesktops – one of the best virtual desktop apps on the market before Apple introduced Spaces.

I really found this application to be useful. I have separate Spaces assigned to Photoshop, Painter, Netnewswire and Web/Mail. I can now easily tell which desktop I’m on, and that makes me more productive. This is something I wish Apple had implemented from the get-go.

In short, if you’re looking for a better way to organize and manage your Spaces, check out HyperSpaces. HyperSpaces requires 10.5.4 and works on Intel and PPC Macs.

-Krishna