Author: YJ Soon

Fixing iPhone sync error 13019

I tried syncing my iPhone yesterday, and got an “unable to sync, error 13019” error message.

Some quick googling landed me on this Apple support page (Error 13019 during sync), which recommended de-selecting syncing voice memos and trying to sync again. If that failed (yup), de-select syncing music to try again (failed). Then videos, podcasts, etc. until a successful sync could be performed. All of this failed, so the page recommended I “attempt to sync an empty iTunes music library to the device while logged in as a new admin user”. Ugh! No!

What eventually worked for me: looking through the Voice Memos app, finding 8 of the same voice memo, deleting them all then syncing. Hmph.

Inspired to draw

I’ve realised it takes quite a bit of discipline to draw stupidchicken on a regular basis. Yes, I usually just end up taking existing drawings, making small modifications, adding some senseless text and pretending it’s funny. It’s still tiring. Be quiet.

This last half-year of doing the webcomic has been quite rewarding, though. I’ve set up a Facebook page for it (factoid: biggest fanbase – teenage girls from the UK. Go figure), and a nice commenter went “love these comics, really make my day, keep it up!”. A nice comment! On the Internet! Probably a sarcastic troll. Anyway, thanks, nice commenter or sarcastic troll. I’ll keep it up as long as I can.

I also found drearyweary recently. The creator is a Singaporean comic artist who does some really, really amazing work, and he posts entire long (and coherent) comicbooks online (Creative Commons licensed, even). I need to buy some of his stuff, if I can find it. I’m really enjoying The Resident Tourist – it’s a (presumably) autobiographical story about the life of a returning Singaporean who feels displaced in his home country. Speaks to me more than a little, I guess. And the crisp art is just awfully impressive.

Finally:

Evil-Tofu

Evil Tofu is a character from the webcomic, who showed up here and here. Drawn for Toru, my evil friend who’s in Nairobi or Narnia or something.

New chickens, April – May

I seem to be averaging five comics a month, which is not quite twice-weekly but not too shabby I guess. Also, working in some longer-term plot points, but don’t hold out for a coherent storyline or anything.

MORE NEW CHICKENS

Haven’t quite been keeping up with the twice-weekly schedule, but I try my best. I also have a Twitter account for stupidchicken where I post chicken-related tweets. Ha! Chicken-related tweets. I’m so amusing.

New chickens

Two months since I announced regular updates to the webcomic (Wednesdays and Saturdays) and I’ve only missed one. That’s quite acceptable, I think, and it was for another project which turned out quite well.

I’ll probably write about that at some point. Meanwhile–

Drawing

I managed to rush out today’s new stupidchicken comic only an hour before my self-imposed deadline. I imagine this will become more common as work gets busier, but I’m glad this Wednesday-Saturday update schedule is forcing me to be disciplined about drawing regularly. 

New chickens since the last update (also, you can subscribe to stupidchicken by email or RSS!):

nothing-to-draw1

Before the internet grew up and ate all my free time, I doodled a lot. I bought reams of white A4 paper, laid on the floor, drew with my cheap fountain pen while dreaming up all kinds of ridiculous story arcs, left my drawings all over the house, and got yelled by my mom who threw away the drawings. This sequence, repeated regularly until I enlisted, made me happy. I even entertained thoughts of drawing and making comics for a living, half-aware that I really didn’t have the talent or patience for it.

At 19, I was being interviewed by the Public Service Commission for the scholarship (in engineering — math is easier than art, after all), and they asked what I would like to be doing in ten years’ time. I told them, all earnest and naive, that I’d really like to be drawing comics. I can’t remember what their reaction was — maybe I couldn’t see their bewilderment through my nervousness — but I remember my scholarship officer mentioning a year later that she had heard about it, and found it funny. Seemed to me it had gone around the office that some kid had dared to tell the PSC he wanted to draw comics! Not serve the public good! Just wait till he comes back and serves his bond!

So now, it’s ten years later, and I really want to draw some comics so I can tell the 19-year-old version of me that I didn’t mess up his dreams too badly. 

wocka1

Also, I spent $500 on my new tablet, so I’d better use the hell out of it.

Moving, moving

Had my last staff dinner last week, and didn’t win anything in the lucky draw for the third year. Hung out with colleagues afterward and the conversation steered itself in the exact same direction as after last year’s staff dinner. Full marks for consistency, everyone.

Met the new colleagues for the first time today. This might be interesting.

Going home more often to try and figure out how best to fit the giant TV (that I bought last year for the apartment) into the spare room when I move back home. I’ll need a sofa, a new table and maybe some way to soundproof the room so I can still hold Rock Band / Guitar Hero parties. And a new OS; the Ubuntu box is getting a bit long in the tooth (haven’t upgraded since 6.10). And a new TV. And a Mac Pro. Er, wait.

Done with having to go back to work on a regular basis, but need to resist the urge to play Fallout 3 until my eyes bleed. I still wonder if I should have planned a trip somewhere for the break.

Saw the ex for the first time in very, very long, and found out from a good friend (thank you) that she’s moved on and found someone new. Hey, it’s been nearly two years; I’m just the one who’s slow and useless like that. Felt sorry for myself for a day or so, but ran 30km in a week to not feel like crap (old post), and hey, it worked! Ignore the time dilation I did right there.

Been slowly seeing my boarders vacate their rooms to go home for the holidays. I doubt I’ll ever see most of them again, and I keep wondering if I ever got the pastoral care role of this job right. Last piece of advice I offered to them on my “Level 12 Blog” (er, post-its on the pantry wall) was to please, please use this break to do something they’d been putting off all year. Upon further thought, I think that was for me. 

I’m okay now.

End of term

Term ends in a week and a half. This Friday, I meet my classes for the last time for “reflection and review” (comically abbreviated as “R & R” on the timetable), and then I just need to go for some closing dinners, write some reports, supervise a camp, attend some meetings and hand things over to my unlucky successors… and then I’ll be done here.

Holy shit. That’s way too soon. I need to thwack a few more misbehaving students on the head with my large plastic file, or else I’ll leave here with a severe sense of underachievement. 

I’ll probably do some “R & R” of my own on my brief teaching stint here at some point (summary: I don’t think I could have had a better first posting), but for now, I need to find me some students to thwack.

Reunion Book

I received my Fifth-Year Reunion book in the mail this week. I’d been getting (and ignoring) reminders over the last few months to fill up a personal-updates page online, which would then be printed and sent to everyone in the class of 2003.

iPod nano: Thinner than a reunion book.
iPod nano: Thinner than a reunion book.

The first thing I did when I got the book — after marvelling at how heavy it was, then attempting to kill a cockroach with it — was to check if my ex had submitted a page. She had, and after reading it (semi-disinterestedly, I’d like to claim), I turned to where my update page should be, as if to check if I’d submitted something and completely forgot about it.

(I hadn’t.)

Many of my best friends from college hadn’t submitted their pages, either. Maybe it’s because we know we don’t need to catch up in a book sent out five years after graduation; more likely, it’s because we’re all ridiculously lazy, and that’s why we got along so well in the first place. Anyway, I’ve been very lucky in having been able to see them pretty often, thanks to the work trips (three in just over a year!), and many have come to Singapore.

In hindsight, it would have been terribly amusing to send in a whole series of Chicken comics to put on my page. Maybe someday I’ll write a blog post answering the questions posed (“favourite Stanford memory”, “life after Stanford”, “current life motto”). Or maybe I’ll be too ridiculously lazy to do it.