I'm back!

Finally wrote my last exam for the year, so now I can get back to those things I do. Y'know, draw, tinker with electronics, play games and be weird in general!

Before I can do all those however, I need to sort things out, starting with catching up on my clearly overflowing inboxes. Damn, people post a lot of art in a month. So it's gonna be a few days before I have something to post too.
Wanna drop some comments here and there. Many journals to respond to.

So, what are my plans for this month, apart from getting up to date again? Well, I'm going on holiday to family near the coast. Been dying for a change of scenery! (Sometimes, it felt like a literal statement. The same places over and over and over tends to do that.) Hoping to get back into drawing more often while over there. That said, if I were to upload, I'm not sure if there are scanners, so photos will have to do.

Now for the actual update parts~

General: Been rather chaotic lately. Apart from exams, things around the house have been out of loop. But those seem to be normalizing now at least. Not much else to say here it seems.
Electronics: Lots going on here! I recently got the inspiration to do a computer project: A homebrew 8-bit microcomputer! Called the Vulpotron 1000, it'll have a 8085 CPU, along with 32k or 64k of RAM and a yet-to-be-determined amount of ROM. It'll also have a Yamaha YM2412 sound chip, the same one found in the Sega Megadrive console. "Seeegaaaaa" Though, the sound chip will only be added once the main system has been fully or almost fully developed. For the first while, it'll use a hexadecimal keypad for input. I'll add a proper keyboard later on. Composite video out is also planned. Most components have been procured, or are on the way here. But I still need a EPROM burner and eraser. So no OS or BIOS yet. Can build a basic RAM-only version already, with byte displays. Nothing fancy, but it's a start!
Other electronics stuff include a new, higher capacity memory card for my phone. Now I can load even more music onto it! Also got a new microcontroller dev board, an ST Nucleo; an ARM-powered MCU development platform. Feel like making some audio projects with it, since it's got a rather powerful processor and some nice on-board peripherals.
Studies: Done for the year~ So glad to finally be finished for a while. This year has been crazy, but I've felt a bit more in control than I did last year, a year I definitely do not want to relive again. Anyways, this semester I had a rather cool subject, one of my computer engineering modules. We just refer to it as Micros. It's based around the Intel 8088/86 CPU, and looks at memory interfacing, clocking, I/O, serial comms and so on. All the basics to get a microcomputer running, which is part of what inspired me to start the Vulpotron project. We also used PIC microcontrollers to drive a 1602 LCD, which was a really awesome experience. We nearly did serial comms on the PICs too, but ran out of time unfortunately. All in all, definitely my favourite subject I've had in the last three years.
As for everything else, wasn't all that exciting, but had to be done. Math was a pain, as always. But Signal Theory 1 showed me one can do some really nifty things with Matlab in terms of audio signals. That was rather cool!
Art: I have not drawn and finished anything this entire month. D: Exams kept me away from my sketchbook and pencils, so not much was done. Got some half-drawn sketches, but nothing worth showing yet. Aiming to change that now that I no longer have any academic responsibilities for the next two months. Have so many ideas! And a contest entry I need to finish within the next 8 days. gulp And three sketchbooks to fill! And a Wacom to dust off! My poor Wacom is lonely. ;.;
Also! Commissions! I have 2 or 3 ink slots, $15 for thigh-ups and $20 for full-body drawings. Might open up digital ones too, once I've gotten used to the Wacom again. 

TL;DR: Exams are done. Gonna clear out inboxes. Catching up on friends' journals and art. Got crazy computer project idea. Gonna draw. Also commissions open.