About Nuchtchas

Self proclaimed Artist, Dreamer, RolePlayer, The Podcast NINJA!, Gamer, Klingon, Walking Corruption and Geek Queen, Nuchtchas is the owner and operator of NIMLAS Studios with the life goal of highlighting the awesome and good in the world and to spread the love of all things geek!

Christmas Card 2010

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Nuchtchas

Christmas Card 2010

Originally uploaded by nuchtchas

As many of you know by now instead of mailing out Christmas cards I have taken what I would have spend on cards and stamps, doubled that and donated it to a charity. When we got married this practice grew from suporting one charity for the holidays to two.

This years we are supporting the Red Cross and the War Amps. Now the Red Cross is a repeat, and a charity I often support because every time the is a disaster somewhere in the world they are the first there. I have seen this organization in action and have so much to thank them for. The War Amps is a charity that offers programs and service to those who have lost limbs. Not just soldiers, but children and civilians and it is a charity that has touched our lives in the past few years. Seeing people get back up and back into life is inspiring and we’d like to help that cause.

We are so happy to have everyone in our lives and so happy to share this time of year with you, even if it is through a computer and the internet.

Have a happy and safe season.

Nutty Bites

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Nuchtchas

I have mentioned that I am working on a secret project, well here it is, the announcement. After listening to podcasts for over five years and being asked all the time what podcast is mine (none, as until now I was the podcast ninja, showed up on everyone’s podcast but didn’t have one of my own) I have finally decided to create a podcast of my very own.

What will it be about? Well that’s a good question, I am interested in so many different things that this will be something that will highlight things I’m interested in, and hopefully that isn’t covered to death on other shows.

I will focus on Art, the creative process, people out there in the verse doing creative works, audio dramas that I’m interested in, books, movies, tv, music, you name it. I will also cover Cons that I attend, host discussions and other fun tidbits. I will even have games, contests and interviews with people who inspire me.

Does that mean I won’t be features on all those other podcasts I work with? What about the Digger Chats on SciFi Dig? I will still be working on all those great podcasts, I will still be doing the digger chats, this is just something extra.

I hope you all are as excited about this as I am.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10 — 1.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

Christmas and Epiphany

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Nuchtchas

Every year when talking about the holidays I will drop words like Epiphany, Kris Kringle and Kings Cake only to have baffled looks from people I am talking to. My family celebrates a little weird, no big shock there, we do everything a little weird. Many of our traditions come out of necessity, being the 7th of 9 children it makes very little sense to buy a gift for every sibling. Some of our traditions just came out of us being us. To explain last year I made a comic on Bitstrips, you can see the whole comic by clicking on the thumbnail.

As with many families we are growing and spreading out. Most of my family is back in NY, one section is in CT and my husband and I are in Canada. This makes the holidays interesting. This year was my grandmother’s 100th birthday and so we all (except my mom, then pregnant sister and niece who had to run track for college) traveled down to florida for it. We had a great time but it meant my husband spent the days he would have spent on Epiphany off work on that, also, we spent the money we would have paid to travel on that. Still, we are traveling, just not to my family. For Christmas we are spending it with his family in Ontario, and even better we are meeting our very good friend who lives in BC and spending all that time with him. Batman (the nickname online I use for this friend) is awesome and we miss him lots. Since he moved out to BC we don’t get to see him much so this will be a great trip. Already we are making plans for D&D and ShadowRun games, viewings of Tron (Original and the new one) and so forth. I can’t wait.

For Epiphany, I will be traveling to NY alone and while my husband really wants to go and be there this is one of the sacrifices we have to make. We have to get used to it, we live really far from both our families and he is in the military, so there are sacrifices to be made.

We have no need for a tree since we won’t be home, the lights, stockings and decorations will all stay in the box in the basement this year.

While some of my family and friends are celebrating Chanukah and others are getting their trees up and decking the halls I have been plotting and scheming. I love giving presents, LOVE it. This year we were able to get a lot of it done early, as of today there are only two gifts left I think to get. Oh, and presents for each other. My husband already knows what he is getting from me, and even though the money I was hoping to pay for it didn’t come in yet, I think I am still getting it for him. A PS3, it’s a big gift, it costs way more then I should be spending, but, it will make him happy and I’m amazed he held out this long on buying one. I will need to have something for him to open on Christmas though, a trinket of some sort. Other then that, my plotting and scheming continues for the last two gifts, I love playing Santa.

What I hate doing is waiting to give people their presents, I want to give them now. More then getting anything I love giving presents, seeing people’s faces light up when they open something I know they’ll love. It makes me so happy to give them that smile.

So, what’s your favorite part of the season? What does your family do differently?

Book Review: “Jack the Kitten is Very Brave”

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Nuchtchas

Many of you know I love books, no big shock there. I love art and picture books, not a big stretch there either. What you might not know is how much I love, and I mean LOVE reading books to my many nieces and nephews. (my family was graced with it’s 10th just a week ago, and there are two on my husband’s side too) One of my favorite things to do when visiting is to read to the kids, often the whole family is together so there isn’t much time, but when I’m visiting individually I love having a munchkin or two on my lap and reading to them. One of the only things that can make the situation better is when the child turns to me after we finish reading and tells me it is their turn to read to me, even if they don’t know how to read yet.

Jack the Kitten is Very Brave written by Tabitha Grace Smith with illustrations by Mindy Lou Hagan, is a new children’s book for the pre-school to second grade crowd. It features some great images of cats in a picture book quality with a nice simple story to go along with it. It’s fun, cute and something I can see a lot of fun reading to the little ones. There are things to point out in each picture and talk about and the story, the story is based around a struggle that often happens with kids… yeah, no spoilers here, and in the end they learn a lesson. The two main characters are Machu & Jack, two adorable kitties, the characters are based on the real life cats of the author. It’s fun, it’s fast and it’s something I’ve already ordered and can’t wait to read to my little ones.

Full disclosure, the author is a good friend of mine, I adore TABZ, I also adore her cats, as does Rory, but that in no way skews my review. I wouldn’t write things that are untrue here nor would I spend my hard earned cash on something I didn’t really want just because a friend created it.

You can pre-order yourself a copy of this book, signed by the author and the kitties by going to machuandjack.com

You can also order it from Amazon

And lastly, and perhaps most important to some, you can SAVE MONEY (10%) by going to CreateSpace’s store and using the code: D9A8XUZU

Ordering through CreateSpace is great for international readers too (outside the USA)

NaNoWriMo is over! YAY!

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Nuchtchas

As I stated before, this year I participated in NaNoWriMo. Now I’m here to say that I’ve won, I won and I’m thrilled with myself.

NaNoWriMo was a great experience and I am so glad I did it. For years people have tried to talk me into it and this year I was so happy to tell them I was doing it. I dared, and was dared back by @anechoic_chambe and again I am so glad for that little push, it helped keep me in the game. Also, I am happy to report that both of us won, so I am really glad I pushed her too. I met some wonderful people through the process by communicating with other NaNos in my area. Here in the Valley we had write ins and stuff on the forums and games and while the write ins weren’t as productive as sitting down at home without distraction and writing, I did find that it kept me writing. Talking about our novels at the write ins gave me ideas for writing. I also met someone who lives relatively close to me and is a twitter addict like me and who happened to my my NaNo Nemisis. On twitter she is known as @AuroraLee and basically she and I were neck and neck most of the month, every time she passed me I worked harder to pass her, and she then in turn worked to pass me. My novel was about 53K words, her’s will be 150K so eventually she passed me. I think had I more words she might have gotten more words then she did, as it was she made her personal goal of 75K and ended Nano with over 80K words, so she rocked any how. The healthy competition was great. There was some more competition with writing an apple as a weapon into our stories that everyone in our area was challenged to do and the write all night event we had some crazy word wars, and that was great. My novel was finished by then so I wrote a 6K plus short story set in the ShadowRun world.

I had so much fun it looks like I will be joining the writing group that sprang out of last year’s Nano so I will continue to see all of those great people. Also, more reasons for me to bake (I made filled cupcakes for two of the events and they were awesome. Sorry, no pics)

I also want to find or create something similar to the writing group but an art group, art club really. A set time and place to meet people to paint or draw, I am really excited about that. It will take a lot of work and planning and most likely won’t happen until the new year, but that’s just fine.

Also, I want to do my 40 days of Daily Creativity again this year. Meaning, I will take on my task of creating something (painting or drawing) every day of lent. I would love to start something like NaNoWriMo but for art, though if I picked March (which it turns out is National Youth Month) it is right before April which is ScriptFrenzy and people might not want to do it right before then… if I picked April then the same issue… though honestly I am really drawn (no pun intended) to March. It’s a good time I think… hmmm so many ideas, so much I want to do.

Also, there is a secret project that people have been pushing and prodding me to do for the last two years or so, that I think I have firmly decided to do… more info on that later. Oh and this secret project might let you read that ShadowRun Story :P

Thank you everyone in my area, thank you everyone on twitter and facebook for the support and encouragement.

Most importantly though, thank you to my husband who has made some great sacrifices (mostly time with me) through out this whole month and has been very supportive. He is great and I really love how wonderful he was all month with me slacking on stuff so I can get my word count in or for being a bit of a shut in so I can write and losing me Monday nights for write ins and the other events. Love you.