10 February 2004. Two days ago I decided I had to start using my Paint Shop program daily, if only for a half hour or so. I planned to play around, nothing more--but playing around with my long division "template." In other words, I would throw long division mathemaku together without reflection. My purpose was to gain familiarity with Paint Shop. Of course, I would be on the outlook for interesting accidents. The result of the first session follows:

I like this but I don't much understand it. I love the way "cave" came out. I made a negative image of my original version, by the way--that's why the background is black. I can find a coherence of sorts in my poem. I feel good about the colors--I'm not sure how aesthetically effective they are, but they were fun to work with. Most important for me was that I think I have now mastered the use of print in Paint Shop, something that I had a ridiculously hard time doing. For one thing, the program prints outlines of letters and the user must define both the color of the outline and the color of the interior of each letter. I thought it would just print the damned letters the way a word processor does.

Anyway, I played with colors and letters. My one "experiment" was having "tusk" half into the dividend shed, as I call it, and half out of it. I think I can do something with this idea, but just what, who knows.

"in dur," which is in pieces and incomplete in the remainder, is supposed to suggest "endure," and, with the T's, "in dirt."

The one surprise for me, although it probably shouldn't have been, was the mildly three-dimensional effect. I hope to make this more pronounced down the road. Possibly in this mathemaku, which I'm sure I'll revise--though not for a while. I hope to do an entirely new rough draft of a mathemaku every day with Paint Shop. I did so yesterday. I haven't yet today, but soon will.