Farsong Blog-o-Matic

In six parts; the idea was to do it simply. Even then it took a while, but it was a great exercise, too.



Parts are perhaps a little dark, but it's supposed to be cheesy (perhaps the cheesiest ending evar), but not edgy; edgy comics are annoying and usually somewhat pretentious. I also tried to show it, not tell it. That's kind of the point of comics.

( The rest of the story )

Two new albums to-day:

Envelopes — Here Comes The Wind
A little bit Architecture in Helsinki, a little bit Firey Furnaces, a little bit Ima Robot, a little bit Broken Social Scene, and a little bit B-52's.

Excellent little Swedish indie-pop band. Each song is different, but they actually fit together as a whole. This is on this year's The List*.


Don't Stop: Recording Tap
Funk/dance/disco/pre-rap beat poetry. Good stuff.


Now, I'm sitting here drawing things, and have been for hours. I'll post the completed comic later, but this week is busy. It's seriously the cheesiest thing I've ever drawn. I just realised a few minutes ago that I need to keep all the micron pens in order, otherwise I'll go insane because I can't find the nib/tip size micron pen I need.

Also, this inking 6 pages of comics business goes slower than I anticipated. I don't think I've actually ever done this many full pages before. Fortunately, I can devote all my time till Thursday on this project as a whole (the comic is a small part of the overall presentation); then it'll be smooth sailing for the most of the semester.

I'm totally strung out on Dr Pepper and sour cream and onion Sun Chips right now. I neglected to get the Nutter Butters, but I think I can survive.

I just realised that this is the first real "24-hour-comic" style thing I've ever done. I need to do more of those.


--
* dragon is too lazy to look up The List (of albums for the year). Click the "music" tag and find it maybe. Last year's is probably towards 31-Dec-2007 or 1-Jan-2008.

• Hillary is the psycho ex-girlfriend of the Democratic party

Despite all the math counting her out, Hillary Clinton fervently remains in the race to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. She has become the Democratic Party's psycho ex-girlfriend, and she's not going away without a restraining order.

• Exfoliate
For the Dr Who fan who needs a good scrubbing

• Gnome + Do = Crazy Delicious
Have I mentioned this one before? It's Quicksilver for Linux. It's really snappy. Adding this made me feel immediately at home on Ubuntu 8.04.

• The Arcade Fire for Obama for President
Wait … aren't the Arcade Fire a Canadian band? Not that it matters: America's business is the world's business.

As a followup to the previous post:

I was attempting to listen to John Gruber's podcast about the Apple Extended keyboards. As Gruber rightly says, keyboards are one of the most important things that most people never pay any attention to. Consequently, the market is saturated with crappy, cheap keyboards that work about as well as the cost that went into their manufacture, despite the fact that the keyboard is used to interact with the computer more than even a mouse. It's sad that the best keyboards of today are models from 1992.

The Talk Show, Episode 20

We discuss one of the most important topics of our time: the Apple Extended Keyboard and Extended Keyboard II.

 ★ 

[Daring Fireball]

I'm not about to register for free internet when there other unfettered accesspoints abound. The fact that I have to log in to use the wireless at EWU just about every hour is bad enough (and I really need to figure out a script to do that for me).

“It's like that one bumpersticker — well, it's not a real bumpersticker, but if it were real, and if I had a car to put the bumpersticker on, this is what it would say.”




I also ended up vectorising this from the other day (though I still need to make a larger version of the insert spacer):

There is still more to tweak, too.


Playing around in illustrator and seeing how to go about making things I like; I do find I like iconic things. I do like the type on the first thing; I'm a typeface geek. Of note is the fact that the lulz incurred are not malicious, but rather, awesome. I do things because they can conceivably be awesome. $5 also could be construed as an inside joke, but it's mostly an addition to the end of a boring story to make it worthwhile as well as awesome. Try adding it the the end of your boring stories and watch the magic happen.


Finals commence on the morrow. I have things to finish before then, and I was not the most productive today.

Well, Improve Everywhere tried just that. In a food court, no less.



I should probably also link to the amusing D&D heirarchy, a posthumous allusion to the Geek Heirarchy. The NYT image is actually very well designed. Reminds me a lot of Franklin Christenson Ware's style, though it might just be the font.

And I do find flow-charts to be highly amusing.


I should also link to-day's XKCD.


( More brainscrapings from to-day )

I swear, tech is trying to rickroll me to-day.

First, it was the 45 minutes I spent trying to make Flash Player work (I finally repaired permissions, rm'd a few things, and re-installed. I think it finally worked, because videos play on my Brother's G4 MacMini, and I am not going to mess further).

Now, it's the sketchy scratchdrive. It's probably the USB chipset on the case, not the drive its self, but the thing is buggy and disconnects randomly. Then again, it's USB, so what do I expect? I've replaced it with a 500 Gb Firewire (400, not 800, unfortunately, and my G5 lacks eSATA) Western Digital MyBook, and it shall serve as storage of DV footage, photos, and such. The price for the new one was too good to pass up: $71, with a coupon and gift card. Plus, it has good power management, has Firewire (and eSATA), and is virtually silent. I should also add that it's a smashing matte black color, and fairly nice looking, for an external drive.

Of course, I've been arguing with the one sketchy drive for over a year now. It's failed catastrophically twice on me, thus far, and I've reformatted. I really ought to give up on it. The only thing of value on it is some DV footage, and I keep all my source tapes. The footage still needed to be edited, anyway, so it's no great loss. I stopped caring about the files on it last year.

I have a wonderful keyboard and I could ramble ad nausium about it, thought that's a bit annoying. Suffice to say that it has mechanical keyswitches like the old IBM keyboards or the Apple Extended II keyboards, complete with the right amount of action and key force. It's built like a tank, feels great, and is loud. It always made me happy when my ex-roommate yelled at me about how loud it was.

That said, when it dies or wears out (I think I might wear through the spacebar before the keys die), I intend to get Das Keyboard. It, too, has the mechanical keyswitches. It would also make a great Dvorak keyboard. Interestingly enough, I've found that I'm quite capable of QWERTYing on a Dvorak layout (by touch). Now, I need to switch that around so as I am Dvoraking on a QWERTY.


Also of note, things which I have broken:

Firefox 2.0.0.11 spellcheck function doesn't quite work right on my main machine (the one I didn't mess with--the 1.8 GHz G5). It shows words that are misspelled, but it won't give me the context menu dictionary.

Inkscape runs on my MacBook (Intel Core2 Duo 2 GHz), but all the letters of all the menus are boxes, as if there is no text. I don't think it's an issue with X11, because OpenOffice seems to work just fine. It was actually the reason (aside from the gawdawful stacks) that I switched back to 10.4--which is working fine except for Inkscape).

If anyone has any suggestions on these, I'd be willing to listen.

Being at home for this semester has made me loose all sense of time. It's seriously like a week 'till Christmas. Crazy.

I also rotoscoped an image from the summer. I thought it was fun, and the results were surreal. Also, for future reference, "Rotoscoping" is simply a fancy way of saying "tracing a photo."


No, I will not give context for this one.

Today was … actually rather awesome.

Half of the details will have to wait. The other half I can tell.

( And it's a boring recounting of the things I did to-day )

To-day was pretty awesome.

No, no pictures to-day, but I did find some cool things. The fact of the matter is that there are a great number of low-end electronics for pretty low prices. Things that are not so low, too!

I found, for less than €8, a memory card reader. It transfers at USB 2.0 speeds, and saves me from draining the camera's batteries. That's as good a deal as you'll find on Newegg, without the shipping. It reads all manner of cards, too. Even better, it said “works with Win 2000/ME/XP” without a mention of Mac. It's a mass storage device, so it will work with Mac OS 8.1+, that is, any mac that supports USB. Most things work with Mac, and OSX has drivers for almost anything.

More than that, I found a new alarm clock for €7, but not just any alarm clock with a light. Moreover, it's radio-controlled, so it syncs up with the atomic clock in Frankfurt. And it isn't one of those crappy American ones that is in 12-hour time—no, this one is in 24-standard time (there's a reason that it's called "standard").

To top that off, I found a 2Gb SD Card for my camera for less than €30. Yes, I already have a 1Gb card, but this was too good a deal to pass up. And I'm a terrible geek (ie, terribly geeky).


Of course, to round out the geekyness, I got some awesome metal that you can't find in the states. One can't hardly find any good metal there. Two albums, actually (when was the last time I actually bought a CD?). The first is Rhapsody's Tales From The Emerald Sword Saga (produced in Germany), and Within Temptation's Mother Earth. Orchestral metal. Mmmh. Good stuff.


The thought occurred to me recently that I could really take up residence here in Germany. I quite literally have everything I need: computer and some clothes. I could take up residence in a small 1 or 2 room flat. There are a few things that I would want from my current … residence, mostly in the way of bookses.

Outcome: I will be walking on bloodied stumps by end of this week. That, and I'll need to wash my socks. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't hurt too terribly much, so I'm not too concerned.

Dear Western Washington,
This is actual winter weather, and not that chilly at that. Snow is cool, but you seem to freak out any time it comes around, saying things like “White Stuff? Falling from teh_sky? Oh noes! This never happens.” Yet, it seems to snow at least once every year. Seriously.

I've been drawing on bristol a lot more, of late. The texture is quite nice, and it takes ink so well. I'm also getting better about not smearing my inks, too.

In addition, I spent part of this afternoon geeking-out about aircraft, specifically the Ekranoplan, a Russian Ground Effect Vehicle with high-volume lifting capacities. I also was geeking out about how such a thing would work great in a cyberpunk/steampunk sort of story.