Real Animation

Disney is switching back to real animation. Hopefully, the industry will follow their lead (like it always has).

Hopefully this will mean more good films along the lines of:
The Emperor's New Groove
Tarzan
Hercules
The Lion King
Aladdin
Beauty and the Beast
The Little Mermaid


And less tripe like:
Shark Tale
Robots
Madagascar
Chicken Little
Hoodwinked
Open Season

(Yes, I know only one of those is a Disney film)

Screamerella

I drawed a picture.

Planting a Tree

In the spirit of telling stories from months ago, here's one from November!

Erin's parents gave us a tree for our anniversary. I called JULIE, the underground kill-line report service, to make sure there were no power or water lines running through our front yard, then took an afternoon and dug a hole. It was a fine hole, devoid of dirt.

Then the tree came and we placed it in the hole. I put the hole-dirt in one of our garbage cans, but now I don't know what to do with it. Dad says I should just spread it out over the yard, but it's been cold lately and I haven't wanted to.

Bathroom Painting Photos

A while ago, we painted the bathroom, but I never posted pictures. Here are pictures.

Gorditabraten

I want to create a German-Mexican fusion restaurant so I can call it Taco Schnell.

No nose hath smelt...

I thought I knew the depths of stink. Both of our basement toilets spewed forth a dizzying cloud of sewer gas today. We tried to ignore it at first, but we were soon overwhelmed and had to stand outside. The poor intern is cleaning it up. Poor, poor redshirt.

First Recorded Emoticon?

Could this link show evidence of the first recorded emoticon?

Quantum Cryptography

Somehow, I fail to see how this quantum cryptography thingy is a big deal. Isn't it just a really good random number generator?

Warning: Ignorance Alert! This is merely my layperson understanding of how this works...
If I want to decode an encrypted message, I need three things:

1. The encoded message.


2. The method used to encode it.


3. The encryption key (usually a number or a word).

Say, for example, I send a secret message to my friend Ruteger. "Meet me at Steak and Shake. You're buying." I run it through my encryption machine with the key "857312." Even if someone intercepted the message and knew my encryption method, they would still need the key. In this case, the key is rather short and a computer could guess it with trial and error.

But wait... Why not generate the number with a photon? Photons can make random numbers using SCIENCE! Now, instead of the pseudo-random number key "857312," I can now have a truly random number key: "2287937."

The amount of work done by the spy is the same. Am I missing something here? Do I have a fundamentally flawed understanding of cryptography? (likely)

City of Heroes: Wings

Holy cow, these look amazing; the animators really did their homework. After seeing them on the test server, I'll probably put these on a lot more characters than would strictly make sense. Winged robot AWAY!

YouTube video.

The Prestige

Awesome movie. It's sort of a murder mystery with a SHOCKING TWIST! Two magicians with a bitter rivalry are always trying to one-up each other, with deadly and awesome consequences. Seriously, best film I've seen in a while.

Also, Nikola Tesla is in it.

SPORE Sloth

I can't wait for SPORE to come out. This game would seem to be everything I've ever wanted. Hopefully you can put lights and smokestacks on your critters, so I can make this:

The Internet in One Sentence

I found this quote in the comments of a YouTube video. It eloquently sums up the vast majority of discorse on the web:

City of Heroes: Veteran Rewards

CoH will soon have a new system where subscribers get in-game prizes based on how long they've had an active account. They revealed the latest batch of them today.

3 Months: Trenchcoat
Folks have been asking for this for a long time.

6: Greek Alphabet chest emblems
This is the lamest reward by a big margin. Guess they can't all be super good.

9: Kilts for males, "belly shirts" for females
I hear reqests for kilts all the time too.

12: Bonus attack power, special versions of the "sprint" power, and some new decorative pieces for supergroup bases
Some fun stuff. The extra attack will help out at low levels and the base items can add that much more dimension and realism to a base. The sprint powers were originally exclusive preorder items. Those who got them with their preorder felt it was a special little bonus that not many people would have. Now a fair number of people will and that doesn't sit right.

15: Wings
These look exactly as I wanted them to look. Well done. They even flap when you fly!

18: Samurai armor
Looks great! Very nice.

21: One-shoulder cape
Eh, kinda lame. I can't think of any of my characters that would look good with this.

24: Teleport power that takes you to your supergroup base, more decorative base items, special titles
Exclusively-solo players are out of luck here. I'm psyched though. My SG base is awesome.

27: New tech armor
Not bad looking, but really not anything special. This doesn't look all that different from the tech armor options we already have.

30: Chest emblems from existing NPC groups, more decorative base items
Seems like another filler milestone to me.

33: Really really cool bonus attack power
The Nemesis Staff is the sweetest temp power in the game. Now I'll get to keep it FOREVER!

36: Non-combat pet, decorative base items
A little critter that follows you around. I hope we'll get to name them. Looks like fun!

Scattered in there are also a bunch of costume change tokens and character respecs. Unfortunately (or not), they've given out so many of those already that they're just not an enticing reward anymore, so I did not include them in my list.

Fertilizer

I killed a bunch of grass.

Those fertilizer application carts have a sliding lever on them that gives the user more control than simply "open" and "closed." The strip of grass by the mailbox is now a healthy brown.

Fiend Folio Art Review Part 1

This D&D monster book has been around for a few years. Like my analysis of the Monster Manual 3, I'm going to go through each creature entry and bore you with my commentary. In this case, I'll only be talking about the art. Click here for WotC's teaser art gallery for the book.

Shining Stars

Abyssal Ghoul - Scary lookin' critter right there.
Bhut - A big scary melted ghost with big teeth. Reminds me of an evil version of Slimer from Ghostbusters.
Blackstone Gigant - Very dynamic image, despite the fact that it depicts a statue.
Caryatid Column - Looks just like a classical marble statue... come to life with a sword. The serene expression on her face sells it.
Crawling Head - Icky, but perfect.
Alkilith - A nasty slime creature, here depicted as neon green and purple lava. Totally alien and wonderful.
Paeliryon - 20 foot tall morbidly obese "devil-clown." I don't think a better visual interperatation could exist.
Ethergaunts - Utterly alien, bizzare entities from a parallel reality. NAILED.
Armadon - Armored bug monser, straight outta Starship Troopers.
Half-illithid Lizardfolk - Shows an example creature with said template. It's exactly as I would have imagined it. Well done.
Hullathoin - An enormous zombified four-legged "thing." Covered in boils that burst forth with swarms of evil locusts. I love this thing so much.
Inevitable - Geometric, clockwork beings that roam about enforcing the laws of the universe. The illustration here is flawless.
Jackalwere - Striking sillouette.
Lucent Worm - Giant gooey, transperent slug. Truly horrific.
Maug - Captures the feel of an enormously heavy and powerful stone-person thing. He's got some momentum going, and he isn't going to stop.
Shadar-kai - A shadowy race of faerie folk. Great use of contrast and angular edges to evoke the mood.
Yuan-ti Anathema - Evokes not only what the creature looks like, but also hints at what yuan-ti society is like.

"As a foulness shall ye know them."

An odor is present here. You know when after you floss your teeth and you smell your finger? (C'mon, everbody does it.) It is the rank miasma of death. Investigation as to its source may prove necessary.

I lit a three-wick scented candle but it is powerless against the funk.

Where in the World is Chris?

My friend Chris is in Japan, teaching English for a year. Using the address he gave, the city's official website and Google's translate feature, I came up with a dot on a map. I'll see how close my estimate was the next time I hear back from him.

Sloar

The 1984 film Ghostbusters has Rick Moranis spew forth the following insane rant:

"During the rectification of the Vuldronaii the Traveler came as a large, moving Torb. Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new form for him—that of a giant Sloar. Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day, I can tell you."

What the heck is a 'sloar?' My inclination is that the writers just made it up, but might it be some sort of kiln or 'death-sauna?'

Skeleton Baby

Years ago, while visiting Six Flags: Great America during Fright Fest, several friends and I tried to think of ways to bug the crap out of the unfortunate costume-wearing employees. We asked a fellow dressed as a skeleton the following question:

If two skeletons got married and had a baby, would it be a real baby or a skeleton baby?

What is the real answer, and why?

Marmaduke Explained

Every link site I visit has featured this in the past week. I'm featuring it too - because it's AWESOME.
http://marmadukeexplained.blogspot.com/

The writer deconstructs the subtle wit of America's greatest dane.

iTunes 7 still sucks.

Waiting it out has proven fruitless. I'm tired of hoping Apple will patch the program so it works. To their credit, they have posted some workarounds for the problems folks are having, but seriously. No one should have to "work around" anything when you release an update like this.

The suggestions to fix the problem haven't worked for me. The main thing I use iTunes for at home is playing music in the background while I play games. Sound from the game and sound from iTunes have a fundamental disagreement they didn't have in version 6.

Oh, and get this: They have the cahones to tell me the problem is with the other programs I have running (see the very last bullet point on the page). Gee, the only change to my system is the new version of YOUR program, and you're telling me the problem is with everything else? I'd say "nice try," but it isn't, really.

Needless to say, I have reverted to an older version until the damn thing works for me.

Aaron's Last Day

My friend, Nerf target, and mentor said his goodbyes today. We'll keep in touch, certainly, but it won't be the same. Have a good one, Aaron.

iTunes 7 Windows Bug

iTunes 7 for Windows has a major playback bug. When running any other programs with iTunes in the background my music plays all garbled. I really hope they patch this soon - as in like, tomorrow.

The only information I have on it right now is this thread in the Apple forums.

Youth Ministry Logos

Logos I designed for the Jr. and Sr. High School ministries of a church.

V for Vendetta

This is what we like to call a good movie based on a comic book. It may have not been totally believable, but at least it wasn't campy and insulting.

If you're looking for 1984 meets The Count of Monte Cristo look no farther. I enjoyed it greatly.

pandora.com

This is the greatest website. You enter the name of a music artist or song, and it plays other songs that share characteristics with it. It's the result of a huge project by some music analysts. They went through thousands of songs, listing very specific features of each. The search engine goes through these lists and finds stuff you might like. Very, very cool.

You can save playlists, and rate individual song results thumbs up or down (like TiVo!). Did I mention very, very cool?

Painting the Bathroom

From the moment we bought the house, Erin was itching to repaint our purple bathroom. I told her to wait a little bit, until we got settled in. Such was our Labor Day project. We went out to the store, bought the supplies we needed, including some quick-dry spackle for the nail and screw holes all over the walls.

While Erin put up the tape to block the trim and ceiling, I drilled a new hole for the light fixture. The lights and medicine cabinet were too low - I had to lean over to see my face in the mirror! So we needed to move everything up about five inches. I drilled a great big hole five inches above the existing great big hole and set about getting the exposed wires where they needed to be. When wiring the cable and speakers for the living room, I had bent a wire coat hanger into a hook to pull cords through a small hole, so I figured I'd give it a shot here. It took some work (including making a second hook to grab and pull the other hook through the hole), but it totally worked.

Then we painted. Erin got these "paint pads" that work quite well on the wall edges. Then we used the roller for the rest. It really wasn't bad at all.

The Godfather

This film is a classic. Several friends of mine often mention that it's one of their favorite movies of all time. We had never seen it before, so we rented it and sat down for the long haul.

This movie is great. Like my friend says, it makes you want to be in the mob (just a little). Dramatic, suspenseful, great music, wonderful characters. My favorite part was the gradual transition of the main character - he's pulled in by things within and outside his control. Sort of a tragic anti-hero.

There was a lot going on, and I got a bit confused by all the different characters. They'd be talking about somebody by name and I would have no clue who they meant. But it certainly didn't lessen my enjoyment of the story.

Sears Repair and Service Center

I bought a reconditioned weedwacker at Sears, after giving up on the other one. This new one didn't work either - it would idle for a few seconds, then just shut off. Lame. I called Sears a few times during the week, and they never answered. Turns out they close at 5, so there was no way I could get there until the weekend.

Saturday, I drove back to the store with the machine in the back seat...

Dave enters the store, carrying a weedwacker. He waits in line at the counter for a couple minutes.

Polite But Entirely Unhelpful Lady: How may I help you?
Me: I bought this a week ago and it dun't work. Could I get it fixed or replaced?
Lady: Sure. We can send it up to [God knows where] to get repaired for you. Just fill out this work order.
Me: Okay. (hands over the machine, fills out the form)
Lady: Alright, we'll give you a call on the 16th (two weeks from now).
Me: The 16th?
Lady: Yes. Is there anything else I can do for you?
Me: No. That'll do it. Thank you.

Dave leaves, disappointed. What a load of crap. He gets in the car and drives to the parking lot exit. Hmm. I wonder what Erin will say when I come home with nothing, claiming we might hear back in two weeks.. Dave does a U-turn and parks the car again, walks back inside.

Polite But Entirely Unhelpful Lady: May I help you?
Me: Bet you're real happy to see me, huh?
Lady: ...
Me: Could I just exchange it now instead of waiting two weeks for repairs?
Lady: I'm sorry, but if there's a problem with a product we have to get it repaired.
Me: Are you sure I can't just trade it for one of those over there? They're pretty much the same thing.
Lady: I'm sorry but I can't do that.
Me (getting irritated): Look, I bought this last week with the understanding that it would work. Now you're telling me I have to wait another two weeks just to use the machine I already purchased?
Lady: I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do.
Me: *sigh* Okay. Thanks.

Dave gets back in the car, quite annoyed. He drives once around the parking lot, then realizes he has the reciept in his back pocket. He reads it gleefully, stops the car, and goes back into the store for the last time.

Me: This is the last time you'll see me today. I promise.
Polite But Entirely Unhelpful Lady: What I can I do for you?
Me: Could I get a refund please. (not a question)
Lady: Sure. (does all that is required for the refund)
Me: Thank you. (walks over to the rack of weedwackers, picks one out and brings it to the counter)
I'd like to buy this weedwacker.
Lady: (completes the transaction - turns out this one was ten dollars less than the other)
Have a good weekend, sir.
Me: Thank you.

Super Justice Team GO!

Our City of Heroes supergroup has a new secret HQ. Take a tour with Screamerella!

The reception desk - first thing you see when you materialize inside.


The purdy but dangerous skylight. If we were ever attacked, this would be the weak spot in our defenses.


Teleporter room. The empty space on the right is reserved for another unit - not yet constructed.


The workshop where Col. Pemberton has been building the new teleport pad.


Rec area and computer room, seperated by a not-at-all soundproof glass wall.


The basement, with generator and water heater. Grey Pup promised to change the lightbulbs last Thursday.

Snakes on a Plane

This king among films was absolutely hilarious. It was all I hoped it would be and more. I found myself laughing uncontrolably at the line "We have to put a barrier between us and the snakes!" There's something indescribably absurd about it.

There was a lady all by herself in the theater with us. I thought it was a little strange, 'til she walked out about halfway through and I realized she must have been screening it for her kid. Chuckle.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

It's been a while since I laughed out loud so many times at a movie. I've always enjoyed Will Ferrell's sense of humor; he was the best thing about SNL while in the cast.

"This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love Fig Newtons."

Watercooler

While at work some time ago, I made a comment that the water in our dehumidifier ought to be drinkable, since it comes directly from the air. That's probably true, but I wouldn't want to try it without cleaning it up a bit. The tank probably has mildew growing in it, and who knows what foul vapors and particles are floating around in the air down here.

Anyway, here's a detailed schematic of a hypothetical dehumidifier/water filtration system.




...And a prototype.

Weedwacker

The Descent

Movie night on Thursday! We saw The Descent.

Very good, visceral and genuinely scary. The director managed to hit a nerve, making the viewer feel as claustrophobic as the characters. With lots of "gotcha" moments, this is a great film if you're a fan of somewhat gory slashers. Interestingly, the characters are all women. This totally eliminates one of the conflicts classic to horror films: sexual tension.

Again, if you're a fan of the genre, see this movie. It delivers on its promises.

A.

Wordpress and EasyPHP

Inspired to once again redefine my web presence, I am starting to put together a new website using Wordpress. Tonight I went through the first website I made that had a blog in it, copying all the entries and images, and editing the post dates to reflect when they were actually written. A bit tedius, but I hope it's worth it in the end.

Smoove Move

Last Thursday we went to the bank for closing. It took almost exactly one hour to sign and initial all the paperwork. Finally, we had the keys! We'd been packing all week, but that evening was the first time we could take some boxes over.

Saturday, though, was THE DAY. My in-laws came down to help, and four of our friends stuck around and carried large objects with us. We rented a U-Haul, getting everything in only one trip. With so many assistants, the whole process went by quickly - we were done in five hours.

Two of our friends insisted on mowing our yard and weeding the garden! I was overwhelmed by their giving spirit. Best move EVER.

More Boxes

You'd think after two days there'd be more progress. You'd be wrong.

Looking Up

Mobile

Packing Up

This is an unfortunately small percentage of all we have to move. A little bit packed every day will add up, I suppose.

Calvin & Hobbes

C&H has always been my favorite comic strip. I remember when I got the first book, noticing that Calvin would be the same age as me.

25 Calvin & Hobbes strips.

Miyazaki

Continuing to use my Hollywood Video coupons, I rented a couple Miyazaki films: My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl's Moving Castle. Totoro was really great, truly a wonderful view of what it's like to be a child in a loving home.

Howl's Moving Castle is a fairy-tale in every sense of the word. Dazzling vistas of imagination, likeable characters. I think Princess Mononoke will always be my favorite, but Howl is a close second.

Hollywood Video

So it turns out we have 6 'rent one get one free' coupons for Hollywood Video, 'cause of a class action lawsuit against them. We've had them for 3 months and I just remembered 'em today. While at HV, I learned we had a free movie credit on our account, due to a broken DVD we rented, plus an additional buck fifty. I rented three movies for $1.42!

The Tenth Dimension

Speaking of alternate universes filled with pure evil, check this out. Gotta warn you though, the site has had a lot of traffic lately and is experiencing unseasonably long load times. When and if you get in, click 'Imagining' and you'll be privy to a thoughtful and unconventional look at what higher "dimensions" might be like. If - after length, width, and height - time is the fourth dimension, what might be the fifth? The 10th?

Superstring theory (I've been told) mandates the existance of 10+ dimensions - I'm sure my quantum physics friends will eventually let me know that the superstring dimensions are all spacial, having nothing to do with 'time,' and curled up like quantum drinking straws or something. Again, Imagining the Tength Dimension is not an explanation of the way things are, just a different way of thinking.

Ultroloth

The most foulest and mostest cunning lords of the Gray Waste are the enigmatic Ultroloths. Always covered in voluminous cloaks or robes, their mysteries are filled with evil and nastiness. Tony D. rules.

Postage Meter

Months ago, I did an illustration of an electronic postage meter for an ad. We ended up using a photo instead of this look, but I liked this little sketch.

See, envelopes go in where the arrow is. Then you push a button or something and your letter dematerializes, reappearing at the post office.

Guess What We Bought Today!!!

Here's a hint: it has a garage.

The house is just off the left side of the frame.


The back of the garage.


Inside said garage.

The House We're Looking At

We've been looking at houses for a little while now; not owning our home is starting to get old. This place looks kinda small in the first picture, but it's not (at least compared to our apartment now).

Click on a photo to enlarge.