May 17th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Today has just not been my day so far today. I woke up from a really bizarre and upsetting dream that haunted me for quite a while. Then I drew a funny little obscene cartoon and showed it to Muse. The look on her face was priceless. So that part was good.
Then Muse left me to my own devices to go see a musical with her friend. So I read a comic mini-series and then started going through my downloads to get them sorted for a possible trade later tonight with a friend. So I get bored with the unzipping and file trimming (it’s for DS, if you don’t understand it’s OK) so I decided to look for a script to help me automate the process. I found one. Yay! Happy Day!
Then I do something really stupid. The script adds redundant file extensions to all my files. OK well maybe if I just select all the files and just change the file extension on one it will change them all. BZZZTT!!! WRONG. All the files were changed to the same complete name as the name I edited with a number appended. Yeah. About a hundred and fifty files that I just worked on rendered completely unrecognizable from each other in less than a second. All I could do was laugh.
If I had just thought it through I would have known that would happen. I know how it works but I was in a hurry and screwed up. So I’ll spend the next hour or two fixing the mistakes. Luckily I didn’t SHIFT+DELETE the source files….
Then I took the dogs out because I realized that I was cursing myself and my PC instead of taking care of them. Guinness jumped unexpectedly on me and his leash flew out of my hand and into the sludge caked bottom of what used to be a nasty mud puddle. Gross. The end of the leash was just brown. So I had to take them back holding his leash closer to the middle which is awkward. Then Chinni had to poop. So I picked it up in the little baggy and as I went to close up the bag the side slipped open and the poop fell and splatted against the ground. Which doesn’t really sound or look nice. Or clean up as well as the first time.
Now I’m just sitting here at the PC listening to some calming Beethoven, typing this up while my PC unzips all those files again. I think I’ll try and be a bit more careful this time….
May 16th, 2008 by cybrpunk
It’s been a long day and it’s almost time for nighty-night time. I’ve been swamped at work for the past week and a half to two weeks and I just got off two calls to my management in St. Louis to make a very long day even longer. I haven’t had time to post, to do any artwork, to work on the comic or anything today. Granted I was at work and I was working but I hate it when I’m being pulled in three different directions all day long and don’t even get to take a breather for lunch. Oh well, whatever.
So other than a little whining I got nothing much else to say right now. Although I do have to mention that I just found out that my boss (soon to be my ex-boss in a few hours) has been diligently reading this site. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t complain too much about work on here or name names, eh? If she’s reading this I wish her good luck in her new project.
And with that, I’ll be signing off to go put my shoes on, take the dogs out and then crash. It’s been a long day and I deserve some sleep. That cat better stay quiet tonight….
May 15th, 2008 by cybrpunk
I’m not sure why or how, but I seem to have run across a bug or flaw in Adobe Illustrator CS2. I noticed it while working on the next comic for A Little Scary. I changed no settings or procedures from the previous comics. I did every thing the same as usual but all the sudden when I would export my layout from Illustrator to Photoshop, some items would be blurry like they were run through Anti-Alias multiple times. I’ve tried multiple tests and settings and different ways of doing things but I get the same results.
But the odd thing is that the results are not consistent. I created a new AI file and drug the same character PSD into it twice from a Windows Explorer window (just like I normally would). Then I ALT+Clicked and drug each one to make a copy of each. So essentially four identical items all in one Layer in one brand new file. I exported it to PSD format for Photoshop CS2 (just like I normally would) and then opened it up in Photoshop. Two of the four were blurry and the other two were perfectly normal.
As you can see in this sample pic though, it’s not consistent as to which one is blurry. At the top, the original is fine and the copy is blurry. At the bottom of this same file, the original is blurry and the copy is fine. I also tried just adding four different characters to a new Illustrator file and exporting that. All but one of the characters was fuzzy even though they were all added the same way and all of these characters have been created in the exact same way.
If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know. It’s driving me crazy.
May 14th, 2008 by cybrpunk
I’ve had my fair share of heart-pounding, swear-inducing, wallet-draining encounters with police while I’ve innocently been driving along. I’ve been lucky a few times and not gotten tickets but I almost always got a ticket for something. Of course that’s what lawyers are for. But do you know how to react and what to do when you are pulled over? Ask any number of drivers this question and you’ll get any number of answers and opinions.
Magazine Car & Driver interviewed seven state patrol officers from across the United States to get their take on this. You can read the full article here. A lot of this sounds like common sense but some of it I was a little surprised by and I’m sure others may learn a bit too. It never hurts to learn as much as you can especially when it comes to dealing with the police.
While you’re at their website, you should also check out the pictures they have of the upcoming 2009 Ferrari California. Freaking sweet. I imagine I would get pulled over a lot in one of these.
May 13th, 2008 by cybrpunk
It’s been a rather crappy day so far today and I don’t feel like being creative right now. So you are stuck with a joke from the old archives today. Try to enjoy.
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A guy boards a train bound for Pittsburgh and sits down in his seat. He immediately notices that the guy next to him has a deeply bruised, black eye. “Heck, what a coincidence! We both have black eyes! Mind if I ask how you got yours?”
“Well,” explains the man, “I was at the ticket counter and this gorgeous blonde with beautiful breasts was behind the counter. When I asked to purchase a ticket to Pittsburgh, I accidentally blurted out ‘I’d like a picket to Tittsburgh’ and so she sucker-punched me!” The man continues, “So what’s your story?”
The other guy says, “Don’t worry about that. We all make Freudian slips. I was at the breakfast table this morning and I meant to say to my wife, ‘Please pour me a bowl of Wheaties,’ but I accidentally said, ‘You ruined my life you stupid bitch.’”
May 12th, 2008 by cybrpunk
It’s Monday and I’m sitting at home still un-showered and working on comics. Today is a public holiday here in Hong Kong. It’s Buddha’s birthday! Who am I to argue? Sadly though, public holidays are a double-edged sword. Sure you get the day off, but unless you feel like pushing through crowds of people everywhere you go, you pretty much just sit at home all day. Like I’m doing.
We say Iron Man on Saturday afternoon and it was awesome. I’m a bit of a fanboy when it comes to comic book to movie adaptations and I know many of them aren’t that great. Iron Man definitely lived up to the hype in my opinion though.
After the movie, Muse and I split up and went with our friends to different places. Me and my friend went to Sham Shui Po to go to the computer and game malls to look for a Sony PSP for me. I thought about getting a second hand system but decided it was too much risk for too little discount. So I went for a new one. Unfortunately all the cool colors of the new ’slim’ PSP are all twice the price (or more) of the standard black, white or pastel colors. So I found a shop that still sold the ‘fat’ versions. They had a few of the limited Japanese releases so I went for one of those. Just to make Colin jealous if nothing else.
Oh yeah, that is a metallic blue Sony PSP. Only released in Japan but everything ends up in Hong Kong eventually. Sometimes I love shopping here in Hong Kong.
May 10th, 2008 by cybrpunk
I think there’s something wrong with me. I came across this simple web game called TypeRacer and actually found my competitive nature kicking in and making an otherwise productive day into a keyboard melting experience. And the odd thing is that it’s probably good for me.
The whole idea is that it gives you a paragraph from a book, movie or song that you have to type, accurately, as fast as you can. At the same time, other people are racing against you to type the paragraph faster. Little Volkswagen New Beetles race along the top of the screen to show the progress. The first to complete the paragraph with no mistakes wins. Then you go on to the next race.
The thing is that I nearly flunked my typing class when I was in high school. I’ve gotten better with typing in my computer career but I still make plenty of mistakes. But making typing into an on-line competition? I’m already up to 60 words per minute! Granted that’s in a short burst typing out one paragraph, but still - it’s improvement.
Of course there’s also a leaderboard that shows the fastest typers and obviously there are some robots that play this game too because I don’t hink it’s humanly possible to type at 217 words per minute. Perhaps there’s a cheat like Aimbot for typing or something. Who cares. Try it out.
May 9th, 2008 by cybrpunk
The other night I finished reading Mr. Murder by Dean Koontz and I can definitely recommend it. Even though at about page 100, I was unsure if I wanted to continue reading the book. Not because it was bad. No, it was because my heart was racing so much and my blood pressure was so high that I wasn’t sure I was going to live through the rest of the book. To call this novel suspenseful is a grave understatement. If you enjoy Dean Koontz as an author or just like good suspense stories with a little supernatural or science fiction thrown into the mix, then you may enjoy this book.
I didn’t realize that the book was a reprint of a much older story when I started. The copy I have is from 2006, but the original was published in the early 90’s. Some references make this very obvious, but for the most part Koontz keeps the details and pacing at a level where nothing really feels dated or so jarring that it doesn’t work today. It’s well written and the end is a bit of a stretch but it all works well.
I’m not saying anything about the story because I don’t want to give anything away.
Next up is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Not sure if I’ll make it through that monster classic but I figure I owe it to myself to try.
May 8th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Yesterday, I got a bit distracted from my work. I had a standard Dell USB optical mouse that I liberated from a users desk because it was so nasty and sticky that I refused to use it. I gave them a new one. But of course that left me with the nasty sticky mouse which also had smooth spots worn into the two mouse buttons.
I also had an even older Dell USB ball mouse that worked just fine but no one wants old style mice with balls. It had a nice clean black top half and was the exact same size and shape as the optical version. At least on the outside. So I thought I’d clean off the funk from the bottom of the optical mouse and put the nice black top from the ball mouse on that. In theory it’s very simple. In reality it’s really freaking hard.
Even though the outsides of the two mice were physically shaped the same, the insides were different. There were plastic support posts and wiring in different locations in each mouse. I used a straight blade to shave down plastic edges and cut off supports. I had to rearrange some wiring and eventually use a little brute force to get the new hybrid mouse to close up. I was only partially successful the first try as the right mouse button wouldn’t press. The second try after a bunch more cutting was a complete success. It’s a pretty sharp looking mouse now with it’s flat black top and it’s smoky opaque bottom.
Then of course, I have to completely disassemble the remaining parts. Which of course starts with removing the old mouse ball. It made me realize that optical mice were probably the best thing to ever happen because mouse balls were stolen constantly. I have no idea why or what people did with all those stolen balls but every store you went in with a PC on display, you’d try and move the mouse and immediately find that the ball was gone. Even attempts at gluing the ball in rarely had the desired effect. Optical mice changed all that of course and those damn ball thieves were thwarted once and for all. You know who you are.
A new thought occured to me once I got the mouse ball. Why is it so heavy? I never thought about before when mouse balls were the only choice, but now that I hadn’t handled a mouse ball for so long, I was intrigued by it’s weight. I bounced it against my wood-like desk and it popped like a metal sound. So I decided to see for myself. I grabbed the straight blade and started slicing it around it’s circumference. I thought it might be metal inside but once that razor sharp blade starting grinding against something that set my teeth on edge I knew it was.
So there’s a metal ball bearing hidden inside there. That also explains why old mice feel so much more substantial than new optical mice and also why some high end gaming manufacturers have started putting weights in their new mice. It makes a big difference.
Perhaps you’ve never wondered about this and certainly don’t care now that the age of eunuch mice has taken over, but now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Considering that quote is from G.I. Joe, I can only assume that the other half the battle is the guns, explosives, killing, wounding, etc. They never really said.
May 7th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Muse broke the news yesterday. It’s official: I’m going to be a Daddy. tee hee
We’ve known for a little over a month but we wanted to make sure everything was OK (or as OK as it can be) before we started telling everyone. So now the whole world knows (well at least the tiny piece of the world that visits our web pages).
The top shows the whole baby and the bottom pic is a close up of the head and you can just see a hand and some fingersjust in front of the face. Seems like a kind of awkward angle.
Kinda creepy looking isn’t it?
It’s estimated that it’s roughly 12 weeks in those pictures so that would put it at about 13 weeks right now.
Well there you have it.
