cybrpunk.com

Duke Nukem Forever Release Date

Perhaps hell has frozen over?

I was on Best Buy’s web site looking at the pre-orders page to see how much they were going to rape me for a Collector’s Edition of Hellgate: London when I saw Duke Nukem Forever listed.  With a release date of December 1, 2007.  No way.  Perhaps it’s not vaporware after all?  Take a look at the screen shot below.

Here’s a link to Best Buy’s pre-order page so you can check it out yourself.

The official 3D Realms page is soundly refuting the pre-order dates, but only time will tell.  I find it hard to believe that a huge chain store like Best Buy would possibly fudge the dates and take people’s money for something they can’t deliver.  They’re too big to risk that.  But you just never know, do you?

And another legend dies

Colin McRae, World Rally champion, killed in Scotland helicopter crash

The man who made rally racing famous, even in the United States where foreign sports are generally snubbed, died yesterday after crashing in his helicopter.  His son and two others were with him and there were no survivors.

I would have thought it would have been the wild rally races that he was always in that would get the best of him, but instead it was his flying.  For those of you who don’t know of Colin, he’s like the Tony Hawk / Wayne Gretzky / Dave Mirra of rally racing.  His fame spawned a ton of fun video games with his name on them and his sport made bringing the Subaru WRX STi and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution cars to the United States a long awaited reality.

Although I didn’t know him, this is still a big loss.  My sympathies to his wife and daughter who now have to put their lives back together.  He will be missed.

Reading is…

I stole this from some shitty MySpace page. It came up while I was searching for baby seal pictures. Don’t ask, I have no idea. It’s funny though so here it is.

Fuck this, I’ll be a stripper.
I love the internet sometimes….

Drawings by Vince #2

So here it is.  Friday already.  It’s time for the second episode of Drawings by Vince!

One week ago I asked for suggestions of things for me to draw.  The idea was that I would pick three suggestions and do as much as I could in one week and post the results no matter how finished they were.  So, here are the results:

The most requested suggestion was to draw the foster kitties that my wife has drug home.  I tried.  I really did.  It may not look like it though.  Kitties are hard to draw.

The next one was a suggestion from Angela at Fluid Pudding.  She requested (and I quote): “How about an angry one-legged squirrel drinking a chocolate stout at Growlers? (Also, he€™s not opposed to soft pretzels with mustard.)“  Well, I’m not sure he looks terribly angry, but I think I covered everything else except the mustard.  I hope this meets with her approval.

And the last one I had some fun with.  This suggestion came from Matt over at The Onymous.  He asked for “I€™d like to see Elmo and Barney in a vicious fight to the bitter end.“  Well, I hope this captures the idea you were looking for with Ninja Me Elmo versus Barney the Barbarian.  The first picture is the original black & white drawing and the second is the super-special-colorized version.  I like Photoshop sometimes, hee hee.

So there you have it.  Let me know your thoughts on these pictures in the comments.

And since this is Drawings by Vince #2, leave your suggestions for this weeks drawings in the comments as well.  I want to hear from more people this week, but I’ll take what I can get.  Give me your ideas and I’ll see what I can come up with.

I hope you like them.

Scanning pictures

I’ve been getting ready for the unveiling of the results of the first Drawings by Vince thing-a-ma-bob that I made up.  I’ve got one drawing all scanned in and I will be showing both the original scan as well as the new & improved colorized version (in amazing Color-O-Scope) ((I made that last bit up)) (((or did I???))).  I’ve got one other drawing I think needs some more work before I scan it in.  And the third drawing didn’t come out very well but I’m using it anyway.  I’ll scan that one yet today.

In other news, I got seriously ill yesterday after eating lunch.  Actually it ended my lunch.  It was that immediate.  A group of people including the wife went to a local Thai restaurant and the food was good as usual.  Something however did not sit right with me at all.  It was so bad that I had to go home instead of back to work.  To shower.  Seriously.  That bad.

I will miss that pair of underwear… and the staff at the restaurant have my deepest sympathies….

Intersting art

Check this link out for some bizarre but cool art.

The video clip showing how he did the rotating self portrait and the Bruce Lee painting is really cool.

Death Threat

Dear Tommy Thompson,
I understand that you were in charge of the FDA when VeriChip was filing for FDA approval of it’s pet microchip products.  I also understand that studies that show that these microchips cause cancer in pets were ignored by the FDA during that time.  I also understand that after VeriChip received it’s FDA approval, that you left the government to take an executive position with VeriChip for substantial stock option and cash bonuses.  And even though you say now that you never heard of VeriChip before you left your government post, you are on record as having mentioned VeriChip by name while in that same position.

Now we see that pets are dying from cancer that looks like its caused by VeriChip’s microchip products.  With the same results that were ignored by the FDA while under your control.  This is bad.  You sold out millions of people’s beloved pets and family members for money.  If there is a hell, and for once I certainly hope there is, you will certainly rot in it.

And since you have threatened the lives of my dogs and cats, consider this fair warning:  If one of my pets dies from a VeriChip RFID microchip, your life will be in danger.  My pets are my family and I do not take threats on their lives idly.  I will make sure that you check for any sign of hell’s existance before I get the chance to do so personally.

Sincerely,
cybrpunk (aka Vincent Wagner)

PS - If you are the FBI or someone similar, make sure you undertand that this is not a death threat… yet.  My pets seem to perfectly healthy at the moment.  Just add this to my file. 

Finish the fight

Hello data. You’re my bitch now.

The old hard drive that failed on me has been dismantled in the never-ending cause of curiosity. Don’t believe what you read about the Western Digital My Book Essentials series: they can be opened. It may not be usable anymore, but it is in pieces and the disk extracted for future testing. I am the alien and it is my helpless human captive. Let me grab my probe.

Yesterday we went to Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po again and we bought stuff. Because, really… what else can you do there? I bought a big stuffed Totoro (squee!) and two Maxtor external 500GB USB drives. And some blank DVDs… with little pink octopus on them. Hehe. I love Hong Kong sometimes.

So I copied all the salvaged data from the temp drives I borrowed onto one of the new drives. Then I hooked up the second drive and created a batch file to xcopy all the data with the archive flag set to the second drive. I have this batch file set to run every night at 3am local. It works too. I already tested it.

This has one major advantage and one major disadvantage:

• ADVANTAGE: Unlike with RAID-1 setups, if I screw up and delete or overwrite a file I can still go to the second drive and recover the previous version before the scheduled task runs. This is great, because I tend to screw up a lot.
• DISADVANTAGE: Unlike RAID-1, if I delete or move files those changes are not reflected on the second drive. Actually if I move files from one folder to another on the first drive, it will create duplicates of that data. That will suck, but I think I can work around it.

Either way the evil empire of computers will have to try a little harder to destroy my data. The next step is to use those cute little octopus DVDs to back up some of the data that will never change. Octopus are good for that.

And now it begins

Thanks to everyone who posted their suggestions yesterday.  I really appreciate it.  I’ve already picked out the ones I’m going to work on so no more suggestions are needed for this week.  Hopefully none of us will be too disappointed with the results.

On an unrelated topic, Tokyo got hammered by a typhoon yesterday.  Too add insult to injury, there were two earthquakes back to back in Taiwan that cut one of the main ocean floor fiber connections feeding Internet access to Japan.

Our Internet access is horrible today, so I assume that has something to do with it.  Good luck to everyone in Japan.

Drawings by Vince #1

A couple of weeks ago my good friend Yoshi accidentally gave me an idea that I think sounds fun. We were talking with Tiggerprr and PlaidToaster and the suggestion came up to make cartoon drawings of everyone. I asked what people wanted and they were beyond my abilities but Yoshi said “We could call it Drawings by Vince!” Which of course like any good geek, I was immediately looking to see if that domain was available. Then I thought that was silly… I can just do it on here.

So here’s the resultant idea: I like to draw but I need much more practice than I allow myself. Plus I never know what to draw. Here’s where you come in. Once a week I will take suggestions for things to draw. Any suggestion is OK, except pornography of any sort. I have no idea how to draw that and I don’t really care to learn. I will take up to three (3) suggestions each week from the comments (assuming I get that many) and I will spend the rest of the week working on them. When the next weeks request for suggestions comes around again, I will post whatever I have created up to that point and start on the new ones.

I will be doing the drawings in ink or pencil or computer depending on what I feel like practicing or which medium I think will work best for the suggestion.

Hopefully you are at least a little intrigued by this, because I think this sounds like fun. Please leave your suggestions for this week in the comments of this post and I will start working on them. To get you started, here is a quick drawing I made of a dragon:

Yes it’s kinda crappy, but it was during lunch and I was in a hurry and whatever. The important thing here is that you can see that I’m serious about this and that I really need to practice.

SO… if you have a suggestion or request, please let me know in the comments of this post. Please make sure that you leave a valid e-mail address so I can contact you if I have no idea what it is you’re talking about. If I use your suggestion, you will be credited with the concept.

This is open to everyone that reads this website no matter if I know you or not or what country you live in. I’m hoping to see some really fun ideas. The sooner I get requests, the sooner I can get started. So comment already!