Archive for the 'General' Category
July 17th, 2008 by cybrpunk
I’ve been sick for over two days. It’s just a cold. A stupid summer cold. My nose is either stuffed up solid or leaking like a sewage pipe emptying out toxic waste. My voice sounds like crap. My throat was sore for the first day and half at least but feels a little better now.
And the book I’m reading has been giving me nightmares. And something was making noise somewhere in the flat last night. Something larger than the lizard that has taken up residence in my bathroom. I saw him last night when he ran into my foot. Lizards are nice. I don’t mind them. Other things that go bump in the night can kiss my ass though.
I forgot to bring DayQuil with me when I left for work this morning. So although I’m doing OK since my morning dose, I know that it will be wearing off in a few short hours and I will become a mess once more. I’ll probably be asked to go home at that point. Ever since that whole SARS thing, people really don’t like sick people.
July 11th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Today is Muse’s birthday!
Everyone should go to her site (catandmuse.com) and wish her a happy birthday.
Happy birthday my beautiful pregnant wife!
July 11th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Do you like contests? I’m betting most people would answer yes. Even if I know I have no chance of winning or would prefer I not win (which would be wierd), my competitive spirit keeps me coming back for more. In the realm of the internet and blogging I’ve seen lots of different contests: photo contests, writing contests, guessing game contests, comment contests, etc and I’m sure there’s a million others out there I haven’t heard of or seen before.
So my question to you is: What is the best contest you have ever entered and why?
July 7th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Muse is shopping for maternity clothes.
I’m shopping for a new computer.
I’m also shopping for a digital camcorder.
Soon we will be shopping for two cars.
Then we will be shopping for a house.
I’m assuming there will be lots of shopping for the baby.
Will the madness ever end? Or has it even begun?
June 6th, 2008 by cybrpunk
It’s Friday once again and luckily this particular Friday leads into a long weekend. Pretty much every one of our offices in the Asia-Pacific region is closed on Monday for various reasons. For Hong Kong and Mainland China it’s for the Dragon Boat Races. I haven’t seen them but since we’ve sworn off local festivals here in Hong Kong that means that I never will. And I’m OK with that. Seriously.
Muse has created a new mommy blog for the upcoming hellspawn. The title of this new site is Baby Barie. There’s not much there but she has just started it up so head on over and bookmark. You know you want to. I need to get the latest ultra-sound images from her so I can scan them and post them for your amusement.
On a slightly perpendicular note, Muse’s photography site was recently completed and put back into live status. Go check out ShotSauce for a very small sampling of Muse’s photographical talents.
And since I’m busy plugging my wife (in the internet link sort of way you gutter-monkeys!) I’ll take a moment to plug myself (hehehe) as well. The latest comic of A Little Scary went live yesterday as it always does each Monday and Thursday. People seem to like the zombies in the comics so this one should be a treat for those fans. Sign up for the feed while you’re there so you don’t miss a strip!
June 5th, 2008 by cybrpunk
I believe Muse has already let the kitteh out of the bag, so to speak, but we will be coming home to St. Louis this year. Muse will be leaving Hong Kong before me to get the pets all sorted and safe. I was the first to arrive between us and I’ll be the last to leave. I suppose I should take some comfort in that I’ll get to live here in Hong Kong for just a bit longer but I also remember the loneliness of my first month here. But that was a long time ago now and I’m no longer a stranger in a strange land with no idea of what to do/where to go/what to eat. I no longer need to subsist on ham sandwiches and cans of soup. Although I may just because.
Now, when the time comes, I’ll probably spend my free time leisurely walking the street markets and shopping malls without the worry of wasting Muse’s time or needing to feed or walk the dogs. Maybe I’ll go directly from the office to a local bar with people from work and see what the night life is like before I leave. Maybe I’ll go for a hike without worrying about time constraints or anything but my own ability. Or maybe I’ll just sit in front of the computer and play World of Warcraft all night. It’s hard to say.
Actually when I say we will be coming home this year that makes it sound like something that will be happening at some far point in the future. But really it’s nothing like that. Muse may be leaving in a month or less. I won’t be here any longer than mid-August. It’s scary close to those dates already. By the end of August we will be back in the United States of America and trying to figure out life once more. This time with a baby on the way.
When we moved we did so on short notice and also threw in our wedding because it wasn’t a stressful enough experience. Now with a baby coming, I see now that we just really like to complicate things. I can offer no other explanation. We sold our house and our cars and most of the rest of the stuff we didn’t ship to Hong Kong. So add in another layer of sphincter-clenching in that we have a baby coming and we need to buy a house and at least one car but really we need two and baby stuff and furniture and Oh My Gawd what are we insane?
Yes. Yes we are. Nice to meet you.
June 2nd, 2008 by cybrpunk
The cat wouldn’t stop meowing and howling all night. It’s been sick for over three or four days and is just starting to feel better. All that sleeping during that time had oviously been stored up to stay awake all freaking night. And then when it seems that he has quieted down an amazingly loud and bright lightning storm erupts right outside our windows sending out big dog (Chini) into hysterics and climbing over us to be protected. She’s terrified of storms for some reason and the one this morning was a doozy. She whimpered and pushed and shook for at least an hour or more keeping us both awake even more.
Over all I don’t think either of us got more than an hour of consecutive sleep last night. I am so wiped out today I’m barely even functional at work. Maybe some ice cream would help.
Most of the weekend was a lost cause due to taking the cats to the vet and going back and forth to pick them up or to ask questions. In the off times, I did a little drawing in Illustrator and then got my troll Hunter in World of Warcraft to level 50. Leveling is so much faster than it was a year ago. There seems to be more money available too because I’ve never had so much in game before.
When I get home tonight, all I want to do is take the dog’s out for their evening walk and then take a nap. Eating dinner is optional at this point. I’ll work on Thursday’s comic tomorrow. I’m to burnt to do it today. Today’s up on time though. As usual.
May 29th, 2008 by cybrpunk
Maybe its just because I’m still reading Atlas Shrugged but the whole deal with Hollywood (MPAA) and the music industry (RIAA) buying the United States government to further their corporate needs just scares the crap out of me.
So imagine my surprise when I read this article: Canadian Politicians Negotiate to Join ACTA, Will Criminalize CD Copies, iPods at Border Crossings Basically this is saying that the border patrols between the United States and Canada (and presumably borders between any countries involved in ACTA) have the authority to decide if you have illegal copyrighted material on your computer/MP3 player/mobile phone/USB drives/etc and confiscate and/or destroy the device in question. No proof on their part would be required if the rumors are true.
So have you even heard of this ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)? I hadn’t till I read this. Since then I’ve found that this is being called the Pirate Bay Killer act which goes along with the whole copyright issue. As stated in the linked article above, when people have tried finding out more about this through the Freedom of Information Act, all they got was the title of the act and everything else was blacked out. From what little information can be found about this, the governments are being very quiet about this whole deal and the process to create it.
As usual, I encourage people to do their own research and make their own conclusions but this kind of thing honestly scares the shit out of me. Not because I have anything to fear from it but because of the possibilities of the kinds of violations of rights this kind of act can make possible. Mix this in with Homeland Security and we may be looking a little more dystopian any day now.
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 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.
