[633] measurable progress

console

< Piro >

"breathing deeply"

Wednesday - November 10, 2004

I've told Seraphim that if I ever produce another chapter with 97 episodes that she is to beat me senseless with the chapter 5 printout. :) I'm not going to talk about Chapter 5 today, I just want to breath a bit. :P There were a lot of problems with chapter 5, but I think it came together ok towards the end. Now I need to apply what I've learned from looking back at chapter 4 and 5 to see if I can do a better job with chapter 6 and future chapters. I'm actually going to touch on some of this in a rant later this week or early next week, but for now I am digging in and getting busy with finalizing development of the next chapter.

I was originally going to do a 6 episode Omake for the end of this chapter, but I've decided to move forward with chapter 6 instead. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest of which is that there is some momentum going now that I am loath to bring to a halt. The second reason is that I need to focus on the 8 page Endgames manga short I'm doing as an extra for Volume 3. I have two weeks to finish it, and it's going to take every bit of that. :)

The schedule for the next few weeks, then, is this -- I will be doing a nice little DPD for Friday, a series of Omake next week (Seraphim check, Piro the Homicidal Web Comic Artist Reads Poetry and then Kills Lots of People with the Jagged Shards of his Smashed iPod, etc) and then we'll launch right into Chapter 6 on November 22nd. I'm a little overloaded right now with Book 3 stuff, chapter 6 development, MegaGear store stuff... oh well, it keeps me out of trouble. :P

Speaking of the store, the Piro Pencil Sets are back in stock. When I first linked them a few weeks ago, they sold out pretty much immediately. It took two months to get the first order in, so I was worried that it would take a while, but the distributor came through and got us a bunch more pencils far quicker this time. If you missed out the first time around, we have the back in stock again. :)

The Kimiko poster is at the printers and I should have a proof of it to review tomorrow. That should be fun, it's always fun to see these things in a larger format. I'm figuring that we should have them available sometime next week, at which time I can be depressed about how boring people think it is. :P

This is hardly surprising, given how late I tend to be with things, but I'm just now getting started with the 2nd part of my Japan trip blog. I've been digging through my trip pictures, and I've started to write about my tour of Megatokyo Tokyo. It makes sense that I am revisiting this now, as I work on Chapter 6 - my January Japan trip will influence the next chapter far more than chapter 5. I'll post that rant, with pictures, as soon as I finish it.

I have a copy of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha sitting here, taunting me. No, I don't like stuff like this. Nope. No idea why Cortana thinks I do. It'll be easy not to watch it. Yep. Not gonna watch it.

Nope.

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< Dom >

"Braaaains"

Monday - November 8, 2004

[Dom] - 00:00:00 - [link here]

So over the weekend, the Golden Bears gave me a few more gray hairs with their lucky squeaker of a win over the Ducks. I think I aged a year or two during that game, honest.

But that wasn't what set my imagination racing this weekend. What really got me thinking was a CNN article about scientists growing a rat "brain" in a dish that can fly flight simulators. And after thinking about various Evil Genius-style ways of using a brain that can pilot an airplane, I thought up whole hordes of ways I could find a rat brain in a dish handy. For example!

Rat Brain Chauffeur: This one would be especially awesome, since I wouldn't have to make small talk with it and wouldn't have to pay it--I mean, what does a brain in a dish WANT, really? It's not like a brain in a jar, where it used to be a Nazi and either wants a body again or wants to take over the world. Maybe I could pour some stimulants into its container or something.

But the rat brain chauffeur would also be awesome not just for the laziness factor, but for the "wtf" factor I'd get from onlookers. I mean, what if it got a speeding ticket? Can you just imagine the following scenario?

OFFICER: (walking slowly toward passenger side window) Sir, do you know exactly how fast you were--
(sees brain in a dish turn toward him)
OFFICER: WHAT THE !#%& IS THAT?!

That'd be the cost of research right there.

Rat Brain Spam Filter: Since it seems like all I do when I open my inbox these days is delete about 200 pieces of spam and see maybe one or two real e-mails, I might as well let the rat brain do the deleting for me. I mean, the error rate wouldn't be THAT high, even if it just deleted everything. Sure, the pattern recognition on rat brain dishes is horrid so far, but I would never fear about the rat brain wanting to enlarge its non-existent penis or chest. So at least those wouldn't get through.

Rat Brain Video Game Player: The way I see this one is, I could just loose the rat brain on the FPS world in general. If it can fly a flight simulator, it can play Counterstrike -- some of the levels feel like navigating a rat maze anyway, and it would never complain about aimbots or anything like that. Its rudimentary brain would only be capable of l33t speak like "pwnz3d" or something anyway.

It'd at least be better than I am at CS (note that I'm the kind of gamer who gets motion sick from playing FPS games, thus why I don't write about them much).

Rat Brain Forum Moderator: Wait, we're employing a rat brain to moderate our forums already, never mind, on to the next one.

Rat Brain Fantasy Football Manager: Given some of the boneheaded moves I've made in Fantasy Football in the past (Why, WHY did I drop you, Ryan Longwell? For MORTEN ANDERSEN! Who's, like, 70!), replacing me with a rat brain wouldn't be all that bad. Maybe it'd be smart enough not to waste a fourth-round pick on that bum Aaron Brooks, and grabbed Javon Walker on the wheel or something. Not that I can complain that much.

Rat Brain Marching Band Member: Hey, it'd know more songs than the USC band (rimshot).

Rat Brain Pet: Related to the Chauffeur and Game Player ideas above, why not keep the rat brain in a dish as a pet? It wouldn't eat much beyond what's probably a protein-rich solution in its container, and unlike playing with more normal pets like dogs or something, it could play ESPN NFL Football with me and not slobber everywhere.

Yeah, I think I've thought way too much about what to do with my very own rat brain in a dish. But isn't it pretty to think so?

November 9, 2004
Wow, it's been a while since I did this. Sorry about that. Been a little busy lately. Aaanyway.

Catching up with old friends
So after talking with a couple of old GamePro co-workers over the last week, both of whom now work for GameStar, it turns out that they're running game blogs. Wat, the "panites" fan of the bunch, is running Bikini Gamer, which is rather obviously aimed at the male crowd (he points out the Dead or Alive alarm clock rather prominently, where I chose to ignore it, for example). Sean, perhaps my favorite person in the industry to talk to, lends his amusing little sketches and profuse wit to Normal Mode. So go read what they have to say, says I!

Gunpla strangeness
I've been up against some weird forms of fandom before. Hell, in a way I AM a weird form of fandom. But soon is coming out a book of "Gundam Photography", which is, well, Gundam photography. Teruhisa Tajima took Gundam models, put them in little dioramas, took pictures of them and ended up with a 128-page photo book. That's more than a little scary, if you ask me...