[841] friendly misfire

console

< Piro >

"ready for deployment"

Tuesday - April 4, 2006

Y'know the opening sequence to Quake 2, where all the space marines are stuffed into these little pods that get shot out the side of the spaceship as they invade that evil planet thingy and whatnot? Todays rant image shows a bunch of boo plushies all lined up in their little boxes... somehow, it reminded me of it. :)

Before i update you on how things are going with Book 4 processing and the status of Nayuki and Akkiko and the poor forums, i need to do some MegaGear store pimpage. Hey, it keeps us online and a roof over our heads. :)

First item of note is that the new version of the Ph34r t3h cute ones t-shirt is now available. This is a remake inspired by the original Ph34r t3h cute ones image i did way back before Megatokyo really started, and the image and ideas that inspired the Piroko character. These shirts are kind of an experiment for us, and involve a 4 color process rather than the traditional screen printing approach. This gave me a lot more flexibility in coloring the image, and enabled us to get a multi colored image without needing 12 layers of ink to get it. We also have ladies t versions of the shirt on order and they should be in in a few weeks.

Next item has a little bit of a story behind it. Like most mills that do runs of a complicated product for customers, Beiderlock made more of the original Miho blankets than were usually ordered in to have some on hand for reorders. There were several runs of this blanket before we moved to our own store, and recently they let us know that they still had a small quantity of these blankets in inventory if we wanted them. Rather than just take the small quantity of blankets that were left and sell them to the few customers who would notice them and snap them up, we decided to be fair to everyone and order them in sufficient quantity to take care of everyone. That said, The Miho Blanket is back available for purchase in the store. Made to the same high quality standards as the Kimiko blanket, the Miho blanket is warm, fuzzy, and approved by our cats.

If you are familiar with Underpower, you are already familiar with the work of Vaz. Vaz and I are in a constant struggle over who is the more ansgty artist, and i have lost many rounds to him. We are proud to present Vaz's first shirt design, Angst-thulhu. Support the angst that is vaz, and support the cult of angst-thulu today!

Also new in the store this month is the Applegeeks Squirrel Nut Attack mug. The front of the mug shows the most deadly of Ninja Squirrel attacks, passed down through the generations. Support AppleGeeks and the public awareness campaign warning of this deadly menace by purchasing one today.

We also have some special promotions going on. For a limited time we are offering free shipping on Boo plushies! Basically, if you order a Boo plushie, we'll ship him to you for free! This enables you to order Boo plushies without having to pay for his deployment, but if you order other things, you'll still need to pay for the shipping on those items. We look at it as a kind of tactical boo deployment scheme. We still have lots of Boos looking for assignment. Don't forget that he squeeks when you squeeze his belly. It's his secret weapon.

Don't forget to add stickers! Shipping on those is free too!

You will also find that many of our older shirt designs are on sale, so be sure to check things out. Be sure to pick up one of these fine designs before they are retired!

There. Whew. That was a lot of pimpage. It made my head swim. Thank you for your patience with such blatant shameless promotion, and if you do purchase stuff from us at the MegaGear store, please know that we here at MegaTokyo thank you for your support.

In website and book news, the forums are STILL offline, and we do apologize for the downtime. There have been a number of issues in getting them back up and running, but these are mostly issues that we were going to have to deal with at some point anyway... we're just having to do a bigger overhaul than we planned to. So much for attacking it in stages, Nayuki wasn't having any of that. As soon as we get some more RAM into Akikio, we'll be ready to move things over. Realistically, we've targeted having things up by Friday. Thanks for your Patience.

As for Book 4 processing... i still have a lot to do. I did get a good chunk of it done in my two week work break, but the trip to Sakuracon and other work that needed to be done for MegaGear kept me from resting much. :) I honestly am worried about my deadline, but i'm workin in, we'll see. I've met harder deadlines. :P As for the comic itself... Mondays comic was really hard for some reason. I think its that same old problem of getting out of the swing of doing it, and suddenly diving back in tired, unprepared, and expecting to just roll the thing off. Heh, serves me right for thinking that. Wednesday's comic should go better (i hope).

Regarding the auction for the 4 Two Week dpds, my plan is to start the auction on Thursday and run them through Saturday and Sunday, April 15 and 16 (i'll try to stagger them a little).

I've got to get back to work, today is turning out to be a very long day, but at least i feeel rested again.

---

UPDATE: the four "Two Week DPDs" are now up for auction on Ebay. Each one is a separate auction. All four auctions end on Sunday, April 16, ending at 3pm and are staggered by a half hour (for example Miho ends at 3pm EDT, Erika ends at 3:30 EDT, etc - note that the times listed on the auction page are PACIFIC time (PST))

Two Weeks DPD #1 - Miho
Two Weeks DPD #2 - Erika
Two Weeks DPD #3 - Yuki
Two Weeks DPD #4 - Ping

If you are interested in any of these four drawings, please take a look. Thanks for your support!

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< Dom >

"From the well to the ocean"

Tuesday - April 4, 2006

[Dom] - 11:30:00 - [link here]

Ugh. What a couple of weeks. Deadlines, late nights, and an endless series of storm fronts that have covered the Bay Area in a layer of gray that has sunk into the spirits of everyone around. I guess this is what Seattle feels like every day. I've been so bummed out that I've even forgotten to do the obligatory self-promotion about stuff I've written getting featured in places other than my various collections of blogs.

But enough of that. On to the important revelation I had while I was touring around this weekend:

Everybody's TV is bigger than mine.

I never used to notice this fact in the past, when I just lugged my laptop everywhere and played games/showed movies. I wouldn't have noticed it this Friday, either, when I was wandering around Berkeley with some old friends and defying the rain with random shouts, like "AND I'M WET AND I'M STILL HYSTERICAL!" and "ME ha YOU-TACHI wo KICK SURU!" (which, by the way, happened to catch the ears of a passing native Japanese speaker, who started laughing so hard that I had to crouch down and ask him if he was okay).

But see, last Thursday I bought an Xbox 360, my splurge purchase off my first paycheck at the new job. And my first stop with my well-gotten gains was Ed's apartment, which has a wall-sized HDTV complete with overly complex sound systems and more remotes than any one man can hold in his hands.

And things were gorgeous. We played the Fight Night demo, and that was enough to push Ed into buying his own 360 later in the week. We went off to watch V for Vendetta, then came back to his place and played more video games into the wee hours of the night. Heck, even Smash TV looked pretty good on his box, with all its dated graphics.

Friday and Saturday were spent up in Berkeley with the Cryptomancer and other old friends, where much Geometry Wars was played on a widescreen TV while the rest of us played things like Shadows Over Camelot and filled the night with randomness.

And then I came home, to my old, familiar TV, and things weren't the same. Aspect ratios were... square. Colors were average-looking.

And time was, I would've been satisfied with this. I didn't really watch TV much, it was just a vehicle for cartoons and the occasional sporting event, while most of my entertainment came from my computer or some books. So I didn't really care that my TV wasn't up to suff--after all, if I really wanted to watch a movie with the best setup possible, I'd arrange for a movie night at a friend's place (usually Hamusutaa, he has a big living room) and get all my friends together to share the experience.

Or, as was more likely, we'd kind of ignore the movie and hang out, idly reading the subtitle track.

But now, this 360... this 360 is distinctly mine. While I bring it everywhere to share the joy, my ultimate goal is to keep it at home and play on Live with friends. It'd just be a shame to consign the poor thing to a nomadic existence in the trunk of my car, after all, and I have a Nintendo DS if I want to play portable games.

In the meantime, I guess my 360 will travel with me to the abodes of those better equipped to show it off. I don't really mind that, it keeps me social outside of the headset.

And no, if you ask me what my gamer tag is, I won't tell you.