All entries written in November, 2009
November 27, 2009 at 9:05 am · Filed under Misc, Personal, Thoughts
Happy Thanksgiving, readers! By the time you see this, I will be (likely still asleep) at my parents’ house, and since the rest of the country is taking a vacation, I figured I’d be all right to do the same. But I haven’t missed a Friday update in months, and I don’t intend to break my streak just in time to leave you with nothing on this fine holiday weekend. In other words, this seems like the perfect day to fall back on my tradition of posting links to interesting things and announce that my best friend made a movie!
It’s called Ingrown Toenails, it’s about 20 minutes long, and it’s both highly artistic and expertly depressing. Depending on how you experience the holidays, you might actually be in the perfect mood for this. But this is well worth the time of anyone who enjoys mental stimulation; I’m proud to be one of the first to link it, and to know such talented artists as I do.
Watch Ingrown Toenails right here!
November 20, 2009 at 9:07 am · Filed under Reviews, Thoughts
Not much to say this week…I’ve been working on a non-SKSG story lately that I’m very excited about, and of course book four is still making its way through some (very) early stages. Normally, it would be natural for me to talk about some of those things here, but I don’t like to discuss my projects out in the open until they’ve attained a certain degree of completeness. So, instead, you get to hear about video games!
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - I finished this one up a few weeks ago. As frequent visitors to this site will already know, I’ve become a fan of the Ace Attorney series this year. Apollo Justice tends to be seen (if I’ve interpreted the rumblings of the Internet correctly) as the black sheep of the family, moving away from the plots and characters of the first three games while still nailing down an epilogue to the trilogy that many will call a depressing cop-out. But I greatly enjoyed it–to me, the game actually felt like a better experience than some of its predecessors, and although the cases are still cartoonish and ridiculous (who ever heard of a group of police department employees moonlighting as international pop sensations?), the stories keep you interested, and they lean a lot less on spirit channeling mumbo-jumbo than, say, Trials and Tribulations. In fact, Apollo’s Perceive skill actually receives a logical explanation late in the game, which I found very satisfying. The first three games in this series were ported to the DS from the GBA, but Apollo Justice was made from the ground up, and as a result, there’s a pretty dramatic improvement in the graphics, sound and animation (some of the one-off sprite movements are really creative). I can easily recommend this…there’s a really good twist at the beginning of the first case that will intrigue you within five minutes. If your copy comes with an instruction manual, don’t read it!
Keep reading….
November 13, 2009 at 9:07 am · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
This has been fun to put together. Friends of mine know that I like to cook, both because it yields fresh, tasty results and because it’s much cheaper than ordering delivery all the time. I never have the right change anyway. To do something different for this week’s post, I decided to document a few of my recent meals–it’s actually gotten me to step up my game a bit, though I still think I could do better presentations if I were cooking for someone.
I may add more to this post during or after the weekend, but for now, here are five dishes that I can make (in no particular order). Most of these are designed to serve two, so I usually wind up with leftovers, which provide a creative opportunity all their own (plus further cost savings!)
Keep reading….
November 6, 2009 at 9:03 am · Filed under Extras, On SKSG, Production Art, Thoughts
This is something else I drew for book four. I don’t have a lot of time to comment this week, but this is a pretty significant picture, so perhaps its best that I let it speak for itself anyway. See if you can guess who everyone is (chapter 11 of The Gauntlet is, I believe, the best place to find a roster of the Go-Cart Gang that’s been published so far).
Anybody want a wallpaper of this? It just occurred to me now that it could be done.
November 4, 2009 at 12:03 am · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
Well, that’s great. Now the ads look better in IE than they do in Firefox. Once again, IE’s poor Web 2.0 compliance forces me to sacrifice my best-laid plans in my home browser to head off an error there. I hope to tweak things a little more over the weekend; for now, at least you can click on everything.
I’ve begun the switch to Gmail, and so far I’m really liking it. I was annoyed right out of the gate that I couldn’t create a label called “Important,” that name being reserved for system use–I detest being denied reasonable requests when both myself and Google could just as easily have what they want (i.e., Google processes labels internally with ID numbers, not friendly names, opening up the potential for non-duplicating duplicates). However, I got over that pretty quick when I realized I could create a category called “*Important” that would sit at the top of my labels list anyway.
Preserving the status quo for most people while still allowing smarter users a little leeway…I think I like you, Google.
