fredart : blogbits

I’ve been using a 13 inch macintel macbook for a while now, and while it’s a very nice little machine (her name is Tomoyo, btw, and yes it’s one of the black ones) there is one problem with her - she really don’t run non-universal programs very well (for those of you who aren’t mac-heads, the switch to intel based chips in the new macs means that in order to run optimally, programs need to be revised and made ‘universal‘ to run well in the Macintel environment) Yes, they run, but once you start a non-universal program on your system, there is a very, very noticeable ‘hang’ that happens quite often when you are using various programs.

Lucilly, most of what i use (BBedit, Omni Outliner, Mail, FireFox, etc) have long been converted. Other programs like Photoshop, Excel, etc, have yet to be converted. Photoshop makes the machine incredibly sluggish (especially when switching between programs) but Excel runs ok and doesn’t seem to cause the same hang problems. I don’t use Photoshop much on my laptop, so its not a huge deal. There is one program i do use a lot and it seems to make things as sluggish as photoshop: Ecto, my favortiest blogging software ever.

I know that Aadrian is working on it, and i am looking forward to the completely re-vamped version, but I’ve come to the point that i am going to have to use something else until the universal version is done. After beating my head on the table (and getting some help from Hawk this morning) i was able to get MarsEdit up and running (in fact, this is kind of a test post to make sure that it doesn’t blow up my site). It’s definitely not as nice as ecto, but it will do the job until the Ecto team finishes up that universal version. Please hurry guys, i miss Ecto already

As part of our putzing around looking into some of the outdoor activities around here, Sarah and i went Kayaking yesterday - no, not the kind that involves going down river rapids and stuff (there isn’t much of that around here) just some paddling on the Huron river between a few dams with some rented Kayaks. I’ve done my share of Canoeing and other forms of boating (i was into sailboarding back when i was a kid) but never really sat in a Kayak before, so it was kinda fun. I suppose i’m suffering from wanderlust pretty bad these days, so much so that i’m even looking at the water as a means to go places.

Going to have to get real dirty some time this week when i sit down to degrease and clean up my old Trek 930 singletrack. Picked up a can of degreaser and lube (at the bike shop, of course) to see what can be done un grime the thing. 10 years of little use leaves quite a mucky mess.

Odd as this may sound, i’ve produced more sketches in the past few weeks than i have in a two week period in a long time. Most of them are related to the development of a new project Sarah and I are working on, so i won’t be posting any of them yet, but I guess it is a sign that fresh air, oddly enough, makes the creative mule wander a bit.

Anyways, feeling rather thoughtful today. That can be detrimental to the comic sometimes, but it shouldn’t be today. Rainy and crappy here today. Listening to Sundummy - some amazingly good ambient drone stuff - most of their catalogue is available for download (yes, legally, duh). Be sure to check out “Spanish Moss” (on “Mighty Voids Collide” and Approaching Storm. (you used to be able to download the full version of Spanish Moss, which had this trippy spooky voice over at the start of the track, but the disk version is still good.) Anyways, very much worth checking out.

pirotunes: Approaching Storm from the album “Mighty Voids Collide [tzpdc 19]” by SunDummy

Well, the time has finally come… almost. We still have about a month before the first episode airs on TV in japan (and subsequently will be devoured, redistributed, subbed and otherwise pawed over by the usual suspects) but the Kanon: Prelude DVD is out - yay!

Because i’m such a pitiful keyfan, i am overlooking this tendency they have these days to sell ‘pre release’ teasers of stuff like this to eek a few more pennies out of hapless fans (they did this with Clannad too). I also could care less about all those out there who are irked by the fact that Kyoto Animation is ‘wasting their time’ doing a re-make of Kanon instead of providing more Haruhi goodness. I’m very much looking forward to this revamp of my favorite series, and the elitists can all go to hell. I want my kyoani kanon. Go watch those backlists of anime that you keep trying to slog thru, and leave me to enjoy it.

Shipon has done a great write up on his experience getting, enjoying, and pricing a satalite dish so he can get BS-i when it airs. I guess i’d be like this if i lived in japan too…

In other news… it’s kinda weird getting worked up about an anime seires again, and honestly, as a reader, you might wonder why i haven’t been gushing more recently. Part of it, i suppose, is that i’ve been spending a lot more time outdoors recently. Sarah and I purchased new bikes a few weeks ago, and we’ve been spending some time out hitting the multitude of bike trails there are out here. We are both in far better shape than we’ve been for years - mostly due to diet and whatnot, but now we are trying to work in more exercise and outside activities. Some suprising (or not so suprising, i guess) benefits to this is that i find that i’m far less fidgety when i sit down to draw. Drawing is by nature a sedentary activity involving sitting on your can for long periods of time, and i think the rest of my body is appreciating some attention.

I’m actually looking to get into mountain biking - the bikes we bought are only really for light trail and paved path riding (they have a more upright position, a pair of Trek Navigator 300 bikes) but i have an old Trek 930 i bought back in 1996 that i’ve dug out and will try putting through its paces. Don’t worry too much about me breaking things - i’m not a stunt junkie by any stretch, but i do like exploring, and want to be able take some of the easier singletrack trails there are around here. Anime has really been my only hobby for so long that its kinda weird but also very refreshing to start to poke at other things.

Be careful when your hobbies start to become work. You need to enjoy what you are doing, and not worry about wandering off to other things. Often, you find that this can help you go back to enjoying things that reflect the reasons you got into your original hobbies in the first place.

pirotunes: Irresistible Force - Nepalese Bliss (DJ Food Mix)

As i mentioned earlier, after experimenting with my first set of COPIC sketch markers, i found that i really enjoyed working with them - far more than i ever did with computer based CG stuff (barring the possibility of getting a Cintique, which i’m still not convinced would actually improve the situation). So much so that i have now invested in all four 72 marker sets (i’m writing a rant about all that right now).

Having pretty much the full range of COPIC markers gives me a much broader color range to work with, and after fiddling around with them for a few weeks i feel it was definitely a worthy investment (it might not be for everyone, but for me it has been). I’ve also been refining how i work with them - i’ve found that printing a 600 dpi scan to marker paper, using the highest quality settings on my Epson R300 gives me really good lines to work with, and the re-scan isn’t quite as fuzzy as it was with earler experiments. The color selections in this piece are not really the best - but it is a pretty nice example of some of the experimentation i’ve been doing lately. Oh, this drawing was originally a DPD from a while back.

you can view the image here.

- pirotunes: Lusine - Everything Under the Sun from “Serial Hodgepodge” -

I’d actually like to talk a bit about things other than the damn website, or conventions, or other things. The megatokyo site should be behaving more or less normally for people today (it takes a good 24 hrs for the DNS changes to fully propagate). If you aren’t seeing the most recent comic and can’t go back into the archives, then you are still seeing Mishio. Give it time, all roads will point back to Makoto shortly enough.

I haven’t really communicated much with readers since i left for San Diego Comic Con almost 4 or 5 weeks ago. A lot has happened in that time, and i’ve had a lot of things to think about, most good, some bad, some just … different. I’m a little unhappy with the fact that i’m still not 100% back on my feet after returning from Otakon - having the website implode on me the way it did didn’t help. The last two comics were pretty bad, with Monday’s being rather pointless… but given the site condition, i am actually glad it was just an inbetween comic of sorts. Lots to talk about really, and i’m going to spend the next couple of weeks looking at some of it.

In other wanderings, i just wanted to link this site for fun. I love this site, it’s been around a while: Kurisute’s “GomiShoujo” - it’s a delightful little site done mostly in flash. I love the music he’s created for the series, and the animations are haunting and kinda cute:

Really need to start updating and adding to my wanderings list to the left… its’ only been two or three years since i’ve updated it, right?

pirotunes: 超視力の森・連鎖する幻 from the album “Shamanic Princess Original Soundtrack Vol. 2″

As many have you have noticed, the website here at megatokyo.com hasn’t been very stable. Last week we had a hard drive fail which took the entire site down for several days mainly because the server itself has been having issues that are more than just errors on a hard drive. Right now i am working with a VERY jury rigged system that frankly does not work very well. The individual who created and maintains this will be unavailable this week, so those who can help me with things are working with me to make it work until his return.

Basically, what you are supposed to see is a cached version of Megatokyo that is created on Makoto and copied over to Mishio for all of you to see. Getting that caching to work is hard enough, but the real problem is that the caching is producing an error which is not copying the files properly, leaving the entire archive of Megatokyo comics inaccessible.

In trying to post the comic this morning, things just seemed to get worse and worse. No matter what we tried or how long we waited, we were not able to get the cache to refresh. We decided to try moving the www back to Makoto and hoping she can handle the load. I’m really not sure what else can be done to make the comic availible at this point. If this fails, then i will look into more etreme measures, like hosting a bare bones version of Megatokyo somewhere else and redirecting things until this issue is fixed.

Obviously, this kind of thing is unacceptable, and i apologize to my readers for the delays this is causing. I will be taking steps in the next few weeks to see what can be done to eliminate these issues once and for all.

Hey all. If you’ve been wondering where i’ve been for the past few weeks, and why things still don’t seem back to normal around here, it’s just because there’s a lot more work in returning from a big show like Otakon than you might think. Also, there is that dry, grey area in your creative output that you have to stumble through in trying to get back into a creative routine… or at least, i do. In years past i used to set myself up thinking i can just roar back to work as soon as i got back from a trip. Then, i’d spend all sorts of time panicking over the fact that i didnt get things done or i was struggling painfully with getting back up to speed and i had promised things for people monday morning… i’ve tried to stop doing that, partly because its not fair to readers to promise stuff when history has proven that it’s not likely to happen and partly because it’s hard enough getting back up to speed without beating myself up that much more about it.

After unloading things yesterday, working with Sarah to take care of the shipping backlog, and doing a number of other things that needed to be done (and had been neglected for almost three weeks on account of the two conventions) i got a decent start on things last night, but the bulk of the work for Wednesday’s comic is happening today. Good news is that it’s motoring along nicely, just that it will probably be tonight by the time i finish.

All sorts of things to cover when i get back on my feet, it’s been a very interesting three weeks. For now, i should get back to drawing.

pirotunes: “Spanish Moss” from the album “Spanish Moss [tzpdc 29]” by SunDummy