Just a little snippet of a short msg between Hawk and me this morning:
<hawk>: http://www.dlisted.com/files/caption0722.jpg
<piro>: hahaha
<hawk>: that better not be you fred *eyes you*
<piro>: hehe
<piro>: no
<piro>: i never take him outside
Got several PDFs from the Kodansha BOX team this morning with the layout for the Faust preview, which is finally going to print soon :) Yay!
Now if Jack would settle down maybe i can get this damn comic finished. Ugh.
Ok, one more post here to test that twitter plug in for wordpress. Should be working now.
We’ve added a wordpress plug-in that will automatically post fredart blog updates to the fredart twitter. This is a test to see if that works or not :P (I actually posted a blog post right before this reviwing a new Logitech mouse, so don’t forget to check that out.)
After one of the cordless mice died on one of the machines at the office, i ended up replacing it with the Logitech wireless mouse i was using with my Laptop. Using a mouse with a laptop is nice, but not as needed as it is with a desktop machine, so the sacrifice was required. After a while, i did find that i missed having a mouse with the laptop (especially when one of the cats would decide that my lap was a good place to sleep when using said laptop, blocking access to the trackpad - a frequent occurence) so i went looking for a new one and got a Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks.
Yknow, when you have a friggin Wacom Cintiq 21ux, you just don’t get worked up over things like mice, but i have to give some props to this thing. The mouse i was using with my laptop was a Logitech VX7 Cordless Optical mouse, which is a pretty decent mouse, but there was one irritating problem with it - the USB reciever is nice and small, only 2″ long or so… but when sticking out of the USB on your laptop, it’s just plain akward when using it on your lap. There is always this constant fear that you will break the thing off, and you have to take it out when sticking it in a bookbag.
The most awesome thing about the VX Nano is the reciever:
Once it’s plugged in it only sticks out of your laptop 2 mm or so. You seriously don’t even have to think about the damn thing. Corded mice and laptops were always a pain in the ass. The LX7 with its 2″ reciever was great, but this… this is cool. 
The only gripe i have about it is the forward and back buttons (which i actually use when browsing) are not in the most convinent location (like they are on the LX7) but that’s just taken some getting used to. It is a better mouse than the LX7, the tracking feels more accurate and the weighted scroll wheel feels very natural and comfortable to use (you can have it spin down long pages with a quick rolling flick). It’s a little on the expensive side ($70+/-) but it really is a convinent addition to my laptop… so much so that i got one for Sarah.
The new Last.fm site re-design is pretty nice. I have to say, the old design was a little jarring at times, this is much, much better. It’s always nice to see it when a site gets updated in a POSITIVE way. Not always the case. :P Thankfully, the MT site update was definately an upgrade, even if it didn’t change all that much visually.
My little experiments with YouTube yesterday and the day before came off pretty good. Aside from the need to add some music or commentary to keep viewers from falling asleep as the lines come together, its not bad. Of course, i wish they were better drawings - its hard to go back and record a drawing process AFTER you have drawn something. I’m going to cobble together some background music in Garage Band to run mindlessly in the background of the next one, and try adding some commentary voice over. I’m not sure if i should comment WHILE i draw or do the voice over AFTER. Doing it while i draw might interrupt the brain cells as they are focusing on the drawing, doing it after might not really be as interesting. I can easily do both, its just a question of trying both.
When i first started talking with the guys who re-did the MT site, we started talking about what to do about the FredArt site. I don’t want to simply re-code this site without thinking about how i really want it to WORK. I tried early on to think ahead to what i might or might not do, but in recent months i’ve started twiddling with bosting content online in ways that really do give me some interesting ideas for how this site can really be something different and interesting. I can capture and upload screenshots with very little effort now (using automator), and i am working on ways to make video clips of the process that do not require lots of setup or thinking (that’s pretty important when it comes to me). That kind of content on a regular basis, especialy when tied in with the Fredrin twitter and RSS feeds make for some interesting possibilities.
The only problem with using my youtube account again is that now i’m getting tons of youtube emails ^^;; ah well.
One of the things i’m looking forward to when Jack starts getting a little older is playing with Legos again. Legos were, of course, one of my fave toys when i was a kid. I haven’t built anything in many years, but it’s not hard to be inspired by some of the things that people build. We’re a few years before these kind of Legos are anything less than a massive choking hazard.
This is a Lego set that i must have. Pictures of it leaked today. It’s not out yet, but you can probably guess why i want it: 4999 Vestas Windmill set
Lego, of course, deny’s all knowledge of this for now, and even asked some sites to remove the images (though it’s a little late for that, cat is long gone out of that bag). I will be keeping an eye out for when i can order one tho.
Just need to find a place for it near my desk… somewhere Jack won’t be able to reach it. For a few years.
I actually started something writing something earlier that in the end felt made a pretty decent rant for the MT site, so… that’s where that’ll go once i check it over. :P.
Still trying to get my head around what organizational/clipping software will work best for me. Started with looking at Google Notebook, then i looked into Evernote, Yojimbo, and then DevonThink. The whole thing gives me a headache, honestly, because none of them REALLY seem to do what i want (make it really easy to snag bits and pieces of information, images, etc, and store them in a way that makes it easy to find and browse through them later on). I DID find out two things about Evernote that answers one of my ‘wish it did this’ things - you CAN have notebooks that are local to your computer and are NOT sync’d online (and therefore not using your memory allowance (which is pretty paltry if you are like me and mostly collect images) but the only way to actually put anything in those non-sync’d notebooks is to drag it into the program specifically. Not quite right, honestly.
I still worry that the program really won’t be able to handle the large amount of material i want to manage, which keeps me thinking that DevonThink is really going to be the program i’ll end up using. It’s a bit dated compared to the others (interface needs updating, tagging is a little difficult, etc), but there is a new version in the works that should really bring it to the forefront of information management on Macs… or it will be a total dud. Who knows. Of course, it’s the most expensive of the three. Figures
I had to pass on seeing Hellboy 2 with some friends over the weekend, but when Hellboy 1 was on TV earlier this evening… yeah, i couldn’t help but sit and watch it :) Spent most of the day working on Chapter 10 stuff, making sure i have everything ready to go (which i don’t of course, not really :P) but this comic is pretty straight forward, so i just gotta finish it.
It IS fun to be back into the comic again. As much as i look forward to doing little side stories, i always find myself eager to get back to the main story. That’s good, i guess.
Guh. There’s nothing worse than having to break off of one thing that you have TONS to do on to do something else - and then find yourself cooling your heels in the midst of doing that second thing. Eh, well, i knew today was going to roll a bit like this, which is why i have my laptop here.
Oh yeah, i forgot to mention that i finally picked up a new Hard Drive for my Mac Book - remember how it died on Christmas Day last year? Well, Tomoyo is back up and working. I lost some things when that hard drive failed, but it wasn’t a lot. I really need to get a copy of Leopard for her, but that can wait.
Really irritated that i wasn’t able to get that comic done for today. Setup for this thing i’m busy with today took a lot more time than i thought it would, and I’ll be busy with it tomorrow and Wednesday as well. Bleah. At least it’s not all day, i’ll be able to get back to the comic later this afternoon.
Now that i sorta have this fredart blog thing rolling along again, it’s not too hard to just sit and tap out a lame little post like this. The MT rantspace on the other hand… i think i might just have to take the same approach. That thing up there right now has been there for two months. That was the first thing i started to work on when i sat down to write while waiting here…
and here i am posting on fredart because i was drawing a complete and total blank of how to start on the MT rant. I guess what i should do is talk about the omake, as well as the way i am doing the comics now and the things that have changed now that i really am drawing all digital… that might make for an interesting topic. Good place to start anyway.
Last week was a good week - I actually managed to get three comics done early and posted on time (using the new website back ends feature that allows me to put the comic in que early and have it automatically post at 1am). It felt good, and i am going to do what i can to do this from here on out if and where possible. Friday’s comic wasn’t fully hatched, which was a little bit of a bummer, but it DID get posted on time.
Right now, i’m finishing up the hatching, which shouldn’t take too long, then back to Monday’s comic. Really hope i can post on time tonight.
I know people are not really enjoying this omake very much, it’s not as much fun as some of my previous ones, i know. A lot of it has been more an exercise in loosening up more than providing the best possible entertainment in the world, and im sorry for that. Hopefully when the next chapter starts up next week or sooner (depends on a few things, i’d like to start it THIS week, honestly) things will be a little more enjoyable. The big things that have happened in this omake are not really story related - you might have noticed that i’m doing a lot more full body stuff, and that the art has improved a little over the past year. The other improvement is the posting of FINISHED comics. I am very keenly aware of how the tail end of Chapter 9, while quite readable, does not show the level of finished comics you guys not only should expect but that you deserve while reading Megatokyo. It’s been a high year for me personally, with the birth of my son Jack, but the comic did suffer quite a bit, and my hope is that from here on with a fresh new chapter things can get back on track to being a good online comic that people look forward to reading.
There’s also another big project for MegaGear i’m working on this week which is going to take up a lot of time early in the week, but hopefully it won’t impact the comic schedule. I’m going to try not to let it. The upshot of it will be that i’ll be offering full color character designs on t-shirts in time for back-to-school. THAT will be very cool, if all works out.
Oh, i found a lot of friend requests on last.fm, so i went ahead and took care of those.
The current omake relies so heavily on almost fanboy-like knowledge of not only Full Metal Panic and Clannad but a plethera of other anime and other creative works that i’m going to work with Ray and WK to pull together a little guide to walk you through all of them. This way, if you are not a hard core fanboy of such things you can get a sense of the kind of useless knowledge that runs through our heads.
I am fond of putting in odd little details, for example - there is a peverse logic to the kinds of firearms being fielded in this omake. I’m not sure if anyone has identified the handgun that Piroko is using - it’s a Seburo BoBsonS, which is the only weapon in the omake so far that is not an actual production weapon.
I’m actually getting a headache just thinking about pulling all this randomness together. Wheee.
