» For $300 you can get this keychain-sized barcode scanner, but I have little idea what a regular person would do with one. Supposedly you can use it's big brother to organize your comic collection too.

» I totally have to build a laying down computer desk like this. I'm sure it's very practical for people who are bedridden but for anyone else this looks like the most awesomest laziest thing ever!

» This car fighter turns up on the net every so often, chances are I've probably blogged about it before as well. It's still cool though.

» Yes! the world needs MacGuyver merchandising like this!

» I have a faucet drinking fountain thingie like this. They're neat.

» Vanity Fair 2006 Year in Pictures

» State of the Union used to compare HD feeds Same video, different networks, interesting variations. Many pics.

» Transformer more than meets the feet?

» Ape Lad's Captain America Vs. Iron Man Illustration

» Wired article What we don't know, with some of the biggest questions that don't have answers. Also in the same section, What we DO know, like the fact that it takes 251 licks on average to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop.

» Puff Daddy and Jessica Biel at the Golden Globes. P Diddy loves the Golden Globes! (sorry... but that's a funny pic)

» Attack of the Show's Olivia Munn as Wonder Woman

» George Takei premieres as Hiro's father on Heroes this coming Monday. Fantastic!

» Some kid and a duck, duct-taped to a wall

» I am looking forward to Michael Bay's Transformers. You know, just looking at this pic, that it going to be wonderfully terribly overly the toppily insanely bad in the most spectacular way.

» Gamer Chest Pillow

» Neat 3D computer Animator Demo Reel

» Do a pre-Wii warm-up with these Wiixercises

» PicTaps lets you make a character of your design dance.

» OMG!!! Real Life Bambi and Thumper pictures.

» Take a look at the next version of the Pure Digital Point and Shoot, RCA branded Camcorder with a DVD burner dock.

» Free Multi-player Video Games

» Make your own Blackboard Globe. Cool object for notes.

» Balcony Grill Design

» Networked Emoticon Device

» Batman PWND T-Shirt. leet!

» Saul of the Mole Men? Live Action Cartoon Network Adult swim video. Show premiere's Feb 11, 2007.

» CSS Cheat Sheet

» IRS Telephone Tax Refund questions and Answers. Get $30-60 extra back this year.

» Gweneth Paltrow to join cast of the Iron Man movie. She will play Pepper Pots opposite Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark, Iron Man. (BTW: Anyone else see the Green Lantern symbol when they look at the movie Iron Man logo?)

» The forest service has redesigned Woodsy Owl and has a guide to destroying the classic Woodsy Owl costumes. Ape Lad has a neat cartoon about the matter.

» Friend Jeff at KneelBeforeBlog has a new blog header graphic

Thursday January 18, 2007 9:48:35 PM #

» Didn't buy the full wave this time. Of the Five figures only got the two (or three it appears). Scale continues to be a DC Direct Issue, with Mr. Terrific being a shy bit too oversized (and although I didn't get them, it looked like the other releases were on the large side as well.) The Atoms on the other hand seem a little too small. In any case Mr. Terrific is one of the few really nice character additions to the DCU patheon in the laIrand the hooded Atom is great addition to the Classic Justice Society.

Mr. Terrific and the Atoms

Atoms

Fair Play!

Terrific

Superman and Mr. Terrific

Batman and Mr. Terrific

Cyborg and Mr. Terrific (Mr. Terrific is a little overscale

Atom seems a little "too" small.

» Adam and Comfort have done colors over their earlier Wonder Woman and Black Widow illustrations Very Very Nice, go take a look.

» Updated my Grand Rapids Toy Report in my forum.

Tuesday January 16, 2007 11:38:54 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» This is turning out to be a light blogging week.

» Might be turning pointing the webcam on tomorrow nights' Heroclix game (or maybe not). Come back tomorrow, say 8pm-ish EST and take a look at the Stickam streaming video in the upper right corner to find out.

» Supposed to be some Justice Society Action Figures tomorrow. So I'll probably do some pics of those Thursday or Friday.

Comic Solicits

» Solicitation Picks, with some highlighted covers (linked)

DC Comics Previews Solicitationsfor April 2007 - BATMAN #665 • DETECTIVE COMICS #829-830 • CATWOMAN #66 • NIGHTWING #131 • NIGHTWING ANNUAL #2 • ROBIN #161 • SUPERGIRL #16 • WORLD WAR III PART ONE: A CALL TO ARMS • WORLD WAR III PART TWO: THE VALIANT • WORLD WAR III PART THREE: HELL IS FOR HEROES • WORLD WAR III PART FOUR: UNITED WE STAND • 52: WEEKS 48-52 • AMAZONS ATTACK #1 • THE ALL-NEW ATOM #10 • BIRDS OF PREY #105 • BLUE BEETLE #14 • THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #3 • DOCTOR FATE #1 • FIRESTORM #35 • THE FLASH: FASTEST MAN ALIVE #11 • GREEN ARROW #73 • CONNOR HAWKE: DRAGON'S BLOOD #6 • GREEN LANTERN CORPS #11 • GREEN LANTERN #19 • GREEN LANTERN #19 • JLA CLASSIFIED #37 • JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #8 • JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #5 • JSA CLASSIFIED #25 • JUSTICE #11 • MANHUNTER #30 • OUTSIDERS ANNUAL #1 • THE TRIALS OF SHAZAM #7 • SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE FLASH VOL. 1 TP • SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #29 • TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #7 • TEEN TITANS #46 • WONDER WOMAN #7 • WONDER WOMAN #8

» DC Direct Solicitations

Alex Ross Justice League Action Figures: Green Lantern Armored

Mini-Mates: Captain Marvel with Mary Marvel, Guy Gardner with Kilowog

» Marvel Previews Solicitations for April 2007
• MS. MARVEL #14 • THE IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #7 • NEWUNIVERSAL #5

» (Above) What's World War III? Seems like I should know something about it by now? Is this a fifth week event?

Let's Go Surfing

» Classic Satr Trek Mini-mates, very neat.

» Doctor Strange Animated Movie Stills

» The Venice Project was cool until they changed their name to Joost. That's just incredibly lame.

Sunday January 14, 2007 8:23:53 PM #

» Mike Sterling at Progressive Ruin, poses the question, What's your favorite DC Universe Earth? ie: Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-S etc.

Here's my answer to that question:

No I don't have a God complex, Why do you ask?

Earth-CK (short for Earth-Chris Karath It's the DC Universe in my head, both the way I think it happened and how I would have liked it to happen with nothing that I think shouldn't have happened.

If someone ever questions a continuity error in my recollection, I explain that's the way "it is" on Earth-CK.

Good stories get retconned into Earth-CK and bad stories never happen there. And the best thing, I decide how it is.

Oh and one more thing... Earth-CK has more than just DC characters, there's some Marvel and Indy characters, well as some folk from Books, Movies and Television on Earth-CK too. It's a really great place, maybe someday I post a little about it.

Sunday January 14, 2007 4:15:09 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Hooray! the first contribution to Wildcat vs. Swamp Thing Drawing meme is in. It's from "fractalhall" and It's Great! (It made me lol!). Go See! (and then break out your crayons and magic markers or glue and macaroni and add your own!)

Sunday January 14, 2007 1:09:49 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» I sort of discovered G4 TV's Attack of the Show this week. It's a pretty poorly done program and it's incredibly formulaic. They might be able to put together one or two hours of TV a week but the five hours they are doing, well there doesn't seem to be enough content for them to work with. In anycase, I've had it on in the background as "Television Room Audio/Video Wallpaper" if you will.

On an episode this week, They profiled Stickam.com, a myspace/youtube style hybrid that lets you stream live video to the net, they also have an embedable LIVE (well mostly live it seems that there is a minute or two of a buffered delay) player you can place on your blog or webpage.

Neat technology and free service. Not sure how practical, since I'm on the computer at home most of the time and it's not going to be an exciting show to watch me playing with the computer. Might be interesting in an internet cafe sometime though.

In anycase, I'm going to leave it streaming for awhile in the upper corner... so post in the comments how creepy this whole thing is won't you?

Let's Go Surfing

» On My Desk is an interesting weblog that focusses exclusively on the studios and desks of creative types, it's always an interesting view. This most recent Geoff Gibson office being no exception. This guys' workspace feels in tone like it could be from a Harry Potter movie. He also has a very arty/minimalist/B&W/poetry/sketchblog too.

Sunday January 14, 2007 3:29:58 AM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» The joys of re-learning to do things in a new programming language that you already know how to do in another language!

I got a little better at php/mysql tonight. It don't look like much, but that little "Blog Alert" section in the top right corner is a database driven web app. (Previously it was pulling some data from my Wiki, but now it's its own little entity) I can use it to schedule Blog Alerts to automatically post on future dates. (yeah I know most blogging platforms can do this already... but it's still fun to write it yourself.) One step closer tonight to making some "real fun" stuff.

Let's Go Surfing

» Friend Jeff at KneelBeforeBlog has pictures of Ghost Rider and the old "All New" Fantastic Four. He's even worked Dora the Explorer and Boots into it. So go check that out.

Saturday January 13, 2007 9:14:41 AM #

» Can you feel the buzz for Wildcat vs. Swamp Thing building? Sure it only started yesterday, but if the below image is real, then it appears that Marvel is already getting on the bandwagon and they're not going to let this DC promotion go unanswered.

Unverified security footage from Marvel Headquarters

Although I cannot authenticate the above security cam (emailed to me by an anonymous source known only as "afriend@whitehouse.gov") pic's authenticity, if it's real, it would appear that Marvel, overnight has already begun readying their answer to the Wildcat Vs. Swamp Thing Meme and has started work on their their own Black Panther Vs. Man-Thing Meme.

No addtional posts yet at W vs. S central but media reports indicate long lines outside of art and office supply stores this morning. When asked what was the purpose of these mysterious mobs, all the crowd members would say is "We need pencils and sketch paper, a meme is coming."

Yes, I know, I'm insane. Join the madness and contribute a drawing OR a comment won't you? Mike and Dorian have commented.

Saturday January 13, 2007 12:44:28 AM #

The Venice Project - TV just got reinvented.

» I played around with the Beta of The Venice Project this evening. It's interesting.

For those that aren't familiar with the project, it's The Next Big Thing™ from the founders of the internet telephony service, Skype. The Venice Project or TVP, as it is being called, is a peer to peer delivered television system. However, even though it's P2P you should think distributed 'Comcast' more than 'Youtube' or 'Kazza' as I continue to talk about it.

It has a minimalist user interface, not minimalist bad, it's minimalist good. It's different than the web and different than TV, but after a few minutes it feels very natural to navigate. Basically you have an onscreen remote and a series of semi-transparent screens that pop up over your video. There are channels but all the shows currently are "On Demand" so the channels function more as playlists.

The beta channels contain a large number of music videos, music documentaries, making-ofs and MTV style programming. There are also some specialty channels focussing on Discovery channel type stuff etc.

The video is crisp, although occasionally choppy. I think the choppiness has more to do with the small beta testing group, as there are alot of channels and I'm not sure there's always enough peers on any given one at this beta testing stage to smooth out the streaming. The more "interesting channels were very fluid, presumably because more users are on those. To clarify, when I say choppy I should probably rephrase that as "video pausey". There is no buffering, and the audio track in all the channels I tried was pretty consistent, occasionally, in some of the more obscure channels the video would start and stop and pause while the audio track kept moving without interuption. When the video stops, it is still crystal clear and is not as anonoying as YouTube since it has none of that blockiness.

Beyond the TV watching there are also plugins for Channel Chat (to talk with other channel viewers) Instant Messaging, User customizeable RSS fed news tickers, etc.

There's not much else to say about TVP really. TVP really doesn't seem to me to function as a great internet video delivery system. But TVP would be killer software that I would probably pay for, if the major networks were playing on it, and it was running on my "Cable" DVR box.

Stepping back and looking at TVP and imagining it with all the cable networks on it, you're really talking about decoupling cable television from the clock. Keep the concept of Cable Networks but liberate the programming from it's temporal prisons and wrap the whole thing up with an On Demand Bow.

PS. Yeah they've got commercials on it. Some are regular commercials, others are title cards between playlist items. As implemented at the moment, they are fairly well handled. Could be a good solution for advertisers if kept at it's current unobtrusive level.

Want to hear what more people are saying about TVP check out the conversation on Digg and more stories and conversations on Digg.

Friday January 12, 2007 6:56:03 PM #

» THIS IS IT! The link I've been hyping!
Soon to be the talk from coast to coast! MOVE OVER "Batgirl Meme" GET READY WORLD because it's TIME for:

Click Here for Drawing Goodness!

Yes, I've shamelessly concocted this plan
to get two of my favorite comic blogs:
Progressive Ruin and Postmodern Barney
to link to my talented friends'
Adam and Comforts' NEW comic sketch blog.
Now I wait to find out... WILL IT WORK? *bites nails*
and will others JOIN the madness? *crosses fingers*

Friday January 12, 2007 6:15:03 PM #

Let's Go Surfing

» Men of Action has some Helboy Action Figure Pictures up. The one with Sculley and Mulder amuses me for some reason.

» I like stick figure cartoons. I like blogs. I just found this Stick-Figure Cartoon Blog: stereotypist.livejournal.com. It's pretty good.

The same artist and Dean Trippe are also promoting February 1st as Hourly Comic Day

» The US Airforce is developing self cleaning underwear. Now that's progress!

» Lots of stuff in this Chicago Tribune interview on upcoming Battlestar Galactica plots. I stopped reading it fairly early in because I don't want to be spoiled.

» Another one of those Wii remote T-Shirts, but this one is a little more violent.

» Print, Cut-out and assemble your own Papercraft Apple iPhone. PDF at the link.

» Fab@Home a 3D printer. Doit yourself for $2,400. How soon until commercial versions of this that you can "print" action figures with? Watch the video.

» KatieCanDraw has drawn Ms. Marvel. Cool.

» The true face of Space Ghost!

» Steve Jobs on CNBC iPhone interview.

Thursday January 11, 2007 10:52:32 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Yawn... so many links in my Google Reader, so too tired to blog. Should be more tomorrow though.

One interesting thing, I got into The Venice Project Beta. Not sure I'm supposed to talk about that though... I'll have to reread that Click through NDA first.

Let's Go Surfing

» Adam and Comfort's has two really nice illustrations up today 1) Psylocke and 2) Catwoman/Black Cat. Give them a look, and leave them a comment, your eyeballs will be happy you did.

» Oh yeah, and that link I talked about earlier, it's still coming... check back later.

Thursday January 11, 2007 7:33:31 AM #

» A great link to the next great team-up that the ENTIRE comic blogosphere from coast to coast will be talking about (yeah you heard me, the entire* blogosphere) is coming to this spot soon. You won't want to miss it!

That's my attempt at an internet tease.
*Maybe I'm overselling this a little?

Tuesday January 9, 2007 9:49:45 PM #

I have two friends, Adam and Comfort, that are a married Comic Book Illustration Duo (both of them draw, ink and digitally color)

I've recently talked them into starting a sketch blog. Right now they are pitching a couple books to various publishers, they also do some freelance for Palladium games.

If you're interested in that sort of thing. Please, give their sketch blog a look and leave a comment on their site, I'm hoping they continue to publish even more of their work online.

Oh yeah, like all good blogs there is a picture of their cat, Obi Wan, on there too. (Yes, they named their cat Obi Wan.)

Adam and Comfort's Sketch Blog

Tuesday January 9, 2007 8:18:14 PM #

Apple iPhone

I saw the iPhone keynote today and spent some time with the Quicktime Demos on Apple's Site. Really neat, Really exciting platform filled with possibillities. Play the Audio below, to hear me ramble on a little like a fanboy over the whole thing.

(For those interested in how I created the audio below: I called my Vonage Voicemail from my cellphone. Vonage automatically emails the voicemail as a wav file to my gmail. I then uploaded the wav file to Odeo, and copied the "embed text" to paste it into my blog. Yeah, I'm a geek like that, so you can understand my excitement over this phone.)

Tuesday January 9, 2007 6:25:45 AM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Yesterday I read newuniversal #2. Very much enjoyed it. Not sure I'm completely buying into everything the big satellite had to say, seemed like too much exposition, too early to me. But other than that, the book is very enjoyable and seems to be rapidly diverging from it's source material. Question, is 555 significant in Marvel Universe Lore? I notice that it seems to be the multi-verse number given to this reboot. According to Wikipedia the original New Universe was Earth-148611.

Let's Go Surfing

» Washington Post Article written by Steven Colbert's "Black Friend Alan", Jordan Carlos. There's a couple paragraphs in there on how the bit came to be. On that topic, the joke's actually alot less funny when you find out that they actually had to hire Steven Colbert "A black friend". And that he didn't have an actual one, or a staffer, that could play the role for this gag. If you do want "Alan" as your friend, here's his Myspace page. (He has 804 friends at the moment.)

» Not sure if this is the same as yesterday's Craftsman CNC wood carver. But this Carvewright device looks similiar. Click the link to see a video demonstration of the device in action. (It appears that the Sears one is indeed a rebranded version of this.)

» More photos of yesterday's R2D2 Projector as well.

» Also updated from yesterday, scroll down to the second update on Boing Boings' coverage of the Target Markdown info traveling around the web. Lots of info on the inner workings there.

» Seen on Comics Continuum: "The second animated Hellboy movie, Blood and Iron, will air on Cartoon Network in March. The exact date hasn't officially been scheduled yet."

Monday January 8, 2007 1:00:59 PM #

Let's Go Surfing

» A little pricey but Sears has CNC Wood Carver for $1,800. The images at the site show some fairly 2Dish 3D carving, I'd be interested in seeing what you could really do with this device. Lot's of fun toy possibilities when this comes to the masses.

» Cellblock is a free service that lets you embed a "Youtube-like" player on your web or myspace page and then while you are out and about, you can email cellphone pictures to it that will immediately show up on your site. You can do the same thing more or less with Flickr, but this looks like an interesting alternative.

» I have no idea when you would need your own portable carpet lounge, but I'm glad one is available.

» Half-scale Remote control, Star Wars R2D2 Video Projector. 800x600 1,000 lumens. Very Cool.

» Mysteries of Target Clearance Pricing Revealed? Not that exciting, and probably not necessarilly true since the price shown is 75% off and Target does on occasion go down to 90% off. (looks like 25% ends in 8, 75% ends in 4)

» Action-Figure.com has a link to Toy Biz's new "Indy Legends" Judge Dredd Figure.

» Mike Sterling at Progressive Ruin has created a very large list of links dedicated to MODOK. (They're designed "only for Klicking".)

Monday January 8, 2007 4:46:26 AM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» I have a wiki on my site now. Not anything there that wasn't on the wikispaces version, but now I've brought it onto my actual site under my domain... probably some future cross programming between the blog, the forum and the wiki to come.

Let's Go Surfing

» Saw this Custom Darwyn Cooke Spirit (by "Lowe") on Raving Toy Maniac's Buzzboard. Primary ingredients, a shortened DCD Clark Kent and a New Frontier Green Lantern head. Nice.

» Really nice Anime Style Drawing of the Simpsons Cast. Same artist on Deviant Art has also done an Anime Futurama Cast Picture. But the Simpson's one is really really good.

» Toothpaste for Dinner Cartoons: Combination of Myspace and Pay pal, MyPal and I didn't know that was a Soda Lid Option.

» Clay Shirky Second Life: What are the real numbers? Interesting article with a skeptical analysis on Second Life and how the media covers "The Next Big Thing" in general.

» Preview pages for this week's upcoming Marvel Adventures The Avengers #9: "Modok Issue"

Videos

» Silent Star Wars.

Saturday January 6, 2007 11:19:05 PM #

Doodles

For my very good friend, Adam, who was not impressed
with my School of Rock doodle yesterday. ;)

» One of these days I have to get me a slanket

» Found an open source MP3 Flash Player that you can place on your site to play MP3's from your own site. Pretty easy to install if you know a little HTML. Beyond a player, it also can install a nice playlist too. I'll probably continue to use Odeo for now (saving on the bandwidth costs) but it's a nice app, if you're looking for something like this, give it a looksee. There's some other code there to play video and jpeg files too.

» Julius Marx Action Figure Insider has pictures of Mattel Hot Wheels Batmobile (Like official Hot Wheels size and everything.)

» Jeff at Kneelbeforeblog has some picks of the current status of his Marvel Legends shelves. Yea! Toys.

Friday January 5, 2007 11:37:57 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» I discovered these Zip Pens this week. They are tiny pens that you can wear on your finger like a little ring. As a bonus they also have plastic caps which work well as a PDA stylus. I found them at Office Max for a little under $5 for two. Neat.

» Heroes' Hiro, Masi Oka, on Jay Leno (Very similiar to Conan's Interview)

Let's Go Surfing

» Jolt Mints. Supposedly 5 mints have as much caffine as a cup of coffee. This seems like a bad idea.

Friday January 5, 2007 6:13:24 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Week-off continues. Spent the afternoon with my friends Adam and Comfort. We live in the same complex and took a walk with their young kitten before lunch. (The cat did very little walking but he does like to jump from shoulder to shoulder while you're on the trail.) Weather is unseasonably warm for Michigan this time of year, as it was near 50°F our winter coats prooved to be a little over kill.

My friends are freelance comic illustrators. While I watched the movie they were busily working away on some commissions. I don't have near the patience for the time that they need to put into their work (one of the reasons why I became a graphic designer instead, it's far more instantly gratifying) But watching them work, I still felt like coming home and doing a quick sketch (the difference of course being that after 5 or 10 minutes at the drawing table, I felt that drawing itch was scratched). So fair blog readers, you get the quick doodle of Jack Black, by *ME* above.

Thursday January 4, 2007 3:36:25 PM #

» Was out and about today after picking up comics (more on those later maybe) and have some pictures to share.

Above, some Telephone Pole Worker Bucket Shots. There were 4 of them, two on each side of the road and at one point each had extended to the middle of the road and they were stringing wire over the open road moving traffic. Neat (if a little distracting.)

At right, how stressed out and overworked are kids today? Apparently, today's kids are on-the-go enough to need the Hello Kitty 6 Cup Coffee Maker. (And that's not in the toy section, that's a working coffee maker in Target's Appliance area.) How things change, I know when I was a kid my Mom worried about me getting too much chocolate, apparently today's parents are trying to decide regular or decaf?

On a neater note, I was in the 28thSt/i96 Meijer in Grand Rapids and saw this "Burn Bar", which consists of 4 touchscreen workstations where people can select and burn their own CD full of songs. $3.99 for the first song and 99’ for each additional song. Pretty fair pricing I think (1. although I am biased. 2. apoligies for the bad mini-cam pic.) If you are in the Grand Rapids area, go check that out.

Also did a GR, MI Toy Report Update

Thursday January 4, 2007 10:39:14 AM #

» Woke up this morning and saw this photoshop tutorial on sandbox but it gets a little more involved than I wanted for a morning "doodle" session. So at right is an illustration by me following about half of it and making up the rest because I got hungry and wanted to go make breakfast.

It's a fun style, I should probably do a really nice one for the site someday, but for now... breakfast!

» Psst. It's New Comics Day, pass it on.

Let's Go Surfing

» Jeff Bezos made a spaceship! No really, he did. (That's the way to spend a dotcom fortune in style. Guarantees him kick-ass membership in any model rocket club. Plus he can put a bumpersticker on his car that says "My other vehicle is in orbit.")

Thursday January 4, 2007 2:04:39 AM #

» Found Spider-man 2099 Wednesday night. If they're going to make odd Spider-man variations, this is as good as any to make. I haven't read the book in years, but I do remember enjoying the first few issues when it came out back in the early 90's. Miguel O'Hara, has talons, fangs, venom, strength, agillity and organic web shooters long before the Spider-man movie brought them to the Peter Parker Spider-man. When I first saw Batman Beyond I thought it borrowed alot of it's feel from Spidey 2099. And when the Batman Beyond figure comes out later this year, I think they'll share some shelf space together.

Spider-man 2099 shot by me, but background CC image modified from this Flickr user

Thursday January 4, 2007 12:52:02 AM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Hooray for me! My blog now has a tiny bit of dynamic content! (other than the Flickr strip, Odeo strip or Google Calendar strip that is.) If you look in the "Forum box" in the menu strip at right you'll see a list of the last 5 discussions in my forum. (It's not likely to change too much, though, because right now I'm the only one talking in my forum, but hey it's only been up for a week so that's ok.)

I'm actually just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous with ASP pages but unfortunately this web host doesn't support those so I have to learn a whole new way of thinking in PHP. After a little trial and error and a little looking stuff up in a book, I've reverse engineered some of my forum code to display the most recent discussion titles in the invisible little iframe at right. (Yeah that might not mean much to anyone, but I'm excited about it.)

Eventually I hope to learn enough about Database driven PHP to become dangerous in it too, and "enhance" this blog with all manor of web trickery. But for now "Latest Discussions", Hooray!

Let's Go Surfing

» Compilation of Windows Freeware from Microsoft

Wednesday January 3, 2007 12:05:28 PM #

Let's Go Surfing

» Useful stand-alone, no install, Web Design Toy. Type HTML in the left pane, instantly see the results as you type in the right pane. That is all.

» TWO of those fancy USB self-charging AA batteries for $20 on Thinkgeek.

» If you have a modest sized screen and use Firefox, check out Tiny Menu to add an extra 1/4" or so of screen space. (If you install it, be sure to read the developer comments on this page to get it to look right.)

» KKKKKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHNNNNN!. (I never tire of that line.)

Wednesday January 3, 2007 2:34:00 AM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» The below video won't mean much (in the way it's edited together that is) to anyone other than those I work with, or other Grand Rapidians (Rapidites? Rapidors? What do you call someone from Grand Rapids anyway?) The video features a compilation of cameos of another Grand Rapids icon and favorite son seen on TV during the Grand Rapids coverage of President Ford's Funeral Tuesday. If you're local, you'll figure it out if you look close as the video "rolls" on. (apoligies on the resolution, my capture device was set to low and I didn't realize it until editing.) If you're not local, pay the clip no mind.

» I now present to you in order, often to least, the top 20 keywords used over the last three years to find my blog on Google and other search engines: justice, league, teen, the, titans, megas, unlimited, xlr, torrent, download, bittorrent, green, mp3, and, porn, torrents, lantern, titan, pics, theme.

Porn came in at number 15. My apologies to all the disappointed porn seekers who have found there way here. :(

» BTW, if you're wondering why so many posts this week, I'm fortunate to have some time off work right now. Things will eventually return to their more intermittent 2 or 3 posts a week next week.

Let's Go Surfing

» Wieringo has this redesign of Archie and Jughead up on his site at the moment . I'd actually be interested in picking up a book with these characters. I'm not an Archie fan, but these two, look like they're up to something worth reading about.

» Let's reminisce shall we over JLU Holiday Hal. Was it really a year ago? How time flies ;)

The site with the Hal post above, afhub, is very prettily put together too. While I was on it, I saw some cool neat Batman Animated Customs, some massive collection shots and if you scroll halfway down the page: two nice Marvel Legend Group fight scenes
via Action Figure Insider

» I'm afraid I know nothing about Lovecraft, but I love the little screaming people.

» Over on Fwoosh, there's two solutions to the collarless Banshee (you've got to scroll abit to see them), one uses a Black Widow collar, and the other takes a collar from Longshot (which seems like a good use for those plentiful Longshots.)

» Marvel has collected all their Marvel Zombie covers on one page. I chuckle at the thought of Marvel Zombies buying a book called Marvel Zombies, it cracks me up.

» Boing Boing's got that Carrie inspired cake you're going to want to bake for the teenaged girl in your family. "They're all going to laugh at you."

» This is so messed up, yet I kept watching it and am even posting this...

Tuesday January 2, 2007 9:17:21 PM #

Action Figures

Nic and Caretaker shot by me, but background CC image modified from this Flickr user

• I picked-up two Movie Ghost Rider figures today. I didn't have any intention of doing so, but once I saw the Ghost Rider with Nic Cage's head, well how can you pass that up. Kitsch is what it's all about. Anyway, they're nice figures, and bravo to Hasbro for doing them in the Marvel Legends scale and style. Well played.

(Oh and a no-prize goes to the first person who explains the image above in my comments.)

Y'know you can't wait too see this movie. Nic freakin Cage as Ghost Rider,
I think it'll be Snakes-on-a-plane-arific!

Movie Ghost Rider with Marvel Legends Ghost Rider.

... and with Flaming interchageable head!

"See I wanted to play a superhero and..."
"Yeah that's nice Nic, I'm sure it's a great flick, but I've got to catch a flight"

Ghost Rider 2?

Sing it with me now...
"We are the Champions!, my friends! and we'll keep on fightin' 'til the end..."

Tuesday January 2, 2007 12:22:16 PM #

MODOK shot by me, but background CC image from this Flickr user

Oh, and my site gets an honorable mention under Mike's "Favorite Weblog" category. An honor I'm so proud of that I'm going to print the post and put it on my mantle right next to my bowling trophies. Just as soon as I get a mantle... and some bowling trophies. But seriously, Progressive Ruin is the best one-man-show comic blog on the web, so really, it's just nice to be in his link list much less in a post. Very cool.

Tuesday January 2, 2007 2:50:10 AM #

Random Non-Sequiters

Herc and Thor shot by me, but background CC image from this Flickr user

» I saw this simple photoshop tutorial on making real photos look like model railroad pictures. After which, I thought, "Hey that would be great for action figures backgrounds!". So I found a sutible random Flickr image with a Creative Commons license, and I took the photo of Hercules and Thor that I posted a couple days ago, used the "toyification" technique and threw it all together in five minutes (also added a directional lighting efect and 2% of noise.) Interesting effect for the most part, I'll have to try more and spend a little more time on this technique later.

» I hate posting these cheesy stories, but this one is pretty good.

Let's Go Surfing

» Crass but hilarious classic Alec Baldwin SNL sketch.

» Very Neat Flash webpage that has jpegs and pdfs of hundreds of US and world-wide newspaper covers updated daily. Very Slick.

» Go look at the mousepad couch. That's alot of blue mousepads.

» Anyone have any experience with DivShare.com or Mediafire.com for sharing files? Both look like interesting free download services? Any thoughts?

Monday January 1, 2007 6:07:48 PM #

Random Non-Sequiters

» Happy New Year!

» Saw this ad in the Grand Rapids Press. They did an Incredibles one similiar to this awhile back too. It kindof reads to me as: "Captain America reads the Daily Bugle, but um yeah, the Grand Rapids Press is ok too." (I know, I know, I'm reading too much into that.)

Let's Go Surfing

» Macro Insect Pictures. Interesting and Creepy. It's a good thing these creatures are so tiny.

» Time Top 10 Video Games of 2006. Hooray to Resistence Fall of Man at #5 (my best friend had alot to do with that game). #1 is Wii Sports, a very good choice.