| Date: | 2007-02-01 12:11 |
| Subject: | AZM IS BACK! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  accomplished |
Fucking finally! Angry Zen Master is back in the house!
That'll teach me to upgrade on my own.
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| Date: | 2007-01-30 10:02 |
| Subject: | BABY! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  excited |
I'm an uncle!
Isaac Shunji Noguchi was born on January 29, 2007 at some time over there in Washington state. He's 7lbs 14oz clocking in at some undisclosed length. WHOOOOOO!
We don't know what he looks like yet because by brother and sister-in-law are allergic to cameras, but we heard Isaac on the phone crying! Wow. My brother is a dad!
What this means, of course, is that our family's sole mission is to purchase the noisiest toys ever invented to give Isaac every birthday until he's old enough to go to college.
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| Date: | 2007-01-16 16:09 |
| Subject: | Shock and Awe |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  contemplative |
Over the weekend, which was extended for some of you assholes (fie and damnation!), I caught Future Weapons on the Discovery Channel. The host, Richard "Mack" Machowicz, gives views a behind-the-scenes look at the development and implementation of some of the U.S. military's next generation of "smart" weaponry.
What amazed me most about this show was not the weapons themselves but the information presented detailing every aspect of each weapon featured. Rounds per second, blast radii, launching mechanisms, targeting technologies, functional design. You could almost write a technical manual based entirely on the show.
Okay, so the show is pretty cool. Seeing things go all 'splody is fairly entertaining. But what's the theory behind giving away so much information? Aren't we at Chum-Fucker Warning Hue Puce or something like that?
The only thing I could come up with is that if the enemy knows just how much potential power we're packing, they will be less inclined to engage us on the battle field. The explosions were all very devastating and quite impressive. I know I wouldn't want anything in that show aimed at me.
However, can this type of shock and awe media campaign (if I can call it that for a bit) really frighten off religious zealots who believe they're fighting for their freedom? Hell, can anything deter such convictions? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
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Well, this is kinda cool.
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| Date: | 2007-01-12 08:49 |
| Subject: | Broken |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  frustrated |
With a false sense of competence, I decided last night to upgrade my AZM blog to the latest release of Wordpress. Simple trick. Back up the database, delete the old stuff, upload the new stuff. I fully expected the layout to be fucked and I was fully prepared to spend some time just tweaking. Well, the layout did indeed get fucked. Along with everything else. Fuck.
I tried a clean install and removed absolutely everything. Nope, still fucked. Then I tried to restore the old version to just get it back to normal. Again with the fucking and not the good kind.
So, because I have no idea how to fix it, I've decided that the only solution is to start over. From scratch. I could have punched a hole in the wall. I'm so fucking pissed. I worked hard to put that piece of shit together and now it's all broken and I'm going to have to start all over again. Fuck.
Completely fucking fucked. I hate everything right now.
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... is the definition of a bad joke.
Yesterday, Bush announced his new plan for Iraq. Sounded a lot like the old plan for Iraq. Completely absent from his speech was any mention of a political solution. Might has clearly not made much right. Sending more troops isn't going to change much. More people will die and the Iraq government will still be in shambles. Without a political solution, fighting will only result in more fighting.
If he was trying to resell us the old war, Bush failed miserably. If you're going to sell something old by pretending it's new, you have to do it right. Bush should have contacted Steve Jobs.
This week also marked Apple big announcement. The iPhone is an amalgamation of old ideas packaged in a new way. We have phones, we have web browsers, we have portable music/media players. The iPhone combines all three in a new compelling way that is exciting and easy to sell.
See, Bush's big mistake is taking only one idea and trying to repackage it in a not so compelling or exciting manner. There are plenty of old ideas that he could have drawn from. Using diplomacy in the region is a pretty old idea that could use a slick face-lift. Rebuilding the infrastructure that we obliterated when we first came in was an idea I heard a few years ago. Training the Iraqis to run their own country could be good. These are three pretty old ideas that could have been repackaged and sold to us last night. All we got was more troops? Please.
It looks like it's going to take another administration or two for us to really change course. The jury's out on how much Congress can actually shape the war. I'm hopeful. I'm hoping that this new Congress will be a significant thorn in Bush's side. But I suspect it's going to be at least 2009 or hell, even 2013 before we see something really new.
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| Date: | 2007-01-10 16:13 |
| Subject: | I be Venom |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  geeky |
Your results:
You are Venom
| Venom |
| 74% |
| The Joker |
| 60% |
| Magneto |
| 56% |
| Riddler |
| 56% |
| Mystique |
| 50% |
| Mr. Freeze |
| 49% |
| Apocalypse |
| 40% |
| Dark Phoenix |
| 39% |
| Lex Luthor |
| 35% |
| Two-Face |
| 34% |
| Dr. Doom |
| 30% |
| Poison Ivy |
| 30% |
| Catwoman |
| 28% |
| Green Goblin |
| 26% |
| Juggernaut |
| 18% |
| Kingpin |
| 18% |
|
Strength, disguise and adrenaline are your greatest weapons.
 |
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain am I?" quiz...
Whhooohooo!
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Super Columbine, an RPG where players go around a school shooting students, was recently pulled from the Slamdance Film Festival due to pressure from the festival's sponsors.
This raises a good number of questions.
1) Can a game be considered art?
2) Is it appropriate to censor the Columbine game when there are other games out there where players kill just about every thing and every one? Can we censor this game without censoring all others?
3) Are there/should there be limits to so-called artistic expression?
I think the game is utter shit. It takes a sick fuck to come up with something like that. I fully agree with pulling it from the festival. So in a sense, yes I believe that there are limits to our freedom of expression, though honestly, it's not as bad as yelling "FIRE" in an over-crowded room. And if this game was not about Columbine, I'm sure no one would care.
Because it is about Columbine, does that makes it censor-worthy?
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| Date: | 2007-01-08 15:47 |
| Subject: | Damn Printers |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  disappointed |
I have not had a good relationship with color printers. Kinkos color printers mock me as they charge me what should be my mortgage payment for colors that don't match any semblance of the colors that I see on my screen. Every color printer I have ever personally owned has teased me with a handful of amazing prints only to print colors that they must invent in their digital little minds should I neglect the thing for a few weeks.
And now, NOW, the brand spanking new printer that I bought last year if ever I wanted to sell small runs of prints has decided not to talk to Photoshop. Oh, it'll talk to all the other applications including Preview, Safari, Word, Illustrator, Firefox, BBEdit. Hell, I'm sure if I knew how, I could print from a little terminal window. But Photoshop? The only program that I truly NEED to do anything? No, my printer will not talk with Photoshop.
For the most part, I am happy with my machine. It helps me make pretty pictures. But lately, it's been acting funny. It won't wake up after I make it sleep. If I'm running Photoshop, disk space magically disappears then reappears once I close it. If I keep a web browser open too much, it'll slow down everything. The pressure sensitivity will suddenly turn itself off in the middle of painting a background. Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
Printers? Printers can go screw. No matter what I do, eventually, the printer will decide that it's better than me and make me grovel for it to print something that remotely resembles actual colors that my eyes can recognize. ARGH!
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A number of people have been giving shit to Oprah regarding the school she just set up for the kiddies in South Africa. The two big arguments I've heard are why aren't there any white girls in her school and why did she build a school in Africa when there are poor kids right here in America. And to those people, I saw in the immortal words of Bobby Brown, "It's her prerogative!"
Oprah doesn't owe anyone shit. She came from nothing and built her Oprah monolithic empire on her own. In my estimation, she can do whatever the hell she wants to do with her money. If she wants to set up a school to help poor kids in another country, that's great. It's far more intelligent than spending money on a bridge that goes nowhere.
If anyone has a responsibility to our schools it would be our Federal, State, and local governments. Education should be a real priority in this country. There's no excuse for the public schools in the capitol of the "free" world to be so shitty.
Oprah opening a school is far more generous than Oprah giving away cars. But whatever Oprah does with Oprah's money is Oprah's prerogative. Leave Oprah alone.
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I saw Rocky Balboa last night and I absolutely loved it!
However, from a pure fighting point of view Rocky seems to come from the "I'm gonna break my opponent's fists with my face" method of fighting. Personally, I've never found this a particularly effective method. I like my face. It lets me see, eat, and smell, all activities which I quite enjoy. Using my face to break, well, anything is pretty much out of the question.
I suppose an argument could be made that Rocky uses his face blocking jutsu to wear-out his opponent so that when Rocky unloads with his 24-inch pythons, brother, he does a lot of damage. This is usually how he manages to land his first hit. His opponent gets tired of Rocky's face hitting his fists, lets his guard down, and Rocky comes in with thunder and lightning.
Don't get me wrong. It makes for a damn entertaining movie. And you gotta respect anyone who can use the face blocking jutsu effectively. I also think that they've done a good job showing what all those hits to the noggin can do to a guy. So when you're watching the movie, you don't really notice just how much his face blocks that fist.
All in all, I was entertained. Great movie. I highly recommend it to everyone!
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"What would you do if you had [__insert x amount of dollars__]?"
We've all heard it before. But in my opinion, that's not really what we want to know. The question that we're really trying to answer is "what would you do if you were absolutely free to do so."
You don't really want the money. You want what the money can get you. Stuff is nice, but there's more to it than the material. We're really after the freedom to choose what we would want to do with our lives.
So, if you had absolute freedom to choose, what would you do?
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| Date: | 2007-01-02 11:37 |
| Subject: | Happy 2k7! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  weird |
Well, 2k6 sucked all sort of salty donkey scrote. And though I'm thankful for a great many things, zooming out to the big picture, 2k6 has left the world with a big mess of mess. On that same global scale, it looks like 2k7 is going to start off a bit rough. But like Tina always said, "We never ever do anything nice and easy. We do things nice... and rough!" As long as they don't reinstate the draft or nuke anything, I'll be perfectly willing to call 2k7 a success.
Zooming in to the small picture, things are actually quite divided. I'm all googly and giggly about getting married. That's going to be a lot of fun. Hell, it's a lot of fun right now. Vacation was great and Audrey got to meet all the folks in Cali. It's clear that they all really like Audrey and are much more positive about things this time around. The culling of the crap in the condo has begun anew and it's starting to physically shape up. All that's left is for me to figure out how to get back into some sort of shape that I'm happy with.
Oh, and a small part of my re-branding experiment has been completed. I've posted up a portfolio of some of my current work along with my new logo and mascot. The filthy monkey, he schemes!
Happy New Year everyone! I hope this one is safer than the last one. Blech.
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Took forever, but I found the solution.
So, you make yourself a really annoying ad in flash and set its background to transparent. Then, you grab yourself some div tags and absolute place that bitch wherever the fuck you want. Slap in your content and upload the whole mess to your server. Test it out and you've got a really annoying flash banner that overlays itself over your content!
It's so simple I'm kicking myself for not figuring the shit out sooner.
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| Date: | 2006-12-22 10:20 |
| Subject: | Rotofugi! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | dorky |
My sister-in-law lives four blocks away from Rotofugi in Chicago! I told her that if random sacks of money show up at her door, it's from me and that she should go there a pick up infinite Dunnys!
Which begs the question, why isn't there something like this in the D.C. area? I can understand Maryland's dearth of urban art culture, but D.C. has a pretty decent art scene that would just love to get on the urban vinyl thing. Seems to me that there's an opening waiting to be filled be some entrepreneur type person.
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This Saturday, we kidnap Audrey to take her to California to meet the rest of my family. I've met Audrey's mom's side a few times now. Her father's family lives in France which is much farther than San Fransisco and Sacramento, so we're going to California in stead. This is kinda exciting because one, Audrey's never been to California. Two, she's never eaten real Chinese food (SF China Town, here we come)! Three, everyone is really looking forward to meeting her.
The only thing missing is my brother and his wife, but they're trying to keep warm up in Washington state. Oh, and she's preggers so traveling by plane isn't the best thing in the world.
Other than that, the whole family will be there. A week is a pretty good time too because anything longer than that, everyone starts to get on each other's nerves.
I like vacationing with Audrey far better than not. Vacations aren't really vacations these days. Sure, you're not at work, but it's rarely relaxing. There's lots of travel and doing things and you just wish you were home in bed with the TV on. With Audrey there, I don't notice the non-vacation aspects of vacation.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a nice safe holiday and that you get lots of loot! Hooray for loot!
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Only in webcomics could fans of a comic not three weeks old decide that they want to mod a turn based strategy game based on your comic. Enter Battle For Erfworld. The game will be based on Battle for Wesnoth which is an open source RPG and has a Mac version which I'm happy about. Apparently, anyone who's plays nice can mod the thing.
And another weird development. A number of haters have emerged just throwing hateful shit our way. One remarked that you have to be some kind of idiot to laugh at the jokes in Erfworld. The response? One of our fans created a badge of honor so that all the rest of the Erfworld Idiots could make their voices ring proud! LOL!
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So this won't make any sense to anyone but a few people, but Chris's magic instructor is fucking playing my office XTREME Mas party! I just let him in the building!
Small small world.
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You know those really annoying flash ads that popup over the content you're trying to read and you click the x and they go away? I've been trying to find a tutorial on how to build such a monstrosity for the past couple of hours and have had no luck. Any really nerdy folk out there know a good place to track something like that down? I have an idea to use such a jutsu for the powers of good, but I have yet to find any useful information.
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| Date: | 2006-12-15 16:01 |
| Subject: | Cow Throwing! |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | geeky |
There's a game in Rayman for the Wii where you swing a cow over your head and try to toss him as far as he'll go.
Wii wins! Period!
2 comments | post a comment
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