Monday, May 25, 2009
Videobloggery: Hobo Chris Beaten by Vista
Don't worry. Real footage from this weekend will certainly make its way to other videobloggeries, but for now, while I am without my own computer, you must deal with a lame slide-show-esque montage and my ethereal voice.
And I'm not kidding when I say that my USB streaming video isn't supported by Vista- look, it's even there at the bottom in big red letters! So, I guess now, when I was just starting to accept vista a little, it is back down to terrible on my scale.
Friday, May 22, 2009
NOT Videobloggery: Spider Train
I was pretty tired last night, but I wanted to see how well my camera recorded music. I found out that is doesn't do this very well, but I still finished editing this song, 'Spider Train'
I made the guitar part first, then thought, 'what does this sound like? It sounds both silly and spooky at the same time.' And so, from that train of thought I eventually thought of the word 'spider train' Maybe once I get my actual recording equipment from home I can post this as an audio-only good quality (and more though-out lyrics than just ad libbed ones) post. But for now, I know not a lot of people come here, so I'll put it up.
I made the guitar part first, then thought, 'what does this sound like? It sounds both silly and spooky at the same time.' And so, from that train of thought I eventually thought of the word 'spider train' Maybe once I get my actual recording equipment from home I can post this as an audio-only good quality (and more though-out lyrics than just ad libbed ones) post. But for now, I know not a lot of people come here, so I'll put it up.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Comic update: page 2
Tomorrow looks like it could be pretty busy, so in case I don't put up anything else I promised, I am offering what I have so far on page 2 of the comic as a compromise. Only half-inked with out dialogue and no detail, but at least you know I have been working on something between work and sleeping. Come to think of it, this is more for me than it is for you.
Song, Com. and T1
Sorry, the song isn't up yet, but you'll be happy to know that it has a name, refrain and bridge, and lyrics are coming along nicely. So look for that, probably tomorrow.
In the meantime, I have been working on the comic. Since my last update, I've done 1 more concept page (page 7), 1 more pencil-sketched page, and I'm starting to ink 2 pages at the same time (2 and 3). Maybe those 2 will be up by the weekend.
And I need to rant about this car I just found.
Sorry, just skip it if you don't care.
The Caparo T1 (above) instantly reminded me of the Ariel Atom. I know I'm late to the game, and the T1 is practically history, but as far as I know probably no one who reads this would know that. Made to be a street-legal F1 car (!!!) the T1 was designed by prestigious ex-McClaren engineers working carefully to fulfill the British Single Vehicle Approval Scheme while at the same time beefing up the engine to create the unheard-of 2.5 sec 0-60mph acceleration. The overall power of this tiny toy is 1000bhp/tonne.
While watching the performance of this car on Top Gear (typically the where I get interested in new cars), it seemed like everything expected in a super-lightweight-insanely powerful car: loads of acceleration and kicking-out back wheels. It seemed like all the Car-nirvana created in the Atom's perfect weight-to-power ratio was gone, so I was unimpressed. The handling was reported as, and looked on camera to be, dramatically poor. Then they timed it around the track. Nearly 10 seconds faster than the Atom. 8 seconds faster than the CCX! There is no equivalent in any other sport I can think of that redefines 'the fastest' like this did.
Naturally, I was upset about how easily all my track favorites had fallen to this newbie, so I focused on the bad stuff: such as how it is a 2-seater F1 car. Who has ever heard of that? What passenger would be crazy enough to sit in the belly of a 200-mph monster while not having any control over it? But because some people would like that, I could also focus on the T1's bad history with accidents. For example, it once burst into flames while being tested on the TV show Fifth Gear and while Clarkson was driving it the floor panel started falling off. Also two incidences of the throttle sticking open have been reported while the car was being tested. So it is like an F1 car in the fact that is needs a pit crew to maintain it every few laps.
It seems hard to believe that and T1's could be out there in the world right now, seeing both how they cost half a million and they tend to kill themselves instantly, but something about this car made me very emotional, like 'a good book,' so I guess at the very least it was 'written' brilliantly.
In the meantime, I have been working on the comic. Since my last update, I've done 1 more concept page (page 7), 1 more pencil-sketched page, and I'm starting to ink 2 pages at the same time (2 and 3). Maybe those 2 will be up by the weekend.
And I need to rant about this car I just found.
Sorry, just skip it if you don't care.
The Caparo T1 (above) instantly reminded me of the Ariel Atom. I know I'm late to the game, and the T1 is practically history, but as far as I know probably no one who reads this would know that. Made to be a street-legal F1 car (!!!) the T1 was designed by prestigious ex-McClaren engineers working carefully to fulfill the British Single Vehicle Approval Scheme while at the same time beefing up the engine to create the unheard-of 2.5 sec 0-60mph acceleration. The overall power of this tiny toy is 1000bhp/tonne.
While watching the performance of this car on Top Gear (typically the where I get interested in new cars), it seemed like everything expected in a super-lightweight-insanely powerful car: loads of acceleration and kicking-out back wheels. It seemed like all the Car-nirvana created in the Atom's perfect weight-to-power ratio was gone, so I was unimpressed. The handling was reported as, and looked on camera to be, dramatically poor. Then they timed it around the track. Nearly 10 seconds faster than the Atom. 8 seconds faster than the CCX! There is no equivalent in any other sport I can think of that redefines 'the fastest' like this did.
Naturally, I was upset about how easily all my track favorites had fallen to this newbie, so I focused on the bad stuff: such as how it is a 2-seater F1 car. Who has ever heard of that? What passenger would be crazy enough to sit in the belly of a 200-mph monster while not having any control over it? But because some people would like that, I could also focus on the T1's bad history with accidents. For example, it once burst into flames while being tested on the TV show Fifth Gear and while Clarkson was driving it the floor panel started falling off. Also two incidences of the throttle sticking open have been reported while the car was being tested. So it is like an F1 car in the fact that is needs a pit crew to maintain it every few laps.
It seems hard to believe that and T1's could be out there in the world right now, seeing both how they cost half a million and they tend to kill themselves instantly, but something about this car made me very emotional, like 'a good book,' so I guess at the very least it was 'written' brilliantly.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Videobloggery: Anathem Review
Tom posted a video last week. Go see it, then:
And I'm still chipping away at Sara's video in viewership. As of this morning I'm down by 375 views. Given that we never set a time limit on this contest, I feel pretty confident that even though I'm losing, I'm winning.
I'm working on a song that should go here in the next two days. Unfortunately I don't have my recording equipment with me, so it'll have to be video-recorded music. Ugh.
And I'm still chipping away at Sara's video in viewership. As of this morning I'm down by 375 views. Given that we never set a time limit on this contest, I feel pretty confident that even though I'm losing, I'm winning.
I'm working on a song that should go here in the next two days. Unfortunately I don't have my recording equipment with me, so it'll have to be video-recorded music. Ugh.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Videobloggery: Extremism
Tawm's response to my 'bwat' list
And my latest video:
Click on the video to follow it to Youtube and subscribe, rate or comment.
And while you're in a Youtube mood, check out my random video , which is not a videobloggery episode, but just something I made a while ago and I am trying to get more views than a friend on this video- I am only 558 behind now, woo! That's up quite a bit from 633 behind last week!
And my latest video:
Click on the video to follow it to Youtube and subscribe, rate or comment.
And while you're in a Youtube mood, check out my random video , which is not a videobloggery episode, but just something I made a while ago and I am trying to get more views than a friend on this video- I am only 558 behind now, woo! That's up quite a bit from 633 behind last week!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Comic is on!
So I finished the first page of the comic I'm working on for my thing-a-month in May, and it took much more work than I thought.
I thought I'd share the whole construction of page 1, click on the pictures to see them full-size.
First I thought up the page layout, and doodled it really roughly about 1/5 the size it would end up as.
Then I made a full-size sketch with pencil by hand.
Finally, I scanned it into the computer and began inking via tablet. I've never done this before, so it was a really long process, and took 2 days of on-and-off work to complete this step. Here's the final product: enjoy!
At this rate, there's no way I can do a complete comic during only May, but I'll keep trying. I've already got the first 6 pages in the 1/5th concept stage, and I've done the first three of those in full-size pencil sketches. Comments?
I thought I'd share the whole construction of page 1, click on the pictures to see them full-size.
First I thought up the page layout, and doodled it really roughly about 1/5 the size it would end up as.
Then I made a full-size sketch with pencil by hand.
Finally, I scanned it into the computer and began inking via tablet. I've never done this before, so it was a really long process, and took 2 days of on-and-off work to complete this step. Here's the final product: enjoy!
At this rate, there's no way I can do a complete comic during only May, but I'll keep trying. I've already got the first 6 pages in the 1/5th concept stage, and I've done the first three of those in full-size pencil sketches. Comments?
Friday, May 8, 2009
Done with Dexter
#1) I'm in a contest with my friend, Sara, for getting more views on Youtube. Watch my video, and pass it on like a virus! I know it stinks, but in the spirit of competition, quantity beats quality! So watch it and pass it on. Only 633 more views to tie it up!
#2) Maybe you've seen or heard of Showtime's Dexter series; the story of an easy-to-love serial killer in Miami. The show was based on the book series by Jeff Lindsay, and I thought the show was clever, so I sought out the first two books.
The first book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, followed the 1st season for a while, so I can't review it without a fair amount of bias, since knowing the end of mystery book does take away the body of it. But I think I can review the second, Dearly Devoted Dexter fairly fairly.
No spoilers, though.
Written very much like the first book, the second in this series is humorous, dark, but with a simplistic narrative style, making a noticably different character out of Dexter than Showtime's. Throughout the story, Dexter is pent-up and restless, and it really made me feel restless too. When was the action going to start up? Why was there only 1 death from our favorite serial killer in this story? It's true that in this volume, Dexter is trying to appear as normal as possible to throw off people's suspicions about him, but the combination of him doing it so well for so long and his antagonist's lack of evidence against him made this situation boring and seemingly drawn-out. The more action-y parts of the book involve another serial killer, whom we know little about and don't even meet until the final few pages, much like in the last book. Maybe if this part was a little more spread-out, I would have enjoyed the book more.
The story was immersive enough for me to speed through it in 3 days of commuter-reading, though. Probably the quickest 300-page read I've had since the Drawing of the 3, by Steven King. I liked the main character enough (which suprised me when I saw the show and read the first book, but seemed normal to me by now) but was annoyed when he failed to understand basic concpets on one page, and then on the next page quickly solve a murder case that had a federal agent baffled. Dexter is finally free to kill again in the final 2 pages of the book, which makes me think the 3rd installment would be a better read, but neither of the first 2 books got me as interested as the show did. I'll look at the 3rd book before I let go of this series, but honestly I'm much more excited about season 4 coming out later this year.
#PS) Next post I plan on my thing-a-month update. Look out for a new videobloggery by this Sunday, too!
#2) Maybe you've seen or heard of Showtime's Dexter series; the story of an easy-to-love serial killer in Miami. The show was based on the book series by Jeff Lindsay, and I thought the show was clever, so I sought out the first two books.
The first book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, followed the 1st season for a while, so I can't review it without a fair amount of bias, since knowing the end of mystery book does take away the body of it. But I think I can review the second, Dearly Devoted Dexter fairly fairly.
No spoilers, though.
Written very much like the first book, the second in this series is humorous, dark, but with a simplistic narrative style, making a noticably different character out of Dexter than Showtime's. Throughout the story, Dexter is pent-up and restless, and it really made me feel restless too. When was the action going to start up? Why was there only 1 death from our favorite serial killer in this story? It's true that in this volume, Dexter is trying to appear as normal as possible to throw off people's suspicions about him, but the combination of him doing it so well for so long and his antagonist's lack of evidence against him made this situation boring and seemingly drawn-out. The more action-y parts of the book involve another serial killer, whom we know little about and don't even meet until the final few pages, much like in the last book. Maybe if this part was a little more spread-out, I would have enjoyed the book more.
The story was immersive enough for me to speed through it in 3 days of commuter-reading, though. Probably the quickest 300-page read I've had since the Drawing of the 3, by Steven King. I liked the main character enough (which suprised me when I saw the show and read the first book, but seemed normal to me by now) but was annoyed when he failed to understand basic concpets on one page, and then on the next page quickly solve a murder case that had a federal agent baffled. Dexter is finally free to kill again in the final 2 pages of the book, which makes me think the 3rd installment would be a better read, but neither of the first 2 books got me as interested as the show did. I'll look at the 3rd book before I let go of this series, but honestly I'm much more excited about season 4 coming out later this year.
#PS) Next post I plan on my thing-a-month update. Look out for a new videobloggery by this Sunday, too!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Karma
It has taken me exactly 19 weeks, but something finally clicked today: I think I like the Fisker Karma[see below, left]. When I woke up on Christmas morning, reached into my stocking and saw the Karma in a magazine article, I was not impressed. Electric car, fish-like features (reminds me of the derranged Mitsuoka Orochi: seen below, right), "American-made", and called a 'premium-performance' hybrid. It was impressive that the combination didn't make me tear out the article and throw it on the yule log, but I've started to come around.
I admit I am a little skeptical because of all the drama that has been happening with the Tesla Roadster (see below). Drama which, in fact, had decided to involve suing the makers of the Karma for stolen technology. The Tesla got high reviews and several prestigious awards in the category of being the Best Green Sports Car, but I for every award I felt less impressed, as there was no competition. Performance was good as well, with reviewers raving about its massive acceleration and top speed of 125mph, not to mention the absurd equivalent mileage (well over 100mpg). But I had also heard that with aggressive driving, the driving range drops laughably low, so it while it can have the performance of it's less green cousin, the Elise, it can't be the track toy it's built to compete against. So with the track option closed, it becomes a road car. But a road car with two seats and a pricetag over $100,000. So now it's a car that simply shows off your status as a rich, eco-concious car enthusiast who likes to . Not the most terrible thing for a car to be, but it's unfortunate to be limited to this, and I don't think that such a car should be considered an award-winner.
So the Karma. Back to that. An American car manufacturer that puts its cars together in Europe (just double-checked for exact location: Finland??) did cause me to raise an eyebrow, but not in intrest. Close comparisions to the Tesla's numbers didn't impress me- about 100mpg, top speed 125, 0-60 was 2.1sec slower than the Roadster, but ooh, what was this? an impressive $20K was cut off the price tag very neatly. I did like that. But the Karma was a very different animal, indeed, because it did not pretend to be a track car- 4 doors and all, this was a called a luxury sports sedan. Now the $80K price tag makes sense, but consider the comparison: the Karma fit roughly into the niche the Tesla market had controlled, but now some in-the-money leftys could save some money and bring their friends around on the town. Not too shabby for a sedan. I had never really understood the concept of a luxury sedan before, and I guess I still don't, but this car started to appeal to me.
But what really excites me about this car is the response it got from Tesla. 5 months after the Karma was revealed, Tesla announced their plans to make their own electric sports-sedan, and for only $50K this time! Fisker has actually started a ball rolling in the hybrid/electric/green/sport/luxury/coupe/sedan market, where the game had long been consiting of one player, scoring infrequently. While hybrids have been picking up speed (literally) in the average sedan market, I think this development will start to perk up the interest in the rest of the car enthusiast world.
Whew! Did I really write that much? I was hoping I could review the book I read today, but looks like it's pretty crowded already. Next time!
I admit I am a little skeptical because of all the drama that has been happening with the Tesla Roadster (see below). Drama which, in fact, had decided to involve suing the makers of the Karma for stolen technology. The Tesla got high reviews and several prestigious awards in the category of being the Best Green Sports Car, but I for every award I felt less impressed, as there was no competition. Performance was good as well, with reviewers raving about its massive acceleration and top speed of 125mph, not to mention the absurd equivalent mileage (well over 100mpg). But I had also heard that with aggressive driving, the driving range drops laughably low, so it while it can have the performance of it's less green cousin, the Elise, it can't be the track toy it's built to compete against. So with the track option closed, it becomes a road car. But a road car with two seats and a pricetag over $100,000. So now it's a car that simply shows off your status as a rich, eco-concious car enthusiast who likes to . Not the most terrible thing for a car to be, but it's unfortunate to be limited to this, and I don't think that such a car should be considered an award-winner.
So the Karma. Back to that. An American car manufacturer that puts its cars together in Europe (just double-checked for exact location: Finland??) did cause me to raise an eyebrow, but not in intrest. Close comparisions to the Tesla's numbers didn't impress me- about 100mpg, top speed 125, 0-60 was 2.1sec slower than the Roadster, but ooh, what was this? an impressive $20K was cut off the price tag very neatly. I did like that. But the Karma was a very different animal, indeed, because it did not pretend to be a track car- 4 doors and all, this was a called a luxury sports sedan. Now the $80K price tag makes sense, but consider the comparison: the Karma fit roughly into the niche the Tesla market had controlled, but now some in-the-money leftys could save some money and bring their friends around on the town. Not too shabby for a sedan. I had never really understood the concept of a luxury sedan before, and I guess I still don't, but this car started to appeal to me.
But what really excites me about this car is the response it got from Tesla. 5 months after the Karma was revealed, Tesla announced their plans to make their own electric sports-sedan, and for only $50K this time! Fisker has actually started a ball rolling in the hybrid/electric/green/sport/luxury/coupe/sedan market, where the game had long been consiting of one player, scoring infrequently. While hybrids have been picking up speed (literally) in the average sedan market, I think this development will start to perk up the interest in the rest of the car enthusiast world.
Whew! Did I really write that much? I was hoping I could review the book I read today, but looks like it's pretty crowded already. Next time!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Start Your Engines!
Well, I'd like this to start off spectacularly, and what better way than with a pretty picture?
So now that ElecTranio has been officially initiated Italiano-style, I have to say that I plan on using this rather selfishly. Yes, I am going to use a blog primarily as a tool for self-motivation. Of all the things I've seen people use their blogs as, I think this is the most productive and benificial, but sacrifices user enjoyment. So for that part, I think I'll dedicate the Videobloggery segments.
Speaking of Videobloggery, check out latest video, although I don't like it that much. If anything, the vlogs will get more entertaining and this place will suck up all the suck to where it can be constructive.
Prepare to accompany me in things both new and old with my Thing-a-month, slyly inspired by JC's Thing-a-week. I've decided to have one big project per month (Novembers are already taken with nano, other things will be thought up as I go along) and work on it, keeping track of what I'm doing here. It has to be either creative, constructive, charitable, somewhere along those lines. I suppose since I'm starting this month a week in I'll try and make a comic. That's creative. Updates to follow!
But this would be a boring place if I only did one thing a month. So all the little things that bloggers do that seem to be popular- I guess I'll try those out too. Book reviews? Why not. Lists comparing pricing of a Whole foods in Boston with Shop&Spit back home? Okay. Recordings of spur-of-the-moment jam sessions in West Village? Yes. Random stuff that only I like and everyone else thinks is boring and/or ugly? Maybe. I'll stick with what I like and dump whatever is unpopular.
Part of this blog I'll use to converse with Tawm, from tawm.net, but that I'll also restrict to the vlogs.
I'll also show my vast array of personal emotions: rar! Take, for example, this news article. I am a little concerned what it says about our legal system and just how eager people are to screw one another over. I think people are just a tad overzealous to display how much power they have over others- the policeman here seems to have done it, and is getting it right back at him from someone equally unjustified! What do you think? There! Emotions! Exclamation points!
I'm nearing the end of a book, so I should have a review next time I post. Looking forward to it :)
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