If Ya See It, Save It.

As it is told, once it is on the net, it's there for life. Not so. Many a time has been I go looking for something and I can't find it no more. I quickly learned to immediately bookmark it, or better yet in this day and age of large ass hard drives and infinite online storage I now download everything I want to save.

Remember when there use to be all these sprite sites, some with rather large public domain sections? I grabbed up a few. One day that Wily sprite made be Deccus showed up. I snagged it just in time. Next day it was gone. Along with a bunch of others I wish I had saved.

Jib Jab used to make all their videos in flash, now they all have been converted to YouTube. I have the original interactive versions. Bunches of the original Foamy the Squirrel, Joesph Blanchett, Joanime, Andrew Dickman. All the really cool kids have moved to YouTube. That's where the action is at, and mostly because bunches of other people had used hand held cameras to re-record the original flash video and post it to YouTube. I miss regular ol' SWF. Often you can watch them at full screen, and then shrink the video itself back to its original size and see all kinds of extras. Like sprite sheets, limbs, objects before they come on screen, and after they leave. I've learned a lot by doing that.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Perusing Jib Jab's site I noted many video's not there. Bill Clinton cooking brownies, Hillary running for Senate, Rapping Cowboy, Adam and Eve, Farting Waffles, and many many more. Glad I saved them. Except the waffles. Didn't like that one.

I remember a time before YouTube when AMVs were traded on CD by friends. I have a Dragon Ball video set to It's My Life. In the early days people would make whole sites dedicated to their works of love and allowed you to download them, ten PM to three AM. When the transfer rates were cheapest. I spent days downloading Sailor Moon on Jerry Springer, Sailor Mercury in I'm Blue, Jinnai in the Bugrom. At the time I had DAILUP! I got pretty pissed when I downloaded one that sucked.

That site has long since disappeared, but the owner has since redid these gems in much higher quality on YouTube.

Whole sites disappear. One that I have always regretted not saving was Shadey Theatre. That was the first web comic I read. What got me hooked and inspired me to do my comic. However I never saved any of the comics. Pretty much it was 8-Bit Theater using sprites from Final Fantasy 4, 5, 6, repainted Megaman to look like FF7, and some plot elements form Warped Reality. I think. Jeeze, I last saw it in 2003. I only really can remember a vague outline and some characterizations.

You know, once in while, perusing the archives, I'll find the odd protoform essay, spelling error, graphical mistake that was probably meant to be but I forgot why, or even whole comics that need to be made gone. Like a couple that were posted in June of 2004 that had certain well known and respected “Authors” that I felt really guilty about using.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 44.

Click Here.

Taking a look back  at an old story form another character's perspective.

I believe that is the first time I ever let the word bitch through. I figured that if the FCC let's Bob and Tom say it, then it is alright with me. I've tried to maintain some semblance  of decorum, (for this comic), but once in a while to help get that feeling I want a character to show, you have to cross that line.

I just did a comic and in the punchline I used (bleep.) Shit would be a much better word to use and funnier. However there are some lines in the comic I am not willing to cross just yet.

Identical twin sisters kissing, no prob.

On an unrelated note:

What was Cyberteam in Akihabara? It's a hybrid magic girl/sentai/robot fighter/playing card/tiny monster show. I think it's main purpose was to collate all that together and tell a semi-comprehensible story at the same time. It's a bit slow and it really could have been done in 14 episodes instead of 26. Sometimes we get to know things that just are not important, like how many siblings Suzume has. Only one ever shows up and only once. Other problems are that you have to deal with the interminable little girl crap, inconstant characterizations, nudity, and a rather aged look to the series. Not as bad as Toei though. I remember watching this back in 2000 and thinking how old it looked. Even watching side by side with Ghostsweepers.

The best part is that all the pertinent characters get fully developed. They are not one dimensional. You get to see all the motivations, desires, triumphs, and tragedies. Nice that there is a short version of the transformation sequences. The tendency to play around with the end theme and credits lends some freshness.

I have had the rather dubious distinction of having watched three different dubs: AXN, ADV, and the original Japanese. Of which AXN is the best for people who don't like to read their cartoon shows. AXN was far from perfect, but they chose the right voices and even got the pronunciations of the names correct. The Japanese dub surprised me at how low pitched Hibari's voice was. I also recommend listening to the voice actor commentary on the ADV version. They really went in and researched this series and found all the references to anime and real history. Though you do have to put up with what the weather is like in Texas during fall/winter.

The one thing that has me the most perplexed at how many Cyberteam theme CDs there are. I have four. There were dozens more I saw on the shelf. Even more oddly is no merch. Just a couple of keychains on Amazon.

Overall it's not a bad series, buts it's not an outstanding one either. Something to fill in the time between releases of really good series.

New Schedule.

I'm changing the update schedule for the website.

It will change from
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday
to
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

I have already been doing a double update in Thursday anyway. Mostly because I like not having to worry about doing anything on Friday. So I might as well set it in stone now, or more precisely: HTML.

There is a secondary change to the unannounced schedule. I would try and get the site updated by noon Eastern Standard Time. Reality demands a change. I am going to move it later in the day, somewhere around ten PM Eastern. I'm not going to bore with any more details.

I do this out of respect for the guy that stops in once in awhile. I've said before one of the things that annoys me is when people make these kinds of changes and don't tell anybody.

These changes will take effect on the 31st of October and will probably last until about April of 2012.

Or until I arbitrarily change it sooner, or later.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 43.

Click Here.

Ghosts of Vista.

My biggest complaint about C 64 was having to type in that command every time and wait forever for the game to load. Imagine my pleasure with Win 98 at having to just double click on an icon and just go.

Had some difficulty moving from 98 to XP, but most of that was resolved by downloading updated versions of my software. This week I got reminded why I went form XP to 7.

Ubuntu 11: Onerous Ocelot. The great thing about earlier versions of Ubuntu is that even though you had to do some deep digging to get some stuff to work, it was still pretty straight forward. The commands were there in the menus. You might have had to look up what they were, But hell, I could figure it out.

So why do programmers that are way smarter than me do dumb stuff like remove the easily clickable restricted drivers option and the Synaptic Package Manager? Now we have Ubuntu Software Center which was no help what so ever in getting the wireless on my laptop to work. It's always worked before. After about five hours of reading one tutorial and forum post after another I accomplished screwing up the install and having to start form scratch. Then I found some obscure site that I forgot to book mark that had the real instructions. It wasn't Canonical by the way.

Look, I love Linux. It has saved my bacon many times over the years. Mostly due to my own errors. But this was frustrating as hell. If that was pissing me off, think of everybody else that just wants to turn thier computer on and go. Why in the hell should anybody have to type in some long and easily misspelled command line in Terminal, or XTerm, or is it UXTerm?

My dream job would be a tester with hire/fire authority. The only thing I would tell some dumbass programmer that removed the two pixel wide option is fix it. If I get any sass, then your ass is going out the nearest exit. Especially if it's a window that's not exactly on the first floor.

You'd think people learn from Vista.

Said enough on Monday.

Title says it all. Of course, this post will be trapped between two Mondays. Could cause a lot of confusion.

Or as I call it: S.O.P.