Ravy 2011 Pg. 19.

Click Here.

The major headache with doing comics so far in advance is that if I decide to do one about a current event, nobody will remember the event, especially if it is an obscure one, therefore making the joke even more useless than it already was.

Especially if the number one hit song from a year ago is no longer being played on your local hits station.

Update: That song has been played at least a dozen times now.

Almost a "National Stupid Day" moment.

I wanted a certain set of comics to come up precisely on that oh-so important day in February. To make it easy on myself I started putting the date I wanted the comic posted on in the file name. This helped out tremendously. Especially this week.

You see I originally made these comics right after the second round of Op and Toni in the park. This means they would have been posted during the week of April 15th. That date seemed familiar to me. I looked it up and went "Uh-oh."

What made it worse is that the was there was one that had Trauare making a snide comment about a Megaman clone form the early 90's. I wound up cutting that one entirely. Though I may use it as end of year filler.

Release the photos as JPEGs, please.

Mr. President, I will admit to my hypocrisy on this issue. I will never look at the photos. Not my thing. However a majority of Americans and even a majority of the Muslim world want to see these photos. And from what I'm hearing, in the Muslim faith, such photos do harm to the character of that person. Now Bin Laden was not well like in the Muslim community to begin with. Releasing these photos will do no real harm and will serve to prevent him from becoming a martyr.

If these photos are released, please put them out as JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, or whatever graphic file you seem fit. Please don't use PDF. Remember the even greater stupidity that erupted over the release of the birth certificate? As if the flat birthers weren't bad enough. Now we are getting flat deathers. And I am so sick of Donald Trump death certificate jokes.

Uncle Ralph got his wish.

Years ago my uncle told me that when it comes to the judgment of one's soul, only God can do that. Even for Osama Bin Laden.

And that a sniper should expedite the process

Great News!

With the great news that has happened, I have decided to dig up this old joke.

BIN LADEN IS DEAD!

(For most people that would be enough. However:)

Bin Laden finds himself in a very bright cloud like area. Suddenly he is confronted by George Washington. Who then proceeds to give Bin Laden a boot to the head. Next is Thomas Jefferson, who also gives Bin Laden a boot to the head. Behind him we find: Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, Henry Clay, Ella Fitzgerald, William H. Harrison, Patrick Henry, Sam Houston, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Meriwether Lewis, James Madison, Dolley Madison, John Marshall, Cyrus Hall McCormick, James Monroe, Elizabeth Monroe, Powhatan, Pocahontas, Walter Reed, George C. Scott, Winfield Scott, John Smith, James Jeb Stuart, Thomas Sumter, Zachary Taylor, John Tyler, Julia Tyler, Letitia Tyler, Nat Turner, John Tyler, Booker T. Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Edith Wilson, and many many more.

In the midst of this bedlam, Bin Laden calls out:

“Allah! Allah! What is this?”

“It is your eternal reward for the life you have led.”

“This! OWWW! (Stop that!) OWWWW!”

“Yes. 72 Virginians!”

Ravy 2011 Pg. 18.

Click Here.

I spent a couple of hours making a new background. Then moronically deleted it and emptied the Recycle Bin. I still have the part that appears in the panel, but not the rest of it. The parts I need to do a camera shift left or right.

I can either spend the time remaking the whole she-bang and having look a bit off kilter from the one before. Or I can just do what I always do: fake it.

Of course that background doesn't appear at all this week, or next, or for several more months. Making this post's jabbering rather silly. Or what I euphemistically call "normal."

(I almost put in that Ricky Martin video. Then a rare fit of sanity hit me.)

Penny for Your Easter.

As if talking insentiently about how long I can hold a button down isn't torture enough for my Facebook friends, I do somewhat irregular cartoon called Penny for Your Thoughts starring Cajun Bon Vivant Penelope Bell.

The usual format I have settle on is a news broadcast with host Ravy as the straight man and Penny as the sidekick wiseacre. Though when I have (steal) a good idea I go outside the norm(?) do a standard(?) Ravy type comic.

For the fan of this blog. Here's a behind the scenes look.

 

You should see the spelling suggestions for Facebook and blog.

All New C64: Is it worth it?

My Mom was the real computer geek until I bought my first $1000 solitaire machine. She actually used the C64 as a computation device. She was on it all the time doing newsletters for the library and going online with Q-Link. She was downloading games and music back in the late '80's early '90's.

Me? I was just playing video games. Some of which were actually better than what was on the NES. Plus Commodore games were a helluva lot cheaper than the NES carts.

When words comes by me that the C64 is making a comeback, memories came flooding back.

Then reality set in. First off one of the major selling points is playing all the old games. Whoopee. You can do that for free now. As buggy as the emulators are, I've managed to get most of the games I want to play. Then reading further it comes with some games. Probably a select few of ones nobody liked and you probably can't add in those downloaded roms.

Then there's the C64 OS. Which is a Linux distro. What we need, another version of Linux. (A friend of mine was complaining about all the variations of Windows. One word: Linux.) On top of that when you order your very own C64, it doesn't come with the C64 OS. It's not ready. Instead you get some weird version of Ubuntu.

Now the coop de gracie: an Atom Processor. You have got to be kidding me? No? You're not? Really? Atom? That has to go. So I look up the motherboard to see what other processors will fit into it. I can't find out. It appears that the CPU is soldered into the motherboard! If I get a new C64, I'm going to have to replace the Motherboard too?

You see, I want the All New C64 not just for the nostalgia or the nerd cred. I need a compact test bed with off the shelf parts. A laptop doesn't fit this because the drivers needed are proprietary. The ones that run the motherboard and video card. I'm currently using a Compaq that I rescued from the trash. I can't get XP drivers for it, and the Win 7 drivers I don't think are working. Vista? They work, weirdly enough.

I need to be able to throw Windows 7 Ultimate 64 on the C64. Can it handle it with an Atom Processor? I'm having enough trouble with an AMD 64 Athlon X2.

Looking at the price guide, I see you can purchase a barebones system for $250. It doesn't come with the motherboard and Atom I was just bitching about. It also doesn't apparently come with a power supply. I can get all that for an additional $350.

While I wouldn't mind buying the fine craftsmanship that went into building the case, this isn't 1982. We expect more for our dollar in today's terms. I just don't know if it is worth it.



(So, how much did I spend on Rosenkreuzstilette again?)

Ravy 2011 Pg 17.

Click Here.

In a city of hundreds of thousands, Op would have to accidentally hit on the one woman that would be the absolute worst choice to sleep with Toni.

You Highness.

Rated R
(They got that one right finally.)

After years of fomenting jealousy at his older brother's exploits, Prince Thadeous is sent much against his will to help re-rescue his brother's bride after she is re-kidnapped by the evil wizard. Along the way Thadeous grows from princely playboy to all around hero.

So I got my wish, lots of boobies. Generally far away shoots, covered in mud. But plenty of close ups of severed wiener. Just what is this Hollywood obsession? Or more precisely I'm worried about me. How in the hell do I keep finding this stuff? This movie overall was not fun to watch. The only real laughs I had was at the very end with Thadeous's line to Isabel “I was just about to finish thinking of you.”

Was this supposed to be a serious movie with bits of comedy? Well, it fell far short of Princess Bride. Was it a satire on the fantasy genre? It fell far, faaaaaaaaaaaaar short of Robin Hood: Men in Tights. (There was a shout out to the Great Mel Brooks movie at the very end.)

Dollar theater for Your Heinous.



For those of you that must obviously be gluttons for punishment and stuck around, here's me adding to the review, putting it in this entry and not making a “new” post just one minute shy of this one.

I found the part where Prince Fabious's knights betraying our heroes and siding with the evil wizard very ingenious and really caught me off guard. And the fight with the hydra was kind of unique in that the hydra was actually what's his name hand in a cauldron. When one of the snakes heads was cut off, so was the bad guy's fingers. You'd figure after one was cut off, he'd stop. But no, like any bad guy he just can't help himself and lose it all.

I did find mistake: The Isabel swim scene. At one point she was in the water, then she was out of the water, dry, and then diving in. Natalie Portman in a metal thong. (Oh my!)

  By the way, this is from the trailer. In the movie she wasn't wearing this much.

Academia Waltz: Decades ahead of its time.

If you think I've I'm a fan of Rosenkreuzstilette, Bloom County is even worse for me. I got all the books, even buying the Bloom County Library editions. I got a paid subscription that delivers comics to my email, and even read it daily from a Seattle newspaper.

Now a while ago I noted that the Seattle edition had entered 1989. Isn't that when Bloom County quit? So I look it up and what do I find? Academia Waltz, the precursor. It originally ran from 1978 to 1979. It's not really all that different, from Bloom County, just has a tendency to have more raunchier nuances.

I timed it perfectly, because one of the first comics I saw was this one:

Making fun of sprite comics before anybody could possible know what one was.

Ravy 2011 Pg 16.

Click Here, and Here, and Here.

Women, can't live with them, can't have great menage a trois with out at least two.

I want boobies, lots of them, and I want them NOW!

This rant is a long time in coming. Since about 2009. Back then I kept going to movies not expecting to have wiener shoved in my face all the time. Even in the Hangover live on screen. These guys are in Vegas for a bachelor party and we the audience get no naked females? At least Watchmen had some boobage, for about five seconds. That's why I loved Hot Tub Time Machine so much: breasts on the big screen.

Now in 2010 I picked up season nine of Family Guy and was quite shocked to see uncensored Peter's peter. What was the message being sent here? What social commentary needed to put out? Can anybody tell what episode we saw Lois or some other female cast member topless? When Peter said to the cutout of Kathy Ireland that he is "out" under the table, that was funny, showing it wasn't.

Recently on American Dad the did the similar joke. First they used a word for wiener that I hadn't seen since a 1980's issue of Hustler Humor. Then they actually showed Stan's wiener falling out of his pajamas. Censored of course, but on the DVD it won't be. What was the joke? That Stan stood there until Francine put it back in his pants, just to fall out again?

Ya'll probably wondering what's my beef? This stuff is many years apart. What set me off?

I finished the second collection and thought that while it was a bit schizophrenic and riddled with ADD, it was a big improvement over the first set. It seemed as if the writer was throwing a bunch of ideas at once in the hopes that the Inukami manga would get picked up as an ongoing series and could fully explore them for many years down the road. I also noted the fact that nudity was next to nothing or just barely out of shot.

"Hold it, isn't Inukami is all about female nudity? Why do you have a problem with that? So far you've been whining and moaning and bitching about wiener." Inukami manga is rated 16 and up, it should have been rated 18 and up. Now I fully reorganize that Japanese sensibilities and American sensibilities are very different. I think that nudity of any kind has no place in comic books and cartoons that can be easily purchased by kids or unsuspecting parents perusing the graphic novel sections of Hastings or Barnes and Noble.

I gots no problem with Hustler Humor or Penthouse or Playboy. I know what I'm getting into. After watching that episode of American Dad I was pissed at what slapped me upside the head the next day. Inukami the anime.

(Editor's Note: As of this writing I am about 20 episodes in.)

The writers decided that what was needed to improve this series was as much wiener as possible and as much male erotica as can be shoved in our faces. If I hadn't read the manga first, I would have quit not even half way through episode one.

I accept that the Japanese are much more open than we Americans about about what we call adult material being seen by a younger audience. There was no warning about what happened in episode one. I was expecting lots of nudity of Yoko and even Nadeshiko, but KEITA!? And almost every other guy in that episode!? What audience are they going for here? Obviously not those of us that read the manga.

Granted, the nudity was "cleverly" hidden by an elephant's head. That got really irritating after more than a minute. If they were really clever, they should have used an elephant's butt to cover up the butt shots. It wasn't just once or twice, it has been through out the whole series. Even ruining a boring episode. The one with the fight on the blimp with the shinigami. I found it boring because it was almost just like the manga. The writers must have been thinking "What can we do to spice it up? We can have magic frogs shot from Keita's groin area!"

Like I said they covered up the naughty bits. I have to admit they engaged in a strange bit of self censorship. It was strange in how they implemented it. At no time did we ever see any female nudity. If the writers were clever enough to use an elephant's head to cover up the guys, couldn't they have used a cat's head to cover up the woman's lower fun part? Or watermelons to cover up their boobs? In the panty thief episode, the main villain eyeballed Tomohane and said no, but was looking forward to it down the road. Thank you for NOT stealing the little girl's underwear. Later on in the ranking episode it was decided to change from the manga. They had Imari and Sayoka just stand there in their normal outfits instead of the sailor suits lifting up their skirts showing off their gym shorts.

However for some strange reason it was perfectly alright to have a little boy naked and uncensored.

I just spent this entire time trashing the anime of Inukami. Let me tell you what was done right. When they stuck to the manga and/or explored side stories or throw away bits from the manga the writers of the anime had a 90% success rate. The story of Kayano and Hake was top notch. The date between Keita and Gokyoya gave a purpose to a character that really had none to begin with. The fight between Yoko and Kaoru's Pack was superbly animated and the expressions on Yoko's face made me believe that she was out for blood. Also she kept her clothes on.

Now my final question: I was asking myself this by episode 2, why is Yoko's shirt still on?

Addendum to the above rant.

After writing and posting all that, I realized there was a little more I wanted to talk about and completely forgot to. I could just go in and edit, but I want to try an experiment. We'll find out if it worked in a few minutes.

In discussing nudity in American animation I wanted to talk about other examples and not just pick on Seth MacFarlane. I'm not talking cable channels or film festivals, mainstream studios have subtly done nudity since the at least before the 1920's. (There was a time not so long ago when you could say things like "The 20s" and people would know that you meant the "1920s." Now you actually have to say the 1920s.) Felix the Cat came up in my research. He came out about 1919. No clothes what so ever. This goes on with Hanna-Barbera, Warner Brothers (and their sister Dot,) and of course Disney.

When looking at this I realize the major difference between Family Guy and Rescue Rangers: they're animals. For some reason it is perfectly alright to have Chip and Dale running around with shirts and no pants on; but not have Peter hanging out around town. I think because off the fact that Baloo and Kit are anthropomorphic bears make the fact that they have no pants on acceptable to the general population. If it's a human character, instant no-go. I don't really have a problem with it, I'm not going to go all fundamentalist on you all, (I believe that there isn't much mental in fundamentalist.) But, I will have a little fun pointing out the inconsistencies: Rebecca Cunningham and Gadget wore pants and coveralls, oddly though Launchpad had pants but not Gosalyn.

The many decades of having cartoon animals in human form eventually allowed today's media to push the envelope.

Another good thing I wanted to say about the Inukami Anime is that the writers did a good job with subtle touches of character. I caught this one right away: Keita left Igusa alone and teased most everybody else. Most notably Tayune. While not explicitly stated why in the anime, but from reading the manga and just a wild guess at what the character bible may say; that since Igusa is scared to death of men she can't properly defend herself from Keita's lechery. Tayune can beat the crap out of Keita, so he picks on her all the time, and does get his ass beat all the time.

One final point: Can any body think of an instance where Francine and Hayley are topless, facing the camera, and uncensored?

It Worked.

What worked?

When I first started this blog I was pretty damn ignorant with the more intricate details of the settings, and I would have to agree with most that I still am. I thought I was always stuck with the time and date given by Blogger. Not so. After a year I tried scheduling a post a day out and it worked. Then I tried a week out and I was ecstatic.

One day I was having to fix some older posts because I messed up some information. When I reposted them the were in the original location and not up front. I found it interesting because it doesn't junk up my blog with out of date posts and new posts.
Well, no more than usual.

I've noticed that when people fix a post on their blogs they'll usually post a new entry saying they screwed up and not even fix the old post or even add in an annotation about it. The problem with that is what if someone finds that old page with bad information and not the new one with the good?

This week after posting the above rant about Inukami I realized later that I had forgotten a lot. I could just easily re-edit the post, or do what everybody else does and make a new post that would would appear above the old one.

I decided on an experiment: Could I possible make the post with the additional blubberings appear below the original? Turns out I could.

Not a very useful trick. But as usual I found it interesting.

Ravy 2011 Pg 15.

Click Here.

Just like the mall: One bathroom located at the other end up the damn stairs.

Ravy 2011 Pg 14.

Click Here.

Bob Kevoian said it best: "This room has a one wiener limit!"

I am Number 4.

A world has been destroyed and the last few survivors and their guardians are on Earth. Three so far have been killed and we start the movie with fourth one on the list.

Graphically this movie was pretty good. That's about it. I was seriously yawning throughout, I almost got up and left. I could not get into these characters at all. It was so predictable: main guy falls in love with Earth girl, they have to part, old wise dude dies, alien babe realizes powers comes to rescue at just the right time, nerdy kid falls in love with alien babe and gets continuously rebuffed, kid's dad helped the aliens, and school bully turns good.

You're not missing much. There are much better aliens hiding on Earth shows than this. Like all those episodes of Star Trek.

A couple of little points: throwing a license plate on a fire does nothing to hide the pressed lettering, also that fire wasn't anywhere near hot enough to melt out the center. I know, I've actually done this many years ago. Of course the evil aliens sniff the burned up plate and track them right down. Amazing how fast they found the good guys. Took them years to find Number One, then Number Two, and Number Three. They get to our heroes in the matter of days.

Why are the bad guys taking them in order? What if number 123,456,789 is right next to them?
"Soon, it will be your turn. As soon as we track down 4 through 123,456,788."

I am Number Snore is best viewed (if you don't have anywhere else to be on a Friday night) on a movie channel.

Angry Birds Makes me Angry.

The game itself I don't have a problem with. Except for the part when a brick falls on a pig and the pig doesn't die. Or how the constructs have a tendency to fall the opposite way that you would expect.

My beef is with Rovio. I don't think they did a good enough job handling the game. How can I say that even though it has consistently placed in the top ten of downloaded apps? Because I didn't know it was available for Windows until Justin mentioned it off-hand. Then it took me another hour to get it on my computer.

I had always known that it was available on IPhone, IPod, IPad, Android, and even heard Bob and Tom playing it on their Macs. Also Leo Laporte and Kim Komando talking all about how this game is all over the the same platforms. Not a word about Windows. I thought it's great the Mac finally gets a quality game, but I ain't buying an IPhone just to play this game.

(Big secret: I don't have an IPod. Why spend a couple hundred dollars on a music player when a $40 one does just as well?)

Late last year I needed a graphic reference and of course Googled Angry Birds. Took me right o the Angry Birds page at Rovio. I just wanted that big picture in the center. But I did do a bit of looking around but didn't see much that indicated to me what it was available on. I'm familiar with the App Store and such. I didn't bother with much else. Why trouble myself, Everybody says it only on mobile devices.

Then reading Super Justin's review he mention it was on Windows. I immediately Googled Angry Birds on Windows and at the time came up empty. Going to Rovio's site still had me guessing. Except for Palm for some strange reason, they never mention the specific OSes that Angry Birds is available for. I'm not asking for every damn Android phone on the market, just say Mac, IPhone, Android, and Windows. Click here to check compatibility. Adobe makes it pretty obvious. Microsoft can do it. Look at their shelf. DUH! Office is for Windows, but HEY! There's a Mac Version sitting there too!

With a bunch of random clicking around I figure out that the Windows version is in the Intel AppUp Store. You can't just download the game.NOOOOOOoooooo! You have to install the AppUp App as well. Then you can buy the game.

Now it's time to get stupid. I like to keep things slim and trim on my computer. I can't have a bunch of crap running hogging up resources. Intel AppUp turns on when you start up your computer. I go into MSCONFIG and turn it off. Angry Birds won't play. Next you can't make a backup copy. I tried. I copied the Rovio folder to another fully updated computer and it failed to play. Even installing Intel AppUp failed to get it to work. So you have to re-download it again.

Harddrives fail, motherboards overheat, and yes, Leo's cosmic rays do screw up Windows.

I understand totally. If you make this game playable by itself, people will pirate it to no end. It happened to Rosenkreuzstilette. But hell, Adobe is still making tons off of Flash. People pirate it, and some do buy it.

My problem is what if Intel AppUp loses your information? When I installed Win 7, I then installed Bejeweled 2 that I had downloaded from Pop Cap. They lost my information so I couldn't activate it. Had to go buy another copy. On CD. There's no option to get a hard copy of Angry Birds from Rovio.

For five dollars, it's worth the effort. Rovio is smart about this: check back once in a while, there's new levels.


I do have this feeling of Deja Vu, but this time I can't figure it out. I think I've played a similar game before, but the closest I can come is the "Cat"-Apult sequence from Blazing Dragons.

Ravy 2011 Pg 13.

The New Swim World Federation Intercontinental Solo-Synchronized Tag Team Champions of the
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRLD:

The Bad Ass Trauare Wrede, Road Dawg Zorne Sepperin, 

The ROSENKRUEZ OUTLAWZ!

Worth a Look: Sasami and the Magical Girls Club.

Most people probably heard of Pretty Sammy by way of Tenchi Muyo, not me of course. On one of my all to many vacations to the continent of Asia I watched tons of anime. Some in the language of the land such as Sailor Moon, Bomber Man, some Transformers rehash that had the copyright logos from Takara. I also got to watch a few in English and unedited like Power Stone, Samurai X, Ghostsweepers, Dual, Transformers: Headmasters(uhg,) Powermasters(YEAH!) and Victory(whoopie).

There was one interesting and pretty obnoxious series. As soon as I got home I went to the local anime store to find it. A store dedicated to renting out and selling nothing but anime. I saw the star of the series on one of the boxes for Tenchi Universe. I took the box up to the proprietor and asked:

"Do you know of a series that has this girl but she wears pink, transforms, and has a talking rabbit that meows?" He immediately takes me over to the subtitled section and points out Magical Project S.

What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. It's my time to waste and nobody's forcing you to click on this.

For many years I dismissed Sasami: Magical Girls Club mostly based on the early descriptions. Overemphasizing the cooking club bit. Which was really only a minor part. And the costumes were God awful, even for a magic girl show. I was tired of the whole "Does this lipstick go with my shoes?" routine of these kinds of shows.

One day Amazon recommended Sasami: The magical Girls Club. I guess based on the similarity to Rosario Vampire and Deathnote. I can get the whole series for thirty dollars. Well, I had been watching House for a couple of weeks and needed a change. If I don't like it, I know some guys I can give it to, or donate it to my Grandma's church rummage sale.

This ain't Pretty Sammy. This series was par excellence. For the most part. Let's start with that. After many years of Tenchi I'm used to a certain character design. This is very different. It's good, different, but good. Voices: good actors were chosen, they did a good job acting, and the correct voices were used. However, I was disappointed that Chisa Yokoyama, Etsuko Kozakura, Sherry Lynn, or Kate T. Vogt were nowhere to be found.

The next two problems are the fault of the acting and writing. I thought we were done with gross mispronunciations of names back in the 90's. "Roy-o-oh?" I can't even begin to figure out how to spell out the way they pronounced "Sasami." The thing I would fault this series for is too many characters. They get no development what so ever. You have the three other girls with Sasami and Misao. Then there's the other magic girl club. All the witches in the other world. Plus their parents, and a bad guy that looks like a good guy. They all have their own stories, which are good, but no time was given to fully develop them. They should have left it to Sasami and Misao. Which was always the strongest part of any of the Pretty Sammy series.

This is the best part. I had been thinking the whole time :"When is Misao going to get hypnotized into Pixy Misa and fight Sasami?" Never happened. Instead the bad guy used trickery to play upon Misao's jealousy and anger towards Sasami to make the decision to turn on her friends and fight against them. That in my mind made it worth suffering through the asinine little girl stuff.

Of course Misao is taken over by the main bad guy, fights Sasami, rescued, and then gets to use Sasami's powers.

While watching this, I got that feeling of déjà vu again. I definitely recognized the imagery from Pretty Sammy, and even from Tenchi in Tokyo. But, there was something else:

 NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
(Though I must say the ones on the left where both very difficult to get.)

Ravy 2011 Pg 12.

Click

Just a shout out to a character model that helped me along the way.

Here.

GoAnimate.

Friend of mine pointed me to a site called GoAnimate. So far all I've done is just peruse some of the tutorials and played around with the character maker. As far As I can tell it is something of a simplified version of Flash.

Mostly.

I say that because in one of the tutorials they kept talking about making one scene after another to get Spock and his ship to move from the back ground to the foreground. In Flash you only use one scene. Then to get both Spock and the ship to move on a path you have to coordinate them as separate objects and trust the judgment of your eye. (My eyes? You kidding?) In Flash you make a movie clip with Spock and the ship and then place them in the scene as a single object on a motion path.

The character creator was was a bit limited for what I wanted to do, but it was still fun. Though I didn't get the money thing they kept displaying.

Nurse Becky.
If she had been able to get a
job at a serious medical facility.

Angel form of Nancy Conner.
5 bonus no-points if you can
find all the mistakes I made.

This one really shows off the limitations.
I wanted an ACU pattern but couldn't find one.
Who is she?
She used to be in the comic, I'll say this, I have plans.

Thus far for a FREE program it's pretty well rounded. I haven't gone any further into it, so I really can't judge how good it is. I will at some point. Then I'll get back to you.





(By the way, it is a real pain in the ass placing those pictures, putting captions to them, and making it look somewhat comprehensible. Thank Google for that "PREVIEW" button.)

Ravy 2011 Pg 11.

Click Here.

Fairies are our friends. They are always there in our greatest times of need.

Usually because they caused it.

Runaway Freebies

Last year I saw a movie that I swear I had seen before. So when it came out on DVD I dug up the other movie and decided to do a side-by-side comparison. Of course I must share my incoherent bumblings with all the world. And it turned out to be quite the adventure in using free software.

I needed to rip the movies to my harddrive. I popped the DVDs in and turned on DVD Shrink. In the matter of mere minuets the VOB file was in a useable form on my harddrive. Next up I had to edit the first movie down to the scenes that best make my point. I have Nero, Pinnacle, and Ulead. Instead I went with Windows Live Movie Maker. I had already been using it to edit videos for some time so I was familiar with the interface. It's not as feature rich as all the others, and it is a little unwieldy, but hey, it's free. You get what you pay for, especially from Microsoft. (I think there's universal agreement that it's okay to bash Microsoft.)

Probably the one big disadvantage is that you can only have one instance of Movie Maker open at once. You can import two movies, but at four hours of videos, it's tedious enough with one movie scrolling up and down the screen looking for that one special spot. So it's best to work with one movie at a time and when you're done save it and work on the next video. However, Movie Maker can do frame-by-frame edits, add additional sounds and music, all kinds of transitions, and captions. But, I needed a fade out, and that wasn't there. Seriously, fade ins, but not outs. In terms of audio, You can change the level, which is important because the first movie had a lot of F-Bombs and was much louder than the second.

The next movie was problematic: it wouldn't open up in Movie Maker or play in Media Player. Bummer. Let's try converting them to another format. That brings us to Freemake Video Converter. If you are a serious YouTube user (unlike me) you need Freemake Video Downloader and Freemake Video Converter. Get 'em and install 'em. You won't be sad that you did.

I digress, why download videos from YouTube? One reason I will discuss at some other time, for this article I will say to save something you like in case it is removed. This does happen. The old adage is that it's on the internet forever. Not true. There's a couple of old webcomics I liked that I can't find anymore. I remember hearing a talk show host lament the fact that he couldn't find the video of a politician saying something on YouTube. So when you see something, SAVE IT.

I converted the second movie to WMV and it opened up fine in Movie Maker. I think it worked better in WMV than VOB. Got the pertinent scenes and re-imported the first movie and spliced everything up in a semi-comprehensible order. I thought I was done, you'll know me and so you know I am never done. I needed to record some audio for a colossal flash trickle of a brain storm. Audacity to the rescue.

After spending an additional several hours working on that, I finally loaded it up to YouTube. 

Programs I used:

DVD Shrink

Windows Live Movie Maker

Freemake Video Converter

Audacity

For your bemusement, my masterpiece de resistance. Of course, I fully acknowledge that I am most likely letting my over-reactive imagination trick me into seeing coincidences that just aren't there.

Ravy 2011 Pg 10.

Click Hear Here.

The Fairy Conspiracy.

How could it have ever been 8 to 1 for hatred?

When I look at the make up of the Supreme Court I see some Justices I agree with 90% of the time and Justices I disagree with 90% of the time. I am totally mystified as to how these two groups could possibly come to the conclusion that a bunch of God damned phony Christians can be allowed to do what they do.

Now I could rant all day and well into next year about these people and the Supreme Court on this one.

But, I had a better idea. I went through the rusty old scrap pile of humor on my harddrive and found this gem of a joke. I'll take it and reword it for the times.

Becky and her girlfriend are on the beach applying sunscreen to each other.

(Let me take a minute to enjoy that visual.

........
........

I'm back.)

Where was I? OH-YEAH! Becky and her girlfriend are on the beach applying sunscreen to each other. When at that moment all around loud mouth, desperate for attention, party-pooper extraordinaire: Freddie Felching Phelch Phelps (who cares) comes running over to ruin all our good times.

As the turd of the human race is running, he stubs his toe on an object in the sand. This causes it to come flying out and lands in Becky's bikini-clad lap. She picks it up it and examines what looks like a lamp. You know, the one from every TV show and movie about genies. Then it begins to a rumbling and a shaking. A cloud of smoke erupts from the business end and it forms a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman dressed as a genie. (Think Barbara Eden.)

"Thanks to this man I have been freed from a thousand year imprisonment. He may have three wishes."

"I WISH..."

"WIAT A MINUTE!!!" Becky interjected. "I"M the one holding the lamp when you came out, don't I get any consideration?"

"You're right, he gets two wishes, and you can have one. Now, sir, what are your wishes?"

"Oh I can't wait." Becky murmured.

"I wish for a 100 foot tall impenetrable wall all the way around my land." Genie crosses her arms, nods her head and a loud 'boing' is heard.

"Done! Your next wish?"

"I wish for all true believers like me to be inside this wall. We will be safe from satan's temptations and when The Rapture happens it will be easy for The Lord to find us." Once again Genie does the voodoo that she do so well and the self-professed reverend disappears.

"Done. Now you wish is..."

"You know, we could just end the bit right here where everybody is happy....... NAAAAAAAA! It's time for me to poop on their party." Becky said. "Genie, I have some questions: this wall describe it to me."

"It's 100 feet tall, 10 feet wide, goes all the way around and nothing can get in or out."

"'...Nothing can get in or out.' Check. Now, every piece of (bleep) that goes around protesting funerals of fallen heroes and little girls shot to death are inside this wall?"

"Yes."

"Genie, I wish for you to FILL IT FULL OF WATER!"

"Done! Well, I guess I should get back in the lamp now."

"No way! Stay out and enjoy some time in the sun. But first, you're looking kind of pale after being in that lamp for so long, you need sunscreen. Me and my girlfriend would be more than happy to help you apply it.

Overcoming XP SP1

Been almost a year since I last said anything poignant about my disadventures in the world on Windows 7. (Okay, since I last said anything about Win 7.) I was mostly waiting for Service Pack 1 to come out. That was ticking me off. I was going to reinstall Windows when SP1 came out. Which was originally October. Then November. December. January. Finally February. I went and reinstalled much earlier because of some crash issues. I thought it was the hard drive, but it turned out to be the power supply.

(I know, it's not really a power supply. That's the outlet in the wall. Everybody calls that big metal brick a power supply, even Leo Laporte.)

What I'm mostly going to focus on is what has changed in my opinion from what I originally scribed about.

First is I switched from using Ultimate 64 to Pro 32. I was still having minor bug issues. Little incompatibilities here and there. It's been an issue forever. Only when all hardware and software manufacturers switch to 64 bit will the problems be solved. I decided that if I didn't like Pro 32 I could easily switch back to Ultimate 64. Other than the fact I had to load up Solitaire separately I've been pretty happy. Most things seem to be working better. Sure I can only use 4GB or ram, but hey, the most graphic intense game I have is Angry Birds. To be quite honest, perhaps the only version of Win 7 needed is Home. Unless you want to use XP Mode.

That's the next one. At first I thought XP Mode was rather useless. Sill is, except I did find one rather interesting use: Test programs I download. Instead of junking up my Win 7 install with trials and errors, use XP Mode. When things get to screwy, just delete the 4kb file in the Virtual Machines folder of your user account and start again.

I had a lot of trouble with Soundblaster. It's gone. One day it quit. I'm sure I'm the reason. The card is good. I tried it in my Linux Test Box and it worked fine. I now use what I term the Soundblaster bypass. I'll talk about it some other time.

Last thing I can think of is that I no Longer use XP Paint. I found out that I can resize the boxes even after I draw them.

That was the last bit holding me up.

In summery: I like Win 7. It's here to stay. In fact I'm at a point now when someone asks for some help with XP, I can only stammer through a response because I can't remember a damn thing about it. Win 7 has totally flushed it out of my brain.

Ravy 2011 Pg 09.

Click

It's pretty easy to tell when I do my own backgrounds.

here.

A Boy and His Dog-Type Girl.

If anybody ever takes the time to read the comments might have seen me spouting off about something that's binding my cheese. Welllllll, I changed my mind, I'm not going to talk about it. Why? Because I can. Instead let's be positive and talk about:

This weekend I was engaged in my usual pastime of going to book stores and reading the magazines without paying for them. When I was done I went to the manga section (big surprise, wasn't expecting that was you?) I was looking for the usual suspects and they weren't out yet. Then I spied the omnibus collection  of Inukami. The cover picturing a cute girl with the bushy tail had me picking it up and taking a much closer look. Yes, a very closer look.

To sum up the summery: "Ineffectual trainer has to train the untrainable." Wow, I've never seen that before *cough* pokemon *cough* kurumi *cough* Now my conundrum: which one to buy: The $16 volumes 1,2,3 or just the $10 volume 1? I hate spending even $10 on a book, I may not like it, but you can't judge a series on just one volume. It took about two volumes of Soul Eater for my to decide I didn't like it. (I do like the anime.) So I spend the extra six bucks and tax, (lotsa tax.) I figure if I don't like it and if there isn't any nudity I can give it to a friend of mine for his kid to read.

I liked it, I couldn't put it down. I went through Inukami that night, now I'm busy rereading it. Let's get the two major drawbacks out of the way. The nudity. While I love looking at naked women, there's a time and place. One of the places is certainly not in this story. Sometimes you have to take the unnecessary with everything else. The other bit is that Yoko's hair has a tendency to change color and style. Making it hard to read at some points.

This next criticism is not specific to Inukami, It's one I have of books, comics, TV shows in general: they're hard to follow at first. That's why I read through at least two volumes before making a decision on whether I like it or not. The creators are throwing all their ideas together trying to see what clicks and what doesn't. Establishing their characters and stories. That can take awhile. By about volume three of Inukami this is mostly settled and an actual conflict seems to be brewing.

To be honest, I don't know why I like Inukami. Why Oh My Goddess? Why am I still reading Lucky Star? I just do. Give Inukami a try, It can't hurt you. Well maybe drool over everything and scratch herself at inappropriate times.

Ravy 2011 Pg 08.

.ereH kcilC

Some of the more ironic comics I have done. I'm making my own emoticons, but I'm still using backgrounds from the game I got them from in the first place.

Previews and Trailers: The Day I Dread Has Come.

Remember movies cassette tapes? I do. I also remember how in the beginning the FBI Warning and then the trailers for other movies were at the end of the tape. Then some genius got it in his head to put this stuff at the beginning of the tape. Why? Because no one would bother much with watching them. But they didn't count on the fast forward button. You still had to sit through the previews, but at least it was at least twice the normal speed.

Then comes DVD. Same thing: FBI Warning (oh, I'm soooo scared) and trailers. You could fast forward, and you can hit the Next button, or the menu button to skip all that and go straight to the movie. Then I got scared, Paramount, the guys who put out Star Trek, wouldn't let you skip their logo. Pop in most any Paramount DVD, you have to sit through. It's only a few seconds, but that's a few seconds I could be watching Kirk yell "KAAAAAHHHHHHN!!" Rhino DVD was even worse: you had to sit through the catapult sequence on each Transformers disk before you could even think of hearing Optimus Prime order "Autobots: Transform and ROLL OUT!" Youtube, they've been putting ads in videos for years now. WWE got in on the act. On each disk you can't fast forward, menu, or next through the "Don't try this at home." PSA. WWE I give a pass to because that is mostly important. But, hey, I wanna watch Nature Boy go "WOOOOOO!" Do I have to sit through the PSA on each disk?

I thought my greatest fear had been alleviated. The trailers and previews were moved from the beginning of the disk to its own sub menu. YES!!!! No more having to even think of having to see the Tsubasa preview. Okay, I still have to wait out the FBI Warning, but I beat that by using that time wisely by making a call on the porcelain phone.

HOWEVER!

A while ago, there I was, minding my own business, bothering absolutely nobody. I hadn't even updated the blog with my bumblings. I was having an oh so excellemundo time watching Sasami: Magical Girls Club (review to come) when the day I had long dreaded, the day I thought had been slayed, had come back with with a mighty vengeance. I put in disk three and the preview for Tsubasa came up. No biggie, just hit menu. Biggie. Hit next, even bigger biggie. Fast forward?

OH MY GODDESS! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! KAAAAAAHHHN! STAAARRRRSCREAM!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't skip the trailer! WHY! Haven't we suffered enough with the gross mis-pronunciation of names? Why must we be forced to sit through the previews? I had already seen the Tsubasa preview on another DVD. I was indifferent. Now I dislike it.

This is just one preview. What if they decide we need to sit through all 5, 10, 15 previews? Hey guys! You guys in the Anime DVD business. You're in enough trouble as it is. Best Buy is dropping Anime. Suncoast has long since disappeared from my area. Wally World only really carries Naruto and Dragon Ball. Hastings? At this point we're completely dependant on what somebody's mother decides to trade in behind his back. Amazon, sure we can go there, but I like to support my local businesses. And I get the disk in my hands right away.

Anime DVD dudes, don't give people any more  reasons to stop buying DVDs.

Ravy 2011 Pg 07.

Click Heeeeeeeeere.

Who should I piss off: Junior, or Gordon fans?

Rosenkreuzstilette 106b Work Around of Sorts.

I was at a friend's place to help him fix his computer the other day. (I owed him a favor.) Mostly it wound being downloading and installing service packs, getting rid of no longer used programs, updating various other stuff. Taught him how to score free music off of YouTube. When I was done I turned it back over to him and started to leave. (I heard the latest issue of Rosario Vampire was out) when he tells me about this game he just got.

"I just bought this cool game. It's like Megaman only it's all girls. It's called Rosenkreuzstilette."

"Tell me more." I'm thinking: "This guy has been my friend now for several years, he's never been to my site? Hell, my own brother never even goes to my site. Let's see how far playing dumb can get me." (Believe me, I can take it pretty far.) My evil plot is to play the game and make all the usual first time mistakes: sliding into pits, jumping on the bad guys, thinking that spikes are cuddly. I'll let him think that he's teaching my something, then I'll spring the trap and not get killed until the Raymond Raimund Seyfarth Battle, or until I stupidly slide into a pit.

I blow it within one second. Mis Amigo still had the game windowed. In the upper left corner it said  "Rosenkreuzstilette - Version 1.05c."

"1.05c! When did you get this game?"

"Yesterday."

"You bought it? From DLSite?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Could you download it again?" So he went to DLSite and re-downloaded it. Unzipped and indeed it was version 1.05c.

When I wrote my article about the 106a English Patch Workaround I had ASSumed that 106a was the version being offered from DLSite. The workaround is the same, but there is more detail to add. This works for people who have just bough the game, or those that have an un-altered copy of 105c from DLSite.

MAKE A BACK UP COPY! AND ONLY SCREW WITH THAT COPY!

Now, with the COPY apply the Rosenkreuzstilette English Patch. Note this makes an additional copy of the game. Next, with the COPY of Rosenkreuzstilette 105c you got from DLSite apply Patch 106b. Finally copy/paste the "scenario.dat" file from English Patch to 106b. This only changes the talking back and forth with the giant floating heads. This doesn't change any menus and other wossnames.


 
If you have already patched your one and only copy of Rosenkreuzstilette 105c from DLSite to 106b you are probably SOL. And I don't mean the Satellite of Love, worse. In doing the research for this I have yet to get the English Patch to work with any version other than what came from DLSite. I have version 1a that I got off that hard drive I bought at auction years ago. If I patch that one to 105c, the English patch fails. I swear to Belldandy that is the version I used to to apply the English patch from the very beginning. So you are going to have spend the $15 something dollars to get another copy.

There's a little bit more. I have actually been asked to provide links to or to send in email the English version of the "scenario.dat" file.

No.

I have gone through the EULA for the Rosenkreuzstilette English Patch and the best of my understanding is that no individual part of the patch can be redistributed. Out of respect for the work I won't do that. I do suggest pestering the programmers  to release the "scenario.dat" file by itself.

Ravy 2011 Pg 06.

Click Here. Actually, click here.

Picking my brian for some filler ideas to waste time until that oh-so special day in February.

Ravy 2011 Pg 05.

Click Here.

Comic 1620, middle panel, often suggestion of improvement.

A Little CSS Curious.

Tutorials: I just need to know ONE thing.

I had heard many a great thing about CSS: You change one thing on a .css file and it changes on every page linked to it. It allows much greater control over just about everything. The biggest selling point to me was being able to get the look of Bob and Tom, Max PC, Bunny and Ravy, Bob and George, and so on and so forth.

I had been able to emulate the look with tables. Tables can be extremely difficult, sloppy, non-transferable, and I have even read that they block search engines. When working with tables to try to place everything in its proper place is frustrating. Adjusting cell height and widths, making, deleting, combining, splitting cells. Inserting images of the same background as placeholders. Then bits of formatting show up at random causing huge amounts of empty space or forcing objects outside the table. On the rare occasion I get one looking right I copy and paste it to a new page and hell breaks lose. All the formatting I spent hours getting right is gone. On top of that, I read in a tutorial that information contained within a table cannot be indexed. A little Google search of Rosenkreuzstilette proves this. The only two articles appearing in the top 150 are the ones that have no formatting what-so-ever. You have to get around to 200 to find one that is formatted with tables. Admittedly I doubt there's anybody that can remain interested or even awake all the way through Article Two. Much much less the other three.

Apparently CSS can solve all my problems, or some guy in Nigeria tells me. First thing I do is download web pages that look good to me and pick them apart to learn how's it done. I start with Bob and Tom and open it up in my editor and boy does it look nothing like how it's displayed in a browser. I do this to a few more sites and each one doesn't help. So I start Googling CSS Tutorials.
My frustration with online tutorials goes back to learning how to make flash videos. Of course I wanted to use sprites, but I couldn't find one that told me how. All the tutorials would tell me how to draw with the tools in the Flash Toolbox. How do I import sprite sheets and use them. Can't be all that hard. It's all over Newgrounds. (Yes, I did download that page as well.) Then after months of searching I found one. The results are my usual fare.

Most CSS Tutorials start out with "Here's how to do background color, and now here's you do foreground color." Not mentioning that foreground is also called font. I understand starting off with the basics and working up. After a dozen or so sites that tell how to do background colors, I need more. When we do go indork, it's all about navigation, divs, images scroll or not to scroll. Good to know, but what I need to know is how to get the look of a table but with CSS.

I was smart enough to pay attention to the parts of the tutorials that talked about linked style sheets and inline styles. So I go back to Bob and Tom's page and open up the CSS file. I really didn't get much of it, but, when I opened up the actual web page and looked at the code I knew where to look. First I had to find the section that was formatted the way I wanted, then look at the code. It was linked to a section marked "container." I copy and pasted that code to a new file and a new web page and it turned up just the way I wanted.

I have since implemented this style as I go along. All the pages in Season 2011 will be formatted the same way. I still have problems with copy and paste, formatting mysteriously appears for no reason screwing everything. I'm not going to go back over every page to implant my new knowledge. They look good enough as is and nobody really bothers with the archive anyway. Maybe someday when I feel this overwhelming urge that my my life can go no further unless I do this: I may fix Season 20 and get it looking the way I really wanted.

One thing I did do: I looked up CSS Container code to make sure it wasn't just for Bob and Tom. I don't need the Friggemall Lawyers coming down around my ears for stealing their lines of code. But hey, why would they care about some obnoxious blogger and his very much unknown sprite comic hidden in the deepest, darkest, dankest, dorkest corners of the internet?

Ravy Comics 2011 Page 04.

Click here.

Poor Luste. This is only the start of a very long, very weird day.

Ravy Comics 2011 Page 03.

Click here.

Started implementing some CSS code. Someday I'll talk about my eternal frustration with tutorials and how Bob and Tom taught me more about using CSS in five minutes than two weeks of YouTube videos.

"What's up with Toni, I thought she was a lesbian?"

That question was asked of me years ago while giving a sneak peak of Season 19 to a friend of mine. There were two ways to answer that question: The smart way, and the stupid way. You have probably already guessed which one I went with.

"These are my characters and I'll have them do what I want."

While true, It's a very dumb reason. Ravy Comics has developed over the years as more of a character driven comic. Such as my personal favorite Bloom County; rather than a random comic like the great Far Side. When someone asks a question as to why a character does something, you have to be prepared with an answer. A real one. Comic number 1607 being posted on January 13 2011 answers the question as to why Toni gave up being a lesbian and married a man.

Simply put she fell in love with Op.

However there is an answer behind the answer. I based a lot of this particular comic and ones over the years on real life events, situations, and conversations I have been party to. One such case is a lesbian friend of mine and I were have an engrossing conversation about the ins and outs of our favorite subject: sex with women. When  it just popped out:

"Do you think it's possible for you to fall in love with a man?" She said yes. "Then I have a chance." I remember coming to hours later with a big purple bruise on my forehead. Months later another friend of mine seemed down in the dumps. She told me that her partner got herself pregnant and married the guy. I asked her who she wanted me to make cry and how about some revenge sex. I remember waking up hours later with now two purple bruises on my forehead.

"These are my characters and I'll have them do what I want." Has haunted me for years and now I think I can lay it to rest.

Ravy Comics 2011 Page 02.

Click here.

Stay tuned. Later this week I will be going indearth about a very special comic. Of course once I post it, it will appear above this one making it seem rather silly. Or as I call it: normal.

Ravy Comics 2011 Page 01.

Click Here.

Reality has had a strangle hold on me. Been real slow on the draw with the comics. Am trying to increase production and change some of the layout.