Comic

For those who care, that last panel is a combo of a recent quote by Steve Jobs and this.

Oh, and my apologies to devbus. We are praying that he will make a full recovery.

Yeah, Star Wars VII is coming to theaters! YAY! No, seriously, it's only coming to DVD ;-)

May 6th, as I predicted, I will be back at the old register again. Thank goodness :-P. My sleep "schedule" as of late has been so screwed it's not funny. Also, I have yet to take the driving test. Tuesday and Wednesday I slept right through 7am and Thursday I spent my entire 15 minute break trying to ge through, to no avail :-P. So I'm going to try again this week and hopefully I'll luck out.

Speaking of circles, my interests seem to be changing again. The last time this happened was in 1997 when I was introduced to computers. Now I seem to be getting back to my roots in art... with computers of course ;-). The whole comic thing sparked my intrest again and I'm left wondering why I quit in the first place. I take that back, I quit because a) I couldn't get my frackin' pencil drawings to look like the book, b) I thought there was no money in it. I've figured both things out: pencil drawings suck, and I can make a killing as a graphics artist. I spent most of this afternoon redesigning my character in my comic and this is what I came up with:

Me in my "little vest"

Bad Ass Jedi Knight Matt

As you can see the hair is more normal now, the glasses shrank and I've switched to a harder shading style (the airbrush thing was just a pain in the butt). All this arty stuff has made me realize one thing: painting with a mouse is murder. That said, this coming pay check I'm going to invest in a graphics tablet.

Well, I've rambled on long enough. I probably need to be getting to bed here soon as there's another early day tomorrow :-P.

Comic

Enjoy :-)

It is once again my weekend (yay!). Work the last few days hasn't been nearly as bad as it had been, but still icky all the same. This morning was rather interesting, however. The district manager came to pay a visit today and the place was abuzz making sure everything was neat, organized, etc. It's kind of like what most college kids do when their parents come over: let things slide till the man shows up.

But, anyways, I e-mailed my supervisor yesterday (yeah, I've got corporate e-mail. 'Tis cool) and asked him exactly when I'd be going back to cashiering, and, thank heavens, he said probably between the first and fifth of May. I'd personally figured on the sixth since it begins a new work week, but the earlier the better :-).

I'll be getting up early tomorrow and try to get my appointment in for the driving test again. Hopefully I'll be luckier than I was last week. If that fails I'll try again on Wednesday. I'm really itching to get the thing because then I work on getting my spice orange Chevy Aveo:

'Tis sweet, no?

I bought the new DS "game" Brain Age the other day and I have got to say it is one of the sweetest things I've played in some time. My current brain age is 28, 20 being the ideal, down from 55 a couple days ago currently beating everybody else who's got a profile on my card (Mom, Jeff, and Chris). I've also discovered Sudoku. I don't know why I've scoffed at it all this time because it's very similiar to MasterMind in terms of solving it. However, I still like MasterMind. IT RAWKS!!

Later!

Comic

Alright, it's way early but I've been working really hard on it the last couple days and I wasn't about to wait several more just to post it :-P. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy (and I'm sure I'll enjoy the interesting stream of comments this'll generate....)

As you've noticed I never posted the new podcast last Thursday. Now it's not because we didn't record it, we did. However, for those who've listened to Ep II my voice started echoing the further it went on. This was due to the fact that both linkman and myself were recording seperate tracks and his mic picks up everything (including Katie yammering in the background). So we're waiting for linkman's headset to come in. Hopefully we'll make this Thursday or Friday.

Comic

There you have it, the very first strip of F5. I'm pretty pleased, though I need to get more consistent about my drawing and move to a more standard size. But, nothing starts off perfect :-P. Enjoy :-)

It's something I've been hankering to do for quite some time now (ever since I started reading CAD, really). Jeff's been making them for some time now (he should be posting them on this blog at some point) and Chris has had his Hackfam's for years. So now I bring to you F5, the "adventures" of two programmers:

I'm working on completing the first strip and hopefully I'll have it posted some time tomorrow or Sunday. It'll probably be a weekly thing as getting the comic pulled together is an incredibly time consuming process. Stay tuned for more :-).

If you haven't heard of or or seen something on YouTube yet you must be living under a rock. Where it came from and why it's suddenly so popular I don't know, however I do know a promising technology when I see one (like the iPod and the x86 processor) so I joined the bandwagon. I uploaded my Vader's Day "trailer" as a test, so here it is:

[video=http://www.youtube.com/v/LkwPzYp0xb0]

One nice thing is that I'll be able to save some space and bandwidth this way. I'll probably release YAVP on YouTube as well (and other verious video projects). Well, enjoy :-)

Today I plan on cleaning the nuclear waste site that is my desk. But before I do that I figured I'd post a "before" picture along with an in-depth analysis of what's on/around it. So, here we go:

1) My laptop (under a couple of spindles of CDs, goodness knows what's on them)

2) My DS (under a rejection letter from Capital One :-P)

3) Camcorder

4) An empty cup. Probably had ice water in it at one time.

5) A pile of clean jeans under which is a box I still haven't unpacked from the move.

6) Library books (Dave Barry's Money $ecrets and Heir to the Empire to be exact)

7) Trash can (notice how it's empty?)

8) My financial crab

9) My bed

10) My headset (dutifully bringing you l33ts every week)

11) Some cables, a GBASP headset and various other junk

12) Easter candy, a pile of blank DVD-Rs, my CD case (mainly emtpy), a change sorter, my cell phone, both pairs of glasses *deep breath*, a socket set, a phone book, my GameCube memory card, and a lightbulb.

13) This is where my GBA and DS stuff is supposed to go. Mainly it's games and trash now

14) My Mario picture (lovingly hand stitched by grandma)

Pretty sad, eh? Well, this is my pet project for the remainder of the day (which means no work on YAVP for now), however, I will not let that get in the way of dutifully bringing you the next episode of t3h l33ts. Assuming I can get this whole thing clean I'll post the "after" picture tomorrow. Until then....

It's been a while since I've last blogged mainly because a) I forgot and b) I was in a deep blue funk. But now I'm feeling quite chipper for two reasons: a) I'm going back to cashiering again in May, b) I've been selected to join the ACC Site Improvement Committee. For anybody who's paid attention, ACPD has been one of my major ongoing projects for the last two years. Now that I am officially connected to the site I'll be able to push it more and perhaps replace their existing flash editor with ACPD Online.

I have yet to call the DMV, however I have been driving again lately and I'm not as rusty as I thought. I WILL CALL TOMORROW!!! Okay, that's out.

Also, I have YAVP (yet another video project) of which should actually be seeing the light of day. However, I cannot at this time divulge any information aside from that it's the most expensive project to date. I have spent eighty whole cents on props (my gosh!). I may put the trailer up here soon, but I want to try to get the entire project finished. Also, I've been thinking of rewriting Ramboella and filming that now that I'm more buff than I was six months ago. More later...

Finally, before I go, I need to hand out gold stars. One to devusb for properly naming the "Vista blows", a play off of some lyrics in the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie song "Every OS Sucks", and one to linkman2004 for getting the "winds of change quote" of which was uttered by Randall in Monster's Inc. (and again sarcasticly by Mike). Congratulations and keep your eyes peeled (hint: there's one in this post). Happy hunting, and happy belated Easter :-).

Whoo! It's Episode II! Oh, barf, that was terrible :-P

This week we discuss:

Red Steel for Revolution

Global Warming Stopped

More Revolution Info

Hacking LED Construction Signs

Smell-o-vision

linkman's E3 Predictions

Clocking in ten minutes longer than last week's podcast, it's worth the listen (I hope, haven't actually listened to it myself :-P). Go ahead and check it out: Direct Link, iTunes

Do you have a filty mouth? Should your mouth perpetually have a bar of soap strapped to it? Well then you're reading the right column. Hi, I'm Dr. Matt.

Over the last three years my team and I have come up with a simple solution to all swearing problems. It is a simple matter of appended or prepending letters or phrases onto said bad word to make it kid friendly. Let's have an example:

"What the hell is that?!"

Doesn't sound very nice, does it? Now let's see the same phrase after applying Dr. Matt's pateneted cuss removing technology.

"What the shell is that?!"

Much nicer, no? The following table contains a list of beautified words that you can use any day in front of anybody (except the pope):

bass

mustard

witch/itch

ship

crab

freak/frickin' (funk has also been suggested, but that burders too close...)

In certain situations a letter won't work and you will actually have to say the word, however, after much research it was found that the word "Hoover" can aleviate sid problem. Examples:

Hoover Dam

sucks like a Hoover

Ans there you have it. Practice these steps everyday and you'll be on the road to verbal maturity in no time. Have a great day :-)

I am proud to announce something that will change the face of the internet as we know it.... or not so much. Anyhoo, I bring you "T3h L33ts", the official dxprog/linkman2004 podcast! Whoooo! It hasn't been listed on iTunes yet, but it will. Iiitt wiilllll. Here's the topics we discussed in Episode I (excluding off-topic stuff):

Apple's Boot Camp

Pilotwings Revolution

2005 Nintendo Profits

Bob Ross Painting on Revolution

The Revolution's Final Secret

The Reggie-man

Go ahead and take a listen, spread the word and such. Pretty soon I'll have an official site up (instead of just a directory listing). We'll try to update every week so pay attention to the feed. Enjoy :-)

UPDATE: We're on iTunes! Whooo!

In what could be marked as a pardigm shift for me I have purchased my first "real" song off of iTunes, meaning it is a modern rock song. Now the song, which I will name, I've heard plenty of times at Wal-Mart (as much as one can hear it over *beep* *beep* *beep* and all the chatter), but I suppose I have devusb to thank for it in the end. Using some iTunes VPN thingy I was digging through his music this morn and I was able to listen to the entire song and found, horror of horrors, I actually liked it. This leads me to wonder if I shouldn't broaden my musical horizons just a hair.... But anyhoo, you're probably wondering what song could cause such a cataclysmic shift in such a humble being as myself. It's "Dirty Little Secret" by the All-American Rejects.

In job news I am going to be blunt and to the point: the deptartment managing specialist job SUCKS! That said I am going to beg to have my cashier job back by May. I can't stand this job anymore. The hours (and lack thereof) stink, the lack of human interaction is driving me insane and a couple of other reasons I will leave unsaid (to save my job and reputation). Had I realized that this is how things were going to be I would have stopped complaining about my cashier job and been happy. We'll see how things go down, though.

Well, that's enough for now. In about fifteen minutes I have to be at the eye doctor's for an appointment. Stay tuned for my next post where I'll do a little bit of ranting again (yay! ;-)).

PS - Gold stars to anybody who can name the quotes I've been stuffing into my posts lately.