Sorry, We’re Closed

There hasn’t been much activity on this blog in a while and, honestly, I’ve lost interest in maintaining it.  At this point, I think I might as well make it official.  This blog is done.  I don’t plan to add anything to it from here on out.  To those of you who did read and comment now and again, thank you for your attention and encouragement.

The blog started with me gushing emo crap like some kid on LiveJournal and eventually evolved into a mashup of a few different topics that interested me, but never really synergized with one another.  It just didn’t work out and I believe now that I had a lot of misconceptions going into blogging.  I do have aspirations to apply these lessons learned at some point in the near future, but when I do, it will be with a new blog having no connections or affiliations with this one.

I’ve moved the site off of my shared hosting and onto WordPress.com where it should be able to live on indefinitely while also being less of a drain on my pocketbook.

Protected PDFs FTL

Ever run into a PDF file that wouldn’t let you do something as innocuous as copying and pasting text? What a pain. Fortunately, as suggested by the Web Curmudgeon, Text Mining Tool lets you grab text from these protected PDFs where Acrobat and others won’t.

Wii sighted

So the buzz on the Internet concerning widespread availability of the Nintendo Wii on 1/21 proved to be true. I picked mine up from the Gwinnett Circuit City this morning along with an extra Wii-mote/nunchuk combo and Zelda. My location had 25 units in stock and vouchers were handed out for all of them before the store opened at 10AM. The local Target didn’t have any, despite persistent rumors that Targets across the country were holding stock to be released today. Same goes for Wal-Mart. I didn’t try Best Buy.

Checking the weekly adverts, which are readily available at each store’s Web site, seems to offer some insight. Circuit City and Best Buy both claimed stock with per-store minimums. Target and Wal-Mart did not. Funny how that works, eh?

The SlickDeals PS3 & Wii Availability Forum offered up plenty of helpful information during my search, but I didn’t find any of the plethora of “trackers” to be very useful.

Nintendo Wii + Accessories

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

I recently had the pleasure of finish a decidedly British fantasy novel by the name of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The book is at times rather slow and long on exposition, but it makes up for it with a tightly wound storyline that kicks into overdrive in the third and final part of the book.

4/5 Overall

DragonCon 2006 Recap

The 2006 Labor Day weekend marked the passing of another thoroughly enjoyable DragonCon. For those out of the loop, DragonCon is a massive general-purpose sci-fi/fantasy convention held annually in Atlanta, Georgia. Where many conventions of its type choose to focus on a narrow segment of fandom, DragonCon brings everything together in one place through a diverse set of programming. With everything from anime to Zork finding representation, there’s a little something for everybody.

2006 marked my third year in attendance at DragonCon. Here’s a few of the highlights from my experience.

• I finally made it to “Drawing Anime 101″ this year, which I managed to miss in years past. This year’s rendition of the recurring panel was headed by Kittyhawk, artist and webmaster behind the anime-styled webcomic Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki. The panel ran a bit long at three hours and it was less structured than I had hoped, but our hostess quickly proved her competence and offered a bunch of useful tips. Much of the advice offered on the panel would likely have proven useful to artists in other genres as well.
• While this year’s ART track had a plethora of interesting panels, I was only able to fit one into my schedule. “How I Learned to Stop Pirating Software and Love the GIMP” took an insightful look at the free software options available to aspiring digital artists. In a space largely dominated by pricey commercial offerings, capable free software like the GIMP and Scribus deserve due consideration. Now, if only they could help me understand the GIMP’s UI…
• Dean Haglund of the X-Files and Stargate’s Gary Jones returned this year for encore performance of their excellent improv comedy routine. Donning the mantles of Spock and Kirk, respectively, the duo put on a highly entertaining parody of the original Star Trek in this year’s panel, appropriately dubbed “An Improv Enterprise.” With audience members providing cues, Dean and Gary filled in the rest for one hilarious hour.
• “Mythbusting for Fun and Profit” was one of many panels featuring personalities associated with one TV show or another. Mythbusters host Tory Belleci did an admirable job of entertaining the crowd despite the absence of fellow hosts Kari Byron and Grant Imahara who were also scheduled to attend. Between tales of wild pyrotechnics and a fake IMDB biography, it was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend the hour and a nice introduction to the show.

Titus, who also joined me for the convention, has posted his own thorough set of synopses for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Finding my Fast

My Fast: 2006 Volkswagen GTI in United Gray

A month a half ago, I drove home with my first new car ever; it was a Volkswagen GTI. I wanted to share my impressions of all the vehicles I looked at and, hopefully, offer some insight to other new buyers through my own experience. The process started late last year when I received my first lesson on driving stick shift from my uncle and culminated in me driving home my GTI over the Memorial Day weekend.

Mini-review: Tsubasa, Vol. 7

I’ve had a stack of unread manga ever since TRSI’s last Del Rey sale. With things getting back to normal post-vacation, I’ve had time to start working on that backlog. Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE, Vol. 7 was the first such title to come off the queue.

Mini-review: Elfen Lied, Vol. 1

I’ve been jumping all over the place the last few days in terms of content. Anyhow, here’s my take on another anime DVD: Elfen Lied, Vol. 1.

Elfen Lied, Vol. 1 DVD

I like to use Netflix to view anime that I either don’t intend to ever buy or haven’t decided. One such series is Elfen Lied. The series managed to garner a lofty #3 ranking of AnimeNfo’s top 200 ranking, which doesn’t really mean a lot, but I’ve found the site useful in the past when selecting new series to watch. After the first disc, I’m not convinced the series is any better than average; maybe slightly above, but that’s about it.

DD-WRT

No, it’s not the next Dance Dance Revolution game. It’s the new firmware for my router. I recently lost my Linksys WRT54G wireless router to a lightning hit, and I was subsequently forced to replace it. I replaced my trusty WRT with the similar, but newer WRT54GL, also from Linksys. This provided an opportunity to re-explore the world of third-party WRT firmwares, whereupon I found the DD-WRT project, which seems to have overtaken the original Sveasoft firmware as the top third-party firmware for Linksys (and a few others) routers.

Victoria

Vacation is now over and it’s back to work on Monday. Our last stop was Victoria, the capitol of British Columbia located on Vancouver Island. Victoria is smaller than Vancouver, though it is reputed to be equally beautiful. We spent a single day in the city, which proved too little time to do everything that we had planned.