Killed by Television

Umm... my productivity that is.  We added a cable television in my office.  That and Gears of War 2 have been soaking up all my time lately.  Oh, and Dead Space too.   Dead Space is fun to play while you're playing it, but hard to point out exactly what makes it so special afterwards.

I have been puttering away at my drawing, but it was mostly finishing a reference for the female character clothing in my comic.  Useful, but not necessarily very interesting.  Hopefully as I finally shut off the TV for a while I'll get back to putting cool pics up on the page.

I watched the Hitman movie, recently and really liked it.  It was kind of a different take on the James Bond style characters.  It was inspired by the video game series which I liked.  It didn't get very good reviews, but it had cool action sequences if you could overlook the wooden acting.

I also caught the movie Aliens, which I've seen before.  It was a lot more cheesy than I remember from when it first came out.  Kind of like an exercise in 'how bad can things go wrong.'  It was a horror movie disguised as an action movie.  In an action movie you figure the characters have a chance, but in this one the writers systematically kill everyone off.  They actually finish the job in the 30 second introduction to the following movie.  It was fun and exciting, but a little depressing at the same time.   I guess seeing it after so long made me realize how artificial and predictable it felt.  Reminds me of Dead Space for the Xbox 360.  Or maybe the other way 'round.

My latest toy

I have a new toy... I've been using a wacom tablet for almost as long as I've been doing the comic, and they've gradually gotten bigger and fancier.  I finally got my wish and purchased the grand-daddy of them all: a Wacom Cintiq 21ux. 

Drawing with this is almost like using paper, with all the benefits of Painter or Photoshop thrown in.  I love it. It feels SO much more natural than using a tablet where you're drawing in one spot and seeing it appear somewhere else.  I'm not sure if this would be 'natural' if you'd never used a tablet before, but for someone who's used tablets forever it's nerdvana.  I'm working on the next two pages of the comic at this very moment.

The only thing is, I've had to rearrange my desk twice to try and find a configuration that works.  It changes my seating position a bit 'cause it's HUGE.  But that just means there's more to love.  Right?

I'll give another report in a week or so and let you know how it's going, and if the new-toy-shine is gone.

Places you should visit, and Zombies

Roger Ebert's blog:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/
If you want a guide to movies, ebert is your man. I may not agree 100% with each of his movie ratings but from reading his blog it's clear that he thinks deeply about things. You can't have enough of those kinds of people around you. He's kind of like the movie evangelist telling you where the good stuff is. He's spent his life drinking in a particular art form and now that he's reached an age of wisdom he definitly has some profound things to say. I get a thrill reading his blog, and that's not a common thing.

Wil Wheaton's blog:
http://www.wilwheaton.typepad.com/
He traded an acting role on Star Trek the  Next Generation for a spot in the competitive world of blogging... To quote PVP. He's another one of those creative types that I get a thrill from reading. He's more on the creative rather than the Consumer side like Mr. Ebert. If you've Got Geek? Wil's your man with some pointers to good stuff.

Lastly: Lessons learned from Zombie stories.
After reading  "zombie contingency plans" I've been reminded of one of the fundimental aspects of writing. You don't just ride along like you do in a movie or a comic, you actually get inside the character's head for a time. That's both good and bad. The Zombie story character referenced above clearly has something wrong with him. I felt a bit crazy by the end of the story, or as much as I was able to stomach. It was a good story, there was just... something wrong with the main character. It kind of messed with my head. I guess the threat of most stories is that you really don't know what you're getting yourself into when you first pick the book or story up. In this case I didn't actually finish the story because I felt so "off" after a while.  I guess I'm just a wimp when it comes to those kinds of things.

Jackassery

I read a few books to Anna, my youngest daughter as part of the getting-ready-for-bed process.  Most kids books are fine if a bit sappy, heavy handed and poorly written.  However there's one series of books that I can only take in small doses.  That is of course the Berenstain Bears. There's only so much I can take of an author portraying a father as a complete and total asshole.  Occasionally there's a book that's more neutral, but on the whole they're pretty bad.

It isn't quite time to say enough and hide the offending books, but I'm close.

Darth Barbie

Angela found this picture online over here, and I couldn't resist passing it on.

Batman

One last thing.  I tried to see the latest Batman movie at 8 this evening.  I was blown away that the movie was sold out.  For crying out loud it's Wednesday!  People should be doing something else besides watching the movie I want to see. Apparently from talking to the ticket seller the movie has been selling out for all the evening shows so far.  Wow,  just wow.

Last Gasp for learning Japanese

I loaned out all my Japanese books to a friend who was interested in learning.  As usual this got ME thinking about learning Japanese again.  I even looked at the latest edition of the how-to book I like on Amazon.  But as I thought about it, I realized I should once again pass on learning Japanese.  First of all it fails my litmus test for learning a cool new writing system: Can I use it to write my passwords?  Unfortunately Japanese is phonetic, so there's no equivalent for the letter V or writing capitols.  I admit this is a pretty flimsy reason, but it's either a tip of the iceberg kind of thing or a red herring.   I'm not sure which.  Perhaps, someday I'll pick Japanese up, but for today I'd rather spend my time doing useful things like writing inane blog posts and learning elvish. 8)   

The main reason I'm going to pass is I want to be devoting my time to telling stories.  Because more than anything else that's really what I want to be about.  I'm just easily distracted by shiny new concepts.  I guess I'd better get back to it.