Posted 9:19 AM by Tim Rafuse
VELMA is a little less than she was before. The current battery seems to be lasting me only about an hour, and even less than than with the CD spinning. I can handle that though, but I'm not liking it.

Ok. I've been thinking about the relocation. I figure I'll probably up and move to Blog*Spot (can't be bothered with links today). I'm not sure how long the move will take, but I will have to get started soon if I'm going to be moved before too long.

That book has me reading still. Since VELMA is only good for short distances, I've been busily following the storyline. Of course, my wife is well into the fourth book of the series, so I know that things are going to be fine, no matter how dangerous it seems. Too bad for me, eh? The whole sex instruction thing has died off in the story too, but I know it'll pick up again soon.

This weekend looks to be busy. Listowel is on, and I've at least got a deck ready for it. I expect the games to be long and drawn, but that's alright. I'm ready for them. In other card news, I've started the groundwork for a really strange deck. It's using Sherazade, which is cool.

I do have one point to mention today. This weekend, my Brother-in-law and his girlfriend were assaulted. They're both ok, just a little bruised (Well, he had a dislocated shoulder, but that's not too terrible an injury - just painful). Now, this did happen late at night, but it was downtown, in a reasonably lit area. I find that a little disturbing. It actually leads me to think that maybe most of the "city violence" is really happening in smaller towns. I mean, it'd be harder to catch people unaware in a city, they're expecting it.

Well, that's all I'm gonna get into that for now.

Posted 1:42 PM by Tim Rafuse
Hmm. I've been having a bit of trouble with getting a blog out lately. I guess that's what happens when I divert the creative energies, eh?

I've been reading Clan of the Cave Bear and just started it's sequel, The Valley of Horses. The first is a strong book, but maybe a little confusing in places. The second book seems to be a little different in the writing style, a little more mature maybe. All the same, it looks like I'm going to have to confine the reading to the house, as the book is reading a lot like a love instruction manual. :)

Anyway, news today. I'm nearly ready to proceed with trying my hand at the webcomic. It means a lot of interesting times ahead as I try to come up with a script, characters, and manage to draw the whole thing. I've been reading a lot of anime-ish stuff lately, like Eversummer Eve, and MegaTokyo. Both of these comics are done in a much more unrestricted fashion, with a heavy manga feel to them. Not only are the comics large (at least a full 600 pixels high), but they use a variety of images on each page. The layouts are very interesting to me. I'm looking at incorporating ideas similar to theirs, if I go with the layouts.

In particular, Eversummer Eve lead me to a very nice manga tutorial, which reminded me about a series of books on drawing anime. Not surprisingly, the site is the web front for those books. They're expensive (about $30 or something), but I think I might invest a few bucks into one of them. If I manage to get by that store this weekend. Gwah.

I'm still struggling for a storyline, and for characters. And I'm still very worried about my drawing abilities. I did get a bit of practice time in on the bus though, so that helps. Between drawing, VELMA, and reading, my commute is starting to look more and more inviting (at least in the sense that it's a block of creative time).

I've been considering getting a little knothole of an appartment in the city here, to lessen the demands of the commute. I'm trying to balance all the pros and cons of such a decision though, to see if the expense is really warranted. First and foremost is the loss of companionship. Right now, even though I don't get to see them very much, I do see the family every day. If I live away all week, that's a lot of time I don't get to see them. Not to mention that the last time I lived away I really didn't do anything. I barely left the house other than to go shopping or work. I'm gonna try not to be such a housebody if I do end up with a place.

I've considered the merits of living with Wayne again, though paying rent this time. I don't think it'll work. Wayne and I managed a full month without wanting to kill each other, so I know we could get along, but the real issue comes from my reliance on him for transportation. Again, I'm not going to have a car, so I'll need him to get me from place to place, or some other arrangement. Of course, this overlooks the fact that living away is supposed to help me stay and do more overtime at work. I'm really not sure we could work something like that out easily.

Let's move on, well, backwards. Back to the comic thing. The storyline thing has me worried mostly because of my concerns over the artwork. What if I can't make a character look the same in each panel? What if I can't get any sort of emotion across? To address the issue a little, I figured that I'd probably post a few random scribbles and such before getting into any sort of real comic. Considering the speed at which I draw things I like (think geologic...), I have no idea when anything might be ready in the least. I will at least say that I'm going to shoot for at least one drawing by say... next week. Just before the site goes nova anyway :)

On the site move, I still haven't found a home yet, not that I've been looking either, but I do know the move is coming. So's a site redesign if I ever get ahold of the files hidden on ROSA.

Posted 4:52 PM by Tim Rafuse
Gwar.

So, half the month is over and there doesn't seem to be any sort of retraction coming from Geocities about their new "FTP for pay" policy. Not that I mind the idea of someone recovering costs, I just don't have the cash to pay for it right now. So... I'm looking to move the site. Yep, pickup and move entirely. I'll probably leave this one behind as a mirror of sorts, until it grows moss and dies.

The move process itself, however, leaves me with the option of making a few site changes. Lots of little things that can be changed you know. Site colours, fonts, etc. Hey, I may even find a place that allows scripting and build a few servlets or somesuch thing.

There's developments in the works. VELMA, the new laptop has been offering a most useful service in the development of the project, and that's good news. I have been taking it easy with the development this week, as my wife showed me a book she really liked. I'm ravenously reading it, of course, leaving very little time for much else on the long ride home.

Posted 12:26 PM by Tim Rafuse
Today marks an interesting anniversary. It's been 6 months since September 11. It's also my sister's birthday, and the birthday of my nephew. So, there's a busy bit of stuff there. I've gone over the September 11 thing in my blog before. As I said, I probably was less moved by it than most. Not that I wasn't scared, or worried or such, but there were a few things really keeping me from being stark terrified about the event.

The first is that I didn't personally know anyone who might have been hurt in the disaster. Second, I'd never been to NY, and had never seen the towers, so in a sense, they were largely mythical. Third, and this is where most people would disagree, the whole thing wasn't that terrible, really. I mean, yeah, a lot of people lost their lives, and the buildings did come down, but that sort of thing happens all the time in other parts of the world. The tragedy was the lost innocence, not the event itself.

The USA has been pretty free of wars. Sure there's the skirmish wars between gangs, police and criminals, churchs and so forth, but nothing big and organized. Not much since the Civil War, really. Yeah, they've fought all over the globe, but that's not the same as having the fighting outside your door. Just look at Isarel and Palestine right now. Jets zooming overhead blowing the hell out of buildings. Try to picture that in your neighbourhood. You're headed out to get the paper, and ka-boom! Warplanes are dropping bombs on the mall downtown. Now try to imagine that kind of thing happening all the time. Every day - ka-boom - there goes the mall again. After a while you'd kind of get used to it.

September 11 was just a reminder that nobody is really safe from other people as long as other people exist. And that's where the tragedy really is.

Posted 4:54 PM by Tim Rafuse
So, another work day is nearly done. I must say that the tiniest glimmer of a workable comic has come into my head today. The drawing bit is another matter. I've been thinking that the best plan is simply to start by just drawing and seeing where that goes.

I was struck by several other thoughts on comicing yesterday. Let me relate them to you now. The first was about the relative weights of art and dialogue, but that's lengthy, so I'll come back to it. The next was about not doing a comic, but doing something related to comics - like a web-zine. I was thinking about sending out an email to several comic artists that I read, and asking if they wouldn't mind answering a few questions for me. I'd take those answers and post them to a website, which would have monthly (or bi-monthly) distribution. Of course, I'm back to the problem of garnering content. What do I, a total newbie when it comes to comics, have to say about them? Probably not a lot.

Ok, back to the thoughts about art and dialogue. The way I see it is like this. A comic needs both art and dialogue (there are some exceptions though). Look at it like this, a comic without dialogue is technically "silent", and really comes down to "sequential art". I'd still class it as a comic though, since you can do such things quite effectively. On the other side, a comic without art is just a story or script. I wouldn't call that a comic (though you can see this done from time to time in things like Fans!).

If a comic has really great art, it can get away with dialogue that isn't very good at all. The expression, and body language can convey most of the meaning (even all of the meaning, as with silent comics). But, if the art for a comic is lacking, then the dialogue needs to be better and better all the time to carry the meaning.

Personally, I feel that my art is severly lacking, so if I were to do a comic, my writing and dialogue would need to be even better than above average. Pacing, word choice, timing and such would all have to be very high. I'm not sure if I'm able to provide that.

Posted 2:22 PM by Tim Rafuse
I've been doing pretty well with these daily posts. I'm happy about that.

I've been doing more thinking about what I could do for a weekly comic. Not much has surfaced as a real "storyline" that I think I could do with my draw skills. My skills are really raw, and well, bad. I've been trying to figure out just what to start with, and most of my ideas involve an angry little boy and his family. I don't quite know where that's from... If I do go with posting something, expect it to show up here, and move along to wherever it ends up. I may not even make it past the first week. We'll see if something hits though.

Ok. And now for information you didn't care to know. The commute is slowly grinding away at me. I mean, an hour long commute is pretty harsh - especially if you don't know anyone and don't talk to anyone, like me. But 2 to 2.5 hours each way is really starting to grind. Not that it didn't grind initially, but it's been grinding for a month-ish now, and that's really starting to add up. The fact is that the amount of useful day is pretty small. Like, almost non-existant small. The morning is lost (except for the laptop now), and so is the evening. Yesterday I got off the bus at 7:00, got home at 7:30 dead tired, forced myself to eat (as I knew I was hungry - ravenously so), and then went straight to bed. I eventually managed to sleep. I have trouble not thinking before I go to bed, and that keeps my brain a little too active. Also, my daughter spent at least 15 minutes yelling "Motheeer!", "Motheeer!" to try to get the attention of her mom. I finally told her to be quiet so I could sleep. Gah.

So, I've been wondering to myself. When am I going to get the rest of this website up and running? Well, I'm not sure. I figure that I can load the site onto VELMA - the laptop, and work on it in addition to my other mobile projects. I've been able to devote at least 6 hours this week to projects alone, which does a lot to move them along.

Since I'm in a babbling mood, I'll let it out that the current application project I'm working on - codename "Dingo" has started off fine. I'm still early into analysis and specs, but I've been thinking about Dingo for quite a while now. I originally planned to have a beta-release for July 4, but that looks unlikely. I may have an ultra-early Alpha version available by then, unless I can rope Wayne into helping with the code project. But for that to work he's gonna need a system. We're looking for one for him....

Alright, enough with the horn. :)

Origins is just a short 4 months off, and I'm no closer to having the cash to go to it. Well, that's not entirely true, I've got about $2 more than I had last week in the "jar of change for Origins" that I've got started at home. I'll need to merge this with the "jar of American change for Origins" that I've got at Wayne's house. Maybe I'll put up a meter of how much I've got saved...

Coming up this month: Tournaments. There is one major tournament that I want to get to. I've got most of a deck already, I'm just looking to tweak it and refine it more. This puts me on the hunt for some cards, but I'm hoping to not need too many. I'm not sure who's going to test the deck with me either. Most of the tournament worthy decks that I've had lately are very "play on your own" styled. Mainly, that means that I do a lot on my turn, and wait for my opponent to say "done" on his. Wayne hates those.

I'm sure there's more - but I don't have time now.

Posted 9:53 AM by Tim Rafuse
Did you ever want more money? That's a silly question isn't it? For most people, that's like asking, did you ever breathe? Of course we want more money. I've been thinking about what I'd do with a big pile of money for forever - probably like most people.

The current item of purchasing interest is a car. The previous item was a laptop, which I now have. Yep, my tastes just keep getting more and more expensive. The car of interest (general interest anyhow) is a Honda Inspire. A nice 2 seater hybrid. I really like the idea of hybrids. They're small, light, and very very very very fuel efficient. The Honda info on the Inspire quotes something like 1200+ Km per tank. That's pretty good, considering the average for gas-only cars is only 300 Km. Our current vehicle gets about 450 Km, on about $20 - $25 of gas. That's really not that bad for most cars.

The main thought on the Inspire is that it would make a great commuter car. Gas for the thing would be just over $6 a tank, and the mileage is still enough to get me from home to downtown and back again - twice. Our current car would require a tank of gas (roughly) each day to get there. That's about $120+ a week, just to drive back and forth, compared to about $24 for the Inspire. Parking really isn't a factor, since I'd have to pay it either way.

Of course, there's always the idea that the hybrid isn't as sporty or fast as gas cars, and that it might have trouble keeping up on the highway. I don't think that's the case with the Inspire though.

On the other side of the mind is the Toyota Prius. A 4 door, 4-seater hybrid. This would work good as our main car, and be a good investment in the long run, the slightly higher cost being offset by the lower cost of gas. The main concerns that I'd have would be long-term ownership, and the problems of trading in the car, or getting the batteries serviced, or replaced.

Personally, I'd love to own a fuel cell car, but those aren't out on the mass market. I'm thinking that a Propane/Electric hybrid wouldn't be that bad of a vehicle either. Propane is easy enough to get in most areas, and it tends to be cheaper and cleaner than gas too. I can't imagine the mileage such a vehicle might get, but it's probably prodigious.

If anyone has an extra $22,000 + taxes lying about, I'd be glad to use it on a new car :)