The Long Road
Archives: October 2003
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Adi Granov is my favorite artist to emerge in the comics industry in quite some time. What makes Granov stand out is that he works solely on a computer. From initial sketches, to grayscale, to colours; it's all digital. I'm really impressed with his ability to render the human body realistically and his characters have a very fluid look to their poses. The best part about Granov's art though, is the colouring. The computer colouring gives everything an almost-painted look with a smooth grainy finish (like really fine sandpaper) if that makes any sense.
I'm really dissapointed to hear that Granov decided to leave Dreamwave after only doing three issues of Necrowar. The sci-fi series was sold largely on the strength of his art and was cancelled when Marvel offered him a cushier job. Sure, it was in his best interest to take the Marvel job but it would have been more professional of him to finish off Necrowar before jumping ship.
Professionalism aside, I think his art is amazing. Here are some samples, check out his Iron Man covers (1, 2), Inhumans covers (1, 2) and his Silver Surfer cover. See art from the now defunct Necrowar here.
Aside from covers, Granov is also doing some yet-to-be announced work, hopefully he'll stick with it cause I want a full story illustrated by this guy.
Posted by Rayne @ 11:27 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
So I'm gonna be trying something new here: I want to start posting Guest Columns on this site. Any topic goes, you can write about something you like, something you loathe, you can complain about the people you live with, whatever! Just as long as its not a straight-up "I did this today, and this, and this, and that" - that's boring.
Right now, I'm thinking of posting Guest Columns on the front page on Sundays, so get your words to me by Saturday. Email at rayne@woot.net. I expect great things from you people.
Posted by Rayne @ 05:14 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]
[whoops! the previous survey had been filled to capacity by the time I posted the link, so here once again is this survey. Please take the time to fill it out, it would be greatly appreciated. -Rayne]
For my entrepreneurship class project, we are researching into new product ideas.
If you could click on the link below and fill out the following survey...it would help us out alot!!!!
go here.
Thanks for your time!!
Posted by Rayne @ 05:00 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alright, a bit more text here. The cs370 midterm was Open Book. The first that you'd think when it comes to open book exams is that they'll be easy; however, that's not always true. When time came to study for this midterm I was pretty lost because I kept looking at my notes and the textbook and give up and say to myself "what's the point? I'll have these on me during the exam anyways". I ended up looking over some of my notes and past assignments and midterms.
When the exam came around, I felt pretty ready but the very first thing I did after looking over the midterm was head right for the book like a crutch! I would have been much better off without the bloody thing around to waste my time with.
The worst thing about the exam tho, was that it was almost entirely applied knowledge questions. Most exams are about 70% regurgitation, not this one.
Posted by Rayne @ 09:55 PM EST [Link] [5 comments]
Monday, October 27, 2003
Some people just have absolutely no clue when someone they're talking to has no interest in what's being said (or they don't care) and ramble on and on no matter what.
I was once fortunate enough to have worked for such an individual. One particular incident that stands out in my mind occured one lunch time in the men's washroom. The person in question kept walking in and out of the bathroom stall (he hadn't attented to business yet) to keep a conversation going with a co-employee who was very clearly more interested in his urinary discharge. He basically had one foot in the toilet while talking to the other man. I honestly believe that he would have continued the work-related conversation from the stall had the victim not left ASAP.
Not only did the other person have no interest in the conversation but the setting was so obviously and completely wrong for such a thing!
Posted by Rayne @ 09:23 PM EST [Link] [1 Comment]
Saturday, October 25, 2003
There's been a new rash of email surveys lately, so I might as well fill some of 'em out. You know...for fun. Besides, who doesn't like talking about themselves?
Click on [more]
Posted by Rayne @ 02:03 AM EST [Link] [6 comments]
Friday, October 24, 2003
Big Mac, Big King, Big Crunch and now the Big Harv from Harvey's! I tried it today and really liked it. First off, this thing is a monster! I'm pretty sure its bigger than any of those other "big" burgers in height and certainly in diameter. It comes on a deliciously golden poppy+sesame seed bun and, of course, you can choose the topings you want on it. The best thing about Harvey's burgers are the meat patties. In all fast food chains burger patties are made of very finely ground meat (let's pretend) so they don't have much texture to them. The Big Harv; however, has a President's Choice boxed burger type patty where the meat hasn't been ENTIRELY processed and has more flavour than ground cardboard.
So go out and try a Big Harv. For only 3.99 it will, like iTunes, change your life!
Well mayb not.
Time to stop procrastinating methinks.
Posted by Rayne @ 04:15 AM EST [Link] [12 comments]
Thursday, October 23, 2003
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. Go Away, Go Away, Go Away, Go Away, Go Away. NOW!
Posted by Rayne @ 09:48 PM EST [Link] [6 comments]
or does this Process State Diagram look like something else altogether?
One stumbles onto all kinds of weird things when studying for an OS midterm.
Posted by Rayne @ 02:09 AM EST [Link] [6 comments]
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
So what's worse, watching a TV show religiously even though you know it's bad or watching a bad TV show and thinking that it's good?
For shows like Enterprise and Smallville, I HAVE to watch them because they're Trek (in the so-far vain hope that it'll meet the mostly high standard set by its predecessors) and Superman. I can't say no even though they're predictable, have no characterization and abandon logic for the sake of plot. But at least I realize all that about those two shows. It's just way too easy to snobbishly shake one's head at people who enthusiastically rant and rave about how wonderfully stupendous shows like that are when they so clearly are not...and yet I keep watching them!!
Posted by Rayne @ 10:12 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
I've been pretty happy with Winamp for the last 3 or so years of using it. I've tried other players of course, like the invasive Real Player and the blocky Media Player but nothing is better than Winamp that is until last week when iTunes for Windows was released.
First, the bad. iTunes is pretty slow, slower than Winamp and it takes up a few more megs of RAM. The sluggishness and extra storage can probably be attributed to the fact that iTunes reads all of your mp3's tag info instead of just the song name. Over several hundred songs this probably makes a difference. Scrolling through my entire playlist can be pretty discouraging.
But the bad is worth it!
Here's how iTunes works: iTunes keeps a sort-of database of all the songs you have (including all the tag info) and you use iTunes' search feature to look through your database to find whatever music you want and iTunes creates an new playlist based on what you've searched for. For example, if you wanted to hear the Red Hot chilli Peppers, you'd search for that and all the Peppers' songs will show up. If you want to be more specific you could search for an album name and you'd get all the songs from that album. Even better, search for "alternative" and all your songs which are tagged as alternative will be shown. Of course all this requires that you have good tags on your mp3's, I'm pretty content with just Artist and Song Title but iTunes really makes me want to label all the Genre and Album tags. This feature is great for people like me who have most of their songs stuck in one directory, Mike has all his songs organized by artists then albums so it'd be a little bit less useful for him. But still, even if I had all my mp3's organized like that I would like to be able to still load up a specific album without having to empty my playlist and refill it with what I want, iTunes can save us all many clicks of the mouse!
Other features include "smart playlists" like the 25 most played songs - which isn't superbly useful but is cool to have around to see what your play most. My most played song is currently "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by Santa Esmeralda off the Kill Bill soundtrack.
I think everyone should give iTunes a try, it'll change your life. And to make the most out of your iTunes experience, fix up your ID3Tags with this neat little program.
Posted by Rayne @ 06:14 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]
Sunday, October 19, 2003
First and Foremost, 24 is the best show I watch regularly on teevee. I really enjoy all the wonderful plot twists weaved into each season as well as the cliffhangers that appear at the end of almost every episode. I think I would DIE of suspense if I actually had to watch this thing at a rate of only one episode per week, 24 is most definately best viewed on DVD. It is very hard to watch only 1, or even 2, episodes when the rest are sitting RIGHT THERE waiting to be viewed - when we start, we always end up watching until the wee hours of the morning. 24 is definately a show that rewards long-term viewers, each season seems to be completely planned out well in advance and there is a definite overall plot going through the whole series which will pay off eventually. Of course, it also helps that the show is littered with very attractive women like Sarah Wynter, Sarah Clarke and Elisha Cuthbert.
For all the good, 24 can be extremely frustrating sometimes. Conflicts are often created simply because one character chooses to arbitrarily withold information from another when telling the truth would make everything so much simpler, all the characters (except Palmer and Bauer) have instances of completely irrational behaviour. More often than not, the plot is advanced by locking someone up in a room somewhere. I think that they've yet to really make use of CTU, the organization has come off as little more than Jack Bauer support staff over the last two seasons, the Unit has not really done anything effective on its own. And after 14 hours or so it just seems ludicrious that so many things could happen to such a small group of people in a single day.
All in all, 24 is an awesome show. Tune in Oct. 28th on Fox at 9pm to watch Jack Bauer kick more ass than is humanly possible!
Posted by Rayne @ 05:19 PM EST [Link] [3 comments]
Friday, October 17, 2003
I don't know how much more of this I can take...
Posted by Rayne @ 11:08 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Guy says:
hey u there, i have something important to ask you
Guy says:
thai ?
Rayne says:
ya..
Rayne says:
what's the question?
Guy says:
there was an asian girl sitting with a white chic right behind sarah and amy's row
Guy says:
and that same asian chic sat with her friend during the break when we talk outside
Rayne says:
ok..i don't reemmber
Guy says:
fuck u
Guy says:
how could u not know ?
Guy says:
fuck man... i think ur gay
Guy says:
seriously, are u a fag?
Posted by Rayne @ 01:58 AM EST [Link] [12 comments]
These were just one story so I'll talk about them collectively.
What angered me most about these episodes is that by the end everything that was done in the last 8 or so episodes were undone. Chloe is no longer an evil spy working for Linoel, Lex is unmarried, Lionel is in the dark about Clark's powers again (it really seemed like he knew everything), and Clark and Lana are not dating again. Why go through tons of character development in the second half of last season to only undo it all at the beginning of the next? Where was the token black character...I think he has one scene in total. I also really don't like how this show forgoes common sense/logic to further the plot, its incredibly frustrating that control-freak Lionel Luthor doesn't have cameras in his own office when he has 'em on his son's private jet.
The best part of this show has always been, and continues to be Lex Luthor. His slow descent into the Dark Side is heartbreakingly fun to watch. His decision to learn from his father this episode is one of the biggest steps he's taken towards becoming Darth Luthor yet. His duality between being ruthlessly vengeful and endlessly charitable make him the best villai-in-the-making ever. Clark on the other hand just seems to be the very same person he was in the first episode of the first season.
Posted by Rayne @ 01:57 AM EST [Link] [3 comments]
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
1. In addition to always complimenting a comic on its "grounded nature", Don MacPherson can only do so with the same sentence structure everytime: [artist|writer's name] [captures|conveys|reinforces] the [gritty|down-to-earth|human] [elements|atmosphere|quality|tone|nature] [of the story|at play here]. Practically each and every one of his reviews features a variation of that sentence structure. I don't understand how such a repetitive and poor writer could have gotten so high on the "comic book reviewer ladder". Here's a quote from one of his reviews last week where he basically blows his entire load.
Braithewaite captures the epic nature of the story quite well. Inventive panel layouts convey the broad scope of the plot, and Reinhold's reinforce the mature atmosphere at play. Pete Pantazis's colors do so as well while they reinforce the energy and cosmic quality at play in the story.
2. Chuck Austen! Why does this guy keep getting all the BIG name titles? It's quite apparent that his writting talents do not sell and he has no understanding or respect for established characterization. Yet for some reason The Big Two keep throwing all their flagship titles at him. I haven't been this maddeningly perplexed since Ron Zimmerman kept getting work a couple of years ago. I wait until the day it's revealed that Austen has blackmail material for all high ranking execs of the Big Two, how else can such a hack get Uncanny X-Men, Avengers, Actions Comics, JLA and New X-Men!? I don't understand.
Posted by Rayne @ 09:11 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Monday, October 13, 2003
Kill Bill is Tarantino's homage to classic Hong-Kong, Chinese, and Japanese cinema. This movie is Tarantino seeing all these other American directors messing up "asian-inspired movies" and saying "you morons, THIS is how you shoot a fight scene".
I don't really know how to describe this movie except to say that it's all style and homage. From the music, the camera angles, the "feature presentation" screen, the black and white, and the anime sequence, this movie has more style to it in any single conversation than most movies have in their entire running time. If you've seen a Quentin Tarantino movie before, you know what I mean.
While most other films would have something like "the hero needs a sword, gets one". Kill Bill spends minutes worshipping the art of sword making and giving it a respect that most movies would just gloss over. Long lingering moments like this are what make Kill Bill so different from anything else - they give the audience insight into things that Tarantino likes. What other director would spend such a large section of his movie dedicated to the hero obtaining a sword? This film is not "extruded fiction", there is tons of personality in it.
Uma Thurman is comletely believable as a badass fighter - much more so than Lucy Liu - and the fight scenes in this movie are absolutely brutal. There are an extraodinarily large number of limbs that fall off bodies here not to mention gallons upon gallons of GUSHING, GARGLING BLOOD! The prodigious amount of blood here is completely over the top and is quite amuzing to look at.
Whatever, I LOVED this film. I can't believe I have to wait 5 months to see the rest of it.
Posted by Rayne @ 03:42 PM EST [Link] [7 comments]
Saturday, October 11, 2003
Road trips are pretty fun you get to see the scenery, spend time with people you like, and you've got a destination that you can't wait to get to. However, I *ALWAYS* hope that on one of these road trips that something cool will happen - like getting snatched by aliens, or meeting a monster who hunts every 23 years for spare body parts, or accidentally hitting someone and deciding to hide his body, or meeting a group of cheerleaders whose car has broken down. You get the idea.
Alas, none of these fancifull things ever happen to me. I probably just watch too many movies. Or things only happen on really deserted roads in the middle of nowhere, the four-oh-one isn't exactly an isolated road where weird things can happen. Next time, we're taking the back roads!
The only thing that's even remotely resembled an adventure was the trip last night. It took 11 hours from the time we were supposed to leave till the time we got here, the last time I did this took only 4 hours.
Posted by Rayne @ 08:38 PM EST [Link] [7 comments]
Thursday, October 9, 2003
As I'm sitting here staring at C++ code (we're writing an OS!) that's becoming more and more meaningless as the night goes on I'm downing a very large glass of coffee. This was very much the scene in my room last night as well, except that last night around midnight I was completely exhausted and could think no longer so I decided to go to bed. As luck would have it, I could not sleep. I rolled around for a long while before wasting some time on the computer and then reading...lots of reading...four hours worth of reading before I actually felt like my body would fall asleep. This was about 7am. I can very easily imagine the same thing happening again tonight.
Seems to me that coffee really has a big effect on me. It always keeps me up way past when I want it to, though coffee in the form of Cappuccinos don't have nearly as much of an impact.
Coffee can really be a great friend in moments like this, other times though it just seems to be working against me.
Posted by Rayne @ 01:25 AM EST [Link] [10 comments]
Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Here is my list of comics that I intend upon getting. It's a long list so it'll be a lenthy process. The list is sorted by publication date and updated monthly! (really, I'm just hoping some enterprising people will be nice enough to buy me some of these things)
Posted by Rayne @ 01:02 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]
Monday, October 6, 2003
Remember way back when before the advent of Instant Messaging? Back then I used to be on the phone constantly to shoot the breeze with people or plan things to do. Nowadays tho it seems like a lot to be on the phone for more than an hour a week. The phone has now been relegated to being used for conversations that go like this "so we're meeting here at this time? ok. see ya".
But even with IM it's hard to constantly talk to people. I usually wait for people to message me to actually talk to them. I find that I only really talk to people if I'm around them; I'm probably one of the worst people for "keeping in touch" with an "away"-term. On a work term I'm not really in touch in Waterloo friends and on a school term I'm out of touch with Ottawa friends.
There are some people with whom I could have hours long conversations with in person about anything and everything but when it comes to an IM convo things generally go like "hey", "wassyo?", "not much", "kewl", "aight, lata", and that'd be it! Which is all pretty strange considering I can converse with some people online for long periods of time when I've only seen them once or twice (or never) in my life.
It doesn't seem like regular conversation strenghthens certain friendships. I know that I can usually go back and just pick things right up again with most people without having talked to them for a few months, so I miss out on some new in-jokes ("he's po"), big deal.
It also seems to me like phone calls have become more "important", like you wouldn't call someone to just chat when you can do so online. I'm always of the mind that if i'm going to call someone it'd better be for something important.
So, to sum up. I talk to people in person but not on the phone, and hardly on IM. Certainly a big shift from a few years ago.
Posted by Rayne @ 01:15 AM EST [Link] [2 comments]
Thursday, October 2, 2003
To go along with those endless "Thank you"s, I'd like to say that I don't like it when people constantly apologize for stupid things or have to declare that they are joking.
One of my profs this term is like this. He'll make an apology for every little thing and he tries to sound so sincere. I don't know if he actually IS sincere or not but he shouldn't be cuz he's apologizing for stupid things and if he is sincere then REAL apologies have no weight since he'd probably deliver them the same way.
And to say "i'm only joking, promise" all the time!! That's hugely annoying when it's blatantly obvious that it IS a joke. I don't mind being told that a statement is only a joke when it's not so obvious that it is one or when it's a mild insult, but to declare it after everly little snide comment is so ridiculously asinine. Though, I'm certain that I could benefit from telling people more often when I'm joking since my sense of humour tends to be more...insulting and dead pan, so people take me a little more seriously than they should...which they shouldn't!
I also don't like it when someone says that reviewers shouldn't write reviews and one of the arguments is something like "if the reviewer knows so much why isn't he making the movies(or whatever)". Just because Ebert has never written/directed/acted dosen't meant that he can't tells us which movies he enjoyed or loathed and it doesn't diminish his opinions any less. The truth is, everyone has an opinion and not everyone is going to like the same thing to the same level. If someone wants to put his opinion out there about something then it's up to him to do so and if someone wants to pay the reviewer for putting his opinion out there then that's even better.
Posted by Rayne @ 11:41 PM EST [Link] [No Comments]
"X" means "no"!
Posted by Rayne @ 02:38 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]
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