Earlier this week, yet another piece of material towards global conquest arrived. I upgraded from the Intuos2 and got a brand new tablet! Not just any tablet, but a Wacom Intuos3 Special Edition. It’s all shiny and black and sexy, with two different styli and much needed function keys. I got the 6×11 model to go along with my new widescreen monitor. Take a look at this quick picture of my digital work-station here at SykoGrafix Studios.

There you see my scanner, monitor, tablet, Zboard with Photoshop keyset, and my mouse that glows 7 different colours. So far, so good. I’m not quite sure if the monitor’s colour output is as accurate as I need it to be, so I guess the next step is going to be to get a separate calibration device.

Anyway, the new tablet has thus far been a great improvement over what I had before. The feel of the surface is much easier to draw on, and I don’t feel I have to press as hard to get a steady line. The function keys and touch strip are lifesavers, as I haven’t been able to use keyboard shortcuts since moving my work space to my office, as the keyboard on this desk is tucked away inaccessible while using the tablet. Now I don’t need to use the keyboard very much at all, as all the keys I’d use, like to pan around or change brush size, are mapped right on the tablet itself. There are only two negatives that I can think of. The tablet itself is made out of a very smooth clear plastic (with the underside painted black for a very cool effect), but it’s so smooth that it feels different when you’re moving your hands around the edges. However, I have something that fixes that problem easily enough, which I’ll talk about later. The other bad thing is that I really wanted the special edition because it comes with both the standard grip pen and the extra classic pen, and it’s great having the option to switch between them because they have different feels and you can put a different nib in each of them if you want, but unfortunately, the special edition only comes with one pen stand. It’s not a big deal, but it’s something of an oversight. I’ll have to get an extra one somehow.

What I’m happiest about, though, is just the fact that it got here at all! I was looking all across the Internet for stores that carried this particular model, but it seemed like right when I went to buy it, everyone was sold out or on backorder. I eventually settled on a Canadian chain called Henry’s, and simply placed my order expecting it to ship later this month when their main warehouse was restocked. Well, they must have pulled one off the floor from one of their retail locations or something, because I got it within 6 days of placing my order. Not bad for a backordered item! So I have to put in the plug for Henry’s after this exceptional service.

So, here we go. I’ve almost got all the tools I need. Let’s see what madness I can create with them!

Sayonara.

Some wrestling related musings.

I finished reading Bret Hart‘s book yesterday. It’s a solid read, and especially entertaining when taking into account that I’ve seen so much of what he was writing about, and reading this book affords a glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes. But all in all, it’s a very dreary book. I sort of knew that it wasn’t going to be all roses and sunshine considering that Bret and the entire Hart family have been through a significant amount of trail and tragedy. But even beyond the obvious examples of the Montreal Screw Job and Owen’s death, Bret writes about many topics with a bitter tone. He doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of his siblings, his wife, the wrestling business as a whole, or… well, very much of anything really. Still, it goes without saying that this book is pretty much a must-read for any wrestling fan. I’m not sure how accessible it is to anyone who isn’t a knowledgeable fan, but I speak that language so I got everything.

In other news, I now own a copy of Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for PS2. For those that don’t know, Fire Pro is a long-running series of wrestling video games from Japan which have tons of wrestlers from all over the world, (all under phoney names to circumvent any copyright violations) as well as an incredibly deep edit mode where just about any other wrestler can be created by the user. Aside from 2 entries on the Game Boy Advance, this is the first time a Fire Pro game has been localized in English, but the series has gained a huge following despite its relative inaccessibility to the Western world. It’s got a steep learning curve, though, and it’s going to be awhile before I’m able to master it enough to play it intuitively. I’m most looking forward to really pushing the edit mode and coming up with some crazy new characters, like monsters and super heroes. I’ve already made Hulk! No, not Hulk Hogan, I mean the green guy. It takes a long time but the results should be worth it.

Sayonara.

When I was a kid I would play with Lego all the time. I probably owe a lot of my present creativity to playing with Lego. I had built up a pretty solid collection for myself, mostly from the Space and Pirates range, as well as Knights and City. Unfortunately, there were no Ninja Lego sets at the time when my interest in Lego was at its peek. And now they’d got some really cool stuff like Star Wars, Batman, and Indiana Jones. I enjoyed what I had though, and I’d have to say that it was a defining part of my upbringing. It was a lot of fun, but most of my Lego stuff was passed on to some of my cousins years ago.

However, I did have a few things stashed away, and since I’m in need of money I figured it was good eBay fodder, so I dug out a container full of Lego figures. I had to take some pictures for the auction, and as I was setting the figures up to be photographed, that old sense of fun came back. Everything was still in great condition and I wanted to play! Kinda made me wish I was a kid again.

Here’s the Space guys.

And the Soldiers.

There were some Lego sharks and a monkey in the set, so I set up an amusing shot.

I’m going to miss these guys, but I hope they go to a good home. You can see the Lego Figure auction right here and another Lego auction comprised of specialty pieces right here. They end in a few hours.

Sayonara.

Shonen Knife Rocks! Yeah!

The numbness in my ears has subsided enough now that I can talk about the awesome time I had last night when I saw Shonen Knife in concert!

The venue didn’t officially open its doors until after the start time that was printed on the tickets, which I thought was pretty lame. In the meantime I hung out in the cold and waited as something of a line formed behind me. I got to talking to some totally cool cats who I hung out with the rest of the night. At one point I took a little peek through the front door window and I could swear that I saw all 3 members of Shonen Knife right there, bundled up in their winter jackets. They walked outside, I assume to take a break before the show, and I said “Konbanwa!” They turned around and said “Konbanwa” back to me. So I had my little fanboy moment with Shonen Knife, and it was cool.

By the time the show had actually stared, it was an hour after the projected time. There were two opening bands, both American. I didn’t know anything about either of them. I expected that they would each play maybe 3-4 songs each, but both bands pretty much played an entire 45 minute set. The volume was set at an uncomfortable level too, and I can’t say I enjoyed having my eardrums pummeled like that before the band I paid to see had actually started performing. After the second band had finished, it was around the time that I was expecting the whole show would have been over with by. I was kind of disappointed that it took so long, so I was hoping that Shonen Knife was going to really rock hard to make all of that worthwhile.

And did they ever ROCK!

The crowd was looking pretty small earlier in the evening, but by the time Shonen Knife took the stage, the place was full. And it’s a good thing too, because these ladies were just incredible. They performed an excellent mix of new songs and earlier work, including some of my favorites like “Concrete Animals“, “Fruits and Vegetables“, “Explosion“, “Anime Phenomenon“, and the “Sushi Bar Song“. As far as I could remember, all of their songs were in English. Their encore was a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction“. All told they played for about an hour and twenty minutes. I wanted more! The other bands were ok, but I came to see Shonen Knife. I didn’t mind listening to the earsplitting volume when it was cool songs that I knew. So, not to say anything bad about the other bands, but I wanted to hear less of them and more of Knife.

I would definitely like to see them again next time they are in Toronto, even if there’s a change in the band’s lineup. It was really amazing to see these short, funny, Japanese girls jam like the rock legends they are.

Message to my new friends I met at the show who are hopefully reading this at some point: It was great chatting with you two. Shoot me a line when you get a chance!

Sayonara.

Besides what I’ve mentioned previously, there’s another reason why I switched webhosts recently. I was really getting sick and tired of people using the images here on their own sites/blogs/message boards/whatever, effectively stealing my bandwidth without giving me anything in return. On the old server, there was no way to stop it, and every time I’d bring the issue up with the tech staff, they would act all dumbfounded, like they didn’t know what I was talking about.

That’s all over with now. I have just set it up so that anyone who is looking at an image that is hosted on SykoGrafix.com but being viewed on another site will be getting a face-full of this:

No more hotlinking from SykoGrafix! Beautiful, isn’t it?

And to anyone who thinks this is unfair, or that I shouldn’t get upset over the issue, to you I say: GET REAL. The issue here is bandwidth theft. The key word in that phrase is “theft“. Theft means stealing, and as you should know from watching Sesame Street, stealing is wrong. Not only is it stealing the bandwidth that I pay for, but it’s also stealing the content that I worked hard to put together to make my website a unique and entertaining web experience. I didn’t put in that work just so some loser could add a decoration to a myspace page or something like that. I put in the work because I want people to come to my site, to read what I have to say, to look at the images in the context that I put them in, and to (hopefully) enjoy it. There’s no reason for any of it to be used for any other purpose, so I’ve put a stop to it, and rightly so. End of story.

Sayonara.