Digi-comic

My First Pedal Board(tm)

Hooray! I've constructed my very first pedal board. By linking my guitar effects pedals with patch cables and vecroing them to a ... erm .. board, I now have a handy portable effects unit that allows me to quickly and effectively irritate my neighbours. Currently most of the pedals are still running off batteries, but I'm looking to daisy chain a power supply once I get some connections that actual fit the pedals. So what is in my splendiferous effects chain? From right to left: Digitech Whammy: For creating all those ear-piercing weee-ooohh weee-oooh Tom Morello Rage Against the Machine effects, and for replacing your bass player White Stripes style. Boss DS-1: Ah, the poor maligned DS-1 pedal. So many people have a problem with the pedal, and would consider its inclusion on a board as rather amateur/embarrassing. Poor little fella. However, rather than a distortion pedal as such I'm currently using this as a "boosting" pedal. With the distortion down to zero it's a neat way to increase the volume of your playing when you switch from rhythm playing to lead (certain people would refer to this as the cock spotlight pedal) Korg (or something) Tuner: (above the Boss DS-1) Lights up and tells me what I'm playing is hideously off-key and would I please stop. Dunlop Crybaby Wah: I love this pedal. Everything sounds better with wah. That's right, everything. This pedal takes me from an atonal abuser of the guitar to Hendrix-like sounds with ... oh wait a minute. Big Muff: I love this pedal even more. Were it not against god's law I'd make it my wife. So what has this got to do with comics? Well, nothing. I just wanted to show off how crafty I am with velcro and an old cupboard shelf (that I'm hoping nobody notices is missing).

More than Meats the Pie

Well, I went and saw Transformers last weekend, and I must say it wasn't the total disaster I was expecting. In fact I found it *gasp* enjoyable. There was of course stuff I could nitpick, but it was reasonably faithful to the original series and had lots of giant robots beating the crap out of other, so I have little nerd outrage to vent. Except ... no - it was fine really. I'm not going to start. Also, today is new phone day! My new Nokia 6300 has proven to be a wise investment, and I was kindly provided with a bonus miniSD card of 128mb (not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but much more useful than the standard 8mb), and a service pack that has the Opera mini browser bundled (very exciting and saves me a lot of buggering around). So hurrah! The phone is pretty mid-range, but has a particularly nice screen, and a standard mini USB port and 2.5mm headphone jacks (shocking).

What the hell is news.com.au smoking?

News.com.au recently likened John Howard to Yoda and Kevin Rudd to Luke Skywalker. What the hell? Yoda was wise and for the powers of good. Howard is more like the emperor, a man grown overconfident in his absolute power through years sitting on his fancy throne unchallenged. However, it all comes undone when he fails to factor in armies of angry teddy bears. But even this analogy is not perfect, as John Howard most resembles Dark Helmet from Spaceballs.

Icky Thump

I recently purchased the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump (a misspelling of Ecky Thump, a Goodies episode famed for killing a man), and it's taken a few listens but I suspect it's a rather good album. I'd describe it as "Jack White does musical genres". Including Scottish folk music, Mariachi music and whatever the hell genre Creedence Clearwater Revival belongs to (Southern delta blues swamp rock or some other funk-country-blues-sing-through-your-nose equivalent). My first impression was that it was a little disjoint and/or daggy but it seems to be one of those albums that grows on you. I give it four out-of-tune guitar strings out of five.

Internet in Brushed Steel

Hi Everybody - If you've downloaded the Apple Safari browser for windows, and it's not displaying any fonts, the problem lies in the XML file Safari generates for listing all your system fonts. Look here: C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR NAME HERE\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari\Fonts.plist You can edit this file and hack in the basic Internet fonts you need, or try plugging in the Fonts.plist file from a machine that did display the fonts correctly. Apparently the apple forums are saying if you have thousands of fonts installed it's probably the cause of the problem. Here is my hacky solution file if you need a starting point. Names Lucida Grande C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources\Lucida Grande.ttf Lucida Grande Bold C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources\Lucida Grande Bold.ttf Lucida Grande Bold.ttf C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources\Lucida Grande Bold.ttf Arial C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\arial.ttf Arial Bold C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\ARIALBD.TTF Arial Italic C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\ARIALI.TTF Arial Bold Italic C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\ARIALBI.TTF Verdana C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdana.ttf Verdana Bold C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanab.TTF Verdana Italic C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanai.TTF Verdana Bold Italic C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanaz.TTF Times New Roman C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\times.ttf Times New Roman Bold C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\timesbd.ttf Times New Roman Italic C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\timesi.ttf Times New Roman Bold Italic C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\timesbi.ttf Helvetica C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\HVL_____.TTF Courier New C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\COUR.TTF Tahoma C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\tahoma.TTF I should point out that if you break your machine following my instructions, it's your fault for assuming I know what I'm talking about.

Most Addictive Flash Game Ever

Desktop Tower Defence. Most addictive flash game. EVER. Do not start playing if you have a deadline, an assignment or an appearance in court looming. You will miss it.

On This Day

Thanksch. Also my birthday is International Towel Day, which is fantastic.

Yay, older!

Congrats at having made it through another of those "year" things. May you have many more. Apparently, the 25th of May is also the birthday of Star Wars, at least, it was the release date for Yanks. So happy birthday to both of you, and your roof.

Heppy Barfday

Well, I've reached the age of rock and roll death, 27. The year Cobain shot himself, Jim Morrison died of a heart attack and Jimi Hendrix choked on vomit (of course, they can't really prove whose vomit it was - you can't really dust for vomit). This is the beginning of an exciting new era of comfy slippers and pipe smoking. I'm currently working on making my front lawn nice and green so I can yell at kids to stop playing on it. In other news, the constructicons have almost finished replacing the roof on my house - everything should be completed today assuming they don't go forming Devastator and trash the place. That's a good thing, as the roof is 1930s vintage, and whilst making an excellent possum refuge wasn't terribly effective at deflecting water.

More On That Whole Transformers Things

A new trailer has been released for the Transformers live action movie. The trailer looks absolutely fantastic and has me very excited, which means that it is extremely likely the movie is going to suck a great deal. Still, I've very happy that the original transformation sound has been worked back in. Chk-chur-chr-chr-chr.

Digicomic 2.0 ish

Greetings people - Well, I've had this half done redesign for the website sitting around for a good four months or so now so I figured I'd just plaster on the bloody thing, fully complete or not. So you might notice half of the website is a clean new css based design, with a chunky ol' table based heart. So what the hell's been going on you ask? Why was the last post in December last year? Let's just say, don't get old if you want to succesfully run a comic strip. Too much "big boy" stuff gets in the way (however, I do own a house now as one of the results of the past half year's events, which is awesome). I can't say the prospect of new Digicomics in the near future is terribly likely unfortunately, although I would like to get back to them eventually. Before that I'd like to try my hand at some flash cartoons, specifically of Casual Jim. The idea of playing around with various amusing sound effects and silly voices is quite appealling to me, as would it be to all. We'll see how they turn out, I'll probably post them up here even if they turn out to be utter shite. Well, maybe not utter shite. Moderately shite. The other big news is I recently aquired a Playstation. One. That's right, I'm getting into all the cool stuff people were raving about in the mid nineties. Tenchu totally rocks man. Anyway, I'll continue to post here with further progress of either Casual Jim or Digicomic stuff. Hopefully in less than half a year this time.

This is a test

I just wanted to check out this youtube embedding function. So here's Weird Al's "White and Nerdy".

Cautious Hobbity Optimism?

Good news everyone, it seems Peter Jackson probably WILL direct the Hobbit movie after all. Many of us nerds baulked at the idea of a non PJ director being given control at the last minute - presumably some sort of Michael Bay type. Of course, nothing is confirmed yet, but my mood ring has turned a more calming blue colour.

Oh, I get It

Yes, it did smash. Verily. Thanks, I was happy with the Fright Night thingy. Here is a direct link to it if my links to it above were too confusing, or if the frightnight server goes down ...

That wacky old impartial ABC

Did it smash? Nice Fright Night comic, by the way.