February 26, 2007
Webcomic Lovin’
In which I give props to certain web-comics (or things that are close enough) that you may not have heard about. Many of these are fairly new, some of them are just things I wasn’t aware of before.
Punch and Pie: A spin-off of Queen of Wands
Emma: Steampunkish Fantasy Goodness
Dreamland Chronicles: Holy smokes, a bi-weekly 3-D comic
Dresden Codak: Philosophy and Weird Science
Looking for Group: Typical Fantasy Comic; Atypical World of Warcraft Comic
The Perry Bible Fellowship: This thing keeps winning awards but I keep missing it, reminds me a lot of Bill Plympton, who was my favorite animator some time in the late eighties
Sure, I have serious, dreary comics in my mix, but they’ve been there a while, so it was time to punch it up with bright colors and puppies. Exploding puppies, perhaps, but puppies all the same.
Posted by jenkins at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2006
Capsule Review: Dead Man’s Chest
Did I like it? Yes. Was it as good as the first? No. Read on for my 99% Spoiler-Free review.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a fun movie about love interrupted, greed, and doing the right thing. Surprisingly, not the Disney version of "doing the right thing" but a version more closely in line with the real world. Dead Man's Chest is much darker but, unfortunately, weaker version of the original.
The Good: ILM is not always dead-on (The Mummy Returns, for instance), but except in very few cases here they've absolutely nailed the special effects. The story is good, but Jack Sparrow is much more of a bumbling buffoon than drunken master in deference to focus more upon the Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann characters - and a few other re-appearances. The story isn't much about Jack at all, but that's okay.
The Bad: The things that Disney shoves down your throat, which they don't do in the first movie because they didn't expect it to succeed this well. But now they have you, and they're going to do things to you that you don't necessarily want. The fortunate part is they don't do it much, which takes the pressure off. There are enough that different people will see different problems, and some that I didn't notice, just be warned that they're there.
The Ugly: I didn't like how in Matrix Revolutions the movie ended and they tacked on an extra five-minute teaser scene in attempt to tie it into the next movie. I don't like it here, either. It's not the cliffhanger it is in Matrix II but it can't help but smack of "oh no, what will happen next!"
In second place is that it is not always clear where people are.
Defining Moment: Will Turner, looking for Jack Sparrow, very quickly goes through the first half of the first movie in about thirty seconds. You might miss it. Dead Man's Chest has a lot of this; every so often there's something - from a nod to a scene that's uncomfortably out-of-place - that harkens back to the first movie, to the original Pirates ride, or both.
And, as in X3, stay to the end for fun, after-credits huzzah.
Posted by jenkins at 3:32 PM | Comments (0)
June 9, 2006
Muy Fabuloso!
Today is Fabuloso Friday courtesy of Ze Frank, normally a liberal comentating New York performance blog artist (performance … art … blogger … comment … hell, just watch it). This Friday, he harnessed the power of Wiki to let his general watching audience to write his script for him. Is this truly Fabuloso? I don’t know, but it’s a great distraction during half-time.
Posted by jenkins at 3:50 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2006
All Things New and Sparkly
My CRT monitor died. I was rather sad, because it was a 20” half-width CRT made for doing graphics work, and a steal at $60. It twitched, then it flatlined.
I had a spare LCD (from when a company went completely bankrupt) but it was not something for matching colors. Or even reading text. (When the iLiad comes out, I’m going to have to restrain myself heartily to to just walk out and buy one that day.)
Faced with the fact that I had to buy a new monitor, I skipped the CRT option entirely, though it would undoubtedly have been cheaper, and instead got this one:
I feel much better, now.
Posted by jenkins at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2006
Word Baloons
I can like comic books. Honest! Check out what grabbed my attention on Thursday.
I have no idea what it's about, yet, but I figure it's got copious overprinting and smoking guys with suits (which never ends well). As long as it's not "Clerks meets Reservoir Dogs", I think it'll be fine, not that it'd be hard to combine the dialogue of the two.
Posted by jenkins at 5:22 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Phoney
A few months ago I got myself a cellphone. I was trying to hold back, because I was planning for it to be an only-when-I’m-going-out, in-case-of-emergency sort of thing. So far, I have bought two accessories for it. The first was a leather case for the effect of me running into and dropping things, giving nearly anything I own a well-worn look after just a few weeks.
The second is a handset. I’m sure some of you have seen it.
Considering that I’ve also uploaded a bunch of MIDIs to my phone, I don’t think I can say any more that I’m using the thing just for rare necessity.
Posted by jenkins at 2:01 PM | Comments (1)
January 12, 2006
Websexy
I never felt right installing the Windows Media Player for Macintosh, not because it’s Microsoft but because it installed some hundred-odd files onto my computer. What are all those files doing? Not knowing (and, this being Microsoft, not trusting), I’d simply avoid all WMV files possible, at least those that weren’t old enough to play on VLC.
And so we now have Flip4Mac, a 4-file solution. (App, Quicktime Plug, Webpage Plug, and Preference Pane.) Well, I say “now” because I’ve just discovered it, and I feel a lot better for it.
Posted by jenkins at 3:32 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Talk Like a Pirate Day
Yes, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day again, and with a site decked out like this one, how can I avoid doing some of it? I will promise to say “Yar” at least a few times today. Honest.
Posted by jenkins at 2:07 AM | Comments (0)
September 4, 2005
Dos e Zero
I thought I’d lose my voice cheering and kill my knees by jumping around. It was that good.
Posted by jenkins at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2005
Have you Seen?
Have you seen what I’ve been doing lately?
Posted by jenkins at 4:13 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Firefly
If you or someone you love has never seen Firefly, there is hope.
Do not make a big deal of this, because nothing makes me want to throw someone to the sharks quicker than someone who is too enthusiastic about something. It takes all the fun out of it. However, they must see it. They must. Absolutely. Nothing I can say about it will do it justice, or make it better, or even make it comprehendible.
Sure, this is probably just a publicity stunt before the Serenity movie, but some things deserve it.
Posted by jenkins at 1:46 AM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2005
Some Things Best Left Said
It seems that, under my nose, Merriam-Webster went out onto the net and sought out the most popular words that weren’t in the dictionary.
Mine is: oop (interj): a comment of slight surprise or realization of a mistake too small for a whole “oops”
Posted by jenkins at 1:38 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
More Pirate Standards
Beware the Literary Pirate.
(The designer of this flag did not know you could spell “Catie” with a “C” and has since been flogged and thrown in the brig.)
Posted by jenkins at 4:31 PM | Comments (1)
May 17, 2005
Even Sweet Girls Get the Urge to Pillage
Don’t hurt me.
Posted by jenkins at 5:32 PM | Comments (6)
May 15, 2005
Pirate Chicks
Pirate chicks wear color-coordinated eye-patches.
Posted by jenkins at 5:21 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2005
Vroom
I would like one of these, please!Posted by jenkins at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)