Month: July 2008

Categories
Gaming Home Base

PDF DVD reviews, and something Captain Kirk never would’ve put up with

Music of the SpheresA glowing review of the PDF DVD over at Flack’s site – maybe it’s just because I slaved over the thing for so long, but I think he liked it better than I did at any point. 😆 There’s also some recent activity in the DP forum thread too. As Quark once said, buy early and buy often! 😛 I’ve burned a few new copies that I just realized put this thing into its third print run. I’m still trying to see if I can get my act together and at least send a few for someone to have on hand at OVGE, but things have backed off enough that we’re in “burn about 5 at a time, and don’t burn any more until those sell” territory, so I’m not sure if I can work a 20-disc run into the budget in time for the 9th. A lot of these DVD orders are winding up paying for baby chow (well, and daddy chow too – or, in today’s case, a new sack-o’-dog-food) so I’m not throwing the money that comes in at burning a huge number of ’em in advance at the moment.

In other news, I finally got the Enterprise plaque hung on the door to my game room again, with an addition that would’ve made James T. Kirk’s head explode. I thought it was kinda funny myself – the other sign was a gag gift from someone and here I go finding a use for it.

There's a child. On my bridge.

Martian ThreatOne last note: I’m apparently never completely out of the gaming scene, because I just discovered that an upcoming repro release of the finished-but-never-released Odyssey2/Videopac game Martian Threat will utilize some artwork I cobbled together just for fun a few years ago. It will debut next month at Eurocon and will get a general (but limited – 100 or so) release afterward, with both PAL and NTSC copies available. The “frame” seen around the artwork here will probably be different, since it will almost certainly be reworked into a more traditional Videopac-style package, but that’s a good thing – there’s a lot of fine detail that would’ve been knocked out by that frame, including the work I did to make the “cockpit” look slimy, organic and alien.

Fun fact: I’ve never actually played Martian Threat before (what with it being a rare unreleased game that I don’t own and all), so I have no idea if the artwork has jack to do with what really happens in the game. 😆 You can expect a review in PDF (the site, not the DVD) late this year after I have gotten to play it.

That’s all for now.… Read more

Categories
Cooking With Code Critters

Kitten of the future

So, about three business days ago, I called eBoundhost to cancel the hosting there. Today they refunded the full amount I’d paid them. Good as their word. Still no sign of a refund from Globat. Heh.

Other good news: Phosphor Dot Fossils is nearing completion in database form! The entire arcade section – 200+ entries – is now in the database, and I have deleted the old HTML files. I’ve got fewer than 100 entries left to move over, and most of them are in the 2600 section. I figured, since I’m stuck with Globat for a little bit longer, I’d use the time to get more stuff moved over before we try to migrate again.

I fell in love with a kitten this weekend. … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Music ToyBox

Dancin’ with Delia and other random thoughts

You know, anymore, it seems like 50% of everything I blog about has something to do with Doctor Who. I really don’t try to do that deliberately, but it just kinda happens. I’m on a Who high at the moment – even rewatched Turn Left on Sci-Fi tonight. I’ve been kinda bummed lately, so I guess I’m clinging tenaciously to whatever has most recently brought a smile to my face. *shrug*

That also means clinging tenaciously to a certain baby. He’s now cruising around the house under his own power, delighting in his mobility, practicing standing up at every possible opportunity, and finding new and exciting objects that he really shouldn’t even think about putting in his mouth, and yet manages to at least think about doing it anyway. He loves chasing Oberon. Poor Obi woke up today, having slept most of the day away in Evan’s bouncy chair, to find Evan standing over him. You could see the fear: oh my God, he’s going to be able to chase me around now. 😆 Today I read him “Sammy, The White House Mouse,” a book that was given to me when I was an extremely young’un – it still has my nameplate sticker in the front of the book. I hadn’t read it in…well…let’s say 30+ years. I’m glad I still have so many of those old books of mine hanging around. (I’m loathe to do away with a book that isn’t a duplicate.) … Read more

Categories
Television & Movies Write, Write, You Bloody Well Write

Ramblings from the TARDIS basement

Journey's EndI’d give you my thoughts on the Doctor Who finale, but I decided to just save it for the episode guide this time; you can find it here (but feel free to come back here and comment/debate/tell me I’m as crazy as Davros). For whatever it’s worth, I liked it much better than the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of the same name. 😆

In case I haven’t bragged about it enough yet, this week also wraps up our guide to the entire original series; before the new season began, and back when Evan was itty bitty and napping much of the time, I realized that I had 13 gaps in the original series guide, fitting neatly alongside the 13 episodes that were, at the time, still to come from this season. So I watched and/or listened to those episodes that I hadn’t covered, wrote reviews, and rolled them out side-by-side along with the new season episodes. The guide to 45 years of TV Doctor Who on this site is now finished.

So naturally, what’s next is to rewrite it all. 😆 … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code

Big booma

Friday was a fun day. A really, really fun day. Where to begin?

Just the fact that people have been responding to the blog again is an indicator that the site’s been a bit more cooperative lately, especially on the database end, so I’ve been taking the opportunity to convert more HTML stuff to database entries while I can, as fast as possible, before I migrate the site to a new hosting service. The past two or three days have seen some really good progress on the Phosphor Dot Fossils front – I’m coming down the home stretch on getting all arcade game entries moved over, and I’m making good progress through the dauntingly large number of Atari 2600 reviews.

And then, all of a sudden, that whole portion of the site…just…stopped…working. Period. … Read more

Categories
ToyBox

Death to plastic twisties!

In case the Screaming Angel in the previous post didn’t tip anybody off, I actually opened a few action figures that have been piled up in a corner of my room tonight. Much like I’m the antithesis of a game collector who has to have all of his Atari cartridges in the box and in the shrinkwrap (never mind the fact that the shrinkwrap will eventually damage the box), I’m the antithesis of the toy collector: I open the bloody things and put them on a shelf. I just don’t have the room to keep the original packaging around anymore, except in very special cases or the very, very small handful of dupes I own. So out they come.

The odd mention of a stack of still-packaged figures in the corner, however, is a particular quirk of mine: I keep a few of my latest acquisitions in their packaging for a rainy day. As silly as it sounds for someone who’s a couple of weeks away from being 36, one of the greatest joys of my childhood, and still a guilty pleasure now, was cracking little Star Wars guys off of the card and out of the bubble. I’ve found that having a couple of these around, waiting to be opened, is a nice tonic for my soul when I’ve been down in the dumps.

But man, have things changed since Star Wars was in the theaters. There’s no more “just tear the bubble off the backing” anymore. Now the bubble has two components: the front (the outside) and the back, which is molded to hold that specific figure plus whatever goodies come with it. And these days, more often than not, it takes either a machete or an act of Congress to get the figure out of the package. Or every member of Congress wielding a machete. All the better to cut all those flippin’ plastic twisties with, my dear.

It’s my understanding that these are seen as an anti-shoplifting measure – as easy as it was in the old days to break a new figure out of the bubble at home, it was also that easy to do it in the store, leave the card and the empty bubble on the peg, and slip the figure into one’s pocket. Obviously, that’s less likely to happen with 6+ plastic twisties restraining the figure like it’s a wild animal on an operating table. But it annoys me to no end when I’ve bought the thing and I can’t even set it free. Makes me want to suggest something more along the lines of buying a CD – put it in a case that has to be unlocked at the register or something. C’mon, guys. You’re stealing my moment of joy.… Read more