Skull leaving PvP?

And just 3 months later, it happens, just as I (and likely many others) predicted. Skull appears to be preparing to leave the PvP offices for good.

Now, I can tell you right now that there is no way in hell Kurtz is actually going to allow his fuzzy, silly comedic foil to simply disappear in a puff of smoke. Skull isn’t going anywhere: long-term. Oh, sure, he might be out of the storyarc for a little while while the rest of the cast attempts to visualize trudging on through life sans their favorite furry companion. But Kurtz is not permanently removing Skull from the comic. So just stop thinking that that’s where he’s headed with this, because I can guarantee you with 100% confidence that that will never happen.

I don’t like to attempt to second-guess a creator’s intent, but there’s a small part of me that suspects that after a lengthy reprise, filled with heartwarming trips down memory lane, some humorous peeks into Jade and Brent’s newly-formed marital relationship, and maybe another side-story somewhere else, Skull will simply find himself reassigned to Francis. You heard it here first.

In any case, once again, Scott has glued me to his comic. Congrats, man – 10 years and counting, and you’ve still got me here.

Fun online tools: blippr mini-reviews

So, I’ve been hooked on blippr lately. What is it? It’s a simple site where you can leave and peruse reviews for movies, video games, and books. The catch is that in Twitter fashion, your reviews can only be a maximum of 160-characters.

I love this service for one very obvious reason. When I ask a friend whether or not they enjoyed a book, movie, or game that I’m even remotely interested in, they don’t sit me down and begin to unravel every aspect of the story, de-mystifying the artistic style and languishing laboriously over every minute detail of the dichotomy of the main protagonist versus the foul, despicable villain.

No, they tell me very simply “sure, you should check it out, because” [insert 1 fairly straight-forward sentence on the reasoning behind why I may or may not enjoy said piece of entertainment]. That’s it. Sure, once I’ve seen/read/played it as well, we will then begin to languish laboriously over every minute detail, but until then, I just need a trusted source to either give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, with just a quick blurb about why. All I need is a blip.

It’s still in beta, obviously, so I’ll be continuing to play around with the site. I’ve been periodically dumping in some feedback about some of the features. They have a handy system for importing an Amazon wish list into their system, which is a phenomenal idea for tracking and eventually blipping content once digested – if it actually worked, that is. Hopefully that’s something they get smoothed out because I can see myself utilizing that feature heavily.

In the meantime, I’ve added an RSS feed of my blips to the sidebar there on the right, and in the movies listing down on the far left, I’ll be adding a link to the blips for each movie as they become available.

My thanks go out to Chris Harris (@charris1980 | FriendFeed) of the #dmtweetup group for pointing me towards blippr.

Happy (belated) Mother’s Day!

I don’t ordinarily post on the weekends, so I didn’t get an opportunity to bid mothers everywhere a happy day of rejoicing in the fact that they exist. For those curious, this photo demonstrates how my wonderful wife chose to spend some of her special day.

More pictures of her superior karting skills and the boys watching in awe can be found on our photostream.

For the record, the wife got two excellent cards (one from me, and another just from the boys). A handful of crafting and kids activity books that she wanted ordered off of Amazon, and a gift card to iTunes. She also got a spur-of-the-moment hankering for some pad thai, so we hoofed it into Des Moines late in the afternoon to pick some up.

My own mother got a card from the boys that was extraordinarily appropriate, and nothing else other than our visit and love. She hates it when we spend money on her, so we didn’t. We’re all (the siblings) planning to go over at some point during the late spring / early summer and put fresh wallpaper up in their bedroom. I guess that’s a present? Sure. Let’s call it that.

All in all, a fairly mundane day, but one where the wife got to rest, relax, not cook, and – most importantly – not care.

It’s the little things in life.

WiiWare launches today!

Today is WiiWare launch day! So, when I get home today, I’ll have some purchasing decisions to make. Luckily, those decisions will be relatively easy.

  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. This one’s a no-brainer. It’s a Final Fantasy building sim that looks gorgeous. Sure, it’s $15, but I was just going to waste that cash on our energy bill anyway. Viva la SquEnix!
  • Lostwinds. Have you seen videos of this game in motion? Once you do, you too will wonder how you got by without games that look that excellent. And it’s only $10.
  • Dr. Mario Online Rx. I have to get this for the wife. Case closed. (though it’s not like I won’t enjoy it, too). Also $10.

So, yeah. Let’s see. Add that all up, carry the 1, and — wow. $35, huh? Hmmm. Okay, I might have to rethink this strategy.

Posting this photo is an absolute must

I couldn’t resist. These pictures were taken over at my sister’s house a couple of weeks ago. Does my toddler look absolutely adorable wearing novelty Hulk hands? I submit to you that he most definitely does. Not only that, but he’s got a mean right hook and could probably clean my clock with those monstrosities on his tiny fists.

More of his Hulk tomfoolery photos can be found here.

My creative project for the past few days: Minific!

I haven’t crafted a drawing or written much fiction lately. Instead, I’ve been working on another creative endeavor: Minific.

Minific physically is nothing more than a pretty front-end for the Twitter tweme #minific. Conceptually, it’s much more. It’s a store house for bursts of creative insight. A repository for a flash of fiction. An ever-changing, always interesting cascade of inventive ideas and original voices.

Who has contributed since it’s inception? (besides myself, of course). So far, Kevin Lawver, the creator of the phenomenal Ficlets (from which I drew a majority of the inspiration for assembling Minific), as well as Joey Manley, founder of Modern Tales, Webcomics Nation, and co-conspirator for Josh Roberts’ ComicSpace. But honestly, I’m not so interested in who is contributing as I am in what is being written. What scant few bursts are already available are brilliant in their simplicity, and I eagerly look forward to seeing more posted in the weeks and months to come.

So, if you have a Twitter account, and a 131-character creative thought to spare, might I suggest you head over to Minific and give it a shot? It’s probably easier to do that you could have possibly imagined.

One more reason to like Twitter more than Pownce

The way FriendFeed handles Pownce entries. I caught a tweet in FriendFeed that Jeremy Brooks cross-posted to Pownce. Note that there is a URL in the tweet. In the Twitter tweet, the text is plain, and the link is clickable. In the Pownce post, the entire text is clickable, but links back to the Pownce entry on Jeremy’s Pownce profile. So to visit the corresponding link takes two clicks: once to Pownce, and another to get to the website.

It’s not a dealbreaker, but I keep looking for reasons to use Pownce, and all I ever see anymore are reasons not to.

Nerdflood forum at Lefora

I saw a note pop up on Robert Scoble’s FriendFeed regarding a nifty new free forum service called Lefora. I thought I might as well try it out to see if it’s just as quick and easy to setup and manage as Scoble made it sound. So, I’ve created a Nerdflood forum that I don’t expect to use, but would love to see if I could get a handful of people into to try it out. I might have to try and coerce some of the #dmtweetup crew into checking it out with me.

Field trip!

Yesterday, I got to go on a field trip with my pre-kindergarten son to Living History Farms. It was a great trip, full of the amazement of experiencing new things reflected in the eyes of a child, as well as the enjoyment of listening to the wonderfully innocent and infallible humor of 5 year olds.

I’m currently in the process of getting the photos loaded to Flickr. Once I find some that I can share, I’ll get them posted here – with commentary.