New webcomic posted today

I know that I “retired” from webcomickry over at Evil Avatar Comics, but I just can’t stay away. I have an itch to create poorly drawn comics, and I find that I can only do that in the relative safety of the Evil Avatar community. So, I created a new comic, called Metroid Concepts in our Current World, and I posted it in the super-secret subscribers forum of the site. So, you can’t actually see it unless you are a paid subscriber to EvAv.

But, hey — you want in on a secret? I also posted the comic at my ComicSpace. You can find it here. It’s actually the first in a series, and I’ll be posting all of them at ComicSpace. The idea of the comics is simple, but probably only interesting to Metroid fans. You see, in the comic, I’m taking the standard elements of the Metroid universe, and seeing how they would be applied to our current world. People who aren’t familiar with the somewhat eccentric conventions of the games would likely be a bit lost viewing these comics. Just a fair warning.

I’m currently planning to post a new comic every couple of weeks or so.

Enjoy (if you like Metroid)!

Three-day weekend!

Gotta love our Labor Day weekend. Let’s celebrate working by not!

I’ve got a lot of Metroid on the plate for the weekend, obviously, with a picnic on Monday, provided the father-in-law opts out of visiting. I never know how those sort of things are going to end up. I just let the wife plan everything for us, and I just show up when and where she tells me to.

So long as there’s burgers and beer brats on the grill somewhere, I’m good.

Have a great weekend, all!

CSS elite: cover your ears

Overheard on Evil Avatar (can’t link directly to the thread because it’s in the subscribers section):

Christ, I think the motto for CSS should be “maybe I should just use a table”.

I would counter the man’s argument with a list of all the benefits CSS provides, if it weren’t for the fact that even a card-carrying CSS evangelist like me has uttered this very phrase at least once in pretty much every web design project I have ever undertaken.

Sad, but true.

I feel ‘ugh’. That’s my mood, right there: ‘ugh’

I have discovered a brand new back pain up near my neck that made it impossible to be upbeat last night. That combined with an entire family of cold sufferers and me feeling on the horrendous side of miserable kept me from being able to play Metroid last night.

Can you get withdrawal symptoms after just one night? Probably not, but I absolutely have to play tonight because that box sitting up on top of the TV is simply screaming to be played, and I don’t have the heart to ignore it any further.

My head grogginess has even clogged up my ability to type readable sentences. Ugh.

Metroid Prime 3: I can haz bad revyooz now?

Because LOL language is fun. And giving Nintendo games bad review scores is “in”, apparently.

I should preface this by saying, no, I haven’t yet played the game. That will change Tuesday evening. I really shouldn’t be tossing in my 2-cents judging reviews for games that I haven’t yet touched.

But, oh, wait! This is my blog? And I can say whatever the hell I want? Awesome. I think I’ll have me some of that there freedom.

Checking out Metacritic, it appears as though the title is currently garnering a 91 composite score. Of course, you first have to toss aside the masturbatory 100 received from Nintendo Power. Yes, it’s shocking, I know, to see that Nintendo’s own magazine gave one of its own titles a perfect score. Then, unfortunately, you have to also toss out the pathetic attempt GameSpot put forth to actually create a relevant review of a Wii title. Metroid Prime 3 gains a meager 8.5 from the eviscerators. They’ve demonstrated time and again that they care not for the “wagglerific” Wii and its plethora of “mini-games”. They really shouldn’t be entrusted with the task, as tiresome as it appears to be for them, but I guess that whole “freedom” thing I happened to mention earlier sort of plays into this situation. The truly unfortunate part of this is the fact that GameSpot’s reputation allows their laughable scores to be included in the Metacritic average score tabulation.

But, to be perfectly honest, maybe GameSpot’s scoring isn’t the problem here. Perhaps they are scoring on a more realistic scale, and it’s everyone else that is just not able to catch up to their enhanced scoring methods. Maybe Metroid Prime 3 does deserve an 8.5, and Twilight Princess deserves an 8.8, and Bioshock deserves a 9. Maybe everyone else is skewing GameSpot’s results, not the other way around.

The funny part is that you really won’t hear many people complain about GameSpot’s reviews.

At least, not until they give Halo 3 an 8.2.

My Begindergartener

By the way, tomorrow, Caleb starts “Begindergarten”. That’s what they call pre-K in this school district.

This bears repeating.

My first born son. Starts. School. Tomorrow.

There aren’t enough clever IM-based acronyms to convincingly communicate this sense of complete and utter disbelief.

My son is going to school. I submit to you that he is infinitely more prepared for this than I am.

Oh. Em. Gee.

Iowa State Fair

Last Monday, Amanda, myself, and Amanda’s mother all gathered up the boys and several backpacks filled with supplies and trekked out to the Iowa State Fair. It’s a yearly pilgrimage, and a welcome one at that. I feel as though this year we didn’t get to see everything we would have liked. While we got to check out the butter cow and the butter Harry Potter, sample many exotic fried fair foods (as well as my annual lamb burger), and even watch a concert on the Bill Riley stage, there were a few things left off the list for the sake of the children. We never even managed to get up the giant hill this year, so the Pioneer hall remained untouched by our presence. No brief glimpses of the fantastic photography, pottery, or other artistic efforts nestled within the confines of the Cultural Center. No Pork Producers tent. No wood and/or ice carving exhibitions. No lions, tigers, OR bears. Just lots of smelly animals (that I used to take care of myself, back in THE DAY), arms covered in tattoos, hot sweaty faces, ice cream, and sore feet. And the general good feeling that Amanda and I are doing what we can to keep the boys familiar with their small farming community roots.

Oh, and Dan Wardell. Caleb has an unhealthy fascination with that man. Photos of our day can be found at Flickr.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition

This is probably for the best, seeing as how I gave away all my 3rd edition D&D materials to Ziggurat Con.

A more generous reading would cite all the extracurricular work that Wizards is putting into community building for D&D. Launching alongside the new edition of the rules is what the company is calling D&D Insider, a suite of web tools aimed at easing some of the more time-consuming involved in setting up a campaign. D&D Insider will feature character and campaign-building tools, as well as a “virtual tabletop” that will enable players and game masters to congregate remotely. In tandem with its for-gamers social networking site Gleemax, it seems that Wizards is putting forth an admirable effort toward making D&D play better with the internets.

In all honesty, an update would be fantastic at this point. Creating a new set of rules that coincide with a realistic implementation of web-based assistance tools and automated configuration utilities would be an amazing stroke of genius that Wizards should have figured out for the 3rd edition launch. I’m glad they’re catching up, though, and I’m excited to see it expand onto a serious internet effort.