Happy birthday to me. Nothing but links to things I like today. So that’s it. Seeya later, dudes.
“Tonight I dine on turtle soup!”
Ah. It’s nice having everyone else go off to work and school all day. It won’t last long though, so I’ll be making sure to relish it. I’ll be noting a few important things today, and that will probably tide over my need to post for a week or so.
First things first, I finally got around to watching my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DVD. It took me all day to watch those nine episodes, and I loved every minute of it. It’s hard for me to remember the show at all, since the last time I watched it on TV must be well over 8 or so years by now, and watching a couple episodes really brought me back to the good old days. Damn, do I feel old saying that. Anyhow, it was an overall pleasant day, dog crapping all over the living room aside, and I even learned a couple things (none relevant to anything, of course). You remember when I complained about how there were only five “regular” episodes on the TMNT DVD? Well it turns out that those five episodes are indeed the entire first season. And then the four bonus episodes are from season ten, two of which are from a 5-part mini-series that aired in Europe as a pseudo-movie. “Never before seen” my ass. Ah, the things I would never have known without the good old TV Tome.
In other news, my brother has been spending entire days on the computer lately because… He’s got a website? Arooo? I guess I should give you the link, as I would with any other website I mention, so here you go. As much as I hate to say it, there are a couple funny things there. Most are horrible spelling mistakes, which is for the most part only funny to me (I find spelling errors funny because I’m great at spelling, like a mathemagician (Yes, I think people who are good at math are using magic (God I use too many parentheses)) would with mathematical errors), but there are a couple other things that made me laugh out loud as well.
I gots me the Pikmin 2 a while ago (I just couldn’t resist. I’m weak) and it is a truly amazing game. I played through Pikmin several times over because I loved it so much, and the sequel is about a zillion times longer. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am drawing close, and I’ve only barely scratched the surface of the excellent (and hard!) new Challenge Mode, which just happens to allow cooperative play. The 2P-Battle mode is also a blast, featuring a sort of capture the flag gameplay, but substituting a marble for the flag. Plus, you almost have to work together with your opponent to stomp the neutral enemies roaming about while still trying to get away with his marble, giving it a kind of Four Swords-esqe mix of cooperation and competition. If you were putting off buying the first Pikmin even though you loved it, this is exactly what the doctor ordered. Definitely a wad of bills well spent.
Still haven’t fixed the banner… I want to, but it’s just a task that I don’t have the patience to complete. Can’t put it off forever though…
That’s all for now. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything that I wanted to say, so I’m out. This is RyanMan reporting on the scene for Torrential Equilibrium News. Back to you, Gene.
Tweaking on Pepsi and sleep deprivation…
Yeah. Not feeling too good right now, and very very twitchy. As you can see above, new banner is made, but looks like crap. Sorry, accidentally saved it as JPG and don’t have copy of source image. I’ll fix it tomorrow… later… or something. And I’ll add up some new pictures and such to the gallery between now and Wednesday. Holy crap, need sedative. Scanner for birthday, and working nicely. That is where my new gallery posties come from. I’ve told you they’ll be there, so not gonna make a new post when I put ’em up. Even this post is containing very little. Must stretch out longer, but want to go run in circles. I drew two really cool things today. A battle-damaged robot man and a cowboy. The cowboy is bad ass. He’s got a huge chin. And stubble. Those will be up, and there will be different drawing phases of them too. Like penciled, inked and colored and that stuff. Not going to go into CG for them though. I like the hand-done stuff good. OK, that’s enough for now, I need to go run a few laps around something. Adios.
Band of the Month – September ’04
Yes, it’s that time again. Time for me to take a band and review it! Only, this time I kinda misjudged how much time I actually have to do it, so this one is probably going to be a little short and typo-filled. But in light of that little oopsie, the show must go on.
September’s BotM is one of my favorite (and apparently not too well-known) rock n’ roll bands, Firehouse. While most hair/rock n’ roll bands were having their best times in the 80’s, Firehouse started up (or at least released their first album) in the 90’s. Probably right after the tides of pop culture had shifted, and this could be why they aren’t quite as popular as say, Poison. Actually, I don’t really have any idea exactly how popular or whatnot they were, but nobody I know personally has ever heard of them, so I can only assume that they’ve spend most of their career just under the big time radar. Nevertheless, they’ve released a grand total of 6 albums, one hits collection and one live performance disc, spanning all the way from 1990 to 2003. Not bad, I say.
While I’ve never been able to track down any of these discs (and looking at the track lists, I know I’d pick up at least one or two), I have listened to a lot of their stuff, and I’ll just make various assumptions about some of the CDs. The first one, a self-titled debut (which seems like a rather common way to name a debut), is all-around pretty awesome. It’s got a lot of their best stuff, like “All She Wrote” and “Shake & Tumble”. Also in this little bundle of joy is “Oughta Be a Law”, which at first listen I thought was Motley Crue. Possibly my favorite song on the CD too. And then down near the end is without a doubt their best slow song “Love of a Lifetime”. The next release was Hold Your Fire, and I’ve only heard one song from it, “When I Look Into Your Eyes”, which is pretty good, but if I based it alone versus any of the songs off Firehouse, it really wouldn’t hold a candle the the first disc.
Next up comes 3. Short, appropriate, and to the point. Not generally what you look for in an album title, but it works well. Again, I’ve heard very little music from this disc, and I can’t make an appropriate judgement of this CD. But the few songs I have heard were pretty good, so the rest is probably along that track somewhere. Then came the hits collection, Good Acoustics. Haven’t heard every single song on this one, but it’s a hits collection. It has to be good if it’s made up of their best stuff. After that comes Category 5 which seems pretty good, if a bit out of order. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as though slower songs work best near the end of a CD, especially with rock bands, and this one’s got a really slow song, “Dream” right in the number 4 spot. But it starts with another of my favorites, “Can’t Stop The Pain”, so I’m not going to ding any points.
And that brings us to the live CD, entitled Bring ’em Out Live. This is pretty much a second hits album, just recorded at a live show. Then we get to the twentieth century albums, O2 and Prime Time, both which I have never heard a single song from. But I have read a couple reviews of them on Amazon and the reviewers seem to think that they don’t even come close to the stuff on the first two releases, so I guess that’s all I’m able to tell you about ’em.
As a quick conclusion, I love the music. It’s really not quite up to par with some of the bigger bands of the genre, but it could fill in in a pinch. I’d love to talk about what parts of the music I like, but I really have no clue what’s going on there. I’m not really licensed to review music. Anyhow, great band, and you should definitely download a couple songs to see what they’re like. And if you ever, EVER see one of their CDs in a store, you tell me. That’s an order. I guess this got a little longer than I expected, but there was quite a bit to say. And to make up for what’ll probably become a post drought (yes, this month will probably be pretty uneventful), here are some links that I fancy.
Ninja Turtles anime, reviewed – Yes, a Ninja Turtles anime. You will be 100% surprised at what goes on here. Unless you’ve seen it, of course. But still. Six pages of wacky Japanicised Ninja Turtles. I’m still in shock. And toying with the idea of squid ink pizza.
TMNT musics! – More turtles. A bit of an overdose for a normal people, but for a TMNT fanboy like myself, this is just icing on the cake that was that review. Oh, and they’re soundtracks and such from different TMNT stuff, like that live concert (which I have the original tape of!).
The Number 000 Blues – *sigh* Another webcomic. I’ve gotta stop reading new ones. It’s just too much to keep up with. This one’s a sprite comic about what goes on behind the scenes before and during the first MegaMan game. Pretty interesting for someone such as myself, probably mundane for someone such as yourself.
Spider-Man reviews crayons – If you thought the bullshit was done, here’s some more! Seriously, if anyone but Matt (except maybe -RoG- of I-Mockery) had done it, it would be stupid as hell. But somehow, it works and it’s hilarious. Must be another six pages here, but it’s mostly pictures.
Articles and rants and dogs! Oh my!
Remember yesterday when I promised I’d write an article? Well I did it. Surprised you, didn’t I? You can find it here. And now that that is done, I have some news.
Nobody will really care too much about this one, but we finally got a new van. That’s right, no more rickety bucket for us! It’s a 2001 Windstar Sport and it’s pretty sweet as far as I care. It’s really a nice van, and it sure beats the hell out of old red. Everyone in the family is pretty worked up about it, so I figured it was important enough news to mention on the site. And since the news is out of the way, it’s ranting time! I’ve got a monkey on my back, and it’s screaming for a rant. Oh it’s screaming. And it’s an angry rant, too!
What the hell is with stupid kids and their shitty websites? I really have no place in ranting about something as such, as my site is very novice-style, and I just got over my huge design change, but really people. This goes out to every kid who’s signed up with a free webspace provider in hopes of making a personal site with no actual relevance. I hate you all for creating such crap and polluting the already shit-on-by-not-nerds internet. Your little pages are 100% crap. You have no reason to have webspace, and I hate you for wasting the time of everyone who stumbles upon your crap.
Now you may be saying something along the lines of “but Ryan, your website isn’t exactly purposeful or relevant to anything.”, and you know what, you’re right. But at least my website has stuff on it that people can use for even a small bit of entertainment. the sites that I’m talking about are a dime a hundred dozen, and I can run down every element of them without breaking a sweat.
The index page is possibly the worst. Littered with tons of gifs and usually a full MP3 (loading hell for dial-up), they have a scant “hey this is my *current buzzword* website. It’s real kewl and I hopes you love it. luv ya, -*owner*” And it doesn’t stray too much from that. Sometimes there might be another phrase or something describing the “content” of the site, which is never much. Oh yes, and it’s almost always written in a terrible combination of net-speak and keyboard symbols. See my mock page for an example of this jargon.
The second page on the page list is the “all about me” page. This one is always the same too, giving out every single detail of personal information that this person has, including full name, exact location, and about three trillion photos. My parents never wanted me to have a web site so that I would never put this information out on the internet, but I went and did it anyway, becasue there’s one little factor that plays a big role in this. I was a 16-year-old male when I made this. Low predator rate there. Not zero, but a helluva lot lower than for 11- to 15-year-old girls, the group that makes up about 98% of the population of idiots who own these crap pages. Not only that, but these girls are flaunting all this shit about being dead sexy and how they love to get with boys and shit like that, and if you ask me, that’s just demanding that they be raped. Maybe I’m jealous because I’m ugly, but these girls really need to learn a lesson.
And next, we get the “mi friendz” pages. There are usually one or two of these, and they show a bunch of pictures of all their friends. Not only is this a waste of a page (nobody cares about your friends), but they’ve also got all their friends’ info stuffed on there as well. Maybe I’m taking this too much like a parent (How many kids have been stalked/raped because of a personal site? Not rhetorical, I’m really asking), but it angers me that people would not only tell the world who and where they are, but put out all of their friends’ personal information as well.
And then there’s the guestbook. Filled with words of praise from all of their stupid friends who think the site is so shit-hot. Are these people blind retards or do they just not register the lack of any actual content? It makes my blood boil that people will be proud of sites that are so crappy and that other people will actually go and tell them that it’s a good site. Me, I get compliments , but I also get constructive criticism. Never has anyone just flat-out said my site sucks (which would be a respectable opinion, I know it’s not as great as I want it to be), but people have commented on my writing style, what articles they liked, what articles were weak, and which parts of the site just weren’t interesting to them at all. And if this were in my guestbook, I would not just delete the post and accept only praise like these kids do. I’ve posted many a message pointing out bad points of their site and how to get around them, and every last one of those posts were deleted. To all aspiring webmasters, take advice from people who know what they’re doing (that doesn’t mean me), God knows your site will only benefit from it.
And after all this, sometimes there are other pages, like quotes pages and random pictures pages. These are equally stupid. The quotes, no so much, if you want to make a large collection of your favorite quotes, but it’s still unappealing for readers. As for random pictures pages, I have one word. Why? That is what your entire site is! Why do you have to make a whole other page for it? I’m probably being too critical about this, but if you ask anyone who has a website that isn’t described in the above paragraphs, they will probably agree with me. While it is all about creating
something that you like, it should still avoid looking like a piece of crap and having absolutely no content besides pictures of you and your friends. Unless you’re making an online photo album, but Yahoo will do that for you for free.
Oh it’s nice to have that off my chest. It’s been buggin me for a long time now, and I just needed to get it out there. It is kind of comforting to know that there is a kind of website that I hate more than the blog. If I were making what I hated most, it would look pretty bad. Heh. In light of all I’ve typed today, here are some pictures of my puppies. They’re growing quite well. On the left we have just Gizmo, and on the right are both Giz and Harley.
That’s all I neeeded to get out today, and that’s probably all I’ll be doing for a while. I’ll have the new Band of the Month pic up on the 1st, but the actual review probably won’t be seen until Sunday or so. Maybe on Thursday or Friday at the earliest, but not before that for sure. I still don’t know which band I’m reviewing.
The Dick Turtle Surprise Bag!
I’m sure that everyone has seen a surprise bag sometime in their life. They were a very common item in the candy section at dollar stores, and I’m sure that they’ve been other places during their lifespan as well. I know that lately the surprise bag population is starting to dwindle, as I’m seeing less and less of the things every time I visit a buck store. In fact, I haven’t seen any in town for the longest time, and the only place I’ve seen them in the last 5 or so years is at the Bargain Shop out in Lac du Bonnet. And even there they don’t restock the things.
So while we were out there this past weekend, I made it a point to go find one. Sadly, the Nintendo Surprises are totally extinct, and even the Nintendo gum packs are gone without a trace. So I had to settle with one of the lesser brands of surprise bags. I had two choices at hand, one was a pack of random “fun size” candy packs, but the bag displayed what would be in the pack, and that just totally kills the surprise. So, I went with my second, less sanitary-looking choice.
And then we get to the bottom of the package, which has promises of cosmic candy, toys and novelty. For some reason, I think that I’m going to be disappointed with what’s inside. I mean with a package like the one above, how good could the contents possibly be? And what are the chances that they’ll be “cosmic”? Why does Dick Turtle have rockets for feet? Since when did turtles need or even want to go to space? At least that kind of supplies reasoning for saying that the stuff inside will be “cosmic”. Turtles are nature’s D student (according to Stewie, anyway), so there’s no way that NASA would accept them. He must be working for those greasy Russians.
Dick Turtle may not be exactly who we once thought him to be!
That’s all I’ve got. Sorry.
That’s all that came in the bag, and I can’t say I’m impressed. Surprised, but not impressed. The candy was old looking and probably poisoned, and the “toys” were boring and common. I still wish I hadn’t put those fangs in my mouth. I’m also pretty pissed at how they totally changed their mascot halfway through the bag. But I guess that it’s not exactly made for people like myself. It really is more of a children’s novelty. In the end though, it made some great review material. There really wasn’t a lot to review though, so I thought I’d add in a little bonus material.
It’s not much, but I was making a bunch of characters on my brother’s “Smackdown: Shut Your mouth” game this weekend. It’s not only a great way to while away the time, but it also satiates my need to create. I made a lot of them and decided that since I did pretty good jobs on the ones based on real characters, I wanted to show them off a little. So I took some screencaps and here they are. Make sure to click on the pics to see some more stuff.
In the end, I’m just really happy that I’ve made it to 1000 hits. I thought 500 was pretty damn big. And the fact that the site is almost two years old is just the icing on the cake. I never really figured that I’d care about the site longer than a couple of months (just look at Quest for the Cube), but I’ve made it a lot farther than most personal web sites do, and I’ve even had some people who don’t know me e-mail me with compliments. Hah, I guess this December, I’ll have to throw some kind of celebration event. But that’s something to think about another day.
Looks like I made it
I go to the cottage for four days, and look what happens. My hit counter made it to 1000! Huzzah! I am the new Webmaster Grand Champion*. I guess this deserves some kind of celebratory something. Maybe I’ll learn Flash and make an animation by tomorrow. Nah, too much trying invoved with that. Instead, I’ll just whip up some kind of article or something. Actually, that shouldn’t be too hard… I have just recently acquired some great material…
Anywho, my birthday is in about ten days. Buy me this. Seriously. I’ll be getting a scanner in no less than that amount of time, so I’ll be able to add tons and tons of my “artwork” to the site for all to see and critique. I drew a few “comic strips” this weekend that I really like, so you can expect to see those up right as soon as I get that scanner. Those, and a whole art book full of crap that contains a lot of drawings and sketches, even some from years ago.
Now why am I getting all excitied about being able to scan up my art book? Well for one, I love to draw. And when I draw something that I like, I want people to see it. Drawing is my single greatest passion. I may love to play video games and writing for this site, but I love drawing even more than those. I’m very much an artist, and I guess subconsciously I started this site mainly to show off my work. And rant. I love to rant too. Not necessarily angry rants like most people do, but just ramble on about stuff that nobody would really care to hear otherwise, like this. Putting my ideas into words or pictures and putting them up for everyone to see. I really wish I could put those doodles I did this weekend up now. They’re not too original or funny but I like them. It’s probably because they mainly feature my oddball personality.
Getting back to things I can do now, I’ll have a new article up sometime tomorrow. I promise. It will be done, come sleep or Mario Sunshine. I’ve been playing that a lot lately, and after five whole days sans-Cube, I’m need a lot of CC’s of Nintendo goodness. I predict it’ll be up either just before noon or around 5-ish. There’s no way I can tell for sure, but I’m starting to think this paragraph is getting to be more procrastination than explaination. So it’s off with me for now. I’ll catch you alls on the flip side.
*Ryan is in no way the Webmaster Grand Champion
A call to drivers and rockers
On a happy note, new article! But that’s not all that I have to go on about today. Plenty of whining, good news and bad news will now ensue.
Nintendo Fusion Tour? Damn, I need to go! Featuring Story of the Year, Lost Prophets and My Chemical Romance? Damn I need to go! Three other decent bands? Oh why can’t I go? Only the closest they’re going to get to me is Minneapolis and Toronto… My birthday is soon and tickets are 20 bucks. Somebody take me! OK, the money I can handle, but I’d still need a ride and someone to go with, and that’s where other people come into play. Right now it don’t really matter who. I just wanna go! Having no car/license and girlfriend sucks every once in a while.
In other news, I might very well be going to see Van Halen when they come here in October. I’ll be going with my dad and brother, but it’s freaking Van Halen. They are the band that got me into rock n’ roll. It’s just something I have to do as a man and a rocker.
Better news yet, the X-Box that’s been dirtying up the house has been sold! Huzzah! As soon as we get rid of these Windows-based computers, the house will be Microsoft free!
Bad news, I’m out of mini bagels. This isn’t really relevant to anything, but I loved those little things.
I know there was something else I was supposed to be mentioning about now… Ah yes, Wolf Pack Productions, my favorite anime subbing group, has teamed up with Planet MegaMan to provide torrents for several entire MegaMan soundtracks. Awesome opportunity, and a wise use of your bandwidth. You know I have them all already.
That’s about all that I needed to get out of my system today. Now if you don’t mind, I haven’t played Tales of Symphonia for like a week and it’s really starting to bug me. Ryan, away!!
In the nick of time!
GorillaMask.net has gone through a major change. It’s been totally revamped, and you probably wouldn’t recognize it at a glance. And to think that I stole the site layout for myself just more than a month ago. That certainly was close. I guess this means that I’m not directly copying anyone anymore? Oh well.
There is more than that little note afoot, however. Two things, to be exact. Firstly, and it’ll be more important to my friends than anyone who’s stumbled across the site and has kept reading for whatever reason, I’m going to stop drawing new Spare! comics. As much as I loved doing it, I’ve realized that this comic endeavour is more of a big joke than anything else. Ever since I started reading Penny Arcade I’ve wanted to write my own webcomic. Reading Real Life made me consider starting a new site devoted to the comic, but there are two major obstacles in my way:
1) My source material is gone. With no more school to attend (for the moment), I’ve got nothing to write comics about. Sure, I could try to make some up on my own, but looking back at the fictional ones that I’ve already done, they’re some of the weakest ones there (bar the “imaginary girlfriend” saga, I really like those ones) and I’m just not good at writing funny. If someone would like to write for me, that would be excellent, but out of the people I know, and no offense to you guys, we’d need a whole team of writers to get anything done.
2) No webspace. Yes, I have a few options, but none of them sit quite right with me. Making another site on Angelfire is not something I want to do. Hell, I can’t wait to find an alternative for this one. I hate having to rely on free providers. A friend’s webspace? No. That way, I lose a lot of immediate control. And I wouldn’t be able to put up spur-of-the-moment stuff like this. It just wouldn’t be right. I could make my hard drive into a web server thing, but then my site would be a number, and people are less likely to remember a number than a name (not that “Torrential Equilibrium” is easy to spell either…). Someday, I’ll buy space and a domain name, but as it stands, that won’t be happening soon.
So as it stands, the comic is dead. I’ve begun the slow and painful process of Painticizing them, but that’s not looking too bright as an option. Nobody would respect a webcomic done in Paint. I’m probably gonna get a scanner for/around my birthday, so I’ll at least have them all up for viewage in a month or so.
Now, onto the other thing I needed to rant about. Damn, I went on so long about the comic that I’ve forgotten. Well, I’ll just leave this then. My brothers and I have all decided to forsake our Christmas presents this year, and will instead be getting a new computer (hopefully) sometime in November or early December. Yes, it’s a long time away still, but I’m pretty pumped. Obviously, there aren’t any ideas on the table yet in regards to specs or manufacturer, but it’ll certainly be able to run Doom 3, so I think that “the shit” is a pretty good ballpark description. Personally, I’m most looking forward to the possibly huge (looking at 200+ GB) hard drive. Living with ~10 (considering space for other users) gigabytes of storage space is very hard these days, what with current games taking anywhere between 500MBs and 6GBs each. Now that I’ve let out enough geek for the day, I think I’ll go do something productive, like mowing the lawn. Yeah right.
Ah, Hell. Now I remember. Planet MegaMan is currently offering MP3s of the entire soundtrack to RockMan X Command Mission. A pretty good bunch of tunes, if I do say so. Not quite as great as the original NES games’ tracks, but enough to tide me over until the game is released over here in the West. Go and download them now if you want ’em, as they probably won’t be up there long.
Boo curfew
My dad has received the title “Computer Nazi”.
All summer, my brothers and I have all been vying for time on the internet-ready PC. It’s usually theirs during the day, and every couple nights, I manage to get on during the split-second that they try to switch off. I like to think they’re working against me. So one of us is usually on until the wee hours of the morning. Just look at most of my posting times.
My parents do not like this trend, and have reinstated a new regiment so that my brothers will get back to a normal sleep schedule before they go back to school. The new rule is that no-one is allowed on the computer after midnight. Bullshit? Yes. But they never really enforced it until last night.
I was casually flipping through the Real Life archives, and my dad came down at exactly midnight, and hovered over me until the PC was turned off. I tried a menacing glare, but no such luck. I gave up and sought to come back an hour or so later when he’d be gone to bed. I went upstairs to take a bathroom break, and as I turned back, I saw him unplugging the computer.
Now you see that giving him the nazi title is totally justified. I don’t see why this rule should affect me, as I’m not going back to school right away. In fact, I’m trying to get the midnight shift at the local Tim Horton’s.
The situation was dire, but as I pondered a way for revenge, I found my loophole. If he had only taken the power cable, I could simply steal the modem and hook it up to my PC with my TV’s cable line. I had been wanting to try this out for a while now, and never had the right opportunity, so now was definitely the day of reckoning.
As things turned out though, he had not stolen the power cable, as I had previously assumed, but in its stead, he had removed the cable that connects the modem to the PC. This was a stupid move, not so much because my plot was foiled, but because his rule was breakable. The PC was still in working order, there was just no internet access. So I was free to do all the non-internet things I wanted. Unfortunately, the internet is like cyber-cocaine for some (me included), and a PC seems totally useless without it. Gah, this blows.
But on the upside, it’s been a month now since I redesigned the site, and I must say it’s been a huge success. Not only have I been posting a lot more (it helps that posts are easier to write than articles), but my hit counter has been steadily increasing as well. For a while before I changed the site, it was stuck at around 800 for days, and within a month, it’s gone up by approximately 150. That’s pretty awesome for a site that nobody knows about. And that means the 1000 hit celebration is due any day now!