ORIANART

Cadwallia//these volatile times: I know how the world works, and I don’t want Karp & co. to go broke,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:37:00 -0400

Cadwallia//these volatile times: I know how the world works, and I don’t want Karp & co. to go broke,...:

I know how the world works, and I don’t want Karp & co. to go broke, but JESUS I hate that everything these days has to be “monetized.” I hate that the business model for websites is “create neat thing, run it well for a few years, sell it to megaconglomerate for a trillion bucks, then give the…

I believe that websites and social platforms are trending things, and are prone to change without notice. If they don’t become uncool by a corporate buyout, then I believe it will be from it’s own undoing eventually. (see: facebook’s current situation of becoming “uncool.”) Popularity and user base fizzle out over time as newer trending services arrive. (I’d say right now, we’re observing 6 to 8 years MAX lifespan before decline starts setting in.) Some services dodge this bullet by being the first to fill a large void in the market and having hard-to-replicate features (see: youtube, deviantart,) but none are completely safe from failing, and most are prone to eventually failing or fading away. (see: livejournal, blogger, myspace, digg.)

Tumblr is, let’s all face it, nothing particularly special. It’s a blogging service like many before it that has a mass-consumption-driven community designed to be attached to it, (unlike blogger and wordpress which are highly stand-alone.) Believe it or not, this community aspect makes Tumblr a service very prone to eventually fizzling out, or face deep redesigns to keep up with the changing landscape that will inevitably alienate longest-term users. I’d say Tumblr doesn’t exactly have much of a future path to stay relevant indefinitely. It’s features are too typical, too replaceable by a newer, trending one. I remember when I started off using LiveJournal. Then I went to Blogger. Then I tried WordPress. Now I’m on Tumblr. All in what, the last 10 years?

For all we know, Yahoo may actually make Tumblr for the most part better. (Different than we know it right now, but overall maybe a little better.) I’ve been here for just under 2 years now? The only thing that’s changed are some minor dashboard, front page, design and appearance tweaks. How about a better search engine? Searching by multiple tags and sorting posts by relevancy or popularity? Yahoo can probably finally develop that. I remember when Yahoo bought Flickr. In my experience, they made the site more responsive, more usable, and more content-centric. (Not to say that the original company wouldn’t have — but the key here is that Yahoo didn’t just let it rot.) I also look fondly at the work that Google did to Youtube and Blogger, the improvements Microsoft made to Skype, and what Adobe did to Macromedia (which wasn’t much but wasn’t worse.)

Digg comes to mind in particular to buyouts. A couple years ago, Digg was a massively popular content aggregation site. The Digg board (and Kevin Rose) were cocky, refusing companies who wanted to buy it because he believed it was being massively undervalued (at $200 Mil from Google.) Reddit was the underdog of the time. Rose made changes to Digg shortly after rejecting the buyout proposals to try to increase it’s scope and profitability. Turns out he tweaked it too much and seriously piss off its users. The vast majority of Digg’s users migrated nearly overnight to Reddit, exploding its popularity. Digg was eventually bought for a super low $500K and is still slipping the ranks into irrelevancy. Kevin Rose: “Oops.”

I don’t think we owe ourselves to Tumblr’s success. Yes, Tumblr would’ve been dead in the water without its users. But by saying “you would’ve been nothing without us!” is overlooking the fact they created and built the platform which was offered for us to freely use to begin with. It’s a good easy to use service which warrants having lots of users — even if a lot of those features are a mish-mash or other service rolled into one — so for that at least their work paid off. I really don’t blame Karp & co. 1.1 Billion is no small sum of money for a blogging platform, especially since I (as well as he probably) believes that this is as high of a value it’s ever going to get. Zuckerberg will always have Facebook and will be known as “The guy who made facebook” because really, it’s a tough act to follow in its total size and scope, and the historical mark it will leave on the internet (see: google+ TRYING). But Karp, I have no doubt he has other services and products he’s been wanting to pursue, and all that money will certainly springboard a new company for himself. In his position, I’d have done the same. Don’t want to go down in History as another Digg.

“Gate-A4” - Maia TomiokaJiro style! Background...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:19:00 -0400

“Gate-A4” - Maia TomiokaJiro style!

Background painted in Photoshop, Maia drawn in SAI.

Notes about background: The grand majority of the scene (including the wear on the foundation concrete to the building,) was painted with the “Broad Tip 2” brush in my brush set, (row 4, brush 6,) and contains no sampled textures. The speckles came from spray/spatter brushes I have. The rest was a standard round opacity brush.

[Link to 1920px wide version]

creativesauce: digital painting tutorial, painting demo, tips...

Sun, 12 May 2013 03:00:00 -0400

creativesauce:

digital painting tutorial, painting demo, tips & tricks.

Hey, new video about digital painting in Photoshop by my good friend Tyler!

AND I CREATED HIS NEW INTRO LOGO and “BST” SEQUENCES!!! :D

Its a good idea to get the new cintiq 13 hd, or is better to get the 21? i wonder if the size of the screen makes it less usefull.

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:34:00 -0400

I think the 13HD and the 21UX/22HD are both just as usable as each other. There are times when I use my old old 12WX and feel more comfortable with it compared to my 21UX. Sometimes the smaller screen feels more like a regular sized piece of paper, it’s easy to get a handle of the tablet like a sketchbook. Also the pixel density on both the 12WX and 13HD are much higher compared to the 21/22 inch models, so for line art and things, it just looks delicious.

Even though the color on the 12WX sucks. 13HD is much nicer in that area, though. I’ll be writing / videoing my take and experience on my 13HD soon!!

You have a really neat and clean tumblr design! Is it one you made/paid for, or if not is there any way you could point to where you got it? Thanks!

Sat, 04 May 2013 17:32:09 -0400

Thanks! It’s based off of a free theme you can get. All themes for blogs I run are based off of existing ones. But I don’t like default appearances, so I look at the HTML code and break it ‘till I like it.

I basically use an existing theme to get all the functions and CSS styles figured out for me. Then tweak it beyond prior recognition. Saves a lot of time!

Hey everyone! Thanks for all your interest for the print sale I’ve been having! Just letting...

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:49:00 -0400

Hey everyone! Thanks for all your interest for the print sale I’ve been having! Just letting you know that the first wave of orders are shipping out today, with more to follow going out on Monday.

A tip for when you receive yours: the print is fastened to the inside of the shipping tube with a strip of blue masking tape. It’s there to prevent the print from sliding back and forth within the tube, potentially denting the sides from hard falls in the mail. And, it goes without saying, but when you remove your print from the protective sleeve, wash your hands first and handle carefully by the edges or backside. EPSON Enhanced Matte is a quality paper stock, and will scratch/show oils from fingers on its surface. (These aren’t some cheap poster prints!) A can of compressed air is the best way to remove dust from prints like this. (Just make sure to test-fire the can first, so you know it won’t shoot out a spurt of liquid compressant.) Wiping dust off could cause a scratch or smear the dust into the grain of the paper.

And if anyone is still looking to order a print or two, I’m still running the print sale and will be throughout the rest of the month of May. Click here to read about it!

alexds1: americanninjax: I just don’t even know what… The...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:52:00 -0400

alexds1:

americanninjax:

I just don’t even know what…

The internet is a wonderful place.

I’ve been on an Evangelion binge all week what with the recent release of 3.33 on disc.

Whenever I use Win98 now, I’ll imagine myself as a NERV bridge bunny.

“Commander! Explorer.exe isn’t responding, we’ve lost communication with the OS! Should we try to restore contact?!”

“No! There’s not enough time, sever connections — force terminate all connections! The operating system’s health is our top priority!”

Just played through the beta demo of this very interesting (and...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:58:00 -0400

Just played through the beta demo of this very interesting (and difficult under pressure) game. About border control and immigration checkpoints.

Get it and try it for free here, http://www.dukope.com/#ppl
It gets harder than you think as the days go on, and more strict regulations get applied. The message behind the game is very strong, “Look at what’s put in place that affects everyone, based solely on the actions of only a few.”

You’re pressured to process as many people as you can in a work day, to earn money to pay for your rent, keep your family warm during the crushing winter, and just barely manage to feed them. You’re forced to sometimes make moral decisions if some people don’t have the proper criteria for entry: do you believe their story and let them in in exchange for a penalty fee on your part? Or do you keep your own family safe in following the rules as they’re written and earning your pay?

Prints SALE-sale! $20 13x19 Archival Prints!

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:17:00 -0400

Okay! So I’m trying to save up for the new Cintiq 13HD so I can do work away from my desk, but I’m something like $200 short. I’m trying to bridge the gap before I do some travelling this summer so I can stay productive on-the-go!

Until I get my Cintiq 13HD, I’m offering my 13 x 19” super fine quality full archival process prints for $20 with $5 US shipping, $10-$15 (depending on your location) international shipping! (Combined shipping if interested in more than one print.) Normally they’re $40~$50-ish. It’s a SAAAAALE~. Like before, they’re still being printed with an 8-ink color process on Epson Enhanced Matte, 13 x 19” cut sheet, in an acid-free sleeve and shipped in a nice tough tube. These are seriously nice, gallery-quality prints. Each is signed and numbered!

Email me at matt@plasticshards.com or message me here if you’re interested and tell me which picture in my gallery [click here] you’d be interested in!

I take Paypal and ship out typically within a couple days. [I’m a professional artist. Believe me, I’m not looking to rip anyone off. My reputation is valuable so feel safe ordering a print from me :D]

Example of what a print looks like: (yes the following image is a photo of a print itself. I have one hell of a printer.)

Hopefully this is looks good to you guys! :D I love making/selling prints to people!
.

(If you’re not interested at all, sorry! hahah)

fox-orian On: The Boston Bombings and Police Lockdown as seen from a local citizen

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:37:00 -0400

I’m getting really tired reading all these opinions from people all around the country trying to tell us in Boston that we were violated by the police and military in what was a temporary experimentation in creating a police state. Whether to support their asinine existing political agendas or whatever, I don’t know, but I need to get some stuff off my chest.

As someone who spent 100% of his time in the city from the moment the bombing occurred to the time the suspects were caught, here’s what I observed pertaining to most of the convictions I hear time and time again from people who weren’t even there:

“The city lockdown was a violation of individual liberty and freedoms. The vast police presence was designed as a show of force to instill fear and control the public.”
I’m diving head-first into the most BS statement. This has got to be the one. First, and I’m serious here, the lockdown didn’t even last one full day. It took place from early morning Friday the 19th to about 5 or 6 PM that evening: in total, about one work day. The only place that was closed up until friday was Copley Square and the Copley subway station, understandable as it was a crime scene. The city ran normally — shaken, yes — but normally for that entire week, even though we knew that there were two or more people still out there responsible for the attack.

The actual lockdown on Friday wasn’t anywhere near as extreme as it may have seemed in the media. Don’t be fooled by photos showing “Boston as a ghost town.” As a photographer, why would you display the photos showing otherwise? That’s just boring. Wait for just the right moment and indeed it looked like a ghost town. The lockdown was only a police advisory for your own safety. Kind of like a severe weather advisory. (Hey the MBTA gets shut down for those, too!) You could go outside, sure, but you were warned. There were not police and military personnel outside of everyone’s homes and apartment buildings forcing them to stay inside. If you went outside, police didn’t force you back in. I live on Commonwealth Avenue in Allston about 1 mile away from where all the action was happening in Watertown. There were cars driving down the street, much fewer than normal yes, but people were still going places. I commonly saw people walking down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. I even saw kids playing with a sprinkler outside the building across from mine. They didn’t look violated of their liberties to me, and we weren’t that far from the epicenter.

Most of us stayed indoors because, well, why wouldn’t you? Who wasn’t glued to news channels or websites, watching the events unfold as they were happening that day? — You know, NOT hiding under our bedsheets crying for the boogieman to go away. Me? The weather was meh, why go out? Stay in, clean up a little, draw in photoshop, watch the news… It was a more or less average day off from work.

Above: What my neighborhood looked like during the lockdown. Few cars… no people… no trains… Actually this photo was taken on a completely different day like a month or so before the bombings even happened, but if I told you it was taken during the lockdown, it adds a cool oppressive vibe to it that gets you all riled up!

Yeah, businesses were closed. That sucked for a lot of people who lost a days wages, (including me,) but ask anyone here whether it really affected them, and I’m sure much more than not you’ll get the response “well they got the guys didn’t they?” The positive effect of knowing the suspects had been caught was healthier for the city the next day (and every day after) than anything else.

Remember that Boston is an EXCEEDINGLY small city. Even its metropolitan area is small. It’s maybe 5 or 6 miles square. You can walk across the entire metro area in just under two hours or so. It’s entirely possible that downtown businesses could have remained open with no ill effect on the operations occurring between Cambridge and Watertown. But as this has never happened before in the history of Boston, the decision was to take no chances that day, minimize possibilities for additional loss of life. The suspects, after all, were still capable of an attack, and since everything is so close to each other here, it’s not impossible that it could happen anywhere. For all the police knew, the initial track down of the suspects could have turned into a dangerous chase through the middle of the city. Again,why chance it?

And yeah, people celebrated with the police directly after Suspect #2 was caught. Ever see police officers high-five civilians? I did. It was awesome.

The nutjobs are blowing it way out of proportion. “The public cooperated with the police because they had no choice. When fully automatic battle rifle-equipped soldiers force you to cooperate, that’s your only choice” Give me a fucking break. The only people who can speak about that happening are a very select few in the small area of Watertown where the manhunt happened. And even then, I doubt those people were treated with malicious intent. But, I can’t speak for them. And neither can you.

“The people of Boston gave into the terrorists with fear. They stayed in their homes, cowering.”
I’ve heard countless non-Boston dwellers claim that the city was cowering in fear, that we hid in our homes for a whole week and succumbed to the shock of the events. You know what DIDN’T happen in Boston that week? Exactly what I just described. The three days after the bombings, I went out for some walks, got a gyro from a food truck near Kenmore and ate it in the BU school of music while listening to students practice. I went to the park with my girlfriend and pet bunny to enjoy the nice weather and get some exercise. There were people out and about doing their daily things. They went to work. Went out to eat. Went to the gym. Went to class. Rode their bikes. Sure, not in or around Copley, but that’s only one small-ish section of the city. I’d hardly call that “everyone cowering in fear in their homes.”

“They shouldn’t have killed Suspect #1. Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty?’”
In an ideal world, no they shouldn’t have — and I really don’t think the plan WAS to kill him. Plus, I mean seriously, if you are visibly and actively firing upon police (even gunning one down) who have surrounded your house, I think it’s safe to say — regardless of whether or not you’re a suspect of a bombing — you’re a threat that probably has to be dealt with immediately. Reports also state the brother was incapacitated by police, but was actually killed by his younger brother when he frantically ran him over with the get-away vehicle.

I would’ve liked to have seen the guy caught and questioned. But it didn’t turn out that way.

“If the US overreacted this badly to a 19-year-old-honors-student gone bad, that’s sending the wrong messages to terrorists everywhere to have a go at us.”
It’s hard for me to comment on this one. I have bias of living in the city where this happened, so of course I wanted a quick resolve so life could go on normally again. I honestly thought months would go by without any leads — nevermind closure — surfacing from the attacks. Four days after the attacks, the guys are identified and caught on the fifth day? I dunno, it may have been an overreaction with thousands of forces at the cities disposal, but damn were we pumped to get it over with THAT fast.

The reaction for shutting down parts of the city and services and such may send out the wrong signal, sure. So might dispatching shitloads of police and military. Makes you think a terrorist would jump on that recognition to go bigger and badder. But the manhunt side of it is present, too. Unless one commits the crime without fear of getting caught, okay, nothing will stop you, might as well commit suicide in the means of the attack. But for many others, the fear of the resulting manhunt is deterrence. Your photo plastered all over the internet and the news. Thousands of cops and the FBI looking for you. It WOULD be only a matter of time before you’re caught.

Boston may have gone a bit too far. I also think if it didn’t, there would be people slamming it for not going far enough.

Also, for the record, stop referring to him as a 19-year-old-honor-student. He’s not a kid. He’s old enough to know full well what he was going to do, the effects of what he was going to do, and the consequences of his actions. Describing such a person to belittle his actions and the city affected by his actions is despicable.

“The bombings were small. No, like, really small. Only a few dead and under 200 injured. All this for just that? I’d like to remind you of 9/11. That’s true terrorism. Is this going to be a thing for regular crimes now?”
It’s easy to say that when it didn’t happen in your city. I can say, absolutely, that the events of 9/11 are still more impactful and chilling to most anyone in Boston than the events of the marathon (who were not directly affected or nearby the bombings, that is). But this isn’t a contest. As I’ve said, Boston is a really small place. Shit like this just doesn’t happen every day here.

There are over 100 known definitions and qualifiers for “terrorism.” The Tsarnaev brothers were criminal radicals in reality, (and not very good ones at that,) who committed an act of senseless violence on completely innocent people. The same kind of people who might commit a school shooting, but with the knowhow to create and implement explosives. School shootings and bombings are a kind of terrorism because they emotionally charge the public with all sorts of topics from gun control to… well, this very rant. Convenience stores and banks get held up all the time, but you tend not to hear them become the focus of debate for days and weeks onward after it happens. That’s sort of the dividing line for me.

The term terrorism carries, these days, images of 9/11 and controversial destruction on a large scale. But really, just as a Weapon of Mass Destruction doesn’t have to be a nuclear device, a terrorist attack doesn’t have to kill thousands of people to clear the threshold.

In the days after the Boston bombings and even after the suspects were caught, crime did continue as normal in Boston. There were still shootings in Dorchester. Fights and stabbings between local rivals. They weren’t met with brute military force and city lockdowns to deal with them. It was regular police duty for those incidents. And will continue to be.

It wasn’t a police state. It isn’t a police state.

Alright. I’m done, had enough of this. Obviously these are mostly just my opinions and observations. I’m not speaking for the whole of Boston. But I seriously think I’m not far off from the general consensus here.

Thanks for reading all of this if you did, it means a lot to us.

Click for Full Size Back in 2010, this was an infographic of...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:58:00 -0400

Click for Full Size

Back in 2010, this was an infographic of sorts explaining how things a lot of things were for consumer electronics and technology back in 2000. A lot changed in just 10 years, and I wanted to do sections touching on many different areas, including cameras, gadgets, home theatre, storage media, web design, etc etc etc. These were the only three I got done until I got bored and went on to do other things,

Still though, back in 2000 the average camera photo resolution was like 1600x1200 at the very highest. It cost like $120 for a 64MB memory card, and they were the size of credit cards. Some cameras even used floppy disks for storage. Back in 2000 the iPod wasn’t even out yet — not ‘till 2001, and it still cost like $500 for 4GB, man. Stuff like this.

Anyway yeah, whatever, enjoy this old piece of abandoned graphic design from me.

I just got word of the bombings at the Boston Marathon, man. I have no idea where you live in relation to the incident, but shit, I hope you're ok.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:40:00 -0400

I’m good, and so is my family who was in the area when it happened. Things are weird in Boston right now. The air in the whole city is tense as shit.

Jenna, another character from Synthesis. Here in her uniform as...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:50:00 -0400

Jenna, another character from Synthesis. Here in her uniform as part of the Aricean light-response military, (mostly doing civil-servant / in-city-peace-keeping duties.) All Aricee youth are required to go through a brief basic training. Jenna is one of the few who stuck with it after all those years. Her relatively low rank causes her to act a bit tougher than she normally would be.

Dear Coquette: On an asshole

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:59:00 -0400

Dear Coquette: On an asshole:

dearcoquette:

I’m lonely. I’m in my mid-twenties and I’m surrounded by very positive feedback. I’ve earned it, since I’m a workaholic, I seek perfection in every aspect of my life, from diet and exercise to my wardrobe. I’m working on a novel and two screenplays, and I have three jobs.

I know I have the tendency to be a control freak, but I’m a very supportive person, and people always lean on me for advice or positive reinforcement. I’m tired of always being the one to initiate social situations, however. I ask people to do things all the time, but half the time they’re busy, or else I just wind up alone on weekends.

I don’t want to compromise my goals and dreams, but why do I feel so alone? I was popular in college - what happened?

This may be tough to swallow, but your real problem isn’t that you’re lonely. It’s that you simply haven’t realized yet that you’re an asshole.

Yes, that’s right. You are a magnificent asshole. You self-identify as a “workaholic” — asshole. You say things like “I’m surrounded by very positive feedback” and “I seek perfection in every aspect of my life” without the slightest trace of irony — asshole. You brag about how many jobs you’re holding down and the number of projects you’re currently writing —asshole, asshole, asshole. I mean, come on. That was just your opening paragraph.

Don’t worry. Being an asshole is fairly common for people your age, especially overachievers who enjoyed popularity in college. The good news is that you don’t have to keep being an asshole.

All you have to do is chill the fuck out. Learn to be a serious person without taking yourself so damned seriously. Start recognizing when you’re coming off as persnickety, and stop being a control freak.

Nobody is asking you to compromise your goals and dreams. In fact, you should start reminding yourself that nobody gives a fuck about your goals and dreams. Most of the time, people don’t even give a fuck about what you say. All they really care about is how you make them feel.

So, how do you make the people in your life feel? The truth is, even though they know you’re a good person, you kind of annoy them. That’s why they only want to deal with you in small doses.

If you relax, pull the stick out of your ass, and quit treating life like it’s one big job interview, you’ll soon find that people will enjoy being around you more.

Reblogging this because not only is it one hell of an amazing answer, but because I honestly wouldn’t have picked up on these mentioned traits present in the OP’s question, and would have just tried to come up with some other logical reason for their loneliness. (But of course, I would have never gotten there.)

Also let’s not forget the part in the question where they said “I know I can be a control freak BUT…” — to recognize you can be a control freak (a very negative thing) and then attempt to justify it with being supportive / caring, which don’t directly stem from being a control freak.

What a refreshing bit of brutal honesty.

I’m the mayor of this town and I say “CRAZY FUN...

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:43:00 -0500

I’m the mayor of this town and I say “CRAZY FUN BRIDGES FOR EVERYONE!”

Someone help me, I’ve discovered how to make stupidly ridiculous roadways in the game.

(edit: oh god it gets worse. No matter what nonsensical road I try to make, the game tries its darnedest to make it happen.)

My first city with the new SimCity! I pre-ordered the game, so I...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:39:00 -0500

My first city with the new SimCity!

I pre-ordered the game, so I pretty much lived on it all day yesterday when it was released. It’s a lot of fun, as you can see I’m making good use of the curved roads feature in this one.

My impressions of the game are very much positive. A lot of “diehard” SimCity fans like to make a lot of noise about their sore disappointment with this game, but if you ask me their expectations were too unrealistic to begin with. (Or, in many other cases, they’re the annoying knee-jerk reaction “0/10 because this game has DRM and is made by evil EA” dumbass type.)

I, myself, have played every SimCity title since the first, and I like the new direction Maxis has taken the game very much. Many other people were expecting (read: wanting) this game to be exactly what they had in SimCity 4 … just remake in 3D. If you ask me that’s a little boring, isn’t it? I don’t care about having the same game I did before, just with better graphics. The improvements they made to the simulation in this version meant there had to be sacrifices such as map size, but I’d much rather take the smaller map size for these changes rather than a rehash of old gameplay any day.

The new regional gameplay completely overtakes the old SC4 regional play. In SC4, every map on the region had to have it’s own collection of government and utilities buildings. Yeah, you could make trades with neighboring cities to buy power or water, but never enough to run the entire city on it. (In the new SimCity, my main city has a nuclear power plant which creates a massive surplus of power. I have other cities in the region that this plant is feeding entirely, how cool is that.) My main city has a city hall with different department annexes to make more advanced purchasing options available — and this one city hall rules the entire region. I don’t need 7 city halls for the 7 available cities in my region.

The regional play in SC4 never really felt truly connected, either. You could make connections, but that was only so you could make some really basic electric/water/garbage deals. But now, for example, my neighboring city has a lot of low-tech industrial zoned on it. My main city does not. People will commute from my main city to the other one to go to work there. The high industrial development there actually lowers the industrial demand of my other city, and I get to separate the pollution it generates! I will admit, the city sizes are small, yes, but this level of regional play really makes them feel a lot less smaller when you work on a grander scheme.

It’s also nice now that safety and utility buildings don’t have a “circle of effect” anymore. This meant you had to put a fire station or a police station every other 3 blocks in your city to make sure you blanket it with even, overlapping circles of coverage. In this new game, I haven’t had a problem with crime and fires in my city (Yet!) and I only have one fire station and one police station. The reason why is that the stations (just like schools, hospitals, utility stations etc,) are upgradable and expandable to properly serve your city’s needs. My police station has a 10 squad cars and a jail attached, enough to respond to anything going on in the city. For schools, you can have just one school, just make sure it has enough added classroom annexes to handle all the kids in your city, and that you place bus stops to all the residential areas. Buying more busses will ensure they make their rounds without them filling up, or falling behind on schedule.

Other cool changes are that, unlike previous SimCity games, having schools and stuff actually matters. In SC4, you needed schools to simply get higher mayor approval rating and unlock high-tech industry and raise sim wealth. That still happens in this new game, but it goes a step further: you need schools and colleges to educate your citizens so that the more complex jobs that are available in your city can be conducted correctly. For instance, there was a period in my city where I forgot to check on my schools — and it turns out they had filled to capacity a while ago and I forgot to plop bus stops to make sure all the people are being enrolled. My nuclear power plant had uneducated workers and I was getting warnings that if left to the hands of these idiots, the plant’s reactors will crack and leak radiation into my city. To prevent that from happening, I shut down the plant (awesome that you can shut things down without destroying them,) bought power from my neighboring city to keep things going, built up my schools to proper capacity, then when the education level rose enough, turned the nuclear plant back on and normal life continued. When you shut something down, everyone that works there gets fired. When you start it back up again, it has to rehire workers before operating again. Thus, the plant hired all new smart-people and a meltdown was averted!

Anyway, despite what a lot of people on the internet try to convince me, I’m having a blast with this new game, and so are all my friends who bought it as well. It does have a few downsides, (such as no offline mode and small maps,) but they either don’t affect me very much, or they don’t by any means make the game broken or even slightly unplayable. It feels quite a lot like a fantastic foundation for a bright SimCity future. Yes, some of that future will involve DLC, there’s no getting around that, but the beauty of DLC is that the majority of it isn’t necessary, and you can just get the ones you want in the future.

Overall, awesome job Maxis. By the way, give your teams sound designer some major credit — the sound in this game is just absolutely incredible and fresh.

I still like to look back every now and then, though.

Quick note: to people who complain about the loss of terraforming, so what? SC4 was the ONLY title with terraforming you know? SC3K and SC2K had a really primitive “slope maker” and SC1 was a 2D overhead where you couldn’t do any landscaping at all. I don’t miss terraforming one bit whatsoever, never used it in SC4 to begin with. It makes more sense doesn’t it? You’re a mayor, not a god. You can do some fundamental landscaping, but forget flattening entire mountains — that just circumvents the challenge of using the landscape that was given to you.

nicholaskole: jaymamon: Goofy Movie is objectively the best...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:03:38 -0500

nicholaskole:

jaymamon:

Goofy Movie is objectively the best movie ever

FULLY AGREE. My whole childhood. Everything.
ROXANNE. NEVER FORGET.

Spoiler: Goofy dies at the end.

Pictures on my Tumblr appear all vertically stretched! What do:

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:55:00 -0500

So, you make text posts with embedded images to the body and for some annoying reason the images always appear to look horizontally squished (or vertically stretched if you prefer) to fit the width of your layout! It ruins the looks of your posts as well as the content itself! How do you fix this? Turns out it’s ridiculously simple!

Go to your Tumblr Customize page, (you should see it as a button in the upper-right corner of your blog page itself,) and click the “Edit HTML” button.

Now, you should see a huge mess of code. Don’t worry about all of this too much, we’re going to be dealing with 99.98% none of it.

What we’re going to be doing is either adding or editing one parameter of your theme’s CSS section to tell images to automatically resize their vertical dimension based on the width of their container. Thus, maintaining a constrained aspect ratio.

First thing is first, we need to check whether your layout already has the CSS entry. Within the first 1/4 of your theme’s coding, there should be a line that has the tag <style type=”text/css”>. This is the start of your CSS. The CSS ends when you find a line further down that contains </style>. Take a quick look through this section to see whether or not it contains an entry called “img” — if it does it would likely be near the beginning.

If this “img” entry already exists, we’re going to add one simple piece of code to it. Within the { } brackets following “img”, add this code (in bold) just before the closing } backet: height:auto;

If this “img” entry does not exist, we’re going to add it by making a new line between any other two entries in the CSS section. Copy and paste the following code (in bold) into that line: img {height:auto;}

*Note about the following bit: My theme thinks it’s being clever by substituting traditional greater-than / lesser-than symbols used for HTML tags with left and right arrows. Please disregard this and read them as normal greater-than/lesser-than symbols. Copying and pasting the code text will still work fine in your theme.*

If for some reason your theme HTML does NOT contain a <style> CSS section at all, we can simply create one. Search the first 1/3 of your theme’s code for the line with </head> in it. This is the end of your <head> section, and where your CSS parameters should be. So, just above the </head> line, add the following code (in bold):

<style type=”text/css”>
img {height:auto;}
</style>

Hit preview, then save! You’re all set.

So with this simple code fix, your posts can go from looking like this:

to this:

Some shots from a recent photo dump. Q3-Q4 2012. Taken...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:51:55 -0500

Some shots from a recent photo dump. Q3-Q4 2012.

Taken in/around Boston and Cambridge, MA.

Sony Alpha SLT-A77, 16-50mm f2.8
Sony CyberShot RX100
Sony NEX-5N, FD 75-200 f4.5
Canon AE-1 Program, 28mm f2.8, Kodak Elite 400

Just think, THIS could have been what Google Glass looked...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:41:00 -0500

Just think, THIS could have been what Google Glass looked like.

Suddenly the design they came up with looks mightily less intrusive now doesn’t it?

I was talking with a friend about how, even though I’m not personally interested in owning one, (well, its price is a good start,) the design that Google came up with for Glass is something not really at all freakish looking. When I see pictures / video of people wearing the Glass frames, I don’t immediately think “look at that weirdo ass hat.” Instead, I feel toward Glass exactly the same as I do toward people wearing audio headsets — except Glass is for visual transmission/recording instead of sound.

The design is advanced enough just cross that line of familiarity, and this is only the first iteration of such a product. Here’s looking toward in-visor HUD’s like we see all the time in Sci-FI games.

Also, I’d love to see an artist wear one of these for truly first-person recordings of art-making.