I’m actually really enjoying my vacation. Not a lot of rest and relaxation time but that was expected. I’m doing a lot of stuff on the site which was the plan all along. Plus I wanna get my first story ready for distribution. Scrolling through the eCO site, they say it takes about 10 goddamn months to get your copyright certificate and for your case to go from ‘open’ to ‘closed’ meaning that it’s done and finalized. That’s a long goddamn time. I can only imagine how long it would take doing that shit the traditional way. The good news is that as long as all your shit is on point during submission, it’s a safe bet to consider your work protected. Not just intellectually, which is a given, but legally. So I’m not gonna wait that long to release my shit. Gonna try and have the first one ready by Sunday. One thing I don’t like is that eCO charged my card and they got paid but I don’t have anything to show for it. That sucks. All this shit for a piece of fucking paper.

Sent all the emails I needed to send regarding my older college work that I don’t have anymore. One professor’s email came back undelivered. Another said she only keeps shit for 1 year. So I can kiss the work I did in her class goodbye. And the third and last professor said he doesn’t have the time nor does he want to keep and save student work. So that stuff is long gone forever. Word to the wise if you’re a writer: save everything, throw nothing away, don’t delete shit, backup your work and have a backup for a backup for a backup!

Longtail finally came through too. Managed to make their ads work using the v3.16 media player. Still having probs with v4.1 though. Got the code but making it work became a host problem, not a Longtail prob. I emailed my host and they gave me a suggestion that I’ll try out but the process might not be worth the time. Also, I upgraded to Adobe Flash CS4 and it automatically upgrades you to Flash v10 for your browser. Pretty sure that’s a beta version and it is buggy. While testing Longtail’s ad solution, I was getting probs that I didn’t have when I had CS3. So I downgraded to the latest v9 that’s a stable final release. Now I gotta retest shit and see if v10 was the prob and if all the suggestions and code works. It really is a pain in the ass.

Flash CS4 is faster than CS3, no doubt about it, and has more features. But I liked the simplicity of CS3. I’m not turning back though cuz CS4 has improved h.264 compatibility. There were times when I encoded .mp4’s and all I got was sound with no video. Now I get both and that’s a major plus. You also get to choose the specific quality and file size, whether you want f4v or flv, blurring, there’s all kinds of stuff you can do now. I’ve only had it for less than a week. Next week’s update is gonna be pretty intensive and I’ll be putting it to heavy use. We’ll see how it holds out with encode quality.

Not doing Megacon next year. Don’t need to. Probably going to do an anime convention instead for a change of pace. Still got a big backlog of comics I haven’t read and that’s mainly due to me reading Akira and not having the full collection of Supremeverse books. Wanna take care of that by Sunday too. No comic shops in my area are having any sales so I’m probably gonna go the online route and see if there are any good enough deals to complete some of my storylines. Gonna need Paradise X too. Found both trades online on the cheap a month ago but didn’t buy them. Hope they’re still available at the price I saw them at. If not, I’m the dumb ass. Didn’t buy them when I saw them cuz I was strapped for time.

You’ll notice the new ‘random cell phone pics’ category in the photo section. And they’re just that: random cell phone pics. Me and my peeps are always sending shit to each other and I figure I’d go ahead and share. Some images from the Frontier(s) movie and physical dvd are posted there. That’s cuz my friend kept on harping on about how good the movie is and that it’s gory. Don’t really care how gory something is, as long as the story is good. In this case, it was formulaic, nothing new, and really wasn’t all that gory in comparison to other modern flicks; and I watched the unrated version!

Would I recommend it? No. The only shining spot in that movie was the performance by Karina Testa who played Yasmine. That’s a chick people need to watch out for cuz she was awesome. It wasn’t necessarily what she did cuz a lot of it was just poor writing. It was how she did it. She owned her role and was extremely believable. I’d put it right up there with Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker and I know that’s a mouthful but I’m sticking with the comparison. I can’t fault Xavier Gens as a director cuz he’s inexperienced. But at least he made sure the acting was good. Can’t find much fault with it and the dialogue. Can find plenty of fault with the poor plot and theme which Gens is also responsible for. Maybe he should stick with doing other people’s scripts and not his own. The only reason I’m glad I saw it is cuz of Karina. The two pics I have in that category are of her. It was an absolutely amazing performance and that’s the only reason I’d tell anyone to sit through it. But other than that, don’t waste your time.

Do you know who Foghorn Leghorn is? Would you be surprised if someone told you they didn’t know? I would and I was. A good friend of mine revealed that little tidbit to me and I couldn’t even believe it. I told her to text a friend of hers and ask if she knew who he was and her friend didn’t know either! I was speechless. Told another friend this shit and he was floored too. Said they both had deprived childhoods. The fact that they were both females shouldn’t matter. Everyone I’ve known up to that point grew up on Looney Tunes and knew all the characters. She’s white, she’s gen-x, she’s American, she grew up in privilege. No reason she shouldn’t know who he is but she didn’t. And for the most part still doesn’t. Just goes to show that some information isn’t common knowledge no matter how culturally significant it may be. And I’m not gonna post a pic here for you dimwits out there. Click the link above and do your research! There are some things in life people should just know.

During a recent trip to a local mall, me and a friend made a pit stop at an FYE to buy some tix for an upcoming rodeo event. For one, they botched the order cuz of a Ticketmaster system error. But that’s not what was important. What struck me was the price of cd’s. Damn things still cost more than 10 bucks. Even saw single cd’s around 17 bucks and shit. Nothing special about them either. So can someone explain to me why cd prices have remained the same or even gone up in price over the last 5-8 years when you’d expect them to go way down? Pretty sure it’s because the record labels are still holding on to their ancient business model of physical media while almost everyone else is going or has gone digital. Their attempt at going digital by putting mp3’s on storage cards still involves physical media. These old codgers just don’t get it. And they wonder why people are downloading for free.

Why pay all that money for a cd that takes up space and physical resources when all you really want is the songs? The album art and cd labels and shit is something that’s already been digitized. Plastic to make cd’s and cd cases and the paper for the labels is a waste. What you’re really paying for is that, physical distribution in the form of transportation, storage, and merchandising, and greedy record labels that want maximum profit. What a bunch of morons. And then a single song costs 99 cents? Fuck that. That’s too much money for 4 minutes of entertainment. Once the song is done, it’s done. Once the art and credits are done, they’re done. They’re already digital. All they need to do at that point is marketing and digital distribution. That’s it. The only major cost when all that is done is bandwidth and storage.

Lots of artists are smart and are jumping on the digital bandwagon. They don’t need record labels cuz in the digital age, they can do everything themselves. In the future, record labels will become nothing more than a means of marketing. The donation model is one thing, lowering the price of individual songs and complete albums is another. Some people are saying that the value of music these days ain’t much cuz this generation sees it as something that’s free. That ain’t true. Today, there’s so many commercial opportunities in music, it’s ridiculous. Most artists make their money from merchandise and touring anyway. Getting their song on a tv show, movie, or commercial is a bonus and it’s also another form of exposure. And these opportunities exist in traditional media and online. Plenty of money out there. So who needs a modern day version of a record label when you can make all the money yourself? Who needs physical media when if the industry pushed portable media players hard enough, the cd would slowly die? Who wants to pay 99 cent a track when if the price was lower, sales and profit would rise? What price suits you best: 99 cent or let’s say 49 cent? Less people buying at 99 cent or vastly more people buying at the lower price point which translates into increased page impressions, clicks, visitors, etc. Doesn’t take a mathematician to figure this shit out.

To further increase the value of music, I think music videos should be bundled somehow with the music. For legit music purchases, there could be a link to not just view but to also download the music videos free of charge. Give people incentive to buy. And no DRM! If they wanna share, let ‘em share. Efforts to stop people from doing that has proven futile and unprofitable. I’m sure it costs 10 times more for the lawyers than the money made from a court decision fine.

Only two new shows have managed to make it on my regular sched so far: Gary Unmarried and Operation Repo. Gary Unmarried is a good sitcom and a breath of fresh air since there aren’t many good ones left. Operation Repo is just insanity in every segment. I just happened to catch a commercial of it when watching another TruTV show and it looked interesting enough. Plus I know what those repo motherfuckers have to deal with: real people. It’s always gonna be unpredictable. And when I watched it, that’s exactly what it was. The main cast is just as crazy as the people whose vehicles they’re trying to repossess. Great tv.

A couple of interesting news items I found: one is that PETA wants Ben and Jerry’s to switch from cow milk to human breast milk in their ice cream products. I like titi milk as much as the next person but if it ain’t freshly squeezed from the source and immediately and instantly available to me directly from that source, then I don’t want it. Another story involves Mickey Mouse being declared an agent of the devil. Click here to read that ridiculous bullshit. Yet another cartoon character that everyone should know!