Left : Actual. Right : Got the width wrong. Built from the fire evacuation map, which is wildly inaccurate.

15:56 <@xeno> [Mark Millar is an idiot.]
15:56 <@solios> fuck that guy. with a goat.
15:57 <@xeno> ah hell i forgot you have a raging hate-on for him
15:57 <@xeno> now *I* do too
15:57 <@xeno> so like, huzzah and stuff
15:58 <@solios> never heard of the asshead before now, iirc
15:59 <@xeno> yes you did, you went off about him raping graphic novels and passing the resulting malformed baby off as a movie*
15:59 <@rez> Wow. That guy's a fucking moron.
15:59 <@solios> science is an awesome.
15:59 <@solios> i mean, where the FUCK would we be without tang?
15:59 <@solios> WHERE?
15:59 <@rez> Indeed.
15:59 <@xeno> without tang, there is no poon.
15:59 <@solios> sshkjlgharrjklherHJBB

* He's thinking about Frank Miller's Sin City-ization of The Spirit. Miller, Millar. Barely closeted bondage nut, complete idiot. I thought he was thinking of the Wachowskis, who've made a career out of assraping Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, etc. But he wasn't.

Posts that should be going to ATC are going into the dcr category for the time being. I should have internet ANY DAY NOW RIGHT COVAD??? and whenever that happens (weeks, years) I'll be able to start busting serious ass on the ATC site rework. The fewer recent links that suddenly Stop Dead, the better.

As I was saying, re: mapping. The Majestic is as done as I can see needing it, ever. It's not like any of the principle characters is an orma host or ever gets near the cockpit of one of the damned things, so I'm spared the hilarity of landing gear, carrier stowability, etc.

Over and done with in less time than it took to blitch* about how OMFGONNADIE long it was going to take. Re-used one of the Sabrosa specularity maps on a whim and it worked so amazingly awesomely sweet that I had all of the basic hull done in, like, an hour.

The tail graphic took a bit longer.

* blog + bitch. If it's not a real word, it is now. Dammit.

Majestic squadron patch for ATC:

The Majestic is (basically) a "psychic" AWACS-style patrol/recon sort of thing. See previous. More like a U2 (sans Bono) or an SR-71 than an Orion. While most mundane hardware of this type has the typical pilot/copilot/engineer/ECO (etc) complement, the Majestic type has a two person crew - pilot/Navigator and copilot/Carbon Computer host. The CC ties into the Majestic's sensor payload, which is - basically - a dolphin-sized pile of "extra" brain. Brain and support equipment. Something very much like a brain, I should think - with all sorts of whiz-bang hoodjits and whajjits plugged into it. The host being one of them. It knows what you had for dinner, can guesstimate how much fuel you have left, and can tell if you're in a killing mood or not. It probably knows your bank account number and PIN.

And Grij, genius that he is, sent one on a cold recon without the typical (vast, prickly, disgustingly overgunned) fighter escort.

Give the man a prize.

Fucking hell, I haven't drawn anything in awhile. Porn sketches, sure. But a man's got needs and needs don't mean shit when it comes to comics. I'm still "settling in" at the new place, and in the process I've been taking care of Old Business.

Said Old Business being a multi-pronged attack on existing comic pages. As the locational shitstorm flared up, I paper-prototyped the Second Edition of The Dualist. At the time I figured there'd be fuckelse doable for a very long time, and planned accordingly. I even announced accordingly.

I then proceeded accordingly, beginning with unfinished or otherwise incomplete CG assets. The unfinished or otherwise incomplete CG assets list is about as long as my leg - this was prioritized as:

1. Assets to be used in The Dualist (Second Edition) and Dead City Radio. Namely the Hemera, which has been geometry-complete for awhile. I finally finished with texturing last night, so the ship is done and ready for use - in The Dualist 2e prelude and in DCR Chapter.... uh. Four.

The Hemera carries two Lokis, so they were next up on the list - the ship model has been thoroughly overhauled, updated, textured, and - almost on a whim - animated. It's now carrier stowable. Which will make for a very cool scene in DCR. In a year or two.

2. Assets to be used in The Dualist (Second Edition) and Transitional Voices. Or, where I'm at now. Namely, the Majestic - the Psychic AWACS, the Third Eye In The Sky. Geometry is complete and I've been hammering away at smoothing groups, working out pinches and doing minor tweaks for the past couple of days. It's now at the point where it needs to be texture mapped. I'm not looking forward to that, at all. To get it done Right will take at least a week, and this thing sees maybe eight pages total across two entire books. And I'm itching to rip it apart and animate the sensor pod into a carrier-stowable position, even though the only scene in which this ever would have been feasible (plot-wise) was cut from The Dualist back when I was still getting laid.

I finished texturing the Hemera in order to put off texturing the Majestic. The ship is the last asset needed for The Dualist 2e, as it remains the only airframe in the book that's hand drawn. After that, I need to de-FUCK! the QAR. I'd say that I need to de-fuck it, but trust me - after trying (unsuccessfully) to work with the thing early last week, FUCK! is much more appropriate.

3. Assets to be used in Dead City Radio only. Namely an entire floor of Allegheny Center, which has been base modeled (raw hallway, apartments) and needs a lot of cleanup and whatnot before being finalized. Followed by the elevators, Whitehouse's apartment, and a studio. All necessary for doing the remainder of Chapter Two the way I see it in my head. I can theoretically do the next panel (the last of a page) whenever I feel like it, but to proceed beyond that is going to be a shitton of CG work. CG work I'll use for most of the book.

4. Assets to be used in Transitional Voices (and forward) only. TV suffers from the same problem that's crippling DCR at present - namely, I have to do an enormous amount of "structural" work in order to move the story forward at all. Not just "build a room, do a scene." No. That would be awesome. No, this is "build a room, figure out shower effects, finalize the Banshee fighter (includes : texture mapping, ordnance hardpoints, missiles, etc), build a section of the Sabrosa sick bay, de-FUCK the QAR, and then - maybe - start rolling again." That's just to get up on Water. To do the whole damned thing I'm also going to need a beacon/fueling station and a couple of terran environments for Greymalkin and Tantek's scenes. Then for Fire I'll have to model about the same volume of stuff. Only different stuff. Air? Don't get me started on all of the CG I have to generate for Air. That's the kind of list that causes heart attacks, emphysema, rheumatism and gout. Fuck that list. Fuck it in the ear.

What I'm saying is it's going to be awhile before there's more {new} comics. Of any sort.

13:20 <@bda> omfg
13:22 <@rjbs> wow, there's a word I haven't heard in a while
13:23 <@rjbs> what's the label on the jar?
13:23 <@rjbs> atreides?

12:32 < solios> DARK MATTER SUPERNOVA
12:34 < vai> was that heinlein with the antimatter planet?
12:34 < vai> and the ship, slower-than-infinity?
12:35 < vai> and the single-molecule hull, puppeteers et al?
12:35 < solios> that last one's Niven
12:35 < vai> that was all niven then.
12:35 * solios beowulf's vai's schaeffer.
12:36 < vai> o_o
12:36 * vai whacks solios around a bit with the nibelungenlied
12:37 * solios buttplugs vai with a GP hull
12:38 < mdxi> Dystopia by Midnight Juggernauts is a fantastic modern rock album
12:38 < mdxi> solios++
12:38 < mdxi> puppeteers make the finest anal toys in known space
12:38 <@rjbs> ...
12:39 < vai> folding in and out of spacetime inside your anus, nothing will bring ..
12:39 < vai> oh I can't finish that.
12:39 <@bda> ...

Left : Old office chair, which my ass has totally destroyed. That's, like, the third application of gaffers tape, and a couple of the casters were swiped from another chair.

Right : Sexy "new" chair rescued from another section of the office.

 

Specifically, this Tuesday or Next. Major hurdles, both of them.

I overslept today, bigtime - alarm was set for 8, which would have gotten me to work comfortably late if I hadn't slept clean through it and woken up around one. I've been getting by on 4.5-5 hours of sleep a night for the past several weeks, only getting a Good Rest here and there, and after working the weekend (always a drain), my body seemed to have had enough. Since I got something to the order of 10 solid hours of out time, I should be in a better position to do this 9-5 thing for the remainder of the week. Starting Tuesday, of course.

This didn't prevent me from getting some work done, fortunately - the Beehive wifi allowed me to fire off some much-needed email and start doing some equally much-needed research.

Tuesday - not this coming but next, the 16th - is coincidentally when the Covad tech will be showing up to Give Me Mah Intarnets. He'll be there sometime between 0800 and 1700.... which is a really long, painful time to be sitting around. But there it is - internet back on in a little over a week.

I still have to pay off the electric, pay phone, pay this month's broadband (service cutoff is usually the 15th, so I'll have to pay my bill before I have internet), and pay rent/security deposit. Since my old landlord has yet to cash the rent check I dropped off on the 22nd, finances look a lot more comfortable than they actually are, so I'm starting to stress out about that... fortunately, the roommate responsible for the rent handling is being very, very cool about it, so I'll be able to break up payments and essentially pay rent three times over a period of six weeks.

Financial assrape should ease by late October. I hope.

11:04 <@solios> I really wish io9 would stfu about fringe
11:14 <@esch> Hmm.
11:14 <@esch> I just asked rez about that.
11:14 <@esch> should I give a shit about it?
11:14 <@solios> depends
11:14 <@solios> are you in line to blow jj abrams or not?
11:14 <@solios> if you're in line it'll give you something to do until your number comes up.
11:15 <@esch> well not if there's a line.
11:15 <@solios> if you think he's totally overblown bullshit, then you're not missing anything.
11:15 <@esch> I don't have time to wait
11:16 <@solios> word
11:16 <@solios> did the x-files make you squirt? because Fringe is the x-files.
11:17 <@esch> hmm

See subject.

Speakeasy says it'll be two weeks for a flipover of existing services. Something about Verizon updating their records and it taking forever, as according to the speakeasy overmind my line is at my old house and has DSL. My line is at my new house and has no DSL. This is a problem.

The Guy then tells me they can send A Guy out to run a unique (non-Verizon) line to the house for broadband, waving the usual $90 installation fee, saving me $5/mo. Oh, and they'll drop that extra IP since I'm not using it for anything, saving me another $5. In theory I can then tell Verizon where to stick it and save myself a base $26 (+$40 spread over two months for the switchover fee), thus having sweet sweet intertubs at $45/mo instead of (approx.) $90/mo. Same speed, features (80 isn't blocked, no 250g Comcap) at half the effective price.

They tell me they can do this within the next two weeks.

Oh, and there's a line in the email that says the new line will be "associated" with the phone number. Before I got the email, I asked The Guy if I could tell Verizon to fuck off and he said yes, I could. I am assured of this.

Still, one more point to stone cold clarify.

Gas is on. Second hot shower in just over two months is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

I can has pencil sharpener. Fuck if I know what happened to my old one. I think it gave up and died awhile back but I don't remember throwing it out.

Two weeks. Without porn.

For future reference:

1gig PC-2700 stick for 12" G4 Powerbook : $89 from Ramjet. $44.95 from OWC.
Would move Knave from 640 to 1184. (128 meg soldered to mainboard)

2x2gig PC5300 DDR2 667MHz matched DIMMs : $85.99 from OWC.
Would move Athena from 1g to 4g. Ramjet sells a 2x1g kit for about the same price and as of this timesink does not list a 4g kit.

Putty Knife : ~$6.
Required for any form of surgery on Athena. Which looks to be a major pain in the ass any way you cut it.

Superdrive for Athena : ~$100 from OWC.
If I'm doing Major Surgery, I may as well go all the way. Though Maniac and Minerva both have 16x superdrives in full-sized ATA bays. And those drives, should one go belly up, can be replaced for $20-40 and a bit of sweat. Oppose the Total Butthurt of working on Athena.

Searching for 2.5" HDDs reveals that a 3.5" in an outboard is going to offer MOAR GIGS for the same price, where "price" includes hassle, butthurt, surgery, backups, data transfer, etc.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro USB2/FW400 500g drive : $135.99 from OWC.
Empty ("0g") SATA enclosures retail for about $70, so getting the thing with a 500g drive is a good balance of price/convenience. More options here. 320g 7200rpm 2.5" drives start at about $150. No contest.

Looks like an OWC order or two is in my near future - probably one for RAM (soon) and another (later) for the disk.

Which reminds me, I still need to file COA with my bank.

So far the only technological problems I've had with the move have been minor. The big one is a marked lack of internet, though I'm happy to report that I'm adapting well to a life without the traditional staple of Porn Before Bed.

The one probably silly thing I did at the outset was to cable up all of the machines and peripherals before running ethernet. Maniac (the media machine) powered up just fine; Athena (the intel mini) came up, Minerva (the storage locker) wouldn't power up, so I set it aside for a few minutes while I brought Gridlock (which is, among other things, the DHCP server) online. This involved a bit more patience than usual - at present there's no means of plugging a monitor into the machine*, so waiting on fsck - usually a maddening experience - was made trivial by tending to Minerva.

Before Gridlock came up I plugged in the switch and ran cable. Without a DHCP server, hairpulling resulted. Maniac was fine, Gridlock lit up, but Athena's switch port remained dark.

Long story short, "jiggle the handle" works as well for ethernet as it does for toilets.

Some dicking around with the Network preferences on Maniac and Athena was then required to unfuck everything back to normal. My tech fu has always been questionable at best - and after years of not seriously needing it for anything, the skill has grown a pretty thick coat of rust and I'm now making my skill checks at a -3.

Minerva's stubborn refusal to power up was head-traced to the fact that the machine's CMOS (or PRAM for you old mac-heads) battery has been dead as a doornail forever. I'm of the understanding that simply leaving the machine plugged in for an indefinite period of time before powering it on can solve this, though I found my own solution much more viable for an immediate "must make sure it works!" fix - I pried the battery out with a screwdriver and instead of LED light-up, light-out, nothing.... light-up, startup chime, power up. Finally.

Minor remaining nits : Getting plumbing connected to The Intertub, and figuring out how to get the scanner's lightbar to shut off when it's not in active use**. The current solution is to simply unplug the thing, but I'm sure that if it's anything like my old piece of shit Umax, there's probably a software utility that does the equivalent, sans effort.

After the initial financial strain of the move blows over, I may finally be able to afford some much-needed upgrades - namely MOAR RAMS for my powerbook and mini, and a faster (and larger) OS drive for the mini (undecided as to internal replacement or adding outboard storage). RAM can be had for a drinks tab - disk upgrades are another hassle entirely, as the primary hurdle with replacing the onboard drive is the fact that it's on board, which implies a good deal of juggling to get the user data and applications shuffled off to a useful location.

* Gridlock is a beige G3. The expansion slots are filled with two SCSI cards and a 10/100 ethernet card. Or maybe one SCSI card, the ethernet card, and a case cooler or something. I forget. The machine's internal video is the old 25-pin mac standard and fuck if I know where my mac-to-VGA adapters ran off to. All displays in the new place are either VGA or DVI and the old Mac CRT and keyboard I'd use to troubleshoot Gridlock on the rare occasions it needs serious attention are in storage.

** You'd think I'd already know this, right? Well, no. I've been scanning my artwork at work for years. Taking a bus, waiting for the machine to free up, scanning, transferring the data, etc. was vastly faster than letting my piece of shit Umax chew away at an image for a few hours. The scanner in question is an Epson (perfection 600 I think, but it's at the house and right now I'm not), and is the only item Left Behind by a previous roommate that I've been able to make use of. Though it'll be a few days (or weeks) before I'm able to do more with it than see if it works.

Gas should still be Go for Friday. Not in my name, fortunately.

Power at the old place is off. Final bill to be mailed to new address. Phone has been switched over - a $40 privilege. Dialtone expected Friday afternoon, followed by a call to the ISP for them to do their mojo. Won't know how long that will take until the phone's over. I'd have shut off Speakeasy and gone with Verizon DSL but for the fact that Speakeasy's already billed me for the month.

All the calls have been made. The last thing on the current To Do list is to fill out and file the COA form for the post office. Maybe they'll let me do one for my sister, too.

My stuff's been mostly unpacked and largely set up. Wiring with regards to the internet is the last major issue to resolve, and there's no need to think on that until it's time to figure out where the modem lives.

At present the only problems with the new place are a marked lack of garbage cans (merrily biding their time in Steve's car) and the fact that none of the nice big windows have screens. No screens means huge crazyass MOTHRA SIZED INSECTS marching around like they own the place. Moths the size of my cel phone; some weird species of beetle I'd never seen before. Crazy. Fall/winter will solve that soon enough.

My old place was surrounded by hippies. The new place is surrounded by ivy, a weird old dude who wanders around shirtless while chomping a cigar and apparently picking berries or something, and cute girls. Lots of cute girls.

Verily, an improvement in all aspects.

Move Number Fifteen (counting all couches) is Out. Still working on the In. The new place is kind of a hole but is more than workable for our (yes, our - I'm no longer a solo operator) needs for the near-term.

We had no power until this afternoon, which means tonight I have to set up my alarm clock at the very least so I can make a meeting at work tomorrow. Gas is go for Friday, so I have two more days of cold showers ahead of me. My first hot shower in over two months was Monday afternoon. I can (and will) deal.

I've been "slacking" (read : moving*) on getting telephone transferred. It looks like I'll be canceling Speakeasy and "downgrading" to Verizon DSL. This should all either be Done or In Progress by Friday.

Gridlock as a web-facing server is Gone and probably won't be coming back. The web sites have been transferred to Germany. Kudos to _Lasar for hosting!

I still have to contact my previous landlord and get the keys back to him. And I still have to get my Bag O Sammich Materials out of the fridge at the old place. And I still have to maneuver the contents of my new room around into a position that will allow me to start setting things up. I still need to turn the power off at my old place and I still need to inform a few people that my housing needs have been met.

Much thanks to mom, dad and Martin, who helped out bigtime on my end. Also to Dave, JD, Ella, and everyone else who pitched in on the Owens end of things.

Oh, and the bathroom in the new place has a bitching view of downtown. Jpegs to follow.

* Mornings and afternoons on my own materials and logistics; evenings helping my new roommates with their (much larger) volume of stuff. For the past three or four weeks, with most of the heavy lifting being last week. My "me time" (read: ATC time) has consisted of blearily staring at the intertub for a few hours a night in a coffee shop. Very much looking forward to internetting from home again soon.