Now I'm just blogging for the sake of blogging. I 'do' need to feed my site with more current news and content though.

So Google's been slowly dominating the world, and here we have another neat app that Google has unleashed upon us; Google Sites. It's basically a website builder for n00bs. Well, ok, its not so bad. It's Free! you can't beat that. It's got a lot of cool built-ins and its Google, how can you lose?

I decided to give it a little test drive and start up a company intranet for housing some internal docs and info for my web company (Actuent). It's good at what it does, is very easy to use and quite customizable. It does lack some things but like I said before, its FREE! how can you argue that? My biggest beef about this (and other Google apps such as the Google groups), is the lack of full integration of their Calendar. I just don't see why they can't have a fully functional, shared calendar for members somehow. It would be so perfect if it did.

I would see this more of an add-on tool for your company or for personal use. I can see this getting popular with clubs, organized groups and lazy developers.

8/10

Been long overdue for one. No shoots or work to show (yet), but have some in the works. I had one little incident though with a so called 'client' who'll remain nameless (you know who you are if you're reading this), who basically ripped me off after I delivered the goods. This 'client' which I'll call 'C' requested my services to do a commission vector art. After sending C a preview of the finished work I told C the final cost and he initially said he didn't have the money for it (not like I was asking that much!). Not only was he not going to pay me, I just wasted about 4hrs of my life.

So anyway, I gave him some options and didn't hear back from C for a week. Shortly after he responds and said that he has sent the $ via paypal. So I check paypal, initiate the transaction and start the processing to make sure it was all good. Well, it was all good alright.. I then send him the final PSD file (the master file of the vector), and well what do you know? the paypal transaction then magically gets cancelled from his end. ?? why? he gave me some excuses.. and well I haven't heard from him since. That was 2 weeks ago.

If he does decide to pay me I'll give an update here, if not I'll have to expose who he is to the internet world.

So finally, the Futurama crew returns and now bigger than ever, in a feature length, 1 of 4 movie comeback extravaganzas!

Minor Spoiler Alert

The first in the series of 4, direct to DVD feature length movies, Bender's Big Score, takes place in the not too distant future after the last episode (The Devil's hands are idle playthings). A new alien race known as the "Scammers" have scammed their way into the Planet Express Corp and have taken over the company and pretty soon, all of Earth.

It felt like good old times in Futurama! All the major characters have some much needed screen time, from Fry, Bender, Leela, Zoidberg, Hermies, Amy, Zapp, Kif, Nibbler and so on. At the core of the movie, it is still very much a Fry and Leela love triangle type story with a whole lot of crazy B and C stories running alongside.

What I liked about the movie was it stayed true to the roots of the show. They didn't try to do anything too fancy in the form of 3D, no more than they did in the regular show. And after watching it for the 2nd time with audio commentary, you get a sense that the actors are happy to be back and if you've heard the other commentaries from the DVD box sets, you'll know how soon hilarity ensues.

Although I wouldn't say its the best thing to Futurama in terms of comedy. I could easily name 5 other episodes that top this movie, it was still a solid effort (pat on back) and there are some signature "touching moments" in the movie that make it worth watching and I look forward to the other 3 movies set to make their releases direct to DVD sometime in the future.

A definitely buy for any fan, especially for the features on the DVD. Not quite as many but still satisfying to watch them, especially the Hypnotoad Episode (all 30mins of it!)

Rating: 7.5/10

I've finally taken some time to polish up my site. Made a few changes and decided to set the focus back onto my work instead of the blog itself. I'll still blog here once in a while, and if I ever get around to doing those tutorials then I'll definitely be posting those too.

I've also been catching up on my posting of new photos, still a lot more to come, some real gems but they will have to wait till I've caught up. Also, a few of them are for upcoming issues of a magazine I'm shooting for right now, so I can't exactly post the shots before the magazine is even out. They're well worth the wait though, so keep checking out the site now and then. I'll be posting a few more sets in the coming weeks.

Christmas is so close, I can smell it!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Harry

Yah.. I've been so very m.i.a these past few weeks. Been caught up with work and other "extra curricular" activities that I haven't really had much time to work on my site.

Hopefully after all this stuff passes I'll get back to working on the site. =)

So lately, I've been playing a lot of non-computer/video games in my free time and I'm actually kind of enjoying it more. For starters, it requires no computer, so no mindless staring into oblivion and second of all, they're fun and more often than not, always multiplayer. It's like the equivalent to PC lanning or console gaming without the hassle of having the multiple controllers or PC's.

I've always liked games of all sorts, trivia, video and what not. But what kick-started it back into action was the WoW Boardgame. At first I was a bit skeptical, I mean, how good could a "boardgame" be compared to its computer counterpart? You'd be surprised actually! Although its not without its own quirks and 'bugs', we've applied some of our own rule changes to make certain aspects more fun or more fair. The only aspect we have to work out is the time it takes to play a full game (on average, its been taking 6-8hrs with 6 players), not quite checkers.

Then there are the more simplified games that do only take 30-60mins to play through. Such as this game I tried while attending PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), this past summer. The game was called Guillotine, and it was really easy to learn and play and still required a bit of strategical play to win.

So I encourage all of you out there, to walk away from your computers, playstations, xbox's and try out some boardgames, you might also be pleasantly surprised.

Funny, I was doing some good ol' browsin' around and stumbled upon this person's blog about how he thinks The Simpsons have taken a nose dive in recent years etc etc (read it here). What's more funny is, this was written well before the movie was released and I think after watching the movie, it got me thinking the very same thing about the lackluster the series has become in the past few years.

Another weird coincidence, I share a lot of similarities with the author of this blog, I, too, own all the (he has the first 7, I got the first 11) seasons of The Simpsons on DVD and have watched and listened to all the commentaries for each episode. Also, one of my all time favorite episodes happens to be his all time favorite episode, "The Lemon of Troy".

But back to the topic at hand. The episodes really feel dumbed down, as funny as that sounds for a cartoon sitcom. All the best writers have left the show and these writers were geniuses back in the prime of the series which sucks, that they've moved on.

For example, Conan O'Brien was a writer during the early hay days of the show. Although he only write four episodes, he contributed a lot of funny quirks to other episodes. Another awesome, original writer was John Schwartswelder, who's an accomplished author in his own right. I look forward to picking up his books next time I'm in a book store. He's written well over 20 episodes, all classics in my book, but he hasn't contributed to anything recent in the past few years. Technically, he's credited to writing part of the movie, but it's not quite the same. I could probably make a nice little graph showing the decline of quality vs the lack of good writers over the past 5 years.

I think when its all said and done, its the writing, the material just isn't as funny as it was. Either that or all the great stories have been done to death. It's just sad to think such a classic series might end off on a low note, because it dragged on way too long and beyond its prime, but here's hoping.

I've decided to launch the site as is, in its unfinished state. Simply due to the fact that I just need an area viewable and navigational (somewhat), for my work to be displayed.

This also gives friends a chance to see whats been in the woodworks and test out some of the things in my site. So don't hesitate to signup and comment away on stuff, photos, etc.

Anyway, nothing really works, only the photos and the recent uploads. I'll be spending some time re-uploading all my photos and artwork to the site. Hopefully I will find some time to do that 'vector' tutorial I've been wanting to do.

Only time will tell...

Harry