So, after selling my broken Xbox 360 on eBay, I had a nice little sum of money on Paypal. Unfortunately, you can't just transfer Paypal money to your credit card, and transferring it into your bank means putting up your account info, and they charge money for it. So, I went to Warehouse 23 and ordered some GURPS books instead. I also just got my bonus cheque from work, as well as a paycheque from A&W which I wasn't expecting, so I put it all on my Visa so as to order a couple more. Also, I've been downloading free pdf's from E23. Which brings me to my next topic:

Those of you who DM, GM, or ST, take note! There's a free pdf which offers complete rules for the use of Lava in all systems! It's brief, concise, and has all the information you need, as well as easy to use diagrams and charts which you can print off and hand to players for easy dispute resolution! Even if you're just a player, this is an absolute necessity, and it's TOTALLY FREE! Go here to download it!

Last but not least, Jenn and I have been batting around ideas for a fantasy setting. We were talking about dragon kin, and I remembered a bit of an afterword in a Ben Bova book of mine, which led me to an internet search, resulting in this video, and a corresponding article from BBC News.

Be careful what you wish for. The end amused me greatly, although while I am posting this for your benefit, I have to admit that Tim was the first person I thought of when I saw this.

Enjoy!

Here's a little something a friend told me about:



And here's something I ran across looking for that first one:



The thing I love about the second one is that it gives a pretty fair treatment of both Star Wars and Star Trek. I was worried that it would just be some guy's opinion about one being awesome and the other a load of crap, but I was surprised. I thought it was pretty well put together, too.

So, you remember when YTV was new, and Barenaked Ladies were new, and the race riots in LA had prompted a bunch of anti-racism stuff in schools and tv?

Do you remember this?



Oh, and for nostalgia's sake, here's one for Jenn:

This is possibly one of Weird Al's best parodies, and yes, it's new. Complete with music video, on Albino Blacksheep.

WHITE AND NERDY.

Seriously, if you read this you need to watch it.

The CNL had a two hour sale on thursday, so I went out and picked up some DVDs. I picked up Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and Secretary for Jenn, and got for myself episodes 1 and 2 of Star Wars, as well as season 3 of Samurai Jack. Last night Jenn and I ate some Kung Pao chicken and drank some booze (wheat beer for me, blackberry merlot for her), and attempted to watch a couple movies. Unfortunately, we had both been up for a long time, and wound up passing out during the first movie we put on. It's been a long while since we had a nice evening in like that though, so we enjoyed ourselves anyway.

I randomly was looking for Goon Show the other day, and I found a site with free streaming broadcasts of nothing but the Goon Show. It won't play with WMP, so I put a link to Realplayer on my desktop and bookmarked the Goon Show Radio, as well as Happy Hardcore Radio, found over here.

I decided a while back to sell some things on eBay. I waited for them to offer their "list 5 items for free" promo, and put up some of my old treasure from my parent's place. Turns out it's not worth very much at all. I think that part of the problem is shipping, people would ask me for a quote and then they wouldn't bid when they got it. In the end, I'm rather disappointed, but it's kind of fun to pack things up to send off around the globe. I don't think I'll do it again, though, garage sales, free listings and swap meets are the way to go.

On the plus side, What money I've made is good for a couple things. Jenn and I found this really cool online costume store, and bought ourselves some faux-leather costume boots. I got some black cavalry type boots I can use for the pirate outfit Jenn's going to sew for me, or a Jedi costume at some later indeterminate time. I've also placed an order for the last of the locally unobtainable Star Wars Lego sets, and once I have those there will be only one set I'm missing (not counting the other not yet released one), which is readily available from the Lego website. Oh, so close, I can't wait to be finished.

On the down side, I just got a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency. They've reasessed my 2002 return, and rejected all of my expense claims from when I worked as a diver, meaning I now owe them more money than I care to admit in my LJ. To be honest, I've been worried this might happen, I heard different things from different sources about what I could or couldn't claim, but at least it's only a reasessment, because in my more paranoid hours I imagined being hurled away for decades on fraud charges (stupid overactive imagination...). This has come at an unfortunate time though, as Jenn and I are still recovering from an oversight earlier this month when we went nuts at Ikea. The closest there is to a silver lining here is that I can pay the difference between that and this year's return, which will take out nearly a quarter of it, and the rest will fit on the line of credit. It's not really good, but at least I can manage it. On the other hand, I just talked to Fido, and my contract is up so I switched to another plan which should cut down my cellular bill by two thirds. Once Jenn's contract is up and we get her switched, we should be doing pretty good.

Things like this overwhelm me and make me anxious, but there's nothing I can do except to keep doing what I'm already doing. Keep putting money in the RRSP, keep taking bites out of debt, use a moderate amount of willpower to avoid overspending (sometimes), and over time things will get better.

For those of you who don't read Rick Mercer's blog:

Mr. Harper is being a jerk.

In order to familiarize myself with the GURPS combat system (and justify the expense of the battlemap Jenn and I bought last year), I decided to make some generic fighter type characters who could randomly battle each other in an arena. I made up the minifigs and arena obstacles months ago, but it was just last saturday that I finally finished making up stats for the four medievil characters, and today I finally took some pictures and put them up in a brickshelf gallery (click on the picture for a link). I'm not going to make stats for the four high-tech characters for a bit, because two of them need to have stats for their equiptment first. In the mean time, it should be all ready to play next time Jenn and I host tea. The idea is to make it kind of like Star Wars Epic Duels, and either do single or team combat. It will probably not play as quick untill I have the rules down a little firmer, but that's the point of the exercise. Once I know what I'm doing, I'll be better equipped to run a game. Here's the four available characters (based on 50 points each):

Archer: Fast character, proficient with wrestling and archery.

Dirk: Very fast, not very strong, knife fighter with a compulsion for risky behaviour.

Helmut: Generic sword and shield fighter.

Lumbering Jack: Slow, heavily armoured, strong berserker type.

So, like I said, anyone who wants to play, it will be set to go next time tea is at our place. And if certain "dubious" individuals have negative comments to make about GURPS stemming from barbershop singing, math nerd cheer-boys, don't bother, I've already heard it. ;p

Jenn and I picked up Firefly a while ago, and we've been steadily making our way through it. One thing I've noticed is a similarity between one of the characters on Firefly, and one from another show she insisted on picking up:








Anyone else see it?

And for those of you who care, check out this Lego model of Serenity.

I meant to post this about three weeks ago, so here it is at long last, my Coralskipper from the New Jedi Order series (for those of you who I didn't force to look at this at my birthday tea):



First, it doesn't look at all like the "official" version, because I think that one looks like a zombie's bruised nut-sack. Secondly, it's about half the size it should be to be minifig scale, but I always envisioned coralskippers as being smaller than x-wings and swarming all over the place, even though the books say the two fighters are about the same size. Aside from that I've got the volcano-like guns and mica-like canopy. The ship is supposed to be grown out of "yorik coral", so I used red and orange to give it a coral colour. I tried to make it a little organic by mottling the colours and making it slightly asymmetrical. When reading the books I pictured the dovin basal* as being at the front of the ship instead of the back, because it works on attraction instead of propulsion. When I was reading the books I imagined the dovin basal as being shaped like a big blue heart with red veins, but that was too hard to build, so here I've made it into a translucent, vein-coloured mushroom held onto the front of the craft by pincers. Click on the picture for a link to the brickshelf gallery, where I've also got a shot of two Yuzhan Vong warriors and Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin Solo.

*An organism that can manipulate gravity. It moves the ship by latching on to distant gravity wells, and can create miniature black holes to shield the ship.

Well, I've been three cubed for about a week and a half. When I was one to the power of one I couldn't count, and when I was two squared I certainly didn't know what exponents were. This is the first time I've been able to appreciate being an integer raised to the power of itself. Unfortunately, it will be the last. I find this kind of disappointing. I spent most of my celebration time on the 10th of this month looking at garbage on the internet. Here's some of the stuff I've run across, as well as some stuff I've wanted to share for a while:

First, to start you off gently, an amusing webcomic featuring Grimlock.

Happy belated Valentine's, everybody!

At long last, this image finally explains the mysterious and un-nameable appeal of Vampirella.

I went looking for optical illusions, and found many like this. Then I found this one, which I had to download and look at in an image editor because I just couldn't believe it. Finally, this seems like an optical illusion, but it isn't. It affected my eyes for several days.

Last but not least, some videos. First, in response to Jhayne's fire-breathing fat Japanese guy in a gold cape, please enjoy this Iowa woman in a gold track suit rapping an ode to jem sweaters.

I was going to write a big introduction about how awful this next video is, but I'll let it speak for itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Gunther on the Prowl for Cheap Whores, attempting to make his "Ding Dong" Sound Sexy.

Does your brain hurt? Are your eyes bleeding? This will take away the pain, at least it did for me.

Who likes math? Everyone, of course! That's why it sometimes happens to me when I'm bored at work. A couple days ago I was thinking about how my wedding cake had been cut. An inner circle was cut, and the inner circle and outer wheel shapes were sliced into pieces (Fig. 1).



I began to wonder how wide the inner circle would have to be in relation to the outer circle (Fig. 2) for the pieces to all have the same volume. First I made the simplification that the cake was a uniform height, meaning as long as the surface areas were all the same, the volumes would be too. Next I decided that the outer wheel could be cut into twice as many pieces as the inner circle, meaning it has to have twice the surface area (Fig. 3). Phrased as a problem:

Given that: Ab=2Aa
Solve for: Ra as a function of R

( Here's my solution )
Okay, that wasn't fun. How about something easier?

One of these things does not belong here,
One of these things is not the same.
One of these things does not belong here,
Now it's time to play our game!

Beef
Chicken
Pencil Sharpener

Cthulhu
Godzilla
A box of tissues

Gort
Torg
The Tin Woodsman

Scantily clad, skinny girls doing (supposedly) sexy gyrations under flashing lights
Drum machine dance beats
Polka

Okay, that last one was a trick question, they all go together, at least according to Slovenian Group Atomik Harmonik. Their videos are in the right column under "Videospot". If you only watch one, watch Turbo Polka, a song that put them on the charts in Germany and Austria. The accordian pimp in the ice cream suit is not to be missed. The sad thing is that Scandahoovian choreography doesn't seem to have improved much since the days of Armi and Danny from Finland, but at least the dancers are moving at the same time and the camera work makes it harder to see what they're actually doing.

The critics* have called it "OMFG ROTFLOL THAST TOTALY TEH BEST MUSIC VIDOE EVA!!!!!!1" I was simalarly entertained, you might be too.


*Jenn. Artistic liberties taken with actual quote.

So I was looking for some wallpapers. I decided to look for Qui-Gon Jinn wallpapers, because Qui-Gon is my favourite Star Wars character, and came across qui-gonline, a site that crawls with a cootie-ridden fangirlyness. It did reveal some interesting stuff about the whole Jedi ghost thing that was supposed to be explained in episode 3. According to the script, all beings join the force when they die, but they can't maintain their own identity. Qui-Gon found a way to do this, but his technique was incomplete, which is why he didn't disappear and can only be heard as a ghost and not seen (go to the faq section of qui-gonline for excerpts). In order to do this you have to be incredibly in tune with the living force (compassion?), as opposed to the unifying force (destiny?), which is why the Sith never figured it out and the Jedi thought it was impossible. Kind of neat, eh?

Also, Master Replicas is putting out a Qui-Gon Jinn lightsaber later this year, but it looks like it won't be the light-up FX type, so my wallet is safe for now.

They also had some interesting links. Two of note:

The Jar Jargonizer: A utility to translate web pages into Jar Jar speak. I suggest you copy and paste this URL: http://www.kavinay.com/noodlings/2006/01/election_2006_harpers_a_trekkie.php

Find your Star Wars Twin: A personality test (reportedly) made by a psychologist, which you may optionally give miscellaneous data to for studies. Click to see my Star Wars Personality.

This made me think of the other Star Wars Character test at Sluis-Van. Just took it again, still Luke Skywalker.

As for the wallpaper, here's one I thought was pretty cool (and well photoshopped too) from theforce.net.

It's been a while since I did a Lego-related post, and I feel the need to share this. Here is a model brought to you by the same folks as the mini-mizer, and it is what I call "intelligent design".

First of all, I'd like to say Happy Holidays to my friends, and gift them all with a link to something I didn't make or pay for:
Clicky!

Jenn and I both got some HMV gift certs from Santa, and I got a $150 cash Christmas bonus from work, so I cajoled her into blowing it all today. We went out to Coquitlam Center around elevenish, after the hardcore shoppers, before the afternoon stress cases. For the most part, the mall was about as busy as Metrotown on a saturday (although the Future Shop was really packed, and the line to get into Off the Wall was comparable to the line to get onto rides at the PNE on Labour Day). First we hit the HMV, and Jenn picked up Barbarella and Super-Size Me (mostly because it cost about the same as renting it would), and I got Robots and the Faux Fireplace DVD. We then hit the Future Shop, where I inteded to spend my work bonus on Sea Quest season 1, the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special, and a portable CD player for putting on in the kitchen while I'm doing dishes or cooking. Well, despite my seeing multiple copies of the He-Man DVD there before, all the Christmas stuff was hidden away, and Sea Quest wasn't shelved, even though today is the official release date (the main reason why I wanted to get it). So I didn't even bother looking at boom boxes. Instead we went to Best Buy, which was not only less crowded, it was better lit, and the staff was incredibly helpful, not to mention whoever was doing the organizing for Boxing Day had a real head on their shoulders, and the checkouts were amazingly efficient. They had everything I was looking for, and I thought at first it was going to cost me $8 more than Future Shop, but the prices were lower than they were labeled, and in the end it cost the same. From now on, when I need electronics around Coquitlam Center, I'm going to Best Buy. Afterwards, I was very hungry, so we ate at Popeye's. I've been wanting to try the food there for a while now, mostly because of this loop of a girl dancing in a way which I find endearing for some odd reason. Not really a good reason to eat somewhere, especially because it isn't even a commercial, but I've been craving fried chicken and I've given up KFC, which really limits my options where I live. It turns out they're a Louisiana themed place (named after the character from the French Connection, as opposed to the cartoon character), complete with Dixieland Jazz playing in the background. The chicken was pretty good, as were the fries and the biscuits, but it was the red beans and rice that I decided to take a chance on that was the thing that makes me want to go back. Another thing I wasn't expecting was that they serve catfish, meaning I now have a second, more affordable source for the delicious poisson. Now I just need an excuse to go back.

A meme from legacyofty's LJ

1.) Go to http://images.google.com/
2.) Answer the following questions by searching for the answer to each question.
3.) Use the FIRST image Google gives you and paste! (OK, you can cheat and be a little selective to make it more creative/work-safe/educational)
Here are the questions you must answer using the first images Google has given you:
1.) This is what comes up when I type in my name.
2.) This is my favorite animal.
3.) This is what comes up when I type in my mother's name.
4.) This is where I live.
5.) This is where I want to live.
6.) This is my favorite food.
7.) This is my favorite musician.
8.) This is my favorite actor/actress.
9.) This describes how I feel right now (use the word that best expresses your feelings at this very moment).
10.) This is what I want to share with the world

( Read more... )

And now, a rating of my sins:

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Very Low

Discover Your Sins - Click Here

I find it odd that greed is higher than gluttony.

Here's an idea I had at work the other day, inspired by those "cross two or more movies" type photoshop contests. Of course, photoshop costs too much so this was made using the Gimp. So I guess this wasn't "photoshopped" so much as "gimped". I find that more amusing anyway.

So without further ado:


Also, here's a larger version for those who want it:
http://www.maj.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=332333