Just a reminder for my players, if you want to start at second level, do something to flesh out your character by tuesday night and you can start the game with 1000 XP. First session is on for this wednesday, Jenn works untill 5, so be here by 6 if you want to be in on dinner, hopefully the game can start shortly after that.

( In the mean time, here's some NPC's )

I showed Jenn how to play with the Gimp, and here's two images of how she coloured the ship, two of inspiration that I took, and one of hers that I modified. ( Behind the cut of course. )Anyone else want to play? If you have the Gimp I can give you the xcf, otherwise you can play with it here.

I spent some time yesterday evening and about half of today drawing a starship for the Star Wars game coming up. I drew it up in a drafting program and coloured it in a raster program, the best part being that they're both free. My renderings are pretty cartoon-looking, but I'm happy enough with them as a representation of the ship. ( Five large pics behind this cut )

Here's the characters for the Star Wars game! They're not full sheets, I don't want to make those up untill I know which are being played, but the main stats are there. Included is a male and female picture, I prefer for people to play their genders (fortunately, most Star Wars names are gender neutral). Character histories are rough sketches, players are free to add flavour, extra events, plot hooks, and motivations as they see fit. Here's the order in which you get to pick:

1:mallinson 
2:ice_kitten 
3:dr_holmes 
4:plaidalicious 

So the last two times I tried to hold a Toon Supers game, nobody showed up. Would anyone be interested if I gave it one more shot? The only thing is, I haven't been in the mood for it lately, although I might be able to put myself in the mood if I had some interest from the outside. The other option is Star Wars d20, I've got some ideas for a campaign set 250 years before Phantom Menace which I think might be fun, only I'd want to limit it to three players besides Jenn, and use pre-generated characters (don't worry, I always make more characters than players, even the last person to choose gets a choice). I'd only want to play every fourth weekend, so it wouldn't be a big commitment. Would anyone be interested in this?

Ever since I saw that video of Triumph the comic dog making fun of people in line to see Attack of the Clones, I wondered how well it would go over if he were to make fun of people in line to watch a hockey game. I mean really, what's the difference between dressing like Obi-Wan Kenobi to watch Star Wars, and wearing a jersey with an athlete's name and number on it for a game, when you aren't even on the team? It's the same thing really, it's just fun to get dressed up all fancy and share the enthusiasm of your peers. Some people might say "Yeah, but Star Wars isn't real," which is true, but then again, the movies themselves are real, even if what they show is fictional. And by the way, how real is a hockey game? Yes, those people on the ice are being themselves, and the competition between the athletes is genuine, but how real is the inter-city rivalry for the spectators? When the Canucks aren't playing the Flames, do the citizens of Vancouver have a reason to hate those of Calgary? Yet if the Canucks win a game against the flames, the next day people in BC say "WE beat Calgary," whether or not they live in Vancouver or play for the Canucks. If anything, Star Wars fans have a firmer grip on reality, since they never say "WE totally blew up the Death Star!"

Anyway, the Canucks, or at least their owners/advertisers, are having an "ultimate fan" contest, and now there's pictures of all sorts of dorks plastered up in the Skytrain stations. I've yoinked an image from that contest (which is disturbingly full of infants being indoctrinated into Fandom, obviously with parents hoping to win by cuteness factor), and slapped together a Geeks Anti-Defamation League propaganda poster:

Just to start this entry with something that isn't Star Wars, here's a joke I just thought up after tidying dinner.

Q: Sometimes when you lift a pot roast out of a crock pot, a piece of meat falls off and lands back in the broth, and you can't find it again. Where does it disappear to?

A: Gravy Jones' Locker!

What, you no like? Maybe me not shutting up about Star Wars is not so bad after all. This is more of a Lego post anyway. Images of the 2007 lineup have been leaked. ( Observe behind cut. )

In case you haven't noticed, I've got a whole bunch of Star Wars stuff on my plate right now. My Jedi costume is almost half done, I'll be shopping for lightsaber parts soon, the last three DVDs come out next tuesday, and although I'll have to wait for Amazon to ship them to me, I have my plug-in TV game to keep me occupied untill then, my collector's box is effectively just waiting to be printed, and Jenn even has a coworker who wants to start up a D20 game with us.

Naturally, this has gotten my mind whirring. I've come to wonder about Luke and Leia's extended family. In episode 2, there are some deleted scenes set the the home of Padme's family, and her parents and siblings are introduced. Padme's parents are seen again at the end of episode 3 in her funeral procession.* So what happened to Padme's family? According to Wookieepedia, her sister has two daughters, one of which represented the sector in the early years of the Empire, meaning Luke and Leia have cousins. The question is, how would they know? As far as I can see, there were only four people who knew that Padme was Luke and Leia's mother; Obi-Wan Kenobi, Bail Organa, Yoda, and R2D2. Owen and Beru Lars might have known, and if they weren't told, they may have guessed from the time that Anakin and Padme stayed with them. Unfortunately, all these people were dead by the end of episode 6, except for R2D2 who knows everything and says nothing. The question then becomes, would any of them have told Luke and Leia bofore they died? It's pretty safe to assume Yoda and Obi-Wan didn't. They could have revealed the information after they'd died, but they both came from a background in which family contact was taboo, for either immediate or extended family, so I don't see why they would even think to volunteer the identity of Luke and Leia's mother. As for Owen and Beru, even if they did know that Padme was Luke's mother, since they lied about Luke's father, it stands to reason that they'd lie to Luke about his mother's identity as well. That leaves Bail Organa.

As a brief aside, how close was Bail to Padme before he adopted her daughter? We only really see them interact during the emergency meeting of the senate in episode 3, but again, if you watch the deleted scenes, there are several segments in which Padme, Bail, Mon Mothma (who apparently used to be some kind of hot, red-headed scifi schoolmarm looking woman), and a character played by George Lucas's daughter, set up the organization that eventually becomes the rebellion. As it turns out, Padme had worked closely with Bail and Mon Mothma. I'm sure that Bail would have told Leia eventually, but I'm willing to bet that when he died on Alderaan, he was still waiting for the right time to come. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if he had told Mon Mothma, if only to fill her in on Leia's importance by lineage, and to underscore what they would be training Leia up for.

My conclusion, then, is that if Luke and Leia were to learn who their mother was, it would be through Mon Mothma. I think that once it got out that Luke and Leia were brother and sister, and that Anakin/Vader was their father, Mon Mothma would pull Leia aside some time and reveal that her mother was Padme Amidala, who I think Leia would recognize as one of the movers and shakers of the old republic. From there, it would be an easy matter to go to Naboo and find relatives of its most famous queen.**

The final question I have is, if what I've surmised is true, would Luke and Leia take Anakin's ashes to Naboo to be interred with Padme's remains?*** They might do it for sentimental reasons, but they might not for fear of how Padme's family and the people of Naboo might react to having Darth Vader interred with Padme Amidala. That conflict might actually make for an interesting story, except that if it was written in an official capacity, you know there would be all sorts of blaster fights and explosions inserted into what should really be a chick-story about self discovery, family ties, and all that other junk, and either way, it would probably suck. Mind you, it might be cool as one of those anime-dramas. Star Wars: Naboo Homecoming, or How To Make Girls Like Star Wars and Make Nerds Like Emotions. Hey, it couldn't be any worse than the Ewok movies, could it? Maybe Chewbacca could punch Jar Jar in the face or something, then the fan boys would buy it no matter what it was.

* Padme's death makes me wonder how Leia can remember her, but that's a different kettle of fish. My guess is that Leia's vague memories are actually force visions from dreams, like the ones Anakin had in episodes 2 and 3. He also mentioned prophetic dreams in episode 1, in which he was a Jedi and freed all the slaves, but that one didn't come true. If someone had reminded him of this in episode 3, maybe he wouldn't have been so spastic about his dreams of Padme's death. All these dreams make Anakin's tone poem from the episode 1 TV spots more foreshadowing, as well as a little more chilling, I think.



** Do you think that the fact that only women could be elected royalty on Naboo was what made Palpatine into such a power hungry megalomaniac? It's strange what sexism can do to some people.



*** Assuming they didn't just scatter to the four winds on Endor. Not my idea of a great final resting place.

I've just spent about 20 hours in the last two days fooling around in the Gimp, and I've gotten the images for the box finished. Starting on the right panel, the rebellion and empire images were taken from this site, and made that panel the easiest to make, which is why it was done first. The images on the left panel didn't have as many high-res resources to be found on google image search, so I had to fool around with making vector based traces of tiny gifs and blowing them up. These two panels were finished a few weeks ago, so yesterday afternoon I started the front panel. I'd already image searched the lightsaber handles, and it was just a question of erasing whatever was around them, whenever they weren't available as gifs with transparent backgrounds. Making lightsaber blades in the Gimp is tricky if you don't know what you're doing, fortunately this person does know what he's doing, and made a script for the Gimp which turns any selected area into a glowing blade lickety split.

Finally, the top image. The Star Wars logo was found as a screen cap of some kind with just hollow outlines of the letters. Upon closer inspection, when I started doing effects with the letters I noticed that the lines weren'e at right angles or straight. So I lay down some guide lines and made a vector drawing of the logo, filled it, and manipulated it into the bezeled gold chrome logo with supernova effect that it is now. It was actually easy once I knew what to do, but figuring out what I wanted and how to achieve it was tough, and I'm very proud with the result. The two fighters are actually toys, and I drew the contrails behind, again using vectors, and a gradient fill.

Lastly, I wasn't sure if I wanted a plain black background, or a starfield. These images started plain, but now that I have them with and without starfield, I think the extra texture makes the image look a lot more finished. Let me know what you guys think though, I'm interested to hear what other people think looks better.

The last eight hours or so have been spent building a template for the flat box pattern, which was time consuming because my computer was chugging with the image size. Once I've finally made up my mind which images to use (also whether or not to bother putting anything on the bottom, maybe Jenn and I in our costumes?), I can just paste them on to the template and get them printed.

Which reminds me, Derek, could you get me a quote if you're still at the copying/printing place? The image is 23"x24", 300dpi, and I want really heavy, glossy paper, 74 pound being around ideal.

Here's the two images:
( cut due to largeness, although they're approx. half the working size. )

Several months ago, a fabric store in Guildford was having a clearance sale, where Jenn and I loaded up on patterns, especially costume patterns. We also picked up fabric for some historical costumes we intend to use for Halowe'en, ( although it was this pattern that had me stoked ) Speaking of V-Con, We were talking with Bill the other day, and he mentioned getting a room at the hotel for the con. Which made me consider doing what the folks who go to Dragon Con do, which is getting a large room to share for the weekend. Anybody interested in doing this with us?

So, now that I'm three dvds away from having all the Star Wars movies and tv shows ever made, I find myself wishing it were in a fancy boxed set. The obvious solution is to make my own box. I've already started doing some stuff in photoshop, and I need to talk to Derek about a price quote and what kind of sizes and weights of paper he could hook me up with (at least 20x32 inches at 300dpi, ideally 74 lb or higher, uncertain if it's possible...) In the mean time, as I work with cardboard and occasionally get bored while the machine is running and I've done all I can to finish the last set and prepare the next, I decided to make a little prototype.

( six large-ish pics behind this cut )

So, I have been at my workplace for just over three years now, and this means two things. First, I'm eligible for the company bonus plan, in which they match my contributions, up to 5% of my earnings. Signing up for that and getting the full 5% was a no brainer. Also, I can now receive quarterly bonuses based on sales and production. I was only eligible for part of the last month for this last quarter, so when I got my bonus cheque on thursday I thought to myself "ok, I'm probably only getting $40, although $60 would be nice". I didn't open my cheque right when I got it, though, because I didn't want to see it and be disappointed while I finished out my work day. When I got home, there was mail from the government and a message on the answering machine. First, I looked at the mail, and it was good news. My return had been processed, as had Jenn's, and the balance of my reasessment was about $100 less than her return. The message was from Bel, saying she had friday off, and we could hang out as planned. Finally I opened my bonus cheque, hoping for $60 to cover dinner at the Memphis Blues. Well, I didn't get $60, I got $180! I decided that it would be appropriate to go out and buy myself the four Star Wars dvds I was missing to celebrate, especially because I had just seen the Clone Wars cartoons on sale in Lougheed mall.

Yesterday morning I went to the mall, and under the pretense of being responsible, my first stop was the CIBC to deposit my bonus cheque and pay the remaining balance of my reasessment. It was a relief to be payed off in full. It's definitely a pain to lose all that money, my tax return combined with Jenn's was supposed to be over a thousand dollars, which would have been nice to be able to spend, but on the other hand I was always worried that my 2002 return would blow up in my face some day, and now that it's dealt with it can never bite me in the ass again. After the bank, I stopped in at ebGames, thinking that if the dvds were no longer on sale, perhaps I could justify buying a refurbished xBox. Fortunately, the store didn't have any, so I couldn't persue that train of thought.

I did price comparisons for the dvds at London Drugs, Music World and HMV. For a change, HMV had the worst prices for everything. London Drugs had the best price on Revenge of the Sith, $30, so I picked that up. Music World had the double feature dvd with both Ewok movies for $10, as well as both seasons of the Clone Wars cartoons in the 2 for $35 section, so I picked those up. Jenn had wanted me to pick up Bride and Prejudice, which was also in the 2 for $35 section, so I wanted to grab one more movie to get the sale. The section also included Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, as well as Wallace and Gromit, and I was torn between the two. I decided to look through the rest of the store for other dvds that were part of the deal, and found Muppet Treasure Island, which I picked up immediately. I've had the songs from that movie popping into my head at work for months now, and I thought that the sense of adventure relating to pirates was much truer to the original swashbucklers in that movie than it was in Pirates of the Caribbean, for all that Muppet Treasure Island was intended to be a sillier movie.

I decided to pop in to Ming Wo and have another look for a burger press. I found a nice cannister style press for $10, although they didn't have any extra spacer disks, so I put those on order. I then hit the Safeway and got a couple items for dinner that night, and got myself some bubble tea at Cinnzeo and lunch at Kojos. Bel had a lot of running around to do herself, so I was able to take everything home, grab a Hulk comic, and go back to Braid station to meet her there. I showed her how to get to my place, and we hung out and she told me all about what's going on in her life right now. Colin came over after a while, and I made up some chicken parmesan and fetucine alfredo for dinner. Bel went home shortly after that, and Colin and I watched the Clone Wars together. I thought it was awesome, especially an underwater battle between the Quarren and Mon Calamari, complete with scuba troopers and Kit Fisto being an amphibious jedi badass.

Today I am taking it easy at the moment, although I should clean up the kitchen some time. Jenn and I want to go swimming, especially I do to make myself nice and hungry for dinner at the Memphis tonight.

UPDATE: I just added the new dvds to our database, and excluding the dollar store dvds and the ones we want to get rid of, we now have 201 disks, 18 of which are double sided, distributed over exactly 100 sets. Nowhere near the ballpark to compete with my brother, but a significant benchmark nonetheless.

I wasn't expecting this. Should have known the promise of the dollar signs would have worked eventually. It seems the original theatrical releases of the Star Wars movies are coming to DVD this fall, each movie sold individually in a two-disc set with both the original and 2004 special edition versions. Lucasfilm is claiming it's a limited release ending Dec. 31, so the big question for me is: do I buy each individual movie seperately, including episodes 1-3, as well as the ewok movies and the clone wars cartoons, or do I cross my fingers and wait for a giant, expensive, uber-box jammed with delicious special features? Currently, I'm leaning toward the individual movies for now, and if the uber box ever does come out, then sell off the old ones and upgrade. I figure this way I can wait for the tenth anniversary of episode three or when the second generation DVD race is over to finally get a massive, definitive box.

Read the official press release on the Star Wars website.

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.

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.

I tried making lasagna using my dad's recipe last weekend. I modified it a little though, I substituted buffalo for beef, 200g of mushrooms for pork, 500g of ricotta cheese for cottage cheese, and added about a teaspoon of mexican hot sauce to the meat mixture. It turned out pretty good and was well recieved, although I found it to be a little dry. I couldn't find the right size can of crushed tomatoes, and ricotta is apparently denser than cottage cheese, so I only had about 2/3 of what I needed. So next time, maybe I'll just simmer the sauce for 45 minutes instead of an hour and use 750g of ricotta. Also there were too many noodles, so next time I'll just count out 16 instead of boiling up the whole pack.

Today I went out to Best Buy and bought some headphones and the Episode III soundtrack. Their online price for the CD was $14.99, but when I got to the store I found a sign that said it was $10.99. This was actually kind of annoying at first, because there weren't any copies under Star Wars in the soundtrack section of their CD's. I looked around though, and found it after a bit in a big Star Wars display. It comes with a free DVD, which is about 17 of the music tracks from all six movies, set to video clips from the films. They tell the abridged story of Anakin, and they all have neat little introductions from Ian McDiarmid (which you have the option of turning off). I actually found it to be really cool, and I think it may actually tide me over untill I can buy the really expensive box of all six movies.

I've been building some stuff for Rememberance Day with my Lego. I never know what to put up, last year it was the Life on Mars sets, my line of thinking that it's really juvenile of us as a species to imagine other sentient species and ask if they're "friend or foe" before we decide how to react to them. Maybe we should just be friendly in the first place in case that's what they're thinking. Of course, the point of alien species is to make us think about foreign cultures, and I still think that humanity as a whole needs to improve it's ability to tolerate and accept. Because war sucks. Okay, I'll stop trying to be philosophical now. So back to building. I made two tiny dioramas. First off, Flanders' Fields.

This is as you can no doubt tell, a really easy model. Nowhere near as big as it should be, but I don't have enough pieces (this model includes all of my red 1x1 round plates)

Next is Jenn and I kicking back and watching Fraggle Rock and He-Man, and generally enjoying the life we have.

Something I think about every Rememberance Day is the fact that my Grandfather on my Dad's side served in WW2. He was an orphan from Saskatchewan, and joined a highland regiment. My Grandmother grew up in Ireland, and served as a nurse, and that's how they met. If it weren't for the war, they wouldn't have met, my Dad wouldn't have been born, and I wouldn't exist. Kind of an egotistical way to appreciate the sacrifices of more men and women than I'll ever know, but at least I can be thankful for the life I have because of their sacrifices. That being said, I do believe that all wars are tragedies, and I can only hope that eventually we'll all grow up and put them behind us.

Anyways, here's the gallery, which will be up after moderation.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=153448

Finally got two images of Lohnn Olda (my Star Wars galactic big game hunter character) that I like. Stayed up way too late to make them, especially drawing on the Lekku (head-tails for non-Star Wars geeks). Now the trouble is deciding. Of course, there's no reason why the character can't have a change of clothes, but the question is which one to print on the character sheet. Any thoughts or criticisms?

( cut for your protection [actually to save geocities bandwidth] )