Over Time with the Administrator and Miss Pauling

For better results, read the last panel a dozen or so times.

No Ron, it's "LeviosAAAAH!"

Help, we can't stop watching this.

Ghost Goill

A pic of Noill's character Marina, cause he did a bunch of oekaki stuff of my...stuff, and for some reason I usually think I don't deserve fanart, so I did this. Also featuring a dick ghost, though I'm going to refer to them as "Willy Wisp", because it's clean, still accurate, and you could put it in a Nintendo game and get away with it, and that amuses me.

Steam Autumn Sale 2012

Posting this here because it's easy to not hear about it.

They got the "flash sales" thing going on again, so check every few hours.

Pro-tip: rather than opening steam to check the sales, open your web browser, it's way faster.

Feel it in the air tonight

Me and Zach were talkin gibberish, and this idea came up, so i made it.

Silly sprite edit - Turtles in Time intro

You could say this is something I thought about doing nearly every time I played the game.

Top one is the original and the lower one is the edited version.

The palette is slightly bigger on the edited one, hair is a tad more red and 2 skin tones are different, but nothing major really.

The boobs came out ok, but personally, still not happy with it. However, good enough to post I think.

In related news:

I'm actually hyped about this

I played the first game, and I gotta say, it was fun and had good gameplay.

It's not out for PC, nor do I know if they have a PC port planned, So I can only hope. Come to think of it, not even sure it's out for anything at all.

I like some of the choices for characters in this, but the vehicle design looks drastically more boring. Still, it's a minor detail.

Speaking of detail, the TF2 character voices are so off...

"WATER"

> This is why we should never be roommates.

> If I walked in a room and saw you do that to a keyboard, I guarantee you a more tragic ending than throwing your pants over the the cupboards.

I gotta wonder if they discussed taking that sketch further...

Dropbox: The quest for more space

As I've mentioned, Bitten's doin "military service" in Thailand. So I've been trying to think of something nice to do for him since he should be back within a week or so.

Me Zach and Bitten all use Dropbox (Dunno about Jimmy, never asked), and in fact, we have a shared folder between all 3 of us with stuff we wanna show each other or blog related junk.

It is possible for free users to expand their Dropbox, but the most common way to do it is to refer people to Dropbox. the problem is, everyone and their mom uses Dropbox already, and if you try to make another account on the same computer, it won't work.

Dropbox by default gives everyone 2 gigs to store stuff online. Seems like a lot, but it does fill up quick. In particular for Bitten.

He uses his Dropbox a lot for commissions. I think he's sharing a folder with some other group for a comic project, which is like over 500mbs or something, and between that and his public folder which he uses to host commissions and/or wips, and the shared folder he has with me and Zach, his box actually hit the limit a while back.

I've deleted everything I could from our shared folder, compressed some files, but yea. Bitten in particular needs more space.

I happen to look on the Dropbox site earlier, and saw this thing i never noticed before:



"Getting Started"? 250mb space for that? Well, every bit helps...




So there's this freebie you can do for extra space, but the catch is, you need multiple devices to pull if off. I was actually missing step 1 prior to writing this, which is just a fancy "read me".

I don't think this will help Bitten though, I don't think he has a mobile device for this.

So I look around more, and there ARE more offers you can do for space:




I think Bitten will be able to do at least a couple of these.

If you're a dropbox user, I hope you find this info useful.

If you're not a Dropbox user yet, and If you wanna help Bitten, reply to this post saying you wanna help him, and when Bitten's back, I'll get him to post his referal link so you can help him get 500mb storage space.

!

For reasons unknown to us, all of Zach's pictures in his posts show up as "!"triangles.

Right now, we have no idea what's causing this. If anyone knows please tell us.

Edit: It's all sorted out, seems someone was trying to steal Zach's google account and google locked it up for safety.

"King of Famicom"

I love sprite movies, retro games and KoF. So this is right up my alley.

Also megaman's special move is totally not what you'd expect it to be, but that just made it funnier.


Kinda hope that Jimmy sees this one, he hasn't been on aim since he moved.

Thoughts about Interface design and operating systems

Incoming nerd rant.

M$ getting a lil desperate

I dunno how it is in the USA, but here in Portugal, I rarely see an ad on TV for consoles, videogames and operating systems. up to a month or 2 ago, i could count those on 1 hand. I was a bit stunned about M$ actually having ads on everywhere here about Windows 8. Saw it on TV a few times, local stores where having Windows 8 themed sales, stuff like that.

I get the distinct feel M$ really wants people to get Win8, but as I read, the ads don't reflect how Win8 is at all.

I have an android tablet, and if I knew how horrible they were to use, I probably wouldn't had bought it. I'm not gonna get into how shitty it is to use your fingers as controls, but it is.

From the Win8 ads, I had the feel that they wanted to make a tablet oriented interface, which is a horrible idea because those interfaces are the way they are because of limitations, not because they're awesome to use.

But, I read that you can actually get win8 to look just like win7. I didn't know that til I read it online, because from the ads I was under the impression that it was a horribly simplified piece of shit used by casuals jocks.

Did they convince people? I like to hope they didn't. Saw this earlier on a blog:




Made me smile.

Rules for interfaces

The thing with M$ is that even though they make operating systems, and the user interface is a very important part of it, it's something they systematically change for the worse.

I had a class in college that touched briefly on user interface design, it's not as easy as you'd think, but there are basic rules to it.

The goals of a good interface are being easy to use and being efficient.

What that means is that:

• The options should be grouped in a way that makes sense under a menu/tab/other that has a label that clearly describes the scope of the options within it so that they're easy to find.
• There shouldn't be an overwhelming amount of features/options on the screen at once. If there are too many options, then it's likely they should be split to another menu/tab.Do not overwhelm the user.
• Frequently used features need to be accessible quicker than ones that rarely are. This is done by making it so that less clicks are required to use the frequent options, and in case of too many options, the lesser used ones can be sorted in a subgroup.

There's many more details to it, like being intuitive, consistent, etc. but those things tend to happen naturally through testing.

Now, that's sort of a dilemma, and that's the part that doesn't occur to people until they make an interface themselves.

• You can be one of those people that hates submenus and make an interface where every single feature on it is a button on a toolbar, but if there's many features, you'll end up with something that looks like the an airplane's control panel, aka a clusterfuck.
• Or you can be one of those that likes everything neat and tidy and creates tons of submenus that actually drastically slow down the user and make stuff that's used often require several clicks. Doesn't sound like it's so bad, but it it's something that done hundreds of times a day, it'll piss the user off.
  

You want it to be easy/fast to use, but you want all the options well organized too.

What makes an interface good?

The big thing my teacher stressed at the time though, was:

The only people who can say if an interface is good or not, are the users, NEVER the developer.

After all, the users are the ones that will end up using the product and put up with it. My teacher added that coders tend to make the most horrible interfaces that only themselves could use efficiently.

That's possibly the part of software design that requires the most input from the user. And the more time the user has to spend using the software, the more valuable his opinion is.

So how is M$ failing at it?

M$ breaks every single rule of interface design every time they revamp something. But I think I can sort of understand why:

• They believe that existing Windows users will just keep using Windows regardless because of how jarring it is to switch to an entirely different OS.
• They want to attract new people to Windows, their marketing seems mainly aimed at casuals, people who don't normally use computers.

However, they're not really having any sucess with either.

There's an irony here.

• Switching Windows version IS jarring as fuck as it is, and getting worse every time.
• Casual users don't have high end computers, and they actually do find win XP simpler to use, so they'll often use that.
• More hardcore users detest the newer versions of Windows because it requires an adaptation period, which will affect their productivity, and the interface is oversimplified requiring way more clicks in general to do anything, so even after you adapted to it, the interface just isn't as efficient.

I actually have seen how much better the memory management is under win7 compared to winXP, but, The interface would slow me down more than what I'd get from the improvements.

Of course, some people seem to like the newer versions for some reason. But 95% of all people are fucking idiots on any given subject, so who cares.

What's the solution?

Ultimately, whoever decides if the interface is good or not is the user, but there's many of them and all with different tastes, right? So you'd think you can please everyone, but you're sort of wrong.

This is the main thing about people who defend newer Windows versions:

"Well, you probably didn't like Windows XP's interface at first either, but you got used to it"

To which I reply:

"No you dumb shit, You didn't have to because you could customize it to fit your needs. Win7 will absolutely NOT let me do that!"

(I think I'm paraphrasing a convo I've had before)

And yes I know, there's some tiny things that you can customize on win7, but none of them really help me improve my productivity with it.

Here's something else a lot of people disliked:

The Firefox menu.

Most people I know hated it. I think it's retarded because it's designed to save the 20 pixels that the menu would normally take in exhange for an extra click and a lot of navigation through sub menus.

It's especially stupid in an age where monitor are so fucking big. See back in the day where 1024x768 was the most common resolution, maybe? but now? No. it's dumb and 15 years too late.

However!

You can disable it and get the old menu back. and really, that's all i ask for. The more you allow people to customize an interface, the better it will automatically be.

Just let people pick what they want, it's fucking simple.

The OS I wish would get finished

My personal hope is ReactOS.

It's basically an OS that looks and feels like Windows. It's made from the ground up to support any software that runs on Windows, as well as drivers.

It's literally a direct alternative to Windows, except it's meant to be better and won't force you to change OS every 2 years.

Obviously, M$ tried to have them shut down, but since the thing is entirely coded in Linux and does not use a single line of code from Windows, they can't.

A very entertaining read

I saw these tumblr blogs mentioned on tweeter a couple of days ago:

electionresultbutthurt.tumblr.com
whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com

Suffice to say, I've been both laughing hard and been horrified at some of those posts.

Rant

The amount of racism on there is just shameful, the irony on those posts is delicious, and some people on there really can't seem to deal with not getting their way.

But really, those are just details, what struck me as stunning is how 99% of the people in those posts do not seem to even have a vague concept of what a decent healthcare system is. I suspect it could be media manipulation, but come on...

Most of the people who drop by to read this blog are Americans. So, as someone who has lived in countries with such systems my entire life, here's my understanding of it:

In a very brief description, it's a small tax out of everyone's income in exchange for all citizens being able to enjoy medical benefits at greatly reduced cost.

As an example, In France around 5 years ago, my mom had 3 hernias removed from her lower abdomen, and all we paid was 8 euros.

A lot of people seem to think that it's going to give "lazy people" food, money and whatever else without them having to work. I'm not sure how they'd assume that.

The thing is that if u don't contribute, you don't get these benefits, and you have to be a citizen or at least legally working in the country.

Maybe it's because of where I grew up, but I always thought all countries had a healthcare system similar to Portugal or France.

If you just check this page on Wikipedia, You can sort get the idea. Even though the USA thinks it's "the shit" as a developed country, it actually has pretty bad when it comes to health.

Seriously, if people can't see the value in increased life expectancy and reduced infant mortality, there's something wrong with them.

Smile, Darn Ya, Smile

Attempts to make a somewhat believable female medic mercenary eventually led to this. I'm still messing with it, but I personally like the direction it's going. On a side note, that's not supposed to be an Excalibur face, but it totally kinda sorta looks like one.

Given how often people seem to point out how samey my stuff is, it's kind of a wonder nobody's ever gotten on my case about my tendency to draw women who look irritated and annoyed. Maybe someday...

What kind of Pokémon hack would you make?

I've been watching creepy pastas on YouTube, and there are a lot of pokemon ones. Sometimes if the creepy pasta is good, fans of it will make a romhack that acts just like the creepy pasta.

So after watching a dude talk about another pokemon creepy pasta on Youtube, in the related videos there was a tutorial on how to use basic rom hacking tools for pokemon games.

The tools looked decent and simple to use and it seems to cover everything which makes sense because pokemon games are really popular.




So I start thinking to myself:

"Well, I'm sure I could do a romhack if I wanted, and it'd be nice to have a project to work on. But... what would I make?"

That's always the problem isn't it? I've learned to use many tools to make games in the past, but the only reason I never made a game is always because I never had a good idea for it. Editing a game is different though, the core is all there, you can just tweak stuff around a little.

I've been asking around for ideas, mostly out of curiosity to see what kind of pokemon hack they would do. The question is:

What pokemon rom hack would you make assuming you had a team do it for you. In this scenario we assume you're just the brains of the operation and all you need to do is decide things. 

I think I'd like to do a romhack even if the idea isn't that great, just for the experience. So I'm open to ideas and suggestions.




When I asked Zach what he would do if he could make a romhack, his response was "I dunno". but then again, that's also his response to "What are you doing?" and "How do you feel?". He says "I dunno" a lot actually...

As for myself, I had this vague idea:

---

You would play as a trainer who was walking through a desert like area with his 6 pokemon, but there were all caught in a sandstorm. The trainer gets separated from his Pokémon in the storm, and when it passes, he starts looking for them.

Now there's 2 ways I imagined this going:

• The trainer is the one that fights. He goes through all the areas around the desert looking for his pokemon and beating up wild pokemon and humans alike. His pokemon team would basically just be himself.
• One of the pokemon finds the trainer right away (a Numel), and he sets to find the rest of his team with it.

The goal is simple, find your lost pokemon. That's it.

In either case, the lost pokemon could be just hiding and/or cornered by other pokemon, trapped somewhere, collapsed from hunger/fatigue or stolen by another trainer.

It would not be a long game, I imagine playing it wouldn't take more than 1 hour to beat. Probably not even 30 mins if you're replaying it.

Would probably disable capturing wild pokemon, but allow the player to get the lost pokemon in any order. Much like megaman, some orders could be easier than others.

---

Could be fun.

If you guys have comments or ideas I'd love to hear them.

The deal about Bitten

Ok, Zach tells me people keep asking him about this, so I'm just gonna make a post here about it.

Bitten's from Singapore, and as he told me, in Singapore every able man has to go through military training for 2-3 weeks each year. That's what Bitten is doing now.

This year Bitten got sent to Thailand, his plane left on the 3rd, and he should be doing push-ups in the mud right now.

So yea, no Bitten for a while. Let's just hope it all goes well for him.

"Fairy Wish Prince"

We keep watching this one too.

"Pokémon Spread"

One of those things Zach links to me that makes us laugh for days.