And I shall call him...mini-behemoth!

Almost a year ago Ryan and I built the Behemoth.  It’s fully assembled (except for the darned doors which I just can’t seem to manage to build), so last weekend I decided to build a unit for Kaylin.   It’s not nearly as big, just one 24′ wide by 8′ tall unit.  This one’s built with 3/4″ maple ply-wood ($66.00 a sheet) instead of 3/4″ MDF ($33.00 a sheet).

Now to be fair I bought all of the wood shortly after Maks was born, early one Saturday Kaylin and I headed out to Rona, picked up $120.00 worth of wood and a $10.00 pry bar (to cleanly pull the trim off the wall, something I didn’t have last time and ended up doing a horrible hatchet job).  I bought better wood this time because frankly MDF is heavy and disgustingly messy (though incredibly forgiving).  I also made a small error in checking over my cutlist which resulted in me getting 7 shelves out of the sheet instead of only 5, and ended up meaning I had to purchase an 8′ length of pine for an additional $16.00.  All in I should have been able to build this thing for $100.00.

Last Saturday I made the final cuts that needed to be made, and spent a few hours putting the boxes together.  Kaylin helped me, and together we built the entire thing in a few hours.

I’m pretty happy with the way it looks, however it really illustrates how much I need a router.  I have no edges on any of the sides, and while it still looks cool, it doesn’t quite have that finished look that the routed edges on the original Behemoth has.  Maybe Santa will be good to me this year.

Now all that’s left is the filling, sanding, painting, sanding, and painting which should only take at the most another sixteen years!

This new host is much faster, and I’m now trying out WordPress 2.7 over here, which has a very nice User Interface.

As they say, “As you were”.

The best games from the beginning of 2008

I don’t know when it happened exactly, but at some point in the last 5 years, I stopped being a huge movie nut, and transferred some of that love over to video games.  I used to read Premiere magazine, and Entertainment Weekly.  I would surf Film Threat, and Cinematical, Rotten Tomatoes was a weekly pilgramige, and I always knew what new releases were out on video.  My DVD collection was huge, and always growing.

Then a strange thing happened.  About 3 years ago I kind of stopped buying DVD’s.  You can almost see a line in my collection that looks like a growth line in a tree.  Tons of DVD’s, then nothing.

A similar thing happened with my surf habits.  I now visit Gamespot, Giant Bomb, Joystiq, PS3 Fanboy and Xbox 360 Fanboy on a daily basis.

I’ve always been a fan of video games.  I had an Atari 2600 when I was a kid, I got in trouble for going to the Arcade which was across Wharncliffe Ave when I was in grade school.  I spent a lot of time in arcades through high school.  I bought a Super Nintendo in high school (and a 13″ colour TV to play it on even).  I had an Atari Lynx handheld system in high school too.  I played a ton of Warcraft, Half Life, Quake, and got into modding levels for Quake and Half Life in college.  After college I bought a PS2 which led to an Xbox, which eventually led to an Xbox 360, and now a PS3.

So I’ve always had games, and I’ve always read games magazines, but gaming as a lifestyle never appealed to me.  I never considered it as a career, and never even thought about gaming journalism the way I thought about comics and comics journalism, or the way that I considered Movies and TV as a career choice.

What’s kind of strange is that I find myself more and more drawn to gaming, and less turned on by movies.  Oh sure, I still enjoy a good flick, and I’m totally freaking out about Watchmen and the new James Bond flicks, but I’d much rather read about Little Big Workshop, or a review of Gears of War 2, or the latest on the New Xbox Experience than read about movie news anymore.

The Sony PS3

Well, I did it.  Last week in a moment of weakness I sold my HD DVD discs, put the HD DVD player up for auction, and went out and bought myself a Blu Ray player…a PS3 to be specific.

The deal at Rogers video was too good to pass up.  I’ve been eyeing a Blu Ray player for a while because I’m just enough of an AV snob to love the way high def movies look on the HD DVD player.  With nothing new coming out, I just needed a fix.I managed this on our single income through a combination of trickery and brilliant salesmanship.

I paid $399.99 for the PS3, which came with a controller, a Blu Ray remote, 2 games, Singstar, Genji, and a Blu Ray DVD in Jumper.  I put the 2 games and the movie up on eBay, and I’m expecting to get about $90.00 back for them.  My movies netted me about $250.00, I put up a few Xbox games, for another 60.00, and the HD DVD player itself will get about $80.00.  Meaning I got my PS3 down to revenue neutral!

Purely digital movies look brilliant on Blu Ray, and with Dark Knight and Wall E both coming out shortly on Blu Ray, I just had to pull the trigger.

I don’t really want  a second video gaming system, but I can’t hide the fact that I really like the idea of games like Little Big Planet, and the fact that the PS3 is ahead of the curve when it comes to full game digital distribution, and the fact that you can easily add your own hard drive to a PS3 if you want to upgrade it.  If we didn’t have such a huge investment in Rock Band at this point, I might even get rid of ye olde Xbox 360, but between Rock Band tracks, the instruments, and the arcade games I’ve bought with it, I can’t justify getting rid of it now.

Yes, his name is really Al

There’s a reason that the “Comic Shop Guy” is such a stereotype in the comics industry.  There quite frankly isn’t a lot of money in the business, and the overwhelmingly “pack rat-ish” mentality of comic book fans means that owners (who are usually fans) are drowning in overstock.

When you’re dealing with 10 and 15% margins, every item you have in stock requires you to sell 5 to break even.

This week we did something at All New Comics that we’ve resisted for as long as possible.  We raised prices.

It wasn’t the cost of gas that did it (we’ve debated raising shipping rates for subscribers forever, but have never done it), it was the price of the Canadian dollar that finally forced our hand.

I really didn’t want to do this, but neither Peter nor I have ever seen a steady stream of cash from All New Comics, we’ve had a couple little middling payments amounting to less than a couple of mortgage payments, but certainly nothing that could make either one of us think we can quit our day jobs.

The amount of work we do for the amount of money we make puts slave labour to shame.  I do 20-30 hours a month on All New Comics, Pete does the same, maybe more (especially for show months), and in return we see a few dollars here and there.

Almost monthly I have this question about whether I want to continue the business (usually when I’m inputting crap from the absolutely ridiculous 500 page monthly catalogue…that’s a whole other rant).  What am I building here exactly?  Is it a way for me to get cheaper comics (a commodity that I don’t even particularly like that much anymore, and which I could get in trade form from Amazon for pretty much the same price as I pay at cost), is it a business that I want to eventually run full time?  Is it something that I just like to do on the evenings and weekends?  Is it an educational exercise?  Is it a potential safety net in case I lose my full time gig for whatever reason?

I don’t know anymore.  What I do know is that the emails I get back from our customers usually keep me going.  They love us, they really do, and even when we do something mean like raise prices to keep alive, they send us re-assurances and thanks for the job well done so far.

That makes it worthwhile for now, but the day will come when Kaylin and Maks ask mommy why daddy can’t go to Canada’s Wonderland, and when mommy tells the kids that it’s because daddy has to input 43 different versions of the latest Uncanny Possum Man mini-series into the system, I will have to seriously consider my priorities.

Just for fun, here’s the email I sent out today about changing our prices.

An urgent notice from your friends at All New Comics

Dear Subscribers;

As we’re sure most of you know, the Canadian dollar has been on a nose-dive lately, plummeting from a 52 week high of .97, to today’s close of 1.21.

What you may not know is that we are invoiced by our US based distributor in US dollars. This is why we lowered prices last year, and why we now have to do something about our incredibly shrinking margin. If this continued much longer we quite frankly wouldn’t be able to stay in business, and would have to shut our virtual doors. This isn’t something that we want, and we definitely don’t want to ever leave you, our loyal subscribers, without your monthly comic fix.

We thought about this quite a bit, and decided on a solution. Going back to Canadian cover price, and it is a massive logistical pain in the neck to do it, and often ends up being quite a bit out of whack with reality. So what we have decided to do is charge you a floating exchange rate based on what we are billed, and apply your discount after it.

A real world example from this week looks like this:
$2.99 US comic x 1.18 exchange rate = $3.53 (this is based on the rate we were billed for this week’s comics)
- 20% discount (.72)
Your cost = $2.82

As the dollar fluctuates, our prices will go up and down, if we get back to last summers .97 dollar, that same comic goes way down to 2.32. We’re sorry that we have to do this, but it’s the only fair thing to do with the fluctuations in the dollar, and the fact that we have to remain profitable in order to stay open.

This new policy will go into effect with the comics shipping November 5th.

If you have questions or comments about this policy, please address them to Peter and I at <email address removed to keep out of the spamobots grubby little fingers>.

Sincerely:
Brian Garside
- All New Comics resident Web Guru

Star Wars hoodies by Marc Ecko

I like Marc Ecko, I had a really cool Marc Ecko yellow shirt once that Charlene hated with the firey heat of a thousand burning suns.  Unfortunately most of his stuff is a little too “Affliction” for my tastes.

However their new Star Wars line is pretty cool.  In my opinion this hoodie, may be the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while…or perhaps the lamest.  So lame in fact that it’s gone 180 degrees back around and become cool again!  This one however might be lame (although I’m on the fence on it, it might have gone like 190 degrees or something, and is just over-cool).

I loved that Boba Fett hoodie so much that I went to buy one, only to find out that Marc Ecko won’t ship to Canada.

Damn.

The Flip Ultra in all its glory

When we bought our Pentax digital camera, we discovered that it had a nice little built-in video feature.  The movies it made were good, but not great, the sound was quite distorted, but the pictures were good enough that we could take little 30 second videos without hauling out the massive Sony Digital 8 camera most of the time.

Then we got our Canon Rebel XTi, and gone were the little videos (though the amazing pictures we’re taking more than make up for it).   Since last Christmas (when we got the Canon), our video production had dropped by quite a bit.

Then along came the Flip Ultra.

I had read a few reviews about the Flip Ultra, but it wasn’t until seeing it in action on videos from the San Diego Comic-Con that I REALLY wanted one.  Scott Kurtz of PvP online did a number of little videos with a Flip Mino that showed me the real potential of the device.

After keeping an eye out online, I found a Flip Ultra on eBay and ended up snagging it for $80.00.  I have to say that it’s $80 of the best dollars I’ve spent recently.  The videos are crisp and sharp (although since the zoom is digital it introduces artifacting), and sound is incredible.

What’s more, the videos it produces are awesome for sharing.  I’ve created a Vimeo account where I’m keeping all of my masterpieces.  With the Flip videos you just shoot a few seconds, and fire them up to a service.  You don’t need any extra cables, as the flip has a little USB port that swings out from its side.  There’s software built in to the device to do basic editing and uploading to either YouTube or a couple of other services.

The flip saves all video as MPEG4 .avi format files which allows you a lot of flexibility.  All video is shot at 640×480 at 30 frames per second and is shown on a 1.5 inch LCD screen.  The flip contains enough internal memory to hold 1 hour of video, and is not upgradable.

I’m going to pick up a copy of Vegas Video (hint to wife for anniversary/birthday/Christmas gift ideas) soon to start doing some more video editing, which is one of the things I miss from my TV and internet video superstar days.  In the short term though the Flip Ultra with Windows Movie Maker is pretty much all you need to make cute little videos like this one:

Kaylin rides a tricycle from Brian Garside on Vimeo.

Cool Geek Factors:

• Cheap, incredibly portable camera that literally fits in your pocket.
• Built in USB attachment means no lugging around cables.
• Onboard software allows basic video editing.
• 2 standard AA batteries means you can just grab more batteries if you run out (I’m currently using rechargables which get tons of life).
• TV out jack lets you watch video on TV.
• Tripod port on the bottom.
• Videos saved as MPEG4 in .avi format
• Flat bottom makes it easy to just set it up on any flat surface.
• One button operation makes video recording simple.
• 1 second boot-up means you don’t miss that cool shot.

Uncool Geek factors:

• Built in software is kind of limiting
• A little thicker than a regular camera
• Pictures are only 640×480
• No “bells and whistles”
• No optical zoom
• Digital zoom is kind of useless and makes video look horrible
• Storage not upgradable

The Flip Ultra is an excellent little camcorder which can be thrown in your pocket and is great for those little 30 second videos that you want to take and quickly share with friends.  Video and audio quality is surprisingly good for such a tiny package.

Here is Maks as he gets his first test

Today at 1:20pm, we welcomed the newest addition to our family as Maks O’Brian without too much fuss.

Char woke up at 4am, tossing and turning and woke me up around 5 (of course last night was the night I decided to catch up on some work and TV at the same time and ended up crawling into bed around 2:30).  She woke me up again at 5:30 asking for Tylenol (which our midwife had recommended).  I got in the car and drove, looking for a 24 hour store that would sell Tylenol…not an easy feat when you’re groggy.  In the process I almost killed a skunk on Oxford, and had to hit two stores to find Tylenol (and then I only got Regular Strength).

I managed to get another couple of hours sleep while Char paced downstairs.  She eventually woke me up around 7:30, pretty sure that today would be the day.  She called my mom to come over and take care of Kaylin, I finished up some emailing to work, and then it was a whirlwind.

While she went for a quick bath to hopefully control the contractions, I headed outside to put the carseat in the car.  She came outside to tell me that it was getting close, and when I got back inside, I called our midwife Bin to let her know we were close.

We both got fuelled up, and headed to the hospital (the same hospital that I was born at and nearly to the day).  This time it would be Charlene who screwed up the directions, I was sure we were supposed to go in off of one entrance, she insisted it was the other.  Kind of makes up for me getting lost on the way to the hospital for Kaylin.

I dropped her off and parked the car, grabbing only Char’s essential bag.  No camera, no baby bag, no car seat.  Our midwife Binh checked Char, and she was already 7cm dialated.  It was noon as we checked in, and it looked like we’d have a baby by 2.

Things happened very fast, so fast that I didn’t have time to grab the camera or take a quick pee.  Luckily I had my Flip video camera in my coat pocket (which I brought with me because I didn’t want to forget my wallet or keys).

Maks and Charlene from Brian Garside on Vimeo.

Charlene’s labour was fast and intense, and I knew we were in the home stretch when she suddenly started saying that she couldn’t do this anymore.  Our midwives were fantastic, both supportive and task oriented, getting her through contractions one at a time, and keeping her updated on how close she was to the finish line.

At 1:00 the work began in real earnest, things had progressed so fast that Char hadn’t had the opportunity to have any pain medication at all other than the couple of Tylenols that morning.  With just under 20 minutes of pushing on Char’s part, Maks O’Brian emerged into the world.  Char said she knew that we were almost there when the tears started flowing down my face.  What can I say?  Seeing babies get born makes me cry.

I took a little bit of video right after he was born, and got his cries as he got weighed (7lbs, 4oz).  The midwives let Char and Maks bond for a while while they filled out all of the paper work.

Then they did the various tests and checked out all of his parts:

• Two eyes - Check
• Two ears - Check
• One nose - Check
• One mouth - Check
• Two hands - Check
• Ten little fingers - Check
• Two feet - Check
• Ten little toes - Check
• One penis - Check
• Two testicles - Check
• Three nipples - Check

Umm, waitaminute…three nipples — what the heck? Apparently it’s pretty common though.

Just three hours later we were sitting in our own bed back at home (at 5pm), with a newborn baby boy.

It was fast, and it was amazing.  So far he’s been a good kid.  He’s pretty quiet, and when he does cry he calms down really fast.

There are a few photos in my Flikr photostream.

I give you these 15 (SMASH), these ten, ten commandments!

There are a few pet peeves I have of web site designers, things usually done by people who don’t really know any better, who think that “more is more”, or who blindly listen to advocates without understanding the realities behind the advocacy.

With that in mind, I’m creating my Web Design 10 Commandments

1. Thou shalt mark up thy pages semantically
2. Thou shalt attempt to make thy pages validate
3. Thou shalt not change the default mouse pointers
4. Thou shalt not use self serving javascript
5. Thou shalt not maketh thy website for one browser
6. Thou shalt not relyeth on the Javascript
7. Thou shalt respect the contrast.
8. Thou shalt not employ the “SkipIntro”, nor shalt thou useth the “Splash Page”
9. Thou shalt never auto start sound.
10. Thou shalt not fear the table.

#1: Semantic is another way for “meaningful”, it makes your HTML easy to update, and a year from now when you come back you won’t be struggling to figure out what “a_12-sideb” means.

#2: Don’t kill yourself on this.  It’s absolutely essential that your HTML prototype is valid (X)HTML, and your CSS should always be valid.  That said there are so many moving parts on a website that keeping one valid all the time with any sort of content management system is an effort in futility.  Do your best.

#3: Don’t change my mouse pointer’s behavior. There’s no point, and it just makes things confusing. If suddenly my mouse turns from a pointer to an hourglass, to me that means something’s loading…it doesn’t mean your site’s kewl.

#4: If you don’t want somebody taking your images or viewing your source code, don’t post your website. It’s that simple. When you stop me from using my right click, I’m suddenly unable to look at web properties, bookmark a page, go back, etc…all things I do with my right click. There’s ways around it, so you’re not really stopping anyone, all you’re doing is forcing me to disable javascript for your site.  If you are using Javascript for self-serving purposes and not in the user’s best interest then you need to stop.

#5: “Made for IE”, or “Made for Netscape” is just dumb, you’re cutting out a percentage of your users. Check your site in a few browsers (I.E. Mozilla, and Netscape will do if you have to limit yourself, although you should check in Opera and Safari if you can…the ambitious among us can look at I.E. 5.5, and I.E. 5.0).

#6: People disable Javascript, don’t make your site rely on it.  Navigation should NEVER be in javascript or Flash, and if you DO need to use Javascript or Flash, then you must make sure that your site has an elegant degredation to simple HTML.

#7: I originally titled this one “Thou shalt not useth red text on black background (or black text on red backgrounds), nor shalt thou use a high contrast image behind similarly coloured text.”, but that’s just too long.

#8: Why are you making me click on something to enter your site? If I didn’t want to enter your site, I wouldn’t have followed that link/entered it into my address bar.  Oh, I see, you like that pretty picture that your sister’s cousin’s brother’s nephew’s dog’s walker’s brother made for you?  Then make it the background on your desktop and be done with it because newsflash bucky…you’re the only one who cares about the damn picture.  Same goes for your stupid Flash thingie you just made me sit through.  Oh and advertisers, I’ll sit through ONE screen of your dumb advertisement with the “click here to skip this ad” button, but make me do it again and you will really piss me off.

#9: It’s 3am, my infant child is sleeping in my arms, and if I move in the slightest the banshee’s wail will begin.  I’m absent mindedly surfing the internets oblivious to the volume of my speakers because…hey, I’m surfing and reading articles, not watching video.  I go to your page and the roar of zombies fills the room, bringing about the wails of the infant banshee in my arms.  You are now in my top 10 people I would like to punch in the mouth at that very moment.

#10: I know the CSS evangelists will hate me for this, but sometimes a table is the right way to present content. If it makes sense, use the damn thing.  Tabular data should be presented in a table.  Grids of data can be presented in semantically meaningful table structure with CSS to control the presentation layer.

This year would see yet another defeat at the hands of my many enemies, meaning I haven’t drank from the Bond Street Cup since 2005.  This stings and I have vowed to return in 2009 with a new drive.  I’ll be redoubling my Quoits training, and plan on coming back bigger and better than ever.

I don’t want to sound like an apologist, but I’ve been battling a torn scapula for nearly a year now, and I know that it threw off my throwing arm at least 2%.  The addition of the new pitch also played havoc with my game, and more than likely contributed to my defeat.

This year the luck of the draw saw me paired up with a new partner, rookie “Dave of the small hands”, and after an initial rules overview we began our first battle against my former partner Joanne and her partner Wosson.

After taking an early lead, we Joanne battled back with first a ringer, and then used chicanery and some previously unknown vegetarian super-power to score back-to-back ringers in the final two ends.

The final score was 15-7.  It’s the first time I’ve ever been knocked out in the first round, and I was totally unprepared for the severe depression which I fell into for the next two to three minutes.  I wasn’t sure what to do with my day, how would I go on?  Should I just go home?  How far away from civilization is Caledonia anyway?  What’s that, there’s a fair going on?

Luckily Kaylin pulled me out of it by finding some chalk, so we proceeded to draw on the sidewalk.  Okay, I drew, and she ran up and down the street with her “barrel feet” slapping on the cold concrete (she loved the sound of her bare feet on the sidewalk).

I had a chance to capture some video, and talk to my friends which was a lot of fun, and took some of the sting out of the loss.

Today I can look back and see where I went wrong, next year I’ll be better prepared and ready to make some major adjustments to my game.  The first step in my path to redemption will be the purchase of a regulation Quoits set, then I’ll start my extensive diet and exercise regime designed to build my body into a quoits hurling powerhouse.