Archive for May, 2005

I’m glad to announce that the newest Unfriendly Giant cartoon, Safety Day is online and ready for your viewing pleasure. I hope you like it.

Some things you might notice are different in this new cartoon.

1. The pitch of the soundtrack is lower. For some reason, I sped up the soundtrack of the first cartoon. This one is much closer to the original pitch.
2. The lip synch is more involved. Instead of open, closed and “Ooo” shaped, I’m using eight different mouth shapes to corespond to the vocal sounds. The result reminds me of Davey and Goliath.
3. There are more “smooth” transitions between scenes. Though, you the viewer might not notice it (unless you remember the old scenes from the preview.)
4. I’ve used more “animation within animation” in this cartoon. For example, the eyes of the characters are animated elements attached to the larger element of the characters’ heads. They keep rolling around all the time, even when the cartoon is over.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun to work on, and now that it’s finished, I’m a little let down—I guess I’ll have to start on the next one. Any requests for UFG 3?

As of 9:00am, June 1st I’ve put up a new version of Safety Day that includes some more Easter Eggs.

Today is the day of The Great Glebe Garage Sale. Actually they’re a bunch of yard sales mostly, but I like all the g’s. Anyway, I’m not normally into garage/yard sailing, but today I really got into it and Jenn and I walked home with not a few steals—of course, we did pay for the stuff, but it felt like a steal to me.

Let me mention, before I continue, that today was day two of A Week(end) with the Fouldses for the Caldwells. We went to dinner and a movie (Revenge of the Sith) with them last night—I’ll report on that later—and we inevitably end up going to the same church most Sundays—rounding out the weekend. Andrew and Anne showed up just after 8:00am and we hit the streets together.

My first category of swag is the musical kind. I missed out on a really good turntable because I hesitated—apparently something veterans of yard sailing could have warned me about—but I did get four great CD’s at reasonable (5$) prices. The Best of George Harrison (1976), With the Beatles (1963), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and Buddy & Julie Miller (2001)—which I count as a real score. I was also given another CD for free because apparently, I’m a music lover. I guess that also means I’m a good customer, or a sucker.

Category number two is “games.” I picked up a copy of Ravensburger’s Labyrinth card game card game and Civilization II (for the Mac.) Three buck for the both. I played lots of CivII at Bethany and am happy to have a copy for myself now.

Jenn got a bunch more Christmas shopping done (don’t worry, a number of stores in the glebe were selling overstock at crazy prices, so it’s not old junk.) In particular, we got a really cool Christmas tree topper/star for $2. The sale price was $40! Not bad. Also were some misc things for a buck or less.

Anyways (archaic spelling,) we had a really good time and even continued when the Caldwells had to bow out. So, excuse me, I’ve got some CD’s to rip!

Remember playing SFCave on your PalmPilot? Quite an addictive game. I remember going to Chicago with Robin to a Commodore 64 expo a few years back and someone had SFCave on their Palm. Pretty soon, we all had it and there was a photo of a number of us sitting around a hotel room playing. What nerds!

Anyways (remember, that’s the archaic use of “anyway,”) there’s an online SFCave version now. It’s a 3D Java affair and quite entertaining. I don’t think it will reach the heights of popularity that the original did though.

Yesterday, being a Wednesday, was small group night. Being the last Wednesday of the month, it was non-Bible-study-night at small group (or what I like to call “Wasted Wednesday”) When I was talking to Andy (the leader) in the afternoon, I told him that I planned on lobbying Jenn to go for a bike ride instead—seeing as our weather has been so awful lately, I figured we should take advantage. He’s got a bike rack on his car and offered to drive us and our bikes home if we made the ride out to Almyer, PQ where we were having “Wasted Wednesday.” I proposed it to Jenn and she thought it was a good idea—great! So we spent 1:14.43 (plus another fifteen minutes or so of rest time) riding the 24.5km to small group. It sounds impressive, but I feel I need to re-calibrate my bike computer—I doubt our average speed was really 19.7km/h.

In other news, what does it mean when a contests boasts where the winner gets to “meet Avril Lavine live?” Or how about contest where the winner get “a chance to” do whatever? (I don’t know if I’ve actually heard that with my ears yet, or if it’s something that just been jumbled about in my head.)

PS: I have jam and toast on/in my keyboard this morning.

I enjoyed Carla’s and Rich’s quizes enough to make up my own. Who can claim to know the most about me? I can’t wait to find out who my new best friend is.

Well, we arrived at Jen and Jason’s in Maine on Friday night—no problems. They’ve been great hosts, feeding us all sorts of fun food and letting us hold (and smell) baby Avery as much as we want.

Saturday we went to The Friars’ for some sticky buns. The Friars are Dominicans (I think, maybe Franciscans, I can’t tell—they wear the brown robes) who have a bakery in downtown Bangor. We stop by every time we’re here and it’s so nice that Bob (I think that’s his name) always recognizes Jenn and chats with the Canadians for a while. Then we did some shopping and I picked up a couple books at a second hand shop—a style guide and a corporate identity design guide.

Today Jenn and I drove down to Camden where some lady told us off, presumably just for having Ontario plates. We were driving into the small downtown area (Camden is just a little tourist town on the coast) with a few other cars and this lady driving the other way rolled down her window, gave us the finger and told us to “Go home!” It kind of made us want to. We had a good lunch there and wandered around some of the shops. After Camden we started back up the coast, stopped so I could go in the ocean, and then visited Fort Knox. No, not that Fort Knox, the one in Maine that was built to defend the US against the British, but never really saw any action. It was pretty cool, like a mini version of the Citadel in Quebec City.

Tomorrow, we head home, but not before we hit the Jewish deli (beside the Friars’) for one of their world famous cherry cheese danishes. Anyways (that’s the archaic form of “anyway”) it’s been a good time and a short time, but we must be moving on.

Yup, those Friars were Fransicans. Here we are enjoying their baking.

…Or Foulds 3, Frisby 2

When Jenn and I stepped outside this morning to drive to work (I often drive Jenn to work when I think I might need the car during the day—it’s only a short drive… does that make it worse?) the rear passenger side tire was going flat! Oh no! Especially since we’re heading out to Maine this afternoon. We decided that Jenn could make it to the tire place and then walk to work (it’s just down the street) and she’d come pick me up when she was off work and we’d head out.

Well, an hour and two phone calls to her office later, I hadn’t heard anything from Jenn. But, one of the girls at Jenn’s office did tell me she called them and said she was having problems with the tire people. Up to this point, I was having a hard time coping. I was imagining the tire people trying to force us into buying a new tire and stuff. So I saddled up and rode (my bike) down to the tire place. Jenn and the car weren’t there. So, I rode to the office. Jenn and the car were there. She had just arrived and tried to call.

Apparently a nail had punctured the tire, but they replaced it for free. We just had to shell out $35 for a little labour and balancing. Not bad. These Frisby Tire people are starting to redeem themselves.

Let it be known through out the land that I am soliciting bonus/Easter egg material for my latest Unfriendly Giant cartoon. In particular, I’m looking for you to record short quotable quotes of two or three seconds in length that could directed towards my cartooning abilities, style, etc. It could also be short recognizable quotes that would be even funnier if taken out of context. In addition, if you’ve got a great (and really short) idea for bonus/egg material send it along. I’d like to start using your quotes in the next week for an end of May release of the next cartoon. If you don’t already have my e-mail address, it’s at the bottom of this webpage. Thanks in advance for your help and (whatever the opposite of advance is—retreat?) for your encouragement to continue cartooning.

We got into Toronto Thursday night despite construction on the 401 and 427 and we spent a comfortable night at Jenn’s friend’s place. Friday morning we were going to head downtown and then meet my friend Ron for lunch. The plan (especially after we got there and found we were on a streetcar line) was to take public transportation. But, because we wanted to get out of Toronto by 1:30 (before rush “hour” started,) we couldn’t do it. It would take too long. But I did enjoy driving beside the streetcar for some way.

We parked right beside Queen’s Park, where we were going to meet Ron, and we popped in to utilize our Provincial public service. Apparently, Friday is a slow day at Queen’s Park, so the dude gave us tour passes to clip on our jackets and we were free to roam around.

After that, we found Ron and went wandering through the university and on to MoMo’s—middle eastern food. We had a leisurely lunch and got caught up on most of the important things that had gone on since Christmas.

After lunch with Ron, we drove north, through the city to see the area that Jenn used to live in. I saw her old place (just a block north of Casaloma and a block east of the stables.) We saw the stairs that she used to walk all the time, Walmer Road (but not the fun part of it) and the General Lee (parked behind a PharmaPlus at Eglinton and Bathurst (I think.) The most fun part about finding our way around Toronto was the map we used. It was one of those cartoon maps that has roads on it, but you can’t be sure if you can trust it. It worked out alright for us. (Hey, Ron, did I spell that all right?)

Upon a tip that Ron gave us at lunch, we went to St. Jacobs (just north of Waterloo) on the way to London. They have an outlet mall there where I picked up a copy of Löwenherz for $14.99. They also had a Lego outlet there (Robin, Tom) with a big display of Egyptian themed models—you know the big kind like they have at Legoland? I didn’t get anything there, because I wasn’t sure of the prices, but to give you an idea, the blue 500 piece bucket was marked down to $9.99 from $14.99. Is that a deal?

We arrived in London around 4:30 and got down to business. Wedding rehearsal and then rehearsal party—too much food. The ceremony is at an Anglican church. I was leafing through the book of additional common services (I’m not sure if that’s the correct name—it’s Alternative Services) and noticed in the section about the Eucharist (that’s communion, not the card game) that they recommend that references to “the Son” (fillious Filioque?) be removed from the Nicean Nicene Creed when it is used. I’ll have to check it out again today when I get bored during the sermon.

Thanks to Doug for passing this along to me. I couldn’t wait. I scored 117 (but I allowed myself to go back and correct my spelling on four answers: Jessie, cocktail, lonely, colitas. So, adjust my score to 100 if you consider that cheating.

In other news, I’m going to a wedding this weekend, so I’ll have to calculate my score.