The official ComfyCon Vendor’s Room is now on the main ComfyCon.net website! Go there for all the good ComfyCon merch!
New official ComfyCon Vendor’s Room!
Category: cool things!
These things are cool!
ComfyCon 2013! It’s here!
It’s that time, boys and girls! Time for the easiest, most stress-free, relaxing, COMFIEST convention you’ll ever attend! ComfyCon 2013 is here! Three days of geeking out your own way, you can watch the panels, host your own panel, do whatever you like, because you never have to leave your computer, or even put on clothes, although if you want to cosplay, that’s fine too, we won’t judge! The convention happens entirely online! No need to pack a suitcase, no need to book a flight, because there’s no place to go!
The brainchild of Randal (“Something Positive”) Mulholland and Danielle (“Girls with Slingshots”) Corsetto, aided and abetted by a bunch of other webcomic artists, the first ComfyCon last year was created for people who couldn’t get to go (or didn’t want to hassle with going) to San Diego Comic-Con. Danielle and the others used YouTube to host the panels live and streaming, with much craziness and pantslessness, at least from what I could see. At any rate, the ComfyCon program is here, at ComfyCon.net, check out all the panels, I can guarantee they’ll be the easiest to attend, and you don’t have to worry about filling up the room or dealing with those horrible uncomfortable chairs (unless you have some yourself, for some reason)! Best of all, no con funk! Unless, again, you have it yourself, in which case…
Update! Â Now that the official ComfyCon Vendor’s Room is open, beat feet there and scarf the sweet sweet merch from the artists! Â THEY HAVE DEALS!
Nerdtour 2012: Riding the Enoden pt. 2: Kamakura
So, after riding the Enoden for a few minutes, it was time to get off at the station in Hase town, where the Great Buddha (Daibutsu) of Kamakura is situated. Like most of the towns along the Enoden, Hase is a tourist town, making the most of the local attraction. A lot of tourists come because of the Buddhist aspect, and a lot more come just to gawk (yeah, I’m guilty of the latter.)
Not being Buddhist myself, I didn’t get the spiritual feeling, but as a techie, to me the Great Buddha is an impressive engineering feat! Cast in bronze sometime in the 13th Century, the statue is hollow, allowing people to go inside for a mere 20 yen (about 30 cents US). Â The temple grounds around are also very impressive, with sculptures both man-made and natural.Â
This day was particularly fun, because there was a tour group from an elementary school, and some of the kids were split up into groups, each group assigned to speak to a foreigner in order to practice their English. Â The group that approached me and my buddy John did a very good job of introducing themselves, asking if they could ask questions, and handled their English fairly well. Â The questions were basic, “Where are you from?” type questions. Â It was fun watching them “ambush” other foreigners, too, although I have to wonder if all of the foreign tourists spoke English.
So, here is the gallery of photos I took in and around Hase and the Great Buddha of Kamakura.
Nerdtour 2012: riding the Enoden
So, I’m updating (only a year later!) with some more photos from my Nerdtour of Japan! This will broken up into a couple of sets of photos that are going to be on my portfolio site, but I’ll update here when I update there!
So, on this day I rode the Enoden train, a historic train line that runs from Kamakura to Fujisawa, with the main stop in the middle, at Enoshima Island. Enoshima has been a tourist spot since the days of the Shogun, and the Enoden gets its name from “Enoshima Dentetsu“, Enoshima Electric Railway. Kamakura is famous for its large statue of Buddha, which I will post in another set of photos. The train runs along the beach on the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo, with stops at several beach towns along the way. I stopped at one of these, Shichirigahama, which turned out to have a nice view of Enoshima Island, as well as Mount Fuji (but only in silhouette, as usual…). It very much reminded me of the beach towns of southern California, especially with the surfers, and apparently the Enoshima area is known internationally for its surf. After spending way too much time in Shichirigahama, I continued on to Fujisawa in the evening, but due to failing batteries I didn’t get many photos of the city.
This set of photos is from the first leg of the day trip, from Etchujima station near Monzennakacho, through Tokyo Station and Kamakura Station, and sights along the Enoden to Hase.
At any rate, Enjoy!
Rainy day in Chiba – photos
So, I uploaded some more Japan pictures to my portfolio site, these are pictures I took on my last day there. It was appropriately cold and rainy, to match my gloomy mood. These are photos mostly of Chiba, including riding on and watching the Chiba Monorail. Also got pictures of some of the runners in the Chiba Ekiden marathon, which passed right by the monorail and JR stations in Chibaminato.
So, hop on over and enjoy (don’t be too depressed at the gloom!) the gallery!
Maryland Renaissance Festival “Day of Wrong”
I went to the last day of this year’s Maryland Renaissance Festival, which is traditionally the “Day of Wrong”, where people come dressed in anything but medieval costumes, although some choose to dress in a mashup of historical and modern, like the “Scottish Stormtroopers” or the “Iron Man knight”, most are just regular cosplayers (as if “cosplaying” is a “regular” thing! =^_^=). I captured a few of the folks, including some cosplay friends, as well as the general ambience of the place. It was a beautiful day, sunny but kind of cool, perfect for an Autumn day.
And so, hasten thou to ye Faire, and enjoy!
“Welcome to Tokyo” Olympics promotional video by “World Order”
There’s a musical group in Japan called “World Order“, started by a former kick-boxer and now choreographer and composer (why have just one career?) named Genki Sudou. The group has made several music videos, and their signature style is to dress in expensive business suits and march in robotic unison through crowded streets in Tokyo, followed by pop and lock dancing to music composed by Sudou. They’ve been featured in ads for some companies in Japan, as well as performing in different places around the world.
Since Tokyo won the rights to the 2020 Summer Olympics, “World Order” made a “Welcome to Tokyo” video, where they perform their song and dance in various famous (and not so famous) places in Tokyo, such as Akihabara, Asakusa, Ginza, Roppongi, and Tokyo Tower. It was neat seeing this, because I’ve been to most of the places they perform in this video, which makes me wish I had been there when they were recording this! Seeing familiar places also makes me want to go back again, although with my current employment situation that’s not going to be possible for a few more years.
At any rate, here is “World Order” performing their song “World Order” in Tokyo.
Enjoy!
Power tools dubstep…
One of my favorite Youtube artists is Joe Penna, the “Mystery Guitar Man“. I’ve posted about him before, he’s a master at taking small video segments and literally “playing” them as notes in pieces of music. He’s also experimented with stop-motion animation, odd mechanical contrivances for making music, recreating old technology, and other unusual things. He’s worked solo and collaborated with other musicians and Youtubers to create short musical video pieces. His enthusiasm about the technology of video and music is undeniable, and he always looks like he’s having tremendous fun creating his works.
This video he made has been out for a little while, but I recently re-discovered it while roaming Youtube. I kind of like some music called “dubstep”, but not in any great way (some performers make pieces that go on for a good part of an hour, and that’s way too long for me). This short clip is kind of an interesting take on the genre. Using only video clips containing the sight and sound from various tools he used while building a sign for the sponsor of this video, he manages to make a very presentable “dubstep” piece.
Enjoy!