Starting Amy Undercover

More than a year after the last post!

Last night was a late night inking session starting my personal comic project - Amy Undervcover. Don't be fooled by the plush bear, it will actually be an Action/Detective comic.

Somebody remarked that I was using a un-beveled ruler and ballpoint pens for inking... but, shouldn't you use the tools you're comfortable with? After all, tools aren't the determining factor in making a good piece of work. Besides, this is a personal project and a trial run, which I will use to test some narrative and compositional techniques. Perhaps some day it will be fully published anywhere in the net...

My new toy

My new 10k toy: Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SuperZoom!



Cammy has to be glad...

TNT 17

I took a quick trip to the TNT 17 Manga-Comic Expo, just took a few photos and bought a book. Strangely enough it was pretty empty, perhaps due to my visit occurring at the start of the planned convention days. Once there I spotted some recycled cosplay and the usual merchandising stuff.

Cosplayers Pikminlink and Ichigokitty were invited to the event:

After their presentation, some photo studios were made:

I got he chance to listen some nice anime themes from Ensamble Quimera:

I was lucky enough to find a girl cosplaying Raven!


Of course, I got the chance to take a photo with her! XD

Finally, some assorted cosplay photos:

New Compy Trials

The new compy is undergoing trial by now, I have to resolve some issues like non-installing programs and burning errors. Thanks dual display for making debug easier!!! XD

Among the errors, I found the following:

- Adobe CS3 installs, but the programs cannot start since the license agreement never appears on screen... thus, I can't press the d@mn "Accept" button... :S

- Internet Explorer 7 won't install. I had to get Internet Explorer 8 RC1.

- I had some Flash Player issues, corrected by reinstaling the plugin.

- Burning errors: I received the "Power Calibration Error" message... following advice from some webpages, I disable the IMAPI service. Seems it worked by now.

- Apple iTunes won't install the neweste version... don't ask me why... I settled for the not-so-new version.

That's pretty much, as I remember. Well, I'm also sending a pair of new images of the new compy, below. The first is the inside before cabling optimization. The second, bueh... is the compy...

Finished layout...

...and going to sleep! After a few sleepless days, I finished my IC layouts. And after a play with The Bends at a party, it's finally time to dive in my bed and sleep until very late tomorrow! nighty...

The last shops needed for the new computer, bought last friday! An ASUS 4850 video card with 1GB memory, a two-kit Kingston Hyper-X DDR2 1066 2GB memory, 500GB SATA2 hard disk, DVD-RW optical unit and the Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 5000.

Info on the building and testing of the new computer tomorrow. I'm tired of playing Tomb Raider Underworld... hee hee... XD

My shops for today: an AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition processor and the ASUS M3A79T-Deluxe motherboard. Just installed both on my new chassis. More news on the progress of my new gaming computer coming soon!

Tablet's back!

Well, last week I finally decided to reformat my Tablet PC... not a good idea! XD

I spent some days a few months ago trying to figure out how to slipstream my SATA drivers into the installation disks of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. I supposed then that it had worked, since the installation booted ok... but last week, when I tried to reinstall WinXp Tablet to my Toshiba Tablet, it gave me a blue screen after booting first time!!! :S Since I have no time to make experiments (risk getting kicked by my Ph.D. advisor), I had to buy an external floppy drive and make ye olde-style installation... meh...

Good news, it worked... bad news, I have to make some more experiments on slipstreaming... I guess the problem is that I tried to automate some steps in the installation, introducing some bugs in the path. Well, back to the design board (or computer).

Yawn! Sleep time... more info other day... gonna sleepzzz.....

Drumming along...

This post about the band...

Well, finally I bought a set of cymbals the last month. After going with the whole band to test the sound, I chose a set of Zildjian ZHT Rock cymbals; the Sabian's Xs20 cymbals weren't as good as I thought. And I had the chance to test them live in a play we had, and they sounded quite good! A little too bright for my taste but well all along. The bad part is I tried to get an extra 18" crash last week, but the sellers in this country are definitely s***... not worth commenting anymore on this. At left you can see the new config for the drumset.

The live play went ok, but I had to let the other bands use my drumset, so you can imagine what happened to the drumheads... good time to change them an get some new Remo Ebony Pinstripe black drumheads for the toms and a clear Remo Pinstripe for the snare. They're quite cool! Very strong hydraulics and didn't need muffling at all... except for the snare, but being a metal snare, well... I had to use a quite large muffler :P. But hey, now the set sounds very nice! In time I'll be upgrading the drumkit as been happening 'til now. Check the image at left to see the new heads.

But enough of drums! L.D. also contacted a new guitar player, Jorge, who alse played with us in the live. He's a little busy with school so he hasn't been practicing much with us, but he's good with the instrument and hasn't had any trouble following us. And about the singers, well, until now both have good performances. The live play (a birthday party for Jhoely) was overall good and I hope there will be more performances alongside my partners whom, I must say, are quite good musicians. Keep it real guys!

The Band, current lineup. From left to right: Jorge (Rythm Guitar), L.D. (Tenor Singer), R2 (Main Guitar), Gato (Baritone Singer), Oso (Bass), Pepe (Drums).

Status!

Let's see... I'm supposed to give a status report in here. So here it goes:

• The Ph.D. is going well, though I have to work more... a lot more... read a lot of basic Delta-Sigma theory, control theory, transforms, etc., reproduce some basic results, and few other tasks. Something that bugs me is the fact of having 3 advisors!!!
• Bends! The band is all Ok. I'd like to buy a complete set of good cymbals, but... well, they are expensive and I need the money for other purposes. Oh! And I have to begin the work on the band website, so I need to read more on flash design and program.
  
• Photography, well, the same... I'd like to get a telephoto stabilized lens, but again is the money question... besides, little time to work on it due to Ph.D.
  
• My personal projects are on hiatus, too many Ph.D. task to deal with this at the moment... :( So my USB, microcontrollers, homepage, CNNSim, Drawing & Comics and other projects will be in the waitlist.
• Ah! At last, I finished watching ALL the Kim Possible episodes. :P

And that's it, write you later... keep it real.