Thursday Night Blogging...

Let's see, what shall we talk about tonight?

A Fun WebComic!

I recently discovered Shortpacked, a three-day-a-week webcomic that's supposed to be about toys, but often delves into other areas of collecting, as well. It takes place in a toy store, and I found it very amusing... in fact, I spent a fair amount of hours the day or two before the computer went wacko on me reading every installment from the first (unfortunately, now I'm waiting for each new installment on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday).

I've Been Mentioned on Another Blog!

Over at the Comic Treadmill, they're doing another installment on superhero Halloween costumes, and I'm mentioned there as "Comic Treadmiller First Class," complete with a link back to the post of Krypto and I in costume!

Where is Robby Reed?

Since the anniversary of 9/11, there's been minimal postings over at Dial B for Blog -- mostly teasers (well, actually, just one teaser)... all along the lines of "Where is Robby Reed?" Hopefully, Robby's just taking a break from his five-day-a-week postings (which have to take a lot of time each day), and will return to new postings soon!

That's all for tonight!

Jon

Did You Ever...?

...do something without really thinking about it, and then discover about five minutes after you've done it that you made a really big mistake, immediately regret it, and spend, oh, about 24 hours or so trying to figure out how to fix it, and then somehow do, but have no idea exactly how you did it?

That happened to me the other night.

I've been having some hard drive issues on my Macintosh -- some of my files wouldn't open at all -- and I wanted to run Norton Utilities to repair the issues. Norton works best when you are starting up from a disk other than the one you're trying to repair, so I made an effort to create a new startup disk that had a system folder plus Norton on it.

Since I only have one CD-ROM drive on my Mac, I wasn't able to use the system install disk to create a new system folder on another CD, so what I tried was to copy the system on that CD to my hard drive, and then create a new CD with that system and Norton.

And then I forgot to delete that system folder from the hard drive before restarting.

Big, big mistake. When the system restarted, it wouldn't restart from the CD -- indeed, I couldn't even get the CD-ROM to eject the disc I'd made so I could try to restart from the Apple CD! I ended up having to open up the computer so I could manually eject the CD-ROM drive (the button is hidden on the tower -- a really bad design feature -- and when I replaced my keyboard a few months back, it was much, much cheaper to buy a new keyboard which didn't have a working CD-ROM eject button than one that did... yes, I'm using an older Mac with an older system than is current, but I digress) and then insert the Apple CD...

...and even then, I couldn't get the computer to start up right. I kept getting errors saying that the system could only be used on the original media (it couldn't find the real system folder, just the one I forgot to delete).

So, Tuesday night I was up until 1 am trying to fix this... and Wednesday morning, I got desperate and opened up one of the "junk" PCs I need to dispose of soon and pull the hard drive from it, and put it into the Mac, hoping I could install a system on that, and restart from it...

...which I wasn't able to do until last night. And I couldn't do it while the original drive was plugged in. But that worked.

Then I restarted with both drives plugged in... but neither drive came up (but the CD-ROM did). Then I restarted with the newly-formatted HD unplugged, and the original HD plugged in...

...and the CD loaded, the original HD loaded... and I was able to delete the bogus system folder! Huzzah!

Needless to say... my original intent didn't quite work out the way I'd planned, but at least I got that start-up issue fixed (whew!), and I even ran Norton from the CD (but without starting from that CD) and fixed the vast majority of the problems I was having.

But I'm still not sure how I managed to get it all to work.

But I'm happy it is working.

Jon

Link-A-Rama Time!

Not much to talk about tonight... so here's some websites you can check out!

One of my favorite TV shows is Futurama, and if you're a fan of this show like I am, you should check out Can't Get Enough Futurama, which will give you the latest news and developments on that series!

If you're a fan of the 1960s Batman TV series, check out The 1966 Batman TV Tribute Site, which has an almost ridiculous amount of info on the show! You might also want to check out The Bat Pages, too, or The History of the Batmobile website. And if you're skilled with making paper models, check out the 1966 Batmobile Paper Model web site!

Of course, there are good websites on the classic George Reeves Superman tv series, too... I particularly like the Superman Comes to Television page!

There's a bunch of fun toy websites out there, too... here's one on Aurora Models, and there's The Gallery of Monster Toys, and of course, one can't forget the ever-popular Mego Museum!.

Comics Creator Blogs

You might want to, if you haven't already, check out and bookmark the blogs by Paul Dini, Fred Hembeck, Peter David, and of course, Mark Evanier!

Pop Culture Blogs

When you've got some time to kill, check out The Secret Fun Blog, or A Sampler of Things, or Bubblegum Fink!

Once a week (new posts on Wednesdays), heck out Mr. Pop History.

You can keep up with a lot of what's going on in TV these days at TV Squad. And Cartoon Brew is another favorite daily destination of mine.

There's lots of comics-related blogs I check on a regular basis...

Blockade Boy
Booksteve's Library
Dave's Long Box
Dance of the Puppets
Lady, That's My Skull
Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog
The Absorbascon
Blog@Newsarama (a decent blog, but it doesn't usually play nice with Netscape, so I have to do a "select all" to be able to read it)
Comics Should Be Good was one of my daily destinations for a long time, but since they moved to Comic Book Resources, their postings don't usually display right in Netscape for me.
Arf Lovers Blog
Beaucoup Kevin//BlogMachineGo
Mike Serling's Progressive Ruin
Poilte Dissent is where I get weekly reviews of House episodes, and the medicine is discussed!
Dial B for Blog - yeah, I know, everyone has that one bookmarked!
The Comic Treadmill

there are many others I've got bookmarked... but some of them are only updated sporadically!

Jon

Sunday Night...

...and I'm just about ready to head to bed.. so what can I talk about tonight?

Well... since Jessi went off to bed, I've been searching online for some photo reference for Gamera, while watching one of the Gamera movies on DVD. Why am I doing this?

Well, in case you happen to be a fan of my weekly "Cover Stories" column at World Famous Comics, you've probably seen some of my "Comics They Never Made" covers... especially the ones featuring Godzilla, as well as some of the covers for Drive-In Movie Classics... and maybe you've been wondering why I haven't done any Gamera covers.

The simple answer is: I haven't found any appropriate images to use.

And that's still more or less the case... but I've been doing some thinking about what I could do for a Gamera comic book cover. I have found some reference that might work... if I were to use them as reference only, and actually draw some original Gamera covers.

So, what do I have in mind for a Gamera Comic They Never Made? I'm thinking a Charlton title for it, where the concept is basically rips off Frankenstein Jr. in a way. There'd be some kid whose father is a major scientist-type who always gets involved in high-tech threats against the Earth, and this kid has some kind of communicator that he can use to call in the giant turtle (who is, after all, a Friend to All the Children, as the movies say over and over again), who can fight the threat to Earth when all the tech doesn't work.

I'll let you know how that goes... once I get to the next steps, which involve printing the photos I was able to find (which won't happen until I get more ink for the inkjet printer), and then seeing if I can somehow either trace the photos or try drawing them freehand... and then scanning those drawings in after I've inked them, and adding the logos and so on.

Other than that... nothing else happening here! It's back to work on Monday, natch!

Jon