Quick Report> Tech Was Kinder This Week

Since I didn’t take photos this is going to be another quick report of the various mini projects I did yesterday. Most of them were successful.

• So, remember that TV that started working after Dad bought a new one? It turned back into a radio so rather than mess with it we just put up the new one and took the old one to be recycled. I spent much of this week getting the settings the way we want. Yesterday I tried to put in an old soundbar but for some reason the bar itself didn’t want to stay connected. Luckily the TV already has really good sound so it’s just a question of what to do with that. At some point my dad would like to get surround sound speakers but that’s hardly a priority in this economy.
• I did however actually show him how to use one of the smart TV features and he figured it out. If you knew my dad you would know this is a huge victory. He doesn’t even use all the features on his tablet.
• Another thing I worked on this week was preparing for a mini-podcasting event I do on the other site every year. That mean going through and setting up programs and various bits of hardware. While I didn’t succeed at everything I succeeded at everything that’s important to this project…though I do need to check one more arrangement before the month is out. I can start and that’s what matters.
• My project drive, where I host my video content and finished shows as back-up is all messed up. I have a friend working on it.

So a mostly successful week of projects. I’ll take that victory after last week.

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Quick Report> Technology Decided To Hate Me This Week

Well…yesterday happened.

And since I’m writing this the day before it goes live you can imagine I’m still in a bad mood after reading my issues. I was going to make brownies (I have one bag left of brownie mix) but we’re out of eggs. That’s fine and I had a feeling we were out. Dad’s going shopping Monday so maybe next weekend. Also unplugged one of the air conditioners for the winter season so I don’t have the cord dragged. I just have to cover it and I’m good.

Then the problems started. My project drive appears to be zirched and unless my computer expert friend can recover them I’ve lost a whole lot of video projects and thumbnails tied to my other website, including a video I’ve been trying to edit for years with my various medical issues distracting me possibly lost for good. So yay.

Then I try setting up a set of programs I need for a different project and it fought me at every possible point. I don’t have it completely set up but far enough that I’m ahead of the game.

Finally our TV will only put up a picture for a second before becoming a radio. Have to get a new TV with money we really can’t afford to spend. Even more yay.

EDIT: Guess what started working this morning…AFTER dad came back from the store with the new TV. Yesterday was evil to tech.

Yeah, I’m a bit ticked off right now. Technology decided to smack me around and I’m not happy about it.

Comic Report: Transformers Armada UK comic

 

The project for this week hit some snags and I don’t have time to do a full article going over those snags. A plan for next time perhaps or maybe I’ll just move on to something worthwhile. So to make up the time I’ve reworked an old article from my other site for the more casual crowd I expect comes to this site versus that one..

For those of you who don’t read that site or haven’t seen me talk about it here, Transformers Armada is based on the toyline in which the Autobots and Decepticons were joined…quite literally…by, or rather to, a third faction called the Mini-Con. If you only know them from the recent Robots In Disguise series it’s a modified version of the original concept. By connecting to certain “hardpoints” on the larger figures the Mini-Con would activate hidden weapons and such, but on the “dead points” kids could pretend they were giving them a huge burst of power, which extended for the next few toylines until the 2010s RID. (Interestingly a couple of toys from the 2000s RID, which came from Car Robot, were able to accept Mini-Cons due to the molding.) To me the gimmick was never fully showcased however.

I wrote about the little Transformers and my love of them in a previous report, where I noted that these were small Transformers who turned into vehicles that had things like headlights or little jets. (And as we’ve seen in Rescue Bots and Rescue Bots Academy headlights can double as water cannons, but since they’re headLIGHTS you could argue they’d make for good lasers.) Some of them not only turned into weapon-bearing vehicles but the toy itself may have launching projectiles. The helicopters had spinning blades. One Mini-Con team had a gimmick that they turned into mounted or hand-held weapons, but the only ones anyone following the media would know are the ones that combined into the superpowerful weapons like the Star Saber, Requiem Blaster, and Skyboom Shield. There was so much more play and fight scene potential in the Mini-Cons that was never realized, nor was their non-weapon potential realized outside of being referred to as “smart tools” in the cartoon. This has constantly bothered me but with the gimmick altered after Power Core Combiners (which didn’t even have a non-toy appearance) to what it became in Robots In Disguise and the related toyline (which was these disks fired by launchers or little robots that turn into weapons) it’s just more wasted potential. It’s a sore spot for me because I really love the classic Mini-Con toys and wish we could see the full extent of the gimmick beyond robo-steroids.

Enough about that though, because this getting too long intro hasn’t even touched on UK comics. I’m not from the UK and I’ve only seen a small number of comics from the UK but they don’t appear to come in the traditional comic size but in more of a magazine format. Someone actually from the UK can correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not sure how because my memory is only slightly less damaged than Sam Beckett but I ended up with the first issue of Panini Comics’ Transformers Armada, a comic adapting the toys into comics for the UK rather than simply reprinting the US comics from Dreamwave. And it does appear to be a magazine, as you’ll see from the cover. There are a few character profiles and an activities section that includes how to draw Megatron. Not that this is the artist I would choose to draw Megatron but I’ll get to that. I’ll be focusing on the comic story, which makes four versions of the origin of the Mini-Cons on Earth I own, along with the Dreamwave comic, the cartoon, and a junior novel. Also, this is Simon Furman’s chance to do his own telling of the origin since he came in during the second story arc of the US comic. Readers of the other site know my issues with Furman’s writing style and his darker take on Transformers but his Dreamwave run, including the Armada comic, was quite good. How well did he do here?

I also don’t remember if this had a sticker album but I get the feeling it didn’t.

Transformers Armada #1

Panini Comics (May, 2003)

“First Encounter”

WRITER: Simon Furman

PENCILER: Jon Mitchell

INKER: Bambos Georgiou, and Martin Griffiths

LETTERER: Neil Porter

Oddly there is no coloring (or in this case colouring) credit despite the whole magazine being in full color.

Comic Report: Superman’s War Of The Worlds Crossover

Today’s project is dusting and some mild reorganizing. Seeing as I haven’t had the most interesting article lately I wanted to make up for it with something worth reading. So here’s a review from my primary project, BW Media Spotlight, about one of my favorite Superman crossovers, a different take on the H.G. Wells classic. Enjoy.

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The year was 1938, which would see the debut of two influences from fake aliens. The first was Action Comics #1, which debuted among other characters the hero known as Superman. Unlike the Superman we know today his powers didn’t come from the Sun but because Earth’s gravity is lighter than Krypton’s. He couldn’t fly or had any special vision powers but he was superstrong, could leap an 8th of a mile and outrun a train, and while he was still bulletproof he wasn’t as invulnerable as he is today. The force of a bursting shell was the minimum to pierce his skin, and that was by 1938 levels. That wasn’t the only difference between the Superman of history and the later known iconic take on Superman.

1938 was also the debut of the Mercury Theater’s Halloween radio broadcast The War Of The Worlds. Loosely inspired by the H.G. Wells novel the setting was moved to then present day, with the framing device of a music broadcast constantly interrupted by a mysterious threat from the planet Mars. While the public reaction has been greatly exaggerated (one source suggesting it was the newspapers taking a shot at radio because radio news came faster than the twice-daily newspaper–and given modern reactions to new media I’m willing to believe it), the story still earned a place in our culture, and TV specials have used the same framing device.

1999 may be a year late for the two stories to have an anniversary, but it’s the reason 1938 was chosen as the setting for one of my favorite Superman Elseworlds stories. Superman: War Of The Worlds uses the original incarnation of Superman while mixing elements of the original Wells novel and the Orson Wells radio drama and tells a story of what could have happened had this relatively weaker Man Of Steel had to protect the world from the other Red Menace.

“Geez, J’onn, I said I’d pay you back on Friday!”

Superman: War Of The Worlds

DC Comics (1999)

WRITER: Roy Thomas

ARTIST: Michael Lark

COLORIST: Noelle Giddings

SEPARATIONS: Heroic Age

LETTERER: Willie Schubert

Cleaning Out The Humidifier

Well, so much for the exciting category. Yes, this week’s project is something other than what I’ve been working on, but it’s not very exciting…though that won’t stop me from trying because at least there is something to work with. I have to choose which humidifier is going to be the one I’m using from here out. See, my dad didn’t like the one I was using because he thought it was too much trouble. It didn’t bother me at the time but he got me one similar to the one he uses in his bedroom for me to use in mine.

Quite honestly I think it is the better one.

I’ll go into why but there’s also something else I had to do with both of them because I made a mistake and this week I had to correct it. As autumn is now going and winter is close behind the humidity is going down. I’ve been noticing my skin is getting a bit drier and as someone who already has to deal with dry skin and staying hydrated because of the Crohn’s and it’s related issues as well as my various sinus issues this week it was time to start using the humidifier again. Although maybe I should have drained the water out before I stopped using them.