Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
June 5, 2007
Shanghai Shanghai Shanghai
Category: Photo … SC Updates … Travels

More of Nanjing Road...

First off, I've posted a new comic on Scary-Crayon that briefly relates one of my encounters on Nanjing Road. For more info about that incident (and numerous similar ones), you can also read the attached SC blog entry.

And now, more photos from Shanghai!

A tear(man) of joy!

This guy was on a lot of the signposts around the area near the hotel. I have no idea what he signifies.

The Shanghai Ocean Aquarium

This is the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. I didn't actually get to go inside, but I did take several photos of the exterior, including one of this cool plush pufferfish they had outside to advertise the deadly aquatic animals exhibit.

People and buses

Another photo I took while walking around the downtown area near the hotel. Note the McDonald's in the background! Even with a Mickey D's on every corner, though, the people in Shanghai remain remarkably thin.

Greenery and buildings in the distance

Another pic from the area -- I think I took this from outside the local park. I'm a bit puzzled as to how those trees stay so green, because the sun never shines in Shanghai. Which is to say that there is so much pollution that the sun literally is not visible (at least from the ground). Plants receive their energy courtesy of a smog filter.

The Rock says...

Here's one from inside the park! There were lots of giant rocks in there.

Friends, Shanghai style

A billboard with some very happy people and some text I cannot read.

Defeat M. Bison with the power of Pepsi

And to think I'd pegged Chun-Li for a Sprite drinker.

Finally, here are two additional pics I took with a certain someone in mind:

Taco Bell Grande!

Nicole Kidman for Omega watches

I have no idea why Nicole Kidman should make me want an overpriced watch. Speaking of Omega watches, though, a guy tried to sell me a Rolex watch, an Omega watch, and some sort of designer pen for a combined total of 20 yuan (roughly $3). Very cheap price indeed!

All for now, then. Ja! 🙂

-posted by Wes | 12:26 pm | Comments (2)
May 11, 2007
It has cost us our blood
Category: SC Updates

Shredder's Casque

Am I the only person who thinks Michelangelo's response is hilarious?

Betcha can't guess what that is...

Also, for fans of the old Random Lunches pieces that I used to feature on Scary-Crayon, I posted an article about a week ago that covers a handful of Random Lunches from 2004 that I never got around to highlighting back in the day. But in The Lost Lunches: Volume One, you can now view them in all of their horrifying and potentially dry heave-inducing splendor! Yesh.

-posted by Wes | 11:39 pm | Comments (1)
February 26, 2007
Ugh.
Category: SC Updates … Serious

I was thinking I'd syndicate tonight's serious post to the Scary-Crayon blog here, but instead I will just link to it and Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #96, the subject of which is discussed at length in that entry. Suffice it to say that I have not been very happy as of late (which is mostly nothing new, but still), with this weekend being particularly depressing. I feel sick to my soul.

I will go to sleep now.

-posted by Wes | 4:55 am | Comments (0)
February 17, 2007
Coding and image fun yes yes
Category: SC Updates … Technical Stuff

EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!EXTERMINATE!Is it Saturday already? Time usually crawls with me, but this week seems to have gone by unusually quickly -- likely because I spent the majority of it lost in php and graphics and photos and whatnot. As I noted in the Scary-Crayon blog, I've recently decided to start using WordPress to manage the index and content pages as well -- but seeing as how I hadn't originally planned to use it to that effect and had placed it elsewhere in the site hierarchy, making that adjustment is has required some major internal structural changes. After literally sitting at the computer from 8AM to 11PM-ish on Thursday, though, I seem to have almost worked out all of the kinks there... but now, of course, I actually have to add all of the blurbs that I've written to introduce the articles since 2004 into the WP database. I've written hundreds of those things! So that may take a while, or maybe not since I'm so bloody obsessive. And even when I finish that, I'll have to tweak the layout and make some new changes in order to introduce them, as I've decided to create new categories for the game reviews and short stories (etc.) that had previously been lumped in with the miscellaneous pieces. Fun times.

So in addition to the changes to the SC blog and php code that these updates demand (which, I should note, also moved me to make some minor changes over here as well), I've also been fooling with lots of graphics stuff and text techniques in preparation for the minor layout changes. This morning, I found myself fiddling around with the Dalek at right to create a text-wrapping effect. It seems to work well in IE7 and Firefox (I have no idea how it looks in IE6 or other browsers, though), but it is problematic in that it's far too involved for its own good. I mean, I spend a lot of time doing image work on articles as it is, but somehow it seems a bit over the top to take the time to measure out and slice an image into 19 individual components (yep!) for something that hopefully takes a backseat to the text wrapping around it anyway. It might be cooler if Scary-Crayon had fewer pages and were less ostensibly text-centric -- and I'll probably do something like this on the "about" page that I design for the site and maybe even incorporate it into future tweaks to the blog -- but I can't see taking the time to do it on a regular basis. I'm almost certain that there are programs out there that can do this, but I'm not too confident about their quality because Paint Shop Pro also has a feature to do it and it's absolute rubbish. I had better luck copying and pasting selections snapped to a grid and going from there. There's a way to replicate the effect without slicing an image by using sandbag divs -- this article was actually what inspired me to attempt to do it via the image slicing method -- but using fixed image backgrounds and modifying external css rules is really impractical for individual articles. Ah well.

Okay, that is all for now. Thanks for reading, even if that didn't make a whole lot of sense to you! I will probably continue fooling with this for the next few hours before taking a break to actually work on a new SC comic/article/whatever. Ja! 🙂

-posted by Wes | 11:29 am | Comments (2)
January 23, 2007
DVDs, Daleks, images, and anniversaries (!!!)

Becky is right -- if those DVDs mentioned here had been $4, I probably wouldn't have put them back. (They were actually only $6 -- maybe even $5 -- but oh what a difference a dollar makes!) $4 price tags were enough to get me to pick up Election, Pump Up the Volume, and The Island of Dr. Moreau at Best Buy last week, and I've never even heard of the second and have heard horrible things about the latter. But I like Christian Slater and Moreau is one of those movies that I knew would sooner or later come into my possession simply in virtue of the subject matter, so I figured I wasn't likely to find a better price. Besides, even if it's terrible, the presence of Ron Perlman, Marlon Brando, and Fairuza Balk make it worth a viewing in my book. And Election is just hilarious.

It is a desk clock.

So the other weekend we found this while cleaning the basement. It doesn't work anymore -- it was apparently a promo thing given to my dad by some drug company many years ago -- and there doesn't appear to be any way of replacing the batteries, so it would otherwise have been thrown away... but I have other uses for it. Any guesses as to what I could use it to represent? Read on for a hint... (more...)

-posted by Wes | 11:43 pm | Comments (4)