Van Speaks

This Thing's Getting Framed

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:03:20 +1000

Well, my copies of Japanese Nostalgic Car have yet to arrive, but a friend not far from me received his copy yesterday, so he lent it to me to facilitate some drooling. I promised not to get it on his copy.

Man, what to say. So damn stoked. I was hoping the cover would be of a heavier stock, but otherwise I'm rapt. There are mistakes here and there throughout the mag, and one pretty big kerning cockup on the cover, but I've taken all of those things on board and I know they won't happen again. All in all, I think it's not bad for a first ever effort.

Here's some choice photos.

15,000 copies. Glossy pages throughout. 83 pages. All designed by me. Bring on issue 2!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Beer versus T-Shirt.

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 01:09:50 +1000

So, I went to see Gomez tonight, with a good buddy of mine that I've known since school. We always do the gigs together, courtesy of our both having sensational taste and, incidentally, the only good taste in our "group".

After buying a cheap dinner, I had AU$40 to my name. Ordinarily, that's drinking money right there. At $12 a shout (two beers), and including my mate's shouts, that's easily... doing the math... 56 beers! But as I enter the band venue, I spot the merchandise table. Suddenly, I am overcome with confused and mixed feelings. My Boyfriend Sense begins to tingle. The hair on the back of my neck, and my chest, was rearranging itself like crop circles, spelling out words such as "Buy Fiona a T-shirt!" and "Time For a Shower, Arsehole!".

So, if only to ensure that the rest of my evening would not be spent fending off conspiracy theorists and skeptics desperate to examine my crop circles, I bought Fi a t-shirt. For the princely sum of $40. They were all $40! Well there was one for $20, but I didn't like it as much. The point is; I surrendered my manly right to get right fucked up, and looked after my baby.

Damn you Mendoza! I mean Gomez!

Note: The above tale is only partially true. I did manage to wrangle a couple of beers out of my mate. I'm not much of a man, but I'm still a man damn it.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Gmail WTF?

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:42:40 +1000

Has anyone else noticed that when a Gmail thread gets to around 50 emails, the page rendering starts to get all cuhraaaazy? Every time the Gmails between myself and Lorien get to 50ish replies, everything sorts skews off to the right-hand side and I have to scroll right across to the get to the reply box. On top of that, the "Back to inbox" link that is normally at the bottom of a conversation thread completely disappears. What ho? Surely I am not the only one! How has this botchery not been sorted out yet? Some mofo's gonna lose his nerd status soon, I suspect.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The battle begins!

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:58:29 +1000

Holy crap, we can't insert remotely hosted images? Bad Vox! Short of posting that dynamically updating image (which means uploading the image to your server will ruin the entire point) on an entirely different page and linking to it with a text link, there's no way for me to display the image here in its intended form!

Tsk. Tsk.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

To hell with Michael Bay.

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:09:44 +1000

Megatron-looks-shit

What... What the fuck is this?

Man, fuck this movie. I've done my best to be supportive of the changes they've made. I understand the need to take some liberties here and there in order to make the movie more appealing to a wider audience, but this is ridiculous. There is not a single reason to be making these changes.

The funny thing is, whenever someone complains about all these changes, the inevitable response is "Who cares what they look like? Who cares if Optimus is a longnose truck and not a flatface?", etc. The response to that is simple enough: It's not that we have a problem with change, where it's needed. We realise that not everything in a cartoon translates perfectly to movie, and sometimes things need to be changed. But when wholesale massive changes like this are made, for no apparent reason, it's disgusting. There may be "no harm" in making changes, but there's a difference between no harm, and [i]no reason[/i]. If there's no reason, that's the harm. You offend and insult fans without need. That's the harm.

This movie exists largely because millions of fans who watched it as a child, demanded it as an adult. Of course, nobody doubts that the major reason this movie is happening is because of the money and the trend to remake old franchises lately, but the bottom line remains the same: No Regular Joe is going to be turned off or turned away by a Transformers movie that remains almost true to the original designs and concepts, but every fan is going to be offended and heartbroken by a Transformers movie that maintains only the most vague, tenuous links to the original cartoon.

Doom bombed. It discarded and massively altered the original story. Resident Evil bombed. Same reason. Alone in the Dark bombed. Same reason. Precisely how many lessons will it take before it's learned? There were probably dozens of production studios and writers who would have made respectable movies based on these franchises, and now we'll never see them, because they were ruined by idiots who thought they knew better.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Pluto back to being just a dog.

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:54:31 +1000

Well, it's official. I know you were wondering, and now I can confirm it for you: Pluto is no longer a planet.

Myself, I'm not too phased by it. Back in the mid 90s, Jeff Kennett—the Premier at the time of the state I live in; Victoria—went about closing down and demolishing hundreds of schools that were struggling to stay alive. Sure the government had the money to help, and then some, but it was better suited to his grand plans for the state that they be knocked down to make way for apartments, offices, what have you. Fair enough, I can live with that. If it sucks for me at all, it's merely the fact that one of the 4 primary (elementary) schools I attended no longer exists (though they sure are pretty apartments!).

Of the 13 houses I'd lived in while growing up, 6 of them have been demolished and replaced, or renovated to the point of unrecognisability. As someone who very much likes to go for drives to the places I lived and frequented as a child, it's a shame to think that almost half of those places don't exist anymore. Not as I remember them anyway, and isn't that the point?

Anyway, my point is that removing Pluto from the Sol System's planetary list is just another example of my childhood being knocked out from under me. I'm no stranger to that!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Neighbour #3 - Lorien

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:00:43 +1000

There exists in my life no more beautiful a thing than Lorien, or Loh, or in the brilliant glare of offline reality, my Fiona. Hah, that gets me thinking that I should totally re-record The Knack's My Sharona as My Fiona. Wouldn't that be out and out hilarity? I think you'll agree that it would.

I've shared more about myself with Loh in the past six months than I did in the entire two years of my last longterm relationship, a couple of years ago. Artwise, I've accomplished more with her at my side than in the entire century preceding our relationship. Forget that I've only been alive for 26 years, it's still true! There exists no better muse, with which paper I do abuse. Hey, that was pretty clever.

Emotionally, it's been a relief, to be sure. As a general rule, I cannot stand the company of others in anything more than small doses. It's not because of them, or because I feel that I'm better than them, but rather that I have a very topsy turvy mind and if I can't spend time alone to sort through it all, I turn into a furious beast furied fury. Fiona understands this, supports me through it, and encourages me to spend time alone to do all the things I like to do alone. She makes no secret of the fact that she hates being apart from me, and I certainly enjoy her company as much, I think, as she enjoys mine, but even with that being so, I absolutely cannot spend great amounts of time with any one person. Be it Fi, or Be it television's Jeremy Clarkson, no person alive can captivate me to the point that I can ignore my annoying mind's demands for ocassional solitude. I'd eventually come to the conclusion that I was destined to a life of 2-week "relationships" courtesy of this socialus imcompatibilitus, but lo I found Loh and all has been well.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Neighbour #2 - A Digital Cat

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:44:00 +1000

I'm not kidding, this person's handle is A Digital Cat. How does one go about deciding on such a name? Is it a homage to the famed Tamagotchi keyring games of old? Does she (I presume the "she" part) live in an apartment that does not allow pets, forcing her to resort to digital representations of such animals? This begs the question: What other digital pets is she parading around the intarweb? Are they trained? Need I fear for the safety of my digital children? More so, can I trust her digital cat on my digital rug? In the event of an incident, has a precedent ever been set for the legal headaches that may ensue?

I guess, really, the only important question is: Why a cat? If we're talking digitalism, why not a dinosaur? Or a unicorn? Don't girls love unicorns? I'd have gone for a seahorse myself. Have you seen that giant armoured seahorse that Aquaman rides? Something like that.

In closing, ADC is a fantastic artist. I'm not too sure what she's messing with lately, though it looks as if she's sketching whatever images she finds on the front page of CNN.com. Is this an attempt to improve her skills? It's a clever plan, Dr. ADC, and I salute your cunning.

I can only hope and pray that Jessica Simpson makes it to the front page of CNN.com some time very, very soon.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Neighbour #1 - .tiff.

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:29:52 +1000

I have decided that I will make a blog entry about each person that adds me as a neighbour. I'm not sure why, but right now I'm high on Froot Loops and Coke™, so it's all systems go.

Vox's .tiff.—who I shall refer to hereon as Tiff—is not, despite what you might think, the presenter of UK television's Fifth Gear—a far less amusing rip off of Top Gear. I really don't see the point to that name. Most decent performance cars have six gears, so if you punt around in fifth gear, aren't you just going to blow shit up? Silly Brits.

But no, Tiff is a designer of very high regard here at Vox. Why so? Tiff takes care of the template designs. It's always irked me a little that we can't design our own templates. On the one hand, it's good. It'll ensure that there are no ugly Voxes. On the other hand, those of us capable of yanking out a nice looking design may feel a little shortchanged. Alas, I digress. Tiff's work is the beans, and I, for one, dig it.

Whatever you're using as the design for your Vox account right now, chances are pretty good that Tiff designed it. Yet she is merely an intern at Vox! So much responsibility. What next? Senate? The Presidency? Will she become a dark Sith lord, plunging our fair planet into a centuries-long war? I don't know about you, but I think we could do with the change. Tiff for prez!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The irony is delicious

nobody@vox.com(Van) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:15:47 +1000

raj:    this makes me so sad
raj:    i've had this speedreading page open for days
raj:    but i can't get around to reading it
van:    yeah
van:    i don't think a tutorial about speedreading should be so long.

Amirite?!

Oh and if anyone was wondering, let me assure you of this most base fact: a bowl of Froot Loops and milk, along with a bottle of Coke™, are the ideal breakfast for a Wednesday morning at home.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend