Category: Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Categories
Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Psssssst…

vworp... vworp... vworp...You want to read almost 7% of VWORP!1 for free before taking the plunge?

VWORP!1 Sampler – 2.56mb PDF file

I’ll be looking over a new proof copy in the next couple of days, and provided it hasn’t been randomly rearranged by some algorithm designed to “correct” my carefully-arranged layout, I’ll pull the trigger and make it available to order.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve opted to use Createspace, which is part of Amazon and therefore is automatically available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, rather than Lulu.com. Believe it or not, this’ll actually make it cheaper for you; in the meantime, I just have to deal with the automatic document check system on Createspace trying to “correct” a layout that I actually thought out pretty thoroughly, thankyouverymuch.

Keep watching the big book cover link to the left…… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Say hello to my little friend

VWORP!1Meet my new buddy Dinsdale the Drashig. He doesn’t make too many public appearances, not since his guest starring gig in the 1973 Doctor Who story Carnival Of Monsters. (Which, incidentally, you can read about in VWORP!1.)

He’ll be helping me hand out books at OVGE, but you’ve gotta be careful with him… … Read more

Categories
Gaming Toiling In The Pixel Mines

In Dreams

Flynn'sEvery once in a while, an idea lands in my head from a dream, fully-formed, and I wake up and go “hey, gotta write that one down.” Today I took a nap and had such a revelation.

I stated a while back that I’d had a memoir that started out, at least nominally, as a Phosphor Dot Fossils book, but it just as quickly become something that reached far beyond the parameters of that particular “brand name” (if you can even call it that). It’ll still make many a mention of video games and computers and so on, but it’s not a straight-up video game guidebook of any kind.

What hit me today was the organizational idea for precisely the kind of straight-up video game guidebook that the other book had ceased to be. Ironically, the idea was familiar – I’d actually already seen something similar in a book about pre-’80s rock bands, many, many years ago (we’re talking back when I was in college, mind you), and suddenly that dormant synapse fired and said “Why not apply that organizational strategy to… this project?”

So suddenly the PDF book, that I’ve known for some time that I needed to write, has a shape and a purpose. Something unique that sets it apart from other books on the subject. It’s almost hard to explain – it’s both an organizational concept and a visual concept. The layout will be pretty involved.

Maybe 2014 or 2015, if I haven’t keeled over by then from all the stuff I have to roll out in 2013.… Read more

Categories
Toiling In The Pixel Mines

V(w)orpal sword

The bookA quick bit of blawg, so I don’t break my non-stop blogging streak:

VWORP!1 is undergoing last-minute revisions after a brutal editorial once-over. I had someone look it over and, you know, when you have someone look things like this over, you expect them to be uncompromising. The good news: it’s a good book, it just needed lots of little persnickety grammatical and punctuation fixes. But the knock-on effect has been a little bit of a delay and an increased page count (I realized, very late in the game, that there was stuff I’d left out). This is why you have someone else look over your crap. Sort of like the little internet meme graphic making the rounds: proper punctuation is the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you’re shit. That, and some minor formatting/layout fixes, have pushed the page count dangerously close to 400.

I printed out a copy, from beginning to end, on paper, just to look at it. I learned two things from doing this.

  1. That’s a good way to kill two ink cartridges.
  2. I’ve written a big-ass f@#$ing book.

I hope you like it. It should still be ready for OVGE.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Uah uah

Colossus is watchingWhen we last left our heroes… well, there weren’t really any heroes, just a couple of college students who had two episodes of a show, barely half an hour each, in hand, and a cable access channel ready to show whatever we threw at them (within the bounds of decency, which admittedly JCC wasn’t likely to cross).

This is the even stranger story of how Jump Cut City went from being an inside joke to something that other people were watching, and would therefore have to understand (within reason, which admittedly was not an area where JCC tended to dwell). … Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Uah

Nobody got it! Nobody! Last week’s Bad Visual Pun of the Month (well, probably more like Bad Visual Pun Of The Indeterminate Time Period) went completely unsolved. Here, then, is the answer – although it required some slightly specialized knowledge about one of my stranger creative projects.

UAH!

FIDDY CENT

There’s a pretty good chance you didn’t know how to arrive at that answer. There’s a pretty good chance you don’t know what a fiddygibber is. It’s time to change that. It’s time to tell you all about… Jump Cut City. … Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

You’re in black!

Hey bro, you're in blackThere are few incidents worse than a TV station over which you’re supposedly riding herd “going black” – i.e. something, somewhere, has stopped working, and you’re broadcasting an empty signal. In the control room, this is known as “oh shit time.”

So naturally, that’s when people who have no idea what does what in master control begin calling the master control trouble line. … Read more

Categories
Critters Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Meet Explorer Earl

Dork HelmetOkay, I only thought this stuff was buried under a mile of soft peat somewhere.

Sometime in 1994, at the first TV station where I worked, I got shanghaied into being on-air talent during kids’ programming. Our kids’ club talent had just left, and there was a perfect storm brewing:

  1. The Humane Society did pet-of-the-week spots in our kids’ programming, which helped the station to fulfill its “local public service” quota. Those spots now had no host.
  2. The station had just gotten a pith helmet in a National Geographic promo kit.
  3. I was already on the payroll.

With no contract, no additional pay, and no perks, I was suddenly… Explorer Earl. … Read more