I'm learning from the master. We decided that we'd save on the hotel room and head home from BlizzCon a day early because the 2nd day was basically a repeat of the first day followed by a concert by The Offspring. By the time I woke up this morning, Kim had already sold all four of our passes (we bought two and got two for being press) for $220. What's great is that she was wearing the World of Warcraft shirt that the Penny Arcade guys gave me that says "The Goldfarmer" on it in the The Godfather font when she met the people to collect the money. Before I tore down the computers, I did a quick scan on ebay to see if anyone had listed the in-game Murloc pet you get by going to the convention (basically a baby mer-man that follows you around in game, but doesn't fight) and there were a few up there. We got four of them because of our four badges, so I listed two of them. By the time I got home and unpacked the computers, they had both sold for my buyout price of...wait for it...$250. That's $250 each. Looks like I'll be buying Age of Empires III this week after all.

posted by Travis at 7:07 PM

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Friday, October 28, 2005

If this picture means something to you, then you need to click this link.

posted by Travis at 5:20 PM

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Kim and I arrived in Anaheim without incident and have gotten our room up to snuff. BlizzCon tomorrow and Saturday. Pictures and video will follow. This should be fun.

posted by Travis at 12:51 AM

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Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Spawn #150 came out today. I became a Todd McFarlane fan long ago when Marvel gave him his own Spider-Man book. I had been out of comics for a while, and was no longer buying them. My mother saw Spider-Man #1 in a store and, being a well-trained mother and always on the lookout for such things, she bought it. The art style was so striking and so dramatic and just so much more than anything I'd seen in a comic book. I started grabbing everything I could with his name on it, and I was drawn right back into comics. I got a subscription to Spider-Man, and impatiently waited for each issue. But it all soon came to an end when Marvel made Todd change one of his panels to be less violent. The published version of the page and panel can be seen here. The entire comic is drawn sideways or "widescreen". This was the first time I'd seen anyone do that. Anyway, Todd had drawn the tips of Shatterstar's swords piercing Juggernaut's eyes, but Marvel thought it was too much, so they made him change it. It seems like a small point of contention, but it was enough to make Todd quit and the cover of Spider-Man #16 has Spider-Man saying, "Bye, Todd."

Todd took with him some influential artists and started Image Comics. The flagship of Image Comics was Spawn and Spawn #1 sold out everywhere. I stopped buying Marvel comics when Todd left and got on board with Image. It was really only Spawn that interested me, and that was the only comic I bought until I stopped buying all together sometime in college around the same time that Todd stopped drawing. Image soon replaced DC as the number two comics publisher resulting in DC publishing some stunts to stay competitive (the death of Superman and Batman getting paralyzed).

When I got back into comics a year or so ago, the first one I bought was a Spawn, but it wasn't the same and Todd was still not drawing it. The reason for this rather long and drawn out post is that Todd McFarlane drew one of the covers for Spawn #150 and promises to get the comic back on track. I may get back on board.

posted by Travis at 6:41 PM

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Monday, October 17, 2005

I updated the Writing section of the site with my recent articles, including the one that just got posted today concerning my trip to San Fran to play Xbox 360.

I caught up on some TV this weekend, and I'm afraid that Threshold just isn't going to make the cut. It has been removed from the Tivo. I'm going to give Invasion a few more episodes before I remove the season pass for it as well. I'm still on-board with Surface and Supernatural, so far. Both those shows are entertaining me. However, Supernatural just did an episode called Bloody Mary that drew an awful lot of inspiration from The Ring. It's not a bad thing, but tread carefully, WB.

Justice League Unlimited is still the best show on television.

posted by Travis at 5:49 PM

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Thursday, October 13, 2005

I got a flickr account and the code is up where the old Photos section used to be. Flickr is a pretty good pictures site (although the Yahoo! account thing is a problem), so that is what I'll be using to upload pictures. The pictures shown on the left will always be the most recent ones I've uploaded and you can click them to see the bigger versions. Once you're on the flickr site looking at my stream, you can browse the other pictures in there as well.

I spent Tuesday in San Francisco playing Xbox 360 games all day on toms dollar. The system is impressive, but I'm not sure it is the leap ahead that Microsoft claims it is. Current gen Xbox games also look good on HD at 720p, so they should stop using that as a selling point for new hardware. I expected to be blown away, and I was only slightly impressed. Still, I fear I may be tricked into buying one just by the event of it's release. That happens to me sometimes. I am actually considering celebrating the release of Xbox 360 by finally buying a Playstation 2 and Soul Calibur 3.

posted by Travis at 11:47 AM

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Wednesday, October 05, 2005

You know what this site needs? It needs more big pictures of me on it. This picture was taken recently for work for one of those take-a-picture-of-everyone-and-put-it-in-a-public-place things. This is me sitting in my cube. Yes, I do have a giant Darth Maul poster in my cube. It says "One Truth, One Hate." I think it's very Disney of me.

posted by Travis at 3:35 PM

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Tuesday, October 04, 2005

We saw Serenity over the weekend, and it's really really good. Comparisons to Star Wars are inevitable, but not entirely appropriate in my opinion. Serenity is certainly scene-for-scene a better written movie than recent Star Wars outings, but it doesn't have the weight of Star Wars. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Serenity doesn't have all the politics, mysticism, and mythology that accompanies a Star Wars story. It's just fun sci-fi. In Star Wars terms, imagine if the Galactic Civil War ended and the Empire won, and a young Han Solo is eeking out a living on the fringes of civilization. That is kind of where Serenity is. It's a sci-fi western. You don't have to have seen any episodes of Firefly to enjoy the movie, but I think if you have you will get more out of it.

I wanted to mention the recent premiere of Smallville. I stopped watching the show a bit because it was frustrating me, so I was basically watching it by proxy through Kim. She asked me to watch the end of last season's finale because she thought I'd like it. I prefer the Superman mythology episodes to the what I will call "Indestructible Dawson" episodes. Anyway, last season ends with Clark being teleported to the North Pole with a crystal, so I was hoping they were going for the Fortress of Solitude. Well, the premiere of Smallville was full of stuff that I thought I would never see in the show. Things like the Fortress, the Phantom Zone, General Zod, and the arrival of Braniac. They don't say it's Braniac, but I read months ago that James Marsters (Spike from Buffy) was playing Braniac on Smallville. Zod may not have actually been on the show, but two Kryptonians show up in Smallville all dressed in black and someone says something about stopping the followers of Zod, so maybe they are setting up Zod for a later episode. I hope so, because if this guy was Zod he was super lame. Basically the premiere was kind of Superman II, but not as good. So, I'll stay back with Smallville until they go back to Indestructible Dawson.

posted by Travis at 10:05 AM

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