MichaelandChrissy.com

When we found out that Botcon was going to be held in Disney World this year, we decided to bring the whole family.  We confirmed that Chrissy’s mom and sister Cassie could come with us.  But that was six months before the actual event.  So it kind of snuck up on us, kind of like your birthday.  You barely know it’s coming until it’s already the day.  At least it felt that way to me.  Chrissy, on the other hand, had us packed and ready to go a week ahead of time.

We got to Florida a week before Botcon so that we could spend a few days in the Disney parks.  We had a lot of fun, but it was tiring because the weather consisted of 95° heat and 88% humidity the entire time.  Besides the heat, Harry Potter World had just opened across town at Universal Studios, so attendance was down in the Disney parks.  This meant that we got to try lots of fun rides that we had never been on before because the lines were really short.  So it all worked out.

Botcon was fun, but there were some downsides.  I missed the autograph session with Peter Cullen because I only showed up for the line one hour early.  The line started at 5 AM and it was completely filled long before I got there.  On the bright side, I did get a couple of chances to speak to Hideaki Yoke during the convention.  This is the guy that designed the original Megatron toy.  He has had a hand in every Transformers figure since Diaclone.  I have met Peter Cullen a couple of times in the past, but meeting Yoke-san was a real treat.

I met a lot of celebrities of the Transformers world over the weekend, but I also caught up with lots of friends.  This was the first year that I socialized with people at Botcon, mostly with people that I met on Twitter or Facebook.  It was nice to meet everyone in person.  Usually I just go and hang out with Chrissy for a couple of days and buy some toys, but this time I hung out with some people while Chrissy went out to the parks with the boys.  I took pictures of almost everyone that I met and put them on Twitter.

I like to hear what new stuff is coming out next year during the Hasbro panels, but mostly I go to Botcon to buy Transformers.  I have most of the modern figures, but I still need to fill in parts of my vintage collection.  This year I neglected to bring a Visa or MasterCard.  We only brought the Discover card to spend on, and of course none of the vendors accepted Discover.  I could still buy some of the figures from the ’87 and ’88 lines that I needed, but I could have easily blown another thousand bucks in the dealer room if I had brought a Visa.

We also attended an Awards Dinner on Saturday night.  This was designed to honor real people and fictional robots into the Transformers Hall Of Fame.  The dinner was pretty good, and we saw induction speeches from Peter Cullen, Hideaki Yoke, and Bob Budiansky.  I was surprised that music by Stan Bush was not used during the introductory videos, or that Scott McNeill was not asked to speak after the Fan’s Choice character was announced, since he was the voice of Dinobot in the Beast Wars series.

During the dinner, they announced the location of next year’s Botcon.  It will be in Pasadena, California again next year.  This is the same place as last year, but they’ll have a new movie to promote again.  Michael Bay and several actors from the movie made appearances last year, so I assume that plans are in the works to do something similar for Transformers 3.  This is the first time that Fun Publications has re-used a Botcon location, however, so I think that lots of people were upset (at least those that don’t live anywhere near California, like us).

The next morning, all of the hotel rooms in Pasadena were booked.  If I recall correctly, the problem last year was that convention hotels did not have enough rooms to accommodate all of the Botcon attendees.  Chrissy heard at Disney World that the Disneyland parks were completely different, so we might stay at the Disneyland resorts instead.  This means that I would have to rent a car and drive the twenty five five miles to Pasadena every morning in LA traffic.  I suppose that’s all right, but I’ll have to wake up extra early in order to make the Peter Cullen autograph line.  At least I’ll be able to spend the rest of the week at Disneyland with my family.

Dark Horse Comics posted a message on Twitter that they were having a contest.  Anyone who forwarded that message on Twitter would be eligible for a giveaway.  I was a huge fan of Dark Horse back in the day, and they still hold the comic rights to my two favorite franchises, Aliens and Predator (and Aliens VS Predator, for that matter).  So I took a chance and re-tweeted their announcement.

And hey, I won!  Dark Horse sent me eight “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” graphic novels in the mail.  It took a while for them to show up, but I was happy to get them.  I played the KotOR video games by LucasArts, so I was interested in seeing how the comic version tied in.  Very loosely, or so I found.  The story is sort a prequel to the video games, not directly related to those storylines, but the game characters do make guest appearances.

The art by Brian Ching started the series strong with great detail work.  Like Groo, by Segio Aragones, the scene would often pull back and show sprawling city scenes in the background, filling in details about the location and alien life all about.  The art would waver again as Ching cycled in and out of the artist chores.  It would appear that many artists don’t share Ching’s talent for backgrounds.  I didn’t like the art for the Vector crossover at all, but improved when Ching returned.

I don’t normally win anything, so this was a pleasant surprise.  And since the KotOR series recently came to a close at the 50th issue, I received almost the entire print run in one shot.  Just need to pick up the last four issues to see what happens in the end.  I haven’t even read them all yet though, so no hurry.  I sent a nice “thank you” note to Dark Horse (digitally, of course).  I’ll have to keep a lookout for more Dark Horse giveaways concerning Aliens or Predator.

I’m not a particular fan of the Old Navy logo, but I do have some of their hoodies in my closet.  One of the people that I follow on Twitter, @CorrinRenee, recently had a contest on her blog to hawk colorful Old Navy ruffle tops.  I left a snarky reply, completely not expecting anything to come of it.   See me be snarky:

I’ve been known to sport an Old Navy hoodie.  But I won’t wear the ruffles.  I will give them to homeless children who will wear them for me.  And dance for my amusement.  Dance, little ruffle-wearing homeless children, dance!

As it turned out, the homeless children were my own!  Corrin chose the winners of the giveaway by random number (my comment was number 31), so we won a coupon for $45 off of a $100 purchase.  The downside was that it expired in two days.  That wasn’t a problem though…

I got the notice on Sunday morning and, by Sunday afternoon, Chrissy had racked up a $200 charge at Old Navy.  She bought a lot of clothes for the boys, some that won’t even fit until next year.  The checkout girl said that this coupon was very rare and wondered where we got it.  So thanks, Corrin, for helping us dress our homelessful children!

I might be the most tragically unhip person on Earth.  I just don’t jump on the bandwagon with everyone else.  I dig the social media, however.  I love Twitter and I make Flickr updates almost daily.  But it took me a while to warm up to the idea of starting a Facebook account.  Too trendy, not very useful, not my thing.

So I blame Chrissy for our new Facebook addiction.  I thought that I was bad about checking my Twitter updates, but Chrissy has checked her new Facebook eighty-seven times today.  She does it on the iPhone while changing the baby’s diapers!  Okay, that last part was a complete fabrication, but you get the idea.

Chrissy was my first Facebook friend.  And my real-life friends quickly became my Facebook friends as well.  Oddly, people that I don’t even know are now requesting to be my Facebook friend.  I follow plenty of people on Twitter that I don’t know, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that on Facebook.  Holding off for now.

I think that the Facebook account will be there to catch up with old friends and play Mafia Wars (yes, it’s awesome and I can’t stop playing it).  I can manage it through an iPhone app.  I’ve got a Twitter application to update my status message directly through Twitter, so it should pretty much maintain itself.  We’ll have to see where this goes.

I use Twitter a lot.  So, when Chrissy and I got iPhones, one of the first applications that I downloaded was a Twitter client.  There are quite a few out there, even though most of them only give the “crippleware” versions for free.  I started out with the free version of Twittelator, but it wasn’t satisfying me.  I then tried some other free client applications, like Twitterific and Twinkle.

Twinkle is not a dedicated Twitter client, but its claim to fame was that it shows local tweets only.  It’s an intriguing idea, especially if you’re interested in meeting local people for Tweet-ups (social gatherings with Twitter friends), but it wanted you to first sign up for Tapulous, their free service.  The messages that I received were actually Tapulous messages instead of Twitter tweets though.  I didn’t want to sign up for another service, so I deleted the app.

Twittelator starts with a list of groups, such as friends, replies, and favorites.  Unfortunately, these links disappear when browsing the postings.  I also had a hard time viewing user profiles and doing other common Twitter functions.  Most damning was the inclusion of paid advertising between every fifty messages.  You can get around this, and get many more features (some really cool), by purchasing the “Pro” version of Twittelator, but I wanted to try the free stuff first.

Twitterific is another Twitter client with a free version and a paid version.  Like Twittelator, the free version limits you to a “dark” theme with white text on a black background.  Harder to read, but you can get “light” themes with the pay version.  The basic functionality was better with Twitterific though, and includes context-sensitive help windows.  Like Twinkle, Twitterific allows you to view local tweets (without the separate service).  At least there are no ads.

Lastly, I tried TwitterFon.  This app works the most like Twhirl, my desktop Twitter client of choice.  With a little work, I was able to follow links in the tweets and look up user profiles.  You can even follow people right from the interface.  Thankfully, there is no “paid” version of TwitterFon, so what you see is what you get (even the black text on white background theme that others make you pay for).  I used TwitterFon extensively while on vacation in Orlando.

So which one did I like best?  I’ll probably stick with TwitterFon for a while.  Of the free Twitter clients, this one is the best.  It has some drawbacks, like only downloading the last 200 tweets at startup, but I’ve learned to live with those.  After a while, I might try a pay version or maybe even Tweetie (paid app with no free version), but you just can’t beat FREE.

I really love Twitter, so much so that I spend a goodly chunk of my day posting my thoughts online and following other users.  One of the people that I follow, @corrinrenee, recently blogged about her new Twitter t-shirt.  I wanted one, but I would have to make it myself.  I already had iron-on transfer paper for the printer, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to put together, right?

The original EPS file can be found on @tedmurphy‘s site.  Ted created the file and allows others to customize it.  I didn’t have Illustrator, so I loaded the graphics file into Adobe Photoshop Elements instead.  This allowed me to add my own Twitter handle to the image and change the colors, although I had to change some preferences to fix the font kerning.

I couldn’t decide on a t-shirt color (“Twitter blue” or my usual khaki?), so I got both.  They were only $5 at Target, so worth the cost for this experiment.  After flipping the image, I printed it onto the iron-on transfer paper.  Following the directions, I ironed the paper onto the shirts for three minutes and then peeled the backing off.  They didn’t turn out bad at all.  What do you think?

I’ve been using Twitter for about nine months, and I probably send out about five tweets a day. Twitter is an interesting animal, in that different people use it in different ways. I think that it was originally meant to be a list of your current doings (“eating breakfast”, “feeding baby”, “out to lunch”), but reading grocery lists like that is like watching grass grow. And I prefer to watch paint drying. Twitter has evolved, though, to be many things to many people.

Personally, I tend to use it as a stream of thought collector. I think of it as supplemental content for my web site, so I don’t reply to others much on it (unless the reply might be interesting to read on the site). I do keep up with a lot of people, however, I just do it via direct message. These do not show up on the public record, but the other person receives them via email or through third-party interfaces like “Twhirl“. I also try to include any links or contextual information from the original tweet in my responses. This ensures that each of my tweets is a stand-alone thought.

I’ve seen some news organizations (including my local paper, “The Northwest Indiana Times“) just post links back to their content. They’re not there to be social, as the term “social media” might imply, but rather to disseminate their products to anyone on Twitter who may be interested. Just don’t expect them to follow you back, since these are often automated bots. The more successful ones have a live person behind them that does follow and engage other users.

Other people may use Twitter as a chat room, sending a series of fragmented replies to several conversations at once.  The problem with this is that Twitter has no threaded discussions.  That’s not a criticism of the way Twitter works, it’s just a fact.  When I read someone’s archive of tweets, I like to be able to understand each one and get a feel for what that person is about.  There is no right way or wrong way to use Twitter, but I still have an opinion on what makes the most sense.  I usually only “follow” people who use the same tweet etiquette I do.

There’s nothing worse than a tweet that reads, “OMG! ME TOO!” What does that even mean? I guess I could go back into the timeline of whoever they were responding to, but if their tweets are just as indecipherable, then it would do little good. How about something like, “You thought that last night’s Doctor Who episode was great? I loved it too! Here’s a link to my thoughts on it: http://is.gd/zIy“. That is easily within Twitter’s 140 character limit, tells everyone what you’re talking about, and provides a link to more information than your short tweet can convey.

The nice thing about Twitter is that the architecture is so open that all of these uses are possible.  Businesses send out links to products via the web interface.  Spammers send out spam through the Twitter API.  Podcasters send out notices of the latest releases with Twhirl.  People talk about their day by cell phone text message.  Short messages, long messages, and bot messages.  It’s all good with Twitter, in whichever way people want to do it.  It’s a very flexible, if sometimes unreliable, system.

Rene Engström is a Swedish cartoonist who does the web comic “Anders Loves Maria“.  She draws and paints each update by hand.  The art seems to be finished in water colors, and they turn out beautifully with spectacular shading and gradation.  The subject matter leans towards the adult side, with some nudity and mature topics, but the story is taken seriously and is very well put together. I’ve added it to my daily reading list.

I first heard of Rene on Twitter, where her handle is “reneengstrom“.  Today, she was taking random requests for quick sketches and then posting the results for everyone to see.  Some of the requests were pretty out there, but she came through imaginatively every time.  I requested an Optimus Prime sketch, and she sent over a picture of her work.  That’s some funny stuff; I laughed out loud.  Thanks, Rene! You made my day.

I haven’t finished writing down all of this year’s Botcon experience, and I will most likely only write a short bit about the huge haul that I brought home. However, I did notice that I have a ton of tweets (Twitter posts) pertaining to Botcon, so I thought that I would post these for anyone who is both interested and not already following me on Twitter. To get the full effect, click on the “Continue Reading” link below!

Continue Reading »

I signed up for Twitter a few months back, and I’m hopelessly addicted now.  I find myself checking my Twitter feed about ten times a day: reading replies from friends to people I don’t know, checking those people’s feeds, adding them to my own friends list if they look interesting.  I don’t mind the jones, since I enjoy it, but does anybody outside of the “Twitterverse” read my entries (“tweets”, as they’re called)?

Well, now you have to.  I found a WordPress plugin that will post my tweets as a daily blog post.  I’m not going to use it though, because I don’t want my blog to be filled up with Twitter digests (I saw a site like that recently, and it wasn’t pretty).  However, I might post a “best of” list as I see fit.  Below is the first installment.  Redundant data or a poignant look into my psyche?

Continue Reading »