I finally got a Nintendo Wii and it only took me two years!

The store I bought it from harassed me to buy a warranty about five times telling me that the Wii has "known issues" and that things can go wrong. I don't understand the sales tactic of telling people what you're selling is outright crappy. I decided against a warranty because I don't think I need one. I've never had a problem with any Nintendo machine I've owned and I've had them all (with the exception of the Virtual Boy that thing sucked goats). I've had to send in my niece & nephews DS's for repairs but they're kids, naturally they're gonna be a bit rougher with their stuff. I live by Nintendo Canada so repairs & returns are easy - I set 'em up on the phone and do a walk in repair. If it's under warranty they'll do a replacement and if it's out of warranty you get an option for a factory replacement/refurbished model.

I didn't get any games yet so I just rent and borrow them. I recently ordered Okami & Monkey Ball for $10 each on Amazon during their black friday deals. I'm gonna be on the lookout for other good deals, and used games to try and beef up the library. I'm a firm beliver in good games now will be good games a few years from now and I don't have to get them the day they come out. I used to obsess over that stuff but it was just a waste of money.

One thing I made sure to pick up were some rechargeable batteries for the Wiimotes. A four pack of batteries is about $10, and a four pack of rechargeable batteries is about $15 but you can re-use them a few hundred times. Rechargables are like most good things in life, more expensive upfront but much, much cheaper over time.

I've decided I'll be selling my old NES/SNES/N64/GameCube games too. I could use the space (and drinking money) - I'll post a note when I get around to putting the on ebay.

Patience pays!

A few weeks ago I thought it would be a good idea to import a few thousand fonts into my system. This was extremely stupid because installed fonts are stored in your memory. Even with 4GB of RAM my system responded very sluggish and Photoshop would stall every few seconds.

Mo' Fonts Mo' Problems

If you want to utilize a few thousand fonts without sluggin' your system you gotta get a type manager. A type manager lets you install and uninstall sets of fonts with a few clicks when you need them for projects and let's you disable them for when you don't need them. Another bonus is they give you a preview of your fonts at a glance. The free Font Xplorer is decent, but I've been using the pay program FontExpert for the past couple weeks and it's got better features. I'll most likely order it for reals when the trial expires.

Obsolete Fonts?

Before TrueType and OpenType fonts there were "Type 1" fonts. Type 1 fonts are being rendered obsolete because modern operating systems aren't supporting them anymore. I have many Type 1 fonts that I still want to use so I downloaded the program CrossFont which let's you convert fonts between the different formats.

Bonus Font Trivia!

The designer of the Gill Sans typeface sexually assaulted his children, f*cked his sister and the family dog too.

What the font!?

A couple weeks ago I got to re-vamp the "header" or the top graphic of of the SpawnPoint gaming community.


I go into more detail more over @ my SpawnPoint blog.

We got an oldie (but a goodie) in the forums a couple weeks ago and it reminded me how easy it is to "keep in touch" these days with all these fancy "2.0" sites.

I recently joined LinkedIn and as usual you can add me to Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.

So I guess I'm on some kind of "health" kick.

Jess & I started P90X two days ago and I'm freaking sore. I've been doing martial arts since I was 14 so i thought I was going to be alright but right now it hurts to bend or straighten my arms. It's friggin' intense. Lots of push ups, pull ups and jumping around. I'm thinking that it'll build practical muscle & strength rather than the inflated bulky "for show" gym muscle which is good because I LIKES TO KEEP IT REAL YO.

I've also been jogging my financials into shape. I'm sick of interest working against me in the form of credit card debt and I'm wanting to get interest working for me in the form of investments.

...and finally "work" health. The US economy kind of took a downturn the last year or two and that's affected my freelance operations greatly. I'm in the process of gearing down my biz and finalizing a long-term contract gig with another web company. I'm stoked because I get to focus more of my time on straight up designing rather than all that other stuff freelancers often get occupied with.

Here's to new leafs!

A few more feature graphics for Spike. I might have said before that these are good little graphics for warming up the design muscles in the morning.


Still working through the plans for world domination updating my portfolio site. I've started sketching layouts on paper first to figure out some of the functionality - it's basically going to be an image gallery with slightly different organization.

Well this is post basically text but let's not get silly.

Currently in Seattle to watch a baseball game but here's what's been up with TrueNuff in the last little while:

• New Shirts For Sale!
  Four different shirts and stickers for sale at the new shop!
• New Subscription Options
  The mailing list sucks bingo - so we're moving to RSS & Email sign up at our site!
• J.Rai is Leaving
  Jeff is heading east-ward to Toronto - wish him luck!
• Greenling Custom Videos
  We did these custom video for a company in Texas that deals with organic produce.

Stay tuned for a video update and the exciting conclusion of the blender series next week!

That's all fer now!

I loves me some poker - Holdem' specifically. I ain't any good but I have fun playing (that's all that matters - right?). I've lost money here and there but I usually chalk it up to "education costs" as long as I learn from my mistakes.

Jess asks me if I can play "for fun" - kinda... but no. If you play "for fun" you have people going all in with a pair of two's with ten thousand fun dollars. Basically people play like morons when nothing is on the line so you can't really learn/practice strategies or get a feeling for the actual dynamics of the game so I insist on playing with some money. It doesn't have to be for much. If you put any amount of money into a poker game, be it a $5 buy in on a tournament among friends or playing online for pennies - people seem to smarten up because real money is on the line.

I usually put about $15 into PokerStars and play on the micro $0.02/$0.04 tables. Even with pennies people don't play like idiots and take it somewhat seriously and dollar lasts me a good 30-60 minutes. Some days I lose a dollar, some days I win a dollar. It's good bang for the buck for entertainment considering I could drink $15 quite quick.

Like everything Poker will only become a monster if you let it - know your limit and play within it.

It's true!

It's been two years since we released our "Mac Spoof" videos over at TrueNuff TV! and I marked the occasion with a blog post at TrueNuff with a bit of behind the scenes knowledge on how we did the background effect.

We've got a video update, the conclusion of the Blender series and some t-shirts for sale in the coming weeks.

Keep on keepin' on.

I sold my Pemberton Festival ticket. I can't spend $300 for the three day rapefest and then spend a few hundred bucks per day on booze to get so drunk I probably won't remember any of the bands.

I'm going to Seattle next weekend to watch a Mariners game instead. It's cheaper and if I get drunk and don't remember the game it won't matter because baseball sucks.

Just kidding, baseball sucks.