Here are some photos of the first go at River' bank heist costume in Serenity.

All items by queenmaab. She did have to spray dye the fabric used for the dress as the original was too peachy/orange/pink and we also spray dyed the over vest thing. There are things I don't particularly like on it (the vest thing for starters), but I love the cut of the dress and the shirt.

I know she wasn't wearing boots in the movie, but there's no way I'm running around a con in bare feet. The boots are similar to the ones she has later on in the movie, so whatever.

Reference photos for this costume are here.

( five photos )

And now I are off to make a batch of Anzac biscuit for a party this afternoon :D

The news has been posted at several DS-related sites.

+ Future R4 firmware to sabotage clones, brick DSes?
+ R4 Team may brick Nintendo DS units using R4 clones (includes photos so you can try to figure out if you have a real R4DS or not)

It seems that R4 is planning on releasing firmware for the R4DS that will sabatoge any knock off versions on the R4DS... and bick your DS console.

Seeking to eliminate its knock-off competition, Team R4 has announced that as of September 15, it will release firmware that will only work on genuine R4 flashcarts, according to a statement translated by GBAtemp. As an added deterrent, users attempting to load the firmware on illegitimate carts could potentially damage their DS permanently, leaving their system unusable.

Uh. Great. It seems like this will go into effect in September, but I'm hoping they will change their minds.

Your choices are these:

+ just stop upgrading the firmware.
+ upgrade when they release new firmware and risk your DS getting bricked.
+ buy a different flash cart, like the CycloDS which is getting high marks.

Well. Hippafaralkus is up, but not exactly running. As feared, it wasn't nearly as easy as just plugging in the old drive and installing some drivers to get it all to work. What it looks like I'm going to have to do now is transfer all my files over to the new secondary drive and reformat the primary and do a fresh install of XP. seijitataki is trying to talk me into Vista. Please, I held on to Windows 98 until I got the machine before Schrodinger, which was only a couple years ago.

Right now, the new drive (Sihnon) is formatting, but once that's done, I can start transferring data. Also, I think I'll at least be able to use a USB flash drive to get some really vital files off of it (the digital file for Module, possible the matte painting for Phase II). One really odd thing is that Windows is seeing a third partition on Arcturus that's 170GB in size.... that drive only ever had a 160 on it, so... wtf?

On the plus side, it's running at 38C, which is nearly half the temp Schrodinger ran at.

Oh, Hippafaralkus, I am annoyed with you already!

Met up with tiscbh28 at the mall for food court meal and Wanted. I can't believe no one else wanted to go see it! Argh. Anyway. Whatever. We had our typical religious/political/technological discussions, which is always interesting.

Right. So. Wanted. The cast is fabulous. I love Angelina Jolie, especially in an action role. James McAvoy... well, I'd just like one of those. It's weird hearing him speak with an American accent, though. Oh, Marc Warren, you will always be Elton in my brain. Morgan Freeman... well, Morgan Freeman. Terence Stamp! (Kneel before General Zod!)

I've never read the comic, so.. I don't know how far off base the movie is. I did love the premise and a lot of the scenes, but I also felt like the movie really, really dragged in places. Don't even ask what points I mean specifically because I'm pretty sure I just tuned out. All the action stuff was great though. Maybe the Matrix bullet time stuff has been a little overdone, but in this movie, they've used it in a rather interesting way. Well, to me anyway. Maybe I just like to see bullets and slow mo and brains getting splatted; I'm weird. It vaguely reminded me of Fight Club but that's probably because of the narration.

( spoilery babble )

Stylistically, I totally love this film. Wesley and Fox are great characters and if there's more... I might be in. The pacing was rather uneven, which is strange considering every other scene had some sort of action in it. I dunno. Overall, it's good enough that I would buy the DVD, but if you're not a fan of crazy visuals, guns, and violence, I don't think I'd recommend it.


Uh. You guys. I totally just saw Iron Man for the sixth time. tiscbh28 mentioned he hadn't seen it yet (omg what??) and their one showing per day happened to be after Wanted was over. So we went. I heart this movie still and everything I found funny the first time is funny still. Plus, I got an extra long look at the Captain America shield on the work bench and it is so awesome. Can I has a Tony Stark? Post-cave, of course; pre-cave Stark is totally an ass.

Still no fully functioning desktop. Talyn works fine, really... but I feel like I can't do real work :\

In the meantime, I'm doing some finishing tweaks to the River Heist costume queenmaab made for me. It looks really fab! I should hopefully have some photos up soon. I bought some spray fabric dye for the lace tunic part and it looks a bit better.

I've also tweaked my crackspace page. Put in a new layout and edited the content a bit.

Without stuff on the computer to keep me occupied, I feel like I just want to go to bed. There are a ton of things I should be doing or could be doing and it doesn't get dark until late, but... yeah... lack of technology is making me lazy. Go figure.

I are so lazy and unmotivated. Guess I'll try and catch up on some Tony/Pepper fic.

Going to see Wanted on Thursday! YAY!

What the frak with the dying, people?!

Stan Winston, Tim Russert, George Carlin, Micheal Turner, and now Don S. Davis.

Hammond of Texas, we shall miss you! ;_;

Argh. So Schrodinger Mark II is not yet complete. The wrong video card was ordered. Now I have to wait for a replacement. Really not what I wanted to be spending more money on. :\

Still, we got everything else put together and I'm hoping it will all work correctly. The case looks rather snazzy and I took photos of the build process.

I have returned from the shoot! Actually, I got back about two hours ago and have been checking e-mail and now I'm trying to make it through the Google Reader. Eesh.

I'll probably write more about the shoot in a later entry. For now, I just have to play catch-up and relax. My brain is tired.

So my bags are packed (I think). This year I seemed to have gone with a lot of little bags instead of one giant bag; will see how well that works this time. Most of the stuff is in the car except for things like Talyn and my camera and other tech items. Also packed my Top Gear and Spaced DVDs in case there is down time for watchage. I've wrangled a place to stay for tomorrow night and I double checked with the cabin place and my reservation for the week is all set.

Oh. I also helped mom put together a new potter's table bench thing she bought for the deck. Took me like 2 hours, and I screwed up a couple spots, but it came out all right. Go me?

I'm sure there are some last minute items that should be taken care of, but I can't remember any of them now. I just can't wait to go down there and start shooting! My camera is all set and I've got a ton of batteries. Woohoo!

Right then. Leaving early in the morning, but I'm going to pack up Talyn now. I will see you all when I get back, which will be any time between June 26 and June 28, depending on when the shoot is ending. I will definitely be back for work on Monday though.

WTF weather? There was a huge, insane rain/hail storm yesterday that flooded our parking lot at work. My jeep was right in the middle of the nearly knee deep pool and I had to wade out there to get to it. Of course, that's the day I decide my new River boots. Ugh. I thought about taking them off (and probably should have), but the water was nearly black it was so dirty and I didn't really want to think about what was floating in it or settled on the asphalt. So. My boots are fraked. I went to queenmaab's and rinsed them out, though. Then we went off and picked up her new DS (yay!) and spent the rest of the night setting it up and also trying on the River costume she made for me.

Speaking of, after several attempts, I finally managed to put some photos on Sikozu (my DS). Apparently Moonshell will only read non-progressive jpg images so I had to resave everything. Once that was figured out, it works all right though. I wish there was some sort of rotate function, but.. whatever. Looks all right.

Today is day three without Schrodinger ;_; It's weird not having the constant hum and the blue lights in my room. I don't like it. Parts for Schrodinger Mark II came in today, though. Just missing the case and a couple other things. Unfortunately, I will be off in Star Trek: Phase II (formerly New Voyages) land.

I'm mostly packed for the trip. This year I'm going sort of light and packed two medium duffle bags (one with clothes, one with other stuff), a backpack for days, and my laptop bag. I guess I probably could have just brought a large suitcase, but... meh. Smaller bags are probably going to be easier to handle. One thing that's bugging me though is that I can't for the life of me find the small flashlight that converts to a "candle" that I used last year. Seriously have no clue where it is.

Talked to my boss today and he's let me have Thursday and Friday of this week of as well, so I'm going to leaving for Port Henry on Thursday morning. Hopefully I'll be able to wrangle somewhere to stay for the night. If not, I guess I'll just sleep in my car for a night. Whatever. Won't be that big of a deal. I've decided not to go nuts with the food this time and will probably just buy food from the store in the morning. I've got most of the important stuff packed: clothes, camera, batteries, toiletries, DS... Talyn has been all cleaned up and I've also managed to pack in a copy of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Nothing, and The Boondock Saints for entertainments. I'm told they're trying to stick to 12 hour days this year. Sweet.

Hopefully when I get back next week, I can put Schrodinger Mark II together and everything on the hard drive will be intact. At the very least, I hope I will be able to save all my stuff on to the new secondary drive. I really want to finish my Stark/River fic, but it's trapped there (sorry, not_last_resort! -_-; )

Uh. Okay. There is an insane storm going on outside. Our lights flickered
and stuff (but still have power, obv). Soundsl ike it's passing quick, but
it's really LOUD.

Yup. Yeah. My computer is still dead. Not that I thought that would change 3 hours later. (And my voice post didn't show up until 2 hours later... huh?) It's probably a good thing that I have Talyn, because if I didn't I'd go even more nuts.

I'm pretty much kicking myself for not having backed up all my vital information on Friday. On the plus side, 99% of my photos are on the Castiana drive and I'm mildly confident that Schrodinger's drive is in tact. The only thing I can think of is that the power supply died (since it just shut off) or something with the motherboard. Since the power switch does absolutely nothing and we didn't have a storm or power outage issues (never mind the new APC UPS surge protector I just bought), I'm really hoping one of those two is the problem.

What I'll probably end up doing is asking seijitataki to build me a new machine -- no cheap parts this time and better cooling. I can manage $600-700 I think. Yeha. Will have to wait until he's up to discuss it with him.

In the meantime, I'm still going to Port Henry for the Phase II whatever. It doesn't make sense for me to sit at home and stare at a computer that doesn't work and then have a slow meltdown. I need to go to work tomorrow, so the distraction today will be nice. Then maybe when I get home, seijitataki will have something sorts for new computer parts. I think the only things I can keep will be the DVD burner, the DVD-Rom, and hopefully the hard drive. The rest will have to be replaced. Ugh.

I wish I could use two icons for this post, but I'd also go with this one: oh, and this one . Oh yeah, plus this one:

Uh. So my computer totally just shut off and I CAN'T TURN IT BACK ON.

Just got back from seeing The Incredible Hulk with sweetwildandmad and katkel.

( cut for spoilery chatter )

(I don't really need a hug, but it's my only Kiss Kiss Bang Bang icon...)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is on TNT right now! And TNT HD, obviously. <3

As if I haven't seen this movie enough already. :D

Today was seijitataki's birthday, so after work we went to Dakota's for dinner. Came home, watched Transformers, which I totally forgot I loved lots. Then we had birthday cake. Well, birthday fruit tart. It was good :)

Okay, so I did this silly meme thing. ( MASH game )

Okay, I got some current event life stuff to catch up on instead of posting about fannish things...

Friday
smashedrecords' birthday was on Monday, but she had a little gathering at Union Inn Friday after work. I met up with her, Eric, and Ben at her house and headed on over where there were already people waiting. Apparently, John and Sarah had gone to school with seijitataki. Weird. Anyway. We hung out for a while, I had a BLT. Tasty.

Afterward, we went back to smashedrecords's where she had a hot tub for the weekend. They went in, but I just sat nearby in a chair until it was time for me to go home. Boring, I know.

Saturday
Went to queenmaab's to help paint her bedroom. Kim and Kori were there, too. We went out to the mall for lunch, stopped in at Sephora (where I finally signed up for that Beauty Insider thing and bought a Tarte lip gloss set), before getting in line for free Friendly's ice cream. Kim left after that, but queenmaab and Kori and I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang while waiting for the paint to dry. Finished up the second coat of the room. We went to Old Chicago for dinner. Kori went home and I left shortly after.

Sunday
But I was back on Sunday to finish up the other walls! It didn't take too long and this time we watched Fight Club while waiting for paint to dry. I love that movie, but I think queenmaab thought it was really weird. *shrug* Put on second coat. Played DS for a while. Had dinner at Mr Subb. I hung out for a little while after we got all the tape and stuff off, but then I went home.

Monday
Oh, that'd be today. Work was... work, but it went kinda fast today, so that was good. Got to talk to arysani for a bit, yay! After work, I headed over to Best Buy and picked up a new UPS unit (an APC ES Series - 750VA) and... er... a copy of resident Evil: Extinction. What? It was on sale.

Came home and installed the UPS and actually put the power management software on my computer this time. Never did before, strangely enough. Right now it's telling me I'm going to get 11 minutes of the power dies, but I'm hoping that's because it's not hit a full charge yet... kinda doubt it. Either way, it's still more than the 30 seconds I got with the old one.

I told queenmaab I'd try to make some icons. So. Off I go!