And the Oscar goes to...

The Oscars are tonight so I started a thread on the message board. Please share your thoughts about anything related to the Oscars, from your picks on who should win to which categories they should have, or anything and everything in between.

There are only a few more weeks left for this session at Comic Book Masters. Things started off a bit rocky, due to the lower than usual student numbers, but I've really been starting to have to good time. After I got home yesterday, I fell right asleep. And I mean I was really, really asleep. I don't think I've ever slept like that. I only slept for about an hour the night before, so that probably had something to do with it.

I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow, where I'll be getting my wrist looked at. I'm not sure if any conclusions are going to be drawn, but hopefully I'll have a better idea of what to do next so that I can start drawing and colouring again as soon as possible.

I remind everyone again that there is something new and exciting coming to this website very soon. It's going to be an entirely new section of the site. Speculate away!

Sayonara.

As if there was any doubt.

Ninja!
You are a sneaky Ninja.
We don't even know you're there...
before it's too late!

Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sayonara.

What's gonna happen next?

As I've mentioned before, because of the pain in my wrist, I can't really draw very much any more. Therefore I don't know when the next time this site will see any major updates.

However...

I've got an awesome new addition cooking up, and I'm very excited about it. This is something I never thought I'd be able to do on this site, and I'd wager that no one would ever expect to see anything quite like this here on SykoGrafix. I'll be keeping it a secret for now, but feel free to speculate! Of course, you can sign up to the mailing list to be on top of any and all updates, plus some extra stuff.

Thanks goes out to those who have been signing my guestbook recently. "oddness in ball" has suggested that Magenta's nail colour shouldn't be green. That's probably a good idea. However I realized that I don't like drawing the nails, so I just don't even bother with them anymore. Heh.

If anyone in the Toronto area is interested in drawing with me and my pals, the Comic Book Masters webpage has been updated with new information about our upcoming Spring classes.

Sayonara.

Grapple with this.

Last week I went to 2 Toronto Raptors basketball games. I've been going to games for several years, ever since the Raptors' first year, but it's pretty rare for me to take in two games within a single week. Now, I'm not a sports fan by any means. I don't watch hockey and, quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of having my national identity associated by the game. But I like to watch basketball. It's very exciting and easy to get into.

But here's the thing. Both of these games were losses for the home team. One of them, against the Spurs, was a heartbreaker after a close game that saw several injuries, and the other game I saw, against the Nets, was a complete blow out. Not really my idea of a good time. And now the team is on a losing streak. Great.

That got me thinking. NBA basketball is pretty much the only sport I'll watch besides professional wrestling. Yeah, wrestling. Counters and reversals and high risk maneuvers, pier 6 brawls and technical grappling contests. I've been a fan for years and years. There's nothing I like better than to watch a finely crafted wrestling match with a lot of buildup. I have a deep respect for those who follow their dreams and step between those ropes to put their bodies on the line for the enjoyment of the audience.

Some may scoff at this and say that wrestling, since it's predetermined (or as some kill-joys like to say, "fake"), it is a less valid form of entertainment. Of course, these people are missing the point. I say that a good wrestling match, regardless of the outcome, is much more exciting than watching your home team loose in any "real" sport. Because it's predetermined, in simple terms, the people involved can create a much more interesting final product to watch from an entertainment value perspective.

And yes, wrestling is a sport. To borrow a phrase from the great Mick Foley, if golf is a sport, then so is wrestling.

Now can you dig that, sucka?

Sayonara.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

No, not the holidays. ToyFair! The time of the year where we get an advanced look at what we'll be getting for the holidays! You like toys, right? Lots of webpages out there have covered the event. Check out my thoughts here for more info and share what you think! Looks like it'll be a busy year for collectors. It's nice to capture the magic of looking at new toys now, before they're released, before the crushing reality of the fact that we can't afford even half of the stuff that we want begins to set it.

Sayonara.

Yep, I'm twisted, I know it.

Sayonara.

Next, I'll Reformat my Brain and Reinstall a Personality.

I've pretty much started from scratch on my computer now. After reformatting the hard drive and applying a freshly installed Windows XP, it seems to be running more-or-less trouble free. The process of reinstalling all the programs and getting everything back to the way it originally was (or as close to it as I can) is annoying and time consuming, but I do what I can.

Of course, this is me we're talking about, and there can't be any good news at all. Right? I mean, just as soon as one problem is solved or goes away, something else shows up to ruin my day in its place. This is no exception. No sooner did I get my e-mail software up and running do I find that, once again, my e-mail address is being used to send Korean spam. I'm being bombarded with returned mail that I never even sent, in a language that I don't even speak. I've asked my webspace provider for help, but knowing them I doubt that they'll be taking much action.

What the hell is going on in the message board? Nothing, that's what. Come on, folks. You need to be posting. That's what it's there for. I don't care what you post about, as long as you post! Replying to topics is great, but you can start new ones too. Certainly there's got to be something out there that you actually want to talk about. This is the place to do it in!

Sayonara.

And the hits just keep on comin'!

Yeah, I've really done it now. I've somehow managed to screw everything up again. I don't know exactly what I did wrong, but after some sort of terrible sequence of events, the kind which have been defining my existence for the past several months, I really messed up my computer.

My Tablet works again. Great. But Photoshop wouldn't start. Ok. So I try to tweak Windows a bit. Then Windows won't start. Ug. So I try to reinstall Windows. No problem, right? Wrong. After it's reinstalled, it still won't start. What the hell did I do? Damn.

I think at this point I should mention that I'm typing this on a different computer.

This is just another in a long string of misfortunes. I felt so... defeated. But I continue to fight. I pulled out the primary hard drive and plugged it into the other machine, then backed up all the important stuff I wanted to keep, and I'm now in the process of reformatting it so I can do a fresh install. Hopefully this should take care of any problems. So far, so good. But I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work.

Maybe I should just give it all up and get a Mac.

Nahh!!

Sayonara.

Take the good with the bad, as usual.

My digital tablet was sent back from repairs and seems to be working again!

Yay!!!!

But my secondary hard drive once again has decided to not work any more!

Boo!!!!

See what I have to deal with? Always one thing after another. Is the entire world going out of its way to make me mad, or what?

Sayonara.

No more Mr. Nice Ninja.

Yes, I realize the irony of that title...

The overwhelming majority of hits that this website receives are coming from Google image search. That means that people are typing in their search terms, such as "Anime Samurai", getting my site as one of the results, viewing the picture, and, more often then not, taking it for their own use, without actually reading the webpage or viewing the image in the proper context that I intended. And the result of this usually amounts to someone using the images on this website on their own websites, or in their web logs, or on message boards.

That sucks.

I'm not paying for all of this web space just so other people can exploit my property. I put time and hard work into adding all of the content found on this site, be it an original piece of artwork, screen capture from a DVD, or anything else you find here. All I want out of it all is for people to actually see what I have done, read what I have to say, know that I am the one who is presenting it, and tell me what they think. To bypass all of this and just take what they want for whatever reason is disgusting and immoral. It just lacks the very basics of human decency and conscience. These people are stealing my property and my bandwidth, and last time I checked, stealing is wrong.

If you want to look at any of the pictures on this website, you must look at them through this website. I don't think that's too much to ask, do you?

Though my web host has not been very helpful, I have spent the last week taking certain measures to protect my property, and I will be continuing to look into doing more.

Be fairly warned: If I catch anyone using my images on their website, message board, weblog, or whatever, I will not politely ask you to take them down. No, I will simply skip right ahead to the part where I horribly embarrass you and make your lives miserable. And don't think for an instant that I won't. I will.

Anyone got a problem with that? Just try and stop me.

Sayonara.