Desk Diary 6-23-2012

It’s been six months since my last desk diary. Several things happened since then, mostly in the last couple months.

First, a couple general updates. The webcomic project I’ve been trying to get started hasn’t moved all that much in the last several months. While I had a fairly workable idea a while ago, as things go, I’ve changed my mind on a few things. I haven’t given up, though. I’m currently trying to come up with fresh ideas.

As you may have seen from recent posts, I had a couple anniversaries with my BJD girls. My first girl has been with me for two years now. My two Dollfie Dreams and floating head haven’t seen much attention lately, but in the last few weeks I got a couple of new items for them.

I haven’t been paying much attention to Volks events since money has been tight. However, there have been a couple recent events held by Volks called Kyoto 9 and Doll Party 27 that had a lot of great items. They both had great Dollfie Dreams up for lottery. I really like “Shining Blade” Sakuya. She’s from the same series as my first two. I would have loved to enter for her, but it’s beyond my means right now.

However, they had a plethora of great clothes on offer from the Kyoto 9 collection. Unfortunately, these items are very limited, and while I tried to grab some via the lottery with Kerbey Lane, I was only able to get one item through them. This left me with the only option to take part in the “click war” on the Volks site. This is a first come first serve—he who clicks faster wins—setup. I took a little extra time beforehand to plan a process to get me through the clicks and cart as fast as I could. When the day came I managed to get four out of the five items I wanted in the cart and purchased in less than fifteen seconds. I was pretty pleased. Unfortunately, many were not so lucky. Nearly everything was sold out in less than a minute. It’s an unfair system when you consider that lag and browser/computer speeds can really affect the outcome.

Here is Yuri in one of the outfits I was able to get.

I also received a couple random goodies over the last couple months.

First up is a Roku XS. I don’t really watch much TV, but I do like to watch Netflix and Crunchyroll. While my PS3 sufficed for Netflix for a while, I didn’t have access to Crunchyroll except on my computer and iPad. Enter the Roku XS! I love this little thing, and I do mean little. It fits in the palm of my hand. This little wonder has caused my PS3 to collect dust lately. I certainly recommend these little Roku boxes.

About a month ago I finally caught up with the rest of the world and got a smartphone. It’s an HTC Vivid running Android 4.0. I mainly picked this one because it was cheap, but I find myself using it more than my iPad. I still love my iPad and it’s great for certain things, but this phone has really helped me become more connected to the social networks.

While I generally like Apple products, I must say that Android is nice for its customization. I changed my launcher to something custom that I like, my lock screen has all the latest tweets, facebook and flickr feeds that I follow right there. I can flip through these posts without even going into the phone. It has a nice camera as well and being connected to all these social networks really makes it convenient to post a quick picture.

Next up is a little treat from a childhood favorite of mine. I was a big Transformer fan growing up. Recently I watched the new series, Transformers Prime, and really enjoyed it. When I found out there was a Wheeljack, I just had to get it! He was one of my favorite characters from the original series. I still have his G1 version from way back when.

It took a couple stores to find him, but eventually I saw one hanging on a shelf.

These new Transformers have really cool designs and are a lot more complex than the old toys. Though, they have a lot more plastic. The instructions are pretty crazy too.

The posability is rather impressive. The old toys almost never even had movable legs, let alone elbow joints. These new ones have ball-joints and hinges all over the place. Luckily, or not, we didn’t know better with the older toys.

I love seeing all these old cartoon and toys that I grew up with coming out again with updated stories and designs. While some more hardcore fans may scoff at them, if you actually watch the original shows today you may be surprised at how silly and nonsensical they were. These newer “updated” shows and toys have really grown up.

Hopefully it won’t be another six months before I post the next desk diary.