vidthekid

I must be crazy.  On something resembling an impulse, I've launched a webcomic adaptation of the “Cool Story, Bro!” concept from my website.  If mediocrity is your scene, check it out.

Cool Story, Bro! on Comic Fury

New computer has been acquired and installed in the bedroom.  I shall call it Tedd, and it looks really pretty with purple Aero windows, the Bubbles screen saver, and this artwork by Dan Shive as the wallpaper.

Tedd has a hyperthreaded quad-core i7 CPU at 3.4GHz, and 32GB of RAM, running Windows 7.  I look forward to exercising all this processing capability for art and entertainment.

I may begin using my 3.3 MPix* camera with renewed frequency.  Apparently, its battery contacts need periodic cleaning.  But I also acquired a 4×D-cell external battery pack for it, for long-lasting power.  Now that I don't think I'll be replacing this thing anytime soon, maybe I'll try to develop an ICC profile to take care of the corrections I always seem to be applying.  

* I don't know where they get that 3.3 megapixel figure.  The largest pictures it takes are 2048x1536.  That's 3,145,728 pixels.  Or, exactly three binary-million pixels.

So deviantART rolled out this whole Llama Badge thing a couple of weeks ago.  I've now received several, mostly from people I've never heard of, who never commented or +fav'd my work.  Apparently, each deviant can give a Llama Badge to each other deviant, at most once.  Furthermore, this requires confirming one's site password.  That's a lot of pressure to think twice before awarding a Llama Badge.

And I don't even know what they're supposed to mean.

Okay, I guess it's a good thing.  But how good is it?  If they cost nothing to give, are they worth anything?  By what criteria should I decide whether to give a Llama Badge?

And then people started trading Llama Badges for other dA commodities, notably Points.  And then dA came out with this Points-for-Llamas market thingy, further complicating the matter.  I don't know if that makes Llamas more valuable or just cheapens them by taking artistic merit out of the equation.  But then, I wasn't sure if artistic merit was even part of it to begin with.

Of course, the deviantART Help & Support area has no FAQ entries regarding Llama Badges.

The whole point of this journal is to answer anyone who might be wondering to themselves, "why hasn't ~vidthekid given me a llama?"  (Yes, I'm narcissistic like that.)  Well I'm sure many of my watchers and watchees are deserving.  But until I get, in my mind, a very clear idea of what it really means to give a Llama Badge, I won't be giving any.  Because without that clear idea, I really can't decide whom to give a Llama Badge, and perhaps more crucially, whom not to give one.  I feel guilty leaving people out without a good reason, and if I just give Llama badges to everyone, then clearly they have no meaning after all.  And then, what's the point?

So, I went and filled out the form to create a Group called #roadgeeks.  My first choice would have been #roadgeek but apparently there's been a ~roadgeek for about a month now who hasn't done a single thing since creating the account.  Annoying, isn't it?  Anyway, I know there are a few highway enthusiasts out there on deviantART so there should be a group for that.  For that matter, there seems to be a fair amount of incidental roadgeek material from non-roadgeeks which will make for a well-populated Group Favorites section.  So, I await the group's birth, and I have a couple of people in mind who will receive invitations to join at that time.

Update: is online and accepting membership requests!