Happy 1st Birthday, I Animate Blog!

I started this blog exactly one year ago from today.

Actually, this was not my first attempt.  I started a blog using Blogger a number of weeks before that.  That one ended up with me going all over the place, totally misdirected with no clear idea of what to do with it, so I scrapped it.  Days later, I decided to try WordPress.

I got the idea to start a blog from a college classmate of mine who happens to be an awesome comic book artist and writer himself, Gerry Alanguilan.  He has a fabulous blog at Komikero.com. 

Back in college, Gerry was always the go-to-guy outside my small circle of friends when it comes to comic books.  He was one of the few I knew in college who was really a serious collector.  I was not that deep into comic books, but I was very familiar with that fictional universe courtesy of copies borrowed from friends who have these kind of literature and would heartily read them anytime I can get my hands on some.  I might have probably pestered Gerry at least once to borrow some of his comics in the past, though I can’t recall being able to.  I just had to say that for security in case I did and was not able to return said copy.

Though I thought of Gerry as a comic book collector, I never thought he would eventually end up as an artist for Marvel!  It was years later that I learned from a fellow classmate about Gerry’s exploit as an inker for some of the most famous comic book characters like Superman and the X-Men!  Wow, talk about living your dream.  

That led me to Google search his name out of curiosity, which led me to his online journal that he has been keeping since 1997!  After lurking around it for a number of months, I eventually learned how to send a message through his contact page to say hi.  He still remembers me, which was fortunate because I was one of those who fly below the radar in college.

Gerry now writes, draws and publishes his own comic books, a testament to his dedication to his art, and for that I admire him.  It is not everyday that somebody was able to chase down a dream.

By the way, I have to confess that I have not read any of Gerry’s work except those that he publishes online, such as Elmer, which he made available for download on his blog.  See for yourself by checking it out and you might agree with me on how awesome he is.

I just had to say that Gerry’s blog had been at times a loud voice for the semi-dormant (or failing to fully erupt back from dormancy) comics industry in my home country, the Philippines.  I am frequently amazed at how many comments Gerry’s posts gets, especially when it comes to the state of the comics industry in the Philippines, to which I am completely clueless about!

This guy has been maintaining an online journal for more than ten years now.  It amazed me.  I am no stranger to keeping a journal, having been writing on a diary for some time myself back in high school.  But to have it online, where strangers can read about your thoughts?  Hmmmm, why not?

So that is how I got to blogging.  What better way to celebrate it than tell about the man and his insightful blog that made me think about starting and having one of my own.

Mabuhay ka, Gerry Alanguilan!  

Oh, and a happy birthday to you, my blog!

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Advanced Happy Birthday, Blog! Tagged As Well!

My Blog will turn 1 year old tomorrow!

And quite by coincidence, my college classmate and comic book artist and writer Gerry Alanguilan, whose fabulous blog I regularly read and in fact was the one that influenced me to start my own blog, tagged me:

TAGGED!

It’s a blog award tag, and behind the award is a wonderful story of love and survival of a little boy given another chance to live through a heart donor.

Please help raise awareness for Organ Donorship in the Philippines and abroad.

So the idea is, you get this award and you help spread awareness by tagging other bloggers who doesn’t necessarily have to be moms and dads themselves (such as myself).

Just as long as they’re great human beings.

I am tagging Gilbert L. Concepcion, Tita We, and blog readers Chelle and Jasreet.

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Mac Pro In Semi-Intensive Care; iMac In Service.

I had successive kernel panics yesterday that really broke my back and led me to do some major troubleshooting to narrow down what is causing all my issues.

I will try to do this using the process of elimination.  I decided to unhook the Cintiq from the Mac Pro and install it on my back up machine, a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac.  This machine was purposely brought in months ago for this particular situation wherein I need to work on a back up machine in case the main workstation goes bonkers.

The Mac Pro, as of this writing, has been running for 19 hours straight now under the Apple Hardware Test to see if any of my internal hardware, particularly any of my RAM modules, are defective.  I’ve been searching the web for the cause of what I recently found out as my “intermittent kernel panic” and I just recently learned that that may be caused my faulty RAM modules or the processor of the machine itself.

I installed extra RAM from a 3rd party vendor several weeks ago.  These are not Apple branded products; those are ridiculously expensive compared to the 3rd party certified RAMs.  I am investigating to see if these 3rd party RAM modules are now defective since I never tested them when I first installed them.

So I am now doing my work on the iMac.  Surprisingly, the Cintiq is working pretty stable on it, knock on wood!  Of course, that remains to be seen; I intend to complete my posing assignments on the iMac until such time that I need to do animation and that is when I will move back to the Mac Pro.  By that time, I hope to get a result from the Apple Hardware Test.  Right now, the results are still negative; there’s no problem found.  To narrow down the culprits, I intend to pull the 3rd party RAM modules out of the machine and work using the stock 2GB and see if the kernel panics will disappear.

Wish me luck!

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Extinguishing That Burned-Out Feeling

I am currently working on two productions simultaneously.  My work schedule is so jam packed that I am constantly glued to my seat in front of my workstation. Sometimes the only rest I have is when I get up to eat lunch or to take a leak.  I also drive and pick up my wife from work, so the momentary break I get from that is a welcome relief.  But there are times, especially on a weekend, that I am just at it for 12 hours straight, with some small window of breaks in between.  It is during those times that at the near end of the day, I feel totally burned out.

That burned-out feeling is more pronounced when I am just about to finish a week’s worth of workload. You see, I make it a point to try and finish my assignments as early as possible so I can afford maybe a day’s rest.  At times I am successful at that, but the complexity of my assignments varies and depending on the roll of the dice, I might get a very, very complicated sequence of scenes that no matter how hard I try to breeze through them, I could not.  By the time I complete them, I am mentally exhausted.

Sometimes, I would miss my self-imposed deadline completely and would be left with a scene or two unfinished.  These are the scenes that I wish would get up and magically finish by themselves!  Of course, that is not possible, so I have to suck it up and dive right into it, which really contributes a lot to my creative flame fizzling out.

So what I do is I leave those scenes alone and shut all my computers down.  I would plop myself on my Lazyboy and turn the TV on and just rest.  I just do…nothing.  I do that no matter what time of the work day I feel like it.  I drop everything like a hot potato and just bum around, doing nothing.

No lawn mowing.  No short trip to the mall.  No driving the dirty car to the car wash. Nothing.

I might squeeze in a warm shower, perhaps to cleanse myself of the rigors of work — that’s refreshing, but other than that, nothing.

Let’s say the supposed deadline is tomorrow and late in the day today I still have three to four scenes left.  I leave them alone.  I just shut everything down and leave.  No matter how I force myself to finish these scenes, my body and mind would just give up so there is no point in trying, so I just quit.

It helps!    Taking this huge break from my routine helps to reboot my mind and body, and by the next day when I wake up to get back to work I am so fresh that I would go through those left over scenes like a hot knife through butter.

I just did that this morning.  Those recent mishap with my Mac Pro and the Cintiq that I have been experiencing set me back a few days that my schedule got out of whack, leaving me a couple of left over scenes that I just can’t finish and that I have to  work on overtime over the weekend.  The same situation cropped up, so I employed my tried and tested technique and got off work early than normal.  Suffice to say, this morning those leftover scenes are now done with time to spare and I now feel like a new born baby.

How do you deal with burn out?

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Wacom Support Refuses To Help Me On My Issue!

I was bitterly disappointed with Wacom Support yesterday.

I had another gray-curtain-of-death incident again and the crash log reported that it was caused by the Wacom Tablet Driver.

I emailed Wacom Support to let them know about it. I even attached a copy of my previous kernel panic report logs just in case.

Wacom Support wrote back with this infuriating reply:

“Randy

Unfortunately Raleigh is no longer with us. You will now have to handle all kernel panic errors through Apple. It was a blessing to have him with us and offer the out of the norm support but we cannot help you with this matter any longer because it truly is an Apple issue.

Chris Lang
Customer Care Technician
Wacom Technology Corporation”

I was stunned.  How can this be an Apple issue when the crash report clearly indicated that it was the Wacom Tablet Driver that was at fault?

Okay, to be fair, maybe I should talk to Apple about it, though I don’t know to whom or how.  Wacom did not bother to give me a link to this Raleigh person. I’ve posted my issue on the Apple Support discussion board, but the replies I get are from the users and not from Apple themselves.  But imagine this: I call Apple Support. I tell them my Mac Pro has been having panics, the cause of which is the Wacom Tablet Driver. Other guy on the line would tell me to take the issue to Wacom because it is their driver that is at fault. I go back to Wacom Support and they tell me that I should take it to Apple because it is a Mac issue. Huh?!

I performed the obligatory hardware tests just to see if there is something wrong with the internal hardware of my Mac Pro.  The tests shows negative and all is well. The only peripheral hardware I have connected to the Mac Pro is my 30″ Apple Cinema Display and the Cintiq, nothing else.  Ruling out any hardware defects within the Mac Pro, clearly something is incompatible between this machine and the peripheral connected to it.

This is so exasperating that I need to vent it out:

I DECLARE THAT THERE IS COMPATIBILITY ISSUES WITH MAC OS 10.5.4 AND THE WACOM CINTIQ!

FOR ANYONE WHO HAPPENS TO STUMBLE TO THIS BLOG HOPING FOR A CLEAR IDEA IF YOU CAN MATCH A MAC WITH A CINTIQ, THE ANSWER IS NO!

ARE YOU THINKING OF GETTING A CINTIQ FOR YOUR MAC? DON’T DO IT!

There!  I just had to get that off my chest.

Wacom should post a bulletin or something on their web site about the incompatibility of their product with Mac OSX.  I don’t know, maybe I may be generalizing it too much.  Maybe my issues are local and it is just my darn, hard luck that I am plagued by this issue.  I’ve been posting on different forums asking if anyone has the same issue as mine, but aside from an odd reply here and there, it appears I am the only one with this kind of set up.  It just sucks, big time.  Getting no help from Wacom Support adds to the pain even more.

So what am I doing now?  I guess I am a masochist; I am still using it even though I know it would habitually crash.  I will use it until I get so sick and tired that I will eventually return the Cintiq back and just go return to using a regular tablet.

The Cintiq is a great device.  If only it would get into bed with a Mac with no hassle.

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New WordPress For iPhone!

Testing the new iPhone App WordPress for iPhone.

Pretty cool! This would be my very first post from the iPhone itself.

The touch screen keyboard of the device works well for me, albeit I am typing with only my index finger.

For me, the iPhone is a glorified Palm Pilot. I used to own a Palm and I brought it everywhere with me. This beats the Palm a thousand fold, in my opinion.

I might be exagerating a bit on that, but this is pretty awesome.

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I Animate, iPhone 3G.

I just have to write about my new iPhone 3G.

Mine is the white 16 Gig version:

As some of you may well know, Apple released the second version of the very popular iPhone last July 11 and was made available here in Canada too.  

Not wanting to be left out, I decided that day to line up and get one for myself.

The lines here in Calgary were not as crazy as in the US or in the other parts of the world.  That’s from my limited observation when I went around to look for a favorable store to get one.  The day before the launch, I did some research to see where the iPhone would be available and mapped out all the stores that I planned to check out.

I started hunting for these store at around 8:15 AM, right after driving my wife to her office. By 9:00 AM, one of the stores I visited had a line of eight to ten people already. Since I don’t want to wait a long time, I drove around to look for a store that does not have a long queue.  I did not bother to go to the mall since I am sure most of the buyers would be there and decided to go to the independent stores. I think I visited four stores before settling with this one store that had a line three person long.

So I patiently waited in line for probably an hour and when it was my turn to be served, I was not able to get the phone outright. There were some trouble that day activating the iPhone in-store. This was due to the provider’s server being hammered and not being able to cope up with all this same day activation.  

It was the same scenario all over the world; people had to wait excruciatingly long hours in lines because the servers went down, or were slow to process the orders. In my case, I just signed the application documents at the store and rather than wait for an undetermined number of hours, I was asked to go back home and wait for a call to see if the my account got activated.

By 5:30 PM that day, I got the call. I hurried back to the store and after a short while I had my spanking new iPhone 3G well in hand.

I am secretly proud that I am one of the lucky few here in Calgary to get a fully activated and functioning iPhone 3G on the release date.  The stores had limited supplies and most of them were sold out. When I checked some stores out a couple of days later, they were still unavailable.  In fact, more than a week of owning the iPhone 3G, I have yet to see another person holding one in the wild and as of this writing, it is still sold out in most parts of the world.

I don’t know how long the exclusivity of my ownership will last, but I am enjoying the bragging rights of owning an iPhone 3G where in other places you couldn’t even get one and in my shallowness that means a lot! My apologies, but I can’t help it.

Geekness!

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Mac OS X 10.5.4 Crash Report 004: Kernel Panic!

Boy, I thought I was running scott free.  I was just about to declare that my crashes has been solved and solution found when my Mac Pro decided to ground me and crash once more.

This time, it was a Kernel Task:

I was not doing anything when the crash occurred.  In fact, I was at the iMac doing some research on the internet and when I turned to go back to work, there I see on my Mac Pro’s monitor the gray curtain of death.

It saddens me that all these crashing has my blog turn into the Mac Pro/Cintiq crash watch!  If I look back to several previous posts, it all relates to the issues I am having with the Mac Pro and the Cintiq.  Let’s add Adobe Flash CS3 to that mix, since it’s the only app that I run.

Okay, on a lighter note, I have the iPhone 3G.  I intended to write about that but I was too swamped with work.  It was released July 11 in Canada and I think I am one of the lucky few who was able to get an fully functioning one on the day of the launch.  Pictures and write up to follow as soon as I can squeeze in the time.

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Mac OS X 10.5.4 Crash Report 003: Two Successive Crashes!

Oh boy, it was not too long after that first crash and I rebooted and started working once again when I suffered another crash, this time the log indicates Adobe Flash CS3 as the culprit!

Did that Adobe update I just did threw in something to make the system unstable once again?

I will be performing a haxies removal procedure once again and see if that fixes things up.

Will update as soon as something turns up.

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Mac OS X 10.5.4 Crash Report 002: Updated Flash CS3 And Boom!

So here I was working early morning of this Sunday.  When I booted up my sytem, the Adobe Updater came up so I thought, what the heck, might as well update Flash CS3.

Right after the update has completed it’s run, I went back to work.  Not a few minutes after, Mac OS X crashed.

Aarrrgghh!

Isn’t it dandy?  It was just right after I responded to a comment made on this post on how stable the system was this last couple of days.

Oh, and once again, it was the WindowServer that was at fault:

Hmmm, I am starting to suspect that my stock graphics card may be at fault here, but I don’t want to upgrade and buy the other card until I am sure that is the case.

Sigh.  Doing another Repair Disk Permission to see if that stabilizes things once again.

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