Dave's Rantlets

11:47am: Zeppelin Railway!
Courtesy Scientific American.

8:14pm: Comics for November 18, 2009
( Lots of late book entries )

   Dave Van Domelen, "Oh my! So nudism DOES run in the family." - Ma Hunkle to Wildcat Jr.

12:07pm: An observation on neo-V
While I may be reading too much into Morena Baccarin's performance as Anna, it seems like she brings a sort of "Wait, I thought I debugged that?" confusion to scenes where people don't swallow her "I'm a friendly alien here to help" act. Where John in the original series brought a sort of blustering politician's BS to things, underlying it was a fairly human set of emotional responses. With Anna, it feels like she's running a human emotion emulator instead, leading to mild confusion and internal bugfixing when it misfires, rather than to an intensification of blathering. A brief pause where she's not quite there in the conversation before she patches her script and starts running it.

5:50pm: CoH: Dyna-Green of Legend
( Working the new Martial Arts costume pieces )

11:29pm: Review: The Fury of Fearswoop
The Fury of Fearswoop, if you have the original molds don't bother unless you're a big Hooligan fan.

10:46pm: CoV: Carnivore X
( Think Dr. Dinosaur's claw-happy minion. )

9:13pm: Comics for November 11, 2009
( No Books of Note. )

   Dave Van Domelen, "So that's Venus' old boss? At least the ancient freak speaks perfect English." "It speaks 'god.' Everyone can understand it." - Ken Hale and Namora, Assault on New Olympus Prologue

5:48pm: CoH: The Queen of Misery
A bunch of Toy Matinee came up on my iPod today, and I decided to rectify my "no lowbies on Virtue" situation by making up an Illusion/Empathy Controller based on TM's song, "Queen of Misery" (which has peppy bouncy music and a rather depressing lyric, like most of their songs).
( Bouncing off the walls... )
ETA: Got her to L11, with successful Atlas and Kings Row Safeguards, now she goes on the shelf until I need someone sub-20 for Virtue team heroing.

6:25pm: CoH: Peaceseeker as the other four TFA crew
I broke down and got the Superscience Booster, which let me make the radically different body types of the other four Autobots in TF:A Optimus Prime's crew.

( Original Peaceseeker, as a reminder )
( Bulkhead (my favorite of the four new ones) )
( Prowl, second favorite )
( Bumblebee turned out so-so )
( Ratchet has a slight paunch, but otherwise not too happy with the results )

For now, Peaceseeker has only three costume slots, so he's using Bulkhead and Prowl as his alternates.

8:38pm: Review: RotF Deluxe Wave 6
Thrust is better than Breakaway, Gears is unhappy about the whole thing.

7:19pm: Geek Cred Fail


ETA: in the same catalog, they offer an F-105B Thunderchief model but show an A-10 Thunderbolt model.

6:43pm: Comics for November 4, 2009
( No books of note or other-media )

   Dave Van Domelen, "RUN, GINA! RUN! IRONY IS COMING FOR YOU!!!" - Peegi, Peebo Tales #6

2:23pm: ASH: Coherent Super Stories #18 - "The Black Buddha of Bhutan" featuring Jack of All Trades
Coherent Super Stories #18 - "The Black Buddha of Bhutan" featuring Jack of All Trades: Jack Ripley's travels in search of the odd and unexplained have taken him to an obscure corner of China where darkness dwells.... Written for High Concept Challenge #4.

4:23pm: Review: RotF Deluxe Wave 5
Blazemaster needed more design work, Jolt is good, Ice Cream Truck Twins are okay, Dead End is a good redeco.

11:23am: Spambot taxonomy
In moderating the Monsterpocalypse boards, I've noticed that spambots tend to be groupable into three bins based on how they set up accounts.

1. Bare minimum. Just a username, a fake email, and whatever other information the board requires.

2. Spam the mods. Any fields that are open, like interests or location, will be filled with more spam messages.

3. "No, I'm a human, really!" These actually recognize what the fields are for, presumably because they're tuned for the defaults of a particular board code. The fields are filled in with random elements from some list, but usually end up looking fake anyway (i.e. since when is "customer" an occupation any real person lists?) and they don't seem to realize that listing your location as Nigeria or Russia is itself a red flag.

Additionally, the postings fall into three basic categories as well.

1. One post per disposable ID, on whatever the default board is (usually a General Discussion one).

2. One post per accessible board per disposable ID, never return to that ID on the assumption it'll be deleted and it's easier to just generate a new one.

3. As per 1 or 2, but check back a few hours later to see if the mods have noticed. If not, repeat posting.

I've never seen any that just spam until some circuit breaker kicks in, I guess they assume that excessive posting will be noticed faster. One or two per board are more likely to reel in suckers before a mod notices the spammer.

1:45pm: ASH #101 - Rival Schools Part 1: Superpowers 101
Academy of Super-Heroes #101: Rival Schools Part 1 - Superpowers 101 - The main cast of ASH gets to take a break, but it's back to school for a lot of members of the supporting cast...and not everyone is going to like the lessons being taught.

8:14pm: Comics for October 28, 2009
( Book of Note: Hercules #137; Other-media: Astro Boy (2009) )

   Dave Van Domelen, "I think the little girl's creeping me out." "That's only 'cause Layla was before your time." - Darwin and Madrox, X-Factor #50

10:16pm: I can haz pumpkinhead
( Not my first character to earn the thing, but the first one I've actually put on one of the costumes (since he doesn't really need to use his extra costume slots) )

9:51pm: Review: K-Mart Mini-Con 10 pack
Mildly recommended, but some good color schemes in there.

7:38pm: CoH: Jordan Murphy HeroClix
( Another of Ol' Jed's SG-mates )

7:12pm: CoH: Dress-up with Ol' Jed
Got a set of Halloween salvage and cashed in my L20 extra costume slot.
( With a trenchcoat for colder weather. )
( Sunday-go-to-meeting duds. )

1:57am: Sketch: Sand Witch
( Something I put together in about half an hour, all told. )

9:02pm: Roman Robot!
( Finished Imperious Taskforce tonight )

4:52pm: Repainted Carnitron
( Unmodded one is on the right. )

3:53pm: Rules Team Gorghadra
( Likeness to 1980s shirt-wearing stuffed animals unintentional but amusing. )