Sunday, August 28, 2005 at 11:21 PM | 0 comments  
Those of you that know me personally, understand that I have an affinity for action figures. I have a large collection at home ( and plan to eventually photograph it all ). One of my recent acquisitions was a Galactus figure. To get Galactus you had to collect his body parts by buying seven other figures in the Marvel Legends series IX from Toy Biz. Then assemble him. He stands at sixteen inches tall, by far one of the tallest figures in my collection. When I finally did assemble him, I had an idea to photograph him in various poses, and create a marketing piece. I've always admired how McFarlane Toys photographs their figures, and I really wanted to try my hand at it - my way.

Here is a size comparison between Galactus and a standard G.I. Joe figure;



Some of the original photos:

Clickable thumbnails;







Final composition, you can use these as desktop wallpaper;




800x600


1024x768


1280x960



Galactus is a Marvel Comics character. The action figure was created by Toy Biz.


-B
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So I get the itch to get a new phone, and switch to a new carrier. I have Cingular now - and it's been satisfactory for me for the past few years. I loose signal inside of Wegmans and Wal-Mart. Aside from the occasional random dropped call, I really can't complain. So being cheap as I am, I decide to buy and port my number through a 3rd party company. Wirefly. I bought my current phone through them last year (and get a 1 year contract too). That went just fine. So I decide to go through them again for my upgrade.

Clickable thumbnails;



It's a Motorola E815. Bluetooth, supposedly all the bells and whistles. Quite and upgrade from my current V600. So I get the phone and my number gets ported, and I love Verizon, and get to sync all my data via Bluetooth.

Right?

No. Not even close. First off, I had the phone for 3 weeks waiting the whole time for my number to get ported. I call Wirefly's "customer support" over and over, each time (after 5 min of recorded CRAP) the customer support (BTW Indian) assured me that the problem would be solved within 48 hours. Well it never did. Before I finally cancelled the whole deal, I did a little research on Verizon, and this new phone I had sitting idle. I tried to link to my Mac via Bluetooth. They saw each other. Neat-o. So I took a snapshot and tried to send it to the Mac. No luck....Mac says the phone doesn't support that feature. Hmmmm. Tried to sync my address book. Mac says the phone doesn't support that feature. Hmmm.. Tried to send a (Mp3,Mpeg4, photo,etc...) Every time, Mac says, the phone does not support that feature. I need my custom rings. I need my custom screens. I need to take photos (where would this blog be?). I guess Verizon wants you to use their camera phone network. No free bluetooth transfers..

So I slueth. I find this handy dandy chart on Verizon's oh-so-easy to navigate site. Turns out Verizon like to lock out most of the useful Bluetooth features. Especially usful features, such as address book syncing, and media swaping. I mean, why would I want to actually use a feature, that I was built into the phone? I could unlock the phone, using special hacking tricks, and void out any warranty in the process.... Whatever. Verizon blows for crippling hardware features. Some of us use Bluetooth for more than linking to overpriced hands free units.

Screw off Verizon, screw off Wirefly.

Now I wait for my order refund. I wonder what crap I'll get nailed with now...

Bluetooth

-B
Posted by Ben
Saturday, August 27, 2005 at 11:35 PM | 0 comments  
Clicky;

Posted by Ben
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 at 2:12 AM | 0 comments  
Clicky;

Posted by Ben
Friday, August 05, 2005 at 11:45 PM | 0 comments  
So Dan gets a nice new toy. It's an AK-47. I haven't traditionally been a 'gun guy', but I must say that this piece of harware is impressive. And the really cool thing is that most Americans can go out and buy one. No special permits needed (thank you NRA for keeping our rights alive and well). I think we all should have at least one.

So for lunch on Friday, Dan invited me and Rich out to test his new toy.

Dan takes his first shots with the AK;


Rich takes a few shots;


I take a few shots;


My target after 10 shots;


After it was all said and done, we had to clean up our mess;


That's a trash can with 90 spent rounds in it.
This beast would let off a ball of fire with every round fired.
Gotta love the 2nd Amendment.


-B
Posted by Ben
Book for sale!
book for sale
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