Comic books, markup, and geeking out with an academic purpose

For those of you who’ve been following the blog since I started writing early last year, it should be no surprise to you that three-quarters of the year, I’m up to my nose in school work, earning my Masters degrees in Information and Library Science.  (And yes, that’s right, two degrees – I added the Library Science degree on at the end of the spring semester last year.)  And as most of you know, I try my hardest to work my nerdiness into, well, everything I can.  You’ve seen my cube in my office building, covered in My Little Ponies.  You saw Scooterlou with her yarn-covered wire basket.  (And I saw Scooterlou recently – and she still has her basket cozy attached!  A fellow crafter bought her, and is considering sewing beads onto her cozy, but I digress!)  So, it should come as no surprise that I’ve managed to work my nerdiness into my graduate work – and that it’s come effortlessly, too.

One of my professors (and my academic advisor), Dr. John Walsh, is a comic book fan.  A large one.  There’s a big chunk of his office dedicated to action figures.  He’s even created a markup language entirely dedicated to comic books: Comic Book Markup Language.  I learned about CBML during the Digital Humanities class I took with Dr. Walsh last semester, and of course got very, very excited about it – in fact, so excited that I delivered a presentation on it for one of the presentations we had to do.  In short, CBML is an extension of the Text Encoding Initiative guidelines that gives digital librarians and archivists a markup language that’s more appropriate for documents that combine both text and graphics on a page – like comic books, for which the markup language is named.  You can use it with the TEI guidelines to mark up an entire comic book – sound effects, scenes, advertisements, news, and fan mail.  (If you’re interested in learning a little more about CBML, you can either check out my presentation from Digital Humanities last semester, or you can read this article by Dr. Walsh from Digital Humanities Quarterly.)

A snippet of a page from the Twilight Sparkle issue from the My Little Pony comic micro-series. You can see a scan of the original inked page in the background of the header - I actually own that page!

Part of my presentation from last semester: a snippet of a page from the Twilight Sparkle issue from the My Little Pony comic micro-series, all marked up. You can see a scan of the original inked page in the background of the header – I actually own that page!

One thing that I noticed while doing my research on CBML for last semester’s presentation is that aside from a few snippets in the Digital Humanities Quarterly article, and from some examples on the CBML page itself, there’s not really any large-scale projects using CBML out there for people who are interested in seeing exactly how it works, and how an entire page from a comic book may look when it’s completely marked up.  I talked to Dr. Walsh, and asked if he’d mind if I started putting together some examples of CBML so others could see how it looks when it’s in use for existing comic book pages, and maybe build up a small repository of comics.  He said it sounded like a great idea, and while it’s been off to a slow start (moving got in the way, and then sorting out a schedule for the new semester), I’m currently working my way through marking up the first issue of Captain Marvel Adventures.  And once I have that put together, I hope to put together a small website where people can actually view the marked up pages, and download the XML files that are working behind the scenes to display images and text together.

I plan on documenting the process as I go along – and what better place to talk about it than here, on The Crafty Nerd?  After all, marking up pages from a comic book feels partly like assembling a craft project – you look at the page, and assemble the markup pieces to build the textual version of the graphical page.  And, come on, we’re working with comic books here.  This project will be right at home here. (And besides, I’m not quite sure if I want to start a third blog just for this project, unless it really takes off and becomes something huge.)  I hope to post something here every few weeks about the progress I’m making, and even show some of the work I’ve done!  And if any of this sounds of interest to any of you, my readers, feel free to get in touch with me – I’d be happy to ramble on about CBML with you.

Instant Reaction: Sailor Moon dub episode 1!

I’m sure many of you have already heard that Viz has released a new version of the Sailor Moon dub, far better and more accurate than the DiC version from the mid-’90s.  Well, the DiC version was the one I grew up on – and while it’s what sparked my nearly two decade long love of Sailor Moon, it was incredibly cringe-worthy.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So, when I found out that Viz had redubbed the English version, and remastered all the original Japanese music, I had to give it a watch.  I wasn’t entirely sure I’d like it, considering how very used I am to the old dub voices, but I had to watch.  For science. (And, conveniently enough, it’s on Hulu!)  And as I started watching, I caught myself posting my reactions to Twitter – and then realized it might just be better to collect them all here, to share with everyone!  So, here’s my in-the-moment reactions to the first episode of the new Sailor Moon dub!

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What I’ve been up to these past few weeks

“Hey, Beth! You seem to have fallen of the face of the Earth entirely!  What the heck happened?”

Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what you’re asking right now.  Yes.  So I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to, in glorious picture format!

Sleeping kitty = such cute

Sleeping kitty = such cute

Taking pictures of sleeping cats!  Because kitties are cute, and I now have one living with me.  His name is Steve.  He likes to watch Battlestar Galactica, enjoys kicking the carpets in the bathroom around, and his favorite pony is Pinkie Pie.

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WE ARE IN THE FUTURE

Playing with my new smartwatch.  Bryan says it’s a fad, they won’t last, but honestly?  I love it.  I partially justified the purchase by saying that it’s research for when I re-write an old NaNoWriMo novel for this year’s NaNoWriMo.  Since it’s set in the future, I gave the characters wrist communicators, and, well, HERE IT IS ON MY WRIST RIGHT NOW.  Granted, it needs a cellphone to work with, but we’re getting closer!

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Getting a jump start on Christmas crafting!

Punch embroidering, because I haven’t done it in years.  I’m making a couple of Christmas stockings, and then I might see if anyone wants to commission me for anything, because gosh do I enjoy doing this and I forgot how fun it is.  Plus, it’s getting harder and harder to find punch embroidery stuff (apparently the place I shop from online is now the ONLY online store selling punch embroidery supplies!), and I may as well do it while I can, right?

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I love Digital Libraries.

Doing homework.  And yes, my most recent bit of homework involved reviewing an online digital archive of comic book art.  Have I mentioned how much I love library and information science?  Because I do.  I really do. 😀  My next bit of homework, for Representation & Organization, involves writing a script of how a typical grocery shopping trip goes, and then comparing it with the actual process of shopping in order to spark discussion about mental models and how they match up to the actual process or task that one is trying to complete.

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On the banks of Racquette River, with its banks of blue, stands our honored Potsdam College, stirring sight to view…

Drinking lots of coffee and feeling rather homesick.  This is the time of year I really miss Potsdam – even though the stupid lack of sunlight and the near-constant dreary grayness made my seasonal affective disorder crap way worse than it needed to be… I miss the trees changing color, the nights getting downright chilly, and the hint of winter in the air, even in September…

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Yes, this is pretty much a tiny Chun-Li.

Getting minis ready for painting!  It’s been entirely too humid out to prime minis, but that doesn’t stop me from scraping off the extra plastic bits and filing the rough spots down so I can prime and paint when the weather is good.

And that’s what I’ve been up to, in illustrated form!  Now that I’ve settled in for the semester, posts will occur more regularly, and I do have some exciting things in the works!  Have an idea for a topic you want to see on the site?  Leave a comment on this post, and chances are, I’ll cover it. 🙂  I’m always looking for new crafty and nerdy things to talk about.

Gen Con 2014: The Cosplayers!

As with any awesome convention, there are tons of awesome cosplayers – and here’s a post showcasing all the ones I found!  (Please excuse my facial expressions in some of them, haha – I’ve got a couple of derpy faces going on in pictures I’m in.)

And as a bonus – here’s a link to one of the many recordings of the Costume Parade from yesterday!  I like this one especially, since at about 9 and a half minutes in, you get a good minute and a half of Cupcakes Pinkie and Rainbow Factory Dash action, haha.

GenCon 2014: Day One

Sporting my shiny press badge!

Sporting my shiny press badge!

Today was the first day of the biggest convention of the season – Gen Con!  This is my third Gen Con – and my first one as press.  I was super excited to pick up my press pass, and Ross and I cheerily wandered through the convention after I got my badge, looking for fun costumes and things to do.

The one thing about Gen Con is that there’s almost… too much to do, to be honest.  So many games, so many panels, so many exhibitors to visit.   I never know where to go first!  And every year, it seems I take a different approach to the first (or, in the case of 2012, the only) day of Gen Con.  In 2012, Bryan and I pretty much wandered through the exhibition hall for five hours, stopping frequently for pictures, spending oodles of money, and walking until we were exhausted.  2013 was a whole different ball game – it was my first year spending all four days at the convention, and not only that, but a friend had a hotel room that needed filling, so the three of us literally lived at Gen Con for those four days.  The first day was pretty much entirely spent flailing around the exhibition hall, making new brony friends (like Ross!), attending panels, playing games, and spending absolutely stupid amounts of money.

This year was a bit different.   Bryan decided to sit this year’s Gen Con out, so Ross and I decided to go together, and commute all the way from Bloomington (as getting a hotel this year wasn’t an option, thanks to housing selling out within TWO HOURS of housing registration opening!) to Indianapolis each day.  And today was pretty low key.  We wandered around the exhibition hall, and found some very awesome goodies to take home – Ross picked up a very epic looking skull mug and an awesome Nightmare Before Christmas/Alice in Wonderland crossover print, and I picked up a few more minis from Impact! Miniatures‘ Chibi Adventurers line.  Ross dressed up in the most ruffly clothes I own and confused a number of people who thought he was a girl, haha.  And I got to meet up with a friend of mine from college, who I haven’t seen in forever and is enjoying his first Gen Con as we speak.  But other than that?  We did a lot of walking, a lot of looking, and I learned that even the most comfortable looking heels will not be good for your feet at a convention.  At all.

I noticed there weren’t too many people dressed up in costumes today.  Typically, the big thing I take photos of are people in costumes, but I think I only saw a handful of people dressed in out-of-the-ordinary clothes.  Here’s hoping tomorrow will bring more costumed con-goers!

But yes, all in all, today was a laid back day.  I’m not anticipating the same for tomorrow – Ross and I are dusting off our Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash costumes, and are going to parade around as My Little Ponies for the day!  And hopefully find some games to explore and panels to enjoy, too.  Keep an eye out here tomorrow for day two of the Gen Con Report!

61 Levels Later… (or, eight months with HabitRPG)

Started out as a lowly warrior, back in December...

Started out as a lowly warrior, back in December…

How many of you remember me posting about HabitRPG, the to-do and habit building site/app that turns your life into an epic adventure where you can earn experience for taking the dog for a walk?   Well, if you can’t quite remember it, here’s the post I wrote.

I’ll admit – when I first started using HabitRPG, I was thinking “oh, I know me, I won’t stick around for long.  I’ll use it diligently for a few weeks, and then stop.”  That’s usually how it goes with me – but not this time.  Oh, definitely not this time.

Logging in day after day, checking off my to-do list and daily habits and getting experience for them, well, the novelty did wear off after a little while.  But then I went on some quests.  I fought Vice and got some pretty impressive goodies such as a staff that makes my awesome Mage just that much awesomer.  I conquered The Spirit of Spring, The Hedgebeast, and Octothulu and earned quite an impressive menagerie of pets. And most recently, I banded together with all the citizens of Habitica to fight off the Dread Drag’on of Dilatory.  The quests are definitely one of the things that keep me coming back.

And I can play with friends, too.  There’s two ways to do this – you can have a party of people you go questing with, or you can create a guild and participate in challenges.  Either way is a great way to keep yourself coming back.  There were some days where I was feeling lazy, and didn’t really feel like logging in and marking my stuff off as done… but then I’d remember I was part of a quest with my party members, and if I didn’t log in, they’d take damage, and I didn’t want that to happen – which motivated me to get off my butt, get stuff done, and help fight off whatever boss we were tangling with at the moment.

From lowly warrior to epic Mage, with a Mantis Shrimp as my pet!

From lowly warrior to epic Mage, with a Mantis Shrimp as my pet!

Now it’s been around eight months since I got an account and started leveling up my little character.  And in those eight months, I’ve developed some good habits.  No snacking late at night.  Walking every day, and taking short walk breaks when I’m in the office all day.  Making sure I actually eat breakfast AND lunch each day.  Keeping hydrated by making sure I drink enough water.  My habits and daily tasks are constantly evolving, too.  When the end of August comes and classes start up again, I’ll likely be adding tasks to make sure I get my homework done.  And with the new house, there’ll be new chores too (I expect to be vacuuming a lot more often, given I’ll not only have carpeting pretty much everywhere, I’ll also have a cat!), and of course I’ll need to get into the habit of doing them regularly.  And I know HabitRPG will help me with that!

So, if you’re already on Habit, look up the guild The Crafty Nerds.  It’s the official guild of The Crafty Nerd (you’ll know you’re in the right place if you see Scooterlou as the guild leader, I mean, come on, who else would name their character after their old scooter but me), and I’d be happy to have you there!  And if you’re not, why not join up?  It’s free, it’s easy to get the hang of, and will definitely help you build some good habits.  Plus, the retro art style keeps things fun, and the wide variety of quests to do, pets to collect, and people to meet in the Tavern will keep you coming back.

A Week With the Surface Pro 2

I don’t generally write hardware reviews here – mostly because I tend to just pick up technology as I go, get all excited about it for a few days, and then once it incorporates itself into my daily life it simply becomes mundane.  But recently, I got a new piece of technology that really, REALLY stands out.  I find myself using it pretty much all day – in fact, right now, outside of work it’s my sole computer.

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… if you look really closely you can see my ghostly reflection in the HP monitor. Creepy. XD

I ended up picking up a Surface Pro 2, after the untimely death of my laptop’s battery.  I’d done a fair amount of research, and got to see the Surface Pro 3 in action a couple of times at work (a co-worker of mine teaches workshops from his), and I figured, if I got one with decent enough specs, I’d be fine with a Surface Pro 2 instead of a pricier Pro 3.  I mean, if my co-worker could teach entire workshops off of it, it had to be at least a halfway decent laptop replacement, right?  So I stumbled across an open-box Surface Pro 2 on Amazon with a 256 gig SSD and 8 gigs of RAM (pretty much an exact replacement for my laptop, aside from the SSD, which is a major upgrade) for a relatively good price, around $900, and I jumped on it.  So what if it was older hardware?  It should suit my needs without breaking the bank.

And I have not been disappointed, not one bit. 😀

First things first – I love the fact that I can hook up various peripherals through USB.  This is the only tablet I’ve owned so far that’s had a USB port on it!  I’ve even gone so far as to hook up a USB hub and run a wireless keyboard and mouse through it, before I picked up the Type Cover.  With that awesome little USB port, I can hook up an external hard drive, use my USB headset to deliver a workshop, use a mouse for when I need something more than a tiny trackpad… I think that’s quite possibly my most favorite feature about this tablet.

The fact that I can also hook it up to a monitor with the help of a dongle is awesome, too.  With the external monitor and mouse, it almost feels like I’m using my full desktop.  It’s not quite the same experience as using my desktop, as my desktop has twice the RAM, but it’s an incredibly smooth experience, especially for a tablet.  I’ve worked in Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and InDesign on here so far, and the only thing that reminds me that I’m on a tablet is the keyboard for the Type Cover.  In fact, this thing runs better than my work desktop – far better.

And the keyboard?  Pretty impressive for something so small.  I’ve had varied experiences with tablet keyboards, and more often than not they’re too small for me to type comfortably on.  I remember trying to type with the keyboard for my old iPad Mini – I had to squish my two hands together and take a few minutes to adjust to typing on a keyboard crammed into such a small space.  And there was no trackpad, either.  The Type Cover feels like I’m using an actual keyboard.  And it’s backlit.  Having laptops with backlit keyboards have spoiled me in the past, what with my old Macbook Pro and my recently out-of-commission Asus laptop, and in low light conditions I rely on the backlighting to make sure my fingers are on the right keys.  And this little keyboard does not disappoint, either.

Might be a little difficult to see, but those keys are all lit up.

Might be a little difficult to see, but those keys are all lit up.

Last of all – but certainly not least – is the battery life.  Oh lord, there’s nothing that makes me giggle with glee quite like hovering over the battery icon and seeing I have ten hours of battery life left.  I’ve been able to use the laptop tablet casually all day long, and have only needed to plug it in at the end of the day.  When doing more intense work like using Creative Suite, I have plugged it in just to be on the safe side, but that’s just me being the paranoid designer that I am.  (Save early, save often, or you will be very sad if your machine dies)  But for simply browsing the internet and listening to music (and oh gods the sound is amazing for such a little tablet!), I’ve been able to go most of the day without plugging it in.

And there you have it – my impressions of the Surface Pro 2 after spending a week of quality time with it.  If you’re considering getting one for yourself, keep an eye out on Amazon for good deals, and shoot for a Pro 2, as they’re cheaper considering the Pro 3 has just come out with some new models.  The Pro 2 will do you just as well, but without entirely breaking the bank!

 

Things I Want to Make (when I finally get my craft room back)

Four more days until I move!  Oh, you have no idea how happy this makes me.  Not only will I not be limited to wearing whatever clothes I didn’t shove into vacuum sealed bags and toss into the treacherous cave that is the storage unit, I will also have access to ALL my crafting stuff.  Not just one crochet hook and a blanket that’s too warm to sit under while I crochet it.  And there are a number of things I want to be making…

Crocheted Toothless

Amigurumi Toothless – yes, I want to make another one of these little guys.  The one in the picture here, I ended up giving away to a friend – and they’re so quick to make, too, so why not make another one?  (or six, or eleven, why not a whole tiny Toothless army?)

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The Modern Poncho – It’s no surprise that I have a fondness addiction to making shawls and ponchos.  And I think this one would look very lovely in a nice warm shade of brown or combo of browns and reds.  It’s a good thing I’m moving closer to my favorite yarn shop…

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I’d really like to finish the third Fourth Doctor scarf I’m working on – I’ve got less than a third of the scarf to go, and I was hoping it’d be done in time for GenCon this year, but no luck.  Plus, the only part of my Fourth Doctor costume I can locate at the moment is the coat… so unless I can magically find all the other parts in the week before GenCon as I unpack, no Fourth Doctor for me this year… :/

scooter

Crocheted Scooter – In seafoam, naturally.  Or I could make four of them – red, blue, seafoam, and red/cream, one for me and each of my housemates…  And having at least one of these would be pretty cool, considering the theme for the living room in the new place is going to be scooters…


(nsfw, language!)
And finally, last but definitely not least, the first project I’m probably going to work on as soon as the dust settles and I can find my various costume pieces is the Cupcakes Pinkie Pie costume (the video above is the least violent reference I could find to it, hahah).  I’m not going to lie – I’m afraid it won’t be done in time for GenCon, but Ross says he’ll help me out, and this is the only costume I’m really working on, so here’s hoping I can pull it off…

I’m going to be busy after I unpack, haha.

Why I haven’t been all that crafty this summer

I know, I know – I’ve not only been slacking in the blog department, I’ve also been slacking in the craft department.  The last crafty thing I did was make Ross that Rainbow Dash t-shirt back in May.  “What’s up with that?” you ask.  “I thought this was The Crafty Nerd, not just The Nerd.”

Well, I’ll show you what’s up, my friendly readers.

Can't exactly craft when all my craft buckets are in the middle of a pile of stuff...

Can’t exactly craft when all my craft buckets are in the middle of a pile of stuff…

Yep, The Crafty Nerd (and Mister Crafty Nerd, and Ross, and our other housemate Gina, who is also crafty and nerdy) is moving.  And because of the joys of moving (packing, filling up a storage unit, and waiting for the new house to be ready), I haven’t had access to my craft supplies since… oh, June?  It’s a sad existence.  Not to mention pretty much all of my My Little Ponies are in storage as well (see the box under the trash can, at the back of the unit?  Yeah, all my Build-a-Bear ponies are in there, as well as some other pony plushies), and my office isn’t very fun without them.  Plus, I’ve only had my laptop for computering for most of the summer, and the poor laptop’s decided to give up on its battery, which is frustrating.  Grr.  My poor NyanMachine – you can see it there, on top of a small dresser, just gathering dust and waiting to be used to craft blog posts.

So, all my crafting has been put on hiatus, aside from one crocheted blanket and the Cupcakes Pinkie Pie cosplay I’ve been stalling on all summer, simply because I lack the motivation to get it done (and every time I think of something I could add to the costume, I realize it’s in storage and let out a sigh).

Post-GenCon, though, I promise there will be loads of crafty stuff.  And while you all wait, I can at the very least post some nerdy stuff and share some fun craft tutorials!  Until then, be patient – I promise I’ll make it all worth everyone’s while! 🙂

Book Review: The Hunger Games

Hunger_gamesYes, I admit, I hadn’t read The Hunger Games trilogy until, well, this past week.  I finished The Stand sometime on Thursday night, and needed something to read that wasn’t Stephen King… so I poked around on Amazon until I saw The Hunger Games, and realized that while I’d seen the movie, I hadn’t read the books yet.  And usually I’m the type to read the book WAY before the movie comes out!  (With the exception of Twilight.  I only read the books after the first movie came out because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  I’ll hold back on my opinions on the Twilight series, haha.)  I was in the mood for something new to read, and I really did enjoy the movie version of The Hunger Games, so I sat down and read it.  And blew through it in a day and a half, and ended up signing up for Amazon Kindle Unlimited when I realized it would cost less than buying Catching Fire and Mockingjay combined!  (And once I’ve got some more experience with that, I’ll likely be reviewing that too!)  And then blew through most of Catching Fire.  And then I realized – hey, I should write about these books.  They’re good.  So, here’s part one of my review of the Hunger Games trilogy!  There will be spoilers.  You have been warned.

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