Tag Archives: RetroNick

Making Comics

Posted by Steve on September 6, 2013 No comments

I think I should wait till I have about 20 or so strips under my belt before I decide to call myself a Webcomic author, but yeah, I am making comics now. It started a while back when I was relating to Nick that we should have a webcomic for the RetroNick site. I had some great ideas for some strips that involved us, the hosts, but since I couldn’t draw (and he can, amazingly) we could team up.

Well, the problem with that is that Nick is extremely busy. Also, drawing takes a lot of time. So I gave up on the idea until the other day when I thought about just doing them in Photo form. I had seen Joel Watson of http://hijinksensue.com/ so them on occasion and they looked pretty straight forward. So I wrote up some quick jokes, talked to the guys and suddenly…BOOM, RnR comics was born.

As of this posting, there are only 2 active. I have 4 nearly finished, waiting on some info and extra photos, and another 2 in script form. This process makes me both envious and NON envious of some of the webcomic authors I follow who can actually draw. I know they put a TON of effort into drawing each strip as well as coming up with new material each week/day/etc. On the flip side, drawing some of the panels would make the limit of “what can I pull off in the real world” a little easier. (Example, I probably couldn’t pull off a picture of me and the guys in a theater watching a movie)

So keep an eye over at the RetroNick site and look for the new comics on Tues and Thurs!

Kuwait Adventures continued!

Posted by Steve on January 28, 2013 No comments

Rapidly closing in on finishing up my full month in country, I have to say I have certainly learned and seen a lot so far. With my Project 365 task, I have tried to keep the pictures themed to what I have been doing here and some of my experiences. I can look back at these pictures and probably tell you all about what happened that day.

Recently I had a great adventure when I met up with a local, Mohamed, who got in contact with me via Reddit. I know it’s not the safest or wisest thing to do, meeting random strangers on the internet and having them take me through a foreign country, but hey, I like to live dangerously. (Also a fan of not getting raped or stabbed, thankfully that didn’t happen)

This meetup was to show me what gaming culture was like in Kuwait. Boy did I learn all about it too. I don’t want to put too much into this post because the whole reason for researching this was to have some great knowledge for the next RetroNick Radio podcast. All my findings will be there!

In the meantime, you get to catch up on my P365 photos. Also, don’t forget to check out the Trooper Adventures! These Lego guys are out on a tour of whatever they can find.

Blue Ring (P365-27)
When I got here to Kuwait, it was VERY dry. Back at home I am used to higher humidity levels so I went out and bought a humidifier. I found one in a place downtown, it cost me about 18KD (close to $60) but it really is amazing. And it looks cool too.

Fighting at the White Tower (P365-26)
This one is more of a snap shot of something I went to do today. I was guided by a great Local guy to one of Kuwaits main gaming communities. The White Tower (Facebook.com/whitetowerq8)
Here you will find the elite of the Kuwait fighting game league. It was a great glimpse into Kuwaiti gaming life. Much more about this trip will be covered on the RetroNickRadio pod cast. Www.retronick.com.

Keyboard Conundrum (P365-25)
Spent a lot of the day working, which meant typing away on a keyboard. This one is not my regular laptop but one from a small netbook sized laptop I bought while here. I have been using it as a media PC running XBMC.
You can see from the keys that it has both english letters and arabic letters. Just in case I need to write out some letters to the locals.

Pop Pop relief. (P365-24)
I mentioned on my blog that I had a minor crisis when I left for Kuwait. I left my battery charger at home. Yeah I know! My battery normally lasts around a week, two if I conserve. You would also think I could just buy one here, but alas, no. I tried 12 places and no one had any DSLR chargers. (not even Canon ones!)
Thankfully, my lovely wife slipped my charger (and fully charged spare battery) into the mail and about a week later, it arrived. She loaded it so full of bubble wrap it was comical.
This bubble wrap may show up again. Just warning you now.

Play time is over (P365-23)
Another walkabout brought me upon this old abandoned playground. I have to imagine that there were many days of kids swinging and laughing here. On the plus side, across the street from here is a large park with a new playground that looks much safer.

Night Transit (P365-22)
Wanted to try for a long exposure night shot of the road in front of my building here. There are always cars zipping by till pretty late, and the cross road is sually pretty busy as well. My angle for the view isn’t the greatest but it gave me a chance to play around with it.

Fishing boats in the Mists (P365-21)
Went to the local open air market and found some of the fishing boats that supply it. The fog rolled in today so I took advantage of it.

Smug Camel is Smug (P365-20)
We went to visit the camel breeding and trading post today. While we did not actually find the trading post, there were plenty of camels around and all of them were very friendly.

A taste of home, abroad. (P365-19)
I love ginger beer. Back home I would find all sorts of brands to test. Here in Kuwait is almost impossible to find. Thankfully one of the stores imports Barr brand from England.
This was a backup picture I took as a “just in case”. I have started the habit of shooting a few things through out the day just to have something for later.

Chillin like a goat (P365-18)
Came across this guy while I was out on a little expidition. I love the way he is staring longly at his watering hole conteplating his life……… as a goat.

Machine City during the day (P365-17)
The nearest large refinery looks amazing both during daytime and night time. It really does look like a giant machine city. I’ll work on getting a shot at night with all the lights.

Pocket Stuff (P365-16)
At any given time I almost always have 4 things in my pocket, and my fitbit clipped to the side. Two are very basic, some lip balm (which is more for Sarah than for me), and a USB stick with some basic documents on it. The more interesting items are the 20 sided dice and the brass acorn.
Most gamers know that your dice are sacred, they have a connection to you. This one has been in my pocket for years and is very connected. Also, you never know when you may have to make a roll to resist temptation.
I always get asked about the acorn. When we started dating, Sarah and I were out for a walk and she randomly picked up an acorn and handed it to me. Not thinking much about it, I put it in my pocket. At the end of each night, I take the stuff in my pocket out and put it on the dresser, then the next morning it all goes back in my pocket. At my bachelors party, the real acorn disappeared and I was devastated. Sarah found the brass one online and gave it to me just after the wedding. It’s been in my pocket ever since.

FishEye view of the coast (P365-15)
Decided to give the DSLR a rest today and broke out my GoPro camera for a nice super wide angle view from my balcony here in Kuwait. Even in a foreign country, I still end up on the East Coast!

Old habit with new things. (P365-14)
I am a big tea drinker. I had thought that coming to the Middle East would open up the types of tea I could try. Turns out that’s not the case. They are a big fan of Lipton here. I found this Red Label tea that’s not too bad, but kind of strong.
The mugs in my apartment are tiny, so I picked up this one on the base.

We’re Back!

Posted by Steve on July 16, 2012 No comments

This was the start of our London Journey

Hey all!

We are now back from London! We had a total blast the whole time out there and I took a metric F-Ton of pictures! (They use the metric system over there.) Most of them are the touristy style pics, you know, because that’s what we were. I did manage to set up and take some good solid pictures that will require some post processing and tweaking. Those will be trickling out over the coming days. Sarah actually as a very good day by day accounting of our trip over on her website.

Sarah got a few snaps of me taking snaps

I did want to touch on a few things that really made the trip though. (from a Gadget/Tech/Game perspective, that is.) For my photography stuff I brought the whole backpack of gear, but rarely used all of it. For general city travels I used my messenger bag and typically just the camera and my 18-270mm lens. It was great for all around shooting. On a few days I brought my 35mm with me, but rarely needed to swap it out. I found that carrying around my full 15-20lb bag of gear would wear me out fast. Also, I am not ashamed to say that a lot of shots were done in AUTO. I was there as a tourist, I liked some of what I saw so I wanted a picture. These were for memories, not art. I know there are some photogs out there that claim they would never use the AUTO setting on their camera……they are full of crap. It’s there for a reason. To get the memory you want at a good quality.

Setting up for a shot of the London Eye

That said, I also set up a number of shots specifically to be processed and done in an artistic way. These were set in M and bracketed. The downside being that 1: I have a large number of photos to go through, and 2: Sometimes I would forget I was bracketed and ended up with some shots all over the place in exposure. (what, I was tired!) All of my Touristy shots are in my gallery on the site here. My Artistic shots will be trickling out as I work on them and probably uploaded to Flickr. Keep an eye out!

Actually, we had good Signal everywhere

We had a very fun experience with Cell phones while in the UK as well. My friend loaned me an old iPhone 3G for the trip and my wife as using her unlocked Motorola Razr Maxx. First thing at the airport I tried one of the kiosks to grab a sim that we could at least use to call our driver. It was an O2 card that was 10£. Sadly, I didn’t use it at all, it had no data and we found our driver before needing it. Next, while out we hit up a local shop that dealt in various phone stuff. I picked up a 3 sim that had the low end of texts and min, but unlimited data for 15£. Since we were only using data while here it would be perfect. It worked perfect in the old iPhone but in the wife’s Motorola it wouldn’t get any data. The guy said to go to the 3 store in westfields and they would fix it.

Had I realized (or not been tired from the plane) there was a mall right next to me, I would have just gone there. The 3 store was shit for help. Their on staff folks were clueless and their phone support couldn’t figure out the Android APN settings. We decided to hit the O2 store and got a sim that had 500mb data topped up to 1.5gb. The Guru was enamored with the Motorola and set up the APN very quickly. Everything worked great! Again, had I been more aware of my mental state, I would have just had them top up the card I bought at Heathrow.

As a side note, while out and about we noticed that O2 had better service with better coverage, but 3 had that unlimited data factor for cheap. The final score board was 1 O2 Sim from the airport never used. 10£ 1 3 Sim from random store, never used 15£ 1 3 Sim from random store, used in iPhone 15£ 1 O2 sim from O2 store, used in Motorola, 20£

Yeah, that’s a game.

From the gaming side of things, we had a great meetup with some of the RetroNickRadio fans out in the UK! You can find the details of that over at the RetroNick site. We were also clued in to a little hole in the all Arcade located right near the London Eye. I got very few pictures and didn’t have enough time to really explore, but it was a great find.

I know this post is starting to drag on so I will cut out here. Expect some more excerpts from the trip in the coming weeks!

The new Retro (Wait what?): Braid

Posted by Steve on March 22, 2012 No comments

Also featured at http://www.retronick.com

You got Retro in my Next Gen! Well you got Next Gen in my Retro!!

Stop stop, you’re both right! I want to talk a moment about a current gen game that brings the classic retro style that we all know and love. This one is about….Braid.

Braid is a side scrolling game created as an indi project by a developer named Jonathan Blow. JB took the initiative on himself and solely funded the Braid project with the idea of creating a classic style game with high artistic value. Using $200,000 of his own money, he did just that.
In Aug of 2008, Braid was released on the Xbox Live Arcade platform. Since then it has taken off on all platforms now. It’s even been featured on the Humble Indie Bundle a few times.

But what is it?

Braid tells the story of a young man working to rescue his girlfriend from a horrible monster. To do this he uses various skills and tools to master the art of time and space. He can rewind time to fix mistakes and move objects to solve puzzles. Each world he visits presents new challenges that he may or may not need tools from a different world to solve. To your average player, this may seem like a copy of many other classic games like Prince of Persia, or even the various Mario games. (Yes, your princess IS in another castle)

What sets Braid apart from these other games is really in the artistic presentation. The artwork is very stylized and beautiful. Even more so than the visuals, the music was outstanding. I almost found myself using Braid as a way to relax because the music was so soothing. I am not even kidding about that. If you doubt me, listen to yourself. (link to Magnatune, embeds below)

Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of Braid. I bought it on XBLA and couldn’t stop playing it. I picked up the Humble Bundle and now I play it on my PC. I highly suggest it to any gamer who appreciates the art of the game as well as the art of the world.

You can find a demo version of Braid at http://www.playgreenhouse.com/

Of Websites and Podcasts And things

Posted by Steve on March 14, 2012 No comments

For the past few weeks I have been helping a friend work on his website. He was using an old Blogger site to post some incredible works and I knew that WordPress would help him get some better exposure and have a better design. So, having done some work on mine, and Sarah’s site, I thought I would lend a hand. So now I present to you, RetroNick.com! It’s a retro style gaming site where Nick talks about his collection of classic games and even some discussion on current games.

You may notice that in honor of the site relaunch, there is an inaugural podcast along with it! That’s right, the gang here decided to start up a podcast! The podcast is going to be mainly game oriented (with various antics, of course) but a lot of comparing new to old and how the industry is.

Well, we hope, that is.

Odds are it’s just going to be a bunch of guys drinking and talking about games. Only recorded. So check out RetroNick’s new site and maybe give the Podcast a listen!