Food Tips For Out of Towners Coming to ECCC

by on February 21, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Posted In: Test

Last year their was a thread on The Webcomic List’s Forum from some of the out of town attendees about easy options on where to find food quick in downtown Seattle. This year I decided to be preemptive and provide some of the data before the question came up. (A quick note, obviously there are lots of wonderful posh places that I recommend this overview is strictly about downtown grocery stores for people who need food fast.)

Obviously anything at the convention center should be avoided it’s not just the prices it’s the fact that everything there will be huge lines and all of us there on business just won’t have the time. The closest options are:

Ralph’s Grocery and Deli on 4th Ave, Seattle, WA (across the street from the Cinerama)
Kress IGA on 1427 3rd Ave
The New Downtown Target on 1401 2nd Ave and of course Pike Place Market.

I’ve been to Ralph’s once or twice it’s a bit posh but good. I would avoid the IGA it’s one of those places I like to think is designed solely for gauging yuppies. I checked out the Target recently. Their grocery section seems to be designed around people needing to eat on the run but the prices seem to be about average. As for the Market there are always a lot of interesting options there at various prices. I haven’t shopped there recently enough to be able to recommend anything. but one of the few perks of Emerald City being early this year is the tourist season hasn’t officially started so the market shouldn’t be too crowded for people who are just there to shop.

If you’re willing to take a little more time for a better deal I will suggest the QFC on Pike and Broadway. Just walk up Pike (that’s the street the convention center straddles) and you should make it in 15 minutes. The other Market I will recommend is Uwajimaya in the International District 600 5th Avenue South. It has a very good selection of Chinese food, Sushi and Vietnamese Sandwiches. You can probably walk to it in 15 minutes but better yet it’s right on the International Districts Bus tunnel (You can enter the Bus Tunnel at the downtown Nordstrom’s on Pine street) Unfortunately Downtown Seattle no longer has it’s ride free zone but 1.25 for the round trip should be worth it to save on food.

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ECCC Progress

by on February 20, 2013 at 6:19 am
Posted In: Test

CoveroneWell I’m psyched. After having reported last week I had sent out my order for my new book for the Emerald City Comicon (well not that new… It’s actually a new and improved version of volume one) But when I got home today I was pleasantly surprised to find them waiting for me considerably earlier than I expected them. So early in fact that part of me is suspicious (I could have sworn I had asked to have it sent ground.)

So that’s the biggest item on my checklist taken care of now here’s hoping that nothing goes wrong with the buttons that are scheduled to arrive the day before the con.

In the mean time I’ll stick to worrying about the smaller things… Like having someone to help me man the table with me so I can go to the bathroom.

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Tuesday Rhapsodies

by on February 19, 2013 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Test

For everyone who thinks I fall back on way too many versions of Gershwin‘s Rhapsody in Blue or Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody whenever I can’t find anything new for this segment, here is Fredrico Aubele‘s Bohemian Rhapsody in Blue! Actually it doesn’t really sound like either of them but I find it most pleasant to listen to so enjoy!

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Technical Scare

by on February 18, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Posted In: Test

Well I must say that I found another bit of proof that I’m getting more technically literate on File Management and WordPress. I’m the first to admit that I tend to be a bit of a borderline Luddite on most things technical. I think it has something to do with the whole visually artistic right brain not dealing with coding very well. However I’ve been keeping at it to the point I’m pleased to say I now know enough to make small tweaks in the code without having to worry about breaking anything.

That is not to say everything is all fine and dandy things will happen that leave me in a state of panic before I either take a deep breath and figure what’s up or call for help.

This just happened an hour ago. I was in the middle of one of my boring archive maintenance projects that involved moving a lot of files when I suddenly got an error message about updating Comicpress and files not found that I did not understand. The next thing I knew all of the comics were gone from this page. After about ten minutes of panic I found out what the problem was. While moving a handful of files on FileZilla I inadvertently dragged the comics Folder out of the Rhapsodies folder and out of the page. A quick fix once I found out where I had dragged it to.

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I Heard the Birds Sing

by on February 18, 2013 at 9:26 am
Posted In: Test

I’ve been doing a lot of walking the last couple of weeks, an activity that I enjoy as an opportunity to meditate, brainstorm and save on bus fare. So when I was making my way to the University District I noticed something for the first time this year. The birds were really going at it. I’m not talking about the usual generic calls. But this was the first time I had heard them actually singing (or as I like to call it staking their turf) in a long time. Which means the earliest sign of the spring season is upon us.

In another bird related note, I saw a bunch of crows mobbing something in Ravenna park. They were too high up it the trees for me to get any idea who their victim was but I like to think it was that barred owl I saw last year.

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Convention Countdown

by on February 16, 2013 at 8:37 am
Posted In: Test

Well I’m happy to say my progress in getting ready for the Emerald City Comicon is coming along well. I managed to get all of my merchandise orders out before I had to pay more to get everything here on time. So now I am a that stage where I worry about whether everything shall arrive just as I ordered them or will I be getting a lot of expensive crap. (Unfortunately this isn’t just me being paranoid. I have gotten a few printing errors that were all my fault. The worst was last year where I didn’t realize you had to set the resolution when making your PDF and what I had set the printers was the absolutely lowest setting)

But despite all of the worry I’m glad to be done with it. Getting the book was the worst. I thought this year that since I was repackaging earlier material it would be a cakewalk and mostly that was true with one exception. I had too much faith in automatic kerning. This is not a good idea. While most of the fonts have this covered there are lots of exceptions to this rule. Especially when you had it set to bold for when a character was shouting. There were many instances where a lot of words looked more like a short sentence and other instances where letters were nearly merged together they were so close. So I decided to go to the originals and clean them all up. This led me to my second problem. These cartoons were all done back in the day I had a much smaller hard drive and I used to merge most of my layers to save space. While the text was still thankfully a separate layer it had all been rastarzized. This meant I had to select individual letters or words with Photoshop’s lasso tool and nudge them one by one… It took me all day.

But now that that is behind me I can focus on all of the other things I have to get ready for this thing. Making sure I have an assistant to help man my table, have a way to get all of my gear to the convention center… string.

You know… the easy stuff.

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