I still remember the Nintendo I got for Christmas (thanks Rudolph!)... I wanna say I was 8 or 9. I remember getting Final Fantasy 1 on my 10th birthday from my grandfather. I still remember buying my N64, my PS1, my Gamecube, all of 'em.

Then I remember my first pack of Magic: The Gathering cards. I remember the first time I ever saw them, reading about the game in a Readers Digest my grandparents had in their living room. That started a hobby/obsession that lasted well until I was 23. I still have those cards in my closet.

I've played Dungeons and Dragons for damn near 15 years. Recently getting a group together has become a headache, but I still wanna play.

I've dabbled in other games as well; Warhammer being most notable, board games, other card games, etc. It all led into a stint running a gaming shop for a few years. That ended in disaster, but I still remember it fondly.

My gaming ended about 3 years ago. The shop closed, friends went their separate ways. Life just got in the way. Ever since then I've felt something missing. There's a whole social aspect not immediately present when you look at these rulebooks and figures. You may not even notice it when you're gathering with 15+ people at a game shop to knock out a few games with people you've probably never met.

You do notice it when it's gone.

Some friends and I have picked up WarMachine again. It's the Warhammer for people who like tighter, simpler rules, and far less figures to lug about.

I've had more fun in the last 3 weeks than I have in a long while. I built my table, I started painting my figures, building my army, planning my strategy. I've seen friend recently that I haven't seen in years.

And god dammit, I'm having a good time.

When I play, I get that same feeling I had when I was a kid; my only care in the world is directing my little pewter soldiers across the field to victory.

And hey, perhaps the creative juices will flow once more, and I'll draw like I use to again.

What the hell ever.

Let me know if you love/hate/meh.  And I'll probably tell you I don't care.  That's how much I care.  What?

First off, the basic idea is to have a pair of functioning eyeglasses, in which one of the lenses is built in a HUD, in high resolution, that displays various data streams in the feild of vision.

The most common use I can think of for this would be for displaying data on whatever you're looking at (to get an idea of what I'm talking about, search for Google Goggles or iPhone HUD on YouTube). If I'm looking at a price of hardware or something at a store, the HUD automatically scans and finds competing prices from other retailers. Look at a monument and get wiki articles and other info scrolling down on the HUD. And possibly facial recognition, just becuase that might be handy.

Next, I require voice activated commands, just so that I can draw odd stares from people as I ask nobody for the directions to a restaurant (ohh, there's overlayed map view using GPS too). This is important because interaction with this thing has to be seemless.

Now, I say that it should plug into an existing smartphone, where the heart of the software would reside. Smartphone horsepower is simply going to be far greater than anything you could jam into the band of this thing, and I also say "plug in" because it would also draw it's power from the phone. I understand Bluetooth could be used, but that requires the glasses to also house a battery, not to mention the Bluetooth radio, and I just see that as being too bulky.

I'm sure there are other functions that could make their way into the HUD, such as email/SMS alerts, status updates, etc. Better minds than I can work that stuff out when they're building this for me.

Also, I should be able to use the scouter to determine someone's power level...

Somebody make this happen.

I always tell people how overpriced CVS is, and here is undeniable proof...

This better be the best damn candy bar ever created by mankind.

A tad angered, I found that the phone was mostly functional, being able to work around the dead zone in most apps.

So the phone decided to up the anty, and Sunday the screen stopped responding to touch entirely. Now I was mad. Every other function of the phone worked properly, and voice control was pretty much the only thing keeping the phone functioning as such.

Enter the Apple Store. A trip to Short Pump Mall put me in contact with a guy from the Genius Bar. He asked me what was wrong and gave the phone an overall condition inspection. I keep damn good care of my electronics, so they found no problems. He tried a few things on the software end, and pretty much told me that, yes indeed, the screen has stopped playing nice.

He told me to hang on for 10 min, and disappeared. Shortly after, he reappears with my phone, new screen freshly installed.

At this point I dread what's coming... How much is this gonna cost me?

Nothing. Free. $0.00.

He smiled and gave me a handshake, and asked if I needed anything else. I thanked him endlessly, and happily left the Apple Store with a 100% functional iPhone again, and a personal understanding of why Apple gets such high marks with their customer service.

Needless to say... This pissed me off to no end. As with just about every artist I've ever talked with, there's been that idea of common courtesy. A lot is said about the site being infested with kids with no skill, but at the same time some of the bigger names in comics maintain sections on DeviantArt.

There's an ever present aura on the site that doing something like this is the worst thing you can do, and that most of the artists here look out for one another (that is, in fact, how I found out about my stuff being stolen; some one shot me a message asking if I had any kind of arrangement with this guy using my stuff). I guess there will always be a few rotten eggs, and I really makes me wonder how much of my stuff is out there being passed off as some one elses.

So I emailed the guy, found out it was some 18 year old living in Brazil, and posted on his site, for everone to see, how he was rippin me off. Told him if the stuff wasn't down within the week, I was coming after him.

I have yet to recieve a reply from him, but the stolen work was gone within 8 hrs or so. I'm glad my artwork is gone from his gallery. I was really prepared to go all in on this, digging up the admin emails for DeviantArt, and seeing what legal rights I had to shut him down if needed.

What's really kinda scary is that he had some photos of himself on his page... I cracked open the EXIF data on a few of them and sure enough, GPS info right there embedded on the image. Dropping that data into google maps would probably turn up his home address.

Pro Tip: turn off GPS data on your camera/phone of you're gonna post your photos along with the artwork you've stolen.

But whatever, it's done, images are gone, things back to normal. I just think I need to keep a better eye on things at DeviantArt instead only logging in there once every few months