Max Riffner

The Parlor

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My Little Ubuntu

About 6 months ago, my friend Ben gave me his old iBook laptop before he moved out of town so I could play with it. I wanted to try installing Ubuntu and see if I could get a few more years out of the little guy.

However, Ubuntu had something else in mind, like dropping PowerPC support. There are still fans of having Ubuntu on old Mac hardware though, so I was able to find a suitable installation. It worked well, I have to say. It wasn’t as fast as I had hoped for, but it worked.

This week I upgraded to the latest Ubuntu version, and it did not work so well. Like, at all. So with a heavy heart I grabbed an old copy of Panther and went back to OS X.

I like Ubuntu. It’s free. It’s is extremely usable. Unfortunately, I’m not just using old hardware, but the old PowerPC processors were never a good fit in the realms of computing standards. It’s like putting a lawn engine mower on a bicycle instead of just buying a new car. Or even a used car.

I’m planning on getting a new MacBook soon, and I’ll definitely be able to install Ubuntu on that with no problem.

In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying being back on OS X for what is in reality my very first laptop (I’ve always been a desktop guy).

At The Waiting Room Saturday

This Saturday, I’ll be at the Vago CD Release Party at the Waiting Room, signing CDs and copies of Quick Step. You may remember that I did the previous album cover and design for Vago’s first CD. They contacted me again for their follow-up release, and I was more than happy to work with them a second time. Not only are they good musicians, but they are a great group of guys.

Here’s the design I did for the CD cover. The guys wanted it to resemble an old movie poster, and we tossed out the Creature From The Black Lagoon quite a bit. There is mention of “evil seahorses” in one of the songs, and well, there you go:

I also did a gig poster for the guys to print quotes and show dates on themselves (quotes at the top, dates on the bottom). Again, I did an illustration of them all in what I call a “Scooby Doo moment,” and aged it appropriately. This poster was more grindhouse to the album cover’s classic horror, but I think it will all work together fine.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Stop by and see us all on Saturday! Should be a good time, and I will have copies of Quick Step if you would like a signed copy.

Need A Reboot

I’ve returned from the South (for a wedding), and have decided I need to recharge. I’m exhausted, and I can’t stop feeling like my metaphorical (and literal) house is falling down around me. For instance:

• Pinups: I haven’t done a pinup for three months now. I don’t know what to do about this, mainly because I’m a bit bored by them, and I have a lot of other work going on at night.
• Website: I’m thinking of redesigning this thing now. I’d like to add a link blog to the side of Parlor, and maybe even think about making this fit for 1024×768 versus 800×600 resolution.
• Running: I skipped out on most of last week’s training. Happily, I still feel I’m making progress, though it is painful making the transistion.
• Strength training and diet: I need to make adjustments here fast. I’m tired of looking at myself in the mirror, and the weights will help me run better anyway.
• GTD: I stopped halfway through gathering everything to file because it was so overwhelming. Needless to say, there are huge piles all over my office. It has a Depression Factor of 9 out of 10.
• Smoking: Yes, I know I quit 6 years ago. Recently, I’ve taken a couple sweet drags off of other’s cigarettes. It takes the right stress in the right spot to make me want to smoke, and a heavier amount of stress has led me back to temptation. I never want to be a slave to cigarettes again, so I need to watch myself a bit better. I quit cold turkey, but that was because I got myself in the right mindset. I need to get there again.
• Webcomic: I still want to attempt this again, and I think I found a way how. I missed 24 Hour Comics Day this weekend, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still do one. I read that Steve Troop of Melonpool used the day to produce 24 new pages of material that he will be releasing once a day online, and that he’ll keep doing it that way once a month if people like it. I love it when a plan comes together.
• Comic: Oh man, I shouldn’t even be writing this post because I have so much drawing to do. The Grinder seems to be on a fast track to your local comic shop. More as it develops…

These are all high priorities to me, plus a few others, so I can’t quite divide and conquer. I’m almost at the point of needing to schedule blocks of time for all of these activities, although that never seems to work for me.

Ironically, GTD would work well if I ever got through it…

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