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You're right: That was the Harlem Heroes story in the first 2000 AD Annual...

//http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/features/sprout/2003/annual/annual.shtml

However, I haven't seen the Extreme Edition so I've no idea what the reprint is like.

-- Mike

Ooops... I forgot that the voting deadline was yesterday - I assumed it was today 'cos most comps end on Fridays. I'll re-read the stories over the weekend and vote before the new deadline!

-- Mike
(Y'know, if the deadline hadn't been extended my story would be the winner!)

I've recently updated my Costume Designer flash program to include some new features... Extra costume bits, extra colours, and - most important - the ability to save designs between sessions!


If you want to check it out, visit //http://www.iol.ie/~carrollm/shs - please let me know if you find any bugs!

-- Mike

Woah, that's weird! I post the image and suddenly they ALL appear!

-- Mike

You mean this one?

Just back from the first showing at Vue, Liffey Valley...

Thoroughly enjoyed the movie - it opens beautifully and just keeps getting better. There are some great touches (including some nods to the X-Men canon that they really didn't need to do, so it feels like they were done just for us fans) and it ties in very well with the existing X-Men movies.

Hugh Jackman is - according to my wife - "a GOD!" on screen. This naturally makes me jealous but since it's her birthday I'll indulge her rampaging Jackmania.

-- Mike

Well, I'm done with Primeval now. It's just too dumb even for me.

The one with the Croc in the museum was really the clincher, but I decided to give it a few more eps in case it got any better. Well, it didn't.

[spoiler:keoc8e31]Last night: Conor - supposedly a genius - has two dinosaurs secretly hidden away in the ARC (a top-secret facility with worse security than the average community centre). One of them chews threw the wires on his one-of-a-kind Anomaly Detector (a super-high-tech device that can detect anomalies wherever they appear but somehow lacks a warning signal that lets them know when it's out of commission), so everything that happens in that episode is Conor's fault. Is he arrested? No. Fired? No. Reprimanded? No. Instead, he's given an apartment to live in.

And then there was the fun guy from the other government place who got the stuff all over him... His thought processes went something like this: "Hmm... what's that weird black stuff under that protective perspex canopy? It might be dangerous. But it probably isn't because they didn't even lock the door. I'd better poke the stuff just to be sure."

Not to mention this wonderful piece of logic: The fungus man is attracted to heat. Therefore, we will make the ARC's really big room very, very cold so when it goes in there it'll die. Obviously this was the right thing to do, because it worked. Somehow, they knew that the fungus-riddled man was stupid enough to seek out cold places that would be dangerous to it, rather than warm places where it could thrive.

And the mysterious hexagonal metal thing: "Never seen it before in my whole entire life," says Ben Miller, presumably trying to give the government woman the idea that he had never seen it before in his whole entire life and there was absolutely no need for her to go looking for it. Yet moments later we see the ex-museum girl working on the thingy in her lab in full view of the doors that don't lock and have little windows in them. Whew! What a stroke of luck that the soon-to-be mushroom-man didn't check that room first![/spoiler:keoc8e31]

[spoiler:keoc8e31]But the Croc episode: an anomaly appears in the museum and a great big dinosaur comes through (lovely special effects, mind). The - ahem - "soldiers" from the ARC swarm into the place all gung-ho. "It can't escape - we've blocked off all the exits!" "Er... What it it tries to come out through one of the entrances?" "Don't worry - it'll have to go through the gift shop and we're pretty sure it doesn't have any money."

Instead, the canny croc escapes through the open loading dock. WTF? How come the soldier guys didn't think of something as simple as going around the back? What a croc![/spoiler:keoc8e31]

-- Mike

Hi Rich,

Sounds like it might be what we call "just one of those things."

Check Photoshop's "Memory & Image Cache" settings (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-8): this will tell you how much memory Photoshop thinks is available, and how much it will use. If the Available RAM figure seems wrong, then - if you still have the install disks - try uninstalling Photoshop and re-installing it.

If that doesn't make any difference, then it could be something other than Photoshop that's causing the problem... I've heard that if you add more than four gigs of ram to a Windows XP machine then you can experience some weird effects, such as the one you're having (apparently XP isn't capable of dealing with more than four gigs).

That's pretty much all I can think of at the moment...

Hope you can get it sorted!

Cheers,
Mike

Thanks for all the nice words, everyone!

Steve: Yep, I'm still using Cinema 4D. I finally figured out the Global Illumination settings so I can now get pretty accurate renders in a reasonable amount of time - plus I've picked up a few tricks here and there about light scattering, texturing and the like.

And it's pretty much all thanks to you: without your stunning work to spur me on (that is: make me jealous) I'd never have got this far... I've learned more from trying to catch up with you than I could ever have learned on my own - I still watch your showreel every now and then to remind myself how far I've yet to go!

Cheers,
Mike

Now Mike, you know what that makes you...

Hey! It's not like I'm pimping my own websites (//http://www.quantumprophecy.com / //http://www.iol.ie/~carrollm)!

-- Mike

...he's done so much more besides.

He certainly has... check out his website at //http://www.turmoilcolour.com

I've always just assumed that these things rear their head when Tharg gets a Future Shock type script that better suits different branding.

That's what happened with my Future Shock: I didn't know it was going to be a Time Twister until it was published.

-- Mike

That wasn't bad - I enjoyed it more than the Christmas special.

I thought that Lee Evans was great, and I'm not normally a fan.

I switched channels before the spoiler for the next one, though, so I didn't catch when it's coming. Probably August Bank Holiday, I'd guess.

-- Mike

From the pages of Judge Dredd Eggazine...

Yay! Great stuff - what Necronauts should have been!

I've said it before, and I was right that time so I'll say it again: Satchmo is one of the very top bestest comic creators in the world, ever, in the entire history of time including the future.

-- Mike