June 2009 – Toren Atkinson

June 29, 2009

Tour de Lovecraft Wins Origins Award

I did interior art for this!

Atomic Overmind Press is proud to announce that Kenneth Hite’s Tour de Lovecraft: the Tales has won the Origins Award for best Non-Fiction product! We’d like to thank GAMA, the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design, and the attendees of the Origins Game Fair. Ken Hite and the rest of the Atomic Overmind Press family are proud to receive the coveted Calliope.

You can get it here, by the way.

In other news, today I didn’t embroid all day long, I actually got a lot of drawing done after the ol’ day job. That’s good news, everyone!

June 29, 2009

Must be Sun Spots

Today at work we’ve been having a bunch of technical issues – gmail wasn’t working for me, problems with various other equipment. I thought what I usually think when something weird happens – must be solar activity. Which is of course only partially ridiculous.

So then I decided to find out if there was a website which reports on ‘space weather’ and indeed there is!

http://spaceweather.com

Today, “A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth’s magnetic field, but it is not stirring up geomagnetic storms or auroras. Geomagnetic activity should remain low.”

It also has a cool chart with PHAs – Potentially Hazardous Asteroids –
“On June 29, 2009 there were 1065 potentially hazardous asteroids”
The closest one this month being 0.7 LD (lunar distance = 384,401 km) away, though it was only 21 meters across.

And that’s neat to me!

June 27, 2009

Second Level Wizard shirts

Which one would you be most likely to buy?

black 2lw shirt options

June 26, 2009

The Nerd Quotient of My Neighborhood Just Skyrocketed

Kenn has been working me like a dogg at Embroiddme, but that ain’t a bad thing as I is broke! You know it’s bad when you finally get around to doing your taxes cuz’ you know you’ll get a refund. I got my poor delapidated bike from the shop today and it cost 1/3 of the bike’s initial price to get the back tire replaced (I done broke the axle). It’s in sore need of a tune up too but I told them I’d be back in a few paychecks.

Also upon the umpteenth accountancy review of KhanCon and Ghostbusters Con it has been uncovered that Second Level Wizards is taking a bath.

I waited too long to go pick up my ‘held’ Ghostbusters X-Box game and they sold it on me.

And now the good news:

Connection Games & Comics is opening on my street in just 5 days! That’s pretty exciting for me. I know that my studio is just above RX Comics, but now I have close access to twice as much geekdom–plus they don’t have gaming stuff at RX.

The next Second Level Wizards event is sure to be a success, and is being masterminded by our marketing guru Kathryn! I get to dress up. Also we need to have another Saturday Morning Cartoon Party ASAP!

Time to sell some junk and make some room in here!

My birthday is on Sunday and I get to chill out, dickwad.

Pre-Post Apocalyptic

Staying on target for MUTILATOR is easy when you’ve got access to many a post-apocalyptic movie at your disposal. Here’s what I’ve been watching lately:

Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

The Day After – TV Movie set in Kansas. No mohawked bikers but a nice depressing ending which is key to a good post apocalyptic film

A Boy And His Dog – very ’70s

The World, the Flesh and the Devil – great!

Tank Girl – sucks!

Panic in Year Zero! – surprisingly good.

The Last Train BBC miniseries – started out decent, couldn’t finish it.

The Last Man on Earth (50’s with Vincent Price) – Good!

Omega Man (remake of Last Man on Earth) – Unwatchable!

I Am Legend (another remake of above) – Not bad

Red Dawn – not enough mutants

Quiet Earth – good