There’s an interesting little game on the way to the Wii next week called Boom Blox. I thought I’d mention it in the blog because I’m really excited for the game. It’s got nearly 400 levels, and is certainly in the “puzzle” category, which I think is a genre we’ve gotten slim pickings in recently. Seems like everyone is making Action and FPS games now. But I like a good puzzler.

Basically, you throw balls at towers of blocks (kind of like the game where you throw balls to knock down milk jugs at amusement parks) and then they fall and trigger explosions and other cool stuff. You try to use as few throws as possible, and there are all sorts of interesting designs I’ve seen so far. It’s certainly not an “epic” game, but frankly I have more time for pick up and play stuff like this now than I do huge adventures. So I’m hyped.

I don’t have marfan’s syndrome! Hooray!

I finally got the results from my genetics test in the mail, and it came back all normal. Thank you God, it’s such a relief. Knowing my heart has no genetic reason to randomly explode is a very nice feeling. Heck, just knowing one way or the other is good, since if I did have it I’d just need to be treated for it for the rest of my life. But I’ll take not having it, thank you.
Now I need to get my healthy nose to the grindstone and start working on my goals again. This has kind of been holding me back a bit. The nagging worry, anyway. Of course, I’m still supposed to go in for a skeletal assessment, and x-rays. I can deal with that, though. (Maybe it will explain why my shoulders always hurt.)

Alright, work time!

Yesterday was really nice outside. Really, really nice. And as such, I didn’t want to waste the day. So I set out to be as productive as “Weekend JKR” can be. Weekend JKR is a bit more lazy than Workweek JKR, usually. Anyway, I proceeded after church to pour cement in the basement where we’re adding a new half-bath, rip out two 6 foot tall shrubbery from the side yard, begin digging out the new flower beds for the back yard, play tennis, jog a lap around our local track, and get in a bit of weight lifting before passing out for the night. All in all, a great day.

The problem is, apparently my body wasn’t exactly thrilled with being put through such a routine. And now I’m extremely sore and don’t want to move. This is problematic because I have a lot to do this week. And even sitting at my computer is painful.

So I’ll be working through the exhaustion this week (or hopefully just today and tomorrow and then it will go away) but I’m just hoping I can get everything done. This week I plan to have a new update for Cubetoons and Fred, putting KB on its favorite back burner again until those are done. Oh, and I just got an email learning that the freelance project I finished two weeks ago went live, and is for no apparent reason terribly broken. Hooray for that! (Note, that’s sarcasm. I reality, boo for that.) I blame technology, as I often do.

Hey, two out of three ain’t bad, right? (I hate using the word ain’t, but it’s how the old saying goes, so I will.)

For those of you who enjoy the light, fun Fred the Monkey comics, Number 20 is here for you!

Maybe you’re more of a deep, story driven comic kinda guy or gal? Well Kingdom Blue will suit your needs.

But perhaps you like a black and white comic about video games? … Okay, well come back next week.

Anyway, that’s the updates for the week. If I can keep up with two of the three for every week of the year, I will be a pretty happy camper. I know, people would like all three weekly, but that’s difficult to manage. Not impossible… But difficult.

I was going to wait and post a new blog entry when the new Kingdom Blue Issue 10 was done… But it took too long. SO I’m going to talk about food instead. That’s similar, right?

I never quite grasped why fast food made people fat. I know it isn’t the best thing for you, but I assumed it was due to grease or crappy quality, or whatever. Wow, now I understand. Looking up the data, I discovered that (of all things) a TACO SALAD at Taco Bell is the highest calorie thing on their menu. A taco SALAD. I never would have guessed. And sure enough, the salads at Wendy’s are super high on the list too. So no wonder people get fat, they think they’re eating something healthier but that’s a big lie. Who knew?

I have to save some money right now, so eating out is going to be much less than normal. Not that it’s a big deal, since I like cooking. I sure is easier, though. I think I need to go back to my old schedule of making Monday my “housework” day, and just make most of the dinners and lunches then so I don’t spend so much time during the rest of the weekdays on it. We’ll see I guess.

And here’s a Daily Drawing too.

As I said yesterday, I bought the new Adobe Suite software. Despite that, though, it’s still sitting un-installed on my desk here. I don’t exactly know why. I really should just install it. But I feel like I don’t have time to, or something will go horribly wrong after I do. Hopefully my scanner won’t refuse to communicate with the new Photoshop. Or the extra data crash my hard drive or something.

Speaking of which, I should really back up my files soon. Soon as in right this second. I haven’t done it in a long, long while, and it would suck (to use the least harsh term) to lose everything since the last backup. It seems like such a pain to me to back things up, I don’t know. If only I had some sort of hard drive that held everything and would never fail… Ah technology. How many things it gets away with…

Today I am the proud owner of the brand new Adobe Suite software bundle! I’m pretty excited. It’s been years since I originally bought Macromedia Studio MX 2004. I guess it was in 2004, actually. So four years.

It was expensive to upgrade, but I figured it was about time. Q complains often that Actionscript sucks and she wants nothing to do with the programming language, but the new Flash has an all new Actionscript, so maybe I can plead with her to help me work on a new little Fred game for the website game section. Nothing as huge as the for-retail-Fred-Game I’d still like to make one day, but something that would be fun to play online in Flash.

So in a way, the new software means good things for fans of FredtheMonkey.com. It probably won’t be apparent that there’s a new version while watching the cartoons (though you may want to upgrade to the latest Flash Player now to be prepared!) but the new game, whenever it comes out, should be a fun little distraction!

All all new Fred cartoon short has hit the web! Go see it now! You can come back and read the rest of this later. I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you have enjoyed the cartoon, I can talk about it. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but it just popped into my head one day. It seemed very “Fred-ish” to eat those things. To eat anything, I suppose.

I’m pretty happy the cartoon is finally done. It took a while. As I mentioned the other day, I spent a LONG time on some backgrounds. I’m sure you can tell which. Clearly the school scene is pretty. At least to me.

I’d love to have a Cubetoons comic for tomorrow, but to be honest I’m not sure if it will happen or not. I’ll try, though. I was working so much on this cartoon, I’m pretty far behind for a comic. We’ll see I suppose. We’ll see…

Today I thought I’d take a break from the taxing toll of coming up with a topic and answer some questions posted in the comments yesterday. This is not a cop out to help me from having to think. Seriously…

 Noo Monkey says:
On other news, how are the ideas for the Fred video game coming along?

JKR Answers:
The one I mentioned earlier in the year? Yeah, terribly. It’s at a total standstill. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was too ambitious to take on all at once. I’ll keep toiling away at it when I can, but for now I better focus on getting the sites updated more.

 Person from Place says:
Ooooooooh, charecter with a purpose, very exciting, new cubetoons charecter? New fred the monkey charecter? New kingdom blue charecter? Charecter for a game?

JKR responds:
Maybe, maybe, no, and maybe. Guess we’ll see!

Person from Place continues on:
I have an idea on where he’s going to be used…
THE RETURN OF MR.D!

JKR relates:
No, but I need to work on that cartoon some more, thanks for reminding me. Sigh, so many things to do!
Well, back to work so that the new Fred short will be up before Friday! (I’d love to have it done today, but tomorrow is much more likely I suppose…)

Today’s drawing isn’t just a random sketch. It has a purpose.

This is a character with a name. I’m not revealing his name just yet, but rest assured if you are a fan of FredtheMonkey.com, you can expect to see this fellow again. In a cartoon?! Maybe maybe not. Time will tell, I suppose… (How much time, who knows?)

In other news, that isn’t really news, I spent a solid 2 hours on a background for the next Fred cartoon short which will be on screen for approximately 10 seconds. I didn’t plan to put so much into it, but there just kept being “one more thing to tweak” and suddenly two hours had gone by. But I really like this background. I can tell I spent some time working on it. Of course, that means the cartoon is still being worked on. And at this rate, it will be ready by 2011. Don’t worry, I’ll hurry up and put less effort into some of the later backdrops.

Maybe.