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Warren Shea

Archive for August, 2010

Review – Scott Pilgrim (graphic novel) & The Women in Scott Pilgrim

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 1:37 am

***SPOILER ALERT FURTHER DOWN…You’ve been warned***

I’ve read the 6 Scott Pilgrim graphic novels completely twice now, in order, panel by panel, and skimmed through individual volumes quite a bit lately. I’ve only owned them for maybe 2 or 3 weeks now…

I’ve found the world of Scott Pilgrim to be hilarious and entertaining, I love the references to a number (at least 5) of Toronto places that are actually within a 15 minute walk from where I live. It’s awesome. I played the PS3 8-bit Scott Pilgrim game for 2 nights, beat it on all 4 characters and got them $9999.99 each. I’ve yet to see the movie, waiting for Z to read the volumes before we see it….but I may have to see it despite her lack of motivation to be a perfectionist and witness the universe in the chronological order that the products were released. Yeah….I’m the odd one, I know.

Anyways, the 6 volumes are a masterpiece. There are some parts where I’m totally like Scott Pilgrim.


and other parts where I’m intrigued about his character. He’s mysterious, as are many of the characters in the graphic novel. I find him innocent and charming (in his way), trying to forget the bad decisions he’s made the the bad parts of the person he is. Trying to do right despite being a bit of an idiot, trying to be good and change for Ramona. It’s really a “coming of age” story for Scott Pilgrim when you get past all the sillyness, video games, and hilarious absurdities.

I remember reading this (below) in Volume 1 in literally LOLing. I mean, I say “lol” a lot but I’d say that I rarely do it when I’m alone..but this…this is when I knew this Scott Pilgrim thing was just for someone like me:


Again. Sooo me. Even the way he speaks…

What I find somewhat perplexing is the love of all these women in his world. Despite being a bit of a goof, he’s got the adoration of Knives Chau, the long time infatuation of Lisa Miller, a previous relationship with Kim Pine, a previous relationship with Envy Adams, and a relationship with Ramona Flowers. Maybe he’s just really handsome/cute looking “in real life” though not artistically captured in the graphic volume…which I realize is an absurd statement in itself because…you know, everything’s fictional and (until the movie), everything existed in the graphic novel.

I can understand why the girls all like him:
Scott Pilgrim shows Knives a world she’s not accustomed too, much like the Aladdin-Jasmine relationship from Disney’s Aladdin (1992). Man I’m such a girl. Anyways, Knives is just…intrigued by the crazy world Scott’s from and wants to experience this whole new world with him. Again, I’m such a girl.

Lisa Miller is best friends with Scott only to have him fall for another girl, Kim Pine. He’s completely unaware of these deep feelings she has and he never really realizes what he means to her. Years later, Lisa’s probably thinking how Scott was “the one that got away”….well, not quite, it’s high school. But I can understand her wish to have an unrequited love return her feelings, even after so many years.

Kim Pine obviously had/has a connection with Scott when they were young but probably became a bit bitter and angry regarding how her relationship with Scott ended. Again, it’s Scott being an idiot…selfish and a child…but he was young. And stupid. Honestly, I didn’t care for her character much until her departure in chapter 5 as well as her support in chapter 6. Of all the characters…well, women…in the series, I like her the best. Realistic and grounded, sarcastic, brutally honest, intelligent….she looks like she hates the world but I can see a very warm character in her, albeit a bit bitter given some of her life experiences. Wait a sec…I just realized (after proof-reading) that I described liking her for reasons and characteristics that describe me! That must be a form of…self incest or something…Maybe I like her because I see similarities…I’ll have to give this character more thought…

Envy Adam. He might be the only one that really knew the original her. The Natalie V. in her and not the public Envy that the world knows. Well, he should know her…it seems his memory is, as always, a bit of a failing of his. His interpretation of events clearly bias themselves towards his benefit. She’s still attracted to him because he’s the ground in her high flying world.

Ramona Flowers. She’s obviously had some bad experiences with boys in the past, they’ve treated her poorly though she’s treated them equally as bad. Cheated on some of them, left them for other guys that “walk by”. She’s looking for someone who will stick with her mess of a life, someone who won’t hurt her, a nice guy. She’s a bit annoyed when she finds out Scott cheated on her…or…specifically on Knives for her. She expected better and that’s why she’s with him. And that’s why they stay together…because by the end of the volumes, Scott’s more mature and still genuinely a nice guy…

Now, why he likes them. Or why he should. Or shouldn’t.
Knives. Shouldn’t. Rebound girlfriend. Not real…Scott’s an idiot here.
Lisa Miller. Should. His teenage best friend. She’s totally in love with him, he’s just too stupid to realize it. There probably should have been something there. Or specifically, there should be (kudos to you if you got that).
Envy Adams. Should. She’s hot now. Shouldn’t. But a celebrity…don’t do it Scott, it’s a trap! Too much hassle.
Ramona Flowers. Should…NOT. She’s mysterious…I liked her a lot too but the more you read, the more high maintenance she becomes, the more baggage she has, and the better…
Kim Pine turns out to be. Scott SHOULD be with Kim Pine. That’s the girl I’d choose. <3 Honestly, I'm bit more intrigued by the personalities of the girls, their point of view, personalities and character. Well Scott's fun and similar to me, I'm afraid he's simply a bit too unrealistic as a human to empathize with. The girls are different though, they're realistic, well developed, they each have their own spot light and defining moments. I love Scott Pilgrim's precious little life (kudos to you if you got that too). I’m envious for all the amazing women in his life that love his stupid ass. He’s a socially retarded, socially stunted, immature, forgetful, selfish, boy. But he’s genuinely nice (or, he tries to be), he’s childish, innocent, believes smoking is evil, doesn’t drink (or claims not to). There are similarities as well as differences with his character and my own. I find it easy to be placed in his shoes and make the decisions he’s made but difficult to understand them. It’s…confusing. Identifiable but not identifiable at the same time.

What can I say about this graphic novel…it’s like a video game-highschool-Dawson’s Creek/One Tree Hill/Gilmore Girls/The O.C./<insert other highschool show I’ve watched and enjoyed>

I’m a sucker for love stories. I love realistic ones. Well, realistic characters. I enjoy empathizing with them. Being sucked in their world and watching/analyzing their decisions. Characters like these are as believable as any real person to me if I can understand their feelings. The moment I can’t understand them or their decisions, I dislike them. They aren’t realistic. And that’s when I stop being interested. Note: It’s okay to disagree with their decisions, as long as they’re made somewhat rationally. When a relationship simply does not make any sense <insert random O.C. relationship>, and I can’t even understand it, much less agree with it, that’s when I stop watching/reading.

/wrote so much on Scott Pilgrim….I really really hearted this book (kudos to you if you got that too). I think it changed the way I wrote the last two posts. I felt passion again, after so long and wrote a post worthy of my site.

The (2) real reasons why I couldn’t be a designer

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 11:58 pm

1. I’m sensitive. I don’t take criticism too well…bad criticism can get be down, depressed, etc. I don’t handle constructive criticism too well either, or even compliments. Basically: I don’t want to be told what you think of me or my work, good or bad. I’m paranoid that I think that if I get compliments, it could be genuine or it could be an act towards letting my guard down so that someone could take advantage. Paranoid much? (that’s me talking to myself).

The real reason that I could never be a designer is:
2. I’m arrogant and I have too much pride. I take a lot of pride in my work, I’m pixel perfect with design, I try to keep my code clean, I do a lot of the little things most people ignore/don’t care about…because I care about everything I do (that I care about). If that makes sense…

But the thing with design, that’s so different from development, is that design is subjective. I could do my best work, something I’ve worked hard in and take pride in, show it to someone and they can say they don’t like it. And it’s their right. But I can’t take it. I can’t handle when the awesome stuff I’ve done…isn’t awesome in someone else’s eyes. Now, that’s life, I should get used to it. The problem is that I had done design for years now. I’d been an artist most of my life, been naturally talented (not enough to be professional). And then I’d have joe schmo <insert lame banking desk job&th; saying my stuff was no good. Pissed me off. Who the F*** are you to tell me you don’t like my stuff?!

.
. (time passes)
.

I’m looking up “design is subjective” in Google…and it’s telling me Good design is not subjective. And you know what, I believe that. Meaning a lot of things:

      1. Maybe my designs in the past weren’t that good. Despite my pride and hard work, maybe I wasn’t looking objectively. Maybe there was too much of my pride in my work and not enough skill/talent.
      2. Maybe joe schmo was right all along. Maybe my designs weren’t good enough that they weren’t “good design”. Which means a lot of things:
        1. Despite some natural talent/skill, without hard work and formal training/education, I could never be great
        2. I made the right choice giving up design a couple years ago and focusing on development, which I have to say, the ol’ brain enjoys. And I take more pride in dev because less people do/understand dev than they can/do design. Well, I imagine….that last statement is not backed up by any facts >_>

I’ll leave design to the professionals. The ones that read about design, the ones that blog and tweet about it, the ones that do research outside of work, the ones with textbooks on design, the ones that are formally trained/educated in that area (and I can only think of one person like that, he sits near me at work).

I’ll leave development to the professionals too. The ones that read about development, the ones that blog and tweet about it, the ones that do research outside of work, the ones with textbooks on development, the ones that are formally trained/educated in that area. Wait, that’s me :D (and yeah, I re-wrote and set that whole paragraph up…to prove/show that I’m a professional developer….boo-yeah). Like settin’ up my own jokes. Your mom.

/realizing this post has a lot of attitude and fun in it….I honestly have to thank the Scott Pilgrim books, they gave me a bit of “attitude in writing” inspiration.


that is SO me. especially eating the birthday cake.

Original image from Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe Vol. 5

warrenshea.com, warrenshea, and Google Chrome

Sunday, August 15th, 2010 at 5:19 pm

I’ve decided to start trying to use Google Chrome a bit more, give it a chance as my default browser over FireFox.

There are quite a few interesting things (PROs)
1. typing words into the address bar performs a Google Search is one of them…that’s friggin awesome.
2. the UI is smaller, about 1/2 in size.
3. it’s faster
4. it’s seems to Crash less. Firefox has been crashing, for no reason, lately. It’s annoying!

CONs
1. No FireFTP, FireFox Developer Toolbar…need to find equivalents or something

Also, my site currently doesn’t render so well in Chrome. I have to do some debugging….which I’m doing right now!

I just learned about CSS Hacks for IE8 and Chrome. I knew them for IE and IE6…

#footer-container {
_margin-top:-214px; /* for IE6 */
*+margin-top:-214px; /* for IE7 */
margin-top:-212px\0/; /* for IE8 */
}
body:nth-of-type(1) #footer-container { /* for Chrome */
margin-top: 0px;
}

Damn….on my list of things to learn:
CSS3
HTML5
jQuery
ASP.NET 4.0

It’s difficult staying current, especially staying current on so many languages/techniques. Like I told my co-worker, being a jack of all trades does not work as a professional. You have to pick 1 or 2 things and devote yourself to that…now…what do I devote myself to? I don’t know….

I like being a jack of all trades :'(

Instinctive auto-clicking – 1, Warren – 0

Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 1:50 pm

I wanted to update one of my WordPress plugins (Site Stats) and when I went to updates, saw the words “update automatically” and impulsively clicked it.

It actually updated my WordPress 3.0.1 code….so the site you see how is with regular WordPress 3.0.1, not my WordPress 3.0.1.warren modified code.

The RSS/blog section on the right is messed up, the source is messed up, there are <p> tags and <br />s don’t stack…LOOK at what happens to 4 dots! …. ! that’s fugly.

Need to go home and fix…in 3 hours…grrrr!

PHP > ASP.NET? + SWFObject + Google Javascript Libraries API

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 9:15 pm

Actually…I’m not entirely convinced of the above statement (PHP > ASP.NET). I just know that within the last week, I was building something in ASP.NET. Today I was building something in PHP. Both were simple CRUDs…actually, more like C(reate) R(etrieve) U(pdate)s…(btw, the D(elete) is the last one). And PHP was so much easier to develop in, a bit harder to debug (my errors consisted of: Parse error on line: #) but….everything is just so much faster and simpler!

Even with drag and drop controls, Visual Studio design view, etc…I found it more fun and easier to develop in PHP.

Anyways, it was good to develop in both and stay away from ASP Classic.

I developed some good PHP today, finished what I needed to do. Back to my .NET project!

Man…I walked home today and thought of 2 other things to blog about but I can’t remember them now that I’m at home >:( I’ve got some defective RAM and the only ROM I came across was the Royal Ontario Museum.

OMG i just spent like, 20 minutes putting that button in…the reason was that this google page:
http://code.google.com/apis/libraries/devguide.html#swfobject has some code,
load request: google.load(“swfobject, 2.2″);
but they forgot 2 quotes, it should be
load request: google.load(“swfobject”, “2.2”); !

DAMN YOU GOOGLE! HELP ME OUT AND FRUSTRATE ME AT THE SAME TIME ! If you weren’t the best (minus Wave and Talk), I’d hate you! But no…I (would) still love (to work for) you.

/malnourished. will develop for food.