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May 17 th , 2007 - MattBoySlim
Ok, good news and bad news. The good news is that when I sent a link to our new sketch to the gang from the Preston and Steve morning show on WMMR, one of the guys liked it so much that he put a link to it on their site! So far in the past few days it's gotten over 20,000 hits! The bad news is that if traffic continues like this, we will reach our monthly bandwidth limit before the end of the month. (Thank god he linked to the medium quality one). However, they're always putting new stuff up on their website and our link will be buried in a few days , so I expect the hits to drop off pretty significantly. We already had half the hits yesterday than we did the day before, so I guess I shouldn't be worried about it. Still, if we ramp up production and start making a lot of new thing and we get noticed like this again we may run into trouble in the future. Still, getting shut down because too many people wanna see our stuff is a problem I really can't complain about. We'll see! Anyway...neat!
May 14 th , 2007 - MattBoySlim
Time for another quarterly update to WSO, I guess. We hope to get the ball rolling on a few more projects soon, but we always hope, don't we? This time we have a pretty good Star Wars sketch entitled "Self Taught". It ended up being harder to pull off than I thought, but it works. We'll probably continue in a Star Wars theme for at least the next project. We might also do a semi-sequel to "No Buns" which seems to be popular with...um...people who know us. I hear some people at the Penn State Delaware County campus enjoy it as well. If that's the case, spread the word!
January 26th , 2007 - MattBoySlim
Ooo, yikes. It's been a helluva long time, huh? Well, I still haven't done anything with the review tapes or the Kegger 2K6 tapes. Or my photoblog, Two Foos. Or much of anything, really. I did finish my big project at work: a brand new Orientation Video for A Duie Pyle Trucking, which is neat, but not really all that relevant. Anyway, we sat down a few days ago and recorded some stuff for a quick re-dub sketch idea I had and it came together pretty nicely. Enjoy!
November 8th , 2006 - MattBoySlim
We got some good stuff down on tape, show-wise. I'll get to editing it together...once I'm done doing prep work for this year's premiere drinking event, The Marcellus/Waldron Christmas Kegger 2006! In honor of the impending mayhem, I slapped together a video that John McGarvey took at 2005's party. Again, it comes in both High Quality and Medium Quality flavors of Flash Video. I think now the plan is still to do a show full of reviews, etc. but to also split those reviews into separate articles that can be viewed individually on Pandar. That way you have a choice of watching the whole 20-30 min episode, or just the piece that interests you.
November 1st , 2006 - MattBoySlim
Well, it's been quite some time since I've put anything up here! The house stuff is finally starting to settle down...see for yourself here. I finally did something I've wanted to do with this site and uploaded a video review of Final Fantasy 12. It comes in both High Quality and Medium Quality flavors of Flash Video. Hopefully, this weekend we'll get together and film some square-table discussions on geeky stuff and do some various other nonsense I can cobble together into a show. That's the new idea, by the way...a strange sorta variety show consisting mostly of us talking about (reviewing) games, movies, etc. with some sketches and other funny stuff in between.
August 9th, 2006 - MattBoySlim
I cleaned a few things up around here today. The Pandar review indexes (indices?) are now arranged by date instead of alphabetical order. Stately Elm had suggested it months ago, and I now feel like it's a good idea. We may have some new reviews coming in, so I wanted the index to match the order of the main Pandar page. Yes, I said new reviews. Video reviews if I have any say about it...which it turns out I do. However, that would require that my PC not be out of order, which seems to be its natural state these days. Also, it would require time at home, which is now at a premium what with the big move a week and a half away. I could probably sit at my PC and edit videos while Jenn packs all our stuff, but I enjoy being happily married and would like to stay that way. So, video reviews will come...just not for a while. Probably a month or two.
August 8th, 2006 - MattBoySlim
There. Now the WSO HQ index looks like the other ones. Since this news stuff is probably pretty boring to most people, I'm moving it here. This way the main focus is on our projects and not on my rambling, though it's still easily accessible via that "News!" button on the left there. If you see it missing on a page, please let me know. It's a major pain to add it to every page and I probably missed a bunch.
The Flash Video version of Hamstah Gangstaz is encoding as I speak...or type. Whatever. Since HG is old business, it'll be housed in the Omega Basement. I'm only doing a high quality version for now. If the bandwidth usage gets to be too much, I'll do a cheaper version or let Google Video host it or something.
Wow! Now that it's done encoding, I gotta say it turned out pretty good. The "de-interlacing" of the new footage could've turned out better, but I did what I could with the tools at hand. Most of the audio ended up pretty good, though, which was a surprise.
August 4th, 2006 - MattBoySlim
Wow, two consecutive days of content?! Unbelievable, but true. It's a quick audio project Tim and I threw together one night for his class. Read more and listen to the DCCC Commercial here!
I've decided that since the WSO cartoon has been shelved for now and we have a few possible projects on the horizon, the main Waffle Squadron Omega Headquarters page will showcase those various projects. Until now, that kind of stuff would've been moved off into the Omega Basement section, but I can't really have all our new content being piled up on a page that isn't the first one people see. And since these new projects are being forged with the same creative energy that spawned the original WSO idea, I feel that they're closely related. As soon as we get 4 or 5 completed things on here, I'll rework this page to make it look and function more like The Omega Basement and The House of Pandar.
This bloggish version will still be close to hand in the guise of a "News" section. The Omega Basement will continue to exist as a repository for our old projects (e.g. Real MFG's) and personal events (e.g. The 2K5 Xmas Kegger), etc. Hopefully, we'll someday rework the entire site using some sort of more automated thing so that when I change one of the menus on the left, I don't have to go and change it on every single page individually. I probably should've done that from the start, but I obviously don't know that much about creating web pages so I had no idea where to begin. I'm lucky it looks as good as it does now.
August 3rd, 2006 - MattBoySlim
Yeah, we all knew that wasn't going to happen. Still, things are a-brewin' as always. One thing that managed to struggle and grope it's way out of the usual slacker purgatory commonly known as "What A Great Idea" is a short film I slapped together called "A Right Royal Smiting". You can currently attempt to enjoy it in the crappy picture quality forced on me by YouTube.com. Expect to see it on Google Video at some point, too. In the meantime, I've whipped up my own Flash Video version of it that you can check out here: (in either High and Medium quality).
Finally, some content that's totally kid safe while still being funny! Yeah, note to parents...don't let your kids run around this site unsupervised. There's a pretty good chance they'll run across something scarring, emotionally. Especially if they like Hamstahz. Actually, I guess Hamstah Gangstaz is the only really concentratedly awful thing on this site. ...so far. We tend not to censor ourselves, though.
A whole lot of great ideas are coming to the forefront these days...just in time for me to not have any time to execute them due to the fact that I'm moving into an actual house in a few weeks. Still, I may have one or two more tricks up my sleeve that I may post later this week. Stay tuned.
April 22nd, 2006 - MattBoySlim
So, yeah. It's been a while. Work on the WSO cartoon has kind of ground to a halt due to a number of conflicting circumstances. Anyone interested in lending any assistance, artistic or otherwise, to what is still destined to be a legendary cartoon, please email us. In the meantime, we're working on a followup to the indescribable Hamstah Gangstaz. Also, check out the new Cave Story review on Pandar. Expect more reviews soon and there's a possibility you might not be disappointed.
March 7th, 2006 - MattBoySlim
And so the icy grip of Winter sinks its frigid talons into our brains, dulling our creativity and draining away what little motivation we had in the first place. The theme song is coming along. The main guitar and vocal tracks have been laid down, and now I'm trying to re-learn piano to add some extra flavor. We still haven't taught ourselves enough Flash to make a passable cartoon, but we'll get there. Keith has made an awesome drawing of a bunch of us standing around in uniform. Once we get that scanned in and colored we'll make a wallpaper out of it or something. It serves as a great example of what will be the final character design.
As you can see, I've made a few updates to this page. I got that news ticker at the top working a day or so after my last post. There's some new category selections on the left there in an attempt to organize the content before too much is created. Also, I'm hoping that this'll kick my butt into gear to get back to working on this. Coming soon: Character Bios, more Downloadable Media and an About page for those new to the Waffle Squadron concept.
January 8th, 2006 - MattBoySlim
The House of Pandar is as complete as it's going to get. It's now full of as much old stuff as I feel like converting and is ready for new stuff. I made a few minor updates to this page to include links to the old construction page and the wallpapers. This is officially the end of Phase 1. Phase 2 includes creating a theme song and learning how to make a relatively passable cartoon in Flash. For a good idea of what is possible with little-to-no Flash knowledge, check out PvP's Blamimations. I think this is what we're kinda going for...with maybe a little more motion. Not much, though.
I'll move all of this bloggy-type stuff off to an archive or something soon. From here on in, this page will only contain news and files relating to the cartoon and the whole WSO idea. It will also have links to new stuff on the other sites (see the links to the right). Pandar will contain features and reviews. The Omega Basement will contain whatever else we feel like putting up that doesn't really have anything to do with WSO directly or isn't a review or anything. I'd like to get some sort of news ticker working in that horizontal bar up there where links to the newest stuff across all three sites would display. We'll see.
January 4th, 2006 - MattBoySlim
After almost a month and a half of struggling with Dell technical support, I finally have a working notebook...but for how long? Longer than 12 days this time would be good. So, this may (hopefully) be the last of the blog-ish still-under-construction posts. You'll see that all of the section links on the bottom left are now active. The pages to which they link will fill up with the rest of the old reviews over the next few days.
My cousin Ed (D@n's brother) told me a few days ago that The House of Pandar is looking weak. He's not referring to the shoddy architecture (which would be well within his rights) but to the content. And he's absolutely right. For a review site to have only one or two articles that are less than three years old is unsatisfactory. I've spent too much time converting old stuff and railing against Dell to write new stuff. Ed has offered to write up some stuff, which should help. I myself need to get on the ball, stop acting like a greedy, lazy contractor and finish my job.
Still, I can't do it on my own. If any of you has an opinion on anything and you feel like writing it down, send it to me and I'll slap it up here. I do mean anything. I mean, I'm gonna make a Wawa review section at some point to review new sandwiches, for crap's sake! If you see a movie you feel strongly about, write it up real quick in an email instead of the forums. I'll probably start making threads for every review so we can still discuss as normal...linkable from the review itself, naturally. Let me know what you think.
December 29th , 2005 - MattBoySlim
Sorry for the tumbleweed fest. I've been having massive problems with my laptop. If you're desperate for more info on that (for some reason), you can read about it here. Otherwise, I suggest you visit The Omega Basement and check out my new piece on The Marcellus/Waldron Christmas Kegger 2005. It's an in depth look at the party of the year.
In other news, HOLY CRAP we've been BLOGGED by Slashfood! That officially means that someone other than me and a few people from the forums actually looked at this page!!! It's exciting and disturbing at the same time. To anyone new, keep an eye on this space. Things will hopefully get pretty interesting soon. And by soon, I mean probably not until Spring 2006. Still, check out our forums in the meantime and introduce yourselves!
December 1st , 2005 - MattBoySlim
The House of Pandar is starting to flesh out a little. Check it out, if you like.
November 14th, 2005 - MattBoySlim
There's a new article on The House of Pandar by me, MattBoySlim. Check out our adventures in awful sodas!
November 3rd, 2005 - MattBoySlim
Well, it looks like today is the day this bold, ambitious venture takes it's first wobbly steps into the intimidating digital world. Let's just hope it doesn't immediately fall on it's face and take a dump in it's pants. I'm optimistic, though.
Right now my first priority is to get the three sites up and running to a point where we can just post new content and not have to change a million things. If you'll notice, though, only 2 of the 3 sites exist as of now. "The Basement" should be pretty easy to whip up real quick. That's where any other content that has nothing to do with Waffle Squadron Omega and isn't a review or column or article goes. Like the "Dr. Poopenstein and the Magnificent Paper Caper" web comic and Mighty Doom's "Real MFG's". All the old stuff that we're keeping has to be converted to the new style, which may take a while.
Priority two, then, is to learn enough Flash to create a test animation for the show. Character designs have to be set and I have to create the theme song that I have in my head. Priority two will be a larger challenge than I make it out to be so it may take quite some time to accomplish. Still, although it may not happen until early 2006, we all have so many great ideas for this Flash show that it will happen. It must happen.
In the meantime, check out the only thing I've converted to this new, hip style...my old RetroGaming Reviews. I'm still particularly proud of the Bionic Commando one.
What's New On:
The House of Pandar
The Omega Basement