Stray Dog Strut

The more observant of you may notice the new header=)

Just a little something I knocked together this afternoon to start the ball rolling on the changes i’m making to my blog. I originally intended to imitate the style from the title screen of Cowboy Bebop Session 2 (shown below) and although I made the whole image from scratch (no 3rd party graphics), I’ve made a few modifications for simplicity. I feel it’s time to finally put the Sympathy for the Devil moniker to bed and match up with my blog address (and yes, I know about the double ‘T’!!).

The biggest trouble was the title text as I couldn’t find a Cowboy Bebop font (and it seems others have had the same trouble), so in the end I went with “Century” which had all the nice Serif tails like they have, which I then bevelled and then rasterized before hacking it to bits with the eraser. The end result is close enough to please me=) For the Japanese characters I cheated a little and got the text from Amazon.jp before formatting it to get the look I wanted.

Once I’d uploaded, I had trouble getting the new image to sit right and it turns out a little tweaking of the CSS code was necessary. While it’s supposedly not necessary to specify a height for the header (in this case in the #outer-wrapper section), I found that when I tried to keep my nice (suitably recoloured) gradient edging, I got about a five pixel gap between my image and the edging graphic. The solution turned out to be to declare a height for the header LESS the height of the edging graphic. I’m new to CSS scripting though so let me know if you see something funny in your browser;-)

I *may* make some small changes in the future if I feel the need. I’m in two minds about the right side as I had originally intended to put a graphic there but the only Ein picture I’ve drawn (ages ago) isn’t quite what I wanted. I’m quite pleased with the paw prints though (created very simply using the custom shape tool in Photoshop).

More changes to follow.

I’ve been leaping, swinging and rewinding my way through The Sands of Time recently (I think all that talk of Braid before got me inching for some time-manipulation shenanigans). This has also got me all excited AGAIN about the new Prince of Persia with it’s oh so easy on the eyes art style and mouth-watering new acrobatics.

I’ve been watching some of the development vids again. I was previously a bit skeptical about the whole not-dying thing (thanks to the Prince’s companion Elika) but the developers comments on moving away from an “artificial penalty” for death are understandable, and seeing Elika in action is pretty impressive: she really does seem to move around the Prince constantly without getting in the way and generally seems a lot more ‘aware’ than some NPCs.

I’m really looking forward to the new abilities like sliding down vertical surfaces with the Gauntlet and roof-running. The climbing seems a little more free form and I like how the prince jams his fingers into cracks just like you do in RL rock-climbing. The creatures crawling down the cliffs look fantastic=)

Before all that, I still have quite a bit to do really: I still have the trilogy to complete before I even think about stepping up to the next gen iteration, but i’m making swift progress after my MORE THAN A YEAR long hiatus=S I’m almost finished The Sands of Time though – blitzing my way through enemies with some pretty effective use of walls and encountering new surprises in every location – then next for my feast, I have Warrior Within and The Two Thrones awaiting patiently for my attention=) I’m quite keen to get a bit of PoP on the PSP too now I think about it…

Ah the goddamn pleasure and pain inducing PSP. I love it but I have the distinct feeling that I would be happier with a DS as problems with glare mean the PSP is nigh unusable except indoors, underground or in the evenings. Possibly the DS is no better? Habboi will have to confirm;-) Still the PSP provides a good gaming fix on my way to work these days, and i’ve recently started using it (albeit a bit clumsily) as an eReader. I’m on chapter 15 of The War of The Worlds, with the Martians now on London’s doorstep=)

I learned today that my three year old nephew has just got PS3. Well, his dad has, but seeing as my nephew is the Grand Theft Auto addict of the house he’s claimed GTA IV now as well. Yes, he’s three years old and keeps asking for “the bad man.” What are we doing to these kids??=)

As for myself, I may put a plan or two into action soon to lay my hands on my own console of Sony’s – hopefully before the release of PoP and LittleBigPlanet although neither is very far off=S

Mmm I smell a barbecue….

I meandered on over to Jazzmess today – a site that in no small way inspired me to start my own bebop fansite (eh, you call this a fansite?!) – and I was greeted with some rather disturbing, albeit slightly dated, news:

Fox is making a live action Cowboy Bebop film and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Keanu Reeves* is linked to the role of Spike.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

*Please note that I am myself quite a fan of Keanu in many films – The Matrix, Constantine etc – just NOT for this role.