Louistrations

I've brought the gallery pages up to date. You'll be able to find some pictures that are new to the site. I could tell you which ones, but where's the fun in that?

Recently I managed to score an invite to an exclusive Nintendo 3DS Preview Event in London.

If you have any interest in the handheld you will probably already know all of the details, and I doubt that you'd be able to learn anything new from me. The event staff were more specialised in the knowledge of event planning, so it's not like I could really ask any questions myself. Regardless, I thought I'd write up my impressions of my short time with the device. At least it'll be something new to post on my website, which seems to be suffering from a lull in new content at the moment while I feverishly work on completing my own video game.

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There's a guest comic made by yours truly over at School Bites today! If you haven't already read this wonderful comic by Holly G then please do so! The comic updates really frequently so there's plenty of pages to sink your fangs into!

Just a brief note to say that I'm going to be removing my old websites (pre 2003) from the internet. These sites are so antiquated that they keep breaking and no longer display correctly in modern web browsers.

The websites affected include Holly, Charcoal and The Terrafirmapin. The content from these websites are in the process of being integrated into the main Louistrations website.

My old comics are already available for viewing on the 'Archive' page.

There's something that I've always wanted, but never really known the name of. A couple of members on the deviantArt forums kindly identified what I was looking for - and that's a lightbox!

A lightbox appears to be the name given to several products, but basically what I was looking for was a backlit drawing board. There were several that I found, but this is the one that I settled on. An inexpensive A4 lightbox by Eyebright.


Aside from the obvious uses such as being able to work in the dark, the lightbox allows me to see through ordinary paper as if it were tracing paper. Which is great! Tracing paper is horrible!!

Normally I would ink over pencil lines, which can become a little messy and ultimately means losing the original pencil drawing. This allows me to ink directly onto a separate piece of paper.

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This was drawn back in 2002, it was part of the background used on a comic. Mark Speight was a personal hero of mine, which is noticeable from how I gave my comic character Charcoal a schoolgirl crush on him. I used to watch every episode of SMart, it's a real shock to learn that he's gone.

I won't be posting any details of his last few months here, but you shouldn't have any trouble finding them on news websites.

Just as shiny objects attract the attention of crows, so does the appeal of a shiny gadget attract mine.

It's not an iPhone - that has yet to be released here. It's just an iPod touch. I was sure I would be buying an iPhone when it came out here, but after the announcement last month that the European iPhones will still use the EDGE network, it's made the iPhone fairly dead on arrival. Which is a shame. It would be crazy to enter a £40 per month contract for something you can't use, then again, you have to take into consideration the whole shiny appeal.

Anyway, the iPod touch is probably better suited to me in hindsight. My mobile phone really only gets used to listen to my friend brag about his high-scores on Guitar Hero.

The iPod touch really is a wonderful device. It does everything you'd expect a media player to do, and does it very stylishly. But it was the Safari browser that really surprised, it's by far the best mobile browser I've used.

I'm just hoping they release cases for it soon. I've collected enough fingerprints on mine to start a small forensics lab.

When I saw this figurine when it was unveiled last year I knew I had it get it! It's a figurine of 涼宮ハルヒ Suzumiya Haruhi from 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the better anime shows out there. Produced by Max Factory it's 19cm tall and made in PVC. For a commercial figurine it's really well made and they've perfectly captured Haruhi's iconic pose. Well, I really like it anyway.

I'm not a big collector of models and figurines, in fact I only had a couple before this one. Although the do interest me, albeit not enough for me to spend a lot of money. Some of the resin models that are created are nothing short of amazing. Assembling and painting figurines from kits isn't something I can see myself doing, mainly due to my dislike of getting my fingers dirty.

On a side note, my camera can take some really nice photographs when it wants to! I bought it cheap in a closing down sale. If the camera didn't resemble a cinder block in both weight and aesthetics, and if it had a battery life longer than 5 minutes (no, really!); I'd probably go so far as saying it was the best camera in the world!

I recently drew some illustrations for a short story by Stephen J Wright entitled "The Goblin". It's a charming children's story following the mischievous antics of the last surviving goblin named "Glob" and his magically over-sized bat, "Butch".

Although I'm not really at liberty to post the story in its entirety, here are a couple of the drawings that I made. Due to tight time restrictions, I didn't have time to create detailed backgrounds.


If I recall correctly, the story was available to read at a library in Chester. I don't know any further details other than that. However, the author is apparently looking into publishing and planning a sequel, "The Return of the Glob". Zing!

The 24th of March marks Shutdown Day. Now, before you panic and head for the hills - this is not an apocalyptic doomsday, but rather a test of determination and willpower. The concept is simple; You leave your computer switched off for 24 hours.

A few years ago the very thought of a day without a computer would have horrified me. However, that was before I had to work on one. These days I'm more often than not involved in less technologically advanced activities such as reading and drawing.

Yes, I know.

What a beauty. It clocks in at 4 inches in length, a whole inch and a half longer than the regular sized Maoam.

And yes, it's been eatten. It didn't survive the time taken to transfer the photograph from my camera to my computer.

The question that I submitted has appeared on the Wii Everybody Votes Channel. Although, I surely can't be the only person to have submitted it?

Nonetheless, it's still awesome that it's up. The results are in tomorrow!

Tea for the win!!

My, how times change! I can remember the time when washing-up liquid came in a single variety; Mild green.

Today I had the opportunity to use a new Fairy liquid with the scent of pink grapefruit and garden mint. It just goes to show how luxurious modern day living is.

It's put all the joy and pleasure back into scrubbing dog puke out of the carpet.

Firstly, I could fill this blog post with an endless source of Wii-related puns and wordplay; But for everybody's sake, I'll wiifrain miiself. Although, with that being said my Wii Remote had it's moment of fame on the GoNintendo website purely for it's toilet humour.

After following every rumour and every insignificant news snippet regarding this console for the past two years; Wii has finally hit Europe, just 6 days after Japan. 6 days! I expect this was simply due to a mistranslation of 6 months.

I braved the December weather and picked up my Wii at the midnight launch. There were roughly 50 people waiting outside the store before the doors opened to let people in, one, at, a, time. All of the available Wii systems were pre-orders, so it was all fairly civilised.

Here's my Wii code if you're so inclined:

2713 - 5182 - 4035 - 8329

The Louistrations website has now been changed to UTF8 encoding. Although there should be no noticeable difference, it's possible I may have overlooked some parts of the site or database. Please let me know if you encounter any problems. Thank yooou!

Can you believe it? A comic convention practically at my doorstep in Lancaster! There's some absolute legends attending the convention that I'm dying to meet. Web comic artists that can actually make a living from their comic art!

All this is happening within walking distance! That is, it would be if it wasn't for the fact that I'll be somewhere off the African coast at the time. I can't go! It's such a rarity that I even leave Lancaster! I would have gone in an instant, but I paid for this trip a few of months back. That dear children is what's known as "Sod's Law". Write it down in your exercise books.

For those of you in the vicinity of Lancaster - which I know there are a few of you - you may as well go along! If not just to be able to mock and torment me when I get back.

This is taken from an OS X application named CocoaMySQL, an open source MySQL database management program.

Pressing this button flushes a user's privileges, hence, the image of users being flushed down the lavvy. Genius.

This morning my sister Holly (the real one) appeared on the BBC Radio Lancashire breakfast show, presented by Tony Livesey and Alison Butterworth.

Holly talks about her recent performance at the UK's most talented contest at the Tower Circus in Blackpool.

You can listen to a recording of the segment by clicking [here].

Cold weather they're having in hell at the moment.

My dear old computer is starting to show its age. Back in the year 2000 it was a top of the range Packard Bell iMedio with a 1 GHz processor, 256mb RAM and integrated DVD and CD-R drive. Although, it's debatable that it's the same computer! Parts have been gradually replaced and upgraded; the only surviving pieces of hardware from the original system include the floppy disk drive and a stick of RAM.

We've had some rough times: The DVD drive dying, the graphics card short-circuiting, the daily system overheat, the fried motherboard, the second DVD drive dying, the first "I hate DVD drives so I’m buying a standard CD drive" dying, the completely random system resets, and just recently, the third DVD drive dying. You little bugger.

I'm already looking around to find a successor for my computer, but today, my current computer receives an upgrade. An addition that will dramatically improve system performance.

My entry for Scary Go Round Idol has been posted along with the other entrants on the Scary Go Round website [here]. (I'm number 72)

I didn't make it into the group of runners up, but I appear to have been given a star of approval from John Allison. Hurrah!

The release date has finally arrived and I now have the currently Europe-only black Nintendo DS Lite.

42% smaller, 21% lighter and 100% less sister possession.

I can't declare that I'm a fan of football, I've never really seen the point of it. However, I can declare that I'm a fan of time off work, so c'mon Three Lions!

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to show the setup in the office for watching the World Cup. When a projector came back from being repaired, the unambiguous decision was to test it.

It worked.

One of my web hosts (powweb.com) are in the process of migrating all of their accounts to the Linux platform. My account is scheduled to be migrated on Monday, 26th June 2006.

The migration will affect the following areas: naut-cotic, Charcoal and The Terrafirmapin.

These websites will be inaccessible on this date, and probably for a couple of days afterwards. The main Louistrations web site will be unaffected.

My Mother appeared to be delighted with her Christmas present this year. It was a revolutionary plate scrubber that dispenses washing up liquid as you wash!

Or perhaps, she just didn't want to hurt my feelings.

Three years ago a bought a pack of fifteen Christmas cards to give to my friends. This is the third consecutive year I have used the same pack.

It's really magical! Each year I write the cards to my friends and there is always some left in the pack! Its magic I tell you, it must somehow be replenishing itself! It's the pack of cards that just keeps on giving!

I only hope that the Christmas magic continues, and that my friends don't realise that they're receiving the same Christmas card design each year.

Sorry to anybody who sent me an email recently and never received a response. My email account got swamped with spam emails.

There is now a feed back form that you can use to contact me without any fear of Vikings! You can access it by clicking on the "contact me" link at the foot of the website.

Muffin in examination: Vanilla flavoured chocolate chip muffin.

Texture analysis: Spongy, pleasantly moist.

Presentation: Beautifully formed, rich in colour.

Closing comments: Bloody good muffin. Consumption only resulted in minimal crumbs.

Total Score: 91/100
Muffin factor: 4.5

There are currently problems with Louistrations.com web sites. Hopefully everything will be working later today.

I made this a while ago and thought I'd share it. It's the Louistrations logo (to some extent) as a puzzle for Polarium on the Nintendo DS.

Use the password below to add it to your custom puzzles:

437 235 4622
471 037 7582
603 633 0551

But not a drop to drink! Well, actually there was. Next door kindly boiled water for us and filled thermos flasks so we could drink tea and coffee.

Anyway, photographs from ground zero have been posted after the jump.

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Sorry about the recent inaccessibility of the web site over the past few days. There were a few PHP problems that arose due to the web site being moved to a new server. Everything should now be back to normal.

The revised naut-cotic web site quietly launched a few weeks ago. Since then the website has been automatically updating with the three pages that have previously been available. The automatic updates appear to having been working fine and will hopefully continue to do so!

Today sees the first new page of the naut-cotic comic and the website is set to automatically update every Friday with a new page.

So there you go - regular updates at last! It took me longer than planned, but I eventually got there.

Website: naut-cotic.net

Spring is finally upon us! Spring is such a wonderful time of the year. The mornings are becoming lighter and the evenings are becoming longer! The trees have started to blossom and the flowers are now sprouting! The rain showers are becoming lighter and the sun is showing more often! But most importantly of all, the local ducklings are NICE AND CRISPY!

For the past five months I've been hooked on a little game called Animal Crossing. It's a simplistic game for the Nintendo GameCube that took 2 years longer to be released in Europe than the rest of the world. Not one single game has held me captivated for so long!

I don't really know how to explain the concept behind the game. You buy a house in a small village inhabited by different animals. You lead your life - all in real time - in which you shop, trade, converse and frolic with your animal friends.

Follow my adventures on the Animal Crossing thread on the Rumble Board.

The site has been rewritten again, but this time as a valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. The site displays without compromise on Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Konqueror. Huzzah! Maybe I can get some content added now!

The XML RSS feeds are now available for all you lazy people.

Preston bus station, dating from 1969, is one of the largest bus stations in Europe. Preston bus station is big enough inside to house at least three jumbo jets. Its a long trail down the rubber floorway if your bus leaves from the far end.

Preston Bus has a range of special tickets, Rambler, Day Tickets and the New Family and Friends Returns, that are designed to be convenient and to save you money.

Redevelopment is planned and Preston bus station is under threat of demolition.

They smell of plasticine.

At the base of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, a french man kindly made two of the biggest crêpes I have ever seen! They had chocolate sauce and tasted like crêpe! Delicious!

To my utter glee, Adam and Joe have released a DVD of "The Adam And Joe Show" featuring the best bits from their four series. The DVD features such epics as Toytanic, Chew Wants to be a Millionaire and the Bob Hoskins song.

Adam and Joe are comic geniuses. You should buy their DVD and force it upon generations of Grand Children.

Lately I've been going through a worrying amount of Maoam, mainly due to the 'buy one get one free' offer at Woolies. I went through 1800g of it last week, although I did share a large portion of it. Yes, even more worrying is the fact that everybody loves Maoam, with the cherry and raspberry flavours being the most sought after. I've not met a single person who has turned down Maoam.

Most worrying of all are the designs on the wrappers. Every single one features the Maoam man in some kind of suggestive pose with a fruit. Click here to see for yourself. Absolutely shocking!