Archive for ‘News’

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Polls Open: Halo 3 ODST Contest

September 17th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

The time has come. Cast your vote below for your favorite ODST-themed screenshot. As you can see, we had quite a few entries for this contest. Polls will be open until noon EDT on Sept. 22. The winning prize will be shipped out a few hours after that.

Click the images to embiggen. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Contest – Halo 3: ODST

September 2nd, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

ODST

Welcome to the Official Reclaimer Halo 3: ODST Contest! Up for grabs this time around is a free copy of Bungie’s latest title, complete with an unlock code for Sgt. Johnson in Firefight mode. All you have to do to enter for your chance to win is submit an ODST-themed screenshot from Halo 3 – either from the campaign or from multiplayer – by Sept. 16th. That’s two weeks from the time of this posting. Fire up Halo 3, set up the best screenshot possible, and then email it as an attachment to reclaimercomic@gmail.com by midnight (EDT) on Sept 16, with Reclaimer Halo 3: ODST Screenshot Contest in the subject line. From there, I will open up the submissions to a community vote. The screenshot that garners the most votes will win a brand-new copy of Halo 3: ODST with Sgt. Johnson.

So, just to recap:

What: Your ODST screenshots (limit one per person)
When: Submit by 2400 (EDT) on Sept 16th
How: Email your shots to reclaimercomic@gmail.com with Reclaimer Halo 3: ODST Screenshot Contest in the subject line
The Prize: Halo 3: ODST and Sgt. Johnson

And if I can land some additional prizes in the meantime, then I’ll add those to the prize pool and open the field to runner-up prizes.

What are you waiting for? Start taking screenshots!

Edit: I really didn’t think this needed to be stated explicitly, but in case the above instructions weren’t clear enough, the screenshots you submit MUST be one of your own, not one you “borrowed” from a site like IGN or TeamXbox. In other words, you yourself have to have taken the shot from one of your own campaign missions, multiplayer or custom games, or Forge settings. Why would you think it would be fair for you to benefit from someone else’s work? Submitting a screenshot that is not yours will automatically and permanently get you removed from contention from this and all future Reclaimer contests. No exceptions. Consider yourselves warned.

johnson

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Website Tweaks

September 1st, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

Observant Reclaimer fans may notice that the site looks slightly different this morning. The latest version of the ComicPress theme was officially released yesterday, so I spent some time last night (and early this morning) porting the site layout to the new theme. Hopefully, this will be the last time I have to make a major revision like this, since future ComicPress updates will not, in all likelihood, overwrite any of my customizations.

Most of the changes are on the backend and will, therefore, be all but invisible to you—but they go a long way toward making management of the Reclaimer website much easier for me. What you will notice, however, are a couple of minor visual updates on the front page. For starters, the sidebars, comic, and post entries all have boxes around them, with some background shading near the top. For Firefox users, the boxes have these classy rounded corners; not so much for IE users. (Yet another good reason to switch over to Firefox, if you haven’t already.) There is also a “Related Posts” lists with comic and blog entry to make it easier for readers to find similar content throughout the site, and the new comic nav menu features a “Random Comic” button.

The comic nav menu also now features a “Buy Print” button. I’m going to experiment with this a bit, but readers who want a copy of a specific day’s comic to hang on their wall can now purchase a copy. The purchase price will primarily cover cost of materials and service to print that page and shipping costs. If you’d like a print, just click the button and place your order.

I’m quite impressed with the changes in this latest version of ComicPress, and I’m looking forward to seeing how much time it saves me in the future.

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iPhone Wallpaper

August 22nd, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

Yesterday, I whipped up a quick wallpaper image for those of you who have an iPhone. Feel free to download and enjoy. I’ll be playing around with colors and format a bit over the next few days, and I’ll update this post with any additional versions I create.

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tweetmeme on Reclaimer

August 19th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

The boys over at IntenseDebate have added a new plugin to their commenting system for the tweetmeme service. What this does is allow for a very easy way for readers to retweet a blog post (or, in this case, also a comic post) and promote some of their favorite reading. You should now see at the top of the commenting area, a little green ‘retweet’ button with a counter before it. Clicking on this will automatically update your Twitter stream with a retweet for that particular post.

If you enjoy Reclaimer (and hey, why else would you be here reading this?), then please take just a second and a mouseclick to promote Reclaimer to your Twitter followers. The first time you click it, you’ll probably have to give tweetmeme permission to access your Twitter stream so it can automatically post that retweet and all future ones. Your retweets mean greater publicity for Reclaimer!

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Update

August 6th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

Just a quick update for those of you wondering what’s happened to me:

I had every intention of bringing Reclaimer back onto a three times weekly schedule this week, but apparently fate had other plans for me. I’ve been suffering under illness this week and have spent the better part of the last several days curled up on the couch trying to determine how badly I want to die. Fortunately, as of this writing, I’m starting to feel a little better, but it’s not going to be enough for me to have something ready for tomorrow. Sorry, gang. Them’s the breaks. Hopefully, I’ll be back to feeling like my usual self by Monday. Just continue to bear with me as I get my health back.

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Riding the Bungie Day Gravy Train

July 9th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

Wow. Traffic to Reclaimer yesterday was the best I’ve seen in quite some time.

stats

My best guess for the spike is the extra visibility from Bungie’s front page due to Bungie Day events on Tuesday. I can live with that. Thanks to urk for pointing people my way, and thanks to everyone who visited (and left comments).

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Delays

June 29th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

One of the downsides of owning and operating a farm is that weekends are typically spent on upkeep and maintenance. Unfortunately, this past weekend was no exception. I’m working on a special presentation for the 200th comic, and I just didn’t have enough time this weekend to complete it. I’m playing with some new things, so the learning curve has slowed me down a little. Hopefully, the final product will be worth the extra time and effort. I’d like to still get the comic out today but don’t be too surprised if you don’t see it until Wednesday. In the meantime, help yourself to the comic archives and stop in on the forum for a chat.

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Driving Drums

June 19th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

There is a Reclaimer comic forthcoming today, but in the meantime, I need some help. I’m looking for a good music track, something that’s just drums but with a driving beat. You remember the drum rhythm from Battlestar Galactica during those brief flash-forward sequences that gave the little previews of the upcoming episodes? I want something like that, only longer, minimum of one minute. Anyone have any recommendations?

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Video Editing Machine

June 13th, 2009 | by Jim
Posted In: News

Some of you know that I recently acquired a new desktop computer that I’ve set aside to be my dedicated video capture and editing machine. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on rigging it out properly in order to get the most out of it. For those interested, here’s the basic technical specs:

Gateway LX6810-01
Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor10 Q8200 (2.33GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2 cache)8
Genuine Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit) with SP11
8192MB 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory (4×2048MB Modules)9
Hard Drive 640GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive with 16MB Cache4
8-Channel (7.1) High Definition Audio with Dolby Home Theater® Sound
Maximum 8GB
Systemboard with NVIDIA® nForce® 720i Chipset (MCP7A-D)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT120 Graphics with 1GB DDR2 Total Video Memory9

In addition, I added a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro video capture card and installed the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium bundle. All together, it’s one powerful machine.

My first capture tests started out well – the first four game videos I captured spooled off perfectly – but then the capture sequence started to lag, hang, and ultimately abort prematurely. A little research revealed that my hard drive wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the HD video being captured to it. Fortunately, this computer has built-in expansion slots for a RAID array, so my next task was to select and acquire two hard drives for that purpose. A little more research, and I chose two 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor disks, which clock in at 10,000 RPMs, 16MB cache, and 3Gb/s data transfer. A quick hot-swap, a RAID 0 config (128K stripe), and I suddenly have a VERY fast hard drive.

As I write, I’ve got Adobe Premiere capturing video footage, and so far there’s been no hesitation or problems. If all goes well, my computer will continue to function at a high rate, and I can really start to think about what I need to do to start work on a Reclaimer machinima.

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