Comics! BAT! And a recipe!

My webcomic, I haven't been working on it: Wikimapia, college, sleep, and plain old wasting time have taken tolls on it. Plus, I'm so ashamed of my art, too. It hasn't too much improved from a few years back.

Although I am trying to BAT again. Right now, if I can figure out the height of automatic doors (standard), I might be able to make something. Although I have closer pictures of both, here's Candidate #1:




Candidate 2:


(you may click for larger view on both, and yes, I turned Lightbox off)


Both are increasingly rare in real life, Super Kmart moreso (in fact, this particular specimen downsized, converting the grocery department into a Sears Outlet). I know automatic door heights, so using the odd SimCity scaling, I should be able to convert a reasonable facsimile of the facade and work from there. But which one?

Finally, I may have complained in the past that General Mills reformulated their "Milk and Cereal" bars, diluting the cereal with miscellaneous grains and God knows what other stuff to make it less like what it's supposed to be like.

But it's fairly easy to recreate the taste as it was: just follow the Rice Krispies Treats recipe, and substitute the cereal in question. Smash it down flat in the pan (breaking a few, I know), let dry, cut, spread icing (Pillsbury Supreme Classic White icing works well) on it, and enjoy.

Retro HTML

There's something about HTML-coded pages that makes me smile. It resembles a backlit magazine page (with one uniform font and a few pictures), super fast loading (a plus), and usually is packed with neat information.

The dark side of this is that HTML pages, especially amateur-designed ones, are packed with pictures everywhere, use garish colors, an obnoxious background, and (in some cases) music playing.

Examples: This what I like. But the main page of the previously linked webpage has EVERYTHING wrong with it (but no music).

Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins

(I posted this last September, but wanted to add an extra paragraph to it)

I recently was looking at an eBook of Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins, and was a bit disappointed. It outlines what Kmart did wrong: having terrible locations, rarely updating its stores, and ignoring Wal-Mart until it was way too late.

Well, some of the Amazon.com reviews says it reads like a high school research paper (or early college) as it tends to jump around between Kmart and Wal-Mart with Target as an afterthought. Despite the terrible decisions Kmart made (personally, pushing Big Kmart was a Big Mistake), it's really anti-Kmart, and makes Wal-Mart to be a far better retailer than it was even in 2003.

My uncle had always said that Kmart built far too many stores in Baton Rouge, about eight or nine(!) at its peak, until the bankruptcy, and these were all converted to Target or Wal-Mart. They did treat employees really well, giving my cousin (who worked at Kmart at one time) a few weeks of paid vacation despite only being an hourly employee. It pains me to think about what Lampert and his group did to Kmart, at first giving it a new logo (sadly, not the green-and-gray logo, which I prefer), even a new "Kmart Supercenter" logo before a recent slashing that did away with the grocery sections of many stores (that were left) and even sealing off the K-Café. On the other hand, I know I've seen advertising for Kmart in my local movie theater recently, of all things, and in my town, there's not a Kmart for 100 miles away (the local one closed in 1994).

Another thing that really bothered me about the book is it has a full paragraph on why Little Caesar's is a poor choice for Kmart.

Is it in Kmart’s best interest to commit to another five years with Little Caesar’s? Perhaps not. Explains Rob Gelphman of Gelphman Associates, “Little Caesar’s’ position is two pizzas for the price of one. Low cost is their stated value proposition—not quality, and certainly not taste. When everyone competes on price, it is almost impossible to move up and compete on quality, or performance, or functionality. You are stuck on price. Kmart is now looked at as the low-cost, low-quality leader. Having Little Caesar’s as a partner does not help.”

While that IS true for Caesar's, the fact is ALL fast food works this way. Wal-Mart had McDonald's in most of their stores at this time. Do you go to McDonald's for a really good hamburger, or is it because it's cheap? Clearly this woman is grasping at straws.

More on Kmart will be explored, but not here.

Carbonizer isn't dead

I haven't posted since September 26th, which is a relatively short time for many blogs (some may have a hiatus of up to a year, and then never quite post again after that) but I've become kind of less and less interested in Carbonizer! and more time pursuing other projects. One of the reasons is that I started to realize that Carbonizer started to become Two Way Roads II in several aspects, including a continual (yet subconscious) delusion that I actually HAVE followers.

- The webcomic I've been planning is still in planning (I made two strips, but wasn't satisfied with the art) and will focus more on wacky college hijinks rather than the wacky college hijinks+overarching story+sociopolitical commentary I've been planning. It probably won't bring anything new to the webcomic world, although it is designed for all environments: I can't be accused of Cerebus Syndrome because it's already built for that.

- You've probably heard of the death of Steve Jobs. An amazing visionary and creator of so many wonderful things, my appreciation for Steve Jobs waned as he did several things with the Mac and the iPhone that I wasn't too fond of, with Mac OS X Lion being one of them.

- In the Electric Light Orchestra album Time (which is amazing, by the way), I'm surprised that no one on the 'net has mentioned that on 2:09 on "Here is the News", one of the soundbites is "RadioShack programs".

- One of the things at Simtropolis is another SimCity-like proposal. Given the discontent with the abysmal SimCity Societies, Cities XL, which was talked about, planned, and over-hyped only to be a major disappointment, and about half a dozen cancelled fan ideas, I'm curious to how this ultimately turns out.