The Finished Product

I used to be one of those people who took really good care of his possessions. Everything I owned had to be cleaned and put away back in its proper place. I was verging on the edge of obsessive compulsive. Then something changed and I am not totally sure what it was.

Reading books like Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek and David Allen’s Getting Things Done have really changed how I look at life and day to day living. I find myself trying to live more for the now then to save and anticipate for a hard and unknown future. To be honest I feel it has payed off greatly. I am a lot less stressed out and more aware of what is going on around me with family and friends.

My Desktop Pictures and iPhone Vinyl Sticker. This Photo Does Not Do The Desktop Pictures Justis

I recently purchased a new 15″ MacBook Pro. A computer I use all the time and take with me just about everywhere I go. It truly is a powerhouse work horse for me. When I got the computer I new right away I wanted to sticker it with some cool Transformers art. I had seen a few photos of other Apple users who had put Ironman or Snow White vinyl stickers on their Macbooks. Both stickers are really awesome and I wanted to do something smiler with my Macbook Pro and Transformers.

I ended up searching on Etsy and finding Rob who makes vinyl stickers for MacBooks. I sent Rob an e-mail asking him if he could make me a vinyl sticker for my new Macbook Pro. For the next two weeks we worked together over e-mail to come up with just the right Transformers image I wanted displayed on my computer.

I really wanted to find and image that worked with the Apple logo on my Macbook Pro  much like the Ironman and Snow White images did. I was sent a couple mock ups of  Optimus Prime with the Apple logo in his hand. It was a great image but I was not happy with that rendition of Optimus Prime. So we both went back to the drawing board. I finally came up with three images I sent in and asked Rob what he could do with them.

Autobot Matrix of Leadership

The first image was of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. I was soon sent back a render of the image with the Apple logo in the center of the Matrix. It’s a great graphic and I ended up using it on my older 15″ Apple Powerbook.

Getting Ready To apply The Vinyl Stickers

The second two images I sent in came from IDW Transformers posters. One of Megatron and one of Optimus Prime. I ended up having vinyl stickers made out of these posters and I ended up placing them on my Macbook Pro.

When I got the stickers in the mail they came in a large envelope between to peaces of cardboard to prevent them from getting bent or damaged. Inside the envelope where some simple instructions on how to apply the vinyl stickers along with a couple of Popsicle sticks to smooth out any air bubbles that might happen to form.

Wet Erase Marker

Putting the vinyl sticker of the Matrix on my Powerbook was pretty easy for the most part. I just lined up the Apple logo in the center and smoothed it out. The Optimus Prime and Megatron Vinyl stickers where a little bit harder to apply because they didn’t incorporate the logo. There was a lot of adjustments I made to make to make sure the images where level and centered. Once I had the image placed on my MacBook Pro just the way I wanted them I used a green wet erase marker from my Dungeons & Dragons battlemat to outline the stickers. That way when I picked up the stickers and remove the backing from the sticky side I could align it back up correctly before sticking them to my computer.

I am really happy how this little project turned out. I had a really great first experience with etsy and everything went so well. Rob no longer has a store front on etsy. He does however have an eBay page and he can be e-mailed here. He still makes custom vinyl stickers for computers and he is really great to work with.

I show off my computer every chance I get. You might just catch me with one of my laptops at PAX Prime this year. You never know.

This is supposed to be Optumis Prime

Yup, I saw Transformers 2, and it was a cinematic abortion. A phrase I have used on Twitter, and Facebook when asked about the sequel to the first live action mistake that Micheal Bay directed in 2007.

Now I know I have said I would never pay to see Transformers 2. I started saying that shortly after seeing the first film. Truth be told I didn’t. A good friend of mine paid for my ticket to see the movie. Partly as a joke. Partly because of the friends we went with like to see me rant and rave about it. But mostly to celebrate the birthday of a good friend.

The movie so rudely, and blatantly went against the 25 year history that Hasbro has with Transformers. Micheal Bay probably can’t tell you a thing about the Transformers mythology. Rather then reading up on it, he reinvented it, changing just about every single aspect of the Transformers story line. He would talk on his website, and forum, explaining his process of auditioning a couple of the original voice actors for the movie parts. It came off as if he was doing all the fans of Transformers a huge favor. As if auditioning them, and giving the voice actgers a roll in his movie would make all his  re-imagining of a 25 year old beloved mythology, acceptable to the fans.

I think not.

With the release of Transformers 2 I can easily say I am not the only one who was disappointed with this movie. Professionals in the industry are also not happy with it.

…a horrible experience of unbearable length.”  ”The day will come when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be studied in film classes and shown at cult film festivals. It will be seen, in retrospect, as marking the end of an era. Of course there will be many more CGI-based action epics, but never again one this bloated, excessive, incomprehensible, long (149 minutes) or expensive (more than $200 million).” Roger Ebert

Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade. Peter Travers of Rolling Stones

for the uninitiated, it’s loud, tedious, and at 147 minutes, way too long. Ray Bennett of the Hollywood Reporter

it is Bay’s worst-reviewed movie, topping Pearl Harbor. The Washington Post

As I have said before I hope that these Transformers movies bring some interest to people to go back and read and watch the original stories. I hope before I die someone comes along and makes a Transformers movie that should have been made.

If your not following him on twitter, you should.

Hannah and I went to carve some pumpkins tonight. She recently got me a Flip Camera for my birthday, so I thought this was a good chance to test it out. I would video tape the nights events and see how the thing works. Hannah made a really cool Autobot pumpkin!

When we took the Jack-o-lanterns outside it was so cold that you can see the hot air rising from the them.

Today my desk got just that much cooler. While at Fred Meyer this weekend I spied a Transformer Christmas ornament. This just begs the questions; why is anyone selling Christmas ornaments in October? I guess the answer is because people like me buy them.

The Transformer ornament was of the evil Megatron. He goes great on my desk next to my Optimus Prime ornament I got last year around this time. So now, whenever I look over my laptop screen I can catch the two Cybertron learders fighting it out.

When I sit down at my computer I don’t do searches all that much. I have a handful of websites that I go to everyday. In the past I would just type in the URL and go. But having a custom page with the links of my commonly visited websites saves a lot of time. Just middle click the links and they open up in a new tab.

This is pretty useful when your not always on your own computer. You can save your custom home page to a thumb drive, CD, or even upload it to your web server if you have one. This allows you to have access to all your favorite websites from any computer.

Below is a screen shot of my custom homepage that i built. Because I am such a Transformers fan I wanted to use an image of Megatron and Optimus Prime battling it out. With a little CSS I am able to make sure that no matter how big or small my browser window is the two will alwasy be fighting on the bottom right of the window.

I also use CSS to control the font and the link colors. Now your custom homepage dose not have to be this involved. It could just be a list of links you like to visit. It could be more involved with widgets, and backgrounds, and animations. Sky is the limit.

If you would like to download my custom homepage, Modifiy it, and use it for yourself you can by downloading it here. You will have to set the links in in the “index.html” file. Once that is done just point your browser to that index.html file.

There are no comic book shops in Juneau. I came to this depressing realization after living here for a few months. The grocery stores are the only places in the city you can go to and get comic books. The Selections at the grocery stores are minimal and poorly handled by the staff that stocks the magazine racks. You just want to slap some comic book edict into every store employee that walks by.

Last Saturday I forgot about all of that. Last Saturday, everything changed for just one moment. I was at the “Friends of the Library Book Store” by the airport with Hannah. This is a store where people donate old and used book to be resold. Just as we had finished browsing and started to walk out the door I gasped.

“What” said the old lady clerk, startled.

“You have comics?” I said pointing to an old bin with haphazardly placed comics books.

“oh yeah, just that one bin though” she replied.

Transformers Comic Issue 10 - Dawn Of The Devastator

I gently dug through the bin while Hannah waited. Inside I found what was to me, a small treasure. Comics like the first issues of “The Crow” and “Marvel Universe” and “He-Man”. I could not believe it. I kept on digging and found the first few issues to the “Marvel Saga” and “Rawhide Kid”. But then I struck pay dirt.

Transformers! In the bin where a couple of issues of the original Marvel Transformers Comic. One of them was one I did not already own! Issue number 10. Dawn of the Devastator! I have not found an original Transformers comic that I did not already own since my trip to Maui several years ago. I have been trying to complete my Transformers collection forever, and now I am one more issue closer to that goal.

I would like to invite you to see Batman: The Dark Night which opened in theaters this last weekend. It will give you the chance to see what a good movie adaptation of a comic book looks like. I am hopping that if you can see this picture before it leaves theaters you might be able to save movie audiences from the cinematic abortion that will be Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and maybe make a good movie instead. You know, one that is not an embarrassment to Transformers fans.

Respectfully,
Youseph Tanha

And here is the Mach5 From the live action Speed Racer movie that just came out.

There is almost no difference between the two.

Now please look at this. Below is an image of Optimus Prime from the Transformers cartoon show.

And here is Optimus Prime from the live action Transformers movie.

Now, what the hell happened? How can one movie try so hard to preserve the original aesthetics of what made the show so great, and another movie go out of its way to visually rape their fans of what they have known and loved for so many years. What the hell went through the mind of director Micheal Bay when he was mangling the characters of Transformers?

To quote Kevin Smith.

In Hollywood you just fail upwards

Originally this post started off as a letter to Micheal Bay (the director of the Transformers movie) pointing out some basic time and money saving things he could have done. But as you will read you will see that Micheal Bay’s own personal two year vision of the Transformers is what he wanted to make. Not the already existing and well known 20 year old mythology of the story.

I have been an avid fan of the Transformers most of my life. I feel that this makes me some what of an authority on the subject. I have seen all the Transformers cartoons and I have read all the Transformers comic books. I remember growing up and my older brother coming home from college on the weekends and bringing me a new Transformers toy just about every time that he visited.  When I was a teenager, I remember saving my allowance for months sometimes, just to buy Transformers comic books I could find from local comic book shops. I have so many memories, wonderful memories around these robots and their adventures. I have waited my whole life for a live action Transformers movie – and on July 3rd, 2007, in Juneau Alaska, I was the first person in line for the first showing to see that movie.

The movie that Micheal Bay has made is fantastically inaccurate and was very disappointing to me, personally. I think that he has made one of the best movies of the year, if not the best movie of the year. It is a visual symphony of special effects, acting talent and some of the best directing I have ever seen. The film that was made, however, is not representative of The Transformers.

Micheal Bay mentioned in a blog post that I read before it was taken down, “I cut my fee 30% so I could make this at home.” I think that is very amazing and I don’t think an act like that should go unacknowledged. As a Transformers fan I have so much respect for him because of that single act.

In the same breath, I want to tell Micheal Bay how I think he could have only cut his fee by 20% instead of  30%. I don’t know very much about the movie making business.  But, I do think he could have saved a lot of money with the writing. The script for Transformers film had already been written for him. In September of 1984, Marvel Comics released “The Transformers” ( http://www.thetransformers.net/review.asp?MenuID=207 ). Looking at this, he would have already had a completed written script. Granted, you might have had to hire a writer to update a few things‚ so that it would be current for 2007. This solution, to me, sounds much cheaper than hiring 2 writers to create a whole new Transformers story. But again, I don’t know much about how to make a movie … it just seems that he could have saved some money by doing this. Micheal Bay also would not have upset numerous Transformers fans like me, because the story would essentially be correct.

To quote Micheal Bay again from his blog post, “Tom had one creative meeting with me for one hour and ten minutes to be exact about a year ago. He told he was the uber fan boy and was going to protect me from the minefields. The type of minefields on the Net like‚ “Damn you Michael Bay‚” ‚”You wrecked my childhood Michael Bay‚” and other various web death threats I received. Tom proceeded to tell me how much he had problems with the robot designs and script issues. I realized he was worlds apart in my vision.”

This, I think, was his biggest mistake.  The Transformers rejuvenation in recent years has not been a result of his vision of how they should be. Fans are not walking around talking to each other thinking “Wouldn’t Prime look so much better as a long nose truck?” The return of interest in the Transformers has been because of the iconic characters and the classic story line of good vs evil.

Micheal Bay has stated in past interviews that he is not a fan of the “blocky” shapes of the original G1 Transformers, so he decided to have them changed. To me, that is like saying Superman has been wearing his red cape for too long. Maybe it should be green, and perhaps shorter. Or, maybe just remove it altogether. Changes like this do not make sense to me. Later, he stated that Industrial Light & Magic would not be able to make the blocky G1 style of the original Transformers work. The arms and legs would not be able to move in all the ways that would be required by the movie. I can understand making minor modifications to the G1 style of characters so that they could physically move the way you would need them to. But to flat out say that ILM could not make it work is something I have a hard time swallowing. ILM is the world’s best at special effects. If they would not be able to get G1 Transformers to work, then I think their work as special effects artists does not deserve the credit that it has been so highly given.

“I never spoke creatively with Don. I read his notes kind of trashing the script and making me and the writers feel like a big shit pile.”

It sounds to me as if two people that Micheal Bay worked with knew more about the Transformers mythology than he did.  They tried to correct the mistakes in the script that he was working from.  Perhaps, he should  correct his two year vision of the Transformers to be more accurate with the twenty year-old mythology that Transformers fans are familiar with.

Waiting as long as I have for this movie to be made, only to be disappointed with the results, is very depressing. I can only hope that with time someone will remake this movie to more accurately represent the Transformers as loyal fans have come to know and love them. They are already doing this with other franchises like Batman and Superman. I really wish I could get a refund for my ticket.