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General Motors has taken the wraps off three newly-developed engines, showing the future of fuel-efficient engines across the globe. These engines will initially be offered in Asia and Europe, and will eventually make their way into vehicles right here in Cedar Rapids.
Tag archives for general motors
GM Announces the Future of Small Engines
General Motors Invests $1.3 Billion to Upgrade Plants and Create Jobs
General Motors, maker of Chevrolet vehicles, has announced an investment of nearly $1.3 billion dollars to upgrade plants across 3 different states. These enhancements will help GM produce new fuel-efficient engines and transmissions while improving vehicle quality and streamline logistics. According to a press release from GM, the investments will create or retain around 1,000 […]
John Calabrese, GM's VP of Engineering, Shares his Passion for Education
General Motors released an article highlighting a conversation with John Calabrese, GM's vice president of engineering. Calabrese is responsible for global vehicle engineering and technology operations. He is the key GM Executive for Virginia Tech and serves on the university's advisory board to the College of Engineering. He also a board member with the Engineering […]
General Motors Partners with U.S. Military for Fuel Cell Technology
General Motors, maker of Chevrolet vehicles, is teaming up with the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development & Engineering Center (TARDEC) to develop hydrogen fuel cell technology. Through the collaboration, GM and TARDEC will work together to test new hydrogen fuel cell material and designs and evaluate their performance and durability before putting them into […]
Seven GM Facilities Recieve Environmental and Community Honors
GM, the maker of Chevrolet cars, trucks, and SUVs, has been recognized by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for environmentally-focused community involvement. Seven of GM's facilities, including assembly plants and engine and transmission factories, were given the Neighborhood Environmental Partner (NEP) award, which encourages and honors business and neighbors to work together on sustainability […]
2014 Silverado is Most Corrosion Resistant Chevy Truck Ever
Chevy Silverado has a long-standing reputation as the most dependable, longest-lasting truck on the road. Thanks to advanced technology, the 2014 Silverado continues that tradition, becoming the most corrosion resistant Chevrolet truck ever. According to a press release from General Motors, the 2014 Chevy Silverado uses four distinct techniques to help prevent corrosion.
GM makes $900,000 Donation to Technology and Engineering Education
General Motors, maker of Chevrolet vehicles, has announced a $900,000 donation to Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a leading non-profit educator. John Calabrese, GM VP of Global Vehicle Engineering, announced the $300,000, three-year renewable grant, which will contribute specifically to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curriculum. According to a press release from PLTW, students […]
GM Reaching Environmental Goal, Continues Commitment
General Motors, maker of Chevrolet, has reaffirmed its commitment to reducing energy use and the environmental impact of both its vehicles and operating facilities. GM has reduced energy use by 7% and carbon emissions by 5% since 2010. The company also increased the number of landfill-free facilities to 105, saving total waste by 8% since […]
General Motors Plans to Redesign the Chevrolet Malibu
General Motors recently announced plans to redesign the Chevrolet Malibu! The changes, which will tweak the look and feel of the popular sedan, will be made shortly and the revamped Malibu will hit showroom floors during the summer.
News, articles, and general information regarding General Motors and the new line of Chevrolet Cars & Trucks.
Auto News
- 2015 Chevy Colorado Review
- Cloth or leather or your next Chevy?
- Be good to me, I'll be good to you, says your car!
- Truck Comparison: Chevy Silverado 1LZ vs Chevy Silverado 2LZ
- Guide to preparing your car for summer!
- 2014 Chevy Equinox Named Top Safety Pick+
- SUV Comparison: 2015 Ford Expedition vs 2015 Chevy Suburban
- Good Fuels = Good Vibes
- Z71Package: Turning Silverado into an Off-Road Machine
- Flying Camaro: How Chevy Engineers Designed the Z/28 for Liftoff
Current promotions, sales events, press releases, and all the latest news from Cedar Rapids #1 Chevy dealer, Pat McGrath Chevyland!
Dealer News
- Let's discuss tires! Winter vs. All-Season
- The All-New 2015 Chevy Suburban is Available Now!
- Proud to Be 2014 Iowa Chevrolet Dealer of the Year!
- 2014 Chevy SS Heading to Cedar Rapids
- 2015 Chevy Silverado 2500HD Trucks Are Coming Soon
- Next Generation of Chevrolet Trucks and SUVs Coming Soon!
- Answering the Top 5 Questions About the 2014 Camaro Z/28
- "Laguna Blue" 2014 Chevy Corvette Stingray Available Now
- 2014 Corvette Stingray Arrives in Cedar Rapids
- The 2014 Corvette Stingray is Heading to Cedar Rapids
We put the new line of Chevrolet Cars & Trucks head to head against competitive vehicles in the Cedar Rapids automotive market!
Vehicle Comparisons
- Cloth or leather or your next Chevy?
- Truck Comparison: Chevy Silverado 1LZ vs Chevy Silverado 2LZ
- SUV Comparison: 2015 Ford Expedition vs 2015 Chevy Suburban
- Truck Comparison: 2014 Silverado 1500 LT vs. 2014 Silverado 1500 LTZ
- Car Comparison: 2014 Toyota Corolla vs 2014 Chevy Cruze
- Car Comparison: 2014 Toyota Camry vs. 2014 Chevy Impala
- Car Comparison: 2014 Ford Taurus vs Chevy Impala
- 2014 Impala is First Detroit 3 Car to Top Consumer Reports Sedan Ranking
- Chevy Spark EV Will Be Among Lowest Priced Electric Vehicles
- Video: Chevy Camaro vs. Ford Mustang…Again!


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It was so absurd that someone would put a porta potty in the middle of the sidewalk and leave it there for weeks, that I had to take a picture one morning. But the symbology of this image pretty much sums up my running and blogging for that matter for the month of July.
I ran a total of 98k in July. When I was running my peak mileage weeks while training for the Ottawa marathon, I ran 98k in 1 week. Wow! I don't think that running less mileage has been a bad thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure I needed it mentally and physically.
I have been debating what to do to keep inspired and to motivate myself. I tossed around the idea of competing in a duathalon. But I'm still not sure. I think I may do an early fall half and .... oh that's right.... I'm running a marathon in Greece. The original marathon route. That should inspire anyone. I will be running the course with Rick and Tracey. Our goal is to run the course and enjoy it. No time expectations.
In the meantime, I think I will train to run a quick half while training for my marathon. After a slow month of running, I finally felt like adding a bit more to my run this morning. I'm taking that as a sign from my body that its forgiven me for my last marathon and is ready to run a bit harder. I just need to find a race and then I'm committed.

subset: commoncrawl


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Blue Lake – Mount Gambier
Natural Wonders
Blue Lake is at Mount Gambier, which is set on the slope of an extinct volcano that rises approximately 150 metres above the plain and protects the deep lake in its crater. In the cooler months of the year, from around March to November, the water is a dull, blue-grey colour, but in summer it turns a stunning sapphire blue. Drive to the Blue Lake for great views, or walk around the rim. Equally fascinating is the network of caves located beneath the town. The tunnels and caverns are an enormous wedge of limestone that stretches south to the coast and north to Bordertown. On Bay Road, one of the main streets, a cave opening has been transformed into a rose garden, and there is a similar sunken garden at Umpherston Sinkhole on Jubilee Highway East.
See Also
- Back to nature, Blue Lake, Back to nature
- Bushwalking around Mount Gambier, Eco-friendly activity


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|Spartacus is driven by his purpose in life, which, pushes him beyond humanly limits and expectations.
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
Proverbs 3:6 - In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
I am a huge fan of the Starz network drama series Spartacus. During their escape from slavery, Spartacus and his fellow gladiators had an important decision to make. Having just killed their slave master (Lentulus Batiatus) and several key Roman leaders, they were free of bondage and servitude. They could leave Rome and try to rebuild the lives they previously enjoyed or they could join Spartacus. By joining Spartacus, they would be risking their lives to free other slaves and have to share food and living quarters with strangers. As Robert Frost romanticized, there arrives a time in each of our lives where we must choose a path to take. Despite their better judgment, many of the former slaves decided to join Spartacus in his cause.
For us in modern society, that complicated decision may be between having children or traveling the world, attending law school or joining Teach for America, or dropping out of college or signing a recording contract. Regardless of the specifics, we all arrive at this point in our respective lives. As difficult as these decisions are, looking back, things work themselves out. We cringe change, but some how, some way, we adjust. We stay in jobs too long out of the fear of uncertainty. We stay in careers too long because of our fear of instability. We accept the
status quo (I don't) because we fear being outcasted or criticized.
I challenge you to face your fears. Our lives are predestined by God. We were all created with purpose. Thus, we should live purposeful lives. Pray, meditate, participate in fellowship, and learn about God. Establishing a strong relationship with our Creator may en graph a spirit of prosperity, success, purpose, favor, entrepreneurship, and more.
Regardless of your upbringing, the lack of family support you receive, or your socioeconomic status, by building your spirituality, you will find your purpose. Finding your purpose clarifies your past, your talents, and your future. That should give you reason to celebrate. You know why you were created and why God gave you the talents he did give you. Now it's your responsibility to accept this purpose and hone your talents towards fulfilling your life's purpose.
There is nothing sadder than watching someone spend their entire life working in an area that is not their respective purpose. That person appears to be successful, but he or she is not successful. True success should be in your area(s) of purpose. It's why you were created. That's why NFL star Tim Tebow can't accept playing any position other than quarterback. He believes his purpose in the NFL is to use his talents as a quarterback to win and to spread his love for Christ while doing so. Whether he is right or wrong is irrelevant. The point is to find your purpose and use your interests, talents, and goals to fulfill that purpose. You must invest everything into honing your talents and maximizing your potential.
Subsequently, we all have a chosen path in life. That is our purpose. Thus if you build your spirituality with God, your problems and concerns diminish. They don't matter as much, because you are connected to something greater than your city, your residence, your job, etc. If you desire to become successful and to achieve great things, you need inner greatness. That greatness comes from developing a deep understanding of your existence. By developing your spirit, you influence your mind. By shaping your mind positively and progressively, your enlightenment begins to show. That's why I stopped worrying about common adult problems (what car I drove, how high is my credit score, should we find a bigger house, etc.). I knew that with faith, optimism, and clear thinking that I possessed the power to accomplish anything. By knowing my purpose and choosing to accept that purpose, I have chosen my path. Are you ready to choose yours?


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5 Ways to use the Distance Symbol for Healing
Reiki is an amazing complimentary therapy, so nurturing! The distance symbol is a powerful tool and one I use personally in my own healing and professionally with my clients.
There are many ways to use the distance symbol, here are my favorite 5:
1. Connecting with a client or energy from a distance. The distance symbol creates a bridge across no time/no space.
2. Healing a relationship. You can use the distance symbol to heal a hurt relationship by laying out pictures of you and the other person (if you don't have a picture, write their name on a piece of paper) and use the distance healing to connect to your relationship energy and send light to your relationship. If you had a particular argument with that person, send the light to that argument.
** Remember Free Will: the light is not being sent to 'change' anything or anyone, the light is being sent to ease healing in your relationship. You do not need to decide what that healing might look like, just be open to the possibility that change and healing can happen.**
3. Healing a Past Life. You can use the distance healing to connect with your past life and send healing light to that time. Just like the healing light you would send to another person or to a relationship you can also send light to that lifetime and the person or being you were at that time. Again Remember Free Will.
4. Healing your ancestors. You can use the distance symbol to heal your ancestors the same way you use it to send healing to another person. We all have trauma in our ancestral lineages and this healing may take awhile. Healing your ancestors can bring forth many gifts that many have been held back over time to you and your family going forward. If you have pictures or know of specific events, focus on those. If you don't know just ask the light to go towards healing for either line in your family.
5. Healing your child self. If there are specific events or traumas in your childhood, place pictures of yourself at those times on your altar and use the distance symbol to send light for healing. If you don't have a picture, just imagine yourself at those ages and use the distance symbol to connect that way. Imagine you are holding yourself in the light as you would any of your clients or family members.
Bonus! Healing for our beloved Mother Earth. Using the distance healing, send light to all the beings on our beloved planet for peace and freedom.
Have fun working with the distance symbol. Opening and allowing for healing change can be very freeing if you can set your ego aside and just send light. Trying to define the outcome of healing drains your life force energy and can have an undesired impact on the life force energy of the other person you are trying to send light to.
Many Blessings!
Reiki Answer Lady


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Supplement Master Letter to Agencies
October 23, 2008
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attention: Special Agent Jeff Danik
505 South Flagler Drive
Suite 500
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
Katherine Fernandez-Rundle
Miami-Dade State Attorney
E.R. Graham Building
1350 N.W. 12th Avenue
Miami, Florida 33136-2211
Bill McCollum
Office of Attorney General
State of Florida
The Capitol – PL-01
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1050
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink
Florida Department of Financial Services
200 East Gaines Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0300
The Office of Inspector General
Florida Department of Law Enforcement
2331 Phillips Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32308
The Office of Inspector General
Attention: Kenneth A. Chambers
Supreme Court Building
500 South Duval Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1905
Brooke S. Kennerly
Executive Director
Judicial Qualifications Commission
1110 Thomasville Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32303-6226
John F. Harkness
Executive Director
The Florida Bar
651 East Jefferson Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2300
Michael L. Schneider
General Counsel
Judicial Qualifications Commission
1110 Thomasville Road
Tallahassee, Florida 32303-6226
Theodore P. Littlewood, Jr., Esq.
The Florida Bar
651 East Jefferson Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2300
Detective Luis Robainas
Miami Dade Police Department
Public Corruption Investigations Bureau
8899 N.W. 18th Terrace
Doral, Florida 33172
Chief Judge Joseph P. Farina
Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida
Miami Dade County Courthouse
73 West Flagler Street
Miami, Florida 33130
This is to supplement my previous letter to you, dated September 17, 2008, whereby Notice was given that violations of 831.04 f.s., constituting a felony of the third degree, may have been committed by attorneys Ronald C. Kopplow, Marc Cooper, Sonya L. Salkin, and their counsels, Charles W. Throckmorton, Lauri Waldman Ross, Robert M. Klein, Lewis N. Jack, Jr., and Reggie Sanger.
It has been brought to my attention that another State Criminal Statute may have been committed by attorneys Ronald C. Kopplow, Marc Cooper, Sonya L. Salkin, and their counsels, Charles W. Throckmorton, Lauri Waldman Ross, Robert M. Klein, Lewis N. Jack, Jr. and Reggie Sanger with the acquiescence of Judge Jeri Beth Cohen.
F.S.A. § 831.02 - Uttering Forged Instruments
Whoever utters and publishes as true a false, forged or altered record, deed, instrument or other writing mentioned in F.S. § 831.01 knowing the same to be false, altered, forged or counterfeited, with intent to injure or defraud any person, shall be guilty of a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s.775.082, s. 775.083, or 775.084.
Since May 30, 2008, Judge Jeri Beth Cohen has known that attorneys, Kopplow, Cooper, Salkin, and their counsel, Throckmorton, Waldman-Ross, Klein, Jack, and Sanger have been using a document, deemed to be fraudulent by an expert witness, to support a Summary Judgment Motion, for the benefit of their clients, the attorney defendants, and to the detriment of the Plaintiffs in a legal malpractice lawsuit in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, Case No.99-21062 CA 15.
The defendants have never refuted the expert witness' declaration that the documents, which they are relying upon to injure the Plaintiffs, are fraudulent. Nor have the defendants retained their own expert witness to refute that the documents that they have been relying upon are fraudulent. Nor have the defendants and their counsel withdrawn the fraudulent documents in violation of Florida Bar Rule 4-3.3(a)(4).
Since May 30, 2008, the Plaintiffs have been seeking, through numerous written and ore tenus Motions, to strike the Defendants Pleadings for "fraud on the court" for knowingly using fraudulent documents to support their clients' position. This activity is in violation of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, 4-3.3(a)(4) which:
Prohibits a lawyer from offering false evidence and requires the lawyer
to take reasonable remedial measures when false evidence has been
offered. This is subordinated to the criminal statute violation.
The Plaintiffs have filed verified Motions to Strike Defendants Affirmative Defenses, which goes to the heart of the fraudulent documents, as a Sham, pursuant to FRCP 1.150.
Judge Jeri Beth Cohen (a member of the Florida Bar) has wilfully engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice and thereby has subverted the truth finding process that the adversary system is designed to implement by the following violations:
1) refuses to allow discovery to see which attorneys were involved in the preparation, perpetration, execution and submission of the fraudulent documents.
2) refuses to conduct an evidentiary hearing as required by law under FRCP 1.150 which states:
Rule 1.150(a) contemplates a full evidentiary hearing where the parties
have the opportunity to offer evidence on the issue of whether the pleading
attacked alleges a cause of action or defense that is false in fact. The rule
provides that "the court shall hear the motion, taking evidence of the
respective parties." Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.150(a).
3) continues to violate Judicial Canon 3.D.2)a:
A judge who receives information or has actual knowledge that substantial
likelihood exists that a lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules
Regulating the Florida Bar shall take appropriate action. This does not
speak to the violation of criminal statutes.
4) has violated and breached an Agreed Order signed on February 14, 2008, by Senior Judge Herb Stettin, which states in part:(A copy of the Senior Judge Stettin's signed Agreed Order is enclosed herein).
3. Plaintiffs shall have twenty(20) days from the date of this Order
to serve their response to the Amended Affirmative Defenses.
4. Plaintiffs reserve all rights to challenge the Amended Affirmative
Defenses, including, but not limited to, motions to strike, motions
for summary judgment and the like. The Plaintiffs have complied
with both requirements of the signed Agreed Order, and still Judge
Jeri Beth Cohen refuses to abide by Senior Judge Stettin's Order.
5) has denied Plaintiffs their due process rights pursuant to an Agreed Order signed by Senior Judge Herbert Stettin.
6) has condoned the Defendants and their Attorneys breach of that Agreed Order. The Defendants (attorneys) and their counsel engaged in a knowing breach of that signed Agreed Order whereby the Defendants received the benefit of the Agreed Order and then the Defendants engaged in a scheme to deprive the Plaintiffs of the benefit that they were to receive by that signed Agreed Order......the right to attack the Affirmative Defenses by striking them as a sham under FRCP 1.150 which would require the court to conduct an evidentiary hearing.
At the hearing held on October 15, 2008, I requested that Judge Cohen adhere to her judicial responsibilities pursuant to Judicial Canons. She sat stoned faced and said "you file a Complaint," again, in violation of her judicial duties.
Furthermore, the violations of the Rules and the law that the attorneys have engaged in, with the cooperation and coverup of Judge Jeri Beth Cohen, needs to be investigated by all the appropriate agencies, especially because such conduct has risen to the level of, what I believe to be, criminal activity. Judge Cohen continues to obstruct justice.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I want the record to reflect that I have a JQC Complaint pending against Judge Jeri Beth Cohen, No. 08411, in addition to these allegations of involvement in criminal activity. I also have a Civil lawsuit, under the ADA, pending against Judge Jeri Beth Cohen, in her official capacity, and in her individual capacity, in the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Case No. 08-CV-22009-JORDAN. I have also alerted the JQC, its fifteen member panel, and Governor Crist to the undue influence that Special Counsel to the JQC, Lauri Waldman Ross, has on the judiciary. Such influence is displayed regularly as Judge Cohen yields to Lauri Waldman Ross during proceedings. Lauri Waldman Ross has used her undue influence previously before the late Judge Manuel Crespo who presided over this case in 2005, for a total of two hearings, and then recused himself before expiring.. At a hearing held on October 15, 2008, Lauri Waldman Ross, Defense counsel for Marc Cooper, and a Special Counsel to the Judicial Qualifications Commission, continued violating Rule 4-3.3 - Candor Toward the Tribunal: False evidence and a duty to disclose. In addition, Ms. Ross violated Rule 4-3.4 Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel. As a member of The Florida Bar, and as a representative of the JQC, Ms. Ross should exude the highest standard of ethics, as she, by her position, is called upon to weigh transgressions of the judiciary. How can Ms. Ross perform her responsibilities if she, herself, does not abide by the Rules of Professional and Ethical Conduct regulating The Florida Bar members? At that hearing, Ms. Ross verbally and demonstrably accused Plaintiff's counsel, Mary Alice Gwynn, of making misrepresentations to the Court when it was Ms. Gwynn who alerted the Court about the parties' prior agreement with regard to challenging the Defendants Affirmative Defenses. Ms. Gwynn referenced e-mails between the parties documenting such an agreement. Ms. Ross immediately started pointing her finger at Ms. Gwynn and said: "I want anything in writing from this lady because I am sick of coming in here and having misrepresentations from her."
Ms. Ross sat silent and failed to disclose that, in fact, the parties did have an agreement that was reduced to an Agreed Order signed by Senior Judge Herbert Stettin on February 14, 2008 which was actually drafted by Lauri Waldman Ross, and forwarded directly from Ms. Ross to Judge Stettin.
I, Meryl M. Lanson, on October 16, 2008, via e-mail, requested that Ms. Ross report her misrepresentations to Judge Cohen. Ms. Ross refused to do so which further violates the ethical rules governing The Florida Bar members. A Notice of Filing of the exchange of e-mail communications between Plaintiff, Meryl M. Lanson, Pro Se, Plaintiff, Norman Lanson's counsel, Mary Alice Gwynn, and the Defendants counsels, Waldman Ross, Throckmorton, Klein, Jack and Sanger was sent to the Court for filing on October 22, 2008. (A copy of the Notice of Filing with attachment is enclosed herein). Furthermore, a Motion (A copy of the Motion is enclosed herein)was sent, via Federal Express, to the Court for filing on October 22, 2008 which outlines what transpired at the October 15, 2008 hearing and the violations of Ms. Ross, with the acquiescence of Judge Cohen, and the silence of attorneys, Throckmorton and Jack, who were also party to the Agreed Order signed by Senior Judge Stettin. Robert Klein, Esq. and Reggie Sanger, Esq. were not present at that hearing but are party to the Agreed Order and was party to the e-mail communications, and all communications filed with the Court. A copy of all filings have been sent to all Counsel of Record. The Defendants and their Counsel continue to engage in obstruction of justice and do so in knowing violation of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar.
I have asked Judge Cohen, on three occasions, to disqualify herself. She refuses to do so. Her rulings in this case appears to be that she is using her position, to not only retaliate against me for the actions I have taken against her, but also to sabotage the civil litigation for the benefit of the attorneys and to the detriment of the Plaintiffs, Meryl Lanson, Norman Lanson and Baron's Stores, Inc., and its beneficiaries, the Creditors.
As mentioned in my previous Notice dated September 17, 2008, the Courts have turned a blind eye to the submission of fraudulent documents in violation of the Rules and the Law for, what I believe to be, the protection of certain well connected professionals.
This matter involves both state and federal agencies as the alleged criminal violations involve the transmittals of the fraudulent documents through electronic mail, Federal Express and the United States Postal Service.
I have made serious allegations against these attorneys and Judge Jeri Beth Cohen. I stand by each one of my allegations as I have the documents, the transcripts, the tapes - the evidence to support my position. Finally, every agency in receipt of this letter has a duty to protect the public from unethical conduct, negligence, fraud and/or corruption. When such unethical conduct, negligence, fraud and/or corruption involves officers of the court, specifically attorneys and judges, the tolerance level should be at zero and the priority to investigate should be at the top of your agenda. I trust that your investigations will be properly handled without regard to whom the individuals are.
Respectfully submitted,
Meryl M. Lanson
Telephone: 561-488-2740
Facsimile: 561-488-2861
E-Mail: email@example.com
1) Copy of Senior Judge Herbert Stettin's signed Agreed Order dated February 14, 2008.
2) Copy of Notice of Filing dated October 22, 2008 with attachments.
3) Copy of Plaintiff, Meryl M. Lanson, Pro Se, Supplement to Plaintiff's Response to Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment and Objection to Any of the Defendants Proposed Orders and Request for an Evidentiary Hearing Pursuant to Senior Judge Herbert Stettin's February 14, 2008 Order.
cc: Governor Charlie Crist with attachments


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Acupuncture Therapy Dermastamp Skin Anti Ageing Scars Acne Spot Wrinkles Care
The derma stamp is a revolutionary device which has the amazing ability to naturally stimulate collagen and elastin production in the skin without damaging it. It can be used by both men and women and has numerous . All microneedle technology is designed to lightly pierce the skin without damaging it, in turn the body reacts to this (tricking of the body) naturally and increase blood circulation which produces new collagen & elastin. which over time helps regenerate/repair the skin.
Advantages of derma stamp therapy:
A. Does not destroy the structural integrity of the skin
B. Gradually remove the skin deep toxins and waste
C. Establish a direct transportation between skin and beauty product
D. Promote the skin metabolism
E. Improve the ability of wound healing and anti-aging
F. No side effect, safe and reliablE
G. Simple operate
H. Effect is more remarkable than the general beauty products .
|Derma stamp Application:
♣ Scar Removal – including acne scar removal / treatment
♣ Stretch Mark Removal / Treatment
♣ Anti Ageing,Anti Wrinkle
♣ Cellulite Treatment / Cellulite Reduction or Removal
♣ Hair Loss Treatment / Hair Restoration
♣ Hyper Pigmentation Treatment
1: About the delivery?
We can offer the door to door services by air or by sea, just depend on your actual request. Such as DHL,
UPS, TNT, FEDEX... by air; and the sea transportations.
2: About the delivery time?
Within 7 working days after payemnt received.
3: About the package?
Strong and beautiful aluminum alloy case.
4: About technology supports?
we have a professional technology supporting team for your timely services. We prepare the technical
documents for you, also you can contact us by telephone, webcam, online chat (MSN, skype...).
5: About the payment method?
Our payment terms is T/T, Western Union, Paypal
Acupuncture Therapy Dermastamp Skin Anti Ageing Scars Acne Spot Wrinkles Care Images


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Brilliantly Ham-fisted got a little mini review in the upcoming January issue of Geek Magazine. Click it to read it:
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Brilliantly Ham-fisted got a little mini review in the upcoming January issue of Geek Magazine. Click it to read it:
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
POST IT SHOW 3 video
I'm bummed I didn't make it to the opening night. But someone made a little video of the POST IT SHOW 3:
BEASTS! 2 release party
Here's a Flickr set from the BEASTS! 2 show at Fantagraphics last weekend. If you look closely, you can almost see my print hanging near the bottom of the wall above the bookshelf.
I wish I could see the rest of those prints. Some of them look incredible. For more, check them out at the BEASTS! blog: here, here, here and here.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
2 Group Shows this weekend!
I've got work in two group shows opening Saturday, December 13th:
POST IT SHOW 3 at Giant Robot 2 in Los Angeles.
I made 19 post-it-portraits of artists and writers that I like. I posted all of them here. With most pieces priced at $20, this show is a great way to get super-inexpensive artwork by a lot of todays best cartoonists, illustrators and artists. Recession art!
Not in L.A.? Sorry- GR won't pre-sell anything from this show. It's a first-come-first-serve sell-a-thon at the opening reception. After that, they will sell the remaining post-its through their web store.
BEASTS! 2 book release party and print show at the Fantagraphics Book Store in Seattle, WA.
I have nice new prints of my Skinwalker beast. The prints are a 2 plate letterpress with hand-painted watercolors by me. Limited edition of 60 copies. Fantagraphics has numbers 1-5.
They are $60 - Cheap!
Or order the BEASTS! 2 Book here.
Not in Seattle? In January there will be another Beasts! 2 show at Giant Robot San Francisco (more details coming soon). Sometime after the holidays, I hope to get these prints up on my online store.
Monday, December 08, 2008
ISIS t-shirt
I designed this for an ISIS t-shirt. ISIS is on a short European tour right now, and they are selling these shirts and hoodies along the way.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
POST IT SHOW 3 at GR2
Giant Robot is having it's 3rd Annual POST IT show.
Lots of artists are asked to do drawings on Post-it notes.
The show opens Dec. 13th at GR2 in L.A.
More info about the show soon.
Here are my Post-it-Portraits of artists and writers who I like:
The 3x3" post its will be $20. The 3x5" post its will be $30.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
20 Questions
Twenty Cartoon Questions is a little blog started by comics-savant, Austin English*. Austin asks the same 20 questions to different up-and-coming alt-cartoonists. The questions focus on the artists' process and materials. The results are some of my favorite interviews.
If you're at all interested in peeking into the minds and studios of some of today's best cartoonists, I recommend all of these interviews. One of those cartoonists is me. My 20 questions can be found here. This is an on-going series, so bookmark it.
*Austin is also the author of Christina and Charles and editor of Windy Corner Magazine. Both are published by Sparkplug Comic Books.
Review of "The Blot" from The Comics Journal is online now.
This review appeared in The Comic Journal #287. Chris Mautner has just posted it on his blog for everyone to read.
Here's an excerpt:
...And yet The Blot really is that good. I'm actually sorely tempted, for example, to compare it to the first issue of Acme Novelty Library, or The Biological Show or Good-Bye Chunky Rice. Not that it's necessarily standing on the same high aesthetic ground as those works (though I'd find it hard to believe it won't be included on my "best of" list come January), but rather that it's an impressive and declarative debut in the same fashion that those other books were. This is the type of book where after reading it you get the feeling you're going to start expecting big things from the artist from here on out.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
You can't tell me some things weren't better back then...
For more images from old Macy's Parades, go here.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Aquarius Records
Aquarius Records is probably my favorite record store in the universe. I discovered them when I lived in SF nearly 10 years ago, and even though it was significantly smaller than Amoeba, it felt more like my kinda place. I was sad to lose my regular trips there when I moved to L.A., but soon found that they have an amazing website and they review nearly every album they carry. The reviewers are all knowledgeable and smart and each have their own personalities and niche taste in music. They're kinda like that cool older kid in high school who introduced you to all your favorite bands. Just the other night a friend was asking me "where do you find out about all these crazy underground bands?" My secret is Aquarius Records.
Anyway- while I was up in SF for APE, I stopped by and gave them a bunch of the Melvins comic books to sell. And this review of it includes my favorite description of the comic so far. Read it on their latest "new arrivals list #305":
"For those of you who missed out on the ultra limited Melvins A Senile Animal box set (which is probably most everybody), we managed to get a handful of these super limited comics, by aQ customer Tom Neely, which came in the box along with a belt buckle and a bunch of other stuff. The comic is amazing, inspired by the album, which means it's bizarre and twisted and fucked up and garish and beautiful. For those of you who have yet to see Neely's art (you very well might have and just not known it as he does a lot of commercial stuff too), you're in for a treat, classic and old fashioned, but just a bit tweaked and damaged.
This Melvins comic is the tale of a horse, who loses his head, some sort of spectre, plenty of gore and blood and vomiting, a bandaged worm man with a very powerful tongue, being chased by little legged dots, a bar full of vampires and historical figures, a wolf in grandma's clothing, a long journey across a black sea in a rickety rowboat, a strange mountaintop female cyborg, a giant eagle, a city wrapped in living tendrils, more removable heads and a horde of horses. Sure it sounds insane, it's a comic based on a Melvins record!!! The back cover has a funny Melvins parody ad, and the inside back cover has bios of both Neely and the Melvins."
So, now you can order the book from Aquarius or from Hydra Head Records. Support independent record stores like Aquarius. They are a dying breed, but one the last representatives of the amazing diversity of arts in the world we live in.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
BEASTS! 2 pre-order
BEASTS! 2 is now available for pre-order from Fantagraphics.
The first BEASTS! book was great and I'm very happy to be included in the second volume, which includes an even more impressive lineup of artists. The above image is my contribution to the book- The Skinwalker. There is also going to be some sort of print show at the Fantagraphics store in Seattle. I have made a limited edition of hand-painted letterpress prints of my Skinwalker that will be available at this event. More details coming soon.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Another great review...
A very nice review of "Your Disease..." and "Brilliantly Ham-fisted" by Brian Heater can be found here.
...fans of Neely's deservedly lauded book will no doubt be satiated by both books which provided a happy return to Neely's strange and wonderful universe and a chance to delve even further into the artist's happily warped psyche.
I've received e-mails asking how to order these books. "Your Disease..." can be ordered through Hydra Head Records here. As for "Brilliantly Ham-fisted," as soon as I make some more of the, I will put them up in my store.
More Obama love
Two things I have in common with our president:
• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
I wish I could also say I can bench-press 200 lbs, but at least we have similar taste in literature.
More facts about Obama are here.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
"Your Disease Spread Quick" available.
I haven't had a chance to get "Your Disease Spread Quick" up in the I Will Destroy You Store yet, but for those of you who want it, it's now available at the Hydra Head Records Store for only $6. This is the comic book I created for the Melvins box set for "(a) Senile Animal." That box set is selling out quickly. But the comic book can be purchased separately at the HHR store and a few comic book stores around L.A.
If you want to sell this book in your store, please e-mail me about wholesale prices and orders.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
A.P.E. movie
i made a video at A.P.E. this weekend.
i miss all of you already.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
APE this weekend!
I'll be heading up to San Francisco for the APE comic festival this weekend.
I'll be joining my friends at the Sparkplug Comic Books table.
This will be the first time I've had The Blot at APE.
I'll also have The Melvins Comic Book "Your Disease Spread Quick," and "Brilliantly Ham-fisted" and a few other things.
EXCLUSIVE and NEW: The Obama vs McCain poster above will be a giveaway at the APE comic festival this weekend. Don't forget to VOTE!
Also- I have a few pieces in the PANELISTS IV show at Giant Robot San Francisco.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
3 weeks ago...
We're still not used to the novelty of calling each other "wife" and "husband."
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Panelists at GRSF
I'm a last minute addition to the list of cartoonists who will be in the Panelists Group Show at Giant Robot SF. I submitted 6 of my comic strip poems, but I'm not sure how many will be hung in the show. The show opens November 1, 2008 (During APE weekend). I'll post more info about the current show soon.
UPDATE: That's the new postcard above. Click the postcard or check the GRSF site for more information.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
13 from our honeymoon
i don't wanna be back home.
i wish we were still in Belize...
Friday, October 03, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Melvins Box Set Released!
from the Hydra Head Blog:
"Also, this happened to some of the Melvins comics...
When Tom went through signing and numbering the comics for the Melvins box set, he went and got all clever and did shit like this...which makes us just want to keep them all ourselves...instead we just took pics of each one and cataloged the images for safe keeping...we'll post more down the road. This Horse image here is in the batch that Secret Headquarters is sitting on right now...and no, we're not gonna tell you what number it is. Roughly 1 out of every 6 has a unique drawing in the comic...there are talking Juicy Juice boxes, black metal dudes yelling "Elton John!", knights and castles, and piles upon piles of other sketches including, as you can see above, some of the characters from "Your Disease Spread Quick".
The Melvins Box Set with my comic book "Your Disease Spread Quick" is released today exclusively through Secret Headquarters in L.A.
From SHQ:
Its here!
"A Senile Animal"
Box Set
(4xLP, comic, belt buckle, limited to 300)
exclusively available
Secret Headquarters
Los Angeles, CA.
Starting today!
Accepting orders via email ONLY
Send email with "Melvins" in the subject line to:
Include address and telephone number in the body of the email.
We will contact you once we receive your email.
Limit one per customer.
Price: $90
Shipping West Zone: $20
Shipping Mid Zone: $25
Shipping East Zone: $30
International rates on request
Don't call us - we'll call you.
We will not be accepting ANY phone orders - please follow the email instructions above.
We will contact you.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
This is really upsetting me.
Hollywood really needs to be stopped!
"Universal Pictures has made a splashy preemptive buy of "Moby Dick," a reimagining of the Herman Melville whale tale that Timur Bekmambetov ("Wanted") will direct. Studio paid high six figures to Adam Cooper and Bill Collage to pen the screenplay.
The writers revere Melville's original text, but their graphic novel-style version will change the structure. Gone is the first-person narration by the young seaman Ishmael, who observes how Ahab's obsession with killing the great white whale overwhelms his good judgment as captain.
This change will allow them to depict the whale's decimation of other ships prior to its encounter with Ahab's Pequod, and Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive.
"Our vision isn't your grandfather's 'Moby Dick,' " Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story."
..."We wanted to take a graphic novel sensibility to a classic narrative," said Collage. They brought it to the Wibberlys, the "National Treasure" scribes ..."
What the hell is wrong with these people?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Melvins Box Set
It's finally almost nearly out!
Read about it at the Hydra Head Blog.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Interview on Indie Spinner Rack
When I was at Heroes Con in Charlotte North Carolina this summer, I met Charlito and Mr. Phil of the Indie Spinner Rack radio podcast. They asked me to do a joint interview with my pal Jim Rugg during the convention. It happened on Sunday when I was sleep-deprived and losing my voice and not really thinking all that clearly... But anyway, it's not as bad as I expected it to be.
Our interview starts several minutes into this show (after a long bus-ride conversation about Starbucks and Japanese Engrish between Charlito and some other people in the Heroes Con shuttle). I talk about The Blot, the Melvins book, my big sculpture and other stuff.
Monday, September 08, 2008
More reviews...
Another great review of "Your Disease Spread Quick" and "Brilliantly Ham-fisted" comes from comics critic Rob Clough:
"Neely's artistic style makes for an interesting series of contrasts. He draws much of his inspiration from classic animation and comics from around the 1920s, and his comics have a rubbery, cartoony quality that draws the reader to its surface qualities. At the same time, he subverts reader expectations with images that are often gruesomely visceral. Another trope of his is his use of ink blots. These blots have multiple meanings, depending on the context, but generally represent both creation and destruction. Neely also has an extensive background in fine arts, and as a result his comics have a tension between the flow between panels & pages and the powerful single image."
Read the rest of the review here.
(The article also includes reviews of two other books by Rina Ayuyang and Jonathan Baylis)
Monday, September 01, 2008
Two Great Reviews!
Comics critic Sean T. Collins reviews my Melvins comic book " Your Disease Spread Quick."
"Tom Neely is working the most fruitful vein of horror-slash-artcomics since Al Columbia."
And he also gives a mostly positive review of my collection of comic strip poems "Brilliantly Ham-fisted."
"...this collection of "19 comic strip poems" ... boasts some very strong work, including among them some of my favorite comics of the year."
I still don't know the release date for the Melvins Boxset, but it should be any day now.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The surprise hit of SDCC for me was the sale of my Moby Dick giclée prints. I only had 10 of them, and sold out in a couple of hours. Well, I've got 20 left and then they are gone. They are now available to order through my store for $250 (includes shipping). As they come closer to selling out, I will be raising the price.
It is 19 x 41 inches giclée print on good quality watercolor paper. Limited edition of 30 signed and numbered copies.
Please allow 2-3 weeks for the order to process.
Get 'em while you can!
Monday, August 11, 2008
Atwater Village Art Walk 2008
Ever wondered what my studio is like?
Wanna see all my available artwork in one small space?
Wanna hang out in my backyard on a Saturday night?
Want some free beer?
I'm participating in the Open Studio portion of the Atwater Village Art Walk this year. It happens this Saturday, August 16th, from 5 to 9 pm. It is hosted by several nearby galleries and businesses, including Black Maria Gallery (where I had my solo show last year).
I'll have all my stuff available for purchase:
The Blot
Your Disease Spread Quick- the Melvins Comic Book
Brilliantly Ham-fisted- a collection of my comic strip poems
my giclée prints: Reborn, The Wolf and Rise Above
my new Moby Dick giclée prints
my Self Indulgent Werewolf Record
And most of my available paintings from the last couple of years will be on display and for sale (Black Maria will also have some of them in their rack room).
Please come by and keep me company. Otherwise I'll be sitting in my backyard alone with a big bucket of beer... and that might result in a bad Sunday morning.
The flyer is attached below (map removed post event).
I'm #10- way down at the bottom of the map.
But it's really only about 3/4 of a mile from the galleries. I'll have a cold beer (or soda, or water) waiting for you after you make the long trek through my beautiful neighborhood. See you then!
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Another review of "The Blot"
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Weekly Comic Strip: #20
These aren't going to be "weekly" anymore, but I hope to start posting them more often as I finish them.
Monday, August 04, 2008
I'm blogging at Fanboy Fables
I've been asked to participate in a group blog called Fanboy Fables.
This blog contains posts from comics professionals, retailers, and superfans about their experiences with certain issues of comics from their past which holds special importance to them.
My first entry is about the Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Danzig's really gonna punch me now...
I just saw this newspaper article about Comicon and there's a quote from me about Danzig:
Six years ago, Glen Danzig was tucked away in a little corner booth selling his art, trying to remain anonymous. He wasn't wearing a nametag and when a fan looking for an autograph approached him, he denied who he was. Now he has embraced the Con for a chance to sell anything he can, but has a constant security guard present. It's hard to tell whether or not they're trying to fly under the radar or make themselves known, but I'd bet on the latter since all of them are wearing Samhain or Black Aria T-shirts.
And a mere three aisles away is Sparkplug Press, a small publisher selling "Henry and Glen 4Ever," a mini comic about Danzig and Henry Rollins as life partners.
"I'm just waiting for him to see one and come by to punch me in the face," said creator Tom Neely.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
San Diego Comic Con 2008
I survived another year of the San Diego Comic Con! I had a really great time while I was there. In many ways it was one of the most pleasant SDCCs of my career.
Highlights included meeting both Gonzo and Matt Groening (who said he had The Blot and he bought my new comics!), hanging out with all my comic book friends, and introducing my fiancée to the strange world of comic conventions. And she LOVED it.
The convention was a big success, too. I debuted my Melvins comic book "Your Disease Spread Quick" and it was well received. I also sold out of my mini-comic collection of comic strip poems. The biggest surprise was how quickly I sold out of my Moby Dick prints. I didn't have them until Saturday morning, but all week people kept stopping by and looking at the proof I had on display.
Levon brought 10 of them down from L.A. with him and within 4 hours of opening on Saturday, I had sold all of them. And I'm starting to get e-mail requests to order them already. I will have the remaining 20 copies of my Moby Dick prints available in the store soon. Check the blog for future details.
The convention has changed in the 10 years I've been going there. There's lots of talk about it being too Hollywood now... but I don't really know about that. Over half of the convention is taken over by movies, t.v. shows, toy companies and video games. And it does seem like that part of the convention overshadows the comics. But it doesn't seem like it really efects us that much. They seem to keep to their end of the convention center, and we've still got ours. That's fine with me. It's like me and my friends are all sitting at the nerd table in the high school lunchroom. The Jocks are encroaching on our territory, but they can't keep us from being who we are.
I love comic convention people. They fascinate me and entertain me and make me feel at home. There is something really wonderful about the freedom to express all of our geeky-weirdness in public.
I managed to avoid buying stuff this year. I only made one purchase the whole week: a novel based on the '60s supermarionation show Captain Scarlet. Who could resist a novel based on a puppet show?
HUGE thanks to my pals Sparkplug Comic Books and Teenage Dinosaur for letting us join them for our double booth setup. And Levon, Jeff, Shiga, Shannon, Alixopulos and David for hanging out and helping all week.
I love going to cons with these guys - they help keep me grounded amidst the onslaught of interacting with thousands of people. Even though I'm completely exhausted, I'm already lookin' forward to hanging out with them at the next one.


text:
Gauntlets of Recursion (+3)
Times, trials, and turbulence.
Monthly Archives: September 2007
Everything except time.
Personal Development
It's been a little crowded lately for that, it seems. Yesterday and today have just been crowded with assignments and studying, so progress on my article and website just haven't happened yet. To be honest, I'm still working myself over the initial "getting started" hurdle on the article. I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to cover, but that first pen-to-paper moment is always the hardest. This weekend isn't too heavy in terms of school workload, so I'm going to push to get the draft written tomorrow. That'll just leave revision and demo-writing before it's good to go. I've also been learning some various tricks in regards to web design from a friend, but I'll jump into that pool of piranhas later!
Jobs jobs jobs
My first interview(s) has been scheduled, thank goodness. They're combining my interview for being a CS125 and CS134 Tutor together, which means a little less time I'll be stuck on campus wearing nice dress pants and a fancy-dancy shirt. Sheesh. 🙂
CS125 and CS134 are both first-year intro-to-programming courses that use Java to teach programming concepts. 125 is the "totally new to programming" course, while 134 assumes you have a basic understanding of the ideas behind programming. I was pretty sure that I would get interviews for these, so the tutoring jobs will (assuming the interview goes well!) effectively be my "back up jobs" if I don't manage to snare a more alluring position elsewhere. Not to suggest anything detrimental to being a Tutor — on the contrary, I think it would be a fantastic learning experience. It's win-win all around.
Phong Illumination Model
Jon has been tinkering away at yet another game development article, this time focusing on a the more theoretical side of graphics programming. His article talks about the ideas and basic implementation of the Phong Illumination Model. If you've ever been interested in raytracing, he's planning on following the start he's making with this into a full-fledged series on the topic. Keep an eye on his journal.
Nothing but busy.
Co-Op Again?
It feels like I only just started the school term, but they already have us out applying for jobs once again. Our co-op schedule follows the pattern of alternating between school terms — one term being three months — and work terms. We go through a system called 'JobMine', which is a massive database of jobs that heaps of employers send co-op offerings to. It comes in two waves, whereas we go through and apply to jobs that catch our fancy. If all is well, then we are offered an interview. After our interviews, we rank the jobs (which we may or may not get an offer for) in order of preference, and then the highest ranked job that we actually got an offer for becomes our co-op placement for the next term. That's our co-op system in a very brief nutshell.
Currently I'm on my way to the interview phase. I've applied to about 22 jobs — all of which are in Waterloo; I don't want to deal with subletting my place — and am eagerly waiting to see how much I will receive interviews for. As usual, there was a great diversity of possible placements, everywhere from McAffee to Research In Motion to Capcom to Sybase. Shame the job for Capcom is all the way in Burlington. 😦
News on this as it develops!
Ich muss Linux lernen!
As I delve deeper into my studies (and the business world), I'm realizing that Linux/Unix knowledge is becoming a greater and greater asset. Being unsatisfied with the sluggish pace that I've been moving at by only using Unix (well, Solaris) in the school computer labs, I've moved over 90% to Linux on my desktop. I still need Windows to play my precious games, but I mostly just write documents (OpenOffice) and work on Skirmish (NetBeans) anyways, so it's not like I'm unable to do most tasks. In the long-run, this will mean many things will be challenging to do the first time around, but I will learn a lot more from doing than from reading some dusty Linux textbook.
As another upshot, it's given me a chance to work on getting Skirmish working properly for Linux, which has been painful so far. It's almost working, so I'll save that for another entry.
Glow: Post-Mortem
Making a game is hard. Looking back at that game a year later and writing one's thoughts and feelings about the development of that game is arguably even harder.
Mike Stedman (Ravuya to "teh intarnets") is such a developer. About a year ago (nearly to the day!) he completed Glow, an impressive futuristic zombie-bashing top-down shooter. He has just completed the arduous process of creating the post-mortem of his work of art. And thusly, my recommendation to you, dear reader, comes in
two three steps:
- Play Glow.
- Visit Mike's journal and read Glow's post-mortem.
- Rinse and repeat.
Personal Development
Demo Feedback
First and foremost, I'd like to extend a huge thanks to everyone who took the time to try out the Skirmish demo and replied with feedback. The consensus seems to be that it works on Windows without any hassle (to be expected, as the development platform :P), Mac OSX works with a little bit of fiddling, and Linux is a little dodgy. Like I said, hopefully I can find someone with some thicker Java+Linux experience than myself to help aid in that.
The overall conclusion (sans distribution methods) is that the game runs exceedingly well on most semi-modern systems. I actually had several rendering optimizations already planned in case lower-end machines were struggling, but nothing reported seems to fall very far of 100FPS in the worst-case. I will, however, need to rework my update timing, since the UPSes are all over the place. Groan, my friends. Groan.
I'm going to start looking into WebStart for future distribution of Skirmish-related files. Huge kudos to Jon for writing up a mini-article on using WebStart.
Personal Development
I wouldn't call it a hiatus, but I'll leave it to you to determine how to look at it. I will be taking a short break from Skirmish in the coming 'several' weeks, in order to work on some 'personal development'.
Personal development? Yes, that's intentionally vague. 🙂
I'd like to think that I've accomplished a lot during the years that I've dedicated to game development and programming, but I can't help but feel like I've been leaving a lot of things out. Writing games is certainly something that I'm comfortable doing at this point, but there are quite a few areas surrounding that which I really haven't taken the time to explore. Like what, you ask? A few things:
Articles. I have absolutely avoided the article 'world'. I wrote a small mini-article or two 'back in the day', but it wasn't anything that I was really happy with or particularly informed about. They say that to be able to write and discuss something is to show greater understanding of something than simply demonstrating its use. Sure I've written raycasting demos, fractals, metaballs, and other games/demos that show a direct application of the theory behind them, but I still can't really 'talk' myself through the math and ideas of it all. I really want to solidify my understanding of many of these ideas, and, as a nifty byproduct, I get to show informative articles to the world that can help others learn. Once again I have Jon to thank for the motivation to take on this direction — he's been quite active in article-writing for several years now. I've seen how much writing articles has helped him in his work, and I can't think of a better way to give back to the community.
Websites. Take a look at my 'flagship' game project — Membrane Massacre — and it's awe-inspiring website. Does it fill you with the same sense of "from under which ugly-rock did that thing crawl forth?" that it gives me? I've been downplaying the marketing of my games for ages, and I would really like to do something about it. As a programmer, things like HTML and CSS are certainly not beyond my understanding, and I'd like to think that I have a good enough sense of style to pull of a decent website. When I point people to MM, I really want to write that URL with pride, not show some dinky template-generated 4-frame website hosted on gamedev.net. After all, that's the kind of stuff I paid for this webspace for!
A good start, I think. Since this notion of 'personal development' is the sort of thing that should continue for the remainder of my career, I'm not going to really say that "I'm going to work on this for N weeks and then return to Skirmish". Instead, I'll work on my articles and my websites when I can, and work on Skirmish when I can. Overall this will mean a slower development rate, but I think that this is a tiny price to pay compared to the gains of putting time into these 'personal developments'. I'm interested in hearing about similar endeavors any of you have undertaken in the past. 🙂
Article 1 – Metaballs
For my first article, I definitely want to start off with something that I know I understand. Well heck, I remember writing that little Metaballs demo a while back, why not write about those? Fair enough. So, I set about creating an outline for the article.
After sliding in a few points for what the introduction would cover, it didn't take long for me to realize that I really didn't know much about the theory and concepts behind isosurfaces — isosurfaces being the more formal name for the type of 'object' metaballs are — and that I couldn't just write an article about a vague notion of what metaballs are and a couple of formulas. After all, this was supposed to be about becoming informed, right?
So, I hit the books. The online ones, that is. It turns out that there really is a lot more behind isosurfaces (or 'level sets', mathematically) than I had realized. Researching really is a critical component of writing articles. Articles are about facts (the good ones, at least :)), not about general opinions or beliefs of "what it probably is like". Just in spending an hour or so of the evening reading up on isosurfaces and metaballs proved extremely enlightening. This transformed the original dilemma of "what can I write about other than the definition and formula of a metaball?" to the problem of, "what stuff do I leave out? I can't fit all of this in here!". 10/10 times I think I would pick the latter. 🙂
The article is going to focus on isosurfaces and their applications to game development. This development journal's focus has always been rooted in writing games, so I want to make my articles tuned into that wavelength to some degree. Since my audience is also of that vein, I doubt there will be many complaints. As an upshot, I even get to write a couple of small demos involving isosurfaces for game-related effects/mechanics. Exellent. You can read the (rough!) outline here, and are encouraged to provide any feedback or suggestions.
Sometime in between that endeavor and my assignments, I will also try and also build an outline for Membrane Massacre's upcoming website. Perhaps brush up on my HTML and CSS knowledge as well. I can think of at least one web design guru I can prod at if things go awry. 😉
And that's all (for now). I hope that those of you that are here because of interest in Skirmish can understand my reasoning for undergoing this — er, 'delay'? — side-project. In the long-term it will doubtlessly help me as both a developer and an individual.
Until next time!
Demo time!
Project Skirmish: Demo One
Just a short and to-the-point entry tonight, featuring the first downloadable demo for Project Skirmish. This is a demo of the press-mouse-to-spew-firearms functionality that I wrote about a couple of entries ago. Click to spawn random guns. Simple enough.
The goals are:
- To ensure that my distribution
guessesmethods are proper for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
- To determine the game's average performance on various systems.
- To gauge if my current method of calculating updates-per-second is going to hold under non-development-computer conditions.
- Fun? 🙂
If you would like to test one (or more) of these out, please be sure to respond with the following information:
- What OS(es) your feedback applies to.
- What steps you had to take to get the demo to work. (if any)
- Your system's processor speed, amount of RAM, and video card.
- Your FPS and UPS at: 0 props, 100 Props, and 500 Props
- Any bugs, glitches, or odd occurrences that may have taken place.
A huge thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to help test the existing Skirmish base. 🙂
General business.
GameDev Club
Phew. Thursday and Friday were the university's "Club Days", where all of the various clubs gather for two days in the Student Life Centre to show off their wares and recruit members into their ranks. This is my second time helping man the booth for Club Days, and it certainly hasn't gotten any crazier. 🙂
It's packed. Perhaps not as ridiculously so as I'm making it seem, but it's definitely bustling all day, so it's very hard to engage in discussion and conversation with people that are more than a foot or so away.
My tactic was largely to stand out in front of our booth — I learned quickly that standing behind it would ensure nobody could hear what you were saying — and say something like, "Interested in game development? Y'know, making games?" to anyone who's eyes lingered on our three-fold poster for more than two seconds. Given two days of doing this, I've managed to aptly categorize potential developers into X genres:
- Gung-Ho'ers. These are the rare ones that when you ask them about game development, you can actually watch their eyes light up with glee as they fumble with the pen beside the sign-up sheet. These folks have had previous experience (usually at an intermediate level) with game development, enjoyed it, and were already looking to get some more. Not-so-coincidentally, these were always programmers.
- Shruggers. A few notches down from the aforementioned genre, but the Shrugger usually shows some promise. These are usually artists, musicians, or writers that have only just had the notion of combining their skill (be it art, music, or writing) with game development. The concept seems to bedazzle them somewhat, since they sort of shrug their shoulders, nod their head to themselves, and then write their name down. We're trying to have more to offer non-programmers, so hopefully these guys will stay.
- Ambitionists. These ones are either dripping with promise, or are laden with failure. These people look to be really excited about game development, but then again, they also seemed really excited about the last five clubs that they visited and are holding pamphlets from in their other hand. They'll sign up pretty quickly and write something like "Everything!" for the Area of Interest section. Either they are legitimately interested in game development, or we'll never see them again.
- Long-Shots. To be honest, they weren't really that interested in game development in the first place, but after chatting and convincing them for a few minutes, they sort of manage an, "Oooh, I guess…" and write their name on the sign-up sheet. Usually they have a fairly developed skill in one of the areas (usually any of them except programming, oddly enough), but they aren't really too interested in applying it to game development. Oftentimes it seems to be a, "Oh I don't want to be a nerd" thing. If they show up for the initial meeting, it's a surprise.
- Impossibles. "Have you ever wondered how games are really made?" I would challenge the passerby of this genre. They would walk a few more steps before actually briefly making eye contact, "No. Sorry." and just leaving me standing there. These are the most common, naturally enough. There will always be the bulk of the crowd that just has zero interest.
Long story short, we ended up with about 80 names written down by the end of Friday. This certainly beat last term's record of ~60 names. We barely had enough room for everyone during the initial meeting, so I don't know how we're going to cram everyone into one room this time. It's going to be intense to be showing the grandness of gamedev to such a huge audience! (Gah, this Thursday!)
Skirmish: Ever Forward
It's been a while since the last update, which has been largely unavoidable. Classes and assignments consume the vast majority of my time, with the gamedev club and social life chewing up most of what's left. The tail end of all of that is what little time Skirmish receives. Bit by bit though, it's getting there.
The props shown in the last update are now unified under a generic "Item" class, which will abstract the things like picking things up and throwing them away, which will work the same for all items.
Similarly, an even more abstracted 'selection highlight' interface exists for Props in general, which will really serve as a visual indicator so that the players knows when s/he is in range of a Prop in the world that s/he can interact with. Green will represent a pickup-able Prop, whereas later on there will be other colours for things like Switches/Buttons or Staircases/Elevators or defusable landmines.
As shown in the above screenshot, a simplistic inventory interface was implemented to allow me to develop the inventory system without needing to actually make any decisions about how the HUD will work. Right now the player can simply scroll through their inventory. Also shown, the game will work upon the assumption that the player can only have one "Held" item at any given time. This differs from the previous Skirmish insofar that there will not be quick-use hotkeys for throwing grenades or using a melee attack. At least not in the same sense. This will probably be possible via macros or a similar facility.
The last thing remaining on the "basic item interaction" system is discarding items, which works by throwing. Since most online games like to have a simple discarding system, such as, "drop item in front of player with no forces applied", I figured that I would spice things up. The player will be able to 'charge' any given throw, meaning that a player could simply drop the item in front of him-/her-self, but the option remains to fully charge the throw and actually heave the object at an enemy. This will be particularly useful with certain items, like knives. Additionally, this will mean that the ability to pick up background Props (chairs, plants, trash cans) will also be on the feature list again, since these will function exactly the same as any other Item.
I'm aiming to put up a downloadable demo tomorrow, featuring the version I showed in my last entry (the "gun-spawner"). The plan is to get feedback about how well (or not well) the game runs, and to ensure that the game launches/runs properly on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
And, given the late hour, I think I'll save my ravings about writing binary tree algorithms in assembly (for my CS 241 course) for the next entry as well. Hoy. 😉
Brave new world — Part 2.
University & Classes
The first week of classes is now done and behind me. It's a bit longer of a hike to the campus than I had expected — about 20-25 minutes if I keep a decent pace going. From here on in our university includes bus fare with our tuition cost, so it is sort of 'free' for me to take the bus as well. I really dislike the 'bus-stop scene' though, so I walk when I can.
I'm taking five courses this term, which are all exceptionally interesting. I'll toss in a brief paragraph about each:
CS 245 – Logic. This course looks at logic on a fundamental and computational level. It's very heavy on proofs — in fact, it's virtually all proofs — based on four logical operators we have at our disposal (conjunction, disjunction, implication, and negation), as well as introduction and execution rules for each of them. It's extremely interesting to work with logic on such a 'raw' level, and has obvious benefits for anyone interested in CS.
CS 251 – Computer Organization and Design. In a nutshell, this course begins at the level of assembly and machine code, and then works its way down, towards the machine itself. Only the very basics were covered this week, but I'm thrilled to be learning more about how a computer really works on the bottom-most levels. I've browsed through the textbook a bit, and it looks fascinating.
GER 102 – More German. Not the actual name, but you get the gist. I need to make a prerequisite chain of length three as a degree requirement, so I figured I'd continue my study of the German language. It's challenging and often frustrating to learn a new language, so excuse me for not sounding as worked-up as I did for the other courses. It's certainly interesting, but in the hair-pulling way. 🙂
PHYS 111 – Physics I. Officially, I'm taking this because I need a Science credit for my degree. Unofficially, because it ties *directly* into my growing interest of the computation and simulation of physics (both accurate and the crude stuff for games). This course covers kinematics and dynamics, which is exactly what I'm interested in. It seems like everything beyond that in physics (waves, quantum physics, etc) is too mind-blowing to do much in terms of the simulation I'm in to. Looking very forward to using this course to augment my basic knowledge of physics.
CS 241 – Foundations of Sequential Programs. This course starts at the level of assembly and machine code, but unlike CS 251, it works its way up, towards languages. Without a doubt, this is going to be the most intriguing course of all. This week we were writing raw machine code for an old CPU called MIPS — or rather, a MIPS simulator. I think if we were all writing real machine code then most of the campus' servers would be down by now. 🙂 It's really really really fascinating stuff, and we haven't even touched the bulk of the course: writing a compiler for a simple programming language. This blows my socks right off, so I'll definitely be writing more about this as it develops. We have to use the basic language that they specify, but I'd like to start my own off on the side, just for kicks.
Project Skirmish
I didn't forget about Skirmish. Oh no. 🙂 In my last post (or 2nd last, rather) I promised that I would have a surprise ready for Monday, when I had thought my internet would be good to go. Since it's functional now, I might as well make good on that promise right now.
Given my recent habits, perhaps the surprise could have been that I'm still regularly and eagerly working on Skirmish. I think that's probably a surprise to many of you, but I won't stop there. Read on!
Props & Physics
What it's boiled down to (internally) is the idea of Props. A prop, in terms of Skirmish, is any physics-driven object that [can be] maintained over the network across a hosted game world. This includes: chairs, tables, grenades, bullets, rocks, guns, rockets, empty shell casings, and even big wood splinters left from destroying a crate.
This leads directly into the fact that all 'items' are now technically 'weapons' in the sense that all items create an Entity (be it a physics-driven Prop or otherwise). Firing a gun creates a bullet, throwing a grenade creates a grenade, which is obvious. However, using a medkit will create a healing entity, which will essentially be a particle effect that also restores lost health from nearby teammates. Melee weapons create a melee damage entity, which will really act like a short-life invisible projectile released from the player.
It sounds sort of strange from a player's point of view, but it will be entirely transparent to players — they won't be able to tell the difference between this and if I had coded each type of item completely separately. From a developer's point of view, it means that one type of network message can handle all items, and naturally having all items under a unified system makes life much easier than having several cases for each item type.
I've implemented the foundations of this Prop system already, which can be viewed in the video below. In terms of performance, since Props use collisions based on a single point, are very low-cost. I can easily simulate hundreds of active Props at once, colliding with the map and static Props (crates in this example) with little performance hit. As a plus, when a Prop stops moving, it goes into stasis (read: no collision checking), which kicks up the speed as well. This will go a long way in making the game feel more dynamic.
View Prop Physics video on YouTube.
(Note: Standard YouTube low-quality, but you can see the gist of what's going on.)
Almost there.
Bell says that our internet will be activated on Monday. Expect a juicy update then. 🙂
(On a sidenote, the dev-log has broken [a paltry] 2,000 views. Hurr.)
Out of the loop.
I'm currently mostly moved into my new house in Waterloo, but we don't have an internet connection set up just yet. I'm filching a neighbour's at the moment, but the connection is poor; I'll have to make this brief:
All is well. It will be a week or so until I have an actual internet connection, so don't expect anything new here until then (or thereabouts). I am preparing a nice surprise however, despite the downtime. Hush hush until then! 🙂
Brave new world — Part 1.
Movin' Yer Shtuff
This will be my last night at home before moving back over to Waterloo, bright and early tomorrow morning. I'm certainly going to miss all of the free meals, but it's going to be fantastic getting back over to university and feeling that collective energy that just can't help but buzz around the area. Definitely going to be another excellent term.
Leaving the previous year of living in residence behind, I will be moving in with two other chaps I met in a reasonably sized townhouse not too far from the campus. They're Computer Science nuts like me, so I'm sure it will be just fine. After selecting our phone/internet/TV plans, I'm incredibly thankful for the wonders of splitting bills three ways. We decided to splurge a little on internet and get the Cogeco Pro package, which offers a whopping 16 mbps of hardcore download transfer speed, and 100 gigabytes of bandwidth. I'll have to lay down the law about torrent downloading though, lest we go over our cap.
Tomorrow I'll be moving in, and so is one of my other housemates. The third moves in on Sunday, which means I'm guaranteed to not get the smallest room, so all is well. 🙂 Medium or large is fine by me. After all, I can't be expected to write code without being able to have a good leg-stretching here and there, right? Right!
Project Skirmish
It's been a little hectic lately for coding, so it's mostly been design work lately. I've decided how to manage weapons and projectiles — which I won't delve into just yet, since I doubt it's an area of interest — but it will allow for the best flexibility in adding lots of different types of weapons through a common interface (rifles to grenades to flamethrowers to rocket launchers to baseball bats). As you can see from the list, firearms, melee weapons, explosives (thrown and planted), and tools (medkits, armour, stealth devices) will all go through the same system. This makes for faster development speed, and, even more importantly, a far less painful networking model.
I've also decided to — regrettably — downgrade from the Object Model that I spoke so highly of before. I would absolutely love to have fully dynamic objects with nice collisions/physics, as well as allowing for such a high level of interaction with the environment. However, I also need to be realistic if I hope to complete anything. Having an over-ambitious physics model is the largest factor in Gloom's downfall, and I won't let it crash Skirmish as well. For the time being, the environment will become static, meaning props in the world will not be interactable, sans basic collisions. This excludes Items, which will be dynamic — referring to dropped guns, thrown grenades, or loose rocks/grit/shrapnel laying around, which will react to forces like being kicked by a player or knocked away by explosions — to the best degree I can manage. This may or may not lead to allowing props (eg. crates, desks, chairs, trash cans, etc) to be destructible, not still not movable.
I plan to discuss the Inventory/Item Model for Skirmish in my next entry, and how it fits into the game/gameplay. This will be a pinnacle part of the game, so I will be interested in hearing feedback to make it as interesting as possible. Stay tuned.
The History of Skirmish.
History Lesson
This only scratches the surface of each of these projects, and my own history in game programming. Still, hopefully it will give a decent overview of the efforts I've exerted over the years towards creating my ideal online shooter game — nay — my dream game. It all began five long years ago…
2002 – "Bizlof War"
Back in my first post was where I first mentioned Skirmish Online. But it began far before that. The undying firey passion to create this online game began all the way back in 2002, five long years ago. This was when I was rather new to the idea of game programming; anything beyond a text adventure was "far out". I was introduced by a friend to the online game creation utility known as BYOND, or, Build Your Own Net Dream. It uses a C#-meets-Python-like scripting language, and lets the developer build atop of their existing network and world code. You were constrained to their object-based networking system, and their 32×32 tile engine. Despite this, it was still enough power for a budding developer such as myself. It wasn't long before I had created the first incarnation of my dream game, Bizlof War. The name was made up on-the-fly, but despite its look, it has no Russian background or relation. Who knows?
Bizlof War wasn't that pretty, but after looking at the screenshots from the link at the top of this post, one can see a strong resemblance.
Bizlof War took place in a more futuristic setting than Skirmish, featuring weapons like railguns, plasma weapons, and allowing players to 'warp' to teammates. The damage per-shot was also lower than most games, allowing battles to take place for longer than a quick encounter. The characters were also broken up into 'classes', such as Soldier, Pulse Trooper, Commando, Stealth Op, and Weapons Expert, whereas certain weapons would only be usable by certain classes.
The game saw moderate popularity, but my inexperience in writing games combined with its performance/gameplay being hindered by BYOND itself (it was catered towards slow games like puzzles or RPGs) resulted in a less than optimal outcome. Still, there were several games hosted with 20+ players, which was a simply fantastic experience, and was what spurred me to keep on aiming for this ideal online game.
2002 – "Bizlof War: Tactics"
After Bizlof War's completion, development quickly began on a sequel, Bizlof War: Tactics. The idea behind this game was to encourage more tactical and stealthy gameplay, while keeping the overhead shooter aspect that I enjoyed in the first game.
Bullets became instantaneous, whereas the player would aim at a tile and click the mouse to fire a 'burst' from the selected weapon. This would be 1 round from pistols, 3-6 for SMGs/rifles, and 8+ for shotguns, with the rest somewhere in between. Recoil was also a factor, so battles wouldn't become stand+click wars.
Another inclusion (which I loved) was gas grenades. They came in both the Chlorine (damaging) and Nerve-Gas (stunning) flavours, and continuously spawned gas-cloud entities that drifted and shifted about for the lifetime of the effect, blocking line-of-sight and dealing out its effects. It was neat to be able to trap someone in an office with a well-placed gas grenade, and wait around the corner with a shotgun for when they came rushing out, unawares.
The game worked on the idea of a 'slotted inventory', rather than classes. A player would choose items to have in his/her inventory prior to appearing in the game, each of which took up a certain number of the total seven slots they had (seen above). Items had no cost associated with them, so the player was free to experiment and customize their arsenal in whatever way seemed to best fit the play-style they wanted.
Bizlof War: Tactics also received a luke-warm response, although seemed to fare a little better than its predecessor. BYOND itself was still the factor that was limiting me. I had begun learning Pascal and Delphi in highschool at this point, so I planned to venture even further towards my dream game…
2004 – Bizlof War (Delphi)
After an intermission of a year or so (developing other games all the while), I found myself back with the online game fever, and it would not let go. It was time to leverage what I had learned with Delphi and try to make a 'real' online game.
Code was hastily slapped together, and very quickly (read: ~2 weeks) the game was vaguely playable online. Players could join, exit, chat, use weapons, and kill/be killed. It looked crude, but I was blown away by the fun of just a few players online gunning eachother down could provide.
After a couple more months of development flew by, it began actually taking on a semi-professional look:
I was absolutely ecstatic about how well everything was going, and how intense the battles were becoming. The gameplay followed along the vein of the first Bizlof War, taking on a futuristic theme with more fictional weaponry, and slower-moving bullets.
In terms of response, I saw far more interest than I had seen with my BYOND-based creations, which was to be expected after I had broken free of its constraints. No more 8-directional movement, tile-based movement, slow input reaction speeds, and inflexible network code. Things were far better than they were, but still, things were not good enough.
The code was sloppily written, on which I blame my naiveness at the time. I was still fairly new to programming, and this was the biggest game I had ever written. I also lacked practical knowledge about writing network code, so the networking was extremely inefficient. Once untraceable bugs started sprouting up and the network code was all but collapsing on itself, I gave a great sigh, and closed the project. It never even reached 'public' status.
2005 – Skirmish Online (1)
I had gained a lot of experience in the following year, and so I decided to undertake this project once again. This time I would opt for as visually pleasing of a game as possible to ensure success with future players. I chose to use OpenGL to wriet a 3D-overhead viewing style, combined with polygon-based maps. I was also especially pleased with the GUI system I had written.
As you can see, I focused on the visual components far more than I should have. This attempt didn't even reach the networking phase before I realized that I was in over my head. I actually rewrote this all in C++ (the original being in Delphi), and starting integrating Newton before I decided that it was all too much.
I learned a lot while writing this attempt at my ideal game. The main lesson to be learned, however, was to keep your ambition in check. I wasn't ready for a 3D game then, and I think I'm only barely ready for one now, 2 years later.
2006 – Skirmish Online (2)
I received the best response on this (and most recent) attempt at Skirmish, even though it too never reached the 'public' phase of operation. I wrote this in Delphi as well, and took the lessons that I had learned from my last two attempts: 1) write code in a clean manner that will allow for long-term use, and 2) don't get overambitious with the features.
As a result, Skirmish used a tile engine for its map system, and a simplified GUI system. I had learned tons in the last year about network programming, so I wrote much better network code.
Unfortunately, despite my vast improvements, "better" is still a very relative term. I made great strides, but still fell behind. The code and networking again became unwieldy, bugs crept up around the corners, and I found myself back where I was before. It was here I learned my final (major) lesson, that planning one's code in advance is just as important as planning one's game/gameplay in advance.
2007 – Project Skirmish
This is where things stand now. Project Skirmish is a temporary name for the game until something more original comes to the surface. I'm writing this game now, using the code I wrote back in July, which saves me a month of writing broilerplate engine code.
I'm going to be taking full advantage of the lessons that I have learned over the years, and carefully write every piece to the puzzle that is my dream game. I've certainly had my ups and downs with game projects, but, as you can see, the plan to create this game has never wavered or faded away.
And so, I'm sure it's very obvious what my 'new' game project is. I consider the diversions of the last couple of months as a simple intermission for my motivation to resurface, and thus Project Skirmish gets resumed. Refactoring has already begun in the intent of keeping organized code, and the game itself has begun to be developed. Stay tuned, for sure.
The dream shall be attained!


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Recent developments at the state and national levels seem to confirm what James A. Farley, late postmaster general, wrote in 1948:
"The hazards of politics come not from campaigns and elections, as might be supposed, but rather from the nature of the creature that engages in politics. Ambition, love, jealousy, hate and the many emotions and reactions man is heir to frequently affect the course of nation and world more than principles or circumstances or events."
Philip Tavlian
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This will be my first fall/winter at the lake and I would like to get some firewood sometime soon. Is there normally some folks selling trucks of wood out on 63 this time of year? Anybody have a phone number for a guy in the Kowaliga area?
they usually have some at Nail's Convenience Store
Look on the bulletin boards at Nails, D&A on 229, D&r , and at Cottons BBQ. Always someone with a card up advertising firewood for sale.
I am cutting timber on my land. You can come and haul off what you want. I cut, you carry and load. FREE.
Email me. I'll be cutting some timber on my land. I'll cut, you carry and load.
Any hickory in the mix?
Some hickory, poplar, oak, pine, sweetgum, magnolia, mixed batch.
Sounds like lakeplumber has a great deal.... but if you want it seasoned, delivered, and stacked, call Josh Floyd at 334-315-2709.


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It was a great pleasure to work with The NCS Challenge again this summer. The scheme, formed by the National Citizen Services (NCS) and national charity The Challenge, provides opportunities for 15-17 year olds to improve their life & work skills through exciting activities and working with local charities.
The group from The Challenge came into visit halow, find out about our services and young people and were asked to think about how they could support the charity. It was great to meet such an interested, passionate and engaged group of young people who later that week took to Guildford High Street to campaign and raise awareness for halow's work in the local community.
This year we worked with the group to organise and facilitate a sports day for the young people at halow, which was incredibly popular. halow's young people were incredibly excited to the meet The Challenge group and get stuck into the sports on offer. After the warm up everyone was split into teams for games of basketball, football cricket and boccia giving everyone the opportunity to get involved and meet each other! It was a great success with both groups learning new skills.
Thank you to The Challenge group for all your hard work and enthusiasm in campaigning and for your patience and dedication in organising the sports day for our young people.
The Challenge is the UK's leading charity for building a more integrated society. Work on a local level to bring together people from all ages, ethnicities and walks of life, connecting communities and building trust. halow is proud to work with this organisation, connecting young people in their local communities.


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Pastor's Page
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Gallery Jan - June
Gallery July-DEC.
News & Announcements
Contact Us
est. 1867
300 Fishburne Street, Walterboro, SC 29488
843-549-6412, email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Rev. Leon R. Maxwell, Pastor
Message from the Pastor
St. Peter's AME Church, Walterboro, SC 2015. All Rights Reserved
No part of this website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the owner, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials. Commercial use and distribution of the contents of the website is not allowed without express and prior written consent of the owner
Terms and Conditions.
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Greetings to all,
As the "Servant Leader" at Historic St. Peter's AME Church in downtown Walterboro, I greet you all in the name of the Risen Lord & Savior - Christ Jesus!
At St. Peter's, every facet of the worship service is intentionally designed to Praise & Worship the Lord our God, and Jesus Christ our Savior, which is led by the Holy Spirit our Guide and Comforter.
Our Sunday mornings worship service ranges from "traditional to contemporary styles" of worship. We believe that everyone has a gift and we encourage them to utilize it in the service of the Lord!
So, if you're interested, we offer Church School Classes for Adult Males, Females, Youth and Teenagers at 9:00am, and the Worship Experience at 10:00am.
Thank you for visiting our website, and
May God Richly Bless and keep You,
Pastor & Mrs. Leon R. Maxwell


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Nobody could deny that a painted garden bench would be the focal point of any garden. You may want one because it will be a beautiful addition to a sunny spot in your garden or you may be a hugely dedicated gardener who likes to open their garden to the public during the summer season or indeed, you may host fund raising events in your garden and your painted bench would be quite a talking point for your guests. Whatever the reason, so many people want a painted garden bench and we are here to hold your hand and guide you step by step through the process in this tried and tested methodology.
We will advise you on bench preparation, the type of paint to use, how to apply the paint and time frames. They key is, don't try to skip any of the step by step advice, not if you want a good result that is!! Whether you are looking for your bench to be in Cotswold olive for that relaxed New England look, or perhaps rectory red to enhance your Japanese water garden – we have the knowledge, (and you are going to have it too), so please read on.
- The area around your bench should be covered with newspapers or an old sheet
- The surface of the wood must be scrubbed with a strong bristled brush to remove any dust or particles from your bench. You can use the same brush again with a bowl of warm soapy water to remove additional hard to see particles – then rinse the bench with clean water. If you have had your bench for some time and it has been outside and open to the elements, there may be mildew or mould on the bench and in cases such as these, bleach should be added to the soapy water for scrubbing purposes, with particular care being taken in the mildew/mould affected areas. Again, clean water for rinsing purposes is a must. The bench must be allowed to dry out thoroughly before you move on to the next stage – do not rush the drying process.
- Use good quality highly abrasive sandpaper to rub down the bench – do not be shy with this as you are looking to dispel any surface marks or old paint – you can use an electric sander if you have one. You need to work towards a smooth finish without any splinters. Dust the bench off and sand down again with a finer sandpaper to give an even smoother finish. A clean damp cloth should be used for the final wiping of the bench and you should continually rinse the cloth as you wipe the bench, so that you are not just moving dust from one part of the bench to another part of it.
- Always use an external wood primer – don't go straight to painting. Proper preparation is everything. The primer gives an impervious coat to the wood and by not using it the top coat will not adhere properly to the wood and the drying of the paint will be hindered. You can spray paint or hand paint using either of the methods below. Hold the nozzle of a spray paint can a minimum of five inches away from the bench and systematically make steady passes to make sure the surface is evenly coated. Pay particular attention to any corners and joins where spot painting as needed. Let the primer dry at least overnight for the best effect.
- For brush-on primer, dip your brush into the paint and coat the wood with even strokes to avoid creating brush lines again systematically make steady passes to make sure the surface is evenly coated. Pay particular attention to any corners and joins where spot painting as needed. Let the primer dry at least overnight for the best effect.
- The colour for the final coat is entirely up to yourself although external egg shell does give a lovely finish. Hand painting followed by an aerosol paint gives a super finish also, being sure to use a paint for external use – this is very very important. Protection against the weather is paramount here. The paint can be applied in an identical fashion to the primer and if you are finishing with a spray paint, be sure to shake the can before applying so that the contents are evenly distributed. Ensure that you allow the paint to dry overnight before you apply a second coat.
- A weather proof sealer can be used to spray over the bench finally, and if your taste is for a shiny bench, then a clear gloss coat can be applied.
- Always, always, always allow your bench to dry completely in between each coat and before you move it into the garden.
Have confidence in your ability to do this and do follow these instructions for the best results – it really is worth it, but most of all, ENJOY YOUR BENCH.


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Does Technology Belong in Classroom Instruction?
Some say it broadens horizons, others that it can't teach children how to think
There's no disputing that digital technology plays a major role in education. Millions of students are using personal computers, tablets and even smartphones to research and complete assignments, communicate with each other and with teachers about their courses and sometimes collaborate on school projects.
But that still leaves plenty of room for disagreement on whether technology should play a major role in the classroom itself—that is, whether teachers should rely on digital tools for a significant portion of their classroom...