My new batteries are in the mail, somewhere between here and Florida. Or so say usps.gov, who habitually wait until the mailman hands me something before even acknowledging that it's been picked up from the source. Either way, they're not here yet; but they're in transit.

So, I've been thinking about that a bit.

I grabbed five extended automatic batteries for the 510, and a new charger capable of charging all five at once; that came out to something like $102 with shipping. Put another way, it came out to approximately a couple cartons of organic cigarettes, which I traditionally went through every week:

So it's not really about the money. I'd hazard that, if I didn't have a Zippo, and instead went through Bic Lighters, I'd have spent the $102 on those in the last six months. Maybe.

And, technically, the batteries I've got from June aren't completely dead. They're just close enough that I'm able to use them all up in less time than it takes to recharge any of them. Meaning that the counter currently claiming that I've avoided 10,358 cigarettes is a little off; call it closer to ten thousand, even: the ashtray living to the right of my trackball isn't just a big empty thing for me to set the Yeti onto between uses at the moment.

But that's okay. I'm fine with real cigarettes where and when I'm allowed by selfimportant fascists to smoke them.

I still need to make a bumpersticker reading Ban Fascism, if only to see whether anyone gets the joke. At a guess: they won't; people are illiterate, and kinda stupid.

About merch: more on that in a minute....

About ECigs: it occurred to me today to remember about the BluCigs, and thusly the chargingcase fiasco. If that's news, the case BluCigs.com were sending out over the summer [including my order, which technically got here before the solstice] were flawed and capable of catching on fire at random. Plugged in or not, apparently. So I followed the instructions in the BluCigs.com's little press release and discontinued use a couple months ago, awaiting a free replacement.

Today, I remembered to hit BluCigs.com to see what the hell was going on. And what's going on is that they updated their site today, which remembers me, but which doesn't acknowledge that I ever ordered anything from them. Secondarily, it doesn't believe me about my username and password to get into the affiliates' backend. So I'm not sure what to make of all that.

I EMailed them. Separately. One EMail to info@BluCigs.com and one to affiliates@BluCigs.com, each asking what's going on. No reply yet, though it's only been about an hour.

If that doesn't work, I guess I'll call them up. Though I know from experience that calling them only connects me to a cheery moron with no useful information and no way of looking anything up. After that, I guess I give up and just give them to the FTC.

Okay, so: about merch.

I mentioned yesterday that I was looking around at things, trying to decide how exactly to do skateboards at zazzle.com. Then I published the What's New and realised that I had a simple way to do it. Somehow, over the last few months [technically over the last couple years], it never occurred to me that I'd got Swyndle's stuff up at CP and PF, but not at zazzle.com. So, I did that, starting with skateboards: zazzle.com/swyndle.

I set up a separate account for that. Partly to keep accounting straight. With his stuff, I kick him fifty percent of the net; so it's easier to glance at an EMail mentioning that, like, Zazzle just sent Swyndle $X through PayPal.com and divide by two.

The designs to date are a but duh, if stylish. I'm more into graphics filling up the whole board, personally; but, for those more into thumping stickers onto things, the centred image leaves room for that.

So, the idea now is to find a way to get the images to fill up the boards without going outside the lines, as it were. Also, I should get the Swyndlechicks onto shirts and things at zazzle.com, since CP suck and no one's ever really heard of PF.

That might be changing, of course. DreamHost.com [who control the server housing this site] just launched a bunch of selfadvertising shirts, using PrintFection.com. Which is funny, since DreamHost.com are in Brea, California, and PF are here in Denver. Though it's also unfunny, since PF therefore have to hit me with salestax if I order something; CP and Zaz being in California, maybe that's why DH went out of state to set something up; who knows.

About skateboards, again: as much as I personally don't much like the centred image thing, I suppose it would be a simple way to get a few other things onto boards without working out how to make them fit. Images designed for shirts tend to be around 4:3 [meaning really 8000*6000], so they should translate well enough into 1:1 somehow. Just in case anyone's been waiting for something like this to appear on a skateboard, but forgot to EMail me about it.

But that's not really optimal, to me. I'm thinking more toward coating the whole board with stuff. Possibly including faked boardstickers. It's not as easy as it sounds, since zazzle.com tend to downscale any fullboard image to fit thinner decks [I tend to design for 8.5inches, since that's what I personally like, but allow the images to go onto all the others], so, once I've got the sizes all figured out to paint a 10*3 bumpersticker onto a board, it can be immediately shrunk down to 9*2.7 on a smaller one. Then again, I'm probably the only one who'd care; if anyone else had my standards, Will Ferrell would be out of a job.

Speaking of standards: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Which is to say that, to date, I haven't actually picked up a zazzleboard at all. Based on their little blurb, they sound pretty good. But I usually like to order something and playtest it until it breaks [not easy to do with shirts] before recommending it.

The problem with the boards has been mostly that there's snow here. No board is any good when there's snow. Except maybe for snowboards. But who cares. So, the intention is to grab one once it's warm enough out there to use it properly, and once I've actually figured out what I'd want to have on my own board. And hopefully not in that order.

Something to work on today, I guess. Unless I accidentally go play a videogame for the next thirty hours instead. Could go either way.

More later....

[Add Comments]