And, We're Back!

This has me really, really excited. The Unofficial Clone Wars site is now back and running!

From 2003 to 2006, I worked on this webpage in the leadup to the movie Revenge of the Sith, helping put together one of the biggest and most comprehensive Clone Wars databases out there, with information on the characters, locations, battles, reviews and interviews. After Revenge of the Sith, we all took a break, and the site went by the wayside.

Until now - with the movie coming out this August, we decided to dust it off and start again, and the side can now be seen at its new home: http://theclonewarz.net. Go check it out and let us know what you think!

Deportation & Comics

My brother Dan went off to college today, the second kid in our family to do so. Dan was accepted to The University of Hartford down in Conn. where he's going to be double majoring in Music Education and I think Music Theory. It's going to be weird without him in the house, although I think that it's going to make things easier all around, at least for me, for a while. I'll have freer use of the car, and I found that when I went to Norwich, even though I was living in the house, I got along better with my sibblings. Probably the same thing will happen here. I gave him my contact information, AIM, E-mail and web addresses, so we'll talk during the year, that's for sure. I think that he'll enjoy college.

Over the summer, I've become more of a comic fan. I've begun to read more than just Star Wars Republic/Empire, broadening my horizons a little. The Amazing Spiderman was the first comic that I picked up, I love the author, J. Michael Straczynski, who also wrote the entire Babylon 5 series. Love Spiderman, then picked up the Fantastic Four, also by JMS, which has proven to be an interesting read as well. I've also picked up some random back issues of Iron Man, who's been a long time favorite, as well as Hellboy(Love the artwork) and Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. I've also accumulated random issues of other Spidermans, Sin City and Freaks of the Heartland, among others.
I was never really into comics as a kid. I know that I owned some, although I have no idea where they ended up, but the one or two X-Men comics that I did own confused me a great deal. I didn't really know what was going on at all during the stories, and really didn't know anything about comic art and storytelling to pay much attention anyway. I was more into the Marvel Trading cards. Third through Fifth grades in primary school, man, I loved those cards, and still have them, in a box. Those were more interesting to collect and just look at, at least at my age. Me and my friends would talk about them all the time, and during Recess, we'd play X-Men on the playground.
Star Wars Republic and Empire really got me more into comics. Working with the Unofficial Clone Wars Site (www.clonewarz.com), I worked at reviewing the Clone Wars comics as they came out. Looking back over the older reviews that I wrote, I can see that I had almost no idea what I was talking about, and as I wrote more reviews, I learned more about comic art and writing. Along the way, I've since talked to quite a few comic authors, artists and editors, all really cool people.

So, anyone have any recommendations for new books and series?

Music & Celebration 3 Pictures

Something that I picked up from a friend's weblog: 01) Total volume of music files on my computer? Currently: 1539 Songs, 4.4 Days at 5.73 gigs. And growing. At a quick pace. Currently, I have 372 songs that I have not yet listened to, although in some, if not most cases, I listened to most of it then passed over to the next one just before it ended. In any case, that's 24% of all the music that I have that I really haven't listened to. 1.1 days. Yikes. More statistics:

Albums: 197Artists: 219 Genres: [Genre, (Song Count)] 33: Acoustic (1), Alternative (50), Alternative & Punk (47), Bluegrass (1), Blues (2), Classic Rock (13), Classical (2), Country (11), Electronic (2), Electronica (2), Film Soundtrack (3), Folk (21), General Rock (1), Hard Rock (27), Humor (26), Jazz (75), Jazz/R&B (20), Light Rock (41), Metal (10), New Age (31), Other (6), Podcast (5), Pop (50), Rock (548), Rock/Pop (11), Salsa (1), Soundtrack (495), Spoken Word (2), Techno (2), Unclassifiable (2), Vocal (1) and World (1). Now, I don't know why some of these are here, like Electronic, Electronica and Techno, aren't they the same thing? Ditto for soundtracks. A couple others, I think that I'd reclassify, because iTunes tells me what everything is, including the genre.

02) The last CD I bought was...The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy soundtrack. Really enjoyed the music set to this, having fun listening to it, listened to that a couple times. I think that my favorites thus far are So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, and Journey of the Sorcerer, which is a weird title.

03a) The last song I listened to before writing this was... Life Less Ordinary, by Carbon Leaf. Outstanding band from Virginia, have some great CDs.

03b) Song playing right now is... Stay (Wasting Time), Dave Matthew's Band. That's really just a coincidence.

04) Five albums I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me...This is going to be difficult: a) Indian Summer, Carbon Leaf. Even though I just found these guys, I must say that their music is very relatable to many things in my life. Life Less Ordinary, This is My Song, Changeless and What About Everything are my favorites off of that album. b) Garden State Soundtrack, Various. This is an incredible CD with a really cool mix of music from a really good movie. Favorite tracks off of there is the Winding Road, Don't Panic, Caring is Creepy, New Sland and Let Go. c) Moonlight Dancers, Sara Wheeler. New England singer, I don't think that I've ever gotten tired of her music. d) Yourself or Someone Like You, Matchbox 20. I think that this was one of the first rock CDs that I got. Love every song on that one. e) Under the Table and Dreaming, Dave Matthew's Band. First CD from these guys, probably their best CD and one that I constently listen to. Runners up: Rush of Blood to the Head, (Coldplay), One, (Beatles) Crash (Dave Matthew's Band), Silent Steeples (Dispatch), Cracked Rearview (Hootie and the Blowfish), Room for Squares (John Mayer), Inarticulate Nature Boy (Josh Clayton-Felt), Ex-Girlfriends (Low Millions), Star Wars (A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi- John Williams), The Italian Job/Bourne Supremacy Soundtracks (John Powell)

5) 5 People to pass the baton to and why: Anyone really. It's always interesting to see what other people like for music.

My cold's almost gone. I just love how something can make you completely miserable for a straight week then just up and vanish. I've spend the last two days going through about two boxes of kleenex and now hoping that whenever I blow my nose, I'm not also going to make it start gushing blood.

Alrighty, start the countdown. 10 more days until exams are over. 16 more days until Revenge of the Sith is out in theaters. I should look into getting advance tickets. You know something, I've never, ever been to a Star Wars movie on opening night. Never. When Attack of the Clones was released, I was working that night as was Eric, so we went the next day, and when the Phantom Menace was out, I can't remember why I didn't go the opening night, but just that I was annoyed that some people that I knew had. And the special editions, it was some time after they had been released.

And finally, I've gotten my Celebration 3 pictures up online!

Here's some highlights:

Me

Me and Brian Gates, my "Boss"

Me, Cathy from DelRey Audio and Donovan

Donovan and I

Me and Matthew Stover

Jan Duursema and I

Alpha and... Beta?

Clones

Me and Timothy Zahn

The New England Garrison

Karen Traviss and I

Me and Troy Denning

I guess we found out what happened to Jar Jar...

R2-D1 and R2-D2

Aaron Allston and I

The George Lucas talk

Sarah, one of the very cool people that I met.

That's all for now. The rest of the images can be found here.

TUCWS New Site

For all of those who visit the Unofficial Clone Wars Site, we're now located at a new address:

http://www.clonewarz.com

The Convention Part 2

Day Three of the convention was the one that a lot of people were looking forwards to. George Lucas was in for the morning to make his first convention appearence in nearly twenty years. People knew it too, and began lining up early. From the reports that I heard, people started lining up at midnight for the 8 am show. On top of that, it was about forty degrees, lightly raining and windy. Not really the most receptive place for a line. I awoke at about 4 am to get ready to help with the lines. It was already several blocks long, wraping around my hotel. Crazy, and people were getting annoyed, because we had to move them around a little bit. I didn't have armor on, and by 7 am, we started moving them into the building. I had to lead a couple of bitchy people around then went back outside and to my room, got my armor on. I then was asked to man the ground floors to help get people out of the building. I was given a pass to get into the second Lucas showing of the morning, and I went up to go see him. It was quite a while before I got in, as we took a while to move nearly three thousand people into the room. We didn't fill it with the people supposed to be in the next showing, so we started filling people from thethird showing. Then we went in, and for the first time in my life, I saw the person who's really changed my life by introducing Star Wars to me and countless others. For a half hour, probably twenty or so people got up and asked questions of the flanneled one. There were the general questions, like what's coming up next (Two Star Wars TV series, a possible Willow TV series, a couple movies that might be in the works.) What did he think of the fans, and some things like that. It was a quick, but very good talk, and he was very appreciative of the fans, and the 501st. He pointed right at me, or my section when someone asked about the Five-Oh-First. "Well, seeing how they're all pointing guns at me..." The entire trooper line cheered. It was great to hear him say that. After that, we cleared the room and got out, and went on to our other assignments. My armor was really starting to fall apart and I got out of it, and worked at Del Rey for a little while, then wandered around for a little while inbetween signings. I talked with Randy Stradley and Jeremy Barlow from Darkhorse comics, whom I'd met the day before. I won a t-shirt from Lucas Arts, talked to Ken, one of the guys who was on the production team for some of the Star Wars games that I made friends with. I saw Battlefront II being played for a bit, which was a really cool looking game that I'm certainly going to upgrade my computer for. It was amazing. Can't wait to see it in it's entirety. I went back and helped with another couple signings, and talked with Matthew Stover, then met Timothy Zahn for the first time. I also went to the Star Wars Spectacular, which was 8 mindblowing minutes of finished Episode III footage. It was absolutely amazing. All of the major fights, and even then some other footage, it was just amazing. Simply amazing. I talked to several people about it and got dinner, tried to get into the panel on the new 9 book series, but the guys wouldn't let me in. Gr... But I found out anyway, which is good. I got Aaron Allston to sign my books, got images from Karen Traviss, Troy Denning and talked with them for a little bit. I got dinner, talked to the artists again and went and walked around at the convention center then went back to the hotel room for a while. I told Sara and Lihn to stop by, but they never did, and I called Eric, who was just on his way into class. I went to bed early. It was almost over.