Imperial Forces Home Page

A page designed to serve as the home page for the forces of the Galactic Empire. When I first made the page, it closely parodied the layout of the US Military website. Since then, however, the US site has changed.

Switch to the Darkside

Inspired by Catatmomic's hilarious flash cartoon at Pixel Red, I decided to further the link between Apple's "Switch" campaign and Jedi Knights turning to the darkside. For more Sith - software company goodness, visit www.microsith.com.

The Romulan Embassy

Like it or hate it, after watching Star Trek: Nemesis I had Romulans on the brain for a while. Therefore, I decided to build a Romulan Embassy page for the promenade of Outpost 10F.

The Tholian Consulate

Once I had started down the dark path with the Romulan Embassy, I subsequently saw an episode of Enterprise which included the Tholians. I decided to make another diplomatic site for the Outpost 10F promenade, this time starring the Tholians.

Twisted Pair

My other blog dealing with making IT work on a small business budget.

Cocksucker

In 1998, Wizards of the Coast released its now legendary "Unglued" pack for Magic: The Gathering. The expansion set was full of humorous and parody cards. Among other things, the set included quite a lot of "chickens" as creatures. As I got to know the set, I envisioned a chicken-countering card: a giant vortex hoovering a flock of hapless chickens to their doom. Once I'd codified the idea in my mind, the name for the card became instantly obvious. Big thanks to my sister for drawing the frightened poultry.

Dwarven Minors

I had this idea running around in my head for about a year before it got implemented. I finally managed to bug Angel into drawing the image for it. Kudos to her on the lovely details such as the "Dwarven Venus" painting in the background, and the bow of the string which is holding up the "Minor's" fake beard.

The Omega Hare

The first joke Magic card I made was a realistic version of a sketchy image that had been floating around the internet called "Vorpal Bunny". This card reresented the killer rabbit seen in Monty Python's "The Holy Grail". In a comic at Penny Arcade, Tycho talked about an ultra-powerful rabbit creature from the Final Fantasy XI MMORPG. Like the evil bunny from Acheron's call, this was yet another nod to the Monty Python rabbit. Tycho's name for the creature was particularly delightful: "The Omega Hare", or "The Rabbit that Ends". The Penny Arcade comic inspired me to create a couple of variations, and rename them with Tycho's wonderfully apt designation.

The Walrus and Carpenter

Another running gag for the Unglued series was clam cards, including "Clambassadors", "Clam Session" and the infamous "Clam I Am". Furthermore, I've been quite annoyed in my beginner games against Chris W. by his use of the "Giant Oyster" card on my most powerful creatures. When I asked myself:"What beats Oysters?" a substory from Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland" came to mind. Chris D., who is fan of Carroll, enjoyed this card very much.

Altarial: Queen of the Night

"Fanfic" is an ugly word... but what else can you describe it as when one writes a 50-page short story about what would have happened had Galadriel accepted the Ring of power when Frodo offered it to her? But maybe it's not a fanfic: there's no weird sexual stuff.

My Fiery Night

This was written as an assignment for my lyrics class. We were asked to take a character from a book and write a lyric from their perspective. Most of the class figured out what character this piece was about, I figure you can too.

If Only...

Like western culture really needs another poem about unrequited love. But, here we have it.

The Spyder

A parody of the famous poem "The Tyger" by William Blake. This epitomizes how I feel about spiders, and makes one of the great Romantic English poets spin in his grave. Yeah.. sorry about that.

Green Arrow

My imagined T.V. theme for a show about my favorite (and only) arrow-shooting socialist superhero, Green Arrow.

Adagio for Trek

The revamped and rearranged GarageBand version of my Outpost 10F classic "Adagio for Trek".

Captain

A song by myself and Deirdre Morgan which pokes fun at the state of the outmoded Sci-Fi actor. Inspired by William Shatner, Mark Hamill, Jonathan Frakes, and Wil Wheaton, to name a few. Lyrics are available here.

SkyTrain

If you live in greater Vancouver, chances are you've taken the SkyTrain at least once. For those of you who don't, it's an elevated light rail transit system, and it makes the neatest sound when it accelerates. Back when I was at UBC, I took a course in electro-acoustic composition. When the time came for me to record and sequence some environmental samples for my final project, I knew exactly when I was going to do.

GamePlay

This is the first piece I wrote after 2 1/2 years of not writing anything new. Sure, I dabbled and arranged stuff, but I didn't actually compose. It's purely instrumental, and doesn't really have a point except to get me writing again. Still, I'm proud of how it came out, and hopefully it's the start of much more music writing.

Rompus Rondo

The victim of a live performance that suffered from an apathetic grad student on the oboe and a pianist who refused to hit the keys with the intensity that the piece required, it's sad that the best treatment of this piece still remains the synthesized version. Better performed by soprano sax, the evolution of this piece was carefully guided by my greatest ever teacher, Nikolai Korndorf. May he rest in piece.

Fugue in A Minor

A fugue I wrote back in 2002 while at UBC. I'd only written fugues in traditional harmony up until this point, so I wanted to try something a little wilder. Unfortunately, I didn't solicit the wild reaction I'd hoped for from my snobbish grad-student compatriots. The piece was originally written for a brass trio but it gave the players' chops quite a workout. I think it sounds better on organ anyway.

Zelda Wedding March

A song from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past which I arranged in GarageBand for Chris and Denai's wedding. The song occurs as a victory march at the end of the game.

Slide

This is a minimalist-style piece I wrote in 2003, in my last year at UBC. It's music that slowly evolves over time, the lines ever shifting against each other. I'm really happy for how it turned out, and I hope to write more like it someday.

New Mail Icon

A custom icon for Mac OS X Mail using a Canadian stamp. The postmark has been changed from "Cupertino, CA" (where Apple's corporate HQ is) to "Markham, ON" (where Apple Canada is based).

Planet and Starfield

I created this image of a planet and starscape using effects in Adobe Photoshop. No 3D software was required, it's all digital paint. I learned how to make the planet from a tutorial by the amazing Greg Martin.

Attack of the Communists

I made some mock propaganda posters to go with a Soviet Halloween costume. Lots were very quick cut and paste jobs, but this one actually took some effort, and naturally turned out best.

Geekman's World Desktop

Just in case you feel like advertising my site on your computer's desktop. Available in 1280x1024. Vintage colour scheme only.

Pickle O's Box

Any DragonBall Z fans out there? I know there's at least one, you can pick them out of a crowd. They're the ones with the bleached-blond hair that's spiked up, screaming at the top of their lungs (like a dude who hasn't eaten enough bran) as they "power up". Well, this piece is a golden oldie for me, from the ages where my sister nearly dragged me into the anime clan. The statement "All the nutritional value of real pickles" is fully tongue in cheek. Any nutritionist will tell you that pickles have absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever.

Antipode

This was something I did a few years ago, envisioning it a cover/name for album of some sort. I've been meaning to go back and redo it for some time- add some spray and steam to help make the picture more dynamic. Nevertheless, a lot of my friends like the ying-yang symbol combined with the elemental significance of fire and water, and so it still hangs on the wall of Chris W's apartment.

Bigger Electric Cat

Back in Adobe Photoshop version 4, there was a secret about box that you could get to if you held down a certain key combination. A graphic of the "Big Electric Cat" appeared in the dialog. Unfortunately, the dialog was quite small by today's standards. A while back I took it upon myself to re-create the image from scratch. Amazingly, I was quite successful. I named my own version "Bigger Electric Cat".

Green Orion Package

Another golden oldie for the truly, truly geeky. This classic dates back to when I first realized that I could use PhotoShop for evil as well as good (ie: creating parodies of popular commercial labels/advertisments). Looking back, it's not one of my greatest achievements, but I decided to put it up for nostalgia's sake.

Imperial Picard

For a long time, Outpost 10F has had two main focuses: Star Trek and Star Wars. After all, they are the two golden girls of Sci-Fi. This was sort of a way of indicating my interest in both. The British accent, the stately demeanor... Picard was destined to be an Imperial Admiral. I just hope that Picard's evil twin doesn't get choked.