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I’ve been toying with the idea of putting my art (the stuff I show no one) online for people to purchase as large prints and whatnot. Well, CafePress seems to be the most chosen store, and apparently, they suck ass.

As noted by this trio of flickrs, CafePress t-shirts suck ass: they severely fade after one wash; however, also noted apparently Zazzle is worth using. I’ll have to check them as a possible printing company to do my art via.

Rrreeeeeoooowww!¹ The TIE Interceptor is a fearsome beast, and a complete improvement over the original death trap. Quad-linked laser canons on the tip of each wing, and a stronger hull, it gave the Rebellion’s X-Wings a run for their money.

The 212 piece Lego kit, the 6202 TIE Interceptor, comes with one TIE pilot minifig, a dish with the TIE cockpit hatch art painted on it, a TIE cockpit canopy, and two 2×2 round tiles with the Imperial logo on it. No stickers.

This kit shares much of the design of the 7263 TIE Fighter, the cockpit builds exactly the same way with very little in difference. However, the wings are far more detailed than in 7263, making the TIE Interceptor look a lot more realistic, and less like a simple toy.

Build-wise, the instructions are easy to follow, and the produced model has no major quirks or other problems. The single real flaw in the build process is that the light grey 2×4 plates applied on each winglet (step 10 for the wings) should be attached before attaching the winglets to the center wing section, otherwise the winglets pop right off while you’re trying to do it.

Compared to the A-Wing (which has a few minor flaws otherwise marring a good looking kit), I give the 6202 Tie Interceptor a 4.5 out of 5.

_{[1]: Yes, that’s the sound of a TIE fighter flying by (well, at least as well as one can do in text). The memorable screetch of a TIE fighter’s engines came from sound designer Ben Burtt mixing the sound of cars streaking by on a rain covered road and the trumpeting of an elephant.}

Well, for less than $20, I’m actually quite surprised at how well this kit builds. Lego’s 6207 Star Wars A-Wing is 194 peices, comes with two minifigs, and a little military cargo hover-transport, and a sheet of four stickers.

It takes about 30-45 minutes to build, and easily stands up to playing with it (which not all the Star Wars models can, the ARC-170 Starfighter is on the other end of the specturm, and falls apart if you even look at it), and accurately looks like the A-Wing. The only flaws are completely minor ones.

Flaws

• It uses stickers. I refuse to use stickers, as they peel back off the plastic, and stop being sticky shortly after, when they land on the floor and attach themselves to dust and fuzz.
• Step 3 of the cargo transport doesn’t clearly state what the three peices in the front actually are (two 1×1 slope bricks, one 1×2 plate). They look like one single peice, and I was off looking for such a peice for a couple minutes until I realized what it really was.
• The additional large plates added by Step 3 of the A-Wing, attached to the construction in Step 4, don’t stay on easily until around Step 7 or 8, and is actually quite annoying unless you’re building on a flat surface and don’t pick it up.
• The tail-fins built in Step 24 look unfinished. They’d look a lot more finished if they simply had a 1×3 tile on top. Also, those three bricks on the top tend to “chip” off, and a 1×3 tile would easily keep them in place.

Other than that, it is still a great kit, and quite worth the money I paid for it. I give it 4 out of 5 death stars.

Canon has a series of products under the “Glossy Photo Paper” name, with the forumla identification number of GP 401. They used to make many different types of paper under this forumla, but now it seems they only make the credit card sized paper.

The paper is flawed in that it has a slightly reddish tinge, which makes pictures a tad warmer than they should be. Compared against Canon’s PR 101 Photo Paper Pro (which is an almost neutral white, very slightly on the warm side), GP 401 can be described as pink.

This pink color shifts flesh tones and anything that uses magenta ink to print out to be shifted over to the pink side as well. Unfortunatley, the only way to get Canon branded credit card sized paper is to use this paper.

So, I just spent the last two hours slowly tweaking an existing ICC profile for a similar paper (Canon’s Photo Paper Plus, which isn’t nearly as red) to work correctly with this paper.

To get you close to the correct colors, set your “Media Type” to “Glossy Photo Paper”, and use the manual color adjustment dialog (click “Color Adjustment: Manual”, and click on “Set…”) to increase cyan to 35, magenta to 10, yellow to 25, and decrease intensity to -10. These alone increase the quality of output on GP 401 a lot, and make it similar to Photo Paper Pro.

Also, if you’re using Photoshop, or any similar professional printing application, disable ICM and use “Print Type” set to “None”. In Photoshop, you typically use Photoshop’s built in color management.

To use said color management, use “Print With Preview”, and select “Color Handling: Let Photoshop Determine Colors”, “Printer Profile: Canon i9900 SP1″, “Rendering Intent: Preceptual”, and turn “Black Point Compensation” on.

Now, this isn’t as good as just having an ICC profile for the GP 401, but it is about the best you’re going to get, it seems.

Well, this is quite interesting. Neil Gaiman has gotten a letter from lawyers representing the company behind Attack of the Killer Tomatoes¹, because he linked to them from a website he doesn’t own and has never heard of, and obviously isn’t registered to him.

However, they apparently link to one of his entries on his blog, and even include a picture of him. I wonder if Neil Gaiman can have his lawyer write nasty-gramms to them.

Update: Inspired by comment below, I’m now direct linking to the law firm as well: Branfman & Associates.

_{[1]: Link intentional. Oh, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a horrible movie, and tomatoes really are evil.}