Well, the 2004 presidential elections are over. The dust has settled, the towel has been thrown, and aside from a few provisional and absentee ballots, George Bush remains the President of the United States. Though I voted for Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party, I had secretly hoped John Kerry would win the election itself. Though voting for one candidate and desiring the success of another appears contradictory, my reasons will be made clear in the next few days.

All Hallows Eve sweeps upon the world, dread and horror, chaos and fear. Perhaps to many, a commercialized source of confectionaries, a call for costumes and door to door begging. Such banality has no place on Halloween, where costumes transform imagination into manifestations of horrible, strange, macabre, exotic, weird and wonderful. As the celebrations commence, a weekend of enjoyment, parties large and small flourish on the glammer that comes alive with the intangible and unexplained.

Well, I’m back from Anime Reactor, and I have to say that this convention has a much higher ratio of cosplayers to regular atendees than any other con I’ve been to. Counting Friday and Saturday, I easily took over 100 pictures, of which at least 80 are of cosplayers. I know I didn’t get all of them, and some were photographed multiple times, but that’s still a huge number for a con this new and relatively small.

Well, I went to Anime Iowa again this year, held almost an entire month after the usual date. It was three days of craziness, lack of sleep, and anime overload, but I enjoyed it anyway. Be sure to read my writeup of the whole shebang. I took more pictures this year, thanks to my ability to forsee the future and bring two extra sets of batteries I never had to use.

Well, it took all of sunday, but the pad is finally done. For months, I had the frame just sitting in my basement, because I figured it would take forever to put the arrows together and get it all tested and soldered together. I was right, but the final product is worth my prodigious effort. I took pictures of the whole process, each piece in a step-by-step manner, so I can do a writeup and share the design with everyone who wants to make use of it.