About Anime-Planet

Anime-Planet is a Seattle-based website, created in 2001. Its focus is to provide high quality information and provide a place where users can give recommendations and keep track of what they’ve seen and read.

The webcomic Kat-nap is now a card carrying member of the WAGON Gamma Deck. To celebrate this Kat-Nap and World Alliance of Geeks Online Network have teamed up to bring you the Spot the Differences Contest for your chance to get into the Webcomic Battle Card Game and win some other Kat-Nap swag as well.

Prizes:

First prize includes: 1 WAGON Webcomic battle Card Game Gamma Deck, 1 Captain SNES WAGON pre-order card, The 5 Original Kat-Nap sketch cards used in the making of the Gama Deck Kat-Nap cards, 1 “8 x 10” print of the contest image, and 1 Kat-Nap Promotional Bookmark.

Second prize includes: 1 WAGON Webcomic battle Card Game Gamma Deck, 1 Captain SNES WAGON pre-order card, 1 “8 x 10” print of the contest image, and 1 Kat-Nap Promotional Bookmark.

Third prize includes: 1 WAGON Webcomic battle Card Game Gamma Deck, 1 Captain SNES WAGON pre-order card, and 1 Kat-Nap Promotional Bookmark.

Rules:

All you have to do is find the differences between pictures A and B at the contest site and fill out the form below them along with your Name, Email, and Address below by 11:00 PM August 11th 2009. Get all five right and you’ll get entered into the draw for first prize, get 3-4 right and you’ll get entered into the draw for second prize, or get 1-2 right and you’ll get entered into the draw for third prize. Note: The differences are not an any particular order. If your entry is pulled you will receive an email on August 14th 2009 to let you know you’ve won and to confirm your shipping address. The information collected from this contest will not be stored after the contest or sold to any third parties.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to Kap-Nap.com and win yourself some spiffy stuff!

As an extra bonus for everyone who pre-orders their copy of Gamma Deck you will also receive a copy of our newest rare card, a cameo apperance of the Game Masta himself from Captain SNES. So if you have yet to jump on the WAGON, this is would be a great place to start your collection!

W.A.G.O.N. will also be making an apperance at this year’s Penguicon in Romulus, Michigan with copies of all four of the decks that have been so far created, and will be participating in pannel discussions as well as giving demonstrations on how to play WAGON Webcomic Battle. All are welcome to come visit and get a little hand’s on training amoung fellow webcomickers and fans. Other apperances will include the likes of Fes, Tanya, and Mark of the podcast “The Webcomic Beacon”, and Adam Smithee of “The Apple of Discord”.

This will be interesting in how it plays out. I want to know though what the cost is to publish your comic to this media? Is it accessible to everyone (read: webcomics)?

This coming almost 8 months after this survey.

Read more about it over at Joystiq.

After some Googleing, I found Add to Any (A2A). It had nice features, including the ability to customize your menu. So I used it.

However, I decided I wanted a simple Share/social bookmarking icon instead of the image A2A had. So off to Google once again!

In my searching I found this page. Apparently the ShareThis icon that looks like a “<” began as a free, standardized icon but was bought out. Now the company is threatening some people who use it. They also seem to collect data. (A2A apparently collects no personal data but “may” collect “browsing habits”. Make of that what you will.)

People found this troubling and founded the Open Share Icon Project (OSIP). They aim to make a new, completely free standardized sharing icon. It depicts a hand passing an object into another hand, but it also looks like an eye. It’s a good thing to adopt and many social bookmarking applets and things are using it.

One such service that uses it is iBegin Share, which is like A2A, but collects no personal data. You can also save the page as a .PDF or .DOC. It gives you stat tracking too. Really the only thing you cannot do is customize it.

So, there are some options for you, and some ethical questions to go along with them! You want your comic and blog out there, we all do. Now you know some of your options.

Share and share alike.

For the holiday season we’re also trying to do our part to make Christmas a little brighter for some kiddies out there, and so a portion of every Combo Pack purchase will be donated to Child’s Play Charity, which is an awesome organization made by gamers to help give something back to the community. An awesome present for the gamer in your life AND a bit of charity for the holidays? Oh yes indeed!

Read about it here.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

All the anticipation I have ever had boiled down to that final moment when I pushed play on my PS3 to watch the recorded first two episodes of the Legend of the Seeker (My area did not carry the show. I acquired it through other means). The sheer awesomeness I was about to witness ran through my head. I had just finished reading all the books and  everything is fresh on my mind. This will be epic.

Now, I’m going to take a time out here and state that yes, I am aware certain deviations were going to take place in the translation to an episodic TV formula. I did read the announcement letter.

Continuing, I watched with a twinkle in my eye as things familiar started happening. Then slowly, my mind started fumbling with pieces of a puzzle that should fit together but were now in the wrong shape. Things were familiar but different. It was like the show was rubbed on cheese grater and instead of using what was left of the block of cheese, they used the scraps. Filaments of the books exists, mostly in names of characters, but these aren’t the same characters. No, no - they are mere shadows of the characters in the book during an eclipse of the sun.

I found myself distracted during the show. Things that I knew held importance in the books were cast aside. I could not stop thinking about them and how the show could even follow the arcs in the books without them. My frame of mind was my prison. Having read the books barred me from watching the show. My fiancee got up and left at the end of the first episode. Her mind wouldn’t even let her get past the first fundamental flaw (all I’m going to say is: Book of Counted Shadows) and she is only on Blood of the Fold.

I really wish I could open my skull take out my knowledge of the books. If I was able, I’m pretty sure this could be one of those awesome shows that I rush home to see in time. Sadly, for me and I suspect many others, this might just be torture.

Lets start of by saying this was the longest series of books I have read. While Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series is roughly the same number of books, Sword of Truth books seem a lot thicker individually. This series is fantastic. I recommend this to any fantasy or even science-fiction reader because I read more science-fiction then fantasy and I was intrigued. Please, I implore you read the first book, Wizard’s First Rule, at least. If you don’t feel like picking up the second one, fine. But I bet you will

If you don’t want any spoilers, I don’t recommend reading any further as I will be discussing points that I would like to point out in various spots in the series.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Let me start off by saying I couldn’t put down the first 3-4 books. I raced through them almost faster then Amazon.com could ship them too me. While the love story is a little thicker then my tastes it serves the purpose of driving the characters through every crazy thing that could possibly happen that happened. One of the books should have been called, “Murphy’s Law“. At one point, I even remember thinking to myself, “Now, come on… give this man a rest.” I don’t know a human being alive that could have so much stuff thrown at him and still want to get up the next day. I guess Richard never had that problem since THE MAN NEVER SLEPT. The things that bothered me about some of the first books is that some of the well rounded characters disappear after The Temple of the Winds. I missed Gratch.

Also, there were many points in these first few books that I wanted to scream at one of the characters to at least tell the other one something they learned. It seems no one wanted to give the information that was so vital to the mission. I guess that is life. Maybe this was a point the author was trying to make since the series seems to revolve around “life” in general.

When I come to Soul of the Fire and Faith of the Fallen, they were good reads as well. They progressed, although not as fast paced as the first ones, but I thought those were pretty awesome as well. I don’t think Zedd ever told Richard he was a bird though. Most of the characters we learned about in this book fail to make it past these two books. I understand that is usually what happens when you open your arms to an invading army but I still would have at least wanted to see Beata again.

Then I hit The Pillars of Creation. It wasn’t till over half way though that large book did I even read about any familiar characters. It took me a while to get through that book.  All Pillars did was set up the next book Naked Empire. There was so much character development for characters that weren’t used past Naked Empire. This was sort of the lull in the series. It took me the longest time to get through them.

Now the last 3 books, dubbed “The Chainfire Trilogy“, should have all been one book. I don’t know why they were split up because at the end of one, nothing really truly climaxes enough to be called an end. This, being the end of the series, wraps up most of everything happening in the series.  There are a few holes or questions that never get answered and a few opening for a sequel. What happened to Jebra? What else to Richard do to the Temple of Winds? Is magic back in the world? Will people be born with it now? Where all Sister’s of the Dark taken? What did Nathan mean by, “A person not of this world will save it” [sic]? I wish I new more clearly what the unwritten rule was (without using wiki). Will Kahlan and Richard ever have a monster kid? Will Shota come to kill it?

I remember thinking as I was finishing Chainfire that I hope Terry Goodkind doesn’t go with the whole, “The magical world forgets magic and is now modern day earth” cliche. Least he did that with a mirror world instead.

Overall though, I would recommend at least reading this. It is a series you can’t go without reading. It is one of those things you read and learn from and take with you.

Lastly, WHY THE HELL WAS THE CONFESSOR PAPERBACK A DIFFERENT DIMENSION THEN THE REST OF THE BOOKS? That is all.

UPDATE: Don’t forget to watch Legend of the Seeker Nov 1st!