Oakridge TN, Secret City Festival WWII Reenactment

 This past June Fran and I took the 4 hour drive up to Oakridge TN for the annual Secret City Festival.  This is one of those towns that 60 years ago did not exist.  You see, during WWII this thing called the Manhattan Project happened.  It involved a little thing called the first Atom Bomb.  The government was looking for a place to process Uranium and creating a new town in the middle of nowhere TN sounded like a great idea.   Well, for the past couple years they have put on a WWII reenactment with Allied and German troops. This year they were reenacting the Battle of Canentan France.  This was an amazing experience.  I had been to a Civil War reenactment a couple years back, and a War of 1812 one in IL about 20 years ago when I was a kid but this was completely amazing.   We got to walk the the camp and get up and personal with all the reenactors and vehicles.  They did test firings of all the guns and tanks.  Two M3 tanks and A German Tank topped it off.  The actual battle lasted about 30 minutes.  It was stupid hot, but everyone except one annoying person in the crowd was riveted.  Two reenactments were planned for the day but only one occurred due to Rain early in the day.  I think this made the one that did happen even more spectacular as all the people involved put there heart and soul into it.   If you live in the Southeast then this is an annual event not to be missed.   As an avid WWII buff, I was about as happy as can be with the event.  I already plan on going back again next year and hope to find more events like this between now and then.  I think I took about 600 pictures that day.   It was just amazing getting to see so many people celebrate America's greatest generation and the sacrifice that they made for our republic and the world.

Comic Life - Comic book creation program

So, many have wondered over the years on how best to go about creating a Diostory layout.  I have seen many over the years, from photoshop layout comic style, to panels layed out on a page one above the other to one picture per page.  With one not really "Better" then the other, I perfer to read my stories in a comic book format.   There are a few different programs out that will help you take your photos and create them in comic format.  I have used both Comic Book Creater and now Comic Life.   While both are great little programs, I have found myself using Comic Life from Plasq a lot lately.  A very simple program to use, I put the Joelanta comic together in about 5 minutes earlier to show what can be done with the program.  You simply pick a template, Drag the photo in from your folder, and add the balloons that you want.  No fancy features here but a very simple program none the less.   The program is fairly cheap at $25 or $30 depending on if you want the deluxe version or not.   This is the program that I am currently using to put together my first full length Dio Story that I hope to premier in the next few weeks.  One last note, this program is fully compatible with Windows 7 as well as a Mac version being available.  I even used this to storyboard the Joe and Smiley movie released at last years Joelanta event.

One nice lookin German

One of those shots you take and just fall in love with.  I was actually just putting in a new SD Card in my Camera and shot this photo to make sure it was good to go.  About 2 years ago by bud Fran finally convinced me to start collecting World War II 12in Action Figures.  This was actually one of my first ones.  I love the weathering on his helmet and the Face mold is one of the best I have seen.  I don't really know what brand figure this is as I have bought most out of box and second hand at the Joelanta conventions held here in Atlanta, GA each year.

Look everyone, It's Dusty....

My V.1 Dusty Figure in front of the Prince of Persia Gate playset.  I set up this for the Target Range event on http://www.joedios.com/ a few weeks back.  I had just picked up the Gate that day on clearance at Target and wanted to use it so I dug out Dusty and posed him.