Wednesday, May 31, 2006

tell him about the Twinkie

Something's up today. I don't know what it is. There's some crazy in the air or something. Or maybe it's a river of hate-filled slime flowing under the city of San Francisco. Whatever it is, I saw two different incidents of unwarranted rage on my way to work today.

First off, there's a street that I take to get to work where the lights are all timed. If you drive 35 mph, you get all green lights. Some dump in a sports car didn't quite understand this and decided that he'd jam on the gas pedal every time the light turned green. He spent plenty of time racing to the next red light only to sit there over and over and over again all down the road. Now, that's nothing new. People do this on this street all the time. What was new to me was the jerk in a Chevy Suburban who apparently hated the guy in the sports car.

At the last red light on the street, it was Sport Car in lane 3, me in lane 2, and Suburban in lane 1. As we're sitting there, Suburban rolls down his window and starts to scream "Hey! Hey! What's your problem!?" at the sports car to my other side. Then, in a fit of crazy, Suburban A-hole gets out of his car, walks in front of my car, and stands there right in front of me screaming at the sports car. The guy kinda' looked like a gorilla and I was very aware of being strapped into my car via a seatbelt at that moment. Eventually, Suburban A-hole simply marched back to his car, slammed his door and drove off. Not the most fun I've ever had on that street.

The other incident was right before I got to work. Another guy who looked like a gorilla (or maybe more like George "The Animal" Steele) was roughing up some woman on the street. They both looked like they were homeless and ... let's just say ... chemically altered. I don't know what was going on and I only saw them for a second; but still ...

What's with everyone today? I think I'd better do everyone a service and go check out the Vigo painting just to make sure it's not up to any more of its old tricks.

vigo_painting

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

access denied, you fugly mutha-effa

As I mentioned earlier, I'm looking to maybe hire someone to do some web design work for me. As such, people have been sending me resume after resume and link upon link to try and get the gig. Typos and broken links aside, this also means that I've been checking out a whole mess of web sites that I've never seen before.

Largely, they're all boring. Lots of financial institution sites and technology companies with stupid names like Mobifusion and SoftMediaNet (lame). However, there have been a few gems hidden amongst the crap.

And so I thought I'd share my favorite so far. I present to you VanityDate.com. Now, before we dive in here, I just wanted to say that the site's design and coding is fine. That's not what flummoxed me. Instead, it's the sheer concept of this thing that amazes me.

Vanity Date is a site where pretty people, and only pretty people, can search and look for other pretty people. The site sums it up like this:

You
- be of legal copulation age (18)
- imposters will be hunted down
- be good looking or you will be rejected

Awesome. Apparently the pretty people are so worried about someone average or - perish the thought - ugly infecting their gene pool with impostors that they're mobilizing against them. Spelling doesn't seem to be much of an important quality, though, because "impostors" is misspelled on their front page and I doubt anyone who's a member even knows. Essentially, the site should really just be called VapidCoatHangers.com since everyone here is solely focused on looks and just seems to spend all day posing in different clothing.

The funniest thing of all about this site to me are the fields available on the Detailed Search Page. They seem to go from Normal Dating Site levels of shallow interest to pioneering new levels of Los Angeles-Centric Dating Site levels of shallow nuttiness. Age range? Normal. Shoe size? A little crazier. Type of Car? DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! New levels of crazy self-involvement.

typeofCar

Seriously, you can simply search for people who drive Audis. How retarded is that? If ever there was a solid criteria for the basis of a healthy and long lasting relationship, it's the "Type of Car" field on VanityDate.com. Or Shoe Size. That's pretty effing crazy, too.

I was trying to figure out who is more shallow and pathetic and - not surprisingly - it turns out it's guys by a fairly large margin. There are 547 pretty women looking for pretty men, while there are a staggering 756 pretty men looking for pretty women. Unfortunately, I don't have the numbers on gay men or gay women because the site's futuristic browser-based facial recognition software must have detected that I was looking at the site and now I get a network error every time I try to access it.

So, try and check it out if you can, for as long as you can. I guess if you get to see it longer than I did you know where you stand on the VanityDate.com hotness scale. Personally, I'm going to go mull over whether I should go buy an Audi or not in order to make my relationship stronger.

I don't think it'll take that long to figure it out.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

"i um job"

Earlier today I put out a listing on Craigslist for a web design job I'm looking to hire someone for. In about 4 hours, I've received about 12 responses so far. These responses follow a typical format:

"I am a designer living in [who cares] and can create for you the greatest website known to man. Please check out some of my clients. I'd love to talk to you further."

Now, more or less, that's what they all say. Here's what I find absolutely staggering: for people doing their best to sell themselves as Web Design Professionals, why are there so many freaking typos in their mails?

And it's not just typos, peeps. There are plenty of these things that I've received that include incorrectly coded hypertext links. Or links that work, but don't actually go to sites that work anymore. Am I crazy to think that you check this stuff before trying to sell yourself by sending someone there?

Ridiculous. It's staggering how difficult some people make things for themselves in terms of freelance work by simply not running things through a spell-checker. Seems like professionalism, much like hand writing, is a dying art.

Friday, May 26, 2006

\m/ RAWK!!!! \m/

Very interesting day. We had a company meeting today and to kick off the whole show, David Collins and I - the two phenoms behind the original pop music for Thrillville - were asked by the president of LucasArts to get our rocks off and play one of our original tunes for everyone.

The winner? "Whiplash," the AC/DC-ish/Vaz Hoil-esque tune we've written. It's odd to hear the final version of it if anyone knows any of our Vaz Hoil material. It sounds like you're listening to a Stone Cruz solo album (which, by the way, was part of the original Hoil mythology. 1. First Album, 2. Second album = personnel problems, 3. Stone leaves and does a solo album). So, I guess this is my solo album.

Anyway, the show went well. And just to go that extra mile, I thought it'd be funny to do the show in full KISS makeup.

jesse_KISSmakeUp

So I did. That's me in my office just now. I thought I'd snap a pick to show everyone how it looked.

Problem is, I don't want to try and wash it off because I'll get water all over myself and I don't have another shirt to change into. So, it's quite possible that I'm driving home like this tonight. To further complicate matters, Amanda just invited me to go out with her to a friend's house for Taco Night. If that's the case, I might not have a chance to go home and change before I have to be there. That would be KISS Harlin eating tacos in someone living room.

Good times. If only this makeup didn't itch so much ....

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

up next: diaper commercials

Alright, everyone. Here's the new fall wardrobe that you'll see everyone sporting around the country this year.

Why? Because we're back-sliding so ridiculously far into some hypocritical moralistic mania that it won't be long before we're all wearing buckle shoes and calling our neighbors "witches."

Want an example? Okeedokee.

Apparently, I must have missed the memo that went out that said "Hey! Coppertone Sun Screen!! First my kids were effed up by seeing Janet Jackson's boob!! Now they're squarely on a path to hell for having seen the Coppertone Girl's bare ass!!!"

Everyone knows this logo:

coppertone_oldLogo

But, you know what? Apparently that little girl's decades old wardrobe malfunction is messing up the moral fiber of our country. Guess who the latest victim of censorship is?

coppertone_newLogo

That's right! It's little Coppertone herself. It's a small pic and might be hard to see. If you're having trouble, gone is the little girl's butt and it's been replaced with a playful tug on the leg of her swimsuit by her dog.

To me, this is Lame with a Capital "screw you, Coppertone." But, in the interest of simply cutting to the chase and not wasting all of our time - Coppertone, please let me be the first to suggest your next logo:

coppertone_futureLogo

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

computers blow

Sometimes. As many years as I've been using them, and as much as I understand how they work and what they do, there's still an all too frequent element of what I can only call black magic that seems to exists within them.

Yesterday I got back to work after a week off for vacation. My computer had been shut down all during vacation. I started it up, worked all morning long, then went to lunch. No problems.

When I came back from lunch, I bounced out a few audio tracks for these Thrillville pop tunes and had just finished prepping the files in Peak when .~*WHAMMO!*~. Total hard drive meltdown. Ry was on the phone with me when it happened. Suddenly out of no where, my network connection died. When I tried to restart my computer, it decided to lock up on the Loading screen and run the fan until it was as loud as a freakin' hair dryer. After that, no amount of finesse with the Power button or kind words would result in anything other than the hair dryer noise.

For the next 4 hours, IT had to come into my office and poke around with crap until eventually my hard drive was simply reformatted at the end of the day. So, now I have to head into work and reinstall Logic, Sibelius, and Peak in order to get back to a functional point for a big deadline tomorrow.

Totally sucks. There goes my morning. Like I said, it's black magic. Or gremlins. I don't know which. But both suck.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

she said "yes"

Hey. I'm back from Hawaii. Much thanks to Ry for celebrating the one year anniversary of this blog with a treatise on environmental travel issues. : )

Hawaii went well. Very well, in fact. For those who don't know, my main goal with our Hawaii trip was to propose to Amanda, and (as evidenced by the title of this blog post) we're now engaged. : )

It feels great. We went through this weird period of about 24 hours where our entire relationship felt different in the aftermath. It was as if we'd just stepped off of some huge jump together and were freefalling into unfamiliar territory - something we don't usually feel having been dating for 6+ years. But, all of that has settled down and we're now simply trying to acclimate to the new use of the word "fiance."

I'll fill in the details on how and where it happened relatively soon. I also have some of pictures from Hawaii I thought I'd share (don't worry; we're not talking hours worth of vacation slides).

Anyway, I'll update it all soon. Just wanted to share the good news about the engagement and thank Ry for tackling Oogu while I was gone.

Friday, May 19, 2006

At least the plane food will be marvelous, right?


God damn it's getting expensive to fly!!!! Every year Lisa and I go to Sweden. In 1999 it cost us, on average, around 400 bucks per transatlantic ticket. By 2003 it was up to about 650. We just booked our trip for 1000 per ticket and that was after VERY MUCH price hunting.

The plus side is that we're flying with Iceland air so I'll get to touch down in Rekjavik. Never been there and I like seeing a new city. But for a thousand bucks I could think of many other cities I'd like to see first. (italy comes to mind)

I'm still shocked how cheap it was, when I lived in England 6 years ago, to fly back to the states. Sure I was flying on "student fares." But having flown 25+ flights that cost between 250-350 dollars, my brain acclimated to the idea that a transatlantic flight was 300 bucks. Not so anymore. And not even for student tickets. Today the difference I got from the online sites like Orbitz vs. STA Travel (the student travel company) was 5 bucks. 975 for non-students and 970 for students. Oh, but that doesn't count the 22 dollar student card you'd need to purchase in order to save 5 bucks.

Can we stop using all non-essential gas so I can fly to sweden cheaply? Or can we ramp up development of the air compressor plane - much like the car I mentioned in a previous post?

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Get your paws off me you dirty ape!

Recent news articles have presented disturbing realities which either settle the debate about creationism vs. evolution or sugggests that the alleged creator is losing favor with humans.

First there was the news of wild gorillas starting to use tools.

Then there was the revelation that early man was "slummin' it" monkey chicks.

And now today we have the revelation that monkey's have begun using sentences to communicate!

It doesn't take a futurist to see where this is going. Monkey's are closing in on us and are on pace to out-evolve us!!!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

A Pleasant Apocalypse...

The AP has an article up today on the wires telling us that April was the warmest such month in US history. But the opening of the article kills me:

Last month was the warmest April on record for the United States, offering many Americans a pleasant spring month.


Oh yes, a pleasant spring month. How "pleasant" this warming trend is!!

Of course the article goes on to mention those who didn't have such a pleasant month, stating "Drought persisted across large portions of the southern and southwestern United States..." and "...there was a series of tornado outbreaks during the first half of the month..."

You know what causes droughts? Warmest Aprils. You know what causes tornadoes? Warmest Aprils!

In fact, saying that there was a series of "tornado outbreaks" wouldn't accurately convey what happened so far this year. Unlike the "summer of the shark" in 2001 when the media jumped on a the recent surge in shark attacks - only to later admit that shark attacks were lower that year than previous years, the media has largely ignored the 691 tornadoes so far this year (as of May 13th)!!!! 318 of those were reported in our pleasant April.

Now is not the time to order your new set of Guiness record books because the records are being broken all the time. The record for tornadoes was set in 1998, then broken in 2003, then 2004, then 2005, and 2006 is on pace to outshine them all.

And what contributes to a tornadoes development and strength? Same thing that make a hurricane... warm water in the Gulf of Mexico! And what makes warm water in the Gulf of Mexico? Warm Aprils... and warm Mays... and warm Junes...

So that AP writer should go see "An Inconvenient Truth" when it opens later this month and then reconsider the rose-colored glasses he wears when he writes his articles on record-breaking warming trends.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

There's no common thread here...

Oogu has no common thread. No theme. No connective tissue to hold it together. I guess the common thread is "stuff that's going on in jesse's life or just some stuff he's thinking about."

So the idea of a guest blogger becomes all the more weird because now it's just "stuff ry's thinking about or doing until jesse's back here thinking and doing."

Why do I mention this? Because in getting ready to blog today I realized that I steer clear of more topics than I write about. Most are of a political nature and would've been more suited to my old blog, Grassrootsnation.com. It wouldn't be right to guest blog on a "random thoughts" blog and hijack to become a "exposing the lies of the power elites" blog... for a week only...

So that leaves the "other stuff I've been thinking about" topics. Which, are all becoming thematic as well. For example, today's post was going to be about the solar panel system I'm designing to put on my balcony. That made me realize that my posts so far have been about the air-compressor car, the oxygen in a can, and then the solar panels. Am I so one-dimensional? Surely I have interests other than environmental, right?

The answer is yes, but I tend to get excited about stuff and projects in groups. So when I'm reading about the air car I start thinking about environmental impact reductions I could do at home. Before long, I'm learning about utility intertie and sine-wave inverters.

So the point is, I'm excited to put solar panels on my balcony to reduce my on-grid electricity useage and apparently by tomorrow I'll be explaining how to save the rain forest. Hopefully I get excited about another topic before the week is up!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Now if they'd just offer free Gas, Electric, and Cable...

Skype, the very neat VOIP client, has just announced that - at least until the end of the year, they're offering free calling to any telephone number in the US and Canada. That means that I have almost no use for my regular phone. I've been on the verge of getting a skype cordless phone anyway to try it out... this has likely pushed me over the tipping point to doing it. Hooray, Skype!

See you later $130 phone bill. Hello... $0 dollar phone bill. :)

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Why didn't anyone tell me my butt was this big?!?


7-11 in Japan will now be selling cans of fresh Oxygen for people to breath in order to feel refreshed.

I know most alarmists talk about how government intrusions harken back to the very appropriate "1984"... but it may scare me even more to know that 7-11 is harkening back to "Space Balls!"

The missing link between cars and Jetson-mobiles

You know on the Jetson cartoons how the flying cars make that little put-put sound from their exhaust pipe? Well I think we've seen the car that will provide that evolutionary step between car and put-put sky-car.



This car runs on compressed air!!! Why does that rule? For one, there's no emissions. The only emissions that occur are during the production of the electricity that charges the compressor tank. So if you have coal powered plants pumpin the electric into your house... it's more than if you get natural gas electricity. But if you've got solar or wind, you now have a 100% zero emission car that doesn't even use lead and nickel-metal nastiness like the batteries in electric cars.

Want more reason it rules? It's got fewer moving parts which means it's easier to maintain and breaks more seldom. AND it means it's cheaper. The first production models in Europe are started at 6800 Euros (8,000 bucks).

Want more reasons why it rules?

It charges the air compressor tank for 6 hours by plugging in, like an electric car... BUT if you're on a road trip or out driving and run out of compressed air, you can use the quarter operated air compressor hose at any gas station to fill up your tank in just 3 minutes. That's right! For less than a buck, you can be topped up and running again.

Once they make them street legal in the US, I'm totally ready to buy one.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Ceymick, I'm looking your direction...

Okay, so Jesse has left me in charge of his blog for the next week. I have to say that I'm as confused as... well I probably am right now. I was going to say "you probably are" but a look back over the comments on this blog reveals that oogu could be renamed "jesse talks with is brother and girlfriend, occasionally punctuated by visits from Ceymic and "Russ." Since Amanda is with Jesse in Hawaii, I'm hoping Ceymic and Russ will step up to the plate. However, it's very possible that this week will be void of any comments.

What's my goal, then? It's to kick it up a notch!!



I'll do my best to find fun/interesting things to talk about! And hopefully, we'll even increase his readership over the next week. It's sorta like the "While You Were Out" home makeover show... only we won't be remodelling, there's no surprise since he asked me to do this, and it has nothing to do with that show whatsoever.

Good times.

That's all for today. I'm off to complete the awesome task of shopping for a new blanket for my bed. I'm sure the experience will make days worth of blog fodder... or maybe not. ;)

Friday, May 12, 2006

aloha!

So, this is it for me for the next week. Manda and I are heading off to the Big Island of Hawai'i for a much deserved vacation. With E3 behind me, I'm looking forward to a really nice and relaxing vacation.

We've got someone looking after our apartment and our mail. We've got someone checking in on our cat. And for the next week, my brother EmoRiot (or Ryan as he's known to the rest of the universe) will be taking over the reigns of The Mighty Oogu for me.

Be gentle with him. He bruises.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Wiidiculous

I kicked around a few different titles for this post (Wiitarded, Wiigretable, etc). They basically are all just a wiiflection of my thoughts about the new Nintendo Wii. Originally titled the considerably cooler "Nintendo Revolution," the Wii is the latest in a long line of decisions by Nintendo that I just simply don't understand.

Before we chat, watch Nintendo's promotional introductory video into the World of Wii:



Okay. Now, notice anything dumb about that thing? Absolutely every game on there has the player Vogueing this pose:

pWiiPostureous

What the eff, Nintendo?

I know that everyone has had that moment in life when you're sitting in front of your TV, you point the remote at it, and nothing happens. What do you do? You extend your arm out in front of you and get annoyed. No one likes to do that for more than a few seconds at most. Somehow, someone at Nintendo has decided that this is a good posture with which to tackle a 100+ hour RPG. In fact, I think I know who that someone is. I'm pretty sure it's the same sadistic fuck who designed the Nintendo Powerglove. I see wiimarkable similarities.

Well, news flash, Nintendo: your Power Glove didn't change the way we play games, and I don't think the Wii will either. I used to be a really big Nintendo fan. The Wii, however, marks my official "not on-board" status with them.

pWiiPostureous

I'm just so not on-board anymore.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

finally!

That's right, fools. It's May 10th and I can finally talk about what I've been working on lo these many past months. I made mention of the fact that I've had my hands tied with 5 different projects simultaneously. So, without further ado, here's the run-down on what's been keeping me so run-down lately:

1. Indiana Jones

There is a really great write up about our new Indy title over at IGN.com. Seriously, this thing is looking great. Especially when you consider that it's still so far out from being released. I'm really excited. Read about it and I think you'll see why.

2. Star Wars

I still can't really say anything about this except that in a recent article with the New York Times, our president - Jim Ward - mentioned that we're working on a new SW game. That has been keeping me busy, too, though admittedly less than Indy.

3. LEGO Star Wars II, the Original Trilogy

Pretty straight forward involvement for me. I've been editing cutscenes and some music for use in-game.

4. Thrillville

Ah, Thrillville. This is where most of my time has been spent recently. All that time I spent in the recording studio recently? It's been writing original music for Thrillville. And we're not talking underscore. We're talking pop music, rock music, hip-hop, etc. Take a look at the trailer for Thrillville and you'll even hear me singing part of "Whiplash," a new tune we just wrote for the game.

5. Traxion

Cool stuff. A PSP game in which the user-defined soundtrack directly changes all aspects of the game. Because of the obvious music-centric nature of the game, I've been doing some consulting, some music edits for proof-of-concept videos, and most interestingly - working with some of my Audio department compadres to actually design some games for it.

If you want to check out trailers for everything listed here (except for Traxion), head on over to lucasarts.com where our main page has been replaced with an E3-oriented splash page.

God-damn, it's nice to finally be able to mention these things. : )

EDIT:

Late addition to the newsfest. We've actually started to talk more about Star Wars. Here's a new write up on IGN.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

it's official: i have no taste

There's no question anymore. Earlier, I was yacking about how I had stubbornly insisted that I'd watch the "Dukes of Hazzard" movie before I'd see "March of the Penguins." Well, as of this weekend, I finally sat down and watched both.

And you know what? This is how I ended up rating them both on Netflix:

hazzardPenguin_ratings

That's right, bitches. 4 stars for both. They're the same in my book and I admit that probably removes me from anyone's movie recommendation list.

But here's the deal ... "Penguins" is good. Don't get me wrong. But to me, it ended really abruptly. The young penguins jump into the water and that's the end. Am I twisted because I wanted to see some of them have to swim for their lives from the jaws of a waiting seal? Probably. But, I knew that it's something that happens. To me, the story of survival for these things just wasn't quite done yet. Some of them don't make it past that first jump. But, that wasn't in the film and it strangely left me feeling like the end of the movie was a bit rushed and a bit glorified. So, because that's how it ended up making me feel, it gets 4 stars instead of the full 5.

And Dukes of Hazzard ... Well, to be honest, it's not that bad. In fact, it's actually one of the most faithful TV-to-movie translations I think I've ever seen. Charlie's Angels and Starsky & Hutch were radically different. The Dukes, however, was pretty dead on. Insane car chases, exploding arrow-shooting, moonshine running, The General Lee, and freeze frame moments where goofy narration kicks in - all of it is actually done really faithfully to the original show.

And I'll admit it, I liked the show a lot when I was a kid. So, to me, it was like watching a pretty decent tribute to a show I remember fondly. Admittedly, the acting in the original show is much better (Jessica Simpson was really god awful). But I expected total crap and was pleasantly surprised. Giving it 3 stars seemed to say "I was neutral on this." And in the end, I wasn't. So, I gave it 4 stars. Believe me, I've seen much worse.

Anyway, feel free to never ask me for a movie recommendation. My feelings won't be hurt.

Monday, May 08, 2006

totally flattered

Like I said, it was an eventful weekend. Besides camping with vampires, one of the other things that happened was that I got an email from Bart Klepka. Bart is an Australian electronic musician, a gamer, and apparently also a fan of Republic Commando.

Whoever said "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" clearly never had his music remixed. Bart emailed me this weekend to let me know that he had completed a remix of some of my original music from Republic Commando into a new psytrance track called "Vode An (Son Kote Mix)."

First off, it sounds awesome. Bart did a great job giving the Clones a more modern edge than I was ever able to do in the game. I really enjoyed how he took some of the individual elements off of the RC PC game disc and reinterpreted them here for this track. Second of all, how totally flattering is it to have someone say "Hey, you're stuff inspired me to make something new." That's awesome. So frequently composers write music, toss it out in the arena of general consumption, and then never hear anything back. It's really nice to get such nice feedback like this. So, thank you, Bart. It's much appreciated.

Anyway, if you're interested in hearing some great Star Wars psytrance, head on over to Bart's video game remixes page and check out the "Vode An (Son Kote Mix)."

Sunday, May 07, 2006

into the woods (and no, it's not more sondheim)

Eventful weekend. The biggest event was our big camping trip to Big Basin Saturday morning. Manda and I joined a handful of people from her work on a night out under the redwoods. For Amanda and I, it was a return to something we did within the first few months of having known each other. Early on in our relationship, we went camping in Big Basin for a week and had a really wonderful time. This time, it was only for one night and ... well, it wasn't quite as wonderful as our last visit.

You see, in the mountains, it's really freakin' cold. No, really. It's true. I know; I was shocked too. Actually, I feel pretty stupid for not having realized just how cold it would be. "We didn't sleep well and I'm tired" is pretty much how the whole story ends. It's not too fascinating of a story, to be honest:

Some friends camped in the woods. It was cold. There were vampires. We came home.

THE END

And yes, I just said that there were vampires. Apparently, our country is in more dire need of Vampire Hunters than even teachers these days. You see, when you pull up to the main Ranger Station of Big Basin, there is a public bulletin board where people can post messages for others joining them letting them know where they are. So, it's full of things like "MARNY & MIKE - WE'RE IN HUCKLEBERRY SPOT #101", etc. However, the very first one when we arrived read:

VAMPIRES

WE'RE AT 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70

So, here's what we learned camping this weekend: apparently Vampires these days feel completely comfortable advertising where they're located and Vampires don't seem to be able to use a hyphen to say "61-70" when enumerating things.

Friday, May 05, 2006

the end of craziness

Next week is E3. That means that everything for E3 is almost done. As always, I'm currently just fielding 11th hour requests.

As of tonight, I will finish the last of the work needed from me. I can't wait to have this stuff out of my (admittedly very short) hair. I think LucasArts is going to have a great showing this year and people are going to be in for some very cool stuff from us.

And, of course, as of next week, I can finally talk about some of the stuff I've been doing for the last few months. : )

Just need to finish stuff up now.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

focus grouping

Anxious for feedback as they are, Techno Squirrels, my new favorite electronic artists, are currently uploading their latest track to an iDisk for me to check out and give feedback on.

As they were hanging up the phone from their call for feedback, I heard Lisa tell Ry "Make sure you tell him that - no matter what - he says something nice about it first."

So, in light of that, I can assure you that the new track is like rainbow kittens and unquestionably smells like summer love. I recommend it highly.

EDIT:

Actually, having now heard the track, I can say with all sincerity that it is like rainbow kittens and summer love. It's a beautiful new track and I'm dying to hear the final mix. Ry and Lisa are really incredibly gifted electronic musicians and if you haven't heard any of their stuff, go check it out right now. You won't be disappointed. So, nice work, guys.

I'm excited and annoyed by the fact that you've teased me with the mention of two other new tracks that aren't ready to be heard yet. Can't wait to have the entire album.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

fun diversion

I found an online South Park character generator.

It's amusing. Feel free to post links in the comments to your own characters if you want.

southparkJesse

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

tell that to Montana

Yesterday was the Day Without Immigrants day of protests across the country or, as the retahded anchor man on the news labeled it last night, the Day Without Emigrants(idiot). Word was that protests all around the country were going to be happening, so I figured that I'd see some people lined up here or there, maybe a march or two. Maybe a sign or a flyer or something?

I didn't. According to the news, it's because everyone was massing in the center of the City - which I'm nowhere near. Still, that said, I did see something related to the day of protests. Problem is, it was someone protesting the protesters.

It was a plane trailing a long banner that read:

AMERICA
IS FULL.COM WAKE UP AMERICA CLOSE THE BORDERS

That's right. Apparently the disgusting truth of it all is that the big success of the day yesterday was bigotry through airpower. I was bummed. It's really a shame to see that so many people were working so hard to get out what they saw as an important message and then one jerk with some money to blow turned the skies above San Francisco into his own personal hate speech forum.

And they had the jerk behind americaisfull.com on the news last night and apparently he's from New York. You know what? Maybe New York is full, but I can think of plenty of places that have tons of available land.

AND and, this is all just a bullshit issue anyway. I mean, seriously, why doesn't everyone see this as the big smoke screen issue that it is? Nothing changed with the immigration policies in the US over the last few years to warrant this. Sure, new legislation was proposed, but nothing happened yet. Nothing suddenly was any better or any worse for anyone than it was a year ago. The only thing that changed was a giant quagmire in Iraq that got worse and worse until someone decided that we should stop paying attention to the giant suckhole nation building failure we created and bitch instead about people who pick our fruit for less money than morally makes any sense.

I guess that's just my own sense of things, though. Still, it sucked to see that plane flying around yesterday. It really makes me admire the fact that John Lennon used to just put up billboards with nice messages on them for a change.

I wonder how much a "SHUT UP, YOU BIGOTED JERK" sign would be?

Monday, May 01, 2006

i can cross this off of my life's to-do list

I had quite an adventure this weekend. Manda and I accompanied her mom up to the outskirts of Yosemite where her mom has a small cabin/house/mountain retreat that she's been fixing up for a while.

After the long day Friday, I was looking forward to a lot of sleep and some R & R in the great wide north. Turns out, I got lots of sleep and shoveled gravel. Not that I'm complaining. I really had a nice time. A little hard labor is good for a person. Anyway, that wasn't the adventure, though.

Saturday night, we were going out to celebrate the 71st birthday of Manda's mom's neighbor with a big group of people. Between dinner and dessert, we stopped back at Manda's mom's. That's when I decided to excuse myself upstairs and use the Little Composer's room.

Well, as soon as I closed the door to the bathroom, I noticed some shadows flying around on the far wall. I thought "Oh, a moth must be flying around the lightbulb." and looked quickly at the bulb to see what was going on.

No moth. So, confused, I then looked at the shadows. No shadows. Instead, it was a bat. Now, never having been closed in a small room with a flying rodent before, I'm not ashamed to say that it gave me a pretty serious case of the willies. With a polite "how do you do?" I excused myself from the bathroom and let everyone else know what was going on.

Needless to say, no one was too thrilled. I don't really remember the next sequence of events, but somehow I ended up back in the enclosed bathroom armed with a large dust wand and the screen to the bathroom window as I tried to corral the thing outside.

Actual photo:

manbat

We went back and forth all over the place for a while. He hung from the ceiling, the walls, the floor (how do you hang from the floor? he did it), my sweater ... Eventually he ended up hanging from my window screen shield. With him on it, I could finally just reposition the thing back in the window and he flew away.

It was fun. I recommend wrestling with a bat to all my friends.