First time for everything...

...and last night wasn't one of 'em.

Hit up Ministry of Sound with some mates last night, and first thing they said to me when I got there was "hey! Tonight, you're gonna hit on five strangers!" The disclaimer being that neither of them had ever done that before either. Yeah, thanks guys.

Anyways, that proved quite the failure. I spoke to a grand total of three strangers, all with the help of friends, and two of those strangers were friends of friends. And my wingmen were fucking useless. Goose played the "I'm already dead" card, Iceman just bought round after round of drinks, and Hollywood just sorta disappeared.

Had a proper conversation with one of them, at least, but my ride decided to drag us out after she had gone to the bar for a drink, meaning I never got her number.

But, good times. The place was huge, with different rooms housing different music and, by association, different crowds. The R&B room was a little strange, though. Quite probably the only time I've ever walked into a crowd and been able to see over everyone's head. Yeah, they were that short. o_O

And now to figure out what the hell I'm doing going into 2006. Happy new year, guys.

Another year, another chance

Blasting around town in a fast car, reminiscing, catching up, "Lose Yourself" on repeat on the car stereo, it finally hit home.

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime

You can do anything you set your mind to, man

Time to get my ass in gear.

Merry Christmas!

Tonight was a good night. Caught up with an insane number of people I haven't seen since high school, and some since my tour in the Army. Acquaintances from my times in OCS, friends of friends, but more importantly, got to chill out with my good mates from years back. The night was spent largely on our asses, eating, drinking (he only had San Mig light, unfortunately), ogling the ridiculously nice cars people were driving in, and bemoaning the utter dearth of good-looking single women. As it turns out, my other mate had hogged them all for his own shindig.

Good times.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Oh fuck me, Merry Christmas to me. I just noticed a darkish one-pixel line down the center of my LCD.

Dec 26th, 0355hrs.
Merry Christmas indeed. The line seems to have disappeared.

Oh, I actually got around to updating the 3D gallery on my portfolio site with the current progress of that Combat Correspondent project. 'Bout damned time, eh?

Death and Taxes...

...and consulting for PFLAG while halfway around the globe. I guess some things never change.

Because it's that time of year

It's a Wonderful Internet

It's good for a chuckle, and the interface is lovely. Talk about nostalgic.

Crabs and Scabies

Yeah. Thanks a bunch, SovietVictory. Ass.

Plugged!

Pimpin' courtesy of ofp.info.
edit: I've been informed that ofp.info throws out a fair number of popups if you're not using a real browser (in other words, use something other than IE).

Nifty. Surprising amount of interest in the project, too.

And of course, no project is complete without a stupid banner sig.


And the latest update:

Been a while

Haven't done anything art-related in some time, and there's a mini-mod to work on for Op Flashpoint, so I figured I should get started on the art assets.

First, the camera, in all its partly-textured glory, which I'm likely going to set aside to start a new one, since the mesh for this one's a bit of a mess. Also reworked one of the game animations as a test.


And the combat correspondent who'll be wielding the camera. Sans head and hands. And texture.
edit: Replaced the first pic with an updated mesh. Will work on the shorts version once the mesh is closer to finalized



Eventually I'll hopefully have a fully-animated guy (I'll have to rework most of the animations), and a range of different cameras, from compact digitals, to telephoto monsters like the one above. With some solid scripting, I should be able to get them usable in-game. Might knock up a videocamera just for kicks.

Fun stuff.

edit: And now, after a bit of sleep... Wow, those are some fucked up proportions!

Note to self:

Don't play Dear Abby when your brain don't work.

AAAAARGH!

Disney fucks Pooh

Pooh Goes Apeshit, a much more appropriate killing of the classic. It's an oldie but goodie read by George Carlin.

Busted

Spotted on ActionTrip and Voodoo Extreme:

NovaLogic...was fined $153,500 after an audit found it had unlicensed copies of Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, FileMaker, Macromedia, Microsoft and Symantec software on its computers.

Jesus H Christ. You'd think a big company like Novalogic would take the trouble to legally obtain its software. Especially since, y'know, they develop software. How the hell did they get away with a simple fine, though? And a fucking paltry one at that, all things considered. What, because they're a big company with clout? Or is it because, y'know, all of that software had been unknowingly obtained?

"NovaLogic Inc. is committed to full compliance with software licensing requirements," President Lee Milligan said in a statement. "As a software developer, our organization depends on respect for our intellectual property rights. NovaLogic regrets the inadvertent violation of license agreements* and is committed to rigorous respect for the intellectual property rights of others."

*emphasis mine

Uh-huh.

It Can't Rain All the Time

So, free of any sort of work-related shackles (still pretty pissed off about the website ordeal), I spent some time today catching up on various sorts of tech news, in particular getting back up to speed on the whole Sony DRM debacle. Reading through the comments on one of the entries on Mark Russinovich's Sysinternals Blog, the name Jane Siberry caught my eye. Haven't listened to her stuff in a long time, but I remember being utterly enraptured the first time I heard "It Can't Rain All the Time" on the soundtrack to The Crow. Anyways, she's offered all of her tracks on a "self-determined transactions" pricing scheme. That includes free. Just figured I'd point that out. No restrictions on the files, no DRM schemes (intrusive or otherwise), nothing. Just beautiful music.

---

Oh it won't rain all the time.
The sky won't fall forever.
And though the night seems long,
your tears won't fall forever.

Oh, when I'm lonely,
I lie awake at night
and I wish you were here.
I miss you.
Can you tell me
is there something more to believe in?
Or is this all there is?

-Jane Siberry

---

Silent Hill. Night. Something.

Gotta love the way distributors try to get publicity material for cheap. Design a movie poster for the upcoming Silent Hill flick. Win $2500 and a bunch of passes. I remember some pretty awful ones getting picked for the RE: Apocalypse contest, too. Anyways, ignoring the US Resident requirement, get a load of the content restrictions:

1. No nudity or sexual activity


2. No gun to camera/no shooting to camera


3. No gun to victim/no shooting to victim


4. No more than 2 guns may appear


5. No reference to drugs/drug paraphernalia


6. No offensive language or gestures


7. No blood


8. No violence towards women


9. No cruelty to animals


10. No mutations/mutilations/cadavers


11. No excessive violence or brutality


12. No rape/molestations


13. No people on fire


14. No people in explosion/people blown out of explosion


15. No exploiting/capitalizing on rating (i.e., "R has never gone this far", "Banned in Boston")


16. No demeaning of religion, race or national origin

I've gotta say. Some of that shit is hilarious. The specificity just blows my mind (14 cracks me up). But ignoring that for a moment. What the hell game do they think they're adapting for the big screen? I mean, Jesus, take two-thirds of the restricted list, and you've practically got the bullet points for the game series.

Brainfart

Overheard at the wedding dinner last night:

hyp: So what's your sis doing these days?
me: Oh, she's with the Autopsy Research Center.
hyp:
me: Well, I mean, she seems to enjoy it.
hyp: She likes cutting people up?!
me: No, dude, what the fu- Oh. I meant Autism. Naturally.

Martyrdom

Okay. So I understand the controversy behind the death penalty. Hell, I've always been on the fence about it myself. I'm not defending the fact that we hung a young man who may have had a "good" reason to do what he did. But really. The guy was carrying something close to a million USD worth of smack. The way the Australian media and public have been acting, you'd think the guy was a national fucking hero.

Oh, lovely. Putfile has blocked IPs from Singapore. Jesus, try finding a real cause to fight for, you fucking wankers.

Time Well Wasted

---

Those leaves were a foot deep in the yard
And 'wash me' was written all over the car
But watchin' movies all day with you
Wasn't on my list of things to do
But we laid on that couch
Girl, we never left the house

It was time well wasted
And there's no way I trade a few more things that I could've crossed off my list
For a day I'll never forget
No, I didn't get a thing done
But I sure soaked up every minute of the memory we were makin'
And I count it all as time well wasted

This world spins too fast if you let it
There's always one more thing to do
But lookin' back I never have regretted
Takin' off early or callin' in sick
Or lovin' away a Sunday afternoon

-Brad Paisley

---

To memories.

Ramblings

As, once again, I am unable to get any kind of sleep before four or five in the morning, I find myself musing about the impending start of life as a student. Maybe it's the back-to-school blues, but the prospect of being a student again -- effectively a freshman, no less -- terrifies me. The unfamiliar campus, the inevitable sea of unfamiliar faces. Then the realization hits me like a shit brickhouse. I feel like a fucking stranger here, in my own country, my own home. I feel displaced. I don't feel like I belong here. Then, I don't quite know where it is I do belong. I think I had a home once, not long ago, but that no longer appears to be the case. Not in the same way, anyways.

Goddammit that was whiny.

On an unrelated note, my inner redneck lives on. Ever since Cross Canadian Ragweed showed up on one of my stations, I've been listening to a whole lotta country (well, country alt-rock, anyways) on Pandora. Shit, I miss my CMT.

Cheerier update:
On an even more unrelated note, and because I hate to leave off with such decidedly unhappy thoughts. Getting shit for free is generally cool. But when the free shit is this impressive, well, see for yourself. 'Sides, it's B5. I wasn't aware of the original game before tonight, but it was apparently quite impressive as is. This update adds a whole slew of features and gee whiz eye candy.