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Mmmm...Nutter Butters...
2002-08-21 22:53:45
Well, where to start, where to start...?
Well, my last week at work has been altogether, out-and-out, sadly, oddly, strangely, boring. I have nothing to do. I wander around in the morning trying to find any grass that needs to be cut, and cut it, until break time rolls around. After break I look some more and keep busy until lunch. After lunch...well let's just say I end up with about 3 hours of editing time.
And that was what I did monday. Today (wed.) I had nothing to do before break rolled around. x_x;;
I almost wish they'd find me some work to do. I'm start to feel like I don't even have a reason to be there for the rest of the week, except that I need the money. So, that being the case, I know I'll be there, bored as all hell, until 3:30 on Friday rolls around. Cest la vie...
In local news, the drought is still going on, and the restrictions on water use have gotten even tighter. Restaurants can't even serve a glass of water to customers unless they specifically ask for it. Needless to say my car is quite dirty now, and probably will be for a while, at least until the drought lets up.
In AMV news, I have about 30 seconds left on my latest project. After my happy-happy-fun-time with fixing stuff yesterday (see journal entry below), and re-editing the song, everything is quite cool now. There is now lipsynch in my video, for about 2/3rds of the last verse in the song. I like the way it came out, far better than what I had done with the last verse before. Dear god, I must have been drinking by osmosis when I did the last verse the first time, because when I previewed it *I* didn't know what the hell I had been thinking. Oh well, it's fixed now. Now all I have to do is finish out the repeated chorus at the end and wrap it up...then go over the whole video again, make sure everything's perfect, then put in my in-video credits (which I'm not altogether sure how to do), then start the potentially long, long process of encoding different sized versions of my video and putting them online. I defintely need to get a CD burner tomorrow with my paycheck. I need to replace my stolen one now more than ever. *Sigh* Guess I won't be getting that Lain boxset...this week, at least.
And finally, in completely-useless-facts-that-you-probably-really-don't-care-about-or-want-to-know, I've been watching Record of Lodoss war. It's very cool, and (at the risk of me sounding like a 'guy') I must say Deedlit is hot hot hot! Oh yea, and Rachmoninov>you at piano. That guy is nuts, and his playing is beautiful. I'm glad I picked up that CD, I would have never known what other stuff of his I was missing out on.
Hooray for Musical Diversity!
Well, that's about it for tonight.
Later. -
La-la-la...
2002-08-20 20:36:20
La-la-la I've been working on my video...
La-la-la The ending I put in sucked so I deleted it all
La-la-la I'm getting ahead of myself though...
La-la-la because my song edit near the end sucked worse than the ending I put in
La-de-da so I edited the song again so the cut wasn't so obvious
Da-de-da then fixed the crappy ending which I'm still working on
Je-sus-Christ I'm never gonna gonna finish this video... x_x;;
~~~~~
*The preceding sad, sad, song/journal entry above just wasted around 30 seconds of your life. Have a nice night.
In other news: I'm getting better at DDR, which means I'm only more hooked on it (see journal entry below). But right now I'm going to the arcade to play some Tekken 4. I'm not stepping on a DDR arcade machine until I'm sure my skillz (<-Slang Term!) are up to snuff.
Later everyone. -
The Revolution has begun...
2002-08-19 00:27:28
I understand now.
I understand the phenomenom that is known as DDR. It's addictive, ridiculously so. I suck at it and I still love playing it.
It all started a few weeks ago when I went to the shore for a day. I was hanging out with my friends and me and one of the other guys decided we'd go over to the arcade and give DDR a shot. See, we thought that it couldn't be that hard to do, and that everyone that played it was just hyping it a lot.
Needless to say, we were proved wrong when we started a non-stop, three stage versus game and failed on the first song. We didn't do badly, but we certainly saw that it was more difficult than we thought. We didn't give it another try that day, but the seed was planted in me at that point, though I didn't know it.
Flash-forward about three weeks later. I'm at the mall (on saturday) after getting an eye exam, so while I'm waiting for them to finish up my new glasses, I head over to GameStop with 5 games and the first volume of Trigun (I bought the 1st volume, then bought the box set, so I had two vol. 1's) and traded them in. I had about 60 bucks store credit, so I walked around the store to see if there was anything I wanted. Ultimately I decided to get Madden 2003 instead of DDR Konamix and the Beat Pad, but my decision didn't hold. I got Madden (and a discount card, and a subscription to Game Informer magazine for the remainder of the year. I guess it was because I traded so many games at once) and left the store. But I immediately stopped at the Mac machine and got out 60 bucks, went back to GameStop, and picked up DDR and the Pad.
Now don't ask me why I got them both (aside from possible forsight into my spring semester at college) since my room is upstairs, and my floor causes disturbances throughout the house if I step too hard, let alone *dance*. But I did it anyway, because I wanted it.
Well today was the first time I hooked up my pad and actually played DDR in the comfort of my own home.
I'm hooked.
I suck pretty bad (at least right now), but I'm still hooked. It's fun to play, more fun than I ever thought it would be, and I enjoy playing it no matter how many times I fail. (Never, EVER, pick Afronova as the first song you try on DDR) I couldn't talk my best friend Jimmy into getting a beat pad so we could play, but I went out and bought a second on my own tonight. When I went over to my girlfriend's house I ended up playing against the same guy I first tried DDR with at the shore. (He's hooked too, I can tell.)
Playing DDR is hard work too. We only played for about 40 minutes, but we were both sweating and stuff by the time we finished. I have to admit, he's better than I am at it, but *shrug* that'll change.
After he and his friend left my girlfriend absolutely refused to play with me though. I'm starting to notice that we have little-to-no common ground when it comes to hobbies. I don't want her to like all the smae things I do, in fact I prefer that she doesn't, but I'd like to have something in common so we can have some fun together (aside from that whole love thing). She just doesn't like to do anything (excpet drive, she just got her license), but that's another story (read:complaint) for another time.
Anyway...
I have been converted.
The revolution has begun.
And it will be televised.
Later everyone. -
Derailed, but back on track *again*...
2002-08-17 02:00:20
Well, I've gone for a couple of days (sleep>getting online) but I've still been keeping busy on the editing end. Had a little mishap a couple of days ago with my video, but fortunately things are fixed and moving right along again.
The mishap really through me for a day or so though. What had happened was that I was checking out the Cowboy Bebop DVD to see if there was anymore footage I wanted to grab before I movied into the last phase of my project. I decided that there might be one or two things more that I wanted, so I opened up DVD2AVI loaded my project, extended the length of footage I wanted (it was in the same episode), and then saved it.
Well, maybe I should have thought about it before, but I obviously didn't, because I then opened up Premiere and opened up my current project. Well, nothing bad happened off the bat (like a crash or anything), but I noticed something odd: all the video *within* the clips I had placed on the timeline had all moved about 7-12 frames. Yep, needless to say I was pretty pissed. I even went back and undid the additional footage I had added in DVD2AVI, but it didn't matter. So I started the process of going through the video and fixing all the clips. I started from my last point and worked back towards the beginning, and got about 1/3 of the way through what I had completed on the video so far. I'm glad that's as far as I got, because the next day when I opened Premiere and prepared to go into fixing things a second time I was surprised to find that everything that used to be wrong in the beginning was now right, and everything I had 'fixed' yesterday was now messed up.
Oh well, so I fixed the end again so now the video's back on track. Had to have one little mess up in the midst of the project, cause that's the way those things work. Haven't had a problem since then though, or before that, so i think I'll be ok until everything is said and done. Hope to finish this video up sometime next week. I'll keep everyone posted (as if anyone reads my journal :p)
Later guys and gals -
Back on Track...
2002-08-07 22:21:27
Well I've been editing today...a lot. I was even editing during work, albeit that time was short lived (it's hard to see a laptop screen with the sun beaming down on it). I'm made some real progress today too, which I haven't been doing much of in the past few days. I account my second wind of editing to figuring out what was slowing me down in the first place.
Turns out it was the solo section I had been working on. There wasn't anything wrong with it perse, and the idea I was using worked and all, but the section was just killing the flow of the video. So I edited it out. And *taa-daa* editing the solo out brought me out of my slump. (Yet another lesson learned today: If something doesn't work when editing, don't be afraid to throw it out, even if it's just to see if it'll work better.)
I didn't stop with that section though, I went through and edited out another section that slowed down the flow of the video. The last thing I was working on was shortening the end where one verse is repeated about 12 times. (Yep, definetly don't need that in there.) I stopped work on it though, because I needed to give my ears (and eyes) a break. I'd been working on that part alone for about 2 hours. The other two sections fell together pretty easily. I guess it was luck that the beats fell together as well as the music itself.
So tomorrow I'll render what I have so far, take a look at what's what, then continue editing the ending. After that this video should nearly put itself together, because I have such a definitive vision about what I want the last half of the vid to look like. Quite happy with it, all in all. Can't wait to see it finished, then I'll be really happy. That's probably a week off yet though, at least.
In other news-
Today: I was absolutely planning on writing an opinion for YCSTR's 'FFVIII Reloaded' trailer, but I wouldn't finish before 12 with writing it, and I want to get to bed early. I'll try and get it done tomorrow, at work more than likely, because this weekend is going to be pretty busy for me. (Note to YCSTR: I definetly will get it done though Dave, so don't worry about that.)
Yesterday: I went to the mall (actually I went to both in my area). I must not have been destined to go outside that day though, because I ran into my roommate (yes, the spawn of satan many of you have read so much about from my earlier journals) from Lincoln in Sam Goody, of all places (he lives in Philly). So after putting on my friendly face (while thinking to myself how much I still didn't like him) and holding a quick conversation I just left the mall. I was gonna pick up the Lord of the Rings DVD, but I didn't, I just left. Wasn't my day to go out.
Of course I ended up going back over with my friend about an hour later. We (read: I. Since I paid for everything) picked up the Lord of the Rings DVD and NBA2K2 for PS2.
It still apparently wasn't my day to go out though, because I got shafted about three times in line while I was at GameStop. I got so annoyed I just left and got the LotR DVD from Sam Goody and came back. Me and my friend each got into a line so we wouldn't get shafted again, and we got the game.
I did end up talking to a very cute girl working behind the counter though (She also happened to be standing on top of the counter putting something away when I first went downstairs. Damn I love Gamestop's dress code. Damn she was hot in those pants. Damn I sound like such a guy.) lol, She started talking to me (since her coworker was busy with a customer) about how her manager doesn't understand how many people come in at night, and that they can't do inventory and everything like he wants them to. I agreed (and not just because she was cute, you fools :p ), because management always does that; they never understand the workers perspective and that there's only so much two people can do running a shift by themselves.
She told me I should tell her manager how unfair it was. I said I would (if I knew who the manager was now). I really should have told her that I'd talk to the manager if I could have had her number. Too bad I didn't think of it till I was leaving. Oh well, I'm sure she'll be working some other time...
But yea, it wasn't totally horrible going out, since I got to talk to the girl. But then me and my friend came outside, to see I had left my lights on. Luckily we hadn't been in the mall long, and apparently I have quite a good battery, because the car started just fine. So we went home and played PS2 for the rest of the night till he went home. That was my day yesterday.
Other other news- Picked up Princess Mononoke DVD (to replace the stolen one) somewhere in that rambling that was yesterday.
Later everyone, hope you enjoyed my ridiculously long entry for today. :p
JOURNAL: FirestormXIII (Robert X. Hill-Williams)
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