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to this day i guess i'll never know
2004-07-19 10:03:06
Current video: Mortician, "Brutal Disfigurement" to Kawarazaki. Progress check: 15%. Expected catalog number: #90. The source is all or nearly all loaded, and I picked out the song yesterday while NOT installing Gentoo due to massive issues with the mixdown of #89 on Saturday. This is the first video in a long time that does NOT have a xivd/divx version in circulation, due largely to some really weird behaviors generated by VDub towards the end of the file. I ended up sending it through DVD2AVI for high-bitrate xvid, then putting the audio and video sides back together in TMPEG to make the VCD-weight distro video.
As a result of this (and the lead/trail requirements), I'm missing AWA Pro this year. Which sucks. #88 will probably hit Expo, but I'm not really seeing a lot of convention action before, say, AUSA. It sucks, but I've got a new editing system to learn, a new system to get fully operational, a bunch of work to do, and a lot to read before the semester starts in six weeks. And then there's the fun #91, for which source continues to innundate me.
Probably no work of any kind tonight; when I'm not celebrating my bro's 21st, I'm going to be reworking the new system and putting the OS on it...or at least starting, depending on how much I have to compile. There is some reprocessing I have to do to get the source into shape, which might get done tonight, but I wouldn't count on even that.
Club was cool; mostly non-boring Naruto and the mas cool end of MinoHi, which I may actually have to go buy when it comes out stateside. As hardcore condensations of long-running manga go, it's not that bad. And I managed to get nearly everything I asked for, and still catch the early train home. Now I just have to check and see if I've got the time to make it in around the disruptions come Friday...and if I've got a bag big enough to lug back both my returns and the six tapes of Patlabor I'm running off this week (5 already complete). Minioning is a tough life.
A video entry for #89 will be up presently; no idea on whether or not there will be a local download associated with it, as I have to try and run it past other staffers to see if it'll cut it as a tribute video. If so...don't hold your breath, it'll premiere in November.
--Kai out
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talk to him every day
2004-07-16 09:00:52
Current video: Nightingale, "The Glory Days" to Prince of Tennis. Progress check: 93%. Expected catalog number: #89. Effects are finished, and all cuts, including the alternate for one (not sure how I wanted to handle a duplex shot) have now been mastered over. Assembly will go in tomorrow morning, and then I can install Gentoo on the new box in peace.
Source for #90 is already mostly loaded (have to check what manga I need to put back on -- I know MPD Psycho will be involved), and there's an excellent chance that, barring major config problems with the new system, I'll be able to do nearly all of the work on that vid on Sunday. After that, the problem will be organizing all the various sources that will be going into #91 -- which I recently learned is not using the song I thought it was going to.
I was checking the lyrics (blame the US loser population, not Redblack or me, for why I don't have _Uncommon Excursion_ on CD) for the song and discovered that even though the internal file details and the label's website said that the song was "Kisses From Stars", the music I have is actually the song immediately preceding it on the CD, "Days Of Emptiness". I may still use "Kisses From Stars" as the video title, because it fits the music in a way that the actual title, which is derived from the lyrics, kind of falls short on. And because the sources I'm going to be sampling from include a large number of eroge, so it's slightly apropos.
offtopic:
Last night also led to the solution to the major problem with the app I've been wrestling with at work, so that's getting cobbled in today and I can report some positive progress before I pack off for club. I always wonder why I don't think of these things sooner, but there's just inevitably a tipping point at which things become easy instead of hard, and the walls finally yield to the cranial battering ram.
I just wish it was while sitting at my desk at 8:00, waiting for midpoint review, rather than while walking out to my car at 5:00. Maa ii.
--Kai out
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i wait for execution
2004-07-15 09:32:25
Current video: Nightingale, "The Glory Days" to Prince of Tennis. Progress check: 88%. Expected catalog number: #89. Drafting is done and effects will follow tonight -- 23 cuts need some form of processing, mostly horizontal flips. The central idea on this one is Tezuka playing against himself, and though there was a lot of flexibility in the source as originally existing, sometimes the cuts need a little massaging to put the right character on the right side of the screen. Any manga bits (now dropped to highly unlikely) will be done in Magix in post, as I have no desire and barely the ability to do the kinds of effects I need from them in VDub/AVS.
Pressure is stepping up at work; I've got six weeks to finish and debug this app. Fortunately, having done this sort of thing at school, I can feel confident throwing out all my current design work and starting new from scratch. Hurray ridiculously long hours to come. I'm probably going to be drilling on this over the weekend while installing Gentoo as well (no errors so far in about 70 memtest passes, and the stench from evaporating rubbing alcohol and curing Arctic Silver is starting to clear), and over most of next week at night. It's a good thing the next video is going to be quick and dirty.
The song for SH090 is still undecided, mostly because I haven't listened to _Hacked Up For Barbecue_ yet. Even so, it's two eps and probably about two and a half minutes of audio...maybe less once I trim off the intro if such applies. There's no way I won't get it finished in time to send to farlo's contest.
Club has the end of Minohi, thanks to leniency of Media Blasters, plus a bunch of stuff I don't care about. Hopefully the "not cared about" will extend through the next two weeks while nervous government types make the light rail system unusable. Though it's not like it'll be a huge deal if I miss Monster...it's running, still, in nearly perfect synch with the manga, and if I don't go to club I don't have to listen to certain annoying people or spend 14 bucks on transit. And yet borrowing, even with minioning and the cost of tapes, is still cheaper than buying this stuff outright.
--Kai out
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we lay in the same grave
2004-07-14 09:28:21
Current video: Nightingale, "The Glory Days" to Prince of Tennis. Progress check: 83%. Expected catalog number: #89. Half the drafting is done. Well, just less than half; 2:06 of the video is finished, with 2:09 remaining. Fortunately, the last part is easy, just choruses and solos, and I don't have to do any more lipsynch, or find stuff in a tennis anime to lyric-synch "the day I was born" or "the eyes of the betrayer" to (the last being especially tough as non-Seigaku players are barred from significant roles in this video). I've got most of the rest of the video plotted, and it should draft up pretty easy tonight.
For those who might care, the partial beta will be available on request until I get a full version together. Effects (including any manga cuts that need to be added) will probably take up most of tomorrow night, and the video will be finalized over the weekend, likely without any Magix work.
offtopic:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aYyZfaVRFtWQ&refer=latin_america
I wrote up a supplement a few years back for The Awakening that put permanent i/o ports in tissue in the category of "major wiring", which humans don't know how to do yet. Even though this isn't accessible by thought, I guess I'm going to have to go change that.
That's the problem with making a game set in the present that allows for the intrusion of futuristic technology from advanced beings. The present keeps becoming the future, and the plain old human beings keep getting more advanced.
more offtopic:
Kirin Ichiban has claimed the lead in the Asian-beer stakes, though by coming in large, cheap bottles, Asahi and OB Lager are still in the fight. Next up: Tsingtao, San Miguel (official ghetto beer of Hong Kong), and White Owl if I can find it, then on to the Indian subcontinent. In this I will of course still be looking for somewhere that imports Suntory...probably ever in vain.
--Kai out
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coal mines and the industries were all i ever knew
2004-07-13 08:55:52
No drafting work last night, but Battlefreak is now up and growling, and I'm no longer quite as sick as I was yesterday. Credit some miraculous ototo-ryori (2 pounds Italian chicken sausage, 1 pound stewed tomatoes, 1 pound spinach, 1 pound chick peas, and a whole lot of olive oil), sleeping with my head in the right direction, and the rush of getting a computer from spare parts to up and running in three hours.
The new system is running cool and quiet through memtest86 right now, doing something useful while the thermal paste on the CPU sets. When I left for work this morning 12 tests had finished with 0 total errors; this'll hopefully continue for the next two days, at which point I can feel comfortable about cabling in the other hard drive, installing a new OS (the boot drive is currently encumbered with a damaged Win98 install, and I have no frickin' clue what's on the other one), and putting the side panels back on. Despite the cramped space this box is in, and that there were several accidents involving rubbing alcohol, the heatsink, and thermal paste during the assembly process, temps are hovering around 40C and the noise is about equivalent to what my K6-2 box is currently making closed up.
I'm prepared for mass future issues, particularly with getting Linux to recognize the soundcard (it's a 5.1) and buying new damn speakers for it without killing my wallet ($90 for two monitor cables + super IDE last night == ;_;), and then ofcourse the usual nonsense with ripping, cutting, and burning VOBs. But for now I'm happy: nothing caught on fire or blew up from being plugged in wrong.
Tonight: beer and drafting. And I need to get my bro something for his 21st birthday...but unfortunately he already has friends lame enough to give him alcohol, so I have to go somewhere other than the liquor store. Damn.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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