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than mind can fly
2004-03-21 23:20:05
I probably shouldn't write about yesterday, because it's not possible without straying too far into gonzo journalism, and there's no real need for me to write shit, even in something that is not read a lot, that would provide blackmail material to be used against my friends. It was some bad, shit, sure, but we were all worn in half from incessant uptime and the nontrivial strains of doing setup and teardown tech for about 6 hours solid, and nobody had beer. Fortunately there were no fatalities, no civilians were harmed, and nobody got involved whose involement could have been avoided.
The demo thrashed the showing computer, which got Kalium overexcited, and wondering why I hadn't compressed it better, until we found someone with a laptop DVD player, which proved itself worthy of handling the file. Then he saw the 20-second section of nothing but hi-res manga panels flying past at full 29.97, and realized that the end of this video is where compression codecs go to COLLAPSE AND DIE. I do have a low-res version together for distro, but I'll need to check it out on a lab comp as soon as I can get xvid onto one; my hardware drops 29 in 30 frames in this section, so there's no real way for me to tell how the quality actually is.
As regards school I am holding steady; I managed to get some nontrivial work done over the weekend in most of my subjects, despite the intense schedule, the video, and the time this afternoon I sank into re-watching Berserk (first 5 DVDs). Just got a short stack of papers to read before 9AM tomorrow, but that'll take care of itself.
Current video: Subway Mirror, "Forever Young", to Stratos 4. Progress check: 34%. Expected catalog number: #87. I got just short of 2 minutes of source out of the first ep; that's almost total coverage. It should be a cinch to get *enough* footage; the trick, as always, is to get the *right* footage, and enough of that to make the video. There probably won't be a lot of prod work before the weekend...and then projects start coming due, which will lead into four solid weeks of devilish crunchtime. It's amazing how fast the year's gone; this time a year ago I wasn't sure I'd even gotten in here, hadn't met Meg, hadn't even started Project Haibane. Darkly Shining Void was languishing at less than a hundred total pages, and being a pro writer was a dream beyond an impossibly remote dream. Now, I'm still not 100% sure of where I'm at, let alone where I'm going, but I can see that I've made progress. I got the book written. I didn't flunk out, and I'm almost half-done my degree. All that remains is to keep going, keep fighting, finish what was begun, and finish strong.
And if I somehow avoid killing myself from overwork, it's likely that I will.
--Kai out
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between your dream world and reality
2004-03-19 23:58:59
Some fuckwit on the forums classed Limp Bizkit as metal. So I had to get out the chainsaw. It's a good thing that Israel is so violent these days; a pipe bomb sent to the physical address of a certain IP wouldn't raise any eyebrows at all.
Of course, I wouldn't do something like that. I strongly believe in applying violence in person. If you can't see the blood spurt, there's no point to it.
Current video: Subway Mirror, "Forever Young", to Stratos 4. Progress check: 25%. Anticipated catalog number: #87. Source is all together for this one, and the drive is clear. It's only about 2 minutes, with footage from 6 eps, so it should go down pretty quick, even with all the school crap I have to get through. Music is from one of Swano's old grunge projects; we'll see how it turns out.
Demo-lition is about ready for release; I just need to tighten up some of the textfiles accompanying it and buy some packing tape, and it can go out along with the other two releases (a KK UC volume and the first of the Noumenon Collection) that are currently waiting around in shellcases on my desk. Of course, that won't be for another week at least; I've got about 13 hours of Animania-related business to hack through tomorrow. And this will, ofcourse, be on 3 hours' sleep: no rest for the wicked...
Offtopic:
My floor is covered in spent BBs, as I picked up a new airsoft pistol yesterday and had to put it through its paces, including comparisons with my other gun. The new one is a Hofeng 1911, basically the same design as my Marui Centimaster, but it balances more towards the grip because it's got a weighted mag (for realism) instead of a huge zinc compensator on the front of the barrel. It's a pain to have to cock it after every round (it's spring, not gas or EBB like the other one), but it shooots better at point-of-aim and totally blows away the Marui on power. A lot of the battery power in the Centimaster gets drawn to cycle the slide and recycle the mechanism; the whole power of the unit in the new one goes to putting the pellet downrange.
At $40 it's not cheap, and it's pretty loud for live-rounds play (nothing on gas, though), but I'm sure I'll have a use for a pistol that can put dents in a #10 can from two meters out. I was thinking of getting a chibi MP5 AEG instead, but that'd mean more batteries, and more pellets; I don't want to feed an ammo glutton like that my imported Excels, especially since I'm half out already. SUCK. Taiwan hasn't caught up to Japan on airsoft yet, but they're getting close. Next gun is probably going to be a M-16 type to tweak up to sniper power, or that stockless AK I saw back home if it's still around. Now I just need to find some people to shoot with around here, and we can start terrorizing the library populations and risking accidental-suicide-by-cop.
--Kai out
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this poison seed now sown
2004-03-18 00:35:57
The demo is done. Finally, after like 3 months and 70 solid hours of hacking time (at least). One distro version is probably built now, the one that will be put up online if the video is ever made available in that context. The other one, which will probably end up too big for the Donut (this is a complicated video with a lot of one-frame flash-cut sequences) will go on the "Demo-lition" CD that will be sent out to the DC.
The toughest part was probably the effects, which my process pushes 90% to the backend. That took at least three hours yesterday; I was able to watch all of both Escape From Death Row and The Enigma while that was going down. Second toughest was the rendering process today; it went down in two builds, and there weren't many problems getting the timing to go right, but the final build still ran like an hour and a half (almost 3 raw episodes of Virtua Fighter -- with commercials). It was probably the transition load; the video like past demos is chock full of fades, and there were a bunch of other transitions at the end to do a singularly weird effect that required a lot of cycles.
For Premiere et al two hours rendering is nothing, I'm well aware, but this is MPEG2->MPEG2 direct encoding with dedicated hardware assistance. I'm used to setting videos to build and having them done by the time I finish getting a meal together, or get out of the shower, even if the environment doesn't crash. Hopefully the next one, about half as long, will go together more simply; after that it's DVD time. Digisubs look better and better all the time, but they still ain't got shit on the Real Deal.
Raijin has "gone on hiatus", which for a magazine that requires sales to get direct revenue and draw more ads, is a lot like "gone belly-up". This sucks. Despite the large volume of stupid content and their inability to run the same stories from issue to issue (large contributing factors?), Raijin kicked ass and was much better than Shonen Jump at being a real manga anthology that non-kids could get into...even if they royally sucked at getting their mags distributed. You can buy Shonen Jump with your booze at almost any full-service party store around here; Raijin you practically have to go scout out with a metal detector.
The problem with Raijin was that they were trying to sell to the wrong crowd -- people already totally into manga and anime. There's just not enough of them to support a $5-weekly (or even monthly) manga collection. So Raijin tried to pull as many of them in as possible, which resulted in crap like Bow Wow Wata and off-topic stuff like Mamotte Shugogetten being published in the same covers as Fist of the Blue Sky, Slam Dunk, and The First President of Japan. Add in the kiddie feel of Grappler Baki and like a hundred virtually indistinguishable samurai tales with practically identical art, and you have a perfect recipe for a magazine that doesn't know what the FUCK it's doing, or where it's headed except into a fathoms-deep well of red ink.
So what could Raijin have done differently? Realize that otaku are not the total market for manga, especially manga that KICKS ASS. Cut back to the hardcore old-school shonen stuff -- martial arts, sports, guns, babes, power struggles -- and sell it at its intended audience, guys 15-25 in mid-lower economic strata. That's who bought this in Japan, that's who'll buy it in the states. Translate the damned sound effects. Ditch the gaming sections and bring on music (hip-hop, hardcore, new-school metal) and extreme-sport content. Print on cheaper stock and sell for less; that's what they do in Japan, assuming that the mag is going to get thrown away.
Raijin was a cool idea, and they had a lot of good content. I'm sorry that I didn't buy enough to see Revenge of Mouflon properly developed (though it would have helped if they'd run it every issue). Unfortunately, they didn't do even one of the things mentioned above, and while nobody can ever be sure that any of them'd've actually helped, it's kind of disturbing to think that nobody on staff even thought of TRYING any of them.
Oh well. It's been and gone St. Patrick's Day, and I'm still too poor to throw down a Murphy's. New videos rise to the top as soon as one's dequeued. Life goes on.
--Kai out
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masters of the death show
2004-03-16 13:18:10
Maybe Da Vinci was on to something after all. I don't normally trust anyone born north of Naples (applies only within Italy), but I'm feeling like I've got energy to burn after doing two naps of 4 hours last night instead of grinding myself up on the work I had to do and sleeping straight till I had to get up. Hopefully, it'll help leverage the time I've got left to finish the video (effects will go in tonight, then Thursday will be for finalization and production). I only need to get the HQ version to build by Saturday morning; I can mix down a distro version while I'm asleep thereafter.
Weird not having anything to do; should be coding on something, but I haven't got all the projects I've got pending precisely scheduled just yet.
--Kai out
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masters of the death show
2004-03-16 13:15:20
Maybe Da Vinci was on to something after all. I don't normally trust anyone born north of Naples (applies only within Italy), but I'm feeling like I've got energy to burn after doing two naps of 4 hours last night instead of grinding myself up on the work I had to do and sleeping straight till I had to get up. Hopefully, it'll help leverage the time I've got left to finish the video (effects will go in tonight, then Thursday will be for finalization and production). I only need to get the HQ version to build by Saturday morning; I can mix down a distro version while I'm asleep thereafter.
Weird not having anything to do; should be coding on something, but I haven't got all the projects I've got pending precisely scheduled just yet.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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