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so beautiful and yet mortal
2004-02-02 12:48:19
Well, we let the Panthers hang around more than was strictly necessary, and made Jake Delhomme look like the made-in-Taiwan Brett Favre in the process, but the final result is what it all comes down to. "Of course he makes it. He's Adam Fucking Vinatieri."
And I got a major school assignment out of the way, freeing me up to work on demo and editing stuff later in the week, and coordinate the simultaneous debut of the Gay Prank Videos that kicked off the Winter '04 semester at Animania. Coding tonight and all tomorrow and I should have the other knocked off as well.
Also got back up to pace on ops; I've got three left to do on the blocks (one of which is going on 6 months old), but at least I've now no longer received more than I've given. Track for Cromartie is tentatively set as Hypocrisy's "Fuck U", and has been postponed to wait for US release (don't give me that shit, they brought out AzuDai and Excel Saga over here and this one's right up that alley. I'll punch Greenfield in the head myself if I have to). I don't want to have to letterbox this one; Cromartie just won't work in Academy ratio.
And Kalium wants me to redo 'ormgard ii: eng' from DVD. I told him to stuff it, that I was going to do the "Next In Line" idea that I had initially thrashed around on some at the end of '02 once the series was completely out, but I should have told him to look up Swano's Subway Mirror altie project and the song "Does It Rain In Your Heart" for this Crest of the Stars romance video he's set his sights on. Of course I had pulled half the muscles in my shoulder girdle lifting speakers at the time and was running on 4 hours of sleep in close to 30 at the time, so it's somewhat excusable.
Out of money, out of food, out of time...hope that stupid paycheck gets in soon.
--Kai out
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all of the damned are wearing the crown
2004-02-01 15:44:03
Work was okay, everyone laughed at video #85 (debuts online tomorrow) at Animania last night, and I'm still alive after a weekend of intense toil. The last time the Pats were in the Super Bowl, I did not watch the game but rather drank beer, did my laundry, and worked on an AMV (#32, 'Phantom on the Green', for those who care), and they thoroughly kicked St. Louis' overrated butt. Accordingly I have to go buy some alcohol and get some more work done on the demo, which continues to have titles added to it. I should be working more on school stuff, but it's not at the panic level yet.
I've already found and fixed one serious continuity error in the book...hopefully there won't be any more. Just doing on-line editing is tough and not always an effective use of time; I really need to get the red-pencil galleys run off pronto, hopefully so I can take care of this stage Wednesday night.
We showed Cromartie at Animania last night. Rawk. It's like an animated version of being on the sidewalk at Metalfest, except with more robots and not quite as many drunk goth chicks. A bunch of thugs dressed all in black doing stupid stuff....I felt right at home. Maybe a Total Terror or Unleashed video if I can get it set up.
--Kai out
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pure damnation's wine
2004-01-30 11:18:01
Pending any editorial changes, either in the markup process or after I have someone actually in the business look at it, Darkly Shining Void is finished and more or less ready for publication, after three years of work (writing started 1/01, even though most of the actual work was done in the last 14 months) and approximately 97,000 words. It's been a hell of an ordeal, one which I'm not sure I'm anxious to repeat (or have the material immediately at hand, anyway), but it's definitely been worthwhile, as I can now honestly say that I've written a book. Maybe it won't ever be published, and if it does there's no guarantee that it'll sell, but I finished what I started and tried to make it not suck too too much.
As soon as I get it PDF-converted to do red-penciling, I'll put up the first three chapters somewhere as a kind of preview. About 50 pages, and it more or less sets everything up without giving too much of the story away. I've got other stuff to work on before that.
I should have more writing time overnight, which will also go towards re-rendering videos. A lot of stuff I've downloaded lately seems to have fucked audio codecs that cause problems either with my ancient version of the DivX player or with tmpeg's frame calculation routines (again an old beta), so I have to run them through at least one render to get them watchable. Not cool, because I always forget to do this when I have to go out for work/class/sleep/etc. And what's with all this 720x480? It's not like any of these videos need the fine detail graining of that many pixels; 512x384 is plenty big enough, at a proper aspect ratio (512x256 for widescreen), and will compress much smaller without as many artifacts while still looking decent. I'm not such an old fart that I'm going to go over into the VCD-MPEG1-or-DIE!! camp, but it doesn't take THAT much effort to make yourself a proper DISTRO version of your video in VDub. There's no need for the con-standard screensize here; what counts is making your stuff watchable. (LAME or Frauenhofer audio instead of these Windows Media abortions wouldn't hurt either.)
I should go home and go to sleep now; Flint's new video looks most tempting, but I don't have my transfer disc with me and I have to be up for work in less than 9 hours and I'm still falling off the high of finishing the book. Maybe I can also get the two main projects I've been working on lately done by the end of February....and put out the video on the 14th. I've added a bunch of stills from CG games (Kanon, Little My Maid, etc...nothing dirty) to the source bag, bringing total elements to 85, which is more than have ever been used in SH demos before...cumulatively (18 on demo 1 + 31 on demo 2 + 33 on demo 3 = 82 titles). Hopefully, all of these will make it in, and appear for more than one frame. It's getting right toward the one-cut-per-title stage, but that'll hopefully be a good thing. It's not like I'm asking people to keep track or anything, and variety is what demos are about.
--Kai out
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and let thor arise
2004-01-29 16:58:36
So much for nothing ever happening at work. Try a two-floor duct failure at five in the morning, followed by them calling at 9:30, at which time I was trying my best to sleep off the shift, to notify me that my paycheck would be a whole day late. Wow. That's really fucking essential, something you have to call a night worker about two hours after he gets off his shift, knowing that he's got classes to go to. I tried not to be abrasive, but I really hate perky voiceswhile I'm trying to sleep . SO FULL OF HATE.
At least I got done what I needed to before the shit hit the fan. There's probably going to be a bunch of book work tonight, and probably an announcement in coming days after I've gotten all the nonlinearity straightened out. That's the problem with asynchronous composition, eventually you just have to go and merge everything back.
Probably after the weekend, in which I should just get out my Shrouded Devourers cloak and turn into a ful-time vampire. Friday: work (11-7:30). Saturday: showing (2-1). Sunday: Super Bowl [go Pats, javla Carolina!] (whenever-I-wake-up to whenever-I-regain-consciousness). And I'm supposed to do academic stuff and work on a video in with all this? What are these people ON??
Going to put two older vids up on the Donut shortly (recently cleared); other than that, it'll probably be two weeks before the new vid is ready.
--Kai out
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who draws the line
2004-01-28 09:59:54
Short post now, I screwed up this morning not getting what I've got of chapter 16 printed so I can work on it tonight. I have to go home and go to sleep, then remember to get back up in time to run that off and do any server juggling I need to. It sucks not having disk access at work, but hey, security guards don't need it.
Also put another ep's worth of cuts into the source bin; the video is looking more and more likely to be completed by the next showing, which is two weeks from Saturday. Hooray valentines of hate.
It sucks just that the book is getting up towards 95% complete, it gets tougher to work on it. It'll get done, though. I should be able to do 4 pages tonight at least (there's very little for me to do once the custodians get in around 6, so it's just an issue of staying awake till then), and depending on whether or not I have any entry time when I get home, another 2-3 pages tomorrow before class. After that, it'll be very difficult to avoid taking entry straight into writing tomorrow night, and then final work/entry will go down Sunday after I've tied it all up Friday night. Hopefully. I could have to bust someone or something, and that would write off the whole night, but that seems kind of unlikely. The most we ever get are oversleepers, and it's not possible for anyone who's ever done CS to bust anyone for that. Sleeping in public buildings is a right of the serious student.
After the book's done, that vampire story becomes the primary, and then something that's been stealing my spare cycles and is now running about 4 pages or 15% done. High-tension adventure-horror, hotrodded firearms, and a degredation into insanity, back to my basics. I've got about 80% plotted including most major plot points (just some spaces left to fill in), and if I can write it well enough, it's going to be Damn Cool. More emotional/existential stuff can wait; it's time to just scare the shit out of people.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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