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my heart is
2003-11-03 19:58:00
Good news: the system seems to be working (more tests to be done tomorrow morning), we haven't lost any rooms for CJN, and I finished chapter 10, putting the book comfortably over the 200 page mark.
Bad news: I'm only midway through outputting the second of three eps of Gash Bell, leaving me with barely enough time to run off either Mouse or Yaiba before the con. And I haven't been able to start the 492 problems. And my personal life is getting screwy as an inevitable result of distance.
Somehow, I'll get through. Somehow, I'll get everything done I need to. Somehow, I'll avoid spending all my money on manga. Somehow, I'll finish chapter 11 before Meg gets out here. Somehow everything will straighten out.
And somehow I'll actually get some work done on the damned video, so that this record will become SLIGHTLY less off-topic.
--Kai out
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on a black horse through hell
2003-11-02 08:36:42
5....4....3....2....1..... MELTDOWN!
Things started going to hell in a hurry Friday night, when I found out that CJN had been double-booked against. And worse, by someone we can't just give the finger to. Okada Mariko blew off the frickin Vienna Film Festival to come out here and give this panel, but CJS (Center for Japanese Studies, big difference from Con Ja Nai) booked them into one of the auditoriums in the MLB without apparently being told by the central scheduling office that there was an anime convention booked into it then. Either that, or they forgot to mention this to Ian when he booked us the rooms.
And so now we are in big trouble, because if Ian's out ironing out those problems, he's not at home putting shows on tape. And if he's not doing it, I have to. And apparently we've got to get through almost twice as much stuff, because there won't be a digital setup in the WTH room. Guardian, guardian, guardian of the blind. Between that and having to do coding and redo documentation for 481, I'll be lucky to find time to *eat* this week, much less sleep -- and then I have problem sets due in 492 and 478 entirely too close for comfort.
So this means no progress on the video is likely. More likely, the current video will just be flat cancelled, because I have a cool idea to do afterwards, and given the 481 exam is the week following CJN, and that there's another quasi-midterm for 492 lurking around somewhere, AND that I'm going to be spending extra time hitting office hours for 478, I'm most likely going to get only one of them done before winter break, and I want it to be one I can send to Ohayocon and AniBo.
So I should probably not cancel it...because most of the time, the videos I build up to myself don't turn out great, and the ones I rush off rock and get well-received.
What the hell, something'll get done. Hopefully I'll be able to run off a tape of Gash Bell between tonight and Wednesday, and a tape of Yaiba after that. And hey, SaiKano and Ippo will be coming out on DVD, so there ain't noting ever to worry about.
--Kai out
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you open the door
2003-10-31 08:55:27
Wrote another 4-5 pages last night, and now, of the seven that I thought I had left in chapter 10, I have about 5 or 6 to get through. Hooray writing. Of course, it goes without saying that I did not work on the video.
Fortunately, I got through one of the main turning points in the book (the first of at least three or four), and now, in combination with what I've got outlined, I have a much clearer idea of what this novel is going to end up being *about* on the first level past literal.
I should really post some chapter clips, and eat server space a la MCWagner's movie reviews/walkthroughs, so that the two people this actually interests can have some idea of what the hell I'm talking about, but that'd take way too much effort, and I still have classes to not fail at as well as the book to actually finish writing. Plus it'd be stupid-offtopic here, so it would better go in a LJ. However, I don't have one of those and don't plan on getting one; I talk to Meg fairly regularly, and nobody else online cares about what party stores less than 20 minutes' walk from my apartment are best.
I didn't get around to the music article, so no dice on that. Gotta code. I might have time to work on the video over the weekend; this good writing weather won't last forever, and I might get my server code done today. Might. Next week's gonna be tough; I'll probably end up staying up all Friday night cueing tapes, waiting for the eps that Ian dropped on me at the last second to finish, and stumbling over to Angelos around 5 to mmet up with the rest of the crew, then trying to run Con Ja Nai on a lethal mix of flat Coke and cheap-ass sake.
Let's hear it for Ozeki! Let's hear it for being dead to the world on next Sunday!
--Kai out
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my cross to be carried
2003-10-30 12:56:12
I really ought to do some AMV work one of these days. Unfortunately, I'm really hitting stride on the book and I've got a lot of classwork to get through, which is putting a real pinch on my time. And Ian's got eps for me to run off -- or will, soon enough -- which will just nonstop eat processing cycles.
I'm getting mixed feelings about my current project, mostly because if I take off another two weeks (estimated time to complete chapters 10 and 11), I'm not sure that I'll want to get back to it. I've actually been participating on the forums lately, which makes me feel weird, since I don't really feel like a member of this community. Too many divergent perspectives. It's not like I can go to a con and immediately be on the same wavelength with ~50% of the people, the way I can at practically any show. Anime fandom is full of complexes and neuroses. Metal 'fandom' is full of 20oz plastic bottles of Bud Lite or Pabst and hairy guys in black t-shirts going "DUUUDE!!" Nobody tries to be better than anyone else. If you answer no to "hey, have you heard of Band X", the questioner feels happy because he gets to promote his favorite band, not superior because he's kulter-than-thou.
Of course, this isn't always uniform. Anime is getting better in this regard, but people who enjoy lording their superior knowledge over others go to too many cons. Metal elitists who would do the same don't go out to shows, because none of the bands they like are sellouts enough to actually play live gigs and try to get more people into their music.
Maybe it's just the internet, the best communication tool and worst communication facilitator we puny humans have yet come up with. A lot of talking, not a lot of listening.
What the fuck. What the fuck am *I* doing posting a journal like that. I'm a no-regrets, fuck-the-world, anti-convention, anti-trend, anti-mass-social, unrepentant heavy-metal hesher. It must be because I cut my damn hair off.
What I'm *REALLY* dissatisfied with is the fact that my vids are starting to look and sound like 90% of the videos on this site. That shouldn't be happening. The only reason I do this out in public is that nobody else is willing to, but now I've allowed myself to forget that, at root, I'm just a bass player with a capture card and a contrarian philosophy. I don't define myself artistically as an AMV creator, but a metalhead with a stupidly time-consuming and expensive hobby. I need to start kicking more ass, and kicking it posthaste.
Maybe I will, and this 'community' will continue to be plagued with my occasional comments. Maybe I won't have to, and I can be retired again, making videos when I feel like it and writing books and software full time.
Either way, I need to listen to a LOT more Amon Amarth.
Offtopic:
If you're one of the thirty people (Sword above!) who hit this record between 9 AM and 1:30 PM server time today, even though *nothing new was posted*, you may be interested in an article on music for Halloween parties to be posted in General Music tomorrow morning. If not (on either condition), screw you, I'm posting it anyway.
Must-not-waste-time-on-.org---must-code-php--.....
--Kai out
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for those who are
2003-10-29 09:36:27
No progress. I was caught up in sleeping and mild depression yesterday (I shouldn't have been, the 478 grade wasn't that bad, and it's not like I can't get out of this hole), and wrote 10-11 pages of the book Monday night. I figure I ought to be able to do some work today, but I'm within spitting distance of finishing chapter 10, so I'll probably put a good amount of effort towards that.
It was about this time last year that the forums went royally to hell too. Must be a seasonal thing. If you've been following, I agree with everything Nate and Iserlohn've been saying, but don't have anything relevant to post.
The problem with AMV, as I see it, is that either people have a bad definition of Art, don't realize that this is also Craft, or both. It's difficult not to tell that there's an inadvertent crapflood in process as new users get AMVs out just to be cool, without, in most cases, watching the masters and thinking critically about what in those videos they should be doing, and what in those videos sucks so much ass that the original creators should be punched in the head. Most of these people (and I blame Apple for this; if they hadn't bundled iMove way the fuck back then, M$ never would have made WMM) have zero cost of access between the time they first see an AMV and the time they first make one, and it doesn't even require a clue. I spent 8 months just *watching* videos before I started, just organizing potential ideas and making sure I had commercial source, because I had to save up $350 to buy a capture card. Now, WMM + KaZaa means that, potentially, a new creator can see ONE AMV, just one, and immediately make their own in less than a day.
What we're seeing now is poorly realized art, driven by effects, and mishandled craft, laid solely to lack of experience and ignorance that it really IS tricky to make a music video. Maybe I should have spoken louder back when I thought I had all the answers: a Craft Not Art meme might help decrease tolerance of sole reliance on flash in what these new creators are taking as inspiration. The situation has become the "what shall I do with my power" question posed by Crichton in Jurassic Park (the book, of course, infinitely superior to the film and the last worthwhile thing he wrote), and the answer is the same: power easily gained is power easily abused. "A karate black belt does not go into a rage and murder his wife with his bare hands. He has had to work for his power, and knows how to control it. The one who abuses his power is the one who has purchased it in the form of a Saturday night special." Apologies for the misquote, but the theme hopefully remains.
Right now, partly because of the efforts of the 'masters' in this community, those who are starting right now don't have to do a fraction of the work to get into this hobby that those who started even a year or two ago had to. When I first found this site, the .org was less than a year old and had less than 7000 members, of whom about 200 of whom are still active. There were no omnibus technical guides, just Phade's then-poorly-realized opinions on what makes a good AMV, which have somewhat fallen by the wayside. WHen I first got into AMV in September '00, there was no .org at all.
The use of 'the guides', ErMaC and AD's bible on AMV technics, as the default answer to newbie questions, may have actually provoked some of the crapflood. Videos may be looking better (see the sound-ratings thread that spawned Nate's rant), but the content is tired or poorly realized. What we have here is a validation-verification conflict: the videos are being made *right*, but the *right videos* aren't being made.
So, from now on, I'm going to cut back on effects barrages in solo sections (even though Hsien wasn't *specifically* talking about me), do more obscure stuff (there's something wrong about #82 and #83 having over 10 hits already when they haven't even premiered -- I blame the video source), and whenever someone asks a technical question on the forums, I'm going to point them at Phade's guide to good AMVs.
Seriously, people, there's few RKOVA AMVs out there better than Eric's 'unSaid', and that was released as like a 160x100 .asf animated postage stamp.
On that front, #84 will be almost all straight-cuts, use both obscure music and an anime not in the database yet, and, if I can get enough source, do something a little different and more interesting thean just a straight-tell.
Time will tell if I actually finish it before CJN, though...that deadline is entirely too close for comfort.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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