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one with my mind
2003-08-28 07:52:00
Now settled in (sort of) at Michigan, so I go down to the library to check stuff and find my hotmail account hosed (goddamned worm), and more shocking, that somebody gave me a 5 for #69. It's the only rating it's got, and it's making me lose my faith in the AMV community. Can't other people tell that this just isn't a very good video? Literally all it's got going for it is effects, and it's a sad day when a few simple Virtual Dub filters will get a video a top rank.
Current video: C.W. McCall, "Lewis And Clark" to You're Under Arrest mini-specials. Progress check: 75%. Anticipated catalog number: #80. Should be able to do the timing chart tonight with another Guinness, like I clipped through the last 5 units last night with. It's like bottled relaxation. I was going to buy some Leinies, since I'm out here, but I've got beer for about two weeks, and the Beer Depot (never see a drive-thru liquor store outside the Midwest) is within walking distance. It's probably shorter than my walk to get to class.
This video will be done, wrapped, and mailed in time to go to MITAC's contest. Prelim editing will be tomorrow after orientation, with effects and finalization on Saturday and Sunday. Monday should mostly be processing for distro, and then classes start on Tuesday and I have to buy books, notebook, etc, and free time just falls like SCO's stock price.
I have to get a job here too, but orientation will probably explain the process on that. It's not fun paying $400/mo for rent and a $2200 tuition bill on no income. At least the anime club here is supposed to be really good. Ganbarusou!
--Kai out
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row like the wind to attack
2003-08-22 14:10:24
this will be my last journal post for about a week, as I have to move 850 miles away, get settled in, and learn all about staying alive in between classes, and the requirements for what I'm taking. All the top-hole videos on Hasshin! 3 are now up on the Donut, and if you want to see others, the CD itself will be listed on the DC in the near future.
con news:
Anime Next may or may not get something from me; I'm leaning towards not, then sending #79 and #80 (to be finished next weekend) off to a whole round of fall conventions as I work on school stuff and maybe some other projects. I budgeted 10 projects' worth of source to be taken out to school, which I probably will not finish before Christmas break. I'm not sure what my 'net situation will be out there, but if all else fails, I'll always be able to post on the forums via library computers, and if these are locked down, I'll get myself a Knoppix CD to run Linux and ftp files onto the Donut.
Divx needs to burn in hell. I'm switching over to xvid for future releases, even if I need to learn a whole new school of encoding, because I'm not going to put up with this bullshit adware. Just say no. If I get server space at school and am able to do a VOTM, I'll work up MPEG1 versions for tat, but continue to put xvid versions on the Donut. AMV fans are much more likely than the general internet population to have up-to-date codecs installed, and the quality is uniformly better.
So so long for now, stay metal, and don't forget that flossing doesn't do any good until you bleed.
--Kai out
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whole world gone to hell
2003-08-21 12:35:17
rrgh, too much .org stuff to do. I'm a little more than a third of the way through archiving the AAT thread, and then I have opinions to write. I've gotten the form pretty well down do far, so I should be able to keep up my nearly-600 everage and rising trend.
I may have time to work on the video tonight; I have to tear down my A/V setup, box up my tapes/DVDs/DCDs/books that will be coming out, and get my clothes 90% back in their duffel, but that's about it. The comp will be torn down probably Saturday or maybe even Sunday morning.
Meg's present is all in readiness for Saturday, complete with failsafe. She's been bugging the hell out of me to tell her what it is, but I've held firm. Two items she'll probably like, and one that she'll laugh and smack me for.
I went over my aid budget and total costs yesterday...aid basically covers
full tuition. I'm short like $92 between loans and work study. I could just decide not to work, in theory, since I'll be taking like $10K in savings in and spending only about $6K on housing and food, with the possibility next summer of earning nearly all of this sum back. It's just plain crazy. This is a good thing, though, because if I work as planned, then I get to keep most of my stake and not have to worry about making huge loan payments out of current income when I get out of school (Meg still better get a good job, so she can make my payments and I can pay down hers). I may even be able to keep making student loan payments; it's only $1800-$2400, which I may be able to cover from income tax returns alone over that time.
So I'm basically looking at writing a check come the end of September for $2046, less whatever I've piled up work-studying, maybe. It's not too bad, and my bank account is elastic enough to take the hit. It's much less bad than I thought it'd be, which will allow me to buy all kinds of crap tomorrow that I shouldn't really be able to afford: the DVDs I'm behind on, the Kalmah CD, more tankobons, etc. Michigan's anime club is really good, but I'm still leery of moving way the hell into the hinterlands, away from the huge base of fans that gets stuff I'm interested in into even mainstream stores.
From a realistic perspective, I should be stocking up on metal rather than anime. But I'm doing that too anyways....
--Kai out
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on the rough winterway
2003-08-20 10:28:55
opinions, packing, Meg time, club...it'll be a wonder if I get any work done at all on the current video before I go off to school. Hopefully, I'll get everything done that I need to. If not, there are going to be some long hours involved Saturday night and Sunday morning after Meg lets me go, packing up everything that did not get crated beforehand.
I hope to release Hasshin! 3 by the end of the week, uploading all germane videos that aint on the server yet, and mailing the release to the DC along with my Anime Next entry. That'll require more DVD cases, but I need to go buy stuff Thursday anyways. I need to get this stuff out now; it'll probably take me a while to find the post office in Ann Arbor.
Also have to send Quu my forwarding address; damn internet outage yesterday put the for-sure kibosh on that.
Offtopic:
I probably also need the new Kalmah CD. It's supposed to be pretty good, and finnish swampophile death metal is pretty interesting an sich. Another if-I-have the time...
--K
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no more left, only one
2003-08-18 10:19:00
I probably shouldn't have started that free-ops thread, but what the hell. I may get to see some original material, and I'll have something to distract me from the packing process.
The weekend was all right. Club was Figure 17, which was cool despite the fact that they munged up the pizza ordering process. WTF is this jalapeno, didn't they pay attention when that got its butt kicked in terms of popularity by shroom, which in turn got whacked by Hawaiian? They only found people to buy 6 pieces of jalapeno; they would easily have gotten 3 times that had they gone with Hawaiian. Bastiches.
Current video: C.W. McCall, "Lewis And Clark" to You're Under Arrest mini-specials. Progress check: 63%. Anticipated catalog number: #80. I may be able to finish all clipping for this tonight, but I have a couple vids to op and of course some other stuff to do, like make a list of what I need to go back to school. I thought I was through with that. Goddamn economy. If I finish clipping tonight, it's likely that the video will be done before I go back to school, though maybe not posted (effects will be tough). I'm going to try to export a good-looking VCD-MPEG version of this and try to shill it to the techren.net crew, in hopes that it will become an official fanwork.
Of course, I kind of have to finish the video and make it good before that. Es hangt darauf an. If I can get some of the new tools I've picked up to work, they may appear in the next project. Mmm -- frames as textures on 3D objects without jerky capture and random crashes...
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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