March 31, 2003
Just uploaded a review of Dai-Guard to Points of View. (Wine Week continues today and tomorrow, as I finish up the entries I was going to post last week, but was too sick to post.) While I was wrestling with Philo about the character designs, I was also wrestling with Murray. I’m not sure if I’ve written about Murray here yet. Murray is the name of my Muse, the shy spirit who controls […]
Friday, March 28, 2003
Ahhh, frack. I came down with my monthly sore throat/upset stomach illness on Wednesday, which prevented me from uploading parts three and four of Wine Week. Now it’ll be all out-of-sequence. Oh well. When creating an animation, the series typically goes through several distinct stages: pre-production, production, and post-production. The second stage, production, is the stage in which the actual drawings are drawn and assembled into animations. […]
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
So there I was again, walking in the dappled shade of a trail near work a couple of years ago. I can distinctly remember the small hill I was walking up, and the Virginia red clay of the path, as my foot came down on the path and my mind…shifted. I’ve had a lot of trouble explaining this experience to people. The most accurate term I’ve come up with so far is “double deja vu.” For me at least, regular deja […]
Monday, March 24, 2003
It’s Wine Week! I’m planning to post five days’ worth of history about my first animation project, Wine to Those in Anguish. So there I was, walking in the dappled shade of a trail near work, turning over and over in my mind the events of the anime series serial experiments lain. I had just finished watching the entire surreal series, and it was taking me several days to deal with. There was just […]
Friday, March 21, 2003
I don’t have anything to write about today, so instead, I’ll write this plaintive plea: Hey, Saalon, when are you going to start writing Half-Tail stories again? I enjoyed them a lot! (However, on Monday I’ll start Wine Week, in which every day I’ll reveal some of the history of one of my animated projects, Wine to Those in Anguish.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Awhile back, I decided I wanted to make a web-based game that just about anyone would enjoy, even people who don’t play computer games. So, one of my ongoing projects is a web-based game called (for the time being) Contract Tycoon. I’ve been designing and developing it with the help of some friends. In the game, you run a contracting company. You hire employees, bid on contracts, and struggle to finish them. As I envision […]
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
I’ve been reading a fascinating book lately, Controlling People by Patricia Evans. No, it’s not a how-to book. It offers a novel explanation for the behavior of people who are controlling, as well as examples of controlling behavior, and ways of dealing with it. The author describes the creation of controlling people this way: We all learn about the world through our senses. In our minds, we build up models of how the world […]
March 18, 2003
And I just came across this article from Japan Times, which suggests that there is a secret, massive underground complex beneath Tokyo. The official description of the Tokyo subway is off by an order of magnitude; they claim it’s about 250 kilometers in size, while an actual investigation indicates it’s more like 2,000. But the guy who’s looked into this – a well-respected reporter and clearly very sane man […]
Monday, March 17, 2003 — St. Patrick’s Day
I stayed up way too late Thursday night, trying to unwind after several weeks of frenzied activity. Unusually for me, I watched television for several hours. The TV’s addictive tendency is really amazing. But in this case, I’m glad I did. First, I watched an episode of The Office, a British comedy series that’s presented as a documentary of a bunch of office workers. It was brilliant. The actors are fabulous. The show nails bad workplaces […]
March 14, 2003
For the past few weeks, I’ve been importing my collection of CDs into iTunes, and tweaking my mp3’s. Part of that process involves rating the songs on a five-star rating scale. I’ve rated about 40% of the songs in my collection so far. Yesterday, when I realized that I’d rated hundreds of songs, I created a Smart Playlist of all the songs I’ve marked with five stars. This was the best of the best to my ears. And I started playing them. […]