Tuesday, June 24, 2003
I’m lucky. I have very little debt. I’ve paid for my truck, I have no student loans, and I only have about USD $3,000 on my credit cards. On the other hand, credit card debt is expensive, and I’ve been unable to eliminate it despite my best intentions for the past several years. So, I’ve decided to turn the knobs up to eleven and purchase nothing other than food and household essentials until I’ve paid […]
Monday, June 23, 2003
I’ve been struggling with the question of what to do for my next animation. I’ve had the idea of animating a few stylized birds at a bird feeder, and found a neat little piece of Classical music to go along with it. But I wanted to tell a very brief story, maybe fifteen seconds long, and I couldn’t come up with a story that fit. A one-minute story would probably take me months to draw and assemble. I was […]
Saturday, June 21, 2003
New poll, and new anime music download. I have nothing to do today. I considered going to see Finding Nemo or Hulk, but now I’m indifferent about the prospect. I just don’t want to spend the hours required to get to the theater in time and pay a hefty chunk of change for a ticket, all for the benefit of Dolby speakers and an audience. I videotaped the Redemption club last night, in the hopes of recording the fun times we have. It revealed a few […]
Friday, June 20, 2003
Animaxis.com sends out daily e-mails to subscribed customers, describing new products on the site, most of which is anime toys and other miscellaneous merchandise like figurines, trading cards, and pencil boards. I like having a feel for what anime merchandise is available, so I subscribe. But I find myself slightly depressed after reading through each one, because it’s just a huge advertisement for consumerism. “If you liked Prince […]
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Despite the problems, I finished animation #4 on Tuesday. It’s an eight-second clip of a man talking, complete with audio and multiple layers of animation. The character in the clip is Suranta, First Emperor of the Continent, from my Seeing Things Invisible world. I pulled that line from the middle of a speech he delivers to a bunch of politicians, which is part of why it feels so stiff and unnatural to me. Oh, I’m not seriously complaining. The clip’s […]
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
I am continuing to exercise, though not as often as I was a few weeks ago. I’m doing a few isometric exercises and long sit-ups and push-ups, but only one or two per night. Still, I feel it’s most important that I get in a little exercise often. I can always expand my routine once it becomes a habit.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
I continue to work on my animations. My current project is much more complex than the previous ones; it’s an eight-second animation of a talking character, complete with dialogue. After noodling around in After Effects, I’ve managed to assemble the animation itself, but I’ve run into a major problem: I need a microphone so I can record the character’s voice, but during the move, it looks like I’ve lost my good microphone. Ick. I hate […]
Monday, June 16, 2003
You know, it’s bad when you really want your work-day to end, and you’ve been at your desk for twenty-five minutes. Work continues to be completely uneventful. As always, there’s some busywork I can attend to, but it’s busywork. The human soul shrivels when it has nothing productive to do. I had a good weekend, though. I took my truck in for its mid-life tune-up at the local Firestone shop, met a really […]
Friday, June 13, 2003
The BBC has a reality show called Faking It, where an average, blue-collar worker gets four weeks to train for a high-powered job, and see if s/he can make a panel of experts believe that this is his or her career. I watched an episode last night, in which a burger-flipper named Ed trained to be a high-powered chef. He was a mousy guy who had to become an incredibly confident chef barking out […]
Thursday, June 12, 2003
It’s a gorgeous morning: warm as a soft blanket, the air fresh and clean. It makes you want to go out and set up a lemonade stand, you know? I went to a customer meeting on Tuesday, which was a surprising success in terms of my work troubles. My boss’ boss explained my dilemma to the customer, who seems to understand my position. More than anything else, I was impressed with my boss’ boss, that he volunteered this to the customer. […]