Month: October 2008

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Critters

Welcome to Evan’s Man Cave (formerly Daddy’s Man Cave)

Evan has figured out how to open and close the door to my game room; the only thing he hasn’t quite gotten his head (or his height) around is the operation of the doorknob (or, for that matter, the lock – daddy senses a bit of doorknob surgery in the near future before that happens…), but other than that, he’s likely to open the door, greet you and welcome you in. I don’t even think this is my game room anymore. :shocked:

He’s also taken on another bizarre habit. He has a blankie horse, you see, and it’s become clear over time that this is his “comfort animal” – his security blanket with a horsie head, if you like. But lately, he’s taken to walking through the house with blankie horse’s head clamped in his teeth, “hands-free.” It took me a moment, and then I realize where he had seen this behavior, and it wasn’t from either of his parents.

PUFFBALL!

My son’s being raised by cats.… Read more

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Gaming

Not always a boom tomorrow

Dune 2000So I had a little bit of frustration worked up tonight and decided that I’d take care of it the only way that seemed reasonable: it was time to blow shit up, and it was time to blow shit up Dune 2000 style. Even though it’s about ten years old (roughly the same age as its Westwood stable mate, Command & Conquer: Red Alert), no matter how much shiny new stuff I have gaming-wise, Dune 2000 is always the game of choice for me to take out major frustration on. I picked out some appropriate music (time to crank the Alias soundtracks), put on my headphones, and declared war. … Read more

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Music

That annual thing I do with music and crap.

They're on instruments....GET IT???!??So, I’m sitting here doing some stuff, and listening to some music I’ve gotten this year, thinking about carving stuff up for the annual “best music I discovered this year” compilation that I make available for a couple of weeks around Christmas before “disappearing” it to placate the copyright gods. I thought I’d ask a couple of questions before I even bother to start on this year’s, though:

  1. Does anyone even listen to it? (If you’re scratching your head and going “What compilation?” I’m gonna take that as a no.)
  2. What’s your preference: a continuous running compilation with brief excerpts of each selection, or a longer radio-style podcast with introductions/comments/etc. between full-length selections? Or something else entirely?

One is actually much easier to do than the other – and it’s probably not the one you’re thinking, either. The compilation has become my own little mini-tradition that 2.8 people probably pay attention to, combining my personal favorites from the mainstream (and, more often, from way the hell outside the mainstream – it’s not like I really bother with radio or music video channels, or, for that matter, music videos anymore) and from various film/TV scores I’ve really dug.

But I thought I’d ask before taking the plunge. I’m picking music. That’s the easy part (almost). Putting it all together, that’s the tough stuff. Since you’re the poor sods who would, in theory, actually be listening to it (and perhaps I’m assuming too much there), I thought I’d ask.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base Music Television & Movies

It is broken. We look for things to make it go.

You are smartArgh. For some reason that I can’t figure out and don’t really have the time to screw with much, Scribblings (the original, you might say, at theLogBook.com) is broken. Videos don’t work anymore for no real reason that I’ve been able to fathom, actually getting it to accept new content is hit-or-miss, and it’s just emblematic of the site as a whole – WordPress was supposed to liberate me to some extent, and let me just concentrate on generating content, because I write almost constantly, and don’t want to have to code pages almost constantly. But it’s maintaining the infrastructure that’s killing me. When I upgraded the WordPress that drives the episode guide, it completely wiped out all categories, and I’m still going through those 2,500-odd entries and re-categorizing them (i.e. Star Trek? check. Deep Space Nine? check. Season 4? check.)…I’m up to 1995 now. Which is quite a feat when the thing starts in the ’50s. It really renews my appreciation for just how much ground the site covers, how much written material (and hopefully well-written material) it represents…and makes the back of my brain throb and beg for More Help With The Damn Thing. It’s not WordPress’s fault, but the early days of the toddler era is not a good time for me to be able to find the kind of time it takes to prop up that infrastructure all the time. The news page has also been hit by the same bug, and I just. don’t. have. the. time. I’ve stopped updating the news page. I’ve looked for someone to take it over, but there’s only so much I can offer when the site’s revenue basically covers its own bills (and to be honest, that’d be a misnomer this year – the PDF DVD is what’s paying the site’s bills right now; the site itself – aside from hosting the ordering page for the DVD – hasn’t made a cent this month). Next year is theLogBook’s 20th anniversary, but I’m starting to wonder if it might not be time to start dialing the whole thing down a bit and just doing sporadic updates. When I feel like it. Rather than trying to generate, on a weekly basis, what I would’ve needed to fill the 6-page print fanzine that theLogBook was in the 1990s.

I don’t even know if this entry will post, so before I hit the ‘submit’ button, I’m going to grab the whole thing and copy it to the clipboard. 😆

On the home front, I’ve just finished a bit of marathon data entry for the in-laws, which proved to be an exhausting, round-the-clock-for-several-days exercise that made me want to say “Uh…you guys do realize I have a child to look after…right?” I’m relieved that that’s over.

Today Evan uttered a new word quite clearly while patting Xena on the nose: DOG-GIE! Her tail started wagging so fast that I was afraid she’d start helicoptering and her butt would raise into the air and lift the rest of her away. Evan has also proven quite capable of playing with Oberon with a length of thick string (I think it’s the drawstring from the swim trunks I wore incessantly in 2007 that no longer fit me – even with the drawstring, they’re too big). He’s really picking up on the “animals-are-your-friends” thing at a very early age, and he seems to have a natural tendency to be gentle toward them (aside from occasionally wallowing all over Olivia like she’s an escapee from his stuffed animal collection that jumped out of the crib and somehow attained free will). Hopefully he’ll never outgrow that.

Work is continuing on the CGE DVD project, and after that I think I’m going to take a break of a week or so to just chill out and not edit any video for a bit. I’ve done more editing lately than I’ve done since the first PDF DVD, or maybe even since the TV station days, and it’s worn me out just a little bit. (The data-entry-o-thon sure as hell didn’t help to alleviate that sense of fatigue.)

Listening-wise, I’ve been devouring the last trio of Alan Parsons Project remasters, Ben Folds’ really uneven new album, and some other stuff. Supposedly, tomorrow we’ll have the tracklist for the new Doctor Who soundtrack album due in November, which I’m looking forward to tremendously. There was some fantastic music this season, moreso than in season 3 I thought. As far as watching stuff… I’m so far behind on Heroes that I’ve almost given up on it. It’s going to become one of these things where I’ll just wait until it’s all over and watch it in marathon viewings, the way some folks are doing Lost if they haven’t been in on the joke from day one. (For that matter, I’m beginning to feel that way about Lost too.) I have been watching The Sarah Jane Adventures (cool), as well as meandering through a couple of other short-lived BBC series, Star Cops (very ’80s, but really not bad) and Moonbase 3 (an early ’70s British companion piece to The Starlost…with about the same tone and pacing and bizarrely overdramatic characterization). I recently finished watching the first season of Alien Nation, picking up on all the episodes I missed out on the first time around, and while it too is hopelessly ’80s, it had so much potential that I’m depressed all over again in retrospect. The TV movies were initially a nice consolation prize, but then they became victims of the law of diminishing returns. A lot of this stuff I’ve been watching to add to the episode guide section, and between that and my general state of fatigue, I’ve been doing all of this viewing and listening in a kind of dazed mode. I haven’t picked up any new viewing habits from the new season, and I think it’s just a combination of not having the energy to devote to appointment viewing and the current crop of stuff just not hitting me the right way. Even The Sarah Jane Adventures don’t really qualify as appointment viewing – I download the episodes, burn them to a DVD-RW, and watch them when I have a chance, and then wipe the disc and reuse it when I have both parts of the next story. Suddenly I understand how/why parents can seem like they’re so out of touch: here I am, listening to new releases of old music, playing (or thinking a lot about) old video games, watching (for the most part) old TV shows. I’m clearly way past it.

I should probably hold off on writing anything else until I’m – ha! – less tired.… Read more

Categories
Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Home and away

Much like Psi Corps, I’m everywhere, for your convenience.

I spent some time over the weekend working up some new music for PDF Level 2, and even found that at some point in the past, I had helpfully left some stuff just this side of unfinished that’s virtually perfect for the next PDF DVD. I also cooked up one new number that I like a lot – for some reason, as sedate as my music writing is when I’m thinking of stuff with lyrics, my instrumentals over the past 10 or so years have tended toward get-up-and-wiggle-all-available-body-parts stuff. I also discovered, along with the various useful unfinished music, the long-lost full 8-minute version of the PDF theme – you better bet you’ll be hearing that excerpted a lot on the next DVD. Hell, even I had forgotten how long it originally was – I wish I had remembered that while scrambling to find enough original music to cover the audio gaps on the first DVD! I may post some previews in the days ahead (like anyone’s that attached to my “white guy doing ’70s funk” routine!). Having had a little burst of musical creativity here, though, I’m probably going to wait until much later in the game to do more – “compose to picture,” as they say.

Speaking of the PDF DVD, you can get it this coming weekend at Sniderman’s table at CCAG in Cleveland; at roughly the same time, relatively speaking, the newly-released Odyssey2/Videopac cartridge Martian Threat will be debuting with cover artwork by yours truly at Eurocon 2008 in Karlsruhe, Germany. That’s not a bad reach, geographically speaking, for a guy who stays home with the baby in Arkansas all the time. The weekend after that, you can find the PDF DVD at Too Many Games in Reading, PA. I’m hoping that I’ll have a trailer ready for the CGE stuff by then too, but if that happens, it’s going to be an insanely tight squeeze.

A while back I promised a follow up to Doctor Who In 35 Minutes; I’m coming down the home stretch on that, mainly because I’m going to need it finished and off the Avid so I can continue working on the CGE auction (!!). As soon as I’m done with the CGE DVD content, it looks like I’ll be doing the packaging artwork too. I think we’re still firmly on target for Christmas though. I’ll make sure it doesn’t look too much like another PDF DVD. 😆

Stay tuned.… Read more