It’s time for eight feet of adventure! Not meaning eight feet tall, mind you – just two little sets of four little fuzzy feet each getting into way more trouble than you’d really think them capable of. (Olivia just watched.) And just what kind of trouble did we find ourselves in? Tune in next time, true believers – same cat time, same cat station. … Read more
As a collector of old video games, some of which are already more than antiques by car standards (though part of me just automatically rejects the very notion of the phrase “antique video games” because it’s all happened in my lifetime), I pretty frequently wonder what happened to bring someone else’s holy grail into my collection. What on Earth made them get rid of this stuff? Tough times? Lack of interest? What about all those arcade marquees? Who played those machines? Where was the machine located, and does that place still exist in anything remotely resembling the same form? Was the cabinet converted into something else, or junked altogether?
But with some of these items, I know exactly where the game in question has been…because it’s still with its first owner. … Read more
No fancy intro? Ah well, time for meat and potatoes then.
It’s time at last to get working on the Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD set. … Read more
Did quite a bit of cooking today, including a chocolate cake I’m a little bit too fond of. Also swapped out amps in the living room so the Mrs. would have her beloved KLH amp back in place. The big difference between that one and what was in there? A remote control. I also found that I had to rewire the entire speaker system because a number of small, four-legged rewiring experts who shall remain nameless had undone a lot of what was already in place; amp swap or no, two speakers out of a five-speaker surround setup were still plugged in. Argh. I redid it so that there aren’t any dangling speaker cables for the, erm, experts to play with.
Here’s a little sneak peak at a DVD intro that isn’t going to happen, which utterly breaks my heart. (Yes, I know that there are a couple of models that turned out to be completely screwed in there, as well as one or two that completely vanished come rendering time. ???) The models were downloaded, but some of the authors basically said “no way” to their models’ inclusion in an intro for a for-profit DVD project, enough of them to make me reconsider the whole thing. (The intro, that is, not the DVD project. You don’t get that lucky.) In the meantime, enjoy the show. I think the intro would’ve been beautiful. And probably three times as long in its finished, more polished form. 😆 I Squeezed this into a larger Flash movie than usual for you, just because the detail is worth it. Some of the models are just deliciously photorealistic, and it’s no accident that the “camera” starts out at the eye level of a small child before it really takes flight.
In any event, my heartbreak is cushioned by the fact that someone else is doing something like this that would’ve put anything I could’ve come up with to shame – and when the day arrives that an actual PDF documentary project is ready to go (rather than this one which, while much-requested, still feels like a bit of a placeholder to me), he’ll probably be unlucky enough to be on my speed dial. 😆 (Besides, his home arcade would make a damn fine shooting location, except for the great likelihood that I wouldn’t be able to get any work done there. Ever.)
I’d love his arcade…but I think I’d hate his electric bill. Maybe he should see about making the new arcade outbuilding he’s working on (see his blog) solar-powered. 😀… Read more
Sam ‘n’ Ella better keep away from my peanut butter cookies. I’m a mongrel for crunchy peanut butter, so this news is rather alarming. In other news, to make a completely bizarre segue into another topic, someone’s finally cracked the Tagalong Code: if you’re craving that most delicious variety of Girl Scout Cookies during those times of the year when Girl Scout Cookies aren’t available, try out Keebler’s new peanut-butter-filled fudge cookies. I forget what they’re actually called, but OMG they’re delicious. They’re still not quite perfect – Tagalongs are thinner and I like the chocolate coating better on them – but they’re as close as anyone’s gotten. (And they’re about a buck cheaper.) That said, I’m still craving genuine Tagalongs, but it looks like I missed the bus for this year’s order. 🙁
Robin Hood: Cats On Printers. The funny picture yesterday of Obi standing proudly atop my PC is not an isolated incident, so my game room has become Off Limits To Kitties While Daddy’s Away. Sad, really, because the window in there, which is all overgrown with brush, is teeming with birds year-round – it’s like Cat TV. You can find one or both of the kittens sitting in there on top of the scanner, watching the window all glossy-eyed. But when Obi jumps on top of the printer, decides that it’s a good idea to jump up and try to tag either an arcade marquee (which is damn close to the ceiling) or the Doctor Who pinball backglass (perched in the upper pane of the window in a way that isn’t precarious until someone starts screwing with it), and then all that jumping threatens to dislodge both printer and Vectrex from their slots on the shelf…well…I suppose this is just a sneak preview of things to come. 😆 My game room is going to need quite a bit of work to make it kid-friendly. Fortunately, I already have some ideas on that front, ideas which I’ll share shortly. Gaming folks with limited space and/or concerns about keeping their consoles clean of dust and other things may want to pay close attention… … Read more
Did my first weigh-in tonight, a week after starting the diet. I figured, what with discovering that I was going to be daddy just a few days into the diet, I probably would’ve gained weight from nervous nibbling. Nope – I actually lost two pounds. Which ain’t too shabby.
The Mrs. and I were actually embarking on this weight-loss adventure together, but I guess she’s going to have to postpone for a little bit, isn’t she? (Actually, somehow she lost six pounds, which is kinda scary, considering.)
I’m up late reconfiguring my LAN to be, well, more of a real LAN. Orac II has been wiped clean and has had Win98 installed on it (it was a Win2000 machine in a former life, but I actually need it running 98 – what a motley assortment, a Win98 box, an NT box, and an XP box – plus a couple of handheld PCs running old, old builds of Win CE). The reconfigured LAN will allow me to get stuff from the Avid to Zen much, much faster, without wasting a lot of time uploading and downloading to my web server (which merely steals from the monthly bandwidth allowance that, by all rights, belongs to you, the reader). It’s time to get some real live workflow ability going here if I’m going to be sitting here all the time with video to edit and a baby to feed. Or is that the other way around?
Speaking of video to edit, I was playing around tonight with a very, very simple effect – making something semi-transparent in a shot. (Easy: shoot the same thing with and without the object in question.) I then messed around with some lighting and other effects, and…
…voila, Cybermen staring down a “holo-Dalek”. Kinda cool, eh? I’d show you video, but I’m not sure there’s a need – that still frame pretty much spells it out for ya, and there really isn’t much movement to the video anyway. (The Dalek lights up different colors, but that’s about it.) (And between the diffracted light and the soft focus, it looks so ’80s.) But hey, I moved it via the LAN, so it was as good a test subject as any.
There’s supposed to be a gaming get-together at Brian’s (icbrkr) new place this weekend; there’s also supposed to be half a foot of snow, slush and ice. This is something like the third or fourth time his gaming gathering has been scuttled by the weather. I’m watching the schedules for CGE and OVGE this year very closely, with one eye on wanting to go, and one eye on possibly needing to stay. :/
By the way, if you’ve never had to do it, puzzling out what kind of devices are on a new machine so you can find the bloody drivers for them is a huge pain in the ass. Thank God for pcidatabase.com.… Read more
Was just watching History Channel’s Modern Marvels retrospective of the computer biz, and there’s a brief sidestep into video games in which they say that Nolan Bushnell encouraged an “open culture” of game making and “allowed other companies to make games for the Atari 2600.” Uh…hello? Nolan was gone before third-party software happened, and when the first upstart – Activision – stepped forward to create that market, Atari sued the hell out of ’em. Repeatedly. Surely telling the story of this industry isn’t so damned hard that it really is waiting for me to do it right…or is it??
I’m thinking about installing the following audio file on the machine I use at work, maybe as the “new mail” event sound, just to keep me awake.
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/realestate.mp3]… Read more
I’m trying to think of a suitably Homsar phrase here, but I got nothin’. 😆 Submit your entries below!
No mid-south gaming get-together today due to the roads; it’ll be rescheduled for sometime in January, I believe, which will be good since I won’t be recovering from a sweeps month. I was looking forward to the “Wii-kend at Bernie’s,” but to be honest, I was wiped. I’ve wandered aimlessly around my house all day in a zombie-like state, burning dinner and dessert and DVDs.… Read more
Just popping my head in to apologize for not feeling particularly bloggy lately. Some stuff has some up – and admittedly 90% of it is work – that’s left me in a not-even-remotely blogful mood. (I’ve also been trying not to vent about things a whole lot at work either – I’m sure everyone’s as tired of hearing about it as I am of dealing with it. That, and I have to start taking the moral high ground at some point rather than feeding the gossip mill.)
I’ve started conceptualizing another fun little piece, very much along the lines of Olivia vs. Dalek, that I hope to start some shooting on fairly soon. I won’t spill any dirt there, except to say that it, too, involves Daleks. Possibly lots and lots of them by the time I’m done working a bit of Avid magic…
You may have noticed the scads of ads for Amazon.com/.ca/.co.uk/.egbdf gift certificates all over the site. That’s the great thing about the sections that have already been converted into WordPress – I just drop in a smidgeon of code, and wham, it’s on everything. (I’m sure some folks are going “oh, gee, that’s great,” but just remember it helps to keep us “on the air.”) So if you need an Amazon gift certificate, by golly, click one of those handy little buttons. The site can always use the dough.
We have wintry-type weather moving in tonight. I’m actually hoping that it’ll sock us in enough that I can’t make it down the mountain to go to work. (That actually happened last year – when you live out in the boonies, you’re in the absolute last place that anyone’s going to send a snowplow. Instant vacation!) I’d love to stay home with my favorite cats and dog in the world and just relax and not worry one bit about the station. At the same time, I’m hoping this weather doesn’t kill this weekend’s gaming get-together in Bentonville. Maybe it could thaw out on Saturday morning…
Also, congratulations to the spammer whose random name generator came up with the absolute best spammer sender name ever to appear in my inbox: Yomoshiro Guadalupe. I mean, that’s got the staying power of Napoleon Dynamite and then some. 😆
November sweeps ends in one hour. Thank God. The handful of spots I’m not embarrassed about from this latest month of mayhem can be found in my work section, for those interested.… Read more
So I actually have a day off today. Wow! I was asleep until almost noon (which made for a grand total, with a couple of minor interruptions, of almost 11 hours of sleep, and let me tell you – I needed that), and now I’m getting ready to watch Arkansas knock LSU out of the running for the SEC championship. Good times.
Speaking of championships, the Galaga tournament didn’t happen yesterday as planned – there was a little bit miscommunication as to who was working which shift. Darned if my old PS1 doesn’t look nice on a great big HDTV though.
I can’t think of a better use for the conference room table.
Purty.
The ship is almost as big as my hand. That’s just crazy.
Despite me loading up Super Mario (via IMBNES), Ms. Pac-Man, and much more recent fare, nobody touched this setup at all – kinda like I was tampering in God’s domain by hooking it up in there at all. Who knows, maybe they’re right. I just thought it looked kinda neat.
Been doing some 3-D animation stuff I’ll show off to you soon, though I’ve gotta say it looks better on a real live teevee screen than it does as a Flash-compressed file.
Back after the game. LSU, yer goin’ down.… Read more
