Floozy Speak!

Generally I never wanted to work in IT, I dont have the mindset for it. I'm more of a moving on to something new than to figure out the present. I like whats working to keep working until it explodes. Upgrading, fixing, thinking, clearly isnt meant for me. Sure I like the benefits from thinking, well some, even fixing is enjoyable from time to time, and upgrading I guess ya some new stuff there but generally I dont like the boat i need to ride in to get it done.

Its a boat ride Ive never liked. How many seats on board and oh how can my front tooth interface with the left adjustable arm rest of the aft seat compartment? Thats a great question, i have no idea. I say that alot, I have no idea, I have no clue and thanks for asking.

Thats when I want to flee, run away I say, far far far away. Dont care. Dont care, dont care. Like Stan, or was it Kyle? saying "dont care dont care dont care dont care" when the Army and Zytar have it out with breakdown on the Towlie plot.

I dont care about the process, I need it to work. My users project their resolve into me, I become a walking shell of wants and needs without really wanting to know anything else. I dont care what it costs, fix it, I dont care what the issue is, fix it, lost in the translation, you bet. I want it working. Thats all people want. The easy way out, the easy way to play. Cheat codes for IT, I need those.

For some reason my shields are up today, most of the day my shields have been up, folks are even trying that cool frequency modulator thing like Kirk did to fool Khan into lowering his shields.. but this time its different, you fooled Khan but not me! My shields arent droppin until I eat something. I'm thinking Human Lion, get my hot basil chicken and call it day. A long fucking day. Gah!

So in the end what do we know about dan? He's simple, hes a video editor that does too much, wears too many hats and is tired of taking the bullet for IT issues that are simply just a bit more complex than a "fix it now". And whys he take that bullet, cause odds are he can fix it, just needs a little time and some help now and then. Thats the bad thing. Troy has a nice thick shell when it comes to IT, though I feel like at times he wants to see just how serious we are about an issue. And I get educated, eventually things sink in, I get my mini Troy tours and yeah I did learn a few things.. like wow thats something I dont want to do, bill me man! Or things like "really" ok thats easy.

For as much as I dont want to do IT, I do more and more of it all the time, and its like a painful trip thats ok to ride yer goin that way ya know.

Actually its not that bad of a day really. I saw pop and he is good, I had four cups of coco and three packages of bottle caps, Troy came and made sense, well sorta of things, and my labels actually printed. Holy Cow!

Posted by dan at 05:27 PM | Permalink

October, bring it on, I need to be in October ASAP!! Why? Its the month that starts with O, so it must be good. Today isnt ending I want the day to end, its a day that starts with a meeting but never ends, an endless never ending day.

Some good but mostly bad. Like a printer that takes 40mins a page to print a frickin 3 color label. WTF happened there? Is it the printer? the user? the paper? maybe the time of day? maybe its the lightning? or maybe 3 colors are really tough? maybe the software? Geeze! I swear its the software, something about SureThing CD labeler really really really SUCKS bad. It takes forever for it to print. Tooo long, like time stops while you stare at the PROCESSING screen.

Printers overall are like the bane of my existance, i'd sleep better if things just worked. Course to me they are little hassle to others they are like massive unreachable, ununderstandable unbelieveable objects, they cannot be reasoned with or anything, just, its just too much, game over.

Game over they say my brain hurts today. AC2 gets a big upgrade come tomorrow, new world to explore, could be good though they nerfed the heck outa my class!

Lets face it, there are some things I'll challenge and figure out and fix and others I wont, I just dont know the answer. Like movers, I'd pay over moving anything myself, I'd just rather have barry moving that couch that my back doing it and snapping and then id limp around for a day. But ice cream, i dont need barry for that, i can do that myself.

Too funny the 10 cd labels i need to print are taking over the main printer, shew away my childern, this printer must concentrate for hours to print its measly 5 cd pages!! Just funny.

Whats best about this process is that by the time i get done i'll have to do it again, somewhere someone will want something else, a little change and we will get to do it all again! And whenever I pick out this classic "no i wouldnt do that" but he did it behevior i get the look from folks, dan doesnt play well. Course Tyler just came in and looked at them and I told him "you love them and they are perfect" and he said "yep they are..." . I think everyone on this particular project is very "done" with it.

On to the next firestorm. This week? Lets see video magic no doubt. Always something, now if troy would just come in and do the phones id be fine. I dont want to know about phone systems. DVDs sure i care, phones i dont. Servers and files and even dlts, i care, phones i dont. Why? Cause its always like 5 people jumping in and figuring crap out, too many hands in there, ill go back to focusing on something that doesnt have 5 people with their say, their ego tossing all over the table. Why? Cause it always ends up as less time doing the fix and more time doing the conversation on the fix.

Conversation kills. Like conversation when someone channels you out and you have an issue, like those damn mexican wendys folk. Fucking god damn wendys.. they are all hispanic!! Ok I dont have an issue with those folks persay really. I just want my sauce, I want my chicken strip sauce, and no im not gonna take yer spanish mumbling any more, im giving u cash with big american english letters on it, in return i want a frickin answer and communication, or ya know what im gonna park my car right here in the drive thru, or yer RUSH thru and you WILL give me what I want.

Ahhh that needed to get out. Much better. Ok 3:10pm and still not ending. I need to shoot folks tonight. I think maybe b1942 maybe. Ive been watching Band o Brothers, good stuff, ok ya its old, caught it late. Sometimes I do that on purpose, something comes out, gets tons of hype and i dont see it cause i dun wanna see it right away admist the hype.

Tyler informs me that tonight on Trading Spaces is a special 3hr episode of all the stuff people "hated".. should be good! Wow, people hated the changes and now they are going back to talk with them some more even. Someone tivo that.

Jon is it 738 or 783?

Dave remember you bring the salsa and chips or we can go back to that mexican place in Dave's Cavern!

Posted by dan at 03:19 PM | Permalink

Dave has the incredible ability to pick bad movies. The other day we caught Tomb Radier Cradle of Life on the big screen and woah.. wtf happened there?!? Bad, bad.. bad acting, bad effects... bad idea... tomb raider just doesnt work for me any more, pah so bad, so bad, so bad of a pick there Dave!

Then at the dollar theater this week we catch League of Extrodinary Gentlemen, which should be renamed League of Extrodinary Plot Failures, Bad Acting, What happened to Bruce at the bar and everything else that went wrong. LXG is a horrible movie. The only redeeming factor is not Mr Connery, but the lone two faced doctor, the good doctor Jekyle and Mr. Hyde. That was the only thing that kept me watching.

Mr. Quartermain left a dozen good friends back at the bar, Bruce included only to be blown to bits! The phantom man is M we knew it already, you played it out to us in M's introduction, I mean come on!! An arms race?! Sells weapons?? Come on, theres more to all of that, why is it that the league is so stupid?!

And whats with the sword of ocean being a foot wide and 984 feet tall? And how's that little explorer pod drive er work anyways, doesnt it just lean to one side? And how is it that Dorian the man that cant die, at his place, at his introduction all the baddiest just happen to show up, ummm do we smell a rat? not only that, but how is it that he can perfectly drive the explorer pod anyways?

And how is it that the invisible man gets burned over 90% of his body and yet in the next scene, hes fine!? Oh and where do the bullets go after Mr. Immortal gets shot with them? Do they just sit inside him? Least in Underworld the Like'end pushed them out of thier bodies forcefully. And whats up with the so fast action cutting you cant actually tell whats going on? Nemo was opening a can of woop ass but no we'll only have him on the screen for .45 secs at a time, just enough for you to barely make out the kick and then we'll cut back to the vampire that can walk in daylight.

Or back to Quatermain who can shoot really really really well but first let me tell you a sad story cause every hero has one, and why is he boss when his power is simply africa wont let him die cause he pissed on a voodooo camp ground?

And how is it that when all bad guys, all of them in dumb movies like this they get a sample of all the stuff they need to rule the world, and they dont even consider the aspect of "hey someone may come to our cool pallace of greatness and take us out in the next 12mins, so here, fedex a copy of the goods to by brother lammy in detriot..." no they never consider that!

Lame upon lame upon lame upon lame, never trusting the audience, never hinting at a possible notion that the story sucked or had some many holes, geeze.. blow $$$$$$$$$ on effects but never tell the people what the fuck was going on or why, and howd the car get in there.

And how is it when the car is first introduced i looks like maybe 3 people could get in it but all six of them seem to somehow fit.. thats a hilarious shot. Maybe Mini made it I dunno even then only 2 people inside should fit. Gah so bad, so bad of a movie... SO BAD!!!

Thanks Dave for yet again, another piss poor movie selection. Next time I pick ok.. geeze.

Posted by dan at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

and someday ill post that flash file again...

Posted by dan at 09:08 PM | Permalink

Just in case quicktime is suckin, try a small or medium windows media version of the said video in question.

Posted by dan at 07:20 PM | Permalink

I've always got a project going on, some half crazed stupid idea of "ooo I wanna do that", currently its rigging the pin-hole camera up to the mini and getting all those cool camera car views I love. Ya know paying homage to Ronin, Gumball Rally and Cannonball Run. The rig to do it was simple, easier than I expected and it worked great. As always there are limitations. Currently at speeds up to 45mph, I get little shakey cam action, i hit 50mph and we're dancin man, crazy cam. I still think i can stabalize some of that video but we're (my brother and I) are also working on a plan b, a better rig. The goal? Just want that view, this video is filled with a camera angle I love in car movies.. I think I got my fix for it now. Heck we shot over 80mins of just driving like this footage. The camera works great in low light conditions, its almost better to shoot in clouldy weather. Still, I like the sun flares, I think thats a nice touch. Right away I'm thinking of using this video to promote the Mid-Ohio Mini owners group that just started up in town, or use it to show off the Smith Bros building for lextant, like a "heres how to get to us from the airport thing". I also plan on getting more views of the car with different rigs, maybe come up with my own racing video lol. I thought about butchering the opening of Cannonball Run and redoing it.. just for fun. Thats all it is man, fun. I love it.

Posted by dan at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jeffery Combs, aka Dr. West is one of my favorite mad scientists. He's the crazest of all, from Re-Animator to From Beyond to Castle Freak (ok i never saw that one) the man is a classic. SciFi channel is bringing us, BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR, but can they bring back the magic? We'll see October 4th. I'll watch it just to see the good doctor on screen again. Speaking of horror and such, I caught the tail end of Carnaville the other night on HBO, wow, trippy, I like. Must see more.

And now the Underworld review. Overall I give it a four stars. Its got vampires, chicks in leather, kate is wonderful, werewolves, great trippy flashbacks, its a bit long, i love the constant blue film look, good creature effects, guns a blazin, and plenty of plot holes. Ok its an action flick, the story is semi-ok, the base of it is decent, i liked that, where it goes from there gets messy. Its 2hr+ long, makes for a long ride into the night but it delivers i think. I think it will do well, and whats really impressive is that though the cast is mostly unknowns aside from Kate, it was made for a mere 20million.. and its take this weekend? 22 million. This is a director that is going to be around for awhile. It was spec'd out to be a film made for 60 mil, but because of his background in props, graphics and art department effects, he made it for 20 million. Thats awesome man. Heck this weekend he paid it off already. Hilarious. Also I really liked the music, good music effects, good use of ambient thumps to paint a picture in yer mind. The cgi what little there is of it is impressive. Its still a down and dirty flick, action action action, sappy dialogue, action, action, ooo chicks in leather etc.. but its good. Now its not without its flaws, there are plenty, like bad places for people to stand that they know they'll die etc. I'll get into those later. And Resident Evil 2 was a trailer on it.

Posted by dan at 12:31 AM | Permalink

Pepsi, Redbull and Snapple crash the campus party you've been hosting, who are they and describe them to me. Pepsi, well he's yer average joe, nice guy kinda flashy. Snapple is a teacher, a soccer mom probably, she's like going back to school. Redbull is the freak, a piano organ player that studies kungfu. That's the kind of focus group sessions we had last night in the lab. Some great comparisons of company brands talked about on an descriptor sense of them. If Pepsi was on a flight next to you, what would he be like, or is he a she? LOL. Great stuff. It really gets people talking and all kinds of bits of data come out as a result. I guess the term for this kind of work is data mining, you're constantly tapping in the conversation dishing out more nuggets of info. Pepsi is single, flashy, he's a talker, has money, but yer average Joe. We're profiling a brand what is that brand, what does it do, how does it look, what does it talk about, what does it say, what's to wear to a party, what parties does it go to, is it single etc.. I really enjoy groups like this, the questions, the answers I love branding. Two groups, one young and old yielded as expected to an extent different results. The young folks had no trouble ripping on the brands and dishing out the comments, the older folks were a bit more weary about hammering a brand.

One thing I like about focus groups is that for lunch, typically the client gets excellent italian food from Sarfanio's in the North Market. Oh man, I loooove their garlic butter and bread. I could eat that alll day. And their salad with their special sauce is heavenily.

Speaking of the North Market, I spend alot of time there when the weather is nice like it has been lately. It's like a little city at times, full of life. It was crazy yesterday, tons of people shuffling around. Every now and then I try something new at the market. Yesterday I tried the Sabaro Mexicana place run by an indian guy. Initally that kinda throws me off, like rednecks servin chinese, just doesnt fit the picture, possible sure, but doesnt fit. Still I went with the enchilliadada's plate and ummm twas tasty, you really cant beat black beans. On the way out I hit Jenni's ice cream. Jenni was actually running the store even. Not everyday you actually meet the owner of the place yer getting something from. I tried the Lemon Yo ice cream, wow, good lemon, and picked up a pint of Coffee ice cream. I had a 2 scoop cup of the rich chocolate and coffee there the other day, mmmmm good stuff. Its safe to say, the pint of Coffee never made it home to the freezer last night.

Today's focus groups run all day into the wee hours, well 10-11pm ish. Should be fun hopefully I'll be able to take a break and try and pint of lemon yo this time around!

Posted by dan at 05:52 AM | Permalink

I'm on the hunt for more Obey Giant prints.

Posted by dan at 02:26 PM | Permalink

trapped in a sea of benchmark propaganda talk, PS this PS that, check this graph out, look I can do 18 gigawatts on the flipside with only the shieldgun pal, ha! Email in NORMAL, a group thread email where my local friends hash out weekly discussions and you can tune in or tune out has been gurling lately. Current topics range from benchmarks fer video card, intellectual property and you, and occasional yahoo news notice from Todd, the VAPID one. Sometimes I poke in there in the hope that something new is happening but its constant, the threads wont die! Ahhh well. Such is the life of NORMAL. Course any talk on the current RIAA action is interesting to an extent.

Everyone keep in mind that Sept. 22 is very important to you.

I'm on the second straight week of having "towlie" stuck in my head, I keep hearing him say "thats the meledy to funky town" or "its important..." and "dont forget to bring a towel..", I dont know what it means really, but it keeps me sane, especially this week where we're in constant focus group mayhem.

Taking some time out to check old links I find new stories that marvel me. The Big Snapple! Since mike is doing a less than adequet job in telling me about Hong Kong I started reading this. Speaking of far away places, I cant wait to see Lost in Translation, the trailer was excellent and it makes me wanna go to Japan! Sniff.

Posted by dan at 10:04 AM | Permalink

i wanted savage i got republic, savage wasnt out yet. republic by edios looked interesting, my obey giant propaganda side saw it as an interesting game with oddly attractive appeal, a 3d simulator all about getting man out of power through propaganda, misinformation, scare tactics, mass group appeal and more. hmmm ok, now the box shows nothing but great 3d images, its not till u open up the game do u realize theres a whole RTFM universive waiting for you. hordes of ideology panels and meters and %'s etc. yikes..

Ok so first your asked 10 questions to figure out what kind of rebelious leader you are, are u sly, do u prefer the break legs approach, hows your charm, what about ethics do u have any? then u pick your propaganda mark, the stuff u spray on walls, i wish i could import obey giant, that'd rock.. ahh well

next up your in the world, a nice simcity existance, you go back to your hood, the place you grew up and start fashioning a new existance, but first u need to do some recruiting, get some names, follow up on some leads, basic headhunting, need to get people doing things for you.

you find a guy, well i managed on finding someone.. the action panels and interface need heavy manual reading to really get an idea of whats happening. anyways i find a guy, but now i need to convince him, pursade him to my way, my ideology, my way of thinking... we meet we talk i russian, the whole game has a soviet russian new country like appearance, i take him to a cafe, at first im in this populus 3rd god perspective type view.. then i zoom in and im at the cafe and the conversation panel comes up..

the conversation panel is hilarious, i thought of mike when it came uo, u can choose to joke, press your point, ease off, etc, all to get your view by and win the argument, u need that man!! i had him and won the conversation out of sheer luck after having ditched the tutorial to explore things... later in game he sent me a note saying he changed his mind lol... too funny.. anyways i loved that part, totally reminds me of mike.. in a good way

anyways more on this later..the game is different thats for sure, i still want savage!!

Posted by dan at 11:49 AM | Permalink

I'm still liking it, always gonna love it. Considering these. For clint. Come on 1984! Good to see people are still having fun out there. Oooooo classic must have more!

Posted by dan at 11:20 AM | Permalink

A tax on espresso, thats insane man. Why oh why? When goverment goes bad. I say we tax people who wear underwear, look if they can afford to cover themselves they should spare 10 cents for the greater good, oh and thongs need not apply.

This morning i've had my wheat bee pollen yogurt smoothie.. it looked purple but had no taste. Yummy! I've eaten a Power Harvest CHERRY bar with it, not as pretty looking but tasty. Last but not least chase all that down with a red bull. Sounds healthy eh? Probably not.

MyJones is yer jones. So I saw on the back of this months Ready Made, an ad for My Jones Cola, yep, Jones Cola except with your pictures printed on the labels of yer favorite cola. Sounds cool, it'd be fun to have a Lextant branded drink with a picture of the lab or some madness on the bottle. So i started to fill out the info, selected a pic and order the my first case which is 12 by them not 24.. so 12 bottles.. hey only $48.50 total.. holy crap!! Thats like double the price of RedBull i'm not doing that. Tossed out that order. Bad idea Jones.

I still like the idea of printing my own bottle labels, maybe I just need Todd to step up production on his line of brew. No Tolerance Todd's approved ale...

I used really dislike Tim Horton's, i never understood why anyone would go there, a fast food place that seemed under powered, only on meager impluse power.. yet recently, ive become quite fond of the m&m cookie.. dang my evil brother. So I'll head over there and get a snack, soup and a cookie. Except soups are never listed so you have to ask them. They rattle off 5 soups or so and when you ask them to repeat, or if you get one wrong they quickly correct you.. "no sir the potato bacon was yesterday.. GEEZE!!" as if I knew. And the soups dont come alone they are paired up with the "mini bacqutteute" or something. And i never pernouce it correctly, i always fumble it up, what is it, a frickin roll, say roll please. I think its canadian french like the people of tim hortons up north, french hockey players that thought what would make a killer fast food place is somewhere they could get cookies and soup. "Mini baguauuat" i say.. "what sir?" they reply... i say "the roll thingie, i want the roll with the soup" and then they say "the baqucetteue?" and I say "yes the roll".

Fast food has gone from friendly to prove yer existance theater. At wendys I get "mas carloos de something" and I go what? He clears his throat and says "nice car man.." and I say thanks and can I get a napkin this time? It wasnt always this bad, i guess it keeps it entertaining.

Posted by dan at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday I recieved my dvd media order. I got three 25 count packs of Samsung, Accu, an Pro 2x media from Mertline online. As the fates decided my Pro 2x media came as basic media and not the white printable kind i needed.. thx! I'll be sending that back. I got a dvd to fedex out today and I wanted to see how well these two types of media print. The Samsung is all white, with SAMSUNG SAMSUNG SAMSUNG! in the middle hub ring area, but its smooth surface is like wax, its soooo smooth and well I have say, made me wonder if I got thermal printed material only or something. The Accu is rougher of a surface but all white no logo in the center hub, its also 4x able. Print wise I felt the Samsung was better cause it was like wax, brand new feeling, yet it almost feels wet in dark color areas. The Accu feels rougher but the all white center hub is nice. The SAMSUNG SAMSUNG SAMSUNG hub is midly annoying. Either or I say, hell I can print on DVD's, I shouldnt be complaining either way.

While the battle of planetside wages on Alt has been renamed in AC2 to Barrythewrench and turrets are often blasting away in the cold silent evenings.

The set of "blue tuesdays" will be getting a make over this weekend as production values have upped quite considerably since the first epsiodes aired early this week. Look for more incredible "blue tuesday" fun very soon! Those of you interesed in some of our semi R rated productions, (dont ask), see me after class for linkage to Dave's new show, its a big hit with some of our swedish viewers.

My Snapstream PC has died.. well its near death. Nukage come to thee I say! Knew this would happen due to the pc being mainly used as a testing ground for infected applications.

Someone asked me the other day, its been a month how's the Mini?! And well, the Mini is the only car I've driven, well owned that has made me grin from ear to ear consistantly. The only other car that did that was Clint's.. well it was Traci's right? Corvette, course Clint was driving it. I just loved how that car could eat road. The Mini while it doesn't have the sheer power the Corvette had, it just loves to motor! She's much happier with my printed cd's as well. The car is just rockin, I love it. Bumper to bumper in traffic people roll down their windows and ask me questions about the ride etc, I get waves from other Mini's, gas mileage is excellent, ride is fun and peppy, its all good.

On rent day this month I wrote out a check to Swiss Village Apartments, the place i lived in down in Texas. Strangely my landlord didnt take it.. how odd. Ok my brain wasn't thinking that day.

Work goes, lots happening at work these days. We have four focus group projects next week, intense will be the word for the most part. Maybe ya'll can get in on some of the studies. Its good stuff.

Posted by dan at 08:51 AM | Permalink

Its happening again, names are appearing in my head... just like day April's Monday appeared in my head many many years ago. Words, little phrases that some kind of meaning yet they seem to get attached with cd labels and various pieces of art i create. 86 Always has been in my head for awhile. Sounds like the name of a remix artist or a design group. London Murry came to me today as well. And Platacaster always jumps into my head as well. My personal favorite at the moment is 86 Always, just flows right, and maybe thats what my brain is telling me, that flows, go with the flow.

Latest CD's hot off the Epson Photo Stylus 900 presses:

In other exciting news I just wrapped up four, yes FOUR magical treats for you via Visual Communicator Pro from Serious Magic. This is my first set of clips right out of the box, no real scripting, just messing around. These files are 1-5mb in size and encoded with the windows media 9 codec. Checkit!

blue tuesday 1
blue tuesday 2
blue tuesday 3
blue tuesday 4

enjoy... i gotta sleep.

Posted by dan at 02:35 AM | Permalink

...40th-ish level die hard players are amassing in Egov in AC2 seeking fellowships for hunting, MA, boots and icefire.

...bots are battling it out on quake 3 servers.

...bob is reading email, or well he was a sec ago.

...mike is lost in japan.

...my mini is praying for it not to rain.

...rip cast is sucking down six 128k-160k bit streams of mp3 goodness.

...im copying 39 gigs to another space on the drive.

...dave is servin lattes.

...jon is probably still asleep.

...stacey may be working but did she water her plant?

...my tomato plant is dying.

...franky wants some fish food.

...half the lextant office is out on biz, go team go!

...troy is debating when to go to lextant.

...i'm eating skittles before noon on a monday.

...the printer says it wants to eat more cyan.

Posted by dan at 11:46 AM | Permalink

So here we are September.. do you remember Summer happening? I sure don't. I guess it happened, I dunno.

She's so shiny and clean, Miss Mini that is.. sooo clean. Still a work out to clean and detail, just cause you have a small car doesn't mean it takes less effort to clean, ok maybe a little but still. Anyways she's soooo shiny! I love her! Vrooom!

I had my first mis-aligned printing on the cd printer last night, totally my fault, remember the switch dan, remember the switch. There's this little lever, remember put it in cd mode! Not a total loss however.

In gaming news I started messing around with FRAPS 2.0, the direct show avi maker for games. Yes what the hell is that? Well you play a game and use this bugger to make avi's of what yer playin. However it didn't really create avi's for me as much as remind me that I need a 3.0g hyperthreadin bad ass cpu upgrade. I had to bump Battlefield 1942 down to 640x480 mode to play and record at the same time. AC2 didn't fair much better, had to take that down to 800x600 and turn off everything. FRAPS wants speed, needs a hefty CPU and possibily gobs of ram to work successfully. I had it at capture 25fps, maybe i could move that down to 15 and see how it does.

Gaming wise still playing AC2. I tossed Sallysue's bow away and gave her a vial instead. She's a fire breathing alchemist as well. Why? Different, just different. Plus I can go DarkSide and change form.. heh. Using DarkSide I change into a hideous beastie and claw at critters. I dunno, seems fun. I like standing around town looking extremely out of place like the old red monster from bugs bunny. I swear thats what they had in mind when they created this 3d model.

"Such and interesting monster too.. my stars.. if an interesting monster cant have an interesting hair doo.. i dont know what I'd do... " - Bugs Bunny

In other gaming news I picked up Battlefield 1942, Secret Weapons of WW2. I love the intro. Let me just get that out, I love the intro. Wireframe animations come to life.. very cool, I need a dvd of that intro. Game wise its pretty cool, I like some of the new city maps, gun fights thru towns is always good. The new planes, while I could never fly in the other B1942's, they are pretty cool, especially the mini jet. The jet pack takes some time getting used too and all the new tanks are a blast. Need a few more hours on this one before I can really review it.

Closer to goodness is what I call it. Goodness is stuff works the way you intended. Like I just authored this DVD right? And? Well? It works sure but I forgot how to author a DVD really. I mean sure i can do the basic but I hardly ever want basic. I want cool menus and still galleries and all kinds of whack ass magic man! I want it all. So far so good, goodness is attained but I must learn how to make chapter stops.

Media is expensive, I picked up some DVD+R's yesterday at microcenter cause I wanted some printable ones right, and thats all they had.. and i didnt look at the price cause i just wanted some and holy crap thats expensive is what my brain said today when I looked at the price. $70 for 30 printable dvd+r's that wont work on my A103 at home. They will work at Lextant but I'm gonna return them and go for media online. I found a firmware for my A103 last night, I guess it takes it up to 2x, thats good enough for now. Heck I need to find 4x media for the burner at work.

Visual Communicator Pro came in this morning along with a 3Comm switch for Troy, he loves installing things! I'll have some words on the Visual Communicator later this week. In a nutshell, Pro gives us DV aka, DVD burnable quality and more! Woohoo!

Lastly and theres no end to dan fun. I have to apologize to Erin I totally phased out on Saturday and missed her fun evening of board games and wine. Sorry Erin!!! Ok I tried to take a power nap at 7pm, I was just tired and all and well I woke up at 11pm. I blame Dave.

Posted by dan at 11:14 AM | Permalink

My inital impressions of the Epson Photo 900, the $200 color photo printer that can print on CD/DVD's, are wow, cool, that's awesome, etc... Install was a breeze and my first cd printing was a cake. It went fast too, almost too fast I wonder if i'm in draft mode or something. Anyways three discs down and I have to say I like it.. its good! Now what to do with the 820? Dunno. The software the 900 came with is typical big icon funky looking but it imported my fireworks files just fine and in minutes I was crankin out cd prints like I used to do with the old stomper which just retired... Course now i'm banished to the land of printable media. Printable CDR's could be found at microCenter but printable DVDR's not so easily found. I'll try a few more local stores tomorrow but I have a feeling those babies are online order only. Size wise its a bit bigger than the 820 but not by much and I'm sure it will eat ink just like the 820 as well. Still for $200 this is a solid purchase and my CDR's will love me for it.

Posted by dan at 03:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Updates people updates!! So I've been diggin around in Xfrog again lately..... yes yes the tree/plant 3d modeler package I use for trippy visualization. Anyways I love this little application and what I love most is creating the base for something to be tweaked with in After Effects and then edited together on the Avid. As seen here in Xfrog on Shine, a 20MB Quicktime animation. You'll see my Xfrog work with Trapcode's Shine effect applied to it, creating a... well.. to me, an awesome freaky light animation effect. I love it. I think i've said this before but I can spend countless hours in Xfrog just playing and rendering out sequences. The old crew would talk about how I could spend hour after hour in the can, painter can that is.. well that's still happening these days, except the can is now Xfrog, AfterEffects and Avid. Its like the part of 3D i enjoy the most. Alot of folks on the cg still/desktop art scene strive for this computer/technical wireframe look. WIth Xfrog you can fake it pretty well and then go from there making an animation out of it. I wish Xfrog had higher resolution output because I would really like to print out alot of my Xfrog creations into prints I'd hang up in the apartment. This whole application feeds directly to my fetish for wireframes.. its good!

Xfrog on Shine, a 20MB Quicktime animation.

Posted by dan at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)