Thursday, November 11, 2004

Need a little love to ease the pain... Thanks to everyone for your kind comments on my last post. I'm particularly happy that some of you enjoyed the song that I had uploaded. Today, I've uploaded another track. I'm not entirely sure whether I've had this one up before or not, but I thought I'd share it with you nonetheless. The song is called Dissolved Girl and it is part of Massive Attack's 1998 album, titled Mezzanine. Out of all of the stuff I've heard this year, I must say that this is definitely my favourite track of 2004. Although it's an "old" track, I only really discovered it this year. I had not purchased Mezzanine when it was released and as a result, I'd only heard a few songs from that album. I think my favourite (out of those that I'd heard) was probably Teardrop. That song was quite popular here in Australia, it got quite a lot of radio time. I stumbled across Dissolved Girl while I was reading up on The Matrix, actually. Although this song was never released on the soundtrack, it was in the original film. This is the song that plays while Neo is asleep at his computer. As it turns out, the lyrics do relate to The Matrix quite heavily. But in their own right, I love them. The singer (this being her only song on the album) has a voice that truly captures the feel of the track. It's a little morbid, but not too much. I really love the way that Massive Attack tend to use a variety of different singers across their various pieces. They are yet another fantastic British group. So hopefully you like the song. ~_^ In other news...well, there isn't a lot of other news, I suppose. Right now my biggest project is the new myOtaku backroom. So far it's coming along well, save for a few personal stumbling blocks (like selecting certain graphics for certain places). All-in-all, though, I think it should be enjoyable. At the very least, it'll be a lot more funky than our current backroom. If you are liking my current myO theme, you will probably like the new backroom also. ~_^ Edit: Oh, if you listen to that song, make sure you listen to all of it, so that you won't miss the cool guitar mid-section. ~_^

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Sunday, November 7, 2004

She thinks it's fun to have no remorse. Another myO update! Yay! You might remember that a while ago, I had committed myself to providing some of my favourite electronic music on myOtaku for you to listen to. Some of you seemed to have an interest in that, considering that most people only identify "electronic music" with the regular clubby or dancy stuff that you hear. The song that I've put up today is a recent favourite. Earlier I had been introduced to a couple of fantastic Curve tracks, by Tony. That was a few months ago I think. I quickly warmed to those tracks (Horror Head and Lillies Dying) and then I noticed this one. Mind you, I own a million remixes of this particular track, but I've never had the original. As usual, the original is a lot better than most of the remixes. As a matter of fact, the layout that you're looking at now was designed entirely around music. I began listening to a couple of tracks tonight and they kind of gave me the urge to do this. I had no concept or colours in my mind originally; my mind was a blank slate. It was really the music that put these images/shapes/colours here. It sounds kind of lame, but I told Alan to give it a try earlier tonight; to just start making something based on the feeling from the music and to ignore your own logic. He seemed pretty happy with that little experiment. It makes me realize how much of an impact music has on me, in terms of design. Depending on the song I'm listening to and my mood at the time, the design could come out pretty differently. The song on myOtaku is one of the tracks I was listening to while I worked on this layout. The other is called The Great Escape by BT. I like BT quite a bit (and I know Transtic is also pretty knowledgable about BT), so I might put that song up next. I really like it, for the most part. Oh and, if you haven't seen it, check out Alan's post in The Reanimatrix. It's the first comedic post in there so far and I found it pretty funny. ~_^

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Thursday, November 4, 2004

His name is Frank. What a rollercoaster week, huh? The elections are finally over. Although I like to follow politics, I must admit that it's nice to get over all of the campaigns. Eventually they become monotonous and repetitive and you have the same mud being thrown on either side. It's nice to be out of that; there's a fresh feeling about it, I guess. I am pleased that Bush won, but this is not really due to a love for Bush. Truth be told, there are many issues where I am completely opposed to Bush; gay marriage, potential Supreme Court issues and even certain foreign policy areas (like Bush's uncharacteristic protectionism of the American steel industry, which was actually illegal, but which he thankfully overturned when the pressure came on). I had felt that Bush may be defeated, because of the heavily-biased media influence. I wouldn't say that I feel that all mainstream media is leftist or something, but there's no question that the coverage has been very biased against Bush. It's really easy to take something and ignore another aspect to it that qualifies the meaning. You know? This has been a source of frustration for me, because so many of his most aggressive foreign policy critics get it wrong so consistently. Perhaps, if I were actually living in America, I'd have voted for Kerry as a result of his domestic agenda. But who knows. Being in the position I am, America's foreign policy and foreign economic policy are the most important issues to me. And Bush wins in those categories for me. But having said that, I do understand the serious concerns of those who disagree with Bush's social policy. But I must say, this doesn't really depress me as much as it should, for two reasons. One, America is a pretty conservative nation compared to the rest of the world. I mean, that comes as no surprise to me whatsoever. You only have to look at America's obsession with religion to understand that (and I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing -- so retract your claws -- I'm just saying that it's a reality). Apart from that, I tend to feel that no matter what is done during this presidential term, issues like civil rights will always march forward in the longterm. I view it as being an inevitable part of modern society's development. As populations become more educated and less ignorant, civil rights tend to advance. There was a time when Governments (both in America and in Australia) actually had racist policies on the books. Do you know that during the middle of the 20th century, Australia had a policy called "The White Australia Policy"? This policy was based on the fear that if we opened the floodgates of immigration, so to speak, we would be overrun by asians. Considering that an enormous number of neighbouring countries had sent many people here during the 19th century (during the major goldrush era in Australia), there was a concern that if it continued, Australia would simply become "another asian country". And yet, today, not fifty years later, Australia has some of the most even-handed civil rights legislation in the world. The only countries that really stand out ahead of us would be some in Europe (particularly the smaller European states who have far more advanced civil rights legislation on the books). But considering where we came from and considering that we are geographically located in an area where we are the minority, it's quite amazing that things have come so far. So, my feeling is that things like gay rights and other minority rights are not a question of "if", but more a question of "when". Whether it's ten years, twenty years, or one hundred years...unless our societies collapse into the ocean, these things will all become a reality. I understand that it's tough to be optimistic about such things given the current climate, but fundamentally, this is how I feel. And that is why I do not feel especially passionate about this aspect of Bush's platform. In any case, it's sometimes tough to be all over the place, politically speaking. If I ever had a political party of my own, it wouldn't be Democrat or Republican; it'd probably be a combination of both, along with some entirely new third party elements. I've always wondered why people think that one side can solve everything, know what I mean? Surely life isn't so simple. Surely a mixture of ideologies and philosophies is required to solve the many complex issues in a complex world. *shrug* Anyway, before I end this rambly post, I want to mention a few other things. Firstly, I want to thank those of you who have continued to participate in The Reanimatrix. I'm really, really pleased with your submissions and I've already added them to the front page index. I do intend to continue it for as long as it can run. But at the same time, my hope is that more people will try to create experimental threads in the OB Anthology forum. That place is so ripe for experimentation (other than just posting a single thread for a single short story or something) and it kind of surprises me that more people aren't playing around with it. Anyway, Kill Adam continues, but I think I'd like to start one of those other RPGs soon. Collaboration may be key to doing that, though. I feel like Adventure Square needs a good kick in the butt; although the RPGs in there are mostly pretty high quality, the concepts are starting to become a little stale, in my humble opinion.

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Monday, November 1, 2004

Gaming Weekend This is the first weekend in a long time - longer than I can remember, in fact - where I spent a good deal of time just playing video games. To be more specific, I played two games: Guild Wars and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I should really start by speaking about the former, because I feel that it will really take the world by storm. I am so keen on it, in fact, that I intend to create an OtakuBoards guild once the game ships. Basically, Guild Wars plays quite a lot like Diablo. However, it just seems more fun than Diablo ever was (for me, anyway). I'm unsure quite how to quantify that for you, except to say that it has to be played to see what I mean. Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of Guild Wars is the unique streaming technology that it uses. You download a tiny client and then download the "first chunk" of the game (which consists of all the basic stuff to set up your account and such). It's only a few MB, so reasonably small. And my connection to their server was lightning fast; faster than I ever normally get on the Internet under normal circumstances. When you create your character, choose the class and so on, you enter the world and begin a tutorial. When you go into each area, you basically have to download that area to your computer. It sounds horribly clunky but in practice, I've never seen anything so beautifully fast and smooth. For me, on a 256K connection, it only took a minute or so to download the very largest environments. It's just insanely, insanely fast. Best part is, even at this early stage, the game is very bug-free. The visuals are gorgeous (very ICO-esque) and the manipulation of the character and the world around it is so seamless. It doesn't take long to pick up the important bits and it's incredibly easy to travel all around the map and create parties and so on. The Guild system is also amazing. I have some screenshots of this game too, which I will post up in the future. For now, I recommend going to GuildWars.com if you want to learn more about this amazing title. Oh and, to add to that, the game never lagged for me, even once. And that's despite the fact that it was a foreign server and my Internet is the base ADSL connection. As I said earlier, I've never seen anything that ran so wonderfully smooth. Definitely worth a look. And best of all, the game will be free to play online; no monthly fees. ~_^ Secondly, I bought San Andreas. If you haven't read the reviews, you really should. I say this because it would take me far, far too long to explain what the game is like. There is literally so much to it that I couldn't do it unless I had a few hours to spare. So, reading reviews will be a good indication. I recommend IGN, GameSpot and 1UP; each review is accurate and each one has slightly different focuses here and there. I also purchased a PSTwo. I knew that thing was small, but I wasn't truly prepared for the size. It's only marginally bigger than a DVD case. I'm really pleased with it. It's super-quiet and I don't get any disc read errors or anything. However, the same was true on my second PS2 that I bought only a few months ago. So, who knows how long this one will last. My hope is that Sony ironed out the quality issues a bit more with the PSTwo. If this unit decides it will collapse, I may not be online, because I'll be sitting in the corner of my room with my eyelid twitching. o_O

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Wednesday, October 27, 2004

^_^; I just want to thank everyone for your comments with my last post. I came on here this afternoon and was surprised to see so much encouragement and so many kind words. So, thank you very much. It means a great deal to me. To briefly answer what someone else had said, the issues I presented in my last post were the ones that really stood out the most to me. However, there's plenty more. This year in particular, the place has really gone to hell. I mean, for example, it's not nice for an entire class to find out that they've missed a major online component to one of their main classes simply because the tutor at the time "didn't want to teach it". That's the kind of stuff that has been happening this year. And it's part of the reason why I have been feeling increasingly dissatisfied and unhappy with my school. Anyway, again, thanks to everyone for your comments. It's nice to know that there are so many supportive people within this community. It's the main reason why I've been working at this network for such a long time now. I don't think I could possibly be happier anywhere else. ~_^

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Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Big decisions. Well folks, I'm on the eve of a major decision. Tomorrow is crunch time. To give you a little background, I am currently in my second year at the Australian Academy of Design. The second year is almost finished and it's part of a three year course (Bachelor of Arts: Graphic Design). I have to say, I've never considered myself to be a true graphic designer. Graphic design is an incredibly challenging industry; it's also an industry where you need to be skilled at many things. One day you might have to do a web design, the next day you might have to do a TV commercial or a packaging design. Apart from the fact that any freelance business is incredibly tough (whether graphic design or journalism), freelance graphic design in particular always involves a process where you are designing something for someone else. Quite often, you aren't designing something that you even like (for example, a new logo for a brand of diapers or something). I have two traits that really bar me from becoming a freelance graphic designer. For one thing, I need to be excited about or interested in something in order to do good design work for it. If I have absolutely no interest in the product, then chances are, my design will reflect that. Secondly -- and somewhat related to the first point -- I tend to be very careful about where my work goes and how it is used. I am very protective over my own content, whether it's on the web or whether it's in print somewhere. So, why choose graphic design? Well, I would relate all of this to the field of medicine. If you want to be a plastic surgeon, you can't simply study plastic surgery right off the bat. You need to become a general practitioner first, then a surgeon, then you need to specialize in plastic surgery. My interest has been, for a long time, things such as web/digital design, video production, animation and special effects. But it is difficult to simply jump right into that field. It's necessary to learn the fundamentals -- to study graphic design as a broader subject, before moving into a specific field. It was with this knowledge that I chose to study at the academy in this particular course. Despite the fact that it's a three year course, my intention was to study for only two years. This was in order to fulfil a prerequesite, which basically means that I kind of build up some credit to allow me to enter more specialty-based courses. However, I've decided to withdraw from my school as of tomorrow. Why? Well, there are multiple reasons really. Apart from a few areas where I've been disatisfied with school in general, there are some specifics that stand out. The first thing occurred last semester. Two tutors took me aside after one of my presentations and proceeded to scold me for only using black and white in my development work. Now, when you create a project, you use a development journal to basically jot down your ideas. It's just a series of notes that contain your own working. These notes can ostensibly contain anything; you can write paragraphs, you can draw sketches, you can stick items in. We were always told to approach our development work in our own way. We were told to "develop our own styles" and not to try and conform our work to a particular design style. So here I am, being told that I will fail unless I resubmit my development work with some colour in it. On top of that, I was also told off for my drawings being "too sketchy". Huh? Why was this never brought up before, in the year and a half that I'd been studying there? I'd never received a complaint. And moreover, it's the way I draw my concepts. It's the way that I work through things on paper. I sketch. Sketches (my ones, anyway), tend to be black and white. And they tend to be, you know, sketches. Despite the fact that I was quite surprised about this revelation and apparently sudden change of heart, I did what I had to do. I resubmitted and tried to conform my journal to their standards. How ironic. But the second thing that happened really made me annoyed. Each year, our school (like all tertiary institutions in the country) has an open day for prospective students to come and check out the place and our work. The tutors decided that they would take my first piece from this year and put it up for display in the open day. Sounds fine? Wrong. There are two problems with what they did. One, I was never told and/or asked about this. Nobody came to me and expressed a desire to display my work, or to use it for promotional purposes. That in itself is unprofessional, however, you might still say that it's not such a bad thing. I mean, afterall, my work is getting free publicity. However, there is one other major problem. The piece was mounted by me, with my own specific mount. The mount contained not only the title of the work, but also my own personal logo. Since the beginning of this year, I have been branding all of my work with that logo in addition to the other details that are required. Whoever decided to display my work at the open day not only did so without my permission, but they removed my mount (and logo) and replaced it with their own. I don't know about you, but I find that to be pretty incredible. To make matters worse, I'd never have found out unless another student had told me -- a full two months after the event. As a result of these issues and as a result of my general dissatisfaction with the way things are going this year, I've decided to withdraw completely. I only have a term left (well, I only have a month and a half left anyway), but I'm going to withdraw early. And I'm going to take my work with me. At the moment, my intention is to apply to an alternative institution, or to simply spend my time working and attend another school down the track a little (perhaps a mid-year entrance in 2005 or something). I have to say, it's a big decision and it's a little scary in some respects. But increasingly, I've felt that it's the right choice for me at this point. Sorry for the length of the update, but...I felt I really needed to get that off my chest.

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Saturday, October 23, 2004

Two hours, brutally stolen. I just finished watching Jeepers Creepers 2. My mum rented it, as she thought it'd be a good "movie to laugh at". You see, my mum and my siblings have this ritual, where we rent really lame horror movies and we watch them to laugh and/or poke fun at 'em. It started with Night of the Living Dead. Now, if I were watching that movie on my own, I would probably die from boredom. But watching it in a group was great; the insults were flying from all corners of the darkened room, as was the laughter (particularly when the "typical hysterical woman is eaten by zombies, even though she could have easily escaped had she not been so hysterical" bits came along). We also recently did this with Dawn of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead is a much better movie, in the sense that it was more enjoyable...but it's one of those movies that really benefits from discussion while you watch it. Normally I'd be annoyed if someone was talking, but with zombie movies, we all usually end up laughing hysterically as a result. So we thought we'd try this with Jeepers Creepers 2, which we knew was going to be awful. Unfortunately, there was very little laughter. If anything, a sense of disgust and awkwardness filled the room. More than laughing at the creature himself (or whatever his name is), our attention was focused on the director, who was becoming the target of our increasing annoyance. Ah well. Can anyone recommend some great zombie movies for us to giggle at? I think we need to recover from that movie, which seems to represent every single negative thing that could ever be apparent in the history of film making. X_X Ahem, anyway. I don't really know what else to say in this update. What should I talk about next time? ^_^;

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Thursday, October 21, 2004

Spring day. Whenever Spring comes along, it seems to sneak up on everyone here. We get a couple of warmish days toward the end of winter, then it's completely cold for a while...and suddenly the temperature skyrockets. ^_^; I'm really enjoying the weather though. It seems like forever since I've seen such bright sunlight. I took the opportunity to go for a run with my sister yesterday (we actually went two days in a row, the weather was so nice). So here's hoping that things stay this way for a while. ~_^ I wanted to mention to Tony (as well as various OB staff) in this update that we've made some changes to the forum permission system on OB recently. So, if you are not seeing what you are supposed to be seeing (ie: staff forum or whatever the case may be for you), please feel free to send me a PM about it. I apologize if there has been any inconvenience or confusion caused as a result. In other news, I'm absolutely loathing school at the moment. I may talk about that in my next update, with some actual specifics. I mentioned it to Shy the other day and he seemed to agree that things were a bit understandable in that regard. However, despite that, I'm really enjoying a lot of the other stuff that I've been doing lately. In particular, online-related stuff has been a great way for me to unwind and have fun. I'm enjoying the discussion in my Arena Underground thread, about that new Zelda RPG. It's cool to see that there is some interest in that particular twist on the concept. I am also really looking forward to diving in with the new myOtaku backroom. That's going to be a fun project and I think everyone will enjoy the results. Also...I think I am almost ready to send Miss Juu her package. It's coming along nicely, but I still have to find a fantastic box to put everything in. Considering the amazing box that Juu selected for me, I am going to have to pay extra-careful attention to my choice. Don't worry, Juu, the kangaroos are on their way. ~_^ ^_^;; I think I'll leave it there, for now.

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Monday, October 18, 2004

Open for business. The title says it all. ~_^ Before you jump to conclusions, I should point out that I'm referring to The Reanimatrix. I am very eager to give that thing a good kick-start, so that it may continue. I imagine that once a thread reaches the third or fourth page of OB Anthology, it tends to be considered dead. I want to overcome that, or at least, try to overcome it. As I have mentioned millions of times, I still have some pieces of my own to add. Apart from time issues, I've been a bit stalled because one of them is really important and I don't quite know how to approach it. It's a bit iffy. Maybe you'll see what I mean when I post it. As I mentioned in my last post, I created the index for The Reanimatrix, which was a surprising endeavour. In the end, it was interesting to just look at the list and see how much there was. This was one occasion where having no sign-up thread actually seemed to help it to blossom. As most of you know (and as the thread itself states), The Reanimatrix is kind of a precursor to The Matrix Revelations, which is an RPG (rather than an anthology thread). When it came time to create characters that would star in the RPG, I realized something very important; I already potentially have a whole host of interesting stars right in front of me. Apart from characters that already exist in the films (and that are still alive), The Reanimatrix contains characters that have come directly from the minds of OBers. So, it seems fitting that these characters should be included in the RPG in some form or another. Of course, I'd want the creators to play as those characters. So that does raise another dilemma, since writing a short piece for Reanimatrix is quite different from being in an RPG (though hopefully no less interesting, at the end of the day). For those of you who have already participated in The Reanimatrix, do you think that the RPG would interest you? Would you need to see the sign-up thread to determine that? And for that matter, is any current participant still interested in contributing more pieces to The Reanimatrix? More than anything, I'd love to get more new people involved (as in, people who haven't yet contributed). But right now I'm also interested in testing the water and finding out what the interest level is out there. I think the RPG will be something special, because I don't want to make it very action-oriented. Yes, it'll no doubt have plenty of that...but I'd rather make it more like an RPG version of Reanimatrix; more thoughtful, more character-driven and with some very far-out, mind-bending stuff. I have been thinking of launching it early. I guess we'll see how it goes.

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Friday, October 15, 2004

Now you do what they told you. Ahh, I've had a surprisingly good week this week. I'm not quite sure why though, I mean, I've had more schoolwork lately than for much of the semester. Yet somehow, I've been feeling very confident and my mood has been pretty good. Maybe I'm just feeling good because my sister and I played Gradius IV for three hours last night -- we used to play video games all the time, but she doesn't like a lot of newer games (she's all about old-school). So I've managed to lure her back to games with lots of Gradius and Super Mario All-Stars. ~_^ Also, there is nothing quite like playing Super Mario Bros. on a 2.1 metre-wide screen. It's tasty. The actual Mario sprite is about as big as my palm on that thing. o_O Anyway, I have also recently been exploring the underground world of fansubbing. Everyone seems to have a different view of this, but I will say that I view it in the same way that I view MP3s. That is, for me, MP3 is a great way to sample music before I buy. But if I like something, I will buy it. In fact, I tend to hunt down music pretty aggressively when I want to purchase it. Anime is a bit of an iffy thing for me, because I don't watch much of it. I'm sure that I'd watch more if I could actually afford more, though. The problem is, anime is very hit-and-miss for me. A lot of it I simply don't like. I've seen so much anime that simply comes across as highly underdeveloped and cliche, compared to many western forms of film. Of course, I am aware that I'm also probably missing a lot of the truly good stuff. And, truth be told, there are some anime films and series that I really enjoy. Problem is, if I ever get anime, I tend to buy a DVD on someone's recommendation. That works out okay, but I don't do it often. Fansubbing could be a bit like MP3 for me; as in, it could allow me to sample new anime and purchase what I like when it's available. Of course, downloading it on a 256K connection takes quite a long time generally...but still. So far one anime that I'm really enjoying is Bleach. I can definitely see myself buying this series on DVD if and when it becomes available in Australia. I guess that there isn't too much else to mention. The only negative thing is that this week, my BSD (Bull Shit Detector) has been going wild. At every turn I seem to come across a weird documentary (aliens made crop circles, the pyramids and stonehenge), or some completely silly political discussion (the whole thing about Cheney's daughter, or the various anti-war conspiracy theories). Blah. One of these days, I should make a very long and detailed post about these matters. I just don't know if I have the energy, especially when discussing fansubs and novel-writing-strippers is so much easier and less controversial. XD Edit: Check out the first page of The Reanimatrix. I've just added the index (finally) and just by looking at it, this anthology of stories is larger than you may initially think. That's very cool. I'm so pleased that a lot of people have contributed. But the show must go on! I'm going to contribute something to that thread soon. I hope that even more people will contribute. However, a couple of people's stories have not been included in the index (Mitch and Ben), 'cause you guys didn't provide titles for them. If you provide titles and you want to be added to the index, please PM me on myOtaku and I'll add you. ^_^

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