Besides playing video games, I like to make things, like LEGO sets, videos and enemies. I recently listened to an episode of Radiolab about Loops.

http://www.radiolab.org/2011/oct/04/

I also recently went to the Texas State Fair this past weekend. Combining both these influences, I made this lil' diptych.

Now, I've been playing Rift lately, which (as you may know) is an MMO. MMO's do not necessarily mix with my obsessive personality as I tend to sink way too much time into them. When this happens I forsake my personal video projects as well as playing other games. With the fall releases already starting to trickle in, I'm at in a rough spot.

I get great satisfaction out of playing Rift. I'm currently in a guild that is progressing in some enjoyable raid content. This being my first endgame MMO, I'm trying to soak it up just for experience sake. BUT I also have an unimaginable amount of other games that I have not played or started playing or, in some cases, haven't even opened that I REALLY want to play as well. On top of this, I have about 3 personal animation and video projects that have been on the back burner for far too long.

All of this is blowing my mind right now. Finding a balance between all of these things is troublesome! I feel like I'm in my own personal series of loops. I'm stuck in a loop of playing one infinitely long game (much as I did with CoD and Counterstrike back in the day) and also in this repeating problem of trying to catch up on other games. Perhaps furthering my creative outlets should be more of a priority than playing games but virtual activities like killing zombies and saving the world are too much fun to pass up. You know how it is.

Ironically, being out of school finally solved zero time issues that I figured would disappear once I graduated. Granted, there are a million other problems that I am more than thankful I don't have currently but trying to prioritize between multiple passions is taking its toll.

Maybe I should just drop everything and move to Japan. After all, They have Takoyaki there.

I went to PAX and then made this. It was a blast.

I like Okamiden.

[video=JnEzwzH75bMPvzPY]

I managed to get my hands on the first upgrade for Rachel, my new camera.

Placed atop a small tripod in the hot shoe of my HV30 is a Rode VideoMic.

I'm taking a Sound and Post cIass in school and it prompted me to gather some new equipment for a couple reasons. First, I don't like renting from the school and dealing with the extremely harsh check-out conditions. And, secondly, because I want to use this bad boy on my own stuff whenever I want to!

I ordered a .45x wide angle today as well. The first thing I got for my old camera was a wide angle lens, so I figured I had to do as much for this one at least too. Next on the upgrade schedule is most likely a new tripod. The one I'm using now is actually meant for still photography and I need a good video tripod with a fluid head for smooth panning and tilting action. After that (hopefully around the holiday season) I'll try and take the plunge and get a 35mm adapter so I can get some shallow depth of field happening, as well as some radical manual focus. Then I'll probably have to get a rails system to mount it on as well as a new monitor for better focusing and perhaps a follow focus to further improve that. It's going to be an ongoing process, that's for sure.

Also got the new Typography project coming up. I have a little less than three weeks to work on it, so I need to get going. I ripped the audio I'm thinking of using this weekend from the film, O Brother, Where Art Thou -- although, I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with this or not. It needs to be at least a minute and I'm sitting at 1:20 with this one.

As far as vidya games. I've been playing Lost Odyssey a bit, as well as some Rock Band 2, which Bort_Hammer and I managed to get a few days early. Everything else has been kept pretty light in favor of school and watching movies.

Update:
Here's a quick rundown of what the camera is capable of. Hopefully this will improve the more I fiddle with things -- I'm still merely an amateur at this stuff.


This is a screen cap from the video at different stages of post production. The first image is just the raw footage. As you can see it's extremely dark because I locked the aperture on the camera and didn't allow the camera to add gain to compensate for the low light. The result is underexposed but clean from noise, and it is fixable in Premiere by messing with some white input levels, as seen in the second image (which is from my initial test upload). Lastly I wasn't quite satisfied so I took the footage into After Effects and added some Film Magic Pro color grading which I messed around with to fit this clip. Typically the presets tend to have too much contrast for the stuff I've shot so far but I'm still working on it.

For a first test, I'm pretty pleased. It took a lot of work to even get this up and running. I'm just glad it's so much fun!

Now to finish these Backyard battles in Lost Odyssey! Just finished the Light cIass ones but I'm a little nervous about the Medium and Heavy cIasses...

She's a Canon HV30 and she's stolen my heart.

I still have a lot of things to figure out with it. I'll probably browse through the manual at work tomorrow and do some test shooting this weekend. Unfortunately cIasses start Monday so I have no idea when I'll be able to put something together.

I also need to find a suitable name for her. I forgot what I was going to call her initially.


Boy that sure would be fun.. Maybe someday...

I have a loose plan to spend even more money on accessories as well. She might look and transform into something even more radical come the end of the year, if things go smoothly.

Stoked beyond belief, I am.

Once again I'm "late to the party". Story of my life folks! I imagine I'll be making that blog title again when the inevitable PS3 purchase arrives.

I finally decided to take the jump into the HD realm and purchased a 32" Vizio LCD HDTV about a week and a half ago.

To house this new piece of hardware I had to get a new piece of furniture. Which was fine with me, seeing how bulky the old entertainment center was--I much prefer the subtley of the current setup.

Notable mentions in the above picture include my mammoth center channel from a couple seasons back. I was planning to work on building a stand to raise the TV up a bit the weekend I got it, but my father kindly and sneakily manufactured me a wooden platform while I was at work to ease the view a bit.

Also the HD-DVD player that I got for $40 at Fry's. I've always wanted a LaserDisc player, so now I have the next-gen equivalent of one. Also, the movies are all -$10 here so I might stock up on a few. Right now I really only have a few Kubrick films and some other essentials.

Aaaand I don't have the PS2s hooked up right now because I'm not sure if I want them sitting on top of the unit. I haven't decided on that yet either.

Since I stacked a lot of my games on top of my old setup, I had to get some new storage as well.

I was able to fit most of the "current" stuff on these twins but am lacking PSP, GBA and movie storage still. Along with all the older stuff. I imagine that will have to come later down the line, but for now this works out nicely. I decided to go alphabetically. I've never organized anything really before, so it's nice to know where everything is.

I went on hermit mode the other week to dial in the TV and think I've got all my settings worked out for the most part. I love it. Love love love. I am currently in the process of playing Lost Odyssey (which I also absolutely love) before I head back through my 360 collection to replay all of it.

Now to bask in the soft glow of High Definition with my buddy Kaim and his pals...

P.S. I actually dusted for the first time in about 14 years because I have everything so exposed now. I'm nervous that I won't be able to keep it up -- but I have to, this junk depends on me!

I've been playing that thar Age of Conan game quite a bit lately.

Well at least trying to. Turns out I was having a bit of a problem with crashing due to an "Out of Memory" error. I did a little research and found out I was not the only one getting this error and it is somewhat widespread. The game causes some kind of memory leak that eventually kicks me to the desktop, I assume after it uses all the possible RAM that it can. I don't think the problem is entirely on my end as I have the maximum 3.3 gigs of RAM alloted to my 32bit version of Vista and seeing that no other games have yet to give me this problem.

My method of troubleshooting has been to kick everything back to low and then gradually increase the settings to find out what is actually causing the leak. My guess was either the textures or the pixel shader. Currently I have my textures back to "high" and am working on moving everything else back as well. I am guessing that Pixel Shader 3.0 is the culprit (right now I'm back at good ol' 2.0), but I'm not entirely sure yet. We'll see what happens later tonight.

But I did get to play a bunch last night without crashing and I am loving it again. In fact, it's safe to say I am hooked--and to be honest I was expecting to. One of my main reasons for never playing an MMO was because I knew that I would probably get into it, hardcore, and in turn miss out on other games that I want to play. I already have enough problem as it is being able to play all the games I'm interested in.

Well at the moment, I'm OK with crackin' out on AoC for a bit, because to be honest, it is quite enjoyable. Like really fun. I just hit 25 last night and was able to claim my Amazon Bow that I got for buying the game from Amazon.com. Clever isn't it? The bow actually isn't bad at all and is one of my more high end items at the moment.

Well, there you have it folks. Basically, I just spent the last three blog posts to let you know I like the game.

Yesterday was just a blast. Again I hooked up with Tyler and Slunks, but also met up with my good buddy Bort as well. We all got on Skype and decided to tackle some of the Underhalls and White Sands quests in Tortage. Now, this was my first time being in an open PVP area, so I was rather nervous -- in fact I was downright hysterical. I was afriad that there was some jerk in every corner just ready to jump out and get me! It turns out the Underhalls were pretty packed with folks, some of them indifferent to our presence, but others extremely hostile!

I didn't mind it too much though. I died a couple of times but did manage to get the killing blow on a higher level jerk who was camping a door. as he realized how much trouble he was in when the four of us show up he decided to book it. I however bust out my bleeding shot combo and murder him just as he nearly manages to break away.

At White Sands it was much less of a bloodbath. We were able to get most of our stuff done without any major confrontations except for a mage who decided to attack us for whatever reason. Not a good idea. At this point we were a higher level and ran across several lone level 7s and such. We decided to mess with one and did an all out charge on him. He immediately turned the other direction and jumped into the water. He was a good sport and laughed it off. I found this a much more satisfying encounter than ganking him like the other nerds in the Underhalls were doing.

I think I'd much rather take out the jerks killing the low levels than the lower levels themselves and I hope to follow that PVP model when Syreth gets to be a bit of awesome.

Overall I think I was exposed to what makes MMOs so appealing today and that's just getting in a group and killing stuff. I have to admit, that it was extremely satsifying and one of my most memorable multiplayer experiences to date.

I'm still on my way to being a high enough level to play with the rest of the Blood Pact clan, so I know there is a gazillion more things to look forward to.

I finally had a chance to install and play Age of Conan Yesterday. I created a Cimmerian Ranger named Syreth. It took a bit to take everything in at first, and to be honest, I'm still feeling incredibly overwhelmed. I think over time things will come together, though.

I went through the little single player tutorial bit and reached Tortage to find Slunks and Tyler dancing and waiting for me on the bridge. What dopes. Thankfully, Tyler fell into the lava river.

I then proceeded to run madly around the city picking up quests, buying items and looking like a moron. Soon after running some errands for the locals and reaching level 10, Talor, Mike, Art and even Steve (I haven't played anything with him since the real Hyborian Age. Get it?!) showed up and I got added to their nerdy little guild. Radical. Didn't get a chance to run around with them yet though.

At this time I looked at the clock and realized several hours had passed without my knowledge and it was now time for bed. Bummer.

I never thought I'd say this about one of those cursed MMORPGs, but I am enjoying it. I may be new to playing these types of games but I've been around them plenty and was never really interested. I think the more engaging combat of AoC is giving me the tolerance I need to actually enjoy the game, because I'm all about the RPG asepects of leveling up a character and getting sweet gear and especially playing games with friends. I can't wait to get back and spend some time with the game this weekend.