The Z Axis

she's down in her office with steve sisco

It's been a week since I got the 23-hour-delayed "Polo" to my "Marco." It was 5 days before that you stood me up, said you'd call, and I haven't heard from you since, despite many attempts on my end. It was a week before then the last time I saw or spoke to you.

I want you to do whatever you want. I want you to be happy, even if it doesn't involve me.

I don't know if I have done anything to upset you, or if you are doing other things, or what.

But please, if you get 30 seconds, just please let me know what is going on.

I have things I wish to do as well, and living in limbo is not one of them.

Please.

[i know i'm getting the song wrong]

a quick aside

So, I finally got hit by the GMail.

And it's been pretty cool, but I have to say, there is one thing that has not ceased to amuse the hell out of me:

It could only be better if the button said "Banish into bottomless pit of incalculable torment."

[citizens for a fair and equal way to get harbucks coffee kicked out of town forever]

i tried, i gave up

Saturday was, among other things, the bithday party for my nephew Mitch, who turned 3 last Tuesday. It was a great day, a good time was had by all, and some difficult-to-understand-without-context pictures are available here.

It would have been a nice day even if it had turned into a baby screaming fest, because the weather was wonderful, and it introduced me to a public park that I have absolutely no doubt I will be back to frequently. It's got waves, and open sky, and everything. This is why there are as many pictures of the scenery as the participants in that gallery. I needed a new place like that to go, so that was excellent.

I can't remember the name of the park, so this is a largely worthless warning, but I will say this - if you ever go there, and want to feed the geese and ducks some bread, BEWARE. You show up, and its a nice a pleasant lakeish area with sporadic geese and ducks - but they are not normal geese and ducks, for they have developed a taste for the yeasty glutenous bounty that the foolish humans that venture toward them offer. If you come to them with bread, they will be on you like a HORDE OF LOCUSTS. I'm not kidding. I took many pictures of this, but they sadly fail to tell the story properly, because I didn't think to take a "before" picture. If you go out there and start tearing up bits of white stuff, the entire lake's worth comes screaming at you, like the soccer ball in a 6 year old youth soccer league game.

We also had a problem where the youngins would throw the beach balls into the water, in some cases a little too far out. Thankfully, the current was such that they were all eventually retrieved. Sadly, the same could not be said for a couple of the balloons - there is a speck in the center of this picture that if blown up many times would reveal Mitch's special green balloon that got away. My inner Cartoon-PSA-watching self was worried about this in an ecological sense until someone told me the balloons are engineeered to degrade from sunlight. How freaking cool.

All the rest of the pics are probably self-evident enough, so I won't jaw about them, except to say for my own edification that when I try, I can still take some fantastic damn pictures - 1 2 3.

3 is my favorite.

Some other stuff happened this weekend, but since it mainly consisted of stuff not happening, it gets no coverage here.

[it took you]

why do i have to prove it to him

So you say a few words. You make a gesture. You remember an important date. Small price to pay for what you get in return; for what you get in return, it's a steal.

-aaron sorkin, d/b/a issac jaffe

I lived my romantic life by these words before I heard them, but I knew I'd found a great way of remembering them when I heard them - even though they didn't refer to a romantic relationship, but one between 2 friends. I wish I was better at this outside my romantic life, but it is one of the many things that is simply wired better in my brain when it comes to that special kind of relationship.

Nonetheless, I believe it to be true in all relationships, and have found the dividends of such efforts can be measured in multiples, even when such reassurance or symbolic gesture is not needed or solicited.

Simple things like that can turn out to be something someone always remembers, and their absence at the right moment can be something they never forget.

Even in the indifferent middle, it's a small price to pay for what you get in return, and more often than not, you'll find someone else will be willing to pony it up if you're not.

In other news, happy birthday finn.

[the rest is all vanity]

mildred and patty hill can suck it part 3

Well, as birthdays go, I'd say today was better than last year's, but far from the best.

I'd like to thank Kevin for the Guinness I'm currently drinking, and the brave scientists who toiled away in the Guinness Advanced Drunkening Labs, who defied God, nature, and physics in their development of the ping-pong-ball-based canned draught system that delivered it to my glass.

Godspeed, ye drunken irish luminaries.

[and still no pony rides]

v2.0 download complete

Nicholas Raymond Kovacich was born today, shortly after 2PM, weighing in at over 10 freaking pounds.

Evidently he has all his fingers and toes and so on, and is expected to be noogied by his older brother Mitch as soon as is medically possible.

[run "screaming_poop_monster.exe"]

iddqd

A new TRB experiment is available.

the rage box - idspispopd

I'll explain the title in a second. First off, this is not a "song" at all - kinda like the last one, and arguably some other ones, it's just a mood that doesn't go anywhere. It's like background music of some dramatic moment on a TV show.

This one is important because it's the first output from the mighty Reason 3, which I managed to obtain through the venerable BadServo. This mp3 was essentially me just creating sounds that should not be able to happily coexist on the average speaker setup without causing unbearable static. This was a deliberate experiment to futz with Reason's new mastering suite, which promises incredibly lush and - loath as I am to use the term - phat sounds, without them stepping on each other's toes. That is where the title comes in.

In the audio production world, as I understand it, static that comes from overlapping frequencies (essentially loud sounds that have not been very well equalized and given their own space) create static and dissonance called clipping. Reason in fact has a handy little LED that lights up when it detects audio clipping. Audio clipping is the enemy of clean, pure sound. This file, as I said, was essentially random notes hit in some synth arrays that I designed specifically to create massive amounts of clipping.

However, true to its touting in the preview materials for 3.0, the new MClass mastering suite makes clipping its bitch in a way that would be sad if it weren't so beautiful.

So, this file has been run through said mastering devices, and while I am still learning how to use them, so I'm sure it is far from perfect, the fact is, these sounds would not coexist for me before. This would have been a dissonant nightmare - but despite the forcefulness of the bass, and the reverb on the choral sound, and the clarity and high pitch of the whatever you call it echoy sound, there is simply no clipping, at least on the two speaker setups I've listened to it on.

That's where the title comes from. In the 3D game design world, walls that are considered "solid," i.e., the player cannot walk through them, are called clipping planes. Long ago, in a little game called Doom, the developers needed the ability to specify clipping planes, but for quickness in meandering through the game world, also needed the ability to ignore these rules of "physics." So, a developer code was written for a "no clipping mode," so they could essentially walk through walls. I'll spare you all the hillarious and insane story of the origin of the code's name (google it if you must,) but in all versions of the original Doom I'm familiar with (even Ultimate Doom, but not Doom II) the no clipping code is IDSPISPOPD.

I knew this from memory, because I am a huge nerd. I double checked it anyway, and found the list of codes for Doom, and had a bizarre memory surge.

So, that's where the title comes from. No clipping, get it? It's like 3 levels of nerd all rolled into a horrible groaner of a pun. It's quite possible that will land me in the unpopular, wedgie-heavy section of hell.

[degreelessness biatch]

woth

So a couple years ago my Oregonian (I say that because he now calls it home) friend Finn comes to visit. He finances, devises and builds this grand green screen project for Left Brain Films that never really got together. I still have a ton of green fluorescent painted foam core boards in my closet, as a matter of fact. This is incredibly disheartening, as the maiden voyage of this new and improved modular green screen system was to be a 4-person lightsaber fight involving Josh, Finn, Carrie and myself. The green screen was needed to provide a conceptually infinite canvas for us to fight in, because we had no ideal place to shoot such an animal. I still have storyboards and ideas for this fight that I hope to scan and place on the sort of ultimate-edition LBF DVD I'm working on.

Finn is the only person other than myself who ever got a copy of the existing, not-so-ultimate LBF DVD, the data components of which have been scattered and disorganized - they were once all gathered together, for the making of that DVD, but hard drive issues and space constraints caused some files (though mercifully backed up -somewhere-) to be lost, and others to get separated from the group, because rendered video files do not adhere to the buddy system at all well. I am trying to reorganize all these files, and collect a ton of other materials, for a truly definitive (read: exhaustive) reflection on the existence of LBF.

But, back to my point. Finn got a copy after God knows how long, because I had finally finished the post production on the movie we shot as sort of a consolation prize, so he could go back to Oregon still feeling like he'd done something cool with lightsabers, even though mainly it was talking about them while working on a dead end green screen. I wanted to make this video widely available on the LBF web site, but it was somewhat long, it was widescreen (wooooo!) and I'd done a careful enough rotoscoping job that I didn't want the video to be postage-stamp sized. It begged to be shown off.

After fighting for probably 3 days with it, the best render I could accomplish at the time was a 136MB QuickTime movie. Obviously, this was not a good fit for general web site traffic. I didn't even make it available on my home web server, because it didn't exist yet.

What a difference two years makes. I now have a 720x480 video in excellent quality, just a little noise in the green areas, that clocks in at a mindboggling 3 and a half megs. Now, 720x480 is not true 16x9, which is the aspect ratio the video was filmed in, and I cannot seem to pursuade Windows Media to let me do that. The MPEG2s that go on the DVD take orders nicely, so the DVD presentation is a sparkling garden of proper widescreen delight. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. You know, once it exists.

Still, I'll take this minor aspect ratio annoyance in stead with shaving 135MB off my distributable file size.

So, 2 years too late, and with many apologies to Finn and cat lovers, behold - Russel the Cat.

No animals were harmed or even involved in the filming of this movie. It was planned and shot in about 30 minutes, so it's not like it's Duality or anything. Get off my back. At least ours is funny.

Though not as funny as yesterday's Rob Corddry movie. Man, that still cracks me up.

I sat pawing through Craigslist postings while tweaking different encodes of this video, and I had vastly underestimated what amateur cameramen get paid. We'll see if those emails go anywhere.

Alright, enough of me for now.

Oh, I guess one bit of geeking out. REASON 3 IS OUT!

WATCH TRAILER AND WEEP!

HOLY BALLS.

This means there will be new music made especially for the new LBF DVD. Mastering suites make me a happy panda.

[if i may be so presumptive as to use the term]

mux demux and bifurcate

So, I'm cranking out some of the backlog of pet projects I have lying around, to keep myself busy and my mind occupied and off unpleasantness whilst I wait for business days to resume and various corporate offices to reopen.

The first thing tonight was a video I made for my friend Steve, who is a fan of all things Boston. If you have been paying attention to the news, you know Boston's having quite a year in Sports - the Bruins clearly would have been a shoe-in if they hadn't canceled hockey. There's a correspondent on the Daily Show named Rob Corddry, who, like my friend Steve, is a long-time and thereby clinically traumatized Red Sox fan. In the course of last year's World Series run, Rob had a couple of bits about this on the Daily Show, and I thought they were some of the most hysterical things I'd ever seen, so I saved them on the magic TV box, so Steve could see them. Now, I've had these episodes percolating on the magic box hard drive since Oct-freaking-tober, because I am a horrible friend and never have him over.

It wasn't until tonight I actually took the time to download them from the box, and learn how to convert Replay Mpegs into something Premiere doesn't vomit up with some of its internal organs.

It took me forever, but I did manage to do it, and since I threw in some quick titles and crossfades, I'll make it generally available, instead of merely shipping it off for Steve's enjoyment.

Gentlemen and perhaps one lady maybe, I give you, Rob Corddry: Red Sox Fan.

Video compression technology, as well as my skills at ticking the right boxes in an Export dialogue to utilize it, have come a long way, so it's a very nice quality video with a middle ground file size.

Given that it will require no additional work, and relates to the LBF DVD I'm still trying to piece back together, I will probably use my newfound encoding foo to make a version of Finn's lightsaber movie that doesn't look terrible, and yet still manages to clock in at less than 136MB. If anyone wants the old 136MB quicktime file, Sod off. There will be a better one soon.

Navigating the murky waters of proprietary MPEG audio sync crapola took far longer than I thought it would, so I'll cut this short and post again when I have something else to show.

[dak tak lak pak]

down through my hands

A new TRB song is available.

the rage box - in memory of things left unfinished

It's simple. I like the title. That's it.

Speaking of, I'm in the midst of clearing some things out of the unfinished pile, and I don't have much to write about right now.

[and on to the canvas]

not that you'll read this, but

i hate imagining a life with someone other than you.

but it seems like it's all i am able to do nowadays.

[the top of my lungs]

a fast paced and confusing entry

A new TRB song is available.

Well, sorta. A crappy "this is the even-more-unpolished crap you guys never hear" song I gave up on and decided to add an explosion sound effect to and release as a gag.

the rage box - helicopter rescue gone awry.mp3

I got back home from Roswell this afternoon and sat down to doodle with music - which I did for like 3 and a half hours, and all I got was this piece of crap and another song I'm even less happy with. Its only promising part is this loop, which I may just use in something else.

Sad use of time.

Got home today, as mentioned, from Roswell, which during the past 2 days I have now utterly spammed with applications in the hope that some wageslave position will be available and offered to me. This is wave two of this process, which I was set to do this Monday, but forces prevented it, and then I had things like Jury duty and urology appointments. While the first wave was sort of a smattering of genre stores, this was a laser-focused geographical tour de force. I'm not pledged on any lease, and I've whittled my expenses down further, and still have -some- income, so I can still afford to be slightly choosy about where I apply. If this wave fails anywhere near as badly as wave one, however, to Randstad I go. I'm sure somewhere out there there is a man in a starched shirt who is having problems checking his email, or a printer barking "PC LOAD LETTER" and they will find them for me. I gotta call some places back at the beginning of this week, and then go back to Athens, but if I don't get much traction on this by Thursday, I'll take whatever crap Randstad can throw me til somebody bites on these lines I'm throwing out for a job that, you know, has something to do with my education and interests.

Hmm, that turned into a little rant there. Oh well.

Leslie's phone is back! Yay!

Seriously, this has been killin me. I expect you all to blow on your noisemakers and say "Huzzah!" before I begin to have violent thoughts.

It's 9:30 pm, and I've yet to eat anything today. I think I'll go remedy this. More later.

[it delivers what it promises]

i'm a gambler who just wants to lose

man. I had one of the most miserable nights of my life last night.

I should have continued watching my tape of the A-Team whilst packing things up and documenting problems with the place in Athens, but I decided to watch one of the movies I'd rented in the initial salvo from the Blockbuster Online membership I'd been scammed into.

I rented Napoleon Dynamite, because I somehow knew I'd need to, the first season of The Office because everyone says its so great, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because it looked interesting to me. I watched the last one last night, because I was alone and I knew none of the movie fans I know care for Jim Carrey.

Until last night, I would have been hard pressed to respond to someone who asked me for a surrealist movie. Parts of Dark City, Brazil - that Big Fish movie looked like it might be there.

Now, for the record, my response would be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

It was a great movie, but it was the absolute worst movie for me to watch at that time in that mental state. It made me absolutely miserable. Well, I was already pretty bad off, but it contributed.

So, in short, good movie, incredibly well put together, but I cannot bear to see it again for quite some time. It went back to the distribution warehouse today with its not all that funny english import friend. Any David Brent fans out there, sorry, I'm just not getting it - it's not a quarter as funny as Coupling is. But, in the interest of fairness, I have already queued up the second season to see if it grabs me better.

On the way back from Athens this afternoon I had another little episode, and let me take this moment to reiterate that Ulrich Schnauss' "Passing by" is one of the finest things ever committed to compact disc.

This has been Patrick's Melancholy and DVD News n Views, respectively.

[and be allowed to leave]

civic duty

[he said doody]