K. Close III

Friday, April 9th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 9 Comments

I have a meeting here in 40 miunutes, so there’s not really enough time to start any projects.

Yesterday was a pretty shitty day all around, that is until I put in The Commitments and remembered how much I love that movie and the music from it. I had bought the DVD for St. Patick’s Day but had yet to watch it. I was in such a foul mood by the end of the night, I think if one of my taco shells had cracked I’d have given up and gone to bed (luckilly they were extraordinarilly stable last night for some reason). Fortunately the only one that broke, waited until half way through the movie and I was in a much better mood.

This morning’s been shaping up though. Its Friday, we might get the afternoon off. The state usually waits until about 11:00 to tell us that they’re shutting down all state institutions at noon. Talk about short notice. Not really enough time to make plans, so I’ll probably just go home and cut the grass. It needs it. If not… well, I’ll just sit here and make more icons. I have some ideas for movie clips I want to use, but I’m starting to think I need to do more still icons as well. I dunno, I’m just having too much fun with animated gifs and they’re helping me think four dimensionally, which I don’t do very well.

If I’m ever going to write, or even make Flash animations, I need to develop my forward thought process, so maybe this is a good stepping stone. We’ll see.

Crap, still have 30 minutes until the meeting. Guess I’ll just surf the ‘net.

Friday, April 9th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 2 Comments

Why the hell isn’t my MoBlog RSS Feed updating? Huh? Anyone want to elaborate? I’ve been posting for the past two days and still nothing. WTF?

Thursday, April 8th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 2 Comments

I fucking hate slow internet connections. I had a bad day at work, and it only figures that when I sit down to fart around on the internet after work (since there’s jack and shit on TV), it’s not going to play nice for me. Damnit, apparently I’m not meant to have a good day at all.

Thursday, April 8th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

I hate it when I realize I’m so damned stupid, I frustrate myself.

I’m going home. Defeated.

Thursday, April 8th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

Today’s been a day. Thats about it. This morning we had some crisies with the plotter and the check-in system, but everything seems to be smoothed out again, and like the rest of this week has been, this afternoon has gotten really slow and really quiet. I feel like an icon factory these days, I’ve made four this week alone, and have plans for more. I wish this was a marketable direction, but anyone can do this shit. Even if I was the only one on the planet who could do it though, no one would really care enough to pay me for them.

At any rate, I’m installing the new Check-In system as I type (waiting for downloads and installs). Its almost done and I hope it gets finished up some time today. I don’t think I have that much left to do. The biggest thing is to move the static IP over to the new system. I’ll have to get the instructions from Craig on how to do that again. I always feel so stupid when I can’t remember how to do something, even if I only ever have to do it once every two or three years.

No game tonight, I guess it’s for the best, I didn’t have anything planned anyway. But then again, if there had been a game toinight, I probably would have spent a little time planning. Yeah, probably not. It’s gotten nice out again, but I think I heard something about storms in the forecast again, which, to me, is still good. I like rain, and I like thunderstorms even more.

I realized, suddenly, that I didn’t do a photo journal this week. It’s probably because I did one so late last week. I also haven’t been on TextAmerica as much this week. I think I’m just running out of things to take pictures of. The one really good thing I saw this week, I didn’t have my camera for. Maybe I’ve just been in a mood, but it could be the end of a phase with me. I’m kind of like that. There are things that I am always interested in, even if the interest waxes and wanes constantly, and other things that I jump into with both feet for about a month or two and then never touch again. Guess I won’t know what this is for another few weeks, or months.

FUGU!

Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

I learned a new word today. Its a noun, but I’m going to have Steve approve it as an adjective for me. Someone asked me for three adjectives to describe their personality, and I shot two off without thought, but I wanted to make sure the third one counted. So I got on Merriam-Webster Online and started word hopping. I came up with this:

diapason (di·a·pa·son): 1 a : a burst of sound b : the principal foundation stop in the organ extending through the complete range of the instrument c (1) : the entire compass of musical tones (2) : RANGE, SCOPE

The part that I felt fit him was “the entire compass of musical tones.”

Whatever, I still learned a new word.

Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 6 Comments

Yet another Icon… I’m making so many, I don’t think I can use them all. Makes me wonder if there are people out there using my icon for LJ or other such forums. It wouldn’t bother me, but I am curious.

Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 2 Comments

New icon for Steve… it came to me in an instant!

Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 3 Comments

It’s raining today, and that’s actually put me in a pretty good mood. It’s amazing how the weather can change emotions so effectively. I guess thats why it’s used so often in movies, but it becomes so cliché after a while. Like, I was watching Gothika last night, and the first 1/3 of the movie was all in the rain, a dark and stormy night. I’m thinking how appropriate, but how unoriginal. Why don’t paranormal suspense thrillers take place under different environmental conditions. It’s like a mandate, if there’s going to be some spooky, other-worldly, horrific event, there’s just got to be thunder. I guess it’s all about the good guy wearing white and the bad guy wearing black. Get the viewer in the right state of mind as fast and efficiently as possible. We’ve been trained to associate certain weather, times of day, colors, fashions, and other such nonsense with specific subtext in a movie (or on TV, or even in books) and the writers know this, so they know they can save time and energy (since at least in movies and on TV, there’s a budget on time, so you need to save as much as possible for the good stuff) by using hackneyed clichés to get over the simple concepts without having to spell it all out, then spend the rest of the time concentrating on their more original ideas. It’s effective, and it works well, but its overly obvious to me sometimes, and it’s at those times that it seems a little trite.

I was making predictions about the movie the whole time too, and while a lot were wrong, not all of them were. I signed up for www.whattorent.com the other day and it asks:

You are viewing a film. After about 15 minutes you can predict most of the plot for the remainder of the movie. You:

Absolutely Hate Predictability – Pretty Annoyed – Mildly Annoyed – Who Cares?

Since I answered somewhere between “Mildly Annoyed” and “Who Cares?” (it was a slider), I was pretty happy making my little predictions along the way. I started thinking, I should write these predictions down somewhere because it’s possible, since I never seem to have a good jumping off point for story ideas, that I could use these misguided predictions to write the screenplays I wish I was writing. Of course, half or my predictions are based on the fact that I’ve seen a lot of other movies, so really all I’d be doing is writing the movie that potentially inspired the one I’m currently predicting, but the names and dates have been changed to protect the copyrights. Oh well, what a vicious circle.

Its quiet, I need music. Though I didn’t think I’d be in here this long.

So anyway, I do want to write scripts, I want to write movies, but I never know what to write about. I just don’t have enough experience writing. I need start wirting just to write, even if it’s crap, just write endlessly. Most if it will be crap, but I need to make a practice out of it, I need to get my mind used to creating and developing, to thinking literally. I mean I’ve spent years writing for my games and developing stories for them, but I’m even kind of out of practice with that. Maybe that’s why a lot of my games have been slightly less than successful recently.

Monday, April 5th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives | 3 Comments

well, I tried my best to make a happy icon, but I found a clip that was too cool not to turn into an icon, so here it is… the suicidal penguin!