February 2004Only if Johnny Depp had won best actor. Aside from that, I'm as happy as a hobbit in a hole with table full of food and a bag of Longbottom leaf!
So I've been going through another phase of intense life restlessness and all that. I've whined about it before so I'll save it for now. Firstly, as some of you may know, I had interviewed twice at a video game company for a great job being in-game support. The interview went really well, I thought. Last week it was announced that the Austin office will be closing. This is a double whammy in that a) there goes my freakin job opportunity, and b) the market will now be flooded with video game industry people looking for jobs, thus greatly decreasing my chances of getting on with the other company I really wanted to work for.
I really want to start pursuing voice acting some more, so I tweaked my character voice demo. Feel free to listen and critique it here.
I may send out a bunch of my radio voice demos too, and see if I can't get on with a radio station again (I was a DJ for a couple of years). I have no job satisfaction right now, and worse, it has completely sapped all my time and energy to do things I want to do (of which there are too many; acting, music, writing, directing, etc). Life makes me want to scream ARGH! or some other such exclamation. Feel free to suggest your favorite.
In other news, we have no social life. We're like prisoners of our apartment. No one ever calls us to do anything, and about the only social interaction we get is the rare occasions when we manage to get a hold of my cousin and book some time before someone else does, or when my friend Andy actually stays in town for the weekend (which is pretty much never), and we can't seem to crack the barrier to being included in anyone else's activities. Thank goodness I have my wife to keep me from going totally insane.
Now scroll back up and go critique my character voice demo.
I recently set out on a quest to find one remote to rule them all. I was sick of needing 6 remotes. The problem was I refused to bother unless I could truly replace them all. Not have "most" of the functionality, but never have to touch them again (of course there are many functions that I never ever use, but that's beside the point). One big sticking point was my TiVo. Obviously it has some very specialized buttons, and I love my little TiVo remote.
After much research I narrowed it down to a few choices. I decided I definitely wanted buttons, and not a touch screen. I've heard many people say you never realize how much you navigate by tactile sensation until you don't have it. There was a $100 the MX-500, remote that could "learn" any key from any other remote, and was mostly hard buttons with a small lcd that has some programmable buttons, but in the end I went with the One For All URC-6131, which is made to accommodate TiVos and TiVo like devices.
Of course the normal $18 one wasn't good enough though. Since it's not a learning remote, you have to rely on pre-programmed codes, which many times have most, but not all the functions you want. Therefore I got the hot rodded model with a special chip and a JP-1 interface, and included JP-1 cord to hook up to my computer. This required delving into the world of JP-1 which is very techie, and not for the weak hearted. There are entire sites, a Yahoo group, forums, and more dedicated to it. I scoured them learning about programming codes, EFC's, Hex codes, OBC's, and many other spoonfuls of alphabet soup. I got a few of my devices working with no problem, but a few were determined to be difficult. There was a steep learning curve, but just as I was about to give up on it all, I had a breakthrough, and from there, things started flowing.
After many posts on the forums, I determined that my best solution was to buy another remote, the One For All 8810w, available at Wal-mart, purely as a helping tool. The reason being, that it can "learn" 4 buttons, and is JP-1 ready, so I could learn buttons from my remotes with the 8810w, then use on of the programs to look at the learned codes, and use that information to help me program my own device upgrade with a few proprietary programs and spreadsheets, and upload them to my 6131,which really is the best of the bunch as far as form and function. The designers really put a lot of thought into, and I am impressed.
I am happy to say that I now have one remote that controls all 6 devices in my entertainment center, and does so marvelously. There are now 7 remotes put away in the entertainment center cabinet (6 devices, and the extra universal used just for learning buttons so as to steal their code).
In addition to that, we got Jess's website going (aside from email which up to the web host to figure out what's up), got her started on Movable Type, and got her Reblogger working (for Lisa's sake), ran a bunch of errands today, and framed our authentic Egyptian papyrus scroll. All in all, it's been a productively geeky weekend.
One of my lovely Valentines gifts was "Permission To Land" by The Darkness, which I had listened to, and wanted ever since.
The Darkness so totally rocks. You'll simultaneously be laughing your arse off and wondering if this band is a joke, but at the same time you'll be rocking out to some kick ass songs. You'll also start saying "arse" if you don't already. They're like a mystery in an enigma, in a paradox, wrapped in a tasty tortilla.
We're going to see them here in Austin in April.
So we had our last day of filming on Friday night. It went well, and I'm excited to be done. Now onto editing. I think our movie will be lacking a bit in the visual/production areas, but I'm happy with the material and most of the performances (I really hate watching myself, which is a bad trait to have as an actor). Hopefully the humor will outshine the amateur look of the film due to lack of equipment, people and budget.
I read about how to get some great lighting for very little money. Unfortunately, this was a few days after we had finished shooting. More and more, I'm wondering if writing is really what I should do, mores than acting. Then again, feedback on my screenplay has been almost non-existent, which naturally makes me paranoid as I think that everyone just wants to avoid the subject so they don't have to lie or else tell me how much they think it sucks, even though I genuinely want honest opinions. Oh well, I like it, and I'm really the only person who really has to live with it. I already have ideas for some more projects to film. Hopefully you'll see some video content appearing on my website as I complete projects!
Firebird has now become Firefox 0.8
If you haven't yet changed browsers, I highly reccommend it! As usual, you can click on the "extensions" link to download cool extensions such as "Tabbed Browser Extensions" which is a necessity, in my opinion.
My cousin and I come up with so many great ideas. If only someone would purchase them and do something with them.
First off, the new Mario Kart game should have been called "Mario Speedwagon".
Secondly, someone needs to open a restaurant called "Suppernova".
Also, PC-ness aside, there's Hitler's U-boat Sandwiches.
Give us a few minutes. We'll have many more. We're frickin' machines.