I'm making a mark here. Something incredible happened this week, and so that if I may look back years from now, I'll have all the evidence I need that this life is worth living.

Nothing Machinima related, just a chance to face the one regret that got me started down the path of, "If you must have regret, it is better to regret what you have done, rather than what you have not." It took me YEARS to reach that point, and truthfully, I'm still working on it.

Like Atreyu beyond The Oracles, I must now face myself.

So the meeting went well! We covered a ton of ground, and I ate enough Chinese food to render me clinically dead for the remainder of the evening. It was the sugar biscuits that finished the job; I just know it! So. Damn. Yummy. Sugary. Thank the mighty Thor, God of Rock (and thunder), for Alka-Seltzer.

The biggest news is that we are NOT going to the NYC festival. The reasons are many, but mostly so we can save our monies and have an epic showing at the next festival(s). As you can guess, money is tight these days, and we may need to show face at other festivals early next year, once we complete the pilot episode of “For Science.” Instead we’re going to spend that weekend camping, as is our early November tradition, and hit up the Machinima EXPO in Second Life the following weekend.

So, in lieu of our presence, we would like to go ahead and extend our best wishes to the participants. Each year shows a huge leap in Machinima’s growth, and this year will be no different! I for one cannot wait to see the results of this year’s event!

Internally we took a serious look at our progress and work ethic over the summer, and we were not pleased. So we ironed out a plan of action to help keep us both in high spirits, and working more consistently. Barry has all but been appointed to be our formal team manager, the cruel taskmaster that will give us ice cream when we work well, and kick us in the nards when we work… poorly? Right now the whole office is on ice packs until the doctor says otherwise. We also started an A capella soprano band. The opening number will be, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!”

Also,

Avast ye scurvy dogs! Man the bilge me lad, she'a be takin on water like the clever beauty do take 'er suitor's coin!

Looks like we're having a huge meeting tonight. As you may have heard, Montreal is a bust, with Second Life rising up in its stead. Word on the street is that even MORE people are going to turn out to the SL event than the Montreal iteration... at least more people from the Machinima community. Which is cool, but I really do enjoy talking and converting the uninitiated public too.

This means I'm mostly likely going to NYC after all, but I won't be taking a week of vacation to do it in. Then again, maybe I'll be in the office working on For Science instead!

We're having an emergency meeting tonight to discuss a much more relaxed production schedule, giving ourselves a week or two to be people persons again. I also believe we may try to have our characters re-designed one last time.

/tosses out hours of rigging and animation.

Since the schedule has become personable again, I may take the opportunity and try some non For Science ideas that I've had floating around my brain for far too long. Our master project list has a music video up next, so I may just say screw-it and get started on it, even though it's designed to be a tie-in of sorts... Mike's theatrical opus follows that, with plenty of breathing room for my 'secret project' that I've been working on, also, for far too long.

One of the ideas floating around my head is a Machinima in Nintendo DS spec. Something cute and super silly, maybe with ninjas and pirates... I could totally see it being an unintentional epic. Mmmmmmm.... 120K/s polygons total @ 256 x 192 pixels resolution....

Wow!

These were -OLD-

Like, antiquated! Look at our college freshmen fat-asses!


And this, I don't get it, but it sure is stylish!


Man, I was awesome, like a real cowboy!


I think they won that year! For SCARIEST SHIT of the SEASON!





All in all, these mystery pics were a nice nostalgic look at 2001/02. I think.

So had some lunch with mom today, and we found two old un-developed rolls of 35mm film in her center-console. Ironic, I was just thinking to myself that when we got back from Ottawa in 04' that I took more pictures than I ended up with... but who knows what's on these mysterious rolls?! I'm going to stop by the local 1 hour this weekend, and we'll find out the hard way if mom's center dash proved a cool-dry place to store film! If they're worth a look-see, I'll post the highlights on the ol' blog here!

Ike is said to be so big, that it may still be a hurricane when it hits us way up here in the Dallas eastern outlands. We won't get the ocean surges, but tornadoes and flash-floods are notorious around these parts. I plan to hunker down in the Warhammer Online Open Beta, and ride out the storm with a Dwarven Ironbreaker.