That's right, I'm moving into my new apartment this week, got boxes all over the place crowding me in. Last week, thanksgiving, I purchased a used Xbox and a bunch of games for under $200 at the local gamestop. Ninja Gaiden rocks my socks off, just wished the camera worked. Fable looks awesome, and Shenmue II will stay closed until I move and have a week to dedicate to it. Dead or Alive 1/2 Ultimate rocks, but the Controller S is weird to me still, so I get my ass handed to me. Burnout 3, naturally, and one of the NHL 2k games from Sega. Got a few more games on the 'to get' list, but they'll have to wait a little bit. (Conkers, PoP, DoA 3, the capcom 2D fighters, and Jade Empire.) So 7 games 2 controllers and 1 xbox for < $200, not too bad at all if I do say so my self. Kinda makes waiting 4 years seem worth it. There may be a few developer types reading this and getting a bit miffed, but used games work and when you get half of them for free, it's hard to feel bad about that lost revenue. Maybe make new games not 50-60 bucks and still have buy two get one free deal, and you may see me looking in the 'new' section a bit more! Ha! Hey, I buy new when they hit sub $35, it's like $34.99 is a sweet spot or something, if it's a good game I can't help but to buy it at that price or lower! When I go to the store and see Quake 4 is 60 bucks, I'm tempted to host a LAN party and see if it somehow gets magically installed on my desktop while I was on a snack run. I was really looking forward to adding it to my game box art collection too. (pic soon, when I unpack the boxes!)

Speaking of Desktops, mine died rather unexpectedly last weekend. I rebuilt her better than ever, but with XP this time. It seems the cd key is invalid so no SP2 so I'll be placing a newegg.com order for a new one soon. 400 gigs of games art and anime from college down the drain. Thank god for the laptop and my many backups! (I don't back up anime, however, it'll have to stay a memory or be added as box sets when they hit stateside now that I'm working class and all.)

SummerTech Folks: Great things are afoot for the Machinima class next summer, pending a few more chats with Steve... Be ready for course so huge, we may only get to pull it off once. You'll have more as Summer approaches! (Coming quick, ain't it?)

Once upon a time there was a forum called Silly Hats Only and they loved Chuck Norris!

One day we decided that Chuck > Your Mom and made some movie posters to prove it. Adding this picture of his hotness:

Broke down today and got me a new poket sized digital camera! I went to the trusty Ritz...err, Wolf Camera at the mall where I once was so gainfuly employed and purchased the Nikon 5600 after much debate between it and the SD2400 from Canon. They were both super close in size and specs, but in the end Nikon won the quick "Hey mom, take a picture hurry!" contest. Plus it was 50 bucks cheaper and came with more free goodies. Here's a quick shot of random items from my laptop desk in my room. My main PC desk is spotless, with moving and all next month.

I have returned from NYC, host of the Machinima Film Fest 2005!

Below is a copy*paste from what I wrote at m.com, it sums it up pretty well for me.

Congrats to everyone! Such a heated competition this year, it was unbelievable. I can't wait to see what next year holds in store for Machinima! The festival in and of it’s self was very cool, at least the parts I could get away for. (The discussion panels.) Hearing the voice behind a lot of what gets posted here is always interesting and provocative. I really encourage everyone to attend next year even if your film doesn’t make the cut, the sheer amount of people interested in machinima looking for filmmakers to talk to is worth the price of admission alone. (Plane and cab fare included!) Manning the Fountainhead booth provided me with an interesting angle to pitch both their software and machinima as a whole to those who were 'dragged along,’ by having the clearly labeled and simple Machinimation interface and a game engine right in front of them to play with, I think it opened a lot of eyes. I also had my fair share of interviews, both on and off screen, almost lost me voice!

There was almost always someone at the booth; often all 6 machines had people. It never got so swamped that Alex and I (sorry I forget your last name now, but he's 5m regular, writer, and just a cool guy to work with) ever became overwhelmed. There was a steady flow of people from the start all the way to 6:30. Only one machine crashed after all the abuse dished out during the day, and it was only to desktop.

The discussions were all about topics covered here a dozen times before, but this time before a live audience. I found it interesting to see who saw flaws where others saw possibilities. The issue of the Holy Grail machinima tool kit was brought up again in a major way. The desire for a machinima program easy enough to use without any other piece of software is highly desired. Something where you can create characters, animations, cameras, and effects all in one with simple click and choose interface was the general consensus for the bare minimum feature set. I would love something along those lines, but unless it was an extremely robust character creator, I would never use it seriously, and still opt to hand mold my characters in a 3D app. Perhaps if it would take base model styles of my design and then allow for size/prop/color customizations from there… Procedural animation, and the idea that game engines, like Source, are good enough look-feel wise from now on was brought up. This was something I did not agree on; while texture rendering may be fine, the lighting tech still has a long way to go IMHO. I'm not too familiar with procedural animation, so I can't really comment on that. (I understand that it would be animation based on algorithmic input, but I haven't seen it in action.)

I recently purchased the Torque engine for evaluation, and I haven’t really had a chance to dig into it yet, but finding that the ILL Clan use it for their live performances to a very successful degree at the fest makes it really seem worth wild (and 100 bucks.) So I can hereby recommend serious machinima types to at least check out the demo. (Warning: Requires programming!)

The nice folks from Second Life setup shop next to us, handing out free T's and demos. I got to see it in action for the first time, looks really interesting, I'll have to seriously check it out soon.

I think the highlight of the event had to be the presenters of the awards, having Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and John Waters present the trophies was a hoot, to say the least! It'll be tough to top that next year.

Apologize go out to everyone for my early 'ducking out,' I'll be sure to stay in town longer next year.

Went out camping last weekend with 2 of my good buddies. We discovered the secret ingredients to great campfire streak: Steak & Chop spice, Worcestershire sauce, and most importantly, 1.5 shots of Tequila per 4 ribeye cuts! Took loads of pictures, I'll post'em here when I can get them developed.

Remember kids, keep your eyes peeled for Wampus cats, they'll bite your head off!

I'll be off to NYC Friday for the Filmfest, counting the hours at this point!