lineofaction

Finally a voice of reason from the big media about Mr. Thompson’s crusading.

http://tinyurl.com/399wwn

I’m not saying that violent videogames don’t affect the violent tendancies of some predilect kids. But this immediate blame of violent games on any form of school violence has got to stop. Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson started pointing fingers at the videogame industry on the Virginia Tech shootings before the media even knew the killer’s name, let alone how he lived or what influenced his behaviors. Now it appears to be coming out that there was no evidence that this kid had ever owned a videogame, less “training” on them as Mr. Thompson seems to think all school shooters do. I understand that people want to place blame on external influences when crazies do messed up things like kill students, but it behooves us as thinking, rational people to get some information on things before we start throwing whodunit’s around.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070418-media-looks-for-nonexisting-link-to-gaming-in-vt-massacre.html

I have to keep this brief because I’m at work, but I just wanted to report that the game I’ve been working on for several months has finally been announced by THQ. Cars: Mater-National is the second game title in the Disney-Pixar Cars universe, and takes place some time after the events in the movie. Lightning McQueen and Mater host an international race, and competitors from around the globe vie for the cup.

Here’s a link to the official story.

‘Bout darn time.

Not a lot to talk about, but I’ll summarize. Work is going well. We’ve become busy, which is refreshing. Technically our quality assurance deadline is in 3 weeks, but apparently there’s quite a bit of wiggle room on that. Last week I caught the flu, and after three days of fever and body aches, I think I killed all the helpful bacteria in my GI tract, so I’ve been wrestling with that for the past several days. My FETC money came in, so I’m about to pay my taxes, and I started building up my “classic animation library.” I’m cataloging them as I go, so far I have over 250 classic animated cartoons. I beat Final Fantasy XII finally and I’m currently working on God of War II. When I finish that, it will be on to the Legend of Zelda, Twlight Princess (and I guess I should finish Okami too). I saw 300 the other day as a sort of field trip with the team at work. It was fun, lots of cool visuals. The storyline is practically transparent, and there’s...well...a lot of man-skin to sit through, but the fighting and violence are enjoyable. Definitely a dude film. The weather is getting hot. We had a few days near 100 already, but its back down to a more tolerable high 70s, lower 80s now. I had to miss Jeremy’s Vegas birthday thing because of work, which pretty much sucks. The hot weather has obviously arrived and it turns out I have almost no shorts that fit, so that’s a new shopping priority. I haven’t worked out in a week due to not feeling well, but I’ll get going again next week. Everything else is going fine. Hank the dog is good, my car is good. Till next time.

I just got home from watching Bridge to Terabithia. Just to get it out of the way, I did like it. It was a film meant for a fairly young audience and expressed themes including handling problems with creativity, escapism, and coping with lose. It played the magical realism card, and I couldn’t help, since the last film I saw before this was Pan’s Labyrinth, but compare the two. Besides taking very different approaches cinematically, as well as being obviously targeted to different audiences, these two films are remarkably similar, in that they both deal with a child handling change through imagination. On the Pan’s Labyrinth side, the little girl Ofelia uses the fantasy world she creates in order to cope with the drastic changes in her new, basically conscripted life under her step-father Captain Vidál. While Jess is taught to harness his own creativity to overcome his problems in school and at home by the magical imaginings of his new friend Leslie. Both stories rely heavily on the fable structure, the lost-royalty-now-found archetype (must everything be Jungian?), and most interesting, they both pose the question of redemption after death - the dilemma of innocence and holy judgement. I suppose I could turn this into a five paragraph essay, but I’ll just leave it at a summary of sorts. If you’re feeling up to the comparison, I invite you to go see both movies and judge for yourself. (Pan’s Labyrinth is a must, by the way. Bridge to Terabithia was good, but I wouldn’t call it required viewing.)

Two weeks ago was FETC, the yearly bacchanalian festival of debauchery for my high school friends disguised as an educational technology conference. The conference this year felt very different. Certain rituals that we’ve done every year for the past 9 years were conspicuously absent - there was no dance party the second night of the conference, our check-in service received much less business than usual, we didn’t go to Vito’s Chop House with the FETC full-time staff. It was a good conference other than those things and the monstrous bout of gastroenteritis I went through on Wednesday night. I must apologize again to my roommates for the…disastrous condition of my GI tract that day. No one else got sick, so I’m guessing it was...well actually I have no idea what it was but it was bad. FETC has been purchased by a for-profit organization, which more or less means that our days on the crew are few in number. It would be nice if we get to go next year but I’m not counting on it.
Other than that, nothing particularly exciting going on. I am, thankfully, still working on the same project at work, which is progressing quite nicely. On a related note, THQ (NYSE: THQI) announced their 3rd quarter earnings last week, and during the announcement mentioned that “Cars”, the game, was the second highest selling videogame of 2006, and the number one game at THQ, having sold over 7 million copies across all the platforms. That title came in just under Madden ’06. Damn shame I’m not in the royalty pool for that one. Ah well.
I purchased a PDA-phone from Sprint last week. It’s the PPC-6700 PocketPC. Hopefully it will help me get organized. I’ve already started storing people’s birthdays so I don’t forget anyone anymore. I have unlimited internet service which is sweet because I can hook into Google Maps or check my email wherever I am, plus it’s got wifi so can get a really fast connection in many places. So far I am really liking it.
I attended an open-house for a Tai Chi class yesterday. The group is fairly small, but they are part of a bigger organization, the Taoist Tai Chi society, which it turns out is the same place that is in Tallahassee, you know that Tai Chi place on Monroe near where Centerville starts. The group is a little older than me, but they seem sincere and it doesn’t have too much of a new-agey vibe, so I think I’m going to continue it. Besides it’s more of a meditative thing for me anyway. I’ve got one more free class next week to make up my mind.
Brett provided me with the first season of Battlestar Galactica (the new show, on SCI/FI) in glorious HD, which I have been watching via my Xbox 360’s Media Center extender. I’m not much of a tv watcher, as most of you know. I primarily watch cartoons, Good Eats on FoodTV, and No Reservations on the Travel Channel. But oh…my…lord, Battlestar is such a good show. This is science fiction television at it’s biggest and brightest my friends. It’s better than Stargate, on-par with Next Generation. You must find season one and watch it. Please. For me.
Nothing else to report, really. I haven’t received my diploma yet, but I’ve been assured that it’s on the way. I am on a month-to-month lease with my apartment-come-condominium. Hopefully I’ll get to stay here until June or July or whenever this project is finished, and then set my sights towards Seattle. Till next time.

Ok, it’s been a while and lots has been going on so I think it’s about time for a blog post, eh?! This holiday season was unfortunately brief. My vacation to Florida to visit my family lasted only 10 days this year, 3 of which were basically burned traveling between locales. I spent the majority of the first half of my trip in Tallahassee, spending time with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and cousins (whom I haven’t seen in a year) and my mother and step-father (whom I haven’t seen in...3 months I guess) and a few of my friends from high school (whom I haven’t seen in a range of time spanning from 6 months to 6 years). The rest of the trip I spent in Tampa with my father his new partner and my...these relationships are getting confusing...my father’s ex and her new fiancé. It was a good trip, though far too warm and humid for my liking. I got to destroy David on Guitar Hero II, a shame which I’m not sure he can ever live down, play some Wii with people that don’t normally touch videogames, which was very rewarding, and do panicky last minute shopping for people, which is always fun. I’ve been back in Phoenix for a few weeks now, getting back into the swing. The attempt is superfluous of course, since I’ll be headed back to Florida in a few weeks to attend FETC. And in today news, I just followed the MacWorld Keynote, and saw the new iPhone and I....must....have...one. So I’m going to hold onto my crappy Sprint phone for another 5ish months until the iPhone comes out on Cingular and then switch over to them. Oh man, that thing is sooooo sweet. You should feel the electric air of fanboy emminating from me right now...and I’m not even that much of an Apple junkie. I’ve also been looking desperately for a Wii, Nintendo’s new console, to no avail as of yet. Hopefully by the time my FETC check comes in...Anyway work is good, life is good, my diploma is on the way, so for now, Ryan out.

I received a letter from the Graduate Studies office at Savannah College of Art and Design yesterday, stating that as of November 22nd, I had completed all necessarily requirements for my Master’s Degree and that I would be getting my diploma in the mail sometime within the next 4 to 6 weeks. Thankfully I didn’t forget to take any classes or anything. Whew. On to the next degree! Kidding...kidding...for now. Rainbow Studios has become a bit of a ghost town, as most people are already starting their Christmas holidays. I will be leaving for Florida on the 22nd and in Tallahassee on the 23rd, so...ya know, chirp me, or whatever the devil the kids are doing these days. I’m doing well on the Cars project. The characters are very fun to work with. It’s amazing how much acting you can pull out of basically a mechanical object. The big emotional eyes and the mouth helps too. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XII for the last several weeks, and let me just say, that if you’ve ever enjoyed an RPG...ever...go get this game. Ignoring the lackluster vocal performance of the main character, everything about this game is like concentrated fun. They also managed to get writers for this one with not only a firm command of English, but with an apparant ardor for the construction of dialogue. In other words the script to this game isn’t just *in* English; it makes love to the language. Sweet, buttery love. As mentioned in the previous post, I’m also playing Neverwinter Nights 2, both in a single player game and a multiplayer with Jeremy. Neverwinter could be said to be “fun despite itself.” Obsidian, the company notorious for its “Box of Bugs” release of Knights of the Old Republic 2, has released another half-finished title in Neverwinter 2, with questionable graphics, incredibly insipid AI, and...well ok the spell effects are fun. That being said, I am enjoying the game thoroughly, especially in multiplayer, and am glad it was released. I...just wish they had maybe took the time to finish the game before releasing it. The modding community has already succeeded in making better AI scripts than the developers, as well as some other useful modifications that make the game more playable. But… I mean come on, its 3.5 edition D&D. HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THAT?! Whew..sorry...I’m better now.
Oh I’ve also been re-collecting Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. I’ve got quite a few collected now, about 40 gigs worth, for whatever quantitative validity that provides. Last night I watched City Limits (starring the lovely Kim Katrell) and a terrifically awful Mexican children’s movie called “Santa Claus” to get me into the holiday mirth. Wow...what a freaky film. Satan tries to foil Santa’s merry-making, but Santa retaliates with the help of his army of multicultural child-laborers...seriously, go find that episode.
Alright, that’s all for now. Later viewers...or viewer...mom…

I don’t have entirely too much to report on, and I know it’s been a while since I updated, but to be honest, nothing really all that exciting is going on. I’ve started managing my finances using MSMoney, which is actually a pretty cool program. It’s very thorough. November was video game purchase month apparently, with all sorts of big highly anticipated titles releasing. I bought Neverwinter Nights 2, Final Fantasy XII and Guitar Hero 2, which still leaves me needing to get a Wii, Twilight Princess, Okami, Gears of War and Final Fantasy III DS. That’s all within the last month. Damn the game industry and its holiday releases. Speaking of releases, Cars for the XBox 360, a game developed by my studio and my team (though I got onto the team right at the tail end, so I didn’t have much to do with it) also released, to decent reviews and numbers. THQ has announced that’s it’s making a sequel to the Cars title this coming year. Mmmhmm. I wonder who could be doing that…
Almost all plans have been made now for my Christmas trip to Florida. I have my ticket and I have Hank set up to be boarded. He got his immunizations last week. This whole trip is costing me a small fortune and on top of that, was unable to get a rental car. It was going to cost $500 dollars for 5 days. Intolerable. So all and all...I’m going to put the number at $1000 bucks so far for this trip. Good stuff. Oh yeah and I’ve only bought 1 presant so far. So much for “managing the finances.”
Jeremy came to visit me last week after Thanksgiving, a holiday which I spent at my ex-lead’s house with his family. It was good, the food was terrific, but ya know...it wasn’t my family so there was definitely something lacking to th experience. But then Jeremy showed up and he brought his Nintendo Wii with him and we played Zelda and Neverwinter 2 almost the entire weekend. There was a brief stop where we went to his friend Nipa’s surprise birthday party at Buca di Beppo. That was also fun. I also gave Jeremy my fishtank. I’m done with fish.
I’m still going to the gym, still trying to reach my 12% body fat goal (its at...um… 14.5-16% right now depending on what time of day I measure).

That’s it I guess. ‘Till next time.

Monday I returned from a short trip to visit my dear friends Brett and Bonnie. While alas, we didn’t have nearly enough time together, it was a great trip full of terrific food, gorgeous weather, beer-making, Mario Kart and Mystery Science Theatre. We made Osso Buco on Saturday, which I’ve never made, or even had. It was sublimely good. Then there was scallops one day, and Brett makes some absolutely killer banana pancakes. We also played tennis on Sunday and I discovered that I need to do some sort of active sport like that to round out my workout routine, because man was I feeling it the next day. All too short a trip. I have vowed to one day live near enough to those two that we may visit each other on a regular basis. They truly are great friends and I miss not being near them. At any rate, it’s back to Phoenix, back to the 80 degree Fall days (the weather is blessedly getting cooler.) This past weekend was also my mother’s birthday, and being the horrible son that I am I neglected to call her until the day *after*. But happy birthday nonetheless. I don’t think my forgetfulness is going to get any better with age...eesh.

PS: Brett, I just rewatched the Squid episode of Good Eats and discovered that the propane burner I got you for beer-making is the perfect tool for getting a wok to the proper jet-hot temperature. Give a try and tell me how it goes, won’t you?

I got a call from my thesis committee chair yesterday informing me that my paper and film had been accepted and approved by my committee. That means the only remaining steps in completing my degree and submitting the paper to the Library for binding and filling out my graduation paperwork. All the hard work is done. Payoff at last.
My mother and Bill came to visit me this past week. We had a good time, visited a few places I’ve never been to, ate some good food, that sort of thing.We took a trip to Taliesin West, which was Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home in Arizona. His attention to the environment in which he built is completely staggering. He really was a genius. I would very much like to visit some of his other architectural projects now. We took a trip out to Tucson, which other than a pretty impressive old Catholic mission was rather blah. It appears that their downtown has a lot more going for it than Phoenix’s, but other than that, not much better. My mom made me Cuban arroz con pollo on their last day in town. Yum. Home cookin’.
Next week I’m off to New Jersey to visit Brett ‘n’ Bonnie, which inevitably means more food and booze and debauchery. I’m going to have to spend all of November in the gym to make up for these next few weeks.

I printed out my thesis today, on 25% cotton rag, watermarked paper with 1 1/2” left margins. All my renders are done and composited, my sound is edited, the dvd burned, menus made, double copies created, files backed-up. The whole shebang is sitting in a bubble-insulated envelope on my printer. Not even light itself can escape the gravity it’s generating there. Tomorrow it will go out via 2-day priority mail to Georgia where it will be hawked over for a few days, then with any luck signed in triplicate by my committee and submited to the library for binding and archiving. Then my thesis chair will submit my grade change and I will most likely have to file for graduation. The point is, for all intents and purposes I’m done. I’ll just sit here quietly until that sets in.

I am about 75% done with rendering my thesis. Sound is finished. I’ve got a few more scenes to polish some animation on and then render. After that I need to work up a DVD, print my paper on the fancy thesis stock, and ship the whole thing out to SCAD for acceptance. My goal of the end of September still seems perfectly reasonable.
I went to Sedona last weekend with Meredith. This was the first time I’ve hiked around Sedona instead of just driving by the scenery. It was really a great trip. The weather was beautiful, in the low seventies most of the time. We went a little north of Sedona to slide rock, which is a natural waterslide area right by the highway. It was pretty neat, albeit jammed with tourists. The water was remarkably cold. I got in, but didn’t slide. Neither did Meredith. We were pretty content watching other people do the crazy stuff. After Sedona we drove up to Jerome, which is an old mining town up the mountains. We had all intentions of stopping to eat there, but it was raining, and apparently rain shuts down the little town of Jerome. Nothing was open. It was much cooler there, in the lower 60’s. Very nice. Jacket weather. I was wearing a tank top. The road winds up the mountain through Jerome with near hairpin turning. It was actually a fun drive, though my poor car doesn’t do mountains so well. We continued on and were going to go to Prescott, but never quite made it and ended up going back to Phoenix for dinner. Good trip. Here’s a picture of me at one of the many Vortexes of Sedona…

That’s 172, by the way.

I’ve been going to physical therapy for 3 weeks to try to get my shoulder strength up in my right rotator cuff. I think it’s improving but it’s hard to tell. My therapist suggested I give it another week and then try to do some of my old exercises and see how it feels. If I still get popping and weakness, she wants me to get an MRI. Lovely.

Mom is coming to visit in a few weeks. That should be fun, and then I managed to get really cheap tickets to visit Brett and Bonnie in New Jersey, so October 12th through the 16th I’ll be travelling up there to see my good buddies. I’m very happy to be making that trip.

Final news, a friend of mine has started what I think is a really great idea. I’m a member and anyone that has a pet, I suggest you become a member too. The site is called SurePaws.com and it’s basically an online database that keeps track of your pet. They provide you with a tag with a unique surepaws id, and if your pet gets lost, the finder can look up the id number and get all the information about your pet, any medical data or whatnot, plus give you contact information for reaching the owner. It’s certainly worth 20 bucks a year (not to mention renewal is only 10 bucks.) So, if you own a pet, I demand you check out the site. http://www.surepaws.com.

So, my father and Angela have decided it’s time to separate after 15 years together. I suppose this affects me, but I don’t find myself as emotionally invested in the concept as I thought I might. They’re grown-ups, they know themselves, and it’s not really any of my business if they want to move on with their lives. It does mean that visiting Florida is going to be even more convoluted now, but hey, what’s life without a little complication. Onward.
All principal animation on my thesis is complete. You heard me. There is an animated scene for every shot of my thesis. The entire thing, with credits and everything, is 4 minutes, 33 seconds long. Insanity. People warned me. I didn’t listen. I’ve got some touching up to do on it, as well as sound design, and I will be turning it in by the end of September; done deal.
Although my weight-loss has most certainly slowed significantly since the beginning of August, I’ve got 5 lbs to go and they are slowly coming off. This last part is tricky because I want to make sure I’m just losing fat and nothing else, so slow is probably a good thing. I’m at 175.8. Pretty soon there won’t be any more blogging to do about this process, as I’ll have met all my goals. Sweet.
I’ve been going to physical therapy for the last 2 weeks to see if I can’t get my right rotator cuff to function like the rest of my upper body. That means I’ve all but stopped my regular strength training routine aside from some arm work and legs. It’s pretty frustrating going from strength training 4 times a week to only twice and minimally even then, but as my therapist said, I’ve spent plenty of time working the rest of my body, I can give my shoulder six weeks of priority. And since she’s a complete cutie, how can I ignore that?
Production has still not quite started on my new project at work. Still doing animation tests on the characters, still trying to get myself up to the level of the other animators. I’m getting there, but keep in mind I just spent the last year and a half professionally cleaning up motion capture data, and now I’m an actual animator again.

Wherein we go from nine planets to eight...wait, what?

Scientists announced a few things since I last posted. First, they have conclusive evidence that dark matter does in fact exist. That’s a big deal, since we can start answering some questions about the nature of spacetime if we can assume that the universe is filled with..something. I’ve actually been rather hesistant to believe the dark matter theory, since it seems like another one of those things that science makes up because they can’t explain why certain phenomena occur. Like the world being flat. I’m willing to take a second look, however. Secondly, based on new conditions laid out by NASA and the Space Foundation and the...government...Pluto being so small and at an off orbit, is now no longer considered a planet. Pluto was discovered in the 30’s and has been the epicenter of a lot of debate about what constitutes a planet, so I suppose it’s a big deal that Pluto is now just a satellite. Wow...that’s a lot of text books that have to be changed. So farewell, planet Pluto. You had a short run as a planet, but a glorious one, and at least nobody could make Uranus jokes about you. Lastly, there’s a vergence in the Force, centered around my thesis. Something is going to happen within the next few weeks. Something...big, I think.