This weekend has been pretty good. I went to the Moffett Field air show yesterday. It was cool. The Thunderbirds did some interesting formation flying. I also got to visit the Spammobile™ and try a thoroughly disgusting Spamburger®.

Things are going considerably better with Expendable. I've found some time to work on the sound this week, and it's swell. I found a great site with a lot of sound effects and I'm going to start mixing soon.

Here's a few snaps of our newly dug-up cutting station and camera:


Heather waiting for me to take the goddamned picture already. The metal desk with the clips is the cutting station.


Heather's Super-8 camera. Kickass.


Remember kids: live wires can lead to electrocution!

I'm getting pissed off how I have so little time to work on Expendable. This weekend my mom had a birthday party, my cousin had a bar mitzvah, and I had some homework. I would have been able to work. but the problem is I can no longer sit down and just edit for a half hour or whatnot. It takes about 25 minutes to copy all the footage onto disk and re-render the project. Once I'm done, I have to delete the files and scrap the renders, too. Also, Heather has been using her computer some this weekend so my window of opportunity is smaller. I'm going to try to get some editing done this week after school, but again, there's a lot of shit going on after school. Thank god I at least have access to an editing station and don't have to rent time.

I think this is going to boil down to me just sitting down sometime and working on it solid. It's not like grenada project, I actually need to plan my hours this time. I'll also try to clear up enough free space to install MOHAA. That should at least solve the SFX problem.

On a lighter note, heather finally found her Super-8 camera and cleared out space for her cutting station. Getting that set up will be one of our summer projects, and I'd definitely like to explore the possibilites of working on film.

In other stuff: I lost my glasses last week, so I got a new pair of glasses today. They're pretty cool.

Oh god. We're here in the stupid computer lab again working on this stupid college thing. MAKE IT STOP!
By the way, check out A Modest Destiny, it's a pretty sweet little webcomic. Makes no sense if you don't read it from the start, though. Here's one of those toight banners they have about:

What is this with everyone ond their Rubik's Cubes? I mean god, those went out of style around 1987. Of course, It's tight when Ernest does it. He can complete a cube in like 53 seconds, it's pretty tight. He's like "bambamskriitchclickclickbamabambam here you go!" Of course now that ernest has made it cool, everyone including that sonavavbitch muller who's standing right next to me has their little cu-bits.
 
Dorks.

Here at the computer lab once again.
Today we're signing up for this stupid career thing, www.kuder.com.
I don't even get the point of this.

I feel like shit ran over twice this morning. Sore throat, runny nose, congestion, the works.

Interestingly, I found that a lot of the files on my server were being hotlinked by several mp3 sites.
There are also hits directed from singingfish.com (an audio/video search engine where catman do films can be found)
and laspirale.tk (some french thing), among others.

If you're feeling curious/masochistic, you can view my access log for this month.

EDS Lockdown Initiated on 05-15-04.
There has been an increasing amount of hits to my download server over the past month or so, with people in remote locations (read:Yugoslavia) downloading large files. In the past month alone there were over 2000 music downloads, and 18 people downloaded the grenada project! Our DSL connection has been severely slowed, so I have been forced to take down most of the files on EDS. The hosted images should still be there, please email me if there is a problem with an image I'm hosting for you.

I should be able to implement a secure download server and give out passwords to friends or find (bleech) an external host for some of the files, maybe Alex Tramiel could host the Catman do movies (i'm going to ask him about it). Until that time, there will only be a few files available for download. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Megaman sucks. What a shitty game.
You can't duck. For chrissakes, you can't even fire upwards!
This has got to be the most frustrating game I've played in a long time. I always find myself cheering whenever megaman dies. Kinda looks like fireworks, so maybe the developers actually wanted joy to be the gamer's response.


The bosses suck, the controls suck, the powerups suck, the gameplay sucks.

There is one good part though. When you select a level at the beginning, it plays the most awesome theme music. I wonder if it's by sheer coincidence that the best parts of the game are right before you enter a level and right when you fail it.
So yeah, If you're ever playing an NES and see a MEGAMAN or ROCKMAN cartridge, dispose of it immediately and pick up a good game such as METROID or NINJA GAIDEN.

I talked with Ryan Moyer today. He was interested in having me join his web design company. Sounds like some good stuff- I'll probably wind up hosting their site.

Nothing much going on with Expendable right now. Ernest is working on muzzle flares while I tighten up our rough cut. Catman do may be starting production for our next film shortly. It's a small project compared to Expendable, we're going to take a break before starting on another huge movie. Stay tuned for further details.

Woah. The new blogger is... interesting. I'm not sure if I should stick with BlogBack or switch over to the new native commenting system. The new system has comments on a separate page under the respective post, like livejournal. Shit, I hate livejournal. I think I'll stick with blogback. Still, tell me what you think.

I'm working on a new Killer Apps page for my website. I figured I'd share useful programs and cool games I've found. I'll also be revising my links page to have some good sites.

I may have found a sport more awesome than curling. It's called a biathlon. Contestants cross-country ski with a rifle on their back. When the skiiers arrive at the target range, they whip out their rifles and proceed to shoot the shit out of some targets.

Now if that isn't a badass sport, I don't know what is.

At the guidance office once again. I think I failed my Chemistry test last period. It's kind of stupid how we get graded on practice tests for the STAR test, as our score on the STAR doesn't actually affect our grades.
This week is turning out to be kind of dumb. We're not doing much in class because of block scheduling, which is all for the better. We had to write a poem about a work of art for English class. I selected something from Boring3D, called "Tar Dipped Carrot Wired For Combat".


Here is the poem:

sitting in a bushel
one tiny, one orange
carrot is plucked
from the pack
and taken
to the vat

cast in
like achilles
simmering in tar
then lifted
our warrior
the atlas carrot

it must be brought
under control
we shall retrofit it
allowing for remote
access and we
have ourselves a superweapon.

Target [+locked+]
swishing, zooming overhead
carrot of death
is on the war path
the flight path
the doom of us all

Good times. Neight and I did some community service today, then came back to my place to tie up most of the loose ends for Expendable. I still have some more editing work to do, but the rough cut is nearly complete. We shot the missing teletype footage and re-shot eye close-ups. I think that wraps up even the post-production pick-ups, which is good news. We're probably about 83% done with the entire movie.

On to other stuff. I'm watching the entire third season of ReBoot, because that's all that is available on the white market. Does anyone have tapes of episodes from seasons one or two? I doubt it, but no harm in asking.

Also, I finally got the whole default BlogThis shit worked out. This means worlds to me. All it means to you is that I'm not going to be bitching anymore on the Catman do Blog about accidental posts. Unfortunately, this constituted about 50% of the total activity on that blog, so we may need to dust off some cobwebs before we start revving up for our next big project.

So, it's been a pretty good weekend so far. I still have to write that stupid essay for Reynolds. I'll do it tomorrow.
Generic Farewell.
-Eliot