Geeknobabble

I can’t believe its only be two weeks and I’m actually posting again. Maybe if I keep it up I’ll actually post more than five times in a year. This week I’m in San Clemente, CA on business, but that didn’t stop me from having an absolutely amazing weekend last week. As I said in my last entry, I was in a Jason vs Leatherface Fan Film, where I played the iconic Leatherface.

Trent Duncan, the Director / Editor / Cinematographer / Demigod, invited me to join him and Cheyenne Hess (Jason), at Spooky Empire in Orlando, FL, where they had some booths set up. He said I could sign autographs, which sounded odd being that I am absolutely nobody, but I was excited regardless of if I signed something or not. I was only able to make it on Saturday, but boy did I have a fun time. Cheyenne and I got dressed up in our costumes and immediately were crowded with photos. It was amazing how many people wanted to take pictures with us. Being a Sci-fi, Comic and Gaming nerd, I’ve been to plenty of conventions, but never horror. I have to admit that they may have some of the obsessive and knowledgeable fans I’ve seen from any genre.

I signed lots of DVD covers and a few posters and even got to scare a few kids. Though I mostly just high-five’d or waved at the kids, because I feel bad for scaring them. The coolest thing was hearing people come up who had bought the DVD from the day before and were raving about it. I don’t know what I expected, but I knew personally I thought that Trent did a brilliant job with editing the movie. Its definitely one of the higher quality shorts that you can expect for having a single camera and 12 hours of shooting.

The other day, while out here in California I got an e-mail from Trent and apparently a guy from Orlando who happens to have a popular YouTube channel and who does Horror reviews wanted to do a segment on JvL. He had already posted a video about all of his finds and he even talks about us for a few seconds at the 6 minute mark. I can’t wait to see his full review sometime soon.

I am such a freaking slacker.  Blogging is just not something I have become accustomed to yet.  Here I am, though, going for it again.  Life as always is busy and today I get to celebrate the birth of my first nephew.  Last year I became an uncle for the first time with the birth of my niece, luckily I’ve completed the set on the second one.  It wasn’t even hard.

Personal projects have been slow coming, in fact no one would even know about them, because I don’t post them.  I guess I’ll give a quick dump of the things I’ve been working on the last few months that are my own or with friends.

In late May I was finally motivated to try and learn After Effects and made my first test show with Lainey.  I called it The Littlest Sith.

I was happy with that as a first shot, but of course it was short and I wanted to do more.  Lainey had a lot of fun as well, so we started planning a second shot.  Jennifer gave me permission to build a green screen in the garage, as long as that meant I cleaned it.  I had two pieces of dry wall that I didn’t use when I built a wall last year, which became the first part.  All I needed after that was green paint and the odd thing was that in a pile of paint Mom had given us, when she moved houses, was a perfect green for a green screen.  With that I made The Littlest Sith – Episode 2

I learned after I had filmed everything that apparently to track motion I need to add markers to my green screen. Oh, well, chalk that one up to a learning lesson. I got pretty busy after this and I’m still waiting to film Episode 3. Somewhere between then and now I hooked up with a really talented Director here in town Trent Duncan.  Trent was casting for a Jason vs Leatherface fan film he was going to submit to the Freak Show Horror Film Festival. He needed someone over 6 feet tall, which I am not, but after convincing him I was ugly and that I’d take care of some shoe lifts, he agreed to let me take part. We spent 12 hours in the woods absolutely killing ourselves but in the end Trent’s amazing editing work created this:

Since then I’ve been super busy at work, but I have found a little time to start a little project with my friend John Nguyen on a browser-based game. I’ll post more details when I have something to show.

Until then…

I’m going to be completely rude and lazy by not posting week 2.  Those rankings made just about as much a sense as week 1, therefore they were meaningless.  I think we have enough data now for these new rankings to be somewhat meaningful.  As meaningful as power rankings can be.

Rank	Change	Team		Power	Record
1	0	New Orleans	94.89	3-0
2	+2	Denver		89.00	3-0
3	+2	New York Giants	82.33	3-0
4	+3	Baltimore	80.44	3-0
5	+1	Minnesota	80.00	3-0
6	-4	New York Jets	78.00	3-0
7	+2	Green Bay	70.89	2-1
8	+2	Indianapolis	68.78	3-0
9	+3	New England	62.00	2-1
10	-7	San Francisco	61.44	2-1
11	+2	Philadelphia	56.33	2-1
12	+3	Cincinnati	54.33	2-1
13	-2	San Diego	53.89	2-1
14	-5	Atlanta		48.44	2-1
15	+6	Chicago		45.89	2-1
16	+2	Dallas		45.33	2-1
17	+7	Jacksonville	37.11	1-2
18	+9	Detroit		32.89	1-2
19	-6	Arizona		32.33	1-2
20	-1	Buffalo		31.44	1-2
21	-5	Seattle		29.22	1-2
22	-5	Washington	27.22	1-2
23	-1	Oakland		27.11	1-2
24	-4	Houston		25.22	1-2
25	-2	Pittsburgh	23.22	1-2
26	+2	Tennessee	9.11	0-3
27	-1	Kansas City	9.00	0-3
28	-3	Miami		6.56	0-3
29	+2	Tampa Bay	4.67	0-3
30	-1	Cleveland	-1.00	0-3
31	-1	St. Louis	-2.78	0-3
32	0	Carolina	-3.33	0-3

These won’t make a lot of sense right now but here are my Week 1 Power rankings.  My rankings are 100% based on statistics, which is why you may see some unlikely teams in some unlikely places.  After weeks 2 and 3 these will normalize.

Rank	Change	Team		Power	Record
1	NA	Philadelphia	88.00	1-0
2	NA	Seattle		74.00	1-0
3	NA	Atlanta		70.00	1-0
4	NA	New York Jets	69.00	1-0
5	NA	Minnesota	68.00	1-0
5	NA	New Orleans	68.00	1-0
7	NA	Green Bay	64.00	1-0
8	NA	Dallas		63.00	1-0
9	NA	Baltimore	62.00	1-0
10	NA	Denver		59.00	1-0

11	NA	San Diego	56.00	1-0
11	NA	New York Giants	56.00	1-0
11	NA	San Francisco	56.00	1-0
14	NA	New England	51.00	1-0
14	NA	Pittsburgh	51.00	1-0
16	NA	Indianapolis	48.00	1-0
17	NA	Jacksonville	37.00	0-1
18	NA	Buffalo		34.00	0-1
18	NA	Tennessee	34.00	0-1
20	NA	Oakland		29.00	0-1
20	NA	Arizona		29.00	0-1
20	NA	Washington	29.00	0-1

23	NA	Cincinnati	26.00	0-1
24	NA	Kansas City	23.00	0-1
25	NA	Tampa Bay	22.00	0-1
26	NA	Chicago		21.00	0-1
27	NA	Cleveland	17.00	0-1
27	NA	Detroit		17.00	0-1
29	NA	Houston		16.00	0-1
30	NA	Miami		15.00	0-1
31	NA	St. Louis	11.00	0-1
32	NA	Carolina	-3.00	0-1

As an avid MMO gamer and a developer on virtual worlds, I’m intrigued by the possibility of a triple AAA MMO using a browser-based 3d client.  I’m very impressed by 2-d flash based games, like Maple Story and Gaia, but I have the feeling we’re right around the corner from a big game being launched like this.

Engines like Unity 3d may pave the way, but I’m not sure what its going to take, especially considering the delivery of content.  I think I may do some searching to do see if any development is done in this area.  It would mesh well as a hobby pursuit and with my job.  With the Golden Age of Virtual Worlds right around the corner, I can see companies more apt to adopt virtual classrooms if an application worked around needing an installer.

That and Adobe needs to hurry up and write a OpenGL and DirectX renderer for SWFs like yesterday.  GameSWF just isn’t cutting it and Scaleform is too expensive if you’re not making a large budget game title.

I’m just going to write, no goals in mind, just data dumps from my busy brain.  Could be about family, programming, geeking out, tv, working out and anything else I decide I want to make a new topic about.  Perhaps focus will come, I’m not too worried about it either way.

I just started using Twitter last week, after hearing about it since it launch.  So far its felt like updating my Facebook status, but I did find some random Driggett from the Bay Area when he started following me.