Sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick

Being sick sucks.  Sitting around with your whole body all achy, fighting off stupid germs that want to kill you, and wishing you were well even though it means being at work instead, just blows.

 

At least i'm getting to finally test out my HD-DVD drive.  It looks awesome.  I'm pretty sure I have the flu, that's what's been going around the office.  Oh well.   At least I made it through the holidays before I got knocked out.

Thanks for the Giving!

Well, another Thanksgiving has come and gone.   Personally, I'm still in shock from how much food we consumed.  My family went to a nice hotel that was having a thanksgiving feast, it was excellent.   Everything you could want and a whole turkey on top of it! ;)  As well, once we were done eating, everyone just gets up, and goes home, and no one is stuck cleaning for another several hours.

The only downside I could come up with, was that it's much farther from the hotel back to the couch, than it is from the kitchen to the couch.  So that's unfortunate. (They didn't have couches set up that you could pass out on and watch football.)

I did have my first banana's foster made right in front of me though, which was excellent.  It's a relatively simple dessert, and I think the wife and I will be making them at home soon.   Yummy flambe!

 

Beyond that, I've been trying to get online to play some Halo 2 with the bro (he pulled me out of gears of war), but turns out now you have to freaking download the add-on maps, since they're in standard rotation.  So I'm about 20 min into downloading all this crap, once that's done it'll be game time. 

He really needs to get a 360, I want to play some Gears!! :)

Sooo pretty.

Ok, so I wasn't wrong preordering Gears of War.  It's so amazingly pretty.  I've played it for several hours, and every time I start the next level it's even better. 

 

However, the online multiplayer is tough.  I've done O.K., but there are a lot of people who are very good already (and the game's only been out for two days.)  Apparently either this game is amazingly well balanced, or I just can't figure out the trick. :)

I can't wait until someone I know picks it up for some online co-op.

Best Game Trailer Ever

So I just downloaded this off Xbox Live, and I had to come find a copy to share.  What an awesome choice of music.

P.S. they were very specific to say that this was all made IN-ENGINE, it is NOT CG.

Gears of War Cinema trailer

Whew!!

Almost forgot a big one!!  I get to buy TWO copies of this sucker! 

25 man raid limit will definately be different.  We've been raiding with a group called the Stormseekers lately.  Started out slow, went a little crazy and ended up raiding 5 nights a week.  It was TOO much.  Ended up just being exhausted all the time.  

So now we're just gonna be nice and relaxed, raid a couple days, take care of the rest of life in general, and all that good stuff.  Till the expansion comes out.  Then i'm sure it will be insane race to 70 time again.  

Tis the life. ;) 

Good lord!

 

Why is it every single year they do this to us?? All summer there's an extreme drought of games, and then all of a sudden it's time to be broke!

Here's what's hitting in the next 2 months that I will be picking up.

 

 - October 16th

 - October 17th - November 7th

 

- November 7th

 

 

- November 20th  - This one is just a possibly, it originally looked like it was going to be AMAZING, but now i'm going to wait for reviews.

 

 

 - November 20th.  What?  The first one was fun!  No, really!  And there's a casino!  Everyone loves casinos!  Also, A jetski game like wave race!  Oh, and I hear they're using the FULL processing power of the xbox 360...mmmmm... processing..

 

And not to mention, the MASSIVE bomb -

 - 360 HD-DVD player - November 17th

 

 - THE WII!! NOV 19th!!

 

 

 - New ZELDA!! NOV 19TH!!

 

The credit card companies are going to love me this year.  All this, and I won't have bought a single present for anyone else. 

Being a grown-up is awesome sometimes.

Dead Rising

So lately, besides World of Warcraft, my time has been completely sucked away by the game Dead Rising.  I finished the normal storyline weeks ago, but I'm completely infatuated with finishing the achievements.   I've literally sat and watched my character stand around to unlock outdoorsman "spend 24 hours outdoors".   It's insane.  I wonder if Microsoft knew what they were doing when they actually came up with achievements.   That they would be a driving force behind getting the most gameplay out of a game.

 

I picked up Lego Star Wars II this week.  I've only played through the first level, but I picked it up on the 360.   Which was 10 dollars more.  And why did I get it for that, instead of one of the other cheaper systems??  Because the wireless controllers rock, and my 360 is already hooked up to the system all the time.  And why is that a copout?? Because, I got it for the achievements!! ;)   It's like when I first started playing WoW.  I would think about playing other games, and realize "but that would be wasting time that I could better spend in WoW leveling.  It's another level to the Carrot on a Stick.  How brilliant.

A new day has dawned!

 Well, a new day of weblogging has dawned.  I have downloaded the Windows Live Writer beta.   I entered my weblog information, it downloaded the supporting files, and now i'm updating from an application.  I continously find excuses to not login to the website and update my blog, hopefully updating directly from this application will force me to do more updating.

Information Station!

So, my last post was on Apr 4th, and this post is July 4th. That wasn't planned, I promise.

I actually have true information for you! We have reached a major milestone in our production of this album. We now have 2 songs complete. While myspace dilutes the quality, the final versions are now online at Anything Times Zero's Myspace Page.

In other news, we've just completed a major project at work, that was a huge pain in the ass. So this is just about one of the best vacations ever. I've played a ton of World of Warcraft, gone swimming for the first time in years, and watched about a whole season of Buffy. I was never interested in Buffy when it was on the air, but after watching Firefly (The new and prematurely cancelled Joss Whedon series), the writing was so amazing my SO and I decided we needed to go back and watch the rest of Whedon's work. If you haven't seen firefly, go buy it now. It's so amazing.

Happy 4th of July everyone.

Solidifying my place in Geek History

So here’s my step towards solidifying my place in the palace of Geekdom. I have been interested in this project for awhile, and finally had the time today to take it on. Here’s the PDF I created, that is a chronological timeline of all the produced Star Trek Episodes and films. We’ve been watching Star Trek before bed lately, and it’s been so fun I think I’m going to take this on next. It'll take years, but seriously, what else have I been doing? :)

The Star Trek Complete Film and Series Chronology

Punk Band Punk Band La La La La

I should rename this blog - "The ongoing saga of two punks to get their album completed". Or maybe "How I learned to frustrate myself on hundreds of dollars of equipment a day".

My personal favorite has to be the VH1 special title - Anything Times Zero - behind the scenes, before the tragedy!

Of course, I don't know of any tragedy coming. It does make for a dramatic title though, doesn't it?? Right now, we are mired in the deepest depths of vocal hell. For those of you out there that are experienced recording vocalists, I envy you. This is definately one of the most difficult things I've participated in. Being a perfectionist, it's extremely difficult for me to accept my own personal failings, and be willing to put up with them. (I suck as a singer. However, I sing my fucking heart out. I think that should count. Let's put a sort of sliding scale into place, as long as I'm on there somewhere.)

Our album is musically coming to completion. We've laid down all the drumwork, the guitar work, and 90% of the basswork, and now it's vocals time!! So we started doing vocals. Over and over and over and over and over until we got drunk enough or tired enough to call them a success. I then proceeded to mix and mix and reverb and tweak and edit and compress and change and push and pull and tweak again and chorus.... and be unhappy. I talked to the other half of my band brain, who was also unhappy with the results. (I have to say, I've never worked with anyone musically I've agreed with more on such a wide variety of problems.... it's the only thing that's kept us going, that we do have a singular vision.)

So I, in my bigheaded I'm a super-mixing-production tech now way (Hey, I've been doing it almost a month, that makes me a pro right?), spent a couple weeks researching vocal styles. Doing critical listening to bands we like, don't like, don't listen to, and love, to find out what makes a vocal track different, what makes it stand out, and what makes it fail. By the time I showed up for the first "experimental" vocal session I had what I thought were some good ideas on where we should go. I termed it experimental because it was really going to be a controlled search for our "sound". We are both experienced and probably better than decent musicians. So of course, we spent all our energy making the music rock, making it sound good and go together well. Vocals were our last thought, when they should've been our first, because of course, as the most inexperienced piece they needed the most time investment.

So we experimented. We tried a variety of vocal styles, from Blink-182 i'm a pissed off 16 yr old lyrics, to Henry Rollins I'm the guy who fucks your mother style. RRRARRRGH. Spent a week doing that. Listened, listened, listened, and found out that's not us. It doesn't fit our style, it doesn't sound smooth, and the Henry rollins thing is a bitch to carry for 45 minutes. Vocal chord ouch.

We come to this weeks recording session. (I know, I know... FINALLY!) Chances are, if you're still reading this, you are so bored off your ass it's sad, or you're sitting at work looking for things to do that aren't work. Good show! Back on topic, this week's recording. We looked at what we'd done, what we wanted to do, and decided. We're going to be us. We're going to sing like we sing, we're going to sound like we sound (for better or worse, probably better for C and worse for me... ;P AND, we're going to be punks like we know how to be.

After all the changes, and all the back and forth, and all the false starts, I'm confident in where we're going. I think that this album will really get done, I think our second album will get done, and I think it's going to sound unique and it's going to sound like us. Hell Yeah.

I never missed a shot
The women think I'm hot
And you know that I've had my fair share

But I've still got the touch
Tu mere knows as much
I am the man, I am Jean Pierre!

Being A Producer

Ok, so we're coming down to the point where we're actually having to start putting all the mess we've created together. As a whole, we've been working on this album on and off for over a year now, and it's time to start mixing and mastering.

So for the last week and a half, I've done NOTHING but read about mixing and mastering. It's intense, amazing, and brain numbing stuff. I've remixed our first track about a thousand times, and every time I get closer, and then decide I don't like it and start over. Damn you perfectionism!!

In other words, I'm frustrated. I'm learning such a huge amount, I'll spend all day reading and absorbing information, get home and start work, and by the end of the night I'll be banging my head on the desk because I just can't get that last 3% I want.

I suppose that's part of creation, letting go. If I had my way, everything I ever worked on would just be shoved to the back of a closet, and labeled with a huge marker "NOT GOOD ENOUGH". Thankfully, while my counterpart on this album is the same way, together we refuse to let either of us succeed in doing that.

So it will be released, eventually. Vocals and production continue.

Tomorrow's Monday, unfortunately, but at least we're forging on.

Punk rock!

This is one of our picks after a recording session:

Now that's punk rock!!!

Also, while cleaning the house, this is your friend:

Now THAT'S cleaning!

I look forward to killing you soon.

Ok, so I keep watching these, and the next one was even funnier.



Wanted to share. ;)

I look forward to killing you soon.

So if you haven't seen this... this guy cracks me up.



You can see the rest at Ask a Ninja!