Brain Asylum

Gorilla

2009-02-05T00:08:00.003-06:00

Ok, so it would appear I haven't updated in a long while. Well, I have a lot to update people on, but it is getting late, so expect multiple posts in the next few days. For now, enjoy my Gorilla that I drew. I'm taking a Graduate level course this semester entitled Visual Communication. We do lots of fun and crazy things and overall just have an awesome time. From time to time we actually end up producing tangible work, such as this Gorilla here. I used Charcoal on a large Sketch Pad. Seeing as how it is my first time to ever work with Charcoal (or own a sketch pad for that matter), I am extremely pleased with the result. The process I went through to create this is very interesting, but I will save that story for later. For now just enjoy the artwork, and let me know what you think.

Riggage

2008-12-18T18:43:00.003-06:00

This is just a model I rigged up over the past 2 days. I just wanted to have something for my grad school app that shows I know how to rig, so nothing too fancy here. The model is not mine, just all the stuff inside of it.

T-Rex?

2008-12-02T01:35:00.002-06:00

So I'm kinda bored. That tends to be the inspiration for all my blogs lately. I got tired of the profile pic I was using on here since it harkened back to my hairless times long ago in a land far far away. I'm now using what has been referred to as my T-Rex pose. I hope you enjoy it, cause I'm probably not gonna feel like changing it for a while.

I'm a Bloggin' Machine

2008-11-19T23:28:00.003-06:00

Okay, maybe the title is a little misleading and a lot too optimistic. But at least I'm getting an update in! Baby Steps. I feel kinda dirty right now, cause I'm doing this on a Mac, but that's alright cause I have an excuse. I was supposed to meet a group to work on a project at 6pm. Well that got pushed back to 11. So I showed up at 11 and no one was here. Turns out it got pushed back again until 11:45. So I have time to kill... and there is a Mac Lab in the building. Crazy Architects and their Mac shenanigans. So what am I talking about tonight? Excellence. That's what. No not me (thanks though). Rainbow Six: Vegas!

It's a game for the 360 that is a few years old, but it still pwns everything else in the face when it coms to Xbox Live. See, I renewed my Gold subscription the other day cause I wanted to play Rock Band with Bill, and he was too lazy to drive the six hours to play at my casa. Once that was done with I found myself needing more Liveage and Bill was not online. So I popped in Vegas for the first time in months. It's still as good as ever. It's a shooter, but instead of tons of health and overshields and all that rediculousness it prefers to go the more realistic route. If I shoot you in the head, you die. That's that. I much prefer that to the "Please hold still while I put 30 rounds from my Assault Rifle into you" bullcrap that games like Gears of War does. It rewards stealth, taking cover, getting the jump on people, and accuracy instead of rewarding the person that can keep their aim on their opponent for 30 seconds while they both run around in frantic circles.

Anyway, Rainbow Six: Vegas rocks. I'm not to shabby either. Try it! The game, not me. I guess I'll stop my mindless ranting now. Sigh, I still have 7 minutes to kill. Sorry for lack of pictures, the whole "on a Mac" thing and me not wanted to try and deal with anything more complicated than typing is kinda putting a hold on the pics for now. Maybe next time. Which should be soon.... 'cause I'm a Bloggin' Machine.

I'm Awesome

2008-10-03T17:44:00.002-05:00

Now, I'm normally not one for tooting my own horn, but I'm pretty sure I deserve and improv award or something. So I was digging through our freezer the other day and was excited to see that we had tamales cause tamales taste good. I decided to eat those said tamales for dinner tonight so I got them out and cooked them as indicated by the instructions, which was to stand them up in an inch of boiling water for 20 minutes. Simple enough, but the crazy tamales somehow unwrapped themselves and fell, becoming completely submerged. Imagine my dismay upon learning that my tasty dinner was now Tamale Mush in boiling water.

I soon gathered my composure however and attempted a recovery. After straining most of the water out of the mush a slopped it on my plate. I then doused it in Tobasco sauce, topped it with grated cheese, and stirred. The result: It could have been worse. So that is how to turn Tamale Mush into something edible.

Goldfish...

2008-09-22T16:50:00.004-05:00

...make me happy!

Relapse of Addiction

2008-09-10T22:38:00.002-05:00

I had been clean for months. 5 by my estimate, I haven't been counting the days. But I had been free of the addiction and there was no looking back. Then this man entered my life:

Wesley Walker. Roommate and Mortician Extraordinaire. It was a simple question, "Hey man have you tried this?" "Why yes," I replied, "Yes I have." In fact, truth be told, I still had my paraphernalia hidden away somewhere. I dug it out. We partook of it's sweet honey. Once, just for old times sakes. Now we are both hook once again, it's very being pumping long forgotten energy into our veins. So much so that we are even planning trips to Houston, just to acquire a fix. That's right, my friends. I am speaking of Magic: The Gathering.

A trading card game of epic proportions. Once it grabs you it never lets go. You may manage to break away, but it will always be there, lingering. Many of you may be considering trying this "game" out of simple curiosity. Heed my words, once you try it there is no turning back. Even a sampling poses an unspeakable danger. But is the experience worth it? Yes... yes it is.

Pyrenees

2008-06-01T13:01:00.012-05:00

So this weekend 6 of us took a train ride from Barcelona to the Pyrenees. While there I managed to climb to the top to two mountains and hiked somewhere between 15 and 20 miles. It was pretty cool out, about 40-50 degrees or so, and quite a bit colder the higher we got. The first day I ended up trudging through hail as I approached the top, which happened to be where a local herd of Isards lived. The second day I hiked for a pretty long time on a very steep slope to reach a statue at the top. On the final day me and a few others decided to skip the tram ride back down from our hotel to the nearest city and spent a good while hiking the 4 miles or so. Enjoy the pictures below.

More Barcelona

2008-05-26T16:50:00.004-05:00

I had a pretty interesting day today. This morning six of us got together and walked about 4 miles to La Sagrada Familia, which is probably the most amazing thing I have ever seen. It is a Cathedral designed by Gaudi and they have been building it for over 120 years (it still isn't finished, though they currently say it will be done in 2020 even though I don't believe that.) The amount of detail in the building is simply undescribable by words. Luckily I took about 250 pictures of the sucker. We were there for about 2 hours and are going to have to go back because we didn't make it off the ground floor.

Tonight we headed out to a jazz club. According to my roommate the band that played would fall in the "New Jazz Funk" genre. They were ok. Their early stuff was kinda weak, lacking harmony, but it picked up about halfway though. Their 2 hour set was definitely worth the 4 euros it cost to see them.

On a final note the Whore Count is up to 3. Enjoy a couple of picks of La Sagrada Familia.

Cathedral, Columbus, Pig Head, Cat and Prostitutes

2008-05-23T15:39:00.007-05:00

Greetings once again from Barcelona. I've basically been spending all my time walking around the city taking pictures of stuff I happen to run into. The pictures that follow are of a massive Cathedral, a massive Christopher Columbus statue, the Open Market (again pretty massive), demon on La Rambla, and a massive Cat Statue. Also, just in case you are ever here, prostitutes solicit by grabbing your arm. That scared the crap out of me the first time it happened, but the second time it happened I was ready for it. My running Whore Count is currently up to 2, but I'll be sure to keep you updated if I am solicited again.

Greetings from Barcelona

2008-05-21T10:53:00.002-05:00

So, I finally got here! I got settled in and walked around the town a bit, it is a really cool place. Every single building here looks cool. I haven't taken any pictures yet and I just woke up from a 1 hour nap, which is the first real hour of sleep I've gotten in the last 30 or so. Due to newly arriving and sleep depravity this post is pretty much worthless except to say expect more soon.

Completion!

2008-05-06T13:54:00.005-05:00

Alright! I finally got my Maya Project finished. Feel free to check it out below, the file is about 6mb. I have a higher resolution version, but it is a really large file size so if you want to see it you will have to get it off my Flash Drive. Audio brought to you by Nightwish, John Williams, My Chemical Romance, and the fine folks at sounddogs.com

Music Reviews

2008-05-02T00:19:00.002-05:00

So I bought 2 CDs a couple of days ago. One was "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace" by the Foo Fighters. The other was "Dark Passion Play" by Nightwish. The Foo Fighter CD had two really good songs on it ("Pretender" and "Long Road to Ruin"), but the rest of the CD was pretty average. I was expecting to atleast hear something that was new and refreshing, but it seemed like the two songs that you hear on the radio are really what carried the CD, which I found to be disappointing. Overall it was decent, none of the songs were horrible, but I guess I was expecting a bit more.

"Dark Passion Play" is another story entirely. I first stumbled upon Nightwish through a free song that Road Runner records was giving away and thought they were worth giving a try. For those not familiar with Nightwish (which is probably everyone) I think they are best described as Symphonic Goth Metal. I know that probably sounds weird, but it comes together VERY nicely. I bought the Collectors Edition of "Dark Passion Play" for $20. The CD is 80 minutes long and comes in two forms, the normal CD and then an Orchestral version as well (with no words). The Collectors Edition also came with an extra song. The extra song was pretty average but every other song on the CD was absolutely amazing. $20 very well spent. I know it is a pretty odd genre, but I definitely reccommend giving them a listen. Check the video out below for a free sample =).

Fighting Game Complete!

2008-04-30T18:58:00.007-05:00

All right! So the Flash Project I have been working on is finally complete. It's fairly simple, but what do you expect out of only 5 or 6 weeks of work? You can select your level and the fighters have some pretty cool things they can do. The game gives basic directions, but you can also perform uppercuts, flips through the air, and other such things, so give it a whirl. I did all the programming while another guy did the character animations and a third guy did the menus and backgrounds. The only thing we weren't able to get in that we wanted were different characters, so you are left with generic fighters. I think it turned out pretty well, feel free to try it out below! The blog was giving me trouble when I tried to embed the game here in the post. It was cutting half the width off for some reason. If you want to play scroll down to the bottom of my blog and you'll find it.

Zombie Strippers!

2008-04-10T22:30:00.002-05:00

Ok, I REALLY should be studying for my math test that is tomorrow, but why do that when I can procrastinate?! So let's see... oh yeah my projects are going well. Have some textures and lighting completed in the Maya one and the initial renders of the first 25% of the project look solid, especially the Sun that I have.

The Flash project is progressing, though slower than the Maya one is. We pretty much have the basic character animations completed, but we are still adding a bit to the overall frame work and haven't started on character interactions yet, so we still have a ways to go.

Now for what I really want to talk about. I saw a trailer for a new movie called "Zombie Strippers" today. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. It looks bad, but I'm getting a "Planet Terror" vibe from it, which is definitely a good thing. So I will probably end up seeing it just for its absurdity. Check out the trailer below.

Legend of Zelda Movie and other cool video stuff

2008-04-07T18:15:00.002-05:00

So I came across every gamer's dream come true today: A Preview for a Legend of Zelda movie based off of Ocarnia of Time! Enjoy the trailer below.

Now the really interesting part about that trailer is that it was an elaborate April Fools joke by IGN. Yeah, my soul was crushed as well because that actually looked fantastic. Why they haven't actually made a movie out of arguably the greatest video game of all time is beyond me, but they should consider it. What kinda jerks toy with my emotions like this though? All-in-all one of the best (and most expensive) April Fools jokes ever.

Now on to something a little more real. The video that follows is a cool thing we were shown in my graphics class today. Basically it shows how a mere 3 guys managed to use themselves and video compositing to recreate Omaha Beach. It is some pretty cool stuff.

Neato huh? Kinda inspires me to do something epic, but doesn't inspire me enough for me to actually do it.

I don't have much more other than that. I did receive a pair of pink panties in the mail this week from a female whose identity will remain a mystery. I was a bit taken aback when I first opened the package, but now I see it as pretty cool since it is something few men can say they have experienced. Check out the photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2494020&id=8347147

About Time for Another Update

2008-03-27T22:10:00.002-05:00

So, I've been kinda slacking on the updates the last few days. Actually, its more like I am juggling 4 projects at once and haven't had time. Luckily I just managed to finish my rough draft on the invigorating topic of "How height differences affect gravitational force". It was probably the hardest paper I have ever had to write due to lack of interest, lack of info, and tons of technical jargon.

Another project I had was to get an executive interview with someone, so I got to visit Bioware Austin and interview Gordon Walton Co-Studio Director - Technology. We had an awesome meeting and he shared a lot of good information covering management topics (which I needed for the class) and the industry in general. I left the meeting feeling pretty pumped and excited.

My third project is the Flash project I had mentioned previously. We haven't made a ton of progress yet, but I did start typing up code in Action Script today. I already have the coding in place for walk cycles! We still have a lot of coding to be done for animations, but I don't see it being a big issue. Interface controls/responses and collision detection is where I see challenges popping up.

My final project is a 3D modeling project in Maya. My plans are to basically have one really big Space Cruiser type ship that slowly drifts pasts the screen, moving in front of a planet and a sun. Then it opens fire on the planet below and unleashes a swarm of smaller ships on the planet. I already have the big ship modeled and most of the small ship modeled. For the small ships I plan on just making a particle system and setting each particle to look like a small ship, which should be cool and handy and save a lot of time.

Finally a quick Bracket Update since I figue most people reading this don't even care. After Round 2 my main bracket has 12 of the 16 teams remaining and still has all Elite 8 teams. I've also picked all the games going on tonight correct so far. My main bracket has pulled quite a bit ahead of all my formulaic ones and is in the top 95% of all brackets in the country, which is a big improvement from what it was not too long ago.

Well, that's all I got for now! Bye, bye.

Bracket Update- End of Round 1

2008-03-21T23:44:00.003-05:00

So today was a bad day for all of my brackets. There were a lot of crazy upsets so it made for good T.V. but my brackets didn't handle it too well. The 10-7 upsets I was hoping for didn't happen, in fact I got all four 7-10 games wrong on my main bracket :\. On an interesting note, not a single person in the entire world that filled out a bracket on espn.com has a perfect score. Infact the best brackets have missed 2 games.

My Actual Bracket: 210 Points with 1320 PPR. After Missing only 3 games yesterday I missed 8 today. That is HALF the games today. Luckily all my missed picks are minor, as I only have 2 of those missed picks winning in the next round, so all my later round teams are still intact.

Coinflip Bracket: 200 Points with 940 PPR. The coinflip bracket actually did the same today as it did yesterday, picking 10 of the 16 games correctly. It has taken heavier hits on teams it projected to go into the later rounds however, so its future isn't looking so hot. It is interesting to note the 10 wins each day. Let's see if it continues to remain as consistent. If it does look for 5 correct picks each of the next 2 days, however I expect it to drop little since I gave 2 gaves each of the last 2 days automatic wins because it was a 1-16 matchup.

Avg. Margin of Victory Bracket: 240 Points with 1260 PPR. Had the best outcome for the first round, however even it had a rough day today, picking only 9 of 16 correctly after an almost flawless performance yesterday. It's lost an Elite 8 team though, so it has less potential points remaining than my "actual" bracket. It is still sitting in contention to finish the best of all my brackets though.

RPI Bracket: 220 Points with 1320 PPR. Sitting in a slightly better position than my "actual" bracket. It got 10 picks right today. Still has all its Elite 8 teams intact so it is still sitting well in comparison to the others.

All in all my brackets are all staying pretty close (with the exception of the coinflip one) so it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few weeks.

March Madness and Mascot Mayhem

2008-03-21T11:54:00.005-05:00

So I think I will begin this session by discussing the final project for my Flash class. There are 4 of us in the class and we have 5 or 6 weeks to make a game. We began with ideas of an RTS that could be played over a server. We were excited about it and quickly started throwing in some good ideas. Our professor was just as quick to point out that we were way over our heads. After seeing some examples of what had been done in previous years we agreed with him, so we had to mill over other ideas. We somehow decided on a Mascot fighting game. Its a really fun idea, but how such an idea is developed within someone's mind I will never know. Anyway, we are now starting with the 6 schools in the Big 12 South, making a Mascot fighter and a level for each. It seems like it will be fun to make and hopefully fun to play as well. If things go well and we get the game complete and all 6 schools done with time to spare we will add more. I will periodically keep my loyal readers (assuming I have any) up to date on our project.

Now on to March Madness! So, I made my bracket as hopefully you did too 'cause it is a lot of fun to do. Mine looks like so:

As you can see I am doing fairly well after day 1. I only missed 3 games and I had all 3 missed picks getting beat next round anyway, so it shouldn't hurt me too bad. I don't have too many crazy upsets, but I do appear to like the 11-6 and 10-7 upsets, picking 3 of each. The 11-6 didn't treat me too well yeasterday as I only got 1 of the 3 right. I missed the only 10-7 upset I had going yesterday, but hopefully Saint Marys and Southern Alabama can help me out today.

So you are probably tired of me disecting my bracket at this point so let's move on to something a bit more interesting. I also made three "experiment" brackets. I think they are fun to do just to see how my human picks stack up against my formulaic ones. My first experimental bracket was one where I simply flipped a coin for each game, with the exception of the 1-16 matchups. Since a 16 has never beaten a 1 I give the 1s a free win in round one. This Bracket has Kansas, George Mason, West Virginia, and Stanford in the Final Four with Stanford winning the championship over George Mason. The next experimental bracket has me advancing the team who has the greatest average margin of victory throughout the season. It has all the 1 seeds in the Final Four with Kansas beating Memphis in the championship. The final experimental bracket has me advancing teams based strictly on RPI. This bracket has Tennessee, Kansas, Memphis, and UCLA in the Final Four with Tennessee defeating Memphis in the championship game. After day 1 (which had 16 games played) here is how my brackets are faring:

My Actual Bracket: 13 Correct Picks with the 3 misses not picked to win next round. 130 Points with 1520 Potential Points Remaining (PPR, based on the ESPN scoring scale).

Coin Flip Bracket: 10 Correct Picks. Lost a championship game team (though it was the loser of the game), an Elite 8 team, and a Sweet 16 team. 100 points with 1180 PPR.

Avg. Margin of Victory Bracket: 15 Correct Picks. Only miss was the BYU-Texas A&M game and it has BYU losing next round anyway. 150 points and 1520 PPR.

RPI Bracket: 12 Correct Picks Missing the BYU-TAMU, Baylor-Purdue, USC-Kansas, and Kent St.-UNLV games with all 4 misses losing next round. 120 points and 1520 PPR.

All in all it appears the all brackets except the coinflip one are doing well. I'm glad my actual bracket is holding up well and I am a bit surprised at just how well the Avg. Margin of Victory bracket is holding up. I am interested to see how it all turns out. I will definitely keep developments up to date. Oh, and at the half Saint Marys leading Miami by 5, so hopefully that upset pick will turn out well for me.

Intro

2008-03-18T18:59:00.005-05:00

[Buster Bluth Voice]Hey, curious reader![/Buster Bluth Voice]

So I was reading Bill's Blog (chronocidalmaniac@blogspot.com) earlier today, randomly decided that I needed an outlet, and then said to myself "Hey! I already happen to have a BlogSpot account, why not use it?" It also gave me an excuse to play with Photoshop *points to logo at top* So here I am. This place will be for me to post commentaries, rants, updates in my life, random nuggets of knowledge, anecdotes and pretty much whatever the heck seems to be worthwhile at any given moment. That is assuming I manage to stay interested in this thing, as I kinda started it up on a whim and expect it to die as whimsically, but only time will tell.

As a preview of what is to come I think I will end this post by examining a correlation between the Bible and Donnie Darko that I discovered this past Sunday at church. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18. As you can clearly see, the Bible supports the Fear/Love Lifeline in Donnie Darko. I shall now take my leave as you bask in this epiphanic moment.