My video has slipped to #2. Yeah, the one I did for the Douglas Adams Video Contest. I suppose if it isn't #1 it will still be seen by the judges and will still have a chance at winning. Still, I wanna be #1. I realize that this is childish, but damn it mine is the best one there. I realize that the current #1 is probably a bunch of kids or students, but I don't care. I worked hard on that video, and it shows. Or So I think.

So now I am doing a big push to get people to go there and vote for me. there is only 15 days left in the voting process.

Voting isn't voting for the one you like the best. You choose the number of bookmarks you think represents the quality of the video. You can vote with 10 bookmarks for mine, then go and vote with 8 bookmarks for the kids. Just saying. :)

So feel free to spread the link around liberally. Encourage your friends to vote. Encourage your enemies to vote. Send it to your grandmother. Then help her vote on it. I am sure the folks over at The Literary Platform, who are the sponsors of the contest, will greatly appreciate it.

Then, when I win the contest, you can say proudly that you helped me win. And it is a far less controversial contest than the one for president and with far more entertainment value than American Idol. (Yes, I said it. And I won't take it back.)

If you are reading this after April 15th, then you are too late to help. But I appreciate the thought, and I will sleep easy knowing that if you had just found my blog earlier you would have helped me out. And you still win because you still get to see the video. As soon as the contest is over it will be on my video page.

YEAY!!!! I am SO HAPPY!!! Remember back a while ago when I said I had to use my old HP because I spilled Pepsi in my Alienware and the keyboard didn't work? Well.....a generous friend found a new replacement keyboard online and ordered it for me. And it works. And I am using it right now. I am SO in debt to this friend now. He owns my soul. The trackpad doesn't work, but I have an external mouse anyway and I have wished I could turn it off since I got the thing, so that isn't a problem. I can now take my computer away from the outlet. I can process things.....in a timely manner even. AND I can do my stop motion again. And if I get a job that allows me to work from home, I can do that. This computer isn't as powerful as I  want, mainly because I can't afford the computer I want, but it is leaps and bounds better than the old HP. I bought the HP when I didn't know much about hardware. Needless to say it wasn't what I needed when I got it. It has power issues that don't allow me to unplug it. Ever. So now I have my Alienware back, I can game again. I can take my computer wherever I want. I can go do job applications at the library. I can go write by the river.

Wow, I am being long winded. But I really have no idea how to express how wonderful it is to have this back. I don't know if my friend understands how much he has helped me by doing this for me. As I said, he owns my soul now. Boy is his girlfriend going to be mad. :P

As a side note.....you can still go vote for my video over at the Douglas Adams Tribute Video Contest. I was #2 for a while, but now I am back to #1. Yeay! Let's keep it that way...

I just spent the last 3 hours steeped in blissful nostalgia. While looking for an app for my Android phone I stumbled across a Ninentdo emulator. It allows you to play the old Nintendo games on your phone. I never actually played Ninentdo (officially). So why would this envoke nostalgia?

I think I need to back up a bit. I have always loved games. Always. I suck, big time, but I love to play them. All sorts of games. Boards games, card games, etc. My mother was opposed to video games. She was pretty hard nosed about it when I was young, though she eased up a bit on my brothers. We had a Commodore 64. Her idea of  acceptable games were Where in Time is Carmen San Diego (which I still have the 5 inch floppies for), Math Blaster and Lemonade Stand. The Carmen San Diego game came with a 1,000+ page paperback encyclopedia and a dossier for each of the Evil Henchmen. You had to determine who did the crime, get the right warrant, and capture the Henchman. I used to play that game for hours. Though I wasn't allowed to play console games, my best friend had a Nintendo. Her mom would tell my mom every time I tried to play (they were best friends), but I was allowed to watch all I wanted. I used to watch all of her siblings play and beat Mario Brothers and Zelda. And Duck Hunt. I used to help her get her turn faster by doing something to make one of her siblings lose. Sadly, to this day I still can't figure out the console controller. I prefer PC games. And I think that is the root of my love of watching people play video games. I can sit an watch for hours and not get bored.

But I digress.....

So today when I found that emulator I thought I would download it, just to get a taste of the games I missed out on. It has been a long time, and I can't remember all the tricks to each game, but it was fun. They have a copy of Where in Time, as well as Mario Brothers and the original Zelda. It has been a long time since I allowed myself to be immersed in video games for that long.

Where in Time was just as I remembered it, from the lobby and elevator down to the faulty coffee machine in the break room. :) All the sounds were there, just as I remembered them. For a moment I was back in the end bedroom at my mom's house, sitting in front of that huge machine, thick paperback book in my lap, my brother whining about it being his turn and if I didn't let him play he was going to tell mom and she would take it away. I could almost feel our dog licking my bare feet, and hear piano lessons coming from the living room. There are very few memories from my childhood that end well. It was nice for once to have an experience that jogged a good one.

Nowadays I play games that are a lot more complicated. Doctor Who Adventure games, first person shooters, LA Noir......all with high end graphics that use more processing power than all of those old games combined. Still, it's nice to go back and play the simpler games from simpler times. When 64 megs of RAM was WAY more than you'd ever need. When beating a game was the most important thing you'd do all day. When ice cream was for dinner when it was too hot and getting caught in the summer thunderstorm was actually still fun.

Hey look....they also have Duck Hunt.....sleep is just an option, right? I can live on coffee tomorrow.....

So yesterday I didn't feel up to recording anything. My allergies are getting the better of me, and I also managed to hit myself in the face TWICE and make my lip wound bleed. It was painful. So I did a lot of sleeping, and I also managed to create this:

In case you are confused, it is a positionable mount for my pop filter. Yeah, it sounds fancy. It is a clothes pin I painted black and a dark blue 16 gauge wire tied to the pop filter. I managed to make a hole in the pop filter, though, so eventually I will have to recover it. Ok, it is a canning ring with black nylons sewn over it. It'll be easy to sew another one on. But it does what it is meant to do...soften the plosives and protect the condenser in the mic from moisture. I should have done it a long time ago. I just hadn't put any brain power into deciding how to make it work.

Today I start my last week at my contract job. My contract is up March 31. I am sad. I will miss working there. I will still volunteer, but as soon as I find a paying gig I will be gone. They are all so nice, and it is fun working there. It is rare to find a workplace that is so free from drama and kattiness. Where really there are no office politics. If there are, I didn't see them. It is easy to get my work done, because I can concentrate on what needs to be done instead of worrying about who is saying what to whom, and whether I will have to defend myself against false accusations. Or, as was the case at one place I worked, have to defend my working habits because someone else doesn't understand what my job is and keeps reporting me for not doing my job. Or worry if someone else in the office is going to decide to make my job harder because they have decided they don't like me. It is nice to have a working environment that is professional and friendly and non judgemental. I hope I can find that again.

Ok. Now that i have that out, I need to get ready to head out. I will probably work more on the audio when I get home. I need to record and to cut the existing audio into spidgettes.

Also, if you haven't one so already, you can still head over to the Douglas Adams Video Contest and vote for mine. Only a few weeks left. :)

Yesterday's recording session went really well. I had one friend come by and record the lead female, and another friend come by and record the male date guy and the friend. As I still have no one wanting to record, I am going to risk the lispiness and record the other female voice myself today. As soon as my sore throat goes away. I must have been snoring in my sleep last night. :) Allergies are a bitch, and mine are coming out full force right now. Welcome spring.

My recording set up looks like this:

That's my MXL 990 USB mic with shockmount. That little round thing in the corner is my attempt and making a pop filter. I bought those when I was doing my podcast. It works very well. When I was in college I took a few classes to learn how to use it properly. This room has high ceilings and has wood floors, so it is a bit echoey for recording. We reduced that by making them put thier mouths really close to the mic, so that the direct noise would overpower any echoey noise. If there is any in there, I can filter it out much easier. I had a blast.

Now I am feeling nostalgic for my podcast. Not that one in particular, but I do want to podcast again. It was SO fun! My old podcast was the Pacific Northwest Celtic Music Podcast. Unfortunately I will not be able to do that one again. I think there are still episodes archived on the web. Some are pretty bad, as my learning curve was pretty large. The newest ones are the best, but I haven't found any of those.

So now my head is stirring around the idea of doing another podcast. When my friend was here to read the Date lines, the internal mic, which I have not gotten to work since I replaced the hard drive in this computer, kicked in, and you can hear me as loud as him when I am giving him instructions between lines. Which means, if I want to do another podcast I can have 2 people talking at the same time. If I can find someone to do it with I can record us both talking in the podcast. that is so cool. I couldn't get it to do it before either. My computer either would read one mic or the other, not both at the same time. Of course now I have widows 7 on this machine. It is less buggy than Vista (ptui ptui). Might be able to do more. Even if the processor on this thing is slower than molasses in January. Now I am channeling my inner Grandma.

OK, I am going go record some more dialog now and start working with the audio. I am SO EXCITED!!! This is so fun.

Before I leave, here is another link for the Douglas Adams Tribute Video I did for the contest. Clicky clicky and votey votey. The end is nigh (for the contest) and it is the best video up there as of now. :)

The last few days I have had a bad headache. So what did I do? I started a pair of socks. I can pretty much feel my way around crochet now. SO sadly I don't have much of an update. Today I got laundry done and dishes. Woo hoo.  Wild child. Intervention time. :P

Tomorrow a few friends have agreed to come over and record dialog. That will help. Still have 2 parts to get voices for though. I may have to do one of them and just deal with the lispiness. It disturbs me how quickly my lip gets numb. I still have scab on it too. The other day half of the scab finally fell off, but I still have the other half. It is ugly and I am sure it isn't helping me find gainful employment. I wonder, of all the places I walked into, how many took one look at my lip and counted me out without even looking at my application. At this point I have had several children freaked out by it. One was a 3 or 4 year old boy. We were waiting for a light to change and he asked me what happened to my lip. When I told him his eyes went big, he looked over at  his mom (I assume) and said in an incredulous voice "You weren't kidding!" I am also beginning to worry that this numb lip thing may be permanent. I guess only time will tell. It has only been a little over a month. I still have a numb spot on my shin as well. I noticed yesterday that I don't get goosebumps on that spot.

Anyway, wish me luck with getting good audio tomorrow. Here's to starting on the animation. *crossing fingers*

Also.....SHAMELESS PLUG....you can still vote for my video over at the Douglas Adams Video Contest. It's up to 1547 views and average voting is 9 bookmarks. Still have 3 weeks left, so anything can happen. I want to win. Confession time: I couldn't care less about the prize. I want Stephen Fry to watch my video and tell me it's cool. That would make my year. Is that weird fan stalkerish?

Here in Eugene, OR it is the second day of spring. And also here in Eugene, OR there is Snow. Piles and piles of it. Everywhere. We don't get this much snow in the wintertime, much less the spring. My inner photog wants to go out and get shots of the snow. My old creaky body wants to stay inside where it is warm. It isn't cold cold out there, so the snow is a bit slushy.

Well, I guess for now I will snuggle with my tea in front of my space heater and debate it a while, letting the nostalgia of winters past remind me why I moved out of snow country. And try to remove the dread of walking to work knowing people are driving who probably shouldn't be.

And if you are caught in the snow like me, take a minute to head over to watch my video over at the Douglas Adams Video Contest. Great distraction for cabin fever. And it has the added bonus of getting me views and votes. :)

My workspace is once more a happy mess:

I decided to take this weekend to work on set pieces and furniture. I think the cafe scene needs different chairs than the home scenes, so I made a few. Here are the results:

They aren't great. I added arms to these. The other blue ones don't have any armrests on them. It is a whole lot easier to keep these guys in their seat with those. I also made a new table. The legs of the chairs are just magnets, instead of pieces of balsa wood. They didn't need to be taller, and the magnets will help keep them anchored.

Also, I added a copy of the script to the site. You can find it here. As I said before, it's not Shakespeare, but it will be fun.

Also, I want to direct anyone to the Douglas Adams Video Contest. My video is doing very well so far. I still have a month left till it's closed, and there may be last minute entries, so don't hesitate to head on over there and take a look. :)

It's St. Patrick's Day! Yeay! I LOVE Irish culture. Traditional Irish is my preferred performing music. I am even working on learning how to sing Sean Nos. One of these days, when the lip has healed enough to not get stiff when I sing, I plan on posting some of my music.

For now, here is Oro Se Do Bhaetha Bhaile, which is one of the songs I am currently working on learning. Slainte!

May your path always be smooth and your company merry! :)

I just checked the Douglas Adams Video Tribute Contest page, and the views of my video have gone up by over 100 in the last 24 hours. That is good, right? Right now I am #1, but I keep waiting for the other submissions that will be slicker and prettier than mine to show up. :P

Getting frustrated with the new one though. I am having a harder time than I thought I would finding voice actors.  Quite frankly I am amazed that none of my acty/performy type friends didn't just jump at the chance to say shitty dialog into a microphone for coffee and carrot cake. And that there is absolutely no one on craigslist who wants to contact a stranger for same. I mean, I made the cake from scratch and everything. Maybe I need to move to the ad to a different category....

I am not sure where to go from here. I don't want to make a nuisance of myself. I could beg and plead and cajole and bully, but I don't want to do that. It is a little project that has nothing to do with anything important. I am not getting paid for it nor am I going to pitch it to anyone.  It isn't even going to be entered into a video contest. It is a learning tool for me.

So while I am figuring that out, I am busy making a list of the props and set pieces I will need. Somehow I am going to have to figure out how to make myself a mini squirrel phone. And a mini turkey. A lot of the scenes are set in the living room, so the number of sets will be low. I have decided to try to make a new computer. The old one is off white. And huge and clunky. Looks very 90's. Though I suppose lots of people still use the clunky 3 foot deep monitors. Do I want to do another paper one, or do I want to try sculpting one? These are the hard decisions one must make as a director, producer AND animator. *hand to forehead* However will I muddle through? :)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Ok. enough silliness for one night. I need to try to sleep tonight. Insomnia is a bitch and makes the days hard to focus on. Tonight I am arming myself with lots of benedryl. Allergies are acting up again, so I might as well kill 2 birds with one stone. I leave you with a picture I have entitled "Sad Dalek Just Wants To Go To Bed, Damn It". Enjoy.