It's better than bad- it's good!

Nethack: the Movie Concept Art

2011-11-11T23:09:00.003-05:00

Click above image for higher resolution.

One of the many projects I have bouncing around in my head is to make a movie out of the ASCII classic Nethack. Well, probably not a whole movie, just a trailer. This is how I imagine it would look. The shot from the game I'm emulating is in the upper right hand corner. (Yes I know the dots are the floor and not the wall. Sue me.)

TTFN
-Tony

I've always wondered...

2011-11-11T08:41:00.004-05:00

If women are so afraid of the seat being left up, how come men always remember and never fall in?

TTFN
-Tony

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

2011-10-23T19:40:00.002-04:00

Has anyone's vote ever actually been influenced by the ubiquitous and omnipresent Political Yard Sign? Anybody?

TTFN
-Tony

IF: Scattered

2011-10-20T16:24:00.001-04:00

Illustration Friday: Scattered. Click image for higher resolution.

TTFN
-Tony

2011-10-16T14:32:00.004-04:00

I'm glad outlets other than (dagnasty evil and smelly) Fox News are starting to admit it: LA Times - Obama: A Disaster for Civil Liberties.

TTFN
-Tony

Censoring the Arts

2011-10-13T23:08:00.005-04:00

I'm watching Rocky Horror on cable, and it's the end of "Planet-Schmanet, Janet!" When Magenta Medusa-fies our heroes, the naked statues are censored - but only the statues of the main characters. So there's a large plaster schlong in the background that's clearly visible, while Barry Bostwick's teeny weenie and Susan Sarandon's naughty bits are blurred. It reminds me of the 90s when Comedy Central used to put black boxes over bits of Terry Gilliam's animations on Monty Python's Flying Circus. You know, the ones made from cut-outs of classic paintings. Just bizarre.

TTFN
-Tony

Reality Sucks

2011-10-12T13:27:00.003-04:00

I was disappointed today to learn that "The Seeing Eye" of Morristown is, in fact, a respected school for guide-dogs, and NOT a giant eye with lightning shooting out of its pupil hovering over New Jersey. Sigh.

TTFN
-Tony

Domestic Ponderings...

2011-10-11T20:55:00.003-04:00

Why exactly do driers have a dial that you can set to your "desired level of dryness"? Does anyone really WANT their clothes slightly dry but still damp, instead of just you know... dry? It's not like your cooking a pot roast.

TTFN
-Tony

Nerd Pondering #3234d

2011-10-10T08:08:00.004-04:00

Why do stormtroopers wear armor when it doesn't protect them from lasers, stones, or even Ewok arrows?

TTFN
-Tony

IF: Hibernate

2011-10-05T10:32:00.005-04:00

Illustration Friday: Hibernate. Click image for higher resolution.

TTFN
-Tony

I Need a Gumption Pill

2011-10-03T10:37:00.006-04:00

About ten years ago, I bought a used 386 laptop off ebay for $25. The idea was to have a cheap word processor. As my friend and very good bearded playwright Craig J. Quack (Clark) pointed out, there could not possibly be any distractions on a 386. He was right. It was, in fact, so obsolete it could not run Windows 95, and don't even think about Word. But still, I wrote, using the 3.1 workhorse "Wordpad."

Flash forward to now. I'm currently a gentleman of leisure. I should be writing. Instead, I'm resisting the urge to watch American Dad on Netflix wilst building a 50' tall walking eye in Minecraft. Why? I have no idea. Why is my mind sometimes so insistent on distractions and procrastinations instead of production and achievement? Aren't I supposed to be an organism evolved for survival of the fittest? If so, why do I have to fight myself all the time to get anything done?

The book God Wants You Dead (which is not anti-religion per se, but rather anti-ideology) suggests that instead of thinking "What would Jesus do," we should imagine ourselves as we wish to be, and ask "what would the perfect me do?" I love this idea... except... well what if the now me convinces future me to sit here and watch American Dad while playing Minecraft? I keep thinking of the scene in Citizen Kane when one character says to another that Mr. Kane will change the acquired newspapermen into "his kind" within a week, and the other character replies, "There's always a chance that, of course, they'll change Mr. Kane, without his knowing it."

I came across a great article about self-sabotage a few days ago (if I find it again I'll link it.) To sum up, it says that we're programmed from birth that for anything (love, achievement, Minecraft) to be worthwhile, we must struggle for it. Therefore, we sabotage ourselves to make our goal -or ourselves - seem more precious. Curious...

Thoughts?

TTFN
-Tony

"I knew the great and the near great!"

2011-09-28T19:37:00.010-04:00

A caricature of me by Bill Plympton. I'll never wash this cheek again...

I had an awesome time at the premiere of Idiots and Angels. When I watched the film, I felt a rush of creative energy and a desire to finish my own languishing projects. After all, I'm currently a man of leisure. The problem is that I have this wonderful ability to work hard creating and planning things, and then give up on them before they're completed. I understand I'm not alone in this.

I talked to Mr. Plympton as he drew me. I told him that I've done some animations myself. He told me that was fantastic, and asked how I'm getting my work out there. I told him I do have some things on youtube. He said I should think about festivals. I think that's an excellent idea.

Some years ago I was working on an animation called False Idols. I fell away from it for a number of reasons. I was almost done, and realized there were many shots I was unhappy with, either from the quality of the models or the changes in tone. Now I feel inspired to finish it. I've been working with 3dsMax for years, and I recently wanted to make the switch to Blender - a very advanced freeware CGI modeler / renderer. I think that would be the perfect project to get me started.

The only problem is that I have a 416 page novel that I'm editing, and I got up to page 226 of the second draft when I realized I want to make major changes to the second half. I'm determined to finish that first, but that's a post for another day. In the meantime, thank you, Mr. Plympton, for all the inspiring zaniness.

I will leave you with this quote from his autobiography, Independently Animated: Bill Plympton, the Life and Art of the King of Indie Animation: (pg 17)

"Whatever school was tries to prepare a person for, you can only become great at something by having a love and passion for it. Except for royalty, no one was born to be anything! Picasso wasn't born to be a great artist. He worked his butt off. I had a buddy in college who was a fantastic artist; he could draw rings around me (sometimes he'd use hula hoops to save time). People would say he's born to be a great artist. Today he's a check-out guy at Wal-Mart. 'Not that there's anything wrong with that,' as Jerry Seinfeld might add, but what my buddy lacked was passion for his art. I don't care how good you are - if you don't love what you do, you'll never be great at it."

Go forth and be passionate.

TTFN
-Tony

Idiots and Angels

2011-09-27T16:04:00.006-04:00

Going to see a movie premiere tonight! And not just any movie - a Bill Plympton movie!

I'm meeting some old NJ friends - Heidi, Glen, and the indefatigable webtoonist, Kevin Pease. But wow... Bill Plympton! I hope to meet him, but what can I say? I love your work, Mutant Aliens is one of my favorite movies, Was all the gratuitous sex and violence in I Married a Strange Person in response to critics possibly saying The Tune was too cute and sweet? Your Face really freaked my son out when he was a baby, I like to make animations too, what made you settle on your sketchy style?

Also appearing will be Patrick McDonnell of MUTTS fame, who is, in fact, as nice a human being as his strips.

Well at any rate, I'm at my parents' house. I had an amazingly delicious lunch, and then played pinochle with my father. He beat me by ten points. Time to get revenge.

TTFN
-Tony

Android Fanboy's Unite!

2011-09-26T07:59:00.002-04:00

I consider myself an interesting conundrum when it comes to ideologies. I try to keep away from them at all costs, and to balance my views and intakes - but is that in itself an ideology?

Like all Android fanboys, I take joy in poking fun when Apple smugly pats itself on the back for being "innovative" with features that other platforms have had for years. Mr. (or Mrs.) Wigley99, I salute you!

TTFN
-Tony

I had a dream, I had an awesome dream...

2011-09-25T20:50:00.011-04:00

Last night, I dreamt I was a kid at my parents' house, playing in the yard with my friends. Like all good Catholic kids, we played mass. We set up pews and everything. One of the neighborhood girls (ever notice how in dreams you have friends you don't know, but it just feels natural?) had a pet troll. He was 8' tall, fuzzy, fat, round and stupid, but funny. He lumbered around the yard, smashing the altar, pews, shrubs, and my mother's dogwood tree, much to my and the other kids' delight. He sat on the hood of my father's brown (black?) Buick (wow, this is way back) and squished it.

I was afraid my father would be furious. Instead he shrugged and said, "Not to worry." He then turned on a pump and re-inflated the car until it was it's original size, the dents popping back into place with audible pings. I went inside to help him put the groceries away, and he had replaced our refrigerator with a newer model. It had a rotisserie inside, but the contraption meant there was less room to store actual food.

Analysis?

TTFN
-Tony

Decluttering the Internet

2011-09-25T14:05:00.006-04:00

The idea of leaving facebook has bounced around in the back of my mind for a while. Then a blog post from my friend Rayne gave me the nudge to jump ship. And why not? It was fun for a while, but it just isn't anymore. It feels more like an overflowing garbage can that no one wants to dump. Does the internet really need hundreds of pictures of me, my friends and family? I deleted everything except a profile picture, past notes, and my artwork. This blog will still be imported, but I deleted all my apps and likes as well.

In my farewell note I mentioned Big-Brother concerns such as facebook's need to integrate everything I ever do on or offline, but it's not that so much as just a need to cut a huge chunk of clutter out of my life.

Now for the rest of it...

TTFN
-Tony

Illustration Friday: Ferocious

2011-09-24T16:53:00.003-04:00

Illustration Friday: Ferocious

(Drawn while waiting for the iTunes store to post the latest Dr. Who episode.)

TTFN
-Tony

It's All in the Mind, Y'know!

2011-09-23T12:22:00.005-04:00

OK, so here's your bizarre for the day:

Scientists have been able to reconstruct thoughts into images. There is a full article explaining it in technical detail here. To sum up: researchers had subjects watch clips from film trailers while recording blood flow to their visual cortexes with an fMRI. They then used 18 million random seconds of youtube clips to reconstruct what the viewers were seeing:

(on the left are the trailers, on the right are brain images reconstructed with clips from youtube.)

Now this is fascinating, but also frightening. What people think and feel are private unless they feel like sharing them. But I think it would be a wonderful self analysis tool. I log my dreams, and I'm annoyed as hell when the alarm clock shreds all memory of them.

Unfortunately, the way all information today is head-rushing towards the arms of Big Brother, this is how I'm sure the technology will be handled: A requirement will be that your dreams and thoughts will be part of the online "cloud" Of course, your identity will be "random" and your "privacy will be respected." After a year, the makers of the dream-recorder will change their TOS that they can sell your information to 3rd parties - and by low the government can have access... randomly and privately, of course.

All pontificating aside, NOW the plot sickens. Apparently, we can also do this with cats:

The real freaky thing is at the end, they zoom in the still of the man's face - and in the cat's mind, it's a cat-person.

I know we're higher mammals and all, but I think cat's can discern from cats and other prey - for example, I don't think they see mice, birds and bugs as small cats, or they wouldn't eat them (would they?) So.... is it then possible that we see higher life forms as people?

Discuss.

TTFN
-Tony

Two Mornings After

2011-09-10T23:28:00.017-04:00

(Me ten years ago, restoring power on the roof of the Trinity Building.)

Two Mornings After

The subway from Queens, unreliable at the best of times, crawled along at ten miles an hour. It grinded to a halt every few hundred yards. Some riders jerked their eyes back and forth. Others hung their heads, swaying with the movement of the tracks. One woman choked back sobs, wiping her eyes every few minutes with a mascara-stained tissue.

I worked at 23rd street, which is about a mile and a half north of “Ground Zero.” When the train from Queens entered Manhattan, a crackling loudspeaker informed me that my connecting train was out of service. I exited into the sunlight, passed a cordon of police and soldiers, and began my thirty-block trek downtown. Even from three miles away I could smell the burning. I tried to ignore the fact that what filled my nostrils included some 2600 people. I failed.

The city seemed deserted, empty. Anything south of West 4th Street had been blocked off with military checkpoints, so only a handful of cars were on the streets. Every few blocks, police and National Guardsmen carrying M16s stood ready, but for what I had no idea. To the south, towering above us all, a swirling pillar of smoke scorched the sky, a giant defacing the clouds with charcoal.

Along Lexington Avenue, bus shelter after bus shelter were wallpapered with photocopies and print outs. Black-ink faces smiled from white paper copies of wedding photos, family gatherings, and yearbook portraits. Each had a plea scrawled in block letters: “HAS ANYONE SEEN _____?” or, “PLEASE CALL IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION!” In time, as the elements eroded these appeals, it became clear that no one would ever call, that these tattered papers would be the victims’ only tombstones. Watching these desperate prayers disintegrate day after day made me feel sick to my stomach and helpless. This, more than anything, is what I think of when anyone asks what I remember.

I reached the New York University Dental School on the East Side, which was under renovation. The kiosk I bought my paper from was draped with American flags. The elderly Middle-Eastern man inside half cowered at the sight of me, a large, pleading smile on his face. He wore a bright, tacky t-shirt with the Statue of Liberty on it. What was his exact nationality? I had no clue. His pleading, darting eyes prayed that I didn’t think it mattered. I bought the Daily News and offered him the best smile I could muster. He bared his teeth in an empty grin, his head bouncing like a bobblehead.

A long line of construction workers waited for me at the gate. As was now the norm throughout the city, everyone had to be checked in with photo IDs. One electrician who had worked there for six months was not allowed to enter, because he did not have his driver’s license with him. “Everyone must have their papers,” he growled as he left. “It’s like fucking Russia.”

On the tenth floor, my coworkers stood at the windows in silence. I joined them, lost in the monstrosity that blotted out the sky to the south, occasional bursts of red and orange flaring up from its base. “How long ‘till they get that out?” I wondered.

“Who knows?” a fellow electrician named Tom said. He took a drag on his Marlboro. “That jet fuel can gel like napalm. It’s all packed in down there in the rubble. Don’t forget that there was the subway, the PATH station, and a little underground mall down there too. They’re all burning. Pockets of air come up and feed the fire, and the fuel seeps further and further down.” The cigarette was just about down to the filter. He tossed it on the floor, crushed it under his heel, and lit another. “Did you watch Dubya’s speech?”

“Yeah,” I said, remembering the standing ovation he had gotten from both sides of the aisle. “Hilary looked royally pissed he was getting so much love.”

“Mmm,” he said. “Bush. Asshole. Just let it happen.”

“How could he have stopped it?” I asked. “You can’t exactly shoot planes down over New York City.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-eight.”

“You’re young,” Tom said. “Never trust the government- especially Republicans. They’ll fuck you any way they can.”

“Ok,” Jeff the foreman interrupted, clapping his hands. It was 7:30, half an hour after we were supposed to start. “I know it’s hard, but we have to get something done.”

Someone turned on the radio. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” blasted from Q104.3, although it couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be called classic rock. Afterwards, Ray Charles’ version of “America the Beautiful” came on. Better, I thought. I strapped on my tool belt and tried to pretend it was a normal day.

“Listen to that song,” a carpenter said. “I love that song.”

“It’s a great version,” I said.

His face twisted. “We should just bomb them.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The whole Middle East,” he snapped, as if I was an idiot. “Just nuke them right off the map, that’ll teach them. It stopped World War Two, didn’t it?”

“You can’t do that anymore,” his co-worker piped up. “It’s not ‘politically correct.’”

“You know some kids are protesting us going into Afghanistan?” a fellow electrician named Barney joined in. He was a plump man in his mid-fifties. He lit a cigarette, sucking the smoke down like a man gasping for air. “It’s just like Vietnam again.”

“No, it’s like Desert Storm,” the carpenter corrected him. “Everyone has flags out along my block, all over their car radios, yellow ribbons around trees, the works. But in a year, everyone’s going to forget. Or they’ll just be sick of it. Right now, the Republicans are all saying ‘I told you so,’ and they’re having fun doing it. But in a year or two, the liberals will be back with a vengeance.”

“Yep,” I said. I reached into Barney’s pack and took out a cigarette. He held out his lighter to me and I took a long drag. It burned and tasted delicious. “People have short memories."

“You got that right,” Barney muttered.

How long would all this last, I wondered as I gathered up wire reels and arranged them on a pulling rack, this bizarre mixture of patriotism, anger, prayer, suspicion, love, fear, and camaraderie? How long could the government continue its tightrope act, claiming that America is in immediate danger, yet at the same time, implore us that it’s a safe place to “go out and shop?” How long were we going to pat ourselves on the back for our freedom and envious way of life, while at the same time presenting our papers at work while soldiers with automatic weapons patrolled the streets?

The first few lines of John Mellencamp’s “Ain’t that America” came on the radio, and someone cranked up the volume even louder. Across the floor, I could see Jeff raise an eyebrow at me: Was I was just going to stand around all day? I realized that however long it took for things to get back to normal, it would be a lot more than two days. I pushed my cart out onto the floor and went to work.

-TTFN
Tony

Maybe it just keeps everyone employed?

2011-07-17T16:26:00.002-04:00

Catching up with Star Trek the Next Generation and wondering why officers always carry data to their superiors on PDAs instead of just sending it to their consoles.

Ttfn
Tony

Fireworks

2011-07-04T10:44:00.000-04:00

Who knows what evil lurks...

2011-06-07T18:10:00.003-04:00

Illustration Friday: Shadows. Please click above for higher resolution. Drawn from the shadows of my dreams.

TTFN
-Tony

Classic Who Favorites

2011-05-13T14:23:00.022-04:00

My friend Ezra is a new fan of Doctor Who , and wanted to know which classic episodes to see. So, for your enjoyment and delight, these are my personal favorites of the classic series. Keep in mind that these episodes weren't meant to be watched in one sitting, they were meant to be seen a half hour a week. This is more true with the first and second doctors, as the 3rd Doctor's era began the standard 4 or 6 part format that lasted for most of the series. The cream of the crop have been marked with asterisks before their number.

Many of the 1st and most of the 2nd Doctors' episodes are unfortunately lost. One or two parts still exist of many of these, and there are novelizations of them. I've only listed here the ones that are complete (or restored with animation or narration.)

1st Doctor - William Hartnell.

1) An Unearthly Child
This is the pilot episode, but while part one is a must-see, the rest is a boring story about cavemen and can be skipped.

2) The Daleks
This, along with "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", was remade as a feature film staring Peter Cushing as a human inventor named "Doctor Who." It is officially available for free viewing on YouTube.

* 3) The Keys of Marinus

* 4) The Dalek Invasion of Earth
Like "The Daleks" - this was remade as a feature film. It too used to be available on YouTube, (and is much better than the first movie) but it seems to have been pulled. You can see the trailer here.

2nd Doctor - Patrick Troughton
As I said before, most of his episodes are sadly missing. It should be noted that in interviews, most of the classic Doctors said he was their personal favorite.

5) The Tomb of the Cybermen

6) The Invasion
Although there are missing episodes, the audio for them has been recovered and animated for the DVD (With a "Bad Wolf" thrown in for good measure.)

* 7) The War Games
The first mention that the Doctor is a Timelord, and the first time we see Gallifrey (although it's not called that here.) Last of the black and white episodes.

3rd Doctor - Jon Pertwee

8) Inferno

9) Terror of the Autons
Although there were two villainesque Timelords shown earlier, (the Monk in "The Time Meddler" (missing episode) and the War Chief in "The War Games," this is the first appearance of the Master (Roger Delgado)

10) The Time Monster

* 11) The Three Doctors
The 10th anniversary special, with, as the name suggests, includes all three Doctors. Introduces Omega, one of the three founders of the Timelords.

12) Frontier in Space / Planet of the Daleks
Technically two episodes, but one cliffhangers into the other.

13) Invasion of the Dinosaurs
A personal favorite, because it was the first I ever saw at age 9 or so. Wonderfully horrible sets that shake. Hand-puppet dinosaurs badly green-screened over film and stills. Evil eco-terrorists. What more could you ask for?

4th Doctor - Tom Baker ("my" Doctor.)

* 14) Genesis of the Daleks
While not the first Dalek episode, it - as the name suggests - explains how and why the Daleks came to be, and introduces their insane creator, Davros.

15) Pyramids of Mars

16) The Brain of Morbius

17) The Hand of Fear
"Eldrad MUST live!" (R.I.P. Elisabeth Sladen.)

* 18) The Deadly Assassin
A virtual reality world run by a computer called the Matrix that is constantly rebuilt by its users' minds? Sounds like a 100% original idea for a movie to me! if only Keanu Reeves wasn't in kindergarten at the time... (Insert sarcasm where appropriate.) Also, the first and best appearance of the "zombie Master." Introduces Borusa, the Doctor's teacher, who seems to regenerate quite a lot for a Timelord politician (and for some reason, always into old men.) Also introduces Rassilon, the founder of Timelord Society (cameoed by Timothy Dalton in the new series,) along with Omega and that other guy...

19) The Face of Evil

* 20) The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
This episode has been called racist due to the Charlie Chan-esqe casting of it's main villain by an Englishman in Asian makeup and it's stereotypical Chinese characters, but it's still a great story.

21) The Key of Time
This story arc consists of six episodes: The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, and The Armageddon Factor.

* 23) City of Death
Co-written under a pen name by Douglas Adams and guest-starring Julian (he who chose... poorly) Glover. Parts of this story, along with "Shada," were incorporated into the novel Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency. Filmed on location in Paris.

24) Shada
Written by Douglas Adams, incomplete and never aired due to a BBC strike. It was released on video in the 90s, with Tom Baker narrating the missing parts (which, of course, are the most expensive action shots.) Was re-made as a Big Finish Audio Adventure with the 8th Doctor starring in Tom Baker's place. See "City of Death."

(note) From here until the end, producer Jon Nathan Turner took control of the classic series. While some of the stories were still very good, the style unfortunately took a very "80's" turn. Bright garish lighting and costumes, deliberately unlikable companions (and, in the case of Colin Baker, a deliberately unlikeable Doctor) pastel color themes and (digital) synthesizer music. Blech.

25) Full Circle
*I HATE Adric, but it is a good story.

26) Logopolis.
Tom's regeneration, and first full story of Anthony Ainley as the 3rd (or rather, 14th?) Master.

5th Doctor - Peter Davison

*27) Kinda

28) Arc of Infinity

*29) Snakedance

30) Mawdryn Undead
A nice return episode for the Brigadier. Re-introduces the Black Guardian (See The Key of Time story arc,) but ruins the impact with a very cheesy outfit and a sense of powerlessness.

31) Terminus
A good story. No, seriously - it's not just here because Nyssa strips down to her underwear for no good reason...

* 32) The Five Doctors
20th anniversary special, with all five Doctors. Well... not quite. The late William Hartnell was re-cast with a look alike, and Tom Baker had a bug up his ass, so he refused to do it, (he appears using clips from the unaired episode "Shada" and is "caught in a time bubble") Although the story is interesting, it suffers from too-many-character-itis. As a result, Susan and Turlough are superfluous and spend most of the episode locked in the TARDIS.

Cashing in on the upcoming Star Wars hype, this was unfortunately released as a "Special edition" in the 90s. The 80's special effects were updated, but just like the Star Wars special editions, the new CGI looks out of place with the rest of the episode, and look just as dated fifteen years later as the original effects did when the SE was produced. I'm also not fond of the attempt to digitally deepen Rassilon's voice. On the other hand, the special edition does contain extended shots and some deleted footage, so it's a give and take.

* 33) The Caves of Andriozani
Peter Davison's regeneration episode.

6th Doctor - Colin Baker (no relation to Tom.)
I initially wasn't a fan of the 6th Doctor, but once the BBC realized that "complete unlikable asshole" wasn't a good character choice and they toned him down a bit (if not his clownish outfit) his episodes became much better. He makes such a good Doctor, in fact, that he is my favorite one of the Big Finish Audio Dramas - but that's a list for another post.

* 34) The Two Doctors
Patrick Troughton's last appearance as the Doctor, along with Jamie. The fact that they are both about twenty years older is ignored. (See the Season 6B theory.) Filmed in Spain.

* 35) Revelation of the Daleks
Has one of my favorite characters - Orcini (for those of you who have known me since the AOL days,) and co-stars Eleanor Bron. My favorite Dalek story of the classic series.

36) The Trial of a Timelord.
Sometimes called a 14 part story, sometimes broken into four smaller stories (Three four episodes long, and one two eps. long) It introduces the very important (though never heard from again) character of The Valeyard.

7th Doctor - Sylvester McCoy.
It should be noted that at first the 7th Doctor is portrayed as silly and fun, but later on is transformed into a dark, brooding, manipulative figure. This is aspect much more explored in the Virgin New Adventures novels after the show's cancellation.

37) Delta and the Bannermen

38) Remembrance of the Daleks

* 39) Silver Nemesis
The 25th anniversary story - hence the name. Gives a little hint about that other guy...

40) Ghost Light

41) Survival.
The last episode of the classic series.

8th Doctor - Paul McGann.

Unfortunately, the 8th Doctor had just one episode. It's a TV movie called "Doctor Who" or sometimes, "The Enemy Within." It was the pilot for an American produced continuation of the series in the 90s that was never picked up. Paul McGann is a fine Doctor, Daphne Ashbrook makes a lovely companion. Eric Roberts as the Master... meh. (I had a beard - why didn't they call me?) Good production values, but basically a very long regeneration scene and a lot of chasing. Notable for a blasphemous attempt to ret-con that the Doctor is half human. Paul McGann did an awesome job picking up the character of the Doctor on the Big Finish Audio Adventure series, and in BBC radio dramas (which were also produced by Big Finish.)

***

Notable external media:

Dimensions in Time
A mash-up for the Children in Need charity between Doctor Who and EastEnders for the 30th anniversary of Dr. Who (1993.) Utter, horrible crap, but it's fun for nostalgia's sake. The 3rd - 7th Doctors and most of his companions run around Albert Square and interact with EastEnders characters. The last appearance of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor.

* Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death
Rowan Aktinson and other celebrities star as the Doctor in a spoof for charity. Penned by Stephen Moffatt, who currently helms the new series. Jonathan Price steals the show as the Master.

* Lungbarrow
The last of the 7th Doctor novels, and the final explanation of... that other guy. Although the new series has refuted it in some ways and some people question whether it is canon, this is so far, the only official origin story of the Doctor. It was supposed to be part of the original series ("Remembrance of the Daleks" and "Silver Nemesis" build up to it,) but Jon Nathan Turner got cold feet, and the series was cancelled before it could be made into an episode. Definitely a must-read.

* Zagreus
My list of Big Finish Audio Adventures deserves its own post, but this was Doctor Who's 40th anniversary story. Again, Tom was a bastard and didn't join in, but it reunites the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Doctors. Notable for having actors who played the Doctors and companions from the original series playing other characters rather than trying to clumsily shoe-horn why everyone who ever knew the Doctor is in one place.

* Unbound (series)
A Big Finish Spinoff series, each story asking "What if?" (For example: What if the Doctor never left Gallifrey? What if the Valeyard had won? What if The Doctor was a woman?) Most notable actors playing the Doctor in these are Sir Derek Jacobi (later to cameo as the Master in the new series) and David Warner (who I would love to see as the next Doctor, if the BBC could please just get over the squee factor.)

Anything I forgot?

TTFN
-Tony

Not Still Sabbatical.

2011-05-11T11:03:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I said I was going on sabbatical. Here I am again. I can't tell you why, or my reasoning for doing the things I do. I think one of my epitaphs could be "It seemed like a good idea at the time." I plan on being cremated and dumped in the ocean. I want there to be a huge book at my funeral though, where people can write their own epitaphs as if I had a tombstone. Could someone please write the Monty Python "Decomposing Composers" joke "Still alive (year before my death) NOT still alive (Y.O.D.) (I'm looking at you, Craig.)

TTFN
-Tony

2011-05-09T00:17:00.004-04:00

I had a fun time at my parents' house this weekend, got to play pinochle with Mary. Took the kids for a walk to my old elementary school (Liberty Corner.) The whole playground is changed. There was once a log jungle gym with a tire swing and a nautical steering wheel that everyone wanted to spin, now it's just all the same plastic shit that's everywhere else. Does any one else who went there in the 70s & 80s remember there was an old car in the woods, and we all thought there was a skeleton under it? And our teachers would say "there's no such thing as skeletons!" But obviously, that wasn't true. I tried telling Joe that story, but he wasn't interested.

I need to start eating healthy again. Like red peppers, tuna fish and apples. I can still eat apples all day long.

TTFN
-Tony

PS - did any one catch last week's Dr Who? I just caught the end and there was a little girl regenerating. Guesses?

2011-05-07T11:51:00.002-04:00

Nothing exciting today. I woke up, trimmed my beard, and shaved my cheeks (on my face.) My daughter was fascinated by the process. I told her that the blade held a bunch of tiny knives, and it was just for daddy's to do to their faces, and I had to be very careful. Took a shower. Feel clean. Yay Axe.

Going to see my sainted mother in NJ today. I was up late last night, I couldn't sleep. I chatted with some friends while I worked on an animation, re-played some Half Life 2 on the X-Box (come out with 3 already, for Christ's sake!) watched some Kids in the Hall on Netflix, and crawled into bed. Maybe I'll stop at the Dunkin Doughnuts on the corner for some caffeine, but the employees there move slower than dead people. It's fascinating.

Looking forward to playing pinochle with dad and seeing my little sister for a bit. Maybe we can get her into a few games of three-handed.

I feel like re-reading my entire Vonnegut collection. I wonder if I should do it in alphabetical order or if I should start with Player Piano. I think if some Tralfamadorians looked at my life, they'd just put their hands over their eyes. Or stick me in a cage with Miss Tessmacher. (50 nerd points if you can connect those dots, and no, I'm not talking about the wrestler chick.) Hmm... the first one alphabetically is Armageddon in Retrospect, but I feel like a novel. Think I'll go with Cat's Cradle.

So I'm off, breakfast, get the kids in the car, and begin our journey. Everyone have a happy one.

TTFN
-Tony

PS - If you take off the L, you're left with XVIII.

2011-05-07T11:34:00.002-04:00

Games and Morality - Does It Matter?

2011-04-18T15:01:00.012-04:00

Throughout my life, morality in media has been an issue. Well, somebody else's issue, not mine. When I was young, Jack Chick led a morality crusade against Dungeons & Dragons that struck terror into the hearts of parents of nerds everywhere. Later in life, it was heavy metal (the music, not the magazine. The magazine was responsible for something else but was fortunately below most parents' radars.) When I was in the army, Beavis and Butthead supposedly single handedly caused every act of juvinle delinquency in the country. These are just the well known scapegoats.

And then, starting with the Columbine tragedy, videogames stepped up to the plate. The shooters were fond of Doom and Quake, therefore first-person-shooters were responsible. Gamers still giggle over Cooper Lawrence's live tirade over the sexual content in Mass Effect when she was forced to admit that she never actually played the game. When she finally did, she admitted that the sexual content was less than what was seen on late-night television. Grand Theft Auto showed us that society is fine with beating hookers over the head with a two-by-four for cash, but showing puppet-looking sex with them would trigger the Apocalypse.

I recently played Fallout: New Vegas. It's a spin-off (rather than a sequel) of Fallout 3. If you click on the trailer, you can see it's full of limb-dismembering fun, set to toe-tapping tunes of the forties. But during game-play, you make choices. Every choice gives or takes away karma. You can be a hero or a villain. The difference with other games that allow you to play the bad guy (The GTA series for example.) is that characters in the game treat you accordingly. If you help people, Elvis impersonators will run up to you randomly, thank you for being kind, and give you gifts. If you've hurt and killed innocent people, passerbys will tell you to get the fuck out of their faces. As with Fallout 3, I have to admit that the effect works on me. Even though it's just a video game, my natural instinct is to do good. I've played it a second time as bad to see what the difference is, and I found that the guilt takes the fun away.

The same goes for the Bioshock series. There are "Little Sisters" whose bodies contain a life-force called Eve. You can either free them of it which gives you half the Eve, or kill them for the full content. Freeing them of it results in a thank you. Killing them results in agonized screams. It's just a game, but guess which one you're more likely to choose.

Portal plays a wonderful psychological trick on you with its Weighted Companion Cube. It's just a box with a heart on it. That's all. It doesn't talk, it doesn't move, it's just a box like any other. However, you're told at the beginning of the level that it contains a rudimentary artificial intelligence, and you must protect it. Here's the kicker: At the end of the level, you can't progress unless you incinerate it. No screams of agony when you do, but GlaDOS (the antagonist) congratulates you, that of all the test subjects, you killed your Weighted Companion Cube the quickest. The guilt haunted me for... ok... five minutes, but still, it's just a box in a game. Why care at all?

I guess all in all it's not that hard to understand. People have become emotionally involved with characters in fiction for centuries - why should video games be any different? Portal 2 comes out tomorrow - I'll let you know how it messes with my mind.

TTFN
-Tony

"My bugs! My bugs! My bugs!"

2011-04-12T21:06:00.004-04:00

As many before me have noted, Skynet will supposedly go online on April 19th, 2011 (according to Terminator 2.) Perhaps not coincidentally, Portal 2 will be released in the U.S. on that date as well. For those who don't know, I've been eagerly anticipating this for years. But although I badly want to run out and get it, part of me is very afraid.

There's a horrible trend in computer gaming to churn out titles without any testing. Players buy a title for $50 or more, and find it's full of bugs. Some of these bugs make the game almost completely unplayable. They go on websites and complain about the bugs. The manufacturers slowly release one or two patches to fix the problems. One example is Civilization V - it's been over six months since the game was released, and the multiplayer-hotseat function that was promised at launch STILL hasn't been patched in yet.

Fallout: New Vegas is in a category all its own. It's a fun game that takes many many hours of gameplay to complete, it's creative, it's got great voice-talent and it's completely immersive. The only problem is that it's got more bugs than a whorehouse mattress (citation needed.) Some are merely annoying: I've had my companions disappear on me many times. (Go to Vault 22, and they'll magically appear on any floor but the first, no matter where in the game you lost them.) Others are more frustrating. I could not complete at least three quests because the computer simply did not know how to proceed. (I saved the cattle rancher's son from the cannibals, but the game would not acknowledge that, even with them standing next to each other. I saved the president of the NCR from assasination, but because I did not take care of the threats in a certain order, they all just stood around looking at each other. The Brotherhood of Steel attacked me in mid-mission for some reason... the list goes on and on.) It freezes many times - one caused me to get three parts of a red ring on my XBOX, heart thumpingly close to the horrifying Red Ring of Death (which basically turns your XBOX into a large footstool.)

OK, I could go on and on. The thing is, this is something PC users have had to put up with for years. The line was that everybody had different PC hardware (video and audio cards, etc.) therefore, every system was impossible to predict. As reasonable as that sounds, when consoles that could be connected to broadband internet were released, they magically suffered the same issues. For those who don't know, each brand of console has the exact same hardware (possibly different hard drive sizes, but that doesn't count.) To make a long story short, once game publishers realized that consoles too could download half-gig patches, they began releasing their games without any testing either, relying on patching to fix the bugs. I'm sorry, $50 is way too much to pay for me to be employed as your beta-tester.

So while I'm eagerly awaiting Portal 2, I'm afraid. I'm afraid it's going to be full of crashing bugs and glitches. Sort of takes the fun out of the anticipation, but I don't know why I worry. If there are bugs, I'm sure GlaDOS will fix them all. For science.

TTFN
-Tony

From the Jokes of Babes

2011-04-11T11:43:00.010-04:00

I took a trip down to Washington DC this weekend. I had a great time with Carol and Jodi. We went out to lunch with Julianne. I saw some cherry trees in mid-blossom, and some Japanese people dancing on a stage that was sponsored by McDonald's. That and lots of Hello Kitty rip-off toys.

I also had dinner with two old friends Rick and Mandy, their kids and their two dogs. Anyway, the point of this whole setup is that at dinner, we traded jokes around the table. Their son, who is my daughter's age, told a lot of jokes that he made up himself. If you have kids in early elementary school, you know what I'm talking about. Jokes along the lines of, "Why did the cow cross the road? To talk to the pig!" They're not even "bad" (I love horrible jokes with a passion. What do you get if you cross an apple with a magic marker? An apple with an X on it,) but they're told with an abundance of confidence and enthusiasm. After delivery, the kids then crack up at their own jokes. It doesn't even matter if you laugh or not, they KNOW it's great material, and they got a million of 'em. Does anyone know where I can get me some of that?

TTFN
-Tony

Procratsination, is making me late...

2011-04-07T11:05:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I’m a horrible procrastinator. And there are so many ways out there to procrastinate! There’s my X-Box 360 (A good game like Fallout: New Vegas can keep me as entranced as a good book,) TV, books, movies, and now, a plethora of crap on the internet. I can waste so much time it’s not even funny.

The question is, why do we want to procrastinate? What is it in some of our programming that is geared toward wasting time? Does God (or some gestalt entity that we’re a part of, or the Master Control Program if life is all really just a computer simulation,) say “Ok, I don’t need you fornicating with my master plan right now... watch some videos of cats playing with string, kill a few zombies, or argue about things with some troll for a while...” So why aren’t our brains geared for achievement? Why do we fight it? I’ve always been fascinated about how sometimes we can be our own worst enemies. (Well I sure as hell can, at any rate.) I think this, if anything, could be used as an argument against evolution. Are you listening, Sarah Palin?

If anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment. Go on - if you’re going to procrastinate anyway, the least you can do is feed my ego.

TTFN
-Tony

Inception: A review of a review.

2011-04-06T12:51:00.015-04:00

Catching up with the human race, I finallywatched Inception. It was fun, but honestly, I was expecting much more imagination from the dream sequences. Something along the lines of a Terry Gilliam (huzzah huzzah) film, or What Dreams May Come.

A friend of mine forwarded an article to me from Psychology Today about how silly the film is. I didn’t even like the film that much versus the hype (I give it a B+) but the article annoyed me. I'm just not sure what it’s trying to say. The guy who wrote it just seems annoyed and angry that people might question reality based on sci-fi / fantasy movies - another one of Us suffering from Arrogant Nerd Syndrome. There's a difference between believing and questioning. I'm surprised the article doesn't really deal with psychology, the writer just sort of lectures everyone else in the world but himself, and he seems to think we're all idiots.

The psychology of escapism is all there in the word escape. People's lives suck, they're overwhelmed, they have stress, they're miserable and unhappy and unfulfilled, and so they want out. They don't care about the science of it, they just want their shitty lives to be different, so they wish there was more than what there is. They want a do-over button. I admit I've felt that way many times myself, it's much easier than the work it takes to change things. I can believe in reality in my day to day life, but use my imagination to wonder what might be. Everything we experience is a model our brains make from our senses, but we know that there is so much more around us than our senses can detect (such as infra-red or radio waves) so why is it so impossible to believe there's more to the world than just what our senses can show us? No, we shouldn't live based on that possibility (I'm not going to deny my children health care because I think it will offend my imagined view of a deity who doesn't want competition in the healing department,) but we can still entertain it.

Let me clarify what I believe. Science is what theory can best be proven in repeatable conditions using the scientific method. If it does not meet those criteria, it is not science, should not be treated as such, and does not belong in a science class. People can believe whatever they like, as long as they don't insist that it is science, or that public school teachers should teach their improvable beliefs because they're "right." or "just a theory (but not a scientific theory) like anyone else's." But if it wasn't for someone trying imagine what might be, we wouldn't even have clubs, fire pits in caves, and tiger skins, we'd be using our fists and fingernails and dying of old age at thirty.

I can see his point that people who question reality are religious - I always found it hysterical that my parents were terrified about me getting too wrapped up in science fiction / horror / fantasy as a kid, but wanted me to believe that priests across the world can change - not represent, but actually change - a cardboard-tasting wafer and wine into the body and blood of God on a weekly basis. Believing in (insert your particular new age belief here) with the power to heal is a stupid and dangerous lie, my son - believe instead in the healing power of Holy Water from Lourdes...

Yes, as a semi-recovering ANS sufferer, I've done my share of annoyed bitching at unbelievable things in TV shows and movies. In the Dr Who episode "The Stolen Earth," the Daleks put twenty-seven planets (including Earth) close to each other. Wouldn't tidal forces cause sudden tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanoes? If Lois Lane fell 2 stories - much less the 20 or so she seems to in the first Superman movie before Superman caught her- especially if he was flying upward - wouldn't she just go splat all over his arms? OK I could go on and on, but you know... they're movies about aliens who can fly because our sun is yellow instead of red, or mutated green blobs in bumpy little tanks. We nerds like to act superior, but if the article writer is "constantly... fighting to suspend (his) disbelief," he needs to realize he's watching a sci-fi / fantasy thriller, not an episode of NOVA. 2001, A Space Odyssey was intended to be the most scientifically accurate sci-fi movie ever made - but it still had wormhole space travel, (off-camera) aliens, and a super-evolved space-fetus at the end. To sum up, I think the writer just needs to get over himself and get laid. Life is too short.

TTFN
-Tony

The View from My Thinking Chair

2011-03-30T17:03:00.006-04:00

In case you ever wondered.

TTFN
-Tony

Blindfolded

2011-03-23T13:56:00.005-04:00

My friend Caroline recently posted a video on her facebook wall where a woman drew a blind self-portrait. (It's not clear if she's actually blindfolded or not. She says she doesn't look at the paper, uses a white crayon, and then paints over it with watercolor to make it appear.) I decided that would be interesting to try, so I used a face-massage mask:

It seems even in my minds eye, my eyebrows are my most prominent feature. At least they're not up my nose. Give it a try let me know how it works out.

TTFN
-Tony

I Really Want to Know...

2011-03-19T20:47:00.004-04:00

Let's settle this once and for all. Are there ANY men out there who find it attractive when women pout their lips for pictures?

TTFN
-Tony

"But seriously, some of my best friends are gay..."

2011-03-18T09:27:00.008-04:00

Truth time: Has anyone else ever wondered if the Mail Song from Blues Clues is meant to be homoerotic? (And no I'm not going on a Tinky-Winky / Spongebob witch-hunt here, I'm just curious if it's a hidden-in-plain-sight inside joke.)

TTFN
-Tony

Blargh!

2011-03-15T23:25:00.004-04:00

I'm a sort of OTC med coma at the moment I want to lay down but it doesn't matter I don't really sleep I just sort of lie there and I guess I probably do sleep but it's not like real sleep. A badly animated cartoon dog on yellow paper is going to tell me I have problems, that I disappointed it. I haven't done any editing in two days I can't concentrate enough. I did however work out a plot-issue that had been bothering me for some time, so maybe it's better that way. My muscles all feel sore. Wah.

So that was my day. I took a nice long nap, I got up, I checked my mail, I took another nap, I farted around a little on my Android, I took another nap, I talked to some friends, I saw some wonderful caring notes from friends, I wrote some other friends, and they told two friends... and they told two friends... (Ask your mom.)

In other news, the Obama Administration wants to make streaming copyrighted video a federal felony, and invoke wiretapping privileges to catch perpetrators. Where are all the watchdogs crying Nazi like when Bush did the same thing to catch terrorists? I disagree with a lot in the Patriot Act, but I think catching terrorists looks a little better on paper as an excuse than protecting Hollywood's interests. (Obligatory Disclaimer: I believe that people should have legal recourse to sue for just compensation when their work is stolen, but isn't this pushing the envelope juuuussst a little bit? Why is it evil for one party to sell out our laws and tax dollars to corporate interests, but ok for another?)

OK friends and neighbors. Going to have one more cup of tea, some Thermaflu, and try to get some more sleep, if you can call it that.

TTFN
-Tony

Sick and Whiney

2011-03-14T23:32:00.001-04:00

I can't sleep. It feels like there's cotton candy in my skull. Lots of drugs in me. "When I was a child, I had a fever, my hands freely just like two balloons..." When I cough it's like there's sand in my lungs and my head hurts from the pressure and my throat burns.

The Japanese situation in a nutshell: It's horribly sad and whoever says it's payback for Pearl Harbor seems to have forgotten two atomic bombs and needs their heads kicked in. Oh wait, I forgot to mention people convinced it's a sign of the apocalypse. Not exactly sure why some people aren't just happy with the idea that they'll die someday, they want to take everyone else worth them in one fell swoop, or why their idea of God is vengeful and punishing. To each his own I guess.

Don't have any uplifting words tonight. That's ok. I don't have to be uplifting. I got to cuddle with my sick Mandy-Pandy and watch Futurama, Blues Clues, & Arrested Development with her. She lost a tooth today, but says she not only doesn't want the tooth fairy to take it, (though she wanted it under her pillow) she still wants her dollar. The kid has a bright future working for the IRS or an insurance company.

I have to go put a dollar under her pillow and try to get some sleep. Goodnight, all.

Ttfn
-Tony

Internet Jokes I'm Sick of Seeing.

2011-03-06T21:01:00.011-05:00

1) Snappy answers to test questions:
You all know what I'm talking about. There's a high-school exam with physics problem showing the Earth orbiting the sun. An equation for velocity is given, and the problem asks how fast the Earth is going. The student draws in a mutant space hamster kicking the Earth and adds something about it to the equation. The teacher writes, "SEE ME AFTER CLASS, JOHN!" in red pen. Mildly humorous the first hundred times I saw it or its ilk. 90% are probably fakes.

2) facebook comments in a historical setting:
Jesus: Ow, these nails hurt
Pilate: Should have listened to me, bro!
Mary Magdalene: What about our baby?
Judas Iscariot: Dude, use some Chapstick!

Ok, wait, that one is actually funny. But most aren't.

3) Mom of the year photos:
Some trampy looking chick with her hands barely covering her naked boobs vamping in front of a webcam, while in the background a baby is smoking on a bong while cleaning out an AK47. Just don't care.

4) Your version of anything:
If I'm looking on YouTube for the scene from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask where the 50' breast ravages the countryside, it's because I'm too lazy to get off my ass and put my DVD in the laptop - not, I repeat - NOT because I want to see YOUR re-edited version of it with some parts in black and white, new music, and intermittently sped up and slowed down like Zach Snyder during sex. Woody Allen is a comic genius. You are not.

5) Iphone auto-corrected text snafus:
Me: I'm picking up your mom from church later.
You: Thanks! She says she wants you to bring her book of hymens and her favorite vibrator that looks like Magilla Gorilla.
Me: WHAT???
You: Oh, #$@!'ing autocorrect - she said she wants you to bring her book of hymns and her favorite vibrator that looks like Magilla Gorilla.
Me: Whew, you had me scared for a second!

Again, 90% are probably fakes.

6) RickRolling:
Never was funny, never will be.

I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them right now. Please feel free to add your own.

TTFN
-Tony

Thoughts that Keep Me Awake...

2011-02-24T09:18:00.004-05:00

I was watching "The Princess and the Frog" with Mandy, and some firefly just wrote a flaming heart with an arrow through it on a tree with his butt. This means that either

A) The firefly's butt is about 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

B) The firefly tore open its own flesh and scraped its biolunincescent innards out all over the bark, just for the pleasure of its cruel, thankless Disney masters.

Discuss!

TTFN
-Tony

Fabricating a Meme?

2011-02-21T20:54:00.006-05:00

A few years ago, the word "Zombie" started popping up all over the internet. I have no idea if this was a happenstance trend, or if it was secretly fabricated by the entertainment industry. Along that vein, is it just me, or is the word "Hipster" - probably not seen or heard in fifty years - inexplicably appearing everywhere? If so, can someone please explain? Even better, can someone make it stop?

TTFN
-Tony

Sigh...

2011-02-17T14:11:00.004-05:00

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick. Just imagine if instead of over-reacting to pranks like this, the government used the same time, effort and taxpayers' money hunting down REAL internet child pornographers. Wouldn't that be amazing? The only problem is it would take hard work and the results wouldn't be instantaneous and sensational. As the parent of two young children, I say just give the jackass some community service with abuse victims so he realizes his bullshit isn't funny and move on.

TTFN
-Tony

The Illusionist

2011-02-16T14:47:00.002-05:00

At Kew Gardens Cinema in Queens waiting for The Illusionist to start. Ok, there's commercials, but the SOUND ISN'T OPPRESSIVE like it is at every other theater, and the ticket was only $7 which is like traveling back in time to the '90s for NYC. The employees are all dressed casually, there are classic film posters in old movie frames, and they look OLD, they weren't bought yesterday from a poster mill and put in new frames.

If anyone has ever seen American Beauty, I was like Kevin Spacey, except instead of being happiest in my teenage years flipping burgers, I was happiest projecting at Bernardsville Cinema in NJ before Clearview bought it and ruined it. Friends would come and hang out, we would bring our guitars and play in the lobby on slow days, my friends Greg, Marietta & Jen worked there, we would make fun of the owners, (MORE CORN!) who, to be honest, were always nice to me- she even let me bring a small tv so I wouldn't miss Dr Who on PBS- I would make comic strips about the other people who worked there... all in all good times.

Ok watching these slides... Fergie & Her Black Eyed Peas won three Grammys? Was one for the shittiest, most embarrassing half-time show of all time?

Ok the movie's starting.

TTFN
-Tony

Buying Air, Plastic & Cardboard from Nabisco

2011-02-10T13:47:00.008-05:00

A brand-new box of "Family Size!" Triscuits: (Yes, the box has obviously been opened, but how would I know what was inside if I hadn't opened it?)

What's inside: 9.25" of box - 4" of air = 57% crackers.

Maybe it's time to buy stocks in cardboard and plastic.

TTFN
-Tony

Well what do you suggest?

2011-02-08T17:56:00.003-05:00

In a diner in Brooklyn having pancakes & watching the news. CNN wants to know how I'd rate President Obama's "handling" of the protests in Egypt. Not sure exactly what he's expected to do...

TTFN
-Tony

From the 2nd Letter of Fergie to the Corinthians

2011-02-07T14:29:00.002-05:00

And yea, the Lord spake, saying "Slash, thou shalt not sell out and mix with the likes of the Black Eyed Pisum Sativum, even if thy bowl not just be merely great, but super." And so was it written, Amen.

TTFN
-Tony

Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

2011-01-31T22:22:00.004-05:00

Illustration Friday: Surrender. This is a frame from a comic- please click on the above for the full strip on I Can Bend Paperclips!

This week's Illustration Friday word is Surrender. As some of you know, I'm a fan of Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. However, after twenty years and five different versions, it's still pretty much the same, and I've wondered how the game would be if it reflected real life. And when I look at real life, it seems that somehow, without even realizing it, "We the People" have surrendered our civilization.

TTFN
-Tony

Google is Pissing Me Off...

2011-01-30T12:12:00.005-05:00

For years my search engine of choice has been Google, because it is no-frills, simple, fast, and has a supposed mantra of "Don't be evil." Recently, however, I've become disenchanted with it.

First of all is the issue of "Google Neutrality." Lately, no matter what search parameters I use, (exact phrases, advanced search, quotation marks,) the sites that pay Google the most rise to the top of my searches, even if they don't actually contain all the words I'm searching for or are the most relevant. I'm not so bothered by this as I understand Google is a business, just annoyed. However...

The second issue is privacy. I have an Android (Captivate, running Cognition's version of 2.2 as Samsung and AT&T refuse to do right by their customers, but that's a bitch for another day...) I use Dolphin Browser HD because it has a private browsing option that the standard browser doesn't (cleaning out history, cache, forms, passwords and cookies whenever I close it.) Now, you may ask why would I want to do those things? Am I just being paranoid? Well...

No matter what I do, Google Mobile somehow saves my searches.

I have no idea how it does this. I keep background data and sync off unless I'm accessing the Market, and I am not signed in on a Google account. Now - this is where Google gets sneaky, pay attention. Google has it's own preferences, and one of them is remembering your search history. You can turn it off - but as the default is always on - that requires you to KEEP GOOGLE'S COOKIES. Get it? As Google somehow knows how to recognize my phone (for those who don't know, the Android platform is owned by Google) it saves my searches - unless I keep Google's cookies, which means actually giving them permission to track my online doings. Yes, I can manually clear my searches every time I use the Google, but why are they being saved at all? Where are they being saved? At Google central? On my phone? Is there a hidden cache? To make a long story short, as long as I use Google on my Android, there's no way to keep them from collecting information on me. Yes I can use other search engines, but that's not the point. The right to control over my own privacy and transparency over how my information is being stored and collected is.

TTFN
-Tony

Dusty

2011-01-26T08:02:00.004-05:00

Illustration Friday: Dusty. Please Click above for higher resolution.

TTFN
-Tony

"Tonight on 'It's the Mind"..."

2011-01-11T21:40:00.004-05:00

Illustration Friday: Deja Vu. Click above for more betterer resolution.

TTFN
-Tony

Another Day...

2011-01-06T12:24:00.005-05:00

So here I sit, at my little laptop. I haven't been for any walks yet today. I went out last night to my New York Cares orientation (I joined a volunteer service so I don't get stir crazy during the day) in the Bronx. Last Thursday I visited an old friend Craig J. Clark (Quack,) a very good bearded playwright who was visiting his mother in New Jersey. I've worked on my game, but I'm coding the inventory buttons and there are so many functions and ifs, thens, and elses for each one that it's making my head spin, and I'm correcting problems that aren't really problems and turning around and saying "shit, why did I do that?" and undoing it. I find myself singing Pink Floyd's line, "And I - can - feeeeeeeeeel... one of my turns coming on..." over and over in my head - is that a sign of something? I find myself reading more and more Manga (because it's so quick to go through) but our library's Manga section is shit - there's a much better library a few miles away but I'm not sure I feel like spending the bus fare. Normally I'd walk but it's just to bitter out.

It's supposed to snow again.

I satisfied my mei-fun with pork jones yesterday, can't do that every day...

Maybe I'll put on a shadow puppet show for myself! I wonder if I can do that without it getting too complicated... I have a tendency to be complicated. If I had written Goldilocks and the three bears, Goldilocks would have been and eco-terrorist and the bears would have been genetically altered with super-intelligence (to live in a furnish house and cook porridge etc) by her right-wing mad scientist parents who abused her as a child...

Well anyhoo, back to distracting myself from life. Everyone take care

TTFN
-Tony

Public Transport

2010-12-22T12:06:00.001-05:00

I'm on the bus to meet my mom and sister Mary in Manhattan. One of the things I hate about winter is that I have to bundle up against the freezing cold, but then the bus is like an Easy-Bake oven. Do you know it's only recently I found out that those things worked by using a high-watt light bulb? (My sisters never had one.) When I was a kid I set fire to my socks once because I tried to warm them on a lightbulb. Or how about when I wanted to try hand-drawn animation in high school, and I used this tracing table we had since we were kids, but the low-watt bulb burned out and I replaced it with a regular one, and it melted the opaque plastic? Or how about when I used my father's super-8 camera at night and it had a halogen light (without a protective glass I may add) and I tried masking it for a shadow effect by duct-taping two wooden rulers in front of it- and within seconds they exploded into flames? In my defense, my father was with me and didn't expect that to happen either. In short, I have a bad history with lightbulbs, which is kind of funny since I'm an electrician and playing with lightbulbs is sometimes the entire job.

Did I mention that the lightbulbs in my room have been burnt out for almost a week now, and I keep forgetting to buy more? I've been using my anti-depression lamp. I don't know if it actually does anything for my mood, but obviously it's no help with memory or procrastination.

Now I'm on the subway, listening to "Wish You Were Here." I'm standing and holding onto a pole. I'm impressed I can hold this in my hand and swype with my thumb.

On the subway home, at least I have a seat this time. Had a wonderful day despite being anointed with pigeon poop. At least it was just on my coat...

I'm listening to Tom Lehrer. The woman next to me is engrossed in a book and I can't help wishing it was one of mine. I'm going to make that a goal, to write a book that people will want to take on subways. I'm a little tired and at Queens Plaza. I'm going to take a little nap. Be right back.

On the bus now after my little nap. Once again I feel like stripping down to my boxers to avoid feeling like a light-bulb-baked cupcake. Are boxers indecent exposure? What if I was wearing denim shorts? Or denim boxers for that matter. Hmmm that would chafe the goods me thinks. I'll resist the urge somehow.

Almost everyone on this bus has some sort of device, all of us with our phones, texts and mp3s, all of us in our own little worlds trying to blot out this one, even though it can be quite beautiful at times. Could that be one of there wishes- to find the world so interesting I don't need distraction?

ttfn
-Tony

Adventures in Apps Pt 2: Making Android App Inventor My Bitch

2010-12-10T22:48:00.006-05:00

Using the procedure I mentioned in a previous post, I found a way to make multiple screens for the adventure game app I'm developing for Android. Each room is a separate table screen-arrangement, with lots of true/false if/than 1/0 clauses to decide which and when each room is visible. I have to break each image up into tiles. Each tile then becomes a separate picture or button. I've found the awesome freeware paint program GIMP to be best for this, because it easily lets me enter the quantities for size and position of the box select tool. The easiest way for me right now is to list the starting coordinates and sizes of each column and row for each room before I start:

I then had a dilemma. I want to have text notifications across the bottom of the screen, but when I make a table, each item in a column has to be the same size as the others (the same with rows.) I decided to make another table, this one with a text window and a button to look at the inventory or show what current (if any) item is picked. Again, this requires a plethora of variables and clauses to make sure if and when something is showing. Also, I had to use a timer to make the text disappear after a few seconds. This wasn't anywhere near as simple as it should be, but I have it figured out.

Yes, this was my bedroom. I've tried to turn back the clock to the way my parents' house was back in the 70's and 80s.

I have two worries right now. First of all, I don't know what happens when I run out of room in the block editor. I've just started and it's already pretty full. Second of all, there are a lot of functions for each room. I'm trying to keep a list of what procedures I have to do for every new room or line of text, but I can see that debugging is going to be annoying.

TTFN
-Tony

Cleopatra: Queen of...

2010-12-08T18:11:00.006-05:00

Civilization V is a crappy game that does not live up to the hype or expectations. What's worse, it actually has less features than previous Civ games (No "Hotseat" multiplayer, no religion, a "streamilned" (read "less than before") technology tree, no animated scenes for wonders or victories...) basically, it's the same exact game it has been for twenty years, but with a prettier engine, and with less actual gameplay quality than before.

Whoever runs Civ V's facebook fan-page has been triumphantly announcing award nomination after award nomination for the past month. Each one winds up getting about a hundred jeering, smart-ass comments from pissed-off players, along with a few words of support - yet they cheerfully keep pumping out announcement after announcement. They have every right to self-promote, but after a point I have to wonder if they're just living in denial, or if the PR department is making bets on how many complaints they can receive.

TTFN
-Tony

Adventures in Apps, part 1.

2010-12-07T18:54:00.011-05:00

A few years ago I bought a wonderful program called Adventure Maker. It's great for making 90's style multimedia adventure games for the PC. The only problem is... no one buys multimedia adventure games anymore. I've been working on a game on and off for years as a hobby. After becoming an Android fanatic, I decided to look into how to make an Android version of my game. I've been trying to teach myself Java (or the Android version of Java, which is frustratingly different) and... it's been very slow going.

Enter Google with its new program, The Android App inventor. It seemed like the answer to all of my prayers, but the process has become very very frustrating. Before I start kvetching, let me make a few things clear. 1) The program is free. 2) It is still in it's beta testing phase. 3) There are many helpful programmers who answer questions and give advice in the forums, even if only to say "We're working on it." To sum it up, it's a wonderful program if you want to make apps that have text and buttons but limited graphics.

OK, let's get to work.

I followed the instructions, but I can't link my phone to work in real time with the program. Annoying, but no big deal, I'll just upload my apps to my phone and test them that way.**

**Addendum: 12/8/2010, they have updated block editor and this issue is fixed.

Next step, let's look at the empty designer screen window in the app inventor. Oh wow, it's drag and drop, that's so simple... oh dear. The screen seems to be for the old G1 Android. The low-res screen isn't the end of the world, but it has a different aspect ratio than my WVGA Samsung Captivate. Alrighty. Can I change the screen size?

No.

Hmm... this puts me in a bit of a pickle, because now the buttons I put on my screen won't line up with the background images. It's just spreading the buttons out along the length of the screen. Sigh... I'll figure out a work around, maybe some forums will help me. But it's not too bad. Once I figure it out, it's just a matter of going from screen to screen, kind of like a web page. OK, I have a basic test pattern for screen-1. Now how do I make screen-2.

I can't. There's only one screen.

Well according to the forums, there is a workaround someone has figured out... I guess I'll have to Google it and research that too... Well... let me make a test app, it will be nice just to see a program I make work on my phone. Let's install it and...

And it wants phone contact and full network internet access permissions.

Why does the program I wrote need those things? I didn't put anything like that in there. Lots of Android users - myself included - are wary of apps that need internet and phone access for no reason, because of data usage and privacy concerns. Is there any way to change that? Is there even any sort of explanation for that?

No.

(Inner Homer: Urge to kill... rising....)

TTFN
-Tony

Surroudned by Idiots, Outnumbered by Boobs...

2010-11-27T11:14:00.002-05:00

Sarah Palin is a blithering idiot, but I agree with her that Obama has also made a string of gaffes that everyone but FOX news ignores. Can't we just pass a law banning idiots from politics, or would there be nobody left?

TTFN
-Tony

The Slope is a Might Slippery...

2010-11-27T02:22:00.005-05:00

Please try and answer the following quiz:

Today, Homeland Security seized a group of dot-coms they suspected of:
a) supporting terrorism
b) drug trafficking
c) child pornography
d) copyright violation.

And of course, the correct answer is…

d.

Read that again.

Homeland Security- the part of our government that is funded to fight terrorism, is now seizing web sites - not serving them notice- seizing them - based on the accusation of copyright violation.

Oh yes, and for selling knock-off handbags.

Look, everyone feels differently about copyright violation on the internet, but this action is a dangerous foot in the door. If this happened during W’s presidency, everyone would be screaming “Nazis!” at the top of their lungs. No, I don’t care about protecting the rights of copyright violators. What I do care about is the frightening precedent this is setting. What sort of sites will Homeland Security be shutting down five years from now? Ten years from now? With what cause?

There are young adults who have never lived in a world without the internet. They don’t realize that before they were born, only the government and the major broadcasters controlled all the communication and information across the world. When I was in high school it was inconceivable that someone could write an editorial or make a video or draw a picture in his living room, and anyone in the world who wanted to could read or watch or see it immediately - or, that you could read or see or hear any information that someone across the globe made available. That’s a freedom that is new and amazing and wonderful. The ability to be seen, to have your voice heard, or to hear the voices of others anywhere instantly is a new right that should be protected at all costs, and this, my friends is the proverbial slippery slope your mother warned you about. Totalitarian changes don't happen overnight, they happen inch by inch.

OK, you say, but I care about copyright. I don’t want my own work stolen. I agree – I don’t either. People’s work shouldn’t be stolen or used without permission. That’s why we have civil courts, so people can be sued for just compensation. If the government must get involved, then suspected site owners could be subpoenaed, and, if they are found guilty in a court of law after due process has been served, then have their sites taken away. But my tax dollars should not be going to make Homeland Security into the personal police force of Viacom, Turner and Disney (and handbag designers.) That’s what really burns me. Not only is our government bending us over for its corporate masters, but it’s trying to hide it under the umbrella of Homeland Security. Please please please, President Obama, please make the connection between terrorism and copyright violation for me in your next speech. I’d love to hear it. I keep thinking of the Family Guy gag where Lois runs for mayor, and all she has to do is say “Nine Eleven!” over and over and over again to get away with whatever she wants. Uh oh, I just quoted a television episode. It’s been nice knowing you.

TTFN
-Tony

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T15:48:00.004-05:00

I'm at my parent's house. When we were kids we always went to my grandmother's house in Brooklyn for Thanksgiving. (And why do I automatically think of it as just her house instead of both my grandparents'? Probably because my grandfather was so relaxed while my grandmother was loud and fiery.) Turkey has been eaten, I've had the drumstick as always. I've never liked white meat, it's too dry and bland. My mother put on Snow White for Mandy but she's not interested, so I'm sitting on the couch eating twisted wheat pretzels keeping mom company. We watched it a few months ago. Once again I'm amazed at what a beautiful labor of love it is, (though I'm sure Disney ran a sweatshop that would have put Kathy Lee Gifford's to shame,) while being bored to tears by the story itself. Oh well, my mother sat through years of Monty Python and Doctor Who just because she wanted to enjoy my company, and her company is priceless. Fifteen minutes of dancing dwarfs is a very small price to pay for it.

I've played there games of pinochle with my father and lost two of them. For some reason I can't fathom BBC America shows nothing but Start Trek TNG every time I'm here. I think their excuse is that Patrick Stewart is British. Most of the episodes they're showing today are so boring I want to cry. Give me Kirk and Spock any day, although anything's better than Voyager. Yes, I suffer from Arrogant Nerd Syndrome.

I'm going to visit my friends Troy and Chris at their parents' house. The Witloxes are good people and have always been friends to me. For them and all the other dear friends in my life I am very thankful.

TTFN
-Tony

IF: Sneaky

2010-11-20T23:19:00.006-05:00

Illustration Friday: Sneaky

It's been a while I know, but I missed contributing to Illustration Friday. Click above for higher resolution.

TTFN
-Tony

What do we want? APATHY! When do we want it? MAYBE SOMEDAY!

2010-11-02T10:44:00.012-04:00

OK, I'm going to tell everyone my shameful secret. I'm sure some of you share my affliction, but you're too ashamed to admit it. I'm here to tell you you're not alone. You don't have to be ashamed anymore.

I'm an apathetic voter.

The American two-party system has become a ridiculous us vs. them shell game that keeps anything from getting done on a national or even state scale, (I think local politics DO make a difference, actually- things are controlled best at their lowest levels- I'm not talking about that) and I don't see how I'm wrong by refusing to play the game anymore.

I'm sick of being given two package deals - both which are full of some good but mostly bad ideas, and told that I have to chose between one of them or I'm a perverted, bad, evil twisted four-legged smelly disgusting creature. Fuck that noise, I'm sick of it. People tell me that if I don't vote, then someday we'll have no choice. I hate to break it to you, but we don't really have a choice now. If I don't perpetuate and champion the illusion of choice, will that illusion vanish? Is that what everyone is really afraid of?

I'm sick of being told that because I'm a blue-collar worker I HAVE to vote for a party which has done nothing to help us in recent years, under the logic that the other party would probably make life even worse for us. I'm sick to my stomach of being used as a hard-hat wearing voter trophy by people who aren't actually helping me.

See, I don't agree with the current administration's failed economic policies and laughably transparent propaganda (Apparently the recession ended in June 2009 - may Obama be praised - this is just the slowest economic recovery period in U.S. History. Up your ass with broken glass, I just got laid off again. I can't survive on working 4 months a year.) But the thing is - as with the Democrats when Republicans were in power - the Republicans have NO PLAN OF THEIR OWN! They talk about taking the country back by teabagging each other but they don't say HOW. Yes, served in the military, yes, I have some conservative leanings. But the Republicans have become a party of morals instead of ideas, and you can't run a country without ideas, and just assuming that your morals should be everyone's morals. How can people look at Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnel and say "Well, yes, they have no practical experience, or ideas, and every time they open their mouths they show off their ignorance and blithering idiocy but... they're against the same things I'm against, so I want them to run the country!"

People who want to teach creationism (or Intelligent Design) in a science class scare the living shit out of me. Seriously. Most of the shit I have is dead. It floats or sinks in the toilet based on what I've eaten. But when Christian-right politicians want to get a foot in the door and push us back toward the dark ages, it comes out of me alive and screaming and wriggling... oh God what the hell is wrong with people? I've asked this before - but if you think we're God's instruments and here to do God's work, then shouldn't you want to know how the world ACTUALLY works rather than how goat herders thousands of years ago assumed it worked? Hasn't God answered prayers of healing by helping humanity discover penicillin - WHICH WORKS BY FUTHERMUCKING EVOLUTION? Wouldn't your children better be able to do God's will if they knew the truth about his creation? WELL????

And Democrats aren't any better. You may all have your push-button issues, (LGBT rights, for example) and I may sympathize and agree with some of them. But you're just as bad. You all assume that because YOUR crowd agrees with some of the things you believe in or claim to have sympathy or understanding for you and yours that they should be running the country, and every bad choice and mismanagement should be forgiven because of that. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. It's just all a way to keep an us vs. them mentality running in this country so nothing gets done.

So no, I'm NOT voting today. I honestly don't see the point. I could pretend that I am, that my vote would somehow make a difference, would keep the world safe for democracy, but it ain't going to happen. Not until people can vote directly on issues instead of electing officials who pick and choose for us. I know that's not how a Jeffersonian democracy works and I know it will never happen because our gargantuan government needs us to believe they know what's best for us to keep themselves in power, but I don't feel like casting a vote to decide which side's global corporate masters get to split up my tax dollars.

Here endeth the ranting, I'm off to play with my kids

TTFN
-Tony

Thoughts that keep me awake...

2010-10-24T14:42:00.003-04:00

Yes, it's a fun game, but can someone please tell me WHY the birds are so angry at the little green pigs?

More of My Childhood Down the Drain

2010-09-27T20:26:00.004-04:00

In regards to the PBS kids show, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That: When did the Cat in the Hat go from being an anti-establishment hobo-type who gets kids into trouble with their parents to some sort of giggling babysitter who takes kids on educational field trips? Did I miss something?

TTFN
-Tony

Classic Who Trivia Questions!

2010-09-18T23:23:00.004-04:00

Although I can find trivia questions for the new Doctor Who series, I can’t seem to find any good ones for the classic one. Therefore, I’ve decided to make some of my own for you to impress your friends with. Enjoy!

1.) Whose real name is Dorothy Gale McShane?

2.) What was the Doctor’s nickname at the Timelord academy?

3.) Which companion was descended from hyper-evolved swamp monsters?

4.) What is the virtual-reality computer on Gallifrey that is controlled by the users’ minds?

5.) In “Destiny of the Daleks,” the Doctor reads a book by which fictional author from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy universe?

6.) Speaking of Douglas Adams, which novel of his was reworked from his DW episodes “Shada” and “City of Death?”

7.) Which Doctor only had one television appearance?

8.) What personal possession did the 2nd Doctor use to free himself and the 3rd Doctor from Omega’s domain?

9.) What “instrument” did the 7th Doctor play?

10.) Who are making the screams that can be heard echoing across the Death Zone of Gallifrey?

Feel free to add your own!

TTFN
-Tony

Do I Need Psychiatric Help?

2010-09-15T20:04:00.006-04:00

I had a dream last night where I rode the Q64 bus home from work. A man in a black trench coat with a large black hat sat behind me. I could tell he was staring at me, but I was afraid to turn around and look at him. I was so afraid I got off at a stop that wasn't mine, and the man got off with me. I felt afraid, but angry, I wanted to face him and fight him, but the dream took its own course out of my control. I walked faster, but I could hear his footsteps matching mine. I ran, and he followed. I felt his hand grab my shoulder and he spun me around. I fell to the ground, twisting. I raised my fists, ready to beat the shit out of whoever it was, and looked up in the rain and darkness at my attacker. He loomed over me, tears streaming down his childlike face.

It was Matthew Waterhouse.

"Stop telling everyone I ruined Doctor Who!" he sobbed. "It's not my fault Adric was a total prat, I just read what was written and played the character like John Nathan Turner wanted! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!"

And then I woke up.

OK, seriously... what the fuck?

May I add that while I always hated Adric, (a blatant attempt by a science fiction franchise that had been doing fine for decades with an adult cast to increase their number of young viewers by adding a kid,) I haven't thought of him in decades. The only reason I can think of is that Mitchell and Webb recently mentioned him in a sketch. So is this just proof that the flowing river of the subconscious can occasionally dredge some bizarre sludge from the forgotten wastes of my memory, or is it a warning, and should I fear the day I meet him, Wil Wheaton, and Jake Lloyd in a dark alley?

TTFN
-Tony

Snow White's Plotholes

2010-09-12T21:28:00.005-04:00

I recently watched Snow White with my cute, little, sainted Sicilian Catholic mommy, as it's always been one of her favorites. Although it's not exactly my cup of tea, I have to admit that it is an animated work of art and an obvious labor of love in a way that very few animated movies ever were again. I just have three questions:

1.) Seriously, you expect me to believe that this princess is forced from her life of luxury - and right away all she wants to do is clean some midgets' filthy shack?

2.) The dwarfs sing that they're working in their own diamond mine. Excuse me? If that's the case, then why are they living in a filthy shack in the woods? Are they just waiting to lure in some princess with a maid fetish?

3.) Why doesn't the evil queen just use her magic to make herself a little prettier?

My favorite part of the movie will always be when the queen sees the skeleton in the dungeon who obviously died stretching through his bars for a water jug, and kicks it at him, and cackles, "Have a drink!" Why don't they do that in Disney cartoons anymore?

TTFN
-Tony

Remembering

2010-09-11T22:15:00.002-04:00

(Me back in September 2001, working on the roof of the Trinity building, restoring power at ground zero.)

As with previous years, the following is a letter I wrote to my friends & family in the days after 9/11. The only comment I'd like to make is that while at the time we were told the death toll was 6000, we now know it to be about 2700.

.............................................

I'm sorry that I've been distant lately. I'm sure you can all understand, some even more than me.

I've been scared. I don't like to be, much less admit it, but I've been scared. I was lucky and in Queens, not in Manhattan last Tuesday. No, I wouldn't have been THERE (Though at 2 am I remember that I was working on the roof of a building a block away a month before this happened.) When the towers went down, I walked to the LIE overpass behind the apartment house and stared at the smoke that was in the place of the towers on the Manhattan skyline. Even though I'm one East River away from the close-ups on TV, it was stomach twisting. I called my foreman that night, and he told me how they watched it happen from the windows, 30 blocks away, how 20-50 year-old tough-guy construction workers were shaking, some crying, because they thought it was WW3 and the beginning of The End.

On Thursday, back in Manhattan, I had to walk from 42nd and Lex to 23rd and 1st, because the #6 line was down. (They were afraid of subway vibrations bringing down more buildings) It's not really as long a walk as it sounds, but I passed the recovery HQ on 1st ave- Past all the TV vans, and past a block's worth of pictures taped to plywood sheets. As time has past, these hopeful "have you seen" pictures have become memorials, and they're everywhere. I can't talk on the phone without staring into photographs with tearful notes of hope underneath, knowing they were put there by loved ones who will never ever see them again. I call my wife, and my voice becomes a dull monotone. She asks why and I'm at a loss on how to explain.

One of my friends at work is 40 years old, and he's a kind, good man. Today he suddenly started cursing himself, muttering what a failure he is. When I asked him what was wrong, he admitted it was because he started smoking again after giving them up cold turkey for 10 years. He told me he feels worthless, because suddenly he can't live without them again. I tell him it's an understandable need, but I can tell that my words don't help. I realize the frustration goes deeper than a pack of Marbalo 100s

Again, I'm on a job 30 blocks away from "ground zero", and I can see out the window that what was once a symbol of achievement is still a smoldering hole in the ground. I know it's only been a week, but I wonder when the skyline won't have a haze that has nothing to do with pollution. I walk down the street and I see people that are scared and jittery, no matter what their profession or race. I buy a paper from an elderly Arabic man, who wears a "God Bless America" shirt every day, and shrinks down in his kiosk- which is draped in American flags- like a frightened rabbit every time I, or any other customer approach. I give the little smile I have, but I don't think it does any good. I wonder if he's so afraid, why he stays here, and I realize he probably has no one and no where else to go.

Our shop is working on restoring power to one of those buildings- the same one I was on the roof of not too long ago (The Trinity building, 111 Broadway for those of you with a love for geography)- and being a lowly apprentice I helped the truck driver deliver material yesterday. My drivers license was scrutinized by armed police and National Guardsmen, like I'm trying to get onto a military base, and they make me wait in the cab while they and the driver search the truck. The won't let the truck get closer than a few blocks away and we wind up rolling 3' diameter wooden reels of sj cord down the street. The smell twisted my stomach, when I realized that what I was smelling was death- the death of a great achievement, of that smug "nothing can ever happen to us" attitude we Americans had without giving it a second thought, and, most disturbingly of over 6000 bodies.

And there's this feeling that grips me, this feeling that there's nothing I could ever do to protect myself, my wife or my son (I know that's a MCP attitude, but I'm sure Jen feels the same way about Joey and me.) And I wonder every night if tomorrow some new insanity will strike. I jump every time a car backfires. I run 2 miles a night (yes, frightening but true. This started a while before all this happened and I'm down to a not-quite-slim-yet 225lbs, thank you very much) and every time a plane flies overhead I flinch. I watched President's Bush's speech on TV tonight, and every time the picture flickered a little (I don't have cable, so 2 is really the only reliable channel- the others are coming and going- for those of you not in NYC, the WTC had all the broadcast antennas for the area except channel 2, leaving those of us cable-less with only CBS ) I thought "oh shit, what's happening now?" Every time I hear a siren, I wonder what's happened. The QM4 bus got held up at the Midtown tunnel yesterday (connecting Queens to Manhattan) because there was an accident. Of course, everyone seeing a bunch of flashing lights and emergency vehicles as we approach a tunnel, we instantly look around like caged animals, wondering if stage 2 had begun.

I feel guilty. Part of me tells myself that I have no right to feel so hurt or so angry- my family and my friends are all safe, and I'm alive and healthy. I'm a civilian now, I don't have to worry like so many others do. Who am I to feel so much? There are some without homes, without jobs, without their wives/sons/husbands/dads/daughters/brothers/sisters/fiancées... oh, you get the picture. I feel like I'm just whining.

I can't help being angry. We have the freedom of religion, but we jump out of our skins if someone says a prayer before a graduation ceremony or a football game. We have the freedom to own firearms, but we curse any law abiding citizen who owns one, while passing more and more lenient laws against criminals who use them. We showed the world that our presidency is a joke, that we don't care about our own history, our pride. We have a popular culture that demands more and more freedoms, but damns those who give/gave their lives and personal freedoms to protect the ones we have. I watched the speech, saw Democrats and Republicans give up their petty bickering that's been tearing the country to pieces, for the first time since WW2. It gives me a boost of hope, and I pray the sentiment lasts longer than this week, and reaches further than military resolve- into fixing our school system, into caring more about our OWN country's welfare, into bringing back production into this country so people can have jobs and learn trades to feed their families. I hope our politicians will stop trying to convince group A that everyone in groups B, C, and Q hates them, just to get their block of votes, then running around like idiots and asking "why?" when that hate turns to violence. I hope we learn to accept and love each other because we're Americans, despite our preference/denomination/color/sex. God, two weeks ago, that statement would have sounded so corny, wouldn't it?

We're at war, but we don't really know against who. There's no clear enemy, no one knows who will attack or when. Will it be us or them? Will it be "Us" or some nut like McVeigh, thinking we'll blame foreign terrorists instead of domestic? I realize I live on an island, and the only way to the rest of the world is by crossing another island (either Staten Island or Manhattan) Am I going to worry over every bridge and tunnel I cross for the rest of my life? And if it's "them," what form will it take? Watching 6000 people die as the WTC go down in flames is one thing. Watching millions in a city die from Anthrax in our water supply is another.

I'm sorry if I see this as just an NYC thing. It's hard to grasp that this is affecting the whole country.

It's an uncertain time, it's become an uncertain world. I just want you all to be certain that I love every one of you.

Those of you who've been forwarding bits of editorials, news items, letters, etc. Thank you, but it's you who's opinion I'm interested in. Let me know what you're thinking & feeling, if you'd like- you're more important.

Love each other, stay safe, and live your lives, for yourself and for each other.

-Tony

On the Train Again...

2010-08-30T22:59:00.002-04:00

I'm back on my regular route going back to the city. It's a 7am start, which I like better than a 7:30 because I get out a little earlier, but that also means I have to drag mein tuchas out of bed a half hour earlier too, and the snooze button is not my friend. I deliberately put my alarm clock on the other side of the room so I can't just hit the snooze, but I do it anyway, feeling myself being sucked back to the bed like a magnet. Well anyway, I did make my bus at 5:45, but I just got the last seat, and mine is the second stop. Will I get up even earlier to make the first, which is four blocks away? Possibly yes, probably no.

Oh dear how am I going to even get there? 5th Ave. and midtown... sounds like the F train with a long walk. I'm writing this with my tool backpack on my knees. That sounds like it should be a song. Now I'm sitting on the F-train with my tools between my knees... (second verse.)

All the people on the subway are fascinating, and I try not to stare. There's the woman whose giant unhappy face looks like it's glued together from giant slabs of meat, decorated with liberal amounts of lipstick and eyeliner that just can't possibly help. There's the muscular guy in bright tartan golf-shorts and sunglasses who's asleep with his arms folded across his chest looking as relaxed and comfortable as if he were sitting on his own couch in his living room. A balding woman with a lined face who has three or four shopping bags piled at her feet reading a newspaper that's falling apart in her hands and she's grabbing at the pages every few seconds without even thinking about it...

I'm at 21st St Queensbridge and every time the subway stops here I think of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere when they have to cross... um... Kingsbridge? Knightsbridge? Is the Marquis hiding somewhere? I love how watching that BBC miniseries was like watching the old Doctor Who. The story was more important than whether they had enough money for special effects.

I almost don't notice time passing when I write on the subway. Maybe that's the secret to productivity? But then time also flies when I play Nethack...

Anyway, that’s all for now.

TTFN
-Tony

More thoughts that keep me awake...

2010-08-22T22:47:00.004-04:00

So... what did Charon need the coins for, exactly? Where did he spend them? Was there a mall of the gods? Did he have a girlfriend? Did he cry poverty every year and constantly raise his rates, like a mythological version of the NYC MTA? Any ideas?

TTFN
-Tony

This Annoying Life...

2010-08-19T21:00:00.003-04:00

Another fun-filled day has come to a close. I always feel like I’m whining when I say that I’m tired, but I AM tired. I feel it all the way from my skin through my muscles into my bones and up my spine to my dissolving brain. I feel like I’m a computer game that was meant to run on an i7 with 8 gigs of ram and a GeForce 480 that’s trying to clog along on a Pentium III. Do I have unrealistic expectations, or is there someone I can see about an upgrade?

After having been eradicated for fifty years, bedbugs are making a comeback in New York City. The reason? Because certain pesticides that kept them at bay have now been banned. The annoying thing is that any articles I read on the subject have an, “Oh well, we need to learn to deal with it,” attitude. Fuck that noise. So many things around us are destroying the environment, one more won’t make a difference. Bring those pesticides back. Now.

Here’s something else that annoys me. I read a few editorials today that state that one in five foolish, racist, and uneducated Americans (not my feelings, just the tone of the editorials) believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Here’s what pisses me off - and no, I have no idea nor do I care what religion the president is - I just hate the us vs. them mentality that our media thrives on fostering: The poll says “Do you happen to know what Barak Obama’s religion is?” It does not say, “What religion does President Obama say he follows?” Because there’s a big difference in having the personal belief that the president is a closet Muslim, and thinking that he is an openly practicing Muslim. The wording of the poll and the resulting smug editorials that followed seem to imply that anyone who thinks the former really believes the later, and has obviously had their brains thoroughly scrubbed by the sinister FOX conglomerate rather than being someone who has merely formulated an opinion.

So what’s annoying you today?

TTFN
-Tony

Blogging Through Banality

2010-08-18T21:27:00.002-04:00

Hello my friends, I’m sorry that it’s been so long. I’m looking at the headlines for something to write about, and everything just seems so banal. I don’t care that Halle Berry is happy to run around naked, or that some star of some reality show I don’t watch is “criminally annoying,” or someone’s mother is sleeping with someone… I don’t know… In addition, I don’t want to hear any more about the mosque being built near ground zero, or how the MTA is crying poverty again or what imaginary numbers say the economy is/ isn’t recovering depending on who is slanting the news because overall it just sort of makes me feel powerless. No wonder people concentrate so much on celebrity idiocies.

I feel cooked after being out in the sun all day hauling bits of scoreboard (blocks with LED lights on them) with ropes and pulleys and constructing gantries and scaffolds. I wonder why so much of my life I’ve wound up doing things opposite of that that I’m suited for. Is it a subconscious desire to round myself out, or do I feel a need to prove something? OK, I know that I’m smarter than the average bear, but I can also fight off heat stroke while standing on top of a scoreboard, hauling up large bits of metal and fixing ballasts.

I may have mentioned this before, but I wonder how much the push for self esteem is forced consumerism. Due to books and TV shows and movies and commercials with little sad faces that look like illustrations in a Shell Silverstein book, I feel like I’m supposed to be happy and confident all the time, and that everyone else but me obviously is. So I need to buy a self-help book, (as the late great George Carlin said – if someone else wrote it, it ain’t self help!) or buy some sort of happy pill or do yoga, or something along those lines. I agree with Ayn Rand on the subject- self respect and self love comes from doing and being someone you can respect and love. But I also think that I just need to accept myself and stop imagining that everyone has their shit together but me. Our stools are all loose.

On that pleasant note, everyone have a pleasant night and a fun-filled tomorrow.

TTFN
-Tony

Embiggen is a Perfectly Cromulent Word!

2010-07-24T09:29:00.004-04:00

Is it just me, or does it seem like every time a difficult topic, (such as whether or not we should "refudiate" a mosque near Ground Zero*,) comes up, the media makes a huge deal out of whatever blithering idiocies Sarah Palin spouts on the subject? This way instead of having any sort of meaningful debate, everyone can just jeer at her and by default, anyone who agrees with her. Also, when she tries to fend off criticism by comparing herself to Shakespeare, I have to wonder if she's really a politician or just an actress hired to keep the Us VS Them shell game going.

*For the record I have nothing against Islam or Mosques, but I don't see why there NEEDS to be one near ground zero, and I personally think that the feelings of the families of the 9/11 victims should be paramount. However, I also tend to think that one should remember to flosingrabe their toes with nonerschmidst every other pingwobble.

TTFN
-Tony

Tony's Movie Rants!

2010-07-10T22:53:00.004-04:00

I took Joe to see Despicable Me today. My God, it was hysterical, much better than the predictable (but enjoyable) Toy Story 3. I would love an army of minions! Plus, it had a cameo by Julie Andrews, (almost unrecognizable with an Eastern-European accent,) as a painfully unsupportive mother.

My only issue with the movie is that there are three adorable orphan girls who predictably warm the not-so-evil supervillain Gru’s icy heart. Now I have no problem with orphan girls, but- as orphans throughout literature history have done- all they dream about is getting adopted and what their new mommy will look like. Will she read them stories? Will she give them kisses? But as a writer who thinks about and researches characters, I kept thinking: What about their old mommy? Don’t they miss her? Don't they want their mommy more than anything? Don’t they want to know where they come from, what their family was like? Where they got their eyes or sense of humor from? What Gru had still fallen in love with their cuteness, but instead of adopting them, had helped them find their real mother or father? (Assuming they were given up for adoption. For all I know real mother could have been eaten by a pack of wild yaks.) Yes, there are many wonderful people who take in children for adoption. But like the Godfather told Tom Hagen (in the novel,) never forget your real father.

Now that I’m on the subject of movies and adoption, I think that the trailer for Salt staring Angelina Jolie looks cool as hell. But she and these other obnoxious stars (are you reading, Madonna?) who go to countries where poor parents had to give their kids up and adopt these kids like they’re some sort of trophy piss me off. (Ten points to Tropic Thunder for it's satirical take on this trend.) If you have that kind of cash and you really want to do good, instead of adopting these kids, why don’t you sponsor their family so they can be with their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters? I think if I was a kid and my parents were alive but poor, I would give anything to be with my family instead of living in lala land. (I’m sure my parents are reading this and laughing their asses off, but hey, I missed everyone horribly when I left for the army and I was eighteen!)

Well, I’m off for a late-night walk. Everyone have a good night. And seriously, despite my perspective, go see Despicable Me. It’s a riot. (Is it me or is Vector supposed to be Bill Gates?)

TTFN
-Tony

Musings of a sun-broiled brain.

2010-07-09T16:51:00.004-04:00

For those who don’t know, I’m finally back to work again – which is a wonderful thing. The only proverbial fly in the ointment is that I’m working outdoors in this miserable heat. At least I can work on my tan. My feet and arms feel like stretched-out rags. We had a last second emergency to take care of, involving digging and laying PVC in the ground. I’m filthy, sweaty, smelly, and my fingers are dry and stinging from the solvent. Shower here I come.

The sky is stacked with cumulus clouds that come and go, come and go. I love the sky like this - when there are layers and layers and shapes and the sun or moonlight (especially the moonlight) is refracted through the clouds creating shapes and halos. I wish I could lie in a field and stare at it all night, but wild coyotes might eat me.

How does a group of individual nerve cells form a consciousness? Are bee hives or ant colonies a complex organism? Sometimes I wish I was a fish in the darkness and crushing cold on the bottom of the ocean and I wouldn't have to move and I wouldn't make any perceptible ripples in the world and I wouldn't matter. I could just be.

I may have mentioned that I once wrote an algebra paper using Ohm's Law equations to plan city traffic like a circuit board. Energy was speed, the volume of cars was amps, and traffic lights were ohms. The difference is the cars are each being driven by an individual consciousness, while electrons are sucked through to the negative pole. It also doesn’t matter if one electron hits another.

If you’re driving in a crowded city or highway, do you partially become a member of a gestalt mentality?

I think it's time for a nap.

TTFN
-Tony

Play-Doh

2010-07-07T23:37:00.003-04:00

I made this at my parents house over the weekend, when I was playing with Play-Doh with the kids. Yes, I know it's pretty much the same as my tin-foil stop animation a few years ago, but it was just something I did on the fly, not a Gumby adventure for Christ's sake.

TTFN
-Tony

NEW ANIMATION!

2010-07-01T21:52:00.002-04:00

Yes, for the first time in years, here's an animation for you. What's more, it's hand-drawn!

Enjoy! :)

TTFN
-Tony

Just Curious...

2010-06-30T11:44:00.005-04:00

I'm wondering - does anyone else cackle, "Fly, my pretties!" when using Insect Swarm while playing the Bioshock games?

TTFN
-Tony

Wondering...

2010-06-28T13:53:00.008-04:00

OK I know it's World Cup time and all, but since it's everywhere (even youtube has a button for it on some videos) I have to ask: Is someone trying to force Vuvuzelas into being the next big meme?

TTFN
-Tony

PS - Something else I'm wondering: My daughter just got a Dora the Explorer doll for her birthday but um... Dora seems to have sprouted boobs. Did I miss something?

Awwwww... it's PAISLEY!

2010-06-20T17:30:00.004-04:00

Illustration Friday: Paisley.

All the weirdly cool people will get it, everyone else will wonder. :)

TTFN
-Tony

...or the ripples from a pebble someone's tossed into a stream...

2010-06-15T20:18:00.012-04:00

Illustration Friday: Ripple. And yea, was it written that thou shalt click above to get a higher resolution.

It was suggested that because of the recent horror in the Gulf of Mexico, our Illustration Friday submissions coincide with the Ripple Blog . The Ripple Blog will sell the images as autographed sketch cards for a $10 donation to The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies or The International Bird Rescue Research Center.

OK, seriously, words fail me. I can't possibly form a coherent post about the greed that caused this, the idea that you can just ignore safety precautions and keep trying to insulate the bottom line by risking disaster, and when the world gets a giant schlong up its tuchus because of it, you can just hide behind an army of lawyers and lobbyists and whatever politicians you own.

This shit is seriously the last thing the world needed right now. Our economy was already in the toilet. Now the lives of all the people who make a living off the ocean in the gulf have been ruined even further: fishermen, the tourist industry, people who had stock in BP or it's employees... people who were struggling and fighting to make ends meet, and now the ends have just been yanked another mile apart.

How can I even begin to touch on what this has done to the wildlife - to the fish who breathe that water, to the birds who swim in it? I read an article that some ornithologists suggest it would be kinder just to euthanize these birds, as they may not survive even after cleaning. Seriously, how can you live with yourself when your laziness and greed has fucked up the world so badly that euthanasia is the only way to fix it?

And I have nothing for or against President Obama, but what he said about wanting to know "whose ass to kick" is total and utter bullshit because - like the Wall Street bailout - the complete lack of responsibility in this disaster just seems to highlight how much our government is OWNED. I don't care which party you worship, it's owned, and the sinking feeling deep in my stomach when I think about the future keeps getting lower and lower.

Anyway, I made this image in 3ds Max. I'd seen wire-sculpture 3d images before and wondered how to make them. I found a great tutorial about how to make random wires in 3ds using particle flow. Basically, you make a stream of flowing particles and have each one spawn new particles (tiny spheres) in their wake that - when numerous and close enough - look like strands of wires. The question was, how do I give them form instead of being a random explosion? The trick would be to model an object and have the particles flow over the surface. Well with all of 3ds's tools, you would think this would be something particle flow could do- but apparently it's not. There is a plugin that allows you to do that, but I don't have $200 to spend for a hobby (if I had a professional studio it would be a reasonable price.) I searched the internet for workarounds, but didn't find any, just suggestions that I buy that plugin.

OK, so I can't get the particles to flow across the face of the surface, but I CAN get them to originate from the face of a surface. What's more, I can tell them to flow to the surface of another object. The only problem is, they're either going to take a random path, or they're going to just make a bee-line for it. I realized I could use the same mesh for both a source and a target. and using different random seeds, the particles would travel to different random points in the same mesh. The only problem was the wires were a bunch of sticks crossing through the object's center, even if they did start and stop at the surface. Again, not QUITE what I wanted, but I was getting somewhere. I modeled a pelican shape using different objects (I didn't want a wire going straight from the beak to the tail):

OK, so now I had an image that looked like a bunch of sticks in a bird-shape. Nice, but not quite what I was looking for. I added a vortex force operator to make the particles swirl around an axis (which I aligned with each object's axis) and after a lot of playing around, I finally got the model I wanted.

The oily water was a bit of a pain in the tushie. I'm still not quite happy with the specular highlights in the ripples. The oily surface map was created using the freeware fractal creator Chaos Pro. It takes a little bit to get the hang of it, but it is an amazing program.

So that's it! A little auto-leveling and sharpening in Photoshop, and that's all she wrote! Thank you for coming by, and I hope you enjoy and think about buying the card and donating. Think of it this way, if you do, not only will you be helping the wildlife that have been hurt in this disaster, but you'll also get my autograph. Who knows, might be worth something on eBay someday! ;)

TTFN
-Tony

Ultimate Nerd Test

2010-06-12T14:56:00.007-04:00

This nerd test is very simple:

Step 1: Watch Mister Hankey's Christmas Classics (or at least the first nine seconds of it, or even better, skip to the ending credits at 21:20 to see Trey fight the frizzies!)

Step 2: Answer the following question: What is, "Fighting the frizzies at eleven!" an allusion to?

Don't look it up, you either know the answer or you don't. If you don't - congratulations, you have a life! If you do - welcome, friend!

TTFN
-Tony

So what ARE the best songs written for computer games?

2010-06-11T16:04:00.007-04:00

Yesterday, I mentioned that portal had one of the best songs ever written for a computer game, and I got to thinking: What are the others? The original Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Tetris games all have soundtracks that have become part of twentieth century culture. If I had to choose my favorite game soundtrack, it would be the one for Lucas Arts' Grim Fandango, which combines Mexican themes with thirties jazz and blues. (The game itself is one of my all-time favorites.) However, I was thinking of songs with lyrics. So, in no particular order, here are three of my favorites.

"War" from Sam & Max Season One

There are a few other wonderful possibilities for the Sam & Max franchise. There's the C.O.P.S. and Ted. E. Bear songs (also from Season One,) The T.H.E.M. song from Season Two, and the classic "King of the Creatures" from Sam & Max Hit the Road (you have to skip ahead to 6:15.) But I personally love the idea that the outbreak of war would cause secret service men to break into a song and dance number while the president would just sit there dumbfounded.

"Skeletons in My Closet" from The 7th Guest.

In the early 90s, multimedia computers with CD-ROMs, video memory, and sound cards exploded upon the scene, bringing with them games more ambitious and creative than anything seen today. Some of these games were Myst (Riven is my personal favorite, but Myst came first,) Doom, Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Day of the Tentacle, Phantasmagoria, and yes, the greatest puzzle game of them all, The 7th Guest. Winning the game meant you got to hear this gem during the end credits.

And of course, "Still Alive" from the ending credits of Portal.

There's so many reasons to love this song. It's sung by GlaDOS, the game's boss. It's message is clear - you thought you blew me up, but I'm still alive. Not only that, but it's sung in such a childish, passive-aggressive, lay-the-guilt-on-thick sweet voice: OK, I used you and manipulated you and tried to kill you, but did you really have to be so cruel and try to destroy me? The game wouldn't have been half as fun without GlaDOS egging you on. (I love the Black Mesa joke.) But the real question is, will there be cake?

Are there any that I've forgotten, or any personal favorites?

TTFN
-Tony

More Geek Ranting

2010-06-10T15:11:00.024-04:00

Sigh... it never ends.

Apparently, Portal 2 will be delayed until 2011, for the reason that, "Making games is hard." At least they still have their senses of humor. There will supposedly be a Portal 2 "surprise" at this years E-3 gaming convention, which makes me wonder if they're planning an early release and just want to be schmucks about it and create buzz first. Very possible. If so, I take my hat off to you. But if not...

Dear Valve. (I feel like bitching today in letter format.)

Years ago you created an awesome, enjoyable first person puzzle game with some action overtones. Despite it's short length, it was very popular for six reasons:

1) It is creative.
2) It is just challenging enough to be fun, not so challenging as to be frustrating.
3) Hidden information that is slowly revealed, creating a sense of mystery and making the player want to know what's really going on. (The cake is a lie!)
4) Dark, dark humor.
5) An AI villain that speaks in increasingly hysterical, paranoid, alternatively childish then Jewish-mother-guilty manipulative monologues.
6) One of the best songs ever written for a computer game.

In short, it is ENJOYABLE. Get it? Few games these days are ENJOYABLE. Most of them just try to make as much cash as they can off of you with over-hyped bullshit that makes you angry you wasted your money. Instead, people love it because it is ENJOYABLE. Do I need to say it again? MAKE A GAME THAT IS FUN AND ENJOYABLE.

The only thing that really needs to be improved is the length (the first game was a freebie in the Orange Box release.) If you want people to buy a full-priced game you need to make it worth their while. Concentrate on a good background story that is slowly revealed, that's the best way to keep gamers enticed. You don't even need a new engine - the Half-Life 2 engine is beautiful for this game, and after six years you should have all the bugs worked out for any platform.

Throwing money at it WILL NOT HELP. Many low-budget independent movies are classics because they are ENJOYABLE - there's that word again - while many blockbusters suck.

Improving the special effects WILL NOT HELP.

Making meshes and textures so high resolution that no one will be able to cleanly play the game until a new graphics card comes out in two years because you're getting kickbacks from the manufacturers, (not saying you particularly are, but this seems to be a common practice with new games,) WILL NOT HELP it will just piss people off.

To sum up: make an ENJOYABLE game that YOU test thoroughly without expecting players to buy and beta-test at their expense and then have to wait months for a patch, (Don't get me started - there's no excuse for this with console games, everyone has the same systems. You can't blame it on different configurations, and you're just proving you were full of shit when you did it for games on the PC,) and you'll be fine. You'll have a winner and make gobs of cash, everyone will sing your praises, people will want to have sex with you, whatever.

Just remember that one word. ENJOYABLE.

TTFN
-Tony

Sensory overload.

2010-06-10T11:32:00.015-04:00

June 10, 2010.

Google Inc. World Headquarters
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Attention: Inability to remove Google background image.

Dear Sir or Madam:

MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP OH GOD PLEASE IT'S SO GODDAMN ANNOYING MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reservedly yours,
Anthony Joseph LaRocca Jr., O.B.E.

PS - Yay, after fourteen hours,Google changed it back to normal, with the face-saving excuse that there was a bug that erased the link explaining why there were suddenly annoying and distracting pictures in the background. No, everyone understood WHY, they just hated it. I salute them for trying something different - it's always better to try than to do nothing, but this was just annoying. Bitching wins!!!

A Day in the Life of a Daddy With Too Much Time

2010-06-08T07:51:00.010-04:00

The other morning I woke up to the sound of my daughter (who will be seven in a few weeks) in the bathroom. I called out “Amanda, what are you doing?” She didn’t answer, so I ran in there to find her with a fistful of hair and a pair of scissors. “Look Daddy,” she said proudly, “I cut my hair!” They weren’t that many strands and she only cut off about three inches (her hair is long.) I honestly can’t tell where she cut them from. Does that mean it’s time for her to get a haircut?

We had a street fair the other day. There was a flash downpour, so the rides were temporarily closed. We stood there for twenty minutes while my daughter kept yelling “I want to go on the horsey!” (Carousel) “I want to go on the horsey!” One of my friends was working the carousel, and promised her she could be the first one on when the rain stopped. As soon as it did she waved us over and Amanda was the first one on. She stood on it, looked up at the horses, and said “I don’t WANT horsey, get me down!” All I can do is give a fond sigh.

The other night my son asked me why pi goes on forever. I said that first of all, we don’t know that it goes on forever, we just have not found an end or a repeat yet, (scientists have divided to 1,241,100,000,000 decimal places so far,) because we had a base-ten numbering system. I then explained what bases are, and why we use base ten. (To quote Tom Lehrer, “But don’t panic: base eight is just like base ten, really… if you’re missing two fingers!”) So the next morning in the shower I wondered: is there any base that pi can be resolved in? What about a base pi numbering system, where pi would equal one, two would be 2pi, three would be 3pi, and so on. The problem is that the “10” place would then be pi squared, which is somewhere between 3 and 4 pi. So in that sense, it wouldn’t work. I was thinking that maybe that would be a sign of superior intelligence in the galaxy, if they had a base-pi numbering system, as that would be a constant throughout the universe, as opposed to the number of digits on beings' hands, and if it wouldn't fit into our system of mathamatics, humanity would have to learn an entire new way of thinking. In a wonderful moment of synchronicity, my friend Julianne posted a quote from Buckminster Fuller on her fb page:

"To how many places does nature carry out PI when she makes each successive bubble in the white-cresting surf of each successive wave before nature finds out that PI can never be resolved?... And at what moment in the making of each separate bubble in Universe does nature decide to terminate her eternally frustrated calculating and instead turn out a fake sphere? I answered myself that I don't think nature is using PI or any of the irrational fraction constants of physics."

I like that I can enjoy looking at the universe from both angles.

TTFN

-Tony

Trail Mix!

2010-06-06T19:15:00.010-04:00

Illustration Friday: Trail. He's leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. OK, it's a stretch. Sue me. Click on the bad boy above for some real detail. :)

A few weeks ago, the Illustration Friday word was Equipment. I sketched out a well-equipped warbot:

I then went to 3ds Max and created some dummy objects as placeholders so I had an idea of how I wanted to model my warbot:

It took me about a week and a half to finish modeling him. ("Equipment"'s time as a subject was long over) Most of it was fashioned by deforming shapes (spheres, capsules,) or from creating an outline and then extruding it. I wanted him to have a copper steampunk look, but at the same time look futuristic. I suppose the Bioshock game series were a bit of an influence, though my son says it reminds him Proxy from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. (And I personally think all fictional war machines since the 80's owe a debt of gratitude to ED-209.) I played a lot with different metals and textures to get effects. The copper bitmap was made from a digital camera photo of the bottom of my teapot. To get finer detail, I extruded and beveled many of the objects faces. Sometimes after I beveled them inward, I overlapped the sunken faces with another material (such as the blue glow.)

I can be a bit of a mechanical / engineering wonk, and although the warbot is a bit top-heavy, a lot was created with functionality in mind. You can only see the top of it in the image, but the thighs have shock absorbers, and the feet have springs between the tallons (which never worked the way I intended.) Every joint has a screw that rotates with the child limb. The neck is on a gear, as is the rotating barrel of the gun. Rivets are just low polygon spheres. I tried to use the scatter modifier, which places duplicates of an object on the surface of another, but no matter what parameters I changed, the placement always wound up being slightly random.

(By the way, I have no idea why I created a rotating barrel on a weapon that looks like it's a laser beam. Maybe... maybe the two glowing bits are small relativity furnaces which convert energy into matter and feed it into the firing chamber, which would then, for rapid speed, need a rotating barrel to prevent overheating? I love thinking about the details.)

Once I finished modeling him, I wondered what sort of a setting to put him in. I decided to put him in the ruins of a city. Keeping the camera in the same location and at the same angle, I created some dummy objects for buildings, using a sphere to remind me where my finished bot would generally be:

Some of the buildings were difficult to model and took days, others were easy. The round tower's skeletal structure with dripping gray matter was from how I remembered everything looking after 9-11. It disturbed me that all these buildings that contained objects that had form and purpose and years of work were all reduced to a dripping gray ash, and after I finished modeling, I realized just modeling it brought back disturbing memories. I laugh at myself because I worked very hard to make the outer shell realistically smashed and broken- and you can't even see it behind the warbot. The second building on the right is very detailed and modeled right down to fire escapes, but you can't tell at all because of its placement. I love how the first building on the right (the one with the cracked and damaged facade) came out. I drew the cracks in Photoshop, modeled the facade with a very high mesh, and then used my drawings as a displacement map (which raises the light areas and sinks in the darkened ares.) The broken brick building was easy, it's just an opacity map (I made a black and white image in photoshop over the picture of the bricks, blacking out where the building would be invisible. The building is simply a 1 face by 1 face box.) The bridge was simple to model. You can barely tell because of the fog, but if you look all the way to the left, you can see that it's broken. That's why the main suspension cables aren't there to the left of the main support. (The thinner cables are hanging.)

The far off buildings were created by talking a plane and adding the Greeble modifier to it. This extrudes the faces to random heights. with extra "widgets" on top. I used a simple pattern of light squares on a grey grid to make the window lights (which I also used for an illumination map) They just repeat off into the distance, but they're just there to give the background depth, and are mostly covered by fog.

I tried to make the clouds in various ways. I took digital photos I had of skies and tried to manipulate the colors until I had what I wanted, but it didn't look right. I tried drawing them and then using the burn and dodge tools to give them texture. It still didn't look right. For the record, Photoshop's rendered clouds are absolute shit. I remembered I had used a facing-particles technique to make a cloud vortex for the IF entry 100%. I dug up this fantastic tutorial by Jonas Ussing. The only thing I did to add to the clouds texture was giving them a "smoke" diffuse map. With the spotlight (and moon) behind them, I finally got exactly the effect I was looking for.

The thing Is, I could keep detailing and adding and detailing and adding, (I considered having jets fighting in the sky,) but I'm very happy with what's here. You have to stop at some point.

As far as the final effects go, praise the FSM for Photoshop! If I was creating an animation rather than a static image, I would have had to make pains to make sure everything was perfect in 3ds Max so it could be correctly rendered frame after frame. I could have tweaked and tweaked and tweaked the settings to get the eye glows and the glowing fire in the mouth exactly as I wanted in 3ds, all it took in Photoshop was the addition of a few mouse clicks of linear light. The same goes for the electricity in the warbot's blade. I don't know who first came up with the technique, but it's very simple to make realistic lightning in Photoshop using rendered clouds (See? I knew they had a use!)

The final image was rendered with a width of 1920 pixels so it could be wallpaper on a widescreen hd monitor. I'm going to look for a site that has 3d wallpaper galleries on it to get a little publicity. I would have posted it at that resolution here, but Blogger's filespace is not infinite, and I have a lot that I've shared and plan to share in the future. But 1024p is nothing to sneeze at either!

So here's a Rorschach test: is the warbot humanity's destroyer, or it's defender?

TTFN
-Tony

What Happened After Lost?

2010-06-05T13:48:00.004-04:00

...click the image above and find out, in I Can Bend Paperclips!

TTFN
-Tony

Nerd Fantasies

2010-05-22T21:03:00.006-04:00

Please Click the above to see I Can Bend Paperclips! No. 6.

So, come on, who were your nerd fantasies?

TTFN
-Tony

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

2010-05-20T13:20:00.015-04:00

If you're not aware, today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Please click on the above image to read what I have to say about it in cartoon form on I Can Bend Paperclips!

In April 2010, the animated television show South Park aired a two-parter to celebrate it's 200th episode, bearing the not-quite original titles, "200" & "201." The episodes centered around celebrities wanting to kidnap Mohammed and steal his power: being the only thing in America that was taboo to ridicule. As with the previous episode "Cartoon Wars," Comedy Central blocked out all images of Mohammed in "200." After a blog made vague threats against South Park's creators, Comedy Central went so far as to bleep out the name "Mohammed" in "201," and to bleep out an entire speech at the end about terrorism and intolerance - even though the speech did not mention Mohammed or Islam.

On April 20, 2010, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris created the cartoon Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, in support of South Park's creators Trey Parker & Matt Stone. It suggested that on May 20th, everyone should draw Mohammed in the name of free speech. A facebook page was created, (well, a few facebook pages, actually,) and the idea gained momentum. Since then, Molly Norris has done everything possible to apologize and distance herself from the idea, including scribbling over her original cartoon, pointing out that none of the images she actually drew are of Mohammed ("they are just CLAIMING to be," - in her own words and capitals,) and suggesting that the name be changed to "Everybody Draw Al Gore Day." Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has banned facebook and YouTube access within its borders indefinitely.

So why am I doing this?

I have nothing against Islam, or its non-violent followers. To be honest, I'm a little taken aback at the hatred that some of my fellow participants are showing. But no one should be afraid to draw a picture, especially in a country that is based on free speech and has a mainstream culture that constantly ridicules Christianity and other religions. If you say that I am being deliberately offensive to your faith by drawing Mohammed's image, look at it this way. Catholics aren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent, but that doesn't mean that non-Catholics who do are offending them. Get it?

TTFN
-Tony

Attention Whore...

2010-05-17T00:06:00.004-04:00

Click on the above image for comic No 4. of I Can Bend Paperclips!
(Thank you all for your kind comments and support over the years, BTW.)

TTFN
-Tony

Honset Parenting

2010-05-14T00:52:00.003-04:00

My son is a "tween," and dealing with all the things that go along with being that wonderful age. Tonight I felt so much for him when he asked me why he sometimes does stupid things. Should I pretend that I have a clue, or should I be honest with him and tell him that adults (especially yours truly) ask themselves that all the time?

TTFN
-Tony

I'd Rather See...

2010-05-13T18:37:00.004-04:00

Great googly moogly, I'm actually being semi-productive! Check out I Can Bend Paperclips #3!

TTFN
-Tony

Paperclips #2

2010-05-12T23:23:00.003-04:00

OK, I've decided I wanted to make more webcomics when the mood hits me, so I added a new blog to my profile, I Can Bend Paperclips. I'll announce here when I post a new comic there, so hop on over and check it out!

TTFN
-Tony

I Can Bend Paperclips No. 1

2010-05-12T00:33:00.004-04:00

A new webcomic for you. Will there be more? Does it mean anything? Do you have to click on it to read it? All these questions will be answered in our next exciting episode!

TTFN
-Tony

R.I.P.

2010-05-11T10:57:00.003-04:00

Rest in peace, Frank Frazetta, your imagination will be missed. May your heaven be full of voluptuous women barely contained by shreds of translucent silk.

TTFN
-Tony

The Mouse of LaMancha

2010-05-10T16:24:00.003-04:00

Illustration Friday: Fearless. Please click above for much nicer resolution.

This is my first composite attempt. There's three different elements here. The floor and walls are actually from a digital photo. The mouse and rat were hand drawn on paper, scanned in, and detailed on my Pocket PC using Pocket Artist and on my laptop with Photoshop. The mousetrap and cheese were made in 3ds Max, and I used that and Photoshop to put it all together. Enjoy!

TTFN
-Tony

A Question...

2010-05-09T23:18:00.002-04:00

Seriously... am I really the only person in America who doesn't find Debbie Downer funny?

Dream Analysis

2010-05-08T11:09:00.004-04:00

I know I haven't posted one of these in a while. Enjoy!

I dreamt I was in a dimly lit travel agent's office with my cute & little sainted Catholic mother. We were going to pick up plane tickets for Jeff and me (I don't remember where or why we were flying.) The agent (who I think was conservative/republican) asked if I would mind filling out a survey. The thing is, the survey used a sort of electrified stick that you had to poke through holes to record the answers, and it didn't work very well. One of the questions was, "Do you believe in God?" Another was, "When was the last time you used gas in your home?" I talked to my mom about it and realized that everywhere I lived had been electric except my parents' house, so the answer was 1996. Then I looked the time and said "holy shit, I'm going to miss my flight!" The agent was trying not to act offended that I wouldn't finish the survey, and I told him yes, but my flight leaves in half an hour and I have to get to the airport still! Then Jeff called me and my cell phone was all screechy and the screen flickered and made weird shapes, and I told him I had bad reception, and he said "that's not bad reception, my friend, your phone is fucked up!"

Then I woke up.

Discuss!

TTFN
-Tony

PS - My daughter just looked at the hair in my ears and said "Daddy, your ears are fluffy!" Sigh...

Illustration Friday: Cocoon

2010-05-04T15:24:00.006-04:00

Illustration Friday: Cocoon. Click above for higher resolution.

I wonder how he got in there, what he's turning into, and how he's getting out!

TTFN
-Tony

Last Minute Illustration Friday

2010-04-29T21:49:00.005-04:00

Illustration Friday: "Ahead." Please click above for higher resolution. It's worth it.

OK, I know I got this one in at the very last minute, but it took a week to make, goddamn it! The hardest part was modeling my head in Poser. I eventually gave up trying to use the Face Room utility that's supposed to line up photographs of your head with splines, and instead saved their default texture and matched my webcam photos up to it in Photoshop. Once I had a texture I could live with, I imported it back into poser, and did a lot of trial and error to get features that were close to mine.

I exported my pretty-decent head into 3ds max and edited the mesh (soft selection is very useful) until it looked pretty much like my dear old self. Next I used Boolean tools to cut the top of my head up into pieces. After that, I used Reactor to simulate blowing a musket ball through the top of my head, and let the pieces fall where they may. I now had a head in pieces, but it looked too clean. I went back to my friend Photoshop and created some cracks both as an opacity map (making it look like my head was missing pieces) and to add to my texture.

Ah, but what's inside? Zbrush is very organic, but it makes wonderful gears very easily. I created some different gears, imported them back into 3ds Max, created a few springs, multiplied them until I had a handful of 64, then used reactor to dump them all in a heap around my open skull.

The marble floor was a bit of a pain in the ass. I couldn't get the tiles to look exactly the way I wanted. I used different smoothing groups, but the effect still gives the individual tiles too much slant. I don't think it's noticeable to anyone but me. (I made it by creating a cylinder, and extruding and beveling certain faces to get the raised tile look. The grout is a plane with a noise texture.)

But why did my head break in the first place! I know, it's because my unwanted, squatting tenant escaped! I spent half a day creating a mechanical bug and just didn't like the result. Turbosquid.com had a free ant mesh by someone named 3DMB. I gave him a metallic look and he worked nicely.

OK, so I rendered it and put it all together in Photoshop. There were a few problems with the ant's reflections and shadows and I fixed them by drawing in a few extra shadows and rendering twice, once with and once without the ant, and composting between the two. I then decided that I just didn't like the way my beard looked- there was too much artifacting in the texture. I took the original webcam photo I had used to make the texture from, pasted my mouth over the 3d mouth, scaled and skewed with free transform, added appropriate shadows, matched the color and contrast, and voila! A wee bit of Gaussian noise and everything matches up pretty well! I blurred the far tiles to give it a little depth of field, and there you have it!

I hope you all enjoy, and I'm glad to squeeze it into IF with two hours to spare!

TTFN
-Tony

Vomiting Trees

2010-04-26T23:02:00.004-04:00

When it rains, the trees in Queens like to vomit their flowers onto the sidewalk.

TTFN
-Tony