This is pretty random, but I thought it was hilarious. Tonight on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert talked about Illinois’ Ninth Congressional district, which includes parts of Chicago and some north-shore suburbs. Here is the except from the show that hand me laughing uncontrollably:
“The Northweastern Wildcats football team carries a reputation for excellence… in academics. But they suck at football. In fact, they hold the NCAA record of 34 consecutive losses. However, residents of the ninth don’t think of the Wildcats as losers because the district also contains Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, a team that year after year makes a 34-game losing streak sound attractive. The Cubs last won the World Series in 1908 and have experienced more than their share of frustrations ever since. For example, in the time it takes for me to speak this sentence, another Cub player will be injured by his own teammate.” [ Shows the clip of Zambrano and Barrett fighting in the dugout ]
On a related note, I checked out a recommended website created by a frustrated Cubs fan: http://hirejimessian.com/. I’m not an avid baseball fan and I’m definitely not a Cubs fan, but the writer has a great sense of humor and writes very funny posts. If you’re bored, take a peek over at the site for a few quick laughs. And if you’re curious, you can keep checking back to find out who will top his list of the worst Cubs players in the author’s lifetime.
I converted the gallery section of my site over to WordPress, as well. Now you can post comments to the gallery section without logging into Blogger. All I need now is new content to go into the gallery!
I finished the scene from University State and now I’m working on another one. I’m hoping that the animation production will be done soon so I can get back to improving my modeling/texturing/lighting skills in Lightwave, plus I want to test out the new features of Lightwave 9.2.
This weekend was a lot of fun but took a lot out of me. Starting Friday night, the only time I was home I was either sleeping or getting ready to go out again. By last night, I was wiped out.
All that busy time this weekend means that I didn’t get to finish any scenes in University State. But, I’m working on one right now and I hope to have it finished by the end of the night. We’re getting closer to finishing up episode four!
I have made some changes to the back-end of my site, mainly to get away from the hacked-together system I’m using with Blogger.com. Don’t get me wrong – Blogger.com is a very nice blogging system. But I prefer to house my own content, and Blogger.com keeps the raw data in their databases and only pushes out the formatted pages. I had an odd system in place that parsed the Blogger.com pages and pushed them into my database, which was then formatted on-demand to you users out there when you wanted to view my posts.
Not anymore. Now these posts are generated from a version of WordPress installed on my server. I’m still experimenting with it, so if you see any weirdness let me know. My eventual goal is to move some of the other content (the Gallery, for instance) over to this system, too, but that’s a future improvement.
With this update, you can now post comments to any of my posts without using any kind of login. All you have to provide is a nickname, email, and optional website address.
My computer is getting old and I was curious how much it would cost to replace it (although realistically, I probably won’t buy a new computer for a while). So I went to HP.com to check out their computers, because I’ve heard some pretty good things lately about their hardware. Off their main computer sales site, they have a link to their high-end systems, VoodooPC Gaming PCs. Curious, I decided to check it out since this computer would be for 3D graphics, which has a lot of the same requirements as high-end gaming stations.
They have different options you can select to tweak your system for different uses. One option is for “Graphics / Animation”, so I set that to its highest level. Then I went through their options for this setting and tuned down a few things (I probably shaved off about $4,000, most of which was in their high-end SCSI hard drives they were trying to include).
After customization, the price of this new workstation was $12,638.07. That’s after I took out $4,000. I couldn’t believe it! Who is buying these things? Are they really worth it? Does it even make sense to buy one $12,000 when you could buy four excellent workstations at $3,000, or six good machines at $2,000 (or 24 basic machines at $500, if you want to set up a render farm)?
If I had $12K to spend on technology, you can bet I’d have a lot more than one really fast computer at my desk. Especially since in two years, that same computer will be an outdated, slow POS.
I found out this weekend that Adult Swim made some recent announcements about their lineup, which included some exciting news.
The most exciting for me is that Lucy, Daughter of the Devil is in production and slated to air in the summer. The show is created by Lauren Bouchard (Home Movies) and stars some familiar voices: H. Jon Benjamin (aka Coach McGuirk) as the Devil and other voices, Melissa Bardin Galsky (Melissa from Home Movies) as the devil’s secretary, and Jon Glaser (Stroker from Stroker and Hoop) as DJ Jesus. The pilot has aired several times on Adult swim since it first ran in 2005 and it is extremely funny, so I’m looking forward to the series.
Additionally, Adult Swim will expand from six nights a week to seven nights, finally getting some air time on Fridays. The release does not give any details about the programming that will air that night.
The release also has some bad news for those of us getting exasperated with the new Williams Street humor style. The Tim and Eric show, Assy Mcgee, Saul of the Molemen, and Squidbillies are all getting new seasons. It’s amazing that shows like those get renewed during their initial run while quality shows like Venture Bros., Lucy, and Stroker and Hoop take months or longer to be green-lit, if they aren’t canceled first.
The new Nine Inch Nails album, Year Zero, releases today, which is unusual because the other NIN albums were all released about five years apart. The last album, With Teeth, was released only two years ago. According to Trent Reznor, he was inspired and suddenly the album just poured out of him. The main theme of the album is of a future Orwellian totalitarian state and the loss of individual rights.
The album is being promoted with a viral marketing campaign similar to the alternate reality game that surrounded the movie AI. I kept up with the AI game when it first came out, because it told a compelling story and had some fun (although extremely difficult) puzzles. I don’t have the time to get into another game like that (the AI game did take up a lot of free time), but I’m certainly curious if it’s as good as the AI one.
Anyway, I already listened to most of the album from the official website and I’m impressed. I thought With Teeth was decent but not the masterpiece that The Downward Spiral was. This new album is definitely more innovative and I’m looking forward to listening to it a few more times to form a stronger opinion.
Curious? Go to the official website and listen to the entire album.
While spending time on my current favorite time-waster, Wikipedia, I found out that the production company that makes Venture Bros. also did a small web series that takes place in the Batman universe.
World Leaders Entertainment, which used to be Noodlesoup Productions, created Gotham Girls, an animated series on the web that features Batgirl, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn. The shorts are entertaining, although kind of corny. But who can resist the combination of Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, and Batman characters? I know I can’t!
Although the main Warner Bros. page for the show is gone, this page has direct links to the episodes that still exist on the WB servers. A word of warning to the Harley Quinn fans out there: she’s kind of the screw-up in the crew. Be prepared to see her make a lot of dumb decisions!
My fiance worked overnight, my brother is out of state, and I had a long week of work, so I decided to stay in last night, relax, and watch some good TV.
I re-watched the first five episodes of Cowboy Bebop, my favorite anime, and reminded myself exactly why I love that show so much. Those of you who have seen the show understand. Never seen the show? Pick up the first disc somewhere (Cowboy Bebop, 1st Session) and watch the fifth episode, “Ballad of Fallen Angels” (or better yet, all five episodes). Genius.
Cowboy Bebop combines great animation, compelling characters, high-quality script-writing, and amazing music into one fantastic series. The stand-alone episodes are fun to watch, but the stories about the main characters’ backgrounds set this series apart as a masterpiece. It is the kind of work that any storyteller (animation or live-action) should strive to achieve, and if you can even come close you will have created something great.
I also watched The Departed last night for the first time, which I also really liked. Scorcese does some genius work and this falls squarely into that category. The movie had me on the edge of my seat, in thrall waiting to find out what will happen next. I don’t want to give away any details, for those of you who haven’t seen it, but it’s definitely worth watching.
