Mars Life

2.24.2003

Hello all, I'm slowly re-adjusting to the work-a-day world after being contaminated by the dirty hippies on Phish tour. Aaaah, back to analyzing data while listening to thuggish hip-hop.

Phish tour was a hell of a fun time. After NYE in New York, I knew I'd be hitting up the three shows I just came back from (1 here in Illinois, 2 in Cincinatti OH), but I had no idea what to expect from them. Unfortunately, and as thanklessly critical as it may sound, I wasn't really left as floored as I expected from the 12/31 show. Well, this time, they definitely wowed me for 3 days straight. I'm happy to say the boys are back in town, they're pulling some of their old antics, now all they need to do is have a word with the crowd again. If anyone's a phish fan and wants to see the setlists, check 'em out HERE.

Phish, why do I love you so? I haven't even really kept an ear open to improvisational music (or "jam bands," as they're called) lately, as I've been catching up on all the hip-hop I missed in the years I kept up on such jam bands. Aaah, the irony, soon I'll have to catch up on them. Following more than one music scene is pretty damn tough when they don't really cross culture lines all too often. But they do make damn good music. I'm sure others do as well, I've just decided to take a break from actively seeking out and listening to them. When one crosses my path, however, I do give credit where credit is due. Case in point, I heard this amazing "one man band" type act from my friend Jen on the trip, and I've seeked him out to add to my launch player ratings. Keller Williams is his name, check him out. He's kinda cool. And, NO, it's not just because he beatboxes.

So I'm back to seeing the band I love, Phish, live whenever they tour. And they're back to playing the music that makes me dance. Life is good.

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Oh yeah, Rico put up my flash animation on the RoxBox site. It's under the beta section, since I'm still not done working the bugs out. Let me know what you think of it by dropping a comment here or an email whenever you get the chance.

Until next time, you must of course know that there's "More to come..."

2.18.2003

Happy days Happy days

Here we are agian, at the illustrious "Mars Life". Whatever could he have gotten into in the past week?

Ummm... lets see... well, until next time!

No, just kidding of course. I must, I repeat, I must get you caught up.

OK, first off, what THE HELL is up with my ear. I got a little disgusted with it last week and decided to invest in some q-tips (hold on, it gets even more exciting) and now, I've plugged up the thing to the loss of hearing. I must have washed the thing out with peroxide 20 times last night, but to no avail. A bit of wax came out in the shower (all right, I'm about to drop this topic, I swear), but alas, I still cannot completely hear things out of my left ear. I SAID I STILL CANNOT COMPLETELY HEAR THINGS OUT OF MY LEFT EAR!!!

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You may remember I spoke a bit about flash design in my last entry (or, you may not have read it. go check it out HERE). In regard to that little endeavour of mine, I have indeed purchased a book that is very in-depth, very instructional and hands-on, and guides you through designing an interactive site from start to finish, using most of the popular features of Flash MX's functionality. The book is called The Flash MX Project by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Duncan. Check it out HERE.

Sooooo, I've spent most of my free time this week setting up "The Honeycomb" website. That's the site the guide guides you through creating, its a site intended for children to have some animation, a preloader movie (that's the intro to a flash site that always says "Loading... xx% loaded"), a journal, some games, some sounds, and even a short movie. It's very interactive, and it's helped me come up with some cool ideas for the RoxBox site (though they're not there as of this writing). I've also been working on putting some of those together, and I think they're pretty darn cool. I'm excited as to how easy it was to learn the software with this book. I'd reccommend it to anyone.

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So other than that, not much exciting happenned.

EXCEPT ONE THING. That's right, The Simpsons' 300th episode. Aaaah, The Simpsons. There was a lot of good stuff, as well as two, count 'em, two new episodes. Of course one sixty minute episode would have been better, but come on, when was the last time there was an hour of new Simpsons on a Sunday? I can't even remember.

Oh, and one last thing. I added these little comments, subscription and counter features to my blog quite a while ago. Lo and behold, a couple people have subscribed!! If you want to, all the subscription service does is send you an email each time I update. And the comments, well, that's your way to flame me or praise me. *sniff sniff* I'm such a needy person..

Oh well, that seems about good for today. More to come!


2.10.2003

And once again, as infrequent as always... notes on my life!

The RoxBox benefit done happenned, homeys. So did the birthday (yesterday, 27, yayyyyy!!) so now it's back to regular old day to day life. Ah, day to day life. It doesn't stop while you're busy with other things, it just seems a whole hell of a lot less important.

The benefit was a great time. It felt really good to show others our work, finally. We've been talking about this stuff we've been doing for a while now, but we haven't really had any outlet to show a whole bunch of friends and peers at once. That's what I'd say was the best part about the whole thing. The numbers could've been better, but I'm not too worried about that yet, I'm more concerned with learning from this experience. This is the first function we've held as a collective, so I've noticed ways we could improve. Perhaps I'll speak a bit more about that when we start planning our next function.

So I'm 27. I couldn't think of a lot that was significant about this age. I guess that'll happen more and more as the years slip by. It is three to the third power however, something I'm sure pleases Kerri, as she thoroughly loves the divinity and magic of the three. So like a month or so ago, I find myself benchmarking my life again. Where I had goals on the new year, I look to those goals again now that I'm another year older.

I have been writing this past month, but I don't know that I exactly hit my 5,000 word per month goal I set down for myself. But I'm not discouraged. I'm 25 pages into my screen play, I've got an actual link to my journal out there, I have plenty of reason to write, I'm just working on actually doing it.

I've started to toy around with Flash MX now too. I'd really like to make cartoons, as Kerri and I would love to do voices for them, and always have these fabulously stupid and childish plot ideas. I like the control that an animated feature provides too, I would love to become efficient enough to do one. That's well down the line, but on the radar, nonetheless. I can see myself buying a book soon, but they all so damn expensive. Got to pick the right one, you know.

Well, perhaps more in a few days on the exciting chronicles of Mars learning flash animation, or struggling to write, or picking up a new hobby / talent, or maybe just something completely different.

Until then!


 
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