Modules 4-7... And Also 1-3

It turns out that there's a project due on Monday for Information Design class; a project on which we've been working for weeks but which I've only technically started on.

Meanwhile I need to finish off project 1 for that class.

Good thing I don't have classes on Friday or Saturday. Or Thursday afternoon past 1:45. Even then, for that class we're doing midterm critiques this week, so I'm not even sure if class'll extend that long.

There's 4 modules to complete for the project; the idea is to take a full week per module- but if I get done one per day, and squeeze in the other thing, I could have both projects completed by Monday. Phew. 

I looked up how many credits I need left to graduate; if by some miracle I actually manage to pass Information Design this time, and keep up my at-least-passing grade in Interaction Design, I'd just need one class's worth of credits to have all my required credits for my current emphasis. Not counting the internship which is also needed.

I can't imagine taking a whole semester just for one class, so... maybe there'll be something eligible this Summer for me to take? I've still got enough money to pay for a Summer tuition, I think; my GPA is slipping far enough that I'm not sure if I'll be eligible for any scholarships beyond that... but if my GPA does slip that far, it'll be because I failed these classes that I'm required to pass to put me in the position of only needing one class in the first place, so! Next few days' work, very very important, is what I'm stabbing at.

Ikthys

It's a miracle I got it compiled in time for class; I did notice the mistake in time but not in time to compile a new video. There should be a title at first, something along the lines of they expected him to be a conqueror. But (and I think I know the reason) that didn't make it into the final video. It'd take half an hour in editing and compiling time, max, in order to fix it, but then I'd have to upload a new video and decide what to do with this old one...

Based it off of Mark which ends abruptly, or at least not all the earliest manuscripts have 16:9-20. So I suppose it's fitting that it begins abruptly? Aargh I don't know; this was supposed to be a triumph but it's just another screwup. Which are fun but it must be nice to succeed once in a while...

Reconsideration of Reason of "Underwhelmed Scholastics"

I think my problem is I try too hard rather than not hard enough. And my ambitions are being punished with plummeting grade. It'd probably be helpful if I didn't procrastinate and be ambitious at the same time, of course- that's what's really being punished. Though that may be part of the ambition, letting things percolate. When I do begin projects they get done pretty quickly, and I wish I could find a jazzier way to say that, but then I lack motivation to get the project out of the way so soon because it's a featherweight. I wait till the last moment, fall behind, all my classes act like they're the only class, and ere long I get smothered under feathers. Yay.

I blame the punctual. They're the cause of all life's woes. Without punctuality, nobody would care whether things get done when they're due.

Source of problem located. Solution for interception: ???

Three Things About the Three-Day Weekend

With Memorial Day weekend here, three days no school on Monday, it's a good thing. That sentence was ill-composed but I'm keeping it. As a lesson.

No school on Monday. That means, or so it would seem, no classes. Pretty sure that logic works out. Which means there's time to get work done instead of having to go to class, by which I mean homework. But for two it also means both of the other apartment mates are apparently out of town because they can be, which means that I've got room to work on printmaking stuff- have some screens emulsing in the bathroom without fear of someone walking in on them and turning on the lights.

There's still class on Tuesday, which means that this project due on Tuesday is actually due on Tuesday and not Thursday like I'd thought. I'd... I'd prefer Thursday.

We Already Got CARRIED AWAY

Remember how I was looking for a microphone? I ordered one from the internet and it came this morning, at the same time as a certain new game console came in the mail as well. In order to I-don't-know-what-it-seemed-a-good-idea-at-the-time, with the new mic I decided to film a reaction video, to all the reaction videos I could track down, to the teaser trailer for the My Little Pony movie. Like I said, it seemed a good idea at the time.

There are almost 40 of them. I never want to see, as of now, another reaction video for the rest of my life. Never been much into reaction videos, but they really broke the mold with this one, whatever that means. Listen, I'd had something perfect to say re: me and reaction videos, but I'm not sure what it is or anything. I keep on dozing off. There is no rest, there is no sleep, there are only ponies. It's like Paprika, but with ponies, and not like Paprika at all; see what did I tell you I'm nodding off, saying things I think make sense but which apparently don't. But if they don't make sense, how did Harley Quinn beat up those dudes on the elevator in the LEGO Batman movie? Thus we know it must make sense. Nelson Malone Meets the Man from Mush-Nut. The wacky adventures of Wally McDoogle. Homer Price? Something about the Queen, seeing you and thus not assassinating you maybe having to do with Quantum, uncertainty stuff, but maybe only metaphorically? It appears that while I've been doing this, it was a secret audition with Robert Downey, Jr, and congratulations I'm a superstar. But for real though the x-acto blades that come in packs, that must be a virus because the number of blades in a pack multiplies, I mean there's more and more every year, and I forget the rest. This is just like 5 years ago, Marvel can't decide their new direction and so they just hand the whole thing off to a raccoon and that's where Rocket comes from and IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN.

Twist ending: I should sleep.

Om Shanti Om

More Bollywood! Foreign film night tonight ensured so. This week's offering was Om Shanti Om. It's 1977. Shah Rukh Khan (!) plays a minor actor (or "junior artist," as they're apparently called) named Om, who has a crush from afar on a megastar actress named Shanti. Om manages to score a night out with her, but later overhears a conversation between her and the producer of her next film, whom we'll call Mike, because that's what everyone will call him in Hollywood once he goes Hollywood, though his real name is Mukesh. So Mike, yeah? 

Turns out that Mukesh and Shanti are actually married secretly, which makes his wanting to marry the daughter of some other studio exec (and inheriting the studio for himself) kind of a big deal. This is all a big twist. Further turns out Shanti is pregnant. This is also a big twist. But we're not even halfway through the movie yet, so the spoilers ain't bad, because I haven't even gotten to the real plot yet. (Here I should mention that the film getting produced, in this film Om Shanti Om, is itself called Om Shanti Om.) Shanti wants a public wedding ceremony so that they don't have to hide the marriage anymore, and a few days later (which Om spends moping around after the news) Mike takes her to the set of Om Shanti Om, a huge ballroom constructed just for the movie which hasn't begun filming yet. We'll get married in here, underneath this chandelier, he says, but nope he's actually lying and brought her there just so he could catch the place on fire with her trapped inside. Om tries to rescue her, but is beat up by Mike's dudes, burnt badly, exploded out the window, and hit by a car rushing to the maternity ward of the hospital. Taken to the hospital himself, he dies there at the same time the baby boy is born, and is thus reincarnated as the child, who is also named Om, also played by Shah Rukh Khan, and who grows up to become a famous actor, living the dream that Om I envisioned for himself.

It's now 2007, and Om "OK" Kapoor is turning 30. He's extremely pyrophobic after his encounters in his previous life, and meanwhile receiving other mysterious flashes of his previous life, especially when they visit the burned-down studio from 30 years ago as a filming location. Also there's this crazy lady who claims to be his mother, (which is actually true because she's the mother of his previous incarnation)? His memories of his past life come to a head during the star-studded afterparty of the award ceremony he won, when he encounters Mike (back in India after spending the past 25 years in Hollywood) for the first time, and remembers all that happened and how his beloved Shanti died. Mukesh came back to India for one reason: to produce an OK movie, that is, a film starring Om Kapoor. OK agrees on one condition: the film they produce is to be a revival of the planned Om Shanti Om from 30 years ago...

From here, the plan is simple: OK Cinderellas a Shanti lookalike as his costar, so that he can Pygmalion and Vertigo her in order to Gaslamp Mike in order to Hamlet him, Something in the Air-style (or Phantom of the Opera-style, really, which they don't even try to hide.) 

Sounds like a good idea to me.

They Grabbed Him by the Drinking Fountain

See if you can make heads or tails of this Calvin and Hobbes strip I'm recreating from memory here (go on, give the old mental archives a whirl. There's probably hundreds of Calvin and Hobbes comics that you can remember without realizing it.)

CALVIN: a couple of kids got filthy rich this morning

HOBBES: really? How?

CALVIN: they grabbed him by the drinking fountain.

I'd always assumed that the kid was named Filthy for some reason and he got rich from suing them after they'd assaulted him. But I guess I've been giving it more thought- our they thought crossed my mind at least that maybe that wasn't the way it was intended. The manner of assault was bothering me- the punchline I remember very clearly. Grabbing him. So, what if his name is Filthy Rich and they "got" him by grabbing him at the drinking fountain? Got as in kidnapped or jumped or absconded with or possessed? Or maybe the two kids made money off of some song by some band, vis They Grabbed Him, by The Drinking Fountain. I just don't know. Anyone else got any theories? Maybe it's a pun based off of some regional accent I wouldn't understand; I don't know.

2017 Backlog 11/15: Boring Backlogging Details

For the first few of these, I put the time of when I was getting these up up front, but now it's just, the time it is today, right now, that defaults and I just do the date, whatever I need. I compiled the days I didn't have already, and like I'm not doing these in any particular order. Just have the date as part of the post title, made a post for each date I saw needed a backlog post, and sometimes I delete the date from the post accidentally and I have to go back and research what date it was, and... I'd be able to get in more that this much in five minutes of writing if it weren't for that. Eh.

Vlog Up

Readings on web typography in my interaction design class seem to indicate that large type is dope, and needn't feel clunky or overwhelming so long as it's laid out properly. This is the size I usually type at. Isn't this much better? Come to think of it, here it is in Arial, which is the typeface I used to use, at the same size, which makes it the same font I used to use. Font is the typeface combined with its style: for example, right now I'm using like a 16 point Arial font (picas and points are another dang thing; just fancy typographers' measurements, is what you need to know.) Right now I'm using a 16-point oblique Helvetica font. Et cetera. 

Anyway I haven't blogged in a couple of days, as of this writing, because my computer's been slow as of late- may have had something to do with compiling the latest vlog. That took up a lot of processing power. And I had to do it like three times, because the headphones I used to mix the sound with were super loud, so I mixed the sound way too quiet the first couple of times. Turning up the volume, from the previously compiled file with the too-soft sound, resulted in a lot of background hissing, so the whole thing was one big mess, but at least you can hear anything and as far as things go I suppose I'm not terribly ashamed of the final outcome. 

2017 Backlog 10/15: What I'm Doing While Doing These

I've got half an hour to make, 6, 6 posts? Which means that each post would need... 30 minutes, divided by 6, 5 minutes per post? It's exactly 11:30 right now, and I'll just be writing straight for five minutes. 

Trying to help my sister make a YouTube video compiling her Snapchats for the year (she's a great and hilarious Snapchatter, and making a best-of. Cool. Needed my expertise to attach the introductory clip, and we've been having export trouble but I've got it now I think.)

Post Time!

Apparently it's almost midterms already?, which I know for a fact must be impossible. Evidence number 1: there's just no way, man. Evidence number 2: I haven't even finished any of the first projects in my classes this semester. There's a huge difference between that and, we haven't finished any of the first projects in my classes this semester, of course, but...

I think the reason I wasn't behind in my classes the first semester is because I was doing more besides classes- extracurricular stuff. That somehow made my use of time more efficient...?

The Second Tiny Abe

Filmed stuff for a new vlog today. I'm not sure who Tiny Abe is, or even the first one; I'm nodding off here and weird sitcoms are coming into my head. But I filmed stuff for a new vlog today. It's probably going to take a while to put together though.

Ghost Rider is the best! (also unrelated, continuing to nod off.)

I've got the opening greeting for the video; do you think the executives will like it?

Hello snackers... For he who clicks the "sub" to me this day shall be my snacker, be he ne'er so vile, this vid shall gentle his condition. And pretzels' pretzel shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd, we few, we twisted few, we pack of snackers... that's all I got... Pretzels here. I can see into your soul.

'Tubing

I've mentioned disturbing "you know, for kids!" YouTube videos in passing before; yesterday Saberspark released a video launching a probe into the matter. It's... it's not for the weak of belly.

You can wash your eyes off with my latest wonderful-thing obsession, No Evil (playlist linked,) which according to my browsing history I stumbled upon Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It is marvelous. It's about... well, it's kind of hard to sum up, and the entire plot isn't fully explained in the videos themselves- helpfully, Crowne Prince of Scribble Kibble explains the whole backstory here, plus why come it's so awesome and why you should watch it.

If you don't subscribe to any of the other YouTube channels I link to here, at least subscribe to Betsy Warlord of Noodles Lee's.

Lois Lane Girl Reporter?

It's been years, and I wasn't even looking for it, but doing an archive trawl through Hark! A Vagrant, I found this linked in one of the, what are they called, rants? It's about Lois Lane, Girl Reporter, which was at one point to be a series of illustrated YA novels not unlike the Secret Hero Society: Study Hall of Justice book, except revolving around Lois Lane, Girl Reporter ("All previous instances of its use now rendered callbacks rather than sexist. BONUS.")

http://deantrippe.tumblr.com/post/4021523420/lois-lane-girl-reporter

Like Cailin said when I showed it to her the first time, back when it came out (!), and I'm paraphrasing because this was 6 or 7 friggin' years ago, but something along the lines of, any project that opens up including the phrase "with considerable brainstorming help from my pal John Campbell" makes it fine by me.

Three Stories, or One

If there's a single verse of scripture at the core of all others, my nomination for it would be Matthew 26:41: Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. Christ has come to his disciples while in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they've fallen asleep. 

I had homework due this evening, the readings for New Testament class tomorrow being Matthew 26-28; I got nothing completed, at least not in time. With little time to complete anything, I focused on the most possible of all my assignments due to complete, which was the reading assignment. There were a couple of chapters of commentary to read, and I nodded off in the midst of them.

Gilgamesh approaches Utnapishtim wanting to know the secret of eternal life, and Utnapishtim agrees to give it to him if he can go I think it was three days without sleep. But Gilgamesh can't- and so how is he supposed to be able to stay alive forever, if he can't even go without sleep?

I completed the reading in time, and even potentially the response, but the assignment is closed by the time I'm able to access it, so I can't submit anything. So that's the end of that story. If you'll excuse me now, I'm going to bed.

Mayhem and RiPPs

I figured out how to download my copy of the PDF- the issue I'd been having was, you need to be logged into DriveThruRPG.com before you click on the discount link, in order for the discounted (meaning free, because it's already been purchased from the preorder) zip file to show up in your cart.

The other bundle's still up for grabs if anyone wants it; maybe I'll auction it off, I expect it to be a hot commodity. Or maybe I'll just let you have it. It comes with the rulebook, and a blank character sheet, and the GC screen, and a PDF file of all 108 Mayhem cards which you can print out and paste to normal playing cards to have your own Mayhem deck. So, everything you need to start playing except for the dice- I myself ordered special Planet Mercenary dice, 4 sets of the 3D6 you need, but any dice work for it as long as you've got a way to distinguish the Mayhem die from the other two. 

The way those work is this: after you roll, if your roll succeeds, if the Mayhem die shows a higher result than each of the other two dice, that triggers a "Mayhem flip," which means that you flip over the top card of the Mayhem deck and interesting stuff ensues. Maybe you actually failed. Maybe you succeeded more spectacularly than you'd thought. Maybe you need to reload the next time you try to shoot something. It could be anything. If it's something you don't like, you can spend one of your RiPPs to negate that card.

Other ways RiPPs can be spent are rerolling your dice, and throwing "ablative meat" in front of you to prevent otherwise fatal injury- you toss one of your grunts in front of you and that takes the hit for you instead. Maybe they survive that, maybe they don't. (If your PC is ever killed off for real, you can keep roleplaying as one of your grunts from then on- and the more times they've survived being an ablative meat shield, the more powerful that character is...) Don't expect to emerge from a session unscathed- being a galactic mercenary is dangerous business, and the idea of a successful round of play in this game is if everyone had fun, not necessarily if everyone did well, or even survived, or not.

I Talk About PM:RPG a Bit More

When I first mentioned Planet Mercenary I was under the impression that it had already come out, because the Kickstarter campaign had certain dates estimated for completion and delivery- only there was this massive holdup as they wanted to perfect everything, so everything's only beginning to roll out now (even though a lot of the parts were already manufactured like a year ago apparently.) The rule book only started printing today, apparently, and, I'm still waiting for the PDF, but, any day now...

Also I mentioned how ingenious the roleplay system was, like an actual story is being told; I mentioned that as something the GM (or Game Chief as they're known in the PM:RPG) did but that's not accurate as much, I was going based off of what I could recall at the time. And it's true that the game chief does have a mechanic similar I guess to handing out XP, where they're called RiPP (role-playing points; the extra "i" comes from the one that's not in "team"), which you can spend to not die among other things, which is fun and relatively uniquely implemented, but, the unique fun story-telly part about it has more to do with the entire approach.

Which maybe I'll tell you about tomorrow; I wanted to get to sleep tonight.

Great Segue

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth a mothering nation... (Mad Libs reference.) I've got the entire Mad Libs sessions from my mission on my thumb drive from my mission, though I have no idea where that is. Somewhere at home? But it's very small, and has been lost for years.

Also, my current flashdrive is also missing somewhere in the apartment last I saw. From a mother's day reference to news that I'm behind on an assignment that I'd had on my flashdrive, an assignment that was due a week ago. Greet segue.

Secondary segue, swinging it back around and segueing the other direction: I love films, and I love making films, and during my mother's day call (seriously is that where you put the apostrophe? isn't it about all mothers though?) I received sage parental advice about, not trying to upgrade to a BFA just because I can, when I don't enjoy it, and, maybe talk to some elective/occupational counselor, because the idea of education is to be educated, which means to, be educated, and somehow education connects with jobs?, I don't know, the logic was a little fuzzy. But Brother Keller already has mad connects with film industry dudes which he'll spread re: me once I graduate and am ready to be hooked up, and the class in my elective focus which I've enjoyed the most has been motion design (though, having taken it last semester where I don't think I got anything higher than a B, I didn't do too well at.) Logic follows, I need to film more, vlog more, do something, to make my wheelhouse rollier and homier, and emphasize in that as a specialty.

Only I can't find the battery charger either, to power my camera...

Arthur's Nothing Problems

So turns out that a PDF copy comes alongside the physical copy of Planet Mercenary already; if anybody wants the link to the PDF copy of the Planet Mercenary RPG rulebook that I won't be using, let me know, and it's for free I guess; MAN I've just got TOO MUCH MONEY as it is, it's the worst.

I've been dreaming almost entirely in heists lately. I was only mildly psyched for King Arthur, but with the Guy Ritchie and all, and my dreams lately (seriously the plot of every single one of my dreams lately has taken the form of a caper) I knew I had to go see King Arthur: Legend of the Sword in theaters; it's okay I guess? There were a few heisty type elements as far as that goes, but overall in terms of movie quality... I can usually pretty easily "script doctor" the precise problem a story has that keeps it from being good*, but this one's got me baffled. Guy Ritchie movies tend to do that to me... 

I mean, for sure the whole Lady in the Lake thing is easy to pinpoint as something that could have been pushed better, but that's near the end and the film clearly was already from the beginning not all it could have been. Character investment, for one, but it's not the characters' fault as much as the structure of the narrative the characters are seen in. Needing to throw up text at us in the beginning explaining some crucial such-and-such, as this film does, is generally a pretty bad sign. So does Star Wars, so there's not really a problem with the text intrinsically so much as what the text means: Star Wars, after the opening crawl, launches straight into action, and deftly gets us to care about the characters we encounter in the early scenes; bad opening-narrative-text movies start off with telling us exposition... followed immediately by showing us more exposition. Like the expositions couldn't have been consolidated for some reason. And we the audience, still not knowing the things we need to know to appreciate the situation at hand because there's still crucial information being explained, don't have time to invest in... anything. So we don't.

From nothing comes a king, is the film's tagline, right, so the problem in the movie would have to be... nothing. Nothing. The nothing bits, those are the issue. The stuff that leads up to the- oh, you know what I meant, it's obvious enough. Maybe it's the directorial style, or something, but I have a hard time getting rooted in Guy Ritchie films generally, like in general have investment problems at the beginning, and the more abstract he gets the bigger the problem is. His heist stuff, set present day or whatever, is easy enough to latch onto early on; Sherlock Holmes movies, a bit further removed, and so it's harder to seep ourselves into**; King Arthur, meanwhile, is, set in a fantasy version of medieval England where one of the very very very first things we encounter are war elephants the size of castles. So.

Planet Mercenary Preorders and T-Shirts Past the 70th T-Score

Planet Mercenary goes to print on Monday, and it should be hitting retailers by July. But I'm pretty sure the PDFs (for those who prefer their RPG guides in PDF format) will be available before then? Anyway, I for one am totally preordering that junk. Tomorrow! Which is actually today!, since it's past midnight here.

I've emulsed another screen, in all that's fit news of print, but that's boring; the good stuff is the ideas I've come up with meanwhile. What got me into serigraphy is the fine arts angle, with t-shirts being an afterthought, but right now I've got one or two (...or one) ideas of which I'm pretty proud in the t-shirt realm, definitely matching the Prince Pretzels standard of being past the second standard deviation of "cleverness." It's a good word- intelligence and creativity, summarized punchily. Out of all the ideas in the world, surpassing the 97.7th percentile of creativity and smarts isn't easy, but I think we've hurdled at least that bar with this stuff. Hoo boy.

Wish I could tell you more, but you'll have to see for yourself... once I get around...