(no subject)

[tamakun]

Alright, haven't posted in awhile ("awhile" being three days, apparently), and I've got the time to post, so here's what's been going on in my mind and I've been meaning to chat about recently.

I wish I could've been at the Prorogue Protest today, but unfortunately I had to work. However, to hear that there are a lot of people organized for this is promising.

We got the chance to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus before it completely disappeared from Toronto cinemas. (It's still around, but not in Toronto per-se; it's on the outskirts.) I'm glad that we got to see it on the big screen. I was not aware that most of the movie was shot in "modern-day London" as evidenced by the trailer, but the storyline is very Terry Gilliam. Don't ever make a bet with Mr. Nick! What was interesting is that after the film aws done, we were caught in a quandry of blurring the lines of good and evil. I think it's not Gilliam's best, but it's definitely up there. The visuals were great (standard of what I'm expecting from Gilliam), the actors were wonderful, and the storyline, while confusing at times, was a lot of fun and I'd love to see more behind-the-scenes of that film.

I also went to see Avatar with a co-worker of mine. James Cameron cannot not do anything Epic. We got the chance to see it in 3D, and I loved the holographic displays. I especially thought the portable tools the scientists were carting around were interesting - I noticed they rotated photos just like an iPhone does ;) But wow, that world... I lvoed how they would just wander the jungle for a good amount of the film, the jungle was living with its glowing lights - so much wildlife and such neat reactions from physical touch! It was just alive with colour, and the 3D (while not paddleball-over-the-top) was just great in immersing me in the world. :D

Just how much of Avatar is CG, though? All of Pandora is just gorgeous, and since it's CG and the Na'vi are CG, I'd guess that, what, 85-90% of that movie was computer generated...

On a side note, sometimes I feel a little bit of an outsider at work. I like videogames and anime, and well, there's a few videogame people, but they're all growing up and having kids and things like that and they don't have the time these days to play. I'm digressing, the point is that I don't get invited to do things outside of work (and if I do, it's to bars and parties where you have to pay $50 to get in, and I'm not that rich). However, it was incredibly refreshing and pleasing to have one of my co-workers invite me to go see Avatar with him. I really liked the fact that he seeked me out for that. He's a great guy. I need more co-workers like that :D

~~
The Final Conan O'Brien show - I was not aware at how short the evening went. I loved how they were "spending as much NBC money as they could" before the final bow. But his final statement, c-n-p'd here, is very, very moving. I never really watched it, but I always saw clips over at Kinnon's (which were awesome). I look forward to seeing wherever he lands in 7 months. (Also, this Chainsawsuit comic is fitting, too.

Before we end this rodeo, a few things need to be said. There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can’t say about NBC. To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want. And what I want to say is this: between my time at Saturday Night Live, the Late Night show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over 20 years. Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways. But this company has been my home for most of my adult life. I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.

Walking away from The Tonight Show is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Making this choice has been enormously difficult. This is the best job in the world, I absolutely love doing it, and I have the best staff and crew in the history of the medium. But despite this sense of loss, I really feel this should be a happy moment. Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second. I’ve had more good fortune than anyone I know and if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-Eleven parking lot, we’ll find a way to make it fun.

And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the Internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. As proof, let’s make an amazing thing happen right now.

Conan then ended his show jaming on his guitar with Will Ferrell and a few other special guests playing Free Bird. A very nice send-off :)

~~
My night class is interesting to say the least. We haven't really done much yet in terms of projects, but the entire class is about discussion. We've been talking about what restaurants we've been to, what we thought was good, what we thought was bad, what we noticed was interesting. Last week's homework was to go to a restaurant as if we were to buy it and see if it was worth it. (I need to do that more anyways... I need more personal research.)

I'm trying to organize my life better, and I've been looking at my notepads that have been stuffed in my pockets. Now that I've made the realization that U8TV was part of my life 8 years ago, I'm kinda surprised to see that one of my notepads has a layout on how to make a U8TV cake, complete with bright-orange frosting. It's probably time that I clean up these notepads and start fresh.

So, I've been playing through some of the games that I already have. Instead of buying and not playing, I decided to try to save some money, only get the obscure games that won't have a high release count (I can always get New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Trauma Team will be difficult to find after it's released) and just play through them instead of leaving them on the shelves. (It's interesting to note that I have not played much Rock Band 2 after the Rock Band Endless Setlist for Child's Play, though I've touched on Lego Rock Band to unlock David Bowie and play some kid-friendly songs :P)

- I finally finished Brutal Legend, which was a lot of fun, but I feel that the final battles were too rushed... maybe it's because I went through all the side-quests before hitting the main campaign all powered-up, but Dolviculus's battles were over way too soon (though I did finally have my ass handed to me in his Stage Battle levels a couple of times). It's too bad, I liked Dolviculus as an enemy; and I feel you didn't face off against him enough. However, the game is classic Tim Schafer and I really liked it.
- I received Raving Rabbids TV Party as a Christmas gift, and seeing that I love the Rabbids and I know a lot of TV Tropes, it's funny to see how many different TV shows they were mocking. There is a lot of good humour in this game, slapstick's always a plus with me, and always a neat use of the remote/nunchuk (especially Shake-It TV - you're actually dancing, making gestures with the controllers. it's very Samba-De-Amigo-like).
- ravenworks sent me Williams Pinball Hall of Fame for Christmas. I haven't played enough pinball recently (especially since my last semester's class was on the same night as TOPL), and this was an incredible gesture. I feel like I have 10 pinball machines instantly available at home. The graphics are incredible, the Wii controls are spot-on (using the Remote and Nunchuk in tandem to simulate the flipper buttons, and shaking them to "nudge") feels so much more natural than using an Xbox Controller. It's perfect. I only wish there were more tables, but even so, 10 tables of some of William's best (Funhouse, Black Knight, Whirlwind, Space Shuttle, etc) is just awesome. :D
- On the PC side, I tried the demo of VVVVVV and was totally mesmerized. The C64 vibe, coupled with the awesome chiptunes and the simple gravity-flipping mechanic (and nothing else!) has made this game incredibly tempting to pick up. (BTW, check out that URL name. Awesome. :D)
- Just before Christmastime, Amanita Design was offering Machinarium for $10 including Samarost2 and the soundtracks. I couldn't resist; I love the art style (and the fact that everything is hand-drawn is just icing on the cake). The fact that it's a point-and-click adventure without dialogue just really drew me in. I love the simple hint system and "thinking bubbles". (In other point-and-click games, there's a fun diversion called Little Wheel which is fun and incredibly well-done in Flash, if rather simplistic in the choices.)
- In revisiting my old e-mails, I came across AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (which was made by the same team as the Katamari-clone The Wonderful End of the World). The pumping music track coupled with the Skydiving feel really caught my attention. I'm also amused that one of the 'cubes' you can unlock is a relaxation cube, complete with hypnotizing, relaxing dialogue. This game looks extremely polished and I'm tempted, but I've gotta not buy any more games for now...

Here's some really strange things I've heard recently at work.
One, the French trailer for Ingolorious Basterds has music from Justice in it. I'm kinda surprised. I don't remember hearing it in the English version, but anything that exposes Justice, I'm for it :)

Two, the trailer for The Box and Valkyrie has the theme music from Saw in there. Is the music from Saw public-domain or licensed or what? I thought it was an original creation. It's practically synonymous with Saw now. At least, it is to me...

In totally unrelated news, I started looking through my old TXT files to try to sort out what I saved these links for. Unfortunately there are a couple of vague lines, including one that stated "Factory 43: Checked up to Katsudon". I have no idea what that means, and I've seen that there are several Factory43 websites. However, I did find FakeBandShirts.com - t-shirts of bands so indie, they don't exist XD

I still haven't looked through my MP3 collection from when I upgraded from Windows 2000 to XP! When I did that, I was transferring all my files to a new disk, and the system actually crashed, which corrupted a bunch of the MP3 files. I haven't found many bad files yet but I've got so many songs that it'll probably take me a good month of listening to them all before I find any more bad files.

Alright, I think that's enough from me for me. I should get back to work AAAAAAAAA *runs off screaming*

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

What kind of stuff is that one co-worker into? :) Maybe you could do stuff together more often :)

I couldn't believe how quickly the last Conan went by, either! It was amazing to see him choking up at the end, but I can't think of a more fitting final moment than playing an electric guitar solo on the stage of The Tonight Show. (Was that Beck? My friend insisted it was...)

I wound up watching a couple of minutes of Jimmy Fallon afterwards, simply because it was on -- I went from hating that guy to just feeling sorry for him. He's clearly no good at this, and he knows he isn't, but he also knows he's going to have to keep on coming out there and dying in front of the audience, night after night. He clearly wants to do a good job. He's just not funny. (We wound up switching to Craig Ferguson after a few minutes, and the difference was just jaw-dropping, it feels like that man must have been born on stage. Wait, that's a terrifying metaphor. You know what I mean. :P)

Man, VVVVVV is another one of those games that's *expertly* done, but just absolutely not for me. XD Yikes. X3;;

"Aaaa" has a demo, y'know :) (I tried it, I was disappointed. X3)

Y'know, I clicked Little Wheel to open in a new tab, because it sounded good, and then it started playing in that new tab, and I realised just by the music that I'd played it already :) It is charming though, isn't it.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Well, for what I know right now, Ryan seems to be big on movies, but he does have just interest in the world at large. I can talk with him about anything that I have in mind, it's a nice feeling :) (He also loves my cookies, but that seems to be an across-the-board acceptance. XD)

And since Christine thought it was Beck on-stage too, I would have to say now that I'm fairly certain that was Beck :) Now, was the long-bearded guy one-half of ZZ Top? And who was the flower girl that Ferrell was face-sucking? XD

We did exactly the same thing! Watched Fallon "share a 40" and split from the stage, and then turned it off and fell asleep shortly thereafter. Craig Ferguson is one of Christine's friend's favorites, and he does whatever he wants because he thinks no-one's watching. Apparently there was an episode where everyone was puppets. (And yes, a terrifying methaphor. XD) When is Ferguson on? I never watch Late-Night shows, but Ferguson has always been amusing - at least, on the Youtube clips I've seen ;)

What is it about VVVVVV that you don't like? Too mind-bending? Too twitchy? (The characters in the stages, like the Stop-Sign heads, totally remind me of other C64 games like Manic Miner and Dark Castle with their bizarre looks and stupid-pacing routines, I like that vibe.)

Yeah, I tried the demo of Aaaa - I liked how everything was put together. It's simplistic, yes, but the soundtrack is adrenaline-pumping and the - what would you call it, "radio chatter"? - gives you that feeling of being separated from the "home base". Only saw their Katamari Clone for a short while but never tried it myself.

I was really impressed with the style of Little Wheel. I don't know how Flash handles 3D without plugins (unless it's just prerendered, I'm sure you'll be able to tell me) but the feeling of 3D items in a 2D space just amazes me. I particularily like how the trains sway.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/01/23/conan-obrien-recruits-will-ferrell-beck-for-final-episode-free-bird/ !

Ferguson is on simultaneously with Fallon, I'm pretty sure. Last night he had the entire Mythbusters 'build team' (Tory, Kari, and Grant) as his guests! :D

My problem with VVVVVV was the pace. X3 I was thinking, that game should come with slow-motion options; the puzzle-solving in it is great, and I think it would even appeal to someone like my dad, if you could slow things down so that the tricky part is *reasoning out* the puzzles, not actually manoeuvring out the path that you've already reasoned out.

Their Katamari clone was kinda fun, but it was too loose, it lacked the wonderful weightiness of the Katamari games. X3

I'm almost positive everything in that game was prerendered; the camera never moves, and nothing really happens 'dynamically', it just plays out the actions that the author determined, y'know? ^^

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Aw, I think I would've like to have seen the Mythbusters outside of their show!

I've heard that VVVVVV has an unlockable "slow motion" option ;)

Yeah, Little Wheel's probably prerendered. I've seen that style before, but the fact that it just manages to create a 3D feel through only black and white is pretty impressive. :) If I had any game-maker blood in me I'd create something along those lines or similar to Walk-Smash-Walk (http://www.sakupen.com/mv.htm).

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Making it unlockable defeats the whole purpose! XD

Yeah, it was weird seeing them in that setting. :D They aren't quite "talk show material" in some ways (Kari was fantastic, actually), but even then they were having such a good time -- and Craig was such a fan of THEM! -- that it was great to watch anyway :D