Emptyeye

Seriously. I suppose in effect this raises the issue of “Should a person post on their blog every day for the sake of posting?” Some might argue “No”, and they’d have a fair argument. The thing is that at the moment, while I finish working on The Six Day Exile, the blog posts are really the only thing I have that signify I’m still alive (And who knows how long that will last if the apartment thing gets finalized as I expect it to), so I almost feel obligated to at least put something up each day.

In that vein, you’re all familiar with the Rickroll by now, but have you checked out the Ricroll (Note the missing “k”)? I can’t help that I’m custom made…

(Final PS: For some reason, the Richard Dawson “September” clip I linked to a bit back shows up in a search for “Ric Roll” on Youtube, which I find amusing)

So I apparently have an apartment come late May or early June. Even better, I apparently have the choice of a basement apartment, should I want it (This is good, as it means I can continue playing DDR without disturbing any poor people that may be below me. Also, it’s a bit cheaper, at the expense of a balcony). That’s really all I have tonight. It’s exciting and a bit scary at the same time. I mean, I’m not moving terribly far away from where I am now (It’s maybe 15 to 20 minutes, closer than I am now to both where I work now and any of two potential places I would go in the near future), but at some point I have to take stock of what I actually own, and clean out all the old video game magazines and the like.

Work slowly continues on The Six Day Exile. This time it was properly fading clips into one another to, if not eliminate the annoying pops that come when one clip crashes into another, at least conceal it enough that you won’t notice.

I’m also trying to work with a program called Jashaka to ultimately get commentaries onto my speedruns. I think this program can do what I need it to (And probably a lot more than I need it to) once I get past the “Designed by Open-Source Geeks for Open-Source Geeks, screw normal people” interface.

Finally, here’s some interesting footage of an old game for the Commodore 64 titled “Cliff Hanger”. Despite the title, what it is is essentially if Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote were instead a bandit and a sheriff respectively, you’d have this game. Looks pretty neat.

This week at emptyeye.com, I returned from my self-imposed exile. Hooray! Since then, I’ve been slowly progressing on the album, doing a bit each day to bring it closer to release. I’d like to continue doing that until it’s finally out. Sometimes it’s significant progress, sometimes it isn’t, but every day it’s at least something.

My dance gaming has kind of taken a back seat as a result, though I did get my twenty-fifth home version Heavy/Challenge AAA, as evidenced here. High gas prices have also limited my trips out, to be honest, even though it really isn’t that far from my house to the mall.

In speedrunning news, my Astyanax run is in the SDA queue (Which reminds me, I need to re-send them my comments for the run), and I’ve begun practicing for a run of M.C. Kids as well. At present, my bugaboo is a trick that lets you skip pretty much the entirety of one level (Birdie’s Treehouse 6) that I learned from the Tool-Assisted Run of the game. It’s doable in real-time (And thus presumably, though I’ll admit I haven’t tried it yet, doable on console), but getting it consistently is a major problem, and the level is set up in such a way that if you miss it, you’ll probably have to go through the level the long way anyway, which isn’t good for a speedrun.

Finally, in book news, I’m currently read the epic that is KISS: Behind the Mask. I’ve said before that I’m a sucker for band biographies, and this is no different. It’s an interesting read, though the most fascinating part to me is a huge appendix of sorts, where KISS themselves review each of their albums one by one, and talk about the experiences writing and producing them.

Until next week….

-EE

Pretty much what the topic title says. For some reason, when I try to go into Timeline Mode in Windows Movie Maker to try and add some commentary in preparation for the Youtube edition of my Rygar Speedrun, it up and crashes on me. Not good.

So I’m putting the call out there: Are there any free alternatives to WMM out there? I don’t need anything super fancy, really, just something where I can load an .AVI file, split it up as needed, maybe throw a pause or two in there, and narrate over it (And be able to output this as a seperate file). Can anyone help me out here?

A bit of speedrun news: my Astyanax run is finally in the verification process at SDA. And it only took four months, compared to the nine months or so for my Magic of Scheherazade run to get verifiers…

I’ve also pretty well decided that M.C. Kids (And given a choice between a link to the site of one of the developers of the game, or a link to the Font-of-All-Knowledge-Some-of-it-Even-Accurate–you know what site I’m talking about–I’m picking the first every time) will probably be my next speedrunning target. In a previous entry’s comment, my cousin noted that I once gave the game a 6/10. This is true, though I also included the caveat that, taken simply as a game (And not a McDonald’s propaganda piece whose target audience was around 5-8 years old), it’s really better than a 6, but missed so badly with its target audience that I docked it a couple points.

Over the weekend, besides working on The Six Day Exile, I’ll probably try and do a Youtube edition of commentary for my Rygar run, ultimately leading to various flavors of commentary for all my existing runs.

While going back and re-arranging what will ultimately become the final version of “7-11“, I was struck at how the compressor that was a part of some of the guitar sound also served to distort and clip said sound. Awesome, now it sounds like a major label recording, and I don’t even get the benefit of being super loud and overpowering everything else. I’ll fix this somehow, either through studio magic or simply re-recording the part, but it doesn’t exactly boost my confidence in my abilities for the moment. Oh well, I think I heard it the first time and more or less convinced myself I was a good enough producer to fix it in the first place, or I would have re-recorded it, so…

In happier news, some two-plus years after I by a complete fluke managed my first Heavy AAA on a Dance Dance Revolution home version, I nailed #25 tonight in a rather similar fashion. Not that it was a complete fluke like #1 (With 24 previous home version AAAs before this one, I know I’m good enough to AAA at least easy songs), but it was on a song–”Maria (I Believe…)”–that I apparently don’t play very often at all, as I hadn’t even full comboed before tonight, where I played the song and pulled a AAA on my first shot. So that was pretty cool anyway. You can check that out by clicking the thumbnail at the top of this post. I also think I’ve almost gotten down THAT. ONE. STEP. in “Sakura” to the point where I can at least combo it now. Fellow DDR players know exactly what I’m talking about; everyone else will be completely lost. Suffice to say that there is one step in particular in the song that is notoriously difficult to hit accurately–or in my case, at all, evidently.

Finally, here’s some more Family Feud hilarity. The first contestant actually does reasonable enough. The second one…let’s just say I’m amazed Richard Dawson didn’t lose it here too.

Or however that particular meme goes.

In all, I pleasantly surprised myself with how I generally managed to stay on-task throughout the past week or so. It wasn’t perfect–I still have to record some solos, and do all the mixing and such–but the fact that I said to myself eight months or so ago “I think I’ll record an album in April of 2008!” and actually (Almost) did it when the time came is a pretty big victory for me. Now I have to keep going, and basically make sure I do something, either directly or indirectly, each day to make sure I move closer to actually releasing the CD. Be it fixing the mix on a song, finishing the recording, or…indirect stuff I guess, like getting a PO Box for people to send money to. Overall, there will be 12 tracks–11 plus an intro–the last of which I’ll have to upload when I finish rearranging everything.

I found out in the midst of the exile that my Astyanax speedrun is finally ready to be verified at SDA, when I ultimately send it in (Which should be later this week).

Lastly, here’s one of my favorite game show moments of all-time. I had honestly either forgotten or somehow never saw the last minute or so of this, which is just as good as what comes before it. Nice recovery by Richard Dawson after he blurts out “September!”

I wanted to leave you with some type of substantial post before I ran off to record The Six Day Exile. This post boils down to “I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election should she win the Democratic nomination.” Now, part of this is my political upbringing, which in summary is “Born and raised Republican; registered Independent after realizing that Republicans and Democrats, as a whole, are merely two separate branches on the same Tree of Evil.” Part of it is her stance on violent anything, best summarized in this speech. And the rest is really what this speech represents, which is four more years of the same fearmongering and doublespeak we got under the current administration.

Now, if you’ve been following my music, you’ll recognize parts of this speech were used in “7-11“. My issue specifically with this is the statement that “violent video games increase aggressive behavior as much as lead exposure decreases children’s IQ scores. And I want you to think about that.” Well, Senator, I have thought about it, and my conclusion is…you are full of sound and fury that means nothing.

Let’s examine the various problems with this statement:
1. How does one measure “aggressive behavior”? Is there some type of Aggression Quotient or something? Can you even compare “Aggressive Behavior” and “IQ Scores” in any meaningful fashion?

2. Even giving Senator Clinton the benefit of the doubt and presuming you can reasonably compare aggressive behavior and IQ scores, the statement as given is essentially meaningless. First of all, how much exposure (To either video games or lead) is necessary, for how long a time, to achieve the stated effect? And what does “Statement 1 does as much as statement 2″ actually mean here? Are we comparing the two in terms of absolute numbers? Percentage-wise? Who knows? Apparently not Senator Clinton, because she sure doesn’t tell us here. In other words, without both absolutes and percentages, I don’t particularly care that “violent video games increase aggressive behavior as much as lead exposure decreases children’s IQ scores.”, because for all I know, lead exposure may decrease IQ by a tiny to nonexistent amount.

3. Is IQ even a reliable indicator of future success? Check out this link at How Stuff Works and judge for yourself. There does seem to be a positive correlation, but it’s hardly the be-all, end-all of adulthood prosperity–plus, of course, correlation is not causation.

So in short, this statement in particular is designed to instill some type of fear into you before you really stop and consider what’s being said, and what it means. Haven’t we gone through seven-plus years of this sort of thing already? Isn’t this the sort of thing we as a country should be trying to move away from? If she’ll make this type of appeal to emotion concerning video games, who’s to say that she won’t do it for other things, like, say, the economy, or preemptively invading foreign countries?

…and with that, I’m off to record an album. See you all in a week.

-EE

In considering future ways to grow what I hope will become the Emptyeye Empire, one of the things I will eventually do is offer t-shirts with some design on them for sale (Vague, I know). One potential plan was to use iron-on transfers for this, with the goals of 1. Keeping costs down, and 2. Actually using this as a selling point, pointing out that I would personally iron the designs onto the shirts myself (Which would no doubt amuse pretty much everyone I know, since I try my hardest to avoid ironing my own clothes in just about all circumstances). You know, make me seem human as opposed to some cold, calculating robot on the other side of your monitor.

I got to look at the prices for iron-on transfers at Target…and quickly decided to come up with a new plan. Suffice to say that, unless I can get iron-on transfers at a huge discount for buying them in bulk like I could with the shirts themselves, I’m better off just wandering to the T-Shirt place not far from my house and paying a bit extra to have them professionally done. I knew transfers were expensive–I didn’t think they’d be over $2.00/transfer expensive for dark t-shirts, though.