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Sun Jul 12 01:33:43 UTC 2009
This was probably the most intense four minutes and thirty seven seconds of my life.
Sun Jun 28 08:50:49 UTC 2009
Oh my, it's been over a month since last I made a post. I had
every intention of making a post pretty soon after my return from A-Kon,
but alas inspiration thrust me headlong into my latest project. As such,
I've found myself spending the majority of my time over the last month
working on it, or unwinding from the mental stress said project has
brought with it. Well enough of that for the moment, right now it's time
to talk about A-Kon!
Simon, Brazilianownage, and I drove out Friday morning and
rendezvoused with Wing in Dallas as the afternoon began. After checking
in to our hotel and depositing our things off, we set out to explore the
con/retrieve badges/etc. Earlier that week Wing had convinced me to throw
together a Scout cosplay, from Team Fortress 2, to go along with his
Demoman costume. So after a brief once over of the con, I returned to the
room to change into my costume, and then met up with him for a TF2
photoshoot.
The photoshoot was lots of fun, and there were some pretty good
costumes. Someone cosplaying an Engineer had actually built a little
motorized sentry that would move around, which was very cool. The amount
of work I put into my costume wasn't nearly as much as the majority of the
people who showed up, but I was still pretty proud of how well it turned
out. For those interested in seeing the pictures from the TF2 shoot, you
can find a whole mess of them on Manda's
Flickr. (Wing and I be lookin' so
fine.)
After the TF2 shoot wrapped up, it was nearly time for the AMV
contest, so I met up with Simon and Brazilianownage, and we scored some
fantastic seats about twenty minutes before the contest began.
Unfortunately, Moeblobber and Halfaspider were unable to be there as they
were driving up later that night with Abe after he got off of work. This
was a real bummer for them as they both had videos showing during the
contest alongside my own. Keeping with the tradition of mediocre AMV
contests at Texas conventions, A-Kon's Fans' Exhibition was pretty bad.
There were a couple videos that were alright, but in my totally
unbiased opinion, the Falcon-dan's entries were easily a cut above the
majority of the videos shown.
The winners for the Fans' Exhibition weren't announced until that
Sunday, but for the sake of keeping with the subject, I'll discuss them
now. My entry (Metal
Drill Solid) won best Action/Horror, and I got a sick
trophy, some Star Wars figures, and one really
upset weeaboo out of it. Unfortunately, Halfaspider's entry (If I Can Make This
Move lost to some Ichigo x Rukia Bleach AMV, and Moeblobber's entry
(Unlucky Star)
lost to some showtunes Haruhi AMV with a ton of LOLTEXT DX in it, which
is total BS.
AMVs made using showtunes garner far too much popularity and
respect than they deserve. Anyone who has ever made an AMV can tell you
that making an AMV to a showtune is tantamount to filling in a page from a
coloring book, and then trying to pass it off as a handcrafted
masterpiece. Using a showtune as your song eliminates all need to put any
thought or work into the scenes you choose, how you arrange them, or what
effects you use on them. A showtune has a coreography already pre-defined
for it, and 99% of the time people using showtunes in their AMV will just
pick whatever scenes line up verbatem with the lyrics of the song, maybe
slap some witty text on top of it all, and then hit export. It takes no
skill, and retarded weeaboos eat it up. But enough ranting, back to super
fun convention happenings!
Around 9:30 Friday night, I decided it was time to unleash the
fury of Emillio
Costume upon the unsuspecting Dallas public. Oh. My. Gosh. people
loved that costume, it was like having some sort
of self-esteem h4x, everybody liked it. I couldn't get into the
skywalk from our hotel because security wouldn't let me walk around in the
mall area wearing a mask, so I had to take the street to get to the
convention center, and people would actually stop their cars, roll down
their windows, and shout at me telling me how awesome my costume was.
Some guy on the street actually suggested I go to the Lizard Lounge that
night, because they were having some sort of glow party, and I would win
the contest. I made sooooo many friends out of drunk and/or high people,
I believe I'm actually in somebody's wedding photos :D. I could go on and
on, telling you of all the various people who stopped me for photos and
whatnot, but that would be awfully narcissistic of myself, so I'll just
say that if you ever want to have everyone around you think you're
awesome, wrap yourself in EL wire.
After about an hour of walking around decked out as Emillio, I
started getting a mondo headache and was starting to feel the effects
of dehydration, so I decided it was time to strip off my costume, and
spend the rest of the night cooling off with the Falcon-dan. Not much
else happened after that, we wandered about the con enjoying ourselves,
and eventually decided to get something to eat around 4:30. After a nice
breakfast at IHOP, we returned to the hotel weary and ready for some
sleep, only to find ourselves stuck in an elevator going up and down with
no immediate way of getting off! Oh yes, so close to getting some sleep,
and we had the misfortune of spending the next half-hour stuck in an
elevator with some very stupid weeaboos. How stupid you ask? Well
about ten minutes into being stuck, one of them decided to start
kicking the doors saying that things couldn't possibly become
more broken. Eventually though we did manage to escape the
clutches of that infernal contraption, no thanks to the worthless hotel
staff there, and after some intimidation of the night-staff and demands
for cake, we made our way back to our room for some sleep.
Saturday passed quietly enough, we attended the Master's
Exhibition AMV contest, and were thuroughly disappointed by what passes
for "masterworks" these days. Other than that, we spent the day just
enjoying the convention and eachother's company. Abe and I poked our
heads into a panel on "how to get into the gaming industry" later that
evening, Abe being curious as he had just recently gotten a job working at
Certain Affinity. The panel actually turned out to be ran by a bunch of
game testers, not developers, and after about ten minutes of quiet
snickering, we left. Around nine PM that night, we returned to the hotel
room to relax a bit, and somehow ended up taking a two hour nap.
Thankfully A-Kon's event lineup was pretty nonexistent, so we didn't miss
anything any of us cared about. Deciding that we were once again in need
of sustenance, we set out in search of food, and eventually found
ourselves at Taco Cabana. I had some of the best quesadillas I've ever
tasted, and then we made our way back to our hotel. I contemplated
whether or not to put on my Emillio costume again, not really feeling up
to the task of getting it all put on, and instead settled for wearing my
hat and tie along with what I already had on.
After getting all wired up, we set out again to roam the con and
see what fun there was to be had. Just as the night before, my hat and
tie were well received. We decided to check out the rave, which was
actually pretty fun, but unfortunately it ended after only a couple songs.
Eventually, we found ourselves on the top floor of the convention center,
whereupon we spotted some comfy looking chairs set around a table.
Further investigation on the part of Moeblobber yielded a box of art
supplies, and what followed was a three hour Falcon-dan drawfest! It all
started with the proposition that whomever could draw their waifu the
best, would get their pick of the other's. A silly contest that IMHO, I
absolutely destroyed with my
drawing of Rei Ayanami, excluding Abe and his ridiculous
skills of course. At some point, this pompus hoe and her possy of
con trash made their way over to our corner, at which point she began to
tell us about how she was "kind of a nerd, I guess", and how she gets mad
art sales overseas or something. She was kind enough to grace us with a
drawing of some cameltoe-rific elf-lady, which we promptly made some
facial hair adjustments to. By the time the drawfest was over, we had
quite the armada of sexy anime fanart to pick from, such as: Osaka,
Tomoyo,
the
better Yoko, Rin
Tohsaka, Konata,
and Emillioko.
We've decided we're gonna start renting a booth in artist alley from now
on.
That Sunday was a quiet one, we checked out of the hotel, bought
some fanart, hit up the award ceremonies for the AMV contests, and then
set out for home. A-Kon, like last year, was a blast, and I can't wait to
go to my next con. For those interested, you can see the pictures I took
here,
and all of the drawfest pictures are available here.
I think I'll wrap up things here for now, I need to get some
sleep. I'll continue recounting the events of this last month in a later
post.
Mon May 25 14:41:24 UTC 2009
A-Kon is this weekend, and with the help of my mom and her
superior seamstress skills, my Emillio costume is now complete! I took a
bunch of shots of the completed product, tossed out all the ones that
sucked, and uploaded the remainder to my
Photobucket account. (This
picture happens to be my personal favorite.) I've also uploaded a
series of progress
shots that I took over the course of construction for those who are
interested.
This is the second costume I've worked on that employs the use of
EL Wire, and it's been quite a learning experience. The original idea I
had in my head was to construct an entire suit out of the wire, but after
some research, I discovered that EL Wire is both too expensive and too
delicate to do anything like that. So it was back to the drawing board so
to speak, and after a couple brainstorming sessions with my mom, we came
up with the current design. Aside from the physical constraints and
monetary impracticalities of using EL Wire as a clothing, I also learned
the (rather painful) lesson to always insulate the tips of any EL
Wire strands that may come in contact with human skin.
I had just finished lacing up my shoes, which includes tucking one
end of EL Wire into the inside of my shoe, and decided to check and see
if everything was still working properly. However as soon as I powered up
my DC inverter, I was met with a rather nasty shock to my foot. Oh how
grateful I am that I thought ahead to include two different safety
measures for just such an occasion. Namely, an emergency kill switch on
the battery pack, and attaching the inverter to a tool belt. Thanks to my
planning ahead, I was able to avoid having to fumble around my backside to
try and disconnect the battery cage from the inverter. Instead, I only
had to give my belt buckle a quick squeeze and let gravity handle the
task of breaking the connection between the EL Wire and the inverter. Oh
science, what can't you do?
I had mentioned toward the end of one of my earlier
posts, that I've been rewatching Cowboy
Bebop with my mom. Well we finished last Sunday, and my little
experiment to see if my mom could handle anime went far better than I had
expected. Cowboy
Bebop is such an incredibly god tier show that it's pretty ridiculous,
and each time I rewatch it it never fails to evoke an emotional response
from me on more than one occasion. This time around, "Waltz For Venus"
(Episode 8) hit me pretty hard, along with Faye and Ed's departure at the
end of "Hard Luck Woman" (Episode 24). And to top it all off, when Real
Folk Blues started playing during Episode 25 it felt like someone just
punched me in the gut, hard.
Now I was very concerned that while I was sitting their trying not
to let loose twin waterfalls of manly despair, that the full force of the
situations at hand would be lost on my mother. So you can just imagine
how relieved I was to see my mom actually crying at every part
where it was appropriate. Heck, she spent a few minutes crying on our
back porch while letting our dog out after watching the very end of the
show. Needless to say, she passed my powerlevel training test with
flying colors. Now I'm trying to decide what to show her next. I'm
thinking that it will probably be Ghost
In The Shell, but I'm also considering Noir
since she has a thing for lady assassins.
Well business for me has taken a pretty steep hit recently.
Laziness, counter-spammers knocking my best client off his main affiliate
networks, one client deciding to try and skip out on the remaining $800
of my fee, and a sharp drop in legitimate demand for bots has put me in a
bit of a financial rut at the moment. However, that doesn't mean I haven't
been coding! While business may be sucking terribly right now, I've
cranked out two spiffy new programs!
First is a 4chan image dumping script that automates the processo
of posting a large number of images to a single image board. The program
is named Operation Jupiter Jazz, and
download links along with some more information about the nitty gritty of
the program can be found on the Code
Page.
The other application I've finished developing, is technically
five. I've written image scraping programs for five different anime
related image hosting sites, and have bundled them all into a single
application by the name of Operation
Image Faerie. The websites that are currently supported under the
latest revision of OIF are: Danbooru, E-ShuuShuu, Konachan, Moe Imouto, and Sankaku
Complex. I may or may not add support for additional websites in the
future, it all really depends on whether or not the site has enough
pictures I care about, and if I have enough dango icons to support adding
another site.
Wed May 20 07:13:44 UTC 2009
I'll post later, too busy working on my Emillio cosplay for A-Kon.
Mon May 11 00:52:19 UTC 2009
Oh Man, it's been more than a month since my last real blog post.
Work has kept me pretty busy these last few weeks, I've been developing my
greatest (and definitely most complicated) bot ever, which has left me
mentally exhausted whenever I got some free time, but I'll get to that
later. For now, let us discuss Anime Matsuri.
So Anime Matsuri was absolutely awesome. A. Wyatt Man, Abe,
Moeblobber, and I gathered the Thursday night before at Abe's house, and
then set out at the crack of noon the following morning. As with any con,
there were a miriad of hijinks, new memes, and manly
poses
that ensued, the heaviest of which being our acquisition of Obelisk-chan
from the parking lot we used that weekend.
I got super lazy the week before the AMV contest submission
deadline, so I did not participate in Matsuri's AMV contest, but I did
attend it. I was very disappointed in the quality control of the
submissions allowed into the contest, some had subs for crying out loud!
Nevertheless, it was a pretty enjoyable show. The video crew that was
supposed to handle the contest never showed, so the contest started an
hour late, but the awesome MC hosting the event kept us entertained
plenty. Plus, Popular didn't win anything this time, so all in all it was
a great success.
I was unable to stay for the entire AMV contest unfortunately, as
I had to leave in order to get ready for the cosplay walk-on contest that
Blu roped me into earlier that afternoon. This was my first time
participating in anything like that, so I was ten kinds of nervous, but it
was still lots of fun. I got to meet a couple neat people, and even got
to utilize my Edgy-strengthened nerves of steel by sitting next to some LOL SO
RANDOM XD yaoi fangirl faggots for an hour. You were supposed to
strike three poses for your walk-on, but as Dr Stiles really only has one,
I sort
of improvised, and totally won everything.
Having acquired The
Con Cube, we got Abe to bring his guitar to Matsuri and belt out some
sick licks while looking for pianos to fix on Friday night. During the
course our jam session, many a weeaboo asked to try their hand at Abe's
guitar, and all failed miserably.
We took it upon ourselves to troll Anime Matsuri whenever
possible, and oh lawd did we carry out some incredible trolls. From
spreading the word about Tou-san,
to bending Rocket Man and Crispy Frito to our will during the improv show,
our trollercoaster could not be stopped! Unfortunately the ravages of
time have caused my memories of our more intricate escapades to grow
faint, so I will have to wrap up my recounting of Anime Matsuri here. To
whom it may concern, all pictures relative to Anime Matsuri are posted
here.
We had a pretty awesome LAN party at Thugz Mansion a couple weeks
ago. Abe, Moeblobber, Brazilianownage, and I all gathered together for a
night of gaming, copyright infringement, and E
Card! We also watched my super awesome modified DVD ISO version the
new Gurren
Lagann movie.
Since Abe is the only who lives in Thugz Mansion, we were able to
experience what it would be like if the Falcon-dan lived in a house
together, and we all grew rather attached to the idea. Thus, plans for
the creation of the Dai Falcon Fortress of Solitude were conceived, and
will be made manifest upon the completion of my mission in two
years.
Abe's friend Chuck from The
Black Mesa Movie came down to Austin last weekend, and so I was able
to meet him. A classy gent who works for ID software, Chuck was a pretty
cool guy who drank nuclear ice tea, and didn't afraid of anything. We
were all going to go shooting last Saturday, but I chose to abstain since
I had zero hours of sleep. So I instead met up with them later that
evening, and we went to Houston's and had delicious $30 steaks, followed
by a round of (free for me :D) ice cream at Zero's. Abe and Chuck also
finished recording a song that weekend by the name of Hours of
Eternity, which some have claimed to be the greatest song ever
composed.
The last week or so, I've been attempting to imbue my mom with a
powerlevel by watching Cowboy
Bebop with her. So far things have been progressing smoothly, she
likes the show, and is finally understanding that there is more to anime
than just SHIPOODEN and DBZ. I'm not sure whether or not we'll watch
anything more after finishing Bebop, I'm considering showing her either
Noir
or Ghost
in the Shell. I must tread carefully however, she must never know of
moe nor the existence of Elfen
Lied.
Sun May 10 07:36:47 UTC 2009
Oh dear, I've been so busy these last few weeks, that whenever I
had free time to sit and write up a post, I just didn't feel like it.
Nevertheless, that is about to change for I shall soon chronicle my many
wild adventures in the last four weeks... later. I gotta get some sleep
right now, so instead enjoy something lulzy.
Sun Apr 12 11:06:05 UTC 2009
Back from Anime Matsuri, we trolled that con like nobody's business, more details and nudez to come.
Wed Apr 8 13:28:56 UTC 2009
Tou-san, by far the best new show of this season.
Wed Mar 25 06:40:37 UTC 2009
Oh me oh my, quite a bit has happeneed this week. From the
freelancing side of things, business has picked up and more than doubled.
I made a tidy sum on a resale alone last week, and now that client and I
are collaborating on reselling my applications on a few (tee hee) "black
hat" forums. Right now we're focusing on selling retail versions of an
account creator and poster I developed for Facebook, but I have quite a
few other projects lined up. I'm pretty stoked, we'll be selling the apps
at $200 a pop with at least 100 or so projected buys, that's a
crapton of money, and that's just from those two apps. I've
developed many an application for social networks over the last year, and
finally they will have a customer base to purchase them!
One of the apps in particular that should pull in a lot of
sales is my Youtube video views increaser. Recently Youtube made some
major updates to their site, which subsequently broke every video views
increasing tool on the market! This in turn has created a ridiculously
high demand for updated tools from all of the people who made most of
their income off of Youtube marketing, and my pythons just so happen to be
the best tool available! Wahaha, I need to start thinking about what
color my party jet is going to be. No matter what though, it's definitely
going to have a drill on the end of it.
This week South by South West was going on in Austin, and Enter
Shikari was playing. Armed with this knowledge, I awoke at the crack of 7
AM on Thursday for breakfast at IHOP with Preston before we went to go see
them at noon. Having both picked the same shirt that day, he and I swung
by my house so I could change, and then we played a bit of Smash while
waiting for Brazilianownage to get ready. Around ten we set off for
downtown. Unfortunately luck was not on our side, as we were unable to
find parking anywhere. We considered parking in a pay-lot without
purchasing a pass, but decided against it for fear of having our car
towed. Preston thought he knew of a place we could park next to Red 7,
but as most of the streets were blocked off, we ended up circling around
downtown for near an hour trying to make our way over to there.
Eventually we managed to get there, but to our utter dismay, the lot was
designated as staff only. Both enraged and dejected, we drove toward the
back exit of the lot, only to find ourselves back in the exact same
pay-lot we had started in. After a hearty laugh we drove three blocks
down, and parked in the parking lot of some emergency building and made
our way toward Emo's.
Our luck did not improve though, as we spent the next hour or so
in the hot sun packed tight in line with a ton of other people, with only
the discussion of who would win if our dibs got in a fight to pass the
time. Eventually a member of the SxSW staff came over and informed us
that the show was at capacity, and nobody else would be able to get in.
We were not to be defeated though, and spent another hour loitering out
front of Emo's in hope that we'd be able to get in after the bands that
were playing before Enter Shikari finished. Eventually though we gave up,
and decided to go grab some lunch at Flores instead.
It was here that our day finally started to turn around. After
bringing half the tables in the restraunt together and enoyoing our meal,
wherein I had the best quesadillas of my life, we parted ways with the
rest of our gruop to seek out new adventure. Off in search of cheap
boxsets, we made out first stop at Planet Replay, where I bought a copy of
Metropolis.
After that we went to Gamefellas, where they had much more valuable loot
to plunder. I ended up buying all the DVDs for His
and Her Circumstances and Quest 64, a game I've been on the hunt for
ever since I sold it back in the sixth grade. With nowhere else left to
go, we retired to Falcon Villa to watch a bit of Azumanga
Daioh, and the first Goku
Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei OVAs.
I spent the next day with a friend I hadn't seen since graduating
high school, and my Mac and new monitor (I used some of the money I made
this week to buy a sexy new 22" monitor) finally got here! After
rearranging a decent chunk of my room, all the while suffering from a
ridiculous amount of hunger rage, I finally got my new command center set
up, and it looks awesome. So awesome in fact, that words fail to
describe its glroy, so I'll let pictures do the talking instead. Gaze and
behold the glory of my
new command center!
On Saturday, Preston, Brazilianownage, and I all went and got
burritos before making another attempt to see Enter Shikari. They were
playing at ten that night, with doors opening at seven, so we arrived
at 5:30. Lady luck was definitely on our side that night, as there was
nobody waiting in line at the door. This was fortunate since we
spent the next half hour looking for somewhere with a working bathroom,
eventually finding salvation in some Tibetan goods store that smelled like
alpackas. When we returned to Emo's there was still nobody waiting in
line at the door, so we became the line. At seven we were let in, and
then spent the next three hours listening to a couple pretty lame bands,
sipping back on free Monster, and waiting for Enter Shikari to come on.
Eventually they did, and what followed was a fantastic 45 minutes of trace
core bliss, I even got Chris to sign my phone! After the show we parted
ways with Brazilianownage, met up with A. Wyatt Man, went to Wal-mart, and
then got some food at Wendy's. A good week indeed.
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