There and Back Again

From: Marriott-Redmond Town Center
7401 164th Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98052 (Current Location)

1. Head west on NE 74th St toward 163rd Pl NE 0.1 mi
2. Turn right at Bear Creek Pkwy 463 ft
3. Turn left at Leary Way NE 0.3 mi
4. Merge onto WA-520 W via the ramp to Seattle 0.7 mi
5. Take the NE 51st St exit 0.5 mi
6. Turn right at NE 51st St 459 ft
7. Turn left at 150th Ave NE 436 ft

To: 4900 150th Ave NE
Redmond, WA 98052 (Nintendo of America HQ)

Drive: 1.8 mi – about 6 mins

The weird part is the Xbox guys might actually be CLOSER.

I think I'll be leaving 6 minutes earlier tomorrow on my way back to the airport, even just to swing by would be pretty cool.

This place is gorgeous...

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

The end of the 7-year long wait would have been perfect on 07/07/07, oh well what's a few more days?

The wait comes to an end tonight, I've loved what I've heard so far, I can't wait to fall in love with the rest, and I can't wait to see them in September.

The last time I was waiting for the "new" album to come out I hadn't even started coding yet.

Go go Pumpkin power!

Tyler reminded me a lot of childhood last night. As we were learning about the Spanish word "limon" and how the language describes lemons as yellow "limons" and limes as green "limons," he busted out with excitement:

"They should make RED limons and BLUE limons!! And they would taste like red and blue limons! And black limons that would have alcohol inside them!"

It's the perfect example of how friends can brighten your day without even trying, and I was having a pretty good day anyway!

I'm expecting to hear the word that StandOut has hit private alpha any minute now. We are taking the afternoon off to celebrate and hang out. I brought in my guitar today too, so this afternoon should be a lot of fun.

Finally, I found this beautiful photo on digg:



It was taken in New Zealand (of course). Seeing things like this and how magnificent it seems is oddly enough a constant reminder to me of how insignificant our little planet is. We're less than a grain of sand, can't wait to see the beach!



Sombrero Galaxy

Ok, so this was originally going to be a nerdy/long rant about how frustrated I am with the games/animation/music industries and how stagnant they seemed to me. What I realized though is that as a whole, even though they are stagnant, there have been/are some great examples of creativity and greatness peeking through lately. So, I won't spend as much time as I had anticipated bashing things as I will praising the good things...

Animation: For several years in my youth I thought I would grow up to be a cartoonist. That didn't quite work out, but my interest in the topic has definitely been sparked again lately, mostly by revisiting some of my favorites like the old, OLD, Bugs Bunny and Ren and Stimpy. I certainly have a respect/interest in CG animation. I think it's sweet! But, come on! After Toy Story it's just been non-stop, let's give it a rest for a little while, I'm sure we've still got some paper/pencils around here somewhere. Right? Turns out we do!!! And, of all the company's to give it another go... it's Disney!?



Sweet! I have no idea what it's about but I'm excited to see some form of creativity that doesn't go through a rendering farm for days on end before I see it. (Disclaimer: The field of hand-drawn Japanese animation has been fairly rich compared to the American scene, just will be nice to see it from this side of the Pacific again!)

Music: So the more and more I'm thinking about it, I really have nothing to complain about here. Radio music has always sucked and will continue to suck, but man alive there has been some great stuff coming out. And something for everyone too! The Bjork concert just blew me away. That lady is such a huge influence/inspiration to me. I just can't really put it into words. Her mixture of synthetic and natural sounds is just, mind-blowingly beautiful.



Games: I think for this category in particular I've been bitching about the industry for years on end, and finally, I feel like it's back on the right track. Sure, there are way more crappy games than good games, but the success Nintendo is having with the Wii and DS, and some of the upcoming games for Xbox 360, and even things like LittleBigPlanet for PS3, I think people are finally understanding that realistic graphics aren't the end-all be-all entertainment solution anymore. It's refreshing! Super Paper Mario is one of the more creative games I've played in a while. The gameplay, visual design, level design... everything about it wreaks of creativity, and more importantly, fun!



Thanks for reading!!!

I came into my room to watch the final disc of (season 1?) of Vandread. It's a very average anime but enough to get the job done. Well, I found my Grandma online and I haven't talked to her for a while so I decided to fill her in on the Vegas happenings. So the anime isn't on, at least not at the moment.

Whilst doing so I popped on my headphones to just actively listen to some music which I don't do nearly often enough. For 9 hours a day it's always on in the background which is a completely different experience. Some Mellon Collie tracks happened to show up and whenever I listen to this album with my headphones I re-fall in love.

A common theme in Japanese anime/movies seems to be the concept that you as a person are not only who you think you are, but the "real" you is in fact a combination of who you think you are, and who everyone around you thinks you are. I don't think it's a terribly outlandish idea, and there may be some truth to it. I'm not going to get into the "finding out who I am" bullshit, but I just think it's really interesting to think about. I think a cool experiment would be to truly hang out with yourself for an afternoon, sort of put the telescope on yourself from your own outside perspective instead of your own inside perspective. I wonder if I do things that would annoy the shit out of me.

Multimedia anything seems to be more engaging than not. That's why I love putting pictures into my blog entries. Here's a concept screenshot of StandOut Designer Edition:



Let me be the first to say that as of now, it looks NOTHING like this. It's a pretty interesting process working on this tool though. The presentations StandOut creates are fairly interesting and it introduces some new concepts. Working on the designer for it is like working backwards in a lot of respects. To fit with the music theme, it'd be like starting with a song (the "end product") and then working backwards to create the tools that can create that song (the instruments). Some other terms/phrases that might be used to describe my day to day right now also include "chicken and egg" and "bootstrapping."

For those of you that don't know this tidbit, that's where the term "booting up your computer" comes from. It pretty much picks itself up by its own bootstraps, i.e. bootstrapping.

Me Llamo Rosa will be recording some live demos tomorrow. I am very very excited to hear what these songs actually sound like. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised. Oh you want another picture? Ok...



Though mostly weird or gross, I always thought these paintings in Ren and Stimpy were just cool.

1. Vegas was a blast.

2. Work is becoming quite busy.

3. I just bought my ticket to see Daft Punk at Red Rocks. Anybody interested in joining me? Tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster. Its July 31st which is a Tuesday night, I'll be heading down to Morrison straight after work :)

Where have I been? JB Dunckel from Air released a solo CD!!! You can listen to the entire album free in this interactive site: http://www.dev-url.com/clients/dar…

I'm buying it on iTunes though since the quality is fairly low, and I think my iPod would beat me up if I didn't.

Happy Happy Happy! Joy Joy Joy!

There's a new Air album coming out on March 5th!!!! It's called Pocket Symphony!!! Check out the new song on their MySpace.






OMG There's a new Smashing Pumpkins album coming out on July 7th!!!!!! It's called Zeitgeist!!






And finally, I would like to formally invite everyone to a scheduled play-through of Shadow of the Colossus, featuring Ben Jeavons. We'll probably be getting things started around 7:00 p.m. on Saturday. The one or two of you that may actually be interested in this will be getting a phone call from me tonight (Friday) with more details. BYOSix-pack. Not to be outdone:






By the way, it was just announced these guys are working on a PS3 game now...

So I just found quite possibly the best online article describing STANDOUT, the product that I am working on and I wanted to share it with those of you that are interested in what I work on every day:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive…

Also, our official Web site has been updated with some better info:
http://www.erain.com/standout

I'll hopefully be making another post soon.