After a long battle, the IMBC is over....and look who outlasted who, Pat? ;)

IMBC Final Results

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IMBC

Is the IMBC over? It looks like Hammy didn't post yesterday. Damn, that would make it 61 consecutive days of blogging. I'm gonna wait for the IMBC homepage to update before I let myself believe that my daily blogging duty has been lifted from my shoulders.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love blogging - I am a hopeless addict now, thanks to Pat and the IMBC. I have every intention to keep this one going even when the IMBC is over. I just won't be posting every day. It's just difficult to write interesting posts each and every night. Some days are easy - you watch a good (hell, even a bad) zombie movie and you get to write about zombie survival protocols. Video game reviews tend to go fairly easily as well. Fallout Journals practically write themselves, although they take much longer to write. (I REALLY want to start writing these again. So much fun! Plus, I want Brandon to finish his Journals too.) I want to concentrate more of my posts on gaming and gaming culture - well, all of them actually - but when you're in IMBC mode, sometimes you just need to write about something. I hope the pictures help to break up the monotony of what sometimes only amounts to a personal journal.

Pat told me about the joys of Blogspot last week, and I may migrate my main blog over to my Blogspot backup at some point. The ability to write your own HTML appeals to me. I just don't know if I'd actually ever get around to making my own page layout.

OK, I'm near the 300-word mark, and I know I'll be coming back at some point today to update, so I'll leave it here for now. I'm heading over to YTMND to hang out. The front page is on fire lately - if you're bored, you should come and hang out too.

You're the man now, dog

EDIT: Yup, that's it. The IMBC is all over. Hammy, you were a fine competitor. Congratulations, and Happy Birthday! Hope last night was a blast.

Well, I guess this is my last IMBC post. Thanks for talking me into this, Pat. It was a lot of fun.

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I spent the afternoon playing with an application called Cuteftp 8 Pro. It's an FTP client that gives you a nice Windows-styled interface for connecting with and using ftp servers. I took a look around two ftp sites, poked around the folders, and made some notes on what I saw. I started a "work log" to keep record of what I so each day and to hopefully help me learn all this stuff faster.

I need to find out exactly what by job responsibilities are. I know I'll be doing some work with PHP and Javascript, and I'm not really that familiar with either of them. I could review some syntax over the weekend, but until I know exactly what it is I have to do, it'll be hard to know how to study/research. I know I'll be working with forms, so I guess I can start on that and wait and see after our call on Monday.

I'm pretty excited about this job now. I can see that it'll be challenging, but I want this kind of challenge. I finally have a job in a field I love and want to be in! I guess I'm still nervous about the details like pay, hours per week, deadlines, and that sort of thing, but mostly I'm happy to starting work on Monday. :)

Christine just called, and she'll be home in an hour or two. I think putting a half-day in on a Saturday is pretty good. I'll take a break - maybe when Christine does some homework tonight, I'll read up a little on PHP, and try and find a good PHP editor. Christine and I are going to cook another extravagant meal, hopefully, so we may have some more food pictures for you.

I also need to write some more Fallout Journals....I have such a backlog of material to write about. Do you guys know that I have Power Armor now? Hell, yesterday I even found.....oh, but you know what? I can't give away all my secrets. I'll keep some surprises for now, to be revealed in the fullness of time. And don't worry, you'll get plenty of advance warning for spoilers and the like. I don't want to ruin anything else for anyone. A lot of amazing things have happened to our hero, None, things that will forever change his path.

OK, I'm going to sign off and enjoy the rest of my Saturday. You should too.  :)

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First, the good news.

We finished out team project today, and our presentation went over very well with Andrew. I'm really proud of what our team got accomplished in the time that we did. Brandon managed to squeeze in a few features at the last minute that really add to the demo's polish, and I felt like we had a strong presentation to demonstrate what we've learned. Andrew was really digging what we were throwing at him - I expect to do pretty well on this project.

Andrew had some good advice for us as well. Our team really wants to finish the game, and we've talked about planning and managing a second iterative cycle to finish the game and make it Web-ready. I think we need to do this; I mean, we could settle for having a solid demo to show how much we learned in 5 weeks...but how much more impressive would it be to have a game that we've completed and published to the Web portals, with people actually having played it? I think that we can do it, too.

But back to Andrew: he said that if we're really serious on getting this done, then we should plan it and get it done before school starts. It's just gonna get busy in September, he argued, and we're gonna have other things (school, work) take priority over the game. He's right. We really should devote some of our free time to finishing it. We won't need to work 40-hour schedules for 5 weeks to finish the game. If we manage our time well, we can finish the game before the end of the summer.

I really want to finish this game. If I could, I would post a copy of the latest build for you to play on this blog. (...hmmm, I wonder if there is a way to post .swf files to the page, like I do my animated GIFs? That's worth looking into.)

Now for the great news.

I GOT THE JOB.

I can say that now and be 100% on it. I got an email from Chris today - he said he's got a good gut feeling about me, that I'll be good for his company. I'm over the moon. I wanted this job a lot - the experience alone will be invaluable. I'm still kind of shocked at my good fortune: I get to do the programming on websites that promote and host online poker tournaments. I'll be working with PHP, SQL, Javascript, and a little HTML all summer. I couldn't have asked for a better or more interesting gig, honestly. I'm pretty stoked. I start on Monday, which gives me the weekend to get familiarized with Cuteftppro 8, the ftp software they're using. I did a little work with ftp servers last term so I think I'll be fairly comfortable working with it. 

I am really excited about this opportunity - the Web is a massive entrepreneurial opportunity, and I want in. The experience I'll get on this job is going to be really valuable to my plans. I've been squarely focused on game development, but networked gaming is the direction the industry is clearly heading. People want to play Mario Kart and Brawl and Halo - and everything, really - online. (I want to play Team Fortress 2, just can't seem to find time to play it.) Learning about Web programming is gonna be a great feather in my cap.

Yeah, it's been a great day. The only thing that could make it better would be winning the IMBC. ;) Hammy is pretty fierce competitor, though. (Happy early birthday, by the way!) It may be a long summer of blogging before going to the beach.

Alright, time to take the dog out and do some Photoshoppin'. Later y'all.

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Christine and I made some gnocchi tonight - they're like the vegetarian's version of meatballs. Gnocchi is made with flour, garlic, ricotta cheese, parsley, and mozzerella.  Once you mix all the ingredients together, you roll the mix into meatball-size balls and drop them into boiling water for 15 minutes. Once they're done, the recipe says to refrigerate the for 15 minutes - I'm not sure if this is totally necessary, but it may help the gnocchi to firm up. After that, you put the balls on a pan brushed with olive oil and broil them until browned. We boiled fresh linguini and covered the noodles in a pesto glaze, and then we topped it off with the gnocchi. The resulting meal was a worthy follow-up to the dragon bowls.

Gnocchi

A table-eye view of the gnocchi

It's just after 11 now, so I'll be retiring to the living room with Christine after the blogging is done. Our final project presentation is tomorrow, so I want to be well-rested for the morning. Christine isn't feeling well either and I want to rub her feet (if she reads this, this is the part where she'll break out into a big smile). We may even start a movie if we're feeling adventurous.

My brother David visited today; he was finishing up work and I called him to come over and visit. We talked about starting up a business based out of Cape Breton, something IT-related - he wants to have a good chunk of money saved up ion a few years' time, and he and my brother Daniel have been talking about the Lever brothers starting up a business. I think it's a great idea - I've heard it's not a good idea to go into business with family, but I think I'd be cool doing it with my brothers. We're all pretty tight, so I wouldn't be worried about family squabbles and that kind of drama.

I want to go into business for myself. I can't think of a better way to spend my life than to be working on projects that I'm really passionate about. I like idea of being my own boss, and the kind of freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur and setting your own hours. Something tells me I should really pay attention if I'm working on the pokker websites' backends. This could be an excellent learning experience for me.

Another short blog post, I'm afraid. See you all tomorrow.

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He's back

I have to say, I wasn't even planning on seeing this in the theater. I had already dismissed it outright, thinking this was just the latest attempt by George Lucas to defame his own legacy. I totally wanted to go out and see a movie though - Christine had the night off, and we haven't gone out in a while.

The previews were good - The Spirit looks pretty good, with a Sin City/300 aesthetic; Hancock's trailer was funny; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Eagle Eye looked like good traditional Hollywood flicks; and Kung-Fu Panda looks like a must-see for me.
 
Then the movie finally started, and I settled in for the grim possibilty of the last Indy movie being really, really bad.

You know what - I actually really liked it! I want to thank all of the critics and naysayers for not allowing me to walk into the movie with even the barest of expectations. I also want to thank whoever cut the trailer, because the cheesy scenes in the trailer actually didn't seem so bad in the movie. It's weird - it's like all of the negative press made the movie more enjoyable for me.

The story in this one is pretty off-the-wall, even by Indy's standards. I won't even bother to write a summary of the story, because, really, it doesn't matter. There are plenty of places on the Internet you can go to get spoilers for this movie. The movie is really about Indiana Jones being put into one crazy situation after another, and somehow surviving against the odds. There is one image in the movie that has burned itself in my mind; it came about 30 minutes in, and Indy survives the most improbable situation EVER. And I loved it. It was just this incredible, iconic image of the man who has seen it all and lived to tell the tale.

I loved all of the action scenes; I thought Cate Blanchett was great (but under-used) as the Commie villainess; I thought Shia Leboeuf was good as Mutt, Indy's long-lost son (c'mon, you heard that already, right? I don't feel that bad if I spoiled that one apparently I spoiled this for someone, and now I feel bad. I'll make the font smaller); I didn't care that some of the dialogue was a little corny. I really enjoyed it! I was just smiling the whole way through. This one is more like Temple of Doom than Crusade or Raiders: a little more over the top, a little cheesier, but still quality Indy.

Pictures of the House

As promised, here are some pictures of our new home, taken by the lovely and talented Christine. She should be a photographer. She's awesome. The photos are arranged in order, from outside of our house, on the corner of Gottingen and Young Street, all the way to the back of the house, in the kitchen. I think these should give you a good idea of what our place is like (sorry, no bathroom shots).
 

At the corner of Gottigen and Young

Our long hallway

Living room - note the awesome curtains

Best rug EVAR

Our bedroom

The Office, where the blogging is done

Guest bedroom

Way better sink than the last place

Christine loves this fish (and those cutrains)

Christine also likes this rug, and the birds that live on it

That's all for now; next movie up on the block is Iron Man, and I've been hearing nothing but good reviews on this one. Hope that doesn't mean I'll hate it. Alright, later skaters. Here's Indy trailer to whet you appetite, if you haven't seen it yet:

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Well, look who's back. I hope you enjoyed the vacation, Pat, but I think it's about time renewed your Exploration. We're waiting, you know. And now that you have freed yourself from the IMBC and the burden of its daily requirements, I hope to see your writings remain relatively free of tabloid trash like this. In return, I promise not to use my Photoshop powers against you.

Today was a day of documentation. I wrote the final draft for all of our weekly reports. Tomorrow, I'll put together a presentation With Open Office Impress (it's their version of Powerpoint). I really love Open Office. I haven't switched to Linux yet as my primary operating system, but I've running Open Office since I bought my PC. I feel no need to buy Microsoft's version. Why pay for something that has a free, viable alternative? That reminds me; I want to take a look at GIMP one of these days. I wonder how it stacks up to Photoshop...

Now I'm at home, with nothing really in mind, and I thought I'd finish off some things before going to get Christine from school. I'm gonna be a good boyfriend and wash some dishes before settling into some Photoshop. Brandon gave me a fantastic idea for a YTMND yesterday, and I really want to finish the one I'm working on now to get to this next one. I think it's a freaking legendary idea, actually. It may take precedence over a Will Smith idea I had.

I also need to get my computer fixed, I've just realized. I have to get my new motherboard installed - I'll do that tomorrow. I definitely want my computer up and running perfectly for when I start working, which will thankfully, hopefully, be soon.

OK, I apologize for the short post today, but I wrote a monster yesterday and I need to do some IRL stuff today. Like Pat said, blogging is fun but blogging every day can be a chore: not so much for the time spent - writing 300 words is pretty manageable - but rather for the difficulty sometimes of coming up with a topic to write about. Man, I miss those Topics of the Day.

OK, that's puts me over the top for the day. See you all tomorrow.

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I just had a magnificent meal with Christine for dinner, and it was so good that I feel compelled to blog about it for a bit. It was a little dish called a dragon bowl - yes, its name is really that awesome. I can't make this stuff up.

Christine went to a cooking seminar on the weekend for her nutrition course: it was a vegetarian/macrobiotic/vegan cooking lesson, and the instructor showed the class how to make dragon bowls. A dragon bowl is a rice bowl with various ingredients mixed in, covered in a garlic and ginger paste. It was an explosion of tastes - I really have to ask Christine everything that was in the paste, but the garlic and ginger tastes were very strong. Shredded carrots and seaweed were mixed in with the basmati rice, and the final ingredient was a salt made from ground seaweed....and some other spices that I can't remember. I can't adequately describe the taste in your mouth that this creates, but I can say that this is a new favorite meal for me - everything blends so well. We also had some homemade black bean soup, which was also delicious and left me walking away from the kitchen happy and full.

Team Project Update: Zombie Research Continues

Brandon, Emily and I had a great meeting with Andrew today - the rest of the team project will be preparing a presentation for Friday. We are going to do a kind of game pitch and a postmortem all wrapped into one - we'll explain the concept of the game as if we were trying to convince a company to make the game. We'll also present an analysis of the development process, highlighting what went right and what went wrong. Our meeting seemed to diverge a lot from the topic - we started chatting about the importance of search engine optimization to successful web projects at one point - but it was a pretty interesting conversation for the most part. I am getting more and more interested in Web programming every day....wow, I can't believe I said that...

Anyway, following our successful meeting, we decided to conduct further research into zombie survival by renting 28 Weeks Later. This is a sequel with a bad reputation in zombie film lore - I know that 28 Days Later is a hard one to live up to, but the outcry against this movie was pretty heavy. I have avoided it up until now, but Emily told me the first half hour alone was worth a rental, and everyone was in a zombie-watching mood, so we walked Belle to the Valufoods market to rent it.

Well, it definitely not as good a movie as 28 Days Later, but it's not without its merits. I'm happy to report that the first half-hour is amazing - no, sorry AMAZING. It is a gut-wrenching, incredibly intense sequence; actually, the overall intensity of this franchise's zombies, the "Infected", is a big plus for this movie. Virtually every scene with the Infected has a visceral, relentless pace to it. These zombies are fun to watch.

I gotta say though: points must be deducted for some pretty sloppy zombie survival protocols that were so implausible that it lessened the impact of the whole story. I can't give away too much here.....well, OK, I can.

****** MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT *******
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Leaders of Earth: if you're gonna try and repopulate a formerly zombie-infested city, please watch 28 Weeks Later and don't do any of it. Learn from its mistakes, of which there are many. To whit:

1.  Before you start bringing citizens in, bring in some civil workers. For God's sake, get the city's infrastructure working. I didn't see one policeman, fireman, doctor....anything. Just American soldiers and British citizens. I didn't even see any construction crews - how are they gonna rebuild this city?

2. Watch the kids. Those precocious young kids brought back to London (you who have seen the movie will recognize them as the ones who broke quarantine and reinfected the entire goddamn population) were allowed enough time to leave the safe zone, steal the keys to a scooter from a corpse, drive home, grab a photo, and discover their Infected mother.

What the hell were those soldiers thinking? What happened there?

American soldier: "Uh, hey, I just spotted those 2 kids that came in yesterday. They're leaving the safe zone. What should I do?"

Chief Wiggum: "Let 'em go, boys - they have to learn on their own."

This contrivance allowed the writers to create a pretty excellent moment in the middle of the film, leading to the eventual reinfection of the population - but C'MON GUYS, they had to let 2 children wander the streets of London by themselves to accomplish this. THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED. Well, not on my watch anyway.

3. If you realize that quarantine has/may have been been breached, you have to take care of those that remain uninfected. It's a top priority. The best thing to do is not corral them all up into a room with poorly barricaded doors, turn off the lights, and then leave them to go look for Infected. If you have done this, you have not helped anyone. You have basically made a zombie factory.

4. Do not hesitate to shoot silly children in the head. OK, this one is harsh. I don't really mean this one, but the 2 kids are really the people to blame here. It's incredible to me that they ever would have been able to get to their old house, but they did - and they found Mom.

Now, I gotta admit, I really enjoyed the scene where Mom and Dad meet again. It was the last great intense scene in the movie, and there was a beautiful theme of betrayal that could have been explored here. It was gut-wrenching to see that Mom forgave Dad for basically abandoning her so he could escape from the Infected, only to then unknowingly infect him with a kiss and plunge London into another nightmare. Great drama there. But the screenwriters got to that scene by cheating, really.

Which brings me to my last point....

5. Don't give any one person complete access to every part of every building. For example, do not give a janitor a key that opens EVERY DOOR in every military/government building. Even the one that is holding your just-discovered-and-Infected-but somehow immune wife. This is a bad idea.

That kind of room should only have military doctors entering and exiting.

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********************* END SPOILERS / RANT ***********************

So, in summary, if you haven't seen 28 Days Later yet, and you enjoy zombie cinema, give it a chance - just be prepared to facepalm every now and then.

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Actually, I don't feel that bad. But I sure have been moving around slowly today.

I had a lot of fun last night. The show was great - I think everybody I know from Cape Breton all ended up at the show. It was like a big reunion! Christine joined us a little later - she had a special Saturday class - and I have to say she looked super hot last night. Crowdis Bridge sounded amazing - they are my new favorite band, and not just because 3 of my favorite guys in the whole world comprise the band. No, they're also amazing songwriters. I won't be surprised if the whole world gets to hear their tunes someday. :)

The festivities wrapped up around 2am, so we headed back over to Vanessa's house, where the DJ party was set to take place. Unfortunately, when we got there, the house was locked up and everyone had gone to bed. BOOOOO. Ah well, that's understandable considering most of the house had been drinking since 3pm. The last standing survivors made their way over to Dartmouth for some more drinks and music. I even managed to play some horrible guitar with the boys before passing out on the floor of the living room. We got up around 10am this morning and headed to the Mic Mac Tavern for some breakfast. I got back home around 1:30 this afternoon - I've done nothing but sit at my PC ever since. I clicked around YTMND for a while, thought about doing some Photoshop (decided against it, too tired), played some New Super Mario Brothers (completed a bunch of levels and then forgot to save it AHHHHHHHHHHHH) and now I'm gonna go for a walk just to get some fresh air.

I can't see myself getting too ambitious today. I might force myself to learn some Photoshop, but it ain't gonna be much. This is what I get for drinking too much. Ugh. OldManLever is old. He can't handle the debauchery like he used to. Ah well, suck it up, princess. You've had worse hangovers.

Okay, that's all I got. I'm also going to post some GIF work I did for the extra media points. I managed to successfully liberate Lil Jon from his backgorund. There are a bunch of strange white marks around him, and because I cut away the rest of the layered images, you see how they all stack on top of each other. This took me the better part of an evening to accomplish. Next, I'm going to try to splice these images into the GIF of the flaming cross from the Samwell video. Maybe I will try that tonight.

EDIT: I got Lil Jon sliced in...how does it look?

Cross

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Crowdis Bridge

After their show, everyone is piling back to Vanessa's house for more fun times, and I'll be DJing! Yes, I've dusted off my turntables and I am gonna spin some funky house tonight. Should be fun. I'll post some photos of the shenanigans if we get any good ones. Which reminds me: I need to post some photos of the new place. I think Christine may have some. I'll get on that very soon.

You know, I really miss DJing. I had a lot of fun playing at The Ruby Room in Japan. It was a very small nightclub and I spun records every Saturday night with a great guy named Josef Wittek. We had so much fun....New Year's was especially fun. I've been playing a lot of my old house records lately, when we've had people over for visits, and the old 4/4/ rhythms are pumping through my veins again.Even better: becuase the new place has so much room, my turntables can stay permanently hooked up. Previously, I had to keep my DJing stuff tucked away under beds and in closets, because I didn't have enough room for them. I've moved 4 times in the last 12 months, and they've been a pain to carry around, believe me. Now that I have them set up in the office, I look at them every day, and I can't help but think how much fun it would be to play in clubs again.

Once school ends, I should look into that. If I get that job though, I'll be spending a lot of time learning PHP and Javascript. AND I wanna work on some programming projects too....man, I need another me helping me out with all this.

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