Random Bits

[Happy birthday to goldsquare!]

The holidays are pretty much the same most places, but I have to say one things that's different about The Burbs -- there is an amazing preponderance of big, inflated, internally illuminated figures on peoples' lawns. The inflated Homer Simpson as Santa really kind of breaks my brain.

The one fun thing about this giant video dubbing project is remembering the odd gems in the collection. For instance, I just did the Babylon 5 Videos track. I expect that most or all of the Gag Reels probably made it onto the official DVDs (although some get dangerously rude), but I suspect that the near-professional-grade music video mix of B5 scenes to "I Need a Hero" isn't, and it's really delightful.

Did my part of the voice acting for Silicon Theater on Monday, which was a lot of fun -- first time I've ever worked seriously with a microphone. One of my parts (a cranky dwarf) is distinctly hard on the throat, though.

Company Christmas party yesterday. A bit less interesting than previous years (which were held at the former CEO's palatial Winchester house), but we arranged to have the geeks all sit together, so it wasn't too bad. The Concord House matched my expectations exactly: decent but exceedingly dull food.

So far, the game writing is going decently well -- bringing jikharra and umbran into the project has helped greatly, both in reality-checking my ideas and tossing in some new ones. But the odd snafu does crop up. Turns out that the casting questionnaire had a stupid HTML bug, with two sets of radio buttons cross-wired, so I had to write to all the players who have signed up so far and re-ask those questions. Not really surprised: I knew that *something* would go wrong when I automated the thing, but being able to paste the results directly into the development wiki is awfully convenient.

Warming up now from standing outside. We decided to take a stab at seeing the shuttle launch, but didn't succeed. Not sure if we were looking in the wrong direction, or if there was too much haze, or if we mistook it for an airplane. (The shuttle doesn't bother with red blinky lights, does it?) Anyway, time for cocoa...

Random Bits

[Happy birthday to goldsquare!]

The holidays are pretty much the same most places, but I have to say one things that's different about The Burbs -- there is an amazing preponderance of big, inflated, internally illuminated figures on peoples' lawns. The inflated Homer Simpson as Santa really kind of breaks my brain.

The one fun thing about this giant video dubbing project is remembering the odd gems in the collection. For instance, I just did the Babylon 5 Videos track. I expect that most or all of the Gag Reels probably made it onto the official DVDs (although some get dangerously rude), but I suspect that the near-professional-grade music video mix of B5 scenes to "I Need a Hero" isn't, and it's really delightful.

Did my part of the voice acting for Silicon Theater on Monday, which was a lot of fun -- first time I've ever worked seriously with a microphone. One of my parts (a cranky dwarf) is distinctly hard on the throat, though.

Company Christmas party yesterday. A bit less interesting than previous years (which were held at the former CEO's palatial Winchester house), but we arranged to have the geeks all sit together, so it wasn't too bad. The Concord House matched my expectations exactly: decent but exceedingly dull food.

So far, the game writing is going decently well -- bringing jikharra and umbran into the project has helped greatly, both in reality-checking my ideas and tossing in some new ones. But the odd snafu does crop up. Turns out that the casting questionnaire had a stupid HTML bug, with two sets of radio buttons cross-wired, so I had to write to all the players who have signed up so far and re-ask those questions. Not really surprised: I knew that *something* would go wrong when I automated the thing, but being able to paste the results directly into the development wiki is awfully convenient.

Warming up now from standing outside. We decided to take a stab at seeing the shuttle launch, but didn't succeed. Not sure if we were looking in the wrong direction, or if there was too much haze, or if we mistook it for an airplane. (The shuttle doesn't bother with red blinky lights, does it?) Anyway, time for cocoa...