Upcoming stuff for winter break
With the semester ending in about a week and a half, I'm thinking of everything I want to accomplish with my 3ish weeks off.
Let me warn you, it's kind of a huge list of stuff. I doubt I'll get all of it done, or even a large chunk, but I want to lay it all out, just to say I did.
Getting into the swing of things
Three weeks into classes and I feel like I have done nothing but work: class, shooting, clubs, homework, planning, meeting... it's been crazy.
As of this past Sunday (the 12th) we finished shooting the first episode of my new TV show mat42dr. The episode is approximately 7 minutes long and will be premiered at GVTV's Premiere Night 2010 on Friday! I am utterly excited. Of course, I haven't watched it yet, but my super-awesome, super-powered editor, Rene Rodriguez, assures me it looks good. I don't expect it to be the best looking thing in the world--because for a first time director, I'm still learning--but I think it will get the opening of the story conveyed to the viewer. I know of two little continuity errors, pointed out by Rene, but he assures me it's not a big deal.
I'm pumped.
Also, there was GVSU's Campus Life Night last Tuesday, followed by the first GVTV meeting and the first Comic Book Club meeting. Both were loads of fun. I hope I didn't scare away the freshmen from the CBC meeting... we'll see on Thursday. Add in the Randomish! sketch I was in on Saturday (for six hours), the constant load of work I've had since school started, and trying to plan for different events with CBC and mat42dr... I've been busy. Which is awesome.
I told my roommate, Brian, about how I felt like I hadn't been at home in a week on Sunday. It was oddly true. I had only been home to sleep, otherwise, I was off shooting, playing D&D, working, doing homework, or working with GVTV for one thing or another. So Sunday had a nice, chilled out evening with ice cream and episodes of Bones.
Of course, starting today, I'm beginning to make plans for the next week and a half of shooting, rehearsing, and people gathering for mat42dr, on top of getting things together for the Comic Book Club's first event: Super Human Registration Day. I have a busy week again.
Craigslist and coding
I decided a few weeks ago that I'd put myself on craigslist to advertise that I'm some college guy who can build web pages for $50 a pop (including a year of hosting and a domain name). I mean, I could really use the cash and I like doing this kind of stuff.
Let me just say... damn. People have been responding. I'm not trying to brag, but I've taken a few jobs on and it's become a list of sites I need to build. Some have extra features (for extra cash) and some are plain and simple because businesses and people want a good web presence.
So I'm up to my neck in this, on top of work, and D&D and life. It's strangely awesome.
To add to things, Nick Nelson and I have decided to take on an endeavor to redesign a personal project we started a two years ago. It's a 100% rewrite/redesign of the site and we want to go public with it. My goal is to have it ready for initial beta testing by January. We'll see. I have approximately three weeks to get the first part of my portion done (1 of 3) and then comes the testing phase of that with Nick. It's gonna be a fun ride.
I've been doing so much coding lately... this is my counter to my creative bout I've had for the last... 8-9 months. I like this. Of course, my hopes of being a web developer in the future may shift this wave of creativity to lean more towards coding, but nonetheless, I like this.
Outlets
photo by zamburak
In the past 8 years of my life, I've been given outlets for my "creativity," and lately I've been in a spiral of taking one or more on at a time. Or, at least, I've been trying to take one or more on at a time. More explanation later.
I've been talking about creativity a lot lately (with no expertise at all), so I apologize if you came looking for something different today.
To list my outlets, they go in this order (starting in 2002):
- Trombone
- Bass guitar
- Electric Guitar
- Computers (Flash, coding--HTML/JavaScript)
- Electric Guitar/Acoustic Guitar
- Writing (lyrics, poems, short stories)
- Glitch/loop-rock
- Writing (blogging)
- Coding
- Garageband
- Electric Guitar
- Coding
- Storytelling (speech - Dungeons & Dragons)
- Writing (short stories, scripts)
And here I sit now combining too many of these things into my life and it's both exhausting and overwhelming to the point where I want to do them all, but can only do them in short bursts.
Is this just me being "old"? Or is it me taking on too much? I guess the problem could be my tendency to simply dive head first into these things and not come up for air until I absolutely need the air (or rest)--again with the pool metaphor. I can hear the thought in the back of my head (the logical portion of my brain) yelling "MODERATION IS THE KEY IDIOT," and yet I just can't bring myself to make that conscious effort to moderate myself.
D&D summer
via arexistence.blogspot.com
It's about half-way through summer and I've been playing D&D every week on a semi-regular basis. Currently, I'm involved in 7 games... it's kind of ridiculous.
Here's a breakdown:
Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy - A game run by my friend John, based in the Warhammer 40K universe. This isn't Dungeons & Dragons, but it's a tabletop game based around a percentile system (that's a d10 and a d100 added together). It's a pretty cool system. I play along with four other friends (Pete, Brian, Kyle, and Megan) as a Cleric, who's similar to a Bard, that empowers the party and still can kick some ass with guns and a sword. Our party is currently working for the Inquisition, hunting down the big and horrible things of the universe. Our GM, John, makes it interesting by winging the story as he goes by taking what we say or think is happening and skewing it to work into the system. This is a weekly game we play on Mondays.
D&D podcast
Last night was the first night of a new D&D campaign I'm DMing for. We have 5 people playing (Brian, Kait, Katherine, Ben and Nathan) with possibility of adding in Jared later--if he manages to find time to play.
But the biggest part of this is the idea of podcasting the gaming sessions. Thanks to a handy little application I found (via TUAW) called iPodcaStudio, we can record and run the whole podcast from my iPhone. How flipping cool is that? It records pretty decent audio (quiet at times) and is overall exactly what I was looking for for podcasting on the go. I highly recommend the application
Brian and I had tossed around this idea of podcasting our D&D sessions for some time now--given Brian's love of the official D&D podcast--but all of the games we were in were already too far in for people to really get all of the references and jokes, so we waited. Then BAM: this campaign came into being and Brian mentioned to me, just before we started playing last night, that I should record the session. We've got combat, joking, inner party conflict and everything that makes a campaign great. Let me just say that it was a fantastic idea.
I'm currently in the middle of editing and splitting the ~70 minute session we had into listenable portions to eventually be put online and on iTunes (2 parts done, 2-3 more to go). I may throw it on a subdomain of some I own, but that probably won't be decided for a few days. Be sure to keep and eye out for it.
This is the beginning of something awesome. I'm sure of it.
On being sick and the last four days
It's been a crazy past four days.
- I moved into my new place in Allendale with Brian and Josh on Saturday
- This includes moving a bed, a desk, a TV + stand, all of my comics & trade paperbacks, a bookshelf, stereo & speakers, all of my DVDs and books, all of my clothes and other odds and ends
- I also helped Brian move his bed, desk, dresser, desk chair and other things into his room
- I acquired a cold after unpacking 80% of my said moved stuff in my room (I blame the dust)
- I've watched at least 8 episodes of Supernatural with Katherine as well as the last few episodes of The IT Crowd, series 2
- I've sorted 200+ comics and filed them in my longboxes
- I've washed all of my clothes and arranged them in a functional way in my room
- I picked up last week's comics on Saturday
- I shot some of Jeff & Mike on Sunday in the blistering cold over at Whitecap Comics with Jeff and the rest of the J&M crew
- This only made me more sick
I'm sure there's some more in there, but overall it's been a long four days; so long, in fact, that my body decided to give me a big middle finger yesterday by keeping me in bed instead of going to work and class.
So, I'm still battling this cold and I'm making myself go through class and work today sniffling and coughing--oh yeah, I acquired a cough last night/this morning. DayQuil to the rescue!
This week is going to go by quick, I assume. Rest tonight. Comic Book Club, tomorrow--we're watching Batman. Friday will most likely mean D&D. Saturday will be dedicated to shooting Jeff & Mike. Sunday is the Superbowl--which I really don't care much for, but will probably be spent drinking beers and eating chili with Jeff and some people. Whew. This should be fun.
I hope everyone else's past four days have been good. I'll be around with more random updates.
Welcome to the new year
2010. Welcome.
So. This year began with high hopes. D&D with some friends, then blammo: My house got robbed. Not like "100% everything gone" robbed, but more like "we're taking your video games and probably coming back for more" robbed. $2400 worth of stuff taken in a two hour timeframe. Yeah. We filed a police report, got some finger prints taken around the house and were told to tighten security.
The next day after not sleeping, I, along with everyone but one of my room mates, got the fuck out of dodge. You can't call somewhere you live your house if you don't feel safe sleeping there.
Now, I'm currently residing at my parents house looking to sublease my room as well as all the other vacant rooms in the house. If you know anyone willing to live in a cheap house in the south-east side of Grand Rapids, let me know.
As for now: I'm just looking to find somewhere to live. Allendale looks good, but it all depends on if I can find somewhere and afford it. (My buddy Brian and I are looking towards the trailer park just across from GVSU)
Let's just say these last few days have been crazy. Lack of sleep, too much sleep, breakfasts made of turkey-jerky and cigarettes plus D&D. Here's to hoping this year can only go upwards.
I'd also like to thank everyone on Twitter who were supportive of everyone at the house. We all really appreciated it.
For now, I'm looking forward to just going back to school and getting back into a somewhat regular schedule. I'm keeping a positive attitude in that sense.
Now, back to my Degrassi marathon on TeenNick. Man I'm a sucker for this stuff.
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@MikeRapin
- RT @RedditComicBook: X-Men#1 the preview bit.ly/14DsLEc #reddit #comics 7 hours ago
- RT @iDownloadBlog: Here are a few hundred invites for App.net join.app.net/from/htkgzkyntw 8 hours ago
- Flax bread pizza for dinner. Mmmm it's going to be good. @ The Technomancer's Lair instagram.com/p/ZolQHthhH5/ 1 day ago
- RT @StephOOC: I forgot Damian was dead. 1 day ago
- Whew. Project finished/fixed for the night. 3 rums + Diet consumed. Lots of music listened to. Now: Snack + internet, then sleep. 1 day ago
