Skate Park, Athens, Ohio

This is my attempt at a skate/bike video. Really, it is also about my search for fan videos of The Sound on Youtube, my inability to find ones for certain songs and thus making my own. Problematically, I didn’t have enough footage to actually run to the end of the song… so I’m waiting for the hate mail that I cut the song short. If I get more footage at the skate park though, I’ll cut an entire video for the song.

Unfortunately, I do not have the names of the skater or the bikers, so if any of you see this, or know someone performing in the video, please let me know and I’ll fix the credits.

Skate Park

Gummi Bears

Gummi Bears was the result of the same film stock test that produced Fish Tank and The Porch. This test, unlike the two previous ones, introduces Fuji Reala 500D. The other two stocks in the short are Fuji Eterna Vivid 500T and Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T. Again, there is no color correction. To produce all the shorts, we shot 500 feet of film total. Gummi Bears was the last narrative short the tests produced.

Fish Tank

Fish Tank was the result of a film stock test.

There are three different stocks used in the short, Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T, Kodak Vision3 250D and Fuji Eterna 400T. Admittedly, the tests really weren’t tests because shooting conditions were never consistent. Nonetheless, for interested parties, I do think some of the qualities of each stock are discernible. I would add that there is no color correction, with the exception of the fish/hotdog close-up. Here I bumped up the whites because the shot was slightly underexposed.

Dwarf Fortress

There are games that are considered complete and final upon shipping but, in this internet age, I’ve largely been drawn to games of another classification, ones in a state of perpetual development. I go in, completely unrealistically, seeing games like this not so much for how they are, but for how they could be with enough time and the right development. Like a battered lover, a glutton for punishment, I keep returning to games of this type after being disappointed so many times before. My best example of this is Infantry, which met many of my expectations but fulfilled almost none of my dreams. I could spin similar tales of games like Graal and EUO. Wesnoth happens to be the only real success story, but something about Dwarf Fortress make it seem like it really will deliver.

Continue reading Dwarf Fortress

For now we see through a glass, darkly – Part 2

Drax the Destroyer. DRAX THE DESTROYER. At that moment it was no longer August, 1985 but February 1973. American POWs were released by the Viet Cong, the US and Red China established diplomatic liaison offices, and in domestic matters I was continuing my never ending role as sparring partner for DeWayne Bell, Buddy Green, Eric Anderssen, and Michael Colobussi.

Looking back on it now, I still can’t figure out why I bought that particular issue of Iron Man. It sure as hell wasn’t the cover. But from the moment I saw the first page I was hooked.

Iron Man

Iron Man was not a big draw for me as far as comic buying habits went. I seem to remember him most from reading a reprint story from Strange Tales when he kicked the crap out of the Crimson Dynamo (the Commie imitation, who, naturally, was no match for Yankee know-how and ingenuity). In an act of mercy, Shell-head let CD escape. After failing his mission, he returned to his rendezvous point with a Soviet sub and they let him drown, stating that failure could not be tolerated. For a kid, that was pretty heavy stuff so maybe that’s why I picked up #55, plus it had a green guy a la The Hulk on the cover.

Continue reading For now we see through a glass, darkly – Part 2