The Don’s Blog…

If there were ever a gaming invention that would turn me into an addict, it would be the EPOC neuroheadset.  A device that allows you to control games and even computer-operated devices with a simple thought from your conscious and even non-conscious brain.  This little dandy can read electrical signals from the brain allowing you to control your in game characters simply by thinking what you want it to do.

How freaking cool is that?  It’s too cool for words.  It comes out later this year, and starts at a mere $299 per headset.  Affordable waves of the future.  It’s even being used in an episode of Prototype: This! where it will be used to drive a car via mind control.  I am becoming more impressed with this gadget every second.  I can’t wait to write my reviews without having to type for hours.

The pros to this thing are infinite.  Imagine playing a game and not fumbling with the controls because your fingers can’t keep us with your brain.  Games like Mortal Kombat will definitely become much more interesting.  Within hours you could be staging epic fights simply by staring at the screen.  No more aching fingers, no more juvenile arthritis and inflamed joints.

I look forward to playing Gears of War 2 with this puppy.  It can be made to work with virtually any PC game, so wherever your mind takes you… you can kick ass with it.

watch?v=ZMiQx4Mhh_U (click to watch a video)

It has taken long enough, but at the end of this month we begin shooting our horror movie.  I wrote horror back when I was just delving into screenwriting, and always preferred it over comedy, romance, or action.  The thing is, it’s easier to shoot a comedy on a low budget than a horror movie is.  So I’ve scraped together some change, found a couple of people willing to help produce it, and am currently setting up a green screen studio in my garage for CG purposes.  I even have most of the cast ready to go.  And I’m only 1/3 of the way through the script.  How’s that for prepared?

I was only eight scenes in when my first producer read what I had, and immediately jumped on board.  She helped fund my last film, which fell through due to a main character who just disappeared on us.  But I now have a crew I feel I can trust, so as far as I’m concerned all systems are go.  At this point I don’t want to give out too much information about the plot, but I’ll go as far as saying that it’s alot like “The Grudge” meets “Saw”.  Completely original, however, as I can’t stand it when people blatantly rip off a good movie with a cheap copy of it.  I spent days writing ideas down on whatever paper I had near me until I came up with a storyline that I felt was nerve-wrenching, yet easy to follow.

I plan on scaring the Hell out of some people at Sundance next year, and am taking a slower and more detailed approach to this one so that everything comes out just right.  I have 10 months from now to finish this movie and get it to the good people at Sundance Film Festival for entrance next year.  Any and all support is appreciated, and I will definately include names in the credit roll in recognition.

Like most gamers, I have been keeping track of the Nintendo Wii.  It came out with a few games to give even the most mundane gamer a hard-on for motion activated gaming, then added a few hundred more when it became a bigger success than the first test run of the Manchurian program.  Now everyone and their grandmother (literally) is logging away the hours in front of their flatscreen televisions playing tennis against a cartoon character with a large moustache.

Now, before you swing your Wii-bat at my virtual head, keep this in mind.  I was up for long, sleepless hours playing Atari after it was no longer popular.  I defeated every original installment of Marios Bros. right up to the SNES in record time.  I even managed to kick the shit out of TKO, Dig Dug, and Wurm all in one single day, just to see if I could do it.  And I could.  Back then.

But those games and consoles are no longer popular.  Nor should they be.  We have moved into an era of gaming without having to use only buttons.  Time to say goodbye to that dumb ass vibrator in your Playstation controller.  Yes, those things are very gay.  Controls will soon be handled by the mere motion of a body part or a thought from the mind.  So when I heard that they were actually bringing back Duck Hunt for the Wii, I had to pause and re-evaluate my rational primate brain.

Not only was Duck Hunt quite possibly the most bottom-of-the-gene-pool game ever, but they actually wanted to bring it back and make a buck off of it long after it is no longer fun.  I can see keeping the Mario Bros. alive, but Duck Hunt?  I keep thinking to that commercial for one of those Game Services, Gamefly I believe.  The guy picks up a game and reads it aloud, “Let’s wait in line.”  We are now using technology in our game consoles that are capable of rendering and producing the most life-like gaming of all time.  We are wasting it on a game about shooting quacking ducks that fly across the screen.  Excuse me if I’m not jumping into my shoes to make a run to Game Stop.

I could literally reach into a box in my closet without looking and provide an ample list of ancient games that would be more than fitting for recreation on the Wii.  And event the ones I hated the most in the pile would still be better candidates than Duck Hunt.  I have a suggestion to the guys at Nintendo.  The next time you get the urge to resurrect a dinosaur, try something that didn’t deserve to be extinct.  And don’t give me any sales numbers either.  I’ve seen the amount of “wanna be gamers” that crowd gaming conventions.

One more thing, what the hell were you thinking putting Resident Evil on rails?  What is this, a mid-90’s arcade?

One of the things I do every morning when I get up is check Craigslist.com to see what people are trying to throw away.  You know, the whole “one man’s trash” thing.  You would be absolutely amazed at what people are selling for little to nothing that could inevitably end up completeing a home theater system, or a gaming system.  Sure, it’s nothing more than digital dumpster-diving.  But who really gives a damn?

The part that really eats at me is when someone has something they know is garbage, and try to hype it up so they can sell it for a nice little profit.  Take this for example:

FUJITSU LIFEBOOK 535TX - $100

Okay, so you have a stone-age laptop that weighs in at 45 pounds and you wanna sell it at just over two dollars on the pound.  Fine.  But don’t try to make it sound like something grand.  These quotes are from that same ad:

“PERFECT FOR A STUDENT”

“A state-of-the-art notebook”

“133MHz toa blazing 150Mhz with MMX(TM) technology”

“2MB of video RAM”

Remember the garage owner from Christine?  You can’t polish a turd.  Perfect for a student of what?  Laptop history?  This thing was state-of-the-art back in 1990, not anytime recent.  And there is absolutely nothing.. NOTHING.. Blazing about 150Mhz and 2MB of video RAM.  Back in the day, when this thing was created, sure, but not today.  And then to end the whole thing, this is what he had to say:

“I JUST BOUGHT THIS COMPUTER AND DIDN’T EVEN IT USE IT AS I CAME ACROSS THE COMPUTER I REALLY WANTED .”

Now let me tell you what really happened.  Some other asshole on Craigslist or Ebay duped him by telling him it was some kind of hardcore workhorse, and now he’s stuck with it.  So to cover that laptop that might actually run something above Windows 95, he needs to sell this one for as much as some stupid person will pay for it, and run with the money.

When you are shopping on Ebay or Craigslist, don’t be dumb about it.  Check other places that are selling the same product and compare prices.  Because no matter what age we are in, no matter what era we have arrived at, there are always going to be jesters in the court trying to sell you a cheap trick.

Anyone want to by my 150Mhz Paperweight Pro?

I’ve been very busy here lately.  Between catching up all these reviews and all the writing that came  after PAX was over, and working double shifts at my day job, I haven’t had time to do much of anything, let alone update this blog.  But now, I’m back for some more action.

Here are a few subjects I want to cover for the next few sessions of blog entries.  In November I am going to be filming a horror movie.  I am going to be using green screen CGI in moderation, and quite a few special effects.  Since I do everything independently, I am going to have to cram all this information into my mammalian brain as I go and put it to good use.  So I want to keep everyone up to date with the movie’s progress as well as a few CGI tutorials as well as ways to make cheap and easy props and equipment.

I also have in the works a running series of articles on how gamers and geeks can stay fit and healthy without having to leave the comforts of the room where their PC is.  Sitting in front of your computer for hours on end drinking energy drinks and eating snack cakes and Hot Pockets isn’t going to leave you looking like a stud.  Want proof?  You should see the six-pack I have.. or you could call it a keg…

And I plan on updating my WoW Made Easy series.  There are many new things coming our way, and I got to talk to some Blizzard representatives at PAX who let me know what we can expect exciting new goodies in the next expansion of Warcraft.  So keep checking in and I’ll be cranking them out as I get them done.

To those who read this, I apologize for not keeping up with it.  I know that there are people who use this blog to help them work their way up the ranks in WoW.  I don’t see any reason why I can’t find the time to make things happen for them.

I was on myspace playing Heroes earlier today.  I started to log out when I saw this little video slide across the screen as part of a promotion for the new Myspace App: Bumperstickers.  I only caught the words “The students stared in amazement”.  I thought to myself, this has got to be something either really gross or utterly fantastic.  So I clicked on it.

5 minutes later, I sat there staring at the screen and realizing that those were 5 minutes I would never get back, and I could have been watching porn or something.  Anything else would have been great.  It was a little story, with pop rock playing in the background.  No pictures or video, just the paragraphs fading in and out for 5 freaking minutes.

Here’s the story, paraphrased of course.  This teacher is a devout atheist.  He spends each semester determined to prove that God doesn’t exist.  (Which tells right from the beginning this was made up, because he would have been fired a long time ago on account of protesting Bible-thumpers.)  At the end of each semester he holds up a piece of chalk and tells the class, “If there really is a God, he can stop this chalk from hitting the floor and breaking.”  Then drops it.  It shatters on the ground.  Chalk is brittle shit, you know.  He then looks at his flock of sheep and says, “Surely if there were a God he could have stopped that from happening, so there can’t be a God.”  He then commands anyone who still believes in Jesus to stand up.  No one ever does.

Okay, flash forward a few semesters.  There’s this devout Christian who gets up every morning and puts on his Air Jesus kicks and his “Real Men Love God” shirt and heads to class.  Only this semester he has the religious ogre’s class.  He has heard of the teacher and prays every morning to have the strength and courage to stand up at the end of the semester.  Okay, flash forward again.  Teach is holding up the chalk.  He repeats, “Anyone who believes still, stand up!”

The faithful one stands up, and the teacher yells at him.

“YOU FOOL!  If there was a God, he could stop this chalk from hitting the… bla… bla… bla..”

He drops the chalk, but it catches on his sleeve and lands in the pleat of his pants and then rolls down his shoe and stops on the ground with no breakage.  The teacher looks at the kid in shock, awe, horror, and whatever expression the original writer grossly exaggerated, and runs out of the room.  The students stare in wonder at a piece of chalk that didn’t break, and the kid in the back comes up and preaches about God for half an hour.  Then they all go home and enjoy a nice cup of Lamb’s Blood tea and curl up with their Bibles.

Okay, I’m not religious.  I believe there are higher powers, but not in the form of a single entity that somehow watches over 6 billion people every second of their entire lifetimes.  I don’t believe that religion should be taught in schools.  That’s what Sunday school is for.  The school system was founded to teach science, art, language skills, ect…  Not whether a crazy man talked to a bush that was on fire and believed it was the voice of an entity.

But I don’t believe in preaching Atheism either.  And there is a reason behind that.  Same as before.  Anything that involves religion or the lack of religion should be kept out of our school systems.  It doesn’t belong there.  Schools are for education, not the reversal of education.  You look closely at the Bible Belt.  Schools in those districts have the lowest test scores in the country.  Not because they are dumb, but because the religious yokels refuse to let certain things be taught in the schools that they consider “unChristian-like”.

So when I get on Myspace to chat with my friends or play a game, and I see some story about a piece of chalk that doesn’t break turning a class into devout followers… Shit, I see so many faults in that story.  One, no teacher is going to be allowed to devote his time to such a cause.  He would be fired.  Two, there is no way to prove God does or doesn’t exist.  Dropping a piece of chalk will not do it.  Three, the chalk didn’t break because it didn’t hit the ground from its original height.  He fumbled it and it landed on his pants first then rolled off his shoe and hit the floor at an angle, reducing speed and impact at which it hit.  This is basic dynamics people, now you see why you have such low test scores?  And Four, the teacher looks in horror at the kid and runs out of the classroom.  The teacher would have known the reason it didn’t break, and would have done it again with the proper technique.  Not run out of the room like a schoolgirl.

Oh, and then the kid comes to the front of the class and preaches for half an hour?  Okay, after seeing a piece of chalk roll down a pant leg like a turd and hit the floor making the teacher look like a douche, those kids would have been laughing.  And the chances of them sitting there for half an hour after the class ended?  Nada, especially not to hear some kid talk about an invisible man who watches you from the clouds.

Do me a favor folks.  Before you start flamming this post like I predict you will do, try educating yourselves on the proper way to prove an all powerful being might exist.  If the chalk were to stop in mid-air, that would be miraculous.  If it were to just vanish, that would be miraculous.  The only thing this post made me consider was that maybe we need to reinforce that idiot Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act”, because it’s very obvious that a few did get left behind.  Welcome to the internet, tribulated ones.  We have dry erase boards here.

Not many of you know that I am an independent filmmaker.  I was inspired as a child by a video my mom found in a box at a yard sale called “This is horror”.  It was a documentary on how horror films were made.  I watched that video over and over.  When I was 16, after years of writting short stories to entertain my family and friends, I decided to write my first screenplay.  I mentioned this in my Indy Film Course post.  It was called “Crystal Streams”.  It was messy, and without even been acted out I realized it was bad writing.  But it was my first screenplay, and I had written it.  I was much further than most aspiring filmmakers get.  Crystal Streams was never filmed, and the screenplay was lost during all the moving we did when I was a kid.

But I never did give up on writing for screen.  I wrote a few horror scripts, a couple of which were produced and filmed by indie film groups, but turned out to be trash because the director couldn’t seem to grasp that spoken word is only half of a film.  You have to feel engrossed in what is happening on screen, like you are there and this is happening to people you know.  So I hit California two years ago.  I came across a young man named Craig who was working at the local television station.  He got me a job there and we conspired to use the local Hotel and Bar as the setting for a horror movie, with the television station backing us.  Let’s just cut it short and say that things didn’t happen the way I wanted and the film never happened.

So here I am now.  Washington, USA.  I have written two more screenplays, comedies this time, and am now halfway through production on the first one.  I am doing everything independently, what I can’t afford to buy, I make.  I have the support of OCModshop, and a great cast and crew that are donating their time to making a dream of mine happen.  This film is called “Drop-Off”, and is set to wrap up filming in mid-August.  After that I have one month to do any and all editing before the film is shipped out to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival this coming January.

Currently, we are still in the process of getting this thing done.  To track progress on how things are going visit Burn Process Films.  We are still looking for music by indie artists to use in the score, and of course funding.  Any and all contributors will recieve noting in the rolling credits and will get a copy of the film when it is finished, and before we put the DVD up for sell on our website.

Disclaimer:  This blog post has nothing to do with technology or gaming.  It deals with an important matter to me and I have to write it and get it off my chest.  Please do not read this if you are looking for something that might benefit you tech-wise.

When I was 12, I was lying on my couch reading a book.  There was a knock at the door, and I got irritated.  I was a disgruntled youth and everything pissed me off, including getting interrupted whilst reading.  I lowered my book and yelled “What!?” at the door.  No sooner had the words left my mouth when I noticed the person at the door.  I was instantly captivated by her, and to my adolescent brain I had fallen for her right then.  Her name was Michelle, and she was looking for her brother, who was roommating with my Mom.

Over the course of the last 12 years she and I have been the best of friends, spending more than our share of time just hanging out doing nothing.  She is my best friend, and always will be.  Nothing ever became of the relationship that we wanted.  She was married, and I was way to shy.  But when it came to what we had, a best friend, we couldn’t have asked for more.  Over the last couple of years we grew slowly apart, it seemed.  I moved to Washington, and she stayed in Tennessee.  Over the last year she crossed my mind almost daily, but I never called her.

Only 5 hours ago, I was talking to her via a speakerphone on a cellphone that had to be held up to her ear.  The cancer that has consumed her body has left her with only 30% lung capacity and a nonexistent ability to move her limbs.  And she can no longer speak.  From what my Mom told me, she could only cry as she listened to me talk.  They tell me that she probably won’t make it through the weekend.  We used to promise each other as kids that when the time came to die, we would be their for each other, whoever went first.  It looks like I won’t live up to my end of the bargain.  I can’t afford to fly right now.  And so I sit here wondering if I really am that bad of a person, or if whatever God is up there thought it would be funny to deal the deck and skip on that last card I needed to finish the game.

Either way, I will finish my life, however long it will be, knowing that the one promise I made over a decade ago that had any meaning at all will go unfulfilled, and chances are good that maybe it’s not a choice of whether I’m a bad person, or that God has a demented sense of humor… Maybe it’s both.

This was the last time we got to hang out together before I left for California.

I had this idea a few weeks back about building a PC case entirely out of Popsicle sticks.  A few of my esteemed colleagues and friends have expressed their opinions on the matter.  So to all of you, especially Trisha who is worried about me burning down my house, I just want you all to lay your fears to rest.  In July, right after we are done filming this movie, I am going to get started on this thing.  I hope to have it entirely done by mid-August.

So here the low down.  I already have the heat problem worked out, the thing I’m worried about is stability.  So common wood glue just won’t do when it comes to the vibrations.  If anyone has any suggestions on what I should use let me know.  But please, don’t worry about the heat.  I got this covered.

I came across this a few minutes ago and laughed my ass off. Someone put some work into this baby. Very realistic. Sometimes I wish I had one of these equipped to my Hunter.

World of Warcraft car commercial - Watch more free videos