friday

captured from my desk. these are the most recent 8 Bits for use in Ballot Bots. Still can't parrot Colbert in 8 Bit form very well...

Ballot Bot men

David Lovejoy and I are hammering out the final layout touches to Ballot Bots. Here are 4 choices taken from my desktop that probably look the same to everyone else.

Top Left - the dark blue makes all of the background colors too dark. The white ring adds more contrast, which also makes the colors dark.

Top Right - works pretty well. The brown gives the background more variety, and the dark blue line work holds everything in its proper place. The darker blue in the upper field of the background may still be too dark.

Lower Left - nice and airy. Dropping the dark blue outlines and the border framework makes the background feel more like a space (the depth is more iconically believable). Still, it doesn't hold together as well, and all the 'air' makes the card feel empty.

Lower Right - this is the cleanest presentation, but the least interesting. If all suits are represented by one color, it is very easy to tell the suits apart, but is it easier than distinct multi-color treatments? The figures maintain a lot of the card's pop, but even still, is that extra color variety more exciting?

House is GO!

Our Bid has been accepted. So now we must get an inspection, finalize our financial agreements, and sign another 100 papers. All in all, November 29th is coming up fast and we look forward to it intensely.


While this means Robot Martini ops will be sluggish and/or a mess for a few weeks during moving, the significant increase in space will allow for more testing (and more testers), more social events, and better art production environments.

the details:
Two stories, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, living room, dining room, den, kitchen with tin ceiling, forced air, 2 car garage, wrapping porch, yard space, off the street/separation, all on 4550 square feet of property.

long week...

Still no word on whether I own a house yet. Spent much of today doing that, writing emails, and working on Ballot Bot card layouts. Also designed this for Emily later in the day...

Obama

Posted to Obama's website, per their claim that they listen to the public


"Your viewpoint on education is admirable, but the reality is the education system is fundamentally broken, and socially backward. Our cultural drive to make all student's "Reach their full potential" has been corrupted to mean "get into college". This is sickening, frankly, as it undermines the inescapable value of labor, service, and support industries, and promotes the view that those who's "potential" is not college related are second or third rate citizens.

When you address education, it is my hope that you consider a drastic and sweeping change to the system over all. One needs only to review the lack of basic knowledge in the american youth to understand that simply holding higher critical standards (based on test scores) is clearly not the answer.

I believe we need to culturally reevaluate the purpose of our education. Is it a vehicle to prepare citizens for "better" jobs, or does it help young citizens determine which jobs they enjoy and are good at and provide them the skills needed to achieve those jobs during their youth?

If it is a stepping stone to better jobs, we must acknowledge that those students who do not climb as hard or as high will hold 'lover value' jobs, and thus be of lover value to society, and should be categorically treated thusly. In this case, we have little to change, as all of our focus must be placed on testing, scoring, and ranking our students and placing the best into the best, most important jobs.

If education is a vehicle for children to learn about the greater world, their place in it, and those skills that they enjoy developing, and the occupations which employ those skills for financial gain, we must rebirth our system entirely. We must abort the focus on grades, as they have no relationship with the student finding a skill to enjoy. We must also expand our base teacher and teacher support system in order to accommodate the wealth of curriculum options needed, and to ensure that each student's voice is heard, and that their interests have an opportunity to be realized."

Weekend yeep!

Long weekend!

Got to see Greg and Travis on friday night, introduced to Travis' new fat / prego girlfriend Megan, chased a little kid around the front lawn (we had no tocquitos, so there were no wizard duels), saw a nice house on Saturday morning, decided to put a bid on that house, viewed an art show (home made / found object musical instruments. Tony Smith's turtle shell guitars were awesome) at H&H, saw Soul Cannon at the Brass Monkey (EZ, Ryan, Matt, and the other 2 I don't know are always awesome, but more so because they played new stuff that night), poked Todd's boobs, pinched Micha's butt, signed a bid for the house Sunday morning, went to the Raven's game (3 point win, sloppy retards have no shot at winning it this year!), great seats on the 50, right at the front of the shady side of the upper deck -- mucho thanks to Zeke, went to soccer, got laid out like a tool, home, feel like crap, went to bed (finally).

27 on 9/27/07

9/27 day is coming up again. we'll see how well it stacks up to previous years, which included such things as Pinyata Robots, Hand made cowboy hats for Dunnys, and an all you can drink Jager party.

Race War on GP

Fun, if not slightly silly racial debate (sparked by a video game featuring black colleges only) on GP. Some good, some not so good comments here: http://gamepolitics.com/2007/09/15/philly-games-writer-bugged-by-racial-comments/

upgraded

NBC fall previews

Watched three pilots from NBC's fall line up on demand cable last night. [spoiler alert]


Bionic woman is like Jake 2.0 meets BBC's Jekyl. The production values are decently high, the writing is hit or miss (generally unbelievable character responses, and poor pacing).
the Bionic woman is the actress from Jekyl. And she fights Kara Thrace from Battle Star Galactica (another Bionic woman). They aren't just machines though -- they seem to also be crazy 'evolved' creatures like Mister Hyde in Jekyl

Chuck was a decent mix of funny and action. It's their second Jake 2.0 rip off, and features an everyday joe (who works at a geek squad at a best buy) getting the entire NSA/CIA spy database downloaded into his head. The acting was better than bionic woman, and so was the writing. It also features Jane from Firefly as a NSA comando, who works at a best buy. The show will be pretty silly, but has its endeering aspects

Journeyman was the weirdest. It features the main character from Dog Soldiers and casts Kellerman from Homicide as his brother. The main character gets thrown back and forward in time, and tries to 'solve mysteries' each episode, while also trying to save his marrage... which is taking a pounding each time he 'blips' out. Good acting, good writing, nice 'heart' to the story, and probably the mot promice of the three shows.

the whole line up feels like they ripped a chunk out of the scifi channel. Bionic woman has 3 actors from Battle Star Galactica, (one was also on Firefly). Chuck has an actor from Firefly. Journeyman has the lead actor from Dog Soldiers (a scifi channel movie). The stories are all scifi too... from production values, to filming style, to actors.

Guess we'll have to wait and see if the public likes it or not

Getting up to speed in the slow lane...

I've been very 'meh' for a few days. More than a few days.
We've got three games working their way through development right now, which is good. Two of the games are pretty fun, which is also good. The website is coming along too, and the shopping cart error is now only happening like 10% of the time.

But I'm just not feeling the cat right now. Getting people to post/blog is a pain in the ass. Keeping the art moving forward isn't as bad, but it makes you hungry for faster progress. Talking to retailers and distributors - getting a lot of interest, but not usually at a price that makes any sense - fries the brain.

And i suppose the big thing right now is that we don't have a good lifestyle flow yet. Still haven't cracked the nut on getting to our clubs, getting the photos, and translating that to content for the website.

blegh