December 16, 2004
Not much to report lately ReBoot related. I finally got my corrected Season 4 DVD from Anchor Bay. You just have to keep bugging them, I guess. I've done a little work on the Matrix video. I've decided that I'm never going to finish the Dot video to my satisfaction, so I need to just release the remastered version. I just need to sit down and do the renders. OK, maybe do a little polishing on the timing first. However, that probably won't happen until after the holidays.
^ TOPNovember 7, 2004
Been incredibly busy with other things lately. I got moved into my new house and FINALLY got internet after nearly a month of wrangling with Qwest. Had a major hard drive failure ("major" as in the drive is actually making "clunk" noises, so it goes into the trash) on my main computer just a couple of days ago, so I get to yet again rebuild my system. That's the fourth Maxtor drive to fail in two years, so I think I won't be buying Maxtor in the future. Luckily I had a relatively recent backup and was able to recover important files since the backup from the bad drive. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to build a more robust system, including a good-sized RAID 1 array to avoid the problems with future hard drive failures. I should note that this is NOT my video computer that failed, so the ReBoot stuff is still fine. No, I haven't done any work on anything. It's looking like it's going to be into the new year before I can get back to the videos. Between setting up the new house and the evil time-sucking black hole that is Sims 2, I never seem to have any time for anything else.
I'm half-heartedly working on a Dot skin for Sims 2, but it's dang hard to get the face right. I've accepted that I'll just have to live with giving her the wrong hair, but I want to at least get the face right. I want to look at her and say, "Hey, that's Dot" not "Hey, why is that green chick wearing Dot's outfit?". After that, I might try Hex or Daemon but I'd need new meshes to get the costumes right and people still haven't figured out Maxis's wacky mesh formats. You know, Maxis saw how massive the mod community got for Sims 1 so you'd think they'd have made Sims 2 more mod-friendly. Instead they almost seem to be deliberately obstructing the modders. But I've never been impressed with Maxis's attitude toward their customers.
^ TOPSeptember 19, 2004
Work on the Matrix video has stalled about halfway through the first draft. I've collected all the Matrix clips I might use so it shouldn't be too hard to finish it once I can find some time and rekindle my interest. Such are the vagaries of the creative process. I certainly won't be doing anything for the next month or so. I just bought a house in Phoenix to be near my niece, Maria. I'm in Albuquerque now so the whole "moving to another state" thing is going to be distracting for a while.
Since a surprising number of people have asked, I'll also mention that Maria is doing well. She's been home for a couple months. She was on a feeding tube, but we removed that a few days ago. She's still on an apnea monitor, which monitors her breathing and heart rate. It's frustrating because it gives apnea false alarms a LOT (like several times a day). Among these zillions of false alarms have been one or two real apneas (luckily they can tell the difference when they analyze the readings) so we don't know how much longer she'll be on it. Still, she's developing and we're happy that she's doing so well.
^ TOPAugust 9, 2004
I recently got back from a month visiting my niece. She's doing quite well and we're happy that she's home and getting better.
I recently got the urge to get back to making videos. For some reason, rather than putting out a final version of the Dot video or working on the Mouse video like I had planned, I had the sudden urge to work on my Matrix video. It uses the Bon Jovi song "It's My Life". I'm about halfway through the first draft, so I hope to have it done within a month or two.
I normally don't watch ReBoot videos to avoid being unduly influenced toward or away from an idea. However I occasionally watch videos from other shows. Recently on one of my stream-of-consciouness web wanderings, I came across Rich's page of Fanatism. On his Kim Possible Art Page he has a couple of music videos which I really enjoyed. If you're a Kim Possible fan, you should pop over and take a look. He also has some high-quality original KP artwork.
^ TOPJune 30, 2004
Posted a few pictures of my niece.
^ TOPJune 26, 2004
No ReBoot stuff today, just personal news.
The good news is that, as of June 23, I have a little baby niece named Maria. Six pounds, two ounces, with a full head of black hair. My sister says she looks like our uncle Tommy, which I guess means she has a bushy mustache :)
The bad news is that about three weeks ago, an ultrasound revealed that she has hydrocephalus, a build up of fluid in her brain.
The good news is that her delivery (c-section four weeks before her due date) went fine. More good news is that an MRI reveals that her problem appears to be "stenosis of the aqueduct of Sylvius". This is a narrowing of one of the channels in the brain that the cerebrospinal fluid flows through. This is good news because that's a very benign diagnosis. Hydrocephalus can be a symptom of all kinds of things, including cancer and worse. They installed a shunt (a tube with a one-way valve) that allows the fluid in her brain to drain into her abdomen where it can be absorbed safely into the bloodstream. The surgery went perfectly and she's doing just fine. Although she'll have to live with the shunt her whole life, there is a good chance it will be nothing more than a mild inconvenience. She'll have to visit a neurologist now and then, and will have to have shunt revision surgery periodically (as seldom as every twenty years), but other then that should live a normal life. She'll be more prone to developing a learning disability than average, but should be of normal intelligence. As bad news goes, this has turned out pretty good.
^ TOPMay 20, 2004
I have uploaded the re-mastered version of Viruses Are Beautiful. It didn't take as long as I thought as only a few episodes have the vivid color thing.
^ TOPMay 16, 2004
I managed to finish the re-mastered version of Ave Daemon. I also tweaked on some timing, made the soundtrack louder, and finally found the source of the jerkiness in the extremely slowed down clips (like Daemon opening her eyes).
I'm not sure when Viruses are Beautiful will be done. I now realize that the end of the week is optimistic. The problem is that the colors in the season 1 and 2 DVDs are quite vivid compared to the season 3 and 4 episodes. So I need to go into each clip and mute the colors but I'm guessing it's not going to be as simple as cutting each clip by x%. So it's likely to be a lot of nitpicky guesswork and that always takes a while.
^ TOPMay 15, 2004
I've posted a remastered version of Hexadecimal Brought to Life to the site. It uses the season 4 DVDs and has a much higher picture quality in the second half of the video. I hope to have Ave Daemon posted tomorrow and Viruses are Beautiful by the end of the week. The Many Faces of Dot Matrix is going to take longer. I still have some editing things I want to do before I consider that one finished, and I see no real reason to release a re-mastered draft. My video editing has been at a halt for quite some time. My mother has been severely ill since October and all my free time was spent taking care of her. She finally passed away April 17, so I've been dealing with the estate as well as the backlog of work from the preceding six months. I honestly want to get back to making videos, but it may be quite a while.
As part of the remastering project, I'm looking for good quality versions of the videos from the PlayStation game. I'm using the RealVideo versions I got off Slack & Hash's Domain but I'm hoping to find better ones. My preference would be someone with a fast connection who can upload them directly to my site. If you have these videos, please contact me.
Hey, I just noticed my counter is over 1000. Woohoo!
^ TOPMarch 26, 2004
First of all, much belated congratulations to AvA for her URA win. If I had to lose, she's the one I would have wanted to lose to.
I am in the process of re-mastering my videos using the [LINK REMOVED] season 1 & 2 DVDs. I have to say these DVDs are tremendous. The picture quality is quite high; the only tiny complaints I can find are that the colors are a little too vivid, and there are some tiny (i.e. a couple pixels in size) imperfections in the picture in some places. Both of these are probably beyond his control, since these were recorded off TV. Best of all -- no Cartoon Network logo. The case art is professional quality, and there are more extras on each of the four disks than on the entire official season 3 & 4 DVDs combined. Trust me - go buy these now!
^ TOPMarch 4, 2004
I've finished and posted my newest video, Hexadecimal Brought to Life. Enjoy!
^ TOPFebruary 29, 2004
Just a few changes to the site. I've added a link in the menu bar to show Site Statistics using AWStats. On the links page I've added that plus the ReBoot Store and [LINK REMOVED]. I've also archived older news items, added some information on upcoming projects to the videos page, and updated a few things in the FAQ.
^ TOPFebruary 21, 2004
This site is the backwater of the ReBoot community, so I'm sure by the time you get here you've already heard this, but...REBOOT SEASON 4 IS BEING RELEASED ON DVD IN MAY! You can go read the news item or pre-order your copy at DVD Empire or Amazon. I already have. The DVD contains both movies (or all eight episodes depending on your point of view) and costs less than ONE of the season 3 DVDs (which had only 4 eps). Between this and the ReBoot Merchandise, it's been a good week for the fans.
Once the DVD arrives and I find time to convert the episodes, I will re-issue Ave Daemon. I won't make any content changes (probably...) but the new version will be higher quality. It sounds like *** will be done with his season 1 & 2 DVD project by then and so I will probably redo the other videos as well.
As long as I'm posting, I'll mention that I've got another video in the works. I still plan to go back and finish
up Dot, get back to the Mouse project, and so on, but this video just burst out of me. I was watching AvA's
video for the eleventy-millionth time, and thinking, "Man, I gotta use this song. But for who?"
Reading the
lyrics, I realized that this is the song for Hex. Once I figured that out, the video popped into my thoughts in its
entirety. I could listen to the song, close my eyes, and watch the pictures play in my head. It traces the Chaos
Queen
from her injury in "To Mend and Defend" to her sacrifice in, well, "Sacrifice". I finished rebuilding my
computer system (that hard drive finally gave up the ghost, so reformat and reinstall) and got to work. I finished
the third draft today and it's about at the level the Dot video is (in a HECK of a lot less time). I'll do probably
two more drafts: one for content, and one for timing and final polish. I hope to have it done by the end of the
month.
February 1, 2004
Feb 01, 2004 - I'm very pleased to announce that The Many Faces of Dot Matrix has been nominated as Best Music Video in the 2004 Unofficial ReBoot Awards. I want to thank those that nominated me. I'm up against some talented people. If I weren't going to selfishly vote for myself in this category, I'd vote for Wake Me Up Inside by AvA, which you can find over at Dreams in Digital. It's a Daemon video that I like better than my own.
I've suddenly realized that at some point I apparently updated an old version of this website. I'm missing a couple of entries on this page and some updates to the links page. Nothing critical, it's just odd.
Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to be even longer than I thought before I can get back to making videos. In addition to increasing demands at work, my mother has been very sick for several months and taking care of her uses up much of my "fun" time. Not only that, but I have had yet another catastrophic hardware failure. My 5-month old Alienware is having intermittent failures of its main hard drive. I managed to back up the important data on the drive (including my source video and Studio project files) and need to find time to call Alienware and get them to fix it. I'm hoping they can ghost the drive to a new one rather than having to do a reformat and reinstall.
^ TOP