blog neglect

Blog neglect. It's a terrible thing.

At work today I was looking through old yearbooks again and this time I found a couple from Rice University from the early 50's. I was surprised to see some promotional artwork from Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo. I looked around the internets and wasn't able to figure out this connection to Rice. It may have been during the Pogo for President campaign. Even though Pogo was before my time as Sunday morning Comics reader, I've enjoyed Kelly's cartoon art style. He worked at Disney before going into comics, and his art definitely shows that style. I still think his influence is seen all over daily comics today.

Volume 1 of the Complete Pogo Daily and Sunday Comic Strips was released in December. I would love to get my grubby drawing hands on that.

another yearbook quote

I found this today while looking through some images. From a middle school yearbook from 1977 someone wrote:

I hope you get hit by a car and get spread over a 50ft area of pavement and they have to scrape up your guts with a putty knife. Let's have a good year!
Your friend
Rex

P.S. Should I?

Should he what? That's what I want to know. Who knows what he was talking about...

Another yearbook from around the same time, and it belonged to a girl. All of the messages written inside started with the phrase "I don't know you very well." Which kinda made me feel sad for her. Why did she get all these semi strangers to sign her book?

This makes me wonder, since most of these books are on loan, how did these people lose their yearbooks? Did they donate them to a library or archive? Why would you give up a yearbook? Interesting. 

year books

At work we are finishing up a big year book project. We scan and photograph yearbooks for genealogical purposes. Big project. Lots of yearbooks dating back over a hundred years. After we import all those images we have to QA each book.

While I was looking through some of the images, it becomes obvious that many of these books once belonged to someone. I can read the short messages people write to their friends. Most of it is the same stuff that you see written down all the time: "Thanks for being a friend. Have a good summer. etc. etc." I've found some long and heartfelt letters between people in serious relationships. One yearbook around 1942 said something like "Strange how this war is tearing our world apart. Victory is in sight, and after everything is over we'll have to get back together again." Serious stuff. If I have time, I try and track down the photo of the owner of the book... Kinda makes all those little notes fit into some sort of context.

I've even found old photos tucked into some of the books. For example: I was taking photos of a very old yearbook from around 1917-1918 and I found a tiny photo of a man dressed in a military uniform. I couldn't tell if that person was one of students from the yearbook, but I assumed it was. On the back was scribbled in fountain pen "Give this to Eleanor". Maybe the book belonged to Eleanor. Who knows.

These brief messages in time are all that are left of some of these people. I'm sure many of them are long dead and forgotten. Who knows what else I'll find?

code talker

My son almost talks. Not really though. It's more of an energetic babble. He's only about 16 months old, so I don't know when he'll start forming sentences like "I need more money dad." or "can I borrow the keys to the car?".

I keep wondering when will be a good time to introduce him to movies, music, and video games. I don't know how "involved" a parent I should be when forcing awesome stuff down his throat. I liked some of the stuff my dad likes, but I ended up figuring it all out on my own. Who knows. I guess we'll see in time.

Crazy stuff.

I didn't think that I'd usually fall into the crowd that buys into special editions of things... even if they're the same thing they already have. For example: all those different color, or special edition game consoles that come out every so often. Did anyone get the Pokemon Edition N64? What about the new Battlefield 3 Xbox 360? Do I really need a red Wii? Things like that make me laugh at the morons that fall into that trap. They're just making money off of you! Your hard earned money!

Then I saw this:

Its the special edition wii classic controller that was bundled with copies of Monster Hunter G. Only available in Japan, this little blue controller is kinda hard to come by by itself, unless you buy the bundle. Ugh. I want it. I don't know why, but I want it.

Lame!

Here's the box for the upcoming Monster Hunter Tri G with included Circle Stick, for the 3DS. I've heard that the new Circle Stick thing is really light, almost in a cheap way, but it make holding the 3DS kinda nice. It adds right and left triggers buttons, and contours the hand in more of a console controller fashion. It takes a AA battery to operate.

Monster Hunter Tri G is an updated and expanded version of Tri, and it looks pretty awesome.

Still haven't heard any news on Monster Hunter 4 which is also for the 3DS. Crossing my fingers that they get localized for North American release.

chiptune

Anamanaguchi - Airbrushed (RAC Mix)

I like this remix because it integrates non electronic instruments with chiptune. Anamanaguchi is known for their punk rock style Nintendo music, but I think that this remix shows how it doesn't have to be repetitive mindless techno all the time. This track also slows everything down. Anamanaguchi's stuff is often too fast paced, and you just feel tired after a while... if more musicians would just slow the tempo down it would make for an easier listening experience.

I think the Gameboy sound is getting old. I like it, but artists need to explore different sound chips. The popularity of chiptunes have increased a ton in the past 5 or so years, I'm wondering what new directions the genre will take. Try a Sega Master System or an Amiga or Commodore 64. Even the NES sounds awesome, but I don't think enough people use it for their chiptune work. Maybe the hardware is just getting too hard to find these days. Maybe the circuit bending crowd will have to take over hardware manipulation in the future.

tiny lands

I've been drawing some things lately... some things for my wife's school stuff and other things just doodling around on the computer. I've got a tiny Wacom tablet that I've been using, and I like to experiment in photoshop. If I'm on the computer and something comes to me I usually try and sketch it down. 

I've been making tiny lands for a while now. I've almost hit 50 posts, and that's something that surprises me. I've never really been able to keep a project going that long. I guess the small nature of tiny lands is what makes it so appealing to me. I can think of a landscape and draw it out quickly. And I've got a small book of all the landscapes I've made over the past two years... so its nice to look back and see how I've improved over time. I think I want to make a book when I feel like I have enough that are print worthy. That sounds like a nice thing to do. 

But now I'm torn. Because the entire vibe of tiny lands was to physically draw on sticky notes, and somehow the act of drawing on actual paper is what made it what it was. I've become more involved drawing on the computer for other things... it seemed only natural to try a tiny lands out digitally. My first effort is pictured above, and it looks great. Do I take tiny lands in a digital direction? Should I stop actually drawing them? I don't know. Just a thought. 

another blog

Can you have too many blogs? Not if you want to compartmentalize everything you do. I started another blog to document all the crap it takes to finish old video games. I'm taking a page from the Japanese show " Game Center CX" where this guy forces himself to play old games. I don't do that, but I like the way they keep track of all his statistics every time he plays. Things like "86th attempt" flash in the upper corner of the screen... or after a cut scene the announcer says that he's been playing the same level for the last four hours.

That got me thinking. How many times do I die before I win? How long does it take? How many game overs? I've started tracking that information as I try to conquer old video games. I can't wait to see the data. I'm sure it will explain how bad I actually am at video games...