Category Archives: Personal Blog

Entries from my personal journal

Personal Blog

Last minute adventures

Last minute plans always have a fun sort of edge to them, and last night was no exception. Graham had only just remembered that I was in LA for the summer yesterday and dropped an email inviting me to a show they were playing last night in Hollywood.

You all must by now know my adoration for Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, so of course I planned to go, and attempted to wrangle any other last-minute adventurers I could. Happily, Josh agreed to go with enthusiasm (he did a small bit of modeling on the music video, and claims to have had Imitation of the Sky stuck in his head ever since).

So we ventured down to Hollywood and managed in to see the Tears. They were fantastic, as always, and the sound system was great! (By that I mean you could actually hear Scary above the instruments)

Afterwards I got to chat with Graham for a good while, which was nice. Graham is one of those people who I’d love to be better friends with, but I only get to see and talk with him every now and again. He and Scary are going to be in town recording for a bit, so we resolved to get together for some quality hang-out time.

Hooray for being social on a Wednesday night!

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

LA Week 1 = success!

Well, my first week in Burbank has wound to a close, and I’d consider it a success so far.

Insomniac is great. It’s a very busy time there, so it’s going to be challenging but fun. My supervisor and mentor are very kind, and the whole team is very friendly. Due to the NDA, I can’t talk about what I’m doing. But since it’s been announced, I CAN say I’m working on Resistance 2, and I can say that this summer is going to be awesome fun and learning.

Meanwhile, I’ve been being social as well. My roommates, found randomly through craigslist, are very cool. One of them has a cat, which will make my summer all the better!

There are also lots of ETC alums and ETC first-years doing internships in town, so plenty of people to hang out with. On Friday, the alums took the first-years to Santa Monica for a welcoming of sorts. There was dinner and bowling. Photos follow…

http://picasaweb.google.com/wertle.dragon/SantaMonica

There’s also been Rock Band with Rob and Evan, and exploring adventures and bike rides. So far so good!

Personal Blog

*Yawn*

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I am now bedding down a mere 2 hours out of LA. Tomorrow will bring me to Burbank and the beginning of the summer festivities, and for now I’m trying desperately to stay awake and adjust to the new time zone. It’s difficult work.

Staying in hotels always brings out the weirdest of dreams. I learned a long while ago that, when explaining dreams, they are never as exciting to your audience as to you, so I will try and keep this brief.

Predictably, the dreams were smattered with ETCers. There were zombie monsters in something that felt like a play that turned into a reality. There was a secret Disney lab which we invaded. There was a swimming pool with layers, and a picnic table amidst a battlefield.

Everyone was wearing the most ridiculous outfits…Andy was a ghost. Brian Evans was dressed very much like Rambo with the exception of a collared, button-down shirt beneath his ammunition harness. Jesse wore two pairs of engineering goggles, one over his eyes and one propped on his forehead, along with a lab coat and a pair of dish gloves that we were all supposed to believe were official science gloves. We were searching for Bryan Cash, who may or may not have been turned into a zombie monster.

There was much activity. Betsy McIver stabbed a zombie monster in the eye with a screwdriver. Vimal kept bounding in and out of existence with tutorial-like advice. There was a faculty decree that banned all animal migrations, with the exception of migratory fish.

I was FURIOUS about this, and put up a rebellious protest.

Certainly, I am purging some weird stuff from the school year…

Personal Blog

Adventure!

Well, it’s the second night of my cross-country drive on the way to my summer internship in LA. So far so good!

I’ve been trying to keep a frequently-updated Twitter log of my adventures, for anyone interested in micro-updates.

Thus far, my father and I have finished the first two Harry Potter audio-books, and it appears we’ll finish off our trip with the third. My dad really enjoys them, which pleases me, because I figured he would. I also knew I’d never get him to read the books merely by suggesting it; I had to trick him by trapping him in a car and forcing him to listen to the story. It’s all worked out, though, as he claims he’ll be excited to read the rest of the series upon returning home.

I realized, in listening to the stories, how the releases of the Harry Potter books are convenient landmarks in my own timeline, as I associate them with specific points in my life. It was an interesting thought, and at some point I might make a media-referential timeline of life events, relating significant moments to particularly memorable media for me at the time. May be a fun experiment.

At any rate, the drive continues tomorrow. I should be in Burbank by Sunday with no problems, if all continues well!

Personal Blog

Spring Semester Photo Journal – Abridged!

I posted about the fancy camera I got for Christmas, and I do enjoy using it! However, I’m really bad about sorting through and posting photos after I take them. So, every now and then, I dump all the photos off my camera to clean them up.

Here are a few shots from this semester’s photo dump. Take a look, you might be in there!

http://picasaweb.google.com/wertle.dragon/PhotoDumpSpring08

Personal Blog

Animation

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Hey Internet, I wanted to show off some of my classmates’ work, and get you guys to give them some feedback.

This student group worked this semester to create a 4 minute animation addressing issues that come up in working in cross-cultural environments. In particular, it talks about language barriers. It’s done in a “Creature Comforts” documentary/interview sort of style..

Please watch it and fill our their survey so they can polish it off…

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/cultural/finalCut.html

I’m very proud of them, I know they worked their asses off to put together this animation in such a short time, and I think they did a great job!

Personal Blog

I figured out how to lure my appetite back

Explain to me.

Why on earth do people buy disgusting flour tortillas at the grocery store when they can so easily make DELICIOUS homemade corn tortillas that are an order of BIZTRILLIONS times better and tastier and more wonderful?

Why?!?

You need corn flour and a cast iron skillet. You could not possibly ask for a more simple recipe. Ah, well, it is the loss of the world! *devours*.

EDIT: I guess I could actually, you know, give the recipe.

First, get ye self to the grocery store and the ethnic food section and buy some corn flour (Masa Harina).

At home, start heating a cast iron skillet, dry, on medium high heat.

Mix 2 cups of corn flour with 1 1/4 cup of water (you may need a little more water, but only add it a tablespoon at a time as you knead). Knead that sucker for several minutes until it is deliciously elastic.

Break off a ball and roll it flat between two pieces of wax paper, using a rolling pin or whatever else you have to get the job done. (To avoid breaking your tortilla, peel the wax paper off the tortilla vs. peeling the tortilla off the wax paper).

Throw the tortilla on the hot skillet for 30 seconds each side.

Done. The end. That’s it. SEE?!?!

You can cut them up into wedges and fry them in vegetable oil to make tortilla chips, but they are just as delicious plain and soft and dipped in salsa.

….ah, salsa….Homemade salsa! My next project!

Personal Blog

A Sad Day for Tears

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I know that I don’t have as much pull as some when it comes to asking for financial help from the internets, but my friends are in a pretty dire situation and I am asking for help for them.

Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, a fantastic band and great group of people, were on tour on the west coast when their van and trailer were stolen (including all of their musical instruments and equipment). They are now stuck in LA, and are trying to get home. This is a particularly devastating setback for them, as things were starting to seriously look up with the release of their second album, and it pains me to see such sucky stuff happen to such wonderful people.

If any of you internet folk have money to spare for helping people out, and would like to donate some dollars on my behalf, that would be considerably awesome. There is a paypal donation button on their myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/bryanscary

The saddest part of this story, to me, is that poor Bauer lost his 42 year old drum set that belonged to his grandfather. Alas, sentiment cannot be replaced, but some spare bucks can at least get them back home!

Personal Blog

WoW Geekery

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For a long while, I’ve had my eye on a hawkstrider mount for my mage in WoW. The pink and purple plumage on the silly chocobo things would match my troll’s hair so well! Well, after much effort, I finally obtained my oversized chicken.

But, something peculiar happened along the way. Somehow, I managed to get good at PvP. Go figure?

I’m so happy!