JOURNAL: ErMaC

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  • Clothes, Caffeine, and Cards, oh my! 2001-09-15 05:14:35 So I'm waiting for my laundry to be done and hanging up the clean clothes that had been in my laundry basket before I plopped them on the bed to make room for all the dirty clothes on the floor, and I realized I basically wear 3 kinds of clothes - free advertisements, anime shirts, and website shirts.

    Free advertisement shirts fall under the 5 year old "Mossimo" t-shirts I have in my closet that still fit me. I wear these when I don't want to advertise the fact that I'm a dork. Also under this classification are shirts like "Cogmos" - a computer company whom I have no idea what they do, but they give out nice shirts at computer conventions. Great advertising too, I wore the shirt to work once and one of my coworkers goes, "Oh yea Cogmos! They make good shirts!"

    Anime shirts are the few that I bought (the Lain shirt you see in my picture from AX on my website in the "About Me" page, my Akira shirt, my really really worn out Key: TMI shirt, the Fanime 2K1 Crest of the Stars shirt) and ones I got for free (the ugly ass yellow Wu-Fei Gundam Wing shirt from AX). Generally I wear the latter as sweat absorbers when I play DDR.

    Then there are website shirts. These fall under my Megatokyo shirts (I have "ph33r the cute ones" and the Kimiko shirt), my Ninja Burger shirt, and my Think Geek shirts such as a shirt with the chemical diagram on the front for Caffeine.

    Which brings me to my next realization - I'm going through around 4 liters of Diet Pepsi A DAY. I knew I drank a lot but it just finally hit me today because I bought 8 2-liter bottles Saturday night and they were ALL GONE on Wednesday. I'm hopelessly addicted to the stuff. I go through it the fastest when I'm making AMVs, writing computer code for school, or playing DDR. Usually I can down a 2 liter bottle after just 5 hours of DDR. That's probably one of the reasons I sweat so much.

    Last night before my show a bunch of friends of my roommate and I came over as they usually do once a week and we watch anime and then talk for an hour or so after. We're watching 3 series right now, Tylor, Battle Athletes Victory, and Outlaw Star. The latter two I've seen all of, but I'm watching Tylor for the first time and it's such a funny series. It's quickly becoming one of my alltime favorites, maybe you'll see it on my top 10 sometime soon.

    Oh yea - all 6 reviews of my X video have been extremely positive. So positive that the video has hit #26 overall on the top %10 video list. I'm really shocked - I didn't think the video was very good at all. One person was going on about how much planning it must've taken. I really don't like taking credit where it's not due - which is why I say in the video profile, the whole video took 6 hours tops. That's including export time. The video was a thrown together mishmash, but apparently people really liked it. Which in some ways is kinda cool yet discouraging. ^_^

    BTW If you haven't left comments on Soul of an Angel - please do so. I'm still looking for feedback on that video - it's the most abstract video I've done (other than maybe "I Pray") but as I said in my last journal entry (I think) I'm planning this really really abstract piece of Visual Artwork soon which involves anime but it's not an Anime Music Video. I'm also only 10 opinions away or so from getting on the top 10 commented vids =D but of course that's not my driving force behind asking for comments.

    Oh yea and thank you all who put Soul of an Angel on your Favorite Vids list - it's currently #9 on the whole site! Wow!

    Whoops time to go put the laundry in the dryer...

    (5 minutes later) OK where was I? (reads back) Oh yea...

    Anyways - I suppose my favorite video personally is still my Closer to God video. I really do like my own videos the best - and I'm not saying that to be egosistical. I mean, every parent likes their kid is the best, right? There's nothing wrong with that. However, it is, of course, an opinion. That's why it's a "favorites" list and not a "Best Video" list - a favorite is an opinion which can't be wrong.

    So I still didn't drop off my job application today. I'm still wondering whether or not to drop ICS52 and add this Asian Film class. If I do it'll give me 12 non-morning hours during the week that I can work, and plus I bet the film class will be much more interesting than Software Engineering - which isn't actually writing software, it's writing design documents... booooooriiiiiiing.

    What I did do, as I mentioned, was go get the stuff needed to auction off my Magic cards. Damn prices have gone down, I should've sold them off 3 years ago or something. Oh well. At least they're worth more than my OverPower cards (don't ask...) - now I just gotta setup seller account stuff at eBay.

    It was funny - I was going over all my Magic Cards. Well not all of em, just the big stack of Rares/good Out of Prints and my 7 fully functional decks. Yes, that's right - 7, all Type 1 decks. Oh I can't resist, lemme give you a breakdown, from order of least expensive and somewhat least effective to more expensive/most effective:

    7) Goblin Deck!!
    How could you call yourself a Magic player without ever having used a Goblin deck? Of course, mine actually can kick some serious ass. Coat of Arms, Marton Stromgalds, Goblin Kings, Goblin Grenades, and lots of good goblin weenies. I tell ya, makes a nasty weenie deck. Can't compete
    against tournament-quality decks though, but still is lots of fun.

    6) Green Weenie+Overrun
    Your standard green weenie with 4 Overruns - River Boas, Whirling Dervishes, Jorael's Centaurs, Spike Feeders, Wood Elves, Llanowar Elves... pretty normal fair, except I thrown in some Deadly Insects and an Erhnam Djinn for fun.

    5) Big bad white weenie
    What better white deck than White Weenie? Well except Serra Avatar+Enduring Renewal+Worthy Cause... but ANYWAYS... ahem... This one's pretty bad ass. I won a couple local tournaments with it. Knights, Falcons (the 1/1 flying + pro-black/red falcons), some Tempest Priests (a couple pro-red shadow ones and a couple pro-black shadow ones), a couple of Angels... but mostly Knights. Then of course the Swords to Plowshares, the Disenchants, and the coup de grace... Empyrial Armor! The most broken card in Weatherlights once they errata'd Abeyance... Emp. Armor is the only Creature Enchantment other than Control Magic I ever play with. It's 2 white and 1 colorless to give a creature +X/+X, where X is the # of cards in your hand! Talk about BROKEN! I love going 1st turn - Plains... 2nd turn - Plains, Knight. Third turn - Plains, Armor. BANG - 3rd turn, creature with either 6 or 7 power (depending on whether you picked draw or play on 1st turn). Oh so broken...

    4) Red Burn from Hell
    There are some good red burn decks. Then there are some red burn decks that are just WRONG. Mine's the latter. Lots of burn, but Fireblasts, Lightning Clouds, and burn-creatures (Viashino Sandstalkers, Ball Lightnings) put the icing on the cake. I can kill someone in 4 turns with this thing. Bolt, Incinerate, Ball Lightning, then 4th turn sac all 4 mountains to double fireblast and blammo - dead opponent.

    3) Black Discard
    Really good stuff in this one - Hippies, Hymns, Stupors, Coercions, Mergrims, Mind Peels... ah the memories. This one was fun.

    2) LAND DESTRUCTION!!!
    Bum bum bum!!! The dreaded land destruction deck! My only two color deck still in existance (and really my only good >1 color deck) with 4 badlands, sulfrous springs, and a couple rocky tar pits for land, Then Sinkholes, Stone Rains, IceQuakes, Rain of Tears, Pillages, Strip Mine, Wasteland, Army Ants, Dwarven Miners, and the dreaded DEMONIC HORDES for the final lockdown. And just to keep my cards coming there's Well of Knowledge (which works great when the opponent has no mana) and of course bolts and a couple incinerates to keep the early weenies out of my hair.

    1) THE DEMORALIZER!!!
    My alltime favorite deck. The best part about this deck is that while it's really difficult to play, it's SO MUCH FUN to see the results. There are only 4 damage-dealing cards in this deck - my set of 4 Revised Mahamoti Djinns signed by Richard Garfield. Other than that, the whole deck is lockdown and rampant abuse of Buyback and Ivory Towers.
    4 Sapphire Medallions
    4 Ivory Towers
    4 Copy Artifacts
    4 Capsizes
    4 Whispers of the Muse
    4 Counterspells
    4 Dismisses
    Some Quashes, some Ertais, some Arvhivists, some Mazes of Ith, some Control Magics, 3 Propagandas, a couple Thawing Glaciers, and a smattering of a few more random cards here an there.

    With this deck - I can lock down an opponent so they just can't /do/ anything to hurt me. I have several ways to win:
    1) Make the opponent forfeit by getting out enough mana and Medallions to start Capsizing all their land and make their creatures useless with Maze of Ith and Propaganda (just a killer combination - they pay mana to attack with one or two creatures, I untap them - just so wrong)
    2) Make the opponent forfeit by abusing Ivory Tower and my card-drawing cards like Wispers of the Muse and Archivist. Little is more fun than having 8 Ivory Towers out and every turn casting Whispers of the Muse twice and Archiving once at the end of their turn and gaining 40 life in one turn EVERY TURN.
    3) Deck the opponent by just outlasting them by using my Feldon's Cane and by capsizing all their stuff constantly so they can't hurt me, and coutering the stuff that I can't capsize.
    and finally - the least fun
    4) Actually killing them with the Mahamoti's.

    4 is the least fun because the opponent actually died at my hands instead of being unable to do anything. Such a shame...

    That last deck was the BANE of the entire local card shop tournaments - I was almost always the winner at the local tournaments with it. And it's just so much fun when it works. =) 
  • Radio Show 2001-09-14 05:05:55 As some of you may or may not know, I'm a DJ here at KUCI 88.9 FM in Irvine (live streaming on the web at http://www.kuci.org ) and I'm currently in the middle of my show, and bored off my ass.

    My show is sooo boring to do, because I just play long DJ mixes of my own or others. Tonight it's 3 straight hours of Paul Van Dyk with breaks at the hours marks for PSAs and Station ID, but other than that there's nothing to do. Fortunately one of my friends usually comes and hangs out with me (he's the other guy who wrote the Parody Dub script with me) but still, sometimes there's not much to do aside from surf the web, read some web comics, maybe mess around with some of the music around the station. But anyways...

    So today I finally got off my ass and bought some hard top-loaders for my magic cards that I feel comfortable sending stuff in the mail in. Time to start selling stuff at eBay. I accidentally got up at like 4 in the afternoon (cause I didn't fall asleep until like 5AM, still couldn't sleep) so I barely made it to the post office to send off a package (sending a commputer projector cable to my folks in NorCal, long story) and then I hit the closest cardshop. I didn't wind up dropping off my job application... maybe tomorrow. Only problem is I really don't know what hours I'll be able to work, aside from like 9AM-11AM, which would seriously BLOW as I hate mornings... I planned by schedule this quarter so I'd only have midday + afternoon classes. My first class every weekday is Japanese 2A at 11AM, which means I can sleep in!...unless I get this job and start working mornings... ugh...
    Course, I could try dropping my ICS52 class (which will probably suck) and take some cool Asian film class that I'd like to take. That would leave me time in the middle of the day to work... It's a serious temptation.

    Meanwhile, Tuesday evening my roommate got in our new projector. Previously we'd been using my InFocus 720 projector (really shitty 800x600 LCD with the most horrible internal scaler in the word, I swear) for stuff, and it was just so awful sometimes... so my roommate bought a Sanyo PLC-XW15 (1024x768 LCD with nice scaler, Y/Pb/Pr+S-video+VGA inputs, HDTV capability, anamorphic squeeze) and it's so awesome. Watched most of Akira in Anamorphic off the Progressive DVD player (Skyworth 1050P - awesome awesome player) squeezed on the projector... just GORGEOUS. Still haven't played DDR on it yet =) but I will soon. My foot's been hurting a lot lately so I decided to lay off on it for a week or so. It's still bugging me but not nearly as much... maybe I'll give it until this weekend.

    Saturday a bunch of my friends usually come over to play DDR - this weekend will probably be kinda busy though...lots of people.

    On the AMV front, I lied. My next project will be another semi-quicky action/comedy video. I forgot to mention it last time... It shouldn't take more than a few days to finish (won't be very complicated) but it should be funny as heck. I'll probably enter that one as my new thing at Ani-Magic.

    Speaking of Ani-Magic - it's in Lancaster, CA on Oct. 5-7 - www.ani-magic.org - and I'll be entering the AMV contest there (anneke persuaded me) and I'll also be on the AMV Creator's panel that will be taking place on Sunday. Look for me as Lupin in the RED jacket (the right color!!! his jacket's RED goddamnit! Green is a fubar!) - hopefully I'll actually have a wig this time... Anyways I encourage you to come if you're in the area. I'm, as you can see in my profile, in SoCal/Orange County and I'll be making the drive up there with some of my friends. We'll be there Saturday and Sunday - so if you've wanted a chance to meet me that's the place. Nic Neidenbach will also be on the Panel with me, as well as Anneke herself (if she doesn't end up MC'ing it, which I doubt at this point, I think she's got someone else to do it).

    Anyways - if anyone wants to buy Magic cards, let me know!!! I'm selling em all... well, I'll try to... some cards I may not want to part with (like my set of 4 Revised Mahamoti Djinns all signed by Richard Garfield!). 
  • Next up... 2001-09-13 04:42:16 Blah, I'm disappointed, and I can't sleep, so I might as well vent here.

    Voting for the finals for the AWA Pro competition just started, and only 1 of my videos made any of the categories. Blah. Yea yea, I know I'm complaining. I don't like it - but hell, it's just a contest. I'll live, and move on.

    I'll probably be posting that video later on in the next week or so since it's not in the running anymore - that means that there will only be 2 videos I've done that aren't available online (once I post this next one, I mean). After AWA it'll be the first time ever that all my work is available online. Unless I finish something else in the interum - but I have no idea how likely that is.

    That X OVA video was done completely out of the blue... I was actually in the process of 2 other (bigger) projects - a set of 3 or 4 videos done to another series which I haven't touched yet but have wanted to for some time, and a big parody dub which is currently being edited together. Right now the parody dub is taking up 16GB, and the clips I've captured so far for the actual AMV project is only up to 2.6GB... although I'm thinking of just scratching the whole analog capture thing and simply converting using DVD2AVI all the episodes of this one series (if I can scrounge up the hard drive space).

    In theory I could get the space, but blah it'd be so much work. I've got way too much shit going on with subtitling projects, fandub projects, AMV projects... oivay. And summer school just ended, and Fall Quarter starts up on Friday of next week (yea I know starting classes on a Friday is moronic but that's UCI for you).

    I'm also gonna apply for a job at the UCI Computer Store tomorr...err today =p depending on when I wake up. That'll be another drain on my time, but I need the money to fund my DVD buying addiction... =) So much stuff out there I'm behind on, I need to finish Mahou Tsukai Tai, Nadesico, Gasaraki, get more Sailor Moon S, Rurouni Kenshin, start Hand Maid May... and that's just in Region 1!! Soooooo much good stuff coming out in Japan (Legend of Galatic Heroes box set!! 47 DVDs ~= $2000, holy shit!) that I want to get, too.

    Not only that I need to save up to upgrade to a DC1000... well I don't NEED to but I'd really really like to. Now Quu has told me how to convert a VOB's MPEG2 video stream to the right format for the DC1000 (something I tried back in December of last year without any luck) so I can edit them in realtime, the advantages of the card are just too much to ignore. I can probably pawn off my DV500 to someone online here... I'm sure plenty of people in the forums would love to buy one for $500 or so (with Premiere 6.0 and all) but then I've still got around $700 to compensate for the difference in prices.

    And then there's the fact that my master backups of all my videos are in Pinnacle's DV format for the DV500. So what's a guy supposed to do??

    I think I'll wind up sticking with the DV500 anyway... unless this job pays WAY more than I expect. Even at just $8/hour if I'm only working like 10hrs a week, after taxes it could take a couple months to save up the money for the difference in price... and that would require me not buying any DVDs. =) Maybe I'll just wait for Christmas and see what happens.

    Or I could start like selling off DVDs I don't want or my Magic card collection on eBay. That's probably a better idea if I want to get money faster... I've been meaning over and over again to go to a card store and buy a recent priceguide and a bunch of tiny card holders to send in the mail to people, but I never get around to it. Maybe tomorrow, er today...

    Wow I've gone off on quite a couple tangents here. This was a longer entry than I expected it would be.

    Oh yea and I'm really starting to hate EFNet. Back in the day (we're talking '94 here) it was the place to be and all the other 'nets were lame, but at least they have servers that work now... seems like all the good EFNet servers are gone, and now I'm just stuck hopping between prison.net, homelien.no, magic.ca, but half the time none of them even work. Gahhhh.... 
  • Wow yesterday sucked... 2001-09-12 03:51:35 Yesterday was a bad day. Go read my homepage for my thoughts, but anyways I've released that video I just finished - I named it "Lord's Prayer" and it's done to the X OVA just out of Japan.

    It's a damn good video for only having 19.5 minutes of source footage (the last 4 on the disc are credits). 
  • Another quickie 2001-09-11 00:35:37 Wow I'm really making use of this thing aren't I?

    Looks like I'm not the first one to use this Anime (I'm close) - one other person's used it. But they used the DigiSub that was released online a couple days ago - Mine's straight digital off DVD all progressive and IVTC'd from the start. I think I'll just clean it up and release the damn thing, so look for it in the next day or so. 
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