Wow. Whoda thunk that episode three would be out so soon when there were two months between one and two…? I know I certainly didn’t! Them’s the breaks here, though. When Jeff and I get together and there are microphones in front of us, something is going to come out. And end up in an RSS feed.
What you’re about to hear is a little bit of an experimentation on a few different fronts. The beginning of the episode (the “meat” of the episode, if you will) was actually recorded after all of the other stuff, which in this case is the end of the episode. Follow all that?
In a nutshell, Jeff is working to revive Lo-Fidelity (his music review/appreciation podcast), and we were farting around with my mixer and his MacBook Pro to test levels and all that kind of boring pre-recording stuffage. We ended up amusing ourselves in the process and were wondering what to do with all of that material. I suggested we just dump it over here on WTF EX, and then further decided that rather than just dump it, let’s record an “intro” to it and make it an actual episode. Furthermore, let’s not edit a damn thing other than dragging it into the production timeline and creating transitions between the “segments”.
So here you go. If you ever wanted to hear us completely unedited, uncut, and uncensored (but thankfully not in a cropped-widescreen presentation), this is it. I hold myself absolutely non-responsible for anything I said, and instead place all of the blame of Jeff. What you’re about to listen to is the ramblings of one man who had already recorded an entire normal podcast, and another who’s itching to record his own.
So here we are about two months after the first episode of this little side-side-podcast. It’s certainly living up to the “what I want, when I want” mantra that I set forth! While we were waiting around for Julian to show up to record the previous podcast episode for Daizenshuu EX, I figured those of us on the local mixer should go ahead and do something short and fun for this blog. So we did!
Jeff is back on this episode, and Meri also joins us, as we talk about our first-ever e-mail addresses and some early internet ignorance. I thought we had a couple pretty interesting stories, and it certainly drives home the idea that we were all stupid early teenagers at some point in our lives.
Enjoy the show, and have a great Thanksgiving weekend~!
So Meri and I are seriously considering just ditching our cable television entirely.
We’ve come to the realization that beyond her occasional crashing with some HGTV… we just don’t watch anything. Sure, there’s South Park when there are new episodes, but the official website & Netflix can take care of that in due time. We’ve dropped Heroes, so that doesn’t matter anymore. For other, regular ol’ American TV shows (if we’re ever going to watch them), we’d rather much watch them on DVD without commercials, anyway.
I also finally used Hulu for the first time the other day, and found it surprisingly watchable. We checked out a random, recent episode of The Simpsons, and I was thrilled to see Dilbert on there, as well. It’s definitely making the case for a media-hub PC output to the TV, rather than just the PS3 or 360.
Speaking of which, those two are also replacing much of the “TV viewing”. No, it’s not because of gaming, but actual programming. Whether it’s material from Game Trailers or Game Videos or even some other random site, I love tossing things on DVD-RW and popping it in one of the systems for TV-viewing. That’s about to get even better with the “New Xbox Experience” and its tie-in with our Netflix account… streaming right to the TV without needing any new equipment!
At the end of the day, we’re not ever really watching “TV” and saving about $80 on a product (digital cable package + On Demand) we’re not using sure doesn’t sound like a bad deal. Are any of you living (well) without cable? I don’t see myself missing it…
I don’t know about Meri, but I’ve certainly had quite a few people at work and in other social situations ask the standard, “So how’s married life treating you?” question. Every time, my answer is the same: a halfway-confused response of, “Well… the same as it was before, but with a ring on.”
I wonder how much of the standard, American perception of married life is based on reality, how much of it comes from media (and more specifically, TV shows like The Simpsons and Married With Children), and how different we may or may not be from all of that.
Is it really such a struggle? Is there really so much faux-animosity? Am I just too young and naive, still?
The optimistic side of me realizes that our situation is probably quite different than most others. We’ve been a couple for eight years, have lived together for the last four, and didn’t even get engaged until less than a year ago. There are no secrets, no surprises, no false expectations.
Anyone that knows us is well aware of how much we enjoy spending time together, and generally have little interest in persuing separate “girls nights” or “guys nights”… we’re together with everyone, and that’s the way we like it.
We had something in our wedding ceremony about marriage being a union of two people, yet those two people retain their individuality and respect for that and blah blah blah. It was one of the pieces that I wasn’t fully 100% on agreeing with, but I didn’t particularly disagree with it, either. I just wasn’t sure that it perfectly explained how we are together. (If that was the least of my concerns with all the wording, I’d say that’s a pretty good thing :P)
So what’s the point of all this? I’m not entirely sure, myself. The curious side of me is thoroughly intrigued to see if the supposedly-naive side of me is correct in thinking that we’ll never be one of those couples making lame jokes about how different marriage is down the road, getting on each others’ nerves, etc.
Of course, I can’t possibly predict how things change if/when children enter the picture.
For now, though… yeah, it’s the same. But with a ring on. Which I’m finally used to wearing and am not constantly fiddling with.
If you’re following this blog then you are probably vaguely familiar with who I am, so needless to say, I have a history with Anime Music Videos. Meri got me into them when we met back in 2000; I was seriously non-interested prior to that, but when she showed me some good ones and I saw some of the proven artistic merit, the lightbulb went off.
My involvement with the AMV community has severely dropped off the last few years due to a wide variety of reasons (but mostly just my hobby A.D.D.). Despite that, every year we bang out at least one really good piece that I or we have had in the back of our collective imaginations for some time. What I would like to do is explain where two of these ideas came from, since it’s probably not what you would expect.
It is very rare when the final video product ends up being exactly what I saw in my mind months ahead of time, and I can barely describe the pretentious joy when it does. In 2007, we were able to create a video that very nearly satisfied every bit of creative juice in my body. That video was “Never Fall Apart“, which I made together with Meri and Jeff.
If you know me, then you can probably tell that Echo Image isn’t exactly in my normal scope of musical interests. It’s not that I wouldn’t be interested or wouldn’t care for the genre, but it’s simply not on my radar. I was introduced to the song we ended up using (“Will You Know?“) on a live internet radio show done by fellow podcaster “Rob Roberts”, host of Orange Lounge Radio. At some point earlier that year, Rob was running a random live show on Wednesday evenings (I think?) simply called “The Rob Roberts Show” where he would play music, take calls, talk about random stuff, etc. In addition to Cascada’s “Every Time We Touch” (which I had unbelievably never heard up until that point), Rob played this Echo Image song, which is actually a b-side on the Standing Alone CD single. I couldn’t believe my ears. The song was absolutely stunning, and combined all sorts of beautiful, individual segments together (I’m a huge fan of incorporating acoustic guitar into electric pieces). At this point there was still no AMV idea, but I simply had to have the CD. I was luckily able to order the CD single off of Amazon for standard retail price (something like $6 or $7), instead of the $30+ it’s going for used, now.
The song embodies everything I love about my various favorite anime series, which is friendship and comraderie (DragonBall, One Piece, Pokemon, Honey & Clover… yeah, no recurring “friendship” themes at all…!). It was no stretch to end up with an AMV idea using it, and Honey & Clover made so much sense, being a recent favorite series and jumping to the total opposite end of what I normally do with shonen friendship videos (see: “I’m Above The Age Of 10 And I Like Pokemon“).
Again, it was absolutely everything I wanted the video to be, and is probably the final over-the-top AMV production I will ever create (of course thanks to Meri and Jeff’s help!).
The other video is not even one I worked on in the slightest, but I suppose you could say it was “my idea”. After finishing BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, I had a ton of random AMV ideas (once I realized that while I really disliked every single character in the show, I truly enjoyed the actual show itself and a lot of the character development). In addition to a few other ideas that I’ll shut up about since I may still actually make them, one of the “joke ideas” was “Juke Box Hero” by Foreigner. While I was vageuly familiar with the song, it wasn’t until Dave brought it up (and sang it?) shorly after the release of Rock Band on the podcast Fast Karate For the Gentleman that the AMV idea hit. When Meri was short on solid ideas for an Otakon video for 2008, I suggested this one, only half-expecting her to take it seriously (especially since she hated the song so much). Much to the surprise of both of us, the final product of “One Guitar” not only ended up being pretty solid, but has gotten an amazing amount of wonderful feedback from all sorts of people (including coming in second in its category at Otakon and winning the “Guitar Hero” award in Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008’s Exposition contest).
I am back from the Honeymoon! We went on a cruise to Spain / Italy / France, and I am going to have a ton of pictures and stories to share (especially from Pompeii). In the meantime, I have something simple.
This question goes out to all you Europeans out there. I should probaby have figured this out on my own (or just asked Andrew), but it gives me an excuse to use the WordPress iPhone app and put up a picture.
So anyway, what the Hell is that thing on the right of the toilet?
There was a regular sink across from it all, so I’m at a loss. Am I supposed to pee into it? It looks like another sink, but it is so low to the ground. Maybe to wash my hands if I fall? Or vomit into if I am super drunk and can’t get off the bathroom floor?
So I randomly started having an issue on my work computer this week where Adobe Photoshop CS3 would crash each and every time, without fail, when I tried to open or create more than one image at time.
Needless to say, this is slightly frustrating when you live inside these types of programs and need to… oh, I dunno… actually get some work done.
First thing I did was go through the painful process of uninstalling and reinstalling Photoshop. I had done a few things recently to the system, so I figured this might just be the best option. Set it to go, went for a long walk, came back, rebooted… same problem.
I really should have done my research ahead of time, because this is a known issue with an easy workaround.
Wait, what…? Photoshop crashing with more than one image open is due to printer availability…?! You’ve GOT to be kidding.
Maybe there was some work being done around the office that I didn’t know about, and whatever my default printer happened to be was moved or disconnected. Not having printed anything for days, I can’t say I noticed. Sure enough, when I switched the default printer over to something else, ta~dah! Suddenly able to have more than one image open at a time, again.
Seriously, Adobe? We pay how much for this? Argh. If I could figure out how to do simple things in GIMP, I might actually consider using it.
So I had finished editing some stuff and wanted to burn it off to CD-R for transferring around. Don’t have Nero installed on this computer, and turns out I don’t really have anything installed over here for advanced burning.
OK, no problem. I’ll just go grab CDBurnerXP, since I don’t need anything all that special.
Whoops, don’t have the latest .NET Framework stuffage installed. OK, let’s go do that. Go ahead and download that first, and start getting it installed. It gets ready to finish up and presents me with the following:
PHEW. That’s a huge relief! I can finally disconnect from the Internet! I’ve been waiting for this day for years!
