Forced Feedback

I’ve put it off long enough. It’s now time for me to reinstall Windows.

Damn.

I hope I survive.

[Added 10/14]

…

I didn’t.

[Added 10/15]

…

This is a piece of utter bullcrap.  No USB 2.0.  This is definitely a software problem as depending on the order I install things, I can actually get the whole non-hi-speed problem to affect an add-in USB PCI card.

This is pretty crappy.  I want to punch something.
Next stop, Windows XP with SP2 as the install disk.  After that, Vista.

…return to the forefront thanks to the launch of a new website: Indiegames.com. A brand new website from the guys that gave you Gamasutra and GameSetWatch, quite a few of the photos I’ve taken during Game Developers Conference this year feature on the pages. Maybe I should do this photo thing more seriously…

Yesterday among the Tokyo Game Show hooplah, the trailer to Flower was released.

This is the PS3 game I’m doing music for. Yep, that’s some of it in the trailer there.

So I decided to do one of those internet quizzes.

Yeah, it’s slightly more serious than the average internet quiz, but it’s still: an internet quiz. In any case, here are the steps:

1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their “Career Matchmaker” questions.
4. Post the top ten results

And here’s my results:

1. Costume Designer
2. Set Designer
3. Broadcast Technician
4. Special Effects Technician
5. Power Plant Operator
6. Animator
7. Fashion Designer
8. Sign Maker
9. Dental Lab Tech
10. Printing Press Operator

…

28. Musician

…

35. Composer

…

…

Okay. Thank you internet.

(As surprising as this result might be, it’s not nearly as surprising as the fact that wikipedia has an entry on online quizzes.  Thank you wikipedia.)

Things are generally crazy.

I’m currently juggling four (4!) part time jobs. One of them is a teaching position over in the Interactive Media Division at USC. Another one consists of intermittent mobile audio work for Konami Mobile. The other two jobs I can’t really talk about right now…

…but Konami recently made known one of the games I did music for. Castlevania: Order of Shadows is going to hit mobile phones on September 18th, and it features 18 tracks of new music, 17 of which are my own original compositions. (The remaining one is a remix of an existing and readily recognizable older Castlevania tune.) I’m pretty proud of the work and very happy that I can finally let people know what I did earlier this year while I wasn’t working on my graduate thesis.

Anyways, back to immersing myself in craziness. Can’t say much about my current work, but hopefully barring acts of God, you should get a taste of it come Tokyo Game Show.

At the end of my first real day of work at Sony (Monday) my laptop died. Thankfully it was just the hard drive and I was able to back up enough stuff.

On Tuesday night, after procuring a replacement hard drive, the internet slowed significantly…then ground to a halt.

It is now Wednesday evening and despite numerous calls to management, our apartment continues to be internetless.

This must be a sign of the coming zombie invasion.

Around 10:30 PM last night, across the street from my new apartment, someone fired ten shots from a handgun. I’m going to hazard a guess that he neither shot them into the air nor at empty Bud Light bottles.

My previous apartment was a beautiful place, a turn of the century home recast as a dormitory by a fantastic couple who regularly treated tenants to meals of venison chili and fish tacos. It got a bit a expensive during my three years, so I decided to move to some place a bit cheaper upon graduation.

My new place is two blocks west of USC. I figured two blocks was close enough. Bigger place, a cool roommate, $100 saved every month on rent.

Last time I heard gunshots that close was during my senior year of high school when the Washington, DC elementary school I tutored kids at became the venue for a traditional drive-by shooting. Being there and being involved in the clean up (and that’s all that needed to be done, thankfully) was crazy enough.

Here, I didn’t see any cars, didn’t see any people or guns. I heard their voices, though. Just enough to shake me up a bit. As close as the shooters were back when I was a student, that was ten miles away from where I called home.

My roommate reminded me: “One year. Just one year.”

LA Times: The Homicide Blog

Map of LA homicides by week

…makes for a frustrating weekend.

Today I got the mail: “The Degree Progress Department is pleased to inform you that your Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media degree has been conferred and posted to your academic transcript at the University of Southern California.” Which I suppose means: time to go to work! Right now there are a couple of things on my plate: music contracts, part-time sound design, stuff like that. Not a lot, but at least it’s there. Seems that the date for finalizing contract terms always gets pushed back. And back. And back again. Which partly justifies my gallivanting about at conventions 300 miles away. Partly.

I’m rediscovering the need for schedule. School was great: a nice framework around which I could attach various creative spurts or embed long-term projects. Despite the reprieve from any high priority work, I just can’t get anything done. I cannot wait for life to kick in so that I can finally manage to insert significant stuff (that’s not my job) into it.

About time to shut down and move everything I own to another apartment a few miles away. I hate moves. I know there’s going to be some book or CD or 3 foot long box that’s going to go missing and I’ll go crazy for about 3 days trying to find it. It will be an adventure.

Things went smoothly! It actually stayed working! I’m happy! Feels like everyone else taking part in the ARE YOU HERE thesis show is happy too!

Got a new website up, dedicated just to my thesis. www.surroundshape.com

Also, lots of pictures from the thesis show. The whole thing runs for almost a week, so there will be even more pictures soon.