On Shrinkage

Nothing shrinks a scrotum quite like sitting in a bathtub full of cold water, because it's 90°F in your apartment because the air conditioning for the complex isn't turned on until some time in March, writing a paper on Wittgenstein.

Seriously...I think they've gone into hibernation...

EDIT: I got it!

Clothes -> Freezer = Auto-AC!










Oh man, this is gonna be so awesome...

EDIT 2: It was awesome for about 5 seconds, before they immediately returned to room temperature. Wonder if heavier material will hold its chill longer...



Google says it's supposed to get down to 54 tonight, and that the high for tomorrow is only 56. Somehow I doubt it'll get quite that cold, but whatever. Just hurry up already. (Surprised I wasn't exaggerating about the heat?)

In any case, finished my paper on ol' Vitty-shtein, which makes 3/3 philosophy papers due in three consecutive days. I've got a seat reserved for the Brubeck show tomorrow night. Life is good...or will at least be much gooder tomorrow

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go stuff some denim shorts in the freezer and turn the tub into a swimming pool again...

On Self-help Seminars

I love finding these around campus...but you have to read it in an infomercial announcer's voice:

On Inconsistency

I address this to you, O, reader who has yet to discover this secret shame of a blog, dedicated to nothing but talking about myself: Sorry about the massive number of posts on day #1, followed by zero on day #2. I'm not sure what finally put the fire in my belly to go ahead and make this stupid thing. Probably the need to bitch about my supposed "usurpation," without having a place to do so. Anyhow, I picked a silly time to start, because I have three papers due this week. The first, as you can see, is on ol' Thomas Hobbes and his wacky textual adventure: Leviathan. Maybe I'll post the finished paper; you'd like that wouldn't you? Of course you wouldn't, what the fuck are you smoking. Anyway, after Hobbes, due on Wednesday, I've got another on Descartes due Thursday, and finally one on Wittgenstein due Friday. A bit of advice: if you don't like writing, stay the fuck away from philosophy.

Cool thing I found out last night: the Dave Brubeck Quartet is in town playing at the school's big auditorium Thursday and Friday. The Thursday show, which will arguably be the better, as it features the Quartet playing with the One O'clock Band, was already sold out by the time I learned of this whole affair. However, they held the group over for another night as a result of the overwhelming ticket sales. Regrettably the Friday show is just the Quartet, but hey, that's still pretty God damn awesome, especially considering UNT students get in for free. Should be a nice way to relax at the end of a long, essay-infested week. Also found the date for this year's annual Lab Band Madness performance. Went to the show last year, and it was un-fucking-believably awesome. The show features all 9 of the UNT Lab Bands, playing some of the most ass-kickin' Big Band tunes you can imagine. What really amazes me is that they try to play as many original compositions by UNT students and alumni as possible. Thinking about this, I made another effort to try and track down the tunes of a Bob Curnow work called Suite Seasonings last night. One of the lab bands played the third movement, Cayenne, at last year's show, and I was absolutely mesmerized. I actually ended up finding some free demo versions with Curnow talking a little bit over them, but more than adequate considering the tunes don't exist on any officially released album.

On a similar note, I was recently introduce to Pandora Radio by a friend of mine who is equally audiophillic. I've been spending a lot of time searching through torrent sites and whatnot (omgpiracy) to find some of the better artists I've been exposed to through the Music Genome Project. I'm finding (unsurprisingly) that my stations all seem to drift toward a Jazz-Funk type orientation. I've loved Big Band since about the first time I ever heard a Glenn Miller tune, and years of forcing myself deeper and deeper into the larger Jazz niche has really yielded some excellent listening material. Of course, the unforeseen consequence was that I now have absolutely no concept of popular music of the day. I guess some of us are just doomed to live in another generation's pop culture, never in our own.

One of the bands that's really struck me as having an excellent sound is the Mitchell and Dewbury Band. Regrettably, they're so obscure that there's only one tune they've produced that can be found in torrents anywhere. I did find a site that was selling the particular album I'm after for $.15 a track, and I must admit I was really tempted to just fork over $1.50 for some great music. However, just before completing the registration form, I had a crisis of conscience (my conscience apparently working in the opposite direction of normal people). The course of action I eventually settled on (and I'm sure this completely defeats the purpose of Pandora), was just to use a trick I utilized for the making of the Cloud WIP video, which is to split the line out on my PC, sending the normal line to the stereo, and using a male-male line to run the other half right back into the line-in port. From there I can record anything I'm hearing in Audacity, with the precise level of quality originally used. In the case of Pandora, despite being a streaming source, that quality is excellent. I'm beginning to think it I should just keep a running recording any time I listen to Pandora, and just split the tracks up later. I'm always willing to go searching around for a band that seems good, but when I can't find them, this is a really nifty method for playback "on demand," as they say.

Anyhow, I've got a paper to get back (three, actually). Once I finish those, I really need to get to work on build the Cloud model, because I think Ninjatoes is really starting to pick up his pace. So if you don't hear from me for a bit (and it's not like you would, no one's even found this ridiculous web-log yet), don't worry. I'm just busy composing bullshit for another purpose.



(Did you catch the Half-Life reference? No? Go back, you'll see it.)

On Communication

This may loosely qualify as assisted internet stalkery.

E-mail: Mr.Klownes@gmail.com

AIM: Mister Klownes

MSN: Kaizo107@hotmail.com

Yahoo: Kaizo107

Playstation Network: Kaizo107

Skype: Kaizo107

ICQ: 395864536

deviantArt

Pandora Radio

Last.FM

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

Ustream.TV

Square-Enix Members

On Photograms

My life in a photo:

All I can say is the Buddha would have a fit.

Proceeding counter-clockwise from the left:

160GB iPod Video - Classic? I don't know what they call the different versions. Apparently they don't make the version I have anymore. Yes I feel like a tool owning an iPod, but no one else makes them as big. I would've gotten a Zune, but i was at the 75GB mark when I was considering it, and I knew I'd be going over the line soon.

Samsung Instinct - I'd been carrying an old clamshell hand-me-down phone for literally 10 years. People used to look at me funny when I said, "That strange ring can't be my phone, my phone doesn't do ringtones." Anyway, it's sort of an iPhone knockoff, I guess? It suits me just fine, I just wish it cooperated better with my~

Sony DR-BT21G Bluetooth Headset - God dammit I love these headphones. I refuse to leave my apartment without them. I think I was about 15 years old when I first saw a concept image for a pair of wireless portable headphones in some tech magazine. I'd been wanting a pair ever since, and for my last birthday, the combined efforts of my mother and sister, via Amazon gift certificates, yielded me the most awesome headphones I've ever owned. For nearly a decade I was a stubborn mule about my portable audio, and refused to use anything but Sony MDR-G42s. They had been getting harder and harder to find each time I wanted to get a new pair, and this last year Sony finally stopped manufacturing them. In a panic, I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and hope the Bluetooth technology didn't need any more tweaking to be viable. Thankfully they sound just as good as my old G42s, and they're wireless. Grab a Sony iPod Bluetooth adapter, a Bluetooth dongle for my PC, and I've got a pair of headphones, with a built in mic and playback controls, which function with my iPod, PC, PS3, and phone. Good motherfucking times.

Sony PS3 Dualshock 3 controller - Obviously for the PS3, for which I am something of a fanboy. I am a self-proclaimed Sony whore. If I could afford a new laptop, I'd get a Vaio, All my headphones are sony, I tend to buy other products from companies who do business with some branch of Sony (Samsung, Pioneer, etc.). Don't get me wrong. If I could afford a Wii and a 360, and all the games I'd want for them, I'd totally go for it. I'm not so stupid as to turn away something good. But the ever present existence of scarcity means we have to choose sides, and I side with Sony (actually I side with Squaresoft, but they're still sort of allied with Sony, so it's appropriate that my fanboyish ties are slowly wearing.) I actually got my Dualshock 3 when it first came out in Japan. Ordered it off of Divineo for like $80. Pricey, yes, but it arrived amazingly fast considering it had to travel accross the Pacific.

Gingher Scissors - My mom got me these for Christmas this last year. Apparently Gingher is quite a fancy brand of scissors? My mom still has a pair of all-metal Ginghers which are older than I am. They're designed for fabric, so they kind of wear out up against paper. Either all my paper is super-abrasive, or paper just wreaks havoc on scissors in general. A run through a cheap sharpener keeps them working smoothly. Probably killing the blades, but whatever. Scissors are obviously a necessity in the papercraftings.

Olevia TV Remote - Okay, this is kind of symbolic. Nothing too amazing about the remote itself. It goes to a 27" Olevia I got two summers ago for surprisingly cheap. I actually decided I wouldn't buy a PS3 until I had an HDTV as well, and I was lucky enough to find this one on Newegg. Anyway, remote, general media-phile. Very deep metaphor there...

Nintendo DS Lite - Onyx. Fancier than black. I had actually been holding out on getting a DS for quite some time. I knew there were plenty of Square titles on the system, but I didn't want to spend the money, and I kept telling myself a viable DS emulator was just around the corner. Well I got my 11-year-old niece Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for her birthday this last summer (I've managed to get her a Final Fantasy title every gift giving occasion for the last two or three years, gotta get 'em started young), and the back of the box totally sold me. Finally caved and got a DS and an R4 card. Figure it was a reasonable purchase. the DS isn't an incredibly expensive console, and with the R4 card and (omfg super) cheap Micro SD card only costing about the price of a new game, I have zero upkeep cost for the system. Hey-ho piracy ahoy~

Sony PSP Phat - This is actually my...third PSP. I got one back when I first started college. See, I've actually been living on money left to me via insurance from my uncle who died the year before I started school. He was always the avid gamer of the family, and the one who usually brought the latest console at Christmas. Most of my apartment is full of his old furniture, and I take after him character-wise in a lot of ways. Anyway, I rationalized that getting a PSP, which already had a very healthy homebrew scene by then, would be a good way to honor his memory, playing the games he played on an emulator. Well I also thought it would be fun to install the first TV-Out mod. Failed. Hard. Ended up getting a new PSP the same week. Some time later, I bought a third because I thought the second one was dying. Turns out it was just the battery, which I turned into a Pandora battery after realizing the problem (and purchasing the third console). The Pandora has been pretty handy really. A friend of mine, Ian, has brought at least five PSPs to me to mod (always with some unknown acquaintance attached), and I'm happy to oblige. Gotta help the gamer 'cause, you know. I always make sure they have a look through my ISO library before they scamper off. What's the use in keeping the stuff if you don't share it, right? I like the Phat, because it retains the iR port, which makes a nifty universal remote with the right homebrew apps. However, I've modded a few of the new slim & lites. They're quite nice. I wouldn't mind getting one for the TV out capability. Crisis Core on the big screen would be quite fun.

And everything is seated atop a Ginger Self-Healing Cutting Mat - Another Christmas gift from dear-old mum. I'd been using a little paper-sized cutting mat I got from, well, not the school store, but a third party school store that's been on campus for ages. Served me well for six months. Still perfectly viable, but the new mat is hueg liek xbox. It's also reversible, which is kinda cool. Until I got this mat, I'd been using an old drawing board. It belonged to my brother in ages past, and he had scribbled the names of a plethora of shitty early-90s bands all over it. I inherited it, covered it in some more pointless tripe, then eventually pried of the clip at the top, and the bizarre plastic bar covering over the little recessed area (no idea what that was for...it's too small to hold writing utensils...). I spray painted it black to cover all the garbage, and drew a big target on the back with a silver sharpie, for use with my Nerf gun (I've got that same 6-shooter everyone always mods). Used it as a cutting board for papercraft on its own for a while, then started using it with the smaller cutting mat on top. The recessed area makes a nice little receptacle for paper scraps.


Take some time to ponder the symbology in this image. Maybe like, the fact that all the items are black is like...meaningful in that...my soul is like...dark and brooding and like...English majors all read way the fuck too far into things. And like, there's no symbolism in any of this, it's just fucking toys I play with. You know, dude? Wow dude, trippy. For real...Anyway...

One wonders why I would choose to stay up writing all this nonsense rather than enjoy some unconsciousness...

Hey, here's a thought: I'll go do that now.

(Did you get the Boondock Saints reference? Yeah? Good times)

On Usurpation

Rant #1, let's dive right in (this should give you some idea of just how petty I really am).

Okaci, a new papercraft designer, has lifted my method down to the last detail. Now let me make it abundantly clear: I am upset about the fact that I wasn't mentioned in any way. I posted the video, I explained what I could, obviously it was meant to be utilized. However, when you produce shitty layouts for models I've announced I'm going to build (and in the same order as I've listed them), without even mentioning something like "oh and you should check out this guy Kaizo's blog, it's where I picked up all this shit," you display an utter lack of tact. He even has some kind of abortion-doppel-ganger version of my coversheet, for God's sake. I would be happy if my blog were linked in some list of other blogs. That would be enough. Go check out my papercraft blog right now. Look at the list of related links. He's there, "Okaci Papercraft."

Now, in a way, I'm happy that someone immediately put my effort to use (two days after the video went up, he released his abomination-Tifa). But what bothers me is he didn't listen to the whole thing. Maybe he doesn't speak English very well? Clearly he understands enough to have gotten the whole method for fixing the eyes. I'm glad for that, because Jamis and Sane Person ended up with insane looking eyes, and I'm pleased I've made some kind of lasting contribution. But he clearly didn't pay attention to shit in the rest of the model editing process, nor the layout process. He seems to have a learning curve, as the Yuffie (notice the "i"?) layout looks strikingly similar to my own models, at least in the face. And the coversheet, wow. But you can't just leave these models as composed of blocks. It looks like shit, and you have intersecting faces. I'd like to see a finished version of one of these, because I'm quite sure it's impossible to mimic the PDO's pose exactly.

It came up, while I was discussing my lament with friends, that I should be happy that someone is clearly following an example I chose to lay down. A friend of mine, Ian, even went so far as to cite the old "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" line (well actually I said it, but I was filling in the blanks he didn't really know to fill). It's almost comically appropriate that a quote on Google's /ig homepage right now is, "Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery - Dr. Joyce Brothers." If he'd listened to everything I had to say, the models would be much better as a result. Another friend, Byron, said I should look at it this way: "you have a disciple now." I took immediate issue with this, primarily because I already have disciples. The difference between a disciple and a copycat? The disciple acknowledges his master. I don't want to sound like some pompous fucker (though I am), but I have kids who have actually referred to me as mentor in regards to this shit. That's fine...I don't really want to be anyone's mentor, but I won't fight it. Why? Because they also tell other people I'm the one responsible for their learning. If you refuse to acknowledge your influences, you're just a fucking asshole plagiarist. When I started doing coversheets and photo-instruction guides, I credited Ninjatoes before I even started. I began using coversheets and instructions in an effort to be more like Ninjatoes, and I informed everyone as such. Every step of the way in papercraft design, I've made mention of the papercrafting pantheonm, for whom I have great admiration: Ninjatoes, Urashiman, Chamoo, and Billybob. Go look at the Final Fantasy Papercraft Compilation in my Mediafire account. Look at that readme and tell me what it says next to Goblinguy's name. "Thanks for getting me started with design." Every God damn step of the way I've thanked everyone who helped me.

I think the worst part is, if you have a look at the selected items in the Tifa PDO, you'll see exactly the thing I mentioned as an example of how to fuck up a model: internal polygons. Little white triangles, set off to the side, because they don't fit anywhere. Why don't they fit anywhere? You carelessly edited the model, and didn't bother checking your work. When you discovered your failure, you just brushed it to the side, literally, and kept not altering the default layout. You're even using Pepakura 3 for Christ's sake. I made specific mention of how great 3 is, because you can reload the model after editing it further in Sketchup.

Sigh...

On the walk home from the second of my two exams this afternoon, I decided it wasn't worth fretting about. I've clearly opened up a Pandora's Box of inadequate copycats. I should just make videos detailing the extraction and editing process for all the model types I know and just retire. It'd certainly give me less bullshit to worry about. I wonder if anyone would remember my short run in papercraft design as a boon to the community...

I guess what it boils down to is, I can try to give them every drop of knowledge I have, but if they won't open up their God damn mouths and drink it all, they're always going to wind up dehydrated (man, look at all those water metaphors...brilliant, no?). This Okaci character clearly took about the first 10 minutes of the video, jumped ahead to like three points along the way, then just ran along to release two models in about a week. Have I done the same? Yes, I've done two models in two days. And they were excellent. But come on...pace yourself kid. You've got a long way to go before you can pull off the same shit I can.

And with that bit of boastful, self-indulgent assholery, I say good day to you, copycats of the world.





Edit: ARGH! He's already started on the child version of Cloud. Jesus fucking Christ, kid, try getting a model right before starting on another one.

Yes, my first models were all shit. But you know what, I told people they were untested, and I didn't have someone giving me specific fucking instructions as to how to make them awesome.

GRARGH! >_<

On Introductions

This blog is, as the name implies, an exercise in digital narcissism. I could lie (to you and to myself) and claim I'm doing this because I'd like to keep up some regular schedule of writing, so as to advance my skills in that field, but let's not bullshit ourselves here. I'm doing this because I'm deluded enough to think someone out there actually wants to read what I have to say, and I'm a big enough asshole to give said imaginary character exactly what he or she wants.

As I write this, I've been...doing? Hosting? Managing? Whateverthefucking Kaizo Papercraft for about nine months (hey that's long enough to gestate some kind of horrible papercraft abomination baby), and I often find myself posting things, wanting to say more than I do. Believe it or not, I actually make a concerted effort (only because I refer to myself as the royal We...get it? Because concerted means more than one person? Maybe a little joke about multiple personalities? No? Ah, well fuck you, buddy, you wouldn't know comedy if it slept with your mother and claimed to be your long lost daddy) to censor myself. As you may have already (read "just now") realized, I have the mouth of a filthy fucking sailor (i~rony~) when I'm not actively trying to keep it PC for the kiddies. But I don't just mean censor in the omgfoullanguage department, but also in keeping unrelated comments to a minimum (that rant about the Golden Compass was a rare lapse in judgement...what can I say, I was upset).

However! I feel as though it's my intarweb and I can blog about anything if I want to (I can't believe I just used blog as a verb). So here we'll engage in some self-indulgent clap-trap, and I'll bite and spit and curse and be my natural self (I wonder if that's at all surprising). If that's not your thing, please feel free to press the little X in the upper right of your screen and kindly fuck off. If you are willing to tag along, feel free to throw in your two cents at will. If you think I'm an asshole, by all means, scream at me. If you think I'm awesome, that's nice to hear too (I expect to hear much less of the latter). I fancy myself something of a hermit-nerd-gamer-weaboo-condescending-high-IQ-sarcastic-asshole cliche, so it wouldn't surprise me if my opinions are embodied in many other individuals. Individuals just like you! So let's get moving onto some content, shall we? We shall.

As for what I plan to actually discuss here...well that's up for grabs. I wanted to do this second blog to just babble, endlessly, about all my petty little shit. I do like to believe (perhaps somewhat misguidedly...perhaps very misguidedly) that I'm something of a writer, and this is going to be an outlet for anything I'd like to get feedback on, or just give to the world (is present, yes?). I'll likely post with much greater frequency here than on the papercraft blog (I know a lot of my fellow crafters started blogs around the time I did with the intent of giving development updates, but they all had external hosting and I do not, so the blog is my homebase for releases; need to keep it professionalish, yeah?). I'll probably actually do something like developmental updates (should be read as "bullshit pictures of half finished models") here, just to post something for the sake of posting something. If you did read my rant about the movie adaptation of the Golden Compass (and I was surprised to see that all the replies to that post were about the rant, not the model update), you'll know that I'm prone to freak-outs regarding subject material for which I care. As a result, you're gonna see plenty of that nonsense here.

If you're curious as to who the fuck I (think I) am, you should continue on with the primer to my working character bio. Enjoy. It's narcissistic to the ultra-super-max-extreme.


So, a few notes to end on:

Shoutmix only lets you have the one chat window, so we're going to be sharing it with the papercraft blog. Oh woes is us, what a horrible tragedy.

I signed up for Last.fm last night (as of writing this) and I'm still playing around with it. Is it unfathomably self-indulgent to think you want to know what I'm listening to? Fuck yes it is. Doing it anyway. Feel free to ask me anything about any of the music you see. Some of the tunes don't have previews, which is a shame because, obviously, my taste in music is pre-approved as awesome by me (little modified Mitch Hedberg joke there, did you catch it?). I also upgraded to Vista a little while back, which scrapped any play history I had going in Winamp/iTunes, so my Last.fm account shows some really narrow stuff concerning my library/listening history. Yes, there is a lot of weabooy stuff in my library, but it's less prominent than Last.fm makes it look (library's actually around 90GB at the moment (mine iz biger than urs im not compensating lolz)). The problem is I tend to pick one song (or maybe a handful, maybe one little playlist) and listen to it on repeat for-e-vur (God damn Sandlot was an awesome movie). So if you see the same thing like fifteen times on my "recently listened to" list...yeah...that's...whatever that is.

I uploaded that Cloud WIP video to MegaVideo recently, and I wanted to keep running with the idea, make a little channel like on the Yoo-Toobs, but linking to my profile there shows me as having no videos. Alas, all videos will likely be embeded. Tragedy?...Not really, no.

I also thieved the "Bonus Questions" directly off of the papercraft blog. This actually seems like a more appropriate place to house them, so maybe I'll get rid of the dual-instance. Maybe not, whatever. I'd really like to see someone get it right.


So in conclusion, that's why I should be class president. No wait...What were we talking about?

(Welcome to my world)