Category: Toiling In The Pixel Mines

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Toiling In The Pixel Mines

A few early PDF II tech notes

Get your butt to the game grid in styleFor the 1.7 people interested, a few tech notes on PDF II – well, not really so much tech notes as stylistic descriptions. I was accosted in #vbender about a couple of these issues and thought maybe I’d elaborate on why the first DVD was the way it was in places, and why the second one may not be the same. More after the jump (to be merciful to the folks who just aren’t interested, which I completely understand). … Read more

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Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Watching the manimals flee……

Seen in a localized ad window on Livejournal:
Animial Medical Clinic
…man, I hope they can get their money back on that ad.

In other news, to wrap up today’s marathon run of blawg entries, the Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD (wow, I haven’t talked about that in at least 20 minutes!) is now available at Digital Press Videogames in Clifton, NJ, where it made its in-store debut just in time for last weekend’s NAVA gathering. If you’re within the reach of the mighty DP store, go hit Joe and co. up for a copy.

Okay, no more bloggage until tomorrow. I promise.… Read more

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Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Home and away

Much like Psi Corps, I’m everywhere, for your convenience.

I spent some time over the weekend working up some new music for PDF Level 2, and even found that at some point in the past, I had helpfully left some stuff just this side of unfinished that’s virtually perfect for the next PDF DVD. I also cooked up one new number that I like a lot – for some reason, as sedate as my music writing is when I’m thinking of stuff with lyrics, my instrumentals over the past 10 or so years have tended toward get-up-and-wiggle-all-available-body-parts stuff. I also discovered, along with the various useful unfinished music, the long-lost full 8-minute version of the PDF theme – you better bet you’ll be hearing that excerpted a lot on the next DVD. Hell, even I had forgotten how long it originally was – I wish I had remembered that while scrambling to find enough original music to cover the audio gaps on the first DVD! I may post some previews in the days ahead (like anyone’s that attached to my “white guy doing ’70s funk” routine!). Having had a little burst of musical creativity here, though, I’m probably going to wait until much later in the game to do more – “compose to picture,” as they say.

Speaking of the PDF DVD, you can get it this coming weekend at Sniderman’s table at CCAG in Cleveland; at roughly the same time, relatively speaking, the newly-released Odyssey2/Videopac cartridge Martian Threat will be debuting with cover artwork by yours truly at Eurocon 2008 in Karlsruhe, Germany. That’s not a bad reach, geographically speaking, for a guy who stays home with the baby in Arkansas all the time. The weekend after that, you can find the PDF DVD at Too Many Games in Reading, PA. I’m hoping that I’ll have a trailer ready for the CGE stuff by then too, but if that happens, it’s going to be an insanely tight squeeze.

A while back I promised a follow up to Doctor Who In 35 Minutes; I’m coming down the home stretch on that, mainly because I’m going to need it finished and off the Avid so I can continue working on the CGE auction (!!). As soon as I’m done with the CGE DVD content, it looks like I’ll be doing the packaging artwork too. I think we’re still firmly on target for Christmas though. I’ll make sure it doesn’t look too much like another PDF DVD. 😆

Stay tuned.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Birthday boy!

Evan and his daddy on Evan's first birthdayEvan’s birthday is today, and I’m working on a little video piece to celebrate the occasion. I temporarily ceased any other video work I had going so I could load every piece of Evan video I have into the Avid. I won’t tip my hand about the music, other than that it involves the Traveling Wilburys. But going through all that video has kinda made me realize how much he’s grown in the past year, and how much I have too – I kinda had to grow the hell up, a bit more than I’d realized. I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing, really – I don’t have a playbook that I’m operating by. All I do know is that it’s now been a year since I become A Guy With A Baby. Somewhere in that year that’s passed, I’ve become Dad. And I don’t doubt for a moment that it’s an improvement. He’s the best part of being me, and from here on out he always will be.

This also means that it’s been a year since I gave up full-time gainful employment. Despite that, I’ve surprised myself and, I think, everyone else by still pulling in some money while I’m on daddy duty. There were people who predicted dire things for us income-wise, and you know, it hasn’t been easy… but for the most part it hasn’t been a train wreck either.

In other news, it looks like those of you hitting gaming events “up east” will have two chances to pick up the PDF DVD – at CCAG in Cleveland on October 12th, and the following week on October 18th in Reading, PA at TooManyGames. I won’t be there in person, but plenty of DVDs will be. 🙂 The sudden surge of duplicating I’ve done for these two shows has brought the total print run up to 200, so if you’re in those parts of the country and haven’t picked on up yet, hit up Tim Snider at CCAG or Scott Stilphen at TMG those weekends and get caught up…especially before the PDF Level 2 DVD comes out next year!

OK, back to the birthday boy for me. I’ll have his video up for your amusement and amazement this weekend, and I’m hoping that next week I’ll have another treat finished at last for those who enjoyed that little video piece I did about catching you up on the mythology of a certain TV show in 35 minutes. Little hint: you’ll need another 30 minutes free in your schedule somewhere, and then you’ll be caught up on the rest of what’s going on in that universe. 😉… Read more

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Gaming Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Wow…real labeling

Makes me kinda embarrassed about the first 50 out there with hand-written “labels”. 😳

PDF DVD - now with labeling!

Sweet, eh? As silly as I feel about the 50 hand-written discs, their success made it possible to go this route. I’m not sure anyone appreciates what a no-budget endeavour the first run was: I blew what I had on blank discs and cases, Flack saved my butt by printing and cutting the covers, and after the OKC show I sweated bullets trying to get the word out to the right outlets. Now the whole project has A Budget. Which is almost scary in and of itself. One thing I did today to cover my own butt – but it’s something I’d been promising myself that I’d get around to doing for some time now – was to grab the domain phosphordotfossils.com (don’t get too excited – it redirects to PDF here at theLogBook). It just seemed like it was better to lock that down now than to have to fight for it later. (Actually, the internet being what it is, I was surprised that it wasn’t already taken by somebody, somewhere.)… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Should We Talk About The Weather? Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Mother’s Day musings

More nasty storms rolled through tonight. No damage on our end, but it wouldn’t have been the first damage of the year if there had been; we finally got the write-up from our insurance company on the work to be done on the house, as well as the check to do it with. It’s not what I’d describe as a small check, and not what I’d describe as small work: new roof, new windows all around, new back door, refinish the deck…I’ll admit that I look forward to having screen windows (the paperwork actually specifies screen windows), as well as a new back door, but I was a little surprised by the new roof thing. That’ll be fun. 🙄

In other news, another round of PDF DVDs goes out the door on Monday, due in no small part to me finally openly promoting it on Digital Press and AtariAge. Both communities have a bit of a history of suddenly getting their backs up when someone starts trying to sell them stuff from within, but ya know, I think both communities also know me well enough to know that I’m not a fly-by-night spammer. (Though considering how little I’ve been on AtariAge for the past few years, they might think I am. 😆 What can I say? I just don’t quite have the hardcore Atari tunnel vision that some of the folks there do, and I feel a little out of place.) I’ll admit that over the past couple of weeks since the OKC show, it’s been kind of fun to see where I got with just word-of-mouth and a banner about the DVD in my message board signatures, but it’s time to get down to business – I need a new office chair stat. Mine’s broken and it’s driving me nuts to sit on it. :-p

Speaking of video work, I’ve been amused lately by a TV promo about a grocery giveaway that looks like something I would’ve done with the on-screen text being “printed” on “receipts” that scroll up the screen. The really funny thing? This promo is not running on a station I used to work for – it’s running on a station that’s, technically speaking, the competition. 😆 Maybe I’m having delusions of grandeur, but permit me a moment to laugh out loud at channel 5 aping some of my old 40/29 promo tricks. (Please don’t mistake this for me pining away for the old job though – one thing I’ve enjoyed about the wild weather this year is being home to take care of my family, rather than getting called in or having to stay hellishly late to wipe someone’s butt and worry my head off about my kid.)

Finally, speaking of my kid, some pictures that only a mother could love: … Read more

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Critters Gaming Toiling In The Pixel Mines

The Othello Report

FISH!Othello is home from the vet, and as I type this he’s enthusiastically chowing down on some Fancy Feast – of which I have quite a bit that I never intended to feed anyone after the Great Wet Cat Food Scare of a year or two ago. All these cans o’ Fancy Feast came as little samplers packed in with cat litter. Right now, they seem to be hitting the spot just fine, which is exactly what we need; due to the same aforementioned Cat Food Scare, we switched off to a regionally-produced brand of dry food – i.e. something that didn’t come from the same mills as 90% of the commercial brands – which Othello now shows no interest in. He now happily chows down on canned food while the other two are locked away temporarily, which drives the kitty kids nuts. Especially when I put his food away and he happily struts back into the baby’s room to lay down on my bed, smelling like canned cat food…which the other two can’t find. Good to be king, eh? But it’s even better that he’s eating. Now let’s see you pack on some pounds, skinny boy.

Got an Avid drive cable in yesterday, so I was able to try out the new Avid drives I got from eBay – remember, the ones that came clanking against each other in a priority mail box with absolutely no packing material whatsoever except for one flimsy piece of bubble wrap between the drives? – and to my astonishment, one of them was not DOA. The other one’s media was so damaged that it couldn’t even get one minute into a low level format. Say it again with me: dumbass! I wouldn’t even be going to the ‘bay for these except that I’m dealing with a slightly older generation of Avid gear. I’d have to buy a completely new setup to get the generation of Avid that uses firewire for everything, and I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t be getting that one for under $425 and a trip to Illinois. (To date, despite a motherboard replacement, three new drives, and new drive cables – which are all kinds of not cheap – I still have yet to sink $1,000 into my Avid.)

Neat stuff comes out of though. I’ll be sending out the next round of PDF DVD orders today or tomorrow, including the first international order (!) and orders from folks who I have no idea who in the world they are. As much as I appreciate my circle of friends picking up copies, the whole “total strangers buying my little DVD that I made” thing is kind of exciting.

Speaking of video games, I finally got Daphne working last night, and played my first game of Astron Belt in ages. I wish I’d accomplished that before the PDF DVD went out the door. 🙄 Ah well.… Read more