This is a short clip from my second run-through, approximately half way through the “The Lost Temples of Nubia” chapter, trying to find all the secrets. It’s not quite the way to play a Serious Sam game, but I was quite surprised about the outcome.

I’ve been busy lately fixing a bit of a screw up with our music collection: over six hundred albums lost because of a hard-drive corruption. Okay, because of RAID. Okay, okay, because I forgot that the NAS runs Linux. Overall though, I find this to be a win. How is this possible? Well…

Originally, the CDs were ripped using iTunes, not the best of methods I know now, as there were mislabeled and misfiled mp3s, silent tracks and data files included, missing album art, incorrect tags – I didn’t even want to listen to it, things were such a mess.

This time, I ripped the CDs using Exact Audio Copy to ensure perfection (or close) and FreeDB for tags, which ended up being about 98% accurate. I then cleaned up the tags and embedded album art with MediaMonkey, adding my own cover scans when not satisfied with those on Amazon (which has horrific compression artifacts) or Google.

I ended up learning a lot about scanners, their software, and album art, so here are some tips:
1. Use Professional Mode. The more options, the better.
2. USE THE DESCREEN FILTER. No one likes moiré in scans.
3. Dust removal is very nice. It saves cleanup time in Photoshop.
4. It doesn’t matter if scans are 1,200 x 1,200 dpi. If the image is compressed, it will always look bad.

I have added the album covers to the gallery for download. The majority are 600 x 600 pixels and they do not have any compression artifacts or watermarks. Enjoy!

Above is quite an amazing CGI short by the animation company OddBall Animation. It’s remarkable when something this good comes out of a smaller animation house. It would cool to see this turn into something bigger, maybe a movie.

Check out “behind the scenes” videos and other concept art on their website below.

Oddball Animation

This is a video compilation of our Minecraft 1.1 survivor multiplayer server. We decided to begin creating these in order to have a placemarker for every large Minecraft update, document each server, and get all the raw video off our hard drives (in this case, 27 GBs).

This is the first time I’ve attempted using a mod to film video; this particular one is called Camera Studio. It works very well, even using only a few functions of those available.

It’s an overcast and rainy day here which reminded me that I forgot to post this video last year.

We had previously posted a fun and lively video short from Hiroyasu Ishida called “Fumiko’s Confession.” The above video, “Rain Town,” was completed as a graduation film and could be easily described as melancholy. He makes heavy use of music, colors and shot framing to create a quite an enjoyable short, and well worth your time. Also, watch through the credits.

Atlus, a Japanese developer-publisher, released this game back in 2008… for the PlayStation 2. I didn’t even know games were still being made for it. And yet, the quality of this title was jaw-droppingly surprising. Persona 4 (and the entire series in general) is one of those gems that are overlooked or out-shined in the media spotlight by AAA titles, similar to what happened for example, to Ōkami. And like Ōkami, Persona 4 will also be getting updated to a newer system: in this case it will be the handheld Vita.

Persona 4 is a long and involved JRPG, but it includes an atypical element: social gameplay. Your character, in addition to fighting monsters and leveling up, can make friends, get a part-time job, study for school, join clubs, build models, and do other high school-er type things. It really gives an fun and interesting twist to what would otherwise be a typical dungeon crawler.

For a PS2 game, Persona 4 has acceptable graphics but great style, the J-pop soundtrack is upbeat and lighthearted, gameplay is tight, and most surprisingly, the dubbing is very good. The (sadly) uncredited voice actors are all well-known in their field, and their experience in anime and game work shines through.

With 200 hours under our belt and the game not even finished, we’re already highly anticipating the second and maybe third playthrough – the game is just damn good fun.

PS If you do plan on trying out Persona 4, do yourself a favor and buy the official guide. It’s almost twice the cost of the game itself, but worth every penny.

This was recorded off of the second tge server. We didn’t have a separate build server then and so kept this server around for quite some time. Minecraft was still very new and magical for us: there were no beds, no creative mode and we were not yet running Zombe’s mod, so no flying either. Making this water ride required a lot of sneaking over an edge so as not to fall off. I did end up falling off often and since the sections were separate, it required making a dirt or sand scaffold back to top.

Water rides like this stopped working when vertical boat speed in water was changed in Beta 1.6. The same mechanic was used to make water elevators which supposedly can still be made, but they don’t quite work the same as before.

Dead Island is a very, very, VERY buggy game, but this is one of the non-game-breaking, non-skill-point-wasting, non-making-you-deaf, non-locking-up-your-PC ones.

I can’t judge Logan though – everyone needs a little private time, even during a zombie apocalypse.

Music: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk