Monthly Archives: March 2003

Graphics Assignment, Frozen Throne

I’ve been work­ing most of the week­end on my graph­ics assign­ment. I have the arm ani­ma­tion work­ing now, togeth­er with most of the tim­ing, but the object motion is killing me. Somehow I have to get an object to move with the claw of an arm, get the object dropped, and then move along a con­vey­or belt. The prof gave us anoth­er week exten­sion (on top of one we already had) so it’s due next mon­day. I would pre­fer to get it done for tomor­row though, since the delays in projects would just add up, and I have my hon­ours project and cryp­tog­ra­phy project to think of. I might be hit­ting the bot­tle a bit ear­ly today.

I’ve been read­ing some Frozen Throne info, and the new units look pret­ty cool. The prob­lem is that the expan­sion is com­plete­ly chang­ing and re-bal­anc­ing all of the pre­vi­ous units and build­ings. Essentially, it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent game. For exam­ple, all the build­ings have their costs reduced by about 15%. Or the fact that units can now ethe­re­al, and that there’s a new type of dam­age. Basically every­thing I learned has become use­less. The only thing that I’ve kept is what I learned from micro­man­age­ment. Shit.

Confusion

Confusion is some­thing that has always struck me in the worst cir­cum­stances. Yet it’s some­thing that’s very dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand at the time. I am usu­al­ly very unaware of my con­fu­sion. I find that it usu­al­ly takes about six months for me to come full cir­cle, and come to a full com­pre­hen­sion of what has hap­pened. It’s as if I can’t see what’s going on in the present, but I have an idea of what will hap­pen in the future, and a knowl­edge of the past, like the damned in the Divine Comedy.

I under­stand that it takes time to be out of a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion and to be able to free one­self of the bonds or con­se­quences of deci­sions made dur­ing that time. Sometimes it just feels like the only thing that mat­ters is for the con­fu­sion to go away, so that one does­n’t make an incor­rect choice or deci­sion.

Confusion was an aide to me once in a rela­tion­ship. It caused me to see things clear­er, and I end­ed up in a bet­ter place because of it, although I did­n’t real­ize it at the time.

I just wish I felt like that was true.

Tired Thoughts, Game Of Life, Etc.

I’m fuck­ing exhaust­ed. I haven’t been this tired since my trip to Tremblant, pos­si­bly. I feel drugged. I almost had a 10 hour day, and I slept hor­ri­bly last night. I decid­ed to attempt an entry at five in the morn­ing, but I did­n’t get very far. I knew that if I did­n’t write tonight, I would­n’t sleep very well again.

I find so much rea­son to write nowa­days. I seem to be get­ting affect­ed by so much. All my emo­tion is com­ing back to me like the open­ing of a vac­u­um.

Working on my graph­ics assign­ment has made me real­ize how large the project is. I have most of the cam­era move­ments fig­ured out, so that I can enter co-ordi­nates into an array and the cam­era will move between them. I can get the oth­er motions done, like cam­era angle and cen­ter of focus rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. I just need to fig­ure out a way to ani­mate four arm objects at once, keep­ing track of all the motions. I’ll have about two days to work on it, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it done.

An inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal idea I’ve learned more about is the Game of Life. I’ve nev­er real­ly found math phe­nom­e­na fas­ci­nat­ing, but the Game of Life offers an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­bilites in cre­at­ing some­thing amaz­ing. With a sim­ple drag of the mouse, one can see if a group of cells will be able to sur­vive, reach sta­sis, or die off, based on Conway’s rules. I could spend hours try­ing out new pat­terns, watch­ing the cells dance in tiny flour­ish­es of log­ic.

I got all three of my mid-terms back, and I was able to pass two out of three. However, the two I man­aged to pass are still with­in five marks of fail­ing. I find that this term is the ulti­mate test of my abil­i­ty to pull things off. It’s the term with the most dire con­se­quences if I fail, and the term that requires the most of my gal­va­niz­ing strength.

I’ve asked Pat to attend my grad­u­a­tion. He’s the per­son who’s helped me out the most in the last four years, no mat­ter what my prob­lem was. Out of all the peo­ple I know, I think that he would be the proud­est.

Tonight was anoth­er scary movie night. Nick, Aaron, and Pita came over. This time it was The Shining. I almost watched it one time, but I was in the com­pa­ny of peo­ple who were mock­ing oth­er peo­ple, so I opt­ed to fall asleep instead. Although I did­n’t walk away from this movie with as much fear as Ringu, it was able to actu­al­ly send chills up my spine and down my arms. I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced any sort of chills relat­ing to hor­ror before, pos­si­bly because I usu­al­ly don’t like the genre. I was…amazed at what Kubrick did. The angles and score seemed to be the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture. My favorite scene is when the wife is exhaust­ed­ly try­ing to open the freez­er door, jam­ming the han­dle over and over, while the cam­era is set near the door, and the audi­ence can see the sweat in her hair, the fatigue in her face, the fran­tic­ness of the sit­u­a­tion.