Something Catchy

I will no longer be updating this site, if you want to follow my posts please do so at mikeyvb.com.  Thanks for reading.

-mikey

Poor blog I have been neglecting you.  I feel that I owe you an explanation and an update.  Well first things first, I haven’t posted anything in quite sometime as you can obviously see by the time stamps that are on each post.  I have been trying to migrate my blog to a new web address, www.mikeyvb.com.  I feel that since this is my outlet for rantings, ravings and sometimes albeit occasional musings, that I should drop the 10 year old handle and go for something that is more personal.  So with that being said that is the why, now it is time for the, are you ready for it?  NEW CONTENT!

My brother just mentioned Whataburger which reminded me of something that I thought about a few weeks ago.  That was the lead in to this story,  a few weeks ago while at Whataburger I ordered a meal and noticed that they were out of ice while trying to fill my cup.  Most people in this situation, me included, would be rather annoyed by this event especially since I was going to have tea.  Shortly after my annoyance I thought about what a giant baby I was being to be annoyed by something so minute as a lack of ice.  Which lead to me thinking about other places where people are either lucky to have something to drink while they eat or lucky enough to eat and here I was annoyed that I had to drink room temperature tea.  In hindsight though I don’t think I was wrong in my initial reaction, I have a certain quality of life here in the United States which includes ice for beverages.  I think that everyone gets used to their situation however good or bad it may be and when it differs from the normal we tend to get annoyed or in some cases angry.  It was a stray thought, but something that got me thinking.  It’s funny how small our scope of the world can be when we are concerned with the day to day.  That’s all I have to say about that, more content to come soon, this time I mean it.

-mikey

Here I am reading different blogs that I tend to frequent and it got me thinking.  Okay so everyone knows that the economy is all kinds of screwed and albeit it scary I think it is also a time for great opportunity.  There have been a lot of people who have made millions during an economic down turn.  I think the real problem lays in first people don’t seem to have faith in themselves let alone the market.  The market will be fine, no worries, will it take some time?  I am sure that it will take time to bounce back, but it’s nothing to be afraid of.  Too many people are stuck in the old way of thinking, you land that good job and work your 40+ hours a week and get your benefits (or not) but you have that security.  So you sell yourself for security, that’s great until they find someone that can do the same job for less.  When it comes to the vast majority of businesses it comes down to the bottom line, money.  Are you costing them too much and not allowing them to grow their capital?  If you answered yes, then you should probably get your resume in order because you won’t have a job for long.

I am in sort of a unique situation,  I am young and for the most part pretty sharp (well I like to think so), oh also a fast learner.  My problem however doesn’t lie in being afraid of loosing my job.  Quite frankly I couldn’t care less.  I don’t want anyone to think that I have no responsibilities and that’s the reason for my total disregard, I have debt, in fact a fair amount, not a ton but some thousands.  It’s no bigs though I mean if I lost my job it would give me the motivation to finally work on the projects that I need to work on.  I am tired of having crappy schedules and being an economic slave.  I want to live the life I want to live.  Perhaps I am just a dreamer, I have been my whole life I suppose.  While in school I would always stare out the window and watch cars driving by and wonder where they are going and wishing I wasn’t stuck in that room (whatever room it may have been).  I also planned on being a rock star, well actually that’s a little misleading.  I didn’t want to be a star in the sense of Bon Jovi or something, but more known in the indie circuits, you have to realize I was listening to The Get up Kids and Saves the Day and the like religiously.  So I just wanted to play, to be honest I still do, but I like to think of myself as being a little more grounded now than I was then.  So back to what I was saying, I think I just want that jolt of reality that makes me move.  I can always get a part time job to pay the bills, and perhaps I have lived too well, maybe I should cut some things out of my life, I would rather not but maybe it’s what I need.

I don’t know if it is just me or what, but I think right now is rather exciting albeit scary.  It’s the journey that’s important not the destination.  So with that in mind I think this could be a blast, here is an experience that I wont get later, so time to take full advantage.  To those who lost their job though, it sucks and I am sorry, but perhaps it is for a reason.  I like to think there is meaning to everything even the small and mundane, but it’s all important.  So if you have your health be thankful for that, if you have your friends and family be thankful for that.  Look to what you do have to give you strength for what you know must be done, well at least in my case.  Don’t let this whole economy in the crapper get you down, tomorrow is a new day full of endless possibilities.

-mikey

Recently the RE5 demo was released for download.  It is still a trial and not the finished version of the levels that are included, so with that in mind if you encounter problems they should be fixed by launch.  For any long time RE fans, 5 follows 4 in regard to the different types of zombies and the view.  Traditionally RE was always a fixed camera so it made peering around corners and looking in general a chore.  However with the addition of RE4 they changed all that, the camera now follows your character in more of a second person view.  If you played RE4 than jumping into 5 shouldn’t be that different.  However they did away with the static menu system, in which you would hit the pause button and you could heal yourself, combine herbs and whatever else tickled your fancy.  While the menu in 5 is similar to the previous installments it’s in game only, so if you are getting attacked by say 50+ zombies and your health is low you can’t just pause the game and fix yourself.   Battles take some for thought which is why you have a companion.  The addition of co-op is excellent, it can create some very epic and tense moments while remaining fun.  Also the sound and graphics are incredible, playing  with surround sound all the way up can really creep you out.  The graphics are some of the cleanest I have seen in a long time, environments were clean and open and didn’t feel muddy with too many textures.  The demo includes 2 levels which are fun and challenging, I would suggest playing them co-op to get your bearings.  This installment should garner many hours of play and a lot of replay-ability, should be a blast when it drops 3/13/2009.

-mikey

Today found me running errands and such, which is a nice change of pace.  I enjoy being busy, it helps mute my mind, which for me is a good thing.  I have this knack for over thinking and over analyzing, which for a philosopher might be a good thing.  At any rate I digress, so I decided to take time and get some stuff down on paper.  Which lead to a sort of epiphany, well actually no it was an epiphany.    So let me set the scene for you– Camera pans in to Mikey sitting on a bench outside, he is smiling and happily chiseling away at his keyboard.

So I started writing and it was a new story, not a continuation, which it should have been  you know so I could actually finish something.  Oh, like that screen play that is going to hit it big and then allow me to move to Hollywood with all the other lushes and piss my millions away in a penthouse.  But alas it wasn’t, nope new story.  So I think that I subconsciously jump around from project to project.  I think its the same reason behind always eating at a table with an additional chair, just in case someone stops by.  In my mind I think I am afraid of finishing a story because then I can’t alter it when something really great comes along.  I hope that by coming to this realization I will be able to over come it.  I will finish that screen play, that prose, that book of short stories and even that poem I never wrote.  Perhaps I will even finish the multitude of concept albums that I haven’t started (but if you have the concept then hasn’t it sort of started?).  I feel like I am finally starting to come into my own as a… well a person I guess, a man, a writer, a musician, a geek even.  For so long my life has been in neutral, could it be that the only shift I needed was waking up to a new day?  Well I don’t know but I do know that I am starting to admit things to myself which is allowing me to assess the situation and work on a solution.  For example I wrote this post and further more it’s the complete thought I set out to write, guess you have to start somewhere.  Well, until we meet again.

-mikey

Today I downloaded the Fear 2 demo.  As a huge fan of the first installment you might think me a little biased.  However I am not blind to the games imperfections. First off the game looks incredible, the environments are rich and the character models are fairly realistic albeit bulky.  The gore is extremely impressive, for example if you shoot someone in the stomach with a sniper rifle they split in half with a blood bath to follow. The Fear series is known for scares and this one doesn’t disappoint.  I found in the demo a barrage of scares, which usually diminishes the scare value however this time around it didn’t.  The demo is about 10 minutes long give or take and I jumped about 3 times, which is a rarity.  Also there appears to be some new weapons and some new effects. One pretty cool effect is being able to shoot out books on a book shelf, however under further investigation you could shoot out all the rows except the top row which was static.  It would have been nice to see all the rows able to break away.  Also I tried shooting out several lights which had a cool flicker effect, but after some time would come back on to full brightness.  That’s just two of the things I noticed that I wasn’t to keen on and I am sure there will be more.  I know its a little knit picky, but stuff like that you shouldn’t notice and I did which was a little disappointing.  Overall though the game looks like it will be pretty solid when it ships 2/10/09.

-mikey

So today while I was playing drums, something felt off.  About 8 months ago I bought a double bass pedal.  It’s made by pulse so I know its not the highest quality, but its actually a pretty solid pedal.  So there I was playing and something was off, so I decided to put my old pedal back on.  My old pedal is the one that came with kit its a single chain version of this pedal, now mine is older and cheaper but still an incredibly solid pedal.  I put it on and I felt the groove come back.  I think that’s what I was missing.  I love this pedal I really do, it’s possible that I just have some attatchment to it because I have used it for so long.  At any rate though I felt this important enough to post.  Well that’s all I have right now.

-mikey

So the Xbox 360 just got some more functionality with the new dashboard.  The big addition that I have been waiting for and probably everyone else who has a 360 is the announcement that if you have a netflix account you can now watch streaming content on your xbox.  So I have been using the new feature for most of the day roughly 4 hours or so to play with the new dashboard and the new features.  I am going to talk about some of the additions and then jump right into the main event, netflix.

The first thing you are likely to see after the epic intro video, is the addition of avatars.  Now the avatars are pretty cool and I preferred making my avatar than when I made my Mii (Nintendo Wii).  I think that making the avatar was more enjoyable than making a Mii, even though there are less options.  Also they have done away with the blades, sort of, they still exist but it’s more of a mini menu.  The new layout is more like iTunes with the pop up art work and each option is assigned its own box art.  The main problem with the new dashboard though is how heavy it is.  From booting to logging into Xbox Live it takes around 10 seconds or so, maybe longer.  I also had my Xbox freeze while using the new dashboard, it was only once but that’s once too many.  Now on to the main event.

Netflix!  So the addition of netflix is pretty cool.  You have to download the software for netflix which only takes a minute or so probably less depending on your connection.  Once installed you are given a code which you enter on the netflix website.  Once that’s all said and done you can now stream you netflix instant view movies on your xbox.  Complaint number one, i would have liked to have full netflix functionality in which I can add and delete movies like I can on my computer.  However the way it works is there are a certain amount of movies that can currently stream, so you add those to your streaming queue via a computer and it will show up on your xbox if its currently on the list of movies that will play on the xbox.  I have already had about ten movies on my queue that aren’t available on the 360, lame.  Second complaint the movies are added in the order in which you added them, so if you threw a bunch of titles up at once, guess what you have a really unorganized list.  I would really have liked to see some different sorting options, I mean if it was anything like any Microsoft Os I would have 50 different sort views that I would probably not even use, so a sort by title or genre would have been really nice and I don’t think I am asking too much.  Now another complaint is about the website, it used to be that if you added a title to your queue you would have a pop-up window with suggestions, but now it redirects you to a page of suggestions, so in order to get back to where you were you can either open each title in their own window before adding them, hitting the back button in your browser for each selection or clicking through the menus which is how you got there in the first place.  The overall quality of the streaming content is good, though when they said streaming HD i didn’t think it would be a sub category, which it is, not all the content is HD only a small selection is.  I would also like to see more Tv shows on there, right now the selection is slim.  Overall it’s a nice feature and I am sure it will get better and my complaints will be addressed.  Netflix is a great company with a great product, I have been using them for over a year now and absolutely love it, they are a company that listens to their customers and cares what they have to say.

So I was wondering if they will have a streaming only option.  Might be an interesting idea, though would anyone be interested in something like that?  Well just something I was thinking about, let me know what y’all think about it,  Do you like the new experience or hate it?

-mikey

So I am sitting here watching TV and decided to post an update.  I think I will either begin working on my book again or on a new comic.  I know Jacob told me yesterday he wanted to me go over The Proud and clean it up if need be, though I would like to also do the art work.  Mainly the problem is that it’s hard to get Kenny motivated.  He is an amazing artist, but that doesn’t mean anything if no progress is being made, so we either find a new artist or Jacob and I try to do it ourselves.  If anyone is reading this that does visual art if you are interested, we would need the first 5 pages and then we will try to sell it to a publisher and see where it goes from there.  Well I need to go to the grocery store and get gas, so I will post again soon.

-mikey

Well here I am writing to you from work.  This post doesn’t really have a purpose other than I felt I should write something, so I am still coming up with a topic.

Here we go, I started my new schedule today, which I am trying to make the most of.  I don’t particularly like working Saturdays, but today is just slow and there isn’t a lot to do today.  I wish I would have brought my book on xhtml, however I thought it would be busier so I left it, big mistake.  It’s always annoying when you could be productive, but for whatever reason you are restricted.  At any rate I have decided to keep this blog as a personal blog.  I started a music blog on blogspot, check it out Envelope of Sound.  The primary focus of the new blog is music reviews, but who knows where it will go from there.  Also Kenny and I are talking about starting a joint blog for movie reviews, I will keep you updated when that surfaces.

I am betting that there are a few people out there that are wondering why I am learning xhtml, so I will address that right now as well as let slip a little info on an upcoming project.  I am currently learning xhtml for Squadron Media, a joint effort between Don, Cory, Andrew and myself.  We currently have a few things in the works, though I can’t go much in depth about the projects other than it has to do with web development, when we launch the projects I will post about them here, rest assured.

Oh yeah the comic is written, still need to get the art done and then we will try to get it to a publisher so we will see how that goes.  Another project that is in the works is Ameriken Samurai with Kenny and Jacob, so when all that business is situated and it’s launched I will let you know.  I also have a few other comics that are in the works, currently two of them are being co-written with Jacob so it should come out nicely, and once again when those are done we will find an artist and then try to take the finished product to print.  Now the last project I am going to mention for now is a music effort that Jared and I are undertaking, once again when more info arises and somethings are completed I will post about them more in depth here.  Well Until then, take care.

-mikey