One last time.

There's a difference between the what you want to say, and how you say it. Blogging for both my marks and your pleasure, I must admit that it is the how, not the what, that makes all the difference. At the same time, our video attempted to personify this statement, by not concentrating on content but on the way we wanted to show it to you. People want to enjoy knowledge more than they would like to actually have it.

You lot have watched my life through the disdainful and sarcastic melodies I have spun out of glyphs and symbols through this blog, which I hope was an entertaining view into a person most of you have come to believe possesses only three emotions: anger, moodiness or complete disregard for you and yours. In the same vein, I have learnt a lot about the people each of you are, from the people I hate to the people I love.

One of my friends has always had this inherent belief that everyone has some sort of redeeming quality, and has on occasion urged me to look for this quality in others. Like the pessimist that I am I was always convinced that she must somehow be at least gravely mistaken, if not completely mentally retarded, but these past two months may have actually convinced me otherwise. You see, while I've always thought that everyone around me must have been some kind of idiot, the truth of the matter is that you lot are actually pretty handy to have around, if not for actual technical work, than at least sheer comic relief.

(Editor's note: Take the above as Bryan's way of telling you he likes your company. And now for the part where you can quote him for next year's sucker- I mean, Freshies.)

Anyway, it goes without saying that it was enjoyable and enlightening experience, in which I learnt lots of different things, grew closer to all my brethren in the course and generally feel very happy to be where I am. I feel that this project is something everyone should at least have the chance to go through once in their lives and I really enjoyed myself.

So goodday to each and every one of you buggers.

It's been an interesting ride.

Now give me my darn marks.

Peace out,
Bryan

i'm just a sexy boy

(P.S. I might actually start writing blogs just for fun now.)

End of MOI P1

Well it's really been a long way, i can't say i'm completely overjoyed by our end result but i think we've gave it a pretty good shot. Win Lose or Draw, this is probably the biggest project i've been though so far, and i'm pretty sure the same goes for my other group mates too.

Screening will be later in the noon, and everything you see here as well as our video will be chunked into a CD for submission.

Looking at the groups around, i somehow feel shadow for most of them have loads of special effects, stopmotion and even greenscreen. But i somehow feel glad we choose to take a different path, that of going outdoors and braving the elements to get real footage.

Alphie also made me feel a whole lot better after telling me the marking criteria, which i think most groups oversaw due to the craze on special effects.

But as a whole, this has been quite an experience for me
Not as in Moi P1, but the entire first year, because if you realized, this IS after all, our last day of school.
When the next day of school arrives, we'l be seeing each other as year 2s.

So well,
Cheers to all the Freshies
Cheers to all the Lecturers
and Thanks for everything this year.

8D

Brian Low

3 and a half hours later

Well hellooo again, with only 30 minutes left before the deadline, things are starting to get really chaotic for some people. Corrupted files, rendering errors, you name it.

I on the other hand have my own share of madness, i am currently waiting in the Mac lab on the 6 floor for Bryan to pop by so we can start on our VIdeo fund editing, which we have almost no idea how because we never touched Final Cut Pro and nothing had been taught to us on it.

Wonderful isn't it. Shooting with a camera you hardly know how to use in one day, and editing with a program you never used also in a day. The whole of Julian's class is probably in a mad rush about completing P1 and Vid Fund.

Lots of things are happening and more stuff is going to happen later today, so well, time for me to look for Bryan, SHEESH

Brian L

4 hours to go.

Ah well yeah, with just a little more then 4 hours left on the clock before the submission deadline, i am honestly pretty surprise to still see some groups editing their videos here in the lab.

Anyway, with reguards to what Bryan and a few chaps said yesterday about our cover looking rather "pirated" i spend the entire night re-designing it. Lets just say it looks alot more "original" now. But it send me spending a big long time at the print shop as the fat bloke in front of me was awefully slow printing a few hundred copies of A3 size coloured stuff.

So well, it looks like everything's ready for today's submission, all that is left is for me to get tomorrows envolope ready with the contents, 12 hours of undisturbed sleep and an extra huge quadrippled patty cheese burger perhaps from Botak Jones or Carls JR.

BANZAI!
See you chaps tomorrow at the big screening.

Brian L

Fully baked.

So. Damn. Warm.

Humid. Stuffy. It's 11:40PM. There should be a law against having to breathe the thick, almost solid air in the animation room. Room's filled with people either doing their work or doing their best trying not to die of a heatstroke while waiting for their videos to render. Glad my group's more or less done.

Our goddamned cover makes our CD and its casing look pirated.

People are mostly packing up now. Submission is in about 15 hours. 8 of those hours will be spent in transit and sleep. I should be worried about the poor quality of our video and audio, the jumpy aspect ratio and our message overall, but there's nothing much that I can do to solve it now.

For the moment, I am hungry. I've been craving four meals a day lately, for some reason. Stuck to only eating three, or two, depending on how late I wake up.

Expect a final post tomorrow, the day before the screening.

Peace out,
Bryan

with a tear in his eye he said "son that's the question"

what this title is

so shall its post be.

ok don't try to make sense of the above nonsense.

urgh, i just have no idea for the title.

so neways, it's been awhile `,^) (attempt to make 'The Rock''s expression)

sorry for not updating.. this goes to not just other teams but lecturers and my group as well.

had been busy with the critter animation and exercises from VidFun.

unlike bryan, evidently, in my posts i don't really care the way i butcher my puncuation nor seem to realise that the lack of capital letters in the times appropriate anything a mistake dire.

let alone correcting my grammar.

haha. ok, but i do still strive to be understood.

anyway, with REGARDS to P1, uhh, i had been assigned the task to draw a 'critter' which was supposed to be animated using Flash for a bunch of seconds. and outta the 5 cute creatures the two

[brahy-uh n]s had to like the same character (#3), which was the hardest to animate:

after improvising and figuring out its 3d form, sketch of the moving sequence. which is basically waving and doing stupid actions:

yea. there you go. i have no idea what this creature is. a bunny with hair as ears that stands on its small hind legs which are miraculously capable of supporting its body weight.

the following are which i got my inspiration/ idea from:

-the pokemon Pikachu
-Stewie Griffin from Family Guy

-my memory of the rabbit in the animation Amanda showed us of a senior's work

-humain hair(which i've always been observing)

-my own personal soft toy:

the hardest part is yet to come.

whilst in Flash, a program i'm still not too familar with, i realised i don't know how to make symbols so i did everything frame by frame. in the process, many a-times i'm confused with my own animation and blurred with numbers because of the many frames.

but finally i got it done by thursday morning. though i think i really did a poopy job. :(

urh, i will end this post now.

but before i go, i didnt think that brian enslaved me like as said in his post.

haha, in fact i thought the real workers have been the both [brahy-uh n]s.

posting for 21st march, saturday

LASZLONEWELL, this might be farewell.

Spy? Sapping MY project?

Team Fortress 2 title reference today, in case you happen to be a girl or DOTA player.

We're about 90% completed, the remaining 10 integers comprised mostly of slapping pretty sparkly stickers onto our work and generally wondering exactly how badly we did. It's not that I dislike my work; I feel that our work reflects exactly how much effort we put into it. What I am concerned about is the wisdom of letting anyone else see it until the deadline.

There's been a bit of buzzing about copied ideas lately, which I think everyone should have seen coming, especially after the whole course tried jumping on the storyline/greenscreen/stopmotion bandwagon together. It's a fact that our seniors specifically refrained from such technology, with the exception of one or two videos, and even those videos either failed or kept such techniques to a minimum. Whether they did so out of laziness or wisdom is relevant, the fact remains that they mostly kept to a straightfoward video doing exactly what the brief asked them to.

Anyway, my point is, you're all pretty much bumming ideas of each other, fools. Even my group bums ideas off the best of last year's work. I suppose that since we're all designers, I should call it inspiration, although the term has to be stetched a bit.

Perhaps you lecturers, the ones marking my post and eagerly dropping marks for having the sheer audacity (by the way, please, please, PLEASE put that program into the labs again) to address you directly without first kissing your lovely bottoms should think of making us all patent and completely copyright every single bit of work we intend to do. It might even help us in the industry, if you think about it. Our seniors are constantly getting their lawsuits handed to them by the lovely people at thepiratebay.org.

But it is ironic when people using a cracked application on a laptop accuses the person next to them of stealing intellectual property. We bitch (pardon my slang) about stealing, then start listening to music that most certainly hasn't been cleared to go on Youtube. I'm sure you lecturers could afford to appreciate the situation.

Peace out,
Bryan

you always find the words to say to keep me right here waiting

PowerPack JigaJack

Most of you guys probably noticed by now, theres been a lack of posts throughout the last few day. No Bryan, no Newell, not even Me for 4 days straight. Just incase the lecturers are starting to think we're slacking on our butts i'm let you know that all the non blogging is for one very simple reason. We have simply no time for it.

Why? Well what else?

At this point of time, my group mates would probably think i'm getting a little of a slave driver pushing them to work non stop while do just about nothing in school.....i'm sure you guys seen me walking around alot. And even worst, happily prancing out of the school as early as 2 while my comrades drown themselves in work till it's about 8 or more.

So what exactly have i been doing for the last few days? Well let's just say, the earlier you see me on my jolly way out of school means i'm off to work just like you guys. All my equipment is at home and i'd rather work with no obstructions for more efficiency.

NO this is NOT for myself, but for the group's sake, it's a group video after all.
So well, how far have we gone into editing??

Just before blogging this, i was doing a little audio clean up of the final part of the video, soon after this it will be my breakfast and off to polyland to collect the completed versions of Bryan's Motion Graphics and Newell's Animation, and all's left is to junk it into the main video, do some tweaking around and we'r ready to rock with packaging...............yes, we have not started on it, which is also why i wanted to get the full complete video out by today or tomorrow at the most.

It's a hell lot of work, it's been a hell lot of work, but it's all good because once we'r done with all the editing work, packaging is the last thing left on our checklist. My only worry not will be what Julian has installed for us for the last week of video fund.

So well expect 1 or 2 more posts before this all ends and see you at the final presentation in a week's time.


Brian L

The sound of Nature

IS NOT SOMETHING YOU WANT IN YOUR VIDEO.
Being cooped up in my bedroom doing nothing but video/audio editting for the past few days made me come to one simple conclusion.

Video Editing, eeeeasy~
Audio Editing, AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only form of audio editting knowledge i've got is what's being taught during DMfun. and i swear what we learnt is hardly enough to take care of the sounds of Nature. Suuuure we've picked up a little on noise removal but forget Audacity, even a program as fancy as Adobe Soundbooth has it's limits when it comes to removing certain "noises"

And just to let you know, the audio of our voices overlap these unwanted noises which is making editing a whole lot more complicated.

It's pretty darn silly if you think of it, i'm spending 4/5 of the many hours working editing the Audio when the whole process is called "Video Editing"

Now that i'm pretty clear about all the extra unwanted hassle, it really makes me wonder how many lucky groups have gotten their footage in a nice controlled environment under the TP rooftop.

No offense, the Jealous Vibe is just getting onto me.

Anyway, Editing work should be about 50% done once the weekdays kicks in but it still seems that without the complete package of the 2D animation and the motion graphic sequence, the end product is not going to be out anytime soon.

Let's just hope i don't get one of those "sleep paralysis" that Ryan(group ilike) experienced, i had it once before and it's pretty darn freaky.

So well, i'm off to work again see ya in a few days.

Brian L

Rewind the bloody tape, then, stupid.

I'm working on the final after effects animation, which is sheer torture to say the least. At least it's simpler than its counterpart, which was the product of weeks of guesswork. Post-production has become really draining on me mentally. Joseph caught me just stoning outside the animation lab, doing absolutely nothing at all besides trying to stare a hole through the wall.

"we love joyce!!"
-Joyce

As you can see, I'm typing in an incredibly crowded room, the likes of which are staring to remind me of Auschwitz. We're just packed in here, some of us busy, others just really, really tired. The mental boredom is driving people like the above to stare at my screen as I blog, reaching over to type a comment in. If you need proof that I did not type that, consider this: I never, ever butcher my punctuation that way, at least not willingly. The lack of a capital letter is also a dire mistake. Obviously a person with such draconian views like myself would never commit a crime against the language like that.

To sum up my current thoughts: Animating is a pain, and I'll leave it at that.

Peace out,
Bryan

another day of putting things aside/as if we'll come back to them sometime

Yes the tape really reached it's end.

Well it's Brian again and some may be wondering why in the name of greyskull am i posting today.
Well see this would mark the 27th post and having over 2 weeks to go, we should more or less hit the 30th mark by say.....the end of this week?? So from here and on, things about the blog post will be changing a little. It's now a free for all, anytime, anyday schedule for anyone to post.

Anyway, i'm pretty glad to say that we're completely done with shooting and recording, so we should be moving on to post production right around now. It's all about balance really, i personally feel that groups should give a steady amount of time for post production and take into consideration of getting your resources for your work.

The logic is simple really, if you shoot more, you have less time to edit, likewise. So keep your ideas simple, or simple enough to be able to pull off a decent piece of work before the deadlines.

Looking at the big picture again, now it seems that the real problem would be if we had enough computers to work. See Mr Ronald just leashed out a new rule that the first years could only use the computers at the 3d Lab.....and we're talking about ALL the first years. Being completely base on first come first serve basis, i predict that things will start to get really messy once majority of the other groups are moving to post production.

It's abit funny to put it this way but there will soon be a war, which is one of the reasons why im pushing as much post production as possible before the pitch forks and torches come into play. That way we would have more time to focus on correcting mistakes or packaging while some of the scary guys get into some sort of royal rumble.

This is the way the industry is, everyone is fighting. But if fighting is sure to result in victory, THEN WE MUST FIGHT!

The tape has reached it's end.

Things with the shooting are going pretty smoothly last week, we had enough sun to get us a good number of shots before the weekend kicked in. Infact, we'r almost done with it. What i'm worried however is just as Bryan pointed out, the music. It seems like the tracks i have happen to sound either too grand or too cheap, not to mention finding something stylish and casino like is really hard if you don't know who does them, i am however thinking of exploring some old disco......of course without the lyrics.

The next sunny weekday should be where all the shooting ends, we've got the time lapse down and i nearly crashed my computer trying to squeeze 13G worth of video down to 10 seconds, it looks decent though. Not too fantastic like those you see on the hit reality gameshow "Survivor" but not too plain either. The scene with 2 Newells however probably needs some working on. The colour and brightness of the 2 videos varies, it will take a while to mask the fella out frame by frame but at least it's something do-able.

Anyway, it seems like most of the other groups are having a "to-do" list on their blogs,
it will be good if we have ours too, keeps us on track.

So well, these are the stuff we will be aiming to complete by Sunday.

1.All filming
2.Voice recording
3.Animation
4.Finding Music

Things that should be working on full swing by sunday:

1.Graphic Motion
2.Video Editing/sound editing

Kinda Cramp really, considering how much time we have left for this module,
I'm planning to get everything more or less done by 2 weeks and leave the last one for
extra ideas or backup time.

So then, see ya around.
Brian L

English, Newell! Do you speak it!?

Putting aside the fact that only a small minority on our fragile earth can possibly begin to comprehend the previous post, I have a new problem.

I do not know if this is a software or hardware fault, but the After Effects on this computer keeps returning OpenGL error messages to me, which is extremely vexing. I can't switch computers, we're packed in like office workers here, though less than ten of us seem to actually be doing work. I would assume, then, that it is a blessing in disguise that I will have to leave to shoot a scene in a location I have never seen for myself before.

At the same time, I'm wondering if I'll have to pull off the editing of the video together with Brian, just so I can have a say in how things look. We've got it a lot easier than most teams though, we have little scenes to shoot and very little can go terribly wrong at this moment. Here, have a short list of things I am worried about.

Short List of Things Bryan is Worried About:

1)Music
It's becoming increasingly difficult for us to find music that suits the mood of our video. We might have to really rack our brains for this.

2)Editing
Simple enough, actually. We can edit, I'm just concerned about the quality of the edited material. In either case, I should press for more than one cut.

3)Cinematics
The opening sequence is 75% done, the last 25% being polish and syncing to the previous and later segments. The end sequence is still in concept, which I had tried to solve today, except After Effects decided to deny me.

Peace out,
Bryan Koh

the things that you do to fulfill your addictions

indu da 4rest!

We Team Powah went to shoot our location scene today at Chicken Island. Even though inside there it was less accessible than weeks ago due to the rain, with our amazing physicality the sticky mud, quicksands, and earthquakes didn't stand a chance.

Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows underneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark green waters. The roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lad and silver.

I will go to the beech wood alone...I will take my anguish and lay it upon the roots under the beech trees. I will examine it and take it between my fingers. I shall eat nuts and peer for eggs through the brambles and I shall sleep under hedges and drink water from ditches and die there.

Oh...I shouldn't have let school policies exist!

posting for wednesday, march 4th
LASZLONEWELL, said-a I'd buy the flowers myself.

Amanda is missing??

Thats right, i was just checking my mail before blogging this, it seems from tomorrow till the 16th, Amanda will be missing somewhere and the groups in her our class are assigned to different lecturers. We got Yoke Ee, i've heard good stuff about her and i think i know which one is her, but then again having to swap lecturers around like that is abit hectic. Why? Simply because Yoke Ee would have completely no idea what we'r doing, what our theme was, and we would have to explain the whole concept to her all over again like we did for the other presentations. And also, there may be a chance that different lecturers have different views and what satisfy one may not similarly be the case likewise. So to keep things simple, i'l try to keep things simple and follow what Amanda told us during interim 1 so by the time she comes back, it should still be the way she's ok with.

Anyway, it seems like majority of the groups had started shooting and we'r one of the few still stuck with computer work. It's a real shame the weather isn't really on our side lately, the during the location scouting it was sunny and all but it seems that for the past week it simply poured. Considering that 3 of our 4 location shoots are outdoors, not to mention we have to spend SOMETIME shooting out time lapse, we could be in serious jeopardy if Zeus decides to extend his Asia vacation.

My only plan left is to completely change the locations if we don't get a single sunny day this week, which will be really bad since our script is somewhat based on the location.

Come'on Murphy, leave us abit of slack.

Anyway, we'r still pushing with the cinematics and i should get started with the ending credits soon so lets
hope the sun sears the land for the rest of the week.

See ya
Brian L

It goes without saying...

I find myself at a loss.

On one hand, there is relief, the breath taken after nearly drowning, the first rays of the morning reaching over the horizon. It would seem that the propecies of doom I fortold not a week ago have not come to manifest, and that we are indeed proceeding on the right track.

On the other hand, a constant nagging fear of something I do not yet know will happen. They saw that the only time you feel confident is when something has escaped your notice, and this is what currently fuels my brooding. While our lecturer has assured us that we are not in fact akin to the likes of Goldar, Rita and Zedd, one cannot help but notice the less-than-optimal expressions on the faces of our classmates. One of them made a valient attempt to inform me of exactly what she thought was wrong with our concept, but aside from a vague remark about content, no useful information managed to journey their way out of her throat, which strangely found itself constricted even though I had not managed to wrap my fingers about it yet.

Do not mistake my murderous intentions for a person who cannot bear to hear even the slightest ill about his creations. I merely wished to encourage, abeit more forcefully than hindsight would have permitted, her to speak her mind with more zest. As it stands, today's presentations were a limp, flaccid thing compared to the first presentations. I cannot further improve my works without critique that does not happen to be some kind of varient of 'Well, technically, it could work...'

To this end I would like to invite all of you to go on and slander me and my work in the hopes of allowing me to actually find out what it is I can do to make this worry go away.

In other news, we'll officially be starting Production tomorrow. More on that after the weather.

Peace out,
Bryan

it stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds

gonna be okay

i'm blogging this on a monday morning because i apparently have poor sense of timing, and i can't sleep now. it's 0320.

a post, for friday. friday it is. what happened on that day?

right we were suppose to have a consultation with Amanda at the animation lab, but that just didn't happen for a reason we shan't be granted knowledge of by the god who designed the MOI course for us film dreamers to be contained in and not be running around wild in singapore. prolly they scared of us be recording what.

What?!

anyways, pennies for my thoughts is an amount far too low and cheap for a quid pro quo initiate won't you agree? so no pennies accept I. therefore no confessions for your that sincerity of yours.

back to friday,
at that time, i was assigned to do my part for the ppt first which is the moodboard. bryan the technical master or whachamacallit was doing after effects effects for the video, faithfully making sure everything will meet the goal of perfection we set. brian, he's doing photoshopping for his storyboard diligently while yawning due to his lack of sleep. while i went to eat to get motivated to work.
you must believe i was dealing with the problem. yawn.

they say i show little mercy in expressing.
and i think i'm a messy person trying to be an artist.

oh well, the great thing is at least i am capable of abstract thinking, things up there are much clearer to identify than things i try to replicate of in this world. a world inhabited by a people ever so conforming.


posting for friday's events, on monday 2nd mar, 0420h.
LASZLONEWELL, when did it all happened.

I need another bag of chips

Ya it seems like the posting late habit runs in the whole group, Probably because at this point of time, there are far bigger issues at hand since we'r soon to go into full swing of production, not to mention having video fundi next block.
And our ideas slightly getting more ambitious by the day.

I am however rather curious to find out how the other classes that finished their interim 1 are getting on their stuff.
Yesterday, there seemed to be an increasing number of After Effects users in the lab, and it seems most of them had a problem of logging in, which made silly'ol me the boy running to and fro logging into my account for the other guys...
If my account gets suspended for various reasons, im pretty much screwed.

Anyway, we'l be calling Amanda down to have a look at our stuff today, she's been giving us the green lights so far, problem is she never really SAW our works yet, so if in any case she suddenly decides to drop us another bomb she and turn on the red lights then the mood of the group will be pretty battered. But lets not think about that, she can't be THAT evil.

There is rather little i have to say for this post.
So i'l just leave it as it is before i bore all your guys out
by pressing on and forcing myself to write things that arn't even entertaining.

Till next post
Brian L

Well, it helps.

I'm posting one day late, which is a phenomenon you could accurately blame on the recent Empire: Total War demo, and more accurately on the recent Scout update in Team Fortress 2, a beautiful game that most of my countrymen (and classmates) sadly ignore for the simple reason of it being a game that is immensely difficult to play pirated copies of.

We've been working on the opening cinematic of our video for some time now, a unreliable mass of blurry vector art arranged in such a manner as to provoke in your feeble head the spirit of Ocean and his eleven to thirteen friends, as well as the opening credits of Casino Royale.

It's dangerous, what we are currently doing. Come monday, several hundred things could go wrong, including finding out our cinematic is in fact made of complete Fail™, that our concept is perhaps one of the stupidest ideas since the Great Leap Foward™, or that we are as incapable and incompetant as every single villian in every single episode of every single season of Power Rangers™ ever.

In a nutshell, I am worried. Too much effort has been put into our plans, too many hours put into our concept and preparation to properly dismiss or recreate our idea. Our collective arm is halfway up the cow's arse, I'm afraid, and to suddenly remove said arm would result in a lot of extensive damage to both limb and rectum. Like Tom Cruise in Valkyrie, our only option is to proceed with the ticking bomb in our suitcase, hoping to hell the Fuhrer happens to be sitting on top of it when it blows. Like Tom Cruise in Valkyrie, we will have to proceed even if Murphy decides to reach down and cock up everything that could possibly cock up, and some which are essentially impossible.

Peace out,
Bryan

as if you held in your hand the smoking gun and on the floor lay the one you said you loved

OSCAR®

urghh hi.

Our group had a break today so we didn't come to school. And since you guys prolly have known by reading the previous post by brian that our group finished pretty much everything, guess it's alright if we talked a little bit about other stuffs not regarding the project, as much as to our course MOI. what do i mean? Stories. Movies, they're all about celebrating life. You shoudn't be able to agree less with every fibre of your being.

Oscar = Good Film.

and when you talk about top movies, i'd instantly think of....

The Hours directed by Stephen Daldry.

the thing here is, some of you guys have prolly heard me preached a bit about the greatness of The Hours, but you still might not have gotten a good and clear picture of what this awesome piece of feleleh masterpiece is all about.

Lo and behold, I've brought yet another piece of good news with me,

here's the movie review by my CMM friend, Christian Gabriel Gerald, Year 2.2.

"The film focuses on the lives of three women in living their lives of alienation, desperation and search for life. The film takes place within the span of a single day in three different years, and alternates among them throughout the film.
In 1923 England, ailing novelist Virginia Woolf is starting to write her novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway', under the care of doctors and family. In 1951 Los Angeles, Laura Brown is a pregnant housewife whom is planning for her husband's birthday, but is preoccupied with reading Woolf's novel. In 2001 New York, Clarissa Vaughan is a lesbian publisher planning an award party for her friend, an author dying of AIDS. Taking place over one day, all three stories are interconnected with the novel mentioned before, as one is writing it, one is reading it, and one is living it. At the end, the whole plot twists and comes together. The basic theme of the film is wondering if it is better to live your life for your own happiness or others.
Winner of nine academy awards including best picture and best original music score. Starring academy award winner, Meryl Streep; Academy award nominee Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman in her first academy award winning role of best actress as Virginia Woolf. It’s a deeply moving film and impressively acted out by a stellar cast and amazing crew, The Hours truly is a thing of beauty."

besides from feeling the great difference in standard of our English, do you feel like watching the movie yet? if not, you should read the review again, and continue doing that until you've manage to find that urge in your heart to watch this movie. You know you want to actually. Because the movie was made great. Because great movies exists.

You can borrow the DVD from the sch library, they've included quite a range of really good movies in the selection, you'd be grieving over the fact why can't you get more than one movie per borrowing. Borrowed DVDs are due in 3 working days.

Hopefully you can be inspired to contemplate over the famous tagline said in the movie:

A woman's whole life...in a single day...Just one day...and in that day, her whole life.

posting for 24 feburary, tuesday

LASZLONEWELL, long posts, if you don't read you lose out.

Potato Chips is Designer Food

Well i'm not too sure how many of you agree with the title but eversince i entered MOI, i've been finding myself increasingly eating much more junk food then i use to.............much more.

Partly due to influence by you doods and partly because i/we have lots of assignments to do.
Why? Because if i don't constantly pop one of those munchies down my mouth, i find myself having lots of trouble staying awake to work for long hours.
Fascinating izn't it? How the body works~

Anyway, Amanda dropped us yet another bomb shell today when i bump into her around the stairs, It seems that what we thought of the presentation of intrim one being on "day 15" was not really how we imagined it to be. If i were to count, since Amanda usually takes Fridays off, day 15 should be this Wednesday....or is it?
I'm not too sure how she labels the dates but she claims that the presentation is on monday, NEXT monday. Perhaps there was something in the design brief that my eyes missed.

Anyway, though kind of disappointing to find out we were rushing like roadrunners, i somewhat felt good that because of that, we managed to get a pretty good amount of stuff done with just that short period of days, leaving us with much more time to play around with After Effects, and if all goes well, we may even get a full length animatic for intrim one.......we may, so don't get your hopes high, it will probably look crappy even if we pull it off.

Meanwhile, after learning about how much more extra time we have, the mood got pretty much completely laid back once we got back to the lab. Bryan still experimenting with After effects, Newell watching what happened earlier today in the oscars.... Froggy, chipmunk and D watching some stand-up comedy.

Perfect time for me to introduce one of those crazy shows i enjoy watching during my free time and NO it's not an anime.

Introducing: Top Gear
A british show on auto mobil by BBC with loads of dry humour, fast cars and fat blokes......yes fat blokes. Not to mention tons of ridicules Brainiac style experiments.

To get a rough idea what i mean, here's a video for you to nibble apon till i get back in my next post in a few days.



Brian L

My Ninja skills are beyond your petty comprehension, incompetant.

I have been stuck with the dreary business of coming up with all the nonsense we will have to say during the video, and I will say now I do not like what I am writing. Not one bit.

It's very dry material, like listening to the words of the thirteenth speech in a row from a seventh speaker of the night, so devoid of anything resembling interest that it forms its own genre of boredom. I might describe it as drivel, but even that word is so underused the mere occasion of hearing it could be a conversational topic in itself.

Despite my complete and utterly bewildered disgust for this filth, I shall have to write it anyway, because I need something to show to Brian on Monday. We have, as usual, split the tasks up into thirds. Our great leader will handle storyboarding, I shall write that thing that dare calls itself a script, and Newell, the eight-legged comedian that he is, will have to take care of the moodboards.

Either way, I shall have to do a second draft of the script when I can, because my computer, as we all know, is clearly an extra-terrestrial device sent by aliens to make my personal life miserable and may one day abduct and probe me. In the meantime I will have to make do with school computers, which tend to be very difficult get to, though this may be only because I am extraordinarily fat and lazy.

A question: What kind of dialog would you want from our video? Sarcastic? Factual? Flirtatious, maybe?

Peace out,
Bryan

like brothers on a hotel bed

ADVENTURE.

We haha went to haha explore a route to some place where we can catch a nice scene of the sand dune.
the journey was hilarious! apart from my slippers failing me by choosing to snap one of its straps which caused me to walk one-barefooted on the scorching ground to our bookshop all the way from the climbing place from bedok reservoir, it was also windy.
i mean, when we got there and were in the bushes, we saw this mini-lake infront of us. and a middle-aged man who seemingly didn't took any notice of us maybe because he have lived there for too long and thought we were some wandering ghosts or aliens.

anyway, it was cool. the kind of paths we have to take. haha. like those barely 2 feet wide and quite highish, riverish below somemore. i honestly dont think that the other teams can do what we did because the 3 of us had had special physical trainings before. Brian was an ex kamikaze-ist, Bryan exballerina astronaut fireman, and me a cosmologist and part-time student. you can see we're quite the elite team of physical fitness in this cohort.

i managed to catch bryan in action. an awesome display of his ninjastic dexterity.







what did i told jya~
















look, and brian's moment too! captured on camera.















look how he dodges the small but absolutely dangerous tree trunk with such graceful sway. (with his hat in place! :3 )



bryan's doing the catwalk but not the one for runways in Paris, the one he learnt in his ninja trainings to walk 2-feet wide paths.


now, you might be wondering where the heck i am right?

NO, i've transformed myself to walk faster.
this is my self-potrait:
















Spiwell: Hi.




we walked on and found this really cool site. someone's been there though. 'cause he built a shelter, a drainage system, a garden and a spaceship. woah... encampments!
the place though, is surrounded by cyan colour waters, like a mini island in this singapore island.
look.

beautiful isn't it?
watch us teleport ourselves there in the next frame.

how you evny us right...? ^^
















lalala..
...

ahh, in the end we couldn't find the place we wanted for the sand dunes.. well.. and i better end this entry soon... oh wells.. but we did find lots of places we could use to shoot now :D.
it was a bittersweet experience as we walked back to school..

all good things come to an end...

thursday, 19 febuary 2009,
LASZLONEWELL


. . . -_-"
Visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/35543278@N07/ to view more pictures of our adventure!

Hey Look! It's a Sand dune!!

Well, i'l get straight to the point.

We'r going to shoot some pictures of ideal locations to take our shots tomorrow, consulting Amanda and finalizing our sequence ready for the writing of speech and planning of effects and angles, today's discussion a conclusion of what theme/story/style we'r going for and what modules we'r going to include in the video. Newell wasn't here so i'm filling in for him again in today's post.
Period.

And honestly speaking, thats about all i need to get the marks.
But really, if THAT was what the lecturers were looking for, don't you think reading similar paragraphs on dozens of blogs day after day would be enough to send one into reverse traumatic disorder?

Anyway.....leaving that wild thought that invaded my brain aside, i'l talk a little on "story" like what Amanda mentioned.

I'm not too sure how many of you really got what she meant but it seems that some of the groups are taking what they think of "story" pretty literarily. I'm not too bothered about that but it does worries me abit what exactly did she meant after saying something like "it's a matter of your interpretation of my words" Just like Bryan mentioned in the earlier post, it is rather hard to pull off a proper "story" in a video, so the statement Amanda made sort of made me nervous.

AAAAANYWAY
I'm a stingy guy.
There are stuff about our assignment i would almost be glad to yell about in this post but just as Alphie once said, it's good to keep your ideas to yourself......or in this case, within the group, so what you have been reading so far is more or less someone that has to blog for the sake of marks with absolutely no topic to touch on.

Fabulous isn't it?

Brian L

Good lord, your painting is gigantic!

It's not often I can't find the words to say to describe what I'm thinking, but this is one of those times.

I'm loathe to call it writer's block, partly because I honestly don't write enough to actually be considered a serious writer, and mostly because it just sounds like another way of saying "I'm too sodding lazy to really concentrate."

Either way, the solution is simple. You can stop writing and take a break, or you can do writing exercises, one of which happens to be simply writing down whatever comes into your head. If you will take a moment to briefly look over my last three paragraphs, you may come to the conclusion that that is exactly what I have been doing for the last minute.

It's okay if you don't think so. I'm perfectly fine with fools and incompetents reading my posts as well, so don't feel like I'm resentful of you or anything like that.

So while you digest this new information, let me point out as well that yesterday saw the last of the individual presentations conclude. I, as usual, had a lot to say about how things were run or the questionability of my superiors' logic. As usual, I kept my mouth shut and my ears open instead of asking people why they were being idiotic.

I'm a bit curious about exactly how many people are treating this as a video, and how many are treating it as an advertisement. From what I've seen, the most obvious route seems to be to go for a trailer or documentary style, but it seems that style isn't exactly what the lecturers are looking for. What they seem to want is story, which is a bit odd, considering most 7-9 minute videos aren't big on the whole story thing, and those that are tend to become rather cramped.

Add to that the prerequisite of product placement taking center stage in the video, and what you have is a really long advert attempting to look like a short film with an actual story. Of course, if by story we mean theme, like in this little gem I found last year, 

then things instantly become a tiny bit clearer. But wait, aren't we supposed to describe our work in our video as well?

Just so we aren't mixed up, we have to

1) Have a 'story'.

2) Promote our course.

3) Create a visual portfolio.

So we have to come up with a story that both promotes Moving Images to potential students and impresses parents with the use of descriptions and visuals of our projects over the past year.

So we can't focus on a story that takes too much time, because then we won't be able to show off our work. Besides, keeping willing suspension of disbelief is a merry hope at best if you intend to slideshow your work at the same time.

--An interlude--

"By God, Watson! Look! Tell me what you see!"

"It... It seems to be a 1 by 1 meter painting done completely in acrylic! Obviously the artist had only a limited time to complete it as part of his 2D Art Fundamentals course, and I gather he must have learnt a lot about painting by the time he was finished!"

"It must be the work of Ronald Moriarty! Look, there he is, going into 2D Animation Room! Should I call the police?"

"No, Watson! We have no evidence! Inspector Eric cannot make an arrest quite yet!"

--End Interlude--

You want the idea? Take it. It's yours. Much good may it do to you and the rest of whatever forsaken planet you hail from. The point is, trying to hold a story with that much product placement in it is close to impossible. You could cover it up, I guess, but then you'd just be sacrificing portfolio time for a flimsy story.

Unless, of course, you happen to be as gifted as Gary Oldman.

This, of course, just leads us back to not having a story at all, because anything you try will be doomed one way or another. Never mind your video seeming realistic, but the lack of props, actors or costumes will make your video look like very shoddy work indeed. Isn't one of the screenwriter's jobs to ensure the script he writes is within the team's budget and capabilities?

The answer then, I assume, is to simply keep everything as simple and to the point as possible. You don't risk losing the audience if you hand things to them straight up. The trick is to use story as a coloured filter over the black and white of your message. 

Peace out,

Bryan

this heart, it beats, beats for only you

So finaly Pre-production??

Well it's already week 3 into MOI P1 and to be honest with you, I think it's high time we all got into pre-production. Personally I feel that the first exercise was more or less redundant and we should have gotten straight to our main assignment from the start.

Just think about it, 2 weeks IS alot of time and we could be shooting by now.Theres even rumors going around that the 1st exercise we spent all the time on isn't even graded.
Ya who am I to complain, but to be honest here, producing a good piece of work within 20 working days including pre to post production IS somewhat of a rush considering some chaps like me are going to have Video fundimentals (Or some other modules) next block.....which is pretty soon.

So well, today is day 1 of our individual presentation, it's interesting to see the ideas from the other guys, ranging from safe to overly ambitious to the down right simple, however after class I did get into an interesting conversation with Alphie Caleb and HaoWei regarding the videos we have to shoot. Alphie mention something about the "storyline" of our videos that really got me thinking, and I shall be talking about it alittle more during my presentation tomorrow.

So see ya around~
Brian Low

oops. the hours.

I didn't realise what I've been and who I've became until I read that previous post.
Bryan was right, I did did some things out of revenge.
I was blinded by my pride and childishness at some time during that day.
Little did I realised the 'realist' I was trying hard to roleplay at the Q & A session made a wrong and bias man out of me, stuck up to the belief that I had came up with the best idea, and my idea alone the best of all.

I wanted to be persistent. I was curious at how the other groups were going to settle other problems, because I believe in challenge. Not so much against one another, but one against oneself. Therefore I am really interested to learn from the other groups, of their solutions. And perhaps I could apply their principles somewhere on me, as an essentiality for personal growth.

However, most of us by now knows how it is already, who you want to become isn't what you really are. You get blinded by pride, fall into traps and get disillusioned - you become somebody else. Or, you can be trying so hard, but you'd still haven't been enough - you are still someone else.

Yesterday, I viewed things from the best perspective I know to do evaluation of the solutions for problems. I'm not sure about how others will interpret that perspective as, but as a matter of fact Amanda didn't think it was wise, then it must be unwise, and I should therefore do change. Also, I'm not going to be stopped for how others are thinking in their displeasure of the unprofessional behaviour I gave during the session because no one can be absolute about anything, but I'm not trying to deny anything especially not the fact that I am very sorry for my attitude and behaviour to all.

~ in The Hours I contemplated ~

Of yesterday's combined meeting,
uh. we have to do a video now.
not sure if it's great or not for me.
i mean, it could be fun.
but like what i say, ''could''.

so we saw examples of how our video should look like as the final product.
and know what to avoid. hmmm... i'd say, just how much we can avoid? =x
uhhhgghh i dunno... i'm being pessimistic of tasks again...

things are going to come together...

LASZLONEWELL

No one cares if I'm gone, Brian.

Disclaimer: Bryan in no way is speaking negatively about  or against anyone, living or dead, except maybe my team mates, who really could have better learned how to wait for the right moment to launch an attack. No one has been quoted without massive amounts of exaggeration and if you still want to take this personally I will be glad to escort you to the nearest madhouse for further treatment.

First off,  I would like to clarify that the earth does not 'go round', as you two laymen have so bluntly put it, because of finance or your urge to procreate. Indeed, I doubt very much if our Earth would be so inclined to cease rotation due to the recent recession or your sorry excuse for a love life as it would be to put on a top hat and proceed to perform us a Pythonesque rendition of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

The Earth, ladies and gentlemen, spins because of leftover momentum from the solar nebula that all our planets and the Sun formed within, and let us leave it at that.

I haven't actually attended class yet, I'm afraid. It is now five to ten in the morning and my recent situation with my PC has forced me yet again to post from outside the comfort of my armchair. I will not have time to post after class, so you lot will have to settle for my version of what transpired yesterday.

If you've ever seen the British Parliament in action, you might have an inkling of what could have occurred yesterday. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you happen to be someone who likes to argue, like myself) Amanda stepped in to cull what what promising to be a fiery yet fascinating speech and conversation, saying that while she was not against two groups having an intelligent debate, the last two groups to go were becoming suicidally bored and would really appreciate it if we could end our debate and move on.

It would have helped, of course, if Brian had simply not made the error of making nearly every single event or booth sound like an all out competition between teams. The idea was that the prizes were to attract contestants, but the crowd would be the main target, not them. You would go over to see what was going on and learn from the way the contestants fared. Hopefully, teams with better communication would be the winners, demonstrating to the audience that such behavior would be beneficial to them. Prizes were a simple metaphor for a better life or lifestyle, not a bribe.

However, my team mates were quickly drawn into reacting, not directing. Instead of setting things in our perspective during the question and answer, the floor took control, giving them the upper hand. What this means is that we were kept on the defensive and suffered for it. I understand the thinking that the floor was meant to be offering up friendly suggestions, but verbal sparring or at the very least the ability to keep ideas in perspective is very important in a presentation. It displays confidence and control, rather than the zealot's knee-jerk reaction my team suffered from. I think that from now on, I'll have to take the questions and let my team mates support me instead of being on the front. That said, I still do believe in our ideas, and I believe that we would have finished a lot better if we had handled the Q & A section with more finesse.

On a lighter note, because comments (if I get any this time) about school are painfully dreary to read, let me just point out that I am in no small way absolutely screwed about Saturday. I can't imagine having to rack my brain every single February like this, regardless of whatever my girl says. I am doomed. Finished. Ended. Like a man stuck in a small outhouse with a revolver, one bullet and a hundred demonic Nazi zombies milling about outside. Fabulous prizes to whoever can tell me which gaming website that last line came from.

Peace out,

Bryan

Schizophrenic conversations that I'm always having with myself

ASTALA VISTA BABY

Well guys, sorry to disappoint but it's sad to say that today's post by Bryan that some of you readers were probably looking forward to will have to be pushed forward a little, see at the moment the only members with a working computer is Newell and I, so while streams of excitement runs through those puny little veins of yours, you guys will have to make do with silly old me first.

Well well, what a day....
I'm sure the chaps from Amanda's class would know what I mean.
It's been a joyous day of senseless madness and massacre...

madness??
MADNESS!!

Oh alright, for the sake of having serious blog entry which the fate of my marks lies between the outcome of the day, this computer and my itchy little fingers, I guess I'll just fill you chaps up with a more in-depth explanation of my definition of "madness and massacre"
Well see, it was group presentation day today and before any of us could get the chance to speak, Amanda dropped us a bombshell. "We're not graded for this" was more or less the message we got which send most of our classmates into "nothing to lose, do or die" mode
Followed by a somewhat primitive yet seemingly fair way to pick who goes first.........
drawing lots........again.
And guess which group was lucky number one folks??

So yeah. each of me mates had the chance to blabber all the stuff and details we had to say,
THEN THINGS START TO GET INTERESTING
"So, any questions?" was probably the trigger to an inevitable irreversible shootout that occurred soon after I made that statement.

HaoWei was the master gunslinger with his quick-hand rapid-fire rounds.
It seems like most groups suffered heavy fire by HW, which was something that got most of us pumped because when it came to his turn to take the hits, everyone brought out their big guns.
ASTALA VISTA BABY~



Alright I admit, I was being a little crude with some of you guys but I personally found some of your ideas good, and the presentation by group STEER(I think that's their name) really impressed me.

So yeah, today was one hell of a day,
if you guys are still not too sure on the full details, im sure the other groups of Amanda's class would most probably be blogging about the same issue. *HOT TOPIC*
Just keep in mind, I hold no grudges against anyone in the class regarding today and hopefully no one here does against anyone, it's just a group presentation and all criticisms were constructive.

So thanks HW and everyone that gave their opinion, they were all good. =D

Till next time,
See ya around~
Brian Low

Yes We Can

HI.
i'm newell blogging for day TEN/ TUESDAY W2.

guess what.
it's eleven forty-two pm now, i have to finish this post by midnight to be considered today's post.
(Edit: i failed to.)

so just a review of what our group's been up to currently.
the Third Age intergenerational project's been progressing quite smoothly.
besides thorough research (oops, i have to do business now! time: 2347h) (back. time: 2355h!) we also gathered information from the first hand experiencees who are the lonely and neglected senior folks and the neglectees/or young Singaporeans who don't have real bonding with the older generation.
then our group heavily debated (time now: 0001....) on the root issue(s) of this problem. as we embraced hoped for our society, and shared a same heart of sincerity and seekingness, by the grace of our lives we had found our precious solutions that might save this situation giving hope and birthing joy to this Singaporean life. Together, we can see a change of people seeking more meaning, a transformation of hearts - conjoined into a loving intergenerational Singaporee~. . . .(pore...) (pore...) (pore..)

We came up with 2 solutions. (two (adj): amounting to two in number.)

Tomorrow we are going to present them.
Till then.

Honactualnestly, I'm still a little worried that we have not hit the whachamacallit of our requirement for this exercise. Like have we missed out anything or is there some weirdoness in the plausibility for our solutions...?

LASZLONEWELL

Rats

Rats, I came home today soo late I nearly forgot it's my turn to blog.

Ah well.

There was no class, today it was mostly consultation with Amanda about what our ideas were for the assignment.
My first one wasn’t much of anything, it was just a mere style which really throws me into a ridicules situation on how in the name of MOI am i supposed to pull off such a darth style and relate it to promoting MOI.
Really tricky stuff.

And my second idea i told Amanda about was erm.....well..
This was the page from my sketchbook i used to show her while explaining about the idea.
Lets see what you can make out of it.


And thats just half of it, wait till you see whats on the second page.
I wonder what must've been running through her mind what she saw all the random senseless doodlings...

So well, that was more or less it for today's class, just consultation and thats it.
Since i was the earliest to arrived, i went first, followed by whoever walked in the door.

After consultation, i got to hear Newell's idea for Wednesday’s presentation and i have to say it was pretty good,
pity he had to leave on such short notice today, he would've been good help if he stayed abit longer to help out with the power point that Bryan and I worked on.....which was called Power presentation power point.ppt or something like that since our group is called power.

I can't really post any videos at the moment since this com's not up to the job and my new one is STILL yet to arrive, abit worrisome since i've got footage waiting to be edited but nothing could be done. I guess i will have to wait.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas we can improve this blog, feel free to tag at our tagboard, all constructive criticisms welcomed.

See ya around~
Brian Low.

You can't eat titles, but it'd be funny if you tried.

Post number five, which technically should be the last post of the week. I'm honoured.

No, really I am.

Urgh. Fine.

To wrap up today, it is not entirely dishonest to say that we did not see each other. I don't really know what else I can say to you. I guess you obviously want me to say SOMETHING, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this.

I'm sorry, I can't help you there.

I could tell you about how we are all performing different jobs autonomously from each other, like Brian's research and exploration into the finer points of the situation posited to us in the brief, or Newell's delve into the abstract mechanics of one of our solutions, or my proposal of a yet another idea. I could tell you how though I may use the word autonomous, we are in fact working together with unison, the same way a lone ant, cautiously picking forward across a picnic spread, leads the others of its nest to great bounties. I could tell you that although we don't secrete chemical trails like our fellow Formicidae, (none mere humans may detect, anyway,) the massive networks spread throughout our island do a fairly decent job exchanging our ideas and thoughts for us, so we don't have to look into each of our stupid faces all day long. I could tell you how, though the magic and wonderment of the word processor, we don't even have to talk to each other.

Do you really want me to tell you all of that? For one, it is terribly boring. I'm sure you'll work out why, champ.

Comment if you hate me.

Peace out,
Bryan K

i think i'm paranoid

more of who we are, less of what.

YO people.
Newell's here to blog for Day o3
sorry bout it cos my internet was down.

so what should i say about this group...?
hmmm.
i am actually relieved when i first knew who my group members are simply because for who they are.
i feel that they're both intelligent thinkers but each with a different administrative strength.
which is good cos it balances out things for the coming of a greater success.
what about me?
well i feel that i'm the thinker and the feeler at the same time of the group. my strengths would maybe be raising the consciousness of deeper issues among the group? and probably the one who ponders for more possibilities. it might be my strength, or weakness i'd say. my mind might venture too much that i don't know what are the things needed to do to accomplish what we should for this project.
but remember what i said about the balancing thing by the other two? i feel i don't have to worry much. for the best thing about a team is to have another set of eyes.

bryan knows what others want to see, and what concepts could be accepted in the current time.
brian knows how to be wild in his imagination to get new ideas that could actually bring about great impact and inspiration.
me? i know how to relate. and find out what is closer to the truth of the human heart. logically un-defying but looking towards possibilities only by creative pondering.

3 very different set of eyes, all dependent on each other's strengths to stay afloat, progressive and triumphant in this storm called MOI P1. (st)(li)

rawr.
for our vision.

laszlo newell.

Animatics? What is that? Can it be eaten??

Ugh, i was getting a little confused yesterday what an animatic was after having a chat with alphie.
Turns out that there are many forms of animatics and we have the choice of choosing which we prefer doing....................that is IF Amanda agrees too, but well it turns out the animatics she showed us yesterday was somewhat not as stylish as the ones i've seen later today on youtube. Which kind of frightened me abit because i did not want to do an animatic much like what Amanda showed us, it looks rather sketchy and un-finished.

Check out this cool nike animatic.

Anyway, i originaly wanted to post a video on our comments on the class so far, but my premier pro is acting up really bad and the program crashed every 5 mins or so, probably due to my com about to go brain dead, so well i only managed to come up with a little character intro. It's somewhat pointless to post it but oh well~

Ya that probably looks down right awkward, like we'r criminals or something.

I'l try and work on a better one, this time with some actual speech and stuff once my

new com arrives.

Till next time, see ya around~

Brian Low

Day 2

...Let's get this train wreck rolling.

'Pick lots,' they said. 'It's a lot more fair than choosing,' they said.

Yeah. About as fair as luck.

Luck is a sadist, by the way. If you've ever crossed luck, you'll know what I mean. But in the words of those who've blogged before me, hey, you take what you get. There'll always be someone with a hand worse than yours, and they know who they are. Luck of the draw, I guess.

Whatever. Like you understand.

This is the part where I tell you about my productive day in class, where me and my team came up with fantastic research and a dozen brilliant ideas. I'm pleased to report that while absolutely no research was done in class, we (that is to say, Brian and me, for poor Newell was struck with an unlucky and untimely lust for the bogs,) did manage to come up with a pretty good idea of where we were going with the exercise.

I'll save you the trouble of having to read about our idea, partly because there's nothing much to say about it, and because I very much doubt you, course-mate or lecturer, would want to read about something that will come up several times over in the following days. But I'll jabber on a bit more, because I'm bored and because you haven't seem to have gotten tired of reading yet.

I'm actually writing this post on Schrodinger's Desktop PC, you see, a mystical device that seems to be caught in a quantum state of bricked and un-bricked depending on a random sequence. In effect, this means I am cut off from any sort of multimedia or program stored in my computer or in the seething mess they dare call the internet. Every few sentences, I have to refresh my screen by resizing windows, making this typing experience rather akin to using a typewriter.

It also means that Mr Thng will have at least one listener tomorrow who has done literally no research on either him or the works he has spawned. I'm a bit apprehensive about this; I know most of my classmates are already close to being on a first-name basis with him, having read about his entire life in a single document. I myself am lucky just to be able to waste your time with this drivel.

But I've gone on long enough. Hopefully, other days will be more productive and I won't have to fill my posts with semi-sarcastic droning. I'll sum up, because I know you wish I had a point to all of this:

- I don't like my group, but what the heck, right? It's only for sixty days. Make it work.
- We are currently working on research for the Third Age Council Exercise.
- Brian is now apparently both the webmaster and my boss.
- I am a happy person with happy thoughts.

One of the above four is a lie. Figure it out, genius.



Peace out,
Bryan K

you've saved my soul