I want to see what happens when you whack the whole blog. I’ll do the db and all. I may get a bit too eager and nuke a few too many things…but we’ll see.

-BG Out

It’s just coming after I finish moving.

And I launch the redesign for the Milwaukee Admirals.

And I replace my ailing MacBookPro.

And I change my car.

And then there’s that 2 year installation time for CS4 (zing).

Yeah. This could be awhile. But good things come to those who wait.

=BG Out=

So why then that after eleven thousand three hundred(ish) days after  birth am I still doing the same things?  I came home from my vacation laden with old childhood paraphernalia.  And in many of them, there sits a little boy and his toys.

Me and my robot

 One of the pictures has a shot of a particularly beloved robot.  It doesn’t have a logo or a cartoon associated with it.  But that little robot was the basis of many a mecha designed on my notebook during my high school and college years.  I still have a thing for robots.  I sit too close to the TV making the same excitedly strangled noises whenever there’s one on the screen tromping on another one.

Or what about the Trans-freakin’-formers?  I had to share my first one with my brother.  He was a red Lambo called Sideswipe.  They made them metal back then.  All the better to club each other while fighting for the toy.  My favorite was Jazz.  He’s a white Porsche (I had a thing for Porsches at such a young age) back in the 80s.  Imagine my glee when I was given the modern version of Jazz . Only now, he’s a white RX-8.  Oh how I squealed three christmases ago.  Because nowadays, I drive around in one.

Which neatly brings me to the topic of cars.  Sure, the transformer that watches over me as I type this is a model of my real world wheels.  So as I’ve grown older, the vehicles have grown larger.  I used to go tearing around the floor pushing one of my Hot Wheels around, squealing the wheels and making lots of noise.  Now, I tear around freeway onramps.  Where once I obsessively cleaned and tricked out my BMX bike, now, I obsessively clean and trick out my car.  Only I still haven’t figured out how to lodge that card by the wheels to make that flappity sound.

Oh well, at least I’ve learned to design things better.  I used to sit in class and design hypothetical controls for hypothetical spaceships.  Back then, it was a #2 pencil to a sheet of paper.  I’d work out targeting computers, HUD displays, even the little knob that self destructs the ship in case of alien takeover.  Nowadays, I still design.  Only it’s on Photoshop and I’m making interfaces for website and applications.  Space ships were cooler.

The list goes on.  The bulk of TV I watch is animated.  I read more comic books than I read real print.  I like to sit on the floor and make a neat little semi circle of my toys around me (though I’ve traded in the action figures for iCrap).  I still bust singing when no one is around and my head is still proportionately much bigger than my body.

I just turned 31.  In my book, I’m supposed to have Gotten Older and Better.  It used to seem like such a distant age when I was young.  And now that I’m here, I can’t help but think that I haven’t even let some bits of my childhood yet.  I look back at the young big headed kid I used to be, the nerdy big-headed kid I used to be, the angst-ridden big-headed teen I used to be, and wish that I could travel back in time to kick my own ass and get me to do Some Things Better.  I know a lot more now.  

Sometimes I wish I could re-encounter people in the past to show off my new and improved features.  But that’s a small list compared to the things that have stayed the same.  But then future me always feels better than past me.  So in another eleven thousand days, I’m sure I’ll wish I could travel back to February 13, 2009 to kick my own ass.

But still.  I’ve been around the block enough time to know that I can do worse than doodling all the time, playing with my toys, watching Big Ass Fighting Robots on TV and having to wear a hat that’s far too big for people of my size. 

My only real fear is that the last time my birthday fell on a Friday the 13th, I got permanently scarred.  It was because of a hill, a sidecar, and a chicken.  I wonder what’s going to happen this year.  Where’s my extra big crash helmet?

=New & Improved BG Out=

It’s all because of those damn Cheetos, you see.

It all started when I found 85 cents lying around my pockets.  So I took a trip downstairs to score me some of that junk food.  You see, I don’t get to eat hydrogenated oils filled with trans fatty whuzits.  It sounds more like a Lamb song to me.  And because I don’t usually partake of the sweet bounty of Chester, I hadn’t really realized that the coil mechanism that dropped my snack was as busted as certain LCD price fixers.

So in goes my $.85 and out comes…nothing.  The bag of chips had gotten stuck in the machine and I’d be damned if someone else with 85 cents and a penchant for finger stains was gonna come along and score two for the price of one.

The first few shoves at the machine did nothing.  But I hadn’t spent my college days for nothing.  Years of Tekken came squealing back, exacerbated my excitement for the next Street Fighter game.  I’m telling you…I learned today what great joy there was in pounding the living tar out of a machine trying to deprive me from my god-given right to snack.

So Hadouken to you, Mr. Vending Machine.  Hadouken.

=BG Out=

I think I took The Longest Vacation ever known to man.  A month off (almost) of hanging out with my family, playing video games, hanging around the giant floating mall that was formerly the Philippines, and spending as much time as I could manage being underwater.

Vacation was fun.  My family hasn’t been All Together In One spot for nigh on 13 years or so.  The last recorded instance was somewhere around the time Old Men walked to school uphill both ways in the snow without shoes.  That puts a Gomez Family reunion somewhere around the frequency of Haley’s Comet coming for a visit.  So it’s a special time indeed.

Amongst the various activities on the docket: Learning to Scuba Dive.  And no, this wasn’t the Intro to Scuba dip your toe in the water so you can brag about it to your friends nonsense.  I wanted a license.  

So off to the pool it was with Mel in tow (one needs a dive buddy after all) for the more hardcore training.  Skills in a closed tank gradually got extended until I found myself showing my instructor that I can recover my regulator (that’s the thing you breathe with) underwater and that I had gotten over my annoying tendency to try to breathe water whenever I removed my mask.  Eventually I was keeping myself aloft using just lung volume and finning around after Mel and our Instructor with confidence.

It’s a good experience and it’s quite cost effective in the Philippines compared to say, the US.  Batangas in the Philippines is supposed to be one of the best scuba diving spots (all of my five dives so far have been there) and if you ever want to learn, I’d heartily recommend giving Arnell Sevilla over at Portulano a ring.  Great guy and a good instructor.  Not many people can convince me that yes…it is a good idea to swallow that water you just inhaled and let out the World’s Biggest Belch…all with just hand gestures since we were 60 feet underwater.

The resort’s pretty good too if you’re looking for a place to get away from it all.  Don’t expect room service after midnight.  So sure…right now I have on thermal underwear instead of a wetsuit.  And I’ve traded my scuba tank for a big puffy winter jacket.  But deep down I’m still finning around a reef pretending I was Darth Vader.  You see, I passed the test and that makes me Jacques Costeau junior.

Little Mermaid eat your heart out.

=BG Out=

Oh well.

Mucho credit goes to Marcus J Ranum who posted some really hilarious images of Death that I was able to use in my composition. What’s more, he was kind enough to allow the free usage of his stock for usage in the Crestock design competition.

(Grave)Yard Work

It currently holds the record for Most Photoshop Layers Ever. Its enough to cause Kernel Panics (read: heartbreaking and despair inducing crashes) on my poor first Gen Macbook Pro. Still, it was a helluva lot of fun making and I might post “the making of” when I get around to it.

So if you read this and if you have a hankering for it, please drop by my entry page and leave me a comment and a vote.

=BG Out=

I’m an insomniac right now. Twisted and paranoid because I didn’t get enough sleep. Eyes red and bloodshot, fingers twitchy from constant infusions of caffeine.

I’m not in this state because I was up all night working on a website. I wasn’t up all night because I was caught in the grips of “one-more-round-itis”. Nope. The reason I’m up is because Crestock just launched another contest and I can’t help but duke it out in the field of Photoshop Battle.

Yes. There are paying freelance projects I need to work on. Yes. There are lots of billable hours I need to complete for my real job. Yes. Mel and I are tag-teaming Dead Space. But instead, I make excuses to myself such as: “I’ve always been meaning to master the Warp tool” or “I need to pwn the Photoshop brush engine” and wind up making designs for a Photoshop Design contest.

I don’t quite expect to win. Looking over 2007’s winner list reminds me that I’m just a little fish swimming in a huge salty pool of great designers and graphic artists. But I’d be honored enough to be mentioned in the same breath.

You can view my entry here.

=BG Out=

So yeah, my car drinks gas and oil like a college freshman at a kegger, but all this is for a reason. Rotor heads say that the best lap time for a rotary engine was your latest lap. They say that the Wankel (and yes, saying “Wankel” does make me mentally giggle) gets better with age. Car and Driver’s Long Term RX-8 not only stayed dependable, it got noticeably faster when it went past 40,000 miles. Mine recently turned past that stage and the butt dyno definitely says “ooo, it feels faster”. I haven’t had a chance to take it on the autocross yet. It’s not like I spend my time cruising up and down the freeway looking for drag races (though I’ll happily smoke any accountant that revs his Audi TT at me). So I really can’t prove that I can hit 60mph half a second faster, but it sure feels like it. It could be Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome. It could be that Mazda set the engine computer to unleash more horses once the car breaks in.

Me Breaking 40k Miles in the 8

I didn’t buy the car to be a speed queen, though.  For the same money, you can buy a lot of good cars that go faster.  Take the Nissan 350Z.  It’s like a Japanese Corvette - plenty of speed at a surprisingly cheap price…but with a lack of polish that keeps it from being great.  

It’s difficult to explain to people how great driving a well balanced driver’s car feels.  But that’s the reason why I chose the ridiculously small trunk, the pathetic cabin size, the low torque, and the high gas consumption.  The car “feels” like I am driving it.  I get the same sense of “whoopee” when I throw the car around a corner going double the speed everyone else is going.  I still smile as widely as the first time when I hear that *beep* at nine thousand rpm reminding me to go up a cog.  Just ask Mel if I still randomly redline the car and laugh like a lunatic when I’m at the wheel of the car.

My baby is forty thousand miles old now.  She feels a bit brawnier and she’s got a few rock chips (accursed semis) and door dings from SUVs.  I’ve driven a lot of other cars.  Some were faster.  Some were smoother. Some felt more “deluxe”.  All were larger.  However, I always felt better when I got into the driver’s seat of my car.

The RX-8 Taken at the MaM

I hear people complain all the time that driving is boring.  That it’s just a chore.  That it’s just a means to an end.  Fair enough.  But I can’t help but think that the reason feel that way is because they let price and color decide which car they’ll buy over how the car makes them feel and the driving dynamics.  I can’t help but feel that if people got into something that fired up their imaginations, that the freeways would be a better place and there would be far less honking.

There’s a lot of you who’ll say that “it’s not the destination…it’s the journey”.

Well, if you’re making a journey by car, put your money where your mouth is and get into something worth getting there in.

=BG Out=

Yes, there was less hedonism, and schwag than I had expected.  But boyoboy was there a lot of hotfooting it from one meeting room to the other.  Because there were less people, it was easy, I heard, to get hands on time with the games and to talk to the developers.  I had fun playing soon to be released video games - many times with the creative forces behind them watching me play.

Bernard’s E3 Highlight Reel:

That one tongue-tied googly eyed moment when, in all my fanboy glory, I got to meet the voice of Solid Snake and the reason why X-Men 1 and 2 were good movies: David Hayter.  All I could get out was: “thanks, man - you’re a nice guy”

Sitting down to play Mirror’s Edge and breaking the game when I tried to invert the Y Axis.  Lars Gustavson (Creative Director for DICE) told me that inverted FPS players were strange…but the stranger ones are the ones who can do both.  He told me he started out like that.

Telling Lars that his Battlefield 2 game stole three years of my life.
Gettin’ my Fallout 3 hands-on and asking the Bethesda next to me: “Hey man, where’s all the combat at?” only to realize that I was yelling at the game’s creative directory through my headphones.

Breaking the Tomb Raider: Underworld Demo.

Debating the movement mechanics of a Barbarian Ninja with Vigil Games, developers of Darksiders.

Asking Peter Molyneaux if I could bum the 360 he was sitting on because I couldn’t find a free workstation for a Fable 2 Hands-On.

Playing Left 4 Dead and always getting saved by Player 3.  Mel later informed me that the Valve guy had to keep pulling my butt out of the fire.

Getting my ass handed to me in a Killzone 2 Multiplayer hands on vs the Cali dev team.

Bumming a Lego Harley Quinn  figure from the ladies at the Warner Interactive desk.  Then coming back and bumming a Leo Joker.  Then asking: “Hey…where’s Batman at?”

I’ll spare you all the blow by blow but if you guys want details, game articles are available here.  I’m still cranking out game reviews for GamePlanet so keep an eye out for more literary masterpieces from yours truly. And you know what? I think I’m developing a taste for it.

Listing of Bernard & Mel’s Game Reviews:

• Dead Space Hands On (by KillaMel)
• Halo Wars Hands On (by KillaMel)
• Darksiders: Wrath of War Hands On (by moi)
• Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II Hands On (by moi)

The big stuff still hasn’t landed: I’ve got Mirror’s Edge on the way, Mel’s got Spore, we need to argue who’ll do a Fallout 3 piece too.

=222 BG Out=

I was up butt-ass early today.  Note the use of “butt-ass”.  It is reserved for those twilight hours when early birds who get worms and old people get up.  ”Butt-ass” early is so early for me that breakfast won’t sit right and the only way to cure the zombie shuffle is with a shot of caffeine to the brainpan.

Today though, I was actually up before Mel (who has to get up at the ungodly hour of 7am) because I was on my way to the Apple Store.  I was on my way to join in the iPhone 3G premiere.  You see…2Gs aren’t enough for me.  So I just had to have the one with more Gs.  I also wanted actual GPS - not the ghetto “triangulate your position by way of cell towers” method - but honest to goodness “within 10 feet margin of error” GPS.

Doors opened at 8am.  I made plans with Joe and Ralph to meet at Mayfair at 6:30am.  I actually got there closer to 6:50.  But it’s ok because I planned on letting Joe hold the line while I squelched in on his punctuality.  And it was even more ok because I was eager to get Exchange support, another G added to the slow EDGE connection, and a proper GPS chip.

But you know what…Apple and AT&T had a bad day.  There was a lot of hype about the launch of the new 3G iPhones.  However, three hours after the door opened, we had gone from one line (the main line) to another (a staging line outside the store) and were staring at the teeth of a third line that looked something like Dante’s seventh layer of hell.

You see…people were coming into the Apple store.  But no one was checking out.  5 hours after the doors opened and I was watching the smile fade from the Apple store guy’s face.  Take that.  And your fake pep too.  The phones wouldn’t activate because the iTunes servers which kick the phone into life had died.

They didn’t start working until a full 6 hours after the doors opened.  And the only thing I can think in my head: “that’s what I get for being an early adopter”.  Oh well, I don’t feel so bad.  You see, we were near the front of the line.  And it took us that long to get out.  The line was something like 300 people.  They’re probably still there.

=BG=