Blade Edge

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Wheee shows

June 6th, 2005 · Stuntwork

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Well my first weekend of shows is over. It wasn’t too bad, though there were some incidents, like when I stalled out the bike in the middle of the bike fight and couldn’t restart it and ended up running it backstage. Yea that kinda sucked. My director said he was up in the booth shouting at me “Where the hell are you going?!?” Ah well, I got all flustered. Only happened that once though since I totally forgot to warm up the bike before the show. Lesson learned, lesson learned. No major injuries to report, which is good. Just the usual scratches and bruises.

Ho hum.

The funniest thing though is how one of our Robins (Steve) keeps getting fired. He got fired three times today . He came in and I wasn’t there and our director asked him if he knew where I was and he said no and he got fired on the spot. Then later on (after he got rehired of course) we’re sitting in the trailer and our director offered him some cookies and he declined and got fired again. Oh wait I think that was the third time. Whatever, he got fired once more for something. Of course he’s never really getting fired, it’s just a joke now that our director “fires” him for the stupidest things. It’s hilarious.

Anyways it’s been a long day, still haven’t gotten that much reading done, and I still have to do that damn newsletter. So I’m off. Ciao.

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Well I’m Back I Guess…

June 4th, 2005 · Stuntwork

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So rehearsals were finally over three days after the show opened. It was quite a ride this year – I don’t even know where to begin. In retrospect I guess it would have been cool to have posted more frequent updates during May – but I kept thinking no one would be interested in hearing about stuntwork, but at the same time I keep forgetting that there are people around here who are interested, so sorry to those of you that have been wondering how the show has been going.

So anyways my last entry was almost a month ago, the day I got walloped in the face with a foot. Luckily I didn’t get kicked or hit again during rehearsal, tho that dirt bike did mess me up a bit. The first injuries were to my right shin thanks to that damn kickstarter. The first time I missed and scraped my shin up on the peg, the second time it slipped and smacked me in the shin. So yea, my right shin still gets splints a bit if I work on it too much, and there’s a little bump there too. I also got tossed off – I did a jump and gave it too much gas and went nose-up, landed on the rear tire and slammed the front end into the ground, which bucked me straight over the handle bars. It was cool tho – I flew through the air and just tucked when I hit the ground and rolled out to my feet, got up and quick picked the bike back up. I got a minor scrape on the shoulder I rolled on, but I was wearing a BMX chestplate with shoulder pads so I was barely even shaken. It probably looked bad ass – wish I had it on tape.

So lemme just be quick and say that the show was a trainwreck when it opened. Six Flags opened this new section called the Golden Kingdom and a new roller coaster (world-record holder for tallest and fastest) called Kingda Ka, so all resources were being tied up by that, so like nothing got done on our set. The first day of rehearsals our director was planning on us doing full run throughs of the entire show in costume sometimes with pyro halfway through the month. Instead we didn’t really get there until like 4 days before opening. The catsuits didn’t even arrive until 2 hours before the first show opening day, which means none of the Catwomen had done a run through in costume. The pyro and crane (which hangs Joker’s balloon) were all on manual control because we didn’t have a finalized soundtrack to program them to. The tower Batman ziplines from during the show was covered in nothing but black fabric. The wire rig Catwoman uses to climb up a building was only installed a few days prior to opening and none of them had adequate training on it. Worse, some people were doing things in the show they had never rehearsed, like Batman climbing up the cargo net into the Joker’s balloon while hanging 15 feet in the air with no life line. FINALLY (and worst of all) the CEO saw the show the day before opening and said he wanted it cut by 5 minutes (so it would be a 15 min show rather than 20) because there was too much fighting.

So not only was the show not really ready for opening, they wanted us to open anyways and with a show that was going to change over the course of the week as we cut things out to bring down the length. Well, we did one show and it totally sucked – worst of all was when Henchman #2 on the quad went nose-up off the jump (like I had during rehearsals) and bailed off the back. SO while he was getting his act back together Henchman #1 and Robin improv’d and ended up both throwing hooks as if the other was to duck and smashed fists together (#1 was on the bike by the way, so we’re talking some serious speed here when the fists collided cause he was going about 6-8mph and they both swung hard to miss, not hit). So Robin (who happened to be played by Steve, the one who nailed me in the face) got a bad contusion in his hand and #1 almost broke his thumb.

After that we all screamed bloody murder and they shut the show down for the rest of Memorial Day weekend (which must have been really rough for corporate) so we could cut what needed to be cut and finalize the soundtrack and show elements for a proper reopening on Tuesday. So I worked like at least 30 hours over Memorial Day weekend (big ass fat check headin my way tho). But now the show is open and things seem to be going fine. I get to do my first real show of the season tomorrow, so wish me luck!

In other news, I swore off all contact with GarageGames and Torque 2D in order to focus on rehearsals. I still haven’t been to the GG site to check in on the latest and I won’t for another week or so – I plan on using the time between shows to catch up on some reading first, then I’ll start bringing my laptop with me to get back to coding.

So expect more regular updates now as I get my life back in order. Yea, no more of this early to rise shit – I don’t have to be at Six Flags until 12:30. ha HA!

kseeyabye

P.S. – I finally picked up REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book. Funny as hell so far.

P.P.S.S. – I see that my absence has allowed Evo to surpass me in journal views. Drat. *shakes fist* (sry John, you still don’t count)

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First Blood!

May 7th, 2005 · Stuntwork

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So we’re on Day 7 of rehearsals, and we’re going over a fight between Robin and the Henchmen. At one point Robin uses a platform to push himself into the air with his arms (so he’s stationary but both feet come off the ground) and launches a flying sidekick to my chest. Well the first time I tried it he came up short – I reacted anyways just to get the feel of it so I hollowed out and dropped my head. Well, Steve (who plays Robin) knew he missed and unconsciously (read – not looking) went through the move again to get the feel of it – only my head was still in the way.

BAM!! (or as our director from last season would say – BAMPF!!)

So he hits me straight in the head and my glasses cut into my face. They didn’t break, which I thought they had, but they were a bit bent out of shape. Nothing I couldn’t fix tho – they feel fine wearing them now. I bled a teeny bit – mainly it was swelling I had to worry about.

Here’s the money shot:

Yep, so that was fun – first blood of the season! Steve of course felt real bad for hitting me, but I’m very tolerant of these things. It’s a stunt show – accidents will happen. To be honest I feel like an idiot for allowing myself to be kicked, so we’re even

Anyways besides that I finally remembered to stop off at Radio Shack on my way home from work (having to pick up a Mother’s Day card helped) and I picked up an A/V switch for my consoles and a new audio cable to hook my comp up to the Viewsonic. The audio cable helped – the buzzing is still there but not nearly as loud as before. It only happens when windows fully boots up tho, so I’m thinking that the Viewsonic might not be well shielded? I dunno. Either way it’s not an issue anymore. One thing solved – still have to get a new monitor cable to fix this damn ghosting.

Ok, I have to work tomorrow at 9 so I’ll leave with some more pics…


The A/V switchbox – yey!


Goldeneye007 on the N64


And with the push of a button… Lord of the Rings the Third Age on GC! Whoo!

Oh yea – I wasn’t going to bother posting this but I figured what the hell – it’s just me on the dirtbike doing my first baby powerslides. I only go around once – after that my “trainer” (the other stuntman who plays my part, who’s been riding motorcross since he was a kid) said no more camera so I could focus. Phooey. I have some crazy slides now – hopefully I can get up some extended footage soon. It’s a Yamaha YZF250 btw – bad ass bike, I love it.

Bike.avi (0:15) 5mb

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Wheee new toy!! (Part I)

April 29th, 2005 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Well my Viewsonic Nextvision N5 arrived today in the mail and it’s almost all set up

I had to cut so many new holes into the back of my desk in order to run all these new wires, and I’m pretty much out of plugs too on both my power strips!

Okay so I have one left.

There are two major problems already however. The first is that the monitor cable that came with the N5 was too short to reach the output on my laptop – if only it were on the other side… but anyways this forced me to get an extension cable. Either the cable is just not of good quality or the distance is just too great for the N5’s processor, but my monitor has ghosting – just enough to be borderline annoying and unnoticable. So I’m going to have to try another cable to see if that works. A shorter one, perhaps. The other problem is that the audio cable running from my PC to the N5 is bad – I hope. It creates this low buzzing noise in my speakers. I’m hoping it’s the cable and not the N5 – if it is the N5 hopefully there’s some sort of audio switchbox I can use in order to bypass the N5’s audio in.

So hopefully I can clear up those two flaws. I need to get an A/V switch as well for my GC and N64.

I hooked them both up to test them and they work fine – the only thing is that the interpolation on the LCD monitor is downright horrible. I totally forgot about that. So things are a bit… fuzzy. I also need to hook up the TV cable still – waiting for my friend to come over so we can split the cable downstairs and route it up to my room.

So I got it – but it’s only like… kinda cool right now. Hopefully I’ll report back with some good news. Till then…

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In other news…

April 27th, 2005 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I spent like two hours today catching up on my journal reading. And I still didn’t make it all the way through, I got through like 3/4 of all the journals updated since mine was last updated and then gave up. So many journals up now! I’ll see if I can get back into the habit of checking them daily, going to be rough since Great Adventure starts this weekend, and we all know how that’s gonna be.

By the way I just happened to notice today that I finally surpassed Mushu in journal views. So ha. Although Evo and TAN still have the lead on me. Forget Hattan, he had too much of a head start. I’d have to kidnap him and lock him away for a few years if I were to have any chance.

… on second thought that probably wouldn’t work either. Oh well.

So hopefully my ViewSonic NextVision N5 TV Processor will arrive in the mail tomorrow. I picked it up for $101 total brand new off eBay. My best friend is a home theater installation specialist for 6th Ave. Electronics, and he’s going to come over to help me splice the TV cable and run it up to my room. He’s also picking me up a switch box for component A/V cables so I can hook both my GC and N64 up to the N5 for sweet console gaming at my desk. Ahhh… bliss.

He’s also convinced me that I need a 42″ plasma screen hung on my wall over the left arm of my L-desk. He said he could get me one for $1500. That’s not too damn bad in my opinion. I’m already starting to save up so I can get it for myself for xmas . I’ll also have to upgrade to the N6 if I do that – I’m checking eBay everyday for one to pop up at a decent price – I’d get it even if I don’t have the plasma yet just for the PIP capability.

So yea… I guess that’s it for now… I’m going to start programming more often in T2D for the time being, so no new videos for a while most likely since I have to get the hang of Premier in addition to programming more than editing. But never fear, Blade Edge Productions shall return at some point in the summer.

Oh yes, I’ve also realized I’ve forgotten my bookmark of the day feature. Silly me. Well, here’s today’s:

Bookmark of the Day

Mmmmm… Sushi…

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Power Kiting

April 23rd, 2005 · Production

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Whoo hoo! New video!

I realized on Thursday that I had enough footage to finally put together a short peice on power kiting. I love the looks I get when I tell people I like to go to the beach to fly my kite. Makes me crack up, because they never realize exactly what I mean, and I usually don’t tell them either. Let them picture me pulling on the string of a whimpy little diamond kite with a bow-knotted tail. The joke’s on them!

This film consists of only three videos of footage I have. One is from last summer down in Belmar, and the other two are from two years ago (I think – somewhere thereabouts) at Sandy Hook during that hurricane that brushed past the east coast. The Belmar fly was done in an average 10mph wind with gusts upwards of 20mph. Gusty winds suck for flying, but we made do that day. Got some good crashes outta that tho. The Sandy Hook fly had me going at it in winds upwards of 30mph. My kite is prob the biggest land kite you could have flown in that wind without killing yourself. If you watch the footage closely, you can spot a much larger kite in the background – that’s a kite surfer out in the bay. I remember it took a while for me to work up the nerve to even lift the kite off the ground in those winds, which were by far the highest I had ever flown in to date (this date as well as that date). I got the kite up tho and it passed my litmus test for safe flying – the kite didn’t loft me while hovering overhead, nor overfly the overhead position. After that it was ON!

This video mainly features me, but also two of my friends. It’s just traction – no buggies, skates, land boards, or any of that. You’ll see a couple of different jumps from me – normal hops, heel highs, boomerangs, spins and leg flares. yea I coined pretty much all those jump names – try matching them to the trick. Also got some nice crashes.

So enjoy this little video, my second production. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve started copyrighting these videos as Blade Edge Productions. Yep, taking the Blade Edge name to a new level – now it’s just Blade Edge with divisions Sotware and Productions. Which will make me money first? 😛 The race is on…

Anyways, without further adeu…

Power Kiting (5:50)

This will be my last project in Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker is a great app, but I need to graduate to Premier so I can tackle larger projects in the future (like my Star Wars fan film). Movie Maker has definetly helped tho in working out my editing style/technique – it’s easier to focus on the “big-picture” editing in MM, while in Premier I was getting lost in all its buttons, dials, doohickies and thingamabobs. Also, I want to upload my videos to Google Video, but they say in their FAQ that formats other than MPEG 2/4 will have a lesser chance of being accepted. And since MM only outputs to WMV of course…

On that note if anyone has a WMV to AVI/MPEG converter and can convert this movie and my Batman movie for me, I’d really appreciate it. I don’t want to buy one just to convert two little movies. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes if you have broadband and a fast computer. Ratings++?? Hey it worked before…

Coming Soon…

Blade Edge Productions is on a roll! I’m not stopping until I start programming again soon, and then things will get interesting 😛 My next project is already half filmed – me and some of my friends at the gym go crazy and jump off everything in sight – ceiling, 2nd floor balcony, wall girders… in a variety of ways. Filming should wrap this Tuesday, hopefully I’ll have the film out by the weekend, barring any troubles with Premier.

Till then!

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I Found My House! (Among Other Things)

April 18th, 2005 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I got bored for a few minutes today and decided to play around with Google’s new satellite map. It didn’t take me long before I decided to look for my house. Lo and behold:

It’s the one in the upper left corner. Since it’s missing the shed in the backyard by the garden, I date the pic at around 2-3 years or more. It’d be more accurate if I could see the kind of cars parked in the driveway, but oh well.

Finding Surrounds Landscape Architecture is easy: simply use the road map to locate your street, zoom in all the way and then switch to satellite by clicking the link the page’s upper-right corner.

I also went kinda crazy just now and spent about an hour hunting down various other spots of significance

My Education

Like I really care to remember. Ah well. Here’s my grade school:

And after that came middle school. This was during the school’s Renovations a few years ago. (my mom works here too nowadays):

Then high school:

And finally the community college where I wasted two years of my life:

My Jobs

The big building in the center is the Acme where I slaved for two years. At 16, it was my very first job (besides mowing my grandmother’s grass of course):

Here’s the office building where I had my first programming job. I started work on my 18th birthday assembling desks for the startup, Napali Networks:

Napali shuttered after about 6 months, and I coasted on good earnings for a few months, then started coaching at this airplane hanger-esque structure:

Tho I still coach, I also work at Six Flags now over the summer. Here’s the park, with the Batman stunt arena circled in red and the trailer where we hang out between shows circled in yellow:

Other Stuff

The hospital where I was born:

The AT&T complex where my dad currently works:

The public beach where you’ll most often find me flying my kite:

The marina where my aunt & uncle have their boat docked:

Our old condo (recently sold) on Hilton Head Is. in South Carolina – this was the closest I could zoom in, so I circled the location:

Circled is the future location of the gym where I hang out on Tues nights and where a lot of those crazy videos you’ve seen over the past few months have been shot:

The Dennys restaurant (center building) where me and my buds go to hang out every Tues night until like 3am after playing around at the gym:

Okay…. I think I’m having way to much fun. Must… stop…

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Fun with the Force

April 13th, 2005 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

I dunno how funny this will be – you might have had to have been there but I’ll give it a shot anyways.

So I’m at the gym like always on Tuesdays, and I dunno how it started but people were hopping up on the balance beams with shinai’s (bamboo kendo training swords) and fighting on the beams. There are 4 beams staggered and within like 3 feet from each other, so you can hop from beam to beam while you’re fighting. So we’re up there knocking each other off and stuff… then my friend Mac gets a turn. He gets up and starts swinging and making these corny lightsaber sound effects. Hilarious. So now we’re fighting with lightsabers. Suddenly Mac puts out his hand and tells everyone he’s calling on the Force. So one of my friends picks up a large rubber ball. Mac swings his arm at his opponent (Dan) on the beam in a Force Throw and my friend Jim wings the ball at Dan. Soon we had more balls, mats, hoola hoops, and all these objects being flung around.

So it’s my turn to go up against Mac, who’s defeated two opponents so far. So I’m up there… now mind you, the week before my friend Sasha asked me a question. He asked me, “How long would it take you to turn to the Dark Side? Be honest”. I immediately answered without hesitation, “Nanoseconds”. And it’s true! Come on! The Dark Side freakin rocks! So anyways with that in mind, here I am on the beam and neither Mac nor I have used the Force yet. Sasha’s standing to one side holding this rather large trapezoid mat. Mac suddenly starts to get a bit self conscious and he’s saying “I dunno man, that’s a pretty big mat. I don’t want anyone getting hurt or anything.” And I just said “Shit Mac, you need to come over to the Dark Side!” And I stretched out my hand, called upon the mat, and flung it at Mac, who got totally knocked off the beam (cause Sash can chuck a mat pretty good).

So yea, that’s my story. The moral? The Dark Side is more powerful. Don’t let that little green midget tell you otherwise.

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Behind the Scenes: Batman Season One

April 11th, 2005 · Production

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

I’ve had a few requests over the pasts few months of people wanting to see what this whole Batman show thing I did last summer (and will be doing again this summer) was about. So I took the time this weekend to put together a little “documentary” based on footage I had from last season. I didn’t start taping until late into rehearsal, because my family’s video camera was shot. I finally broke down and borrowed a friend’s. My family got a new camera about halfway through the season and I started using that, however I don’t have much footage of me, since that was taken by other cast members with their own cameras. Additionally, since I don’t have a capture card, I had to copy the footage from tape to DVD via an external DVD recorder, then rip the footage from DVD to my computer using #1 DVD Ripper. I was hoping the trial version would have let me use it for like, 15 days or something – more than enough time – but instead the stupid thing only let me rip 50% of whatever title I had chosen. So that limited my footage options as well in some cases. Still, I managed to peice together a lot of good stuff. This was my first video editing project – I started to use Primier but realized quickly that for a little project like this that was overkill. So instead I switched to Movie Maker. Hope you enjoy it!

Batman Behind the Scenes (35MB) 9:20

NOTE [6/18/05]
This video has been taken down at the request of Six Flags due to some concerns with the material presented. If I can edit it and repost it I will. Stay tuned.

UPDATE [7/1/05]
Well it’s final. I finally got a chance to talk to my boss today at work and he said there was really nothing we could do to keep the video online. Six Flags has no problem but DC keeps a stranglehold on stuff like this, and it would have to be approved by them, which he said 99% wouldn’t happen. So that’s that unfortunately. I’d kindly ask those of you who have it to please not share it any longer if you have already, just to hold back any legal repercussions.

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I’m Everywhere!!

April 9th, 2005 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Last night I finally took the time to sit down and create my profiles for a variety of sites geared towards displaying your info for other people to see. Call it extreme egotism, call it networking, whatever. It was pretty fun, tho it did take me a few hours. And doing one thing for a few hours can drive me insane (which is why I tend to do so much, so I can switch gears often). Anyways these are all the sites I’m listed on so far:

MySpace
CarDomain
BikePics
1UP
IGDA

Yep… I think that will about to it. Any more and I may have to seek help or something…

Update

In regards to the short video clip I mentioned in the comments to my last post, I would have had it ready by now except it seems my family took the camera with them on vacation, so I can’t get any footage of me in the show. D’oh. Hopefully I’ll have something by next weekend…

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