Dear Internet

Guess where I'm going at the end of the month?





...No, it's not a photography class.

And now for the downside

I'm noticing that the pen sensitivity on the Samsung Galaxy Note isn't as good as it should be right off the bat.  While it is supposedly capable of higher levels, the sensitivity is automatically set to less than optimal levels of sensitivity, and the thing doesn't come with a way to adjust it.

I've spent the majority of my day so far trying to Root the device it to adjust the sensitivity settings and ended up almost bricking it.  Now I need to go back and unroot it so that I can try again from square 1, or at least manage to fully boot it up.

Drawing with a phone? Absurd!

Sorry about the month between my last two posts.  I've been both busy with my new job and distracted by shiny new things.  However, at last it seems the shiny new things have ultimately brought me back here.

I've recently acquired a new Samsung Galaxy Note, which has me all all exited.  My last phone was a blackberry flip phone that I got when flip phones were already becoming something of an antiquity.  Now it's like I'm entering a whole new world of awesome.  The phone is a bit large, putting it mildly.   This thing is like the classic xbox controller of smartphones.  I don't really mind, as I've got big pockets.  

But in all honesty, the size was actually one of the reasons I bought it.  The other reason, which goes somewhat hand in hand, is the stylus that it comes with, and fits nearly into a slot in the back of the phone, similar to a Nintendo DS.  The stylus, combined with the large screen pretty much means that I now have the perfect mini digital canvas.  I just bought the Sketchbook app, and after a little bit of getting used to the interface, I have come to the conclusion that this surpasses the digital painting capabilities of my 3DS by far.  For one thing, my smartphone possesses pressure sensitivity, so I can make lines that vary in terms of both width and thickness.  Also, the screen is probably larger than both 3DS screens combined and with better resolution, so I have  twice the canvas to work with.  In terms of software, Sketchbook offers much better brush and later customization than Colors!3D.

In Summary, aside from lacking the gimmick of being able to paint in 3D, Sketchbook on the Galaxy Note trumps Colors! on the 3DS.  Also, I can create my pictures and post them via the same device, which is another plus. 

Anyhow, here is the result of a half hour of sketching.  Enjoy.  :D

Video Production: 1st Semester

In Fall 2011 and Winter 2012, I took a couple of Video Production courses at UFV.  During for the duration of the first and second semesters of this course, the class was divided into groups of four.  My team was composed of Cameron McCuish, Donna Flello, and Mike Racine.  Of all four of the groups, ours was the only one to really work together really well as a team, without running into any conflicts.  We were also the only group to continue on to the second semester with the exact same members.

Not all of the projects that we produced were good enough to bother with putting up on the internet.  Some of the ones that we actually did put up are still probably not all that good.  Regardless, I had a lot of fun working on making them, and I hope you enjoy watching them on some level.

You Saw Me?

Directed by Michael Racine

This was one of the first projects that we actually spent any serious amount of time in creating and editing, and managed to achieve some decent results with.  The script for this was pre-written for us to interpret as we saw fit.  Everyone had a turn giving the script their own unique spin, but Mike's interpretation was probably the most fun to make, as I got to do some maniacal laughter, throw some fireballs around and do a "death" scene.  We did all the filming for this one in a single morning with just Mike Cameron and Myself, because Donna was unable to make it that day.  It was also the only one that we bothered to put onto youtube.  Mike's explosion effects got some notice from some of our friends in the Computer Information Systems department.  

Interview with a Half-Elf

Directed by Myself

This was my individual project for the first semester of video production, and was also the first video project that I both wrote and directed.  I had fun writing this one, as I got to poke fun at the misconception that people who play roleplaying games have a loose grip on reality.  We borrowed one of Mike's places of work for an afternoon to work on it.  Unfortunately, there was some traffic which interfered with the audio and the microphone was acting wonky, so the sound quality didn't turn out so well.  My favorite part in this movie in both creating and watching was Mike's "Song of Soothing".  While I had devised the lyrics on my own, Mike created his own melody to go with it.  I did a pretty good job in implementing what locations and skillsets I had available to me for this one.  The soundtrack was originally composed of parts of The Battle of Evermore, and Misty Mountain Hop, by Led Zeppelin, but youtube's content filters forced my to alter the soundtrack.  Fortunately Mike was able to quickly mix me up a new soundtrack that I could easily switch into the movie, but it was so much better with the original music.

(On a side note, The Battle of Evermore syncs up really well with the Battle of the Last Alliance in the intro to Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring.)


Every Breath You Take (Stalker Music Video)
Directed by Cameron McCuish

This was Cameron's individual Project for Video Production 1.  Cameron actually shot Mike's lip sync on the same day that we were filming Donna's individual project.  We didn't really have a script for this, as it was pretty much Cameron and us making things up as we went along.  Probably one of the reasons why Cameron decided to do this for his movie was because of some creepy death-stares I gave him while we were filming previous projects. Apparently I can be pretty creepy when I want to.  I also started a running gag where I would occasionally flap my arms and make squawking noises while we were shooting this film when I thought that a particular shot was done, or I messed up my lines.  I ended up ruining at least a couple good shots that way.  Yay, me...


Past Tense

Directed by Michael Racine

Our group project for Video Production 1.  This was the biggest movie we made in that semester, and of all the movies we did, probably took the longest to put together.  I wrote the screenplay for this one, which jokingly got me a bit of a reputation in our group for giving myself the simplest lines.  It was pretty fun to make, and we pretty much designed it so that we could experiment with a couple special effects, such as greenscreen and transporter effects.  The best special effect that we dad in the movie was actually near the beginning of the movie, where we used the natural motion blur of fast moving objects to disguise a black wine box for a video camera.  I'm surprised that nobody really picks that up until we point it out to them.

During the first semester, our group got to learn each other's strengths and areas of expertise, which really helped us to put out some quality work in the second semester.  Mike was undoubtedly contributed the most to this group, as he already had a decent amount of skill in film-making, as well as access to a lot of professional gear.  His official role was Director of Photography for Semester 2.  Cameron was able to quickly pick up technical information from Mike, and ended up being our group's editor and 2nd cameraman.  Donna's eye for getting everything just right made her the ideal choice for directing, as she made sure we had at least two perfect takes of every shot.  Since there wasn't a writer position in the second semester, I ended up in the official role producer, as I had the most time available to me where I could handle details and keep everyone coordinated with one another.  Another major reason as to why I ended up as the producer was because it allowed me to spend more time in front of the camera, because for some reason, I had the most talent and enthusiasm for acting in the group.

It's a shame that Donna hasn't put her individual projects on youtube yet, because she was able to get some of the best acting out of all of us.  Probably my best work as an unprofessional untrained actor was in her videos.  I'll keep poking her every couple months until she uploads her stuff.

Stay tuned for 2nd Semester.  We get better at this, trust me.

Alright, so where were we?

I managed to find a job for July/August painting houses, so that means I'll be able to get back to blogging in my off hours.  I'll try to make a new post twice a week, most likely trying to maintain a schedule of Thursdays and Sundays, as I will most likely have the most content and time on my hands.

So far, my board game review has received the most attention and positive feedback of all my posts, getting reposted by Lost Atlantis Games may have helped with that.  While board gaming is not my biggest hobby, I think I'll try to put more of these up there, assuming my gaming group can get a steady supply of new and interesting games.  I probably won't be reviewing board games that are already staples of most board game groups, such as Settlers of Cataan, Munchkin, Ticket to Ride or Carcassone.  If you still really want to find out more about the aforementioned games, Wil Wheaton has a pretty good web series called Tabletop, where he plays board games with other celebrities within the geek community.  

I probably won't post another D&D 5E recap until the playtest is over, in order to deliver a summary statement on what my thoughts on the game and where it stands in relation to previous editions of D&D and tabletop RPGs as a whole.  While I am involved in multiple Tabletop Roleplaying games at the moment, I don't think my blog is the best venue for posting recaps of sessions.  Again, if you want to see that stuff, you'll probably want to check my main group's forums, here.  However, if our group is trying out a new system for the first time, or I have something big and long to say about RPGs that I want to share with people both inside and outside the group, I'll be putting that up here as well.

I've stared to develop an idea for a board game in my mind, so I may be putting some of the details on here, depending on how/if it develops.  There's also been some talk in my group about working on a card game that we dreamed up the concept for as a group, and that may get further mention on the blog as well.

I'll also be putting up links to some of my digital artwork and youtube videos from when I was taking Video Production at UFV.  You'll probably be seeing some of that on Thursday.

I'll close with a couple shout out to a couple of my friends' blogs.  The first, is Ryan Domingo's Blog, What I Mean By "Hmm...".  His blog is what really insprired me to create my own.  He's been trying to maintain a posting rate of 1/day, and has been doing a decent job at that so far.  The content that he covers is quite different from my own, and largely focuses on music and movie reviews, as well as sharing his explorations regarding his development as a unique individual.  The other, is Fox Tails and Phoenix Down, which is where James Abrahams and his wife, Jacelyn, occasionally post bits and pieces from their life.  The overall gaming related content has decreased as of late, but that's understandable, as James is married now, and gaming has become a less significant factor in his life.  He is still trying to keep gaming as a regular aspect of his lifesyle, and is currently running a Warhammer campaign for our group.  However, his schedule is much busier as compared to other people in my close circle of friends, so he is typically unavailable for more spontaneous events.  James still has a passion for Lego on a hobbyist level, and is has been making some pretty rad things as of the past year.  Keep an eye on his blog in case he shares any of his creations on it.

I started this post, expecting it to be a quick "hey guys, I'm back!" but it looks like I managed to fit a fair bit of content in here after all.

Gone hunting. Be back in 2 weeks!

I've come to the realization that my current state of joblessness between the Winter and Fall semesters means my free time would be better spent pursuing a job that can earn me a steady income for the next two months than working on my blog and other creative pursuits.  I do have a fallback position lined up, however it is not really suited to my skills and personality.  I'll probably only be silent for a couple weeks at the worst, so you probably won't even miss me before then.

When I get back, you can expect to see another D&D 5e play test report, and I'll also begin posting some of my own creative work on here for people to see.

On a related note, does anyone know of any job openings that involve customer service?

Board Game Review: Panic Station

The other day I took a trip up to Lost Atlantis Games, located at C3 - 32386 Fletcher Avenue in Mission (The website is fairly new, and not every game that he has in stock is represented yet).  This is an awesome place to go for great Board Games.  The owner, Darrell, is an awesome guy and possesses an almost contagious sense of enthusiasm and passion for board games, which, in my opinion, is the best reason for going into the business of selling board games.  He has a vast knowledge of many different board games, and does a pretty good job of keeping a finger on the pulse of the board game industry.  He even stocks a handful of very rare titles that are almost impossible to acquire in North American markets.  In addition to his regular stock, Darrell also has an extra shelf full of different games from his personal collection which he is willing to open up and show off and demonstrate the mechanics in order to help give players a good idea of how the games play.  His eventual goal is to grow the business to a point where he can relocate to a larger store that could provide a larger stock of games and have extra tables so people can try out games before and after they make their purchase.  At the moment the store is rather small, occupying the space of a single office, and can at most fit up to six customers at a time.  I really hope his business succeeds, as the Abbotsford/Mission area needs a good board game store like Lost Atlantis.

On this particular trip, Darrell showed me a handful of games that all looked quite intriguing, and would all likely be well received by those that I regularly play with.  All the games I mention here were all games that Darrell had just gotten in recently, and are not on the website yet at the time of my writing this.

There was Quarriors: An interesting hybrid between a deck building game, and a dice game, with a monster battling game  à la Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh.  Another Game was Space Alert:, a real-time cooperative board game where the players assume the roles of the crew of an Spaceship exploring the final frontier, and having to react to events as they occur as they occur as narrated by soundtracks that feature shipwide alerts and blaring red-alert klaxons.  There was also Lord of the Rings: Nazgul, an intriguing twist on the typical games that feature the epic struggle between good and evil from Tolkien's masterpiece novels.  Instead of the playing Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, or any of the other heroes from the story, the players get the play the black robed ringwraith servants of Sauron, working to bring about the defeat the free peoples of Middle Earth and cover the land in a second darkness before the ringbearer reaches Mount Doom.  Dungeon Petz also looked pretty awesome, as it had the hilarious theme of raising and breeding monsters to sell to evil overlords of various tastes for them to put in their dungeons.

The game I eventually settled on was Panic Station.  The reason that this game stood out to me was that it was a sci-fi thriller game, which was designed to evoke a feel similar to the movies from the Alien franchise, including the most recent addition, Prometheus, which the majority of our group had seen and thoroughly enjoyed.  There are some differences of course, but these make for a more interesting game.

The players are playing a group of human troopers and their loyal android companions as they explore an abandoned military base, each player is gets 1 human and 1 android to control.  Humans wield flamethrowers, androids wield guns.  Of course, the base is not entirely abandoned as the players will quickly find out.  It has fallen host to an infestation of alien parasites!  The only way stop the aliens from overrunning the base is by reaching the alien hive, hidden in the bowels of the station and destroying it.  With Fire!  A player needs to have three tanks of fuel in their inventory to provide adequate juice to power their flamethrowers and destroy the hive, and each player already begins play with a tank of fuel and a random item.  

Now with a team of 4-6 players, the most immediate thought is to trade all of the fuel to one player right away so that they can go and destroy the hive.  Easy right?  No.  As  you explore the station (rooms are cards that are randomly drawn, and then placed on the map as the players explore the station) in search of both the hive and new gear, one of the players will inevitably become host to the alien parasite, and will begin working against the humans, trying to infect their former teammates and keep them from obtaining their goal.  The way that the infected go about infecting other humans is by trading infection cards in a secret trade that must occur when a player enters a room with 1 or more characters belonging to another player (each player starts with three infection cards, which they cannot trade until they become infected) the only way that the humans can defend themselves from infection is by trading their fuel to the infected at the same time that an infection card is being traded to them.  The infected gets to keep the fuel, but the infection is nullified.  So the only way to survive infection is by trading your means to win the game, and if the infected end up with all the fuel, and the humans have no way of getting more, the game is practically over.  

The humans can try to destroy the infected using their androids' guns, however, the infected still have access to their inventory, as they did when they were on the human side, and so, are able to hold their own.

My group ended up playing through twice over, and each time that we played, the infected ended up winning by whittling the humans down to one or two people without enough fuel to be able to win.  

While it is understandable that we took about three times longer than the 30-40 minutes posted on the box, as we were all just learning how to play for the first time, the second time around still took us well over an hour.  I think that's more of a reflection of our group's playstyle, rather than an inaccuracy on the game's part., as my group seems to enjoy the amount of intrigue going on around the table.  The infected players did a good job of operating under cover and throwing misdirection around being thrown around, so the other players were often unsure of which players were and were not infected until it was too late for them to save themselves.

When I bought the game, I also bought a survival mini-expansion which added a handful of new equipment cards to add a little extra content to the game.  Included among these cards was the antidote, which was a very interesting card, as it could be used to cure a player from their infection.  The only problem was that the antidote does not protect the trader from being infected themselves, so such a trade is likely to merely switch which players are infected.  The only real use for the antidote is as a self-sacrifice gambit where the targeted infected happens to have a stockpile of gas from either before they became infected or from previous infection attempts, and having been cured of the infection, are then able to torch the hive and win the game.  

In terms of difficulty, the game seems to be weighted in the favor of the infected players, so it is quite difficult for the uninfected humans to actually win.  The game comes with some optional rules to adjust the difficulty, such as decreasing the infection cards each player has, allowing the host infected to use their host card as an infection card, or changing the amount of gas cans needed to burn the hive.  Some other ideas that we proposed were to have killed players return their inventory to the equipment draw deck (the deck has a tendency to run out by the late game), or to allow the antidote to provide defense against infection to the person trading it.

As a whole, I'd say that this game succeeds at bringing across the feel of a science fiction thriller movie in the form of a board game.  If you liked movies from the Alien series, or even Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I would definitely recommend this game.