Dont_Tell_Taco_Tyrant

So one time, I was talking to a door, I was like, "Hey, what's up, door?" And he went, "Man, its a hard knock life."

Reading the residential building code. I want to know what it says about earth sheltered homes, because I'mma build one and then be a hippy inside it.

Is that one of those chocolate eggs with the filling...stuff?

Still trying to get used to this non-dairy thing that was urged upon me by the doctor. I thought I was gonna be okay with non-fat milk, but I came in for a follow up appointment and damn...you think Edward Snowden got in trouble, you should have heard this guy rip into me. #CardiologistsBSeriousYo

Hey, thanks. I keep this up, I bet I'll have a positive score someday

_BL3L5xqyy4 I played the shit out of this back when I was job searching all those years. This and the flavor of green tea are indelibly associated with unemployment in my mind.

A picture of that one time in 2007 when I Kamehameha'ed the bathroom mirror. Or took a really bad selfie, I can't remember which:

Designed an "okay" ergonomics stand

Dear whatever-part-of-the-brain-is-in-charge-of-memory-recall: Thank you for subjecting me to the God-Emperor of all brain farts and rendering me speechless during a crucial technical discussion. That special blend of forgetting everything remotely pertinent and losing the ability to formulate a single thought for the next five minutes brought my efforts to plead a case to a dead stop, never to be regained again. Thanks to your timely decision to revoke my access to any fact ever, I was unable to defend my work from the whims of a newcomer to the project, allowing him to drive a consensus with the Powers That Be that I need to start over. It was great being lectured in front of the client and upper management for my perceived cluelessness, when one sentence of explanation would have averted this entire fiasco. As the cherry on top of this shit-sundae, having to redo this assignment when I was already balls-deep in work puts me irretrievably behind schedule and thus adds "unproductive" to my growing infamy in the eyes of my boss. If I didn't think I'd get lost on the way to the surgeon's or accidentally eat my appointment slip at your prompting, I'd gladly have you lobotomized for being a little ratfuck waste of tissue. I can only wait for the day when cybernetics free me from having to depend on such a pathetically faulty mechanism that, at the best of times, prioritizes Nirvana lyrics from 1995 over information I specifically entrusted to your care not five minutes prior. Get shit on, brain, the only way you could have failed me worse is by melting and oozing out my ears. Worst regards, DTTT

I'm interested, I've never liked having to somehow befriend a big name who knows what they're doing when they only accept others who know what they're doing. Hi guys, A little bit ago you guys mentioned that an animating group sounded fun. I considered starting it here, but then kind of figured that it would be seen as redundant when you consider the subforums specifically dedicated to source and machinima. However, another community I belong to is Rooster Teeth, and on there I found a filmmaking group who desperately wants members producing content. I contacted them and asked if they would be willing to accomodate animators, and was very specific that the reason for asking was to have a ...well, a "home" for lack of a better word. Somewhere people could get moral and practical support as they undertake their animation efforts. The guys were very excited about the prospect of animators making awesome Saxxy-winning films in their group, and I'm sure they will be great hosts. If you guys are still interested in spite of it being on another site, you can find the group here. RT is home to a huge number of aspiring animators, so I think this is the best community to meet everyone's needs. I go by 'Cigarette' in that forum. Note that this group originally geared itself towards working together on live-action short films--they get together in Austin, TX every year and film, voice act, all kinds of stuff. DON'T worry that you've been misdirected if the forum talks about live action filming stuff. Just mention that you are here for the animation and you will be welcomed. Hope to see you guys there!

Our brains are wired for finding food, maintaining relationships, and solving the problems immediately in front of us with tools. We haven't developed an instinctual drive to think in the long term yet, because its only been very recent in our history as a species that we've had the luxury of worrying about what happens in a month. That's why work habit are important, because it turns a long-term priority into an immediate priority that your instincts can understand--your instinctual tug to sit down and work on your book isn't because you know the manuscript is due in a year, all your subconscious knows is that "HEY RARITY, ITS BOOK TIME. GO BOOK FOR A WHILE"

Sweet work on Sniper-chu. How did you do that? And are you open to a suggestion?

AN2WHl-93rM Italian Bonnie Tyler

Eh, its okay, it gets the job done cheap, with the most expensive parts being the LECA balls and the UV plenum. I definitely want artificial lighting though, so that I can take advantage of the red-blue effect--the pacific northwest doesn't always provide a lot of sun anyways.

5up2wZiHGoo

This is a little experiment I'm going to run with my Dad. We want to figure out exactly how hard it would be to make a completely pest- and disease-free growing environment so that whatever is inside of it can be called "organic." That's why I have the UV-sterilized air and drip-feed (because the "soil" is going to be artificial in the interest of cleanliness.) This was all triggered by him displaying one of his pepper plants, which was slouching over in defeat under a blistering onslaught of aphids, and wondering out loud where the hell they had come from.

mgrEhrXHMB0 The coolest shit I have ever heard

Got back from visiting Dad and Mom, had a wonderful time. I helped Dad move bricks down to the basement, took the border collie for a walk, talked politics (we solved all the world's problems, btw. History is over now, you can all relax. You're welcome), and then brainstormed about hydroponics. I brought Mom a book on statistical analysis and she sent me home with a fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, cholesterol fighting blueberry pie that still tastes amazing--this pie is so nutritionally inert, I almost wonder if its some kind of hologram.

Got a case of the grogs. Treatment options are: sleep or Red Bull. Out of respect for the dire side effects of Red Bull (heart damage, pancreas damage, wings), I'm taking the natural option. Night

Are you familiar with the marshmallow experiment? It was that behavioral experiment done in the 60's to try and study will-power. The researcher would interview a very young child and make them an offer: they could eat one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows if they could wait five minutes. The children who toughed it out for the five minutes and got the two marshmallows were said to innately understand delayed gratification, and this was a strong predictor for that child's future success. Not only would that child have the wherewithal to achieve stuff, but they had higher self-esteem and were less susceptible to addictions and dependencies because they had control over their brain's reward mechanism. As you might guess, the proximity of the temptation (eating the one marshmallow) affected the results--in other words, if the kid had to wait the five minutes with that one marshmallow right there next to them, daring them to give in and fail, the number of successes went way down. The interesting thing is the difference between the successful kids and the indulgers, because that difference was not some natural blessing, but just decisionmaking: The kids who successfully waited out for the two marshmallows minimized their contact with the temptation to give up. They would hide their faces or stand in a corner, anything to take their mind off of how much they wanted that marshmallow. The kids who stared at the marshmallow, drinking in its every detail and imagining how good it would taste (this was the 60's, they didn't have anything better) ended up giving in. So! The moral of this story is: if your problem is distractions and procrastination, no amount of free time is going to help. I have a friend who has always been interested in Tai Chi Quan but has never gotten around to it. Recently, he got cut down to half time at work and started getting by on Social Security, thereby letting him make a living on a 20 hour workweek. I bought him a Tai Chi video as a birthday present, and six months later, he has still not found the time to watch it even once. However, as soon as that same friend leaves his home sanctum, the TV and video games, and goes to the local Aikido dojo to train with other enthusiasts, he is the undisputed #1 student in his class. No one practices as diligently or applies himself so hard to mastering the nuances of a very demanding curriculum as this guy. This is a constant, regardless of what kind of workday he had--in fact, he once told me that the more stressful his day was, the more he looked forward to sweating it all out in the dojo. I bring this up because its an example of someone removing themselves from the temptation at home. In a dojo environment, this guy was free to focus on his goal because its a miniature world with nothing else in it, where he can go and hide from his personal temptations and distractions. Here is the same advice, reiterated by a self-employed writer I know: If animation is really what you want, then structure it like a second job--make a not-too-comfortable workspace somewhere that you can be seen and called out if you start surfing the internet (if you even need internet), and ideally, this would be in a different room than where you relax. If you don't have the luxury of a second room, here's a trick I learned when I lived in a roach motel to simulate that environmental change: I had to make do with the same desk and computer for both work and play, so when it was time to work, I got dressed in work clothes, hung up blue curtains everywhere, opened the window, turned on one set of lights and put on shoes. After a while, you train yourself to respond to those visual cues with a more businesslike mentality, and to this day, I still have a pair of home-shoes that I put on, Mr. Rogers like, when I need to get something done around the house. Socks are for relaxing. Long story short, don't stare at the marshmallows. PS: I was thinking about starting some kind of source filmmaker online group. Its probably not going to be the same as having an RL wingman, but if I do, you're welcome to join

7GLkvCrcExU Shepherd of Fire, Avenged Sevenfold. These guys are like a contemporary Iron Maiden to me, they have a distinctive melodic sound and a similar penchant for injecting cynical commentary into their lyrics. I blurt "Noice!" or something similarly douchey every time they come up on the radio. Shepherd of Fire is great, but every time I hear it, I feel like it could have been twice as energizing but was kneecapped by their stylistic choices. I say this as a complete layman to music theory and as someone who can't even whistle, but: 1. The lead in to the chorus where he goes "don't you know" seems a little too abrupt and matter of fact. Not to be crude, but I think it kinda blows its wad too soon. I feel like stretching that out just a bit and having it ramp up in volume or maybe a key change would have set a better tone for the chorus to really slam it. One of the best lead-in to a power chorus I've heard recently is Lindsey Stirling's Shadows or Godsmack's 1000HP. 2. The chorus isn't all that more intense than the refrains. I really can't put my finger on where its lacking to me, but the drums don't try anything new, the lead doesn't sing any higher or louder, and no new instruments kick in. I think some backup singers, or maybe whatever percussion instrument makes the "breaking chain" sound could have really added. Thats my opinion anyways. I like the song well enough, but I feel like it could have been epic.

Speaking of source filmmaker, this is what I'm doing today: Thats footage from Soul Calibur 3 that I baked into an image pane and am transcribing into .dmx animations. In other words, I'm copying animation from the game moves. My goal is to become the next Monty Oum eventually grab every cool looking move from this game, DoA2:H, anything from the PS2 era that I can emulate (legitimately!) and record. Suggestions are welcome--its easiest if the game has a practice mode which can demonstrate the move for you. Also, I made my first prop: I'm proud of the modeling, but as you can see, I know nothing about texturing. Spy wants his old revolver back. (Full disclosure: the prop is based off Weiss Schnee's weapon in RWBY) Lastly, here are my first 95% custom source character models. They are Michael Jones and Gavino Free's Minecraft avatars (Banjo the bear and a creeper, respectively) having it out in front of a monolith. They are 95% custom because I used the ValveBiped skeleton to rig them, rather than reinvent the wheel, but I made the geometry myself. You'll notice that I actually deviated from the true Minecraft character proportions because I thought this looked better:

Listening to this awesome Washington rain on my window. I mean that in earnest, I love the rain. Its a vital ingredient for life, and it just comes showering down for free. Its cool to know that no matter what happens, you can always get hydration.

Visited a, uh, "major Seattle-area aerospace manufacturing company that I can't call out" and looked at some stuff on the shop floor. Those guys are so cool, I love working with them. They even gave me a special helmet to keep as a souvenir!