Gad, what a night. I fell asleep at 9:00 last night while reading a particularly boring chapter in my HCI book, only to wake an hour later in the stupor that commonly follows an impromptu nap on the couch. Backing up a bit, I am now the proud owner of my family's old family room couch and kitchen table with three chairs. My apartment is a feng-shui fever dream. Later on, I couldn't sleep for the life of me. I had tea with dinner, forgetting how much caffeine is in that stuff. I even tried reading from my HCI book, as that had worked before, but the next chapter was really interesting, so that got my brain working again. BUT! At about 4:30 in the morning, I dozed off a little bit and came up with an idea for my creative project animation. I stumbled over to my computer desk and typed out everything I could think of into a haphazard treatment of sorts, because I would have forgotten otherwise. It'll be a ton of work for one person, but it's something that I can do myself. I can't really relay the specifics yet, as I'm still figuring them out, but I plan to show it to my old Communications professor at USF, as I know she'll get it and give me good advice. It'll make sense soon, I hope.

Today has been a little different. I used to go on minimal sleep in undergrad because I had the solidarity of my sleep-deprived friends. I also had gen-ed classes to sleep in, so that helped too. No such luck now. I did see something cool, however. At lunchtime I walked over the student center and there were a bunch of promotional booths set up outside. They were all technology themed, but the coolest ones were a jeep outfitted with at least five different Nintendo Gamecubes and a tent full of guitars and effects emulators. The Nintendo jeep had buttons with pictures of classic characters in their original pixel glory. I picked out Mario and Bowser, grinning like a 24 year old third grader. I went to the guitar demo tent and I got to mess around with a $400 fx box and a $4,000 Gibson guitar. It needed tuning, but the tone quality was glorious. The guy in charge recommended an Epiphone, because it's a lot cheaper and the sound is comparable. It was great, though.

"And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities..."
-excerpt from Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago."

Gerry has informed me that the Cubs are currently ahead in the baseball wildcard race, which is cause for excitement. It reminded me of the Carl Sandburg poem quoted above, in which the poet also refers to Chicago as the "ciy of the big shoulders." That's where that moniker came from, if you ever wondered.

In my last post, I expressed some disdain for Flash. I still don't like it very much, but yesterday I used it to solve a problem on the forthcoming BSU teachers college website. (The current site, by the way, is not my doing. Whoever designed that monstrosity probably jumped off a bridge a la Javert in "Les Miserables".) The new site will feature randomly selected Flash graphics; a new one each time someone hits refresh. I didn't make the animations, but I did make the loader file in Flash to make them load randomly. Score one for cracker.

Six months ago I was standing at a cash register watching yuppies graze stacks of bargain books. This was when I first wondered "what do you call an animator who doesn't animate?" I figured that I would solve this problem soon enough, as I was planning on enrollng at BSU in the Fall.

I've been here for a month, and I'm starting to wonder the same thing again. The closest thing I get to animation is a little flash project I'm troubleshooting at work. It's mildly amusing, but Flash is very dull and clunky compared to Maya. I'm told that there are computers on campus with Maya on them, just waiting for someone who knows how to use it. I'm typing from one of those machines now, actually, but it doesn't have Maya like I was told.

Yarr! September(edit- September 19th) be "national talk like a pirate day!" I wish it wasn't on a Sunday, because I'd like to celebrate this particular day in narrative theory class. Arrr.

Here's a link to a stereoscopic image site with a novel twist- the images flicker back and forth to give the 3d effect. I need to experiment with this in Maya. http://ofwonder.com/blink.html (for some reason, blogger isn't displaying the toolbar to make the link in the text)

Also, the new trailer for Pixar's the Incredibles is online on the apple site.

Three great CD releases are sneaking in under the radar in the next month or so. I already mentioned the new Tom Waits album, but two more also have me excited. The Black Keys just released their third album, which I promptly bought to celebrate my first check. Oh, the neighbors are going to love me for the next month and a half as I learn to play the new songs. Third is Billy Corgan's solo album, slated for a late October release. I'm not really holding my breath, as he is notorious for taking several months in the studio, but whenever it gets released I'll be frantically scurrying down to Best Buy to get my grubby mits on it.

Work is getting better and better. It turns out that the nice young woman who I met at the Heorat last week works in the office down the hall a couple days a week. She loves music, and the two CDs on her desk right now are my copy of the Breeders' Title TK, and Johnny Cash's American IV: the Man Comes Around. Great taste, I must say. Elsewhere around the office, I found out that my paycheck is delivered to me. This is after I walked all over creation yesterday trying to find it. Convenience. Today, I met the head of BSU marketing. He's a good guy, and that means something from me, as I typically hold marketing majors in similar esteem as middle school gym teachers. I first met him when I accidentally walked in on a meeting with him and my boss and my boss's boss. I wanted to buy a coke out of the refrigerator behind his chair, so his first impression of me was a tall guy with an iPod loping through the door and wedging in behind his chair to acquire a canned beverage. I was introduced by name and then as a student in the Digital Storytelling program. His affirmative answer, like so many others, said that he didn't know what that meant either. Later on, as I was saving my work and preparing to leave, he came in with my boss to tell us about his great idea for the video tour. Something new and innovative- computer animated tourguides! The user would have a choice of three fun characters to watch, and... Something about a greenscreen... Something else... I was thinking "wow, I'm blogging this." He asked me if I thought this sounded good, and I told him that a little animated character was going to come across like the MS Word paperclip. It would disconnect people from the message. I didn't mention that it would mean about ten grand in equipment upgrades and more to hire a staff to create these to have online by March at the earliest. Later, my boss (a saint, I should mention) told me that she was happy that I stood up and told him the truth.

I got to thinking, though. What would an animated tour look like? Imagine Gollum at BSU. "Ahh! Tricksy bursarses, steals your monies! No, they's's good to us, the school cares for us. No! All our monies go to losing football team! We hates them! Hates them! Curses!" It would go on like that, and enrollment at IU would jump through the roof. I find it weird that being an animator has meant that I spend much of my time in such discussions telling people how much harder animation is, and how live action is simpler.

Tomorrow night I'm going to see Wynton Marsallis for ten bucks. I'm going with Gerry and a few other friends, and a few total strangers. Discount tickets to good events is another great thing about BSU. USF would be lucky to get Tito Jackson and John Oates.

Tom Waits has a new album coming on October 5th. story

Today, September 13th, my blog is one year old. I remember starting it after hearing about a purportedly free service that would let me type stuff and post it on the internet. Bored as I was, I decided to check it out. The purpose, for me at least, was personal growth. I didn't really have a goal in mind, I was unemployed and bored, and it was free.

After one year, things have changed for the better for me. I entered the workforce as a retail drone, helped various people move, tried my best to avoid purchasing music from RIAA-affiliated artists, waxed pseudo-poetic about movies and television, went to Texas, watched the Cubs on TV, bought a belt, applied to grad school, got accepted to grad school, exited the retail workforce, and moved several furlongs south of home to start grad school. I started this last year because I was bored, and now I almost forgot that I wanted to make a post at the one-year mark because school has me so preoccupied.

The funny thing about all of this is my audience (hi Mom). Once, I new for a fact that I had three readers. I'm not even sure who reads this now, but it is more than three. We had a discussion in HCI class about blogs, and some people couldn't fathom why anyone would want to read somebody else's blog. I'm mystified myself, but I read at least half a dozen that I can think of off the top of my head.

As for the title of the blog, Misplaced Commas, I plan to keep that. My punctuation has improved somewhat, but I can't think of a better title. "Siamese Dream", "Never Mind the Bollocks", and "Swordfishtrombones" are all taken.

I planned on making a list of my favorite blog posts, but I think I'll just post a few. There's a big archive up on the right, and clicking randomly will take you to different points in the past year. It's interactive hypertextuality fun for the whole family.

There was this one...
The time I went to Texas and then wouldn't stop talking about it...
There was that possum...
And then there was the two part moving weekend post. Part One and Part Two

Don't bother reading them if you have something better to do. They're some of my longest writings ever.

The big cultural question of this generation will be, for better or for worse, "where were you on September 11th?" Much like the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, this otherwise innocuous early autumn day has become an immediately recognized day of infamy and sadness, so much so that the corresponding year of 2001 is left to the shared assumption of the populace. To be more specific, then, where were you on September 11th, 2004?



In 2002, there was a solemn memorial held across the nation. The dust in New York City had settled or blown out to the ocean, the Pentagon had been repaired, and the burned scar in a field in Pennsylvania was beginning to grow wild grass in patches of dirt not too saturated with jet fuel. Similarly, the nation as a whole seemed to exhale a bit. One year later and at least two hours back on the Damoclean doomsday clock, America was still on the map. My own choruses of Barry Allen's "Eve of Destruction" had turned out to be premature, thank goodness.



In 2003 we lost our sense of humor. Coping mechanisms that had been the chic of the past two years became sources of shame and embarrassment. Overeating due to stress became the "plague of obesity" on the nightly news, reinforced with pictures of overstuffed children and anonymously photographed giant adult midsections, cropped in and blown up in hi-definition for the world to see and scorn. Stress in general became any number of "anxiety disorders" or even "adult ADD." However you feel, there's a pill so you won't. Rational discussion also fell out of favor, as often happens to groups of people under pressure. News programs degraded into gladiatorial shouting matches for the favor of the public and the patronage of advertisers. The extremes on both ends screamed world war III at anyone who would listen. Whether America falls to ruin tomorrow or miraculously enters an era of peace and prosperity, the pop-pundits will emerge from this period each with their own personal fortune to retire in luxury.



In the weeks approaching September of 2004, I began to wonder how this year should be marked. More quiet reflection with video montages on TV? Eat a lot and yell at someone who disagrees with me? Spending another day reliving the bloodiest day in American history and recounting two of the most trying years since the last big war era is not how I wish to spend the rest of my finite and chillingly precarious life. But to try to forget and pass the day like any other would be callous, and would require avoiding other people, lest someone self-consciously mention the date in conversation. After some thought on the matter, I decided on a third option.



In 2004, I smiled. With conviction. I woke up in the house I spent most of my life growing up in and came downstairs to my parents. Mom made cookies for me to take back to my apartment, Dad sat and drank his coffee from the same sacred ìDadî mug he's used since I was little, the dogs ran around barking at squirrels, and I was happy to be visiting home. I bypassed the front page for the sports section where I found that the Cubs won the second of a double-header, and I was happy to cheer for my team. I called my brother to ask where the spare set of car keys went, and, upon hearing that he was out on a Saturday morning with no foreseeable time to return, I was happy that he is happy and prosperous. I was happy to hear that my high school marching band started their season today with two contests in one day. In general, I was happy.



Upon arrival back at BSU, I spent much of the remainder of the day with my good friend Gerry. We laughed, celebrated another victory for the Cubs, and wandered around the mall with no real shopping agenda aside from a gift for his co-worker. In the later evening, I went to the Heorat to meet my fellow graduate students and see a band fronted by another of our classmates. We drank, sang along to raucous blues rock, and the whole bar smiled in the cloying atmosphere of dim lighting and thick smoke.



Allen Ginsberg posited the volatile question: "America, why are your libraries full of tears?" Ours is a tumultuous history, inexorably intertwined in the history of the world. The calculated actions of madmen who export fear and rigid obedience to the rest of the world are regular footnotes in the record of the centuries of civilization, but they have never defined or altered the course of history completely. This may be because the most fundamental defense against them is to smile, laugh, and remember why life is worthwhile in the first place- friends, family, and a belief in a better tomorrow.

I rented Taxi Driver last night, at long last. I'd tried in vain for years to get it at the Fort Wayne library and I think they lost the DVD at some point. It was a good movie, kind of like Catcher in the Rye with a lot more guns and drugs. What really impressed me was the editing. It's obvious that Martin Scorsese trusted his actors enough to leave the camera running during long exchanges between characters instead of editing every sentence back and forth between shots. The famous "you talkin to me?" monologue is one of these shots.

Back to class today. I'm current on all of the reading so far, so it shouldn't be a big deal. I feel a little like Harold Hill (or perhaps Lile Lanley). "Yes, digital storytelling, that's the ticket! Media convergence, narrative, paradigm, blah-biddy-blah-internet." I'll feel a lot better when I'm able to get back to actual video and animation work.

"If we were talking face to face, ... you would have heard me say just now to someone climbing the stairs outside my window 'Your pants are falling off, you retard.' And I guess saying that isn't very PC, but neither is walking around without really committing to wearing pants."

-My brother Michael

Today I was working on encoding videos for the teacher's college website at work. I've told everybody who asks that "yes, I know all about digital video editing." It appears some people take this statement at face value, because today I got to use Final Cut Pro, which I haven't really dabbled in since USF, to color correct these videos. It kept crashing, and this happens enough that the video guy here has this note below his monitor: EXPECT A CRASH. Yup. After a while, I started looking for other options. I ended up signing away my masculinity and self-respect by using iMovie, the generic Apple box video editor to fix the contrast and export video suitable for the web. It worked surprisingly well, albeit clumsy for multiple video file exporting. So, I got an important lesson about techno-hubris, and Apple got a fat stack of OS X crash reports to ignore.

Gerry and I ware going to the Football game tonight. We get in free, and the school gets to use the new lights for the first time. More importantly, we'll see our newly acquired friends in the band. That counts for something. Gerry also promises that we'll leave if they get blown out early, which is likely.