Category: Updates

PDF Splitter – I managed to pretty much finish the PDF splitting project I started last week. Now I’m down to commenting, code cleanup, bug fixing, and testing while I wait for feedback. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work on other things now, but these projects have a tendency to consume all my time and brain power. DX

The Twelfth Hour – I’m still hoping to finish it by the end of this week, but Chapter 4 is being a bigger pain to revise than expected. Have I ever mentioned that writing in third-person present tense is ridiculously difficult? Maybe it’s just my self-imposed rule that exposition in present tense sections of the book can never explain anything that happened in the past unless it’s of the form “_____ remembers…” I think it makes sense. When you’re writing in the much more common past tense, writing random sentences in the present tense is frowned upon. Writing in the present tense should be held to the same standards. Movie scripts certainly can’t mix past tense events into their third person present tense exposition. Other novelists, however, don’t seem to care. I’ve been reading a book Red Rising by Pierce Brown and several pieces on Critters that are written in third-person present tense. The authors switch to past tense to describe past events all the time, which seems strange to me. Why write in the present tense at all in that case? Anyway, I think it’s hard to write in under this rule mostly because I have to determine how much I can get away with not revealing about the character’s thoughts (which like to wander into the past) in the exposition to the reader. If I had my way, I’d share nothing (like a movie script) or very little, but people tend to like knowing that stuff, and I can see the benefit at times.

Pointless Ranting – Besides that, I voiced disagreements about Fable, Final Fantasy XV, Charlottesville, James Damore, Trump, and the eclipse at various places and, most of the time, with various people around the Internet. Someone take my social media accounts away from me when I decide my unpopular opinions about stupid crap are important enough to start arguments over. >_<

Writing – Despite traveling this weekend, I managed to finish revising chapter 3 of my novel as I planned. Huzzah! Chapter 4 I hope to finish in a week or so. It’s shorter and doesn’t have as many problems. After that, I’ll be in the messy center. >_< I also worked a little on the Speech Therapy script for Foodfight! vs Elysium and finished editing a novel for someone through Critters, ending about a six-week-long project.

RPS Wars – I have RPS Wars’ basic playing field, characters, and game mechanics setup in Unity. Rock, paper, and scissor army members are randomly placed on the playing field at the start of the game, the soldiers move randomly, and on collision, they disappear/die based on the rules of Rock Paper Scissors. The user can also select soldiers and order them to attack other soldiers. I still need to come up with camera controls, a HUD, and Pause and Start menus before I delve into its more advanced artificial intelligence aspects, but it’s coming along fast for spending less than eight hours on it.

Programming Project – I got hired by the co-founder of the company I used to work for to develop a small PDF splitting application for the company he works for. I’ll be focusing on that for a couple weeks, which means Speech Therapy and RPS Wars at least will be placed on hold temporarily. Work on The Twelfth Hour will continue as planned. I’m finishing it no matter what!

Programming – I finished fixing the code that controls the camera and control scheme in Team KAIZEN’s 3D fighter game Shattered Soul! Perhaps Josh will post a new video soon to show off the latest version, but until then, rest assured the camera no longer snaps and spins around, and the control inversion matches the side of the screen the player is on. While I’m waiting for more work to do, I decided to resurrect my artificial intelligence simulation/RTS game RPS Wars to get more practice with the Unity game engine. Soon you won’t have to have a Linux Red Hat Server to play it!

Writing – I made it 2/3 of the way through Chapter 3 of The Twelfth Hour this week. I have a fairly large section to rewrite though, so no guarantee I’ll get to the end of the chapter by the end of next week yet. I’ve also begun writing scripts for new episodes of Speech Therapy where I’ll compare one of my favorite terrible CGI movies Elysium to Foodfight!. Which film is worse? You’ll soon find out.

Other – I reorganized the website’s menu slightly. The link to the page with all my CGI movie analyses, one of the main things I do these days, seemed buried in one too many menus. So now it has its own tab for all to see!

My Eliza – I spent most of this week editing my short story, My Eliza. This included generating what’s going on in the background of the protagonist’s story and the setting. It officially takes place in an alternate United States where the U.S. government collapsed and has been replaced with small experimental governments and anarchy. Apparently, it was necessary to sprinkle some Stefan Molyneux philosophy into the somewhat mundane topic of a job interview gone wrong. I actually really like the extra layer of strange it adds. People said they wanted to know the setting, so I gave them a hell of a setting. I just hope it doesn’t overpower the story.

The Twelfth Hour – I made it to chapter three of twelve in the rewrite process of my novel. I’m hoping to finish this next chapter within two weeks, but it has some rough sections and I have a family reunion next weekend, so we’ll see. I’m thinking about sending chapter one through Critters as well. I have a feeling that this is the type of book that some people will love but most will absolutely hate because I do so many unconventional things in it (switching between first- and third-person, switching between past- and present-tense, redacting character names, mixing alien, ghost, and monster tropes, featuring an angsty protagonist, making heavy use of unreliable narrators, etc.), but if the feedback is anything like what I received for My Eliza, it will still be interesting to see.

Shattered Soul – I got the control scheme mostly working on Team KAIZEN’s 3D fighter. Vector math is a pain though, so it’s not perfect yet. It is, however, much more awesome than it was.

Kingsglaive vs Advent Children – I spent the majority of the week video editing the latest episode of Speech Therapy. This video officially marks the end of my Kingsglaive and Advent Children craze. I’ll probably continue my futile harassment people on YouTube and Final Fantasy forums, but that’s all I have planned for reviews at the moment. If one thing has become clear, I don’t think it’s possible to convince Final Fantasy VII fans determined to hate Advent Children that it is good. Square Enix is composed of malicious capitalists that give people what they want and/or destroy their own worlds in exchange for money regardless of the apparent quality or effort they put into what they produce. I suppose you can’t make anyone change their mind about anything though. That’s true of everything from politics to Star Wars sequels. O.o Anyway, if something else doesn’t distract me first, Foodfight!, Elysium, and Resident Evil: Degeneration are next!

Writing – When I wasn’t video editing like mad, I was writing something. I’m reviewing a novel for someone through Critters, which involves writing my many opinionated thoughts, and working on The Twelfth Hour. I’m thinking about giving My Eliza and The Twelfth Hour a little more attention next week and next month.

Shattered Soul – I’ve taken somewhat of a hiatus from programming since moving due to craziness, distraction, and stuff everywhere, but I’m hoping to get back into it. This week, I worked on the control and camera movement scheme for Team KAIZEN’s 3D fighter Shattered Soul demo. Next week, if I’m some combination of lucky, determined, or talented, I’ll come up with something that works a bit better.

Final Fantasy – I think talking about Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children with random people and reviewers on YouTube and Twitter has become one of my favorite things to do. I did that a lot this week. So yeah, if you want to talk about Advent Children, send me a tweet @SilentFuzzle. Or just tweet #AdventChildren, and I’ll probably hunt you down. I also officially purchased Final Fantasy XV. This means I can witness its glory/incompetence myself and write retrospectives on the game, the movie, and the Omen trailer in the future!

Unpacking – Most of my time this week went to unpacking and organizing my new place in Spokane. It’s been hard to work on projects around the piles of junk in and around my room, but I should be somewhat back on track next week… around the Fourth of July and more unpacking. It’s always interesting looking through my old papers. Most of it’s embarrassing or meaningless, but some of it’s hilarious. Perhaps I’ll post a couple old stories here. I also found a letter that my mom wrote to me for some project I did in middle school or high school about what I was like when I was little. She said I wrote stories before I even knew how to spell. I knew that part, but she also wrote that she hoped I would become an influential writer. I think part of my goal while I don’t have a job is to figure out if I’m supposed to be making and analyzing stories instead of developing productivity software. Doing anything even remotely related to storytelling has always made me happiest, and my spare time has always been and will probably always be devoted to that. Maybe if I harass enough people about Advent Children on Twitter, I can be one of those freaks who makes a living off it. 😛

Improvised Incoherence – I did manage to record two episodes of Improvised Incoherence this week. Those should both be out next week and/or the week after.

Final Fantasy Analyses – The final part of Advent Children: What’s Beneath the Fan Service released this week! I’ve been working on these articles since December, and it feels nice to finally have them all out. I’ve mentioned this before on an Improvised Incoherence episode, but writing these was incredibly liberating and somewhat disturbing. I don’t know if anyone feels quite the way I do about Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, but I hope you all enjoy my analysis anyway. It’s hard to believe I released two things this week because of everything that’s happened since, but Kingsglaive vs Advent Children: Where Nonsense Originates also went out this week. Another video comparing Kingsglaive to Advent Children should be out next month.

Marketing – I opened a Twitter account! Shock and horror! I also started harassing Advent Children reviewers on YouTube. What have I become? What have I wrought!? I got a response to Are Both These Dubs Korean? as well. I want to ask around more to confirm, but it sounds like the Korean audio track on the German DVD of Elysium (2003) is actually Thai. O.o

Other – I beat Final Fantasy X! After four months, ignoring the year that passed between my previous attempt at beating this game and this one, it is done. The time it took has nothing to do with me disliking it (I’m just busy and this year has been really weird). In fact, X is probably my favorite Final Fantasy game so far. Yes, shockingly, it’s not Final Fantasy VII. I’m thinking about buying Final Fantasy XV and playing that next. I’m curious about it, and I also received a request this week to review Kingsglaive again after playing the game. That would be interesting.

Also, I moved to Washington today.

And that’s all the crap I did this week. Now, I’m tired.

Final Fantasy Analyses – I spent most of this week working on a new episode of Speech Therapy. Because Advent Children: What’s Beneath the Fan Service didn’t have nearly enough about Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, I’m making a couple episodes of Speech Therapy that compare it to Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV. I swear I’ll talk about something other than Final Fantasy someday… I would have finished video editing today, but because I’m traveling instead, the new episode won’t be out until next week. Advent Children: What’s Beneath the Fan Service (Part 3) should be out next week as well. Sorry for the delay, but E3 week is a bad time to release retrospectives on twelve-year-old video game movies. 😀

Writing – When I wasn’t working on Speech Therapy, I continued outlining The Twelfth Hour and polished My Eliza. One of the characters in The Twelfth Hour had vague motivations, and in general, was being a bitch to write. After spending quite a bit of time thinking and free writing though, I finally figured him out, and I’m quite pleased with the results. Now I can actually start the rewriting process… after I figure out what needs to stay, what needs to go, and what needs elaboration throughout the book. I’m planning to put the polished version of My Eliza into the Critters Workshop next week. That should be an interesting experiment…

Job Hunting – I got a request to interview for a job I applied for three months ago. O.o Huh. Well, I’m not complaining. I also researched some freelancing websites because, damn, I really like reviewing and analyzing stories, and it would be neat to help people write them and get paid for it. Apparently, however, every freelancing website (Upwork, Freelancer, People Per Hour…) is horrible for one reason or another. That, or people just like to complain about con artists and not getting paid enough.