Fighting The Good Fight!

Looked up "silly" on the Internet. Was not disappointed.

The struggle is real my friend! Okay, just kidding.

That aside I got a bit of work done on the game today. Unfortunately it's a bit of underlying stuff so their is really nothing to show. It looks exactly like the image I uploaded yesterday when run so have a look at that if you want to see what it looks like today. Instead I'll find something silly to upload.

Today's work was making a texture class to wrap images I load up into it. The class handles rendering and will return the width and the height of a loaded image.

6 Things Star Trek Should Do To Make Me Watch It Again

To boldly go back to where we once were.

I've watched the new Star Trek trailer off and on over the last several months, well, at least since they released it, and I just saw it again. I can honestly admit to myself that I'm sad where Star Trek is going anymore.

Like many people I was genuinely excited when I heard about the so called reboot of the series. I was anxious to see Star Trek set back in the era of The Original Series (TOS). Of course the first movie came out and I enjoyed it on a superficial level but it was, for a lack of a better analogy, like eating too much candy. Sure, it's good and tasty but after a while your body wants something a bit healthier. And, in this case, healthy meant something more cerebral.

The Simpler Days of Star Wars

When we didn't know much about Star Wars

Long time ago in the late 70s after the Star Wars phenomenon had hit us I was able to get the following poster through a Burger Kings/Coca Cola promotion and I remember spending many hours just looking at it and taking in the details.

This was in the time between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back came out and there was not a lot of information on the Universe of Star Wars. This was a time when Darth Vader was a bad guy straight and simple who had killed Luke's dad. Darth Vader was simply his name and not a Title.
Those days were interesting and especially so for my 9 to 10 year old self.

I often think about and sometimes talk about paradigm shifts or Copernicus moments. When one day something is a certain way and has been for as long as people can remember and within a moment the world changes in a very real and perceptible way. Suddenly things are different. Sometimes they happen overnight but usually it’s within a year to a year and a half. In my lifetime I've gone through three of them that I can think of.

Back in 1984...

With all the stuff going on over the new Ghostbusters reboot/remake I got to thinking back...

In June of 1984 Ghostbusters was released upon the United States. I was 16 and had joined Police Explorers a bit after that as a result of a classmate who was also in Police Explorers and had asked me to join.

Of course Ghostbusters was a hit and a phenomenon so, when October rolled around a local haunted house needed someone to direct traffic at their super popular (and Ghostbuster themed) haunted house. I didn't have a uniform yet so they gave me a pair of white gloves and I had to hangout with a uniformed Explorer. Our Explorer group did this to raise money for our organization.

The haunted house played the Ghostbusters theme over and over. It was on non-stop repeat and, for a while, I grew to hate that song. It took a long while before I could listen to it again.

As the night went on and the Ghostbuster's theme played for it's umpteenth time I'd gotten into the groove of directing traffic. Probably was subconsciously grooving to the song too as some sort of Pavlovian response to the music. A car pulls up and rolls down a window. A guy who looked like he had just rolled off the set of Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo looked at me, white gloves and all, and asked me if I was some sort of white Micheal Jackson. I thought about it for a moment and replied, "yes, I think I am," which was unusual for a shy guy like me. The guys in the car, the other Explorer and I had a good laugh about it and then he continued on his way.

It's a funny story and I often think fondly back at it because now it reminds me of some sort of scene in an Adam Sandler 80s themed movie.

Those days were awesome!

Disney Confirms "Other" Star Wars Films!

A movie I may have.

Okay, if you are a fan of Star Wars (like I am) then you will be interested to know that Disney and Lucasfilms has officially confirmed that there will be stand alone films that are not part of the new Trilogy coming soon.  What does this mean?

Okay, we all know that Episode VII is coming in 2015 with Episodes VIII and IX coming shortly after that. This will, most likely, follow the family Skywalker the same as Episodes I through VI. That much has been (pretty much) established though no real plot details of the new trilogy have been revealed..