Blogs - jostfa18

hey sorry everybody for dropping off the map for a while, I am still arduously studying for my last courses in order to graduate from my university, I also started a new job as a web designer for a design company, and in the middle of all this I had to move to a new city and set up. I'm almost settled back in to the routine of things now so I'll try to start posting and bringing back babbage and stuff ASAP. I apologize for leaving people hangin' I just have to finish this degree (after 4 years its almost over!!!) and I'm on the home stretch. Wish me luck exams are July 30th.

A ray of the rising sun,
glints across the red paint of the crummy car,
in tune with the trilling of the sparrows,
and the quiet crunch of a schoolchild's step,

He drags himself sleepily,
Over and over the empty parking lot,
on his way to a corner and a bus stop,
Not thinking - but doing as his mother told,

A distant tower tolls its bell to the coming hour,
the dark-skinned child squints and shifts into the buildings shadow,
and there he waits hiding in the darkness,
for the arrival of a faded yellow school bus.

muchos dicen k este grupo solo tiene una cancion buena - el sensei, pero de verdad pueden tocar, acabo de escuchar a dos bonus tracks de ellos, y hay un ritmo de vida un sueño tragico en los sonidos, pero re bien... escuche a el sensei por supuesto, y me trajo recuerdos del tiempo que lleve en ese pais tan lindo. la cancion dura como 10 minutos pero aqui estan algunas de las letras
ahi es cuando todos lo miran a el,
el que mejor sabe gambetear la ley, al
que todos en el barrio llaman el sensei,
vos sabes, vos sabes. (ay el vos re argentino)
si te interesan se puede encontrar los tracks aqui www.pastillasdelabuelo.com.ar/pastillas03.html

The Museum of Innocence is a novel that engages on a multitude of levels
while allowing the reader to sort of freely shift from one conceptual
rendezvous to the next and perhaps even to ignore others without losing grasp
of core thematic elements that are in their crafting absolutely not didactic
and therefore more dependent upon the reflections and suppositions made by the
reader within the book itself. At first glance, the novel seems to be
explicative, exploring the turmoils of a country and its people in transition
by putting on display the juxtaposition of the old tradition and the new, hip,
westernization process that is seeping in at all levels of the society, and
then by describing specific conflicts and contradictions that arise out of this
desire towards modernization. The guiding hand behind this explorative process
is structure, style, and usage of words by the narrator and the manner in which
these jam images and concepts into the mind, and here it is that The
Museum of Innocence is somewhat, though
only in comparison with other magnificent aspects of itself, lacking. This is
not to say that stylistically Pamuk does not command an extreme eloquence and
vitality within his prose, but rather that his construction of the novel
creates very few expectations to be resolved in any way. With the exception of
the desire for a resolution between Kemal and Füsun there is not really another
major motivational force to guide the narrative to the end. His prose, though
vivid, is at times too verbose and illustrates the world within (Kemal) and
without (70’s Turkey) so richly yet at a narrative level so stagnantly for much
of the book that at times it is difficult to maintain interest. It is in the
day to noneventful day discriptons that the reader can become lost, especially
over the roughly 200 pages in which Kemal wallows in sorrow and laments his
situation.

This is, however, my only complaint
and perhaps it is necessary in order that the reader may acquire an
understanding for the predicament of Kemal, a character detached from the world
by his status, so saturated with internal conflict because of the tumult
between his responsiblities and his wishes, his own demeanor, and the inability
to consumate the desires which he cannot control. Initially, he is a happy
individual. He is engaged to Sibel, he is wealthy, and seems to be contented
with the meaning he has found for his life, but then enters Füsun, and
everything changes.When, after the engagement party, the affair with Füsun ends
Kemal is left with a conflict between desire, responsibility, and possibility
that plagues him throughout the rest of the novel. Is his domination of Füsun
and inability to acquiesce to her wishes to become a star, an overt attempt to
satisfy his greedy human nature or is it the result a man following his
emotions, and keeping the one he loves from being kissed by another? The
conflict within his own character, the inability to think rationally by
rejecting his emotions, the power he finds in a nonlinear conceptualization of
time, and the consolation and escapism endowed through the memories contained
within objects, all develope the character of a man in search of meaning, which
is a trait with which I believe we all can empathize. Kemal ultimately kills
Füsun one could say by forcing her into a state of hopelessness and dispair
that drives her to act, but then doesn’t she actually kill herself and attempt
to murder him in the process, and could it not have been that Kemal
misinterpreted signals that she had given him and misread the degree to which
she desired to become an actress? Is not life permeated with misperceptions and
incapability of people to truly understand one another?

For the extent to which the novel
forces one into reflection upon the intricacies and interrelationships of life
at its core while never, to my knowledge, being near as moralistic or didactic
as many works that attempt such greatness I found The Museum of Innocence to be a most fascinating foray into the sublime of
the romanticist manifest within the consciousness of one man, who’s
interactions and contemplations could be interpreted as representative of an
entire society or just the reader, or just love, or just some place in time. It
is evocative of thought and recollection and beautifully portrays the concept
of subjective stories lying behind all the objects we see and the infinity of
worlds availble to our fingertips were we to, like Kemal, committ ourselves a
little more to an engagement with our surroundings and the search for meaning.

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Having concentrated myself predominately on the art mediums of literature and music, I find myself questioning the ostensible lack of philosophical depth ascribed to gaming in general. Why is it that though games have for at least a decade been capable of achieving almost any visual or narrative goal that they have still not established themselves as a means for the realization of art that fundamentally speaks to the human condition. For me. the catalyst for framing a range of free thought within the reader is the effort that the reader must bring to the process, the literaly perception and interpretation of the words stringed out upon the page. This interactive process. that is the degree to which the audience can participate and also dictate the outcomes of an experience, is only heightened in gaming as opposed to other mediums. So why is it then that this feature of the gaming process is realitively unheralded, its ability to collocate all forms of known media from radio, film, literature, and stage, almagamate them and utilize them and its propensity for envolving the player and forcing him to invest a large extent of his mental state into the reality of the game. I would welcome anyone who could point me to a game that envolved the player to a degree that he invested a part of himself with the only additional requirement being that the player after having completed or during the process of playing the game was forced to reflect, juxtapose, or in any way contemplate his own reality apart from the gaming world, a facit, in my opinion, harking back to all great works of literature and present in acclaimed authors such as James Joyce, Shakespeare, Miltion, or Cervantes. Note: the game doesn't have to be didactic in fact, I think this method of literature employed heavily by Miltion but also to a certain degree other authors as well, actually detracts from the audience (ie player, reader, etc. according to the medium) ability to roam in this "framed space of reflection"
- If none of this made sense I apologize, articulating my abstract thoughts has always been a severe problem for me, perhaps at a later date and as (hopefully) someone refutes my assertion that games are not "living up to their potential" as catalyst for intellectual thought, reflection, and hence possiblity for equality amoung other established art forms, I will be able to clarify my concepts of "framed space" etc. please respond with any thoughts of your own as pertaining to this subject as well..

So I've previously been a Max and Maya guy, but in the span of two years it seems that Autodesk has bought up Maya and Softimage, and elimenated the great Learners Edition that Maya used to put out, unless I'm horribly mistaken which could be the case, luckily I was able to find the modder's edition of Softimage and today was my first day using it, and I must say, even though I came in thinking that it could in no way measure up to Maya, I was pleasantly surprised, the navigation features where slick especially the camera angle save feature that allows you to quickly jump between previous camera views. Another feature that really impressed me was the realitive ease with which one can jump between editing vertexes (excuse me I mean "points"), polygons, and edges, overall I would have to say that the navigation was just as slick as Maya's, I just need to play with it somemore to hammer in those shortcuts and ramp up the speed of my work process. Overall, the navigation controls get 5 stars (or 10.0, whatever a standard perfect would be). That's it for Day 1