I've mentioned before on here that I work on independent films with a group called Castparty Productions. One thing that we do that is fun is enter weekend film contests. The idea is that you're given a very short amount of time to create a short film from start to finish. Last fall we entered one called the National Film Challenge. We were given the genre of fantasy and we made a film called Unimpressed that apparently did impress. It won two awards in the nation wide contest. First, it got the award for best use of the genre fantasy. The second is that it got the award for best special effects! Now since I did all of the special effects, this one means a lot to me. It was a lot of work to get it all done in time, but it's nice to know that people noticed. So, check out the film, and let me know what you think!
When I was 4 my dad brought home a Timex Synclair computer. It was a tiny thing that plugged into a black and white tv instead of a monitor and used a tape recorder to save files. Software came in book form and you had to type it in yourself. That's when I learned how to program. A couple years later, we upgraded to a Commador 64. This time we had a disk drive and could actually purchase software on disk, but we would still make our own programs too. Sometimes we'd take programs from books and edit them to be the way we wanted (like changing a boxing game into a wrestling game) or sometimes we just made them up completely. Eventually, we got our first PC, a tandy 1200. It had a 10 meg hard drive and 256 kb of ram. I kept making programs, mostly trying to make video games. I made some text adventures, and eventually started using some simple graphics. My goal at the time was to go into making videogames as a carreer.
When I was in 10th grade I had the junior varsity basketball coach as an algebra 2 teacher. He was a complete asshole and I ended up dropping the class just to get away from him. The ironic part is that I was one of the few students at that school that was actualy planning on using algebra after highschool. So, I looked at my schedule and band was the only other class I enjoyed. Oddly enough, that was a big part of why I chose to focus on music as a carreer. Years later, I went to Berklee, the largest music school in the world. And now I'm playing in the kind of band I always wanted to play in and making the kind of music I always wanted to make.
But, things have a way of coming full circle. Lately I've been getting back into programming. I started a couple years ago with Visual Basic since it was the most similar to what I grew up with. That's what I used to make my Delay Time Calculator that's on my website (www.kevinhammer.com). When I got into Second Life, I started to learn it's own built in scripting language LSL and I used that to create a game called Slatrix (it's not done yet, but you can see some images of it at www.slatrix.com). Lately I've been using a program called Game Editor to make a game for Windows Mobile devices. That way I can play it on my cell phone. It uses C for programming, which is pretty similar to how LSL is laid out, so it wasn't too hard to pick up. Anyway, while I'm still working on those, I've started to learn C Sharp programming lately. It's a lot like what I've already been using to make those games, but it does a lot more, and there's tons of online resources to learn from, so I should have it down pretty soon.
It's just weird how after all these years, I'm back to programming again.
Well, I haven't been on vacation in a while, not since Aruba over a year ago. It's weird to think it's been a year already. For thanksgiving we went to Texas. It was nice, I got to see some family that I haven't seen in a long time, and some family that I've never seen. It also gave Kathy a chance to meet more of my family. It was a nice vacation overall, I wish it could have been longer though. Oh well, back to life as usual....
In a couple of days, it will be the 1 year anniversary of my wedding day! I just wanted to say that now since I'll probably be too busy to say it then. :)
I run the myspace site for the band I'm in, Infinity Minus One. We've got over 33,000 friends at this point, and so we get a lot of spam in our comments section. We'll usually get the same ones over and over from different people. I don't know if their profiles are being hacked or what, but it's annoying. We usually get the same few: Starbucks cards, Iphones, Penis enlargement, and Victoria's Secret. For some reason, these are the ones that keep popping up. I don't care much for spam, and when I get spammed about a product I generaly tend to avoid it.
Anyway, it's easter weekend, and today we are getting hit by a bunch of jesus spam. Instead of pictures of the damn iphone it's some "inspirational" drawing of hands or something with bible verses. I don't know what this means, but I think it's interesting and I thought I'd share it. I have to admit it is ammusing to see it sandwiched between penis enlargement and naughty undies.
A stunning upset to overzealous environmentalists of the world, but a grand victory for people with actual common sence.
In my last post I talked about a baby polar bear that animal rights activists wanted to kill for some random uber hippie reason (I just can't understand the mentality of those people). Well, it turns out that the management of the german zoo where this was all taking place pretty much ignored the environmentalists and they're letting the bear live (Why can't we be more like that here?)
More hippie rants
Current mood: confused
Category: News and Politics
Ok, this one has me confused...
Last time I ranted about hippies (and as was pointed out by my highschool pal who is currently exploring Turkey, I was only ranting about the miiltent psycho hippies, not the peace and love hippies) it was about animal rights activists who wanted to kill people. Now that pissed me off, but at least it made a weird sort of sence. They like animals more than people, so they want to kill people to save animals. Morbid, but at least logical.
This is a story about animal rights activists who want to kill a polar bear. I know, it doesn't make any sence to me either. Their argument is that the bear would have died if humans hadn't saved it, so it's only fair that it should be dead. That's like saying any animal that goes to the vet should be put to sleep. I don't get it. I thought these people liked animals? I thought they really really like endangered animals? Now they want to kill a polar bear? If they do go ahead and kill it, do you think they can atleast turn it into a burger and a fuzzy hat? ;)
Anyway, in conclusion, animal rights activists are all morons and shouldn't be permitted to breed.
Ok ok, I know it's been a while since my last posting, but life has been busy. I meant to post a new blog in early January as a new year update, but I didn't get around to it. So, instead I decided to post one now and call it the Chinese new year update. So anyway, what have I been up to?
Well, first of all…
I got married!
On Saturday October 14th, Kathy and I tied the knot and became man and wife (all together now: Awwwwww!)
We took an amazing honeymoon in Aruba. It was so great! Just lounging on the beach, sipping margaritas at the swim up pool bar, sleeping late, and just all around enjoying not being rushed and scheduled.
After that, it was the holidays, always something to do. We had the usual parties and presents. New year was spent at home, just Kathy and me snuggled up with some champagne and Chinese food (see, back to Chinese and new year again)
On the 18th of January I hit 30. Kathy threw me a great surprise party, I didn't know I even knew that many people!
I started a new business venture. I opened up a chain of shops selling animation in a virtual world called Second Life. If you know about Second Life, log in and search for Hammer Animation. If you aren't, go to www.secondlife.com and sign up!
Infernal Machine, the first full length album from Infinity Minus One is complete. The entire thing can be downloaded (99 cents a track) from http://www.myspace.com/imoboston and the CD version will be available to order soon.
I'm sure there is more that I am leaving out, but if I don't post this now it might be months before I get around to it again!
Infinity Minus One is excited to announce the addition of its newest member Chris Munton on drums! Chris has been creating music since he was 11 and brings his talents to the group to help expand Infinity Minus One's sound moving forward. Look for him onstage soon with Infinity Minus One supporting the upcoming album Infernal Machine.
amused
confused