James Paige

Current mood: bold

Today I watched a pirate copy of Final Fantasy Advent Children. I won’t provide any spoilers (you can find those yourself easily enough if you want), but I will say that I enjoyed it, and if it ever makes its way to US theaters, I will revel in the opportunity to see it on a big screen. I also intend to drag Non-Final-Fantasy-Fans with me to see it, as I am really curious how people who don’t already know the characters will take it. I don’t believe the story will be confusing to people who have never played the game, but I do wonder how people will react to the large cast of strange characters who appear suddenly with little or no introduction.

The english fansub was difficult to find, and I had to use VLC to view it with subtitles, because mplayer couldn’t do it. The fansub was very high quality. A testament to the skill of volunteer translators.

That reminded me of something I had seen recently, an example of a remarkably bad fansub; of Star Wars Episode III. Apparently somebody made a literal english translation of a Chinese sub, with hilarious results. Visit: http://www.winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html for screenshots of episode iii, the backstroke of the west

You cannot miss such fantastic lines as:

Obi-Wan: “Like, reach the man, Good good good let us counter-attacking”

Anakin: “Giving first aid the already disheveled hair projection”

Palpatine: “Then his land killed him to let him go to bed”

or my personal favorite:

Anakin: “I was just made by the Presbyterian Church”

Current mood: triple

The third eye is a symbol of enlightenment.
The third eye is a mark of inner vision.
The third eye is a center of chakra.
The third eye can see things that mortal eyes miss.
The third eye never blinks.
Third Eye Blind is a band.
The third eye can shoot deadly red lasers.
Glasses for the third eye are hella expensive…
…because the frames have to be special-ordered.
It is best to just buy two pairs of contact lenses…
…and throw away the extra one.
or keep it as a spare, whatever.
You don’t have to throw it away.

Current mood: more cowbell!

I used again the same raster-to-vector-to-raster method that I was experimenting on with the Sexy Pirate. Again I am amazed at how much detail is lost in the process, but the finished result looks better than what I would have ended up with if I had tried to leave in all the detail– most of the detail that was lost was scratches, smudges, and paper texture.

What I did differently this time was to add back a bit of that texture afterwards. Using The Gimp‘s image transfer brush, I copied over the texture on the bell. The light sketches on the bell were obliterated by the 1-bit pixelation step, but I liked them too much to lose them.

Now you want to know something interesting? I didn’t realize I was doing it, but just now as I was posting these pictures, I noticed that Belle’s pose here is highly similar to the pose of the Sexy Pirate.Here they are side-by-side with lines drawn over the major axises of aestetic balance. The shapes are very similar. I wonder why I did that? At the time when I drew the pencil-art for this, I had no awareness at all of the similarity.

Current mood: Ruefull

I must confess…

I have done a terrible thing, and I humble myself here before God and man and myspace to try and make amends. Last night, my friend Ryda was playing a game of Freecell on my computer, and I carelessly rebooted the computer, not thinking for a moment about the consequences. Those dreadful consequences! Yes, it is true. Her half-finished Freecell game was lost! Lost forever!

*hangs head and crys*

Not being a Freecell player myself, I failed to understand the deep emotional attachment that a true Freecell player feels towards each and every game they play. It is a spiritual bond. A connection of the hearts (spades, etcetera). I severed this bond without mercy, and for this I deserve scorn. Yes, scorn!

Every time a Freecell player clicks to deal a new deck, it is like they fall in love. And each card they drag, each card they drop, is like the joys and travails, the successes and the failures of life itself. And each time they win a game, it is a mixture of profound satisfaction mixed with bittersweet sorrow at the parting of a beloved friend. This is the game that I interrupted. I am filled with shame. Ryda has played many games of Freecell before, and she will doubtless play many more to come, but that one game shall never be finished. That one game will never have closure. It will forever be a Freecell-shaped scar on Ryda’s soul, and I fear there is nothing I can ver do to heal it.

Forgive me Ryda, I beg of you! Forgive me!

---

The King of Diamonds Sez: