The Life and Times of Paul Geromini

My Second AMV

After much effort I have completed a second AMV which can be seen here. I am very happy with
how it turned out as it was accepted as a finalist at Anime Boston
2017 in the other category. This is the most success any of my video projects have had. Just like those
two other projects I want to give a brief overview of why I used the anime and
music I did along with a couple comments on particular scenes.

Music and Anime I found the music first. During
the time between Christmas and New Years I worked from home for a week and I
was listening to a bunch of music. I started listening to The DoubleClicks as I had head them at
Pax East 2016. When I heard the song I ended up using: Can’t You See
the World is Ending, I knew right away this was going to work with an
actiony anime. At first I thought I might make another Legend of the Galactic
Heroes (LOGH) AMV like I did with my first one. Reinhard would be the focus and
there would be a lot more action. I scrapped that idea because this song has
more of a high school/young adult vibe and as much as I want LOGH to become
more popular, I am not sure I alone can carry that torch. Then I thought of
using Nadesico since
that has more of a lighter vibe benefiting this song and I want more people to
watch this show too. I was not sold on the idea though and I did a brief search
to see if another anime fit the bill better. Then I remembered Saikano and it just fit right away.
It was just a nice bonus that the show is not in vogue anymore.

Editing Before I started editing I had a lot of
difficulty getting quality source material. Saikano has never had a blu-ray
release and the actual animation quality is just ok. That did not stop me from
spending a lot of time with conversion tools (mostly handbrake) trying to get the best I could. The end
result is functional, but certainly not as good as I would like. A big take
away for me in the future is to secure better source material before becoming
married to an idea.

For the editing process I used Sony Vegas. Here is what the finished project
looks like:

When I start I lay the music track down first, then I put notes (those
orange flags) around lyrics I want to get specific clips for. For example when
the song reaches “try to stop the bombs” I want to put a clip of bombs falling.
It is pretty basic, but it helps me keep things organized. Then I have a couple
video tracks. 1. The main “AMV” track which will be the final video 2. A track
above that for “Clips” so I can easily swap clips in and out that I want to
try. You can think of this as alternative cuts. 3. A number of “Effect” tracks
which holds things like text I want to overlay. I had a lot of more of these
effects than any video I have done before. I am sure there is a more clever of
way instead of using multiple tracks, but this is easy to do and what I was
doing was not super complicated so I ran with it.

Once that is all setup I just trolled through the episodes to find clips I
wanted to use. I would bring the whole episode into Vegas and I would scan it
quickly (say 2x-3x speed). I had a good sense of what I wanted to see, so when
I saw a clip I liked I would cut it from the episode and place it roughly where
I wanted. I did this with all 13 episodes (ignoring the OVAs). After I went
through all the episodes I had a lot of clips in rough position. I refined
things from there, going back to get more clips when I needed. After that I
added a few effects with some text and I was finished.

To render I create a new template with the technical specifications Anime
Boston wants and I make an RC or release candidate. From there I send the video
out to a select review group for comments (Mr. Skehill of the inimitable
Quixotic United and my sister). I get
comments from them and make various RCs until I am happy. That final RC becomes
a release and I submit that video. This is a rough imitation of the software release
life cycle.

Scene Breakdown I have a couple comments on
various parts of the AMV . You can think of this as a textual director’s
commentary.

00:00-00:08: This is the part of the AMV I am least happy about. I was never
sure what to put here and this just ends up feeling like wasted space.
Originally I had put a bunch of establishing shots of buildings and
countryside, but that was pretty boring. At least opening with a bunch of
crying shots gets your attention.

00:17-00:00:20: These are flashbacks in the anime so they have a hazy
border. It has the effect of making the animation quality look even worse, but
I really wanted to use these scenes so I figured it was worth it.

00:26: It took me forever to find a clip that worked here.

00:32-00:34: I like the dichotomy of these two clips a lot and that vibe is
what I try to hit throughout the AMV. The main drive of the song is everyone is
acting normal in an abnormal situation so I wanted to highlight that wherever I
could. The one drawback here is it spoils a bit of the surprise later on when
we see her with the Gatling gun (0:53).

0:53-0:55: I think this scene works particularly well. It lines up with the
song, it is pretty snappy with all the cuts, and the contrast between the
destruction in the background and her being the hero is just right.

0:55-0:56: There is actually not a lot of action scenes in this series, with
most of them coming from episode 1. Lucky there are enough clips for this AMV,
but most of the actiony shots come from this episode and episode 13.

1:00: I went back and forth on actually showing people eating food when the
song mentions it. I did not have anything better to use, but I wish I did.
Mostly it just seems lazy to show food when the song mentions it.

1:06. This is the first effect I used. It is just text, but I had to cover
up what is actually shown on the pager with a block of color. It is basic, but
it gets the message across. Looking at it now, I think the text should be more
digital.

1:15-1:16: Best part of the AMV in my opinion. Happy trumpets with a sad
violent clip.

1:29-1:30: This is a subtle effect. Chise (the standing character) actually
talks in this scene, but it was distracting to see. I effectively froze part of
this clip so we could see the animation around the exclamation points, but not
her talking.

1:42-1:43: Those familiar with the series will see Chise shopping here which
is not congruent with the song. In the song Chise is effectively the singer so
she would not be shopping, but her friends would be. That said it goes by quick
so I do not think it would upset many people. There was also no other shopping
clip to use.

1:56: I do not know what the Japanese says here.

2:01-2:02: The most complicated part of the AMV. Basically I repeated the
effect from 1:06, but I had to animate both the text and the color block to
move with the pager. It took a long time, but I think it syncs up quite well. I
also like the humor of mentioning the AMV title here. Interestingly, I came up
with this hashtag first and then I liked it so much I used it as the title.

2:25- 2:26: Ok, this might be more complicated than before. Effectively, I
had to cut out part of the clip with the TV, and then overlay the hamster dance
video where the cut out is. The tricky part is a character is moving right next
to the TV so with each movement I had to change the part I cut out (the mask)
so it would look consistent. On close inspection it does not look amazing, but
perfect is the enemy of good so I moved on.

2:33: This is the second part of the scene from 1:15.

2:49-2:50: I actually uploaded the clip I wanted to show here to youtube and then screen recorded it to get
the youtube controls. I then inserted that clip on top of a TV from the anime.
The effect is nice and it is a bit of an inside joke if you can see the title
and are familiar with the anime. On reflection I think I should have filled the
screen with the youtube clip and not bothered putting it on a TV.

3:00-3:04: Originally I had a clip where Shuji (the guy at 0:09) was crushed
by a giant wave, but I got feedback that a scene like this would work better
and I agreed.

Conclusion Overall, I like how things turned
out, but there are a few scenes I would tweak. Big picture, I think this AMV
was hobbled by the source quality. I should be a bit more sure about what I
have available to work with before I get too involved. Interestingly, the next
project I am working on I have just about absolute control over. Look for that
around July when Connecticon happens.

Four Years Later

It generally takes three times for the normal mind to understand something.
The first sign I got was seeing my senior coworker having part of his cube in
boxes, the second sign was having another coworker come by and shake my hand
saying, “it had been great to work together”, and the third sign was my new,
one on one meeting at 10:15. This is what it is liked to be laid off (although
I prefer the more humorous “budget actioned”). That was March 7, 2016 for me.
It was the end of a (just about) four year period of employment, my first
post-school job. I want to take the time, now a week or so later, to describe
what I actually did for four years. I want to give the highlights, the
lowlights, what I thought we did wrong and what I thought we did right. I will
preface this all by saying I harbor no ill will towards anyone I worked with or
Oracle itself. Oracle always treated me fairly, I am just sad it never worked
out for them.

May 28 2013 My first day of work. The week immediately
after Anime Boston. It was going to be the 27th, but that was a holiday
(Memorial Day). I was horribly late, the latest I ever was in my four years
there. I left early, but spent ages in bumper to bumper traffic. I called in to
let them know I was going to be late, but I was still majorly embarrassed.
After getting in late I was rapidly given a bunch of documents and a cube. As I
was getting setup in my cube, I remember opening the bottom drawer of my filing
cabinet and finding three liquor bottles in it. It was nice liquor too. I told
my coworker and he secreted it away never to be seen again. The rest of the day
I sat in a HR conference call. I would be the last legacy TEKELEC hire before
the company was completely Oraclized.

July 2013 My first real assignment. Before then I had been
familiarizing myself with the code, trying things out, going to meetings to
learn our process. Now I had my first real piece of work to do: S9. You can
read more about S9
here. I was responsible for everything: GUI and backend. I would work on
this for the next few months. It would never ship as the customer who wanted it
never actually wanted it. Company wise, everyone was stoked that Oracle was
going to keep our office in Marlborough and not have us commute to
Burlington.

November 2013 I am a bit hazy about this point, but at some
point I finished S9 and moved to building the “Subscriber Activity Log”. A
feature that allowed a customer to track a subscriber as the subscriber’s calls
flowed through the system. You can read about this in the 11.5 release notes
as it actually shipped.

December 2013 My first company Christmas party. We go and
watch: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug at the IMAX in Jordan’s furniture.
It was good, but my boss was mad it ended on a cliffhanger, so we went back
next year to see the final film. I remember spending a long time in traffic
trying to leave that area.

January 2014 Again, I am bit unsure when this happened, but
at some point I finished up “Subscriber Activity Log” and was moved to a new
project: MPG. The Mobile Policy Gateway (MPG) was a project to develop a device
that would deploy policies to a customers phone. One of the big use cases was a
provider could offload certain customers onto wifi if the load in an area was
too great. I would work on this for nine months, but it would never ship and it
would ultimately be cancelled. Company wise, things are going great. We are
making good money and selling a lot of product.

September 2014 NGCMP, our replacement for our current
configuration management platform (CMP) begins. I am project lead and I start
investigating new technologies. My first challenge is to pick between OJET and
LUX, two competing JS GUI libraries. I end up picking OJET, which
you can use today if you want. Weekly Wednesday calls with the offsite groups
(Bangalore and Nanjing) start. I went to JavaOne at the end of the month and
got this great photo:

I wrote more about that trip here.

November 2014 My first raise and bonus! I live the good
life. The NGCMP is starting to grow as other people finish up the projects they
are working on and get assigned to it. NGCMP starts driving major reforms
around how we do work. Code reviews are formalized, code quality tools like
SonarQube start to come into play, and we get serious about unit and robot
testing.

December 2014 Second company holiday party! We see the last
Hobbit film in IMAX. It is ok, but not worth sticking through the traffic in
that area.

February 2015 I miss most of the super bowl (I hear about
the Patriots winning during the flight) as I travel to India to meet the team
in Bangalore. I stay for a few days. I
wrote about this trip back then.

March 2015-May 2016 Nothing of real note happens during
this period. I do get a raise, and we continued to make a lot of progress on
NGCMP. Customer demos are being planned at this point. NGCMP itself is in an ok
place. It has a lot of functionality, but a number of bugs. I produce the
greatest Star Trek TNG parody video during this time. It was a demo
highlight.

June 2016 Things are not going well for our business unit.
We have our first layoff. Management talks about pivoting to a cloud based
deployment. NGCMP gets “paused”. We no longer want to build a product that does
exactly what our legacy product did, we want to build something for a cloud
based customer. TREC is born and we pivot to new use cases.

October 14 2016 I close on my first house as more people get laid off
the same day. This would start a gradual local attrition of talent.

March 7 2016 Judgement day. I along with 90% of the office
get budget actioned. Layoffs are around 200 for my business unit. The Bangalore
team gets assigned to different projects and the Nanjing team gets reassigned
back to the legacy CMP product. TREC presumably dies as there is no one
assigned to work on it. The show ends.

That is the whole story. I really think things started to go wrong when
Oracle panicked and moved us to the “cloud”. It never made sense how we were
going to make money in that area and we certainly could not produce a viable
product for another year at least. In the end, I think Oracle could not take
the losses it was taking so it bailed. Ultimately it was a pretty good ride. I
had a lot of fun, made money, and learned a lot. It is just a shame it never
worked out.

Home

Finally!

It may have taken some time, but I finally have my own tiny slice of middle
class pie in the form of a house. And not just a house, but land, and trees,
and a strip of asphalt as a driveway. This is the end result of a long,
frustrating, vexing, and stressful process that began all the way back in 2014. A process resulting in 50
private house tours and open houses, thousands of real estate listings, and
countless sleepless nights. After all that hard work I ended up paying more
than I thought I would. I estimated it would cost me
$260,000 (with interest after the down payment), but in actually it will cost
me $310,000 (+ interest). A difference of $50,000 + interest. I also
underestimated my yearly houses costs by about $3,000 (estimated $5,500 with an
actual more around $20,000). The good news is I got exactly what I wanted
(garage, close to work, decent square footage, gas heat, quiet neighbor hood)
with only one draw back (an above ground pool).

Some Thoughts on the Process

1. The time of no financial obligations is over. I now have a very large
obligation (a mortgage for 30 years) and monthly bills of various forms. While
I hope to pay the mortgage off as quick as I can, monthly bills and quarterly
property tax payments are going to be no fun and will reduce the aggressive
savings plan I have had up to this point.

2. Dangerous financial waters ahead. While I do have some cushion to an
unexpected income loss (read job loss) I will be exposed for a bit to this
possibility. This will lesson with each paycheck, but it will always be a
possibility until the mortgage is paid and my investments start generating
enough money to live off of. That will be some time. A quick review of what
can happen if you do not pay is enough to keep me saving for those bills
and mortgage payments.

3. There are a lot of hungry mouths to feed when buying a home. Everyone
wants a cut of the action. The bank will add on a bunch of fees so you can take
out a mortgage, your lawyer has a fee to look over the agreements, the home
inspector wants a few dollars for every square foot he or she inspects. It can
be a little frustrating to see your hard earned green backs flowing out just so
you can buy a house, but they are providing a service, so it was not all a
waste.

4. A sense of melancholy. I had thought I would be very happy buying a
house, but for a few weeks or so I have felt pretty melancholy about the whole
affair. It is nice living very close work to work, and my friends and family
are only a 30 minute drive away, but something about living alone with all the
responsibilities that comes with that seems to be getting me down. I also have
very quickly changed my relationship with my parents. I am less child and more
family relation now. With time I think I will feel better, but it will take
some adjustment.

5. Heightened cost awareness. I am now very aware that I have to pay for
everything: food, electricity, heat. As such I have become hyper aware of
limiting when I can these costs. This is good for my bottom line, but perhaps
being so serious about turning lights on or off is of little importance in the
long term.

Ultimately, I am glad this has all been taken care of, but after exerting so
much time and effort what do I do now?

Convention Projects

Another Video Project

Just like last year I have
created another video for Connecticon.
This time, instead of an AMV, I made an FMV (fan music video). This translates
to using a live action video source instead of an anime one. Go on and give it
a gander. It may not
have won any awards, but I like it.

I approached this piece differently than my last one. At first I was
planning on making a far more simple video than before. The last one was very
drama/story focused and I wanted something a little less involved and easier to
grok. Something more actiony and less reliant on knowing the story of a
particular series. I already knew I wanted to use the song I went with after
remembering its use in Metropolis. As far as the
video source, I was not quite sure. I knew I needed something with a lot of
action, but I did not want to do something very well known (e.g. Attack on
Titan or Black Lagoon). I want my videos to not only be entertaining, but also
to highlight less known works. That is when I remembered Ran. This is not the most
obscure film, but it is not super well known or talked about either. Based on
the Shakespeare play, King Lear, it is about a Japanese warlord who divides his
kingdom amongst his three sons. Two of the sons betray the father who goes mad,
only to be rescued by his third son. It is an engaging film, with vibrant
colors, devastating battle scenes, and masterful direction by one of Japan’s
great filmmakers: Akira
Kurosawa.

Initially, I was thinking that just setting the battle scenes to music would
make a pretty good action entry. In preparation for making FMV, I printed out a
copy of the lyrics and rewatched the film, taking notes and marking time stamps
of scenes I wanted to use. As I started to string clips together I naturally
progressed to a more story focused video, like my last one. The actions scenes
did work well set to the music, but If I had used just those scenes for the
whole thing, I would be stretched thin clip-wise. Kurosawa is a skilled
director which means he is not one to linger for too long, so there is not a
whole lot to work with. That is when I started going for more of a storytelling
piece.

+Comments on Particular Scenes+

The cold opening (0:00-0:0:15): I really like the opening. Most AMVs/FMVs do
not do that. They just go straight into the music and video. I toyed with
making this part SUPER long because I like the idea of people sitting there
wondering what is going on, but I did not want people getting too bored. It is
a real fantastic scene from the movie and I just had to put it somewhere.

Start of the music (0:16) The dichotomy of the violent murder of the King’s
entourage and the feel good lyrics of the song is a really dissonant in a good
way, IMHO. It sets the tone early on that this is going to be a weird piece of
work, with the song and images constantly at odds.

Flashbacks(0:29-0:0:38) I wanted to put more in here, but there is very
little time in the song to allow for that. This does an acceptable job of
providing some back story, but it was a concern of mine that this would not be
enough. It is hard to judge how understandable the story is since the audience
is probably unfamiliar with the film, but I am intimately familiar.

King’s guard bleeding out(0:55) Again, the song and pictures should be at
war with each other. This is a scene I really like which highlights the
dichotomy at plan.

King picks flowers(2:41) I love this cut. The King is really happy (in a mad
way) in this scene, but it is totally at odds with the scene that came
before.

Son comes to king’s aid(2:59) It is a bit on the nose, since “Blue” in the
context of the song is really about the singer’s emotional state and less about
the color, but as Bob Ross would say, it is a “happy little accident” that this
scene lines up.

Son’s death(4:07) This is a tough one since it is not immediately obvious
what happened. In the movie all you hear is a gunshot from the distance,
context which is lost given all you hear is the music. I left it in since it
sets up the next two scenes, but I am not a huge fan of it. This is the real
struggle of making these videos: trying to convey meaning with the scenes you
have.

King’s death(4:10-4:12) A big peccadillo of mine is flapping lips or any
speech you cannot hear during an AMV or FMV. Unfortunately there is just no way
to cut this scene to avoid that. Yet, if I leave this scene out the funeral
procession next scene makes no sense.

That is it. It took about ~10 hours to do with minimal changes after I made
a first draft. This was a lot quicker than the last one, but I had a lot less
footage to work with and a much stronger theme. I hope you like it. I will try
again next year and see if I can get an award this time around.

Uncategorized

Three Years at Oracle

Today is the third year of my full time employment by Oracle. And with that
I say hello to Oracle’s one and only longevity perk: five more days of paid
time off a year. Jokes on them though because I rarely take it. Long time
readers of the blog will remember last year’s post on the subject and even longer
readers will remember my first
post about this

Let us review the year.

What Did I Learn This Year?

1. I am addicted to process. I hope to write more about this, but the short
of it is I find myself getting mired in why something happened and how we can
prevent it. Which is helpful in a small way, but in conflict with the guiding
principle of all workers: getting things done.

2. My patience is growing shorter along with my temper. It may just be a
function of the quantity of work we have left on the project I contribute to,
but I find myself with a shorter and shorter amount of patience each day. The
end result is terser conversations, less guiding hands, and more links to the
development guide.

3. I have a better, if still incomplete, sense of how large scale
applications are built. Before I understood only pieces of the whole. Now, with
another year of experience, I have a much broader and holistic view of the app.
The benefit here is knowing where to put code, not just what to put.

4. The money is in management, but the passion is in engineering. This is
the second year I have split my engineering time with management time.
Management is a lot harder. In some ways, this is frustrating as I much prefer
to be programming compared to making slide decks or charts. On the other hand,
helping keep three sites supplied with relevant work and pushing a project
forward is an interesting challenge. I am not ready to hang up my still shiny
programming spurs just yet, but I understand now why managers make more money
than the people they manage.

What Am I Looking To Explore This Year?

1. Different conventions. Last year we went to DragonCon for this first time
and it was awesome. I want to broaden our horizons and check out some other,
perhaps further away conventions.

2. My investments. I made steady progress this year increasing my
investments. I continue to work with Betterment and I have happily broken the five
figure mark. It is that sixth figure that will be my next challenge. It is hard
to say how much this is helping my ultimate plan, but it certainly
is the right path.

3. Small film projects. Last year I
made my first AMV which was quite fun, but simplistic. I want to try and
make a few more things this year, AMV or otherwise.

4. Improve my technical skills. Like every year, and like every programmer,
I must continue to improve my technical skills. This year, I am less interested
in the technology and more interested in the design or architecture. To be
sure, I must continue to learn the tools I have at my disposal, but using tools
without purpose is inefficient. I must concentrate on learning how to build
large scale apps so that I can be judicious about the code I write (or need to
write at this point).

Things I Failed at This Year

1. Buying a house. For a second year I remain houseless. This is causing me
increasing consternation, but I remain committed to this campaign. It just may
be I will not find the house that meets my exacting specifications so I must
learn to compromise on some parts or be without home for a very long time.

2. Car maintenance. My car runs fine, and I do change the oil when I should,
but I cannot dodge the feeling that I should be doing more. Everything is still
working, but I feel like I am missing something and it will all fall apart on
me. For sure, the brakes will need to be replaced soon, but how soon is the
part that is vexing me.

3. Writing more for the blog. There are a number of topics I want to
pontificate on, I just need to settle down and get writing.

Uncategorized

The Little Death

I have been growing the neck beard out lately, much to the chagrin of people
who know me. I must confess it does look awful, all scraggly and unkempt. Some
people grow nice full beards, but all mine ever seems to do is grow down, not
out. Still, I have got to make out for my losses up top somehow. I do this
about once a year, partly to see if it looks better (it never does), but mostly
just to prove a point to myself: that I still am myself and not what others
want me to be.

To be a part of a society is to conform to that society. To uphold a common
set of rules and standards. In many ways this is a good thing, you probably
would not like to live next to someone who thought arson was ok. This gives
rise to the good side of society: our laws. There is an inverse side though, an
insidious side: the drive to create automata. Automata (singular automaton), as
Wikipedia defines, is “a
self-operating machine, or a machine or control mechanism designed to follow
automatically a predetermined sequence of operations, or respond to
predetermined instructions”. What is an automaton as it relates to a person
though? It is a person who has lost their identity, who has become what society
expects of them. It is a person who gets married, has 2.5 kids while working 60
hours a week. It is a person who works 40 years and retires at 67, who owns a
house, likes football, and vacations once a year. Yet, despite how negative I
have made this all sound, there is nothing wrong with this if that is what you
want. Not surprisingly, If you were to look at the things I like (football),
and the the things I want (a house), you would see the automaton reflected in
me. Is that what I want or am I just playing along because that is what
everyone wants for me?

This is the the little death. It is the slow subjugation of yourself as you
integrate into a society. Each time you think to yourself, “Well, it is just
what people do.” or “That is what everyone else is doing.” a little part of
yourself dies. A unique piece of the multifaceted color of you goes gray. Make
no mistake, this is what some people who know you want. They want you to be
like them, they want you to like the things they like, to have the same goals,
the same aspirations. They are not evil for trying to do this, it is just their
nature. If that is what you to want, great, but if not, do not suffer that
little death.

So too do I often wonder if the things I like and want our my own wishes or
simply my desire to be part of society. How can I prove otherwise? How can I
prove I am my own man. Simple, do the things society shuns, do those things
that are frowned upon, relish the embarrassed laugh you get when you surprise a
person. Cherish that look of disgust and disappointment. This is not an excuse
to be a bad person, but an excuse to be you. So yes, my neck beard is awful,
but it proves I am me.

Uncategorized

Review: Star Trek Hidden Evil

Post author By cpuwhiz11
Post date February 9, 2016
No Comments on Review: Star Trek Hidden Evil

Star Trek has never had the video game pedigree other Sci-Fi properties,
like Star Wars or Warhammer 40k, have enjoyed. For every well received Elite
Force or Bridge
Commander there are a dozen more Away Team and Borg waiting in the Briar
Patch. Sadly, Hidden Evil, a 1999
Presto Studios game, joins this unremarkable bunch. It is short, difficult to
control, and forgettable.

Story

You may be forgiven for forgetting the great contribution Insurrection made
to the Star Trek canon. A film in which the best scene involves Data acting like a life preserver. To
be fair there is probably a decent
episode’s worth of material in the film, maybe a two-parter. Yet it loses
its way somewhere between Picard and crew becoming leather clad action heroes
and the enterprise being maneuvered by a joystick. Thus, it may surprise you to
realize this game is a sequel to that masterpiece. Our main character is Ensign
Sovok, a human raised by Vulcans. He joins Picard and Data on the planet of the
film to investigate a hitherto undiscovered alien artifact the Son’a and Ba’ku
found while constructing a colony. There is not much story to ruin as the game
is quite short, but suffice to say the Son’a still do not like the peace loving
Ba’ku, Romulans are evil, and the alien artifact is actually really dangerous.
It ends up being pretty well traveled territory, both by Star Trek’s and other
show’s standards. It is enough to move the plot along, but it will never
surprise you.

Gameplay

This is not an action game, despite what the publisher’s screenshots may
tell you. This is an adventure game in the same vein as Grim Fandango. Walk
around, collect items, solve some light puzzles, move the story forward, etc.
Fans of Fandango will find a similar awkward control scheme at work here. Sovok
controls much like that of a high schooler’s car: poor maneuverability, slow
acceleration, and no speed. This is a troubling foundation on which to base a
game that requires a fair amount of phaser shooting. There is some light
auto-aiming going on, but you still have to slowly rotate to face enemies. Your
best tactic is running in circles until they miss then trying to get a quick
shot off. This is if you can remember the key to select your phaser. All your
equipment (tricorder, communications badge, phaser, nerve pinch!) is accessed
via the number keys. This is functional, but every time I wanted to get at an
item I hit the wrong button. Most of these items end up being useless anyways,
occasionally you have to scan the environment, but it rarely tells you anything
interesting. Nerve pinch sounds cool, but it is ridiculously hard to get in the
right position to use it, and the enemy has to be unaware for it to work. Most
of the time you will be blasting away with your phaser. Occasionally you can
pick up a hypospray for healing or another equally powerful weapon, but for
most of the game what you start with is what you got.

Lengthwise You are looking at 9 missions, for about 5 hours of ok to
frustrating gameplay. Everything is pretty easy, except for the last two
missions which have you navigating corridors that look very similar. With no
minimap except for the weak imposter they use with the tricorder in the last
mission. Most of your time in these last two missions will be spent trying to
remember what is where.

Graphics

An unexpected high point. Despite being released in 1999, the game looks
pretty decent. Backgrounds are static in the style of Myst and are suitably
detailed. Actual characters and objects are 3d models which, though rough, are
pretty good for the time in terms of detail and animation. It is a bit of
mishmash putting 3d characters in 2d paintings, but it works.

Music, Sound Effects, and Voice Work

Nothing egregious here, Christopher Gorham, voice actor for Sovok gives an
unremarkable performance, backed up Patrick Stewart (Picard) and Brent Spiner
(Data). The actual plot does not give them much to work with, but you will not
be clawing your ears out either. The music is forgettable, but all the sound
effects from TNG are faithfully replicated. Phasers and transporters sound like
you would expect.

Summary

Overall, its a short game that is occasionally frustrating, but has a
decently moving story and some of your favorite TNG characters. I give it 5 Lt.
Cmdr. Datas out of 3 Stargazers.

Notes

1. If you are going to play this, I recommend this walkthrough. 2. This game
does run on Windows 7, but you must install the packaged version of Quicktime
player and install a NoCd crack. It also helps to run it in Windows 95
compatibility mode. 3. There is no quicksave, it was a 90s thing.

Musings SciFi

The Doctor Who Problem

Doctor Who is back for a new season and having seen the latest two episodes
it is right back to having the same problems that have dogged the new series
for years. Before we get into it, some background first. I do not claim to be a
super who fan. You will find plenty more knowledgeable folks than I. That said,
I have watched a number of the old serials, and all the new series, and there
is a distinct difference between the two. More than just the clunky special
effects the old series approached its stories and characters in a fundamentally
different way. Some spoilers incoming, so you have been warned.

Lets start by comparing the very first episode I saw of the classic series,
Pyramids of Mars,
to the most recent two episodes: The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s
Familiar. At the start of Pyramids of Mars an outside force surprises the
Doctor and his companion (Sarah) and the Doctor stops to investigate. They then
start to uncover a mystery while avoiding malevolent unstoppable mummies. It is
all very fun and engaging. In The Magician’s Apprentice in the first scene we
encounter a younger version of an antagonist to the Doctor. Then we spend the
next 30 minutes or so (in a 45 minute episode) trying to find where the Doctor
is and what he is up to. Everyone is all concerned about having him solve their
problems, or they want to talk to him about this and that. In my book, that is
a problem. The new series has always been focused on the Doctor. How he impacts
the worlds he goes to, his past, his motivations. The old series was never that
concerned. Who cares why the Doctor travels around, who cares where he comes
from. Let us go someplace exciting and different and have an adventure. The new
series is obsessed with the Doctor to the detriment of the story. In the
Whoverse there is no one more important, and that is a problem. I may sound old
and crotchety here, but the older serials had the right idea. Doctor Who is an
anthology series that happens to have a few recurring characters.

The second problem in play is the characters. Lately Doctor Who has just
been a factory for tumblr memes. Sure you are allowed some funny lines from
time to time, but all this off beat, look at me I am so random, twitter chaff
is just distracting. Especially guilty is this Missy character. Every other
sentence is trite “I’m evil so I speak in stream on conscience style and it
only makes sense to me. But you know I am serious because I kill people from
time to time.” I admit to having a special loathing for this character. She has
added so little to the series and it is just awful to hear her lines.

Next up we have some serious worldbuilding issues. Nothing is ever final in
the Whoverse. People die and come back. Planets are destroyed and come back.
Whole races are killed off and then miraculously reborn the next season. In the
series 8 finale Missy dies. She is literally disintegrated. Series 9 starts,
shes back just fine. Just a simple hand wave and no respect for the continuity
of the series. When your universe has no consequences there can be no suspense.
At the end of The Magician’s Apprentice, Claire (the companion) and Missy are
both disintegrated by Daleks. It is supposed to be a great cliffhanger, but you
literally brought a character back from death at the start of this episode, no
way I believe these main characters just bought it. And of course at the start
of the next episode you drop some contrived garbage for how they survived. Take
some risks, kill some characters, have some actual consequences in your show or
else no one will ever trust you when a main character is in peril.

Speaking of the Daleks, that nicely highlights another issue the new series
has. It keeps going back the well. Star Wars has this same problem. Everyone
likes the old characters, the old races, let us just roll them out again
instead of creating a new idea. I am so sick of the Daleks showing up every
series for a few episodes. Seriously,
look at how many races we have to play with! You can use them too we do not
have to have the Daleks be the big bad again. Maybe then we can have the Doctor
use something other than his sonic screwdriver to get out of a jam for once.
Maybe then someone other than the Master can be the Doctor’s big nemesis.

Let us summarize, the new series: 1. Revolves around the Doctor instead of
the adventure. 2. Loves to fill dialogue with jokes and upstart memes instead
of contributing to the plot. 3. Prefers to constantly fiddle and retcon the
past instead of having something they did be final. 4. Loves to go back to the
well instead of creating new things.

And yet, after all that, I am still going to tune in next week, because when
everything works the show really is something special. When they go somewhere
wonderfully new and meet a new race and have a rip roaring trek it is magical.
It is worth all the awful. Each time I hear that music I hope this will be the
episode all sins are forgiven. Sometimes I am right.

Projects Review

Lets Get NASty

I want to talk a bit today about my storage setup, specifically my NAS or
Network Attached Storage. I have been running my system for a little over a
year now and have had no issues so it is a good time to give a brief half
review, half description of setup. I started considering a longer term storage
setup when the available space on my desktop began to dwindle. I am a bit of
“digital hoarder” if you will, constantly butting up against my limit. When
space is so cheap and ubiquitous why throw anything out? The problem with this
is you always need to be increasing your capacity. At the time I was getting my
NAS my several year old external drive had failed, another drive in my desktop
was faltering, and the rest of the case was already filled up with other
drives. I did not want to get rid of my existing drives and I also wanted a
better solution than continuing to lock data to my desktop. Enter the
ReadyNAS 104.

The first thing you need to know about NASs (NASes?) is that there are a ton
of models on the market featuring wildly different prices and sets of features.
You will need to determine what you want out of your NAS before you consider
purchasing one. For me I had just two requirements:

1. Four drive slots. This allows for a ton of storage and is very flexible
when it comes to determining your RAID setup. 2. Minimum computational
performance, I do not need my NAS to be a file server or another computer. I
need to put files on it and get files off, that is all.

With those requirements you can pretty much be satisfied with things at the
low end of the market, hence the ReadyNAS 104. Your real cost on the low end
here is going to be in drives. I went with four of these
drives for a total capacity of 16 terabytes. Total (including the NAS) this
ran me $1045.94. You could cheap out here and go for smaller drives or slower
drives. From what I read 5600RPM drives work just as well, albeit slower. I
went max size and max speed because I wanted a long term solution. There were
at the time some rebates, but I do not remember how much they were for. As far
as quality of drives this particular brand came recommended, but other brands
are just as well regarded.

For setup I configured the drives in RAID 5 (~10TBs of space). Take a moment
to read up on the different RAID options here. In my opinion
RAID 5 gives you the best space efficiency (you lose about 1/4 of the capacity
compared to 1/2 in some other configurations) and reasonable fault tolerance
(you can lose one drive and not lose any data). I do not want to lose data, but
then again it is not exactly mission critical. Actually formatting and
configuring the drives takes about a full day so sit tight. After that there is
not much other configuration to be done. Plug it into your router and it should
assign itself a local IP address automatically. It would be wise to configure a
static address in your router’s control panel so its not always changing on
you, but this is not required. You can access your system via its IP and (at
least on Windows) it will appear like one giant network drive.

Of course since your NAS is basically a low powered computer you can run any
number of programs on it. The ReadyNAS people helpfully have a site with some options. I myself jun run
qbittorent for my torrenting needs, but there are some useful apps to be found.
If you are handy with the command line you can SSH into your NAS and do
whatever you want since it runs Linux.

For daily use a NAS is pretty helpful. Transfer times can be slow since I
connect through mine wirelessly, but its not terribly slow. Think a few minutes
for a couple GBs. It is certainly quick enough to stream video from itself to
your computer which is what I primarily use it for. Although when initially
transferring all your files to it I suggest hooking up an external drive. There
are a few USB ports on the back so it can mount drives, but I could not figure
how to connect it physically to my desktop.

In regards to configuration you can mostly roll with stock settings. I
suggest disabling file snap shots, which
can be a bit of a pain, but will save you a lot of space. I also recommend
enabling SSH access (so you can fiddle with things yourself) and enabling “Disk
Spin Down” to both conserve power and the life of your drives.

Overall a NAS is a little pricey, but it is a convenient way to get a lot of
storage you can access from anywhere in the house. It also allows you to sleep
safe knowing your files are backed up. Granted its not off site, but if your
house burns down you probably have bigger things to concern yourself with.

Anime Projects

My First AMV

EDIT 6/2025: Since posting this (in 2015) Youtube now allows these videos to be uploaded so the can be watched in their original form (as submitted to ConnectiCon 2015 where it was a finalist and DragonCon 2015 where its result is unknown) and an updated form (as submitted to Anime Boston 2016 where it was not a finalist). I also made a few formatting and style fixes in the original post.

It is true, here it is spoilers and everything: view here, download here.

For a while now I have been thinking of doing one of these and I mentioned it as a goal for this year. I recently finished the main anime adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes and it was very disappointing to me the series has such little visibility amongst English anime viewers. Granted its age and its MIA English localization probably play the largest role in its lack of popularity (although it was on HIDIVE for a few years). That said I wanted to do a little something for a show more people should
watch, to that end my first AMV.

For those not familiar with the format, an AMV is a series of anime clips set to music. Sometimes they tell a story, or showcase some action, or are just funny. I wanted to make an AMV that covered roughly the events of the first half of the series (episodes 1 – 53 to be exact). I did not want a flat retelling of events though so I themed it or focused it around the relationship between Reinhard (blonde hair) and Kircheis (red hair). To those not familiar to the series, they are childhood friends who set out to conquer the galaxy.

For the music I wanted something that fit the feel of the series. The show makes extensive use of famous classical music, mostly Beethoven. While not classical I went with Time To Say Goodbye, sung by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. I like the mournful nature of the song and the interspaced use of English. I did not want to go with a poppy contemporary piece as it would be jarring with the visuals of the series.

Scene Breakdown

Now that I have given a brief summary I am going to provide some commentary on parts of the AMV.

00:00-00:22, I wanted to start big to give a good scale the series works
with. A shot of the galaxy to begin with and with each strum I narrow the shot until we focus on the ship of our two main characters and then the characters themselves. The preceding shots show a vast battle taking place until we fade out to the end result of the battle, lots of ship wreckage. Not a huge fan of the fade, but it does its job. These scenes are mostly from early episodes so we see a very young Admiral Reinhard.

00:25, Shot of the Odin, the capital of the Empire. Its not important that you know that, but series fans probably recognize it.

00:25-00:31, I wanted to establish that Reinhard is important within the
Empire, but still not the leader. The scene shows him being honored for the
battle we saw in the beginning.

00:32, Start of the flashback. Need to establish the long relationship between Reinhard and Kircheis that started when they were young.

00:38-00:46, This scene with the bully helps establish both Reinhard’s aggressive nature and how Kircheis is always there to help Reinhard out. The rock beating scene also nicely matches up with the music. At times I think it is a bit humorous, but I resisted changing it.

00:47-00:58, These are some scenes set after the bully time frame, but still when Reinhard and Kircheis were young. I wanted to convey Reinhard ambitious nature and I like the imagery of the gun shooting into space that fades into his ship in full action. As you can tell I like fades. There is an important subplot to the series involving Reinhard’s sister that these scenes are important to, but it is not important for the story I am telling.

00:58-01:12. Easy call here to tie Kircheis’s death to the first “Time to Say Goodbye” lyric. It is perhaps a bit quick setup after the flashback, but it is really important that death and lyric are timed up well. This is a pretty big spoiler for people who have not seen the series and arguably the most important event in the entire series.

01:22, I went back and forth on including this somewhat gratuitous death
clip. It is a bit jarring, but I think it works. Kind of quick flashback that
Reinhard is contemplating.

01:25-01:43, Second flashback showing a bit more of Kircheis interacting
with Reinhard and doing his own thing. As a side not we can really see the jump in quality across some of the early episodes in these flashbacks. After the series came out some episodes were remastered so the quality can be all over the place.

01:45, Its debatable if we need this shot of just the gravestone as the earlier scene basically covers what we need to do, but I like lingering here a bit.

01:49, The locket is a very important item to the series so I had to get a shot of it here. You can see it also includes his sister who is important to the story, but I ignore here.

01:50. Kircheis in the stars may be too cliche, but its from the series and bookends this section of the AMV nicely.

01:53-01:56, The music changes and I need to jump a bit chronologically and show how Reinhard has increased in power in the Empire. The scenes with the crowd accomplishes this.

01:57-2:01, This scene is a bit clunky. I want to convey again how in charge Reinhard is and setup the rest of the AMV, but we linger, perhaps too long on planning screens.

02:05, I love this shot of Reinhard and all the ships engines. As a side note that is Mariendorf next to him. She becomes pretty important around the half way mark of the series.

02:06-02:13, This is the planet Fezzan, a planet not in the Empire nor the Free Planets Alliance (FPA). The two major antagonists in the show. It is one of the first planets Reinhard takes on his campaign. It is a relatively quick battle which I used to convey the size of Reinhard’s fleet in action.

02:14-02:19, Some of the most well drawn scenes in the series. Bookends Reinhard’s conquest of Fezzan.

02:20-02:25, Maybe the cheesiest part of the AMV. That is an actual scene from the anime so I went with it. Also you can see the locket again which is super important.

02:26-02:45, Lot of ships again. Start to show some large battles with the FPA, but nothing decisive.

02:52-03:19, Again we return to Reinhard’s ship and then show his decisive involvement in a battle. Lots of FPA ships blowing up climaxing in a nice large explosion. I cheat a bit and take a lot of battle clips from across the series, but we need a lot of different shots here and frankly a lot of these battle shots look the same.

03:20-03:23, Good scene to show after Reinhard’s great success. You can see how lonely he is on the empty bridge and it contrasts well with the first shot of him and Kircheis from the beginning.

03:24, This is Heinessen, home planet of the FPA, after being captured by Reinhard.

03:26-03:27, This is a shot of Yang Wen-li, Reinhard’s counterpart in the FPA. He is super important, but not covered at all in this AMV. I wanted to at least give him a quick showing and I think these two rapid beats help introduce him as the adversary nicely.

03:28, Real cool shot of both of their massive fleets converging.

03:28-03:41, Start of the battle, lots of fireworks to show the scale, but nothing to show who will win.

03:41, Maps again! Its hard to convey how the battle is going so I went with maps (which the series likes using too) to show things going against Reinhard. This shot also has Yang in the middle.

03:44-03:51, Might be asking too much of a person not familiar with the series, but I need to convey the battle turning in Yang’s favor. Showing the map of a fleet disintegrating, FPA ships firing, and a lot of Empire ships exploding hopefully conveys this. It might be difficult to get if you cannot distinguish the different sides ships at this point.

03:54, Great scene of the Empire ships moving to defend Reinhard’s ships. Hopefully conveys how desperate the battle is going.

03:55, Another really excellent scene of Reinhard having the ships guarding his front explode.

04:01, And here we are end of the AMV. This shot is the best in the series and what motivated me to do this AMV. I love the giant imposing FPA ship bearing down on Reinhard. Its awesome and in my opinion, a a great ending with the sudden cut to black.

The thing about that ending scene is, its a massive cheat. The very next second that ship gets blown out by the timely arrival (in true anime fashion) of Admiral Muller’s fleet. I admit its deceitful, but I really just wanted a nice cliffhanger to end on to motivate people to watch the series.

Tools Lets wrap up with a quick tool discussion. All of my editing was done with Sony Vegas 13. I like it a lot since its relatively simple to use. I am sure other editors say Final Cut is just as good, but I have been fiddling with Vegas for a bit now and I know how to do what I want. The only real issue I had was the video sources. I was using files in MKV format and Vegas cannot handle those files. I had to convert each episode I wanted to use from MKV to MP4. I did this using Handbrake which is dirt simple. It was a tedious work around, but it got the job done. I will leave you with a shot of all the clips in the editor. You can see I like to have a lot of clips lying around so I can mix and match and see what works.