Old relics

Blogger is one of the strange places on the internet where new ideas can be formed, forgotten and found again decades later. When I started with this blog I was just a teenager, writing silly stuff that might be sort of like something about homeschooling.

But now I'm a grown up. I have kids and I'm homeschooling them. My six year old son reads at a fourth grade level and is on his third grade level math, but his handwriting is totally illegible. He also drags his feet on every little lesson. It seems like each day is an arduous journey with him, slogging through maybe two pages of actual work. When it's all said and done, he's still way ahead of his peers and it's somewhat of a struggle to make sure that the material is always fresh and challenging for him.

Which brings me to this question of "unschooling". I'm not against just leaving a kid to do their own thing. That's how my teenage homeschooling experience went, but I do think that maybe little kids need a little help. Maybe that makes me a helicopter parent. I guess I've just got to find that balance, for me and for him.

I'll try to update semi-regularly for a while.

The Zune?

[Sarcasm] Oh hey everybody I want to go spend 300 dollars on an overpriced disabled computer that fits in my pocket! yeah ipod sounded amazing until I realized what crap it was. with the failing battery and stuff.[/sarcasm]

I'm struggling to understand why some one should spend 300$ on a crippled computer with a tiny hard drive just to hear music. It seems like too much effort money and time to be beneficial to have specialized mobile computing. The only reason I could see spending that kind of money is if it was just a platform for running everything that my laptop can.

But then again if anything happens to you and your monsterous investment while your weight lifting trying to shut out trashy pop music in the gym then all of the sudden you've lost everything. It's just a disposable underapreciated peice of hard ware.

Mobile computing is suposed to be this special place in the tech market. It's like looking for the holigram, or the flying car. Basically it could be very useful if people knew exactly what they wanted out of it, then they could design to those needs. When it comes to things like PDA's, mobile gaming devices, mp3 players, cell phones, people tend to think that they just need a whole office building in a small box. like it's gonna be so much better to watch a movie in a car on a screen no bigger then the palm of your hand. Or like your calculator really needs to keep a phone book and a calendar, what frickin' waste! With all that precious bandwidth good programs could be made. like a light weight 3d modeling/animation tool (says the 3d artist in me).

It's just not useful to add unnecessary crap on to something and call it "features". It's like if I sold you a sketch pad with diagrams of skeletons and army tanks pre-sketched in there and I called them features. Like I really want your rendition of what the future of computing should be.

I shall spend my next three hundred dollars wisely by not buying a zune or ipod.

Furby 4 u!

So you like to see dead things? good neither do I, luckily this guy was never alive.

Check out the furby autopsy.

10,000 days by TOOL

So I was listening to the album again today and meditating and then while I was reviewing the track list I realized that at 4 track intervals the album had an 11 minute track. And then I realized that these tracks where like molting tracks, they're the the part where the phoenix shakes off the ashes. Then I decided to add the times together for the three parts in the album:

20:51
10:85
20:82

all of the seconds adds up to 246 which divided by 12 (the next track number, invisible I suppose) is 20.5. like maybe 20:50 or roughly the first four tracks? Actually it could be the kavanah to re-listen to the album. :D But actually the 12th track is in fact the whole first section of change. Like the fool after the universe but transcended to the whole next plane.

You see I think the pictures in the book are prolly different interpretations. Like the tarot layout w/the cards down, that’s pointing to the interpretation that 10,000 days is almost a whole deck of cards in divination. That you could use the music as a form of divination to meditate on or even to unconsciously connect to the spiritual world.

Then the picture of the baby in the scull is like the birth of ideas or the time in which an idea matures. It could even be a fertility spell. Or a spell of love. Basically it’s the incubation album in which you can ponder through the universe as it pours out of all of the eyes on the cover of the album. And the three sections of the cd are like the trimesters of pregnancy.

I also realize that the spell to care for Maynard’s mother Marie in her afterlife was like the seal of her 10,000 day struggle to live. Because she was disabled this whole time all she wanted was to somehow hold on to life. To be here for all those important events and cherish them. It’s funny cause when I saw that while I was meditating I was compelled to whisper her name, and she said thank you. She lifted me like a huge spiritual hand/hug and told me to love responsibility. To live through my duty because it’s my duty.

How eastern of her. ;p

The weirdness actually started to happen when I was adding the track times together and all I could think about adding were the numbers 11 and 7. I was told that these are important numbers in a dream a long time ago, but I really felt it while I tried to figure out how long the tracks were. Even and especially on a calculator while I was trying to figure out if the time had anything to do with nine months of pregnancy. Just now I realized that the length of the whole album is 76.06 minutes like almost 77 minutes?

I guess Tool are kinda like pixies. They just dance, they gotta, otherwise the world stops turning. The seasons stop changing, the album is a monument to continuing life, love, and death. It just keeps things going and I bet you that each of the members of tool actually added something totally different to the albums intent. While it could be for Marie's shiva only I think it's more likely that it applies to a broader range of things. That it helps to make something possible for everyone. :)

That's really what being druid and jewish is about. It's not personal gain explicitly but it's not global welfare exclusively. It's bringing the gracious joy and celebration of the cycle but definitely magic for personal gain. Like breathing, who are we to take the oxygen away from all the bunnies and ferret's in the world? Well we just got to. What else are we gonna do, die? I think their are many religions where they just want to die. They want to ascend and all that and of-course they miss this life in the process. Makes you wonder if the justice is in their reincarnation in to the mortal world.

'till next time
--Noé

The Frinj flick#2 "5.....4....3.....2....WHO DRANK MY COFFEE!"

Things seem to be moving at a good pace. There is a compettition at Amazon dot com that could get us 50,000 dollars. That would deffinetly get us going. If we don't win thats okay, we will atleast have gathered the people needed for the actual film.

The comic book is nearing the end of pencilling on the first two vollumes. Now just to the tedious task of inking. I will need a light box and alot of extra time. I just spent two all nighters planing and breaking down the first five vollumes of the comic book. My work is cut out for me.

When the short film is done we'll send it to various filmakers. Hopefully that will open the doors to internships, or atleast funding.

I'll post again when I've had more sleep....

The Frinj flick#1 "our behinds are fryin' on the side walk"

So as you may be aware we are film makers. And our first film gets it ugly rear end into production this summer. That's what we've been counting on for the last year and a half or so. Of course you allways need a plan 'b', 'c' and quite possibly 'd'. The reason being that all of the resources we had before are gone. Capput. At one point we had several computers capable of everything we needed for visual effects. Gone. At one point we actually lived in the city that the movie is set in.
For the last five months we have been painfully moving to Moscow, ID. We have our computers but no amount of bubble gum and scotch tape will make them into lean mean CGI machines. The short of it is that for the last five months we have been trying to cope with more change, and so no progress has been made. My comic book is still not on the presses. And so money is still an issue. No machines exist to edit on any more. Well the machines exist but they can't pull a flea's weight. In April I will go to spend two months. Count them two months. Going in reverse progress with my Dad. Trying to do anything intellectual while we party and fix cars is nothing short of impossible. So in truth I don't know and have serious doubts as to whether this flick will be more than a family home video. You know the kind that your mom pulls out on your twentieth birth day for your girl friend to see. *shudders*.

So obviously I need to take steps to insure the safety of this production.

Step #1: Finish the comic book and get it on the presses.This is especially key to the success of the film as it will create a fanbase. Which we don't have yet(to my knowledge).

Step #2: Finish the website. Both of them. At the Drawn stories studios website we need to have at the very least a promotional poster and copyright at the bottom. To establish that we are not screwin' around. Unschooling madness needs again *one article* just a start. Something to show off to future prospects.

Step #3: Have a meeting for potential volunteers to work on the film. We need people who are willing to hold the lights, cameras, and microphones. We also need people who might have connections to other people.

Step #4: Finish the frickin' scipt. Just a first draft would be nice. Something that can soak in the red marker.

Step #5: Make enough dough to by a decent machine. Just something that will edit movies, sound, and can handle some 3d modeling. We also need a render farm, and some other stuff, but we can worry about computer muscle in post. We just need something to start.

Step #6: I am going to start teaching a class in CGI. In the hopes that I can slam together a team of hard working nerds that can pull off the hair systems, particle systems, complex muscular deformation,...etc.

Step #7: I want to design and sew the clothes for the comic book. The reason being that it will hopefully act as a good promotional tool. But naturally this is low on the list of to-dos.

Step #8: Hopefully I can get an internship with Robert Rodriguez. That would be awesome blossom. We have talked about this for two years now. And it couldn't hurt anything to ask.

Step #9: Turn Drawnstories studios into a real business. Mom says we need an 'S' corporation. But I'm afraid that being something that can be tossed around like a corporation, will end us up in the wrong hands. Mom says that in an 'S' corporation only family members will be able own shares. Except we all have different last names. Who will know?

basically this is what we need to do to get this show on the road (pun intended). This has been the first of a series of entries about the progress of our first film. Isn't that a production diary? who knows.--Noe Martinez

The one-one-thousandth second

My film making career has mainly been centered around CGI, writing, and conceptual drawing, as we (drawnstories studios) are only in pre production of our first film, flick really. But today was different, I became an associate producer of an I-max film. Well actually my Mom was the associate producer but put my name on it instead in the way that she likes to live vicariously through me.
So there is this project where a movie of twentyfour frames will show in I-max, for one second. Now there's very, very brief nudity involved here so don't be bringing the kids to this flick. These twenty four frames are twelve gigantic paintings made in one night, painted by hundreds of artists, shown twice. And the point is to get as many people involved as possible by selling credits in the movie for what ever money people will donate. As of now the credits will last forty minutes. Man I'm not waiting through forty minutes of names. Just to see mine next to Christina Ricci's on a big screen.
Oh well it all goes to a good cause, that is to say the money goes to a women's charity. What about starving children in India, or babies with aids in Africa, better yet Iraqi freedom fighters. No I can even top that, what about an entire organization created to educate our president about the "fundamental nature of terrorism". Unfortunate that dubbya learned that from his daddy. Not that I don't support women's right or anything (I was raised by a young woman going through college) just that I feel that there are bigger thing to give money to. My Moms one dollar could have gone to natives of these here Americas or better yet, the politicians that want them to pay taxes on their casinos, maybe they'd stop then.
I think that now I am officially off topic, but I will have lots of time in the future to write so....
-peace out