Shoes

Well our presentation didn’t happen today like it was supposed to. Apparently they didn’t have enough time so our group has been bumped to next week instead. Yes, I did say “they” as in I wasn’t there. I was running late, so late in fact that I wouldn’t make it in time to the presentation. 7th man James made his third appearance ever (or so I’m told) but was super late and didn’t do the work he’d been asked to do last week. We’ve sent another email to the lecturer, we are not carrying this guy through the module.

My parents have started the christmas shopping so I’m soon to be banned from the loft again. Is it just me who doesn’t feel like it’s christmas yet? I dunno, it seems like uni work is burying away from alot of other things.

Oh by the way, if Rita tries to contact you guys just ignore her (dunno if she’d try but just in case), I am. I don’t want to go into details here but we had a big row and I’m cutting contact with her. So…yeah.

There’s been a couple of other little things that have been going on recently. Youtube seems to hate me and refuses to upload videos correctly. I watched the first episode of that new BBC drama Paradox which looks like it could be good. Me and Simon had a good friendly chat which doesn’t seem like much but most of the time we’re a pair of arses at each other, these kind of chats are rare. I also downloaded Pokemon Rumble as WiiWare, it’s a surprisingly good, hard and long game.

Today was Games Dev day in my uni week and an odd occurrence happened this week. James, the seventh member of our team who’s only ever shown up to one meeting (the day he joined our group) made an appearance. He showed up midway through the lecture and then came and sat with us. Shaun (team leader) finally got a chance to meet him and we our usual meeting. We caught James up on the game and the work and sorted out our slide show for our presentation next week.

After the meeting we all went off our separate ways, this is where my suspicion came into play. Me and Shaun were talking about James’ excuse as to why he hasn’t shown up in a month or two. While it is possible he’s telling the truth there are a number of things that don’t add up. I won’t go into details but I suspect that James only showed up today so he could stand with us while we gave our presentation before disappearing again (we’re guessing he got the day of the presentation wrong).

We’re being careful with this guy. If he does do another disappearing act on us after next week then we’ll continue trying to get him kicked off the team. In the mean time, we watch……like hawks.

Oh and I’m also re-rigging three of my models for my project because they were deforming crap. Bones and Skinning are so much better than what I had before.

Exactly what it says on the tin.

Uni work is plodding along as usual. My project work is picking up again now that I’ve met my supervisor and I’ve made a schedule. Games Development is going smoothly, I find it funny that the group leader is asking me for the final yes/no on some decision on design choices. I like being the one who gets to decide things without all that leadership/management crap to deal with. Advanced Animation is looking good, the lecturer showed us some cool controller set ups for facial animation, something I found really useful since I’m doing my ICA on lip syncing. D&C is…well…same as the last two years I did it.

In game related news, wooooooooooo! Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (on Wii) comes out Friday. I’m super happy about this. It was released in Japan a year and a half ago and in American a year ago exactly tomorrow. It seemed it would never come out here and I gave up on getting it. Out of the blue an ad banner on a website showed an ad from Game about it. If I’d not seen that I’d never have know is was being released. For once ad banners have been useful! For those who don’t know, it’s a sequel to Tales on Symphonia on the Gamecube. Symphonia was the best RPG on the Gamecube (which isn’t saying much but still). Symphonia was excellent and I’ve been looking into the other “Tales of” games since.

In life news I think I may be addicted to Maoam, seriously. My mam went to some big warehouse places that sells food and drink in bulk to stores and bought a tub of Maoam packs. I have devoured around 2/3rds of the tub. I need an intervention, soon. I wrote up my Christmas list (the one for you guys is up on the forum) which I kinda struggled with a bit this year. Me and Faith(Rita) have also been planning me visiting her down south. After a year and a half of talking to her on msn and a year of saying I’d visit I think it’s about time to actually do it.

That’s all I can think of to say. Hmm, looks like I had more to say than I thought I did. Kinda makes this posts title a lie now.

Quick little update. My mam just found the phone I lost ages ago down the side of the sofa. O___O

I have three phones now. If I can get my charger back (I think I lent it to Simon and Jan) I can get back all the photos and videos I thought I’d lost.

Bit of update since it’s been a while.

I finally met with my projects supervisor, he seems like a cool guy, almost bordering on the Morris level of awesome but not quite there yet. He was quite impressed by the amount of project work I’d got done over the holidays before I’d even got back. Games Development is still plodding along but we seem to be alot more on top of the work now unlike a two-three weeks back when we were all running around like headless chickens.

Advanced Animation is also going well, we had a lecture in the motion capture lab last week which was cool and we got to see some models that were built using a 3D printer that the uni has. I really want to use that sometime soon while it’s available to me (uni charges £20-£30 for a model which would cost £200+ from any private company).

I only just noticed the other day how close we’re getting to christmas. Before I forget about it again under the waves of uni work I wrote up my christmas list. My dad did tell me they know what they’re getting me as my main present, I found this quite odd because they never know what to get me. At all. Ever. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Well, I’d best get back to work. There’s some level design work here that isn’t going to do itself.

PS.  Is anyone else getting Russian people leaving comments on your blogs? I’ve had five messages so far.