It is a winter wonderland here in small town Thomas, WV. The days are long, full of holiday cheer, laughter, and merriment.

Oh, and a shit ton of design work.

As you may or may not know, I’m a fairly accomplished professional designer. I’ve been designing fairly steadily for about five years now, and have created dozens of websites. I’m nearing the one hundred mark. I’m not great by any means, but I’m getting better and better, and my work is really beginning to shine.

Anyway, enough about me! Let’s talk design.

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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Terry Pratchett
One of my absolute favorite authors of all time

Just wrote a review last night about Men Who Stare at Goats, a truly unique film that combines psychic warfare, Iraq, the new age 70’s movement, Vietnam, and goats. It’s really quite an absurd film. Here’s a snipplet from my review:

This quirky adventure mixes the irony of psychic warfare in the US army, a tale of self discovery, political commentary, a mix of great actors, and a premise that is guaranteed to be off-the-wall. While this may seem like a sure winner, it stumbles rather than taking flight and becoming a true classic.

Interested in what I’ve got to say? View my review posted at MovieSector. It’s got the full text, screen captures, a trailer, and my final score (you can also add your own score).

I’ve completed two student films recently, one for Advertising and Imagery and one for Introduction to Mass Communications. I learned how to operate Final Cut Pro, Sountrack Pro, iMovie HD, and GarageBand all on beginner to intermediate levels. My experience with Sony Vegas 8 and Audacity really helped in the use of these new software programs, since I already had the fundamentals down.

The first film is for my Introduction class, and it was all about using as many features, functions, and effects within Final Cut Pro as possible. It’s not really a high quality work, but for a first project in Final Cut, it’s decent!

The next one is far simpler, took less time to complete, and I feel like it’s better quality. It’s a zoning advertising for an upcoming vote in Jefferson county, but it’s just a mock advertising. I think I did a good job tackling it.

I’ve been going through a few different games lately, most of them are older games! However, all of them are pretty damn fun.

• KOTOR 2
  I’m super excited to get my hands on this one, because I’ve been wanting to try out the Restoration Mod for ages. Now I get to! I’m installing it right now, actually. Woo!
• Mercenaries 2
  The first Mercenaries was one of my favorite console games of all time. The destructible environments, the ability to hijack anything, the warzone environment, a huge arsenal of airstrikes, artillery, and bombing runs. the ability to drop vehicles anyway. There was simply a massive amount of carnage and a very cool sandbox approach to it that just worked. Sadly, that was the first one. While the second one promised all the same things, and more, it got crummy reviews, so I did not get it. However, on sale I picked it up for really cheap. and it’s turned out to be not so bad! I’ve made it a bit over half way through, and it’s pretty damn intense. However, it’s a bit buggy, the graphics are so/so, and the storyline is horrid. But, coming into this game with very low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised!
  Score: 7/10
  
• Company of Heroes
  I’ve been replaying this classic with a friend. Mainly, we’ve been digging into the LAN skirmishes and battles. Whether it’s a 2v2 versus computers, 1v1 matches, or any other sort of arrangement – we’ve been having a blast. I only had really focused on the single player when I played a couple years ago, and replaying with a focus on the multiplayer aspects has been fun. What a classic RTS! It’s really made me want to pick up World in Conflict, though. The macro-heavy, tactical RTS games have really gotten so much better, thanks to games like CoH and WiC!
  Score: 9/10

View some cool trailers of upcoming games by reading more.

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