ricardocabellov5.5

Well, looks like my ears are starting to be totally unblocked now. That means that I just came back from a Ryan Air fly. Looks like they fly very high or so, after a journey with them I always finish with my ears totally blocked and hurting for some days.

This time I had to suffer that bit for if'05. As I was doing all the image for the party (logo/website/print/screentools/tshirt design) I really had to go there. Leaving home at 3am, we (sole and I) arrived to Valencia at 11:30 a.m or so.. So how do we know that we are in Valencia? Probably because that guy on there is blowing us because we are not using the zebra crossing (on a totally plane surface). Is a bit hard to explain but was very dumb. Usually when I go to Spain I always find things like that, dumb/cheap things everywhere. For example, on the way back after cross the metal detector I just put my arms on the air to be checked, and the security dude said.. "what? are you going to hug me?" Quality!

However, the partyplace was cool, is the third time I attend the party and each year is in a different place (tho always on the same University). This time we had a great terrace that we were going to use very well. For that party I was just doing some extra bits, but once I was there I felt how I was becoming another organizer more. Since bcn10 I didn't organize anything of a party, this time was different, the people on the organization team was very clever and helpful. Respecting the other guys in the team and looking for answers to any problem with the others. If you are with people like that yoou don't mind to do as more as you can.

So, after some demoshows and add some entries on the compos, mr.plek (that with Tekno and others did rent some turntables) told me to do a gig the first night (we were going to do gigs only the second night) and he wanted me to do the visuals for it. Neon v2 was ready for that, so I accepted and as soon as I knew that the music was going to be elektro/house one of the last movies I seen came in to my mind: Napoleon Dynamite. So I just get some videos from that one, some others from other movies to have a little bit of content for that improvised visuals and enjoy the gig. So the gig started and I was just playing with the visual resources I had... and wow, Napoleon Dynamite worked veeeery well, that was a very easy way to show to the people the character and everyone was asking me where the fuck I got that video from. Was a nice gig!

The next day I had some "family dinner" ;) or something like that, and after that I had to work as hard as I could doing more 3Dvisuals, but was a bit hard to do as there was some bugs on the tool, also people watching all the yonkis.com video folder and I just finished with some more visuals that were totally wrong. Actually I was more speaking and doing social stuff than working :D So, the suposed big night was there, we moved everuthing (projector, computers, turntables,..) to the terrace. Also we did some tests to record the djsets, everything was working fine.

So, we started everything, the demoshow went fine, nice prods (not enough for my taste tho), but there was some really cool ones. And after that, we turn the projector to the biiig wall and everything started to don't work. neon2 is now using pixel shaders 2.0 to do some extra effects and my laptop doesn't support that, so I had to use another computer for it. After had a lot of problems with two different desktops (graphic card bad installed (physically), problems with the mouse). I finally had to use my laptop and don't use those special effects, meanwhile the machine to record the djset crashed, totally burnt. So, yeah.. thanks Murphy, nice to meet you again! :) Anyway, I was able to do some more visuals with Cubensis and wel.. threepixels had problems with Murphy as well.. but the night were great, nice music, great fun, we were there until 7am and nobody was complaining about that (that's something very rare in a party).

Verdict: Come to ifparty'06! ;) And don't forget to check Napoleon Dynamite :D

Uhmm.. No thanks! I don't need those stupid new features.. I'll keep using trillian.

First of all.. I want to say that all that is just my opinion. Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps i'm not. But I was thinking about that those days (tho I don't know exactly why).

The demoscene people is always complaining about that there is not enough new people each year. Like the demoscene is dying slowly. Yes, probably, not because what we do now is not like what we were doing some years ago.. but perhaps the feeling between the people and the motivation bigger. However I still thinking all that needs more new people, and the question is, how to promote this stuff?

We did some polls sometime ago regarding that. At least in Spain the people that is in all that is mainly because computer magazines that had that demoscene space. Also there is some other people that just get interested in a Party where they went to play games, share stuff and they seen all those movies on the screen. And the the final options is the contacts, a friend that just starts to find all that interesting.

Looks like the first option is something that we are not doing anymore, longtime ago Dr.Pain/Fuzzion was doing a lot of tutorials on a computer magazine. Also (not sure if was because Nefron/Iguana) on magazines like PC Actual there was a CD with a compilation of the last demoscene stuff. Not sure if they are still doing that. Don't think so. So, however, the main door, is closed.

Organizing bcnparty we did a very good (in my opinion) movement. We just joined Art Futura. We had A LOT of promotion in very famous Design/Art/Computer Portals/Magazines. And basicly because Art Futura. We had the luck of be able to show to A LOT of people a selection of demos, to play a videotape with that selection three times during Art Futura with a short description of the movement, just to possible new people. Man.. bcnparty website received hits from shift magazine (that's impressive!)!! Art Futura main orgos were great with us, helping us a lot with everything (mainly promo) and also they give us a free ArtFutura entrance for each bcnparty attendant. So, what was the bcnparty mood about that?

"We are just providing content to Art Futura, they are not giving us anything."

Cool! V Cool! For first time we were promoting the demoscene as the art it is (the art of realtime and optimization) in the perfect place. So, because some other tiny things and also because a very stupid rivality thing (we are not artfutura, we are bcnparty! we are better!) the cooperation with Art Futura was not continued anymore. It's a shame, isn't it?

Well, at least organizations like digitalekultur are doing now these kind of movements. Promoting the demoscene in computer art events. And this is why the germany demoscene is still that strong.

Hotmail intentando hacer la competencia hace unos meses subio el espacio del email a 250MB (uouuuu!!!).

Y justo hace unos dias, a los de google se les antoja subir el espacio a 2GB. Los de M$ deben estar contentos.

Que porcierto, ya tenia 500MB usados, estaba empezandome a preocupar :)

Veamos con que mas nos sorprende esta gente.. x)

Just one week for ifparty! I still have to do a lot of effects for my gig on there, but after some shine's work the tool is almost ready to be used. I'm doing some tests at home and it's very powerfull, with the same effects that I had on the beginning I could do a lot of variations.

Definitely looking great, now it just depends of the projector, and the ammount of effects. Don't miss it!

Para una palabra que nos esforzamos a pronunciar los espanyoles en ingles (nike) resulta que ni si quiera la estamos pronuncioando bien.

Solemos pronunciar "naic" cuando en realidad es "naiqui".

Some of my favourites prods were done by mr.fiver2.

Respect!

Well, probably more people sent emails to them suggestion these things. As I work 100% of my day with photoshop is very easy to see some bugs, or think some suggestions to do.. so one year ago I sent an email to the photoshop crew with these suggestions:

Instance Layers Be able to duplicate a layer as instance, so if I modify something in the first layer then will be modified automaticly on the duplicated one (could be great if that with folders as well).

What can you do with that? If you are doing a design portal, with boxes, and each boxes have the sime design (like modulez.org) if you want to change something on a box design, you have to duplicate each time you modify the original one (a waste of time). Also, you could duplicate a layer and mirror it horizonally, then just draw a half of a face and you will be able to draw easily a simetric face.

Embeding other PSD Be able to embed another .psd in the one you are working. So you can have a basedesign.psd and then a additions.psd where you do the embeding.

How many times you had to modify the design of different flats because the client wanted a small change in the base design?

Scale images but without lose the original one
Scale a layer but saving (internally) the original one.

Sometimes the client says, can you do the logo a bit smaller? mm.. can you do it a bit bigger now? So, that's why ;)

And If you check that page, looks like they are going to release all those features (and more things) on the next version!! \o/

PS: As Adobe just sent me an email with that text: "Thank you, (this is the only message you will receive for your suggestions)", I decided to let know to Gimp developers, but they were very very rude and told me, "If you want these features why don't you pay us?".. Stupids, don't hey see that that was something that photoshop didn't have and all the designers are needing? Too late now. Bye bye Gimp (forever).

Hahaha, yesterday a photographer just came to SpringDigital offices to take more or less 100 pictures of me. Click click click click!

What for? Well, looks like the independent is doing like a research of how stressed are the people working on the media (audiovisual, design stuff). Spring Digital was selected for that and my lovelly boss Kerry gave me the oportunity to appear on the press.

Basicly is a diary just for a week, project in hand, how stressed it was and when I left. As I don't really got the idea of how important "the independent" I didn't get stressed or intimidated by the idea..

So, lets just buy the newspaper the next Monday and see how big the article appears ;)

wooow!! I really need that!. Long time ago since my last break, a long weekend with drunk computer geeks on the meadow and demoscene competitions is what I need.

At the last moment I realized that there was an area for vjgigs and I wanted to do something for there but the tool and also the amount of visuals is not really enough. Perhaps I'll do a fastprod for there but that's not sure either.

Anyway, looking forward for it, relax a little bit, enjoy the releases and the people on there!

Have a good easter!