So I haven't posted in a loooooooooooooooooong time, which is sad because I've had tons to blog about ("9", getting married, "Despicable Me", the election, etc) but I've been putting off blogging because I've been trying to update my blog software for over a year a now and the more posts I have, the more work it is to migrate everything over. I mean, it should've been easy because the amazing developers at b2evolution.net make robust software that is easily upgradable, but I've been using version 0.9 for like 4 years and I customized the src="http://blog.joshuajmorgan.com/rsc/smilies/icon_censored.gif" alt=">:XX" class="middle" out of it with my own mods and plugins and such, and I wanted the v2.4 upgrade to look and feel more or less exactly the same as the old version to you the reader (like anyone reads this thing anymore after I've been AWOL for so long) so it took a whole lot of reverse-engineering and debugging before I felt comfortable enough with the new software to go live.

There are still a few tweaks to be made, but here it is, the latest greatest (lamest) version of my blog. Like I said, hopefully you won't really notice many differences except a few minor enhancements like the "lightbox" popup for full-sized images, the "ShareThis" link at the bottom of posts, and overall faster load times. All of the other big improvements are to the backend admin control panel dashboard doohickey so hopefully it will be easier for me to post images, videos, and rambling rants like this one, which hopefully translates into to more frequent postings.

I guess it's time for me to post a src="http://blog.joshuajmorgan.com/rsc/smilies/icon_censored.gif" alt=">:XX" class="middle" -load of backdated retroactive posts...

PS - Please let me know ASAP via either a comment or the new and improved "Contact" form if you find anything wonky with the new blog.

LuxemBlog #1

Holy crap, I’m in Luxembourg!!!

So I haven’t blogged in a very very very long time because I’ve been so incredibly busy. The Catch-22 of blogging is that if your life is boring, then you’ve nothing interesting to blog about, but if you’re doing all kinds of crazy cool stuff that is worth posting, then you’re probably too busy to blog about it.

I wasn’t doing much at the beginning of 2006 so I didn’t have much to blog about, and then suddenly in May I had a full-time job for 7 months working pre-production Technical Coordinator on the feature film version of my friend Shane Acker’s 9.

At the same time I was also teaching Advanced Game Prototyping and Design at the Art Institute of Los Angeles and Interactive Animation at UCLA. The Ai classes are Undergrad and the UCLA class is Graduate level, but students in both classes use Flash ActionScript to make Flash games.

It was really really hard to juggle my full-time production job with teaching part-time but it was totally worth the experience. I knew I’d only be working on 9 until Shane and few other Americans moved to Luxembourg for production, so I was planning on using the Winter and Spring Quarters to finish my thesis film so I could finally get my Master of Fine Arts in Animation and continue teaching. But my plans changed when the line-producer called me from Luxembourg on my second-to-last day and asked me to come to Luxembourg for a couple months. I had to give up my Winter Quarter classes at Ai but I knew that Luxembourg is a once-in-lifetime opportunity that I just couldn’t miss.

So with only a few weeks to prepare for a 12-week business trip, here I am in Luxembourg City in the middle of winter.

DAY 1
Thursday December 28, 2006

I flew out of LAX on Thursday December 28th and thanks to a full day of air travel and the 9-hour time difference, it’s already Saturday.

Both of my flights were on time and the 10 hour flight to London-Heathrow flew by (pun intended) because Air New Zealand had movies on demand. They offered all kinds of American films that I haven’t seen yet, like Little Miss Sunshine, but I figured I could rent those DVDs anytime when I get back to the States so I decided to watch a bunch of the films from New Zealand. Out of the Blue, The World’s Fastest Indian, Perfect Strangers, and Banana in a Nutshell were all excellent films by Kiwi directors (I’m going to blog Film Diary posts about them later). I also started to watch two other Kiwi films, but I stopped Fracture after 15 minutes because it just couldn’t hold my attention and I only got about 30 minutes into In My Father’s Den before the pilot turned off the entertainment system in the final part of our flight, right when the film was getting very interesting.

DAY 2
Friday December 29, 2006

The layover in London-Heathrow was 3 hours, but I wandered the shops in Terminal 2 until I caught the tiny Lux Air jet to Luxembourg City. I got to practice my German a little bit on the flight to Lux while ordering food, but “käsebrot und orangensaft bitte” (“cheese sandwich and orange juice please”) is pretty easy so hopefully the more advanced German will come back to me soon, though I think most of the people I’ll be interacting with speak French instead.

All of my American coworkers are out of town so I had to take a taxi to my four-star hotel, where I’ll be staying for the next 2 and half months.

DAY 3
Saturday December 30, 2006

My hotel room is pretty kickass. It’s a one-bedroom loft studio with a spiral staircase and a kitchen-in-a-closet. I doubt I’ll get to use the kitchen much though because I’ll probably eat most of my lunches and dinners at work like I did during pre-production, and the hotel has an awesome Breakfast Buffet which way better than the cheap bagel-and-banana “Continental Breakfast” that I’m used to while traveling. This morning I had orange juice, coffee, cereal, a croissant, a roll, toast and jam, cheese, a hardboiled egg, a tangerine and a kiwi. I’m gonna get pretty fat pretty quick if I keep eating like that. I was going to go for a run before breakfast to explore the city, but the sun didn’t come out until after 8 am and it was cold and dark. It’s not quite as dark now, but it’s still pretty cold, freezing in fact, just over 32 degrees Fahrenheit (check out the little weather.com feed for Luxembourg I added at the bottom of the left menu).

The only problem so far with my hotel room is that the air aonditioner constantly makes crackling and popping noises. Even when the AC is off it sounds like a giant hard drive being formatted. I know the human brain is capable of tuning out persistent sounds over time, but my brain can’t tune out the AC noises because the crackling is so frantic and sporadic and since I’m such a light sleeper, it made it really hard to sleep last night even though I was exhausted from my trip. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if the sound was droning and continuous, but I found myself anticipating the forthcoming gurgles during the few seconds of silence when the AC momentarily stopped making noises. After an hour of trying of trying to sleep, I finally covered my ears with a second pillow, which sort of blocked the sound but since I toss and turn in my sleep, I woke up each time I rolled over to reposition the pillow. The head sandwich also blocked out the sound of passing cars, except for the occasional car bumping European techno.

Other than the noisy AC, the only other problem I’ve encountered so far is that I can’t use the SIM card that the producer provided for my Sony Ericsson W600i because Cingular “locked” my phone when I bought it. Apparently most American wireless providers “lock” their branded cell phones when you buy them with a contract so that you can only use their network’s SIM cards. My cell is a GSM World phone compatible with European networks, but I have to unlock it before I can use any other SIMs. Hopefully I’ll be able to unlock my phone sometime next week when I start work after New Year’s.

I’m going to be very very busy for the next 12 weeks as Production Coordinator on 9 but I’ll try to overcome the blogging Catch-22 since this blog will be the best way to let my friends and family know what’s going on in my life while I’m half a World away. I brought my new Toshiba laptop, my new Canon PowerShot SD630 digital still camera and my trusty ol’ Canon GL1 DV camcorder so I’m going to try to blog everyday and post photos and video of my trip as often as possible. I doubt I’ll have time to do a daily video blog like my hero Ze Frank but I’ll try to post video at least once a week. I hope to have my first video post up by Sunday night (Luxembourg time) / Sunday afternoon (Los Angeles time).

Well it’s 39º F outside so I think I’ll go exploring before lunch.

Seriously, I can’t believe I’m in Luxembourg.

Hey you! Ya you, visitor! Look, over on the menu, there's an ad over there!

No, not the little "Click Josh's Face!" thing. I've already explained that a few days ago. No, I'm talking about the tiny little 1and1.com banner at the very bottom of the left menu.

You don't see anything?! Then you're probably using Firefox with the AdBlock extension like I am. If you were browsing with something else, then you'd be witnessing history in the life of Joshua J. Morgan... I've sold out and placed an advertisement on my site!

Now I know what you're thinking... "what horrible malady befell upon Josh to drive him to do such an unforgivable thing?!"

Well actually, it wasn't anything horrible at all. Quite the contrary, it was something wonderful that happened... My Self-Portrait made the Front Page at newgrounds.com.

I figured only good things could come of this. At worst, my film gets seen by thousands of people. At best, one of those people will give my a job or money or both (imagine it if you can... a paying job).

Being on the Front Page means everybody who goes to newgrounds.com will see my film among the other featured Flash submissions and a huge number of those people will actually click and watch my film. As of this moment, Self-Portrait has been viewed 74,533 times!!! I didn't realize until tonight, when I got an email from my host, 1and1.com, that a significant number of those newgrounders who'd seen my film then went to this website, joshuajmorgan.com. So many people visited my site in the last few days, in fact, that I've gone well over my bandwidth quota.

It turns out that prior to posting Self-Portrait on newgrounds, I was averaging 50 MB a day of traffic on joshuajmorgan.com. My bandwidth spiked to over 300 MB on the day that I first posted Self-Portrait, Friday the 11th, and it stayed at about 150 MB a day right up until last Thursday, when I made the Front Page at newgrounds. Thanks to all that incredible traffic directed my way by newgrounds, I'm now averaging 3 GB a day, which is way more traffic than I've ever gotten in a whole month, so now I'm way over my monthly quota and will continue to exceed that limit for another two weeks.

Here's where I feel so lucky that I have 1and1.com as a host for joshuajmorgan.com. Instead of shutting down joshuajmorgan.com and replacing my website with a "bandwidth exceeded" page (like I've seen happen to other sites that have gotten unexpected traffic), 1and1.com let my website tick along, business as usual, except now I am over-taxing their servers so they are going to charge me for the overage.

But how much is this extra bandwidth gonna cost?

$0.49 / GB

That's right, one dollar for every 2 GB I go over. Oh no, it's costing me less than $2 a day for all this extra bandwdith, how am I ever going to afford that? (In case you didn't notice, I'm being sarcastic.) 50 cents a Gig is way cheap and I have no problem paying that until the buzz around here dies down. Or if a miracle happens and people keep coming to my site, I have the option of upgrading to a hosting plan with a larger bandwidth quota.

"What's so blog-worthy about that?" you might be asking. "Why do you need an ad banner then if you can afford a couple bucks a day for the extra bandwidth until we all abandon your lame-o site for the next weird internet fad?!"

Well here's the deal, it might not sound like much, but 1and1.com did me an incredible favor by allowing me the flexibility to pro-rate extra bandwidth or to upgrade to a more expensive plan. I know for a fact that many other webhosts don't offer their customers that choice. Many hosts simply shutdown the site and basically blackmail you into upgrading to a more expensive plan (I won't name any specific hosts but let's just say the company starts with a "G" and ends with "addy"). I honestly CANNOT afford to permanently upgrade joshuajmorgan.com to a more expensive plan right now, especially if I'm no sure if I'll even need the extra bandwidth until I find another gimmick to lure visitors here.

Bottomline, 1and1.com did me a favor, so now I'm returning the favor by adding that tiny little banner in a non-obtrusive place. And if I make a buck or two in the meantime, then I guess I'm a sellout and so be it.

And for my friends and family who actually read this here formerly-sleepy blog, don't worry, the banner will probably be gone as qucikly as all the new visitors...

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Current Mood:
Current Music: Sailing the Seas of Cheese by Primus

Thank you so very much for checking out my Self-Portrait at newgrounds.com.

If you have not VOTED yet, please let me know what you think:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/277346

I really do read all the reviews and I appreciate the fact that people took the time to give me feedback. I must admit that I'm overwhelmed by how positive the response has been overall.

Most of the comments have been very complimentary and encouraging, and I am indeed pleased so many people recognized that my film is hardly about depression or suicide. I thank you all and my ego has fed quite hungrily upon the praise.

Luckily there have been enough negative reviews to deflate my ego back down to a healthy size. I openly welcome constructive criticism and I thank those few who were able to articulate their disapproving reactions. Your comments have been duly noted and will help me with my future projects, especially my Thesis film which is a work in progress.

I do not, however, give any credence to the insults or whines from those who were upset that my Self-Portrait showed them something they were not ready or unwilling to see. My favorite negative reviews are the ones that cry foul because my film is "too short," as if its brevity somehow makes it "waste" even more of their time (which is obviously too precious to spend on silly things like spelling or grammar or complete thoughts when they leave a comment).

But like I said, the vast majority of comments have been really encouraging.

Thanks again, and enjoy JoshuaJMorgan.com, which will some day be a proper portfolio website, but for now it's just a blog / film diary / dream journal.

Oh ya, if you haven't already, check out my Stick Fighter game, also at newgrounds:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/278243

My blog now comes in two flavors:

• Night - old default dark style
• Day - new selectable bright style (bursting with fruit flavor)

I may add more color schemes if I can think of some other clever names. Maybe if I rename "Day" to "Morning" and add "Afternoon"... nah, that's just fing stupid (as if "Night" & "Day" aren't lame already).

Link: http://quotes.joshuajmorgan.com/

So you might have noticed that all 350+ quotes which usually cycle at random the top of the blog are now listing in the main blog area too (there's like 35 pages of quotes below this post!!!). That's cuz I changed the way I'm storing the quote data.

My old way was a single PHP file that contained several arrays which contained each quote's data, but as my collection grew over 300 quotes, it became too cumbersome to edit, organize and process, so I decided to make use of the MySQL database that stores this blog's other data.

This new way has several advantages:

• categories (Film, TV, Lyrics, People)
• searching
• faster access and randomization
• all around easier data entry and editting

Josh's Quote Collection

So it turns out that if you Google "aristocrats paul provenza" my Film Diary post about The Aristocrats directed by Paul Provenza is on the second page of results (it's the 69th result directly below Roger Ebert's review of the film).

I'm guessing that's how The Aristocrats director Paul Provenza found my post, because he actually read that Film Diary entry and left a detailed comment that challenged my assumption that "Eddie Izzard and Chris Rock were drunk as fuck during their interviews."

I guess I should be more careful about what I post on this here blog because apparently it's not entirely unlikely that the people I write about might actually read it themselves. I've said some nasty things about a few of the horrible films that I've seen, but I usually remain from saying anything negative or undeserving of the filmmakers themselves.

Luckily I had nothing but positive things to say about Provenza's film. I just wish I hadn't made misinformed comments about Eddie Izzard and Chris Rock. For the record, they are two of my all time favorite comedians and I've seen them both live and up close. I saw Chris Rock live in concert for my birthday in 2004 and I saw Eddie Izzard in person hanging around outside of a Dylan Moran show.

Thanks Paul Provenza for reading my blog and taking the time to set the record straight about Eddie Izzard and Chris Rock. My previous post stands corrected.

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Current Mood: 8|
Currently listening to: Made in Usa by Pizzicato Five

So I made a bunch of minor cosmetic changes to my blog that no one will ever notice but me (then again, who am I typing to right now anyway but me?)

I also added an RSS Feed Aggregator using this really cool hack by this guy Ed Bennett, who adapted MagpieRSS for b2evolution (the free, open-source software that powers this here blog).

So far I'm getting feeds from my friends, Sam, Wen, and Tripp, and from a couple sites that I frequent, Anime News Network and Darcy Paquet's Koreanfilm.org.

Five is a good number, so if I ever feel compelled to add anymore feeds, I'll probably randomize them. (UPDATE: I did indeed add more and I randomized them)

I hope Sam doesn't mind whe she gets back from her Labor Day Weekend vacation in San Francisco cuz I went ahead and added an RSS Feed Aggregator to her blog too with feeds to her friends' blogs.

Now that I've pretty much got my blog (and Sam's) looking and running just the way I want, I bet the newest version of the blog software b2evolution will finally come out and I'll have to change everything again.

I know should be working on more important stuff than this blog, but I'm learning a lot each time I tinker with the code. Maybe one day I'll apply my knowledge to something that'll make me rich... if only I could stay focused on it for long enough. I have a real problem where I get distracted by unimportant details and I obsess over a mundane little thing for days and nights without ever following through on the really pertinent stuff.

Working on this blog instead of my thesis animation is like polishing the hubcaps on a broken-down car... it might look nice, but it isn't really going to get me anywhere.

And the worst part is, I am fully aware that it's a futile endeavor, and yet I continue to polish.

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Current Mood: )-o
Currently listening to: Waiting by The Devlins

UPDATE: 09-07-2005

I added RSS Feeds from my own MySpace blog and Régis' blog, also on MySpace.

UPDATE: 09-14-2005

I decided to add a buttload more RSS Feeds so I modified my Random Quote script to randomize the all the other RSS Feeds.

This blog keeps getting hit by fucking spammers who use bots to post spam comments (usually to every single one of my fucking posts) so I added a "verification" code to the comments form. Hopefully that will combat some of the spam, although after reading this Guide to Combatting Comment Spam, I'm starting to think a CAPTCHA might not be enough.

If this does indeed ward off most of the spam, I'm going to add it to Sam's blog, cuz she gets hit by spam sometimes too and since I switched her over to a new host, she now gets comment notification emails, which is the really sucky part about getting comment spam cuz it turns into email spam (my inbox gets flooded whenever all 150+ of my posts gets a comment spam).

I've been tempted to turn off comments altogether considering it seems like no one ever reads this blog, but then every once in a while, a friend, or a friend of a friend, posts a comment and it really makes my day.

So if you're a real person and you read this blog, please let me know by commenting, but if you're a fucking spambot, well FUCK YOU FILTHY FUCKING SPAMMER!!! >:-[ (damn, I guess the spambots can't read since they're computer programs and all so I just yelled at anyone who might actually be reading this thing... sorry )

Link: http://www.joshuajmorgan.com/blog/index.php?blog=3

I just saw 3-Iron, and afterwards, I found a review at a blog called Long Pauses. This guy Darren Hughes has a Film Diary, where he lists all the films he sees each day, and usually a review.

I figured since I'm been so bad about updating my blog, I could at least note the films I watch, esp considering I average about two dozen films each month. That means I'll probably be posting something almost every day, even if it's just a film title.

So to kick off my Film Diary, I've retro-actively posted the films I watched this last week:

McDull - Prince De La Bun
Ritual
Branded to Kill
Pistol Opera
Harvey
Elf
Winchester '73
Destry Rides Again
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2046
3-Iron

I'll be posting comments/reviews to most of the films ASAP.