This my first post on my new diary-a. Except I'm manly. So it's a journal. 'Cuz journals are all beefy and manly and stuff.

So I was grounded because I had a C in Chem (which I think is a hopeless class) and a B+ in English. I was grounded from video games. It turns out that I have been somewhat addicted to them, and I was stressed out until now.

Finally, I'm allowed to play, if just during spring break. I played Smash Brawl and Halo 3. In Brawl, played like 3 levels of the SSE and 200 VS matches flat. In Halo 3, I continued to suck. All of my instinct is Halo 1 instinct, and that hardly does anything, because half of the game is melee. I played a 4v3 (our team being 3) game on Standoff with hog noobs. They won like 50-17. It was awful.

Spring break just started. I had some people over; the people I normally I have over, and Gloria, and Kevin Harvey (who is histerical), and Sarah, a friend of Gloria's. Admittedly, it wasn't that fun, and I don't think it was that fun for her either, because there weren't a lot of people she knew. I didn't have too much fun because I didn't talk to her too much.

That Gloria.

I think part of the reason I (still and shouldn't) like her is how cute she is, and not so much in looks, but in terms of how she is. When she talks, she opens her eyes almost excitedly. Or when she laughs, she bounces her head around in this indescribable way. Or when she walks, she walks almost lazily. And her voice is the most calming thing ever, and all of the peaks of her voice are a little bit off of where they are in normal people.

Another reason is that I love talking to her. I'm not sure why - she brings out silence in me. Whenever I talk to other people, there's never silence. But when I talk to her, I don't feel like talking. I feel like moving my mouth is too much effort - talking to her feels like it should be that easy. Creepy? Of course.

I shouldn't still like her, for all reasons. She doesn't like me back, she's told me that. She's told me all of these flaws that should bother me. It's so typical teen-drama to like her. There are other reasons.

I'm not telling anyone that I still like her, because that always makes it worse. When I told people that I still liked Julia or Eliza, it just made it worse. Nobody is gonna know, except me and...and?

She is an amazing, amazing writer. I would say this if I didn't know her, I would say this if I didn't like her, I would say this about anyone that could write this well. I have no good way to put her words into...words.

So much of her is indescribable.

I went to her poetry slam and won $10 and met a bunch of really cool people. I think I'm on Calliope staff now, doing podcast stuff. I'm honestly not sure.

I have to work on stuff for the Voice as well, and start thinking about writing something that exports XML so Evan Gitterman can write a Flash app that reads it and displays it. I'm also basically rewriting the innards of their site, and turning everything into a tag. Works like this:

There's a Story table, with ID Title, Enabled, Date, Body text, and maybe some URLs.
There's a table that has a separate field for each tag in each story.
There's a Tags table, which has ID, and Tag (a string), and a "Special" ID - eg if it's 5, it's an Author tag, and has special behaviors.
The Special Tags table, which has an ID, and something about special behaviors. Not really sure how I'm doing this one.

This allows you to get rid of an enormous amount of fields, and gets rid of the existing Relationships system. Author can be a special tag, and there can be an infinite number of them. Publication is a special tag. It's even debatable whether EVERYTHING is a tag - title, body text, date, anything. I'm not sure how that should work, but I think it's possible to be 100% tags for anything visible.

Their existing Relationships system is shit! It's non-automated - someone has to pick stories it's related to. That should be done automatically, or at least in addition. It seems like you could also keep the system in there, but have the site, all invisibly, put the tags from the related story into there.

I'm doing a subjective documentary for video and, like all of my videos, it isn't turning out like I want it to turn out. It's not that funny, and it lacks any originality. The premise is simple and the jokes aren't "invisible" - the joke, if nobody laughs, isn't obviously there. It hurts the film if nobody laughs at a joke that's supposed to be funny, but it doesn't if it's invisible.

But the video is flawed because of digital zoom, lack of original background music, unrelated (but cool) titles, a risky premise, and harmfully innovative editing. I edit with the "no-pauses" philosophy, which takes getting used to in a documentary.

To be fair, I've never liked any of my own film-esque videos. I ALMOST liked Muffins (it had the coolest mirror-shot ever), but the lighting after about 50 seconds in just gets distractingly bad. You also couldn't tell it was a muffin for some of it, and the color filters were obvious. Also shot in 4:3, which almost never is better than 16:9. Obvious iMovie SFX in it too. Inconsistencies around the nightvision shot, and around 2:05 minutes in, the lighting is the worst I've ever seen. However, those problems are actually rather insignificant as far as my films go.

Three, for example. Starts off well; good woosh. But I think it's one of the few that's hurt by 16:9, and because some of the shots are in 4:3 and widescreen'd (not completely), which is awful. Falling over looks fake. Audio levels are a mess, as are some of the crops. The plot stops making sense and the third Evan is completely irrelevant. Some of the shots are held a second too long, like before he puts a blanket on the other guy. If you watch, there are a ton of obvious editing errors. And the titles and credits are...wow.

Creepover is the worst. Oh my. Not even going into that one.

But I hope that, during and after my film camp in London this summer, I'll be able to like my films and be making great stuff. I hope.

I started listening to The Meters and The Cat Empire. The Meters are a mowtown band, which I enjoy. Their songs tend to sound the same, though. The Cat Empire is this obscure Australian band that is very fun-loving and talented/high.

And "The Nosebleed Section" by Hilltop Hoods. Heeelllza catchy.

I hope that I can hang out with Gloria sometime tomorrow, it'll be the last time during spring break.