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I have been playing Super Mario 64 when I get the chance for the past week or so. In inspiration of the Skyirm drinking game I saw on Facebook a could weeks back, I have invented the Mario 64 drinking game. I just made it up. I tried to put as little effort into it as possible. Whenever you get a star you take a drink.

About six months ago I fell into a pretty deep spiritual depression and got on a hardcore Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross kick. I would scour the innernette for any and all videos I could find of these two creative geniuses and their programming. Around the same time, these videos started going viral…

Cell phone cameras always seem to fail to capture any real depth of a scene when photographing it, resulting in a flat and soulless picture of whatever the hell was important enough to get a picture, but not by the use of any real camera.

I recently hiked a small river trail in West Virginia and came across a tree whose roots were protruding from the 3 foot cliff raised from the path of the trail. The roots went horizontally into the cliff, leaving a bit amount of shelter for any creature small enough to appreciate it. I thought, “Hey, lemme get a picture of this kick-ass tree! But wait, I know taking a picture with my cell phone isn’t really gonna grab the awesomeness in front of me. I’m gonna upload it to my computer and stare at it and think ‘YTF did I take this picture?’ ”

Then it hit me. Everything is going 3D now a days. The only thing is, it’s not really 3D; it’s just two images displayed simultaneously for each of our eyes to give the illusion of 3D. I can do that! What if I took two pictures of this tree from different angles, and animated them really quickly like those weird drawings I’ve seen out on the innernette!

Behold…

In this video, the Jurassic Park crew is doing some location scouting, and Spielberg is getting ideas and spouting reasons for his decisions on the fly. It’s this kind of pure and unadulterated inspiration that makes this video so awesome and to have a home in this series of posts.

I’m starting a new series of I-don’t-know-how-many posts talking about creativity from the minds of the mainstream. I’ll be talking about videos or articles about popular artists, musicians, directors, and the like and how they talk about some of their best work. I’m sharing the things that I find inspiration in, and maybe they’ll inspire you, too. Who gives a shit?

The first article in this series is about Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails talking about an instrument he used in the soundtrack for The Social Network — a whiptastic movie that if you haven’t seen I’d come through your monitor and smack you right now and tell you to go _____ it. (pick your viewing poison)

In the video, Reznor talks specifically about an instrument called the Swarmatron — a collection of wires and electrical mess hand-built by a couple of doods from Brooklyn. The way that Reznor describes the sound created by this machine is almost poetic. This instrument is so prevalent throughout the movie (and I’ve heard the soundtrack so many times) I can almost hear every note and abstract sound played in the movie’s score coming from the small sample of notes he produced for the video, and to see the guy play with the machine with patience and little-no-remorse in how it sounded or felt is ridiculously inspiring.

I picked up the new Sopwith Camel model from LEGO about two weeks ago and spent a Friday night hammering away at it. I knew it wouldn’t be a long build so I recorded myself putting it together thinking I could make this video and enjoy the experience later as well as share it with others. Enjoy!

Alright, SEGA. Sit down.

I’ve just discovered your intent to release a HD remake of your wildly popular Saturn game, NiGHTS Into Dreams. This was one of the best selling titles on the console, and NiGHTS even introduced analog controls to the world of 3D gaming! And now you plan to port it onto modern consoles following an announcement on its 16th anniversary of the Japanese release.

Over the holiday I stayed up til about 3am with my dad on Christmas Eve to finish a puzzle that was lying around about 25% done. We knocked the rest of it out in 4 or 5 hours. That might sound like a lot, but considering some of the piece shapes literally ranged from human hearts to moose heads, and the fact that it was the first puzzle I’d touched in over a decade, I’d say that’s pretty good.

Exhibit A
A hungry-hungry-Humphrey stares at the ass of James Dean, devilishly holding the cord of a phone from Miss Monroe, being shameless checked out by Elvis.

The week following I started working on a puzzle my sister gave me in, like, 1999. It’s a glow-in-the-dark San Francisco skyline with an Earthrise in the back. Needless to say, it looks pretty badass when you cut the lights.

This game… there is truly no way to describe the experience one could having playing it. The level of escapism and immersion is astounding. Admittedly, I have found myself to be more productive at work because I just want the time to pass so I can go home and play this fucking game.

The Skyrim Effect – I still jump from excitement whenever the word “Skyrim” is said by characters in the game.

After having them for a week, I have to say that the surround-sound headphones I bought are well worth the price tag. For someone like me, living in an apartment, a full surround-sound system is a no-go. I’d have people glued to my door all hours of the night telling me to turn the noise down. It must be a little creepy from an outside perspective, me sitting in complete silence, lit only by the glow of the TV I’m sitting four feet away from, with an occasional bark of awe, laughter, or frustration. So I leave the TV turned up loud enough for that to not be the case, but low enough that it doesn’t affect the exclusivity of the headphones. 😛

Time in Skyrim as of this article:

37h:34m:13s