Day Forty-Three: Sleeping In

7/26/14, 10:06 PM PDT

Hit 3,000 views on my blog today! Awwwwww yeah. Thank you guys for visiting so often, it means a lot to me to know that my writing is entertaining enough to keep you guys coming back for more. Or maybe it's an addiction and you do it in fear of the effects of withdrawal.

3,019 hits of the gateway blog and counting.

So today, I was supposed to go run the Assassin's Creed obstacle course at Comic Con with Seth. But after I woke up, I was just so exhausted for some reason (probably because the entire time I was at Comic Con yesterday, I didn't eat ANYTHING), so I wasn't really in the mood to run then. Thankfully, mom wasn't gonna come home until 9:30 anyway and I had to be at Seth's house by 9, so I wouldn't have been able to go anyway. So thank you mom, for giving me a good excuse to stay in bed until 1 PM.

"No problem, son!"
(via cbc.ca)

Apart from me being knocked out until an hour after noon, nothing else really happened today. Well, I edited a lot more of my short film, but I can't really include any more scandalous scandalous leaks because the part I'm at right now is pretty spoiler-filled. Sorry, readers. But as consolation, here are pictures of the Assassin's Creed obstacle course that I would've run had I not been exhausted this morning.

Obstacle 1: Slanted wall.

Cannonball run!

Monkey bars but with swinging rings. So pretty much they're
nothing like monkey bars.

Log run.

Exiting the log run to enter...

THE LEAP OF FAITH. Which I thought would look way more
impressive, but whatever.

RFotD: I probably have Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder since I naturally sleep at 3 AM now. But that's okay. I think.

SGAT: Edited more of my short film.

Day Thirty-Four: Kids Disrupt My Exercise

7/17/14, 11:59 PM PDT

Oops, fell asleep before I hit publish. My bad.

Went for a run today. Starting week three of that Couch to 5k program thing, I think I'm getting better at running. I think. Definitely an improvement from when I first started and got tired two minutes in, that's for damn sure.

While running, I encountered two kids walking on the road, both probably eight or nine years old. When they're about ten, fifteen feet away from me, they suddenly step onto the sidewalk that I'm running on, stretch their arms and legs out like they're doing jumping jacks, and block my path, Gandalf-style.

"YOU SHALL NOT EXERCISE!"
(via mqotd.com)

Swear to god, those kids have a future as NFL defensive linemen because I could NOT get past them. I tried everything short of just knocking those two over like bowling pins and they just wouldn't let me go. I ended up losing that battle since my last attempt to go around them ended with a botched spin maneuver and a collision with a parked RV trailer, followed by the boisterous laughter of two nine year old kids.

But hey, I got past them while they were busy laughing, so I guess it was worth it.

You know. If sacrificing your dignity for marginal exercise was worth it.
(via gif-emporium.tumblr.com)

In other news, editing my short film continues. A bit unhappy with how one shot turned out. It was a POV shot sort of like this except only a few seconds long, but hey, considering at the time I didn't have my GoPro and I had no idea how to even begin taking a shot like that, I'm happy.

Here's a screenshot of the film so far (ooh, scandalous, scandalous leaks).

Who is that mysterious stranger?

RFotD: Nothing in life has ever made me more frustrated than the Rotoscope tool in After Effects.

SGAT: Edited more of my short film, exercised.

Day Thirty-One: New Smash 4 Characters

7/14/14, 11:59 PM PDT

They announced a few new characters in the new Super Smash Bros. game today. Take a look at the video.

Now, I'm not big on Fire Emblem at all. I've never played a Fire Emblem game and my knowledge of the series only extends as far as the Fire Emblem characters that are present in Smash so far and the one day in Science Olympiad where I played with Kurtland's 3DS and "accidentally" (intentionally) killed off his entire team in one fight.

But the REAL gold of today's announcement?

Hell. Yes.
(via reddit.com)

CAPTAIN. FALCON. AWWWWWWWWWWWW YEAH. For those of you that read my blog that aren't into competitive Smash like I am, let me tell you why this character is so awesome. In Melee, Captain Falcon is easily one of the HARDEST characters to master for several reasons, reasons which, for the sake of not boring you guys, I will not go into right now. Look it up.

But for those that have mastered the character... my god, is it amazing to watch.

Yeah, I'm a pretty big fan of Melee, haha. And also, aside from napping half the day, I didn't really do much else today.

Huh.




RFotD: I get lazy sometimes.

SGAT: Worked more on my short film. Have a very attractive explosion happening behind Nick right now.

Day Twenty-Eight: A New Goal

7/11/14, 11:59 PM PDT

I didn't wake up until 11:45 AM today. I think that's a new record for this summer. No doubt in part because of my AMAZING clip-on fan. It's so beautifully cold when I sleep now. Swear to god, I could probably sleep for 12, 13 hours straight if it weren't for the fact that I have to eat sometime.

Anyway, I spent most of today writing my part of the duet poem I'm working on with Samantha. I got pretty far on it too, I'm about three-fourths of the way through, which is pretty good. Later, went swimming with my family.

On to the big thing that happened today. So because of the wonders of Spotify, I got to hear a new song called "Love on Top" by Beyoncé. Wait, scratch that, it's not an entirely new song to me since I've heard it before from this vine:

But today, I actually got to listen to the entire song.

And holy SHIT, Beyoncé hits DAMN high notes. But my favorite part has to be the end where she just keeps raising the key higher and higher, GOD DAMN. Here, I'll shut up for a bit, give it a listen, it'll be worth five minutes of your day, promise.

Okay, so why am I raving so much about a song? Simple.

It's because I've made it my goal to be able to sing every note of that song.

"PBBBBBBTH, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA."
(via gifsoup.com)

I know what you're thinking. "But Michael! You're not a singer!" And yes, I know. I agree. I'm not a singer. I don't dispute that. But just because I'm not a singer does not mean that I don't sing at all. Because I do. A lot.

I even have a recording studio, see?
(via nixgear.com)

But god damn, I am going to learn that song. You know how effing AMAZING it will be if I manage to learn that? Scenario: I'm dragged into going to my dad's friend's son's sister's uncle's third cousin twice removed's birthday party. They're doing karaoke while I play Tetris on my iPhone. Suddenly, one of them asks me if I want to sing.

Now stop. Before I found this song, my answer to that question would've always been "no," usually preceded by a profane word. But if I learnt his song...

I won't just be saying "yes." I will be BEGGING them to ask me to sing a song. I will furiously scroll through the alphabetized artist list until I see the letter "B." I will look for Beyoncé. And I will sing the SHIT out of the song. Hell, I'll even do the dance routine if there's enough room.

And then I will instantly become the most popular person in that party. Using my newfound popularity, I will then ask all of the teenagers attending the party if I can add them on Facebook (and c'mon, after a performance like that, who wouldn't say no?). AND MY FRIENDS LIST WILL INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY. IT'S THE PERFECT CRIME.

But seriously though. I'm gonna learn how to sing this song.

RFotD: The "Great Bath" in Mohenjo-Daro is most likely the first swimming pool in history, created sometime around 3,000 BCE.

SGAT: Wrote a big chunk of the duet poem I'm working on with Samantha.

Day Eight: I Actually Make Friends

6/21/14, 1:44 PM PDT

Eric showed up at my house at 7 AM to pick up some reimbursements forms for Red Cross. Problem is, I don't normally wake up until 10 AM, so when he showed up, I was SUPER cranky. I don't remember exactly what I said to him when I handed him the Ziploc bag of important Red Cross documents since I immediately went back to sleep after, but Eric, if you're reading this right now and I ended up saying something horrible about your mother, I'm sorry. I'm not me when I just woke up.



6/22/14, 1:26 AM PDT

Wow, another really late entry. My bad, guys.

So a bulk of today was spent at my cousin's graduation party in Orange County. Or at least, I think it's Orange County, I really don't know where they live since every time we go up to their house, I pass out for pretty much the entire car ride.

Let me just throw this out there. I am NOT a social person. Throw me into a party full of the nicest, most accepting people in the world and unless someone talks to me first, I will happily ignore every single person there in favor of writing on my phone. The day I start a conversation with a total stranger will probably be the day that World War III starts and RoboHitler is unleashed into the world.

So based on how this party was looking in the beginning, I didn't think anything would change. The older adults probably weren't looking to make conversation with me that didn't start with the words "What grade are you in now?" and the younger people either already had friends to talk to or had their eyes glued onto their electronics. The latter was especially prevalent in the party's piano room, occupied entirely by kids still in elementary school and middle schoolers addicted to social media.

But hell, there was a piano, so I decided to play. And surprisingly, playing the piano acts as a pretty good ice breaker, because suddenly I'm getting all these requests from the kids around me who were previously just staring at their iPhones. And even though I couldn't play all of their crazy requests ("Play something from Frozen! Play a Snoop Dogg song! Play the Keyboard Cat song!"), I managed to have some pretty decent conversations with these people, so I guess they're my friends now? I added one guy on Facebook who had a VGHS shirt, so yeah, I think we're friends now?

Yep. Definitely a VGHS shirt.

Is- is that enough to bring upon WWIII or what?





RFotD: There exists a "friendship paradox," which states that your friends tend to have more friends than you do. Several mathematical explanations exist to support this paradox.

SGAT: Became a little less socially awkward.

Day Seventy-Seven: Filming and Sleeping

8/27/13, 7:26 PM PDT

Absolutely EXHAUSTING day of shooting today. The sun just made EVERYTHING a lot more tiring.

But we did manage to get a lot done. Acted as a stunt double for Nick and filmed a first-person shot of me taking out a few grunts, which was pretty cool. However, I planned the shot literally the day before, so it might not look as good as the stuff Freddie Wong pulls out. But whatever. Baby steps.

Oh, and got Nick to stab Kayla in head as well. Finished the bulk of our movie, with only the very end chase sequence left to film, along with a few retakes.

Also, a lot of weird laughter went on during the shoot. Told Cody I wanted an evil laugh and he just gives me this cackle akin to a crack smoking dolphin. I don't know what the hell it was, but I'm putting it in the movie for sure.

Immediately PASSED OUT when I got home, didn't wake up until 5 because of how tired I was. Now gonna read the rest of The Secret Life of Bees. Assuming I don't fall asleep while reading it anymore.





RFotD: Heat makes warm-blooded creatures more tired because their bodies have to work harder to regulate their temperature in heat. As such, cold-blooded animals, like reptiles, actually feel more energetic in hot conditions/

SGAT: Filmed a bit more of my short film.

Day Seventy-Four: Sleep Reconditioning

8/24/13, 3:04 PM PDT

Today begins reconditioning to waking up early for school. Even though I stayed up until 2 AM last night editing my short film, I forced myself to wake up at 7.

Since my alarm fails to wake me up anymore, I decided to outsource the job of waking me up to my parents by posting a Post-It note on the door to my room, telling them to wake me up at 7. It worked.

...But then I went right back to sleep, waking up at 8:30. Still a bit of an improvement compared to waking up at 10 or later today. But god, am I exhausted.

Quickly read more of The Secret Life of Bees, which got DEPRESSING really quick. Now about to start my two English entries for the day while blasting EDM through my boombox in an attempt to keep me awake. Reconditioning demands that I do not nap at all, and I'm far from the happiest person in the world when I'm tired, so forgive me if I snap at tiny things, anyone that talks to me today. Or tomorrow. Or any day until reconditioning is over.



Same day, 5:35 PM PDT

OP. MISSION FAILED. FELL ASLEEP WHILE READING THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES.

Oh well. At least my head doesn't hurt anymore. Now to edit!



Same day, 11:54 PM PDT

Lots of editing done today. Finished my roughcut, resulting in an eight-minute movie so far, which is pretty good.

Also looking in to external iPhone microphones since my DSLR's audio is miserable and I don't want to ever reshoot because of audio again. There's one I found online that's really pretty called the "VeriCorder Minimic," but it takes three days to ship, which will be too late for my movie. Probably gonna persuade my parents to go to Fashion Valley tomorrow so I can look into mics at the Apple Store. If I can't find anything, I'll probably buy the VeriCorder because it's just SO COOL.

LOOK AT IT
(via amazon.com)

Also gotta start writing the titles stories as well as the weekly story which will be coming out on Wednesday, as promised. Wow, am I busy.





RFotD: Ribbon microphones (the big, rectangular metal ones that look like this) were invented in 1931. Variations of the ribbon microphone are still used today.

SGAT: Finished roughcut.

Day Seventy: WRITING

8/20/13, 11:59 PM PDT

I'M TIRED. SPENT ALL DAY WRITING. STILL NOT DONE. CHECK TOMORROW FOR NEW ENTRY ON BOTH BLOGS.





RFotD: MICHAEL IS REALLY TIRED.

SGAT: WROTE THINGS

Day Sixty: Sleep Schedule

8/10/13, 2:38 PM PDT

Up early-ish, fixed family computer from the tons and tons of viruses that my sister accidentally installed from playing a bunch of online games. There was one that was particularly annoying because it ran a program on startup that made it look like it was scanning your computer and finding a thousand viruses on it. A trojan, essentially. But what made it a pain in the neck is that it auto-closed Task Manager, prevented me from opening other browsers, and slowed the computer to a crawl. But I fixed it. After smashing the keyboard a bit, yes, I fixed it.

Watching Cloud Atlas now, back in a bit.



Same day, 5:41 PM PDT

Cloud Atlas was AMAZING. Oh my god, it's BEAUTIFUL. Especially the Neo-Seoul segment, which looked absolutely GORGEOUS. Pretty much every genre of film is in this. Romance, action, comedy, sci-fi, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH. It's a masterpiece. Go watch it. GO FRICKING WATCH IT.



Same day, 10:53 PM PDT

Wow, film camp really fixed my sleep schedule. I used to sleep at 3 AM, now I can barely stay up past 11. On one hand, I'm a bit annoyed that I can't tap in to the more creative part of my brain, which only comes out late at night. But on the other, I'm relieved that I (probably) won't be falling asleep in 5th period in school.

Ah, who am I kidding. I could sleep for two years straight and still fall asleep right after lunch.

Oh, and got another college letter. Heh. Rice university.

Wonder what they serve for lunch there?

That's right. Mashed potatoes.





RFotD: William Marsh Rice University has a monthly event called the "Baker 13" where students run around at 10PM wearing nothing but shoes and shaving cream on the 13th and the 31st of every month (or the 26th on months with fewer than 31 days).

SGAT: Slept in, after running on less than five hours of sleep the entire week.

Day Fifty-Six: One Advanced Potato

8/6/13, 7:28 AM PDT

Early again. GOD, my head hurts. I've barely had sleep this entire week.

I'm trying to find a comfortable position to sleep at UCSD even though I don't have a backrest or anything for support. Unfortunately, when I find a comfortable spot, some goddamn seagull flies overhead and force me to look up to see if I'll get bird bombed.

I hate seagulls. A lot. Any other bird is cool. But F seagulls.



Same day, 8:38 AM PDT

Found a chair and fell asleep. It was pretty comfortably. When I woke up, I saw five people staring at me.

Huh.



Same day, 5:08 PM PDT

First day of filming. Well, first we had more lecture where I sort of fell asleep because I'm just SO TIRED. But it's okay, because it was all review. Or at least, I hope it was review.

Anyway, first day of shooting, and once again, I'm the lead role. I'll be playing a mad scientist that can do parkour. I'll be manning a potato that can jump dimensions and they'll be calling me "Doctor" throughout.

Sounds like my kind of role. And look at our props!

It's a dimensional interlacer.

Also, on the way home, my mom told my sister to stop laughing while she was eating or else she might choke and die. So while we were eating fruit snacks, my sister and I heard a news story on the radio where the reporter said quote:

"The man was just on the operating table when his appendix EXPLODED."

We were eating fruit snacks at the time and we just kind of looked at each other, frowning to try and suppress our laughter.

We swallowed the snacks.

And we screamed in laughter. BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. THEY COULD HAVE SAID "BROKE." THEY COULD HAVE SAID "RUPTURED." BUT NO. THEY SAID "EXPLODED." And we're just imagining a guy on an operating table, calmly looking at the ceiling when BOOM. APPENDIX CHUNKS ON THE ROOF. ON THE PATIENT'S EYES. ON THE FACES OF BABIES IN THE NEARBY NURSERY.

He's okay, the news lady said. So it's okay to laugh.



Same day, 11:32 PM PDT

AAAAAGH. Storyboarded the HELL out of my group's video. I'm so tired.





RFotD: Archaeologists have discovered that Romans wore socks and sandals. SOURCE.

SGAT: Storyboarded a lot of my second video for film camp. 

Day Four: Legends of the Hidden Temple

6/15/13, 1:38 PM PDT

Woke up really late today. Well, compared to the other days of summer, I guess waking up at 1 is pretty normal for most teenagers in summer.

Man, parkour really made me tired, I guess. I slept at midnight yesterday, so I got 12 hours of sleep. Mom bought a big box of cheese balls, each a little bigger than my fist. I ate around ten, fifteen of those for breakfast. I can usually only manage to eat six or seven.

Oh, and I had some pretty awesome dreams last night. At least, I think they're awesome, I can barely remember them. I just remember waking up feeling like I just saved the universe or something. Like I can do anything.

Better use these feelings to go and accomplish awesome things.



Same day, 11:55 PM PDT

Wow, that's a pretty huge time gap, huh?

Well, mostly Internet-related things happened here. More tweaking with my server and a few rounds of Assassin.

But the highlight of the day? SynchTube. Well, not exactly SynchTube, more like a copy of it. But nevertheless, it accomplished the same goal, which was to let the Skype Group and I watch the same videos at the same time.

And oh my GOD, did I miss nights like these. First we watched this RIDICULOUS show called "Man vs. Beast." Synopsis? Human beings compete against animals in various activities.

Today's main course? MIDGETS RELAY RACE AGAINST A CAMEL.

It's great, huh?

Oh my god, my head's throbbing from laughing as I'm writing this. After those videos, we watched a HELL OF A LOT of "Legends of the Hidden Temple" and "Nick Guts," both of which Angela had never heard of prior to today, even though to me, Kayla, Brandon, and Christina, those two shows were OUR CHILDHOOD.

We also laughed at JR, who was SPECTACULARLY BAD at his competitions.

After that, we tried to watch a movie, but couldn't find one worth watching, so we decided to end the night there.

Wow, today was hilarious. Not even sarcastic, I laughed so hard today, my throat hurts.





RFotD: A dog most likely interprets a smiling person as baring their teeth, which is an act of aggression. Don't smile at dogs.

SGAT: None really.