Hey guys, sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I really didn't have anything to blog about, except for the ever increasing stress I've been getting from school nothing has really gone wrong. Well, everything EXCEPT the fact that my parents found out that Matt (and I) do... Things that people our age aren't allowed to do. That's all been worked out (I think) and now I have excellent news for everyone.

Halo 2 Project Legacy, Episode 2 is out. It's called "Who's got the button?" and it gives a little more background to the two Renegades; Damone and Reburst. I was surprised that the final product turned out to be 80 megabytes in size, and is a little over ten minutes in length. I'm also proud to say that this episode also includes our BRAND NEW THEME SONG! Jake (the guy whose does Damone) wrote the music with some program and I wrote and sang the lyrics. Matt and Alex (and I) do the back up and it sounds pretty good for the equipment we used. I'm gonna post the lyrics at the end of this entry, so keep reading!

Spring break is next week, and the only real reason I'm looking forward to it is simply because I don't have to go to class for a week. Other than that I have no plans, well, I have some plans, just nothing really exciting. My one and only plan for break is to work on the Machinima (Project Legacy) and complete the "third" episode. It's already complete except for one thing, I need a female voice to speak Shakespeare. If you're interested in helping me by lending your voice (women only) please contact me! I'm desperate for a voice, just please have some experience with Shakespeare.

I've already begun the fourth episode which we filmed on Friday. I finished the video yesterday and I'm both surprised and scared that it's more than fifteen minutes long. That's longer than anything we've ever done before, I'm worried that the final version will be more than 100 MB, which in my mind is unacceptable for size. If we ever want to put these on the internet for download, they're going to have to be much, much less. A normal (five to ten minute) episode of Red vs. Blue is only around 10 MB to 40 MB. That's less than half! Granted their episodes are traditionally shorter than ours, but 80 MB is twice that much! I suppose my only logical reason for this kind of thing is our equipment. Red vs. Blue (Rooster Teeth) uses over $600 worth of equipment and software to make their videos. Us over here at Partners In Crime, excluding John's Mp4 Player which cost $400 dollars, are using only free software already on our hard drives or downloaded off the internet and a $20 microphone I bought at Wal-Mart. Needless to say our videos are of a much less quality than theirs. The hardest part is getting all of these programs we've hi-jacked to work together, like last week our neighbor Ryan gave us this program he got with a sound card. John tinkered with it and found out it had the ability to cut out parts of the screen like the number of the grenades the cameraman has or the score in the bottom right of the screen. We thought this would get great to use on our videos, we recorded the next episode with this in mind and hit a snag. The program (Ulead Videostudios 5.0) can't open any of the files we use. It can only handle .avi or .mpeg files and we can only use .asf or .wmv files. I found a converter that would take a .asf file and change it into a .avi file and ran it on one of the files. It took about two hours before I got an error message I really didn't understand till I looked at my hard drive, IT WAS MAXED OUT! The Converted asf file was over 30 gigabytes in size! I watched it and in big red letters in the MIDDLE of the screen was the name of the website that made the program!

Why the hell would they do something like that? I was outraged but kept my cool and deleted the video and stopped using that program from that point forward. I'm still using Windows Movie Maker and I checked out a forum for how to make Machinima and someone asked if Windows Movie Maker was a good program to use to which they said with "NO!" They suggested a number of other programs to use, and then the aprox. Price of these programs. If you know me, you know that I'm a poor college student with no job and no means to buy these programs. Besides, WMM works just fine with me and I haven't had THAT many problems with it.

Sorry for the long post, but I only have one more topic to talk about, my room mate. Me and John, for the most part have been getting along great. We talk and joke and brainstorm on the Machinima together, just like good roommates. And just like cell mates, the tension in the room has been getting steadily increased over the weeks. He and I have both been getting really stressed about our classes. I, for the most part, have been pretty calm (on the outside) about it, but he's been getting very vocal about his disgust of his classes. He comes in after class angry about the amount of work he's been given or he gets irrate because he's no idea what the teacher wants on the assignments. When he gets like that he tends to vent his feelings onto me through a sentence which he repeats often. Whatever is pissing him "can rape themselves up the ass." It was kinda funny at first, but that was last semester and it's getting kinda old.

I'd keep talking but for those of you who know the correct internet lingo, I have a code 6... For the idiots that means I'm being watched (John came in and started pacing back and forth on his phone) Oh yeah, here are the lyrics to the Opening.

Project Legacy Opening (Everyone dies)

Woke up this morning,
Put on my armor.
Don't know why,
It makes me calmer.
Guns by my side,
I'm ready to blow.
But no! Everyone's here,
It's time to show!

Project Legacy,
Everybody's dying.
Project Legacy,
But nobody's crying.
Project Legacy,
It's all in good fun
But we'll still be here when the day is done.

Friend or foe,
You'll never know,
Just who to trust,
And who to show.
You know sometimes you want to relate,
But you'll soon find,
There's no escape!

Project Legacy,
Everybody's dying.
Project Legacy,
But nobody's crying.
Project Legacy,
It's all in good fun
But your still here, get ready to go... Start your mission 'cause you don't know what else to do!