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February 21 Vote For My ThemeContinuing on with the same subject as my previous blog entry, I have entered a theme into this month's competition for nds themes. If you are able to, could you sign up and vote for my theme?
Icons, cheat buttons, etc can only be viewed either in a DS linker cartridge, or at nds themes. What you see below are just the top and bottom images, where the bottom half of the screen does not have any icons on it. (Trust me, it looks even better with the icons!)
If I win the competition, I don't win anything major, just 100 points and a nice little award icon next to the theme. It's all about kudos, really! (They mean a lot to a geek.) Also, I've uploaded a Guitar Hero skin to go with the Custom Slash Guitar Grip that I made last year. I'm actually quite proud of it! It took me over six hours in total to complete the theme.
Please note: You do have to be a member of ndsthemes to rate any of my themes, as well as voting for a competition entry. February 14 All Things Game and GeekifulSince I have embraced my inner geek, I have been much more comfortable with myself. I love that I can talk about gaming and computers without worrying about getting weird looks anymore, even if I still get those looks!
I've been involved in a few things to do with my geekiness, so I thought I would share them with you:
Xbox LiveI've been on Xbox Live for a few months, and have managed to create a gamertag, and all the peripherals that come with it.
I love playing games on the Xbox 360. You can see from my gamertag pic what I've been playing, and how I'm going.
GameplayerI've been with Gameplayer since the 7th of July 2008. It's a site that links in with a few magazines, but is also a great place to look at forums that involve gaming, whether it's to do with console gaming, handheld console gaming, or even the PC. My username is crazytwish, so have a look at the forums section of the site and see what I've been contributing to.
Gameplayer is one of the reasons that I haven't been blogging as much as I used to!
NDS ThemesI own a Nintendo DS. I've been playing it for a few years, and just love how I can be anywhere and play games. No TV required!
A part of what I now call 'my little kit' is a Cyclo DS cartridge. This cartridge allows me to play music, read text files, and play homebrew games on it. Homebrew games are games that people make up for the DS, but aren't commercially available. They're free.
Anyway, the Cyclo DS has a menu screen. The default screen is pretty boring, so I wanted to find out if I could get better ones. Hence, NDS Themes.
This is a website for those who have cartridges for their DS, and want snazzy new menus. It's not just for the Cyclo DS, there are other cartridges covered as well.
As I hadn't been able to find menus that I liked, I've ended up making my own. I've uploaded these to the website, and other people are downloading them! This gives me a little gooey feeling inside everytime I check to see how my themes are going. If you want to check out my themes, then click here.
This is another little project that I keep up with online. It's for fun, not for profit. I'll be making more themes as I go along, and hopefully become the 'master' that is in my username!
Even if you don't have a DS, you can still download the pictures and see what work I have done. The website's preview pictures are not at 100% quality, so if you want a better look, download them!
Oh, and please vote for my themes as well. It's nice that people are looking at my themes and downloading them, but it would be even better if I could get their opinions!
So there you are! A few other little things that I've been up to besides keeping up with my blog. February 11 Shake, Baby, ShakeI've just arrived home from walking out of a movie. Yes, that's right, walking out of a movie.
The movie in question was a free preview screening of Rachel Getting Married. It wasn't the weak plot that made me leave, nor the very sluggish start. It was the camera work.
What it is that has possessed the director, Jonathan Demme, to use a very shaky camera technique, has me mystified. For those of you who don't know, Jonathan Demme is the Oscar-winning director of The Silence of the Lambs. I love The Silence of the Lambs. Despite it being given the genre of horror, it is still one of my favourites to watch.
However, I digress. Coming home quite early from what would've been a cheap night out, brings me to this question: why use handycam-type methods in a big-budget movie? What is it that gets directors using this more often than they really should?
The Bourne Supremacy is another example of this. The first movie, The Bourne Identity, was fantastic. I loved it. The action was incredible. However, in Supremacy, the action may have been fantastic, but you couldn't actually see it. There was too much of the handycam method for the viewer to actually focus on what was happening. Even in fist fights there was too much camera shake.
Which brings me back to Rachel Getting Married. This movie is about a dysfunctional family and their little secrets that come flying out of the closet on the cusp of a member of the family getting married. You know, the usual mushy slush that Americans love to dish out on our limited cinematic plates. Which is why it was no disappointment to leave the movie early. I would've hung on until the end, if it were not for the fact that my head was very sore, and I just could not keep my eyes on the screen for very long.
You see, I suffer from astigmatism. This is where the cornea in the eye is distorted, making all things that the person sees as not quite the way it should be. For an example, my left eye sees circles as an oval shape. Since I've had prescription glasses for this condition, everything is fine. The only problem is that I cannot view anything with a camera shake for very long before getting a headache.
So, why do directors use handycam-like methods, or add things such as a camera shake? The answer is simply 'reality'. You see, the more there is a shake in a movie, the more that the viewer feels like they're a part of the action. The camera shake method can be used effectively for short scenes that involve things such as earthquakes, tidal waves, or even spacecraft speeding off-camera. Note that I've said 'short scenes'. I'm okay with short scenes of camera shake. It is when directors go overboard in their zeal for realism that my head truly suffers, as it does at the moment.
The interesting thing is, we know that what we are seeing is a movie. We know that it is not real. Why take things to an extreme to try and make a storyline appear realistic? Fair enough, a movie can represent real life, but most of the time we want to see a movie to escape our own lives, or to just enjoy a good story.
Handycam methods and camera shake are tacky attempts at realism. The best form of realism that can be found in a movie is in a great script, excellent acting, and very little special effects. Movies with a handycam feel just make things seem cheap and tacky. Demme should know better than to resort to such petty tactics. Perhaps he was trying to make up for a weak script, or for wooden acting. Who knows?
One thing I can say is this: if directors are going to insist on using camera-shake or handycam methods in their movies for an extended period of time, or for the whole movie, then there should be a health warning. After all, do we want similar effects to the ill-famed Blair Witch Project? Do we want people throwing up because their eyes simply cannot focus on such a jilted image? I don't, and my feet did the talking on that topic this evening. |
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