Storytelling is a fantastic medium of expression. It allows one to create whatever they want about whomever they want, without limitation or exception. When I approach a story, there are three aspects of it that I keep in mind: Character, Plot and Story. These are three very separate and distinct concepts, each as important as the others.

Okay, okay, I know I'm late with my "weekly" blog...by about two weeks. But I can explain!

Throughout the history of Not So Random, I have done a lot of storytelling. I've also had a lot of ideas regarding how to tell stories correctly. I would like to share some of these ideas.

Not So Random has been around publically now for a number of years, passing through numerous iterations of attempts at building a community. Each of these attempts was a learning experience both in code and in culture. Only recently, however, has there been a vaguely cohesive idea about what Not So Random is.

I like Tuesdays, don't you?

Well, maybe you don't really, but now you can!

I felt like releasing some more, behind the scenes, work relating to projects I have done in the past, this time it's my world-famous Papyrus animation, depicting the construction of the typeface Papyrus in the setting of ancient...black and white Egypt.

Anyone that has flown in the last two decades has certainly heard those words, but few (airline employees included) actually know why. Perhaps a cell phone will inadvertently run the plane into the ground, or someone's GameBoy will get it's wires crossed with those in the cockpit. The truth, it turns out, is far less interesting. But this doesn't stop the myths and rumors from spreading.

YES! Ladies and Gentlewomen! I have finally released the source images I used to create Paper Warz!©! This was my Sound-Image project for Intro To New Media taught by Bill Keukendall (spelling?) at UMaine.

Paper Warz! is a short semi-animated film consisting of three cartoon characters attempting to get the better of each other. It was done with drawings I drew, scanned and animated in Blender. All the Music and voices are done by me, Peter Rimkunas.

Putting on hold this week's planned article of aircraft identification boring-ness, I now bring to your attention a subject in much need of lambasting; the news media.

Everyone loves awesome things. And rippling space is one of the more awesome things I can think of. Sparked by a discussion on the Ogre forums ( http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=297386 ) and a mighty need to have such effects in the Invasion Engine, I wrote a simple demo that makes a fountain of bubbly-ness and a black hole. Screenshots, and source code (along with all the textures, shaders, etc) are available below :)

Welcome to Tupolev's In-Flight Blog, a weekly composition about whatever's on my mind. Be warned...airplanes tend to be on my mind rather often. So you could call this an aviation blog.

Well. Week one is complete, and it seems as though the postings are either too short of too infrequent. The way OA is written, plot points happen across multiple sections, making the story difficult and/or tedious to follow, just reading a section every other day.

So last night I worked with Alex and developed a Perl script that would take metrics of sections. Below are my findings.

So, I've had some... spare time recently, where I can't work on Invasion, so I widdled away a few hours playing with something that's always interested me: fluid dynamics. I wrote a quick and dirty little OpenGL app that creates a room full of some compressible gas, and drops some ink in. Read on for screenshots and source code :)

There's a bunch of different ways of mitigating the effects of latency in online games. Everyone who has tried to make a networked game knows how it feels to be testing and running your game locally, where everything is smooth and crisp and instant, only to be tremendously disappointed when you go to play that inaugural multiplayer match and your enemy is skipping so fast you can't even follow him. With the Invasion Engine being built from the ground up as a networked game (even single player matches are actually connections to a local server) solving the issue of lag is very, very important. Having just finished the first successful test of our system for doing so, I'd like to talk a little about it. If you've ever been interested in how games like Half-life 2 (and all the Source engine games) counter lag, or if you're struggling with this same problem in your own project, read on.

I got home from RIT last Saturday, and naturally, the first thing I do is stay up all night coding. I had a really fun 24 hours. Sean and Peter came over to have a cookout type deal, and then afterwards we transformed my dining room table into NSR Headquarters. Armed with 6 cups of coffee and an unlimited supply of hard boiled eggs, we stayed up until about 7:00 AM working on the Invasion Engine beta. Peter had prior engagements, but Sean and I (after a brief 5-6 hour nap) continued our campaign that culminated in about 1000 lines of new code.

Slashdot today brought me news that the PRO-IP act passed the Judiciary Committee, unanimously. This is the bill that would increase penalties for copying a CD up to $1.5 million, the bill that would create an international police force under a new US department strictly for chasing down copyright infringers... etc. So, out of interest, I looked up the text of this bill. I now understand why no one read it. If you're interested in how the US goes about creating and enacting laws, take a read.