I have plans for you.

I really do.

So, yeah, right on cue, I show up 5 months later and whine about not posting.

That’s okay though, because I have been posting. Just not here. Over at that new site I told you about 5 months ago, ThisIsLee.com, I break some news every now and then, keep people updated on my lifestream, etc. It’s great. Oh, remember that Ravsonic.TV I ranted about for like two years? Yeah, it is actually done! No shit, and it even does everything I wanted it to do. That’s great. The format of ThisIsLee is going to change a bit because of it, but that’s cool. At least it is done.

So where does that leave Ravsonic proper? Well, it doesn’t make sense to blog here. I feel spreading the blogging across multiple sites is confusing and pointless. My idea of Ravsonic has always been a “company”, and the site should reflect that. If nothing else, the site should reflect the brand and have links to projects I’m working on under the brand and other places that information regarding the brand exists (ahem Ravsonic.TV, ThisIsLee.com).

I believe that’s where we’ll go with this. I’ve always had coding projects and designs I’ve worked on that were meant for public consumption. This site will make it easier to reflect that. Information will occur here, discussion will occur at ThisIsLee (unless it is status updates for a service: that will happen here). Lifestream stuff goes to Ravsonic.TV. Makes sense to me.

Oh, you didn’t know? Yeah, I’ve got like three trashed designs I’ve been working on for this sort of thing since April. I didn’t like any of them though, so back to the drawing board. I’ve got about a month before class starts, so I should have plenty of time to get it going.

This could be one of the last (okay, probably is the last) post on this site as a proper blog, so toodles guys. Be sure to make the move with me over to ThisIsLee.com and Ravsonic.TV, where things like this fit in better. Trust me, you’ll like this site better when it is done anyway. Promise. Yes, it is going to get done. I’ve been ubermotivated lately. I’m ready to get this show on the road.

While I’m working on the backend for ThisIsLee.com, I’ll be posting more frequently here in the style I’ll be writing in over there. Just so you can get used to it.

You never really notice how much you do to your new computer.

I’ve had my new Macbook for exactly two weeks as of today. On the first day, I ordered 4GB of RAM for it. On this 14th day, I ordered a 320GB hard drive for it. Many people I know have asked me why, considering I still have 60GB free on this one. I want to do Boot Camp, a few different VMWare machines, and be able to hold all my multimedia (videos/photos/ALL my music). I haven’t done much of that yet, because I don’t think I’ve got the space. Hopefully, the extra 200GB will help.

That’s not the point of this post. This post is about where in the hell I spend nearly 60 GB of space in only two weeks, with no music and only about 10 photos. I’ve been asking myself this same thing since early last week.

Read the rest of this entry »

So. Here is a quick, brief update on what is going on here at Ravsonic Towers. As you are well aware, I’ve had this identity crisis for quite sometime here on the site. I wanted Ravsonic to be a forward facing site for m development and design career, but I wanted it to be a blog at the same time. That’s not going to work. Either the blog gets too diluted and looks all corporate, or the business side of the site looks like a joke. Both ways, the writing never gets the attention it deserves and the designs stay in limbo. Fixed it. But it required me to buy another domain.The blog will be moving over to ThisIsLee.com. I’ll get to ramble, rant, or whatever over there. That way this place can stay clean. There will still be a blog up that will announce things or features, but it won’t be like a real blog. This way, I’ll feel more comfortable opening up the Ravsonic site to access to future partners. Also, I’ll be able to direct clients based on the business card I give out. Blogosphere community members will find ThisIsLee.com to be a nice addition to the conversation, while people looking for actual design examples or software work will find Ravsonic more to their liking.  After all, Ravsonic is going to be showcase. A portfolio, if you will.  I do have to get a big boy job some day. So that’s the deal. Coupled with what you already know about Ravsonic.TV, that leaves 3 domains that don’t really fit in anymore. 1 of those I guess can be mirrored over to Ravsonic. One of those is the original .org I bought like 10 years ago. The final one is that black sheep in the corner. Yeah, RavsonicLive. I’ll think of something for it. I know I will. It had too much potential when I was working with it last time. All those ideas couldn’t have just left, could they?Ok, so long from Ravsonic.com. Next blog post you get out of me will be from ThisIsLee.com 

I’m just wanting to make sure that live writer is working properly. For some reason, what I was posting wasn’t showing up. If this is visible, then it is fixed.

I’m running into a little bit of a pickle here. Seriously, did I just say pickle? Anyway.

I’m in the planning stages for Ravsonic.tv, a place where I can share my video reviews, lifecasting, and all around video bullshitting with the world. I am currently trying to decide what technology I want to build it off of. I’m looking at Rails and .NET 3.5.

I like Rails because I know it. I’ve been doing various Rails things since 1.0. I really like a lot of the things in Rails 2 and I’ve not been given enough change to work with them yet. I’ve got a host already that supports Rails and the domain already points to the site. All I need to do is fire up InType on my PC and get to work.  Plus, I plan on purchasing a new portable computer this week. Most likely, it will be Apple flavored. I won’t have any problem coding Ruby on that thing.

Then we get to ASP.NET. In short, I love it. No, it isn’t as blissful as Rails is, but shit if it isn’t robust. I really, really, want to play with LINQ and I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to like the fancy new ways I can expose web services.  I feel much more at home in VS, and VS2008 is no different. I like that my code can be easily portable across other platforms (i.e. if I decide to turn a web app into an offline component, many times its as easy as copying the component’s DLL over.)  The only drawback is that if I get my Mac, I’ll be running bootcamp or parallels to run VS. Has anyone really run VS2008 in Parallels yet with a lot of success. I should probably look into it. I don’t have a .NET host yet, either, so that would be one more hosting related bill a month. Joy.

I really don’t know which I’ll choose. It really is almost a toss up at this point. I want to play in .NET, but I can get this done quickly in Rails. Decisions, decisions. Who knows, maybe I’ll switch over to Django again. That didn’t last very long last time, so probably not.

Wow, that was a lot of rambling. Sorry about that.

It is so horrible to say, but I don’t like to make my own themes for Wordpress though I call myself a web designer. I will hack around on them enough to suit me, but I never can sit down and make my own. That’s not to say that I can’t or haven’t. I have no problem creating them for clients. There is just something about you own site that makes it a little more difficult. Partially, I think it is because of a need for perfection. If I make my own, I will screw around with it forever and it will never get done. Download a premade, edit it slightly, and I’m good to go. I break this habit during summer break usually, but right here in the middle of the semester I simply don’t have the time.

That being said, the theme will look a little funny as I complete my modifications to it so it fits my branding. This is mostly so I can focus on actually building ravsonic.tv (which is and will be my own, from scratch). I see no need in wasting precious time on a blog theme.

You know, it seems like once every six months, I’m writing a post like this. It usually follows a similar pattern.

* I apologize for my lack of posting for the last 5 months.

* I promise a million posts a day from here on out.

* I explain the magnitudes of improvement and scaling the blog/company is doing.

* I blog for a couple of weeks.

* Radio silence for 5 months.

Rinse, repeat. But, alas, here we are again. I’m not promising anything. I’d be lying if I did. But I hope this year will be an actual start to my online presence. It, after all, was my sole resolution for the year.

So let’s get this show on the road.  I’ll post a little more later. I’ve got some physics homework to attend to.

I know I told you that I wouldn’t mention RavsonicLive until it was done, but I think I technically have to since it isn’t going to work at all for a bit. I’m moving development over to .NET for that particular project, which means a host move. RavsonicLive will be down while it moves over. Once it is complete, I’ll place some kind of header info up.

Note that based on the results of the new .NET project, Ravsonic.TV is also a potential move. We’ll see.

You know, I downloaded the beta the second I got my code, which was 1 hour after the signups closed. I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I immediately played a match. About half of the people I played with were a bunch of elitest fucks who were taking it way too seriously. I didn’t play another match that night. I didn’t really think about playing another one. Surely the Xbox Live players hadn’t turned into those kind of people, right?

Nope, I was wrong. I played for a few hours tonight, and played with some of the best players I could play with. No, not because I talked to them at all ( because I didn’t have a headset on). If we won, we won. If we lost, we lost. If someone had the most kills, great. If they didn’t, so what. The way a game that isn’t a clan battle should be. There were a lot of really kick ass players to that probably had every right to be pissed at those, like me, who’ve never played CoD online before. This wasn’t with just one party. I purposely found a bunch of different players to see if there was any difference; there wasn’t much of one.

So thank you, CoD4 players. I’ve enjoyed playing tonight. I’m proud to call you all, um, console-online-service-mates. Keep up the good sportsmanship. Wow, that was nerdy as hell.

I won’t lie. It feels weird clicking Playstation 3 for the category. I’ve had one since January, but this is the first game to get me excited about owning one. 

So? Are you? Have you not been playing the fuck out of this game since it came out yesterday morning?

Every spare minute I’ve had has been spent playing this game. It is that fun. One thing I find interesting is the more I play the more I notice just how damn pretty this game is. No screenshots do it justice. Once you get to that point, you realize that there are 31 other players flying, bombing, shooting, driving, and rocketing their way around a massive world. Simply amazing.

They’ve cleaned it up. A lot. It seems to run much, much smoother than the beta, which should always be a given, but you never know.  Every weapon has a feel about it. Hold down the lock while flying a Warhawk. You actually get a difference in feeling between a standard missle and a homing missle. Sit in an anti-aircraft missile turret and pelt oncoming enemy aircraft. It feels wonderful. A lot of this can be attributed to the amazing audio in this game. When launching the missles from these turrets, the audio feedback is great: you know you’ve just unleashed nearly inescapable hell on someone. What’s more, it sounds great without surround sound. You can get fully immersed in the game, catching yourself spinning to watch for stray bullets and rockets, by simply cutting your TV up louder. And honestly, because of this great audio and visual feedback, I never missed the rumble. I actually never thought about until writing the word “feedback” so many times in this post. Don’t kid yourself though. Running this thing though a 5.1 system will send chills up your spine when a rocket whizzes past your head from behind. I haven’t gotten to try it in the final retail version yet, but my experiences in the beta left a wonderful memory.

What do you find yourself gravitating towards? Do you hop in the first Warhawk or Nemesis you see? Do you like to run around on foot? Snipe? I find myself posted up in the missle turret, mostly because I love the feel and sound, but a big chunk of it is because I kick quite a bit of ass in there. The problem with stationary guns like this is that you have to be alert. Always. When I am on the offensive, I find that too many of these can be taken out by rockets and guns because the people controlling them aren’t paying attention. Nothing pisses a turret operator off more than you standing on top of them throwing grenades at them, when it is there own fault for not getting out. So a word to the wise: be quick and attentive when in the turrets. Watch all your surrounds. Keep your bead on the closet blue dot. Don’t be afraid to bail out. If you see missiles incoming, bail and duck. They’ll blow your turret, thinking they’ve got you. It’ll respawn, you’ll be back in, and they’ll never know.  That’s how I’ve already gotten nearly 200 kills in one.

Out.