Category Archives: Personal Blog

Entries from my personal journal

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

Electricity Eeeeelec-tricity.

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Crew meeting today. I work for Jeff, who can juggle flaming sticks, in electrics. I used to be afraid of Jeff, he was one of those sorts who I couldn’t tell if they were joking or really seriously angry about something, but I’ve come to learn that he’s harmless. Mostly harmless.

I like working in electrics, hanging and focusing lights is great fun! This year, I’m board op (trained monkey) which is something I’ve never done before. It means I’ll have to donate a week of my life to the theatre department, but I think I have my schedule under control, it’ll all be good. And I have plenty of practice pushing buttons, I knew Halo would be good for something!

Speaking of which, Squirt has joined the Krew. I need to draw her up. It’s very strange, I never really hang out with her, but she’s lots of fun. Weird how that is.

I love you Brendan!

Personal Blog

Yum!

Flora makes the best frickin spaghetti on the face of the earth. If the Olympians ran out of ambrosia, they would eat D Flo’s spaghetti. If pasta was a society, then his spaghetti would be God. I plan on obtaining the recipe soon ::dons ninja garb and backflips out the window.

Personal Blog

Drama, Colored Pencils, and Road Trips

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This has probably been the craziest, messiest, drama-filled schoolyear yet, and it’s only a few weeks into the year! Madness, all the time. It’s terrible, but every time I feel a little sad or lonely or confused, I just look up and around and say “Ye gods! I’m glad I don’t have to deal with *their* problems!” O.o Ultimately, I’m trying to do my best to keep out of the fray and provide relief, comic or otherwise, for those involved.

I’m also getting back into my art swing, slowly, and I did the unimaginable and picked up some colored pencils. I’m terrible with them, very sloppy and impatient, but I took my time with this and it turned out better than normal. Next up, I want to give these markers I try, they’ve been laying around untouched for years.

https://www.wertle.com/gallery/v/art/finished/cpwert-02.jpg.html

The weekend wasn’t dull at all, and I haven’t heard much on the enviro-theatre crew’s trip to Tennessee (except a phone call saying “We’re in Gatlinburg!!”, when they were certainly *not* supposed to be 5 hours away, and another one later saying “We’re in North Carolina!!” O.o;;; They got home safely, so all is well).

I also got an extension for my comp sci project, which I now have completely under control. A good weekend, but over much too quickly, as always.

(starfallz-you still up for that sock?)

Personal Blog

Wanted: One Sock

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So I was going through my sock drawer, looking for a sock without a mate. I need a sock to cut up and transform into a protective forearm covering for glass, and you know how there’s ALWAYS that sock in the drawer with the missing pair. Well, not today, every sock was perfectly mated, the first time in nearly a lifetime. What the hell is up with that?? Fates playing games with me again.

Anyway, I need a sock. So if anyone out there has an interesting sock with a lost mate, but just *can’t* throw it away, I can give it a good home and a noble job protecting my arm from the heat radiated by molten glass.

The only qualifications, it has to be 100% cotton, as any polyester will melt and adhere to my flesh, which is generally considered a bad thing. It also has to be long enough to cover most if not all of my forearm, so long socks are good. And if it’s an interesting or cool lookin sock, that’s a bonus.

In return, I’ll make you a little sumpin-sumpin in glass, like a cup or a little animal or something. Any takers?

::sits against the wall with a sign, “Will blow glass for socks”::

Personal Blog

I hate leading zeros

Ultimately, I suppose it’s been a good week. Discounting a few things, of course, like the fact that I did not finish my comp sci project that’s due tomorrow. When I have to make a decision between pulling an all-nighter to get something done and not getting it done, I opt for sleep, it’s more important. No worries here.

Meanwhile, Kay, the hard core grad assistant at the studio who happens to be my glass partner, convinced me that instead of dividing up 4 3-hour slots to half an hour each, we should each take 2 slots and work the whole 3 hours. My first long slot is tomorrow, we’ll see how it turns out x_x

This weekend has potential to be very nice or rather dull. A large chunk of my friends, namely Sam, Will, Meghan, and Flora are going to be off to some enviro-theatre conference, while Ken and Evan go to Louisville.

I’m trying my hardest to convince Brendan to have a sketchbook party with me Saturday night, since we’ll be the only ones about. Brendan is my hero.

Friday, even he will be gone, so I’ll be all by myself. No worries, though, i need some time to myself to get some things done, me-time is always nice to have. So it seems the weekend will balance on the thing line between pleasant, calming rest or boredom, we’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile, Ken has joined the fray.

Personal Blog

Will Johnston Doesn’t Believe in Binomial Nomenclature…

Tonight we had auditions for Shenanigans, the improv troupe of which I belong to here at my college. It was a great bunch of people, very talented, very witty, and a million times better than last year’s audition lot. Until this I’ve never been in a position where I had to take part in the casting process of something, and it’s quite tough!

Narrowing it down was a tough call, and we let many people go to “simmah in da pot” for a year, in hopes that they’ll try out again next year when all the Shenanigans seniors graduate this year.

They were good. Better than me by far, and sometimes I *still* wonder why I’ve been kept in the group up to this point. I don’t consider myself particularly quick-witted, all of my humor comes in 10 minute blocks at the very least. Granted, I’ve had my moments, I was particularly proud of my 1 minute speech on Polly Theism, but I just don’t know. Perhaps I’m good to play off of? I don’t know.

So, our goal is to beef up our performance frequency, and after this year the infamous Will Johnston will turn the project over to D Flo, and then we’ll have to find capable hands to leave it in after we graduate…

…after we graduate. Good God, I’m graduating next year.

::runs to the bathroom to hurl::

Personal Blog

How pecuuuuuliar

Someone asked me through another person why I had them blocked on ICQ, and I said “What? I don’t have ICQ!!”

That must mean there’s actually another Wertle out there! Multiple Wertles! How exciting! I’ve never met another Wertle before. I wonder who they could be?

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog, With Retrospective Commentary

Mizunch

2014 Lisa Commentary: Oh, early-livejournal, so full of random observations. I still wonder this kind of stuff all the time, I just don’t tend to write about it at length. Or at least, twitter has become a much more suitable repository for random one-off thoughts nowadays. Meanwhile, look at how I used to draw, haha! It only took me 12 years to learn to get rid of all unnecessary details 🙂

Why are packaged foods so much less appetizing when they’re smashed? I mean, there’s really nothing wrong with them, they’re still in their sanitary little plastic wrapping, and at most suffer from some mild pre-mastication. But when I pulled the squished oatmeal pie out of the bottom of my backpack I instinctively grimaced with an “Ewww, yuck.”

Of course, after some reflection, I went ahead and ate it, and it was still as tasty as it would have been without my calculus book sitting on top of it for most of the day. And yet, I’ve also been known to eat potato chips that had fallen on the floor of the glass studio, or chase a kiwi down a flight or two of stairs before I caught up with it to eat it.

It could just be me.

Meanwhile, plasma grenades suck.
http://storage.wertle.com/albums/lj/halo3-02.gif

Special thanks to Brendan for being a walking, talking onomatopoeia thesaurus

Personal Blog

Numbing War Movies and Cartoons

I’ve often pondered the cartoons of my youth, and their inexplicable ability to parody the most unlikely movies to be seen by a child in my age group. Specifically, how Animaniacs, Eek! The Cat, *and* Tazmania all managed to do spoofs of Apocalypse Now, so well that though I’ve never seen the movie, I can give a decent rundown of the plot, characters, and general spectacle.

Now let’s think about this a minute. Apocalypse Now? WHAT?? Looking back, I find it strange that these cartoons chose to entertain the youth of my generation by making fun of a serious, dramatic, bloody Vietnam war movie. In that case, why did I find these particular cartoons so funny? I’d never seen the movie, afterall. Was Apocalypse Now so ingrained in the culture at the time that I just sort of soaked it up through osmosis, or did I piece it together after seeing multiple parodies that they were making fun of *something*, and apparently doing it well, so it should be funny.

It’s hard to determine after the fact. Kinda like how I got most of my understanding of pop culture through Muppet Babies. That’s how I knew what Star Wars was, afterall. It was a fundamental truth of life at the time, I never questioned where it came from, it was just *there*, and I’m certain that I knew all the basics of Star Wars before I ever saw any of the movies. Muppet Babies was definately an educational show ^_^

It’s interesting enough to think about this and look at current cartoons, and then try and deduce how this generation’s youth is soaking it all up. I also get to see things from a new perspective, I get most of the things being poked fun at. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember how my parents reacted to the Apocalypse Now parodies, it was something I just didn’t pay attention to.