CerebralDebris

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’ve added a new subsection to this site – a Web Design and Development Portfolio (it also features some info about the work I’ve done in game design). You can access it by clicking the “Portfolio” link above, or clicking this portfolio link right here, or clicking on this handy image:

I am officially on the job market, so if anyone out there in cyber land has any leads, please send ‘em my way!

I’ve posted four different galleries of pictures from Charlotte and my trip to France for Christmas. None of these galleries feature any pics of me throwing up on a Paris commuter train on the way to the airport to fly back to the USA … but trust me when I say that’s a good thing!

Anyway, here they are:

Christmas Food

Christmas People

Paris in Winter

Freezing Versailles

Enjoy!

Christmas Eve Dinner: Three dozen oysters, scallops with wine and veggies, a five-pound lobster, clams, snails, langostines, shrimp, salad, half a dozen baguettes, seven types of cheese, fresh fruit, creme anglaise, homemade meringues, candied kumquats, chocolate, coffee, red wine, white wine … and a few things I’m forgetting.

Chrismas Day Lunch: Two geese, sausage and giblet stuffing, squash, salad, god knows how many baguettes, two plates of cheese (none of it recycled from the previous night), a gigantic “log” made from choux and carmelized sugar, chocolate, coffee, red wine, white wine … and a few things I’m forgetting!

Vive la france, and may god have mercy on my waist-line!

Here’s a little Christmas present to anyone who might be looking for some free tiling textures for use with 3D Modeling, Video Game Level Design, Web Design, or similar projects. All of these were made in Photoshop from various pieces of photo source, and tile without seams both horizontally and vertically. I’ve included “low resolution” JPEGs, which are all around 300-500 pixels wide and saved at 80% quality, right in this blog post. Below each is a link to download a gigantic high-res version, saved at 98% quality. Simply right-click either the image (for low res) or the link (for high res) and choose “save as” to download them.

With the exception of the photo source used in the Blue Rust pic, all of the photo source was acquired from GrungeTextures.com and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. If you’re looking for free, quality photo source, GrungeTextures.com and its associated sites have tons!

Without further ado, here are the textures

Blue Rust

Download High Res

Big Bricks

Download High Res

Grimy Wood

Download High Res

Mossy Rock

Download High Res

Ah, December … best of the winter months, because sure, it’s freezing and gross out, but at least a huge chunk of us get to huddle together with our families for warmth, drinking lots of booze and feasting on sugary treats while tearing open our many gifts. This year I’ll be doing that in France, which is a first for me. I’m both curious and terrified to see which holiday traditions are similar, and which are different. I’m also worried they’ll be a bit disappointed to learn that, while my French has improved, I’m still unable to do much more than discuss, in depth, exactly which hand “the girl” is using to hold her hat, and what color that hat might be.

“Bonjour Chris, comment ca va?”

“Uh, la fille a un chapeau noir dans sa main droite?”

“… Vous etez un bouffon.”

Anyway, after the annual gift-fest of your religious or non-denominational choosing is over, you get another few days of anticipation for New Years, which is usually an enjoyable night, unless you’re one of those crazy people who goes and stands in freezing cold Times Square for six to ten hours in a pool of your own bodily fluids (no, seriously – there are no bathrooms available out there to non-police/military persons). If that’s the case, then you have my sympathy, not so much because your night will suck, as because you’re clearly out of your mind. I’ll be someplace warm, drinking champagne and watching the festivities on TV … because I’m sane.

Once that’s over with, you hit January second, and that’s when the realization sets in for everyone who lives north of South Carolina: there is now nothing but arctic wasteland between you and mid-april. It’s going to snow, then it’s going to get “warm” (about thirty-eight degrees) and then the snow will become gross sludge, and then it will freeze solid, and then the cycle will repeat. This will go on until everyone is wishing only for the sweet embrace of death, on the off chance they’re going to hell, which at least will be warm. Then we’ll get two months of rain before things are nice.

Remind me again why it is that I don’t live in St. Martin?

Anyway, the point of this post was to say that I hope everyone has an excellent holiday season and new years, and that I sincerely hope your winter is as short and warm as it can be.

Since this is my blog and I can thus do whatever the hell I want with it, I thought I’d take a few moments to rank my favorite albums of the past ten years. I’m not going to claim that I have the greatest taste in music ever, nor that I’ve listened to every single album available in making these choices. The list below are simply my top picks from amongst my personal collection. Make of them what you will, but if you haven’t heard something on this list, I strongly recommend making the effort to check it out!

Oh, and these items are listed from most recent to least recent. For example, the first two albums are from 2009, and the last album is from 2000.

Swoon – Silversun Pickups

With their third release, Silversun Pickups continue to realize their considerable potential, moving further away from “that band that sounds like the Smashing Pumpkins” and into their own style. Definitely the most ambitious and complex of their albums so far, Swoon shows improvements across the board, from individual instrument mastery, to the quality of the lyrics, to the intricacy of the songs. Just a fine album on all levels.

Hazards of Love – Decemberists

Pretentious? Absolutely. Whiny? Yeah … I can see that. Nonetheless, Hazards of Love is a terrific album made by a group who understand their instruments and how they work together, and graced with not one but two amazing guest-singers. Hazards of Love tells a complete story in an interesting, catchy fashion. The final song on the album is arguably the strongest, wrapping everything up in a bittersweet bow.

Black Holes and Revelations – Muse

The best Muse album so far, as the band continues to deviate further and further away from their Radiohead and Nirvana roots, exploring new styles of music. Standouts “Map of the Problematique,” “Exo-Politics,” and “Knights of Cydonia” (aka: “Laser Horses!”), are my favorites, but the album’s littered with highly listenable tracks.

10,000 Days – Tool

Some have criticized 10,000 days as being a bit less heavy than previous Tool albums, and I will agree that there are a few songs that sound more like A Perfect Circle than traditional Tool. Nonetheless, Tool’s fourth full album contains plenty of pounding drums and syncopated guitar work. Even if I didn’t like the rest of the album (which I do), I’d have to include it on this list for “Jambi, “The Pot,” and “Rosetta Stoned” alone … the latter of which is eleven solid minutes of fantastic, deranged raving.

Nude – VAST

VAST has yet to disappoint me with an album, but I think Nude is his best work so far in that it’s the most complete, featuring more real songs and less filler than the two that came before it. His acoustic album, April is also high up on the list, but didn’t quite make the top ten because I’m too much a fan of harder rock. Nude has all the VAST hallmarks which I really enjoy, including great guitar work and absolutely impeccable taste in drum loops.

Demon Days – Gorillaz

When they set out to make a sequel to 2000’s unexpectedly popular, self-titled album, I kind of expected Gorillaz to fail. Dan The Automator projects don’t usually get sequels, since they’re mostly about capturing lightning in a bottle, and since Nakamura wasn’t even involved with this one, I wasn’t expecting much. As it turns out, Demon Days is superior to the original album in pretty much every way. It features fantastic engineering from Danger Mouse, superior lyrics from Damon Albarn and a stable of guest-rappers, fewer throwaway tracks, and an awesome sense of gloom and despair which lends a real depth to the album. If I had to pick a best album of the entire decade, it’d either be this one or Hazards of Love.

The Pleasure and the Greed – Big Wreck

This band apparently imploded due to Ian Thornley’s ego, which is a shame, because The Pleasure and the Greed was definitely one of the best “just give me some good old rock and roll” albums of the decade. With the exception of a mediocre first track, everything else on the album is catchy and enjoyable. I particularly enjoy “Undersold,” “Breakthrough” and “Head in the Girl.” Also, I bet “Ease My Mind” is one of the most fun songs ever to play live.

Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By – Lovage

Take one part Mike Patton (the most versatile male vocalist in Rock and Roll), add one part Jennifer Charles (quite possibly the sexiest female vocalist in Rock and Roll), and one part Dan the Automator. Shake them all up with a bottle of spanish fly and you’ve got Lovage. Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By is a slinky, smoldering set of trip-hoppy songs, all of them about the many and varied joys of sex. While I wish Patton wasn’t relegated so much to a background role, it allows Charles to absolutely steal the show. Great, great album.

Lateralus – Tool

Lateralus suffers from the same problem that every other Tool album does: half of the tracks are filler, made up of weird noises, chanting, and other oddities. On the other hand, the tracks which are actual songs are almost universally fantastic. There’s plenty of classic, heavy Tool on display in songs like “The Grudge” and “Ticks & Leeches,” but my two favorite tracks — “Parabola” and “Lateralis” — are both heavy and melodic, continuing the Tool tradition of marrying metal with progressive rock. If you combined the best songs from Lateralus with the best songs from 10,000 Days, you’d have quite possibly the best album of the decade.

Mer De Noms – A Perfect Circle

This band was originally formed by a guy who was a guitar tech for bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, and you can hear that big-rock sound in some of the songs. Maynard does more singing and less growling here than he does on Tool albums. The result is melodic, complex, and well-written. Though it features few radio-friendly songs, the album as a whole is a definite cut above the average modern rock offering of its era.

Honorable Mentions

April – VAST
V is For Vagina – Puscifer
The Garden – Zero 7
Absolution – Muse
Busted Stuff – Dave Matthews Band
Gorillaz – Gorillaz
R – Queens of the Stone Age

Sorry for the month without updates. This has been a particularly hectic month for Charlotte and I – she’s busy with schoolwork and establishing a translation business (for which I’m designing and building the website), not to mention learning to drive and occasionally substitute teaching at the International School. I’ve been busy with work, and mortgage preparation (which is about a thousand times more tedious and annoying than you’d think it should be), and NaNoWriMo.

Yes, that’s right. For the second time in my life, I decided to join in and try to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. I succeeded, hitting 50k on the 28th, and as of this post I’m over 53k. What’s pretty amazing is that I missed four days at the beginning of the month due to my New York trip, and three more over the course of the month due to preexisting social obligations. So I actually wrote 50,129 words in just 21 days, which is an average of 2,387 words per day … which is a lot! Big thanks to my lovely wife for keeping me on track and spending a lot of weekend mornings at the local coffee shop with me.

I think the story’s actually pretty good, too … definitely worth a second draft. It’s about a young girl who is attacked by a werewolf but manages to kill it and is subsequently recruited into a school of monster hunters. You can read an excerpt over at my NaNoWriMo Page if you’d like.

Unfortunately, all the writing and paperwork (not to mention Thanksgiving and our one-year wedding anniversary!) hasn’t left me a whole lot of time for other activities, like updating this blog or promoting The Blood That Bonds. Both of these things will be addressed in December, although I’m also going to try to keep writing on a regular basis, AND we’re celebrating Christmas in LA FRANCE this year, so there will be traveling and such getting in the way as well.

There’s just not enough time in the day, week, month and year, you know?

I kept a couple of pics out of the general galleries I posted from our Kentucky trip last week because I wanted to get a bit artsy with them. Here’s one – a really nice low-lighting shot of some Woodford Reserve barrels in the aging warehouse, where the liquid inside makes the final transformation from clear grain alcohol to sweet, brown, mellow bourbon.

Yum!

I’m guest-blogging for the first time in my life today, over at Reading with a Bite, an independent book news and review blog dedicated to vampire fiction and more. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Much ado has been made over the current “vampire trend” and its potential longevity. People are curious: why and how have vampires become so popular? What has caused them to capture the fancy of the mainstream public after years of being appreciated mainly by fans of the horror genre? The answer to that question lies in the slow move from terror to sympathy that people have made over the past few decades, due in large part to the efforts of many authors, screenwriters, directors, and other artists.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, vampires were the bad guys. Remember those days? Dracula bending menacingly over a delirious Lucy Westenra; Kurt Barlow and his servant Mr. Straker slowly bringing the town of Salem’s Lot to ruin; Keifer Sutherland and his cronies menacing Corey Haim’s family … vampires were nearly always portrayed as voracious, evil killers …

If you’re interested in reading the rest, you can find it at Reading with a Bite. I think it’s a pretty solid essay, and of course I get to plug my book, The Blood That Bonds, as well! Thanks very much to Lindsay for the opportunity.

Oh, and the control to turn off the music that starts when the site loads is over on the right, a little bit down the page. ;)

Note: This is a continuation of the previous blog post.

We awake bright and early (for Charlotte and I, at least … so 8:45am) and find that the heavy cloud cover from the previous day has lifted, and the sky is clear and blue. This means it’s going to be a bit warmer out, which is good, because we end up spending quite a bit of time outdoors, as it turns out.

We grab breakfast with Gabe and Brett — Starbucks again, and then head off on the fairly lengthy drive to the Maker’s Mark distillery. This takes us west out of Lexington, a drive which will continue until we’re south of Louisville, which is kind of nice since it shaves a bit of time off the trip home. Also, we get to drive through some very pretty country on a nice fall day. Not bad!

We eventually leave the Bluegrass Parkway and turn onto rural route 555, which is also pretty and takes us past a weird combination of golf courses, gigantic mansions, and trailer homes. I guess when you go where the land is cheap, you find all sorts of people willing to take advantage of that fact. On our way to the distillery we start seeing signs for “Historic Lincoln Birthplace” and decide that we might as well stop. This turns out to be a minor detour in terms of actual distance, but eats up close to an hour of our time, which is a good thing since we otherwise would’ve been incredibly early for the first distillery tour.

The “Lincoln” in question turns out not to be Abraham, but Abraham’s mother and father, who were born and lived within a mile of each other out here in roughly the middle of nowhere, Kentucky. The Lincoln family log cabin has been reconstructed on its actual spot, while the Hanks family cabin (Abe’s mom) is original, but was picked up and moved in order to create the historic site. We stop in at the gift shop and pay the $2 per head to tour the grounds, then wander around. The Lincoln cabin is one big room with a small and inaccessible upstairs section. The Hanks cabin is practically a mansion by contrast, having four defined rooms downstairs and a big sewing room upstairs. Both cabins are decorated with period antiques. Both are also freezing, dank, dim, and depressing. As Brett put it succinctly after a few minutes in the Lincoln cabin: “Okay … this would suck!”

We spend some time checking out the cabins and the grounds, which butt right up against a golf course upon which a bunch of guys are driving their golf carts in a most hazardous fashion. This proves amusing, as do the remains of what appears to once have been a well, but is now a creepy stone cavern with a spring at its base. Done exploring, we head back off toward Maker’s Mark.

We eventually arrive at the distillery, which is somewhat larger and a bit more industrial-looking than Woodford Reserve, but still pretty quaint and picturesque. We hang out in what used to be the owners’ house, which has now been turned into the central tour location, waiting for things to get started. Eventually we’re herded together and begin our tour. It’s similar to the Woodford Reserve tour, albeit in somewhat larger numbers. Where Woodford has three fermenting vats and stores about 5000 barrels, Maker’s has something like 36 fermenting vats and stores a correspondingly higher number of barrels. They’re still “small batch” though, because they only bottle using 160 barrels at a time. Oddly, given that it has so many more barrels, their aging warehouse doesn’t smell as good as Woodford’s. Maybe the stone walls do a better job of trapping in the scent?

At the end of the tour we get to do a tasting, which includes a small glass of Maker’s and a bourbon ball, but also includes something interesting: a small glass of “White Dog” (aka: White Lightning, aka: un-aged whiskey). It has an odd, ferment-y smell … like a combination of corn and yeast with an alcohol finish. On the tongue it lacks much flavor, and burns a bit more than the aged product. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it compared to the finished version!

Gabe and Brett buy a small bottle of Maker’s to hand-dip in wax at the gift shop. Charlotte and I go for a full 750 ML bottle, which has a horrible label featuring the founder’s face on it, but is otherwise identical to a regular maker’s bottle. Gabe dunks theirs, Charlotte dunks ours, many pictures are taken, and I buy a bourbon-dipped cigar that I will probably forget to smoke until it is dried out and revolting. WOO!

We finished up our tour by visiting the Maker’s Mark cafe, where we acquired various bourbon-barbecue sandwiches, along with some sides and drinks. Pretty tasty for cheap cafe food. Charlotte and I each bought a bourbon cookie for the road, and I decided to eat mine while driving fifty-five on a twisty rural route. This caused a bit of a problem when we came up over a hill and I had a moment of indecision when faced with a fork in the road, finally decided to slam on the breaks and screech around to the left, still hanging precariously on to my cookie with one hand and turning the wheel with the other, all the while bumping over potholes and road debris, since we were now on a median rather than on the expected road surface. Ah, road trips.

Eventually we found our way to 65 north, and spent the next three hours or so making our way home. Our trip to Kentucky was over, but it will remain forever in our hearts. And our livers … at least, until that bottle of Maker’s is gone.

» Links: Lexington Trip Day 2 Pics