It started as a simple harpsichord theme because I was going for something baroque-ish. I'm trying to compose a character theme for one game (the title of which I will not mention because I might not have anything to do with it in the end) and I constantly end up with something completely...off.

Maybe I need to read more about the character, dive into their persona. Or...something. Gaaaaa-argh! It's frustrating :=

Cross your fingers and help me find the appropriate melody :)

Until then, enjoy the eastern winds.

"Rescue: The Beagles" is a side scrolling platformer that relies on procedurally generated content to deliver some great gameplay.

You can see a screenshot of the game in my site's header. Yes, that's you parachuting down, ready to kick some pharmaceutical ass and save the poor doggies. Have I already mentioned that you use owls to attack the enemies? Excellent.

It was made for TIG Source procedural generation game competition and, so far, people seem to like it.

For example, LaughingCrow reviews the game on Lithium Leaf and mentions that one of the more enjoyable moments of the game was the first appearance of the enemy known as Vivisector, because when he enters the screen, he says "Doggieeeess..." in a creepy voice. I'm particularly proud of that, for that is my voice. Ha.

I've also created the sound effects and half the soundtrack. The credit for the other half goes to Rich Vreeland who composes awesome, very enjoyable (sometimes even addictive) C64- and ZX Spectrum-inspired music. Check for more on RichVreeland.com.

All the sound effects (except the enemy voices, naturally) and music were created using the incredible "Unknown 64" C64 synth by Odo Synths - do check it out, please - it's pure fun :D

I've tried to do my best with limited time and I hope it sounds decent, at least :)

Now go download the game and enjoy ;)

The first one is the website for the Society of architects of Split (Društvo arhitekata Splita - DAS). My job was to code the layout and choose a CMS. I decided to go with WordPress because the site's structure isn't too complex and, except for two categories, it's mostly just static pages.

I did encounter a few difficulties along the way, but nothing that wasn't fixable. Most of the pain was caused by the ever popular "/category/" feature of WordPress, which inserts /category/ in the URL if the the page is a category index. While you can access those pages without the /category/ in URL if you're using a custom permalink structure (such as "/%category%/%post_id%/%postname%/", for example), the problem starts when your post count per page exceeds 10 (or whatever custom number of posts per page you choose) and you need to go to page 2 of that category - it returns a 404 error. I fixed this problem with a handy plugin called "Redirection", which made it possible to rewrite "/category/category_name/page/number/" to "/category_name/page/number/". I tried placing the rewrite rules directly in the .htaccess file, but, for some reason, that didn't work.

Second problem was adding custom metadata to posts in a way that would make sense to a site editor. For that purpose, I used the rc:custom_field_gui plugin which was a breeze to use :)

Third one, that gave me two days worth of headaches, was how to display only posts with certain metadata on a category index page. First I used the officially recommended way, which consisted of using PHP's continue statement to filter out the unwanted posts. That produced a empty page 1, and a populated page 2, because WordPress post count occurs before the continue statement. There's also no way to do it with WP_Query, so I ended up writing a custom query. Again, problem with pages. I used the WP-PageNavi plugin, so I looked at its code and figured out what variables it needs to work properly and I gave them the values they needed.

I can only say that I've learned a lot about how WordPress works :) And while it does have its quirks, if you know some PHP, anything is doable.

Second website is for a well known Croatian bottled water, Studena. Again, Blackduke was the one who produced the website and I was asked to compose some background music and a few sound effects. The first version of the music was initially accepted, but then it was agreed that something that currently plays on the site would work better. You can hear and download the first version from below :)

1.  Studena music - 01:42
   Download: MP3 (1,602 KB)

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In other news: wish me luck because I've got three exams next week. And that's it. If I pass all three, I get to start working on my master's thesis.

Future awaits :)

Wow.

It's not like I'm going to die, not like Dean from Supernatural is going to (he so is going to hell, I'm tellin' ya), but still, it's depressing. And also the opposite (name the word). It's both at the same time. Now. I'll tell you more about it in, well... about a year?

And Ablation X fits in here like a wild goose fits on a windshield, but that's just the way things are around here. I've created the Ablation X page in the Games section and it doesn't show in the RSS feed, so I'm giving you a heads up here - ABLATION X GAME PAGE. Moving on.

I've received some weird, but very awesome gifts this year (author's note: for my birthday). Mostly money. Which I can't have. But I can buy myself new clothes for the given amount of it. Because I look like a tramp, according to my mother. And she's afraid that I'd use the money for something else than clothes if she gave it to me for reals. And she's absolutely right. Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to find these three things: pants, hoodie, sneakers? By the time I find those that I like, it'll be Christmas. And it's not that I don't like shopping, I'm your regular 16 year old giggly (is that a word?) girl when it comes to it, but I really can't make myself buy something I'm not in love with from the moment I laid (*giggle*) my eyes on it. Oh, I'm so emo sometimes.

And in category "Cool birthday presents which are not money", we have three beautiful items:

"How to get your music in film & TV" by Richard Jay (thanks, hon!)
American McGee's Alice and Cheshire Cat ACTION FIGURES (not dolls, as Nenad calls them)  (again, thanks, hon!)
American McGee's Alice t-shirt - megaultrafabulous! (and again, thanks, hon!)

I can't wait for Alice: the movie, but sadly, it seems it could take another decade for it to come to life. And although SMG->SMP is not getting any younger, I'd still like to see her play Alice. But I must say, Summer Glau sounds like a great idea for a replacement.

I have a preliminary exam at 8:30 AM tomorrow so I'll call it a day now and go watch Star Trek Voyager.. Digital reproduction photography. Colors. On a freakin saturday morning. Bloody hell. I'm going to fail miserably, don't worry.

Don't forget to make a happy face when staring at yourself in the mirror in the morning, it really helps ;)

It's titled "We all begin somewhere", and it's a short instrumental (what else?) theme, easy on the ears :)

Piano, vibraphone, cello, violas and violins.

UPDATE: There also was something else in the rabbit hole, a "Back alley sneaker". Pizzicato's from outer space make way for a cello lead. Fire away.

Leave a comment if you like it, don't be a stranger ;)

Polaris+ (January 2008)

Music and sound effects for website intro

Link: Polaris+

W&GA (November 2006)

Music and sound effects for website intro

Link: Wine and gastro academy Zagreb

T-com (March 2005)

Music and sound effects for a T-com promo CD

Link: T-com cd @ Blackduke.com

Ultra big thanks goes to Blackduke for giving me the opportunity to work on these projects :)

In short—It's the worst movie I've watched in a cinema, ever. And one of the worst altogether.

It lacks everything that makes a good movie—good.

*** Spoilers ahead, if you care ***

First of all, let me just go back a bit to AvP1 and tell you that, at the time, I thought the Alien/Predator franchise couldn't sink any lower. It was a cheap thrill with lots of inconsistencies and mediocre acting, but it was fun to a certain degree. The only major problem with it was the ending, and I'm talking about the very last scene of the movie—how could the Predators not notice a Predalien growing in their dead mate's chest? It's just impossible. Full stop. End of discussion.

And so, the only major problem with AvP1 is just the first in line with AvP2. It continues right where we were left off, with a problematic premise.

2. Who the fuck are "The Strause Brothers"?! Who gave these people the right to direct this movie? Where did the come from? Why why whyyyyy? The Strause Brothers are not The Wachowski Brothers. And Uwe Boll is a God, compared to the Strauses.

3. Predator vision. The way it's made in AvP2 prevents you from recognizing anything the Predator is looking at. It's pointless and useless. The effect was just fine in Predator and Predator 2, even in AvP1, and I simply don't know how these two special effects supervisors turned directors managed to mess it up this bad.

4. What's up with killing the kid at the beginning of the movie and all the pregnant women? Was that an attempt at making a movie scary? It was just disgusting and some...other words...too. I honestly don't know why Shane Salerno is still in the writing business, and why his work is still being accepted by the studios. I would like to see him explain the so-called "mouth-rape impregnation" performed by the Predalien. Jeez...

5. Flat characters and awful, emotionless acting are nothing unusual in action-focused movies like this one. But AvP2 definitely redefines "flat" and "emotionless". No emotions, no facial expressions, no screaming, no yelling, it's all just flat. Let me describe you just one scene: The Sheriff walks into the bar. He sits next to this guy he knows, one of our lead "actors", a "bad boy just got out of jail", and tells him how they've found one of his (Sheriff's) men skinned and hanged to a tree in the woods. Like it's an ordinary, everyday thing. There's no concern in his voice, there's no body language, nothing. His empty shell simply says the words. And the guy next to him just accepts it, nodding his head. Huh?

6. Action scenes. It's been in many reviews by now, and I'll mention it too. They're zoomed in half the time, it's difficult to recognize who is fighting who, and they're boring and unimaginative. No thrill, no horror, no scare.

7. Copycat work or homage work? The movie is full of clichés, and it's expectable, but at times, I couldn't decide for myself if the Strauses were doing a homage to the rest of the franchise, or just plain stealing. Here, I'm referring to one scene in particular, when the marines are being butchered by the Aliens, and "our main characters" are listening to the carnage over a radio—the scene is almost straight from "Aliens".

8. Bits and pieces of nonsense. So we have this Predator walking around, cleaning up the mess after the Aliens using a bluish liquid that magically melts everything, turns it into a pudding. And then, when a Sheriff's deputy accidentally sees him liquefying some bodies and runs away without even reaching for his gun, he gets killed and skinned by the same Predator. As far as I know, Predators only skin those who they've found an immediate threat, a worthy opponent. Not just anyone, right? Also: Aliens reach their full size in matter of seconds, of course, why not?

9. They made the Predator look like a wuss. Hmm, let's see, Predator's shoulder cannons malfunction, so he just takes them both off and uses one as a handgun. Or handcannon. Or whatever. And it looks unbelievably stupid. The way the Predator walks also looks stupid. I think someone on the IMDB commented that the Predator walks like an WWE wrestler. It's true, he definitely does. He doesn't even notice an Alien clinging, walking beneath him, on the opposite side of a construction bridge. It's see-through, come on!

10. There's a thousand more mistakes and annoyances in AvP2, but I'm going to stop here, I think it's pretty clear that I despise this movie. I don't think I've ever witnessed so many people leaving the cinema in my life. The audience cheered when "the supposedly hot blonde high school teenager played by a 20-something woman" got killed because her character was so-fucking-annoying.

20th Century Fox has made a big mistake with this movie, and probably put the franchise to sleep for the next 10 years. I expected a bad movie, but this was just an awful experience

And I was definitely looking at the clock.

So here's a track of mine that still has no official name, progress, or ending - but I think it's way better than all the stuff I've composed in the past months.

I hope you'll enjoy this one, and its temporary-but-then-maybe-also-permanent name: "Converse" (as in "to converse", not the shoe company).

Comments are welcome, as always :)

And people decided to go with the two-letter-shorter version.

Maybe because most people's writing is not even close to being profound, truthful, or—God forbid—poetic? Eh.

Now, what I do here, this infrequent posting of insignificant updates—would you call it blogging? Because I certainly wouldn't. Nor would I call it weblogging/web logging. It's probably closer to, let's say, pissing in the wind?
The thing is, I just like to let my few visitors know, from time to time, that I'm still alive and breathing. And that, pretty much, is all I do here.*

So...

• Still alive? Check.
• Still breathing? Check. (gotta have "breathing", otherwise I could be just a brain in a jar wired to a computer or whatever they invent in the future)
• Still working on that novel sounds and music for AblationX? Check.
• Still having a hard time making decisions about anything? Check.
• Still stuck with a cat (see a few posts below)? Check.

I hope this checklist pleases many, many minds.

Love you all, but only one I am in love with.

p.s.: Avery Phergham...? No info on the internets, huh? Well, don't lose your whole day on it, it's just a made up name with no search results on Google. For now :)

*disclaimer: I think I actually posted some useful information a few times, or even a sample of work, hence the "pretty much" insertion 8]