A.C. Flory's Blog, page 41

A hover bike?

This is real. I’m stunned:

You can find the whole article here, on New Atlas.

cheers,
Meeks

ESO Housing – Cyrodilic Jungle House

This house was my first major ‘renovation/extension’ in-game, and despite how small the house is, it’s still one of my favourites:

For a larger display area, I recommend that you watch the video on Youtube. As before, I’ve turned comments off.

cheers,
Meeks

ESO housing – Lion’s Cradle

This is another video walkthrough that I’m posting, partly for posterity and partly because I’m proud of the level of editing I was able to achieve. Still not ‘professional’ by a very long country mile, but getting there.

I’ve turned comments off as these posts are mostly for gamers.

cheers,
Meeks

How to get ahead with buzzwords

Matthew Wright is an historian from New Zealand. He’s also incredibly funny with a biting wit that will make you laugh out loud. If you’ve ever worked in corporate, you will LOVE this post.

Matthew Wright

I worked for many years in corporate communications. The organisation ran on buzzwords. They were amazing ways to get ahead. All you had to do was invoke them and you were in.

When I joined, the buzzword was ‘budgeting’. Everything had to be budgeted, meaning properly planned and costed ahead of time. However, most of the managers took it to mean ‘cut-back’. One outcome was that I ended up sharing a desk phone with the person next to me because it ‘saved money’ (the phone I’d had, which had already been paid for, was taken away).

The following year the buzzword changed to ‘management’. This involved people asserting that they were managing the place. Nothing else changed, although late in the year I noticed trucks driving around Wellington labelled ‘waste management’. Clearly there was so much management about that some of it was being thrown away.

After a while…

View original post 203 more words

Housing in ESO – Oops…Lucky Cat Landing in Southern Elsweyr

Apologies! I mixed up the names of two of the houses, both of which are getting videos. The first video is of ‘LUCKY CAT LANDING’, not Cat’s Cradle. -sigh- It’s the second one that’s called ‘Lion’s Cradle’.

I’ve updated the subtitles etc but otherwise the video is exactly the same as before. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend watching it on Youtube as it’s much bigger than what you’ll see here on WordPress:

My cinematography is still a bit too fast and ‘jerky’, but I’m getting pretty good at the editing. The finished video is at least a third smaller than the raw video I shot. Ums, ahs, stammers and oopsies all gone. Oh, and I learned how to put in subtitles!

cheers,
Meeks

Yes! Natural ‘soap’ from the Yucca plant

Huge thanks to Carol from Carol Cooks 2 for her wonderful post on all things ‘soap’. One of the fascinating titbits in her post was this video about soap in the desert:

Why am I so chuffed to discover the Yucca root soap?

Because in Vokhtah [book 2], I mention something called ‘soapweed’. It’s a root that’s used for washing when water and sand are not enough. Discovering that there really is such a root is fantastic. -dance-

And as an added extra, the yucca grows in a dry, arid environment, which is almost exactly like Vokhtah. Simply could not get better.

cheers,
Meeks

My first video with voice over!

I’ve been wanting to make a ‘real’ video for some time, but it wasn’t until Inkarnate and a brand new microphone came together that I finally gave it a go. This is a 5 minute youtube video I made. I tried hard not to sound like a chipmunk.

To be honest, this first video is pretty awful, but I’m posting it to show what I did wrong. First up, I should have zoomed in right from the start and…I should have been ‘showing’ rather than telling right from the start too. Oh and one more thing, you need to have a very clear idea of what you want to say before you say it.

You can’t work the mouse and read from a script at the same time, but the script helps to focus the mind, especially when you’re nervous. I was nervous!

Cringes aside, I’m pleased with the quality of the microphone, and I’ll be honing my technique in the weeks to come. In time, I may even get to be good at this! lol

cheers
Meeks

Boychik – a review

I’ve loved Laurie Boris’ work since I read her novel – Drawing Breath – back in Indies Unlimited days. That book has remained my favourite until now. Boychik has the same immediacy, the same heart as Drawing Breath, and I absolutely loved it. This is the review I just left on amazon.com:

It’s hard to define what makes Boychik so wonderful because the story has it all – great characters, a great narrative and a sense of time and place like no other. For a couple of delightful days, It transported me to Prohibition New York and beguiled me with the sights and sounds and /smells/ of that era.

I don’t actually know what ‘lox’ is, but I love pickles so I could almost taste the food being made, and eaten, in the Deli. Most of all though, I experienced all of these almost alien sensations through the eyes of two young people on the cusp of growing up. And falling in love.

Yes, there is a thread of romance running through the story, but mostly it’s about love and tradition and old expectations clashing with the culture of a new country. In a strange sort of way, Boychik made me nostalgic for a time and place I’ve never known. It made me /care/.

In my not so humble opinion, Boychik really does have it all, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Read it. You’re welcome.

The only thing that makes me sad is that the story is over. But it’s a good sad.

cheers
Meeks

The Grand Hall of the Settlement

I’ve been playing with digital ‘collage’ for days now, and the image below comes close to what I see in my head:

It’s not perfect but I did manage to create the ‘ramp’ which features in book 2. This ramp has been in my head for years :

‘A moment later, all thought of Vokh politics fled Kahti’s mind as the tunnel opened out into a cavern of mammoth proportions. Glowworms placed at regular intervals revealed a number of passages leading out of the cavern, but the young Trader could not take its eyes from the huge ramp that snaked around half of the cavern before disappearing through an arched opening near the roof.’

From the second book of Vokhtah, title still up in the air.

All of the scraps of texture and shape [65] that went into the final, composite image were manipulated in Corel Draw 8. No idea what I’ll do with the image, but it will be handy as a reference if nothing else. Just relieved it’s done.

cheers
Meeks

Mini House Artist

I blame Widds for this, I really do! I had such good intentions until I saw the diamond pane windows and the guttering…and downpipes.

And there are others, lots of others… -cries-

Meeks