First, I’d like to apologize for leaving this blog so empty for so long.
Hopefully I’ll be back in to it soon (or now?), but some major overhauls must be completed. (described at the end)
But I’ll start with SIGGRAPH, featuring FJORG! 2008 (obviously my favorite event. hey – I’m partial to it, alright?). There was tons of talent, and a LOT of amazing entries. All teams completed on time, and I think everyone had a lot of fun. Plus, I got to see my best friends again 
Me, Jim, and Tom helped out behind the scenes for the competition this year.
We stayed at FJORG! for a large majority of the event, even staying up with the competitors! I slept about 2 hours, just like last year. It was strange to be on the opposite side of the whole thing, and see people struggling to stay awake while staring into their monitors but not actually focusing on anything.
We also had the pleasure of hearing some story pitches early in the competition from many of the teams that were willing to share their ideas. We bounced some things around with them. A LOT of the stories we heard were really very inspiring. Lots of them caused a spark in our brains that sent us on tangents to all sorts of places, and riffing new story ideas off each other. Very inspiring indeed. (of course – this caused some of my friends and I to wish we had computers and could make a short too! since we had so many launching points of great ideas… and many many hours to sit around and watch talented people working).
Congrats to EVERYONE who competed. You made outstanding work which will set the bar for next year’s event. Hats off all around.
NEXT UP – Tom’s excellent post(s) on Subtext.
Want a little insight into subtext? Want to know how body language works with/against text with/against emotion? Check out Tom’s Blog Post on Subtext
Followed up with a great one on Being Original. (Who could have pointed him toward that excellent clip from Moliere? It might have been Yours Truly 
)
Lastly, Word Press sucks.
Why? It lets in RIDICULOUS amounts of spam comments. I thought I finally found a plugin to filter it out, unfortunately this plug-in apparently doesn’t work with the theme I have, so its broken… kind of. It doesn’t allow any humans to post comments, because the spam-word verification image errors out (thanks, James, for pointing that out!). Anything you type for the verification will be void. HOWEVER, this spam filter still catches nearly 20 spam comments a day. Proof that spam comments don’t even care about (or can easily bypass) spam-word verification images anyway. Luckily, this filter is smart enough to know which ones are spam (all of them) once they get through (the impassable-by-any-human error problem).
Long story short: I need to find a new theme for my blog – OR – I need to find a new spam filter that actually works and is compatible with my current theme – OR – I need to give up on word-press and join the BLOGGER crew. I hear they have excellent spam blockage.
In the meantime I’m going to keep things the way they are. If I disable the spam blocker, I don’t want to deal with marking ‘spam it’ for nearly 20 comments every day. If you have any suggestions for where I should go from here, please feel free to email me (since you’ll never be able to comment): wJacobGardner@gmail.com
peace.
One Comment
Testing the comments