I just pledged to help fund Dashkin, the upcoming Brackenwood Flash game by Adam Phillips (Flash animator and friend of a friend), and Sean McGee (fellow Flash developer). Please pledge at KickStarter.com:

http://kck.st/naQYl0

Kucinich Moves for Cheney Impeachment

This is Joshua Mwangi, a Kenyan farmer, who needs $1,200 to buy a dairy cow.

I just "loaned" $50 Joshua Mwangi to buy that cow. Actually, I shouldn't've put quotes around "loaned" because it implies that it's not a real loan, but it is, in fact, a loan from me to Joshua Mwangi, via a non-profit organization called Kiva.org. I also probably shouldn't've used a double-contracted word like "shouldn't've." But I have no regrets about loaning the money to Joshua Mwangi because I know $50 means a lot more to him than it does to me. Besides, half of the money was initially a gift to me from Greg, who gave me a $25 gift-certificate to Kiva.org for Valentine's Day (or maybe for my birthday) and I simply decided to match his gift.

I know it's silly, but ultimately the reason I decided to loan the money to Joshua Mwangi instead of the other entrepreneurs in need is because I spotted a fellow "Joshua M." among the list.

I sincerely hope Joshua Mwangi will be able to repay my tiny portion of his loan from Kiva.org because it means that he and his farm are successfully self-sustaining and because I'll be able to re-loan the money to other entrepreneurs.

I've added a banner to my "affiliates" section at the bottom of the left menu sidebar to track the total funds of Mwangi's loan, which is currently at 52%. (If you can't see the banner, then it means you're probably a Firefox user like me and you've got Adblock and/or NoScript extensions enabled so I recommend adding Kiva.org to your exclusions white-list).

Oh ya, and here's a Frontline/World story about Kiva.org:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/uganda601/

[u]LuxemBlog #1[/u]

Holy crap, I’m in Luxembourg!!!

So I haven’t blogged in a very very very long time because I’ve been so incredibly busy. The Catch-22 of blogging is that if your life is boring, then you’ve nothing interesting to blog about, but if you’re doing all kinds of crazy cool stuff that is worth posting, then you’re probably too busy to blog about it.

I wasn’t doing much at the beginning of 2006 so I didn’t have much to blog about, and then suddenly in May I had a full-time job for 7 months working pre-production Technical Coordinator on the feature film version of my friend Shane Acker’s 9.

At the same time I was also teaching Advanced Game Prototyping and Design at the Art Institute of Los Angeles and Interactive Animation at UCLA. The Ai classes are Undergrad and the UCLA class is Graduate level, but students in both classes use Flash ActionScript to make Flash games.

It was really really hard to juggle my full-time production job with teaching part-time but it was totally worth the experience. I knew I’d only be working on 9 until Shane and few other Americans moved to Luxembourg for production, so I was planning on using the Winter and Spring Quarters to finish my thesis film so I could finally get my Master of Fine Arts in Animation and continue teaching. But my plans changed when the line-producer called me from Luxembourg on my second-to-last day and asked me to come to Luxembourg for a couple months. I had to give up my Winter Quarter classes at Ai but I knew that Luxembourg is a once-in-lifetime opportunity that I just couldn’t miss.

So with only a few weeks to prepare for a 12-week business trip, here I am in Luxembourg City in the middle of winter.

[u]DAY 1[/u]
Thursday December 28, 2006

I flew out of LAX on Thursday December 28th and thanks to a full day of air travel and the 9-hour time difference, it’s already Saturday.

Both of my flights were on time and the 10 hour flight to London-Heathrow flew by (pun intended) because Air New Zealand had movies on demand. They offered all kinds of American films that I haven’t seen yet, like Little Miss Sunshine, but I figured I could rent those DVDs anytime when I get back to the States so I decided to watch a bunch of the films from New Zealand. Out of the Blue, The World’s Fastest Indian, Perfect Strangers, and Banana in a Nutshell were all excellent films by Kiwi directors (I’m going to blog Film Diary posts about them later). I also started to watch two other Kiwi films, but I stopped Fracture after 15 minutes because it just couldn’t hold my attention and I only got about 30 minutes into In My Father’s Den before the pilot turned off the entertainment system in the final part of our flight, right when the film was getting very interesting.

[u]DAY 2[/u]
Friday December 29, 2006

The layover in London-Heathrow was 3 hours, but I wandered the shops in Terminal 2 until I caught the tiny Lux Air jet to Luxembourg City. I got to practice my German a little bit on the flight to Lux while ordering food, but “käsebrot und orangensaft bitte” (“cheese sandwich and orange juice please”) is pretty easy so hopefully the more advanced German will come back to me soon, though I think most of the people I’ll be interacting with speak French instead.

All of my American coworkers are out of town so I had to take a taxi to my four-star hotel, where I’ll be staying for the next 2 and half months.

[u]DAY 3[/u]
Saturday December 30, 2006

My hotel room is pretty kickass. It’s a one-bedroom loft studio with a spiral staircase and a kitchen-in-a-closet. I doubt I’ll get to use the kitchen much though because I’ll probably eat most of my lunches and dinners at work like I did during pre-production, and the hotel has an awesome Breakfast Buffet which way better than the cheap bagel-and-banana “Continental Breakfast” that I’m used to while traveling. This morning I had orange juice, coffee, cereal, a croissant, a roll, toast and jam, cheese, a hardboiled egg, a tangerine and a kiwi. I’m gonna get pretty fat pretty quick if I keep eating like that. I was going to go for a run before breakfast to explore the city, but the sun didn’t come out until after 8 am and it was cold and dark. It’s not quite as dark now, but it’s still pretty cold, freezing in fact, just over 32 degrees Fahrenheit (check out the little weather.com feed for Luxembourg I added at the bottom of the left menu).

The only problem so far with my hotel room is that the air aonditioner constantly makes crackling and popping noises. Even when the AC is off it sounds like a giant hard drive being formatted. I know the human brain is capable of tuning out persistent sounds over time, but my brain can’t tune out the AC noises because the crackling is so frantic and sporadic and since I’m such a light sleeper, it made it really hard to sleep last night even though I was exhausted from my trip. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if the sound was droning and continuous, but I found myself anticipating the forthcoming gurgles during the few seconds of silence when the AC momentarily stopped making noises. After an hour of trying of trying to sleep, I finally covered my ears with a second pillow, which sort of blocked the sound but since I toss and turn in my sleep, I woke up each time I rolled over to reposition the pillow. The head sandwich also blocked out the sound of passing cars, except for the occasional car bumping European techno.

Other than the noisy AC, the only other problem I’ve encountered so far is that I can’t use the SIM card that the producer provided for my Sony Ericsson W600i because Cingular “locked” my phone when I bought it. Apparently most American wireless providers “lock” their branded cell phones when you buy them with a contract so that you can only use their network’s SIM cards. My cell is a GSM World phone compatible with European networks, but I have to unlock it before I can use any other SIMs. Hopefully I’ll be able to unlock my phone sometime next week when I start work after New Year’s.

I’m going to be very very busy for the next 12 weeks as Production Coordinator on 9 but I’ll try to overcome the blogging Catch-22 since this blog will be the best way to let my friends and family know what’s going on in my life while I’m half a World away. I brought my new Toshiba laptop, my new Canon PowerShot SD630 digital still camera and my trusty ol’ Canon GL1 DV camcorder so I’m going to try to blog everyday and post photos and video of my trip as often as possible. I doubt I’ll have time to do a daily video blog like my hero Ze Frank but I’ll try to post video at least once a week. I hope to have my first video post up by Sunday night (Luxembourg time) / Sunday afternoon (Los Angeles time).

Well it’s 39º F outside so I think I’ll go exploring before lunch.

Seriously, I can’t believe I’m in Luxembourg.

I just checked NewGrounds again tonight to see how my submissions were doing and I was abso-fucking-lutely astonished to discover that my Self-Portrait had sky-rocketed from 3,500 views as of Wednesday to over 27,000 views:

At first I thought maybe some linkdump had linked people to it, but that didn't entirely make sense because any responsible linkdump probably would've linked to my site directly. Then I noticed the NewGrounds FRONT PAGE (http://www.newgrounds.com/):

The handful of submissions featured on the FRONT PAGE are hand-picked by the NewGrounds creators and admins so I feel incredibly flattered to have my very first submission chosen out of the 350+ submissions in the last week.

Many many THANX to Tom, Wade, James and all the people who voted for Self-Portrait!!!

In related news, I got an offer for "sponsorship" for Stick Fighter. It's a chance to make some money, but I'm not sure if I'm going to sell out just yet.

Also, I discovered that Stick Fighter has been posted on MoFunZone.com. This happened entirely without my permission or even notification, but since they are hosting it on their own server, it isn't leeching my bandwidth, and they gave me credit without altering the SWF in any way so it still includes a link to JoshuaJMorgan.com. I checked their disclaimer and it says I can ask them to take it down since I didn't submit it to them personally, but I still retain all copyrights so I'm not going to complain about the extra exposure. They even had some really nice things to say about my game:

One of the best stick fighting games in flash.

It'll take it all as a compliment.

I'm the Teaching Assistant for Tom Klein this year in the "Interactive Animation" class at the UCLA Animation Workshop, and it turns out that I'm learning (or re-learning) a lot by teaching other people how to use Flash.

Last week I decided to reapply what I've recently relearned to four different Flash projects that I have made in previous years.

First I optimized my Self-Portrait, and cut the filesize in half so I could submit it to NewGrounds.com.

Self-Portrait was like the 7th or 8th most popular submission on November 11th, but NewGrounds only keeps track of the Daily Top 5. Still, I was pretty happy that my film made the Top 10 after being seen by over 3,000 people and getting a rating of 3.6 out of 5.
([u]UPDATE - 11-17-2005:[/u] Self-Portrait made the FRONT PAGE at NewGrounds.com)

I then decided to rework my Stick Fighter game, which was my Final project that I made last year in the Flash class when Brian Boyl was teaching it. I added volume controls for the audio and submitted the game to NewGrounds.com last Tuesday. My game didn't do as well as film, but it still scored over 3 out of 5.

Feeling another boost of confidence, I went looking for any other Flash projects that I could revive. I found another one of the assignments that I made last year in Brian Boyl's class, and after several nights of experimenting with ways to optimize video in Flash, I ended up with the tiny interactive face that now resides at the bottom of the menu on the left side of this page. It randomizes between an initial state of picking/scratching my nose, chin, eye or ear and it will swtich between them when you click on each respective spot on my face.

I figured no one other than visitors to this site would want to click my face and watch me stick a finger in my orifices, so I decided not to submit it to NewGrounds.

Lastly, I tweaked my very first Flash assignment, which was actually something that I'd originally created in Photoshop and ImageReady for Tom Sito's character animation class in 2003. I made two new versions, one for each Color Scheme (Day & Night) and replaced the old static face pic in the top left corner with this looping murder/suicide self-portrait.

There are several other Flash projects that I've made over the years, but none of them are really worth revamping since they are basically just learning exercises. Still, a couple of them stand alone pretty well on their own and kinda fun.

This one was an exercise in Keyframe Animation and Tweening:
http://www.joshuajmorgan.com/swf/blue.html

And this one is my first game:
http://www.joshuajmorgan.com/swf/rooms.html

My Self-Portrait is screening TONIGHT @ 8PM as part of the Greater LA MFA Exhibition & Film Screening.

The screening is at 8PM Sept 7th (TONIGHT!!!) in the University Theater on campus at California State University, Long Beach.

Among the other films is the Student Emmy and Student Academy Award winning animation "9" by my UCLA classmate Shane Acker.

For more info about the screening, check out

http://www.art.csulb.edu:16080/studiotalk/greaterlamfa/

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Current Mood: :-)
Currently listening to: We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes by Death Cab For Cutie

So I was ranting the other night (or technically morning but it was bedtime for me) about how I stay up all night obsessing over minute details that aren't going to make me any money...

Well when I finally awoke the next morning (OK it was really early evening the same day), I ate breakfast (alright, "dinner"), and then I set myself in front of my computer, determined to not get up until I did something productive.

Behold, the result of my productivity:

FairMona.com

But first, a little backstory...

Régis Camargo, my UCLA Animation buddy (and semi-regular reader of this here blog) has a brother, Marcel, who is in a musical duo called Fairmona. Marcel and his bandmate, Barbara Gruska, knew they were going to be embarking on a month-long cross-country TOUR with Inara George, so they enlisted me to set up a website for them.

I got right to work trying to set up a backend administration control panel using various Content Management Systems, but none of them really did exactly what I wanted. Then about a month passed until this last weekend before I met with Barbara and Marcel again and they gave me pictures and other bits of content to put up on the site ASAP since they were leaving for the tour on Monday (today!!!). I decided to give MD-Pro, one of the Content Management Systems, another try but before I got very far using the CMS to add the content, I was distracted and I found myself working on the RSS Feed Aggregator on this here blog all night. I went to bed (after posting a rant) pissed at myself for working on my own site instead of the website for Fair Mona.

Luckily I wasn't too tired or depressed when I awoke to get right to work on designing and coding FairMona.com. I pretty much sat at my computer for about 12 hours straight and though I did take a break to post about the controversial statements made by rapper Kayne West, I was able crank out a really simple, but highly functional website that I think Marcel, Barbara and their fans are gonna love.

The only problem is that I was hoping to have a backend admin panel so that Barbara and Marcel could edit and add content themselves, but since I pretty much gave up on using a CMS and created the entire site from scratch using only a text editor, it looks like someone, probably me, is going to have to manually edit the contentso if they want to make changes to the website when they back from their tour. At least I used an external Cascading Style Sheet so it'll be pretty easy to make changes to the basic style and layout. Then again, I'm really pleased with the layout I created and the response I've gotten from people who've already seen the site has be very positive, so I'm hoping it's gonna stick.

OK, now that you know the work I put into it, go and behold FairMona.com.

Definitely check out the tunes on the MUSIC page.

--------------------
Current Mood:
Currently listening to: Fair Mona

Holy crap! I can't believe Greg and Negin got married today *.

I've known Greg for almost two decades, and Negin ** for over half of that time. I hardly remember a time when they weren't a couple. And now they are husband and wife.

Just as my brother Russ' wedding last year was a milestone, Greg's wedding is another indication of just how far along my life has really come up to now. Both my blood-brother and my brother-from-another-mother have settled down and entered the married life.

I'm still very iconoclastic when it comes to the traditional institution of marriage, but it's getting harder and harder to deny that it's only a matter of time now before Sam and I get married.

There were tons of photos taken during the bachelor party, beach bonfire, ceremony and reception by various photgraphers (Sam Sim, Kurt MacDonald, Barbara MacDonald, Chul Hur, and Myo Kyawswar). Here are some of my favorites (photos are the property of their respective photographers and all thumbnails are linked to the original full-sized images):

Sam Sim

Wedding Ceremony Wedding Program "Congratulations" Reception Greg, Negin, Sam and Josh Newlyweds Brothers from other mothers Greg & Josh dirty dancing Shahab, Josh, Ned & Navid Josh, Sam, Kurt, Shahab & Wen Sam & Josh Morgan Family

Kurt MacDonald

Bachelor Party at GoKart World Groomsmen Josh on the Slick Track Limo to the Ventura Pier for photos after the ceremony Worst Scotch Ever "You guys are MARRIED!?!" After the wedding ceremony Wen smoking

Barbara MacDonald

Wedding Ceremony Josh & Carmen Smith Waiting for the bride "Wait for it..." "You may now kiss the bride" Reception Cutting the cake More kissing "Is this a toast or a roast?" Greg's old roommates

Chul Hur

Rehersal the day before the wedding The wedding party Beach Party the night before the wedding Volleyball Josh and Greg race to the water Beach Bonfire "Fire good!" Josh & Sam cuddle for warmth Raver Josh

Myo Kyawswar

Beach volleyball Josh goes up for the block (too early) "Crap! Wrong direction!"

--------------------
* Oh alright, so I didn't really write this post "today" (July 24th). The wedding reception went way after midnight, but I usually back-date my posts to reflect the day that the events happened.

** I still love Negin even though she made me shave my mohawk for the wedding.

So the whole apartment shook suddenly around 4pm today and if I hadn't been chatting via IM with Régis I would've thought it was just the neighbor kids jumping around in the rain on the courtyard balcony, but when Régis said he felt it too, I knew it was an earthquake.

I quickly googled "california quake" and found this really cool website that has Real-time Earthquake Maps: http://quake.usgs.gov/

The California - Nevada Map showed a 3.4 Magnitude 3 miles off the coast of the Manhattan / Hermosa Beach area.

I was the first in my zip code to fill out their "Did you feel it?" survey and according to the event statistics page, a whole bunch of other people reported feeling it in my area too, even though it was a tiny little momentary quake.