It was one year ago today that I received my Oculus Rift Development Kit. It was also the day that the passing of Ryan Davis was made public, so I waited until the 9th to actually start covering the device. Wait, that's wrong. I missed delivery of my Oculus Rift on the 8th due to Ryan's death and had to wait until the next day for UPS to try again. I even put a sign on the door the next morning. (This post was already made public before I realized my error.)
In my year of having it, I only made nine videos, covering seven different demos. The motion sickness I would experience would sometimes be so severe that I wouldn't feel normal until a couple of days later. I have ordered the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 and am hoping it resolves such problems. I hear that it has and expect delivery of my unit soon, barring any production issues. In the mean time, I'm going to do what I physically can to cover as many DK1 demos as possible. Not only to feel justified in my purchase of the device in the first place, but also so I can better appreciate the improvements of the DK2. Videos can be easily accessed through my dedicated Oculus Rift page.
Oh, one more thing. The fake project name I created to access the Oculus Rift Developer Center was "Attack on Fluffy Booty". It was the first thing that came to mind. I was reading a lot of hype about Attack on Titan at the time.
In May 2011 I spotted Mega Man on the drawings board at a Five Guys in Fayetteville, NC. Two years later I returned to the same restaurant and saw that Sonic the Hedgehog had taken his place.
Sonic says, "I'll chose 5 guys over any restrant." If only he was eating a chili dog.
Here's a bonus Captain America that was on the same board.
I had all my wisdom teeth removed recently. Both the procedure and the time afterward have been completely painless. I did drool blood all over myself, though.
It's July 1st and I want to write something before I go to bed. The air conditioner isn't working and it's 88°F. White Fluffy Kitty has lain on the cold marble in front of the fireplace the past few hours instead of her usual spot upon my broken luggage. She is too fluffy for this heat.
What a crazy year. It opened up with working on a major motion picture in Atlanta as a background actor for several days. I would drive there from North Carolina and stay at a friend's condo. I was there for nearly a month straight when filming kept getting delayed due to winter storms and a specific incident that I'll talk more about once the film is released. It was the longest I had been away from home on my own, though I was sharing the place with five friends. It was a ton of fun and one of my most favorite experiences ever.
Shortly afterward, I saw St. Vincent perform twice over a three-day period. It was the first concert(s) I went to of my own accord. She was great. Her self-titled album is one of my favorites, along with her third album, Strange Mercy. They're rare for me in that I don't skip any of the songs when listening to them.
I then went to Mexico to get dental work done. It cost 75% less there but the quality of work is just as good, if not better than what can be found in the States. One American dentist I have seen since said he is going to recommend Mexico to his patients that can't afford his care, after he discussed my trip with me and saw the work I had done.
I returned to the U.S. for more filming, which ended up getting delayed due to the weather, and went back to Mexico to get the rest of my work done. Since then I've had three surgeries on my head for the removal of six pilar cysts, all benign, and had all four wisdom teeth removed on June 23rd, one day before my 26th birthday. I'm just now able to start eating solid food, though still mostly with my front teeth. Oxycodone is amazing.
I also wore a heart monitor for 24 hours and got an echocardiogram. I'm fine. My dentist insisted on it before giving me IV sedation for my wisdom teeth removal, due to a heart condition I had when I was younger.
In two days I am leaving for Florida to visit a friend I haven't seen in years. When I return, it'll be a short wait to receive my Oculus Rift DK2. I'm hoping the issues with motion sickness are truly fixed and I can make a lot more videos showcasing the device than I did with the first one. I kind of stopped with VR videos after nearly throwing up from my demonstration of Museum of the Microstar.
Hi. You may recognize me from the "White Guys Wearin' Oculus Rifts" Tumblr or the front page of Giant Bomb.
I'm also going to return to working on some films and TV shows. There's a Kristen Wiig project about to start up. She's by far one of my most favorite people in the industry and it would be great to see her act in person. I also hope to work on Banshee again. I worked on season 2 a whole bunch and it's my favorite project to work on. The crew, cast, and food are excellent.
This is me playing an Amish dude in season 2 of Banshee.
Here are some things I hope to write/make videos about this year:
Watching Sony's E3 press conference in a movie theater with smelly nerds
Some of the really intense, imaginative dreams I have been having
Seeing St. Vincent and Noveller (twice)
My Game of the Year stuff for 2013! It's never too late!
The Smithsonian's "The Art of Video Games"
What it's like to wear a heart monitor
What it's like to have surgery on your head and be able to feel everything
My dental work, along with what it was like in Mexico
My many experiences in the film and television industry working as a background actor and stand-in. Revolution, Under the Dome, Banshee, We're the Millers, Tammy, Dumb and Dumber To, The Originals, Eastbound & Down, Sleepy Hollow, etc.
My trip to the Whiskey Media offices back in 2011!
The rest of my trip to Japan
Halloween 2008
My trips to France and Italy
and more? We'll see. If you've followed me you know I'm bad about following through on this stuff. I'm hoping to change that, starting with this post.
And that's it for now. It's 11:59 PM on July 1st. Tomorrow is July 2nd. What are you hoping to do with the second half of your 2014?
Continuing my tradition of bad food decisions for the E3 press conferences a third time, I looked to my picks for 2012 as this year's inspiration while making some minor changes.
Apple juice, ketchup, two spring rolls, small fries, large vegetable fried rice, large vegetable lo mein, strawberry parfait, carrot cake, two large cups of water.
And because I got large versions of my orders instead of small, I had enough food to last me through Nintendo Treehouse's fantastic coverage the days after. Delicious.
With a combination of GifCam, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Photoshop, I made my first gif while watching Giant Bomb's June 21st, 2013 Unprofessional Fridays show earlier this month. Vinny was playing SpyCraft: The Great Game when one of the game's characters suddenly got shot in the head in the middle of his dialogue, which caused Jeff to make a face that instantly reminded me of the "BRB Using Imagination Since No Pics" meme. I captured it with GifCam and exported it to an AVI file. I added the text overlay in CyberLink PowerDirector, and then turned it into a gif with Photoshop. I was surprised by how easy the process was. The only annoying part was trying to shrink the gif's file size into something reasonable. The first version was about 24 megabytes. I managed to get it down to about 11 megabytes. Anything further and the quality goes down too much for my liking.
It was announced that Facebook bought Oculus VR today. When I did my evening check-in on Giant Bomb, I noticed something familiar about the promo shot Alex Navarro chose for his article covering the matter.
Let's zoom in on that...
Oh, it's me!
I had a photoshoot back in September 2013 and took my Oculus Rift development kit with me to get a nice promo shot I could use for any future coverage of the device I might do. I uploaded it to the Oculus Rift page on Giant Bomb immediately upon receiving it, and it looks like Alex decided to use it! The photo was taken by David Pascua, who did a great job of angling everything so the cord and control box aren't visible.
