WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

2/27/2005

Well, I feel a little less like my life is simply a bleak trail of misery extending on forever into eternity than I usually do. This owing either to a few small positive possibilites in my near future, or simply some measure of probabilty that it's impossible to be miserable all of the time. Indications of the former are that some job openings have come up at work, I may be getting some money back on my taxes, my birthday is coming up, and I've managed to make Lady Sword for the PCE my bitch for at least an evening. I glanced at it again recently and decided that I much have been smoking some rat-poison laced crack the last time I tried to make a table file for it. It uses a crazy amount of substiution in the script. There is an enormous list of 2-byte values that refer to various words or sentences used repeatedly. I've pretty much nailed them all down I think, so I'm somewhat pleased with myself. I need to do a lot of double-checking, but it's good progress regardless.
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2/22/2005

I am still sick which sucks. I made some small changes to my home page, I verified it better than it was, did a spell check, and moved my translation projects to their own page. After having to suffer with viewing it on a 56K connection for over a week I decided that folks don't need to download all those images every time they just want to visit my site. I'm listening to Danzig which doesn't "put me in a good mood" necessarily, but when I'm in a Danzig sort of mood it helps support that mood, which is good I guess. :P I am getting depressed when I think of anything today, so I'm trying to turn that around as much as I can and not be so depressed by my own thoughts. I think I'm going to sketch a little...
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2/19/2005

My house sitting is coming to an end. I am sick, in a non-figurative way, as in I have a cold. My page is over-due for an overhaul. I'd at least like to move my translation projects into their own page/s. I am still watching City Hunter which is really cool. I'd really like to get a complete set of Adikolor miniature paints and I'm trying to figure out how to afford some. My birthday is coming up so I'm thinking that I might be able to work it out somehow. Not that I really need to be painting miniatures, but it's just fun. I've been checking out some miniature manufacturer's that I've never heard of before. My favorites so far being Reaper for some nice female and monster minis, and Dragonrune's cool-ass orcs. I'm still writing, but it seems like I'm never going to reach an end and I'm burning out on it again. It's really only a matter of time, but I still wish I had like two months to just sit down and work on it.
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2/13/2005

OMFG I am tired. I set aside this time of my evening for working but I am too exhausted so I am blogging instead. I have been watching an episode of City Hunter each night for the past 3 nights. I was very happy to get the first box set finally even though it's been out for like 2 years. I picked it up for 50% off at Gamestop, I just couldn't pass that up. It's really nostalgic and cool. The music and sound effects and everything have a sort of Maison Ikkoku, Dirty Pair feeling, that era of anime. I guess I just identify with that more than the "flashy new stuff", though I watch plenty of that too. The stories are simple but good, and Ryo's character is kind of lewd, but chivalrous at the same time. It's an interesting take on the "exterminator" sort of vigilante story, throwing in enough humor that it's almost a comedy, while being a drama at the same time.

I've been in an odd sort of mood recently. I'm sort of getting into a D&D, fantasy gaming aesthetic. I wonder if I'm really cut out for the storytelling thing. I think I've really wanted to try to do the "comic book" thing, but I'm not sure that I have the right disposition for it. I tend to want to put a lot more into my artwork, until I am happy with it, and not strip it down and turn it into symbols. I like to explore characters visually, and I'm not so sure that I'm up to creating a real narrative with dialog and story. I think that maybe just going with my natural tendencies and making character "paintings" is a lot more up my alley. There is probably fantastic room for a career there when I think about it, considering that I can think of a broad array of venues for such artwork such as sci-fi/fantasy books, comics, magazines, games, really anything that needs a beautiful cover.

Maybe idolizing Masamune Shiro in a way has been bad, since he is a real comic book artist in addition to being a great fantasy painter. Had I only focused on his "fantasy painter" side I may not have been so enamored with the comic artist side. But I am my own self after all and if I am more of a fantasy painter than a comics artist so be it. I don't feel like I'm much of either when I'm not doing any artwork, but most of that has to do with directing my energies in the wrong ways. I simply have yet to master myself, and it's hard to really be me until I discover who I am.
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2/12/2005

To whom it may concern, I am house sitting for 2 weeks. I will still be checking email and blogging etc. but I may not be checking voice messages very regularly. Not much to say other than I finaly did get Danzig's new album Circle of Snakes. It still has that crappy "we didn't bother making a professional soundikng recording" sort of sound to it, but I got used to that with the last album. The title track "Circle of Snakes" really kicks ass. I'm not sure about the rest of the album. When I first heard it, I though "this is a good", but subsequent listenings have not done much for me aside from make me like the title track more. But still, I hated the last album when I first heard it. It took me months to come around to it, which I finally did in a pretty big way, since it's now my favorite Danzig album. So I will give this one a chance too.
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2/08/2005

I haven't posted in forever. Yay! I am looking at getting a new job, though I'm exploring both promotion within my current company, and other employers. I definitely need more money and something a little more interesting/different to do. I hope that the search goes well.

I spent a bunch of time the other day researching and writing about a game, only to find out that it doesn't really fit in with what I am writing about. :P That sucked. Especially since it seemed like a really cool game. The US release was called Tombs & Treasure for the NES but it was a sequel to a game called Asteka on the PC88/MSX2. I want to sit down and check out the NES version a bit now.

I'm glad to have the full script for Sword of Kalin off to King Mike. Satsu was really nice to edit it for me and it ended up sounding a lot better than my original script. Almost enough to make me question whether I should be bothering to translate scripts at all. ;) But I don't intend to stop any time soon. Even if I never really master Japanese, I love Japanese games and trying to help people to play them in English and I will continue to enjoy that to the best of my ability as long as I can.
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2/01/2005

It's the start of a new month in hell. :P

I translated a famicom game (for King Mike) over the weekend, Sword of Kalin カリーンの剣 (Kalin no Tsurugi). I was pleased with myself for excercising the self-discipline to finish the script in two days. The fact that I had set the goal of finishing it during my 2 days off and I reached that goal was satisfying. Despite the demands of friends, household responsibilites, and my own motivation, I still set aside the time to work on the game and saw it through to completion. I guess that's what I mean by "cultivating my ability to persevere". Maybe it seems like a small thing, but I feel like it's important to myself as a person.

The quote that came up for me recently was "When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the way.". Thinking about this in realtion to my happiness, I feel like I look a lot toward my future happiness, without thinking much of my current happiness which leaves me generally unhappy. I think I try to endure unhappiness by keeping the idea of future happiness in mind. Sometimes that isn't enough though, and my current unhappiness becomes difficult to bear, and I end up hurting myself. I think that, while working towards future happiness, I should also consider my current happiness, and find ways of keeping myself happy, while working towards being happy in the furure. Right now it's the middle of winter and it's just depressing. I'm bored with my job, I have no love life, I'm thinking really hard about where I want to be in 3-5 years, and playing catch up in the mean time. I am very determined to be sucessful, in a way that has value and meaning for myself. Part of that may involve thinking of myself in the present and what I can do to make myself happy now, as well as what I can do so that I will be happy a few years from now. I'm still living my life right now after all.
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