Propaganda Photos

Some of you may remember Obey Fojar from back in the day, my rather blatant knock-off of the propaganda stylings of Obey Giant. That site isn’t even online anymore, and although I have it archived, I’m not going to restore it because, wow, that’s some bad stuff. Take photo, run posterize photoshop filter, convert colors to black and red, and post as original artwork! *shudder*

Still, the source photos are good for a laugh.

Looking to the Future

While I was going through my photo archives to upload old photos to Flickr, I stumbled across the directory with these photos.

Behold the Future

We took these in the tek room for the express purpose of converting into propaganda images. They were taken with the strong backlight provided by a halogen torch light behind the subject.

All Hail Glorious Leader

The pose was much more important than the actual subject or props used. Since we were in the tek room, we mostly had computer equipment around.

Power to the People

The idea was that we would photoshop the various computer equipment out with more standard communist props like scythes or bushels of wheat.

Sledgehammer

In this case, a t-square stood in for a sledgehammer. In fact, I later submitted that one to Print Magazine for the student cover design competition, and placed for my school.

Alas Poor Yorrick

The skull seems obvious, but I have no excuse for the beard, the pose, or the sound card.

Half-Life 2 Episode 1: One Paragraph Review

Half-Life 2 Episode 2

I was going to write a review, but instead I’m going to quote from an email Miles sent me, because he puts it better than I ever could:

“It cracks me up how schizophrenic it is between apocalyptic horror and tongue-in-cheek wish fulfillment. On the one hand: Alien slavers colonize the earth! They’re sterilizing humanity, draining the ocean for minerals, and infesting our ecosystem with hostile alien species. On the other hand: everyone of any significance to the story is a Physics PhD! SUPEREMPOWERED NERDS DUKE IT OUT FOR THE FATE OF HUMANITY! You spend the entire game running around with a 22-year-old babe who’s a self-taught physicist, roboticist, electrical engineer, sniper, and alien-technology hacker; she’s a crack shot with rifle, pistol, and shotgun alike; she climbs walls like a parkour master, and high-kicks zombies so hard that their heads come off!”

And a bonus paragraph from a letter that Miles is “mentally composing to Gabe Newell about ep2,” complaining about the death of CENSORED.

“I mean, I know that you’re Valve and hl2 is a Dark Catalogue of Human Nightmares like war, zombies, Orwellian fascism, environmental collapse, and extinction, but get real: The player has spent nearly the entire game tear-assing around the Bavarian forest in a chopped muscle-car with his electrical-engineer / commando / babe sidekick crawling across the hood to ride shotgun, with a literal keg of whup-ass hooked to the back bumper, earning the raucous cheers of the men when he uses said keg to dispatch looming alien tanks (with great dispatch, even.) It’s the height of insensitivity to cap this all off with, ‘and then two monsters came out of nowhere and killed CENSORED.’”

Bioshock: One Paragraph Review

Silhouettes are Creepy

Years ago, Miles described to me a game that he wanted to make where your character avoided combat in favor of setting elaborate traps for your enemies.Bioshock is that game. Yes, it’s a shooter, and you can grab your guns and slug it out with the bad guys — but the really interesting bits come from sidestepping the gunfights by luring your enemies into a room full of explosives, or electrocuting them in a pool of water, or hacking the security systems to fight them for you. Combine that gameplay with a genuinely fascinating story and a truly creepy atmosphere, and you’ve got a game that blows anything else out of the water. Oh, and did I mention that it’s beautiful? Not likeGears of War, where people say it’s beautiful, but what they really mean is ugly in a really detailed next-gen kind of way. This game is just stunning. I constantly find myself wandering around a level looking at things instead of doing whatever I’m supposed to be doing. Really, the only thing I’m disappointed with is that they really hyped up the level of choice you would have, but the only option I’ve found so far is whether to kill the “little sisters” or not. Still, this game succeeds in refining the shooter genre in the same way that it’s spiritual predecessor,System Shock II did, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Japan Photos!

Some pics of Nakadai, the neighborhood where I live, and the inhabitants of Mickey House, the “Gaijin House” where I reside.

Nakadai

the Hood.

Nakadai

I live just off this street.

Anybody want a Playstation?

Anybody want a playstation?

Do Not Drink With This German

Do not drink with this German.

Origami

origami

Neighborhood Shrine

Neighborhood shrine. People leave cans of tea and mugs of coffee.

The Noble Yayoi

The noble Yayoi, self-named after a period of ancient Japanese history, who moved into the house with a “guest” who is actually her son (adoptive) as of one year ago. She comes from an indigenous tribe of Taiwan whose traditional dress resembles that of the Thai people. She speaks four languages: Chinese, Japanese, English, and her tribal language. She is teaching me Japanese in exchange for advanced English. Studying French, as well.

deletion

The first photo you take after you mistakenly wipe your SmartMedia card.