So, after all the funness and craziness of life in the last few months, the producer and director of the "Hero of Time" film have given me a deadline to finish the score. I have until somewhere in late July to finish the music.

This is NOT a release date for the movie; it's just my deadline to get my stuff finished.

So I need to get busy, because I still have a handful of scenes left to do.

I received a DVD in the e-mail of another LoZ film made by Carl Pelleteir of Quebec, Canada the other day, where he used much my NG music here along with music from other very highly talented composers (some of which made me feel unworthy =p) for his full-length feature. It was an honor. Thank you, Carl.

Well, Jacon was a bit of fun, although for me it was more of a vacation from home than an actual fun-with-anime-people thing.

Now I'm home and ready to go back to work on things I have to get done.

I'm posting this from my friend's laptop. I am at Jacon right now in Kissimmee, and will probably leave after the WoW panel at noon Sunday.

I stopped in the lobby and played piano for a while on and off out of boredom. Just curious as to if any of you are here, too.

That's right!

I've been meaning to do it for some time, but I finally got around to starting an all-piano album of select rock songs from my repertoire.

The album is titled "Redefined: A Piano Album", and it will consist of a live piano performance by myself (mistakes included, as you'll gather from The Fade's track) along with me singing along to it and then turning around and making back-up vocals for the piece.

The mixing sounds raw, but while it was accidental (I still have to recalibrate everything to work with the new computer I've been using since a month or two ago), it does facilitate the "live-performance" sound that I wanted to initially create.

So enjoy. Currently the first two pieces are done, they are "No Face" and "The Fade". There's more to come like "Through the Mirror", "Vivid", "Never the Same", and I'm still taking ideas if there are any of my other songs you'd like to hear in all-piano.

In my experiences as a heavily philosophical and agnostic individual who was raised in the church and places his highest priority on the pursuit of truth, I have reached some rather difficult and harsh truths that have compelled me to share some advice with anyone who will listen, especially since I've fallen victim to them myself. Take these with a grain of salt, because even my own word should not be blindly trusted. These are just food for thought.

- If you desire to seek truth, don't expect to find something new; the answer's in front of you right now, and all your search is going to do is show you what's already there.

- If you spend your life always questioning everything, you will render yourself incapable of ever accepting any answers. On the other hand, if you never question anything, someone else will surely be your puppeteer.

- One consistent paradox in our universe is that the ones who have all the answers are the most confused, and the ones who think they're found are indeed all the more lost and seeking company.

- Do not expect that there's something greater than living life, because you will never know until it's over. Instead, appreciate what you have in front of you now because it could be gone at any time, and it's better to not live forever and know that you lived than to let life pass you by in waiting and then worry about whether or not something will really happen when it's over.

- Whatever inspires you, keep it, use it, and cherish it, because when the going gets tough, it may very likely be the only thing that keeps you alive.

- Don't ever consider giving up on life. As much as it seems it will end your sorrows, all it means is that you don't know that you are valuable and that there are many others like you who need someone like you. Your pain can be someone else's healing, and seeing someone's life impacted by your hands is the singlemost meaningful thing that can become of your life. Furthermore, that person's life wouldn't have been the same without you.

- No one knows what the hell they're doing. There are people who are honest enough to admit it and others who think they have to appear that they have it all together. In the end, we are all clueless, and those who try to prove otherwise are only wasting time and energy empowering their imminent demise.

- Everyone's opinion weighs the same. No one person's individual worth or opinion is worth any more or less than yours or mine. We all give good advice and bad advice, and we all bleed the same and are just as capable of saving the day.

- No God is worth following if there are political hoops to jump through. If he wants a relationship with you and he's all-loving and all-understanding, then he's/she's/it's not going to be just as dysfunctionally fucked up as human beings that we should prove ourselves to one who intimately knows every fiber of our being. Hence, if he/she/it wants a relationship with us, he'll/she'll/it'll know how to start and maintain one.

- Don't worry about vulnerability. It's only a state of being when you're not in control, and when everything is stripped away, that will be all that's left. Therefore, face your vulnerabilities as soon as you are comfortable with so that when the day comes that all is stripped away, you will not fear the shame of them. Own them and learn to manage them so that they will not become you but rather be an unwanted part of you.

- "Reality" is not an explanation of existence; it is a means of explaining perception.

- If there is such thing as eternal life for mankind, there must also, for consistency sake, be eternal life for all other living creatures. If we believe that other living creatures have no eternal life, then what has made us so special that we, an ignorant and arrogant species, be so privileged with it?

- One of the several reasons history repeats itself is because we have a notorious tendency to not learn from our mistakes and/or create new ones.

- A day in anyone else's shoes will put anyone's own thoughts in perspective. If you are racist, sexist, prejudiced in any way, just think about that. People of different races didn't decide what color to be. People of either gender didn't decide what to be. Heterosexuals and homosexuals alike didn't decide what gender they seem to naturally be attracted to.

- Assholes aren't born; they're made by other assholes. As a bit of an asshole myself (and anyone who disagrees with that and thinks I'm nice hasn't really spent a day with me in real life; in real life, I'm a lot like Tony Stark from Iron Man or Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon), I can vouch for my fellow assholes and say that we are people who spent a long time being hurt and believing we deserved it and kinda learned a bit late in life (in my case, around when I turned 22) that we didn't deserve that shit, we tend to lean toward the other extreme and become the biters. Now some of us bite everyone because we're paranoid and think that everyone's a potential biter, or they're more like me where they only bite the people that show themselves to be biters. What it boils down to, despite the fact that fighting fire with fire doesn't put the fire out, is that you get to the stress point where the only way to maintain sanity is to stop caring and develop a sense of apathy. It's that apathy that leads to becoming vindictive. So there's today's episode of "How It's Made". =p

So yeah, at first those were serious, then I think I made it a little too personal. Oh well, if you've even read this far down, you're either laughing or rolling your eyes, but the beauty of being me is: I don't have to care. =p

Take care of yourselves, and I'll update this news post when I have something to report on the movie or any major events. Just some food for thought for you guys.

Finally, it's behind me and I'm glad. I actually got a C in Trig which is fine with me, because not only does it mean that I at least passed the damn class, but at least programming won't require much trig knowledge. I'm just glad to be done with that.

I'm just going to be working part-time over the summer while working on hopefully finishing the score for the LoZ film.

If you're Horde and on the Anetheron US server, shoot my Blood Elf Paladin Raleigh an ingame mail.

I've just started a guild called "The Blue Feather". We're mostly low-level Blood Elves right now (I'm highest level in the guild and I'm at LV16), but we're all working toward being able to do raids together as well as build up a Guild Bank account so we can hopefully do future raids and inner-guild events.

For more information, check out the following sites:

Guild Homepage on GuildCafe.com: thebluefeather.guildcafe.com
(to join on the guild interaction, visit http://thebluefeather.guildcafe.com/jo in)
Guild Myspace: Myspace.com/thebluefeather

It's getting tiring. Most of my classes are trying to cram what they couldn't cover previously into the last 3 weeks, and that on top of working part-time and having the LoZ film director nicely nagging me to get myself moving along has been very tiring.

I'm pulling through it though, even though I feel like I'm flying a ship through a closing docking bay door knowing that although I'll squeeze out, I'll very likely scrape up the ship along with other potential damages (as far as the schoolwork's concerned).

Also, I have 3 characters on the Blizzard WoW servers right now, and I've only had the time to really start leveling a few to LV5 or 6. They are as follows (in case you want to add me to your friends):

"Raleigh"
Blood Elf Paladin
Anetheron server

"Daeanall" (of "Daenall". I'll have to check my spelling)
Blood Elf Warlock
Medivh server

"Akuramati"
Draenei Shaman
Magtheridon server

I hope to start a character on an RP server just for the hell of it, but that won't be for a while.

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Also, on a side note, I am planning an instrumental album project (which will primarily be orchestral but may include other softer styles). I'll give more details later when I actually get that ball rolling. It's not a commission, nor is it a soundtrack; it'll just be an album of instrumental art.

I now have a paid subscription to World of Warcraft. I so far have a Blood Elf Paladin named "Raleigh" (go figure) on the Anetheron server. I'd also, at some time, like to have a character on an RP server just for the hell of RPing, but I haven't decided what to do with that yet.

Not that it entirely matters, because I still have my Spanish class that is cramming the same workload we'd have 2 weeks to finish into 1 week, so I have to stay caught up with that as well as finish the scene I'm scoring for LoZ.

So, consequently, I usually play WoW at night (eastern time), because that's when my brain's too mushed out from the day to get anything accomplished. So if any of you have a character on that server, feel free to add me to your friends if you're Horde.

I saw a rather interesting trailer to some IGN Zelda movie. Some people think it's an April Fools joke, and some think it's real.

The trailer can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvN7jZ3 4SAA

Either way, I have to admit, they had some rather kick-ass CG with very professional video quality. Now, if only their casting and makeup artists were up to par with everything else...

Also, the orchestration I heard in that trailer was quite brilliant. I was impressed and even humbled by the orchestration and audio quality of the music their composer did, although I couldn't help but notice it was far too dangerously close to the original Koji Kondo music that it's got lawsuit written all over it. >.<

Although I'm not an arrogant person, I have to admit that some part of me felt like someone was trying to take my ray of sunshine and actually posed some good competition in that. It was, as I said, rather humbling. Not that I care if that person's music is good, but I do care that when "Hero of Time" comes out, my music's going to be compared with theirs, and that makes me feel a bit timid. But hey, competition's always a good thing, and to be honest, it's not a race. I compose because I love composing, and I'm not really a competitive person (only because I've never been put in the position where I was going to be considered competition before).

So, who knows what will happen. Time will tell. Music scoring for Hero of Time is going as smoothly as it can with fulltime college and part time work. I hope things are well with all of you. I'm trying to keep my mind off the bullshit that's been going on in the past week, but I'm hanging in there.