The MIA's

"I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me..."

Over the years, my website has been home to more than a few things. In the beginning, it was where I would stick my rants. Then once those started going into LiveJournal, I started toying with graphics for the site. Then the Render Gallery. Then music. Then my RPG characters. My site has grown and changed with me, and now it must change once more.

Below are some of the things that WERE on the site that you will NOT find here today, and a little bit of the reasoning behind it all. Think of this as my apology for any 404s that led you here.

The Not-Quite Render Gallery: Shut down.

There were several reasons behind this decision, the foremost being that while I still enjoy outings in 3DSMax, it's ridiculously difficult to keep up with the newer versions of the software, and my comfort level in other programs isn't high enough to really release anything to the public. Complicating matters more is the fact that I simply don't have time between work, school, and my other projects to put any appreciable time into working on meshes. The last straw finally came when my copy of 3DSMax died over the summer. Rather than reinstall it, I've backed up all my scenes and materials off-drive until such time as I can get it working again and use it on a frequent basis.

It also doesn't help that I never migrated the files off of Yahoo!Geocities over to Ryan's storage space, which in turn has been getting used up by music files and temporary file storage for transfers. With that space, I would much rather have fresh, clean renders of everything... and well, it all takes time and working software.

The Render Gallery WILL be back, but because I cannot say when or where, it will be listed as shut down.

Music Portfolios: Temporarily Offline

I know a few dozen people who are going to shout "I told you so!" at me when I say this, but I'm going to be replacing the entire MIDI section with MP3s of my music. I still maintain that the quality of MIDI today is strong, and that though the file format is lacking and in need of major upgrading, it works well for budding or amateur musicians who don't have access to a 50 piece orchestra or the software to simulate one. Also, I haven't put up any new music there in a while, and some music I would like to remove. Add to that the time it will take to transfer these MIDIs into quality MP3s - which will take some re-engineering with more than a few soundfonts for some pieces.

This section WILL be coming back, featuring most of the old music as well as new pieces and previews of music being written for use in WEC 2 - music, I might add, that is making extensive use of soundfonts. I'll also be including some tips and tricks for using Noteworthy Composer, soundfounts, and audio recording tools in music composition.

Role Playing Characters: Shut down

The bios are no longer on this site, but I'll be replacing them with a few tidbits from my experiences as GM and player. Pulling the bios is simply a matter of "Who cares?" as all of the characters featured are no longer active, and of the three characters I presently play, two have had little character development done and the remaining one, due to the structure of the game, cannot be revealed as the other player party could capitalize on the information.

Farrell's Fusiliers: Delinked, Coming Soon

My original intent here was to use LiveJournal as a means of digitally publishing my mercenary story. Problem is, I found I have a weakness in finding voices for multiple characters and that I don't write dialogue very well.

Fortunately, in December 2004, I ran a prequel scenario to the story I've been building up, and it was well received. At the time of this writing, I am engaged in writing pages for the first official contract campaign for the unit in preparation for running the game as a backup to our existing BattleTech RPG here or possibly as a second game most likely to run sometime Sunday.

I am considering piggybacking an Internet version of the same game concept on the real-world RPG. Though it would involve different characters, and, over time, different plotlines, running the two simultaneously wouldn't be too hard. A time and day of week have not been chosen, and it remains to be seen if MegaMek will support combat as much as I would like, but work on the website for the Internet RPG would be concurrent to the real-world website.