Titania Blue Productions

04:44 pm - Video Projects Have Begun!

So lately I've started playing around with the video function on my digital camera. I'm still writing short stories and novels, but now I'm just carrying a camera around with me everywhere I go (along with the AlphaSmart Neo, so I can write if need be) so that I won't miss any of the weird stuff that happens around me all the time.

I've got a few videos up on YouTube, but enough footage for maybe 4 more vids waiting to be edited that I just haven't managed to get to yet. I'm also going to get a lot more footage this weekend when a friend and I do a little ghost hunting in her new 80something year old house. I just bought a new video camera that has infrared so we can film in the dark. Should be a ton of fun!

I'll be adding a permanent link to my YouTube account on my web site. In the meantime, you can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/jjkeeling.

Stay tuned!
JJ

Current Mood: busy

05:50 pm - Change In Format

Well, they say when a door closes, you make lemonade. Or something like that.

I've had so many setbacks with the film thing that I've finally realized I bit off more than I can chew. I was going about it totally the wrong way. I know myself. I am not about to jump up and do something huge if it's not something that I'm familiar with. So I've changed my venue to better pursue my dreams and to play up my strengths.

I'm going to start with writing.

Short stories are what is coming easiest now, but I've signed up for the NaNoWriMo and hopefully that will get me to extend my fiction. Everything I've written, short of poetry, has always been horror. So I'm going to write horror. It might be a little sucky at first, but once I get the hang I'll start submitting my work. That's step one.

Step two will be podcasts. I have always loved audio. I was fascinated by radio shows as a kid and wished that they could be revived, especially the scary story ones. Well, that's what podcasts are for. I can do that. That's not too difficult.

Step three will be dabbling in video. Writing will probably remain my primary outlet, for I've learned that it's what I'm actually best at. But just because it's my strongest talent doesn't mean I can't act or direct. I'd love to give those a try, even if it turns out I suck.

So there you go. Titania Blue Productions has taken a new turn.
titaniablue

Current Mood: chipper

11:25 pm - So I'm Finding Other Outlets

The camera is doing a funky thing. I described that in the last post. I'm going to attempt to fix it. I'll contact the company, check for faqs, and look into the warranty. Something should be able to be done with this thing.

If nothing else, there can be other creative outlets for the ideas that fester in my tortured mind. Like podcasts. I can record crude mp3 files and put them... somewhere... on the net. I'll figure out how it's done and get something up. It might be a story. It might be me acting like an idiot. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm not acting! So come Hell or high water, something will be out there for the world to point and laugh at. Since I no longer have access to a scanner and the drawing thing wasn't going well anyway, Some Kinda Thingie will not be a comic strip like originally intended. Instead, it will be the name of the podcast.

I've been told I have a voice for radio. And a face to match.
titaniablue

Current Mood: creative

12:26 pm - Setbacks

Well, I had really hoped that the windfall of a brand new laptop would mean that I could start doing something with my Hello Kitty camera and maybe start up that Sock Puppet Shakespeare Extravaganza that I'd been promising you.

Well, the Hello Kitty camera is no longer working.

All the pictures I take with it turn out corrupt. If I can even see the thumbnails, there is no way to see the actual picture. Video doesn't turn out at all. Toy camera experiment is a flop.

I need a real camera.
titaniablue

Current Mood: annoyed

01:42 pm - I've Been Neglectful

I know it's true. I'm sorry. I just moved to a new apartment and all of my stuff is packed up. My computer is still in pieces until I can find a surface to put it on. Heck, right now, I'm still having issues finding a space on the floor to exercise. I swear once I get everything put away and all the boxes unpacked, I'm going to start on the Sock Puppet Shakespeare Extravaganza. First will be select scenes from King Lear. After that, I will probably do some of Taming of the Shrew. Right now, however, everything is on hold. I'll be making updates to the site as I can. And I think I'm just going to scrap the idea of the web comic. I had wanted to do one after getting caught up in the early years of Goats, but the people who were characters in the comic shit in my face and I have no desire to have them be a part of my life ever again, even as artwork. Adjustments to TitaniaBlue.com will be made sooner or later.

Hopefully sooner.
titaniablue

Current Mood: bitchy

04:43 pm - new progress

well, I'm moving forward on one thing. even if I don't have a computer right now that can handle video or editing, I can still have footage. seems an SD card isn't all that expensive. that and a tripod, some socks, and I'm set! don't look for it to be the best short in the world. I'm just wanting to put something in motion. it's taken me long enough, right? and if I wasn't paying the full rent (i.e. if my roommate hadn't skipped out and stiffed me on $1200 worth of rent until the lease was up), I might have gotten a computer that could handle editing by now. well, we won't be making that mistake again!

so first things first, I'm going to get a 1GB SD card ($35.48 at walmart) and a tripod ($14.48, because I learned a lesson from The Lost Dragon by Dante Harding) and start dressing up some socks. then, I'm going to select passages from King Lear to perform. I'll have to figure out some simple set design and lighting tricks, but that shouldn't be too hard. I'm looking forward to the challenge! when I get some raw footage clips, I'll put them up somewhere so that people can get an idea of what I've done. it'll be the start of my someday.

go me

Current Mood: creative

09:21 pm - January

well, the results from January are in. in January 2005, I had 11 unique visitors to this site. in January 2006, I had 72. wow. who the hell is reading this crap? were you dropped on the head?

but seriously, folks. I'm just as honored as I am frightened by the fact that there are that many people checking me out.

titaniablue

02:58 pm - since I've had a few questions...

people have been asking me why I got a toy camera and expect to do anything with it. several reasons. I'm sure people think that I've just lost my mind, but there's more to it than that, seeing as my mind has been missing for so long that the police shuffled it off to cold cases.

• I know nothing about cameras. don't believe me? ask thewordoffred and ebonange about their wedding video (commonly referred to as the Blair Witch Wedding).
• a toy camera is a great place to start. if it's easy enough for children 8 and up, it's easy enough for me. we hope.
• can't afford a video camera? did little sally get a cute kiddie camera from grandma this year? send her to a slumber party, or off with relatives, or send her to camp, and steal that camera (until she notices) and film something simple, even if it's stupid. if your goal is merely to be seen, quality doesn't have to be fantastic so long as you have something entertaining to share. look at Gary Brolsma (Numa Numa) and all the fun that was had with the Star Wars Kid. of course, if you're wanting to be rich, you might want to save up for a real camera.
• in addition to learning how to use a cute little resource, it fits in my pocket and has Hello Kitty on it!

• sock puppetry is cheaper than trying to put on a real shakespearean play.
• sock puppets don't bitch about not getting enough lines.
• sock puppets aren't going to keep pestering you about when you're going to be done editing, if their scene was cut, can they see the dailies, etc.
• part of the reason I had to get a camera to begin with was so that I could learn about lighting, sound, angles, etc. sock puppets are very patient.
• two words: Voice Overs! I've been wanting to be a voice actor for a very long time.
• how funny is it that something as dignified as a shakespearean tragedy is being done with socks?

titaniablue

Current Mood: creative

02:00 pm - the kitten has landed

the package has been received. i am excited. upon seeing it, i could tell that i would probably be getting flack from people. probably a lot of flack. i'm going to be laughed at. it's smaller than i thought it would be. and it says it's for ages 8+ on the package. this makes me giggle with glee. those of you who know me, know how me this camera is.



remember that this is not meant for going pro. this is meant for learning and as part of my experiment. this is about hope. this is about someone being laughed at and saying, "Hey! Joy made movies with a Hello Kitty camera! Why can't I do something equally as weird?" it's a start. and i already know what my first project with it will be.

and no, this isn't the only camera i'm going to get. i'm going to save up for a "real camera" later on. right now, this is an experiment. a test. we're going to see how it goes.

and now for the next trick, i will go sock shopping!

be afraid. be very afraid.
titaniablue

Current Mood: giggly

11:35 pm - quick update before bed

the item I'm waiting for shipped today. so it's not going to be here as soon as I'd thought. that's okay. I've got plenty of fun ideas in store for it. it will be fun to learn on.

and on the site hosting issue, security certificate issues have been resolved. blogger is updating as should be. i have a new thought up. something that ran through my head earlier today. more to come when I have actual things to share.

yay!
titaniablue

Current Mood: excited

04:49 pm - Some Kinda Thingie

i drew one block of Some Kinda Thingie saturday night. it might turn out okay. but putting it up will probably be delayed because of ftp issues with afmu's new server and network provider problems. it's making me want to bang my head against the wall. so changes to titaniablue.com are still forthcoming, but it may take a while.

once the ftp problems are resolved, i'll be starting up Some Kinda Thingie and you'll get to see my lousy artwork and weird sense of humor! until then, well, you'll just have to relish the time you have left. mwuahahaha. ha. or something.

Current Mood: frustrated

08:13 pm - the situation with afmu

i am still in touch with the afmu tech support guy. we have been bouncing back and forth trying to get everything resolved. he's being a lot of help and i thank him for that. they were in the process of switching from one network provider to another when the provider went down. they had not counted on such problems when they were going to make the switch. they figured it would be a lot more seamless than it was, but it wound up being a gigantic screw up like my pet chicken (his name is Fuster. and if you listen very closely to your speaker, you can hear Fuster cluck). since the network provider had an outage, they had to put the backups on the new server, but the backups were a week old. this wouldn't have affected most sites, since most sites probably hadn't done too much updating in the past week. however, i made updates to my site yesterday. those updates are now gone. not only that, but my blogger account is unable to communicate with titaniablue.com because of certain changes (security and portal changes, i'm guessing. what! i'm not geek enough for this!) so i'm unable to get the thoughts and reviews pages to work. now that the network provider is back up, they can transfer the live version of the site which included everything done up to yesterday. hopefully, this will at least put the changes up until we can resolve the blogger updating issues.

so everyone hold tight (like there's a lot of you - hahahahaha - all one of you hold tight!) it'll get fixed soon and i'll be able to revamp the site as i've been wanting to do with confidence that it won't go all screwy again. who knew?

still working hard and hardly working to get my dreams presentable to the general public,
titaniablue

Current Mood: frustrated

02:51 pm - not happy with afmu right now

i went to make adjustments to titaniablue.com and discovered that the control panel site isn't titaniablue.com but pluto.afmu.com. this has messed up my blog feeds completely. i emailed them to find out if this was a permanent situation so that i could adjust the location to which my blogs are published so that they can actually be seen on the site. waiting for their response. not too thrilled with this. not to mention that several days worth of mail is now missing because when they switched things to the new server, they used backups that were about a week old. this is frustrating. it'll resolve, but i'd like to be updated on stuff like this before it happens so i know what's going on instead of having to constantly ask them what happened and what i'm supposed to do. you'd think they'd at least bother notifying their customers, wouldn't you? oh, by the way, we revamped your entire site and it may have things missing or malfunctioning so you might want to check. and here's what we're doing to fix it and what you should do to fix your end. just common courtesy. at least, that's what i'd do if i had customers. maybe it's just me. i don't know.

just my quarter's worth of bitching.
titaniablue

05:38 pm - changes will be made

i'm awaiting the arrival of my purchase. just dropped down the dough today. it will be coming. it will be coming in 5 business days. when it does, i'll put up a picture. but let's say for now that it's a start. it might not be the best. heck, it might not even be good. but right now, the point isn't really to be good. it's to start. not to mention that this whole Titania Blue thing is an experiment anyway. it's to show people that it can be done even if you don't have the best resources or the biggest income. you can do it. and i'm going to be working with a knowledge of damn near zero. i have no idea how this is going to turn out, but it'll be fun and probably more than a bit frustrating. but i'm looking forward to it. hey, everyone needs a hobby, right? well, a hobby and a decongestant that actually works. when will i stop being sick? it's been over a month now. nearly a month and a half. i imagine it will stop when nashville stops going through menopause (hot flashes and cold sweats). it feels like winter now, sure. but day before yesterday, we had highs in the 70's. whoever is messing with God's thermostat, i just want to warn you that He's going to be pissed!

so when my purchase arrives, i'll be giving more details. also, i'm working on the art for Some Kinda Thingie, my web comic experiment. it's been a while since i doodled, so i'm not as confident in my art as i was in years past. i'm trying to get back in the swing of it. it's easier for me to write the scripts than it is for me to draw. i keep coming up with ideas (heck, i've forgotten more ideas than i care to count - should have written them down!), but the drawing is eluding me. i used to be so much better at it than this! but hopefully i'll be scanning the first one in the upcoming week and putting it up on the soon-to-be-new-and-improved Titania Blue dot com! i make no promises as to how frequently it will be updated. there are some comics i keep up with that are thrice weekly, some four times weekly, some once weekly. i think i'll probably take a page from Hello Cthulhu and update whenever the heck i have something. sounds good to me! because i know how i operate. once a week turns happens for the first two weeks and then i come up with countless excuses and then it just gets abandoned altogether. but mikah (my roommate) has seen some of the attempts at the art and she likes how it looks. now i just have to start drawing one of the actual strips. i have several both on paper and in my head. should be lots of fun. or something resembling fun. or something resembling fun if you're on hallucinogenic drugs and looking through a kaleidoscope.

with all the new things being done to the site, i will have no choice but to revamp it like i've been promising to do. why? because people are actually visiting the darned thing! people are managing to find it by stumbling upon it randomly! this screams to me "get off your ass!" okay, okay. i'm going to be adding my reviews to the site as well as bringing my journal back. i had to redo my livejournal entirely in order to make it a reasonable addition to titaniablue.com. before, it didn't matter to me what i wrote. everything was for public consumption because it wasn't like anyone was paying attention. now that i'm actually getting some measure of attention, i need to clean it up. that having been said, it's time to go through the boxes in my closet and find my magic wand. it's time to make myself a site that i'm not ashamed to own or tell people about!

titaniablue

05:50 pm - wow!

holy crap, you guys! i've had so many visits to my site that apparently i'm more easily found than i thought. according to my site visitation logs, some total stranger found titaniablue.com by doing an msn search. now, i tried it on yahoo and google, but didn't come up nearly as quickly. but if you go to msn and type in just "titania" i am listed as the 33rd entry! wow!

i guess i should start actually doing something with the site and making it look like a nice little place to visit soon. i'm impressed!

titaniablue

07:01 pm - i wanna strip

comic strip, that is. my roommate laughed at me when i told her about it. sure, my art isn't all that great and certainly nothing to write mom about. but it's coming and you'll just have to deal with it. this is what i posted in my personal journal, for those of you who can't read it:

and did i mention the comic strip idea? well, i've written the script for three of them already. i just have to get to drawing. and no, i'm not just trying to imitate some guy i think is pretty cool. i've been writing comic strips for a long time. i just don't show them to people. i wrote one in 6th grade based on the teachers at Caldwell Magnet Middle. wrote one in 7th grade based on my dad as "Captain Mimeo" battling his archenemy "Major Malfunction." i wrote some in high school called "Jean-Michel, Le Bebe" which were done in french. this would just be my latest incarnation and would be based on actual events in my life. in fact, two of the three i've already written scripts for are real and honest conversations i've had with people over the course of this year. not sure what i'm going to call it. i think it might be named "Some Kinda Thingie" because that's just so me. i'll start work on the art for it tomorrow.

titaniablue

10:46 pm - executive decision

i've made an executive decision. i'm not going to say what it is just yet for fear that it'll be yet another one of those things that i talk about excitedly that never winds up happening. but this thing, it will happen in january. there are people who think that i should do another thing first, but it's something that i really want to do before i'm not able to do it.

AND someone has given me hope. i had worried about my computer. see, right now i'm using my roommate's computer to post. i use it to surf the net. i use it for just about everything not work related (being that the only things i can do that are work related take place at work on my work computer). i figured i would have to save up all kinds of money for months on end before i would be able to afford a computer that would be able to do what i would like to do one day. i had pretty much given up. but someone restored my hope. i bet i could build one for much cheaper than i'd have to toss out for a pre-assembled one. it might have its quirks, but i work well with quirky mechanical devices. for the amount he shelled out for his computers, i could have one in february or march, providing i eat cheaply (and don't have to shell out another $98 for meds - i hate being sick! but on the other hand, how often do i get paid to stay home from work and do drugs for a week?). not a bad deal, eh? and then by the time late spring rolls around, i could have a nice little down payment ready for the scooter i want to get. i'm going to sit down and figure out my finances and how much i'd have to spend and how much i need to save. it's great now that i only pay half of my first paycheck of the month instead of half of my monthly earnings. i'm actually able to plan out my dreams. more attention will be paid to the Titania Blue website soon.

so yeah. hope. i can do this. thanks, man. you rock more than you realize.

now i'm off to lay down. head is too dizzy.
titaniablue

Current Mood: sick

04:21 am - not on my time!

recently had a couple of people log on to my forum who made no sense whatsoever. they were probably bots. they both had websites in their profiles, both of which were for gambling sites. i banned both of them and put up a new announcement declaring that such people will be banned without question or chance to explain. zero tolerance for spam on my site. hear that? ZERO!!! because it's mine and i paid money to have it. if they want to advertise their site, they can go buy their own forum or purchase ad space elsewhere. me? i only have about 3 people on my forum to begin with! who the hell do they think they're advertising to? is that really a smart thing? yeah, i'm gonna go put up links to my site in a place where no one ever goes! yeah! stupid stupid stupid.

i guess now i know how hunter felt when he banned a recent spammer. to quote him on the subject: I be all drunk with power and shit...yo.

x-posted to my titaniablue journal.

still the lame white girl, yo.
but with power and shit, yo.
titaniablue

Current Mood: annoyed

09:36 am - ahoy, what is this?

someone my roommate and i met whilst doing karaoke, as it turns out, is a writer (which i knew) and is interested in producing. and he knows people. and he's done stuff. ooo! he was over last night when i came home from work. mikah made a comment that started out "when you (pointing to friend) are a famous producer and joy is a famous director and i'm a famous actor..." it made me blink a few times. he has a friend who is a writer. he knows the film commissioner. gears are turning. something tells me that titaniablue is screaming to happen.

Current Mood: giddy

02:10 pm - Project Anubis

writing has stalled on mikah's movie. mostly because we've been busy with all sorts of other stuff. i'm going to be at PhreakNIC this weekend, so in what spare time i have, i'm going to see about writing some more ideas down for Project Anubis and maybe some of my Space Suit Samurai ideas, too, while i'm at it.

we've got a few bits and pieces of dialogue worked out on that, a few alternate endings (and i came up with an alternate ending that would incorporate two of the alternate endings we have but without comprimising either effect!), and some background info on the situation. characters will probably be next to be worked on. i'll see what i can come up with and then check with mikah to make sure that it's what she wants. ahh, the writer/director hopeful is plotting. what brilliant schemes will i come up with this weekend?

mwua. ha. ha. ha...
(my unenthusiastic-but-hey-i'm-trying evil laugh)
titaniablue

Current Mood: creative