So lately I’ve been making random videos out of in-game footage I have and uploading them to my channel on YouTube. Most of them are pointless, but I use them as opportunities to try new things. Anyway, here are some examples.
Just pointless (cool effect at the end though)…
Playing with time remapping…
Telling a story (I guess)…
Just cool stuff that happens…
If you want to see more, consider subscribing to me on YouTube. 
Natural selection is the process by which individuals of a species that are best suited to the environment survive to reproduce and pass on their beneficial traits. It is believed to be the primary mechanism that drives evolution. With the human species, one of the results of this is the increased intelligence required to develop technology.
Some of this technology has, for a long time, been able to compensate for undesirable traits to allow more individuals to survive, and the effect of this technology is constantly increasing. So individuals who would otherwise not survive the environment, are able to live long enough to reproduce. It would appear that this is working against natural selection.
I see two ways to look at this. One is that modern technology is nullifying natural selection, and preventing evolution from continuing. The other is that technology is a direct result of our intelligence gained through the process of natural selection, and therefore is part of evolution. I think both of these are valid.
There is also a potentially devastating long-term effect of modern medicine. As we develop more and more potent antibiotics and disinfectants, we kill off the majority of bacteria species. This leaves the most resistant species and removes their competition. This effectively accelerates natural selection and creates stronger and stronger bacteria at an unnatural rate. This is evident in the existence of “super bugs” in sterile environments like hospitals.
The only real conclusion I can come up with is that technology plays a large part in the survivability of individuals. I’d say it’s the same exact effect of a less hostile environment. The question is, are the long-term effects of this good or bad for us as a species?
This is to all those who have given their lives to protecting others, from threats known and unknown. I don’t care who you are or where you came from, but risking your own life for the lives of others is the definition of heroism and deserves recognition.
Today is the day to remember all of the fallen US soldiers. Let’s not forget also those who are currently risking their lives right now.
To all of these people I’ve mentioned: Thank You
You don’t have to support the war or the politics behind it, but you have to support the men and women who fight in them so others don’t have to. There are few things that anger me me more than to see so-called “anti-war” protesters direct their contempt toward the soldiers that have to fight in those wars. They’re doing it wrong.
Well it’s been 2010 for five days now, so I think it’s about time for a post. The new decade came with a surprising announcement. So here’s a short post about that and stuff…
If you pay any attention, you know that my favorite band without question is Soundgarden. Unfortunately they have been broken up since ’97, so by the time I discovered the band there was no chance of seeing them live or anything. Whenever asked, the frontman Chris Cornell always said they would never get back together.
So you can imagine my amazement to see this tweet on New Year’s Eve. I just hope that it’s true, and I’m looking forward to more news about this potential reunion.
So Happy New year everyone! I’ll close with this:
Today, here in the U.S. we celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s a very special day about eating a lot. So, I drew this just for you!
If you aren’t in the U.S. you can still celebrate it if you want, I don’t mind. 
This is just a quick post about using Gravatars. A “Gravatar” is a global avatar that you tie to your email address using the online service. All you have to do is register (or login using a WordPress.com account) at gravatar.com. You can then upload an image and tie it to your email address.
Once you are set up, whenever you make a comment on a supporting blog using that email, the avatar will automatically show up on your comment. This allows people to visually recognize you across different sites. Gravatars are widely supported by many blogs. WordPress blogs, for example, support Gravatar by default.
If you do not have one set up when you comment on this site, you’ll get what is called an “Identicon”. An Identicon is a geometric representation of your email address, so it is unique to each author without requiring action.
Well now that everything is settled, here’s what you can look for here. Soon, I’ll starting adding some reviews on things like music, movies, and games. I have some already written from a previous website, so that’s where I’ll start.
Something else you can look forward to is commentary on random topics I find interesting. I’ll try to keep things as entertaining as possible.
Anyway, that’s all for now…
In the previous post, I said I would write about the making of this theme. I created it from scratch, but I used some free resources in the process. So here I will link to all those resources so that you may find them useful.
First of all, creating a WordPress theme is surprisingly easy. The obvious place to learn about making themes is the WordPress Theme Development documentation. You can also check out this tutorial, which starts with the very basics of HTML and walks you through the building of a theme. It is somewhat outdated, though, and doesn’t cover threaded comments for instance.
After creating the base structure, I started working on the header. I started with a base of a texture from the Tutorial9 Grunge Cement Texture Pack with some color and contrast adjustments. I also added some visual enhancements with some of these grunge Photoshop brushes. The warning stripe textures in the header and footer are the ETC Grunge Stripes Pattern. The font used in the header is called Stencilia-A, from which I created a template and used the paint tool to simulate spray painting.
The Stencilia-A font was also integrated into the navigation and headers using cufón, which uses pure JavaScript to render fonts. This allows you to use fonts that users are not likely to have installed. Other options I considered are sIFR and typeface.js.
So that’s the story of the StevoTVR WordPress theme. I may post some more detailed info in the future. I hope someone finds some of this useful!
