Game: No Man's Sky made by Hello Games

 

I was given No Man's Sky as a gift (thanks Mike!) after being very curious about it for a long time. One question I had about it was how "combat heavy" it was and most of what I saw about the game seemed to suggest  - a lot of it.  That turns out not to be the whole story. One reason I was given this game is it has a "creative mode" which lets you keep out of multi -player, combat and the ins and outs of trading and building things and lets you just explore and enjoys the created worlds. Totally my kind of thing.

I have learned how to play much better over the last 100 hours of play and really like it! I made a base near a lake and then put an underwater base in that lake that I can travel back and forth to. I did go on a couple "missions" that didn't involve contact with other players and I found them... interesting. I came across an abandoned ship underwater and went on a search for it's crew and I started to look for a lost alien named "Artemus" and  another named "Apollo" related to to finding the first alien but stopped actively pursuing it when I was told I needed to make space in my base and look for technicians etc to continue the search. Maybe someday. I completed... ? The Atlas station mission only to find it can't be completed definitively. 

Since starting a few months ago the game has had 2 huge updates, one for a mission I wasn't interest in and another mission involving collecting fossils. I wasn't interested in the mission group thing but I could still collect fossils, make and display specimens on my base and found that super fun. Hello Games seems pretty motivated to keep the game growing and changing. 

Problems? Sure there are. It can be buggy. Sometimes I sigh in and my character drops from orbit back to the place on the planet he was last. I don't like there doesn't seem to be a way to manually save or that while you collect ships to fly around in you really need to buy a freighter to keep them in. I was hoping to have several launchpads on my home base to pick and choose the ship I wanted but it doesn't work that way. There could be more building options and I think they will get added over time and some of the creatures and places are repetitive even though overall, the scenery is pretty stunning and fun to explore. The space station look amazing but inside they are all alike. I am sure these are from issues stemming from a game that is generated on the fly as you play. It takes a few minutes for the creatures to appear after landing. I also found some of the rooms in my underwater base had fish swimming freeing around in them.

None of this takes away from the game as I play it. maybe if I were interacting with others it would be annoying or hinder game play but it's easy for me to ignore since none of those things will affect my outcomes. If you are looking for multi-player action and combat or running a small village on strange planet, those options are open to you but I can't speak to how well that works or how involved it is. I am happy playing as I do! 

The Twleve (restored 2006 documentary) 2025 directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

 Originally released in 2006 on Amazon and then updated several times later, this documentary is about Boston’s most diverse dance club, open from the 70s to the 90s. Three floors, a piano bar and pool tables in the basement, a new wave punk dance floor and then a classic disco dance floor… plus in good weather a roof deck with a grill! The entire LBGT+ community was welcome and mixed together as well straight people and a few other minorities that were not welcomed in other, straighter bars at the time. 

This version is recut, new graphics, where possible, with better sound and upscaled to HD. It was filmed on zero budget with an old video camera and a mono microphone from the Radio Shack so I’ve tried to improve it where possible but tech is only so magical, even these days.

The goal is to give people who were not able to go to this wonderful place and a sense of what it was like and to remind the world of Boston’s gay history and a world that is now gone and lost.

Memorial project: Tomorrow is Another Day - page details

 

I have mad a lot of headway on this book of my friend's Ralph's comic book sequel to Gone with the Wind.  A few pages are scanned in a way that cut off text and some of the images so I figured out what the test would be and used letters from other pages to recreate the missing pieces. It is a lot of work but it's look good. Most of the work is squaring off the pages, removing the page numbers and fixing the colour, saturation and formatting the pages for 300 DPI  CYMK for printing. 

Ralph had written on a publicity page that there were 7 issues of this comic but actually, there are only 6. I have one page where the dialogue box on the bottom of the page is completely gone and will have to ask Ralph's friend Dan if he has a version that says what it is so I can recreate it. 

The image about is pretty typical of the problem I have with some pages. Since it was hand typed I can't just find the same font and redo the text. it looks more authentic like this, anyway. 

Memorial project: Tomorrow is Another Day

 

My friend Ralph had a long, maybe 10 year project, he worked on. It was a sequel to his favourite film, Gone with the Wind and he wanted to tell that story basically as a graphic novel or comic book and include as many old Hollywood stars from the film's era into his new story. They had to be around and available to David O Selznick when a second movie would have been made. He used the technique he used in making his renowned paper doll books, drawing out each page on letter sized paper, inking it and then making a copy of the cleaned up artwork to paint with watercolours. This had the extra step of typing out the dialogue for the thought balloons and then attaching them to the finished art before making colour photocopies to produce the final version of each page. 

Sadly my friend did not understand you can't sell a new story based on someone else's copyrighted work so this giant effort could never been professionally published and it was a huge disappointment for him. He showed its and pieces of the work to people but almost never the entire thing despite people, like me, begging him to. I wanted to scan the original art and put into a self published book using the company Blurb so he could see what it might have looked like as a "real"  book and even have copies made for his friends. That wasn't something I could get him to sign on to though. 

Now, after his passing his good friend Dan has spent a lot of time scanning a copies of the entire project he managed to get Ralph to give him so that i can fix it up and make that blurb book and a PDF version for his loved ones. 

This will take a LONG time. I did take the page I thought might be the most challenging and make it usable. I worked on the colour and straightening out the scan but the most difficult part was the text, especially the long list of movies stars listed. Some of the names were unreadable. So I removed all the text except the title by hand and recreated the art beneath it so as to have a clean image to put more readable text over. I hand typed the replacement text and researched names I could not read well to be reasonably sure they were the names Ralph wanted and then re-arranged the placement of them so the names could be a little larger and easier to read when printed. 

On top is the finished page so far and below is the original scan and the page after I removed the text. This isn't nearly the most interesting or exciting page in the book but I think it will be (I hope) the one needing the most work to prepare it for printing. I would have had a full age just for the names so they could be a decent size but this is as far from Ralph's original design I am willing to go. 

Obituary: Ralph (artist) Sept 11,1934- March 31, 2025

Ralph and Vivian Liegh of "Gone with the Wind" fame

Ralph was an artist and like most artists he drew his entire life. He made it into a profession as an illustrator of cards, posters, etc. until his 50s, when he started to work for me at Box Office Video on Newbury Street in Boston. To be honest, Ralph had a lot of issues as an employee. He had trouble understanding the phones and was a little scatterbrained, always rushing about keeping himself busy but not always in the most efficient way. He was also one of the best employees the store ever had at the same time. His knowledge of films, old-time movie stars and polite genial manner was a big reason people come in to rent movies with us over the other 2 videos stores on the same street. 

Tobias Allen, me, Ralph and Paul at the premier of our film "50 Years" 

One of Ralph’s passions was paper doll books and up until his death he sold them at conventions. His books were amazing, detailed and hand painted in a way you could almost feel the cloth of the costumes. Another passion of his was "Gone with the Wind". He wrote and illustrated a sequel with100s of drawings and it took him about a decade. His story followed directly after the film and he integrated period actors who he thought might have been used if this was actually made at that time. Again, the work is amazing. 

A sample of Ralph's paper doll art

He and his husband Paul MacMahon (1933-2011) lived a couple blocks from me in Dorchester, Massachusetts so I would often visit for supper and talk about films and look at their (mostly Paul’s) frankly ridiculous collection of memorabilia. They were together for about 57 years and married the last 7 after that became possible in 2004. Ralph kept Paul’s ashes in his old chair with his teddy bear, something he had his whole life, next to it. Their story inspired me to make the documentary film "50 Years", which they both spoke of their lives separately and together up to just after getting married. 

Paul and Ralph at the spot they met in New York City in the 50s

After Paul’s death, Ralph and I became even closer as friends and I visited him when I could. Having moved to Montréal, Québec made it a little difficult but we managed to talk on the phone, exchange letters and have our visits that would take all day as we caught up on each other’s artwork and projects and personal lives. I don’t know many artists or "creatives" and my talks with Ralph are precious memories for me and likely won’t happen with anyone else. His passing is a loss for me on many levels. 

It’s a loss for more than myself, though. Ralph was a piece of gay history who guarded that history by telling his story and guarding the photos Paul had taken as a journalist over the years, a legend in the paper doll world and a good friend to everyone in his life. This is a hole in the world that can’t be filled.

Good bye my longtime friend. The last 40 years were not enough. 

Ralph as a child

Documentary restoration: The Twelve - Boston gar bar logos

 I started my next documentary restoration. Each one gets more complicated and prepares me for the next. This was originally made in 2006 and, as usual, with no budget. The former 1270 security head, Bruce, found all sorts of photos and some very rough video about the club, its owner and the people who went there. I had a clip taken from a memorial video that showed many of the old gay bars in Boston which wasn't ideal but it was all I could find. 20 years later, there is a lot more info on the web but still not as much as I would like. I went through photos, newspaper and magazine ads and found a good 20 logos I could clean up or redraw and give a consistent look too to replace the bad video with something more professional. In 2011 I re-edited the 2006 version and took out some bad graphics of my own and this time I hope to do more of that and elevate the doc closer to today's standards. I discovered Final Cut Pro will isolate the voices  and it took out the background music which will give me more options for re-editing the film as the original interview files are long gone. 

Outriders (2003) restored and updated to HD

 

In 2003 I made a documentary for the 20th anniversary of Outriders, the gay group that ride annually from Boston to Provincetown in one day. I did it for almost 20 year when I lived in Boston and it is a great ride with great people. The standard definition version, like most Sd videos just doesn't cut it on modern devices so I am upgrading my older films so they can still be relevant and hopefully inform people about things like Outriders which is just a fantastic organization.

Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death - Prospero

 

This was a bear to do, The coat is not from the plugin I used to make the characters I spent 30 hours trying to attach it so it would animate with the figure. In the end... there is a way to do in the plugin itself which takes 1 minute. God damn it! At least I know about this feature and use it in future. It needed mnor tweaks after it was done but that is often the case. 

Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death

 

Male party guest. This was done with the Humgen plugin and a medieval shirt I bought to speed up the process of making all the models. Adding the shirt to the plugin model was challenging but I figured it out.  My plan is to make and rig maybe 10 guests and then "fake" the rest with illustrations for the people in the background. I can only render so many characters at once so I have to be prudent with them. I think I will try Prospero next as he is one of two characters that actually do anything and I already made the robed figure. Doing all this will make future projects much easier to set up. 

Animation Project: Masque of the Red Death

 The robed figure. Already rigged for movement, though the eyes will need better control. I haven't gone much further with this lately. I haven't had the energy to figure out what needs to come next.