I am a patient person. No, really, I am. That deal with the forks, the armadillo and the tabletop spices? One time thing. Never happened again.

Because I am a patient person. True.

Which is why it’s so uncharacteristically me to be readying myself for all-out armed assault on the Valve headquarters. There will be carnage. There will be gibbage. Spoonfuls of blood shall be shed. Babies will cry. Dogs may bark. It will be an event of portentous dimensions, I shit you not. I have my list of demands ready and everything. This is it:

I want Half Life 2 and I want it now, bitches!”

I have been waiting for this game ever since I laid eyes on the actually-unexpected announcement that it would be released, followed by the most impressive gameplay video I have ever seen, and touting a September release date. That was last year.

Of course, now they have actually come through. Silver packages were bought, Counter Strike:Source downloaded. Major gibbage did ensue (with me on the receiving end, mostly, which prompted me to stop playing under the Overcaffeinated monicker, in order to try to mantain a facade of respectability). Ok, ok, so I was rusty as hell, so I no longer LAN party with my CS buddies, so the motherfucking Steyr Aug is now the Bullpup (when the hell did that happen?). So the game rocks.

I still want Half Life 2.

At least now my nightmares have a deadline: November 16. On that glorious day I will download the last bits and pieces of HL2 via Steam, and my lonely cries of pain shall be lightly assuaged. I will then disappear from the world for as long as it takes and shan’t return without the inanimate tendrils of innumerable headcrabs hanging proudly from my shoulder.

For such is the way of the gamer.

— sergio at 01:01 PM  

My friend *** is in town. He’s around because there’s this big Catholic Convention going on. Not because he’s a chest thumper per se (which he’s far from), but because he’s pretty much part of it. He’s an ordained priest, you see?

Due to that last fact, my usual way of greeting him (MOTHERFUCKERR!!!) elicited a dark, reprobatory glance from my mother, who was present at the time. It’s like being ordained should cast this impenetrable aura of respectability around one, apparently. Like Superman, but with holiness. Spiritual kevlar, if you will.

This is all pretty significant to me, because —difficult as it may be to buy this, particularly in light of my most recent entries— “priest” ranks very high up there in the list of things I could have turned out to be. I won’t go deep into the reasons that drove me away from that, but rest assured, I’m thoroughly convinced I would have made a lousy priest.

I spent 7 years (from the age of twelve ‘til I was nineteen) being part of / working in / leading youth groups in church. Looking back on that now, I shudder to think that *anyone* might have been looking up at me for moral guidance.

I still see most of my friends from that period of my life. We all get drunk together Tuesdays and Fridays.

— sergio at 01:49 PM  

I woke up from a drunken haze, my ears catapulting searing volleys of aggravated opprobium at my throat (purportedly responsible for the Big red fire engine that was at the time doing the rounds between them), my tongue futilely waggling in my mouth like a stranded fish in the last puddle of a desert, my brain struggling to rid itself of fucking imbecile metaphors.

As is usually the case when I come to under such vituperrious circumstances, I started questioning the purpose of it all. What is the purpose of it all? —I told myself— why am I here?, where am i going?, who am I?, why do i write about my life for a nameless, faceless crowd of at least four anonymous onlookers?, and more importantly, why are there bite marks all over my calf?

These are not questions to be taken lightly, so I decided to dedicate my undivided attention to them. Three minutes and a shot of vodka later, I came to an enlightened conclusion. I even made a new header for the site to reflect my godlike moment of satori (refresh if you don’t see it)

In case you can’t read the pixel type, that says:

If all I ever get out of this website is a threesome, it will have been *so* worth it”

— sergio at 05:13 PM  

Through my life, there have been some bits and pieces of pop culture that have stuck with me. The ones that reflect way too much of the inner workings of my personal Wonderland, that give away too much. These pieces of writing (mostly) or film (on Sundays) have a way of putting me in uncomfortable situations where I have to look at myself and ask if what I’m doing is actually the right thing. If where I’m going is actually the right place. If I’m not just another sad, lonely bitter person in a world full of sad, lonely bitter persons (and if I am, can I get something out of it? — Is there enough of an aftermarket out there for endless, cynical ruminations about whatever the fuck happens to be going on in one’s life at any one point? and if there is, isn’t it already overtaken by Livejournal?).

The top five pop culture icons that move me deeply and make my day a bit crap, or nice, or even introspective, but usually make me question and ponder and kind of jerk off mentally are, in that order:

• Nick Hornby books. This one’s a biggy. Hornby’s protagonists are usually despicable human beings. They’re not meant for empathy and —perhaps— they are meant to make you feel a bit better about yourself because of the fact that they are not like you. Or at least that’s what I think. I don’t believe it is ok that I am so much like some of them, and I doesn’t make me feel better about shit all. It does help me get a few ounces of perspective into the whole deal. Hornby may very well have the whole post-shock-cultural-cynicism market cornered, though, which sucks, because there are so many of us that want a crack at it.
• “Preacher” by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. The whole series. Even the 4th volume which came out a bit crap what with the whole Dillon-not-drawing-any-of-it thing and all. Still, an incredible piece of work, and the cornerstone of my understanding of traditional Americana and the whole nationalistic pride thing (which in itself may paint a pretty fucked up picture of my relationship with the american dream, but then again I don’t think it’s that bad, really).
• Nick Cave. “Murder Ballads” and “The boatman’s call” in particular. The one reflecting my adolescent —and somewhat childish— fascination with all things murder-y or dead and the other painting something of a grim perspective of love and relationships that is all too accurate (and thankfully a bit more hopeful than most of his other stuff)
• “Diario de una anorexica” (“Diary of an anorexic woman”). Which isn’t so much a part of “popular” pop culture but features good ol’ me in about two thirds of the book, and chronicles the relationship that put me over the edge and pretty much the reason I’m writing this stuff right now. If it were tortured out of me, I would own up to the fact that I’m too chickenshit to put this all the way up there at number one, where I would really have to acknowledge it.
• “High Fidelity”, the movie, with John Cusack and Jack Black, which is a close offshoot of the Hornby book by the same name, and which, thankfully, paints a prettier picture of Rob, the store owner, that makes him a more likeable person, and kind of makes me think that not all is lost, and that clinical cynicism is at least better than clinical depression, so what the fuck, hey. We’re still here, huh?

    — File under “Things I maybe shouldn’t blog about”.

— sergio at 01:24 PM  

In the beginning, black was just that. Black. Then came orange, and it was the new black. Then we toned it down a bit. Got into Drop shadows. Then came patterns, and we all rejoiced.

I love patterns. I want to feed them, pamper them and spoon with them at night. But I digress. The point (and yes, there is a point to this) is that patterns are lovely, and they are one of the re-emerging Web Design trends that are taking over. From Cameron to Todd, to the other Cameron, you can see that they’re back, and they’re here to stay (at least until the next big thing in design comes along).

I’ve been bitten by the pattern bug recently, too, as evidenced by this design that I quickly threw together to replace this one (because it was burning my eyes and haunting me at night).

So, how do we go about getting awesomely cool tileable patterns for our site? Well, the quick way is: We go to Squidfingers and steal some from Travis. The longer, more roundabout but more configurable way, is, of course: we make our own.

See? I told you there was a point to all this.

Making tileable patterns
in Photoshop

Our objective is to make this →

Nice and simple. This is a tileable stripey barbershop pattern that we can use with the fill tool in Photoshop. We’ll be able to color it, blend it, slice it and dice it.

I’m not very fond of the automatic pattern maker that Photoshop sports, which usually gives rather crude —if not altogether hideous— results, so this will be a strictly by hand affair. Most images are linked to bigger versions, and all hotkeys and shortcuts are in Mac notation. If you need the PC equivalents, see the pertinent reference.

First, create a new blank image (Cmd+N) of 100 by 100 pixels with transparent background.

Now, grab the line tool (U) and set the weight to 5 px. Holding down the shift key, draw a 45° line. Make it bigger than your current image canvas. The result should look something like this:

You should have the line in one layer and the background in another one. Now, what we’ll do is copy the line several times and align the copies side by side. The easiest way to do this is by selecting the Move tool (V), and holding down the option/alt key. That should make your cursor into a double triangle, with the rightmost one being an outline. Make sure that the line layer is active, grab the line and drag it to copy it. Rinse and repeat.

Make sure that the lines are evenly spaced. There are many ways to do this. I recommend relying on the Grid Snap (View > Show > Grid + View > Snap To > Grid ).

You can also double check by making a small marquee of the width between lines, and moving it around to make sure all lines have the same space between them. Stop the copying when you have something that resembles this →

Now we’ll grab a square selection of arbitrary size. Select the marquee tool (M) and hold down the shift key to make a selection inside the line-covered area. Copy-Merge the selection (Shift+Cmd+C). When you do copy-merges, make sure you’re positioned on a visible layer, or the command will do absolutely squat.

Create a new image of 200 x 200 px. with white background. The white is just to make it easier to align the pattern. Paste your selection on it so that you have this:

Activate “Snap To Document Bounds” (View > Snap To > Document Bounds) and move your square into the lower left corner of the document. Now select the Move tool (V). Holding down both the option and shift keys, create a copy of the square and move it to the right until the lines align again. Now make the original layer active again, and repeat the process, but this time go up. In these screenshots I have set the extra layers’ blend mode to “multiply” to make it clearer and placed arrows to show the direction of the movement

Now we’ve isolated the square for our pattern. It’s the little guy at the corner, left after overlapping the two copies of the lines. Using the marquee tool and any combination of zooms and gridlines, select only that square, like this:

Now make the white background layer invisible, so that we don’t include it in the pattern. This is to make our pattern as flexible as possible. Once the square is selected and the background transparent, all we have to do is go to Edit > Define Pattern… and a new window with a preview of our pattern will appear.

Just give it a cool-sounding name, like Jay, or Rocko, and you’re done.

To try your newly birthed pattern, create a new image of say, 400px by 400px, select the Paint Bucket tool (G), set the fill mode to “Pattern” instead of “Foreground”, and your pattern should appear right there in the list. Select it and fill away!

The reason we did not include the white background in the pattern, and also the reason we did not use black for the lines, is that this gives us much more flexibility. Use the pattern in a transparent layer, and the background will show through. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, and you can change the color of the lines (which would be rather difficult if the lines were too dark). Here are a few examples of the variations you can try:

I used a variant of this basic pattern along with some drop shadows to give the ASSA site (work in progress) a bit more pizzazz. You can try more complex patterns too. The basic method is the same however complicated your pixelart is.

— sergio at 06:36 PM