Sorry

Sorry I haven't been posting much, but I have been pretty busy with College and Sims 2 problems. I contacted EA about the problem and I think the game is working fine, I'm not really sure. I guess only time will tell. But amongst all the trouble, I accidentally forgot to back up my downloads folder and well, it got deleted. Luckily there wasn't too much CC in there, but downloading everything I had again, plus a lot more for my secret project, could take a while...especially seeing as I probably won't be able to find it again. I did have notepad files with all the links to the CC I downloaded...but they were also in the downloads folder...D'oh!

Ok, I give up...

Re-installing the game didn't work. So therefore it's either Bon Voyage, Pleasantview (only happened with Pleasantview, but I haven't played much outside of that) or my graphics card. I'm going to try playing it without Bon Voyage to see if it still happens. If it doesn't, we know it's BV that's messing up, if it does, I'll use a different neighbourhood for a period of time to see if it's Pleasantview that's messed up. If it continues to crash, then it's my graphics card that has the fault. Then I'll have to buy a new one or something.

Problem solved me thinks

I think I know what was causing that problem I've been having in The Sims 2 lately, a residential lot. It only happened with one family in their home (on their honeymoon the game was fine). I've moved them out of the house and into another and so far, no problems. I've also had no problems whilst on other lots as well. So I'm guessing that the house was the problem. Although that wouldn't explain how I got the error before Pleasantview had started up that one time, but we'll forget about that. So it looks like all systems go!

UPDATE: Got the error again. I think it may be the game itself, so I'm going to reinstall it tomorrow. If that doesn't work, then I guess I have a reason to buy a new graphics card, which is good :)

Whilst I'm here, I've decided that I'm only going to use this blog for Sims 2 related content. No point in making the blog untidy with content that doesn't really matter :)

We have a problem

Ok so recently my Sims 2 game has been messing up a lot. Every now and then I will get an error saying something about a graphical problem and the game will close. If I try to start the game up again, I will get the following error:

"Failed to find any DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapters in this system! Please make sure you have a DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics adapter and have installed the latest drivers provided by the manufacturer. The application will now terminate."

Other times the game will start fine but sometime after it crashes. I have no idea what's causing the problem as I have DirectX 9 and I've been playing the game for nearly 3 years anyway. I've tried installing the latest drivers many times but it just doesn't seem to work. So if anyone knows how to fix this, I'll give you a virtual cookie :)

Sorry for the delay...

Sorry for not posting anything for like 6 days, but I couldn't find anything interesting to talk about, and I couldn't find anything funky on StumbleUpon. And then yesterday I got Bon Voyage so that's been keeping me busy.

Whilst on the subject of Bon Voyage, it's awesome. It really does feel like you're on holiday. You just get to relax and enjoy the scenery. My favourite location at the moment has to be Twikki Island. It's so exotic and peaceful; just watching the waves makes me jealous.

I've got a feeling this expansion pack is going to be great for movie making. There are many new animations and objects that match different cultures, so we should hopefully see more Far Eastern movies from now on for example.

Whilst I'm here I might as well post something else. Sean (lostatcore) sent me a link to a trailer for the movie The Nines. Now you're probably wondering what this has to do with The Sims or anything random, but you're wrong, it does. Just take a look at the trailer below:



Notice anything strange at 1:08? Exactly. I hope 20th Century Fox can make The Sims Movie look that interesting. Yes I know the two films have nothing in common, but that footage in the trailer just got me thinking.

Quitting already?

No I'm not quitting this blog, but what I am doing is shifting all my time to work on my secret movie project. What this means is that "Friends & Family" is on hold until production on the secret project has finished. Currently I am set to film the secret project (hereby called SP) at the beginning of October. It will probably take 7-8 months to film as it is quite a big movie with lots and lots of green screening. It may take less time to finish it, but I'll still be working on the site, the trailers and the voice overs. Depending on how the production goes, a teaser trailer for the SP will probably be released sometime in December, maybe later, with the full trailer out by May. The finished movie will then be released hopefully by July. Now I know this may sound like an awful long time just for one movie, but like I said before, it's big.

Starting afresh...

Since it's been nearly 2 years since I released any movies, I thought it would be time to get back into the swing of things. I did have one attempt with my drama series "Heavy Rain", but 9 months after I thought of the idea, I had only one scene recorded from the first episode and a couple of scripts for I think about 4 episodes. So I realised that maybe that series wasn't for me. It felt like a good idea at first, but I began to lose interest so I stopped development.

Now, 6 months after I cancelled "Heavy Rain", I have decided to try again. While it is still a drama series I'm planning, I'm unsure whether I want it to have voice overs or not. I found it very difficult to find committed voice overs for "Heavy Rain", and with the great success of series such as "Downtown" (roland31180), "Pleasantview High" and "Off Campus" (katzombie138) which don't have voice overs, maybe it is a good idea. But I don't know. I feel like this new drama series I'm planning should have voice overs. The series focuses a lot on everyday chatter and character development, and I don't know if sub-titles will be able to deliver that.

But anyway, my new drama series is called "Friends & Family" which (as you can probably tell from the title) focuses on just that. I have pretty much got the whole first season planned out as far as major storylines go, but I just need to fill in the gaps with minor storylines and development for the major storylines. I also have most of episode 1 written, but even when I've finished writing that I will want to go over it a couple of times.

So where is this all leading I hear you ask? Well basically *if* I manage to pull myself together and actually complete an episode, it will probably be done by late October at the earliest, and that's if we ignore development for my other secret project. I'm starting my new College next Tuesday so that will slow me down a bit. So we'll see what happens I guess.

So until my next blog post, take care.

Is it a bird? Is it a dog? No...it's a hand...

So I just clicked StumbleUpon on my internet and I found something very interesting, and to me, quite freaky. There's this guy called Guido Daniele who paints on peoples hands to create animals. Here's an example:



I mean, isn't that really freaky? Or am I just being crazy? The artist is incredibly talented as I'm sure it must take ages to paint something like that; I know I wouldn't be able to. You can find the rest of his work on his website here.

Too much YouTube!

Now yesterday I realised that 2 of my first blog posts were finds from YouTube and thought it was getting old already. So instead of posting a video from YouTube or anything like that, I decided I will make a post that comes from me.

Alright, so any self-respecting blogger has the StumbleUpon toolbar on their Internet browser. Basically you click the button and it will take you to a random site on the World Wide Web. But anyway, I downloaded that yesterday so hopefully I'll find better, more random things on the Internet instead of videos from YouTube. I have already found some interesting stuff, but it wasn't really random enough :p.

Right, moving on. I thought I would give you my time and talk about my movie making "company" CleverBox. I haven't made a movie since November 2005! Well technically I have; I made an advert for The Sims 2: Seasons for a competition. I didn't win. But apart from that, I haven't made one for ages. Now currently I am "working" on two projects. One of them you know about if you visit my main site (Friends & Family), and the other you don't know about. The secret one is going to take up A LOT of my time as it isn't just your basic music video or drama series or anything. I don't want to give too much information, but lets just say it's long.

It's tough going from being lazy to making something huge, but I'm not alone so I will have some help. So I suppose it's all good really. I honestly want to get back into movie making so much. I've had a very long break so it is hard to get back into the routine, especially for a lazy teenager like me, but I'm getting there :)

So that's today's first post. Hopefully I'll find something interesting to post later on today. Sims99 doesn't seem to be working for me, so I should have time to search around. Until then, see ya!

The most sophisticated piece of technology...

This has to be the best advert on television right now! It's so funny. I was actually shocked when I first saw this on TV. Take a look:



Don't you agree? lmao

Ok first up, The X Factor

So most of you probably have no idea what The X Factor is. Basically it's another talent show contest created by Simon Cowell...who else.

Anyway, last Saturday's episode was amazing on so many levels and this video here proves that:



"Wow" is what I thought when I saw that. It amazes me how many people think they have such amazing talent even though they don't. Sure, she doesn't have the worst voice in the world, in fact I thought it was bearable, but her whole attitude towards the audition and thinking she is the best totally amazed me. It reminded me of someone I know (you can probably guess who).

What do we have here?

Hey bloggers!

Due to events that have happened in these last few weeks, I was inspired to make my very own blog about random finds that I...find. If I come across anything that looks or sounds awesome, I'll post about it here. This is where you will also find new info on my movie making "company" CleverBox, hence the blog title ;)

So yeah, pretty much it for the first blog post. Keep checking back for new ones :)