Seeking Aspiring Musicians

Azavia and OjaiSoft have teamed up to roll out a great new service for anyone wanting to be heard. Wether you be a podcaster, comdian, rock band, or anything else audio-ized, we have just what you need to get out there. Due to the early developmental status of the service, we are not able to describe it fully, but rest assured it will be cool.

To say it simple: We need music to test the service with. We are looking for people who are willing to let us use their music royalty free, in exchange you will be heard by many, and be advertised on the site. If you are interested please call 1(805)633-1051 and leave a message. You can also email me at troy at ojaisoft dot com.

Marching Band! Update

As promised, you can log into your account and edit your details. Not much to show off yet. More to come next week.

Top Post List Achieved

I was checking the good ole’ blog stats this morning and noticed an influx of hits to my post Need For Speed Carbon + Vista = Problems. I checked into it more and found that I was on the Top Post list on wordpress.com. Nothing special, just thought it was pretty awesome. And just for statistical reasons, it has over 100 hits today, and that number is still growing.

Review – Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny

Probably one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And I’m not being funny either. I knew the movie was not going to be great, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this bad. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jack Black and Tenacious D, but this movie…. could have been so much more.

Plot goes that little JB runs away from home, lands in Hollywood, and meets some local slacker (KG). They become friends, start a band, and begin their search for the holy grail of guitar picks. After stealing the pick, they meet get into a car chase, meet up with Satan and somehow defeat him in a rock off.

What gets me, and I still wonder why they didn’t do this: at the end of the movie, they had the best setup to start the song “Tribute” and as I waited for it, nothing. They left me in my seat with and empty feeling, and the desire to leave before the credits finished. All in all, it was a good idea, executed in the wrong manner, by the wrong people. Jack Black needs to find something else to do because his other movie (Nacho Libre) was also horrible.

If you are into cheap giggles, and some clever moments, then this is the movie for you. I got no more than a chuckle in the very beginning of the movie. Usually I laugh like crazy during comedy, guess this just isn’t one of them.

Marching Band! – The Worlds First Online Marching Band Simulator

I guess you can now say the cat is out of the bag. This is another part of the huge announcement I will be posting soon.

Registration has begun for Marching Band! Claim your account before someone else does for you. You will be able to login by the end of the week. Don’t worry about forgetting about the site, all members will be notified via email when the beta begins.

About the game

Marching Band! is the sole creation of Troy Whiteley (that’s me if you didn’t already know). It started as a joke many years back in high school marching band. Little did anyone know that this day would come when band geeks around the world can compete in one location. Marching Band! was built using the soon-to-be public release of OjaiCMS, a dynamic content management system capable of running multiple sites under one installation.

Once registered for the game, you will be asked to create your school. From there you must recruit, train, and compete with your team. More details about this to come…

Why Marching Band?

Let’s look at it this way: there are lots of high schools around the United States. In California alone, there are thousands of high schools (grades 9-12) [source]. Some of these schools do not have bands, but most do. If you do the math, there is an extremely high number of people who perform with a marching band. This means that there is a large number of people who could be interested in a marching band simulator.

It’s just a market that has sadly only been targeted by ma-pop t-shirt, cheap video production, unhealthy food folks. Why no one has made a full blown video game about it is beyond me. But I do plan on being the first.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up now!

Help Wanted :: Graphic Artist

A graphic artist is needed for an upcoming project to be anounced later today or tomorrow. For more information, please call 805-633-1051 or message me:

aim: jark4life
gtalk: dawnerd@gmail.com (You may also email me here)
meebo: dawnerd

Project details cannot be publically released yet Yes, this is part of the biggy update.

Lots of New Updates

It’s been a week, I think, since my last post, and to prove that I am still around, I am posting some updates. Wii!

To start, I am going to name the biggest and most important update of the week. I have spent a good four days working out the best way to create a user friendly navigation system for OjaiCMS. I bring to you, the first public demo of the system. When you click on a menu item, sub choices will appear. Everything is loaded in the background using AJAX (just like Gmail). The breadcrumb under the header also updates live. There are some bugs, but those will be fixed shortly.

Second on the list if the awesome concert put on my some group from Niger. Pictures from the event are in my gallery (they are the last ones in the set).

To really kick off the last week of school, I had to go to my last high school football game, and was the drive a pain. Took us nearly four and a half hours to get there, but only two hours to come back. Not only was the ride long, but the bus driver kept the lights on, forcing us to stay awake.

The rest of my week was all personal business that is personal? Special update to come in a few days

Need For Speed Carbon + Vista = Problems

It’s really sad that games being released so close to the “Vista Epoch” are not vista compatible. It makes me wonder what the game developers are thinking. Sure I was able to get the game to run, but it took some tweaking and lots of trial/error.

Besides the crashing, even on XP, the game really stinks. The graphics have not improved much, and for some reason it won’t let me enable anti-aliasing. Good thing ATi lets me force AA on. I’m going to sit down tonight and play through the game, and maybe update this mini-review if it gets better, but what I saw a few minutes ago did not look very promising.

Update: 11-24-2006

I’ve noticed a lot of hits to this small article, and all the search engine terms point to people having trouble running Need For Speed: Carbon on Vista. The solution is quite easy.

Go find the .exe file in the programs folder. Right click on it and select properties. Next, click the compatibility tab and select the Windows 98 option. Any other version of Windows compatibility do not work correctly. This did fix a problem with the game crashing, but it does not fix the problem with memory programs coded into the game. I am still waiting for a patch from EA to resolve this problem. Let me know if you have any other troubles and I might be able to assist you.

Update: 11-25-2006

By the looks of it, EA has realeased a patch for Carbon, but does not fix any of the real problems.

This patch has been released to address the following issues:

1. Client side EA Messenger crash
2. EA Nation registration email field character limit to small for larger email addresses
3. EA Nation registration CD Key field character limit issue
4. Issue pertaining to launching Need for Speed Carbon PCCD
5. Incorrect car names appearing in the Pursuit Tag leaderboards

All issues above will be resolved by installing the Need for Speed Carbon PCCD Patch.

Wow! EA sure did a wonderful job making the game run right. I will be sure to buy the next installment in the Need For Speed series.

Update: 12-29-2006

Thanks to Denzo for pointing out that if you rename the MOVIES folder in the Need For Speed Carbon program folder, the game will run flawlessly. You won’t get the pre-rendered videos, but you also won’t have to use the Win/98 compatibility mode. I just tested it and it runs very smoothly on Vista. I should point out that the videos need to be updated by EA if they are the problem.

UPDATE: 2-2-2007

Vista has been out in stores for some time now, and what would you know? No patch from EA. Tisk tisk tisk.

Watch Nick Break His Hand

The video is here. Nothing more to say…

Flesh – Now Playing

We have done it. Editing on Flesh has come to an end. The end result is amazing, at least for a film shot in just a few hours. Enough from me. Watch it!

A note to the crew:
Kari has suggested that we have some form of a party and of course the viewing of the film in High Def. Nick says we should do this on Friday, being as there is nothing happening that day. If anyone has any suggestions, comments etc. you know how to contact me.

Help get the video to the front page of Digg. Digg the video!