Hi there! I’m just checking in since it’s been since February since I last said hi. It was encouraging to see that some of you still come around to my blog- yippee! I have and still am super busy in real life. I’m doing tons of remodeling…still and it feels like there’s no end in sight.  I think that’s pretty common when it comes to remodeling though.  I’m taking a break from staining and polyurethaning the stairs to the master bedroom (I think I just made up a word) to post. Guess what color I stained it?  If you’ve downloaded my custom content, you should know that it was a dark coffee color!  Heehee.  The stain is actually called coffee brown and I had all the wood floors in the house stained that color. Lovely…

I’ve actually been sort of wanting to work on my next machinima project which I’ve had on my mind for a looong while.  I might have mentioned it before so forgive me if I do so again but I want to do a Sims 2 video for “Passenger Seat” by Death Cab for Cutie. Yeah, yeah, another Death Cab song but as I’ve always said I don’t pick the songs, the songs pick me.  Their music just really speaks to me on an emotional level and that’s how I listen to and respond to music.  I’ve always had such strong imagery to this song and have 2/3rds of the song conceptualized which is enough to work on it.  But, alas I have absolutely no time and I’m worried I won’t be able at all to work on it.  Oh well, wish me luck on that.  Here are some of the lyrics that make me think about the journey of life we take with our loved one:

I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home…

With my feet on the dash
The world doesn’t matter.
When you feel embarrassed then I’ll be your pride
When you need directions then I’ll be the guide
For all time…

It’s a pretty simple song but incredibly meaningful (Ben Gibbard is an amazing lyricist) and I see the movie in very cool, intimate blue tones.

I’ve wanted to share some music with you but I’ve hardly been keeping up on the new music out there so for now I just have one song I absolutely love.  It’s from one of my favorite bands, The National, who just released their latest album.  Nothing close to Alligator or The Boxer which I highly recommend but High Violet is very good.  The song is called “Conversation 16″ and no one does  middle class, middle aged angst better these days than these guys (to me anyway).  Err…does this mean I’m middle aged now?  Crap, I guess so.

The National – Conversation 16 (to save, right click and save as)

I’d love to do a video for a song by The National but I have a hard time with imagery with their music.  I respond to them emotionally but their lyrics are oftentimes cryptic, very metaphorical and dare I say sometimes ugly so I have a hard time seeing clean, film-able images.

I don’t think many of you are making Sims movies anymore.  I’d love it if you remarked in your reply what you’ve been doing- i.e. still making movies, still watching movies, using different medium, engaged in a different hobby, etc.  I’d love to know since many of you quit your blogs!

Note the cavernous echo in my all but abandoned blog. I can’t blame you folks for not coming around anymore so I apologize for the long absence. Did I disappear into Sims nothingness? Nope, I’m still here. Real life has taken precedence though and I haven’t had time to do anything else. I recently moved and am doing and having extensive renovations done so I’m super busy at the moment. My computer isn’t even unpacked. It’s safely tucked away in a closet where it won’t collect the icky construction dust that is on everything else. Achoo!

I haven’t really been keeping up with the Sims stuff so don’t know what’s going on with that world. I don’t have Sims 3 and probably won’t buy it but did spent a few minutes looking at my favorite Sims 2 download sites and saw some cool goodies that I want. There’s nothing like a download spree to get me going on my projects. It’ll probably be another 2 months before I can get to the point of setting up my computer which does suck (I’m posting from my hubby’s laptop). I still do want to work on more movies but really, who knows at this point? In the meantime, I hope you are all doing well. I miss interacting with many of you but I’m surely not the only one who has been absent in the Sims world. As an aside, living without a kitchen really really sucks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know my blog’s been broken for over a month and I’ve only finally gotten around to fixing it.  I had to contact my host because there was some technical glitch.  Anyway, the blog is back and I’ve decided to bring some gifts- i.e. music.  ‘Blech!’ some of you might say who don’t like my musical tastes but I know there are some of you out there who do enjoy it so here are some songs.  You can preview them before downloading.  To download, click on the name (files are in zipped format).   As always, I will takes these links down in a little while so snatch them up when you can.  Let me know which ones you like.

Big Bills – Flosstradamus featuring Caroline Polachek
F’ked up Kid – Broken Social Scene featuring Andrew Kenny
Train Song – Feist and Ben Gibbard
The Wrestler – Bruce Springsteen
The Broadcast – Cassettes Won’t Listen
Thanks for Your Time – Goyte
Wraith Pinned to the Mist – Of Montreal

I also have a special treat for you.  Mark Joshua from Brazil attended the Sims 3 Creator’s Camp as a news site representative and I found out that he has several songs in Simlish – yes, they are written and sung in Simlish and they are dance club mix style.  I thought it’d be fun to put some of the songs on the radio in my game and thought you might too so here’s one to download.

Bugersnot – Mark Joshua

So, I guess some of you are wondering what’s next.  I won’t go into detail right now but yes, I am in the process of writing some new scripts and would like to update and work on some more hacks.  I really don’t know when I’ll get around to ’simming’ again so don’t hold your breath- my real life has kept me preoccupied.  I haven’t even installed all the stuff packs I bought at the Creator’s Camp (they were only $10 a piece which was perfect because I wouldn’t pay more than that).  To answer your anticipated question, I bought H&M and Kitchen and Bath.  Even for just $10, I couldn’t get myself to buy the rest because they weren’t worth it to me.  Also, I took the password access off the AinD Backstage site since the series is over.  I’ll eventually get around to writing the production notes for the last episodes- I do have thoughts to share.  Tootles ’till next time.

EDIT:  Music is no longer available.

So if you’ve noticed, I changed the color scheme on my blog. I’m over the mossy green phase which probably lasted me about half a decade as one of my favorite colors and am onto the steel blue. Of course, chocolate brown is still in the mix as it’s my favorite base color. Anyway, head on over to the main Decorgal site and you’ll see I redid the entire site. The layout is very similar but much of it has been redone. The thing that sucks though is that in IE, any embedded object like flash requires you to click on to activate and I have several of those on the site.* That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard- another reason to abandon IE and move on to Firefox (although there are a couple little things I don’t like about Firefox but they are forgivable). Also, I’ve changed my mailing list program for subscriptions. My old one stopped working with the last episode release so I installed a new one and had to spend a lot of time customizing it. I think I might have lost a handful of email addresses (about 10) in the transfer so if you don’t get the next release email, sign up again. Anyway, with the new program you’ll be taken to another page to subscribe. I will be doing all updates for that mailing list including custom content as well as movies since I’d like to integrate the sites more and take advantage of the Designs site fan base to increase my movie viewership. I hope this isn’t a problem for those of you who signed up just for the movies update. I suspect my movie viewers also download my custom content.

I can’t believe that it’s been a month and a half since I released Episode 10 of Adventures in Dating! I was trying to stick to an episode a month schedule and it seems the month of September got away from me. It doesn’t help with all these EPs, problems and stuff. Actually, I started Episode 11 back in the beginning of September and didn’t pick it up again until a few weeks ago. About three quarters of it has been filmed and edited already- hmm, maybe three quarters is too ambitious so let’s change that to five eigths. Hopefully I’ll have it out for you before the end of the month. It seems my goal of finishing up the series this year is quickly becoming unfeasable.

*EDIT: That’s been fixed with a little javascript code on my web pages. Thanks to my affiliate Pernille for the tip!

I usually don’t dedicate almost an entire blog post to a movie but after seeing Once, I just had to get the word out. Once is a very small budget Irish indie film- well, not a regular movie but a musical. Before you envision people bursting out into song out of nowhere and cheesy dance numbers, let me tell you that I am not a big fan of musicals. Once is not a typical musical- the music is seamlessly integrated into the story and feels just right- which, after all, makes sense considering the movie is about two musicians. What makes the story so genuine is the fact that the two leads are musicians (who wrote the music used in the film)- Glen Hansard is the lead singer of the Irish band The Frames and Markéta Irglová collaborated with Hansard on his solo effort for the album “The Swell Season.” The director is also a musician and a former member of The Frames.

The movie is basically an unconventional love story. The guy is a street singer and the girl, a classically trained pianist, supports herself cleaning houses and selling flowers on the street. The guy (literally the ‘guy’ because the main characters don’t have names) catches the attention of the girl when he sings his own songs at night when no one is listening. A relationship soon develops and the movie ignites from there. The most powerful component of the movie is the singing and songs. When the two protagonists sing a duet for the first time, something magical happens on screen and I have to admit that it had me in tears. There is such a deep connection between them when they sing that you know so much more is happening emotionally (listen to the song on the radio blog called “Falling Slowly”- it doesn’t do justice to their version on screen). What makes the movie so much more beautiful is its surface simplicity and understated nature of their relationship. The movie is honest, genuine and unpretentious. It fortunately lacks any inkling of “Hollywoodness” and is not at all formulaic and predictable. It’s a quiet movie and it’s low budget which means that initially the video quality and camera work will be a tad jarring in the opening scenes. Don’t worry though, you quickly forget about all that as you become involved in the characters. Don’t read the reviews before you go- they give away too much of the plot but rest assured, it’s a highly regarded movie. If you do go see it, you will fall in love with the music and don’t be surprised if you end up running out and buying the soundtrack.

I would absolutely love to make a Sims music video to the song “Falling Slowly” but the images aren’t strong into my mind. Instead, there’s another song in the movie that I may convert into a Sims movie. We’ll see though since I’m not sure I want to break from the series to work on something else right now.

In addition to the song from Once, I added new songs to the radio blog. Three of them are from AinD 10 and the rest are songs from bands I enjoy. I’ve included a song from The Frames as well as some very small bands like Statistics and Stars. Enjoy the music and if you see that Once is playing near you, go see it!