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​     Every year for my New Year’s resolution I give myself a target, like publishing a new book. Those who know I wrote a book, Billy in Space, may be aware that the sequel is still not a thing. It’s been my target for the last (ugh) three years now. This comes from me taking months at a time off from working on it. Arguably I was working on a big animation project last year, HauntEd (go watch it!) but there were still hours of time in my day that could have been better spent.
    Clearly, I’m going about self improvement wrong, so this year I’m doing something different. Instead of one big goal that I can put off, and put off, and put off, until it never happens or we’re all dead, this year I’m giving myself monthly challenges to help build new habits. Last month I was a vegetarian. I’ll be talking about that in probably the next blog post. Next month I’m going to try to spend less money on junk I don’t fricken need, by setting myself an allowance like I’m a five year old. This month I’m writing at least a thousand words a day. I want to be a writer, and I want to be a good one. One only gets better at a thing by doing it a lot. Right now I only write when I’m working on a project, and that’s not enough.
     I’m gonna try writing stuff I don’t normally write, and a lot of that will end up here on the blog once or twice a week. You can all look forward to my stupid, poorly thought out opinions on politics, game design, nerd culture, scifi, horror, and sometimes, when I’m feeling really smart, how those things are all related. In the past, I’ve stayed away from writing prompts. This month I’m going to be trying them as well to stretch my narrative muscles.
     This series of resolutions is all about trying things outside my comfort zone. I don’t know what all the challenges I’m going to try will be yet, but they’re all going to be about building better habits for self improvement. That’s my plan. Feel free to tell me it’s stupid, or tell me your New Year’s resolution, or leave me your bank account info an amazon password in the comments (yes this site does comments!)

(398/1000)
See you next time,
Harry L-B

The last time I posted here, was way back in September last year. Wow I suck at blogs. Anyway, here's some updates on my current projects.

Two Lunatics is done! I edited it together and I don't hate it. There's some touch up type things left to do like color and maybe some background sound and a version where I cut off like two minutes. But I successfully made a short film (with the help of a bunch of really awesome people)! So once those touch up things are all taken care of I'll be submitting to festivals and we'll see where it goes from there. Yeay!

Billy 2 is slow going. I hated my first draft, which was done back at the end of November. I've written a bunch more stuff and I was finally able to bring myself to look over the draft again. Currently in the process of taking a clever to the thing and hacking out the stuff I hate. Hopeful I'll have something good in the next couple months.

Web series! I'm working on a web series. A couple actually. One or both or even three might happen, because I have time to write at my new day job. Those depend on whether or not I quit school.

I still haven't figured out something to post weekly. Something to bring people back on a regular basis. Create some buzz and whatnot. We'll see. Might perform a resurrection so to speak.

Also I wrote this while I was sitting in class because my teacher is talking about stuff I already know how to do.

- Harry L-B

Firstly, here's a rundown of what's done. Two Lunatics has been filmed so next thing to do with that is edit. No clue what I'm doing, but I'm sure it will get done eventually. The next Billy in Space book is coming along slowly but steadily, and I've got another book in the works as well.

I've just started school again and I'm going to MATC to learn programming. Might be going into the game development program with a focus on coding. We'll see. You can follow those adventures here.

I honestly don't post in this blog nearly enough. I do however post on my facebook page fairly regularly. If you want to know what I'm up to with updates on how the books are coming you should go here. It's small stuff so it never feels worth posting on a blog.

Anyway. That's the state of things.

It seems the concept of magnetism has been common knowledge to just about everyone (except for the Insane Clown Posse) since we could rub two shiny rocks together.  A negatively charged object and a positively charged object are attracted to each other, due to electrons and tiny multicolored spheres and math and stuff. This little scientific fact is the basis of the commonly used phrase "opposites attract" in reference to couples that are so different they should totally end up together, like in every 80's movie ever.

Unfortunately it turns out we've all been had. Last week, researchers in Germany somewhere decided to actually test the "opposites attract" theory. Surprisingly, or rather not so surprisingly, materials with similar charges wanted to hang out instead of the other way around, which they all agree in hindsight, made no sense.

The reason for this deception by the scientific community dates back to the coining of the phrase "opposites attract". Scientists of the time wanted a pick up line they could use on the hot cheerleader types in a time before science was considered "cool". They went so far as making sure magnets were always painted in such a way to support their claims. Now that science and even dorkiness is cool, the phrase and its false scientific backing can be abandoned.

"We hope that the public can forgive us and we can all move past this. We came up with this theory in a rather lonely time for scientists, but we feel we've grown past the need for it now," said Danny Carlton, King of Science.

It remains to be seen what effect this will have on those cartoony U shaped magnets.

Hope you enjoyed today's lies about magnets. The world my never be the same. Here's some real stuff!

Animation: I finished up the music video for the Happy Horse Band! The final version of it got okayed yesterday. They're super happy with it, as am I. Once they post it, I'll share it here on the website. I think you'll like the song and the video.

Film: May have run into a bit of a snag on Two Lunatics concerning crew, but I have hopes that it will all come together in the end. Did get some essential props put together so that's just about all set.

Comic: I thought I was all done making comics for a while, but my good buddy D.B. Rouse is putting out a new album in a couple months and he wants a comic to go with it. So I've started working on that. It'll be black and white and loosely follow characters in the album.

That's what I got.

- Harry out

Spiders have been around for a long time. They've been creeping out lifeforms since there have been other lifeforms to creep out. They have too many legs. They've got pointy teeth. Their eyes are just plain weird looking. Some are small enough to easily get lost in your bed sheets. Some are big enough to cover your face. Some are deadly poisonous, and some are waiting in that dark spot in your cupboard. They are as varied as they are unpleasant.

Luckily the little critters have always had two major weaknesses. For one, spider bodies are incredibly squishable, succumbing to as little as a wad of toilet paper. Secondly, being spiders, they have spider brains, which are fairly small. Their diminutive intellect has prevented them from realizing what their creepiness could help them accomplish.

Unfortunately we may soon need to bow down to a race of tiny, terrifying tyrants. A group of scientists down in Arizona have developed a method to increase the thinking power of any living thing, by increasing how densely packed their brain cells are. Instead of testing this out on a species of something harmless like butterflies or alligators, they chose to test out this new affront to nature on everyone's favorite nightmare.

All attempts to reach the lab for comment have failed. The lab is assumed lost and will be nuked from a safe distance.

- Harry out

The big project I really want to tell people about right now is Billy in Space (have I mentioned that I wrote a book called Billy in Space? It's coming out in a couple months. Get excited). However that's not the only big project I'm working on right now, and maybe, for some unknown reason, you're interested in one of those other projects. So here's info on a short film I wrote called Two Lunatics.

It's a short film about two guys in an insane asylum. There's more to it than that, but if I say much more it'll give away the whole story. It is short after all. I'm getting help producing it from Sam Kozel of Film Freed, a local indie film studio. This'll be my first time behind the camera on a film project, and Sam has been real helpful with all the stuff I'm totally oblivious on. So he deserves big thanks for that.

It's staring a couple of local Milwaukee theater guys. Jason Waszac of various things from around town, and Matt Kemple of the Milwaukee Comedy Festival and  the Underground Collaborative. I just had meetings with both, and they're both going to do a great job. You should be looking forward to seeing it.

We'll actually be filming at the UC in not too long from now, so that's exciting.

So yeah. That's coming up real soon. Get excited.

- Harry out

For all of humanity's brief time on our planet, we thought Earth was special. It was the only one we had so we best take care of it. Turns out we can start dumping trash where ever we like, because a second earth has just been discovered.

A few months ago scientists launched a satellite that would travel the same orbit around the sun, but going the other way around. Yesterday, the satellite got its first glimpse of a previously unknown planet, which experts are already calling Earth 2. E2 has been following the exact same path as Earth, but we've never seen it, because it was always on the other side of the sun. Not only is the planet the same size as Earth, but it will likely be able to sustain life.

"Yeah it's got water, oxygen, all that good stuff. And to imagine, it's been behind the sun all this time. Who knew?" said a totally legit scientist.

There are already plans to send a group of attractive youths there, to star in a reality show.

Today I got a bunch of animation done. Done on what you ask? Two things. One is a music video for a an actual client, so those are always cool. It's for the Happy Horse Band, a group I've done work for before. You can see the first video I did for them on the animation page. They're a pretty cool group, and my friend D.B. Rouse is a member of the band. Check them out. The video's not done yet, but it's pretty far along.

The other thing I'm working on is a series of promo videos for Billy in Space. In addition to animating a commercial, I'm also doing a series of short videos staring the crew of the book's ship. I'll be doing three or four depending on how many good ideas I get, and I'm gonna release those a week at a time once I have a set release date on the book. Fingers crossed they go viral and that solves all my marketing issues. To get that started, here's a couple images from those.

More soon. Maybe.

- Harry out