The Great Server Migration

I’ve been a member of the internets for a long time.
My handles throughout my internet history have been as follows:
* Two_Beer
* Gerber
* Carcinogen
* FreshLaundry
* KindaGamey

(Dear British Embassy, Passport Renewal Office: Please be aware that many of these nom de pubes are not nearly as original as I had thought, so if you come across some internet flotsam penned by ‘Fresh Laundry’ or ‘Two_Beer’ I wouldn’t be so quick to ascribe it to me.  It’s probably some other git that stole my moniker.)

Attention-Deficit Exit Ramp!

You know, my mother just got a Blackberry Touch as a Verizon upgrade with rebates out the wazoo and it seemed pretty cool. (I think they’re practically giving them away because something else is coming down the pike.) I think my blog readers deserve higher resolution pictures. Some of you do, anyway, for putting up with all my nonsense. The rest of you I will punish with more non-sober stream of consciousness rants that make no sense whatsoever. It’s a shame my punishments never work because you guys are the ones that skip all the words anyway. Your punishments just make the actual readers have to work twice as hard. You people, honestly. Have some dignity.

So perhaps it’s time for my own phoneular upgrade. I wouldn’t do it for me, dear reader, but I’d do it for you. Oh yes. I’d do so much for you.

So across this great internet I have strewn a garbage trail of half-assed projects and flash pieces and strange badly photoshopped graphics and blog supplemental illustrations from back in my myspace blogging heyday. (That stuff was nothing like this blog. it was all personal all the time. Much more interesting, but rather bad for maintaining personal relationships.)

I decided to gather it all up and bring it here to my kindagamey server (where possible) to preserve it forever. Kind of like a showcase of my personal shame. Kind of like a why-you-should-reject-me-for-this-job portfolio. If you are an old friend of mine you’ve probably seen this crap before. You know how I love to dust it off and try and milk it for a little more attention before I stuff it back in the attic again. I assume this is my internet version of my father’s propensity for telling the same joke over and over again.

So, here we go. This is going to cause a false bandwidth spike in the stats, but I’ll write some really poorly constructed blogs to counteract it.

read more to witness THE GREAT SERVER MIGRATION!!!
(Alternate title: Re-living the past is easier than making a new future.)

The Great Server Migration

Flash Projects
(in alphabetical order)

/flash/ads/gas.htm
a commercial that used to play on the radio. i thought it was funny at the time.

/flash/ads/sweety.htm
sweety showtime! back when myspace didn’t realize that annoying ads that made sound really pissed people off i stole jamster’s flash ad and made my own additions to it. for sanity’s sake.

/flash/alieninterview/
warning: this is a big bandwidth hog. i went crazy in my dream journal after reading this thing called ‘alien interview’ and made it an interactive journal piece. there’s a hidden easter egg link where you can download the book for free, but damn if i remember where i put it. looking back on it, i don’t think i put any stock in that book at all anymore.

/flash/bartcop/
i used to read bartcop.com all the time. i was way more political back in the day. this was one of my very early flash pieces full of lots of bartcop inside jokes that you won’t get. it’s all based around the bob marley song ‘the hammer’ because bartcop called himself the hammer. i sent it to him and he put it on the page! i was thrilled. it was my first taste of internet fame and i’ve been ravenous ever since. (i’m just being dramatic. that isn’t true at all.) he was the one that introduced me to chinaco anejo tequila which really is quite amazing ~ a sipping tequila with blossoming tastes of chocolate and flowers and sweat from the velveteen thighs of young maidens in a sweatshop. quite amazing.

/flash/blammo/
i started posting some flash stuff to newgrounds.com to try and get it seen more. it turns out that 12 year old boys were making more quality stuff than i was, but in my defense they had more time and brain cells to waste. well the little shits that go to that site BLAMMED my ‘virtual journalist’ piece (blammed = voted zero in order to have it removed from the site) and through this action the little trigger-fingered bastards gain points as if they are helping humanity or something. i had just moved to Cary, North Carolina at the time and when the cable guy hooked up the cable in the new house we all three sat and watched 9/11 happen right then and there and my hopes for a job came crashing down with the towers. So I made a 10-minute flash movie to get my revenge; not on terrorists, mind you, but on 12 year old boys. That is really, really long for a one-man animated piece. I did everything myself and it took forever. It would have taken even longer if I had actually known how to draw well, but I did it in my half-assed style and I like the way it turned out. It has some newgrounds inside jokes that you might not get as well.

anyway, the guys that made the site (Tom and Wade Fulp) loved it and put it on the front page for a while with a caption, “guaranteed to make you laugh” which of course made everyone hate me and want to tell me how little they laughed. Tom Fulp has since started a game company ‘The Behemoth’ which made Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid, both of which got made into xbox 360 arcade titles and they are doing pretty damn well for themselves. i’m not jealous. *sniff*

/flash/breasts/
a flash breast generator. once you’ve made some nice ones you can get the URL and send it to your friends! what can i say, i like boobs.

/flash/bday/
sweetest flash i ever did. when i was courting my ex- i recorded all of her voicemails for a week and then pieced them together with some frame-by-frame animation. then i went in to work early and put it on her computer full-screen on her birthday before she got into work. her co-workers had already found it and were playing it before she’d even gotten into the parking lot! (i think i stole those audio clips in the beginning from the sims?) man, i really liked that gal. le sigh. ah well.

/flash/bush/
the bush background generator. it uses some clever URL-reading javascript or something. i don’t even remember how i did this. anyway, what i learned from this piece was: people care more about their own crap than your crap. if you create a tool that lets them be the creative force, they will pimp themselves to their friends and you can go along for the ride.

/flash/client/1337/
whoa, that’s terrible. my buddy chris had this idea for a LOST intro to this show they were doing for the Math Club Productions show 1337 (“leet”/elite) and asked me to do it in flash. anyway, they didn’t like it. i shouldn’t even include this link, but i’ve learned that you guys just want to waste time and it is quantity of timewasting you care about, not quality! so here you go.

/flash/client/admissions/
someone actually hired me and paid me money for flash stuff! strange, i know. Randolph-Macon College wanted some kind of animated intro to some bullshit and I told them I wasn’t a designer, but they wanted me to do it anyway. so i did.

/flash/client/ry/
man, this site was a pain in the ass. Rappahannock Yachts. This is what happens when people who normally do print design try and design a website. The overlapping stuff was a nightmare. And the people that hired me to help them with the site had some crappy browser like IE 3.0 for mac or something that broke all of my borders and the lady wanted me to make it right for no charge. I did it, but I never worked for their asses again.

/flash/client/timeline/
another one for Randolph-Macon. this was actually kind of a clever piece. sadly, the graphics all look like garbage, but what it did technically was pretty clever. and i built it so they could make changes without requiring my help. don’t know if they ever even used it.

/flash/client/toes/
popsicle toes! another flash site i got paid for. so cute! i actually like this one. again i built in the functionality so that they can add photos whenever they want and i gave them a set of instructions on how to ftp to the site and all that, but they have never updated nothin. easter egg: if you leave your mouse still long enough the background rotates. if you move again, it reverses back to still dots.

/flash/client/jukebox/
i hate this thing now. why is it moving so fast? wtf? they’ve updated the graphics since, but i don’t want to talk about it. Once again I did a load of extra work so the client wouldn’t have to call a flash developer, they could just change an XML file and drop new mp3s in to add new music, and i swear to beans they will never, ever, ever, ever use that feature I can almost guarantee. the client downloaded a firefox plugin that steals streamed mp3s from flash and then came back to me and wanted me to reprogram the thing so that his thieving plug-in no longer worked because he didn’t want anyone else thieving his mp3s but him. that made me very sad and eventually i determined that you can’t keep a good thief down. if you stream ANYTHING across the internets, somebody can take it. case closed. i did not reprogram it and i doubt they will hire me for anything else.

other professional clients:
I once did crap for Dell (remember the “You’re Getting a Dell, Dude!” guy that got busted for weed? he did the voiceovers for our flash piece!) We made this whole project with all these instructional games and then it turned out that the vice president sees it, goes ape shit at the bill, and shitcanned the whole thing after all that work. sad.

I once did crap for Hewlett-Packard through Sicola Martin. They paid me like $75/hour or something. It was nuts. I’d never pulled in that kind of cash for a flash project before.

The most complicated thing I’ve ever done in flash was this instructional quiz thing for AIG with complex drop-down menus and shit, but I don’t want to talk about that because I’m still sensitive about what happened afterward.

“So wow, KindaGamey, you almost had your shit together. What happened?”
“*toke* I dunno.”

/flash/dots/
this was way back in the day, but i made this game that was pretty complicated for me at the time. i honestly didn’t know if it was solvable till someone at work did it and then showed me the trick. once you know that it’s pretty easy to beat.

/flash/evolution/
an experiment about evolution. if you move the mouse around you will kill any cell that touches the mouse. pretty soon, the only ones surviving and replicating are the ones who get the hell away from you. this is another item in a long like of things where i call it #1 as if a #2 is coming and then i never work on #2.

/flash/experiments/
i bought 3 expensive books about creating flash stuff and i never made it through one of them. ah well. i made these either from the examples in the book or using different bits and pieces.

/flash/FLASH/
Wes Clark Savior of the Universe!!! This Flash Gordon take-off was to promote Wes Clark when he was running. I’m not really a military fan, but the dude was pretty awesome and the media was treating him like a pair of old jockeys (midget horse enthusiasts, not underpants.) I heard from some fans that Wes Clark’s brother actually watched it and liked it, so maybe he showed Wes. Hey, I think I heard his brother on Air America Radio? I wonder if that was the same dude.

/flash/freebasing/
an exploration of the Freemasonic Square and Compass using this incredible soundtrack from an old game called Cyberwar (Lawnmower Man.) Some freemasons said they liked it in the youtube comments. Ha!

/flash/fridge/
i wanted to make a game based on these fridge magnets i saw at someone’s house. they were little tri-colored bits and i was obsessed with trying to make them all match. i never did finish this damn thing and i promised the blog and everything.

(Here’s as far as I got. Not too shabby. Needs work. Oh, it doesn’t actually work yet so don’t try too hard.)

/flash/hair/hair.swf
another stupid flash that i shouldn’t show you but will anyway. i needed a haircut. melissa mom gave me one. i took pictures and made a draggable thing. i don’t understand why, but ah well.

/flash/interesting
These are old school as well but there’s some neat stuff in here. Just little visual or interactive treats:
/flash/interesting/8x8x8.swf
/flash/interesting/blue light special.swf
/flash/interesting/checkerboard.swf
/flash/interesting/no_purpose2.swf
/flash/interesting/tunnel.swf

And… presenting… MY FIRST FLASH PROJECT EVER!
/flash/interesting/TURTLE.SWF

/flash/iso/
i was obsessed with this idea for soooooooooo long. i loved little cubes. i wanted to create an isometric engine for flash games where z-sorting was no longer a problem for developers (each display cube was already z-sorted, so no need to mess with that anymore) and where you could just import a .swf full of textures and the textures could be applied to shapes, just like any other 3D program. I had fantasies of people sharing texture files and sound files and making games with my engine and … it never went anywhere. But damn if I didn’t waste some serious brain cells and time on this little idea. Remember Bullfrog’s Powermonger? I was obsessed. I wanted a game engine like that in Flash.

/flash/jason/
jason whitley‘s unfinished portfolio? where did this come from? i didn’t make this, but maybe i was helping him. i love my man jason. he’s a badass illustrator and he helped me make ‘OPERATION: ENDURING PIPELINE’ for free and we’d never even met. we just wanted to stick it to Bush and make a game. he has kept talking to me ever since. we once met in the flesh and went to see a Calexico show together and the band before them had this guy with a horse head and a light in his mouth and man, that shit was crazy.

/flash/katamari/
myspace used to have all these annoying pornbot hookers that would try and befriend me in order to sell me on some service or website or something. so annoying! and so obviously fake! come on! i made this to get my revenge. the old dude at the end is Rupert Murdoch. he bought myspace, which sucks, so he can have it.

/flash/leg/
me and melissa mom and her daughter dancing to leg of lamb. anyone that knows me, knows i have an unusual dancing style that is mostly contained to rapid leg movements and little to no upper body movements at all. i must have been getting down cause i was doin the zombie shuffle. No, that is not a bong on the table. It’s an… art piece.

/flash/lottery/lottery.swf
my friends have the inane belief that they could win at the lottery. i made this to show they can’t. easter egg: if you hold down the start button it goes all reptilian. i think i was into reptilians at the time.

Download to run locally (let it run for days! see how much you win!):
/flash/lottery/lottery.exe (pc)
/flash/lottery/lottery.hqx (mac)

/flash/makoto/makoto.swf
a martial arts training, mind-body-spirit thing that i first saw in Ojai, California at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. i was obsessed and went to the gym every day to try and get a better score. man, i loved this thing. i wanted to sell them, but i never sold a one because the one i borrowed as a demo unit broke. the people that were selling this really needed to invest more in development. it needed to be smaller and cheaper and until that happens it ain’t going nowhere. any gym can fit 4 exercise bikes in the same spot as one of these giant beasts. i think it was like $6k, but i can’t remember. i still want one.

/flash/match/
my match.com advertisement. you’ve seen this. these things were all over facebook. got on my nerves all those girls looking at me seductively and giggling and turning away. what twits!

/flash/news/
Virtual Journalist. in this game you get to play the role of a journalist who sells out and starts peddling crap to make bigger bucks. i was so mad at the media and still am. i used to read this wonderful wonderful site called mediawhoresonline.com (defunct) run by some anonymous people (possibly industry insiders) who were never revealed. I sent them this piece and they put it in the sidebar on the page! More internet fame! Easter egg: if you click the dude’s hat before starting the game you can re-watch the ending montage without having to go through the whole game again.

/flash/nosuchthing/
“There’s no such thing as free pussy” a poem by FreshLaundry.

/flash/pipes/pipes.swf
an old school game i made. it works. connect the pipes from start to finish before the goop rushes out.

/flash/poopfairy/
“the poop fairy” a christmas card i made one year.

/flash/songs/

/flash/songs/fun.htm
/flash/songs/thethe.htm
/flash/songs/trinidad.htm
(back in the day I got a Roland Tone Bank and hooked it up to Cakewalk via MIDI cables and made music by hand-dragging each note into position because I couldn’t read music and needed to hear it. It was painstaking to do. It took forever. It sounded weird. I’ve lost most of the songs, but somehow this one survived.)

/flash/songs/melissax.mp3
another milestone in my musical history. i had this thing called ‘The Mixman’ (defunct?) that was a USB device that looked like two turntables and we could have these mixman parties in my basement where people would go up and push buttons to activate audio loops and make their own music LIVE; then we would pipe the tunes into the next “room” where we had a disco ball set up for people to dance. it was awesome.

anyway, one time my friend melissa cricket and i painstakingly chose a bunch of samples and then made this recording and recorded it as we made it. i thought it was pretty awesome. i’m pretty sure i helped make the final product? damn, i’ll have to ask her. i think we had a turntable each.

/flash/songs/SNMNMNM/
i seriously have no memory of making this. melissa cricket was friends with the band SNMNMNM and i absolutely loved them and one time they asked me to make a website and i think i freaked out and then they rescinded the offer. i have no idea what this is (my attempt at humor?) but the flashing thing at the bottom made me laugh. i still want to make some animated videos to their songs, but I’m old now. are they still together?

/flash/songs/SNMNMNM/If.mp3

/flash/spiderman/
this is stupid but it has real photos of richmond that i took. i think i was only trying to get the point across that spiderman would have a hard time swinging around in my fair city. i’m not sure why i felt this needed to be said. you can see a man’s painted penis in the beginning.

/flash/sunshine/
made this for a girl. “you are my sunshine” (yodeling version) + “i love my baby in my pajamas” (me)

/thegenderfractal
the penis-vagina fractal. i was so excited about publishing it that i did some really shoddy work. someone else could take this concept and run with it, but i’m done with the thing. i did my part for the equality of the sexes.

/flash/tonezone/tone.swf
an audio experiment from way back in the day.

/flash/war/
OPERATION: ENDURING PIPELINE. An unwinnable game that Jason Whitley and I made together. We never even met in real life. He did the graphics and I put it all together. It was taking the piss out of the war in Afghanistan. I wanted a game where the terrorists looked just like the regular people and if you kill an innocent person then they become a terrorist because they’re so pissed. So, you end up with a screen full of terrorists (or a country full.)

Easter egg: click on the rock in the main screen to see the old version of our main screen. Jokes: The Arizona Memo is the Phoenix Memo, the laser guided missiles are supposed to go off target because in real life it turned out that the batteries for these expensive missile guidance systems we had were all bad and it was causing missiles to go wonky, the reason the food packets might be food or might be cluster bombs is because the US military was dropping little yellow food packets to help the people of Afghanistan when the yellow packets looked very similar to the cluster bombs we were dropping! insanity! the reason the canadian red cross comes out every once in a while is because we bombed the canadian red cross accidentally and the reason the Afghani wedding comes out is because we bombed an Afghani wedding.

The best part is Jason’s slot machine at the end. Nuke your way to the end if you have to.

/flash/wonka/
“I want it now!” Bush as Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. It’s pretty good I guess. I can’t explain all those references. You’ll just have to trust me.

Easter egg: Christopher Hitchens

/flash/xx/xx.swf
strangest voicemail i’ve ever gotten. this italian bird at work called me and left this on my voicemail and we thought it was so funny that a friend at work made this to commemorate it. Randy Merriman was the boss of my New Media department.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/64965
Zombie Cluster Pumpkins of Doom. I miss you Tom. Are you still kicking? You were a good guy and you saved my ass when I was down on my luck and sometimes I wonder if you had just paid me out of charity and kindness and not really for that job at all. Thank you so much.

Images
My neck is killing me from all this sitting and linking and typing and shit. I’ll come back and finish this later. For now, I’ll leave you with the old 20,000 thing I did for my myspace blog:

http://www.southlakecorp.com/brooke/20000/

(Don’t click the myspace.com/freshlaundry link! That ain’t me no more!)

Places of interest:
* Be sure to visit Webcam and click the links for EXIT 1 and EXIT 2. I used to come home to my shitty apartment, smoke pot, and do a live webcam show to no one in particular? Then I would capture images that I captured from the cam and post them. Sadly, something happened to the .jpgs over the years because most of them are seriously corrupted and there is nothing I can do about it. These are the few that survived.

* Be sure to visit POOLGOLF!!!!
I spent $300+ on little miniature trees and hills and styrofoam and made this golf game you could play on a pool table. We used to play it at Penny Lane Pub and we would always draw a crowd. The owner of the joint once came and played too (because he used to be a crackshot at marbles back in the day.) I left it there in a closet and somehow it got thrown away and I was very, very, very heartbroken about that and never tried to re-make it.

BIMAGES and LIMAGES
For this blog I use two folders:

/bimages
blog images. i store any images i use in a blog in here. (unless they are hotlinked.)

/limages
linked images. i store any images that i want to link to from somewhere else in here.
I’ve got other stuff to show you, but I don’t care anymore.
The Great Server Migration will have to wait.

Just like all my other unfinished projects.