Here it is my top films of 2007. I could not get it down to 13 so yea there are 17

No Country for old men

Juno

Ratatouille

Once

This is England

Hot Fuzz

I'm Not There

Bourne Ultimatum

The Lookout

Into The Wild

Death at a Funeral

There Will Be Blood

The Kite Runner

The Great Debaters

American Gangster

Charlie Wilson's War

Persepolis

Honorable Mention list: Sweeney Todd, Michael Clayton, Zodiac, Gone Baby Gone, In The Shadow Of the Moon, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Before the devil knows your dead, The King of Kong, Offside, No End In sight, You Kill Me, 1408, Away From Her, 3:10 to Yuma, Breach, Atonement

 Movies I still want to see from 2007: August Rush, The Savages, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Killer of Sheep, Triad Election, Enchanted

Here it is the long awaited list(by me that is). My favorite albums of 2007. This seemed to be a year of British rock, female singers, indie bands who play mostly acoustic, and of course just some more rocking stuff. So here it is the top 13 albums of 2007.

The View- Hats off to the buskers

Feist – The Reminder

Amy Macdonald- This is the life

Artic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare

The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Cloud Cult – The meaning of 8

Eisley- Combinations

Bright Eyes – Cassadaga

The Almost – Southern Weather

The Maccabees – Colour It in

Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha

The White Stripes – Icky Thump

J-Roddy Walston and the Business- Hail Mega Boys

Following are some of the other albums I have enjoyed this year but just aren't great enough to be in the top 13.

Aqualung – Memory Man, Spoon- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, The Thrills – Teenager, Colour – Between Earth & Sky, Anberlin – Cities, Hot Hot Heat – Happiness, The Killers-Sawdust, Mae- Singularity, Justice- Cross, Dashboard Confessional- The Shade of poison trees, Foo Fighters- Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, DJ Tiesto – Elements of Life

 There were a few albums I haven't gotten yet but they just didn't make it into the cut. I hope to keep finding great cds from last year.

So I realize I am getting really bad at this blog writing thing so I'm just writing this to let you know that I am still alive and my plans for this blog and a future website. Currently I am in my last month of Full Sail before the five months of final project so I am extremely busy with school.  Also I am getting ready for my first GDC which I am extremely excited about. I will be writing about GDC and my experiences there.

Now for the blog I have a few things that I want to write in the next few months first I am going to do my top lists of 2007 including, Movies, Music and games. But right now I am very behind in the movie and game department so it will take me a few weeks to catch up. Also I will be posting a resume soon and hopefully I will have a website up and running in the next few months. Until the next time.

Go download my friend and classmate Naveen Nattam's game Blobula its awesome. This is his game for a competition we had here at school. http://nattam.blogspot.com/ Enjoy. And I will be writing more soon

Here are some pictures of my openGL project from last month. This was an awesome class taught by Richard Wright the author of The OpenGL Super Bible. Along with this class we also had MAR1 a assembly programming class.

Everything in the scene was completely hand modeled and crafted. Including most of the textures.

The front of the level. The Diner inside of a small skybox filled with white fog to set the mood. The windows and door are transparent with textures applied.

A closer look at the front door with the awesome menu banners.

A view of the bar. Things to notice. Bar stools, Foot rest, Pie holder with spinning pies. Singing in the rain poster

Here is where i spent most of my time to get the look of a booth I needed to hand model a curved surface I ended up using a thing in openGL called NURBS ( Non Uniform Rational Basis, or Bézier Spline). This took me a good two days of research and work to figure out how to use. After getting the look I wanted I asked my teacher if there was an easier way he said no but he was in shock that I figured out how to use NURBS. Apparently no one really uses them

Hand modeled table and chairs.

Another shot of the bar. And back room.

Another angle of the whole scene.

Closer shot of the pies.

Also today was the Rugby World Cup Final. Congrats to South Africa on a good win. It was a great world cup. Can't wait for 2011.

   So after that long rant about gaming here is my more of what I am up to since that game was over. Not much really. Except me, Matt, and Micah went to Key West for a few days (I have the sunburn to prove it). It was about an 7hr drive which ended up being cool because I got to see almost all of Florida ( CURSE YOU TOLL ROADS I'm poor now). Funny thing is once you get past Miami and start to enter the keys there is only one road and it is mostly two lanes so Thousands of people have to use this road and it is packed. We got stuck in the middle of the Everglades in traffic but that was ok because it was cool just to look around at that swamp its pretty awesome. It reminds me a lot of the Burren in Ireland but with swamp instead of rock. So we finally got to Key West ( we drove through the Ramrod Key HAHAHA) and got to our hotel decided to go drive around and see the island. Yea so there are NO good beaches on that stupid island who would have guessed there would only be 2 beaches on an ISLAND and one was all homeless people. So we just drove around and began to realize that Key West is for older people then two 19 year olds and a 20 year old. (It is pretty much just all bars). So we went back to our hotel and went to the pool and met these awesome British chicks and their crazy Irish protector. So we hung out with them till the pool closed then we went and walked around the town some more. I saw some interesting things (I'll leave it at that). Then we went back and crashed woke up the next day and just hung around the pool with the Brits then went out for a super nice dinner (yes family I spent $22 on a meal), giant cookies and Cigars. We ended up just hanging in the cigar shop and talking to the owner a super nice old guy who wanted to teach us everything about cigars ( I think I kind of impressed him with how much I knew) I learned a lot. So we went and sat on the beach and watched a thunderstorm roll in. I have to say sitting there smoking a nice cigar looking at the stars super clear and the lightening rolling in was one of the best experiences I have had in a while.
    So we talked to the Brits and we were gonna go to Miami with them but Micah and Matt decided they didn't want to (party poopers). So we headed back and decided while going through Miami  we would stop at the Marlins  Phillies baseball game. It was more like the homerun derby, event the pitcher of the Phillies hit a homer. It was sad though there were only like 5,000 people at the game, granted it was the hottest baseball game I have ever been too. It was also a really long 9 inning game it took about 3:30 hrs. So we left that and got to drive through a nice big thunder storm WOO.
    Now we are all back safe for two days nursing our wounds I have been working my way through the AFI top 100 films (over half way now) and catching up on some reading. New classes start tomorrow (crappy schedule 5pm-1am Tuesday- Saturday) but I am still really excited.
Welp off to bed.
Laters All
Grant

RUGBY WORLD CUP IN 2 DAYS.   

I love these guys.