Ariadne

We’ve just finished directors’ meeting, of course just two of us, about the schedule of new Loony. And, we are pleased to announce it will be in spring. Yeah! I mean, in Spring. Three or four stories created by Fujita has been examined and discussed for New Loony, and finally we concluded and chosen one of them.

Well, as you all know we take our time to develop one title. I know, sometimes too long. Tough Fujita and I used to agree it’s no good to disclose too much information to look _professional_, Personally I think it might be good to be honest sometimes. The development was suspended for one year… because I had two family funerals and was so busy studying in full-time glass art school with bunch of assignments. Then I’ve been swamped with getting my arts & craft business started. I expected Fujita to proceed New Loony meanwhile, however, he has been obsessed to complete Ypsilon during my absence. Oh boy, this is the story. I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but I promise it’ gonna be a great one, worth to wait.

So, the picture is a clay model of Ariadne. A beautiful friend of mine was so kind to be her model. The reason why most of the face is covered is because loosing moisture distorts the water clay. Now I’m making eye part, putting wat cloth on nose and ears to protect them. I gonna make a glass statue out of it (if you interested in the process and result, I’ll show you in my private blog which is coming soon).

It should be critical how to handle the double career. I’m looking for the solution and guess I should create tangible art and virtual art at the same time from one design theme. Umm. It should be the only way. For instance, add something to the plaster model to make it cyberpunk looks after making the decent one-piece statue. Creating the same image both in virtual world and tangible world. Sounds cool. Have a nice day!

-Reiko

Easy Rider

I watch movies a lot recently. I work glass & metal crafts at daytime and evening so have a little free time late at night. Till then, I just enjoy my free time at night as I’m expecting my computer graphic job shortly. Once it starts, I have absolutely no spare time. Night and day.

I’ve just finished to watch Easy Rider for the second time. I guess It’s been 30 years since I’ve watched it for the first time. 30 years! It must be some kind of joke. I have a terrible memory I forgot every detail. It made me enjoy it much though.

I happened to visit New Orleans in this autumn and a friend of mine kindly did a cemetary tour for me. He said one of the grave yard was appeared in Easy Rider. I couldn’t remind any of the scene then I thought I should watch it once again.

It should be St. Louis number 1 cemetary. I even didn’t notice it could be a cemetary when I’ve seen the movie for the first time. Well, it should have been controversial in the States to use LSD and having sex in a historical cemetary.

Anyway, I fully enjoyed it. Steppenwolf and the Band, there are bunch of my favorite music. Also I was impressed by the dialog of George ( Jack Nicolson). “Talking about it(freedom) and being it, it’s two different things. I mean it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in a market place. Don’t ever tell anybody that they aren’t free they gonna real busy to kill a man in the name of proof that they are. Oh yeah, they gonna talk to you talk to you talk to you about individual freedom, but seeing a free individual, it’s gonna scare them.”

Please let me know if I made any mistake of the lines. When I was a kid, there were bunch of hippies in Tokyo. Now I can’t find any. Where all the hippies gone? Also I couldn’t paste the link to Easy Rider in Amazon. The world is full of wonder.

Sesame

The black and white stuff in bottles are sesame made in Toyama.  Though people used to cultivate sesame a lot ,  Japanese sesame is rare thing now. They are all imported from China. It is because they can not sell Japanese  sesame in competitive prices as it needs lots of labor to remove  dusts.

I found it as I bought pears for a friend of mine at farmer’s direct store in Kureha hills. A girl in the store didn’t know Japanese sesame is so precious and impressed by my appreciation.

Toasting sesame is very easy. Just put it in a pan and toast for several minutes. What a nice smell! You will live longer eating such good sesames. We gonna be big sesame lovers.

Lotus Fields

We’ve been to a lotus fields in a hill for a walk this afternoon. There were bunch of lotus flowers… the atmosphere was fragrant with the sweet scent which I love. In Japan, the lotus is a flower for Buddhas. You might have seen Buddha statues sitting on pedestals formed a lotus flower.

In Buddhism as a folk belief in Japan, people will turn into Buddhas almost automatically when they die. And in August, Buddhas come home from Heaven and stay for four days with their family. It’s called “O-BON”. It’s a Buddhism observance. People come home town from cities and stay with their family and relatives.

People opens their family buddhism alters and decorate them with flowers, sweets and fruits. Lotus was used a lot in the past, but as lotus fields are decresing in numbers, people often use chrysanthemums.

I think lotus buds are much more beautiful than flowers. What a shape. They are pointing Heaven straightforwardly.

It is the deepest part facing the woods. Doesn’t it look like a gate to the land of Perfect Bliss(Buddhism Heaven)? Tough Wolf was so pleased and jumped off the car to run through the paths of fields, he suddenly turned here and rushed back for the exit. There might be a bear as I smelled of a beast slightly. Japanese black bear doesn’t harm people as long as we don’t scare them.

By the way, in many folklore, the woods are gates to another world. And the beasts are the gate guards. It should be. Anyway, we had a big time in a lovely summer afternoon.

- Reiko

Walking on the dry riverbed

Hi, I’m wolf. Long time no talk. This is my favorite walking spot. A dry riverbed of Jinzu river. Now there are bunch of yellow flowers.

Now Fujita is deeply absorbed in the development of the new Loony Labyirnth. Until he will complete the game design and construct the skelton of the program, no one have a real access to him…as if he is in a hard shell. So we walk without any word recently;)

Status update

We are terribly sorry for the absence. Fujita has been busy for Ypsilon things and I’ve been busy for arts&craft things. Now we are resuming new Loony Labyrinth development.

Here are the links of appletell regarding LittleWing. Kirk of appletell contacted us about the status of our development.

http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/appletell-exclusive-littlewing-pinball-heading-to-the-iphone-ipod-touch/

http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/iphone-games/

By the way, the photo above is totally irrelevant to the development as you see. I ‘ve got Sony Ericsson digital camera mobile phone called S001. It has “purikura-mode”. I don’t know what it’s called outside Japan though. It’s a photo booth in arcades which you can take “decorative photos” with friends

Fujita doesn’t go well with purikura-mode by any means, but this camera-phone is really great. It’s 8 Mega pixels and the response including saving time is fairy fast.

-Reiko

Happy new year

Tateyama

How things are going? We are working hard and fine as usual. It’s a beautiful day in Toyama. One of the best things in Toyama is the great view of the moutain range of Tateyama from middle of the city. I love watching moutains. The sensitive gradation of blue reminds me of the happy momories of my youth.

Have a nice day!

-Reiko

Happy halloween

Hi, this is wolf the assistant programmer. How do I look in my halloween costume? I’m a red devil tonight. You can see the pretty red horns. Fujita wears a disguise kit sold at the party goods shop. However, I think he doesn’t look like disguised as he let his beard grow heavily these days…

Reiko

Reiko

Hi, this is Reiko. I take charge of game graphics.

I’ve been working with Fujita to creat pinball graphics for 18 years(!). I appreciate so many people love what I created. Thank you so much.

Making computer graphics with Macintosh is great fun, but I also need the tangible world to satisfy my creative mind. So I enjoy making artworks with glass and metal.

The photo shows me carving the bottom of a glass flower vase (11 lbs. my forearm tells its weight!) made by kilnwork.

-Reiko F. Nojima

Personal data:

5′ 3″, 106lbs., Shoe size: 7

Libra

Blood type: A

Hobby: Ice hockey, reading

Ypsilon 0.9.6 update2 released

I have uploaded the latest version in which all bugs found to date fixed.

I improved the implementation of REPL to make Ypsilon easy to develop top level interactive programs using emacs. Also the style of error messages are  easier to be identified. It has passed all the 8,931 tests in PLT R6RS test suite revision 11530.

-Fujita