New Years Eve at the Galleria, Houston

So this is a kinda funny thing that happened today in my Houston New Years vacation. I was visiting The Galleria and I went to the skating rink, which was surprisingly open at 7 p.m. So I began skating, I'm terribly good by the way, I was going really fast, considering this is my third time skating. So I continued skating, watching not to step (or slide) on any little kid. But what I saw was really weird, there was this blond kid that looks exactly like David (from The Christmas post) and it was funny, he kept falling. Not that I wanted to spy on him or something, but I tried to record him as I was skating so you could see what I'm talking about. And I did, but I kept recording even after I finished skating an also recorded how I dropped the kid's lemonade (I sat next to him.) And I was apologizing to his father, I tried to buy him a new one, but they said "No, happy new year!" Hahaha, nice family.

Merry Christmas, David.

Do you remember what you used to do in Christmas when you were a little kid? Traveling to far away places to see relatives? Trying to catch Santa red-handed at midnight?

After doing that for years, a 14-year-old David Reed Gamboa-Brandhorst would be in or in his way to Kentucky, maybe for a home made Filipino meal, with his daddy and papa, Daniel Raymond Brandhorst and Ronald Gamboa, maybe even with a sibling.

But sadly, a three-year-old David, not old enough even to understand the true meaning of evil, was killed when Marwan al-Shehhi and his team of hijackers slammed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City on the morning of September 11.

I am 14 years old now (July 6, 1998), just 13 days younger than David. In fact, call me crazy, but I think we even have some physical resemblance!

I think he was just a little bigger than me, I was 4 in that picture, and I believe he was two on that picture O_o

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it's just that I was 3 years old when the September 11 attacks unfolded, and all the tributes, like this one started flowing quite a while ago, and therefore ended... quite a while ago. 

But ever since I read that blog from this guy named The Wordsmith From Nantucket I felt the great need of contributing to a tribute, even if it's one I made myself, so here it is. 

So I have always been interested in the September 11 Attacks, and pretty much anything that has to do with aviation. I've done a great research into 9/11. Back in June 2012, at the Disney's Pop Century Resort, I came across this blog from Hammersmith, regarding little David.

I was shocked, of course, but more than that, several questions came into my mind. Naturally, I didn't have the pleasure of knowing David, but: I love to draw, would have David loved to draw, too? I love to write, would have David loved to write as well? Maybe we would have liked the same things, maybe we  could have even become friends later on, who knows.

David could be any random kid right now, my best friend or my worst enemy, the person I can tell my secrets to or just a random stranger, but now, I'll guess we'll just never know.

David Reed Gamboa Brandhorst was just one of the nearly 3000 people whose lives were taken away on the morning of September 11, 2001.

In his 3 short years of life, this boy filled his daddies', and pretty much anyone who had contact with's, lives with joy and happiness.

May he and his daddies' memory be remembered years from now, shall they never be forgotten.

This blog is dedicated to Michele, David's birth mother, who shares her story in the comment section of Hammersmith's Blog about David, and Jeannie Gamboa, Ron's sister and therefore, David's aunt, who answers some questions about David on the same blog. Thank you Jeannie for all those memories which I love to read, probably to imagine David and I as great friends, which I know we would have become if I ever knew him. 

P.S. I also found a poem I'd like to share with you about Christine Lee Hanson, the youngest victim of the September 11 Attacks, and also passenger of United Flight 175. Tribute to Christine Hanson. 

To David: Have a merry Christmas, brave little guy, give those daddies of you a big bear hug. Merry Christmas.

To Jeannie: Thanks for the memories and pictures. Merry Christmas, cheers - Luis.

To Michele: My heart goes to you. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and Dillon.

No post yesterday.

I know I didn't make any posts yesterday, but I got a good excuse hahaha, I felt sick, I was nauseating and my emetophobia attacked me. Emetophobia means a terrible fear to vomiting, I hate myself for having that, every time I feel even the slightest anomaly inside my stomach, I automatically think I'm gonna puke. So I was in a party and got home on around 11:30, and could sleep in peace finally at around 2 a.m.

So, that's enough for my personal life. I have been wondering about the 2012 doomsday crap, there's one little problem in your crazy theories, people, it's 21st December in Australia already. I must say, I did have my fears, but I'm actually coming to realize it's preposterous. Personal life again, hmmm.

So okay, as I said, I was sick last night, so I'mma tell you what I did yesterday first. I finished the animation for scene 5, bringing the overall total of the animation to 6 minutes and 22 seconds. And... that's it, hahaha.

So today I'm currently arranging the sound clips and effects for Scene 5 part 2. Why part 2? Well, I think I mentioned this on an earlier post, it's just that I made some calculations, and came to realize that Scene 5 would be around 3 minutes long, which is simply too much for Flash to take in all at once.

So I'm going to start to animate Scene 5b tomorrow, which will bring the overall running time to around 7:07, according to my projections, the whole episode will be around 9 minutes long.

Having a blog is cool

C'est tré cool. Yes, I am learning French. C'est drôle que j'ai un blog. (I have no idea what that means.) So I checked my webstats, and it appears that I can increase my pageviews dramatically simply adding keywords that people are interested in. Words like: animaiton, webtoon, and project brought the total views to the page to more than a 100. (For me that's a lot.) So okay, cut the crap, I was gonna try, (again) to upload my progress in the project, but crappy blogspot wouldn't let me. So you're just gonna have to picture it.

I was able to complete around 10+ seconds today, and animation was pretty decent, hahahaha. So okay, I have now like 6:17, which means I have around 3 minutes left to do, which means around... 1.5 months left. Hahahahahha, -_-. I was forgetting about the 1.5 minute long credits, but I can finish them off in 10 minutes.

What? No readers? Okay, then...

Myahh, so, I think there's no one reading this, is there? Today I was able to get to the 39-ish mark of Scene 5, that means like... what? Around 6 minute... like around 6:05. So, I will be entering a very complex scene, that is some New Flushing-ers chasing around Todd and Sven around a cliff. That is very complex because I literally do not have the image of them in my mind. Oh, well, I always come up with a way around 5 seconds before I actually animate it. I was actually planning to show you here an actual preview of what my project is looking like, but because of... bandwidth... (I say?) Blogger won't let me. It's too slow. I think the fact that the video is 50MB heavy has something to do with it, but Myahh. So, well, I think you might wanna wait until I finish it and I upload it to YouTube. Gosh, I seriously ran out of topics to talk about. Myahh.

Every Night??? Hahaha, no. ¬¬¬

So, I said every night, but I felt too lazy to do it, so I'mma change "Every Night" for "Whenever the Hell I feel Like It". That means I can make a post every night for a month and then be off for the next month. Well, anyways... I realized I'm moving faster with the animation process because of the "Fish Mayor" character. He's a talking... creature (I don't even know what it is) who rules the City of New Flushing.

I chose New Flushing as the city name because I saw this joke on The Simpsons when Homer goes to the World Trade Center because a drunk Barney parked it there a month ago, and Homer had to wait for a police man to give him his car back. Homer then drinks lots of crab juice and wants to go to the bathroom. He can't, and he sees that this bus passing by goes to Flushing, Queens, and he pictures himself with a bunch of toilets. I laughed very hard, so I  baptized the city, New Flushing.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, I'm going faster. Why? Well, the Mayor character's mouth is covered by a thick mustache, so when he's talking, I just make a loop of his mustache getting wider and bigger and then going back to its normal size. Therefore, I save hours and hours of tedious lip-sync.

I know it doesn't have much to do with the subject, but I currently have an obsession with this song, both the 4NonBlondes (original) version and this... thing.

New posts every night??!?!!

Well, I mean, I was thinking about it, but since I downloaded this Blogger app for my iPod (the real one, not the one eaten by the shark), I can actually make posts every night, which I (think I) have been doing for... 3 nights in a row... Or something. So well, cut the crap, I came up with a solution for the problem with Scene 5's length. It was sooo simple I wanted to kill myself. I just need to find a random part of the scene where I can apply a transition in (fade out) and simply split the soundtrack in two. Then, I would just need to make a new scene and continue the scene there. So stupid.

Emmmph, lazy day...

Well, today was completely and utterly devoted of making the soundtrack for Scene 5. I don't mean to brag but it's fucking awesome!!! I just noticed, Sven actually speaks more often than Todd on this episode, and there are many unspoken parts. Well, after all that stupid crap i just said, the thing is,
fom the projections I'm making, Scene 5 will be over 2 minutes long, and well, that's not really bad... Per se, it's just my stupid 5-year-old computer... 2 GB of RAM ain't enough for a 1000+ library items in Flash... Just sayin'.

Oh, soundtracks, heartless bitches!

Episode 2, messy soundtrack.

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Hey. Episode 2 is on its way, I promise. It's around halfway there, but I'm having problems with the soundtrack, I happen to just notice a big-ass error on the script, so it was a re-recording for a line, and some audio tricks. I also made some proofreading n' shit. So, yeah, I think I got it, but if you would like to listen, here is the grotesque soundtrack I prepared myself.

For example, there's a line (the wrong one) that said "You know the special iPod glove that Steve Jobs..." Why was that wrong? Well, a shark ate up the iPod Sven had given to Todd for his birthday, along with his "iHand" a fictitious special glove for iPods, to which Sven responds he saved for a long time to give it to him for his birthday, but because Todd does not mention the iPod getting eaten as well, there was no way of Sven knowing the iPod was eaten, too, so I altered the lines to make Todd (me) say, "You know, the special glove, Oh! And my iPod, too!" So Sven's answer would make sense now.