The Ward

Last night, thanks to the unseasonable heat, I had a hard time falling asleep. So, naturally, I decided to watch a horror movie. By myself. In the dark. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, actually, it was a good idea. Because it ended up being pretty good.

I discovered the movie a few months ago because of The Playboy Club. 

Amber Heard in The Playboy Club

After seeing some clips from it, and learning that the main actress (Amber Heard) was out and vocally supportive of LGBTQ rights, I wanted to find out more about her and which movies she'd been in. 


One of them was The Ward, a horror movie set in the haunted women's ward of a 1960s mental hospital.

Well. How could I resist a movie like that? Especially with such a lovely leading lady (and a lovely supporting lady--Lyndsy Fonseca, anyone?). Period piece? Mental hospital? Ghost? Count me in.

Of course, I thought maybe I should wait until I could see it with some friends. Watching horror movies by yourself tends to be considered a bit strange by most people.

But it takes so long to get people together for an event like that! And Session 9 and The Woman in Black are already next on our list of movies to watch.

So last night, bored and hot and really wanting to go to sleep, I decided to give in and finally watch it.

It really exceeded my expectations.

I was worried that there might be some issues with the whole accurately portraying a mental hospital thing, and that they might portray it as more of a horror than it really was, or portray it as not as horrible as it really was, or what-have-you. But, having not actually experienced a 1960s mental hospital for myself, it seemed a pretty fair representation to me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What really struck me about this movie, right from the get-go, was how well-made it was. This was no low-budget gore fest. Now, maybe it wasn't the best script or even the best premise in the world, but this movie was really well-made.

And I could tell it would be right from the opening sequence.

I think I would put the title sequence of this movie right up there with those of True Blood

and Dexter

and American Horror Story.

Really fantastic cinematography. Just beautiful.

And the music. Seriously, the music. Very good.

Lyndsy Fonseca in The Ward

That creepy female voice? Yes.

On a more superficial note. . .Lyndsy Fonseca as a little 60s nerd? So cute. So. Cute. I would totally have a crush on her character (Iris) if she were real. 


And Amber Heard is pretty as always, even with the weird almost-dreadlocks hair she had going on in this movie. But that's just me being a lesbian. Doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of the movie itself, just the attractiveness of the actresses. So. That's enough of that.

Anyway. . .


Plot-wise. . .it was decent. A classic ghost story, mostly, with sadly fake-looking SFX makeup for the ghost/monster that looked like a rubber Halloween mask. The acting (in terms of the main characters, at least) was good, and the set was certainly good, and as I said earlier, the whole movie was aesthetically pleasing; but a lot of the scares were predictable, and I never felt like I had no idea what would happen next. 


Unfortunately, I accidentally read a huge spoiler before I watched the movie, so the big plot twist at the end wasn't a plot twist to me, as hard as I tried during the movie to remove all memory of what I'd read about it. 


So, because of that (grrr!), I can't really be the best judge of its plot because I knew how it ended beforehand. Still, I would say that while the movie wasn't especially unique or original, it was very enjoyable, and is one of the better horror movies I've seen. I might not put it at the same level I would put The Skeleton Key and The Ring, but it is probably at least at the same level as The Uninvited, if not a little better (or maybe a lot better, just because of how pretty it was). 


Regardless, I would definitely watch it again. 


Even if only because I can't get that damn music out of my head.

First Letterbox Accidentally Thrown Out :(

The very first letterbox I ever saw, the one that introduced me to letterboxing in the first place, was a little tupperware container hidden inside of a hollowed-out book in my local library. A friend of mine showed it to me. She had actually found it using the clues, because she and her family hunt letterboxes together, but for me, finding this little secret in the most unused section of the library (inside an outdated Atlas in the reference section) was a wake-up call to the fact that there were countless other people out there who wanted to hunt for treasure just as much as me, and that there was actually this whole "letterboxing" hobby that I could participate in. I've longed to do so ever since.

But today. Today I found out that the Atlas-hidden letterbox is gone. On the planter's website, it said it was "inactive". I emailed the planter to ask why, and they replied that a librarian accidentally threw it out.

NOOOOOOO!!!

Terrible news. It had such a neat series of clues to get to it, too!

I'm wondering if maybe I should work with this planter to replace the letterbox. That was such a great hiding spot for a letterbox, it'd be a shame to not have one there.

But this letterboxer is pretty prolific (they have planted 352 letterboxes!!) so I don't know if they would really want the help of a newbie like me.

I think I'll see what happens with my own letterboxes first. Let's do one thing at a time, here.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail of Letterboxing

A prolific letterboxes named Choi has a Monty Python and the Holy Grail-themed series of letterboxes.

There's one for the Black Knight, one for the Trojan Rabbit, one for the Bridgekeeper, one for the Knights Who Say Ni, etc.

There are 16 total boxes in this one area (!!!!), and every single one represents another character or event from the movie! This person is dedicated!

I have not yet had the time to explore this fantastically themed series of letterboxes, but I am definitely looking forward to doing so in the near future.

Indie Games/Helsing's Fire

I've been on an indie video game kick recently. Looking into what it takes to make one, what some of the better ones are, how to get them, who made them. . .and so on and so forth.

Some of the better ones I've experienced myself are World of Goo and Helsing's Fire--the latter being one that I just discovered on this most recent kick. It's a game for mobile devices (like iPods, iPhones, possibly Droids but I'm not sure) and it is a very original puzzle game with a nice visual style, good music, and humor. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it sooner. I actually found out about it through Autostraddle, and then kept seeing it popping up in various indie game website's top ___ lists of recent indie games, so I decided it was worth checking out. $0.99 on the Apple App Store and I got something like 120 levels of gameplay. Pretty good deal, if you ask me, especially considering the quality of this game. Normally I don't pay for games from the App Store, but this one is definitely worth it.

You play as Helsing (as in Dr. Van Helsing, from Dracula) and his buddy/servant Raffton, using a torch and tonics to rid the land of Dracula's evil minions. The unique part is that the game's puzzle mechanics are all built around light, and getting the light to fall in exactly the right places at the right times. It's very interesting and sort of hard to explain without pictures, but you should check it out. Really. I would recommend it to anyone. Helsing and Raffton's fist bumps and high fives at the end of every level are also pretty great.

Some QBlock Art

Here's what I've made with QBlock so far!

One of the great things about QBlock is that you can build off of/edit what other people have made. So that's what I did for a lot of them. Actually, most of them. But you know. These are just placeholder graphics, not what I would use in the end. I just want to see what I can do with AppInventor on my own.

Anyway, here are the pics:

First, the player's units:

Mine

This was the first thing I did. I made this one completely on my own. It's-a mine! (har har)

Temple.

My next foray into making something. This one I based off of someone else's and just edited it down.

Mage

This started out as Captain America. I changed it to be a mage.

Knight

This one is completely someone else's. I just saved it to my computer. It did inspire the whole player=blue theme I ended up going with, though.

Farm

This one was another edit of someone else's. It started out as a house with palm trees. I changed it to be a farm.

Castle

This one started out with uneven salmon crosses, a dark purple border around the bottom, and an unfinished inside. I changed it to look like this.

Miner

This one was someone else's, and I changed it to be blue instead of green and red, and changed his eyes to look more like the Knight and Mage's. Unfortunately, from this angle you can't really see his eyes.

Now, the enemy's units:

Android

This started out as Iron Man. I made it into a robot warrior.

Base

This I made from scratch. It would be the base for the enemy units.

Silo

I also made this one from scratch. This would be the enemy's equivalent of a mine.

Robot

This one is someone else's. I just fiddled with the colors a teensy bit and changed the eyes.

Drone

This one is completely someone else's. Again, these are just placeholders, to use while I figure out if I can even make this kind of game with AppInventor.

So there you have it. All my QBlock art. Took me a while, but whatever. It definitely looks better than it would have if I tried to draw it.

QBlock: 3D Pixel Art

Yeah, that's right. 3D pixel art. Kind of like Minecraft-style visuals, only you get to make it without buying a game.

It's online. It's free. It's great if you want to make your own video game but can't draw.

Pixel that sucker!

(That's what I'll be doing for my test game.)

http://kyucon.com/qblock/

AppInventor Test Game

Since AppInventor is back online, I thought I'd try my hand at making a slightly more advanced (and less restricted in terms of theme) game.

I started out thinking I might try to make a space shooter type of game, and I got the menu page working and all, but then I decided it might be more fun to do something else. Something a bit less like a standard shoot-em-up.

So I decided I want to see if it would be possible for me to make some sort of RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game like Warcraft or Starcraft with AppInventor, to see if I can figure out the logic of the coding through the slightly less difficult interface of AppInventor before I even think of attempting it using any kind of real programming language.

I found a background for it, and started thinking about how to program it, when I realized I had a heck of a lot of ImageSprites and no actual images for them, so it was getting kind of confusing moving everything around on the screen.

So I'm putting it on hold for a bit while I look for some graphics to use, or some way to make graphics to use, at least as temporary substitutes for whatever I would end up using in the final product.

We'll see what turns up.

AppInventor is Back Online!

What is AppInventor, you ask?

It's the formerly Google-sponsored but now MIT-sponsored online service that lets you create your own mobile apps for Android devices. For free.

It's the program we used in my computer science class last semester to make all of our apps.

It's basically like coding without actually having to learn code. It uses blocks instead of strings of difficult-to-memorize text, so it's a little bit easier to use than a full-on programming language like Python or C# or Java. But the structure of it is based on C++, I think, so it does still use programming logic. It's just not quite as difficult.

But anyway. Programming talk. Yuck.

The real purpose of this post is that this means I can make apps again! This is the closest I've been able to get to making my own computer/video games. I wish I could learn real code by myself, but I haven't had so much luck so far. Instead, I think I'll be using AppInventor for now.

Maybe you could, too!

http://appinventor.mit.edu/

Stamps Made!!!

Success on the stamp-making front!!! Thanks to my lovely friend the print-maker, I was able to use actual carving tools to make my stamps.

The results? One failed attempt, four successes.

I even made a stamp for this blog, that can maybe be the logo. We shall see.

But first, I need to come up with a trail name and plant those letterboxes! I have at least two in the works, with a possible third and fourth, all for my school's campus. I hope somebody goes looking for them!

Letterboxing Preparations

Looked up how to make my own stamps (one for me, one for my letterbox), and found some really good instructions. Who knew you could make a stamp with such common materials? I was worried I was going to have to wait until I could go to a craft store.

Instead, I bought some white vinyl erasers like the instructions suggested, and spent breakfast yesterday coming up with possible designs for the stamps.

I also need a "trail name", and I'm not sure if I should use the name of this blog as my trail name or something more school-specific, or what. I'll post it when I figure it out.

But the stamp I use in conjunction with my trail name depends on what my trail name is, so I can't really make my stamps until I've figured it out. I also need to borrow an exacto knife from someone. . .

Dialogue Continued

I did a lot more looking at abandoned hospitals than you might think from just the last few posts. Here's part of the previous conversation that I left out earlier:

Friend: WHY were you looking at pictures of abandoned mental hospitals??

Me: Because they were cool, and creepy, and I was looking them up because I wanted to see if maybe I could go and take pictures of them too. And then I was looking up what asbestos looks like to see if I’d encountered any while exploring my dorm's basement, but I couldn’t really figure it out, so. . .

Friend: . . .

Me: Don’t worry, most of the abandoned hospitals around here have been demolished now. And I probably wouldn’t go anyway. There’s asbestos. And it’s not like I could get there. I don’t have a car. So that would be a problem.

Friend: I think there is a bigger problem here than your not having a car.

. . .She may have a point there.

See, the thing is, I love exploring abandoned places. Like the basement of my residence hall, for example, or an abandoned cabin in the woods, or a beautifully maintained yet completely empty estate hidden in the heart of the suburbs.

Apparently, I'm not the only one.

Apparently, exploring abandoned places is no longer just the domain of the idiots in horror movies.

Apparently, it's become a thing.

A thing called Urban Exploration, or "UrbEx" for short. There are all these websites dedicated to it, and articles and photo journals about people's favorite haunts (no pun intended), and it's fascinating to read through them all.

I can't believe there are other people as stupidly curious as I am! Lucky for them, they managed to discover/explore/photograph these places before they were torn down.

All of the (extremely creepy and wonderful) abandoned places near me have been demolished within the past few years. Looks like I've just missed out.

But! There are these photographs and articles, and I can live vicariously through them.

There's even a movie. . .

A few years ago, a low-budget horror movie was filmed in one of the best abandoned mental hospitals in New England: Danvers State Hospital.

The movie is called Session 9.

From what I've heard, the setting makes the movie. Here's the trailer:

I can't wait to see it!

Tried to find a letterbox

but couldn't.

It's the only one within walking distance from where I live, and it had fairly specific instructions, but when the final step is to overturn a loose stone and the entire building and sidewalks nearby are made of stone, it gets a bit difficult.

I definitely overturned flakes of slate with my toes instead of loose rocks hiding a tupperware container. I tried every loose-looking rock I could find. Did somebody remove it? Was I on a wild-goose chase?

Just makes me feel I should be extra specific with my instructions for my letterbox trail. Getting stuck on the very last step is a real bummer.

Letterboxing Fun!

Urban Exploration stuff and a trail of clues I left for a friend made me want to come up with a lasting trail of clues for someone. . .a trail of messages in bottles, so to speak. Or, actually, not "so to speak"--literally. I'm going to put the messages in actual glass bottles, and hide each bottle in a tree knot or stone wall or behind a loose brick. It'll be so much fun!

Hopefully someone finds it, and actually does it. I'm thinking letterboxing is the way to go, because people actually do that, and it's not dangerous in any way. Totally safe. Fun times, fun times.

I'll post the clues etc on here when I actually do it.

Left a little note in a mail chute

An old, no-longer-used mail chute. In a dorm.

I wouldn't say it's abandoned, exactly, because the dorm itself is still in use, and the mail chute is in plain sight in a common space, but it has become beyond obsolete, a quaint remnant of a time when students lived in the same dorm all four years and gentlemen callers were not allowed in after curfew, or without a chaperone.

Now no one even receives mail in their dorms--there is a separate mail center for that. But the mail chute remains, empty and neglected. I had to intervene. How could I not?

So I wrote a little note, and stuck it inside. The note asks anyone who finds it to leave a message, so that all of us curious folks can check back on it in a little while and see how many of us there are poking around on campus.

I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised. We'll see how that goes.

"The Campus"--coming never to theaters near you!

Looking at all of those abandoned mental hospitals inspired me.

Yup, I get creative when I procrastinate. Or, rather, I go do stupid things, like film random scenes and then fiddle around with iMovie to make a trailer for a fake horror movie. Yeah. A lot of work, for sure, but wayyyy better work than writing papers.

Why am I an English major again?

Abandoned Mental Hospitals

(or what I looked at instead of writing my paper)

Curious about what was so engrossing about pictures of abandoned mental hospitals? Well, here are some of the pictures I was looking at.

MT Psychiatric Center, NY
Photos by Martino Zegwaard






Denbigh Asylum
Photos by Howzey








West Park Mental Asylum, England
Photo by Nick Wild




Cane Hill Asylum, England
Photos by Richard James






More creepy yet beautiful pictures of abandoned hospitals:
http://pinterest.com/emstid/abandoned-places/

Fascinating, right?

Procrastination: A Dialogue

What happens when I'm trying to write a paper.

Note: This actually happened yesterday.


Me: I’m a terrible person!!! I haven’t written anything! I’ve been procrastinating this whole time!

Friend: That doesn’t make you a terrible person. It makes you a terrible student.

Me: I’m a terrible student!!

Friend: What have you been doing for the past two hours instead of writing? Were you watching TV?

Me: No, I wasn’t! I wasn’t even doing anything remotely normal!

Friend: Then what were you doing?

Me: . . .I was looking at photographs of abandoned mental hospitals!

Friend: . . .

Me: . . .

Friend: I was following you up until the part about abandoned mental hospitals!

Me: . . .and this is why facebook-blocker just doesn't cut it for me.