It might be a bit late for that, but I thought I should summarize the last year just to get a nice overview of where I was, where I'm now and where I'm headed.

- On January 24th I already had the impression that I needed a break from PHQ which is kind of ironic because hey, it's January again!

- February 1st was the day the civilian service finally started. Now that I've got that behind me I feel as if nothing happened. Well, I do see myself in a bit different light. For example, sometimes I just look at my hands and thank them for still working. I don't take so many things for granted anymore, like being able to see, talk, sing, draw, write, etc. These might be common things, but in a split second all that could change. And now I know that and I'm thankful. So I guess in the end the civilian service wasn't in vain at all.

- I released two photo-montages on February 11th and February 19th.

- While coping with the images I had in my head from the civilian service, I "finally kicked myself in my butt" and came up with the idea to work on all projects at the same time, kicking off the "MS' Insane Working History" page. Right now the site is down again for various reasons. One being that it built up pressure the longer I had 'Missed Days'. Another reason was that everyone knew exactly what I was doing (well, the four people who took a look at the history every day), which on the one hand ruins surprises and on the other hand leads to even more pressure. And pressure is really the last thing I need right now. That's why I decided to close down the working history again.

- March 23rd was the day I thought a bit about Reverse Psychology.

- On March 31st I released the Sound Designer which was originally planned to be an extension for IAD. Well, it's still planned, but you know what happens to my plans nowadays.

- On April 8th I opened up the cafepress shop which later got abondoned again. You had to pay a monthly fee if you wanted to offer more than one black tshirt design. Yeah.

- The MS' Radical Slim Shake Drink has been released on May 11th, or RSS Feed if that is your type of language. So far I've been using it whenever something worth mentioning happened and I keep on using it, although I don't know who actually looks at it (not a lot I presume).

- I laughed at that email I received on June 11th concerning the first Stick Figure Tutorial - which was immediately followed by Stick Figure Tutorial Part II on June 12th.

- On June 13th I finally delivered a statement concerning the progression of Halfquake Sunrise. It is available here.

- August 15th: halfquake.com was down and looked like this. I got my domain back the following day.

- After three months of work Turnament has been released on August 19th, including its own soundtrack.

- September 7th: After coming to the conclusion that HQS will need a completely different set of songs I released the tracks as a personal album called Remains. The songs felt more like they were taken out of my personal life and didn't have anything to do with the game. So HQS will get a completely new bunch of tracks.

- Wii for Vendetta - September 9th.

- On October 14th I received my new keyboard and ebass.

- Watching Lik-Sang go away, I decided to write an article about the whole "Sony Vs. Everyone"-issue on October 24th.

- Oh yeah, MySpace exists as well (I realized that on November 16th).

- For the MODDb.com Mod of the Year 2006 awards I made a little HQA Promo Video on November 20th. It didn't help a lot, we didn't make it into the top 100 (I'm not surprised).

Alrighty. Where am I now? I said it in previous news entries already, so I don't think I should mention that I'm desperately trying to get more free time for my projects.

And because we all don't know yet, the goals for 2007: Finishing PHQ, HQA Comics and Antaran's Journal. And Halfquake Sunrise. Let's see how it works out.

A while ago my friends TaskBeenden and TheNameless were creating music by taking turns and adding element after element until both agreed that the tracks were finished. I heard about it and wanted to join that experiment that was later called "Taskless Sheep". This gathering spawned three tracks with a few alternate versions, six files in total. You can download the whole package here (17.9MB).

TaskBeenden and TheNameless also released a short movie recently, which you want to check out here.

As I predicted PHQ requires another month. Some people were nice enough to actually donate 100 dollars in total for a PHQ advertisment. I don't want this money to be wasted, so I want to make sure the new PvP system and other things are done right. However, as someone in the PHQ forum suggested, it might be better to actually advertise Halfquake itself as it is a possibility that PHQ can be enjoyed more when you know where it came from - but I still want PHQ to get that last kick before I say goodbye for an indefinite amount of time. Although I already know that I probably will be back for PHQ sooner than I can say "Ah, finally I can get back to HQS!".

But I tell you when I can't work on other projects soon my head will definitely explode. So, my dear friend PHQ, January will be your month. If you can't make it until the end of it, please let me go anyway. Don't make me beg for it.

Now you could say I can just take a break from PHQ now, work on other projects and come back later. But you will hear the answer that no, I can't do that because I've done that for the past four years and I want it to end, I want to get PHQ out of my mind completely, even if only for six months.

Oh, well.

Also, still no news on how I will turn myself into a fulltime guy-who-creates-things. I'll keep searching.

I got an answer from the ModDB guys:

"Your mod received 131 points which is very good. You required 210 points to make the Top 100 however."

Anyway.

Change of plans. You knew this would be coming. I said and told myself that I want to finish PHQ by December 21st this year. Well, that's not gonna happen. The only thing left to do is the PvP mode. Everything has been planned out and I still need to draw about 30 creature images. But that's not the real problem. The problem is that I'm not satisfied with the details of the PvP mode. I've had some additional ideas yesterday which will turn the whole thing into something at least a bit enjoyable. So, I guess this will take the whole January as well. I'm really angry because of the fact that I just can't let go of PHQ, but I don't want to leave the PvP spot blank and neither do I want to fill it with only half of what I could do with it. And I'm frustrated because I fell for the addiction called 'content'. I recently watched season 2 of Lost and I got the Wii and it distracts me quite a bit. I suppose all that's left until December 21st is planning for the PvP mode - if I get the time.

My brain is eagerly awaiting the PHQ development break. I can hardly wait to go on with Antaran and the HQA Comics full time. But it will have to wait until end of January...

Also, I shouldn't really talk about it here (not yet at least), but I need to write it down for myself. I want to get out of here. I have yet to find a way to do so, but the gist of it is that I want to be a full time ... well, I guess it falls under the category "artist", although I find myself disliking this definition because usually artists are arrogant mac users who think their stuff is the best in the world. Okay, I guess since I'm probably one of the most arrogant persons who create something you could say I'm an artist. Anyway.

I thought of what I could do if I were a full-time artist. I could finally produce the music story of a knight that has been in my head for a very long time. I would finally be able to update PHQ, weekly, without sacrificing time from other projects. I could write books. I would love to. The muddasheep homepage needs a makeover and I'm thinking of merging it completely with the farm, making a new system for all the content stuff, and all PHQ articles would be directly implemented as well. I could finally continue with the HQA Comics and finish it - and start a completely new comic in the same or different universe with daily updates. And not to forget, Halfquake Sunrise. The monthly magazine with 10 pages full of random stuff. The translation of old stories of mine into English. I could finally go back and work on the game 'I'm a Dragon'.

But I don't know how I can be a full-time artist when there's no money involved. After all I still have to eat and drive around in my car and buy DVDs every now and then. Okay, I could maybe try to live without the food. Seriously though, I think I could live with a monthly income of 600 Euro, emphasis on 'live', which means I would be alive, but probably somewhere in a one room apartment with no toilet. So, I need to sell my stuff. But would anyone buy my stuff? If yes, for how long? You see, the basic job offers the security of a regular income. I wouldn't have this. I would probably work more than in my regular job, but I would get much less money for it (that's what you get for "freedom"). Now I don't want to be rich (even if I sang the opposite ...), but I want to be able to live just like I do now. And at the moment I 'only' get 300 more. So 600 wouldn't be so bad for finally being able to do what I want, full-time.

So, my question to you guys is: Would you buy my stuff? I guess, since you're reading this you've been around here for a bit and you've come to know me and my devotion towards my projects. I described above what I would offer and I'm sure there would be a lot more once I finally had the freedom my creativity needs. But again, what could you buy? The monthly magazine, music in CD format, books, t-shirts (finally), maybe artworks that are solely created for being purchased, or you could simply donate to see the freely available projects grow (PHQ, IAD, Antaran, Comics, HQS).

The next problem is, there isn't enough of you. And I know one reason for that is that everything around here is a mess. There should be one site with all the content. That's quite an obstacle to overcome, but with enough free time I could finally implement the muddasheep.com redesign that has been floating around in my head for about a month now.

I want to do this. I really want to do this and the more I think about it the better it gets. The only problem is money, so I might have to save up for one year first so that I have a bit of a buffer. The whole thing won't happen in one day, sure. And while saving up I can try to get the attention of a broader audience. But for that I need content and time. And I hope I'll be able to use more of the latter and spend it on the first.

Next year is definitely going to be interesting.

Found something today that pretty much summarizes everything I've said in previous posts:

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

I'm proud to give you the Somos (Expulsion Remix) notes. Thanks to TheNameless (actual remix, notation), KiddiKai (digitalizing/scanning notes) and Kowi (Midi version). Download the file if you're interested.

Also, I just found out that Toyoch still has his site up and running and even has all the new songs from my album Remains translated into Japanese. Awesome, man.