Drawings

Hey Sarah I'm bored. Tell me to draw something.

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King of Spain:

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An old lady

I didn't want to draw an old lady

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Iron Man

I learned

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Bitchy Mango

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Kpop Superhero

They're both wearing too much black

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Gaming Experiences I

A huge portion of my best memories in childhood involve sitting in front of the TV, playing Nintendo 64 with my older brother. Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Pokemon stadium (one and two of course), and the Banjo Kazooie franchise summed up my raison d'etre as a little kid. Growing up, and getting new consoles, getting a laptop, diving headfirst into the world of game development and production, I experienced my share of gaming moments but there are 5 that stand out for me as the pinnacles of gaming and that had the most impact on me as a gamer.

5. FIFA '07
    (otherwise known as the "BEST TWO OUT OF THREE! BEST TWO OUT OF THREE!" game)

This game. This motherflipping game.

Whenever me and my brother got into a dispute (or were in a gambling mood) it was straight to this game. Holy shit I lost upwards of $15 on this game (HUGE money as a kid. Think of all the popsicles you could buy with that money).

Probably not this one.

 Pulling off nasty moves, nail biting penalty time, beating each other up if we lost. We hated this game but we HAD to play it. It was malevolent, omnipotent, infinite, this game was the final word in seeing who gets the last waffle in the box.

4. Rainbow Road on Mario Kart 64

God damn it. Just looking at that picture makes me want to throw my controller away. This final map on Mario Kart 64 was the biggest problem in my life as a kid (now that I've grown up a bit, my biggest problems right now have also grown up ie. how do I make eggs, rice and shrimp into an edible meal). My entire life, I've been a perfectionist. Pretty much everything had to be high score, I would rather eat my own fingers than be in second place in something.

This is the first result I get when I google "delicious human fingers". Whew

Rainbow Road was my very first introduction into how FREAKING hard and punishing the world of gaming could be. The thing about this map was that there are so many jumps and so many obstacles that one small step and you're flying over the railings or eating a face full of chain chomp. This map helped teach me to man up, grit your teeth and finally finish first.

3. Halo 2 Multiplayer

Halo 2 was a great game in so many regards. It was rather innovative, it had fabulous graphics (for the time) and an intriguing story but what makes this game so important to me was that it was the first time that I actually played a game with friends. The multiplayer on Halo 2 was one of the best things invented except maybe the wheel. It was fast paced, exciting and it felt amazing when you finally finished a round undefeated. Despite all the rampant screen watching (when somebody looks at your part of the screen to see where you are) it was incredibly fun with friends. I remember rushing home during lunch to pop in Halo 2 into the x-box and spending the next hour just fighting it out mano el mano. I got pretty good at that game.

Damn screenwatchers

Week 2 of VEDA 2013

Another week as gone by and I managed to keep up this project! This is definitely going to be one of the biggest accomplishment of my life (exaggeration, but still significant).

Given, I cheated a couple of times by uploading my "stock videos" and I wasn't able to upload the video on time sometimes, but the important thing is that I'm still putting out a video for every day of the month. It's more like Video Every Day in April.

Here's the YouTube playlist of all of my VEDA posts so far..

And after the jump is all of my videos from Week II of VEDA 2013!

Too many people forget that contributing to the Internet is a two step process.

A friend of mine posted a discussion of his opinion on the question: "Should everyone write?"
This got me thinking, so I decided to make a blog post out of my answer to this question (not so much a reply to Sai's post anymore).

Should everyone write?

"... yes, everybody should be mentally and physically capable of expressing themselves through a written medium, but not everybody should share their writing."

For a while, I would have been in the same boat with Sai on this one. But in the last couple of years I have noticed the trends in social media, how content on the Internet is shared and viewed by its users; this has changed my mind. Anyone is deserving of criticism for the quality of their content, but I also think that everyone needs a critical look into how they are sharing their content.

If one finds themselves on a blog run by a 16 year old girl who laments about her 16 year old life in pure text speak and has an opinion about it, they have every right to express their opinions, no matter how biting it may be. Why? Because it's the Internet, and this 16 year old girl has decided to share her lamentations on it.

However, if a content creator coming out of this experience and has an opinion about who gets to share their content on the Interwebs, they need to criticize how they are sharing their content every bit as much as they are criticizing the decisions made by the text speak blogger. What is she doing right to get people on her blog? Will your blog also be getting the pageviews that she's getting?

Just today I received a Twitter follow by a small YouTuber in the States. It was clear that he was doing random Twitter follows to bring more people to his content. He's not a big shiny YouTuber with lots of subscribers and connections with super famous YouTubers, and I don't think his videos are amazing or that funny, but he's steadily making his way up there with his efforts on Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. 

He does commitment and outreach very well, a department in which I have failed throughout my last 5 years of trying to keep up livejournals, blogs and YouTube channels. This is why he's gaining a wider Internet audience in only a year of putting out content, and I won't even after five. 

So, should everyone write?

Yes, everyone write. Everyone should share their content. I think that everybody should seize their opportunity to explore their creative passions and share their ideas, opinions, and stories with the world. I think it's a wonderful opportunity to develop as a person and a content creator, as long as it is approached with an open mind to feedback and possibility. Even if someone's content sucks, they either quit after some time or learn how to improve, but they all have to start somewhere.

To go on a tangent, don't forget that this is the Internet. Don't take everything too seriously. For example, watch the video.

Too many people forget that contributing to the Internet is a two step process. 

1. Create quality content.

2. Promote it with quality shares.

It's especially a shame when only one part is done well, but that is the reality of many content creators.

Week 1 of VEDA13 (Vlog Every Day in April 2013)

I have successfully completed my first week of VEDA. I'm very happy that I started the project, but there comes a certain time of day every single day where I just want to kick myself for doing it.

Here, you can make the preferential decision to
a) Ignore my offering of daily videos
b) Check them out via
     i) this post, after the jump break
     ii) on my YouTube playlist where they will automatically be played, one by one.

GO!