Another Hiatus

Bah.  I really didn’t want to have to post this, but I think it’s for the better.

Basically things just got a little more crazy on my end.  I want to keep the blog here going, but as I’ll explain down below, I just don’t think I can right now.  I may post the occasional post before I come back regularly (more on that below), but for the most part I’ll be off doing other things.

Firstly my fella is coming down at the end of this month, so for a week I’ll have no desire to waste time writing silly blog posts.  My time will be best spent doing other things, whether I love this project or not.

A day after he leaves to go home Mass Effect 3 comes out.  I still don’t have my Shepard ready for her transfer into the big war, so if I don’t get that done before the game is released, I’ll be doing that and then diving in to the game.  That’ll take up a lot of time on its own, let alone exploring the universe of the new game.  So… there’s that.

And then there’s the big thing.  Spencer, the guy who does some podcasts and such with the Dead Workers Party, has decided to branch out and create a company of his own.  I was invited in to the group of core members, so I have a lot of work to do to help get this thing off the ground.  I’ll be doing a lot of behind the scenes work, and once everything is ready and the company debuts, I’ll have one of the projects connected to the company; it’ll most likely be a blog of some kind, kept up better than this one, and with a more specific aim.  After launch I’ll also still be really busy with other things for the company, such as a bit of website upkeep, possibly moderating the forums, that kind of thing.  So at least until I get into a groove after the launch of the thing, the stuff here will be sparse.

… if there’s anything at all.  I don’t know how time consuming all this new stuff will be, how much work I’ll have to put into it, all this stuff.  But, because I’ll be getting paid in the long-run over there, it will take priority.  This blog may not be updated often at all even after launch, as it may become more of a side-personal-project

But yeah, I’ll figure out that kind of thing later on, when I have a better idea of things.  Just thought I’d give you a head’s up… I want to keep this going, but I don’t want to leave you guys hanging and stuff.  If there’s a new post, that’ll be great… but don’t count on it too much for at least a little while, mkay?

Why do I do this to Myself?

So my guy is coming up at the end of the month, and I’ll openly admit that I’ve slowly been cleaning up in my idle moments with this in mind.  I mean, I don’t live like a slob or anything, but my room usually isn’t clean by any stretch.  It’s just how I like it… but now, knowing that someone important is going to be here, some part of me doesn’t want that mess around.  I don’t entirely get it, but whatever… I’ll roll with it.  I have to admit, it is nice to have a clean desk again, and the place has gained a general sense of nice because of the change.  It’s been cleanish for a couple weeks already and I think I’m even starting to adjust to it and will probably keep it this way.

Anyway, with most of the cleaning already done and idle moments still popping up every once in a while, I decided to turn my cleaning craze to my computer.  Not the physical computer, but the masses of files and such I have on the thing.  My computer organization is about a trillion times worse than my worst point of real room cleanliness.  And… that worst point was pretty bad… not something-died-in-here bad, but still pretty bad.  So needless to say, even thinking of attempting to organize my computer filled me with dread.

Of course, I started with the harder things… the pictures, going through my anime to see which to keep and which to throw away (there are some I’d never watched and never had any intention of watching haha), that kind of stuff.  And then… the music.  OH GOD THE MUSIC.

My music organization is the worst of all.  All the songs in one giant folder, with no real name pattern besides what’s already input in to the file name, and the majority of my songs are cd rips so the track names are “01 – whatever” or simply ‘track 1″… and so the entire single folder is full of songs with title names that don’t in the slightest indicate what they are.  To add to this lack of knowing what half the songs are, I recently got music from my mom, a coworker, and a friend, and just dumped everything in there without actually listening to it beforehand.

Basically I’ve got a folder of just… stuff that has never EVER been sorted, filed, or generally looked through.  The task of organizing it wouldn’t be so daunting if it wasn’t for that… but in order to see which ones I want to keep and which I want to get rid of, I essentially have to go through the entire list and listen to every song, or at least part of every song, to see if I like it or not.

As of writing this I’ve been going at the music portion of this reorganizing for two days in between Skype and work and I’m about halfway through the T’s… and I’m going in reverse-alphabetical order, so that really accounts for nothing in the grand scheme of things.  About 3/4 of my library begins with numbers, so what I’ve actually gotten done is pretty miniscule.

But hey, in the end it’ll be worth it, right?  RIGHT?!  When I’m finished I’ll have room on my ipod again… sure, I may not have the quantity factor so much (right now it’s sitting at about 15k songs), but there’ll be more quality of songs that I like and Ill more easily be able to add more songs later.  Gotta look at the bright side, right?  More concentrated awesome music, here I come… eventually.  If I’m lucky I’ll be done with this in a month or so, so it’ll definitely be an ongoing project.

What have I gotten myself into…?

Valentine’s Day

I just figured I’d post a little blurb about Valentine’s Day, since it was yesterday and all that good stuff.  Might as well throw my blog in to the pile of blogs which blog about the holiday, right?  I’m happy and I want to blog about it, so you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

February fourteenth… Valentine’s Day.  It’s a day that comes every year, and while others have grown to love or hate it, in the past I had generally just gone with it.  It’s a bit too commercial, like every other major holiday out there (I mean, if you need to be told with gifts and stuff that you’re loved on this one day of the year and if it’s not done right you freak out, something isn’t right in that relationship of yours), but people have fun so I’m not going to bash on it.  It was my decision to tweet something along the lines of “Happy Singles Awareness Day! ” and chuckle about it and all the pro/anti Valentine’s Day pictures and .gifs and such out there.  And, as with every holiday, the discounted chocolate available in the days after was a plus.

But then this year came, and for some reason I felt… I dunno, different about the whole thing.  I still had my chuckle at the various Valentine’s-related things on the internet, but this year had something more.  In the days leading up to it, I surprisingly found myself growing excited for the holiday.  I think it’s just the fact that having a special someone makes the entire thing… I just don’t know.  It’s hard to explain, but I have a feeling you’ll get what I mean regardless.  It’s just nice, and warm, and puts a smile on your face, you know?

And, most surprising of all, I found myself wanting to get a gift.  I know, fallen right into the commercialism, right?  But not, because it’s going to be home made and awesome, so it evens out in the end.  And I have to admit, the card I made was pretty great, if difficult to put together.  So aside from just being happy and everything yesterday, it boosted my creativity juices again, or at least gave me an outlet for them.  We won’t be seeing each other until the end of the month, so I have until then to make the present, but still.

It’s just really cool.  Even though he did things until the night-time and I worked later than I had usually been, and so we didn’t get to really Skyping until late at night, it was just amazing anyway.  For the first time ever, Valentine’s day felt special, and that’s something I’m okay with.

And Then I Failed (Again)

I’m really sorry… I always forget how easy it is to fall out of this if I don’t force myself to come to the blog and write and stuff.  It’s not that I feel it’s work and boring and stuff, I just… I dunno. Among everything else I’m doing, it’s not the highest on the food chain so it can easily get swept under the rug.  I don’t like that, though, and I’m not going to let it slip any longer!  No more impromptu non-posting periods in the near future, I’ll tell ya that!  I think part of the reason it’s slipped for the last two weeks is because I’ve had Mondays and Fridays off… but I’ve been called in every Monday and Friday for the last little while, so while I’d planned to write a nice blog post for you guys, I had to work instead.  And by the time I get off work, it’s completely slipped my mind because it’s usually really busy and stuff.  And then on Wednesdays I work really late.

Anyway, that’s no excuse, I know.

So, for today’s blog post?  Let’s talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately… university.

See, I was supposed to be in university this year.  I’d gotten accepted into the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the best tech school in the province.  I had everything ready to go; I was getting my room packed and ready to move, I’d visited the campus and gotten some scholarship stuff worked out, I’d gotten a deferral for the school fees so I could pay them once I got my student loan, everything was in place.  It was quite the undertaking since I was getting ready for school after a year off as well as moving out on my own for the first time, but I managed.  I was so excited…

And then I got a letter in the mail, revealing how much I was being offered on my student loan.  I immediately was sad.  In order for me to go to BCIT it would have cost about 20k a year… about 1/4th of that was school fees and the rest was lodgings and food and the like.  I tried to appeal, but they decided that I wouldn’t get a penny more.  My dreams, for the time being, were absolutely crushed.  I had taken the year off specifically so I could go to school the next year with a bit of a broader view of things and stuff, and that wasn’t happening any longer.  I was stuck at home, forced to take another year off, as by that time it was summer and applying for another school and getting everything together in a month and a half was a bit farfetched.

So I got back on my feet after a time and resumed life as normal.  Same boring job, same boring life.  Sure, I was happy (I make a point to always be happy about something and always look forward to something), but there was something missing, you know?  Anyway, in the time since I found out I wasn’t going to school I lowered my expectations based on my money.  I was going to take the computer course at the college, but after some stuff that happened there, I’m totally and completely against that (Believe me, I’ll probably rant about it in a later post… I still rage about it from time to time).  Luckily there’s a University of British Columbia campus in the next town over, so after dealing with the crap that the college threw my way, I applied there.  I’m currently waiting to find out if I’ll be going to school this year, or if I’ll be forced to take yet another year off.

But I don’t know if I could handle taking another year off.  This place is great, yeah… I pay $350 a month to live here with my mom and the food is free, but… I dunno.  It’s great on a financial level, I suppose.  I need to get out there, and this town is just getting so horribly stale for me.  The people I work with are great and the job is flexible to some extent, but other than that there’s not much for me there.  I’ve gone around town and spread my resume around a couple times, but not a single place has called me back.  Vernon is a great place to live, but work-wise not so much.  I can just feel myself slowly sinking into this rut, and I don’t want to go all the way in.  I don’t want to get in a rut that I can’t get myself out of, and I fear that might be what’s happening.

But then, at the same time, a part of me is saying I’d almost be okay with not going to school again this year.  Both roads have possibilities, it’s just a matter of finding them and jumping on them.

It’s all so confusing… you can expect another update/rant when I find out whether or not I’ll be sticking around for another year, but in the meantime, here’s this!

Hello, Valve

Still getting back into the groove of things, so my apologies if these come late for a little bit.  Not being on the internet so much and stuff always seems to throw me off… I guess it’s my version of jetlag or something haha.

Okay, so now that I’ve give the first look to Drivel With Spencer, it’s time to blog about the amazingness that happened at Valve!  There are some things I won’t go into detail on or won’t touch on at all (they didn’t tell me anything about sharing what I learned, but they were very obviously sketchy about even mentioning one thing in particular, so… yeah), but for the most part, I will share what I learned with you who read my blog!  So, get your nerd on and let’s dive into this sea of awesome!

As I’ve mentioned previously, there was nobody there to give us the tour and we didn’t get an email saying that the tour wouldn’t happen.  We were just lucky enough to get in the elevator at the perfect moment with some of the Valve employees, and they let us in.  Erik Wolpaw, one of the writers of Portal 2, felt bad that we’d come only to see nobody there, so he was kind enough to give us a tour.  And no matter how much he tries to tell himself he was bad at giving the tour, don’t let him believe it.  He was awesome.

He showed us around and boy, was there a lot of awesomeness.  I guess on the regular tours you just go around and get some history and stuff, but on this tour we actually went and bugged some of the dev teams and talked and geeked out and had fun with the people working at Valve.  It was so cool… we got to ask them questions and take a look at their workplace and all this good stuff.  And so, because of that, I have a decent amount of awesome information to share with you guys!  I’ll start with the random stuff and work my way up to the awesome.

So first off for the random stuff.  There’s this one fellow who works on Team Fortress 2, Kyle… he wasn’t actually there because of the snow, but he seems like a cool person from what I’ve seen.  His desk was completely covered in hats.  Why, you ask?  No, it wasn’t because they were references for future hat additions to the game.  It’s because his new year’s resolution for 2012 is to wear a different hat every day.  EVERY SINGLE DAY.  That’s a lot of hats… and is just pure awesome in how random it is.  On the topic of references, there were books and books stacked up in piles in that room.  I took a peek at some of the titles to find that they were books about farms and other such locations found in TF2.  I don’t know why, but I found that amusing.

There are pictures of things in development and posters of things past (one entire wall is lined with the classes of TF2) all over the walls, and statues and figures and other awesome things are absolutely everywhere.  No matter where you turn you see something from the L4D universe, the TF2 universe, the Portal universe… it’s just insane.  There’s so much stuff!  And the coat hangers are pretty cool too; they’re all red valves haha.

Oh, one more random bit!  We got to go into one of Gabe Newell’s old offices (it appears he likes to move every couple months haha) and it was just sooo cool.  This office he converted into a place to display his knife collection.  Yes, one of Gabe Newell’s passions is blades, and not just collecting.  He knows how to make and maintain them and everything, which I think is pretty awesome.  And boy, was that some collection… an entire wall was lined with shelves that were lined with different pocket knives and bigger blades and everything.  Being someone who loves sharp objects myself, I was kind of in awe of it.

We talked about Dota 2 for a bit and I learned something really funny.  Having never played the original Dota, I was not aware how taxing it could be… the strategy, the intenseness of it, how riled up everyone gets while playing it.  Well, it seems that the development team has suffered from these rage-inducing factors of the game they’re making.  See, every so often they have to put down the development tools and do some internal testing… and they get so mad at each other and totally hopped up on adrenaline and all that.  And then, when the match is over and they know what’s working and what’s not working, they have to find some way to calm the heck down and go back into work mode… which is easier said than done.  Erik told some awesome stories of how crazy everyone gets when they have to play test.

At the end of the tour us touring folks and the writers all got in a huge debate about piracy and how it’s hurting the industry.  I didn’t say much, but it was still so entertaining to see everyone go at it so fiercely.  And after hearing people in the industry who are affected by it argue both their side and the other side, I can confidently say I can see where both sides are coming from on the matter.  Overall it was a great way to end an awesome tour, and while we didn’t get the usual treatment I’m glad that it was a snow day and Erik was the one to show us around and stuff.

So Erik, I doubt you’ll ever read this blog post, but on the off chance you do, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I think that’s about it for random stuffs.  Now on to the Team Fortress 2 specific stuff!

All the rooms in Valve in which people work are lined with whiteboard.  I looked at the writing on the wall (lol) and saw stuff from the Halloween and Christmas updates, but above one person’s station there was a timeline kind of thing… it had a bunch of random stuff, but at the highest point in the wavy line there was a box pointing to it that said ‘pyrotime’ or something of the sort.  Immediately I grew curious but didn’t ask anything… which worked because in the end, my unspoken question was answered.  As it turns out, the final ‘Meet the’ video, Meet the Pyro, may be coming out sooner than later.  It’s currently in the editing stage of production, and oh my gosh did I squeee internally when I heard that.  There is no release date on it yet since the team that does the TF2 videos does the videos for every valve release, so if Dota needs a new trailer they have to put down Pyro for that, but still.  It’s being edited, guys!

As well, and I won’t go into this much since they were sketchy to even mention it, but they’re slowly working on a new game mode that involves bots.

So in the Team Fortress 2 area, we’ve got a new game mode and Meet the Pyro coming down the pipe.  Excitement!!  Now, on to Portal 2 news!

I only really have one thing to mention in this area, but it’s pretty awesome and I’m looking forward to it.  One of the upcoming DLC packages for the game won’t be a playable portion like the last one, but instead will be a level editor that we can use to make our own levels.  You may say ‘oh, you can already do that with Hammer’ and to that I’d have to agree.  But the thing is with this, is that it won’t use Hammer; it’s something entirely new.  I’ve never used Hammer myself, but I’ve heard from quite a few people that it’s hard to use and even after years of playing with it, mastery doesn’t come easy.  From the screenshots and posters on the wall that I’ve seen (I compared them to the workspace of hammer to see and stuff), it’s going to be eons easier to use.  So we can look forward to a new and easier way to make Portal 2 maps in the future… I know I’m definitely going to have to try my hand at creating one or two.

Now, on to the merchandise news!

I have two pieces of merchandise news for you… products that will be coming sooner than later, if I’m correct.  One is Team Fortress 2 themed.  For those who’ve seen Meet the Medic (and by now I do hope you have, otherwise I’ll have to be majorly disappoint in you), you’ll find this one absolutely awesome.  I found it sitting on one of the peoples’ monitors and we asked about it and found out that it’s a prototype and that the actual product should be shipping in the next year or so.  It’s an Archimedes plushie, complete with zip tie on its leg and blood splatters.  It’s so cute and awesome, and I want one.  Can’t wait to see the finished product.  The other is a new mug that’ll be rolling out, and this one is Portal 2 themed.  It’s a mug shaped like a grenade that looks like a lemon.  Yes, they made a lemon-grenade-mug.  So.  Much.  Win.

And I think that’s more or less it, aside from the two little tidbits I’ll share RIGHT NOW.

Valve owns floors 4-8 of the tower and will, by the end of the year, own the ninth floor as well.  The lobby is on the fifth floor… we went to all the floors but two.  We didn’t go down to the fourth because I do believe that’s where all the merchandise is kept and shipped from and stuff, and toying around in there could be bad.  The other floor we weren’t supposed to go to was the eighth floor because they’re doing top secret stuff up there.  Top secret, no civilians allowed… are you thinking what I’m thinking?  I know it’s pure speculation and might not be for reals, but it’s still fun to imagine and hope… Half-Life 2 Episode 3, anyone?

Since there was nobody there who knew about the swag bag stuff, Erik gave us his email and told us to email him about it.  So I now have the email of one of the writers of Portal 2, and I hope to ask him some writing questions at some point… who better to learn from than someone in the industry, right?  But that aside we picked up the swag bags on Monday; I think that the gal who usually does the tours felt really bad for not sending us an email saying there would probably be no tour, so she filled up the bags with more stuff than normal.  I ended up getting two Valve glasses (the valve logo on one side and the formula for the decay constant on the other), a Wheatly keychain flashlight, a destroyed Glados iphone skin (which I’m trying to figure out what to do with, since I don’t have an Iphone), and an awesome Portal 2 shirt that says ‘do not inhale fumes no matter how good they smell’.  I am a happy face.

Okay, that’s it.  I now leave you with this picture.  It was an awesome trip and I know that if I ever get the chance to tour again, well, I’ll jump on that!

Oh look, proof that Valve is full of bronies

What an Adventure

All right, so I’m not writing this on the day I post it like I normally would.  Why, you ask?  Because I have some time to kill, that’s why.  Why do I have some time to kill?  Because my bus up from Seattle was late and I missed my connection by TWO MINUTES.  And so, since there are no other buses that go where I need to go until two in the morning, I’ve got roughly twelve hours to kill.  Luckily there’s a McDonalds close to the bus station so I can steal their internets while I wait, otherwise I don’t know what I’d do with myself.  Probably read, but then all my books that I want to read on the way would be gone.  I suppose I could try to sleep… but I did that enough on the way here already since I only got two hours of the zzzz’s last night.

BUT!  That’s all beside the point.  This is a review of my vacation, and oh what a vacation it was!

So I left last Tuesday for Seattle.  By the time I left it was somewhat common knowledge among the people I know and talk to regularly that I wasn’t going down for just anything.  The reason I went down there was because I was meeting someone, face to face, for the first time.  He and I had been chatting on skype with video and such since just before the holidays… just after Christmas I bought my tickets, and those who know me in real life knew right away why I was going down, without me having to tell them.  I plan vacations out half a year in advance (or more!), so the fact that I was up and leaving in a three week span was a dead give away haha.

I had a feeling we had chemistry before I went down there; we got in each others’ heads a lot (and still do! ) and we make each other smile and just talking to the other cheers us up and stuff… and I was right.  Admittedly, I was crazy nervous and scared and all that jazz… after all, I’d never traveled for this kind of thing before.  Conventions, yeah no problem.  To meet a single person that I like, never.  It was a bit of a crazyfest trying to meet up with him because nobody knew where the bus to Bellevue was, but finally I found it and met up with him.  A bit of an awkward feeling hung about the air until we got to his place, but then we sat down and watched an episode of Dr. Who (which is what we’d bonded over, watching Who in synch while vid chatting on skype) and cuddled a bit… and all that uncertainty just floated away.

It all just… worked.  The worries just melt away when I’m with him and I just… I wanted the week to never end.  We went to Valve (which I’ll talk about on Friday… I want Drivel with Spencer to have the first look at what I learned), and went to dinner and the movies a couple times, and watched TV, and just chilled… and it was all so incredibly fun, even when we were doing nothing.  And there were some adventures like me getting locked out of the house and fun stuff like that, so the week was filled with so many memories.

But it had to end, as much as I wanted to just pause the game of life.  I guess, long story short, I found my Dr. Who and he found his companion.  The long distance will be difficult (confession: I cry at goodbyes anyway, so… yeah), but I’m confident we’ll find a way to make it work.  We’ve both fallen to far to let this amount to nothing hah.  I know I’m hopefully going to be going back down in April and August, and he’s probably going to be coming up here around June, so we’re trying.

I will say, though, that after this week, it’s going to be hard adjusting to going back to the video chats.  But I know it won’t be too long until I see him again for reals, so that thought is definitely comforting.

So here’s to a road that will be difficult but so very rewarding! <3

Sorry and a Vacation

First off I want to apologize for not posting on Friday.  Things have been rather hectic around here and I got very busy all of a sudden.  I shall explain.

See, about Monday or Tuesday the Shaftlands (the minecraft server I help to moderate) started construction on the 1.0 Adventure Map.  There’s a lot to be done; we had to choose a spawn design for when players enter the world, decide on road and rail designs and build them to a certain point, figure out a crapload of stuff… and then there’s the actual building and perfecting.  We’ve been working on it for a little under a week now and it’s not done yet, even with all the help we’ve been getting.  But it is coming along and the end is in sight I think, so that’s a good thing.  We’re not opening it up to the public until we know we’ve got everything done and figured out, so… yeah.  That’s been taking up a huge chunk of my time.

I’ll also take this opportunity to apologize for not putting out any LP episodes last week.  We tried to record last weekend but one of us had to study for exams, so we couldn’t.  And then everyone who’s involved with the LP is also working on the new spawn, so we just haven’t had any time for it.  While we want to continue it and stuff, getting the map finished is top priority since the server has been waiting months for this.  We’ve also been talking a bit on what to do with the let’s play and such.  There’s a possibility we may start over on a new map because at least half of us don’t like this one, there’s a chance it just won’t continue, there’s a chance we’ll move on to something different… I just don’t know at this point.  I hope we continue with it in some way shape or form, but we’ve come to realize just how difficult coordinating people in four different timezones is when it’s not the holidays.  We didn’t exactly think that through.

So yeah, there are the apologies!  Now, on to the vacation part of this post!

Lately I’ve been planning  vacation for myself.  It’s different from my usual vacations in a few ways, one of them being how sudden it is.  For me to decide to go on vacation and be on my way there three weeks later is unheard of for me, as most of the time I take upwards of half a year to plan out my vacations and such.  So that in itself is kind of… oddly exhilarating.  It’s also the first vacation where I’m going for, more or less, a single reason.  I’m so excited to leave, and it gets to when I leave the harder it is to be patient.  I just want to leave, you know?

But yeah, I’ll be in Seattle for a week, leaving on the seventeenth and coming back on the twenty-fourth.  I would promise that I’ll post while I’m down there, but to be honest I don’t know how things will pan out with everything and I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep, so I’m just not going to.  Assume that there won’t be any posts for about a week, and if there are posts, well that’s a bonus then!  I mean, on the chance that I won’t have an internet connection (which, admittedly is slim but It’s a vacation… I’ll be out doing stuff and not at the computer at times) I do have my phone, but I won’t be using that at all while I’m down unless it’s for an emergency.  Roaming charges are rather pricey for me, $1/mb since I have a data plan and stuff.  That’s going to be difficult… I’ve gotten so used to chilling on Twitter on my phone that not being able to use it will be… just very odd.  But like I said, I will have my laptop, so there is a slim chance that I may post something… but don’t count on it!

So, the point of all this last part is basically to say that you won’t see me around for a little while.  I’ll be off doing stuff in the city, doing stuff where I’m staying, and just generally having a good time.  All in all I’ll probably be too busy exploring and having fun to even remember that this blog is here haha.  Lots of stuff is planned for the week, which I’ll likely touch on when I return, but for now I’ll leave you in a shroud of suspense, wondering what the heck it is I’m doing all of a sudden.  Anyway, I’ll see you on the other side, yeah?

Backlogs Everywhere

I’m not even going to touch on my backlog of games.  After the holiday season, those are just too many to count.  I still haven’t started on many of them… Alice I’ve started, I’ve tried to get into Arkham City (literally I’ve tried… apparently I registered the game to another account which makes no sense, so I have to sort that out before I can play it), and the others… well, they’re there and waiting.  Things came up concerning my mod duties that come before the other games, for the time being at least, and other things have also been taking up my time. :3

And then of course there’s a few other backlogs of things… but those are unimportant…

Anyway, I’m going to talk about my backlog of books today!  I have quite a few that I’ve never actually gotten around to reading.  I don’t know why I’ve let them slip for so long, but I kind of don’t like it.  Maybe it’s because it’s difficult for me to get into books (much more difficult than it is to get into games), and I fear that these books I’ve bought won’t suck me in.  Or maybe I’m just lazy and never got around to it.  Either way, I have a stack here that’s staring at me and it’s making me sad.

And then, looking at this stack of books, I came to a realization.  I haven’t read a good book in so long!  Like, I haven’t read from start to finish a book that sucked me in either a little or a lot in… wow… years?  That seems about right.  And then I came to another realization.  Perhaps the fact that I haven’t been reading at all lately is why my writing is so unappealing, why it’s so lacking.  I’ve lost track of things, lost touch and focus with my writing, and perhaps reading a book or two will make that start to come back.  I sure hope so, I miss writing.

So I’ve made it my mission that, in the coming weeks, I down my unread book collection.  I say coming weeks because I’ll be out and about soon (more on that later hehe), so I can’t say as soon as possible.  But when I get into a book I generally finish it in a day or two, so if they catch me… well, let’s just say that for once my head might be filled with paper pages instead of web pages for a little while. =P

Like Patchwork, But Not

So I’ve wanted to do this meme for a while now, I just never got around to it.  But I’m feeling like I’m in a meme-y mood, so let’s do this.  I present to you, the scar meme!  And not only will I show off my scars, but I’ll also tell a little story about them… because all my scars have a story of some kind, as with anyone’s, and most of my stories are funny or facepalm-inducing or both.  And that’s fun, right?

Okay, so here we go with the stories!

1) Definitely my biggest scars.  For those who’ve been reading my blog since near the beginning, you know what they’re for.  For those who are just tuning in or haven’t gone back in the posts and stuff, I had a breast reduction surgery done in October.  The scars are shaped that way because they literally cut off your nipples and remove them, then cut an anchor shape to remove the excess fat and tissue, and then they put your nipples back in place and sew you up.  So that’s definitely the most major of my scars and the one with the least hilarious story.

2) No, I don’t cut myself, don’t worry.  I was at work and had to get a box of coffee opened and stuff and the knife slipped just as my arm also slipped, and I ended up cutting into my skin instead of the box by mistake.  I can be such a derp sometimes haha.

3) I’ve got two small round-ish scars on my face.  My mom told me when I had chicken box not to scratch ‘em, but I couldn’t resist… and they’re the result.

4) HAH!  This one has to be the one with the funniest story.  I was doing something for film class and was acting out spawn camping in TF2 in my hallway.  I thought I knew how to fall down without taking any damage and for the most part I did… but the last time I got rug burn from the landing so hard that it actually scarred.  It’s faint now, but you can still see it if you look close enough, and it’s especially prominent when it’s cold.  So yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m one of the only people out there (only person I know, at least), who’s gotten a scar from rug burn!

5) I was opening the trunk on my scooter and getting something out of it.  The bag I was getting bumped the lid and brought it down on my hand just as I was pulling something out.  As it turns out, the part that locks the trunk in place is really sharp and it was quite painful as it ripped through my skin.

6) It was one of my first times paintballing with my friends and I tripped and fell on a log.  It cut into me but I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t even notice until the round was over and the back of my pants leg was a different red than the paints that people were using.

7) Another derp moment scar.  I was peeling a potato and saw that it had a black spot so I went to dig it out with the peeler… and upon trying to hoist the grossness out of the potato, misfired and stabbed myself.  So on my index finger I now have a nice little crescent moon shaped scar from peeling potatoes.

I’m sure there are a few more than that, but those are the most prominent ones… or the only ones I know about.  I also could have included my tattoo, since that’s technically a scar, but I decided not to because if I put it on the picture I’d want it to be detailed and stuff, and I’m not talented enough with my tablet to do that.  So there’s also that, which is on my right ankle.  Like I said, most have silly little stories behind them.  If anything this proves that I can be super ditzy sometimes… got the scars to prove it! x3

Realism in Video Games

So this is a topic that’ll vary from person to person.  I know some people who completely disagree and others who completely agree and yet others still that don’t have an opinion on the subject.  But I’ll be detailing my personal experience and preferences and such.  If you want to argue points, or bring up other ones, feel free to!  I want to get the discussion going if I can, because I know that my view of it is just one among millions.  But, that’s enough for the introduction to the blog post… let’s get on to the meat and potatoes, shall we, and talk about realism in video games!

I love my blood and gore.  Deep down I’m very sadistic, although it only really shows when I’m writing (I’m absolutely horrible to my characters haha) or when I’m playing video games of that nature.  But sadism aside, I dunno, I just love the effects of blood and guts spewing everywhere when you slice things open and stuff.  Now, here I’ll clarify something; I’m not talking about realism as in how detailed those guts and such are.  I’m talking about how real the game overall is.  To me, at least, there’s a big difference between them.  When the game overall gets too real I refuse to play it… I don’t know whether it’s because I play games for the alternate realities and such and if it’s too real it’s not escape-y enough for me, or if lines are crossed that shouldn’t be crossed or what, but either way, if I feel it’s too real I won’t so much as install it.

So like I said, I love my blood and gore, and in many of my games that stuff is almost real-looking enough to mistake it for the actual thing, or something close to it.  Now, what makes these graphically realistic games not realistic enough for me to still love them?  The settings, the stories, everything else.  As an example, Left 4 Dead 2 has amazingly detailed guts and such, but it’s obviously not real because, well, they’re zombies.  In Crysis the environment and killing is pretty realistic, but the main character is in a god-mode suit.  In what little I’ve played of the Call of Duty series, the sound effects and voice acting are convincing, but there’s just something about the game that makes it not real.

However, if you put all of those together so that everything seems real, I just can’t bring myself to play it.  Luckily this has happened but once in my gaming experience, and I wish I could delete the game from my Steam library altogether.  I can’t stand to even look at the greyed out name, even if it’s uninstalled and such.  I just hate it so much.

The game I’m talking about is Sniper Elite.  In it you play a soldier in WW2, and your mission is to kill the enemy, obviously.  What else would you do in a war game, right?  But between the controls, the motions, the environment, and the voice acting, it just felt too real for my tastes.  I played ten minutes max, during which I went with the screen moving as if I was walking, crawled around in dangerous territory, and hid.  I didn’t even have to shoot anything for the blood-curling scream of pain to reach me; another player, computer controlled, had just shot a helpless family while I watched from the shadows.  That was when I turned the game off and uninstalled it.

Screaming in games is cool, I’ve got nothing against crouching, realistic moving animations and hud movement are all good, but that scene.  All those things combined with that one simple shot just made my gut do a bit of a flip.  It was just too real, too based on history, too much.  Some might say I have a weak stomach because of it; I don’t care.  I have my morals and refuse to budge on this, whether it makes me look wimpy or not.  If I’m going to play video games I want them to have at least some aspect of unrealism, that makes them so much more entertaining for me.  If I wanted to see what the Nazi soldiers did to families during WW2 I’d read a book about it or watch a movie.  It’s horrible enough to see and read what went on and I don’t want to live through that, even if it is virtually.

Now, it may seem I’m just talking about war games here, but that’s just because this has only ever happened with that one game, which happened to be a war game.  I’m sure it’ll happen again at some point or another, and then I’ll have something to compare it to, but until then… yeah.

So there you have it.  A rant on what makes games real in different ways and how I react to it!