On Social Networking / The Bitter Twitter Rant

I used to be pretty big into social networking. I used to use Bebo (which I'm sure few people this side of the planet have heard of), Facebook, Myspace, and I also used to post fairly frequently on a forum or two. Since pretty much everything except Facebook has died and I haven't taken it upon myself to fill my social networking void, I just use Facebook now.

Sorry blog, but outside of necessity for class. I've never been a fan of talking to myself and I'm probably not interesting enough for anyone to follow me so I don't really see the point.

Not to offend any twit-ites (is that a term? I don't know but I like it and I'm having it copyrighted) in the oh so jam-packed audience, but I find Twitter to be really really really really dumb. Why use Twitter when you could just stare at your Facebook newsfeed? In my oh-so-humble opinion, people talk enough crap on Facebook without the introduction of another social network specifically designed to foster crap-talking like Twitter.

Oh and the whole "twitter" and "tweet" thing is just so cutesy it makes me nauseous. Not only that, it's degrading. When I hear the word "twitter" used to describe someone's communication habits, I automatically think of obnoxious and idiotic church ladies gossiping and talking monumental amounts of meaningless, unimportant, superficial crap.

Holy Smokes!

Woooow! It has been a really long time since I've updated this here blog-o-mine. Since, once again, I'm required to blog for a class, maybe I'll actually keep up with it this time? Probably not. But for all those non-existent subscribers / viewers / whatever kids are calling them these days... I am back!

MDIA 220 Audio Projects

Snoop Dogg - That Tree Remix

      So for one of our projects in MDIA 220, we were given a selection of songs to remix and I chose to remix Snoop Dogg's that tree because I really liked several of the tracks used in the original. However, I didn't like the song as whole so I chose to take out the vocal track and create an electronic dance-vibey song from it. Enjoy!





Nature Scene - Waterfall Soundscape

     For this project, we were told to find an image and to then go out and capture sounds that would "describe" the image so here's the image my partner for the assignment, Spencer Drew, and I chose and below is what we created.

City Soundscape

     For this assignment, we were given an image of a city and instructed to aurally tell a story that takes place in the city. I combed through our sound effects library and chose to tell a story about a winged demon terrorizing Detroit. Some of the transitions are pretty choppy and a few of the effects don't really mesh together all that well, but I'm fairly pleased with the way that it came out since it was only my second project to be done using ProTools. Here it is!

Animation Critiques

Cameron's Superhero

Cameron, think you did a good job of using subtextual irony to portray your hero using the "frat bro" stereotype. Usually, fraternity brothers are portrayed obnoxiously ever-inebriated people that are generally to be avoided and I thought it was really cool how you took that concept and applied it to your hero.

I also thought it was clever that you took the yellow from the beer in the pitcher and tied it into his costume and paired it with an analogous green color. I'm not sure if you chose to make it green to tie in with OU's colors or not, but if so, that was a pretty nifty move too.

Overall I think your hero was a pretty witty creation.

Arielle's Animation

Arellie, I thought the color choices you made with your hero, the Red Bullet, were interesting. The darker value of the Red Bullet's uniform and body contrasts nicely with brighter white and later the bright colors of the surroundings as he's walking towards the horizon towards the end of your animation.

I didn't really understand the story behind your hero since I had to leave class early before you presented your hero and villain. Therefore I am unable to comment on how your color choices enhance your story but I thought they were interesting nonetheless.

Words of Wisdom from Yours Truly

There are a few points in Karim Rashid's "Karimanifesto" that I could identify with which are "Never say: 'I could have done that' because you didn't", "Normal is not good", and "Here and now is all we’ve got". Some points of my "manifesto" are based off of these concepts.

1. Never be afraid to show your love.
2. People appreciate helpfulness more than most other things.
3. Don't let a bad ending ruin the entire story.
4. Enjoy the time you have. Life is unpredictable and changes constantly. You never know how long the moments you have will last.
5. It's useless to dwell on the past. Instead, strive to improve the future.
6. Try to be aware and understanding of other people's motivations. Never take anything at face value.
7. Keep an open mind.
8. Don't let your self consciousness hamper your creativity.
9. Keep your bridges in good repair and by no means burn them. It's a smaller world than you think and you never know when your actions will come back to bite you.
10. Most importantly: Hakuna matata. Life could always be worse until you're a Juggalo.

Gaming Presentation

One of the most difficult things to explain when trying to describe a game are the mechanics especially for our game, Azvault's Saga.

Explaining controls on for a console game is hard enough even though there are physical buttons that you have to push to play the game. It's even more difficult when your game is made for a touchscreen and there are no buttons so that you have to tap and move your fingers across certain areas of the screen to get Azvault to do what you want him to do.

As you can see, the directionality of the movement of your fingers affects what your weapons do when you're trying to kill enemies. I'm not sure if that came across entirely clearly in our presentation. I have never found game mechanics an easy thing to explain or have explained to you. It's just something you have to get a feel for when you're playing the game.

Another point that I feel might not have been expressed as thoroughly as it might have been are the rules of the game. We wanted to keep the game concept fairly simple while adding other factors and minor complexities to it to keep players interested. Basically, the way the game works, is that every level you have to kill a certain number of enimies in order to advance to the next level. If you decide to get fancy by using different combinations of moves and tactics to kill enemies, then you get more coins. With coins, you can buy assorted weapons which have varying "special moves" associated with them. To make things more complicated, we decided to throw innocent villagers into the mix. Killing villagers makes you lose money by paying "blood money" to the families of the victims.

I find that overall, trying to convey the concept of a game is somewhat difficult to do when you're trying to explain it to a large group of people. If you're having a dialogue with someone, or even talking to a small group, it's much easier to elaborate on specific points based on questions your audience might have. It's challenging to convey an entire world that you've created to someone else when you've already outlined everything so specifically. With a lecture-type pitch, it's hard to know where your audience stands in terms of understanding.

Letting Your Freak Flag Fly

In his article Freak Factor, David Rendall talks about how a person's weaknesses aren't necessarily a thing that should be eliminated. He suggests that every personality flaw has an accompanying strength. Below are the examples he used in his article to show strengths and their corresponding weaknesses.

Strength   Weakness
Creative - Unorganized
Organized - Inflexible
Dedicated - Stubborn
Flexible - Inconsistent
Enthusiastic - Obnoxious
Calm - Emotionless
Reflective - Shy
Adventurous - Irresponsible
Responsible - Boring
Positive - Unrealistic
Realistic - Negative
Assertive - Intimidating
Humble - Weak
Self-Confident - Arrogant
Patient - Indecisive
Passionate - Impatient

Rendall explains that he believes that our weaknesses are what make us unique or, as he says, "freaks". He goes on to discuss that in our society, people are valued for their uniqueness and that mediocrity isn't valued. I feel like this idea has some merit, however, I feel like compromise is the key to success in life. If your employer knows that you're a creative genius, he should take into account that your office is probably going to be a complete disaster. If he values you as an employee, he should be able to just stick a biohazard sign on your office door and wait for you to come up with something brilliant. This applies in all aspects of life. For example, your significant other might dislike that you can be arrogant, however, they admire your confidence so much so that it makes them want to stay with you.

In his article, Rendall talks about "Finding the Right Spot". He proposes that rather try to "fix" your weaknesses to fit into a specific role, that you find the right position that suits your strengths. I would agree that this is probably the best approach to having a successful career, however, especially in the media industry, I don't see how this is realistic. Ideally, his suggestion is a good one. However, with so few jobs, I find it hard to believe that there is really an attainable position that it tailored to me. While it is good to be aware of your strengths so that you can find a type of work that is suitable for you, I don't think that there is a job for everyone that's completely perfect for them where everybody will happily ignore your weaknesses and want to hold your hand and sing kumbaya. Call me a negative nancy, I call it being realistic.

Rendall also discusses that you can't work on both your strengths and weaknesses. He argues that because each weakness has an associated strenght, that trying to change your weaknesses only weakens your strengths. He suggests instead to improve your strengths. I can see how this would make sense. If you think about two strengths as a spectrum (see below)

 

If you take his example of patience being the opposite of passion, the farther you work towards passion, the less patience you have, if you're a passionate person and you work towards becoming more patient, you only move closer towards mediocrity. That's at least how I understood it.

Along those lines, he advises his readers to "Forget it: Don't try to fix your weaknesses". I think this is good advice because I think that if you can make your strengths strong enough so that they almost completely overpower your weaknesses, then people will be more willing to ignore your weaknesses in favor of your strengths. However, I also believe that people tend to find the negative aspects in any situation, therefore you have to work even harder to advance your strengths because you have to be pretty outstanding for people to completely ignore your weaknesses unless their desperate, which, let's face it, employers in the music industry certainly are not.