Archive for the 'School' Category

Where I stand – fall 09

Published on October 28, 2009 in Blog, My future, News, Personal and School. 2 Comments Tags: , .

A lot of curiosity arises amongst friends and family of my current status. “Why only one class this semester? Why do you stay up so late? Do you really have lots of free time?” So I’ve decided to take the time to explain myself here.

As one might infer, I dislike working at school like any other student. I haven’t done very well in the past either. But why? Well, lack of effort really. What drives effort is motivation, and I really lacked motivation to pursue anything. School is dull.

Being unenthusiastic about school I put off signing up for classes in fall 2008 (last year). I then scrambled to find enough classes so I could have enough units to be considered a “full time” student. I eventually did, but I ended up taking the majority of my classes in the afternoon and evening. Now I’m no stranger to the night, but I almost always fell asleep before 3AM. My last class of the day would end at 10PM now (the tue-thurs schedule at least), I would then go home and eat. Now you could interpret this multiple ways: either my food clock keeps me awake longer into the night, or I could have simply been trying to make up lost time on the computer. Either way I was staying up later as a result, and this became the norm.

The bright side is, not everyone works nights. I was confident going into summer that I could land a night job. I even slacked quite a bit in my spring classes thinking I could become independent of school entirely if I could land a good job during the summer. That’s not to say I didn’t know competition would be high during the summer – I tried applying to places while still in school. But rejection is hard to follow up on… for someone who could use a little motivation.

Needless to say I didn’t land a job during the summer and when fall finally rolled around I scrambled for school again. I like to think I learned something over the summer though — through the places I visited and the people I met.

School is easier than finding a job.

So here I am in school again after being able to catch one class by luck at the last minute. But my luck is running thin with my parents. I have to finish up school in two or three years and get out of here.

More details on what I’ve been up to in a bit.

A slice of life, and an update on where I am

Published on October 6, 2008 in Music, Personal, School, games and randomness. 0 Comments

Sometimes I forget the real propose of this blog.

I was seriously contemplating neglecting my blog forever since much of my interest has now drifted from video games to music and DJing. Video games aren’t the real reason I started blogging though. Ever since I was a… well… kindergartner, I’ve always had problems writing things down on paper or being productive in general. When I reached 7th grade school took a turn for the serious and with it I received special help and training on how to overcome my “disability”. Calling it a “disability” is a bit extreme, I don’t want to be one of those idiots who claim they’re retarded in order to coast through life when they’re clearly not. It’s just how the school termed my weakness. Er, where was I? Oh right, my writing “disability”. I turned around in 7th grade and left the program even, only to fall back into it in my second half of 8th grade.
…
Somewhere along the lines of success I had lost my motivation to continue.

If I want to relate this to games again I could go on about how I found self motivation reporting game-news back to the Nsider community (now gone thanks to Nintendo) and eventually DS-X2.com. But lets not get off track here.

The point is I struggled with writing all my life and blogging helped me exercise and sharpen my writing skills. Though that’s an understatement. Think of my writing skills as a fat guy – yes a fat guy – now imagine what that fat guy would look like after sitting on the couch for 6 weeks doing nothing but eating and walking to the fridge occasionally. That’s what my writing skills look like right now. Even if it may not appear that way in this blog entry(riiight), the fact that I’ve done absolutely no English homework since I started school again makes my writing skills appear that way to the teacher, my parents, and even myself through de-motivation. Lack of blog updates really to blame? No… but they do get my brain working. More so than posting on forums or communicating with friends. Especially when the latter is accomplished via IMing.

This is why I need to continue blogging regardless of subject.

Though video games are always going to be a favorite of mine… just don’t expect every post to lean that way. I’m thinking about revamping the page as well. I notice people do subscribe to this blog… if any one’s reading this please let me know what you think I should do with this blog page. For the meantime, here’s an update on me:

My friend Mike submitted an interactive fiction game to “The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition” and I helped beta test it so I feel some personal attachment to the game. I’m also in the credits, woo! Oh- the game specifically is called “Channel Surfing” (download here) and it’s a bit tedious to navigate for first-time IF players. I know it was for me! But he could only do so much programming in the three weeks he had left to develop it. Mike is -unlike me- a brilliant writer and the writing is really the “meat” of the game, so don’t feel bad to use hints in order to progress.

This poped up on inanity one day and at first we were all thinking “WTF”. But I approached it cautiously and it seems to be solidifying into a legit party for us all. To complete it I’ve bought a second turntable and I’m in the process of buying some new records they might want to hear. If all goes well the party should take place later this week.
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With the new turntable I had to buy an LCD monitor in order to make space on my desk… good bye CRT… we’ll see if I can find a use for it though. I would hate to throw it away.

Bank account is feeling it this week with all these purchases. I need to start looking for a job again despite this shitty economy… uhg.

Last but not least, Sin and punishment 2! Woo!

First week of college

Published on August 29, 2008 in Music, School, Vinyl and Web. 0 Comments

It’s finally happened, I started college.
Well… Junior college… but for the most part it’s got all the same freedom and options as a typical college. The one I’m attending is called Sierra college and depending on how much you visit/read into my posts, you may have heard me mention it before. I’m actually more comfortable at Sierra College then I ever was at Rocklin high school. I’m taking interesting classes, all my teachers are very nice, and it’s not run like a prison!

On the subject of high school, I briefly met some ex-Roseville high students and they had an amusing play-on-words for their high school. They called it: “hoesville” for apparently it was filled with girls that were very hoe-tastic. I don’t care if I made that word up, I like it.

This week I haven’t played any video games thanks to school, but I have been playing records whenever I can. Yep, that’s right, the records I talked about last week finally came in! You can read the thread I made on the DJforums here for some details and pictures(lower post). It was worth every penny. One of my best impulse buys! I feel obligated to actually email Primal Records and thank them for giving me so many quality records for so cheap. As probably one of the first to respond to the ad I feel I received numerous records from the co-owner’s personal collection (“DJ Olivier Desmet”) – as the ad had stated some of the “grab bags” would contain.


One of the first Techno tracks: Derrick may’s classic “nude photo”. This release was touched up a bit and called “Nude Photo ‘88″.

There’s just sooo~ much quality here. So much to work with! I can’t wait to mix with these as soon as I become acquainted with all of them. Here’s a sample of a record I just played earlier tonight. It has this awesome break. I’ll let the sample do the talking(click).
-That sample is from “Brothers’ Vibe – Dub Plates 5″ track B1, called: “smooth ride” http://www.discogs.com/release/1306533

Discogs is a great site by the way. Now that I’ve been buying vinyl it’s helped me keep track of my collection, and helped me find the names of records that don’t have any labels. There’s at least 4 or 5 records with absolutely nothing written on them other than a catalog number which is (as always) etched into the vinyl itself. Here’s what my collection is looking like so far.

I’m thinking next week I might bring my DS to school as there is an hour wait between one of my classes(which I have been passing in various ways… like doing homework – whoa I know, that’s gotta change!:P )

Reboot

Published on August 20, 2008 in Music, School, Vinyl, Web and games. 0 Comments

Behold!

Though it may not look impressive to some, I’m quite proud of my new gaming “rig” (please excuse the lousy picture). I’ve got a 20″ Sony Trinitron with three game systems elaborately set up to it all at once. Which means if I get bored of playing Sonic 2, I can start play Super Smash bros. online with the push of a few buttons. Pretty sweet stuff though I must admit I haven’t played much of the Wii as I have Dreamcast and Sega Genesis. Playing Soul Calibur 4 at a friend’s house rekindled my love for the series so I’ve been playing the original on Dreamcast on occasion. Also, I tried beating Sonic 2 as I have always tried as a kid… but failed. You would think after all these years and extensive experience in action games I would have a better handle on… well… mainly the last boss, the rest of the game is easy as pie. Though there was this one pit in mystic caves… the one with the spikes and high walls… yea. Fun fun fun.

On this note I should… note. :|
-that despite my lack of updates (which I’m sure you are all used to by now and have stopped checking the site… all 3 of you) I have been quite active. Well, by my definition at least. Before making a blog update I set a few goals for myself which were: publish interview with GAMEINVEST, make an inanetalk.com podcast, and make the best mix I possibly could with the vinyl I have. It was the last one that I got hung up on. With a limited selection of vinyl I figured the mix I release has to be perfect otherwise I end up using the same tracks over for other mixes to show my progress and that takes away the “freshness” of my music. Yesterday however I made a bold move and ordered 50 records for a very cheap price. Primal records is abandoning it’s vinyl business and was practically throwing vinyl at me. How could I say no? Yes I suppose it was yet another impulse buy for me… Either was expect a mix here next week. DEMAND IT if it’s not here. :P

Oh but what about the other two goals?
-The GAMEINVEST interview can be read here at the ever awesome DS-X2 site. ;)
-While the first ever inanetalk.com podcast can be found here on this page. (we’re also on itunes… somewhere)

Korg DS-10 is mentioned in the podcast now that think of it, and I made a track using it and a sample from Ken Ishii’s new remixed album. Korg DS-10 is lots of fun to tweak and play around with and it’s of such high quality that one could use it in a professional production environment. I’m kinda lost when it comes to arranging melodies, (I will be learning some of that this year at Sierra college hopefully) so most of my creativity comes in the form of the drum machine. You can download this “remix” right here (right click->save as).

Here’s the promo video for Ken Ishii’s new album (where I took the sample from). I totally want this… sooo bad.

so bad

post graduation

Published on June 16, 2008 in Earthbound, Music, School and randomness. 0 Comments

I have soooo much to blog about. A few times I tried to blog last week, but I either got distracted or was pulled away from my computer while writing. So I’m starting fresh today to write about what’s been happening lately and holy shit has a lot happened.

Beginning with the days before graduation, I went on an all-out blitz to complete Earthbound before graduation. For about 2 and a half days I did nothing but play Earthbound… well, I also ate and slept. Point is I played a shit load of earthbound to where I was going a bit crazy. In fact I’ve been having some crazy dreams that I can’t seem to elaborate on. Trust me though, they’re crazy. Sadly I didn’t finish Earthbound before graduation, the last part of the game was hanging me up. More specifically those f^cking Nuclear Reactor Robots spawning everywhere.

After the graduation ceremony I went to Lucille’s which is one of those generic BBQ places with lots of random crap on the walls. However not only is their food better than the average – generic BBQ place with lots of random crap on the walls – but they had a badass blues cover band playing live with a band member whose middle name was actually “guitar”. I kid you not.

When I got home I received a call from my friend Tyler who said I should come over and “party” with him and his friend. I use quotes on “party” because our ideal party is one with lots of video games, soda, and various chips(likely Doritos). It was here that whilst (ironically) not paying attention and stuffing my face with Doritos that I got around to the last part of Earthbound up to the final boss. Then I beat the insane last boss and finished the game in complete awe. Tyler then remembered he had to work early that very morning so I ended up walking home at 5AM. I kinda felt like a zombie… who needed to brush his teeth.

The next day I went to a few other “parties” which was sort of surreal. I was really tired so that probably had something to do with it.

Couple days later I got everything sorted out with Sierra College… I’ll spare you the details, but it was really complicated. I’m just glad I’ve got classes to take coming this fall.

Bought a microphone(more on that here), stand, and some Midi cables. What do I need midi cables for? For my… wait for it… keyboard! Yes that “surprise” item I bought during the mega-garage sale event a couple weeks ago was a 48-key keyboard. A complete steal for 22 bucks though it required dragging home a mile and a half or so. Heck, that wouldn’t have been so bad if I didn’t have my bike to drag along as well. That was awkward – but so worth it. With midi I can make it sound like any synthesizer I can emulate on my computer. Now I have to teach myself Piano… I have some books on it somewhere.

Last Saturday I got a car. Yep a car. I’ll make a post about it later or something it’s too ugly to take pictures of now(getting detailed soon). My uncle really trashed it.

aaaand so that’s basically what I’ve been up to.

Just for the hell of it, here’s this:

The end is near (school year that is)

Published on May 31, 2008 in Camera, Earthbound, Music, School, Summer and Work. 0 Comments

Lack of updates you say? Well, I have good reason: I just finished wrapping up High school! Woo!
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It’s been a wild ride. Lots of memories from the last twelve years of public education. Lots of… horrible memories. Oh ok, and some good ones…

But mostly bad ones.
(I might reflect more on that after I have my graduation ceremony later this week)

Within the last days of school I finished filming my broadcasting project(not actually finished on the last day, as the schedule was really wonky). Now I just need something to import it and edit it all with. However I did manage to take some random pictures here and there with the video cameras since pictures can be directly saved onto my SD card instead of the archaic miniDV tape. I’ve even uploaded some of the pictures to my flickr account.(in 16:9!)

I would buy a miniDV camera or something, but I’ve been strapped for cash since last year. I bought the turntable using money I had in my bank account which I usually never do. I consider withdrawing a bad habit so up until then I had never actually withdrawn money from my bank account and don’t plan on doing it again until I get a job.

Speaking of looking for a job I have been searching for one since April or so – with no luck. Now that school is over though I’m going to be a bit more aggressive with the whole thing. It’s not going to be easy with this economy. There are probably plenty of experienced people out of work looking for any job they can get their hands on.

Progress on Earthbound is slow but steady. I’ve been playing it almost 2 and a half hours each day with the exception of this weekend and Monday so far. When I was in the town of Threed I contemplated making a blog post as if I were right there with the zombies or something:

Hey it’s NPC here vacationing early in the town of Threed! Zombies seem to have invaded the town before I arrived – and after my travel agent sold me this vacation package. Every now and then I have to smash a zombie with a baseball bat to protect myself. In short, the nightlife here is dead…. or would that be un-dead?

Yea I just think Zombies in general are funny. Ever since I saw Peter Jackson’s “Braindead” I’ve been pretty much desensitized to all horror films.

Yet Metroid Prime still freaks me the fuck out.

Last but not least I promised I would post up my first turntable mix if I thought it was “decent” and sure enough I have one which qualifies. I can’t link the thread I made on the DJforums because it’s blocked to non-members, but I reposted it all at inanity. Complete with a screenshot of the comments left at the DJforums which I find inspiring. I must add the music I use isn’t for everyone. Which reminds me, I actually drove a person in broadcasting crazy with my music one day. That is actually what sparked the idea to start filming the type of project that I made… unfortunately he didn’t flip out again despite my best efforts.

Retro cannes

Published on May 20, 2008 in Earthbound, Film, Music, Retro and School. 0 Comments

Another week, another pair of retro headphones.


Better picture here

This time it was by complete coincidence. Last Saturday there was a mega-garage-sale event in my part of town – basically a bunch of people sold crap in front of their homes simultaneously – and I originally planned to take this time to hunt for some records. Well that didn’t go so well, but I did find these awesome headphones for the irresistible price of $1.75. After some cleaning(these things still smell like the 70s) and some research googling, I learned these cans are actually quite collectible. This thread here at head-fi.org explains the details of why these headphones are somewhat desirable. Basically, these are practically the first headphones to have full rage of sound: high and low frequency response. Plus they look hella tight.

I bought one other thing from a garage sale, but I’m keeping that a secret until I’m fully ready to reveal it. Hint: I need some midi cables.

Besides some last minute school work not much else is going on. I have been playing Earthbound for about an hour a day though. Classic RPGs are hard to sit through these days…

Oh and I have a very ambitious(more so than a game review) broadcasting project in the works. Sadly, filming will commence up until the very last day of school so I’m going to have to figure out a way to import it all and edit it outside of broadcasting class. Perhaps my friends could help me with this. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Getting outside

Published on March 21, 2008 in Recreation, School, Sports and Vacation. 0 Comments


(California Poppy)

Ah spring, my favorite time of year here in Northern California. It’s warm, but not too warm. Weather like this makes you want to go outside and get some exercise. Cycling is my preferred method of recreation, along with inline skating, but I got tired of being called “fruit boots” so I got rid of them(that and I outgrew them). Yea I’m actually brave enough to type that, mainly because I actually find it humorous myself.
You know what though?(rant about skates in 3…2…1…)
I love skates. I miss them so much I might just go ahead and buy myself another pair despite the negative reputation. Screw the haters. The feel of gliding across smooth cement and asphalt is unparalleled. I remember I used to play roller hockey for a couple of years too, that was loads of fun. The program fell apart though: One city stopped competing, our coach went on to do something else(ice hockey I think), and I was left being the oldest one around(at 14 or so). Still wanting to skate I tried to get into “aggressive” skating. For various reasons I grew bored of it, at least the skates looked cool and performed well.


(great skates)

I never posted about my bike, have I? For summer school last year my mom bought me a really nice bike to transport myself – bittersweet obviously, but I’m not complaining. It’s a beautiful bike, probably the most (single) expensive thing my mom has ever bought me. Check this beast out:

It’s a sweet ride, don’t think I’ll be selling this thing anytime soon. I’ll spare you the specifics, just go here if you’re curious.

On a gaming note, I’ve been honing my SSB:Brawl skills with my local Smash Brothers champ. He’s crazy good, I don’t think I’ll ever be half as good as him. I’m (sadly) going to be busy with homework this spring break. If I can catch a break I might try my hand online. Maybe hand out my Friend code here and there… we’ll see.

mid-february update

Published on February 21, 2008 in GDC, Music, My future, School and randomness. 0 Comments

Quick update! (still busy/slacking off/playing games/saving the “world”)

14th -Valitines day was a boring but interesting day of reflection.

18th -GDC came and is uneventful to me so far. Playing is believing though. *shrug*

19th -Took a Sierra College assessment(English/math) and felt very ill about 5 minuets in. Couldn’t focus and started guessing on some problems I would normally take the time to solve. Somehow still got normal results – perhaps better than my sister. haha!

Nick: 1
Logic: 400082

20th -Turned 18! Woo!(meh) Went to the doctor as well. He took me off my acne medication finally.

21st -Feeling much better without that medication crap. Unfortunately I have lots of work.

Oh and this set simply kicks-ass. Best headphones EVER. Didn’t think there was an RJ-11 to 1/4″ plug out there.

Homework: push start

Published on February 7, 2008 in DS, Music, School and randomness. 0 Comments

Whoops, did I say I was going to write another entry on Wednesday? I meant Thursday. Because Wednesdays almost always suck. You can’t argue with that logic… *ahem…

Actually, school is kicking into overdrive so I have no time for blogging or other web-related shenanigans… well except for right now.
Times up!
…Nah just kidding.

Gaming is on the back-burner as well. Advance wars has been in stand-by mode for about four or five days now, and still going strong! Who knows when I’ll get back to it. Maybe if I finish this blog post fast enough… hm.

Two weeks from now my school will be – basically – adding a 30min class to my schedule. I say “basically” because it’s actually pretty complicated and some days I may even get out of school earlier than I already do. But given this is me I’ll be stuck staying that extra thirty minuets that is (what they call) the “plus period”. If you click that link you’ll witness some Rocklin High school web designing at its finest. Who knows though, maybe I could turn this time into something productive.

Good’ol Fabrice Lig(AKA: Soul Designer), who I talked to briefly before I jumped off the Myspace bandwagon, has uploaded some short and sweet videos of Standard 9. Which is something Ken Ishii’s website for Standard has yet to do(and I doubt ever will at this rate). Check these out if you like techno!

Edit: BTW I titled one of my previous posts “rapping up jan08″ – and I forgot the w!(w-rapping) Talk about embarrassing!