I really do enjoy writing, whether or not anyone ultimately reads the result. You should see my backlog of posts that I’ve started but haven’t yet finished because of my inability to stop rambling on Tim-Rogers-style.
Thank goodness for 1up’s article about their writers’ favorite gaming moments; it serves as a good bite-sized writing prompt.
Let’s get on with it, then… (more…)
I’m not so hot on the old Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man video game. BUT. Pac-Man Championship Edition is one of my favorite Xbox Live Arcade games, and I totally dug the Pac-Man 2 point ‘n slingshot game on 16-bit. He’s such a cultural icon that I’ve developed a sort of mini-collection of Pac-Man t-shirts within my wardrobe. Unfortunately, being in the economic bind I’m in, I should cut back on buying any more frivolous graphic tees. It’s a shame, though. Just look at these cool Ghostbusters crossover designs! (Click images to go to their sites.)
It’s been said to me in the past that I’ve had a gift for the written word, and certainly I enjoy writing. I’ll freely admit that part of that is a narcissistic desire to simply hear myself “talk,” but nor do I take dramatic efforts to lure in an audience. If you want to hear what I have to say, you know what corner I’ll be standing on; come on down.
In college I decided that becoming a writer would be a decent “backup career.” After all, you don’t necessarily need a degree in the form, simply a way with words and some knowhow. Back in the day, I used to look at my video game magazines or mega-sites like IGN or GameSpot and say, “I could do that.” To that end, I took a magazine writing course to dip my toes in the water and get at least some form of training. In fact, during a very short period in high school, I used to write for teen site Kiwibox.com.
The journalistic environment has changed dramatically in just these past few years. Though not strictly “news” sites, blogs and their writers have gained massive presence and have earned the respect of the industry. No longer are they fan pages regurgitating news from other sources; they can now stand toe to toe interviewing their subjects and reveal scoops of their own. (more…)
My web host finally got back up and running two days after my launching into my 15 minutes of niche internet “fame.” I tore down my aborted VidZone redesign cum school project and put up a barebones resume to try to capitalize on any potential employers who may have been searching for more information. Slowly and surely I’m getting up a new site, all hand-crafted by yours truly. I’m going to reposition the site as sort of a professional blog and portfolio to develop my “brand.” After all, designers can’t show code or art, so we need to find a way to make tangible our crazy ideas and unique perspectives and opinions.
I spent today looking for and configuring a blog solution for my website’s re-re-re-…re-launch and settled on WordPress solely based on the one tutorial someone wrote on how to hack it to fit within a pre-existing website design. If I’d looked at blogging solutions sooner, I probably would have realized it would be pointless to worry about designing a website when the blogging software can do everything a normal website does with zero coding hassle. But I’m stubborn, so I’m going to hassle myself with coding anyway; it’s always a good, hair-tearing exercise. CSS layout is a pain in the butt, powerful and flexible as it may be. I’ve had to fight off the temptation to just use good ol’ reliable tables, and I thankfully made a breakthrough. Still, there is some WTF-ery.
I plan to import a select few relevant LiveJournal posts, but unfortunately without yet more mind-numbing manual sorting, it’s either one month at a time or the whole shebang, rather than individual posts. Initially I didn’t want to use a PHP/MySQL-based blog solution because I thought I would eat up my 100MB database in no time. But do you know what? After downloading the entirety of my eight-year blogging history (over 12,000 combined posts and comments), it all amounts to a humbling less-than-7MB file. Wow. Dust in the wind.
I’ve been reading some of the old entries, and they are sooooooo high school. Interestingly enough, my very first entry is about me choosing LiveJournal over Blogger due to the availability of a desktop client for easy post composition. It’s funny, too, that these days I refuse to use Twitter or the equivalent Facebook “status updates” when a large amount of my entries used to be short, of-the-moment thoughts.