If asked to write a creative autobiography on the fly, it would very likely consist of nonsensical rambling as I'd have no idea where to start or how to structure the piece. Luckily, I have here a list of questions that provide just such a structure for my rambling.
What was the first creative moment you remember?
Well, I can't say I actually remember the first creative moment I remember, at least not off the top of my head. But the first creative moment I remember that I can remember is actually directly related to my field. I built a laughably intricate underground water ride in Rollercoaster Tycoon, probably riddling my park with thousands of structural instabilities in my quest for the creation of the most insane ride ever.
I definitely played games before Rollercoaster Tycoon, but certainly none that provided any sort of creative license. Even today I occasionally reinstall the classic original and construct a wacky theme park out of the thousands of permutations in locations and rides, aided by the ability to actually construct certain rides like the titular rollercoasters and water rides from scratch.
Did anyone see it?
I showed my friends from Sunday school, as we had an informal contest of sorts to who could create the zaniest situations in the game.
What was your best idea?
Monday, July 5, 2010
BrainBank: Heavy is Credit to Team Edition
Some quick statistics: each round for the Gustav was 11 feet long and almost 3 feet wide, and could be fired 21 miles from the Gustav. However, they also took a staggering half an hour to load, in addition to the 250 soldiers needed to get the gun assembled and the 2,500 men needed to lay down the rails that allowed the 150 feet-long 2.7 million pound gun to actually be moved around.
If this thing isn't compensating for something, I don't know what is. On the other hand, I totally want to see this added to Team Fortress 2 as a weapon for the Heavy.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Book of the Dead (or: "rw nw prt m hrw." Because Apparently the Ancient Egyptians Weren't Fans of Vowels)
Based on an exercise outlined in the book "Thinkertoys"
One of the obstacles I face as a Digital Media student and nascent professional is that of recognition. I can produce interesting work in my classes, but I need to be able to get my work out there for the world at large to view. Thankfully, in this modern day and age we have a collection of tubes known collectively as "The Internet" that exist for just such a purpose.
Of course, it isn't quite so simple as just pressing a button and having a fully-formed attention-grabbing site instantly appear at the top of the list on a Google search for "awesome." Luckily, in this modern day and age we've exhumed much of the wisdom of the ancients to guide us into the future. Especially when we don't understand a word of this wisdom. To this end, I have chosen a passage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to translate, hoping to unearth a prophecy directly correlated to my problem.
To be specific, my problem is (ripping off my own eloquent prose from a previous post): "I need to establish a corner of the web for myself and optimally build it enough relevance to show up on peoples' radar."
Alright! Time to start my American-style translation, where I look at the pictures and attribute them to whatever makes the most sense in my head (this is a similar technique to speaking slowly and loudly in English when in foreign countries in the belief that this makes you understandable).
A Google search informed me that whether one reads hieroglyphics left to right or right to left is dependent on the direction the animals are facing. Already we're off to a good start, as my animals are facing to the left here which means I can read this left to right. And what's more auspicious of a start than a star? I can clearly extrapolate from this that the ancient Egyptians refer to my rising star in the world; though based on the tiny man with the humbly up-stretched arm beside the star I shall infer that my methods must be tempered by modesty, a sentiment with which I concur.
The glyphs following these two are far less immediately identifiable, which caused my eye to wander across the paragraph. Immediately I noted that persistence of a semi-circular platform upon which a few smaller symbols or birds were perched. The best analogy this sparked is: I should identify the platform with which to deliver my varied content.
Now, I currently have an ad-hoc portfolio site of sorts set up with the free service flavors.me, which makes it extremely easy to plug various services in (like this very blog) and construct a simple personal site without any code. I've debated as to whether or not this is sufficient.
Luckily, the Book of the Dead seems to have an opinion on the matter. There is a recurrence of a symbol that looks somewhat like an inverted 'L', which is very probably a snake. Three instances of this symbol coil around small sigils, while the fourth points to what appears to be a cross. As it currently stands, my portfolio site is sort of a crossroads, where all of my content approaches from different directions and jumbles together at the middle, with only pseudo-integration. In order to most effectively display my work, I need to encapsulate it within a single site that coils around all of my content.
Upon closer examination of the passage, there is one symbol that stands at a jarring contrast to the others and thus seems significant. Viewing the hieroglyphics as a whole with an unfocused eye caused the single framed image to jump out at me. The frame implies structure, or a guiding influence; based on my previous web endeavors, I don't think that building a site from the ground up would be any better for me than using a flavors.me site. So, I think the best thing to do would be to use an existing structure, but at least centralize all of my content on said structure.
The squiggly lines peppered throughout the passage remind me of the placeholders I use for any text or words in rough thumbnails; I've heard good things about Wordpress, so that's the first thing that comes to mind off of that association. Therefore, it appears I have a new avenue to investigation in regards to my web relevancy!
Thank you, ancient Egyptians. Don't think that this makes up for the generations of slavery, though. That wasn't cool.
Closing thoughts on this exercise:
I rather enjoyed this exercise, as it encouraged me to make wild conclusions about tiny pictures I don't actually understand, and there's nothing I enjoy more than wild conclusions. Actually, I used to play a computer game when I was younger, some semi-educational game that was focused around Ancient Egypt; I have no idea what game it was, but I loved it to death. I suspect, however, that the designers had no idea whatsoever how to translate hieroglyphs, and were just making it up as they go along. Hey, if it worked for them, works for me.
A short note about my creative environment:
I'm sitting on my dorm room's couch at the moment, which I've been doing since about 4:20. There's a nice amount of sunlight streaming in through the opened blinds. The couch isn't very comfortable, but it's better then the strange rocking-desk-chair-hybrids that sit at our desks in Canaris. It's pretty cool in here despite the oppressive heat outside, temperature control units being the best invention since that circular thing that lets carts move about. I'm listening to music on my terrible iPod earbuds for some reason instead of my nice stereo gaming headphones; sheer volume is drowning out any noise my roommate might be making in the room behind me.
One of the obstacles I face as a Digital Media student and nascent professional is that of recognition. I can produce interesting work in my classes, but I need to be able to get my work out there for the world at large to view. Thankfully, in this modern day and age we have a collection of tubes known collectively as "The Internet" that exist for just such a purpose.
Of course, it isn't quite so simple as just pressing a button and having a fully-formed attention-grabbing site instantly appear at the top of the list on a Google search for "awesome." Luckily, in this modern day and age we've exhumed much of the wisdom of the ancients to guide us into the future. Especially when we don't understand a word of this wisdom. To this end, I have chosen a passage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to translate, hoping to unearth a prophecy directly correlated to my problem.
Pictured: The Farmer's Almanac, circa 1650 BC
To be specific, my problem is (ripping off my own eloquent prose from a previous post): "I need to establish a corner of the web for myself and optimally build it enough relevance to show up on peoples' radar."
Alright! Time to start my American-style translation, where I look at the pictures and attribute them to whatever makes the most sense in my head (this is a similar technique to speaking slowly and loudly in English when in foreign countries in the belief that this makes you understandable).
A Google search informed me that whether one reads hieroglyphics left to right or right to left is dependent on the direction the animals are facing. Already we're off to a good start, as my animals are facing to the left here which means I can read this left to right. And what's more auspicious of a start than a star? I can clearly extrapolate from this that the ancient Egyptians refer to my rising star in the world; though based on the tiny man with the humbly up-stretched arm beside the star I shall infer that my methods must be tempered by modesty, a sentiment with which I concur.
The glyphs following these two are far less immediately identifiable, which caused my eye to wander across the paragraph. Immediately I noted that persistence of a semi-circular platform upon which a few smaller symbols or birds were perched. The best analogy this sparked is: I should identify the platform with which to deliver my varied content.
Now, I currently have an ad-hoc portfolio site of sorts set up with the free service flavors.me, which makes it extremely easy to plug various services in (like this very blog) and construct a simple personal site without any code. I've debated as to whether or not this is sufficient.
Luckily, the Book of the Dead seems to have an opinion on the matter. There is a recurrence of a symbol that looks somewhat like an inverted 'L', which is very probably a snake. Three instances of this symbol coil around small sigils, while the fourth points to what appears to be a cross. As it currently stands, my portfolio site is sort of a crossroads, where all of my content approaches from different directions and jumbles together at the middle, with only pseudo-integration. In order to most effectively display my work, I need to encapsulate it within a single site that coils around all of my content.
Upon closer examination of the passage, there is one symbol that stands at a jarring contrast to the others and thus seems significant. Viewing the hieroglyphics as a whole with an unfocused eye caused the single framed image to jump out at me. The frame implies structure, or a guiding influence; based on my previous web endeavors, I don't think that building a site from the ground up would be any better for me than using a flavors.me site. So, I think the best thing to do would be to use an existing structure, but at least centralize all of my content on said structure.
The squiggly lines peppered throughout the passage remind me of the placeholders I use for any text or words in rough thumbnails; I've heard good things about Wordpress, so that's the first thing that comes to mind off of that association. Therefore, it appears I have a new avenue to investigation in regards to my web relevancy!
Thank you, ancient Egyptians. Don't think that this makes up for the generations of slavery, though. That wasn't cool.
Closing thoughts on this exercise:
I rather enjoyed this exercise, as it encouraged me to make wild conclusions about tiny pictures I don't actually understand, and there's nothing I enjoy more than wild conclusions. Actually, I used to play a computer game when I was younger, some semi-educational game that was focused around Ancient Egypt; I have no idea what game it was, but I loved it to death. I suspect, however, that the designers had no idea whatsoever how to translate hieroglyphs, and were just making it up as they go along. Hey, if it worked for them, works for me.
A short note about my creative environment:
I'm sitting on my dorm room's couch at the moment, which I've been doing since about 4:20. There's a nice amount of sunlight streaming in through the opened blinds. The couch isn't very comfortable, but it's better then the strange rocking-desk-chair-hybrids that sit at our desks in Canaris. It's pretty cool in here despite the oppressive heat outside, temperature control units being the best invention since that circular thing that lets carts move about. I'm listening to music on my terrible iPod earbuds for some reason instead of my nice stereo gaming headphones; sheer volume is drowning out any noise my roommate might be making in the room behind me.
BrainkBank: I've Got Goosebumps in the Month of July Edition
Anyone remember those Goosebumps books about the super-realistic looking creepy masks that "became" you once you put them on? Like, a girl puts on a mask of a scary old lady and can't take it off again, and starts getting all arthritic and nasty. This is like that, but with a "Handsome Guy." Naturally the company that sells these monstrosities mainly does monsters and scary old ladies, because they've read up on their Goosebumps.
On the plus side, once they perfect this technology everyone can be like their idol, Tom Cruise, in Mission Impossible II (that movie following that other movie where everyone and their grandmother had photo-realistic masks they kept fooling people with and then peeling off).
On a more positive and inspiring note, this would probably be a great supplement to those unfortunate individuals who have their faces mangled through accidents, etc. If the Phantom of the Opera could slip on a fresh new face and get on with his life that would have been a far shorter but much more uplifting story.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
BrainkBank: I Buy Magic Edition
They've made available for free a propriety bit of software that automagically makes games previously incapable of reading multitouch gestures work pretty well with them, with various gestures taking the place of panning, button functions, etc.
Questionably useful? Perhaps. Unquestionably cool? Most definitely. I'm most impressed at a high-end hardware company out-of-the-blue laying down software that actually makes their questionably-included expensive technology seem useful for the purpose of the gaming machine. Props to iBuyPower. Check it out:
Friday, July 2, 2010
BrainkBank: It Prints Money Edition
I cannot wait to see a gangster movie where they pull a briefcase out, open it, and it's full of this stuff. And try to treat the scene seriously.
Okay, granted, I rarely if ever am actually in possession of a 100 dollar bill, so this shouldn't really affect me. But hey, this inspires me to make lots of cash so I can carry this ridiculous currency around.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
BrainkBank: Oh Lord Why Edition
That said, I wonder what other hideously annoying objects could be fused together to create something entirely unholy? My money's on Chinese finger traps and that guy that follows Adam Sandler around in all of his movies.
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