What has happened in the last 6 months... And how succinctly can I put it?
Top 5:
- I enrolled in a frontend development programming boot camp;
- I started a small collection of contemporary fountain pens;
- I'm still reading comics, but also some other books as well;
- I've been drawing more in my spare time (what little I have); and
- When I'm not able to focus on projects, I'm relaxing with a game or two.
💻
This is probably the biggest one. It's been taking up most of my time and brain power. Doing a regular college class is difficult, but it's even more exhausting when it's an accelerated course that teaches multiple things. It's really like 3 classes all rolled into one; basic modern HTML and CSS, JavaScript fundamentals, and then also using JavaScript frameworks to build frontend sites and applications. Between that and regular work I'm pretty beat.
It has been a fun course so far, and I'm glad there is a community element to it, everyone is really happy to connect on any number of different platforms and stay in touch regarding projects that everyone will be working on moving forward in and and out of the class.
I have a couple of different ideas for the final project. We have to create something that does full CRUD on an API using reactjs... I could probably do something cool with CourtListener or MobyGames. My other idea was to take Wordpress, use it as a headless CMS and just write a reactjs front end; take VideoGameGossip and give it a facelift, or create a new backend and re-purpose CornerComics with a Reacjs frontend.
This is the site that gave me the idea. I was looking for content management systems that use Javascript frontends. I've tried Ghost, but I don't know enough JavaScript yet to fully understand how the backend works on Node. I am, however, familiar with Wordpress, so learning that they've set up a REST API you can use with React or Vue or other JavaScript frontends is nice.
If I just do a facelift to VGG, that might be the quickest way to go. I'll have to test it out. Just make a backup of the current site or something first... Maybe run the React frontend as a subdomain or something, perhaps use beta.videogamegossip.com to implement some new features. I endless scroll for a raw feed is one of the features that one of the users has asked for.
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Changing gears entirely: there's a special connection to items that have semi-permanence in this world. Items that last centuries hold an essence, they can sustain a vibration for long periods of time, so as items they can carry with them the emotions, and energy of the times they were used as tools. Some people might call that magick. So, if those types of items can carry energy with them, then it stands to reason that they could be imbued on purpose or with intention. As much as I think Neil Gaiman is kind of pretentious, he is know to write all of his first drafts with a fountain pen on nice paper. He's respected, so I have to lend some credence to his quirkiness. But, he's not the only one, there are people all over and from all different walks of life that carry fountain pens with them in their everyday lives. I figured that I needed at least three, one for blue ink, one for black ink, and one for a red ink...Trust me, I could go on for several pages exhaustively talking about fountain pens at this point. I carry all three of them with a journal in the bag that I take too and from work. At some time in the future (if anyone is interested) I could always just write a blog post specifically about fountain pens, what I've learned and the differences are between the ones that I own right now. Might also talk about inks and other brands that I might want to get into in the future, and what I would use them for.
Mainly I've just been keeping a private journal, something to keep me sane. A place to empty my head without any expectations. It'll be nice to go back a year or two down the road and see what is different, what I've improved and worked on in that time.
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Comics remain a stable point in my life. I think trips to the shop and the short interaction with John and AJ are just as much fun as the collecting. I'm still picking up the books I would like to read... Sometimes I read them, sometimes I don't. They're mainly just going into my collection. So, I suppose it's more about converting some money into potentially more money down the line.
I don't know how much the'll be worth when I'm old, but they'll definitely be worth at least what I paid for them. If I get back the $3 or $4 per issue I paid. I'd say that was worth it. They'll kept their value at least, they won't loose money like my retirement seems to keep doing these days. I'm probably going to declare my losses come tax time, it should offset the small amount that I've earned from selling a few copies of my copy of Anthem. It actually shows up on the first page of results for Barnes and Noble when you search the word "anthem" so I'm happy about that.
Another one is coming, I'm going to release another Kane Classics Edition, I just don't know when or what the book is going to be--though I do have quite a few ideas and several books that I've read through and considered. I should probably add them to my GoodReads.
I'm actually thinking that if I can write a decent Tarot program that I could sell copies of a Tarot book edited by me that would be a nice accompaniment or nice physical supplement to go with it. I don't think I'll charge for the app, it will probably just be a marketing tool for the book, but I could always charge for additional spreads or something like that.
🖌
I did the first drawing/painting that I've done in a long time. I call it "Monks on Parade". It's actually based on a read photograph., but I liked the idea of space monks in some sort of intergalactic ceremony.
I think it came out pretty good, and was worthy of being posted to my Deviant Art account. Not sure that I have many other new pieces of artwork, but if they are decent, I usually post them to my DA, so if you haven't been there in a while, there might be some new pieces for you to check out.
Planning to do some more drawing in the coming days and weeks.
🎮
There have been a couple of games that I've been playing recently; Vampire Survivors, Forza Horizon 5, and Elder Scrolls Online. I usually only have a couple hour bursts at rare times, so I actually don't play a whole lot.
Today was kind of a treat, when I logged on to ESO today it almost immediately pinged me to go to a specific place for the main quest. It was an audio prompt even. I've played through a bunch of content from the Morrowind expansion and Summerset, but I've never gone back to the original main quest storyline until now.
I even got randomly attacked by a named Draemora before turning in the quest that I did earlier tonight. Call me crazy, but I feel like that's new stuff since the last time I logged on. I felt like I was stuck in a quest the last time, and that's part of the reason I stopped playing for a while.
I can't speak for High Isle because I haven't bought it yet, but there is so much content that I've already bought and haven't played through that I can't really justify buying the latest expansion. And I'm just a solo content player. I like to play in first person, I'm a classic Elder Scrolls nerd, the multiplayer aspect of it doesn't really appeal to me.
They've done a really good job about how well the game is written though. I really do like the lore, they do a good job of shepherding those elements of the game. I do like that all the characters are voice acted too, that was a thing starting with Oblivion and it was kind of a big deal at the time. I personally would have been happy with all text like in Morrowind--even for ESO--but they went the extra mile. I'd say the results are pretty good, they're on par with Skyrim voice acting, and there's a TON of dialog, and a bunch of characters. I feel like I do spend a lot of time in conversations and reading in-game books and scrolls and notes and so on and so forth though. Which is not a bad thing. I even ran into named characters who responded to me that they wanted me to come back with more important matters, suggesting that there are side quests and such that I could potentially do that would lead me to talk to them again and they would have more to say. The combat still fucking sucks though. I've never liked the hot-keys and cooldowns. Phantasy Star Online has addressed this with a decent action combat system... Star Trek Online is the only MMORPG That I've played though that almost gets it perfect. It's a little more janky, but Star Trek has always been at it's best with a little jank.
Still, the combat in ESO is servicable enough that you can do what you need to do to get through like 98% of the combat as a solo player... I don't know though, I think there are raids in the game that require quite a bit of skill and knowing how to make good builds and such. Doesn't really appeal to me, sometimes I wish it did. It's unfortunate that the PVP and raiding is what I see a lot of Twitch streamers doing. There should be someone out there doing story streams, but I don't think there are. And I get it, that stuff only exists once, so someone who watched someone else play through story content might not take it upon themselves to see it out and play it in the game. Probably the most you'll see me post are screenshots.
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