About Chicago and work and computers and….
I’m sorry I haven’t blogged :'(
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I will blog soon….
Monday, July 29th, 2013 at 1:47 amMy weekend…
Sunday, July 14th, 2013 at 2:07 am…has not been nearly as relaxing as I would have liked so far.
Went karaoking with friends on Friday night at 9pm. Lasted til about 3:30am. Slept at 4ish only to wake up at 10:30am to get ready and take care of my niece and nephew.
Did so this Saturday (today). Got McDonalds for lunch (more on that later), watched Rise of the Guardians and Wreck-it-Ralph with them while playing with my old Legos from my high school days. Then went to get Froyo at Yoyos, played some Wii (Kirby: Return to Dreamland and Mario Kart Wii) and got some Pizzaiolo for dinner. Drove them back to their parents home, came back and cleaned up. And now it’s 2am. And I’m freaking exhausted.
FYI – At McDonalds, when throwing my garbage away, I accidentally threw my car keys away into the McDonalds garbage can. Ugh. I only noticed minutes later, when I got to my car and couldn’t find my keys. I went back to the garbage and peered in a bit. Fortunately, when I threw stuff away, the garbage was already pretty full. Anyways, looked into the garbage for my keys, moved a couple of boxes and papers (ew!) and saw them :S Grabbed them…and was extraordinarily happy and felt fortunate to find them without having to go garbage rummaging. “Lucky”, I thought. Generally, I’m pretty careful with stuff but I was a bit frazzeled, taking care of the kids. It’s…not easy. And I thought being a manager was tough, watching over kids is….much more nerve racking.
Plan to work tomorrow, all day. Have a massage at 3:15pm tomorrow….excited for that cuz I’ve been brutally busy lately. I need to relax.
That’s it for now. Also, still playing some Animal Crossing but damn, I realize some people (as I visit their homes) are WAY ahead of me. It’s scary how much they have. Didn’t really realize the depth of this game. People are HARDCORE.
Anyways, enough outta me. 2am and I feel like it’s 6am. Gnite!
Like a phoenix, my 3DS rises from the ashes!
Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 at 9:36 pmSo, as a completist, if I don’t finish a game, it kind of just….lingers as in progress….forever. That’s how my Kid Icarus was. I did not like that game, despite the humor, anime and voice acting. Shame.
My 3DS sat on my desk, unused…for months. Months! But as June comes to an end, so does Nintendo Club’s year-long point collecting. I was 50 coins short of platinum this year so I decided to buy some 3DS games to push me over. I bought Donkey Kong Country 3D and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I started playing Donkey Kong Country but….it’s just like the SNES game…and I didn’t like that all too much. Gave Animal Crossing a try and was like “WTF IS THE POINT OF THIS GAME?!” and was SO disappointed in buying it.
A few days later, decided to give Animal Crossing another try and….man, now I’m playing it like crazy! I’ve only been playing it a week or so but I’ve already expanded my house…twice! I was playing a lot….but I’ve slowed down a bit the last couple of days. But I’m bringing my 3DS to work every day, playing it occasionally. Playing it a bit in the morning, a bit at lunch, when I come home from work, and just before I sleep. I find the music relaxing :) Being Mayor of the town (of Yukino) feels like being a manager. Working hard to make sure the town/team does well!
Unfortunately/fortunately, I just got a new 3DS game today too! Project X Zone and I’ve been playing that (done Prologue 5 atm) for a while. It’s C.R.A.Z.Y. Lookit all the characters in this game!
You make teams of 3 and it’s cool, you mix and match characters. This prologue is all about the introduction of characters so you’ll have the Street Fighter and Tekken guys like “hey, good to see you again” (cuz they met in another game) and then you have Jill Valentine say to Chun Li “Hey, you’re Chun Li from Interpol”…cuz Jill’s a cop. And you have Dante teaming up with Arthur from Ghosts ‘n Goblins and they’re like ‘Sup, we’re both demon hunters’ and it’s AWESOME. Love bringing in characters from around the universes and tying them into a cohesive world. And…I haven’t got there yet but I’m gonna lose it when I see Mega Man X and Zero :D
So not much Animal Crossing tonight, just going to try to get through this prologue.
Also, it’s cool – the art is anime styles. The voice acting is Japanese (! YAY!) with English Subtitles. I think one of the first characters introduced in the game is voiced by D.N.Angel’s Riku Harada. That was pretty cool to notice, haven’t heard that voice in a while.
Anyways….so been playing my 3DS a lot lately….having a lotta fun !
One Piece art
Sunday, June 30th, 2013 at 9:29 pmSo I just started reading One Piece. I know, I’m two thousand and late….
I’m at Chapter 227 right now, about 1/3 done. It’s pretty entertaining. There are quite a few parts that (actually) make me LOL and I love that. The comedy in this manga is totally my styles.
Came across a piece of line art while reading the chapters. I liked it and I started to color it for sh!ts n giggles. I’m occasionally doing it when I’m bored or watching something…
Just thought I’d put my progress so far…
Original
(Note: There’s quite a bit of image degradation it)
Cleaned Line Art
Flats (not final colors)
Cleaned Line Art with Flats (not final colors)
Keep in mind that the purpose of flats is to create an aliased (note: NOT anti-aliased) method of separating colors. It makes it easier to select them for modification. (I actually have professional freelance experience making flats…for the Street Fighter comic :D sry – I did like, 3/100000000 pages and that’s honestly one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life ;P so I like bringing it up…)
Edit: 4 hours later, 1:42AM
Adding Depth to the image! (not final colors)
Depth, no outline
It’s really coming along well! I’m so happy with the progress so far! I don’t wanna sleep, I wanna keep working on this!! Safe to say, I’ll probably be doing this all day tomorrow :)
Edit: 2:53AM
Playing around with the layers
Probably post the PSD at some point if you’re curious :D
Having. SO MUCH FUN. Maybe I should do this art thing again, and soon :D
Edit: Monday 3:02PM (the next day) – 7 hours after last night
Final – No outline
Final V1 (I’m done – sure I could tweak more – but I don’t want to, I need to do something else for my sanity)
V1 PSD [26MB], if you’re curious :D
The Art of Development
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013 at 12:35 am1/4 today…
I’ve spent my career being a developer/front-end developer and I can say that of all the types of development I’ve seen – front-end is the easiest. It’s easy to grasp and there’s a lot of room for error. Though that’s true of any kind of development when you get into it; it can be forgiving. There are an infinite number of ways to get to the best solution and the top 100 ways might not be clear unless you’re really good.
I’ve always thought that anyone who has done any development could do front-end development but I’ve often found that some developers I’ve met absolutely suck at front-end development. I see people doing crazy back-end stuff on their resume but still don’t know that a table shouldn’t be used for layout purposes.
I’d say that good front-end development, like any development, is like an art. There are ways to do things and ways not to. But they’re learned from experience. And that makes the difference between a good front-end developer and a bad one, despite it’s ease. Every kind of development has a box that must be played in. And it’s our job as developers to explore this box and discover how we can play inside (or outside) it. But anytime we play in or outside of the box, we’re creating development “art”.
I look at some pretty good back-end developers, still using tables for layout and I cringe. But they’ve obviously spent their careers learning the “art” of back-end development. And a front-end developer would be lost in this art. Such is “experience” and its value. (I’m almost saying that development “art” is gained through or IS experience).
My point is that, despite having spent a career in front-end development and thinking it’s the easiest of the developmentS, it is not without its unique rules, difficulties, and constraints. But I think the rules and difficulties are more artistically driven than conceptually, logically, or methodically driven. That is to say – you can do less with front-end development but it is, in its way, a skill that takes a lifetime to master.
Well, especially with a breath of new life to front-end. HTML5 and CSS3 both have some aspects to learn to even a seasoned front-end developer. HTML5 Canvas in particular is its own beast. But the new breath of life are the JavaScript frameworks introduced – jQuery, node.js, backbone.js (MVC) are all front-end tools/frameworks/techniques that can be explored with no less difficulty than any back-end language (that is, if front-end had a database…).