So I'm a graduate. I'm an alumni. It's all official now. It didn't rain so we had an indoor and outdoor ceremony. I met up with a whole bunch of people in the Student Center beforehand and then had to line up for, like, an hour before going in. The IMM department graduating class was 12 in total, but none of them were really friends of mine. The best I can say about the outdoor ceremony was that it wasn't painful and the honorary recipient was a good choice since he had connections to the campus. I liked my department's one a lot better actually. For a quiet guy, Phil's speech was actually quite good. Plus, he actually had his letter of recommendation for me on him the whole time and I got it at the end. I'll have to see if I can get more graduation pictures up here. I have a ton on Facebook.

( Here's one )

Then it was party time. That afternoon I went to an uber nice place called Harvest Moon Inn with my parents and grandparents for lunch. I have probably the best fried calamari in my life and an awesome tuna steak that was like sushi in the middle and cooked tuna on the edges. My Saturday largely revolved around an Italian dinner at a place called Il Mullino. Tomorrow things kind of return to life as normal, or rather, what the norm is going to be.

Wednesday night I took Rachel to the hospital. I think she hurt her hand sparring Phil. Originally I was just going to drop her off, but I knew I couldn't leave her so I waited there an hour and a half. This would not have been bad at all if the security had better choice in television (we watched Nightline as opposed to the Tonight and Late Shows). This was also the night Kieran stayed over, leaving things an extra bit chaotic. Still, when I came back things just felt right. Right in that way that I'm going to be really sad when I leave here.

My HA Veronica called gave me a heads up that I am getting written up for my swords. This seems really unusual to me because they've been up since Septemeber and nobody wrote me up when they saw them during fall and winter break. In fact, I don't think I've been in a weaponless room since January of 2004. Still, I have to go through some sort of school kangaroo court this coming week. I figure it can't go too bad since the weapons are edgeless and pointless, unusable even as sparring weapons, have silly features (I'm looking at you Darth Maul tanto), and could (and now will) be used as props in my group project.

On my project, we had our first blue screen day! We shot in the room where the Journal is filmed. Apparently, the Green Room has nothing to do with the Blue Screen at all. That's just where we prep guests for the secret talkshow TCNJ doesn't want me to know about, but I know it's out there. So far, we have some footage of Kieran beating up me and Will followed by the appearance of Suli as the first major boss character. We used some foreshortening techniques not unlike those in Lord of the Rings to make normally 6 foot Suli look like a giant. We also have possibly the funniest blooper ever: I'm supposed to grab Kieran and then he's supposed to break the hold, elbow me, and Bruce Lee-style back fist me into the wall. However, Kieran started before I could get a grip on him, resulting in a fake looking hit, and me kind of just standing there looking like an idiot before intentionally flinging myself into the wall.

I got my audit, and thankfully it says I'll be good to graduate. I was pretty secure about the whole credits thing, but I wasn't 100% sure if they knew that Bob Anderson had waived one of my maths.

So I'm a few days into Spring Break and a week without an update. Wow, not sure how that happened. Anyway, here's a peek into my life.

I'm still looking at grad schools. Right now, Drexel is my favorite. Apparently, most digital media graduate degrees require a specialization in one particular field. From the examples I've been given, education sounds the most appealing to me. However, the man I spoke with made the use of digital media in medicine to transfer and inform sound good too. I still need to talk to the people at Rutgers when I get a chance. When I listened to the guy talk about IT in education it sounded really appealing but it seems like the progress I've made in media would be going to waste. Despite my dad's good intentions, I don't think library science is right for me.

I finally started listening to the Huna podcasts. The first was funny because it told me to concentrate on the concept of a blue feather, and it will come into my life. Then again, it is the logo for Photoshop. I'm making excellent progress on my digital multimedia midterm. My theme is a tiny me in a big world. I've done Photoshops of myself sliding into a bowl, me stirring a pot of pasta sauce, and diving into a bag of Hershey Kisses. I'm definitely making progress with shadows and levels.

I've been playing instances more and more in Warcraft. They're good for items and XP, and working with a group is fun. But it also denies me the ability to just put everything down and vanish when I want to.

I locked myself in my room all afternoon and refuse to come out until I finish the midterm for Projects. During this time I'm keeping this entry as well as one at Blogspot. Matt helped me update the comics on my wall last night, and they look really cool. I hit 40 in World of Warcraft and now ride around on a ram. After the initial thrill, at least I'm now wearing mail, giving me about 1.5x the defense I had before (since half of my defense comes from my crazy agility). Project is going well. I really needed a day like this of just me and the computer... although I think I want to go for a drive at some point. I need to cash in all this change at Commerce [EDIT: Or not because it's Sunday.], and I'll probably get dinner... that Quizno's sandwich I had a few weeks ago was obscenely good. I think I've managed to go three hours without saying anything or having something said back to me. Sleep aside, I can't think of the last time that's happened. I wonder if the porno version of a Knight's Tale is called a Knight's Tail. The neighbors upstairs are really obnoxious, they just started blasting their bass at max. I hit the ceiling in order to shut them the hell up and I made a hole. -_-

This has been a weird week. I was pretty much flying high on Monday. IMM Projects got off to a relatively smooth start, and Suli, Kieran, and I just might have something. I was still feeling awfully triumphant when I got back to the room and actually took the initiative to fix it up like I should have three months ago. Now my army of Wii bowlers has plenty of space with the trash can and the (accessible) printer moved to a better location. However, things crashed again on Tuesday. For a short assignment, the review of my Digital Multimedia assignment was downright grating, and I had to leave early to go to Drexel where my experience was predictably mediocre. There was no representative from the Digital Media department, only Admissions, and any real information I got from the paperwork where I found out that I may have to take some post-Baccalaureate courses just to qualify. Even though I tried multiple times to take the intro CS course, I couldn't because TCNJ thought it was more important that I take Pan-African-Asian Women's Historical Feminine Written Feminist Literature. It just gets annoying that everything always ends up constantly being so mediocre and I wonder if I didn't have so many distractions maybe I'd have more Mondays and a sense that my life was going somewhere. Of course this is the time I pick up World of Warcraft again, and sometimes it scares me because I read some awful stories about people who got addicted to it and then I realize how many hours I've played lately. There's a feature that when you type /played, you can see how long you've been playing. As of today, I passed 2 days, putting me at about 3 hours a day. I came back on Wednesday only to have to come back home to do the February School Talk as well as my Communications project.

Also, I was asked today... how many credit/unit thingies do you need to graduate and more importantly, where is it on the TCNJ site!?

After almost a week back at school I think it's time for another one of those scene-setting posts. I'm back in West 9 and have a regular courseload. IMM Projects is like my 'capstone'. Me, Kieran, and Suli got the gang back together and are going to be working on a video for class. I've been starting the proposal. Unfortunately, I haven't heard back from either of them yet. Digital Multimedia sounds like it's going to be fun. This week for class I have to make a picture in Photoshop using nothing but the brushes and stuff in the program. No actual photo manipulation and whatnot. I started work on a Shinto Shrine using nothing but squares for the body, but then I'm going to enhance the heck out of it using filters, masks, etc. Italian 102 seems alright. This Balena guy seems like quite the character, but he wants us to keep a little journal of assignments which means handwriting them. I don't know what to think about the communications course I have. I'm a little annoyed I already have a moderate-sized writing project in there and that they're due in alphebetical order by last name, meaning I have two weeks and he said don't bother getting started until we discuss it next week.

I also got back into World of Warcraft this week. I'm a dwarven hunter this time around which is a hell of a lot more fun than being a priest. I use rifles and I have a wolf following me. The only problem is that I'm trying to catch up to Matt and Kait with only limited luck.

Seeing as it's New Years, trying to get in the gym is getting to be a royal pain in the butt, which is a shame because I actually have the energy to go despite the fact that posts like this are proof my sleeping schedule has already been completely and utterly shot to hell.

Also Will's back. Yay!

I finished my last final on Monday and then came home. Then today I completed the marketing audit finishing the Fall 2006 semester. Maybe it's the warm weather or lack of multimedia, but it didn't really hit me until I got up this morning and realized I was going to Westampton and not TCNJ.

There's a whole lot of news items already. For one, I'm actually clean shaven... well with two days on it. Among other reasons, this was actually to save me cleaning blood out of it on Thursday when I have my wisdom teeth removed. Why we needed to this within a week of Christmas is beyond me. Subsequently, I will be leaving the Yule party at 10.

Lately I've been at a strange loss emotionally. I just feel like I'm a shell of my former self without a self or identity. Or maybe it's more like being a force, like being made of water when everyone else is an actual fish. I mean, from the minute I stepped in from school I knew what I'd be working on for WMS and when I'd be geting oral surgery that my dad set up, and decided for me I'll be using novacaine and not being put to sleep (I'd have probably chose the same... but I've have chosen). Meals and lots of other things are equally railroad-y, and this didn't just start this week.

I want to get some sort of physical activity this break. I found a coupon for a gym trial I may have to follow up on.

Somehow we managed to pull it off tonight. 2 groups. 24 people total over 3 tables. I'd say Hibachi was a success.

I had some good warm sake tonight. It even came in a bottle like the one Will got me. I just thought it was weird that the chef kept calling me Superman. I had a shirt that was about the right color: blue, medium value, and pretty darn saturated. Then again the symbol on my chest was Italian soccer.

It seemed like a lot of things from the past were coming up tonight, between the nature of the Hibachi trip itself (which started with four people... hot damn), to that silly quizilla test I made freshman year.

Oh man, what a day. I got up at 8 on a Wednesday to listen to the gaming ethics panel at school. The violence and gender ones honestly did interest me, but activity (and lack thereof) and censorship didn't really pique my interest. Still, in the same day I managed to clean a bathroom, go to the right meeting at the entirely wrong time, work out, food shop, do martial arts, and still finish my homework.

I think it's due to the fact my senior pictures are on Monday but I've been having a crash diet of sorts. I joined calorie-counter and have been making a log of everything I've been eating all week. What's even sadder is that I had less than 1200 calories today, but I still ran 450 off and went to martial arts.

Maybe it's the lack of food, but lately my phasers have been set to PIMP! In addition to this one girl I pseudo flirt with when I see her, the girl in my marketing class is so my Pam (if there ever was such a term)... we spend half the class laughing at stupid stuff. Alas, she's happily involved. Then today at the games thing I was doing it again with one of all, like, three of the girls there and then I start sending messages to a girl with a cool interests list... and starting a conversation with the girl at the desk at the gym... and with a girl who lives in the next house over. After much debate between this icon and Shunsui, I determined this post merits Delsus iconage!

So Tuesday was Halloween. I was the Ever Lovin' [Brown] Eyed Thing and for a superhero costume it was an unusual experience. Being familiar with the Fantastic Four, the fact he looks different if not intimidating is old news. Still, I was freaking the hell out of people whenever I came around corners, out of bathrooms, walked past bathrooms other people were coming out of, entering room, exiting rooms, and generally going from "Not being there" to "Being there". I mean, I was the only person in room in costume when I got breakfast, and I was a already a character who frankly is a freak among freaks. Dinner on the other hand was packed with costumes.

So I'm sitting here tonight with a bottle and some tissues. Yes that's right... I've been all congested and coldlike so I have the trusty water bottle to keep my liquids up and I'm regularly blowing my nose. I also tried Airborne for the first time today. It tastes like Orange Soda... only saltier. However, before I drank it I went ahead and checked if it was made of wax on Wikipedia.

Whoops, did I say I was living in Townhouses West 7? Whoops, according to a letter I got today... I meant West 9. Still living with Matt and everything. However, having the right room means I was able to find two of our future housemates.

Look shiny (and predictable):

I haven't gotten a single call in for Taylor yet. Tomorrow I go back to TCNJ and talk to all three of my major profs (Sanders, Wolz, and Ault) in one morning. It looks like my summer should finally be mapped out tomorrow. Then it's back to pick up the new Monster Hunter! The review I saw in a magazine panned its lack of online capability (you can only go local, not on a nation wide network) yet for my online gaming situation this one is a total upgrade.

Nevermind, I got my first vote at 11:08!

I'm 60% LiveJournal!



Maybe starting to get into it a bit too much.
Either that, or your life's really interesting.

The LiveJournal Quiz

Take Other Caffeine Nebula Quizzes

8 pm to 7 am in Holman tonight. Hell yeah.

Chris,


Congrats on what turned out to be a very cool animation. The lighting came out
very well, the set was simple but interesting, and the animation on your
characters came out very well. Keep up the good work, continue to explore and
refine your animation skills and you'll be on a great track.


Grade,

A

My idea for a video game is a survival game. “Survival horror” is a popular genre, but my idea is to design a more traditional survival game like the film Castaway. Told from a first person perspective, the protagonist is stranded on an island for one reason or another and must find the means by which to survive. Challenges would involve making fire, finding food (and making it edible in the case of meat), and obtaining fresh water. On an island full of animals, combat with predators or scavengers may sometimes be inevitable, but combat would be treated more realistically. Instead of being for fun and profit, it would be for survival and usually best avoided. Also, inquisitive players may find new ways to avoid this problem, like training a bear (with a steady supply of fish) to be the player’s personal ‘guard dog’.

There are several variations that the group could discuss. The first thing is our protagonist’s company. I picture the protagonist being the only human on an island full of animals, but there’s nothing that says he could not have washed ashore with a group. Another choice is setting. If we don’t want to worry about accuracy (for example, learning different types of herbs) we could also set it in a more fantastical setting like space. This would add the challenge of finding air in addition to food and water as well as not having any previous inclination to what is good/bad for the player’s character.

Once experienced players have established the basics, they can begin to build a better life for themselves on the island by building bigger and better living spaces and tools. The island could have a mine for players to hunt for more exquisite materials than bamboo and vine. The game could also have room for online growth. Once a skilled player has built a boat, he or she can travel to another player’s island to trade, assist, or (maybe) wreak havoc.

Some of the tasks presented may sound a bit dull, but the success of games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing have proven that players are willing to do things other than supernatural combat in gaming. Many people may enjoy making new choices more than tapping a single attack button thousands of times.