Accomplishments

I Made Another Video of Decent Quality

Max · April 9, 2018 · Xylophone · Accomplishments, Gaming, Music · No Comments

Yesterday, I made another quality video. It involved the Zelda Chest Opening Theme, dry ice, and a cooler.

This semester I tasked myself with uploading at least 5 quality videos amidst the never-ending onslaught of daily videos, which mainly consist of only <30 second folk songs. I’ve only uploaded a few that I thought of high enough quality to check off my to-do list, one of which was the GameCube Startup Theme.

From that video I learned a few things. I learned I could edit my videos just slightly more than usual and come up with profoundly greater looking videos. The GameCube Startup Theme only consisted of me playing one riff and then overlaying the GameCube startup video. It was short and sweet and it looked alright, so I decided to upload it to Reddit to see if I could get any exposure for the channel. Most of the time I submit to subs that can be associated with the videos:

Zelda theme week on /r/Zelda
Super Mario Bros on /r/Mario
Sound of Silence on /r/ArrestedDevelopment

I couldn’t submit to /r/gaming though because at the time I didn’t comment enough to pass the threshold created by the sub to post. So I was left with /r/YouTubeHaiku, which specializes in short YouTube videos.

And it was a jackpot, in terms of my channel at least.

Most of my videos on my channel average at around 5 to 6 views after a few days after uploads, unless I advertise it on the Twitter or post it to an appropriate subreddit, which then can vary the results from 40 – 100ish views.

The GameCube Startup Theme garnered 1000 views in a single day, brought my view count to 4000, making that video account for about 25% of all the views on my channel… which had well over a hundred videos.

So there it was, the flash in the pan. The lightning in a bottle. The fluke. I couldn’t think of anything else to upload that would be of such short length and such high quality. Until a week ago when I came up with the idea of using the Zelda Chest Opening Theme.

It was an iconic sounding riff, it had an iconic animation associated with it, and I could put a little gag at the end, all of which are needed for a successful video. I now even knew of a place that would be highly accepting of my video.

To give credit where credit is due I got the sheet music from NinSheetMusic.org they are super awesome and as the name implies, have sheet music for Nintendo games.

The next step was recreating the iconic animation, which in my mind consists of Link reaching into a semi-mysterious glowing chest and then pulling out the item that he found. Then I needed the parts:

Link – Myself
Semi-mysterious – A fog effect created by dry ice
Glowing – A phone flashlight
Chest – The cooler I bought along with the dry ice
Item – A piece of paper that says ‘consider subscribing’

This was the result.

The rig inside the cooler was pretty funny itself. It consisted of a block of dry ice leaned towards the door, on the side of cooler closest to the camera. I would pour hot water on it to create the fog effect which then created the issue of the dry ice now becoming ever so slightly wet.

This meant that the paper could not be put directly on the dry ice or it would get wet. My solution was to place a block on top of the dry ice to create a flat surface after I poured the water on it. This created a dry surface that a paper could be placed on then easily found in fog.

Then I needed light. I had a flashlight but it wasn’t strong enough so I needed to use my phone’s light. This turned out to be risky because I couldn’t just put my phone on the bottom of the cooler due to the hot water. My solution was to place my phone on a small coffee cup, which I then placed into the cooler after pouring in the water.

With all those elements put together I was able to create the video, which upon looking at the stats, is getting pretty successful. I’ve almost doubled my subscribers so far thanks to the gag at the end and it has also garnered at least a thousand views.

I can’t make any promises, but I’m hoping to try to release a semi-quality video every week or so (something that is of considerable length i.e. >minute) and a quality video (something of good editing) every month or so. I’m also hoping to have a Metroid Theme Week, much like the Zelda theme week of a semester ago.

I’m excited to see where the future takes Xylo-A-Day!

Print-Making the Grade

Max · October 22, 2017 · Content · Accomplishments, Printmaking · No Comments

When I first went to college, I wasn’t exactly the visual artistic type. Aside from the doodles that everyone draws in the margins of their notebooks, I didn’t draw much. I didn’t paint. I didn’t create visual art like that. In high school I was artistic, I was in band and played music, I just wasn’t visually artistic.

In college I had to take a fine arts credit, since I decided not to be a part of the band. I had to actually take a fine arts class, all of which are deduced down to music appreciation, jazz appreciation, and art appreciation. Going against all of my musical learning that began in the 6th grade, I decided to do art appreciation.

The format of the class was awesome. It consisted of being in a giant lecture hall of about 100-200 students and having a PowerPoint full of art that we would just discuss. Sure there were a couple of quizzes and stuff, but all in all it was just sitting and discussing a ton of different pieces of art.

And then I learned about printmaking.

Printmaking, in a generic sense, is the process of making a block (or some template medium) that you run through an inking process and then transfer to paper. Unlike other mediums you can just keep reproducing the image as well (at least until the block is worn). The trickiest part of most forms of printing is that you have to do everything mirrored, so when you place your block onto the paper it prints the correct direction. I have a couple of pictures with the blocks in them down below to help you understand what I mean.

So upon learning of this awesome form of art I went out and bought a beginner lino-cut printing set. This consisted of a couple blocks of linoleum, some ink, and a couple of chisels that are used to cut out the linoleum.

The result of my first actually decent print was a printing of the gnome child meme. Meme right here for comparison.

I since come to the realization that I inked the block pretty badly on that one. After that I produced a couple of other things, and the only other one that I really liked was a pointy-hat confused bearded guy (I should just make that the title of the picture).

Then, for a good laugh (which is the reason I create most things) I made a print of a printer. Neat.

The next significant thing I made was a garlic bread print, where there was a hot piece of garlic bread and kanji (hopefully saying garlic bread, I got it from google translate so it’s questionable). It had been so long since I produced the last print that I struggled to get the inking right, and after printing off a ton of them, I was able to get a cool looking gradient. So without further ado.

And just recently, inspired by a dumb internet meme (another main source of inspiration), I made a print of Steve Harvey that summarizes most episodes of Family Feud.

And that is all I have. If I create any new prints that I think are funny, or a significant improvement in quality, then I’ll probably post them here.

Until I post again, have a great week!

I Conquered Far Cry 2

Max · July 23, 2017 · Content · Accomplishments, Analysis, Gaming · No Comments

This isn’t an achievement to be proud of.

Far Cry 2 is a first-person action shooter created by Ubisoft in 2008. It is set in Africa and features militias, rust, malaria, and long driving sequences. Most people say this game isn’t that good, I’ll put my input on that later. But as far as the facts go there has been two major installments of Far Cry since this game and both of them received better ratings for their well-polished mechanics.

The supporters claim that the game is like Dark Souls and requires a large amount of skill. Their reasoning is that the game’s mechanics don’t reward the player, I agree. There really isn’t a single mechanic in the game that rewards the player, it’s more like you play as Sisyphus and your upgrades just make the boulder a pound lighter, it just technically helps. That said I don’t agree with the supporters, these mechanics aren’t tough, they are tedious.

The game feels needy, it is fully aware there is no actual content. I’ll describe each mechanic 2 ways, from the supporter and detractor side, and then explain my playthrough.

There is malaria:
Supporter – It adds immersion, the player can’t actually forget that they are sick, even in the middle of a firefight.
Detractor – It adds annoyance, the mechanic is just hitting a button every 30 minutes to take a pill.

There is no fast travel:
Supporter – It adds immersion, the player has to truck their way through the Saharan Africa and fight everything on the way.
Detractor – *PERSONAL INTERJECTION WARNING* The cars drive slowly and are made of paper. The map is massive and is filled with the same hostile enemies that keep respawning.

Weapons rust:
Supporter – It adds immersion, you have to keep making sure your weapon is alright.
Detractor – Make sure that after every mission you just grab a new gun, not hard just adds more drive time. More drive time is less fun time, more annoyance.

There is stealth:
Supporter – It adds immersion. You get to choose the time of day to attack. You get to scout out the camp. You get sneak around and stealth kill.
Detractor – Nope. The moment any of the enemies detect you, it is over. If they hear rustling in the bush they all start shooting. Enemies can see you through any sort of foliage, readily equipped with laser vision.

I don’t remember how long it took me to beat the game, but it was definitely too long. 75% of my playthrough was me in transit. Not experiencing action filled camp raids. Not driving fast or feeling cool about my turning capabilities. Only driving in semi-straight lines. Sometimes my car would break down too and I would walk.

Beyond this the gameplay that every considered as super hard was not even a challenge once you understand how dumb and weak the enemies are. Sure I won’t deny that if you walked into camps with a machine gun or assault rifle and tried to mow down the enemies then the game would probably be pretty challenging. This wasn’t the experience I had with the game.

I walked into every camp with a pistol, a sniper rifle, and a shotgun. The first guns that are available. I was unstoppable, the guns were all one hit kills at their respective ranges (The pistol covering all the ranges under the sniper rifle). I never experienced the good stealth mechanics of the game, just walk in, head shot everything, and walk out. It didn’t matter the time of day, it didn’t matter whether it was raining (supposedly those are both game changers).

The game was just a driving simulator where my pit stops were just ever so slightly more interesting than the driving gameplay. There was no hardcore element, there was no interesting gameplay, just driving.

Typing Confidently

Max · June 22, 2017 · Content · Accomplishments, Typing · No Comments

“You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.”
-Business letter
-Typeracer Quote

This isn’t supposed to be a braggadocios post but my typing speed is a solid 70 WPM. Really in the grand scheme of things that isn’t that impressively fast. Yet, in comparison to my typing speed and accuracy 1 year ago, this is insanely fast.

To give some backstory, I am a computer science major so I have the need to type and interact with computers constantly. My typing speed was a whopping 40, without punctuation. Believe me, 70 isn’t super fast, but 40 is definitely slow.

In high school I knew this very well because my brother was a pianist and also a nerd, so he had a good typing speed. I tried once to increase my typing speed but I was in a programming class and reworking my whole technique was going to hinder my bad typing technique even further. I wasn’t willing to take the short term loss for long term gains.

This went on, and I knew my typing was crap, but I had no desire to change that anytime soon. And then… one day I walked into class and saw a teacher type and said, “You know what? Today is the day that I start learning to type better!”

So from there I went to typing.com (Not a sponsor). I went through most all of their lessons, and learned how to use proper technique, which is definitely the backbone to fast typing. This took a while to get through the lessons and feel confident. The rest was just practice.

The place where I practice my typing is typeracer.com (Still not a sponsor). Maybe there is a way to increase your typing speed super fast… I don’t know it. All typeracer does is give you quotes to type, so for me the process is simple:

Go to Typeracer
Type a bunch of quotes
Repeat

The trick to typeracing is to not worry about racing, just worry about typing the passage as fast as possible. I still lose plenty of races, I don’t let this bother me though, because at the end of the day all I am trying to do is improve myself.

If you want to know how many passages I have typed on typeracer, as of this post it somewhere around 2900. The quote listed above is definitely my favorite.