Hamburg steak is about as American as restaurants get here. But, eating fries with chopsticks does feel classy.
At least for the time being, I am giving up having a custom design for my blog/site. It’s simply too time consuming, especially when I have to consider backward compatibility with all of the content I’ve created since not only its creation, but my creation as well. So, I am opting for a basic, out of the box theme that I won’t have to worry about updating or tweaking as the underlying publishing software evolves.
But that’s where my giving up ends. I have been living in Japan for the past 6 months, and amid all the craziness and difficulty of settling in, have already amassed a gigantic pile of things worth sharing; a lot of which has already been shared between my presences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Since much of that is piecemeal and posted one at a time as they happen, there is very little context or organization to it.
I’ll be uploading things to this blog as I have time, including a refined, simplified portfolio, which is as yet unpublished. Not that I’m actively seeking design work, but if some should come along, I do plan to share what little talent I have publicly.
Otherwise, beyond the banalities of my daily life, it feels like there should be a greater opportunity to share things with those who can’t be here in Japan to experience them firsthand. I’m open to suggestion as to what that could be, and until I find a decent groove, my posts will likely be random in nature.
That’s it for now, time for a private English lesson!
My Macbook Pro lost its face Sunday. Actually, the screen and video output decided it didn’t want to display anything anymore, just its slate black face. Turns out my particular model was given a GPU/video card susceptible to failure, and this one’s time finally came. Luckily, due to its widespread occurrence, Apple and graphics manufacturer, Nvidia, teamed up to offer a free repair service to replace defective units with a revised chipset that supposedly corrects its predecessor’s shortcomings. After two days of intense troubleshooting and backing up of nearly 200GB of data, I had an appointment with one of the “geniuses” at the local Apple Store in San Francisco to help diagnose the issue, which turned out to fall squarely within the recalled GPU program’s boundaries, making me eligible for a free repair. While I’m without my modern computing luxuries for 3-5 days, at least I can count on other trees in my Macintosh orchard for the interim.
Since the appointment required me to travel over to “the city”, I decided to take advantage of the fact San Francisco has many more and many better food choices than Oakland or Berkeley combined and visit a small Japanese curry shop recommended by a friend. Japanese curry is a different style than what most Americans think of, usually relating to Indian styles…it’s not quite as rich or thick; perfect for my palate. I ordered it extra spicy and they totally delivered; you can probably make out some of the bright orange specks on the dish. I snapped a couple photos and had a lovely time trying to transfer them to my computer from my phone without the built-in bluetooth of my laptop.
Aside from a sharp decline in the cultural diversity, my new neighbourhood is pretty much perfect. Less expensive than San Francisco proper, safer, greener (vegetation aplenty), cleaner, less crowded, warmer… I could go on, but will save the occasional readers the trouble.
Check out the view from my new bedroom window (click to enlarge):
Polished off the final exam for my third semester of Japanese language last night… ã‚„ã£ãŸï¼
thought of the day: does the church of satan observe religious holidays?
thanks to my clumsy hooves for hands, my site’s presentational theme was accidentally deleted from the server yesterday. i’ve been able to restore about 80% of the style elements, and most things should be functional. please bear with the sawdust and scattered nails until i can get things repaired.
It’s been a good two months since my last post; much of that time has been spent attending events like E3 in Los Angeles, working on personal projects, working to secure a job, and then deciding that I want to return to university life and improve my mind the old fashioned way—which has meant spending time researching programs and schools.
After having separated with my last job, which was fun, paid fairly well, came with almost unbeatable benefits, greatly grew my experience and creative diversity, and then moving literally halfway across the country during an economically depressed period of seven months afforded me plenty of time to evaluate a great number of things, the least of which were my available opportunities.
Those who have known me well enough over the past few years to have a frank discussion about my views of advertising, marketing, etc. know that I’m not exactly fond of perverting my creative talents to liberate consumers from their hard-earned cash and buy crap they either don’t really need or can’t really afford. It’s one thing to crave an audience; but its another to stage a crowd with smoke and mirrors while your business associates pick their pockets in their distracted state. I’ve been told that such an anti-entrepreneurial sentiment is the trademark of creative folk, but pardon me for having any sort of human conscience or ignoring the perceived importance of the almighty dollar.
Many people also know that for the past 3.5-4 years I’ve been volunteering countless hours on a popular gaming news and community web site. While it’s technically not paid a dime (yet), I have met countless wonderful people and it has opened doors to many new opportunities and horizons, many of which have roots here in the San Francisco area. During my months away from the workforce, I’ve had a chance to explore these options to a greater degree and have enjoyed it enough to consider officially working within the video game industry in some capacity. Many young people interested in games seem to be interested in pursuing a career in editorial capacities, which I can attest is a very exciting field, but not one that is likely to bear lifelong careers for anyone unless they have other skills that can be parlayed into much different roles within the industry, particularly in business or other managerial duties; things I have little interest in directly, so I will need to look deeper into the job well.
Last fall, my volunteer efforts with that gaming site landed me a very rare opportunity to travel with a game company to Japan, an experience that really opened my eyes in ways I could have never imagined. It’s one of those things you have to see or do for yourself to understand, not unlike parenthood—so I hear. Ten years ago I would have ignorantly written off most foreign cultures as bizarre, unnecessary, and irrelevant to my life and goals. For me, Japan specifically was perceived as a place of such other-worldly oddity that I could only laugh at the stereotypical wacky TV programmes and assign them as the single thumbnail of the whole country and its cultured history. As it turns out, that naivete has ironically become the defining factor in the goals I have now set for myself.
I am and will always be a creative person and a child at heart. Originally, my college education was intended to put me into a career making video games, albeit from a production standpoint versus creative, but it turns out my mind wanted a greater say in the matter than my technical skill with computers, and the trajectory toward being an Art Director/Designer was set. Does it mean I am tethered to a career in visual design? Nearly as long as I have loved drawing so too have I loved writing creatively, be it poetry, opinion/editorial, or just waste-basket lining such as these blog entries. All things considered, a career that could benefit from my experience with visual design, creative writing and my more recent interest in bridging cross-cultural gaps is the most appealing prize. As it turns out, the gaming industry is multi-national, so there’s hope that I can mix that experience into the dough as well.
thought of the day: anyone who uses the phrase “eye-popping” should actually have to suffer getting their eyes popped. ugh… idioms. is there nothing they can’t doom?
After attending a media event hosted by EA Sports last week to check out some of their new, unreleased games, I came to realise that while most of the sports they had on display were within my realm of understanding, the number falling into the completely unknown far outnumber those that do.
That had me wonder if I couldn’t use that fact to some benefit as a feature here on my blog: to write and describe popular sports in as much detail as possible, except from my perspective… a sports half-wit using only my observational skills to deduce the rules and premise. Look for my first entry soon!
