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… やった！

listening to:
Recovery
Eminem

took a little walk to the ocean the afternoon of valentine’s day, and noticed the sunset casting some really wild colours across the western edge of north america, especially as it tries hiding under some thinly laid haze.

A few panoramas, click to enlarge: Dusk at the lake home. Mother’s Day 2009 at the edge of the continent. Christmas 2009 under the chills.

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.

What it means is that I have set my heart and mind upon this new horizon, and have begun taking the first steps toward that destination. An easy goal it is not, and the decision to leave behind many of the luxuries I have grown fond over the past ten years is equally difficult. It has taken me roughly half my life to get this far; it could very well take the other half to get back to this point when starting fresh with a whole new language and culture. But a life without goals, dreams and growth is not much of a life in my opinion, so it’s a task worth undertaking.

The question that remains is: am I crazier for essentially leaving behind what I’ve worked hard to achieve thus far, or for pursuing such a far-fetched and potentially imaginary treasure at the end of a transglobal rainbow? Status quo or dreams? Maybe it’s the creative soul inside, but impossible dreams are often the winner; they make me tick, and ticking is something I’m not quite ready to quit doing.

On a different note entirely, new art will be posted very soon!

listening to:
21st Century Breakdown
Green Day

A bit of a diversion from my typical posts, but in case someone stumbles upon it from a search engine, hopefully my hours of turmoil will lessen another’s burden.

Last week, I updated one of my computer’s iTunes installation to version 8.1.1, while my other machine (with the primary music library) stayed on version 8.0. For whatever reason, the newer version stopped seeing the older one’s shared library across the network. Huh??

So after tinkering with the router, scouring the web, updating the other machine to 8.1.1, and fidgeting with every damn preference or setting between both machines for hours and coming up completely nowhere, I gave up.

Until someone else logged into their account on my machine…I had them try launching iTunes (a fresh account), and behold, it saw both of my other shared libraries, yet those two couldn’t see this new one nor each other. Hmm..

At that point, it was clear to me that it had something to do with the iTunes preference files (.plist) in my home directory: ~/Library/Preferences/ and ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.

After trashing them and rebooting iTunes on the problematic computers and accounts, re-agreeing to the license and re-enabling my sharing settings, suddenly my network sharing was back to working 100%.

An old trick from the MacOS 7,8,9 days that is often forgotten today. Hopefully it saves somebody else a lot of time and trouble!

ps.. note that the icon for iTunes 8 actually says “itunes 7″ on the center ring of the disc. interesting detail.

Spent my internet-free day tinkering in Flash, mostly with my banner image atop this site. Looks pretty good for a start and for a first time project in the application, but even as 100% vector, it will need some heavy optimisation for the file size to be small enough to replace my static header!

listening to:
Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
Eels

I do have one other web-related project in the works, but I can’t really reveal any more about it yet; still in beta testing! Will work on getting some of my hand-drawn work scanned in soon too; been awhile since I’ve updated those…

listening to:
Icky Thump
The White Stripes

I’ve come to understand that the iPhone is something that I will never, ever own. Not by any fault of the device itself because I think it’s a beautiful and amazing bit of technology (plus I’m a diehard lifelong Apple fanboy to boot), but because of its ubiquity here in San Francisco and the methods by which people use it.

Occasionally I’ll hop onto the municipal bus, and it never fails… at least one passenger has one. How do I know? Because anyone who has an iPhone carries it IN their hand and fucks around with the screen incessantly. It doesn’t really matter how thin or lightweight it is for portability, because nobody carries it in their pocket; just the hand. I honestly believe people hold it and dick around just to show other people they have one, yet strangely they are oblivious to everyone and everything around them. That just makes them massive tools more than anything hip or enviable.

A couple years ago I remember reading an article exploring the negative impact iPods were having on society because they isolated and internalised the listening of music when it has always been a social activity. Another reason I plan to steer clear of the iPhone is that it very, very clearly escalates this strange, anti-social behaviour to an entirely new level.

Not only are the finger-flicking, touch screen zombies filling our public transit system, but also malls, restaurants, bars… even birthday parties. Yes, I have witnessed a birthday party devolve not into boys on one half of the room and girls the other, but the iPhone users secede into their own (literally) dark corner to iChat with other iPhonies; maybe each other for all I know. Or touring a chocolate factory, the iPhone users hung around at the back of the group with their faces and fingers planted strictly to their screens doing whatever was more interesting somewhere else.

I could list countless more examples… bottom line is that even for a techy geek like me, I know where to draw the line between life and not living it; that line seems to be the dotted signature portion of an AT&T contract. No thanks. I’ll go about impressing people the old fashioned way… with expensive clothing.

listening to:
A Dense Swarm of Ancient Stars
I Monster