Oh, let me tell ya; nothing's improving. I actually just got 4 vaccines (none of them covid) and the arms are quite sore. I'm actually still a bit loopy.
Let's talk about unity. It takes too long to load (upwards of 20 minutes) and it performs so slowly that I can't even do anything in a timely manner. Want to go into play mode? Go get a drink, maybe take a walk as well. Seeing an issue? Have fun staring at the red text while trying to edit it for at the very least 5 minutes! But the worst part... the absolute worst part is the fact that half the time the errors aren't told and you have to try and find it yourself with no reference... even when looking up solutions or using the tutorials I can't fix a lot of the issues on my own and have to ask my peers, who also seem to have the same issues. I don't think I'd be mentally able to work on this infernal punishment of a project during Spring Break. In conclusion:
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I forget the word for it. I'm doing worse and worse. This year has been awful, and school's not doing any favors or making it easier. Meeting twice a week sounds less stressful, but that just means there's less time to ask questions, to learn, and to get used to information.
It's impossible. But, of course, it's always the students' faults. The school board has done everything they possibly can (not) and we just aren't working hard enough. Even this class is more challenging, but at least Mr. B. tries to make it interesting. I love learning about this stuff, and he actually gave us freedom to make our work ours. I can't say that for any other class. The work for the beginning of third quarter was amazing. I loved making the video on 2020. And sure, it was a cringe-worthy mess, but I made every single graphic, edited every single bit, completely made that entire video. (Although I used mario sounds) I was allowed to make it my own. And now we get to make our own video games. I get to make my concept art and my level design into an actual video game. I think that's pretty cool. Really, that's about it. This might be the one positive thing I can say about this awful, awful virtual learning experience. In conclusion
Hoo boy, has this year started out with a bang. I wonder if this will just be more 2020, like how people were talking about some big bad Groundhog Day situation where we all wake up and it's 2020 again. My theory is that if we had all went to bed before midnight, and I mean everyone in the world, that that could have happened. But, thanks to the all-nighters, myself included, we avoided repeating one of the worst years yet.
Anyway, let's talk about what I've done for GAD since the last update. I made a lackluster GDD, a disappointing prototype, and I'm not even done with level design yet. Oh, and I have a sketch due tomorrow. Let's go... What can I expect for the rest of the year? I expect from myself that I am going to continue to not thrive in this awful situation, and I also expect that the work will continue to add up and that I will be no closer to success than I am now. Which is pretty far from it. To summarize:
Thanks for reading, I don't have a safety tip this time. I kept it up for two and a half years, what do you want from me. I tell you what. I This year just keeps getting more and more bad. My computer, usually having issues anyway, is having even more. This is a problem since now I have to use my mother's computer to do some school work, and I don't even know what the heck the issue is as of right now.
Regardless, this is a reflection of me, not of my device's woes. I have been getting more work done this year than the last quarter of last year, however I still am missing a few assignments. Including a project. Unfortunately, I can't do anything until I have working ram. I also have been noticing a rather sharp decrease in my concentration and ability to focus on even the most interesting of things. For example, I used to watch hours on end of certain Youtubers, but now I find myself clicking off of their videos five minutes in and shutting off my phone. I don't sleep enough, and yet I sleep too much at the same time. I am never not tired, I am never not hungry, and I am never not just slightly devoid of emotion. What the heck is going on? Normally I would be trying to fit as many jokes as I can into a blog post like this, but now I just don't have the energy. Anyway, I think this has gone on for far too long. Sorry for the waste of time. To summarize:
Yes, I know there was a reminder. However, even that didn't help all that much. :/
So this year has been entertaining so far, even though the first quarter hasn't even ended yet. It's also been a nightmare, what with my French teacher kicking me out of class for no reason (which was agreed upon by several other parties involved i.e. my parents and peers in the class) and the mountain of work I have received. Although I haven't done all of it, I still am trying to. Anyway, what's been going on in GAD? Well, we played several games and had to review each of them. I got to replay my favorite game of all time, Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, which was great. I also finally got to fully 100% it. I played the GBA version, which is the better version, since it has higher quality sound, less phasing through objects, and an entire new temple, the Palace of the Four Swords.(Which is, upon playing it, a nightmare.) Some assignments came out of that, namely the hardware assignment, flow chart, and whatever discussion post there was. We also played a board game, albeit online. I played Sub Terra with Evan and Madison. I am still working on the graphic for the flow chart for it. I think there'll probably be more on it, but that's all I can remember for now. Sub Terra was also fun. All in all, GAD is going-- maybe not well, but it's going. In conclusion:
Thanks for reading, and remember to backup your computer in case your OS fails. Well hello again y'all. First quarter 1 portfolio check. Sucks that I only did one, but that comes with reinstalling windows and not having reliable internet for most of the week. All that's behind me now, and my nearly melted internet adapter may be laid to rest peacefully.
Anyway, enough with me. Let's talk about... me. (But in a different context.) I have made a vow that I will do better in this class this year, most likely because of my abysmal performance last year. With enough effort and time (time is SOMEHOW a shortage during all of this, maybe because of french piling assignments out the wazoo.) I believe I will have at least a B average. Don't pay attention to my summer assignment grade... This year is starting out simple. I know the workload will accelerate as time progresses, however I think I will be better equipped to handle it. (Minus portfolios I guess) I think that as soon as the adobe suite finishes downloading that I will be working my butt off relearning the basics of and trying to excel at photoshop and the gang. I will hold true to my promise. To summarize:
Bonjour! Is what I would say if I were doing the French summer assignment right now. Alas, I'm gonna wait a little longer on that. Anyways, it's "summer." I can go almost nowhere and do almost nothing. (Except work on my drawing skills and build a minecraft server.)
Okay, with the catch-up over, it's time to be serious. I have actually been drawing, and am using my sister's drawing tablet. Anyway, here we go with ACES I guess. Digital art is easier to make than drawing in real life because it is easier to use an art tablet rather than a pencil and paper. Evidence for this comes from the fact that good erasers and good pencils/pens or whatever people use usually suck. Most default No. 2 pencils have the cheapest possible eraser made, as well as the cheapest graphite. This constantly leads to broken/used up erasers, constant sharpening and re-sharpening, and eventual use-up of many pencils. Pen lines can't be undone. Mechanical pencils are even worse, since the graphite used is usually much thinner than normal graphite. Paper also costs money. However, with the invention of the digital drawing tablet, erasers fully erase, there is no graphite to be broken, no pencil to be sharpened, no money wasted on another 200 sheets of paper, no line that cannot be undone. Free programs such as paint, and many more that don't actually suck, exist for ease of use in making digital art. In addition, any color imaginable (by humans, since there are way more colors that a mantis shrimp can see since they have three times the amount of color receptors) can be used by just one pen, instead of buying colored pencils, which will break and have to be sharpened. In conclusion, with the extremely obvious advantages that comes with making digital art, including eventual saving of money, lack of having to sharpen/by awful cap erasers for the pen, unlimited "paper" for drawing, and free platforms, digital art is better than an old-fashioned pencil and paper. Hey Mr. B, if you end up taking mercy upon me. I've been so tired of everything. I have no excuse for not doing work, I've been so depressed and I've been threatened with being kicked out of the house (I took my soup upstairs so that I didn't have to eat with my mom because all she had been doing was telling me how horrible I am). I just need to pass at this point, so I am doing all I can. Again, I am super sorry. I shouldn't have waited and I don't deserve anything. But, I guess I should try anyway. And whatever happens, I'll do better next year. This is one of the hardest classes to do at home since it's a hassle for both parties to wait the 5 minutes it takes my slow internet to upload a message and for the time it takes to reply.
Anyway, on this really tight time-frame, I've been doing camera stuff. It's actually one of my passions, not trying to sound cringey, doing photography. I really love, especially with available settings such as the ones we learned with this class, (exposure i.e.) getting up at sunrise at camps and taking pictures of it. It's hard to think we as humans went from cave paintings of stick figures and big animals to going out with a box and a stick full of gunpowder to add light and then cranking out a picture, to an even smaller box with a little door that can be controlled to let in an amount of light and then a button being pressed to create a real record of anything. Cameras are a bit complex to mess with when it isn't just the phone camera. Shutter speed is not a thing I thought I'd have to worry about when my father bought me a coolpix b500 or something like that (Not worth the 200-300 dollars it is with how low-resolution the pictures seem to come out.) f-stop is also quite new to me, and it can get quite confusing when I have to edit these. Of course, there are a lot of tools to help with this, such as video tutorials, but I prefer the do-it-yourself method that you gave us last year. The website that allowed us to change all of the do-dads on the virtual camera and it showed us what the picture would look like was extremely helpful. So, overall, "camera-ing" is not that bad. In summary:
Thanks for reading, and don't go to Minneapolis. (I guess this is the final one for this year, huh... well, there's the final safety fact for sophomore year...) So, a couple of weeks ago, I had to not only reset, but completely redo my computer. Reinstalling windows 10 sucks, especially when your chromebook can't download more than 2gb at a time. Yeah, I had to wait 2 hours only for it to say at the end "Uh oh, we can't do this stuff."
I had to use my sister's computer to download it. And then the computer broke my USB stick. Well, really it was that it was just cheap junk. The grip came off and then the actual electric stuff came off and it became useless. Anyway, 3ds max takes a while to download and install, especially with the fact that my home wifi's bandwidth can support about 1.5 people. So that's why I haven't been doing work; also because I basically gave up on the UVW robot, since I've never been able to successfully do anything with them. My first (home) project on my return is my model of Bubble Knight. I want to be able to 3d print it in the future for uses as a little dnd character model. Although, that might be difficult, especially with small scale. Anyway here's the TL;DR
As always, thanks for reading, and don't put your toaster in the same outlet as your microwave! A recent decline in the productivity of our computers at school indicates that it is time for the machines to be replaced. The district has supposedly funded new machines that will be installed and in place by next school year.
Does this mean that we are in for a break? Absolutely not. These new computers are similar in parts to those in Mr. Gearhart's class. ...which suck. They are reportedly "not working correctly" and "crash within ten seconds of opening certain [2d] digital art applications. Of course, we use almost exclusively 3ds max, a 3-dimensional studio... which is not good for a computer that can't even run 2-d stuff. So, what are we going to do? Well, the Gracious one, Mr. B, has been smiting and protesting in many an email to the district to fix their idiocies. This shall hopefully work, otherwise the students themselves might have to throw a coup d-etat to fix the way that funding and materials-gathering works. In conclusion:
Thanks for reading, and don't download random files off the internet like some kind of noob... |
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