Summer Log 2

Yay, more blogging. Well, continuing from where I left off, I've made awesome progress on my Japanese and can now read the whole Hiragana alphabet pretty well. Of course, I will need to practice until I stop second guessing what letter it is I'm reading, but at least I can start reading stuff. Next up is the Katakana alphabet, which is the exact same thing except it uses different symbols. I don't really get that, but whatever, it looks like I'll need it since sometimes when I'm reading different things I see there are symbols I run into that I don't recognize (and I don't mean the weirder, complex kind. They are just simple symbols I haven't learned yet). For instance, my name in Japanese would be pronounced: BU-RA-I-A-N which using Hiragana would come out to:

ぶらいあん

and in Katakana would look like:

ブライアン

(you might not see the above if your Windows doesn't have the Oriental text fonts installed).

Anyway, you can see they are quite different styles, with the first one leaning to what appears to be Chinese. Either way, I'm looking for programs to help me out with this. The best one I've found is this game for the DS called Japanese Training. It looks great and the exercises are fun, but the thing crashes very 5 minutes so it's VERY annoying.

Besides learning Japanese, I've also been learning another "language". Lua! This is a programming language used in a variety of different games and stuff, and in my case, is used in my regularly played Spring. The language is a LOT like Python, and has been pretty easy for me to catch on to. Unfortunately, in my adventure of making a "Ferry Widget" for the game, I've come across quite a lack of documentation on all the functions provided. This doesn't help since I'm stuck doing trial-and-error tests, and when I get stuck, no one helps me out, since most don't know Lua (on the Spring forums). The ones that do are to elite to talk to a noob like me I guess.

Also I've met a really cool client thanks to Scope who hired me to do a web template for him. I've done that work, and he was pleased, saying he'll contact me for future work too! So it's really cool that I'm finally starting up my business. Interestingly enough, it's this type of thing that makes me wonder why I'm going to college in the first place. I mean, am I not studying and paying vasts amount of money to eventually do what I am already doing? I mean, I won't even "learn" any computer stuff (be it web design, Photoshop, or whatever) until 4th semester, meaning I gotta wait another YEAR. Just watch, when that year rolls around, I'll probably end up correcting my teacher on faster methods to create this or that effect in Photoshop.

In other news, I bought Team Fortress 2, have been using Twhirl a lot, and didn't get to see Ghostbusters that last time. It was ending, and my sister just called me to hear the ending song apparently. Though I did get to see Jurassic Park (the first one) again the other day, and I think some friends are gonna go out to see Hancock on Thursday.

Summer Log 1

All right, so I've burned around 2-3 weeks of my "summer vacation". As usual my summer's consist of 100% more computer time, sitting here in my house with little contact to the outside world...you know, besides the internet. X-D

Actually, I don't mind it, and prefer it that way sometimes, but geez. You start to realize that despite the fact you are from Florida (you know, the hot and humid state, where temperatures are usually above 80's, 90's in summer, and humidity makes it feel like the 100's) when you are indoors those large numbers are easily maintained at a more comfortable level by a little something called a Centralized Air Unit. Which, practically doesn't exist here. :P

Each room in the house has 1 AC unit, which we only use at night because electricity here is ridiculously expensive compared to the States. We probably pay more using these 3 units at night then maintaining our old (and large) house back at Tamarac at a nice 77 degrees 24/7. I feel more sorry/worried about my computer than my actual comfort, because this type of ambient is what can kill it easily. :( Good thing the case has large fans, but I've had to keep the case side open since it seems every time I close it up, I start getting some funky errors with the hard drives.

Anyway, besides burning up in my chair, I've also started up another chapter of my webcomic, Just Deserts. I've also been reading a lot of Manga online, currently having finished the latest of Eyeshield 21 and School Rumble (both of which are a bit more than 270 chapters long, around 4-8 pages a chapter).

It has also finally pushed me to point of learning Japanese, reading these mangas. So I've started practicing the writing first, memorizing the supposed 46 main symbols of Hiragana. So far I got my vowels done, and the ka, ke, ki, ko, ku syllables as well. There is no real alphabet, it's a syllabic alphabet, and then there's the Kanji symbols, which are full words or phrases. There are thousands of those, so they will be last on the list. :P Though you don't have to memorize all of it to read manga and stuff. Anyway, Ghostbusters is on TV, so I'll write down everything else I was thinking about later. X-D

Graphic Design Competition

This is something I posted about a while ago on my comic blog, but I think I should move it here to avoid any future problems. ;P This was posted 5/9/08.

So, my group won the competition. It was extremely nerve wrecking as they went down the list of all the entries, which were e-mailed to the director to be judged by a group of professors and herself. First half were the entries for the concert, second was ours with the Communication and Design entries. They showed ours second to last, so the whole time I was worrying whether I had e-mailed it wrong or something. Anyway, let's go back to the beginning.

We started on Tuesday with 2 speakers, Guillermo Valverde and Germán Barreneche. In the evening we began brainstorming the ideas for the poster we had to make. My group was really enthusiastic, and they were throwing ideas around everywhere. I sat back and doodle the following in my book:


So I showed my idea to the 1 or 2 people sitting by me, but I never presented it to the group. They had their own idea going, and weren't really paying attention to my sketchbook, so I didn't really care about anything at that point. They had asked the 2 guests for help and advice. On one of these discussions, the guest through out an example for us (as it seemed he wasn't really into any of the previous ideas). The idea he drew, was pretty much my second doodle, a speech bubble with a scribble (in my case, a blob of paint) in the middle. When he drew that, I pulled out my sketchbook. He looked at it and seemed impressed, asking if I had presented this. Admitting I hadn't, he told me not to stay quiet about anything, present everything. Anyway, we continued the brainstorming.

By then, seeing as how my idea didn't seem unanimously received, I got bored and was walking around checking out the other groups' designs. Near the end, I was outside talking with friends, almost ready to leave when they called me inside. They were talking to the second guest (Germán, I believe) who had a speech bubble with the appearance of a paint palette. The group told me to show him my book, so I did. He was really impressed as well (something to note, is that both of them pointed out my first doodle, the one with the pencil. They seemed to have liked that one a lot as well.) He congratulated me for the idea, and told me that I just needed a little bit more effort to have reached the palette idea. My group cheered and that day ended awesome.

Unfortunately I wasted that night Photoshopping some images of the idea I last heard we were gonna use (as the group never told me, ok, let's use yours). Oh well, Wednesday came, 2 other dudes spoke (mainly on urban art), and once again we started working in the evening. This time I busted out Inkscape and started working on the actual design of the palette bubble. By the end of the evening I had a cool vector style drawing. However, Germán suggested we try a more realistic approach, by Photoshopping a palette into a bubble. At night, I finished up a set of the final designs to choose from:


So, Thursday came, final day to finish our work. We decided to use my photoshopped palette, but the various teachers we asked recommended different backgrounds. The group decided on black eventually, and I had to edit the darn JPEG manually to fix it seeing as how I left the editable PSD at home! :P The end result is below, once again. So, it was definitely an interesting experience. I apparently won a tablet (getting it Monday) but it's probably the lesser-known Genius brand, one that doesn't really compare to my current Wacom. ;) So I'll be selling that. Lastly, the Germán dude told me to stand up, and I was actually complimented as a "serene intellectual" in front of all the graphic designers at the University! (At least, the ones who were still left in the auditorium, some had left since they lost ;P) Congratulated by all my class, we then watched the University's salsa dancers show off their moves, and here I am, feeling great. Back to work on all the finals I have left!! X-P