A tribute to those amazing people on youtube.

            It always amazes me when I go on youtube and find young people doing amazing things with their life. I am not talking about the guys who are 25 and are multi-millionaires, I am talking about the guys who make a living making movies, music, funny clips, etc. The amazing thing is that, while they may never have their own private island, or big house with a big car and a supermodel SO; they don't need to.

            Take the youtube channel frediew for example: it is run by two guys and all they do is make fun clips, usually involving guns, about 5-10 minutes in length. Yet, they are one of the biggest channels and can support themselves doing this for a living and they are happy as can be. In fact they got so much attention, Freddie Wong was on an episode of Chuck, and then Zachary Levi in turn appeared on Freddie Wong's Video Game High School, on-line mini-series. Think about how many people you know got an opportunity like that.

           

            If music is more your thing, then you may want to glance over at lindseystomp, EpicLloyd, or NicePeter. All three of them, write and perform their own music, constantly trying out new things, and do what they love doing. The best part is that they weren't found by some talent acquisition guy, but they just started uploading videos to youtube. EpicLloyd started by uploading a video called L-Verse, where he raps in mostly l-word. He then went on to become part of the Epic Rap Battles of History duo, and go on a tour. All without having a big label. How cool is that?

            I love reading interviews with these guys, because they all say the same thing to the question:

Do you have any advice for people starting out?

and it is the most elequent advice I have ever read. It's such a simple phrase of words, yet it can be the hardest thing to do.

Just go out there, and start doing it.

and that is the scariest advice out there. If you fail in college, you can blame the subject, the teacher, anything but yourself. If you fail here, there is no one to blame. Which is exactly why not everyone can do it, it takes these brave and amazing people to say: "I am going to do it, and risk everything." I say kudos to those people, they are my inspirations: not the Zuckerbergs of this world.

Thanks for reading.

Gaming in the mainstream.

Anyone who has followed Video Games for the past few years, will have noticed two things:

1: Graphics have improved leaps and bounds.

2: The rise of pre-order DLC.

Within the past few years, if you buy any game chances are you are missing something. Take Fable 3 for example, because I pre-ordered in the USA, where I live I missed out on 5 weapons that are available in other countries. However chances are I can get these weapons later for the low price of 5.99 a few months later. People have of course complained about this, and sometimes it does change things, usually not. This is because, true gamers have gotten their wish: Gaming has become mainstream.

            Five years ago, when you bought a game, you had a complete package. A year later you may get an expansion, or an add-on. Gaming was good, but it was still seen as a fad that for the lazy. Then something started happening, more and more people played games; famous comedians began playing World of Warcraft. Game companies caught on, and Gaming was thrown into the mainstream. I cannot watch TV without seeing a commercial for at least one game anymore. I remember when something like this was big news. We rejoiced, unaware of the horror we unleashed. Take a look at how complex games were in the past, sure the engines limited things, but if you pick the wrong traits, it is impossible to get out of the first cave in the Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. On the other hand, in the newest Elder Scrolls you can cast a spell of death and destruction without ever setting foot in the mages college.

            This change was made to attract more people into the genre, and into games. This is an age, where my mother plays Video Games. So companies, saw this and realized more people=more money. Furthermore, by milking a series for all its worth you can generate even more revenue. Assassins Creed III is going to hit this fall, there will be a pre-order DLC, and a day one DLC. It will talk about the Assassins Creed trilogy, and maybe closing it up with the fifth game in the series. See, Assassins Creed II had two spin-off games, both of which could have easily been shortened and made into expansions. Nothing new was really put in, the formula, game play, and major characters are all exactly the same. Yet, we got 3 games for it, and people still have not had enough.

            Now, occasionally we get nice gems: Witcher 2, Borderlands, Torchlight, Bastion, Minecraft. Yet, we sit here behind our desks and complain about the state of gaming, and how its turning into a pile of garbage. Did we not see this coming? Look at early rap and then mainstream rap, look at early movies, and then mainstream movies. The pattern is there, and while we will get nice gems here and there, most of modern day music, games, movies will all be thrash. That is not a bad thing though, because it opens doors for indie developers, and lets us appreciate these gems more. After all if every game released was a diamond, then all diamonds would lose their glint and appeal.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

How to: Reddit.com

            If you have not visited Reddit.com by now, you are really missing out. If you have visited reddit.com, you may still be missing out and not taking full advantage of it. At first glance, reddit seems to be a site about someone called OAG, cats, bacon, narwhals, and people asking really hating God. Which is why I recommend making an account and removing your subscription from those "sub-reddits." A subreddit, is essentially a news bulletin for a certain topic, so on the Batman subreddit you will see the most popular images, links, and posts for the day all of which have to do with Batman. Keep in mind, using the reddit enhancement suite, you can filter our certain sites, but it is a bit more advanced so I will look further into that, in the near future.

            When you first make a reddit account you are automatically subscribed to certain subreddits. You can view by clicking on a dropdown menu, in the upper left hand corner called My Reddits. At the bottom of the menu is an option called EDIT SUBSCRIPTIONS. You will be taken to a menu, and the right side of your screen will show this: 

I highly recommend unsubscribing from the below:

Reddit suffers form a hive-mind, and many times these types of subreddits are dominated by one school of thought. Those familiar with my views, know that I urge people to expand their knowledge and talk with those who disagree with them. Other subreddits I unsubscribed from, feature memes which is text over a certain picture mean to inspire some humor. If that is what interests you, then by all means keep AdviceAnimals subscribed.
            Now we can get to the beauty of reddit. You see each person has their own personalized front page, so you can subsribe to whatever subreddit you want. Fans of Doctor Who, will find themselves on reddit.com/r/doctorwho, and if you want a more in-depth discuission you can go to /r/gallifrey. However, the subreddits are not just about shows, comics, and games; there are always subreddits such as r/howto which feature user generated guides to various things, or /r/lifeprotips feature tips people have discovered for whatever they have thought of. There are even subreddits for motivation, growing a business, or philosophical discussion. 
            Joining is free, and the subreddits are endless, so it is easy to find what you are looking for if you know where to look. Be warned though, reddit can easily kill productivity with it's endless supply of links to the whole internet.        

Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

Take a moment to relax.

            I want to start this off with big news for me: I have reached 100+ page views! Yay for milestones! All right now to the meat and bones of this entry. I have spent the entire month writing about personal philosophies or views of mine on some serious matters. Today I say we chill; sit back, grab a cold on, and take the day off. Today is your day.

            Earlier last week, I was taking a walk with my dog and my mom. She mentioned to me at one point that I did not know how to relax. I realized she was right; I only fall asleep when I am dead tired, I worry about my future constantly, and I spent no time actually relaxing. So I began to think, when was the last time I just sat back and listened to music, or enjoyed a nice drive home. I am always active, even when lazy I am thinking about this thing or that.

            So today, I plan on doing all of those things and more. I have wonderful music I plan on sitting back and listening to, I might drive over to a bookstore and pick up a nice comic book, or I may even dive into a pool and just sit back and relax. I urge all of you to do the same.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

The Mindset of Improving Part 2 of 2

Last Sunday I wrote about the first step you need to take upon improving yourself in an area. Today I want to shift the focus on how to improve when you reach a roadblock.

           

            When people encounter a problem, there are always different ways to approach it, and usually most of them are wrong. However since each problem is different, the correct way always changes. Sometimes it is something as simple as doing it over and over in order to hammer the skills into your muscle memory. However sometimes no matter how hard you try you cannot get past the problem.

           

            Sean "Day[9]" Plott is a popular video game commentator and ex-Real-Time Strategy pro player, he talks about one of these problems in his 100th episode of his show. While preparing for a tournament he ran into a player that he could not beat, they played 10 games and Sean barely managed to win one. In most situations, people might try a new mix of units, or maybe a different build order. Sean approaches his problems in a different way. He looks specifically at each problem he has, and focuses on it until it is no longer a problem. This time he made a new account and reworked his game play from the ground up, he played games until he was back where he was before. He found the same guy and they played 10 games again, Sean destroyed him.

            The beautiful thing about this story is not that Sean was simply better than his opponent due to talent, it is that through identifying his problem and a crap ton of hard work he overcame his problem in such a way that is was no longer something that bothered him. However, the point that matters is his mindset here, it wasn't:

Identify problem->Fix

 but rather

Identify problem->why is it a problem->how can I fix it?

If you look at most help me forums, the questions are just akin to:

I have a problem with this. What should I do?

Which is a small fix, the right question is:

I have a problem. Why do I have the problem?

It is through identification of why, that we get better not how.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day.