Long time no update. The last few weeks have been a blur, filled with many ups and downs, from being too numb to care about anything, to one of the most relaxing and comforting day of my life. Anyways, some quick updatez!

I’ve been working for exactly a month now as the Web Manager/IT Support Specialist for the College of Media Arts and Design school at Drexel University, and it’s pretty cool. Pretty much, my job entails of keeping the website up to date and answer requests from the 15 or so different departments in the college, and my office being located in a building where Graphic Design, Fashion Design, and Design & Merchandising have their labs and classrooms, provide them with technical assistance as well.

While I do know my way around Windows pretty well, OSX is still relatively new to me, so I’m not a pro at that yet; luckily my office-mate is, so he handles most of the technical stuff around here while I work on the website until I get more competent at the technical requests. Still unfamiliar with all the settings, procedures and passwords, hopefully I get better at that, and will be able to troubleshoot things beyond cloning monitors and Fonzing printers. While both students and professors come in and ask for help and may catch me offguard, especially since I’m still not entirely confident in the fixing of solutions yet, it is nice to not be stuck behind a computer all day, and I do get to walk around, reimage machines, change hard drives, and even climb in the ceiling and install security cameras!

There are some parts I dislike, though. Mainly making promo DVDs for the college. For some reason, our department was lumped in with the duplication and printing of DVD/CDs, as well as the creation of the data on the discs. While I’m the most qualified to do it out of our team of four, I certaintly don’t remember how to do it well, so it’s taking me more time than I’d like to do it, and I much rather focus on web apps.

That being said, my favorite part has been making suggestions to improve the workflow and processes that go on behind the scene on the website. I’m currently developing a CMS for the news/events and the departments on the site, as well as a management area for the CoMAD portfolio, which will eventually be a full system where eligible professors and staff can edit the content of their departments and such.

Ideally, I want to automate everything, as I watch my code do all the work for me.

Another app I’m working on is the management of the student-late list functionality, and right now, it involves paper, messy emails, and blog posts. Fuck that. This is project is for use in-house, and will hopefully save our department a lot of time in the future. That being said, here’s an obnoxiously “2.0″ interface, using the names of current and former members of Dark Tranquillity and Ensiferum.

Don’t know even where to begin.

So me and the girl were having a fight. Things were going great for a few days, and a hypoglycemic episode ensued. I didn’t know what to do, so I was just like, “Hey, relax, I’m going to get some food.” Can’t get the car started so come back inside and ask her how to work her ignition (was some weird prob). Not as hostile as before, but not exactly inviting, so I sigh and open the door to go back outside. But this time there was a little kitty cat mewing right outside the door.

The cat immediately ran up to us and was rubbing his head against our arms and just being an adorable purr-box. The girl saw my face glow and already knew my next question: “Can we keep it, can we keep it!?”

We went to Harrisburg that night and brought him with us. Along the way he decided to have a disgusting accident in his carrier. Had to stop at a place on the turn pike (wtf are those called?) and clean both the cat and cage out. Gross as hell, but I still loved that little cat. We get back to Harrisburg, and he’s more energetic, still a bit exhausted it seemed, but was eating and drinking a little bit. Had some diarheea and mewed a lot while using the litter box (his nickname was “Poopscream”). He had some strange quirks to him, but if they were of any concern, we figured the vet would figure it out the next day.

His vet visit went great; didn’t have FIV, leukeimia, got rabies and distemperment shots, he was all good. Figured he wasn’t eating/drinking much because of the shots, as that usually knocks them out for a day or two.

A day goes by and he’s still lethargic. Getting worried, I call around to the vets and tell them the story, each has a different opinion. Nothing seemed that serious, though.

This morning, I go to his room and he’s just sitting in a corner, looking forward. Not even turning his head towards me to look at me. I hop around, try to get him to play a bit. Nothing. I check his food and water, as I haven’t been at the house for a day. Hasn’t eaten anything. I rush downstairs to look up the closest vet.

I find the Germantown Animal Hospital is only a few blocks away, so I run upstairs to put him in the carrier to take him. He doesn’t budge and can barely move. How did this happen so fast? Fuck the carrier, I scoop him up in my arms and dash outside. Breathing slowly and not moving from whatever position I put him in my arms, I get to the hospital.

I get in and retell them the story and when the doctor comes out, he immediately just sighs and says “Awww.” Fuck, this isn’t good. I say he hasn’t been eating or drinking, and he’s skinny as is, and he explains how dehydrated he is, judging from the elasticity of his coat (I think?) and his eyes. And a fever as well. He explains the options of giving him treatment and pumping fluids into him and giving him antibiotics, but has a low chance of survival. Would be $200 for that, plus $80 to put him to sleep if the treatment doesn’t work in 3 days. I’ve known this cat for 5 days, and already spent $150 on vet visits and food/litter.. I can’t afford this..

The doctor says the best thing to do is to just put him to sleep. Debating it, I go outside to make some calls and get some advice. This cat was like my sign of hope. Right now, I don’t have a job, no school, not even a place to call home in the area, and recently separated from the girl, but when I saw that cat, he just resonated with me that everything will be okay.

Everything will be okay.

So now my sign of hope, my good omen, my angel was literally dying in my arms. After deliberation, I signed the papers to have him put to sleep. Kissed my boy on the head and told him goodbye.

Went outside behind a bush and broke down over a cat I never knew.

He didn’t have a name officially. But I called him Leviathan. See you in the stars, boy.

So, last week, I had a meeting involving several people from Drexel’s Biomedical Engineering/Science faculty, including the director, as well as the director from Digital Media and others from the College of Media Arts and Design. They discussed a possible curriculum merge for the two disciplines for those interested in pursuing a joint focus.

At the suggestion of the Biomedical Science graduate advisor, I think they’re going to make a concentration of Digital Media as “Biomedical Science”, rather than a joint master’s, to lessen the red tape of Faculty Senate approval and what not (which can take a year plus). So while not as cool as having a Dual M.S. in Digital Media and Biomedical Science, I guess I can think of some cool way to name it. “Master’s of Science in Digital Media with Pseudo-Telekinetic Powers… In a game.”

Also, was suggested some classes that the DIGM’s would find beneficial, such as:

Medical Sciences
Neuro study
Cognitive Psychology
Biomechanics
BCI/Psychology
Brain Imaging
Education

My only problem with their suggestion is that they take the 12 directed electives in the DIGM master’s and turn that into Biomed classes, makes sense, but then they take the New Media Project (9 credits, a “practice” thesis project, if you will) and then the Thesis Development classes (9 credits as well) and turn those into Biomed Classes. I want to have the New Media Project for a chance to synthesize these two fields, as well as get credits for thesis development, as I do not want 3 grad classes on top of a thesis. This plan removes no DIGM classes I find no use for, and removes classes I want to take. So if they’re all about custom-tailoring, then we’ll need to tweak that a bit.

Now I need to sign up for the grad program and then try to get an assistanship somehow, because without that, I don’t know how I’ll be able to afford this. And have been going through a lot of stress, so need to decide if this is what I really want. Them being all about it was really intimidating and sort of an eye-opener of, “Shit, this could really happen.”

Just had a meeting with the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Adviser and it went pretty well. He suggested I may be better off just pursuing a Biomedical Science degree with some Digital Media classes to augment my studies, rather than a dual master’s in Biomed and Digital Media. He seemed excited about the possibility of someone with my background entering the program, potentially bringing in new ideas, and explained to me some possible avenues that this education would afford me, virtual reality and such.
For a stipend/tuition waiver, I’ll need to talk to someone else and since my GPA is good, but not awesome, I may have to kick myself in the ass for an assistanship and gave me a contact for that, as well as the Biomedical Science advisor.

No concrete updates at this point, but he did his job of advising me and made some suggestions at a possible route to take, as well as the next go-tos. Will let you know!

When I played world of Warcraft, me and my roommates played on an Role-playing PVP (RPPVP) server, which means that 5% of the players are hardcore roleplayers.

The other 95% hate roleplayers and kill them.

Touching two topics briefly that will eventually get their own posts (both roleplaying and PVP), I’ll mention them  briefly in the context here. I don’t understand roleplayers, but if they can recapture the awe and immersion I’ve felt when I first touched games like EQ, EQ and even WoW through a noob-lense, great for them. And while I’m all about freedom, in an MMO setting, this usually means ganktards. I’d love the option to settle a heated score with my sworn nemesis out in an open field of battle, as our fates cross paths, leaving only one bloodied and alive. As epic as that sounds, it usually winds up being, “Oh cool, someone 35 levels higher than me and his friends just bent me over when I was killing some gnolls at half-health.” The nemesis thing also reminds me of another good post in the making (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, BILLJOHN).

Like I said, more on my ideas on RP and PVP in a later post.

Where was I? So anyways, [fuck, I'm going to give a teaser for yet another post] the girlfriend has been trying out Everquest 2 for the past few weeks and I want her to check out WoW to give that a go.. I think she’ll like it more, but we’ll see. So, I’m at Will’s house and he’s showing me his pimp warlock and I told him of my plan to make a character with the girlfriend and level it up along side her to play with her. She levels slow, as she’s a new player, enjoys doing quests, reading stories, picks flowers, etc., so I figure I can easily always catch up to her in a shorter amount of time, effectively throttling my time playing (which is a good thing right now for me).

Anyways, fuck, this post is supposed to be about THIS.

I make a character to play with her and I’m thinking of a name to use. I’ve already used the appropriate names on other characters (Sycophant, Pulse) and the other names I use just wouldn’t fit for an Orc Warlock (Niteflyx, Hypolocrian), so I come up with an awesome alternative.

Orcrobot.

Half-Orc. Half-Robot. As soon as I logged in, I knew I had created greatness. Maybe it was late, maybe it was the painkillers, maybe it was the Orc made out of entirely win, but either way, shit, it happened, and I still can’t think about it without lolin’.

I now understand roleplaying. Roleplaying as an orc who became a robot who knows no feeling, other than regret and despair. Now I gotta come up with a macro that randomly says a few quotes of his.
“run \DPS.exe -t”
“I am programmed only to destroy and regret my decisions.”
“COMMENCE(OrcCopter);”

Now I just hope I don’t get reported for being a bot. Because I’m just roleplaying as one. DON’T RUIN MY IMMERSION.

So for the past month of being part of the college graduate crowd, I’m kind of at a loss on what to do. Ever since I started at Drexel, I knew I wanted to be a part of the gaming industry. As what, I had no idea. After taking some classes, I realized I wanted to animate, and then at a later point, be a more technical artist perhaps. After trying for the last two years or so to be a part of the gaming industry through networking and attending events and such, I’m still having trouble getting in. But ever since Lazybrains caught all this publicity, there was some talk about maybe pursueing a master’s doing that at Drexel. So I’m torn.

The Industry

It’s been hard as balls for me to get into this. It’s really frusterating knowing that I’ve worked my ass off for four years, been doing everything that “I should be doing” and still can’t get in. Attending the IGDA meetings, meeting awesome people in the industry and people who are just interested in development, going to the GDC and all that. I make what I think is a badass portfolio, then see others way better. So maybe I just need to improve it and spend a few months on doing that.

Continuing Education

I’ve been looking at Master’s programs all over the country. Most are CS-oriented gaming degrees (Penn’s Computer Graphics and Gaming Technology, Digipen’s game-focused CS Master’s) but some are more art-technology and theory based (like Drexel’s Digital Media Master’s). Ever since the Lazybrains thing, there has been some talk about a dual-masters in Digital Media and Biomedical Engineering, which would be right up my alley, and I could continue to work towards a degree while making neurogaming prototypes. Awesome.

Problem with this is, it’s more money. I would need to get mad scholarships, stipends and maybe a job on the side. Not that I’m not willing to do that, but still. The stipend would have to sustain me living, plus the awesome debt I’ve racked up on my bachelor’s.

So WAT?

All this, on top of pressure from parents to settle and take a web design job. Frusterating as hell working your ass off for four years, doing everything you needed to do, everything you should’ve done, and then just told to settle for less than what you wanted. It feels too much like giving up. When I think about the dual-master’s in Biomed and DIGM, it seems like an awesome opportunity to become more of something. An entry level position at some game company is one thing, and even if I work my way up, is that what I want? Maybe I could start my own neurogaming studio of the future.

I hate settling for less than the best.

Anyone have any advice?

So, our senior project is still getting more publicity. It seems everytime we get another article about us somewhere, someone else reads it and wants to hop on the Lazybrain-train. Choo-choo!

For those that don’t know about what Lazybrains is, here’s a snippet from my portfolio:

For our Senior Project at Drexel University, myself and four others designed a game engine framework and a fantastical, game-like 3D environment and we explored the influence that new methods of interfacing may have on the user’s immersion in the interactive, virtual world, as well as new elements of game-play. To achieve this, we worked with the school of Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, specifically Hasan Ayaz, to bridge the neuroimaging device, the fNIR, into our development environment, essentially giving us the ability to use a player’s cognitive activity as an additional gameplay mechanism.

The week before our senior show, we were interviewed by CBS3 and they told us to expect it in the next few days. Well, we get an email this week saying it’s going to air finally, so we all gathered up at Conor’s to watch Lazybrains’ television PREMIERE.

Although both Aaron and I were taken completely out of context, it was still awesome to watch and see our neurogaming prototype on the news and get so much attention. It definitely garnered more than we would have ever expected. After this airing on CBS3, we got another request for another news publication sometime in the next week or so.

Maybe I’ll be able to work on other new-interfaces like this in the future, who knows. There was some talks about offering us the opportunity to do a dual-masters in Digital Media and Biomedical Engineering (which I’d be all about), but in order to do this, they’d need to offer me mad scholarships as well as some kind of work study thing where I get paid on the side, too. So we’ve all been in talks with the directors of both fields about this and nothing really happened when push came to shove, but Ken’s still talking with them about it, so who knows?

Master of Science in both Biomedical Engineering and Digital Media sounds good, though.

Here are the other articles written about us:
Philadelphia Inquirer
Lebanon Daily News
CBS3

So, while shopping for pizza dough at the co-op with Shelly, I came across this gem:

Bluebeard’s Original Beard Wash. For you scruffy pirate’s out there (I’m lookin’ at you Will), only $14.00. :O

Three roommates have vowed to play through seven Mario games (SMB, SMB2, SMB3, SMW, SM64, Sunshine and Galaxy), back to back, until they’re all completed for charity. On their website, they have a live feed of their room with a picture-in-picture of their gaming progress and a chatroom with over 400 people in it at the time of this post. Going from 3pm eastern until whenever finished, these guys have already raised $800 some dollars in only an hour! And they’re only in world 2 of SMB3..

I’ve always loved the Child’s Play charity. I should do a Mega Man version of this.

EDIT:

Holy shit, $2616 raised at this point! And only on Mario 64, keep it up guys.