Ten: A Lesson Learned from Lockdown

You know those things in life where something relates really well to another thing, even though the two shouldn't be related? I'm going to talk about that for a bit.

The one thing in my case is Tae Kwon Do. Sparring, specifically. Where you put on some protective gear and fight a similarly outfitted opponent. When I started, sparring was all about just making contact with the opponent. Swing a foot blindly at a large target and hope it hits. Try not to let the same thing happen to you.

When fighting stronger or more experienced students, I found that they could always reach me and do their damage, but I could hardly seem to make contact with them, much less a solid strike.

It was about that time when I first discovered the second relatable thing – a sport called Lockdown.

Now listen to me. Don't leave when I tell you that Lockdown is a video game game. Please.

Lockdown is a game where you join a team of up to five other players and battle with swords, guns, and bombs against an opposing team of equal number. The goal of the game is to capture certain areas of land by standing on them. Holding more areas (often called "points", as in "point of control") gets you more points more quickly.

Bear with me. Just a little more explanation.
Within this Lockdown game, there are three classes you can play – Guardian, Recon, and Striker. Recon isn't important for this discussion, so I won't describe it.
As a Guardian, you carry a large shield which you can use to defend yourself and other teammates. Having the shield up prevents you from attacking but will also slowly heal you and those around you.
As a Striker, you get a booster on your back that allows you to run very very quickly for a few seconds. When the Striker booster runs out of power, you have to wait a few seconds for it to recharge, at which time you are vulnerable. As a Striker, your sword damage and swing speed are strengthened.

How do the two relate? It's something I've only begun to discover recently, especially when sparring in Tae Kwon Do. I will usually fight in two styles, depending on how I'm feeling. In one, I give a high pressure fight, throwing fast kicks with a relentless force, never offering the opponent or myself a break. In the other, I wait patiently, keeping up my strength, controlling the center of the fighting area when possible, and throwing super fast single or double kicks when the opponent gets too close. If the opponent does get in close, I use powerful kicks to try to make them rethink their decision.

See the connection? Maybe not.

I've literally learned from my experience playing Lockdown as a Striker that even though you're going fast (kicking is like close combat with swords in Lockdown), you have to also be accurate. As a Striker in game, you can't just zoom into the enemy and start hacking at them, because they'll do the same to you. Instead, zip in, swing once really quick (because you have those sword bonuses), and then zip back out, and then immediately back in to repeat the process. The same applies to sparring. In Lockdown, when you've zipped to the point of running out of Striker boost (run out of energy in sparring), you step away from the fight and try to keep your distance until your strength regenerates.

As a Guardian in Lockdown, you wait. If someone (say a Striker) comes up and starts hacking at your not-invincible shield, you wait till you see an opening between their swings, put your shield down for a split second, swing yourself, and then put your shield back up. Keep moving, even though you're slower, control the center of the battle, and wear them down. When they run out of boost, pursue them relentlessly, and swing quick and fast, ready for them to retaliate at any point.
This relates directly to sparring in Tae Kwon Do. Read the last paragraph again, but think about it in terms of fighting with kicks instead of blades.

I could go more in depth about stuff like aiming kicks the same way you try to swing at a player's blind spot in Lockdown or fighting on the point in Lockdown to keep getting points for your team even when you're contesting just like you fight in the center of the sparring ring to keep the stationary advantage... but I feel I would bore you.

This may not be an insight for everyone – in fact, I'm sure it isn't – but this is an expression of a lesson I've learned from a game and been able to apply directly to life. I've realized just recently that the reflexes I use in one sport are the same that kick in when I participate in the other.

Lockdown and sparring. Who knew there would be a connection?

Nine: "Mnemosyne" – Eye Color

This is the least inspirational blog post ever. But at least you'll learn something about me. Maybe.

By the way, potential sporadic series called "Mnemosyne"? Basically means "memory" in Greek, and it's where I'll talk about something from years gone by... I have lots of mnemosynes of the weirdest kind, so it won't be hard.

Mnemosyne

Preschool. We were filling in some sort of fact sheet about ourselves. I think we measured our height, wrote our family's names, and stuff like that. Well, it came time to declare our eye colors, so everyone went over the the mirror sitting up against the yellow painted wall and took turns staring at ourselves. I was one of the first up and so  got up there and looked really close. The problem was, at that time I'd never dealt with eye color before. I didn't exactly know what I was looking for. Moreover, there was a line behind me. So I stepped out of line and went back to my desk.

I overheard other kids as they discovered their eyes to be blue, green, or brown. In confusion, I asked my teacher if someone could have black eyes. "No, not usually," was the basic response.

I went back to the mirror when the line had abated and looked at myself again. I looked reallyy close. But I could not discern any color – it was just a bluish white eyeball with a full black center. I flagged my teacher back down (again) and told her that I couldn't tell what my eye color was. She looked and told me to just put brown, so I did.

Now

Fact of the matter is, my eyes by default really are black. My eye color changes, which I suppose it always has, but it is normally black. If I'm in the Sun a great deal, my eyes tend to be more brown, but in all other cases, they have no discernible color whatsoever.

When people ask me what color my eyes are, I respond with brown. I do this for two reasons. First of all, they kinda are, just not all the time. Second, if you tell someone your eyes are black, then they often think you're a little kid who just can't figure out what your eye color is. And for me and my obvious Asian looks, everyone assumes brown anyways and just thinks I don't know it. So I say brown.

So there you go. Next time we talk, look me in the eyes and tell me if I've been spending time in the Sun or not. ;)

Eight: Highest (Never Have Imagined) Demo

Just a short one here because I think it's time I get off my computer.
But don't judge me – it's for a good cause. I've been writing and editing music pretty much the whole time (if you must know, I took an 8 minute break to catch up on E3 news).

The song I've been working on is called Highest (Never Have Imagined).

The background/reason for the song:

A good friend of mine has a birthday coming up in the autumn season, after school is out. Basically, I'm planning a couple of projects in advance right now, because my July month is all but completely blocked out – university summer program and church summer camp, and I start school August 1. 

So I asked my friend what I might do for their birthday as a gift, be it artwork, music, or whatever. When I proposed a song, the friend immediately said yes to the idea. 

That's basically the background and the reason. It's a birthday song for a close friend. There was the motivation.

But that was earlier in the week, and I had another problem. I sat down yesterday for two hours, playing with different instruments and different melodies. Usually, doing such lands me on some inspiration which leads to the rest of a song. No such luck yesterday. I ended up with nothing except the chord progression to Nicki Minaj's "Starships" or whatever it's called, which I found on accident.

I kept running into the same progression, no matter which key I played. For you music theorists, it was some combination of I, vi, IV, V. For you non-music theorists, this.

Is it pretty? Yeah, sure. But it's also THE most overused combinations of chords ever. Don't believe me?

Alright, so I had a problem, because all I could do were the I, vi, IV, and V chords. Thankfully, a new tune hit me late last night and stuck with me till this morning. This morning, I planned to just do a little of it. You know, record a couple instruments.

...I've spent 8:30 AM this morning through 12:00 noon – stopped for lunch – and then through 4:30 PM just working on this. I constructed two verses, a chorus, a special repeat at the end, a bridge, lyrics, and THE ENTIRE SONG IS EVEN INFINITELY LOOPABLE as an instrumental track. 3 minutes 40 seconds of audio, like I said.

All I have to do now (and by now, I mean later) is figure out the vocal harmony. And then sing the whole thing.

But isn't that just like me? Getting a project with a deadline of the autumn season and almost finishing it half-way through June?

Why is the title structured so weird?

Simply, the original name was going to be "Never Have Imagined", but that specific line ended up being the third line in the chorus instead of the first or last. The first line in the chorus is "This is the Highest", so I chose "Highest" to be the main line, and "Never Have Imagined" to be the subtitle.

Why are you talking about it and not letting me hear it?

Well aren't you a feisty one? I've got 20 seconds of it here. The entire thing is 3 minutes 40 seconds, but... I don't want to show off the whole thing yet.

There are lyrics too, but I've yet to record those. Like I said, I think I'm done for now.

When I do finish the whole thing, I will release the instrumental version via Bandcamp. The lyrics will be reserved for the recipient only.

If you would like to hear a sample of my current favorite brainchild, click here.

Seven: A TotalBiscuit Review Review

This is a review of a pseudo-humorous review by a British man named TotalBiscuit.

The original five minute video of his review is here:

Background

Currently this week, E3, one of the biggest electronic conferences annually, is taking place in Los Angeles. Yesterday held the press conferences for XBox, EA, Sony, Ubisoft, and more.
TotalBiscuit's review is on the XBox press conference, which I happened to watch live. I know everything that happened, so when he gave his comment, I figured I'd give mine and compare/contrast with him.
Use the timestamp headers to identify where I'm commenting on in the video.

0:05 - "We brought games this time, really!"

Yeah, really. The first press conference where the new XBox One was revealed was just full of, "You can watch movies! You can watch TV!" and on and on. People don't care about TV on their XBox. I don't want TV in my XBox. I want games.

Granted, all things considered, they really did bring games this time. Almost the entire 90 minutes was dedicated to games, with very little on the Kinect or TV at all.

0:11 - Metal Gear Solid

The conference opened with this game trailer. I cannot remember the name of the gentleman who directed this video, but he is kind of the Stephen Spielberg of game trailers. And I gotta admit, this one looked pretty cool. If you have to, go look it up online and watch it for yourself. The character dynamics look really developed, and the bad guy is really [expletive]. 

And I've never even played any of the MGS games before.

Do I agree with Biscuit? I agree with his honest review, which is different from this pseudo-humorous, overly critical one.  It looks interesting enough.

0:22 - "Exclusive... no, not exclusive."

Alright, this was really stupid. The community manager up and posts that the game will be available only for the XBox One on Twitter. Later, he corrects himself and says that it won't. And yet the original, incorrect tweet is not deleted. That is to say, "We know we made a mistake, but the people who come late and see this tweet don't have to know that. They can think they're getting something special." I have a problem with that.

0:40 - XBox 360

...what was even the point of this? Why are they remaking the XBox 360 and charging more for it, when everyone already has theirs – it's been 7 years since the 360 came out – and anyone looking for a new one would just buy the One? Makes no sense from a consumer standpoint.

0:50 - World of Tanks

So we're bringing hugely successful PC titles to console because the PC platform has so many more players. Alright, I can buy that. 

But we're also going to completely misrepresent the game. I ain't buying it no more.

This also raises the question: who will be the first company to get their hands on League of Legends or Smite? Therein lies guaranteed money.

1:05 - Dark Souls 2

"I like Dark Souls. It's great fun to play," SAID NO ONE EVER!!!! And contrasting that fun Indie title from before (the Magic Token game, which we know almost nothing about) with one of the most gnarly (as far as creatures go) games around is pretty bad. Moreover, the tech used to run Dark Souls is old as dirt. Have they done anything to upgrade it? Not by the looks of it, no.

1:27 - Ryse: Son of Rome

First of all, I feel like this Ryse guy was named just for the trailer. "The gods knew that a hero would rise." ...or, erm, ryse. Yeah. Fail.

Megan and I actually watched this one together, since she's into the whole Ancient Greek and Roman thing. I guess I am too to some extent. Cheezy, she called it. Way overdone. "They didn't fight like that," she said in paraphrase. "You don't just go in yelling, 'Whoo! Destroy the tower!' and fight some guys and then 'Destroy the tower!' and in come the catapults and the tower goes down and you storm the city."

Of my own opinion, I have problems with the gameplay. In open combat games, like that, I need to be able to play the game how I want to play, not PRESS THE BUTTONS THAT THEY TELL ME TOO, OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

"I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the-- NO NO NO!!!"

1:54 - Killer Instinct

This used to be a good game. A lot of people liked it. But the company who produced it, Rare, is stepping down in lieu of Double Helix, a rather awful game developing company. Biscuit stresses this in the video. Other than that, who doesn't like a planar brawler.

The presentation of this game was face palm worthy, too. Scripted to absolute death. One community representative and one developer come to the stage and play, and the dev destroys the rep. Owns her. And then he goes on about how, "Oh, I can publish this awesome replay to my friends!" – scripted. Then they play again, and just as they start, the rep says, "Here's how I like to share with my friends!" and enables Twitch. Twitch is a live streaming website where people can watch you play stuff live. Scripted. Even the Twitch chat was obviously fake. I hate stuff like that.

2:04 - Sunset Overdrive

We don't know much about this game yet, but in full honesty, it doesn't actually look bad. It's bright, it's fun, it's got huge potential – very much a Team Fortress 2-like. No gameplay, but I'm following this one.

2:19 - "We brought a car."

Yeah, I didn't get this either. It was reallyy stupid.

2:25 - Don't even remember the name of this racing game.

So the core mechanic of this game that makes it special is that the computer watches you as you drive. It learns how you drive and applies it to the computer-driven cars to make them lifelike. Is that creepy? Maybe.

The computer can also go out onto the internet if you let it while you're away and race other people around the world to see how they drive and apply the knowledge to your game. Is that creepy? I guess.

And the lines between single and multiplayer become blurred since the whole thing is shared online. If you're playing a race, who knows? Maybe when you pressed single player and started a level, it added the old race of someone from Sweden to the game to race against you. Creepy.

2:56 - "Here's a bald British guy."

hahahahahahahahaha well said, Total.

3:04 - Minecraft XBox One Edition

"Oh look," Microsoft said. "A new console. Let's put Minecraft on it! Because Minecraft equals free money!" Pretty much sums up the thing. And the console versions will ALWAYS be inferior to the PC version. Just... get over it.

3:12 - Quantum Break

What... IS THIS? It looks... cool-ish. Inception-esque. But we saw a three minute cinematic, not a game. How do you play it? How does it work? What do you do? Remember developers, we want to see gameplay. GAMEPLAY! Is that ever so hard?!

3:18 - Project Spark

Alright... this guy was creepy. Talking about giving the gift of game development to the people as if it were some campaign promise or... an infant or something. 

Now the game itself. It looks absolutely amazing. Take a blank playing field. Give it structure (add mountains, rivers, villages), set the time of day (to the hour, which changes the shadows), give it weather and environment (sunny? snowy? desert? woodlands?). Then build characters, give them brains, construct upgrades, choose a bad guy, and then play the game you just built. And everyone can build their own games and play other peoples' games. Imagine all the awesome map makers from Minecraft doing this crazy stuff with AI, except that you don't have to be awesome to do it. You just have to have $500. 

Seriously though, of all the games at the XBox con, this one looks the most promising. We are definitely keeping eyes on for this game.

3:39 - The Tablet

Remember how I said earlier how they didn't stress TV or the Kinect at all at this conference. Well, they did stress this tablet thing, which has been around for the XBox 360 in obsolete corners collecting dust for a long time now. And suddenly multiple games devs are using this tablet to play their games, Project Spark included. And the question is why? That's like Bill Gates coming out and saying, "Dudes, you gotta use this old computer! No one uses it or talks about it, but it works and it'll help you." Why?!

3:54 - Killer Instinct Again

Oh yeah, I forgot. They bring KI back again. And this is where they do the cheesy demonstration thing.

And I thought the exact same thing when I heard it live. The emcee guys says, "Just let it happen, it'll be over soon." Like, what? Like that's something you say in morbid, inappropriate situations. Like when you're about to beat your child or something. Need I say more?

4:07 - Microsoft Points >> $$$

For some odd reason, XBox has long used its currency in Microsoft points. You pay real money and get Microsoft points. They're like tokens at an arcade. The problem? You buy them in round numbers. 

"This game upgrade costs 18 MP! Well, I have 16. Let's go to the store and buy two more, right?" No, you buy 20, or 50, or 100 points at a time. I don't want 20 points, I want 2.

So they're finally switching to just using real money. Good (for once).

4:20 - Crimson Dragon

When this game showed live, it had no sound.

You do not.

Do not.

Ever.

Bring a product that someone else is probably paying you to advertise.

And show the entire world of 1.7 million people watching.

This product.

And not.

Include.

The sound.

Ever.

This was a *shake my head* moment and laugh as I imagine Microsoft trying to straighten things out with the producers of this game. 

And the thing is, the game production company (whose name escapes me) is actually a good company! Maybe we'd know more about if this game is gonna be as good as we could expect. If we had the sound.

No, Microsoft. Bad. Bad.

4:30 - Dead Rising 3

The first Dead Rising game was dark and gloomy, but had a fun character who had some great one-liners and could combine weapons to make amazing stuff.

The second Dead Rising game was dark and gloomy, but had the same humor. You could ride around on a wheelchair with miniguns hanging off of each side. Functional miniguns. 

This Dead Rising looks like poop. Dark and gloomy, but with no humor and no ingenuity. You know what we call that? Zombie clique. Something no one gives two neurons about. Poop. 

Would I play it? No.

Also, I love Total's interpretation. "For those of you with three arms..." Seriously, the zombies get to be great in number on screen, so the guy demonstrating it pulls out his phone and calls an airstrike on the zombies. Pretty cool, right? Just do it from your phone! It's realistic.

Um, I have two hands on my controller. And I'm certainly not holding my phone in my mouth to do this. Do I look like a dog? How do you expect me to do this? Look away from the screen where all the stuff that can kill me are? No, can't do that either.

Thanks for nothing.

So yeah. I'm currently watching through the EA conference, but I'm not even sure if I'll finish it.

I might write one more of these about the new Pokemon games (because what the heck) and the new Super Smash Bros game (because what the heck) and the new Elder Scrolls game (because WHAT THE HECK), but that's for later.

Thanks for reading if you did. If you wanna see a more honest, good review of what happened, here's TotalBiscuit's real review of the game, which came out hours after the joke one did.

Six: Destin Florida, June 1-7, 2013

I've learned in the past that it's a bad idea to describe every single thing that happened in chronological order in full Technicolor detail... it's just not interesting reading. So instead, here are the highlights of the family vacation I took to Destin, Florida.

In anagram style.

A is for alligators, namely the albino one that we saw at this one place. Only a few of them exist and only in special controlled habitats, apparently.
B is for Brusters, because we ended up getting ice cream there... twice? They had a Sea Salt Caramel Toffee flavor down there... not bad, actually.
C is for Catherine, because she played kind of a big part in the trip for me personally. That's enough about that, though.
D is for Deweys, a sea food place right on the coast that we visited twice. In an effort to avoid fried foods (burned oil and other such things which I might rant on later), I had the grilled shrimp and the grilled scallops. My final judgment is that the scallops are a better single bite, but the shrimp make a better meal. I hugely recommend both, however.
E is for eating, because a lot of our trip revolved around it. :D
F is for flags, namely the red ones which signal potentially dangerous waves. We had a bunch of red flags when we went out there (even if the waves were less than that), and on one day, double red flags. Double reds indicate, "Don't swim!" due to waves or currents or storms or whatever. For us, it was the tropical storm rolling across Florida when we were out there. It didn't affect us, but it did the waves.
G is for grace, because I needed a lot of it on this trip.
H is for hot and humid. What else do you expect from Florida? Not that it's a bad thing – I almost enjoyed it. Compared it to the Dominican Republic more than once, I think.
I is for I don't know what goes here.
J is for Josiah. Because he did a lot of weird things on this trip. Among the highlights were sleepwalking and putting on an extra underwear over his clothes; digging a hole in the sand five foot in diameter and four feet deep; and making those jokes that only Josiah can. I don't honestly remember any of them now though.. sorry.
K is for kart racing. Kaitlin raced on the "big kids'" track this time and did pretty good. Some people take these casual kart drives too seriously though... *cough cough* Megan and Dad *cough*. An example? Some kid two karts in front of me is riding a turn a bit on the outside, and the kart between me and him tries to wedge inside. Just as that's happening, the kart two ahead realizes he's not as inside as he could be and cuts in. They ram into each other and spin out. And there I am at 20 miles an hour right behind them. The impact knocked the sunglasses off my face. The tracks were nice – I won't go into full detail cause that would be boring – and the people were for the most part too.  :D
L is for laziness. Both on the trip and my ability to think of anything else to talk about.
M is for mini golf, something we seem to do regularly when we go to the Track (see T). For the last... oh, I don't know, four or five times we've gone mini golfing as a family, Megan has been able to ace the final hole. Now Kaitlin is Megan's age and apparently has stolen her skill. Whereas Megan struggled along with the rest of it, Kait holed-in-one. yay
N is for Nothing comes to mind for this letter.
O is for Oceans. The movie series, not the actual thing (although both are valid). As in Oceans 11, 12, and 13, two of which we watched while we were there. Not bad stuff, except for the glorifying stealing part.
P is for pink pants. Megan bought a beach towel of much pink-ness and decided to wash it with the rest of our clothes. Well, the color leaked. A lot. She owes me a new pair of pants.
Q is for quiet. There was some good of it on this trip, which I'm glad for.
R is for Red Brick Cafe. Gluten free, dairy free pizza. Mmmm. We visited twice. I tried the garlic chicken pizza (because it sounded good) and the bacon cheeseburger pizza (because I'm a MAN. no... really because I was just curious and not really hungry that day anyway). Megan got the same pizza both times. I don't know exactly what it was, but it tasted like french onion soup on a pizza. Pretty good and I highly recommend it.
S is for sand, because B for beach was already taken. Nuff said, though, right?
T is for the Track. A place of kart racing, "bumper boats", mini golf, and other such amusement things. A regular stop for our family, and this trip was no exception. Consider looking at K and M for more details.
U is for umbrella, like the one that we used to block the Sun. One day, the wind picked up under the umbrella and blew it across the beach a solid 300 feet (100 metres) before I grabbed a hold of it and brought it back.
V is for video games, because as one of my friends noted, they weren't absent from this trip. OH WELL, what you gonna do about it? xD Only kidding.
W is for wind, because there was a LOT of it. There I am trying to take a nap under the umbrella with the loose tag, and the tag keeps flapping against the umbrella, making an un-patterned but un-ignorable sound. Keeping me up, that thing did, and I blame it on the wind.
X is for the text face you make when you're upset or something: >.<. I think I used that a lot while I was online, but I'm not exactly even sure.
Y is for WHY did I choose to do this style of blog if I'm going to have five of them I don't know how to fill?
Z is for zzz, as in sleep, because I maintained a better sleep pattern while I was out there than I do here at home.

And there you go. Hopefully, that was entertaining enough for you guys. Next blog already in the works.

Grace and peace!