Category → Life Blog
A New Idea…
I recently posted something on my shiny new TED profile, and it goes something like this:
I want to create a non-profit that provides after school programs for kids to create and design video games, while also participating in contests where they can win scholarship money for college.
It seems like a smart idea, to me, but I’m just not sure of how to do it.
This is truth. I have had this idea, in the back of my mind, that there must be a way to encourage a pro-creation, perhaps less consumerism-y attitudes in kids. I know of so many people – yes, young people! – who are so driven to be hand-fed their entertainment, every day. They don’t understand the value in creating, in crafting. They hyperdigest games and look blankly at the screen when there is nothing left.
I want to offer an alternative. I want to gear kids towards creating and solving, rather than having disks/cartridges that solve those problems for them.
Ideally, this would be a non-profit. I would want the money coming in to go towards scholarships that enable kids with passion to create – and do so smartly! – to go on to higher education with less stress on their parents.
Do I seem like an idealist? I think this can be done, and can be effective. Schools seem to be in dire need of more after-school programs around here, and in many other places.
Some bullet points on what I would probably need:
- Smart tools for creating simple games from scratch (think WarioWare DIY and Construct)
- Those who are passionate about teaching, and do it well, to help design curriculum and activities
- Math, art, computer science whizkids to help me make meaningful lessons in design
- I would love to incorporate teaching algorithms into the design curriculum… mmm.
- NON-PROFIT EDUCATION
- FUNDING EDUCATION (these are in CAPS because they are the most intimidating!)
If you have any tips, please pass them my way.
Florida?
Hey travelers! There is a great possibility that I will have a day in Orlando. I’ve never been, and I’ll be with a good friend. What would you do? We’re trying not to be high-spenders. (Yes, I know DisneyEverything is there, but we’ve never been to that, either, so we are clueless.)
All ideas/suggestions appreciated! We’ll also be at the STS-132 NASA shuttle launch, which should be fantastic! 
Sakura Matsuri!
I just realized that I totally forgot about this great holiday! The Brooklyn Botanical Garden just reminded me of an upcoming celebration… in… Brooklyn. Surely there must be some celebrating in South Carolina? It looks like there was one in Boiling Springs on the 12th…
I’ve probably missed my chance to celebrate at all, as most folks celebrate in mid-April, but I have to give it a shot! Locals, give me details!
Friend Code!
Just to ride on the recent DS/WarioWare high, I finally got Tim to bring my wireless router back to me so I could download all of those Ninsoft games.
My friend-code is 2751 3945 0117 and my nickname is Jenothy. Please give me yours so we can start sharing games and whatnot!
P.S.: I accidentally tasted Bitter Yuck! spray this week. Yes, the spray that is intended for CATS. I’ve never tasted something so horrible and so difficult to get the taste out of my mouth. Yuck for serious! I can’t believe it doesn’t work on my cats. Perhaps I should make a microgame about it as a catharsis.
Trippin’ Down Memories
If you’ve been reading, thanks for putting up with my trips down memory lane. I really didn’t want to see my old, interesting posts from a less thoughtful journey into BlogLand get sucked up into the black void of the Internets. I’m hoping to return to new thoughts on technology, silence, music, interactivity, and everything else I could possible hope for, but really, I should catch my breath first. I think the silence posts, in particular, will be wild to post on – now that I live in South Carolina, silence is kind of easy to take for granted. Now, I welcome the interruption of a car, etc. More to come on that when I have a less hectic day ahead of me!
I’ve got lots of exciting projects in the cooker, but nothing to show for it yet! It’s a pain, I know! I’m hoping to at least finish my Theremin project soon, but there’s no guarantee. Also, if you have any tips for wading through boxes of memorabilia, please pass them along. It looks like I may be moving in the direction of Greenville when my lease is up, but I don’t want to do that without owning much less, you know? Moving is such a pain, and I hope to be the smartest I’ve ever been about the process this time.
Oh, and a certain lovely boyfriend recently surprised me with WarioWare D.I.Y.! I hope to make a few little games that don’t stink. I’ll be sure to share them when they’re born.
Before I forget: my time was monopolize by a crazy accident on 85 South, coming from Spartanburg to Greenville. It took me ages to get out of it! Just terrible!
Revisit: Working in Silence
Not long ago, I was as soldering lackey at ITP for a semester. Talk about a fight for silence!
Today, by comparison, will be spent in a rural stretch of land where my apartment is. Occasionally, I will hear a car pass by on the road. One of my neighbors told me that the traffic on the road was “ghastly and loud,” that living near it was nearly “unbearable.” I had to pause, because this place has been one of the most peaceful places I have ever lived. We are a few hundred feet from one another, I’d wager.
There are times when I miss Japan for reasons like these. The kind of respect that people would have for strangers – for each other – was so high. It was communicated daily in those morning commutes, even when the A/C didn’t work in the subway cars. Regardless, you needed to respect those around you by moving little and making no sound or unnecessary gestures so everyone would keep cool in a difficult situation. That is humanity, to me, or maybe the essence of human collectives. Feeling that conformity for the greater good was both sublimating and fascinating.
October 22nd, 2007 in “Silence Theory”:
An intriguing topic came up in my Digital Audio Processing class at NYU: by listening to music while you study, it forces what you are reviewing to enter a different part of your memory. What you learn can be recalled easily, but you cannot interact with it deeply because of the multiprocessing of learning and, in a sense, ignoring the music around you.Interesting.
I tried doing 60 pages or so of reading yesterday for classes that needed to be internalized more than memorized. I did this in silence. By the time I finished, I found myself desperately craving sound, music, and change. However, I can definitely say that what I read is well inside my brain.
The key is balance, I believe. If you force yourself to encounter too many sensations at once, consciousness dictates that some information will be absorbed and the rest will have to subside. By trying to read deeply, you desensitize yourself to the background music…
The other day, I was working in the NYU: ITP fabrication shop on a midterm project. During the course of the evening, the hum of the shop and clatter of people created nearly unworkable conditions. I put in strong earplugs and, to my surprise, found them entirely ineffective. The speech of people was too impulsive – too much articulation – and that could not be numbed enough by my devices. I gave up the moment and left until less intrusive conditions resumed.
The respect of space, in such confined arenas, seems totally lost. When I traveled by train and subway in Japan, the unspoken law of quiet and spatial respect nearly deafened my preexisting Western cultural norms. I was instantly subdued to the group acceptance of these two rules by the sheer encompass of them. Somehow, we do not communicate the same understanding or observation of strong, positive social suggestions by ourselves: we need libraries or other declared quiet spaces for that purpose. The struggle of one soldering student, it seems, does not even tip a balance to the casual many.
Are we hardwiring ourselves to be ignorant of undesired sound scapes?
Are we losing sensitivity to the natural consciousness of our sound environment?
Would a good teaspoon of silence each day regain an awareness of what we are forced to miss?
I’m glad to resuscitate these older thoughts from a grave in a PHP database. It just didn’t seem right to copy/paste them into the Multiblog without some background and reflection.
Raleigh!
I blasted back from the conference on Thursday, but I’ve been in nonstop catch-up-and-connect-with-new-folks mode since I got back. Let me just say this: TGC was a GREAT experience for me, and I can’t wait for next year’s conference to roll around! I’m also thinking of going to the game conference in Atlanta in October (SIEGE), which promises to be equally, if not more, awesome.
I was originally turned off to Atlanta after visiting the Georgia Aquarium on a Sunday (around Valentine’s Day, if you must know). We drove around to check the area out, but it seemed, well, dead. If you lived/played in Greenwich Village for a few years, like I did, you kind of have an expectation of what a “real” city is supposed to be like. Walking through Washington Square Park, hearing who was jamming before I stepped into an over-crowded studio/classroom for some music tech lecture or whatnot… that was my life for two years. It was also the best part of my commute into the city from Jersey City. Anyway, we must’ve been cruising through Atlanta’s financial district or something, but we couldn’t find where the hip kids were at. Maybe it’s more of a commuter city? I was creeped out by the lack of people walking around on a fairly sunny day, but maybe it’s just not that kind of scene. I don’t know. I’m still bugging my Atlanta-prone friends about where I should’ve been exploring.
The real push to attend TGC, aside from networking in the game industry I call my “home”, was to check out Raleigh. For better or worse, I know that I need to think about where I should relocate at the end of the year. Not that Spartanburg has done me wrong, particularly, but I know that my options have been extremely limited, even as a technologist, and that telecommuting for most of my work has been an eye-opener into what I value about work. Some of it doesn’t need an office (getting to know people), but some… well, maybe some does. (You know that chit-chat when you just get in, or those conversations over lunch where you discover that your cubicle mate has the same breed of cat that you do? I don’t have those serendipitous face-to-face moments. Ever. It’s always a voice or an asynchronous exchange.) This isn’t just a matter of telecommuting, but probably a facet of being a contractor – your time is always billed, and who wants to get billed for chit-chat? You’re more of a cog in a machine than a member of the work family, which is something I miss about studio life. However, I have seen consultants in I.T. become part of the teams that are also their clients. Perhaps it’s a matter of culture, but I’m sure that seeing my bright, cheery, I-totally-love-working-in-games-even-doing-this-boring-task-How-are-you-today face would be a positive asset if face-to-face contact was more common.
Anyway, there’s no guarantee that I would gain any of this by relocating. More and more studios rely on telecommuters to keep overhead/office expenses down, so it may just be a sign of the times that so much of my work has come through that venue.
The other half of it, aside from “career positioning” or what have you, is the area. I lived in Sussex, NJ, where there were cows. Some people (non-NJ natives) still don’t believe there were cows, or that I didn’t immediately know what “exit I was off of the Turnpike.” That one is so old. Please, give it a rest. I lived in Pennsylvania for my undergrad (small school) and Jersey City with a commute into Manhattan for graduate studies (NYU… big school). Despite living in so many different places, I’m just not sure where I belong.
I really enjoyed my time in Raleigh, though. So clean, so friendly… I was just surprised. Oh, and those parks throughout the city! And trees! There’s a lot I haven’t touched on yet, so I’m planning a return trip in a few months to see if it’s where I should settle, perhaps for more than a year or two! I’ve been a nomad for the past bunch of years. I hope to change that. Maybe I’ll figure this out before my lease on this apartment ends!
I’ll be in… THE TRIANGLE.
It’s totally true! Next week, I’ll be at the Triangle Game Conference in Raleigh, NC! (April 7-8) I’m hoping to meet with studio folk to see what’s shakin’. It should be lots of fun!
Therefore, I’ve been looking up tips on networking and conferencing. I don’t know many folks in North Carolina yet, but I hope to change that soon. I’ve been listening to an interesting podcast on approaching groups at Manager Tools. I’m still pretty awkward at conferences, but I hope this will better my odds of being less shy/more sure of myself.
I’ll be late for the first day, but I’ll be there both days! If you plan on attending, feel free to send me an e-mail so we can meet up!
A Previous Life
I just remembered a very, very awesome trip I had a few years ago in the ancient, mystical, tech-savvy country of Japan.
If you’re curious about my adventures, you can still read about them! It’s strange for me to read this old travel log now, as there are so many things that would have been less surprising if my first trip had been done when I was older.
Enjoy!
http://jen-in-japan.blogspot.com/
New Beginnings!
I’ve got lots of new things cooking on the backburner, but not much I can share… yet! I’m hoping to have something new (either virtual or physical) completed soon.
However, I know the need for immediate satisfaction is among us! Therefore, I’m taking a risk. I have created a Forumspring account. Yes, you can now ask me any question you want anonymously. I’m a little scared about what may come up, but I’ll do my best to make sure the most interesting questions are answered first.
Let’s give it a go!
