A Creative Casaulty...

Refer to my website please :)

2010-05-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

Hey!

So for a while now I've been trying to maintain both the blogspot blog, as well as my website... but really if you'd like to follow me you should be checking my website :)

So if you are at all coming here for the blog please refer to this link

Thanks for reading and hope you'll continue to do so in the future!

The first steps in a right direction

2010-05-03T17:47:00.001-07:00

I may have drifted for a while, but I did as I always do... I thought long and hard, weighed my options, and made a plan. It was very tempting for a while to jump ship, and try to swim to shore; but I knew that the idea of what I'd find was merely a mirage. Really I knew I needed to try to make my ship sail again.

Ok enough with the analogies, I've made a bit of a plan for myself in an effort to make my life better in Montreal. Part of that plan was to move out of my current apartment, and find someplace new with new people. I ended up finding a great place, and through a little perseverance managed to find someone to rent my current apartment and moved out last weekend. I really couldn't be more excited, I actually technically have four roommates now, I life in one of the older buildings in Montreal, the apartment is two stories, we have a washer and dryer, and crazy enough... we have a back yard!! My bedroom (which is the size of my last living room), overlooks the garden in the back. Although it's taken a lot of work, and a lot of cleaning, I'm finally getting settled into my new place. The thing that really struck me, was that the first morning I woke in my new apartment... I heard birds :) I never heard birds from my last place... ever! I get to park right outside our front door, and our neighborhood is just that... a neighborhood with families and kids playing in playgrounds. The buildings aren't quite so tall here, and at night my bedroom is dark and quiet. While I'm not sure how long I'll stay in my fourth apartment in Montreal, I'm hopeful that it will be for quite a while.

The first morning, I do the same thing I do every time I move to a new place, I took a walk. As I walked I was greeted by people walking their dogs, cleaning their cars, and it was fun to see so many parks and playgrounds in the area. It's funny, I never know what to say when I greet someone new on the street... so I usually stay quiet not being sure if they speak french or English. This weekend I was walking by this old African lady, and her dog, as she was sitting on the stoop of her house watching children play. I gave her just a nod of the head and her face brightened up and she said, "Allo darlin!" and I couldn't help but just smile and know... that this was a good place... and that I think I was making some good steps in the right direction :)

Today was the first day back at work since I moved, and really... I had such a good day. I was really productive, and things just went well for me today. I came home and went for a walk, and now I'm sitting in my backyard, drinking a beer and blogging :) Life is pretty sweet. This is just the first step, and hopefully things will just continue to get better.

Adrift

2010-04-20T18:21:00.001-07:00

I feel like I'm lost at sea. I have no view of the horizon, and a thick fog has set in... There are no birds, no indication of land fall. I can't quite get my bearings, I just keep gripping onto the mast hoping that things will pull through. Yet I'm alone on my ship, nothing but a soiled star chart and journal to keep me company. I keep wondering if I dive over, could I make it to land? Or would the current take me under, and drag me to the deep. There's a possibility that this ship could carry me to new and unforeseen lands, yet my faith is dwindling... There's no one to blame really, besides myself. See I crafted this vessel... I put my blood, sweat, and tears into it in order to make it float. So why jump ship? Why abandon my creation? There's no perfect answer, one way or another... so I drift. White knuckled gripping the mast... This would be the time where others might reach for their trinkets and pray. Pray for guidance, resolution, maybe even land... Not I. For I put myself in this mess, and I'm sure I'll be finding my own way to shore. I just don't know when I'll get there.

New Section added

2010-04-17T12:58:00.001-07:00

Hey all!

I just added a new section of my website titled “Experiental Play.” In it is an analysis of experience in video games, and how it could impact our constructed realities. If your interested be sure to check it out!

A Familiar Feeling

2010-04-07T14:42:00.001-07:00

It's hard to explain, but is a feeling I've come to be familiar with... It's sort of a change in the wind, perhaps it's best described as an epiphany. It's like suddenly the stars have lined up in new and interesting patterns, and suddenly I see something I hadn't seen before. It calls for more... It reaches deep down and inspires. I'm never quite sure what will happen when it comes, as I've learned that a great many things can happen in a short amount of time. I'm not sure what all of this means, but part of me feels a change is on the horizon...

For one thing I've begun writing again :)

More to come soon... I promise.

I'm Here

2010-03-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

(Click the image)

I don't know about you... but sometimes I certainly feel like a robot. This was amazing and just really cool I thought. I think everyone needs to take half an hour out of their busy schedules to try to watch this at somepoint.

A change in weather

2010-03-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

Ok so I know I've been really bad at updating this! I had to read the last post before I start writing this one to know where I had left you off. Ironically enough not too much has changed. I'm still reading thought provoking books, work has still been work, and well the only thing that has changed drastically is the weather. This week has been nothing but sunny and warm. Although I've had little time to enjoy, being at work, it's certainly nice to be greeted in such a way in the mornings and evenings.

Work has been a bit stressful, but all and all good. I'm making a transition right now, sort of off of one projects and onto another. This sort of rapid transition feels a bit strange, as suddenly I'm being integrated onto a new team, a new group of people who have already been working on this project for quite some time now, and away from a project that, while frustraiting at times, I had become quite familiar with. I think it's natural for anyone to be a bit nervous about the unknown. I had, in some ways, developed a sort of comfort zone with the work that I had been doing. I knew what needed to be done, how to fix problems that arised, and what was expected. Now? It'll be a bit learning that all over again I suppose, but I'm looking forward to it. One of my only concerns is that I hope they don't move my desk at work, I've become a bit comfortable where I'm at and the people I'm surrounded by. I'll for sure know more by next week as the transition becomes final.

I think I've been thinking much broader lately, and am trying to look at my life and how I spend my time more subjectively. Conclusion? Well not much yet haha, I've just been trying to be a bit more proactive with my time... but by proactive I don't necessarily mean just being productive but also taking some time for myself.

I'm still working my way through that book on mythology, and have begun thinking of some relationships between what Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers have been talking about, and the gaming industry. I've begun thinking of questions like, "Do video games establish certain views and expectations on the world? Can they help us establish our own morality? Could they ever initiate us into the community?" Perhaps that's some things for whoever might be reading this to think about.

Ok I guess that's enough for now... I'm off to try to enjoy whatever is left of this beautiful day!

Loosening the knot

2010-03-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking soo much lately. I dunno it just seems like I keep running across different things on the internet, or have conversations that has encouraged some deep intellectual thought. About what you might ask? It's hard to explain really, it flows from thoughts and theories on video games, mythology, and inevitably life (past, present, and future) and the connections between these points. I'm so tempted to just start diving into some thoughts and theories I have about it all, but I also feel so obligated to get all my thoughts in order before I do so. Right now everything is just all over the place, a sort of big mess... and I'm still trying to tidy it up a bit to make it presentable. I debated on if I wanted to share some of the things I've found online that have encouraged me to think, and at first I didn't want to... but I think I will anyways. Here are a couple interesting links... I won't share my opinions on them, I'll let you draw your own but hopefully it allows you to do some deep thinking of your own.

Link 1

Link 2

I'd love to hear whatever thoughts you might have on these, as it might encourage some new thinking in different directions :)

How am I doing? I'm doing fairly well, my fair share of ups and downs but I think for the most part life has been positive as of late. I think things may start going in a new and unexpected direction at work, and I'm trying my best to keep an open mind and see where this road takes me.

I was able to go to Burlington this last weekend and visit some friends that I hadn't really had a chance to spend quality time with in a while. It felt just so good to be with them again, I had one really interesting a long conversation with a friend that I had been a bit estranged from for quite some time. I found it interesting to see how much he had changed in such a short amount of time, and just how similar minded we are now. Listening to his termoils I can't help but describe that time of your life as just being a knot of emotions, stress, pressure, and some inevitable mental instablity haha. It's a hard time and the most you can do is hope to loosen the knot every once in a while, but keep chugging on. Listening him I couldn't help but think of him as me just a year ago, and now I feel like I can think so much more clearly and calmly. Sort of like I've loosened my knot, but don't get me wrong... I'm still getting out some of it's kinks.

Well I think that's enough for now... but sure enough expect quite a bit more to come in the near future :)

Good luck and have fun to the Champlainers headed to GDC!

Limbo

2010-02-14T20:46:00.000-08:00

I think it's time for me to start changing some things in my life. I know this may sound very dramatic but I can't help but feel like I'm still in limbo somewhat. I think my problem is that for the moment my life has no clear direction or goal. Perhaps I just miss the structure that college provided me. While I may not have had short term goals (but often I did), I knew what was coming. You could count on it, the seasons would change, you'd get certain vacations, a new semester would happen, new classes and such... there was this constant that was the cycle. Before that was the same, thinking of high school there was a routine that you became accustomed to. Now? It's hard to say. Maybe this is just me realizing that I have to really be the one setting new standards in my life, and setting up goals for myself. With living a full life for so long, it feels a bit strange trying to piece a new one together.

This hit me mid way through this past weekend... what were in my thoughts? Work... I was anxious to get back to work. Not necessarily because I have something waiting for me there, but... well I dunno why. I certainly enjoy my job as of late. What has there been for me outside of work? Not much really beyond movies or videogames, and the occasional outing with people from work.

So I've been thinking... what does this mean? When your preference shifts from your free time to your work time? Perhaps I should get involved into some sort of activities or clubs, or perhaps I should start (or continue) work on certain unfinished projects that I have floating around in my head. I could always fill my weekends by visiting the states, either friends in Burlington or Family in New Hampshire... but part of me feels like that's just me avoiding the problem. I know a large factor in all of this too is that I can't help but feel pretty broke lately and for whatever reason somewhat introverted. I've always balanced between introverted and extroverted, but really when push came to shove I leaned towards being an extrovert.

I'm not really sure people read this or not, and I can really sort of doubt that they would care about all this self reflection all the time. Yet this blog has become more selfish then anything else, and in many ways helps me sort out my thoughts... and inevitably my life a little bit. I'd like to write about interesting insights into video games and their possibly impacts on society and people's development... but for now that's just not what's in me.
If people are reading things, though, they shouldn't take it as I'm being depressed or negative... just pensive and thinking a lot I guess.

I'd like to leave you with some sort of conclusion too, but really there isn't one... not for now at least. I'm still trying to figure out this new road I'm on, that's all.

It's called a Bob House

2010-02-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

My breath is transformed into wisps of smoke as the dance out of my lips. For a moment it clouds my vision as it passes in front of my head lamp. I look ahead with narrow vision, watching the snow covered lake in front of me. I stop for a moment and look up, I can see the light of my head lamp dim as it reaches up towards the stars. The last time I saw stars like this I was in Arizona, what may as well have been a millennial ago.

It's 4 AM, and with sled in hand I continue to make my way out onto the ice. I'm not alone though, I've got a few friends with me and we're making out way to the Bob House (Shanty if your from Vermont) that we had set up the night before. The holes have already been drilled, we now merely have the task of de-icing them and setting up tip-ups at each for a days worth of ice fishing. My body is fairly warm, yet my face can tell that it's bitter outside and that the cold will find it's way in eventually. Some may find it miserable to be waking up so early, to drill some holes in the ice, for the excitement of waiting and watching all day... Yet for me... it was perfect. In many ways I miss things like this. Being out side, braving the cold, and hell just spending time with your friends out there.

Before I left co-workers kept trying to see my logic... they would ask "So your going there to sit out on the Ice all day?" or perhaps "Really... your planning at starting at a hole in the ice? And your excited about this?" I can't help but laugh and smile. Yea, I was excited about this trip. While in the end we didn't end up catching anything worth bragging about... I couldn't have asked much more out of this weekend.

Crunch time... my old friend

2010-02-04T20:03:00.001-08:00

Ah pressure... my old friend... it's been way too long.

I find myself reacquainted with the joys of crunch time this week. Although it's not necessarily a horrible time in my opinion, it's tiring for sure but for whatever reason it always leaves me feeling... good haha. Most weeks by the end of the day I've reserved myself to the fact that the day is over and there will be no more work to be done. This week however I've had no problems chugging through work and puting in 10 hour days. There's a certain sense of accomplishment that goes along with getting a lot of work done. For me I'm happy to be going through this again... sort of a "I've still got it" moment for me haha. Sometimes I do wonder if my potential has dwindled some since college. I find myself more reserved then I once was, and I wonder if I could still get up and give a presentation to the UN? I dunno... part of me wonders while the other knows that it will always be there.

I'm pretty excited about this weekend, I'm off to Sudbury Vermont to do some Ice Fishing! To people at work it seems so strange that I'm excited about going out and sitting on the ice all weekend with my friends. I'm proud to be doing it through, sort of feels like I'm going back to my roots a bit. It's been entertaining growing up in a different sort of way then most people at my job. I guess there aren't many cattle farmers turned 3D infographistes... who knew? They certainly do get a kick out my stories though.

Anyways that's my update for now :)

Am I an Adult Now?

2010-01-31T12:06:00.000-08:00

I thought that after getting my visa and returning to Montreal, I'd find some stability to my life. I'm finding now that I still think I'm in an odd phase in my life. Going from being busy with work, school, and friends all the time, to... not. I remember when I was young, I used to think about, at what time would I be an "adult?" My conclusion was that after I graduated college and was on my own, that's when I would be an "adult." I think I'm still adjusting to my new social status, an almost "beginning of life" crisis haha. Times where I'm left thinking... ok now what? What do I do with my time? Am I in the right place? What will you do with your life? Do you still have the ambitions of the past? I'm sure everybody goes through this period at one point or another, and I think it'll just take a bit more time. Until then don't get the impression I'm not doing well or I'm not happy, quite the contrary I'm doing just fine. I'm just left with lots of contemplation time...

If you've read any of my posts you'd notice that I'm pretty reflective, seemingly always thinking about the past and how it may or may not relate to the present. I've been trying harder to be more in the present, and think about the future. No real news on that yet haha, I'm still figuring out my life it seems.

I will say one thing, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of work that I'm doing. I find it incredibly ironic that I'm doing so much 2D stuff, when in College I tried my best to avoid it at all costs. I marketed myself as a 3D artist, worked to expand those skills, and yet now I find myself doing 2D?? I have some mixed feelings about it for now... part of me worries that I'll be pigeon holed into this arena, yet the other part of me feels pretty fulfilled with my work lately. While I can't divulge much, it's very technical and I like that. It really makes me think and challenges me, and it feels good knowing that I'm doing things that other artists don't really have a grasp of. Sometimes it can be tedious stuff, but at least I'm busy. I also like the fact that I'm working closely with four programmers. The sort of back and forth interaction is kind of nice. I like being able to be more directly involved with development, rather than making a piece and just handing it off. Theres a lot of back and forth right now and I'm the "go to guy" for a lot of things and I like that. So while I'm not super impressed with the kind of work I'm doing right now... I'm still a bit fullfilled by it. Yet I know this isn't the line of work I'll want to do for the rest of my life, my plan is now to do what needs to be done for this project and see what sorts of tasks I'll be given on the next assignment.

I guess as with everything that has gone on with me lately, time will only tell what happens :)

On a side note, your probably shouldn't pull a Wesley and go hike up a mountain in well below freezing temperatures, as the sun is going down, and without proper gloves..... just a few words of wisdom :P

Nostalgic

2010-01-18T14:41:00.001-08:00

I was doing dishes yesterday, a seemingly mundane task. I was drying one of my smaller plates when I flipped it over and was hit by a memory. This Mickey plate had originally been a gift from Ann after visiting the Digitial Now conference in 2007. Strangely enough this memory felt like it had happened a century ago, and yesterday at the same time. It felt ironic that I had been cleaning it after making my sandwich for lunch the next day at work, in my apartment in Montreal. It made me think of a few things, but mainly made me think of Lauren. Somehow the last two years of College could be summed up in a number of meetings, stressful times, presentations, conferences, intellectual conversations, and triumphs with Lauren. Sometimes it feels silly that I hadn't known her the first two years at Champlain, and yet somehow we became the dynamic duo by the end. Life certainly isn't the same without the better half :P

(please excuse the excessively long and curly "Wes-fro")

So sorry it's been a little while since I last blogged, I know in my previous blog I promised something more of the relation of Myths and Video games... but truthfully I haven't had enough time to read more lately, and so I'm still unwilling to promote my findings haha.I returned to week, roughly two weeks ago. I'm finding myself getting back in the groove of things, and after a pretty stressful week last week... I'm feeling pretty good. It's nice to be productive again, and give my brain a real excercize.

Although I'm starting to feel "Burlington-sick" again, and may find my way down there this weekend. If anyone wants to do lunch let me know!!

Anyways I know this wasn't necessarily my deepest post, but I'll try to keep this better up to date... and hopefully write some more about myths in the near future!

Until then... "Nut up or shut up!"

Apocalypse

2009-12-31T13:55:00.000-08:00

I've been really sort of exercising my brain during this vacation. Sort of geeky I know, but I've been finding myself getting caught up into some different topics, which leads to other topics, and inevitably starts to encourage my own theories on things. This all started when I saw this clip from Zeitgeist, which gives an extremely interesting look at religious structure and it's remarkable correlations with astrology. Keep in mind when your watching this though this is from an obviously bias source, but some of the stuff they have to say is very interesting. My Mom then keyed me onto a subject she's been reading about called Noetic Science, which in the most briefest of explanations is: "Advancing the science of consciousness and human experience to serve individual and collective transformation."Some pretty intriguing and hefty stuff here, and could be interpreted to be the actual science of mysticism and basically magic if you will through the study of our brain's and it's unused potential. Needless to say this was already starting to get me thinking about a lot of things. I then received Dan Brown's book: The Lost Symbol, which ironically touches on aspects from both Noetic Sciences and aspects of things discussed in Zeitgeist! While I know it's a work of fiction, there is still a lot of interesting facts in the book relating to both. I now find myself reading The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. This was actually a suggested reading from friends Alain Stracke and his wife Lynda Reid, which sprang out of conversations I was having with them roughly three weeks ago. While I've only begun to scratch the surface, it's already gone further to encourage some things I've been learning from these other resources, and these all have begun to effect/encourage the way I think about life, religion, beliefs, and even the gaming industry. I HIGHLY recommend looking into some of this stuff, as I've found it to be incredibly interesting and I can certainly see that this won't be ending for me any time soon.

While I have a lot on my mind there were two things I wanted to talk about briefly in this post... First of all the concept of the "Apocalypse," which ironically enough has become quite popular with kids my age (yea I'm still a kid...) and definitely the entertainment industry. You hear many genres now being "Post-Apocalyptic," and typically involve atom bombs, zombies, mutants, and the like. Yet I think you'll find this as interesting as I did... did you know the literal meaning behind the word "Apocalypse" is "lifting of the veil" or "revelation?" This doesn't quite sound like Armageddon to me. The Bible even discusses "revelation at the end of the æon, or age." (please note that even though I'm linking wikipedia right now, this also comes straight from Zeitgeist, The Lost Symbol, and I think it's discussed some in The Power of Myth.) If you watch the clip from Zeitgeist, you realize that the "age" discussed could be the new celestial age of "Aquarius" which we'll be moving out of the age of "Pisces" and into. Brown brings in a few interesting points, and implies that perhaps this pending "Apocalypse" is actually predicting a new age of enlightenment. New revelations that may shake the foundations of the way we think, interpret the world, and live our lives. We are constantly making new leaps and bounds as far as technology is concerned, we can move matter faster than light, we're doing crazy stuff with dark matter, and we're even developing mini-lightsabers for field surgeons... Could break throughs in Noetic Sciences lead to a new age of revelation? Although it's also a good thing to point out that in any age of enlightenment, there will most likely be a "dark age" where people may find themselves different sides. Where innovation meets resistance from those who disagree with it either for religious beliefs or possible other ethical dilemmas. Could this impending Armageddon be a clash between sciences and religion? Who knows? I certainly won't be holding my breath in 2012.

I also wanted to talk a bit about Mythology, and it's possible link with society and even video games... but I've already written quite a bit and perhaps I should read more of "The Power of Myth" before I start going into that tangent :P

I'll finish with this though... as I was driving with my Dad today I began thinking about Montreal. It's funny to think that it has been eight months since I first moved in up there, three apartments, four parking spots, five roommates, two visas, and two jobs... To think now after all this time I finally feel like everything has fit into place. I have a nice apartment, where I can now park my car, I've got a good roommate, I like my job, I've got my visa approved, and I finally have a circle of friends. It's only taken me eight months to sort out my life haha. Yet it finally feels in place, and I couldn't be more excited for 2010. For me it's actually the start for the rest of my life, 2009 was a transition period between college and career, and 2010 marks the official start of my career in a sense. I have nothing but high hopes and positive feelings about this new year. Some great things happened in 2009, but 2010 is going to be better :)

Happy New Years everyone! Let's make 2010 a great one!

In the land of sand and snow

2009-12-18T21:27:00.000-08:00

"Do you ever get the feeling like you already know the entire contents of the universe somewhere inside your head, as if you were born with a complete map of this world already grafted onto the folds of your cerebellum and you are just spending your entire life figuring out how to access this map?"

(Larsen, Page 315 in "The Selected works of T.S. Spivet")

First off Yes I'm still reading this book, call me a slow reader, whatever it's been a great read. I found this particular passage really interesting to consider... I've wrote about "The Secret" in the past, and how I believe sometimes your perceptions create your reality. This to me sounds sort of similar... have you ever had a feeling like you knew the outcome of something, whether it be good or bad? Just sort of knew what might happen? Perhaps in some strange way it's Deja Vu, perhaps we then "will" it to happen like the "Secret" would suggest, or perhaps the answer was there to begin with. I won't write much further on this as I don't want to dilute any opinions you may have on the subject, but I think it's interesting to mull over... be sure to let me know what you come up with :)

So as you might have guessed I have returned to Arizona, where my parents now live. It's really sort of interesting being back here, as it's now a whole new level of familiar. Not only is the area starting to become familiar, but seeing things that was from our house in New Hampshire now in this new place was really strange at first. It was little things that struck me, the small sheep magazine holder Dad always had by his chair, the strange old cabinet we have for our canned goods, and even some of the pictures that now have a new wall to hang out. The funny thing is that these didn't feel misplaced, rather they felt like home and in some strange way just sort of fit in... fit into this new home. It's exciting really.

I've spent most of the week with my Dad, exploring things from Petroglyphs to... well the local Walmart haha. While at times he's certainly on my nerves, it's nice to spend some time with him again, as we typically don't spend much time together. Going back to what I was discussing above, the whole "knowing something before it happens" bit. Well as you may have known I've been in limbo for quite sometime now as to my future, first it was complicated to get the official job offer, and since then I had been waiting on the Canadian government to either approve or deny my visa application. Something deep in my gut told me that things were going to be alright, although after all this time I had begun to get pretty nervous about what the results might be. Well I received a great phone call earlier this week to inform me that my Visa has cleared and that it appears that I'll will be continuing work with Ludia at the beginning of the new year! I'm excited to say the least, I mean for a while now everything in my life has been short term... and to now have a full time job and everything all set... to just perhaps settle in for a while rather than being a nomad. I'm super excited. I'm especially happy to return to work with many of my friends from Mistic and my new friends from Ludia. Not to mention others who I have met in my travels in Montreal. Although with the nice weather in Arizona, I'm not exactly super excited about returning to the Arctic haha needless to say I think it's great. I'm really looking forward to 2010 for some reason... Something in my gut tells me it's going to be good.

One last thing I'd like to mention, if you haven't been following the EMC Blog, the team has been at Saint Lucia to test the first episode of their game. I would be wishing them the best of luck right now, but as they have proven time and time again... Luck has nothing to do with it.

Ironically enough I was a South West flight to Chicago last week (on the way to Arizona) and I just so happen to pick up a copy of the Spirit magazine in front of me. I start to thumb through it, actually just trying to use it to cover the fact that my carry on didn't fit in the seat in front of me, when I stumbled upon this article. Low and behold I'm sitting on a plane reading about the Emergent Media Center, Ann Demarle, and projects that I have worked on in the past. I was beside myself and couldn't help but laugh, and try to explain it to the incredibly uninterested passenger next to me.

To be honest sometimes I wish I had stayed, I miss the EMC and the work I did there. I see others where I was before and I'm jealous, almost like someone else taking your baby away from you. It's all different now, and in many ways I know I don't belong there anymore... but seeing others who have stayed certainly makes me wonder if I should have too. The work they do is... well good for the heart :)

Although part of me knows that it was the right decision to start my own path. To venture out on my own and to open up the next chapter of my life. That's probably the same part that knew my Visa would end up clearing haha.Well it's late and I should really end this long post sooo I will.

G'night anyone who actually takes the time to read this :P

A change in weather

2009-12-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

Thinking back, for the past several months my thoughts have revolved around this sense of isolation that I had been feeling. I had blogged about it plenty, and it troubled me quite a bit. Yet, something curious has happened and for some reason it's changed. For those of you who don' t know, I'm still waiting on news about my next work visa, and during this time I can't legally work. So I went to the states for a little while. While there something strange happened, I had this sort of anxious feeling to get back to Montreal. I tried hard to justify it, it's not like anyone would be available to hang out, and how man times had I sat frustrated in the middle of french conversations that I couldn't partake in... I couldn't understand why I wasn't more ecstatic to be in the States.

Needless to say I returned last Sunday to Montreal, the day before my Birthday. Benoit suggested that he had been talking to some people from work and who we hang out with, and he thought we should have an "Apero." Which is sort of like just having appetisers and drinks and inviting people over. I wasn't sure, as I don't typically host parties, but I decided... What the hell, why not?

I spent my day doing chores, preparing Christmas stuff, getting stuff for the party, laundry... all the good stuff haha. Luckily for me it managed to snow on my birthday, which holds a special significance to me. See I don't think I've ever had a birthday in which it hasn't snowed just a little bit. While there are times I'm not too happy it's snowing, on my birthday it's different and I couldn't be happier.

That night I was so surprised to see so many people arrived to partake in the Apero, and even surprised me at my door with a cake! There were people from work, and people who Benoit and I hang out with and even some americans :) I'll be honest, I'm not sure I've ever had such a big birthday! I mean when I was a kid I think the most I ever invited over was like five kids. It was really just awesome to see everybody and have such a good night. For this, I really am happy I decided to be in Montreal for my Birthday.

I visited work today to go to lunch with a friend, and it was really fun to bump into some people, whose first reactions were "Your back?!" Which I unfortunately kept having to say, "Not yet." It was nice though seeing people be excited to see me, and all anxious to hear about my visa. The head of HR at Ludia was mentioning that I have quite the fan club, as different people on a daily basis ask her about me :)

I suddenly find myself feeling apart of a community that I've developed for myself in Montreal... one that I wasn't quite sure I had. I'm not sure how I managed it, but in the time that I've arrived here... I've somehow made a place for me here, and I already feel a bit connected to Montreal in some way. What worries me now is my visa, and if I hear no I'll be starting from scratch once more... For now though, I'm thankful for my time up here, the people I've met, and the experiences I've had.

An American Living in Montreal

2009-11-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

I can't be the only one who thinks that random acts of violence have the potential to be pretty hilarious. It's not that I actually want to hurt anybody, quite the contrary. Relatively speaking I'm not really a violent individual... but do I think about how funny/horrible it might be if I were to suddenly scream "THIS IS MONTREAL" and kick someone into the Metro. Not that I ever would... Sure you could probably blame video games, or many upon many years of other violent media on shaping such supposedly sadistic thoughts. I'm sure people reading this may very well, but I don't. I've made it clear on several occasions that I believe that we are merely made up of our experiences, and obviously exposure to such things probably has had some impact on me. Yet, I enjoy my seemingly random strings of thought. Do you ever find your self happy living inside your own head? Perhaps this life of half isolation that I've been living has had some negative effects on me. Yet lately I find myself quite content in my own head.

I remember in college I had tendencies to laugh at my own jokes, or alternative views of reality that I might imagine in my head. Few people would actually notice, but when they did it was always sort of awkward sometimes trying to explain. As inevitably it never quite came out as funny as it was in my head. There was one friend though in College who would always encourage me to share what I was thinking, I got so used to sharing that now that I don't... just feels strange sometimes. Since I was encouraged, I think its made me day dream even more. Without having an outlet made me sort of depressed for a while, but I think I've become comfortable with it again. I've chosen to be quite happy lately, and it's been good :)

I do believe that we make out own happiness, and naturally we need to have both good days and bad. Perhaps I'm only speaking for myself, but there are certain days where I'm unhappy because I chose to be.

The other day I thought about writing a blog post with whatever entered my mind at the time. Just a little stream of thought from the world I live in everyday. While I'm sure it may seem like random babbling, I think we all need to be more in touch with our own inner ranter; and to truly understand someone else... perhaps we need to hear how the world is perceived in their eyes.

I thought about all of this on my way to another french outing, and how if I were to ever write a book about my perceptions about life living in Montreal; I may call it "An American living in Montreal." Although it's still unknown as to how long my stay here will actually be, and of course there comes the question of actually ambition to do so.

One thing is for certain though... If you see me in a seemingly mundane environment, and catch me trying to hide a smile. I very well may be thinking of a random act of violence...

(Disclaimer: I don't actually always think about random acts of violence, nor do I have any intention on hurting anyone. The point was to talk about random thoughts, and well this post is certainly full of them)

Take life as it comes

2009-11-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Life is always changing, and ironically enough change can be the scariest thing sometimes. In this respect, for a little while now, I've tried my best to be prepared for anything that might come my way. The way things have gone for me, it seems as though I have to be prepared for the unexpected as in most cases, they turn out to be some of the greatest experiences in my life. My first excursion for the Emergent Media Center for example, heading off to Eliot Masie's Learning 2007 conference. Seemed like such a rash thing to do, but lead to so many other great possibilities for me. It's funny to think it's been two years since then, and it's been fun reading about the newest EMC team at this year's learning conference. All that feels like it was a life time away, and I've certainly changed along with my circumstances since then.

A lot of people ask me what my plans are, and really they are quite vague. I like it this way though. I've come to a certain understanding about life, and it isn't based on certainties. For me it's based on balance, the most we can do is try our best at whatever we set forth to do, have a positive attitude, and hope good things return to us. Along with this though, we have to have ups and downs in our life, and it's important to have both equally. If we didn't have hard times, how could we truly appreciate the good times in our lives? We need bad days, to recognize the good ones. I think I'm on my way out of a uncertain time in my life, which was on a bit of a low. My circumstances changed drastically again, and while in some ways I'm still in limbo as to what I'm going to be doing, things have begun to balance themselves out I think. The limbo part of my life, resides in if my visa will get approved by the Canadian government, which there is a possibility that it won't be. The good part of my life is that I did receive a job offer from Ludia Software in Montreal. Lately there always seems to be more complications when it comes to things, but I'm hoping to hear soon that my visa has been approved. If it doesn't, well I'm not sure what I'll do to be honest. I don't even know where I'd live, would I try to go back to New Hampshire for a while to an empty home, stay with someone in Burlington, or would I follow my parents and go to Arizona? I'm really not sure, and in my mind nothing is set in stone. Whatever happens, I have to believe it's for the best. If my future lies in Montreal, the visa will get approved. If it doesn't, then that just mean life intends on me being elsewhere and that's ok too. Whatever happens, I'll figure it out... sometimes you have to play with the cards your dealt, no matter what's in your hand. One thing I'm sure about though, is that wherever I end up, things will be ok. I managed to make a bit of a life for myself in a new city, I suppose I could probably do it again.

One final note is that MIGS or SIJM (to the french) is coming up next week, and while it's unfortunate that I won't be attending this year, I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some people coming up for this event. Good luck to you Champlainers who are going, as this is an extremely good networking opportunity. Ironically enough, people who I met there last year, I ended up working with at my first job :)

Congrats again to this year's Learning 2009 Team! Miss you guys!

p.s be sure to check out some new sections of my Gallery, finally added a part for the America's Army project and some of my DS work is up there now :)

Montreal it is!

2009-10-30T19:32:00.001-07:00

Well while nothing is official before I can sign something, it looks as though my stay in Montreal has been extended :)

Details on the job offer will follow in possibly a weeks time...

Feels like it could be the start of something great :)

A new Tipping Point

2009-10-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

I found it interesting as I twisted the cable around my hand into a tight little knot. This simple act had been so deeply ingrained into my muscle memory, that it took no thought at all. How many cables had I done the same act to? For a moment I was brought back to Gilford High School, where I worked my summers, even before the kayak shop... Then suddenly I was brought back into the reality that was today. I was packing my desk, for terms that I'm not at liberty to say. I looked down at my phone, reading the text from my Mom to inform me they were now on the road. I peered across the room at Benoit, laughing and saying some goodbyes. So much can change in such a short amount of time, and today I found myself at yet another tipping point in my life. Yet it wasn't just a tipping point for me, but for many and nothing would be the same after today. For better or worse, certain things had been set into motion and now were irreversible.

This road is familiar to me now, while you can never tell where it's going, sometimes you have to have faith that it's leading you in the right direction. Sometimes the bumpiest segments can lead to the best places. The Knees have left Moultonborough, my parents have started their journey west to Arizona, Benoit has finished his internship and starts his studies once more, a friend from Burlington has decided to make a big move, and as for me... well I was really hoping I could be writing some answers down here, but I can't. I still have many unanswered questions, but a hidden trail has opened on my path... and for now I'm hoping to take it a while to see where it goes...

If it's for better or worse, I cannot tell. I can only have faith that things will work out in the end, and hopefully by the end of this day I will know if my future lies in Montreal or elsewhere.In any case, I'll be alright :)

Clear Headed

2009-10-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

It was strange really. For so long this place had been fairly central in my life, a place where you could undoubedly find me every day, and had always been a place filled with familiar faces. In such a short time though, I can't help but feel as though so much has changed. These thoughts ran through my head as I exited the EMC, and headed towards my car. Yet before I could make it there, I was pulled in a different direction. In some strange way I felt compelled to visit the river, so I did. I made my way down to the "Onion River" and found myself soon on it's path once again. I had grown to know this path very well, and it had become a place of refuge for me quite sometime ago. When my head was full, and I needed to figure things out, this is where I used to head. I went to my typical "thinking" spot by the river, and at first this too almost felt unfamiliar. I searched around for any clues, that may ring something deep side. I found that I had been looking in the wrong spot at first, and like a ghost I could suddenly see impression I had made here. I could see myself standing at that very spot, contemplating a great number of things, all of which I'm not prepared to share here. Yet that day was different, my head wasn't full of turmoil. In fact I was at ease, something that I typically didn't bring along with me to this place. I found it ironic that in fact my head was quite clear. I smiled and walked away, without looking back, I left the troubles of the past behind...

It's strange to know in such a short amount of time, I've changed some. I'm not quite the person I was six months ago. For better or for worse, things are different now. Life is constantly changing and sometimes the best we can do is ride the current. Some big changes might be happening in my life soon enough. My best friend from Burlington is moving away, and my parents have both finally found jobs in Arizona and will make their move by the beginning of November. Really I couldn't be happier for them, to have the courage to make a change this big, I really couldn't be more excited for them and their next adventure. Although in some ways I'm seeing what support systems I had for myself seem to be leaving within the next month. With my parents move, there really won't be much for me in New Hampshire anymore. Although there are still people for me in Burlington, it just won't be quite the same without this one. I should be hearing by Monday if Mistic will keep me, and if they don't? To be honest I'm not sure where I'll go. Burlington? New Hampshire to an empty home? Arizona? I can't be sure. Although I'm never quite sure where I'm headed, but sometimes you just have to know that everything will turn up the way it's supposed to, and I'll ride the wave to wherever it takes me.

Congrats Mom and Dad! I hope you find what your looking for in opening this next chapter of your life :)

Anticipation

2009-10-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

It's the anticipation... approaching a time in your life where you know that decisions are going to be made that will judge how where your life takes you. It's the same feeling you get as you near the end of college, the unseen, as exciting as it can be... at times is unnerving. It's hard to really feel comfortable in a place that might be so temporary. Will I stay, will I go? I'm not sure but will welcome what comes my way. Although I will say that I'm still a bit lonely here, something that I thought would have left me by now. There are certain people I miss a lot, so much so that I'm beginning to wonder if that should weigh into these decisions that have to be made. Yet I have begun to make a place for myself here, I really enjoy work, and I'm getting along well with my "Frenchie." I'm not sure what life will bring me, but I'll play with the cards I've been dealt.

Something Familiar

2009-09-24T17:31:00.001-07:00

I walked with the determination I found every morning on my way to work. Almost in a trance, I leave the apartment with Benoit. Talk the typical morning conversations, maybe even some chatter about what today might bring for work. As I made my way down the escalator today though, something caught me off guard. There was someone at the bottom playing a song, not unlike most of my mornings, but this felt different. He was on a flute, and had a boombox playing piano behind him. Something about the tune sort of sunk into me, but I couldn't quite place it. Then for some reason my mouth began to "whisper words of wisdom, let it be..." How could I have not put my finger on it sooner, it was Paul McCartney, quite possibly my Father's favorite singer of all time.The melody had sounded so foreign coming from the flute, but the piano was undoubtable. I couldn't help but smile a little and focus in on the music. Slowly the world around me became quieter, and soon all I could hear was that piano. This brought me back to my Father's green ford pickup, sitting in the passenger seat, undoubtedly on the way to a fishing hole or hunting spot. Even as the doors to the metro closed and we took off, I could hear the piano.

.......

I had just finished doing some grocery shopping after work, my hands were heavy with today's "catch." I crossed the busy street and made my way to my building. Noises of people, cars, and the city surrounded me... yet something creeped into my ear for the second time today. I heard something, through the noise... something that didn't quite fit yet was oddly familiar. Suddenly I realized what it was, and looked up. I looked up to see a flock of Canadian Geese (no they aren't Canadian only because I'm in Canada) in perfect V formation. I don't know why but my heart was filled with glee, as I followed them. Ironically enough they lead me straight home. As my last view of them were framed ironically with roof tops, and one of them belonging to my new abode. They soon disappeared from sight, but not from mind.

I don't live in a perfect world

2009-09-21T18:27:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I find myself a bit disconnected, although mostly it's a result of the situations I find myself in. Moving to Montreal four months ago, without knowing a soul up here certainly didn't help this predicament. Yet in college and even high school I never found that I made many truly meaningful connections with people. Sure I had friends, still do, but not many "best friends" and even fewer relationships. I've become comfortable with the notion of being alone, or at least that what I told myself. Moving so far from what's familiar has made me realize that I was wrong... I haven't been alone. For the past four years I've been able to be with someone truly special. There has been ups and downs, but they've always been there. We've been there for each other... some of my happiest memories are with her. The hardest part about all of this has been not being able to see her every day, talk with her, and laugh. I've been lucky though, I've been able to see her off and on, through quick trips back down to Vermont. Although it's likely that it's all about to change, and that I'll see even less of her. There's not many things I fear in this world, I've been able to overcome a lot in the life that I've lived, but one thing scares me to death. I think I'm going to lose her, and that's going to leave a hole inside of me that I'm not sure will ever be the same.

I tell myself to have faith. That something this strong could never go away but I'm not sure what to think. In a perfect world I'd see her with me for the rest of our days... but I don't live in a perfect world. I live in Montreal, and she's about to live far away.

Life is a Puzzle

2009-09-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

I really like puzzles... Always have really. They come in many shapes and sizes, and some don't come across as puzzles at all. This is probably why I loved the Myst series so much... I'm a problem solver. I was thinking about thisalot this morning, as I was given a list of bugs to start looking into. I've developed my own sort of routine for this now at Mistic, all with very clear and different steps.

Step One: Translate French...

Step Two: Try to comprehend what's really being asked of me

Step Three: See if the file in question has been edited recently on SVN and if so maybe the file was fine before the revision?

Step Four... well you get the idea :)

I found myself having fun bug checking this morning, it seemed that through my system of checks and balances and "steps" I was isolating problems easily and moving on. Of course the greatest part of any puzzle is solving it in the end. Moments like these remind me that maybe I'm in the right profession for now.

This weekend was one filled with trips to Ikea and assembling our new living room! This struck me as odd too, actually going out and shopping for furniture... then sitting back and enjoying my new living room was just so... "adult."

Benoit's sister just arrived to stay with us for two weeks, which should be an interesting experience I've decided. He said she spoke a littleenglish, but what I've found is that a little english really means none. Luckily though I think my french is improving and I have been able to have some simple conversations with her, but we'll see how this goes :) It's always an adventure for sure...

I don't have too much to write about I guess, but I'll leave with a link that Heather sent me the other day. If anyone has taken the Myers Brigg's personality test you'll know what I'm talking about, but a while ago I took it for school and figured out I was an "ENFJ" (like Heather) which means I'm "Extroverted,iNtuitive, Feeling, and Judging," rather than "Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, and Perceiving." Anyways she sent me this link that has a really good discription of ENFJ's and well I thought it was pretty accurate.

Snowball

2009-09-09T09:55:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I wonder what I was like as a child. Are you ever curious about what you'd think of yourself if met your younger self? Maybe not, but sometimes I wonder. I feel like I don't really remember as much as I should from my years back home. Sure I've got plenty of stories of the farm and things, but specific things about high school and well school in general feel fleeting at best. I'm sure it's only because so much has happened since then, that sometimes it feels like it's been an eternity since I actually lived there. It's hard not to feel a little bit of a disconnect I think from things in the past... I can't help but feel a little bit of a disconnect in general, it just feels wierd knowing that I haven't really had a constant "home" in quite sometime. Just moved into my new apartment, my third in Montreal, and it's definitely very nice and I'm starting to get settled... I wonder how long I'll actually spend here. Will I be in Montreal in December? Will I be in New Hampshire? Or will I be somewhere completely different? Things have been known to sneak up on me in the past...

I was able to go home for an extended weekend last weekend, and it was really nice to go back. My only connection to that place seems to be my home now, the farm... which is really a farm no longer. I've long since outlived the kayak shop, the bagle shop is under new owners, and really I had no interest in showing my face around the school. So much has changed here, but then again... I've changed too. Although the more I think I've changed and grown, the more I find clues that as a person I haven't changed much. I read a recommendation one of my High school teachers wrote for me, for my college application, describing me... and well it sounded like a lot of it still applied. A friend of mine explained once that we never really lose parts of ourselves, we just add more layers. Like a snowball collecting snow...

I think perhaps I've been focusing too much on this type of thing lately, although it's hard not to be a little introverted at work sometimes, with all of the french being spoken :) While I've picked up quite a bit, I am still relatively in my own head. It's hard not knowing where you'd headed too... There is still so much uncertainty in my life, with minor patches of stability. While I'm confident that I'll be fine, sometimes its hard not knowing what's on the road ahead. Even now I'm not sure how comfortable I should be getting in Montreal, should I be moving my desktop computer up here and start doing my own work on the side? Or would this be just more stuff to move in a few months? Time will tell of course. For now though all is well, I'll just continue living life.

100 blog posts

2009-09-02T10:16:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

I can't really have this blog be a normal post because this is actually my 100th blog post since I started blogging April 24th, 2008. Alot has changed for me since then, been to a lot of places, met some amazing people, and grew up a bit more in my own way. Looking into the mirror, in my new apartment in Montreal, I couldn't help but see that I've grown up some... while my past still seems to have left a mark on me. I found it ironic that I wore a jacket that came from "Outback" trading company and that it was definitely a fashion choice influenced by my time on the farm, I wore a threadless t-shirt with some nice graphics on the front which could only be representative of Burlington influences, and then my plad shorts which was undoubtedly the kayak shop. I was thinking that the title of my blog posts do a pretty good job illustrating summerizing the path my life has taken since I started blogging. So I'll leave you with the 100 blog post titles, starting with April 24th, 2008.

A Year's end and Reflection

Digital Now 2008, Day 1

The Start of Digital Now Day 2 -- Digital Now day 2... Post Mortem

A Magical Evening

I am rediculously Lucky... Digital Now day 3

Back in Burlington

A little thing may make a big difference, PA Training day 1

There's no such thing as Survival of the Fittest

Identity? PA Training day 4

It's all in your head... PA training Day 5

Dawning of the rest of my life

To dwell in the past...

The ending has not yet been written...

The extroverted introvert...

Meeting the AA team...

The Pan in me

Lessons from Nature... the Clyde River

Staying the course

Just Jump

I was a happy kid... and continue to be

Take what you can... and jump... hell risk it all

Growing up dulls the fantasy

The changing view of the industry (GIVIT Day 1)

The Journey (GIVIT Day 3)

It's all about the Journey (Post GIVIT)

The Green Light

Green means GO!

Tipping Point

Humbled

Faith

Heroes

Ups and downs

INTERFACE INTERFACE INTERFACE

Awake

Getting back up isn't the hardest part

Changes in latitude, changes in attitude

Cape Town... Day 1

Cape Town... Day 2

Friends... Cape Town Day 3

Cape Town... Day 4

The Rapper, The Soccer Player, and Me... Cape Town Day 5

Cape Town day 6&7

Disconnected

Not quite re-adjusted but getting there

We're responsible for what we create

Not making the cut...

Under Pressure

Douglas Knee Sr... My Grandfather

Today it rained...

I'm getting really good at barely gettin by

Seeing others where I began

I'm in a hurry to get things done

MIGS!

Ghost of Wes's Future... MIGS Post Mortem

Vicarious Visions

It's an odd feeling getting older

Wanderlust

Canyon

Canyon: People keep talking!!

Seeing the Finish Line

Maya

Depart not from the Path

Spring break!

So close to the end

A sense of Belonging, GDC Post Mortem

Light at the end of the Tunnel

Beta

Updating Art!

Remembering Africa

The Righteous

Demo Reel!

Website Update!

Last Class.... ever

The next Chapter

Next Steps...

Ready to move on...

A rough start...

Adjusting... Montreal Day 3

Welcome to Mistic!

In my Shoes...

Eleven days in...

Identity

Roads less traveled

On the inside looking out

Guilt

Routine

Fireworks

Shoes

MYST MOVIE?!?!

I'm still Alive

Friendly Faces

Apartment Search Continues

Laser Quest

Censorship

Books

Two Worlds Colliding

100 blog posts!

Thanks to everyone who's been on the journey with me thus far and continue to be! If you'd like to check out some of these older posts they are best viewed at my original blog location wesknee.blogspot.com

To 100 more!

Two Worlds Colliding

2009-08-28T13:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet up with a friend of mine, Heather and her boyfriend Nick. Two good friends of mine from Champlain, hell Heather and I even went to Africa together! She moved up to Montreal earlier this week, because she's going to be studying up here for the semester. I had been pretty excited that her and some other people from Burlington would be making their way up to Montreal. Although it really didn't hit me how awesome it is until last night. I had been a little jealous of Benoit, some of his friends had begun arriving from France to study and suddenly he had a small group of friends where I still had none. Being able to hang out with them last night was the start of what can only be a really great fall/winter.

I couldn't help but laugh and appreciate Heather's awe that she took in while we walked some of the city last night, I have been here for almost four months now and still this place remains big for me... I'm ok with this. Although I've become used to Montreal, I'd rather keep it with a sense of awe. While walking we bumped into Keith (another friend of mine from Champlain), and for me it was SO cool! To actually bump into someone I know in Montreal! Not to mention it had been so long since I had seen Keith, it was just very cool to have randomly bumped into him.

As I was saying good bye to Heather and Nick last night, it really occurred to him how strange it felt seeing them in this environment. Just so far removed from what we've been used to in Burlington, to Montreal where I've been living for some time now. Last night was definitely an indication that some things would be changing for me in Montreal, between moving and friends arriving... it's like a whole new chapter in my "Canadian Adventure." I'm hoping at some point to integrate some of my Burlington friends with Benoit's France friends, which could make a pretty interesting group I think :)

Anyways it's a very welcomed familiarity in a place that has been pretty foreign. Which leaves me to wonder who might be arriving the Spring semester, and if after wards I'll see more friends in Montreal who will be getting jobs too. I could easily see a small Champlain community growing up here, and just how wonderful that would be.

(ps if your wondering about the picture on the top... I just thought it was cool hehe)

Books

2009-08-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

I went for a walk last night... it could have been for many reasons but in all reality it was because my room was too hot, filled with a few french people, there was lots of wii... which I've sort of become bitter against after playing with a very competitive Benoit.

As I walked I couldn't help but take in the people around me, as always really. This is something that I sort of enjoy in my daily routine, although I've begun to notice how perhaps it's a bit more of an oddity to take such close not of the people around me, as I've begun to question and share my observations with Benoit. I may ask him what he thought about one person, or did you notice "blah blah blah." Inevitably every time he hasn't and coins it up to me being a fruity artist. Although I'd like to think it's just because I'm observant but I guess being an artist has something to do with.

I found myself in a book store, a good place to be considering I just finished another book this summer. Going into the store I wasn't sure what I was looking for... Walking around I couldn't help but make many stops and continued to look at different covers or brief quotes inside some of the books. I really like books... I don't really know why... probably something to do with a subconscious Myst fascination but I've always liked books. While I do read some, I'm not as heavy a reader as some I think.

It's funny how sometimes a book can remind you of people. I inevitably ended up in the art section, (I wonder why) and I couldn't help but take in as much as I could. At first I picked up a book with all old photography and mainly photography of Western Native Americans, and I couldn't help but think of the adventures I've had with my Parents in Arizona. I found another book about business card design, and thought of Ken Howell who spent so much time trying to help me with mine. Then I found another book, with a picture of a young girl's face (who was obviously from a third world nation). I was drawn to the book and began flipping through, pages upon pages of child's faces from impoverished areas. Looking into their eyes and seeing their faces, they were so familiar to me... and in that moment I was brought back to Africa. I can remember it as clear as day sometimes, and one of my brightest memories is of their smiling faces. I had to hold back a tear, a feeling of remorse and a feeling of regret of having to leave the EMC behind. I couldn't help but think of Ann and their continued mission. I never could shake the feeling I was doing some real good there. Seeing some of their latest art too makes me feel jealous of not being among them still. If you haven't checked out their blog, be sure to do so.

Anyways I had to continue on my journey, and I stumbled upon this cover...

I couldn't help but be immediately intrigued... I've read a few pages thus far and so far it's really good. It's sort of fun in a first person perspective of this 12 year old boy who is trying to figure out the world around him. He continues to have side comments about most of his thoughts, which might make it feel like his thoughts are scattered and all over the place... but I really enjoy it. Sort of feels familiar =P

Anyways lunch break is over... back to work!

Censorship

2009-08-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking a lot lately about video games and the impact they have and potentially could have in the future. I've talked quite a bit in the past about my hopes for video games and interactive applications for the future, mainly in the form of education. While I'm very hopeful, video games still seem to have a lot to overcome before it seems as though they can prove themselves in the eyes of many. Video games have definitely begun to proliferate more of today's markets, but there still seems to be a negative stigma surrounding video games. Of course this debate has gone on for years, but we're starting to see some serious infringements on human rights as a direct result of video game stereotyping.

Sure in school we talked about governmental restrictions on video games, and the topic that came up most of the time was Germany's restrictions on blood and gore in video games. I've begun to hear more interesting reports coming from China and their fight against video games. There are actually video game addiction camps that children are being sent to, to "cure" them of video game addiction. While I'm not saying that there’s such a thing as video game addiction, things like "Shock Treatment" for video game addicts seems to go a little over the top in my opinion. Luckily for Chinese WoW addicts, this practice has stopped, but these camps are still being used and are potentially more brutal then ever. There has been the first reported death of a student enrolled in one of these camps to cure his video game addiction. According to the report the student was beaten to death by the camp supervisors, for running too slowly. While the camp claims “Our methods are tough but do not include torture or other methods that might damage a child’s health," post mortem reports of the boy's body finds that at one point the boy had been handcuffed.

China has gone further on their infringement of human rights by banning certain online games that "glamorizes gangs." Although I can't help but feel as though the individuals who might actually be in Chinese gangs, are more then likely not partaking in online gang warfare but I could be wrong. Even if your not a gamer you might think that some of these things may not effect you, but China has gone as far as threatening jail time for "dirty" text messages. So just in case you were wondering, big brother is most definitely reading your text messages and deciding on jail time depending on what language you might be using. Jail time might include up to five days for one text message or up to ten for three. This sort of thinking is extremely dangerous for not only the future of human rights but the way we perceive technology in the future. Just as we're beginning to see new and evolving emergent media, we also witness new forms of discrimination against it.

China isn't an isolated incident either, Germany is another country that has been well known for it's crack down on video games. With it's recent run of anti-game laws that are looking to get passed, game companies are feeling pressured to relocate out of Germany. I thought it was best put here...

"A ban on action games in Germany is concerning us because it is essentially like banning the German artists that create them.If the German creative community can’t effectively participate in one of the most important cultural mediums of our future, we will be forced to relocate to other countries.

The current political discussion will deprive German talent of its place on the global game development stage, and deprive German consumers of entertainment that is considered safe and fun around the world."

Companies like Crytek have an unstable future as a result of these new measures being set in place by the German government. Ironically enough Germany has become the top game market in Europe... This year's GDC Europe is even being held in Cologne, Germany, where game developers are speaking out to gamers attending the conference; asking them to help support petitions against these laws.

So I know I don't typically blog about these sorts of things, but I find a lot of this pretty troubling. Yet I guess I could be named a hypocrite for saying that I believe in the positive impacts of video games, and disregard what is being said about the negative impacts. For what it's worth I still believe in the human mind and subconscious, I don't believe that video games make us more prone to reenact what we do in the virtual environment. While I agree that there are plenty of irresponsible games out there, and irresponsible parents who let their children play them, I don't believe that video games make us more aggressive or violent then we already are. I don't really have much more to say on this topic right now, I just felt as like sharing some of this information for others to maybe start thinking about too. Maybe I'll have more to post on this later, but for now I'll let you draw your own conclusions... I've certainly been left wondering about the future.

Laser Quest

2009-08-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

A week ago, roughly, I received another inhouse e-mail in french at work. As I skimmed the words, picking out common words that I've begun to pick up, I was still lost until I came across two words in particular... "Laser Quest." Immediately I replied to the e-mail saying, I'm not exactly sure what this all means but I can read Laser Quest and I'm totally in!!

Luckily for me it was a night of laser quest for the employees of Mistic with a dinner afterwards. I have to say this was SO much fun, I had been looking forward to this since I got this e-mail. This afternoon when we arrived everyone had no problem smack talking each other , and as always they had no problem singling me out as the "American." As always I take it, with a grin and a smile, not shameful of where I come from. Yet after the first game, there was a lot less smack talking as I had the top score out of everybody. I couldn't help but laugh and tell them that they really shouldn't mess with Americans haha ...

Although I had a good time crushing my co-workers, that's not my reasoning for blogging tonight. Really it's because tonight I was able to talk to some more people and even some of the programmers who had never spoke to me attempted to talk to me in english , which I think is a big step. There are many people who don't talk to me at work, and I think it could be for several reasons but one of them being that they don't feel comfortable speaking English. A few tonight even started talking to me in french, which I could only smile and nod, and try to understand the conversation. I'm really starting to feel a camaraderie with the people I work with, and I can honestly say that I've really valued my time with them thus far.

A side note, I was talking with one of the artists tonight and he was telling me about his cousin who spent most of her life living inHong Kong, and how when she was 19 she went to a more rural area outside of Hong Kong. He was explaining to me that she had never really seen a sunset or the stars until this trip. I find this so strange and sort of sad... I spent my childhood outside, in the woods, enjoying nature in it'spleasantries . I can't help but really miss both New Hampshire and Vermont because of this. Although I will say that one of the most amazing skies I ever saw was when I was in Arizona. My folks are out there right now enjoying their new place, I'm severely jealous that I'm not out there with them! Someday I will have a nice place, and I will be able to see the stars.

One last thought! I recently had a conversation with a lady writing an article for a Vermont based website, as soon as I know I'll post it for sure, but she was writing about "young people's" perspectives on gaming industry and where it's headed. It almost felt automatic answering her questions, it's funny sometimes I don't think I really have many opinions about things but I guess I really do. I really do believe that the lines between "video games" and "interactive tools" will begin to be blurred, and these sorts of tools are going to proliferate the market. If you know me at all you know my stances on education, and so I won't get into that. I'm not sure really what I mean to say right now but it's exciting to feel at the cusp of it. Perhaps I'm not but as a young person who is just starting in the industry I hope to have some influence on some aspect of it in the future. I'm not sure what I'll end up doing, or where, but somehow I just know that whatever it is it will be interesting... and hopefully help people's lives for the better. Another thing I can see is Champlain Students starting to head the medium and the industry in new directions, yes you may take this as just me boasting my college again but really... Champlain students are sort of a different breed. I think it's going to be interesting as more alumni begin to enter the market, which I'm sure many of them will. I'm also hoping that in the future I'll be in a position to maybe help some of them get on their feet professionally, of course this is coming from someone who still isn't quite on their own feet yet either haha.

Anyways I'll end it with that... Benoit and I have signed for a new apartment today, we're having a meeting with the landlord tomorrow and hopefully this will be a done deal. My third apartment in Montreal should be the best one thus far I think haha.

Apartment Search Continues!

2009-08-11T13:56:00.001-07:00

So remember that apartment I blogged about yesterday? Well unfortunately we didn't get it, due to the fact that the landlord wanted this young couple to live there instead of two foreign guys.... sigh... The apartment search continues! For those of you who haven't been following this will be my third apartment in Montreal...

Friendly Faces

2009-08-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure last weekend to spend some time back in Burlington. Being there made me realize just how attached I had grown to both Burlington and it's people over the past few years. While I'm enjoying Montreal, to me it will never be Burlington.

The main thing for me was actually being able to spend some time with people that I haven't seen since I started work. I keep forgetting that I've only been in Montreal for two months but it feels like ages, and so much has passed. I tried my best to tell stories, and "get them up to date" but really I'm sure there is so much I missed. I feel pretty bad that I haven't kept in better contact with people, but it did feel great being around them again. For me it was great to hear how they were doing, and just news of my fellow classmates in general. I've heard NOTHING while I've been up here and I can't help but be really interested in how everyone else is doing. It was pretty interesting to get back into some EMC talk, I can't help but really miss being there.

I've been able to keep up with a few people who I graduated with, one in particular quite often, and it really sucks to hear about their job hunting woes. Theres one artist in particular who is just incredibly talented in my opinion and he's yet to find something. All of this makes me more thankful to have found Mistic when I did. Although I have felt sort of strained and... well sort of removed in a way... It's hard because sometimes I wonder if I jumped into things too fast. I worked really hard in school, I graduated, and didn't give myself anytime before I started working. I miss home and being able to spend ample time with my friends... Yet I know if I had chose not to start work or if I hadn't found Mistic, I probably would have felt pretty miserable.

Talking to some of my friends about their plans for their Senior year at Champlain and others, I'm brought back to a blog post I made a few weeks ago called "guilt." I see a few doing some of the things I did and over burdening themselves, and I get nervous for them... Really these are some of the most talented people and I would hate to see them struggle to produce quality work for every project that they are apart of. While I wouldn't give up any aspect of my Senior year, it was the most troubling time for me. It was the hardest on me both emotionally and mentally, and while I'm a better person because of it, I wouldn't wish the same on other people. Slowing down has been good for me... but sometimes I do miss running.

Seeing people this weekend only made me want to return to Burlington every weekend haha, but luckily for me some of them will be studying in Montreal in the fall. Which I'm super excited about! Also we've found a new apartment for September and it's really nice! I can't wait to move and I really can't wait for people to visit me!

Anyways back to the daily grind =P

I'm still Alive

2009-08-05T09:48:00.001-07:00

So it's been an interesting week and a half... At the beginning of last week I started to develop what I thought was a minor cold. The glands in my neck swelled up, but really the rest of me felt fine, no fever, no sore throat, no nothing... Needless to say I was a little concerned but there wasn't much to do so I tried to get more rest, have more vitamin C or whatever. Got through the week but by the end my neck was pretty swollen and it had begun to hurt a little to swollow. Managed to make it home on Friday though, and enjoyed an AWESOME weekend with the folks. Since I had only one symptom, I decided it was safe enough to go out and do stuff and so I managed to get out Kayaking for the first time this year on Saterday. Certainly made me miss a lot of things about back home, one of them being the kayak shop. So after a beutiful day, I discovered I had quite the sun burn... because you know me... I'm not one to put on sun tan lotion. Sunday was a nice day chilling at home, watching horrible class B sci-fi movies with Mom. Although for whatever reason the Sci-Fi channel changed their name to syfy since I've been away... which I find odd... Luckily though my neck was starting to get better before my drive back on Sunday.

Monday though my sun burn was in full swing, with the itchiest sun burn that I think I ever had. Concentration at work was SOOO hard... This took my mind off my throat for the time being. I had another itchy day yesterday, and a bit of a sleepless night because of it. Today though is the first time in a while that I feel moderately normal! Neck swelling is gone, I can actually touch my back again, and yea feeling pretty good! I was finding it pretty ironic for a while that if it wasn't one thing it was another... Now I'm pretty sure I have some intense peeling to look forward to... awesome =P

On a happier note, it sounds like I'll be in Burlington this weekend and I'm super excited!

That's all for now!

MYST Movie?!?!

2009-07-29T10:14:00.001-07:00

So I have to take a moment out of my day to share this news. Apparently there might be work on a movie based off of the Myst Book, "The Book of Ti'Anna." I have always been a HUGE fan of Myst and the books were awesome. I couldn't be more excited!!

Check it out!

Since we're on the topic of movies I feel like I should also mention my excitement for the movie "The Road," that is based off of and awesome book by Cormac McCarthy. The Trailer looks epic... and it has Aragorn

Shoes

2009-07-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been thinking about shoes... this is likely due to my recent escapade to try to find myself a pair. Once I found a store and started looking... there were many shoes that I considered to be cool but weren't what I'd call "Wesley." That got me thinking... what sort of shoe does say "Wesley?" In fact do we pick shoes which reflect who we are or how we think, or are we this way due to the shoes we buy. As I searched I inevitably did find a pair that seemed Wesley enough, and I purchased them. Since then I've begun looking more closely at what people wear for shoes, something that I had never really had much interest in. I've decided you can tell a lot about a person from their shoes, a seemingly innocent piece of clothing. Of course I could be inferring a lot when I start making snap judgments about people based on their choice of footwear... but it's still interesting to see who is wearing what nonetheless.

I see alot of different styles and fashions as I peruse this city, if you haven't guessed by now I enjoy people watching. It's interesting to take in not only what people wear, but also how they act. Not being fluent in French, I don't typically know what they might be saying but according to their tone you usually can pick up alot . There are moments where I can't help but chuckle a little when I see someone, these people are typically those who may be wearing their just off to the side enough to be cool, wife beater, and a little too much bling . We can get so caught up in consumerism sometimes... If only I had a coach bag, matching shoes, and of course Oakley glasses. The more money we wear the cooler we might be... now I might be a hypocrite for saying these things, sure there are times where I really like an expensive jacket or article of clothing. Yet I don't think I get as caught up into all of it, in many cases I'm pretty stingy. I saw a teenager the other day, amongst some of his friends, visibly self conscious about not only his looks but how he stood, laughed, and where he looked. I think I used to be him, and sometimes still am that way. Worrying about what I look like, nervous about not saying the wrong thing or just looking stupid. Maybe this is just breeding out of old high school popularity-aphobia. Now I'm just ranting and rambling... but your still reading so maybe I'll continue.

In life we can always encounter certain types or groups of people we can stereotype into smaller categories, so it's easier for us to assume who they are. It starts in high school and continues on from there; Jocks, Geeks, Preps, Emo, Goth, Punk, I dunno I'm sure there are a billion other. What strikes me is how easily they are able to spot at times, based on their appearance... sure I'm sure it's their own preferences for clothing, which somewhere along the line starts to define the entire group. Almost like me wearing a big sign on my back that says "Geek/Farmer/ugh no wait Kayaker" on my back. Since high school I don't think I've ever really fully fit into a category, and I pride myself for it. Yet when I think about the clothes I wear, I guess I sort of wear skater clothes... but don't really skate board... Guess that makes me a "Poser."

There really isn't much of a point of this blog post, other than just sort of a brain dump of thoughts I've been thinking about lately. Perhaps I am saying something though about commercialism and stereotypes... ugh... ignore both! Good lesson for today!

Fireworks

2009-07-26T18:01:00.001-07:00

I looked up in wonder and awe… and yet I wondered how many times had I actually witnessed fireworks? I had seen fireworks since I was very young, hell it’s an American past time! I remember seeing them as a child in Sandwich, again actually with music at Universal Studios as with my parents, I remember watching them out over the water at Disney last year with Ann, Sarah, and Lauren (On Lauren’s Birthday), and now here in Montreal I stood in awe of the big bright lights and explosions. I couldn’t help but consider how really all that fireworks were, were highly complicated particle emiters, and even had a moment of contemplation about how I might be able to recreate fireworks pretty easy maybe… then Benoit got mad at me about thinking about work… So I focused again on the present. I felt like a kid again, and could feel goosebumps ripple my skin. Then my eyes wandered to a young boy looking up in awe just as I was, he couldn’t control his little feet and hands from shaking in joy… and I could relate… Although I had 22 years to find ways of controlling such outward emotional marks haha but I felt as he did… in wonder of the world. As I sat back and admired another artists work, I began to think about my own. I think I’ve started to become too comfortable, going to work, coming home, going to work… Watching the fireworks made me remember why I wanted to become an artist in the first place. I want to cause the same sort of excitement, the same sort of emotion that this little boy was feeling at that very moment. But what am I to do? Will I start an animation that I’ve been thinking about? A new character perhaps? But resounding from deep within myself, an answer came easily… I need to start writing again. I need to finish what I started five years ago… I need to tell my story. A story that when I think about, I get goosebumps… every time. A story that I have so carefully crafted in my head, and have enjoyed so many times in the quiet corners of my mind. I need to share it…

Afterwards I had an interesting conversation with a friend. She argued that the reason that so many people were so unsuccessful, was due to a deeper subconscious doubt that everyone held inside themselves. Sure we all want to do well and be successful, but when we might not even know it, there is a bit of us inside that thinks that it isn’t possible. Little did she know, and I wasn’t about to share it because I couldn’t get two words into the conversation haha, she was talking again about a self fullfilling prophecy. Thinking about this, I know exactly what she means, but the results for me has been somewhat different. There have been many moments in my life that for whatever reason, I felt a cold hard resolve that knew… positively, that whatever goal I had just set for my self… I would complete it. It was always a strange feeling really, to know absolutely that yes! I will accomplish this. Conversely I have had moments where I wanted something to happen, but deep down inside part of me knew it wouldn’t… and guess what? It didn’t…

I’m remembering this feeling again… and for whatever reason I can’t help but feel like this story could be something special. Maybe that just means for me, maybe it means the same for others? Who knows? This is something that won’t be completed swiftly. No, this is something that needs to be nurtured and grown properly. The seed has been planted for a long time though, and leaves have begun to sprout… It’s time for it to bear fruit.

Routine

2009-07-15T14:13:00.001-07:00

There's not a whole lot to write about right now... I seem to be living life, living up to a new found "routine." The funny thing is, that is one thing that has been lacking for quite some time now, some sense of normality and routine. I think in a funny little way I'm happy to have found it once again... I get up, go to work, do my thing, have lunch, finish up the day, go home, go to the gym maybe, and then chill with the roommates. I've been feeling a bit more relaxed I think, becoming more comfortable talking to my foreign companions on a daily basis. I also think my French is improving which helps.

While there are times where I wonder if I'm doing well at work, I have no real reason to think that I'm not doing well right now. I've discovered what's really missing from my working life is a real artist critique like I had been used to having at Champlain. Where we would pick ever little detail apart and decide what are good aspects and what are not. I haven't really got that here, I'm just typically told when they like something and when to change a part of it. It's a bit different but I also think it's because English isn't their first language, and with a limited vocabulary it can be hard sometimes. So I can't help but think that if I wasn't doing well I would have been told by now I think...

It's been sort of fun having a little extra time now and then, I was actually able to complete a book the other day and start on a new one. If you know me at all you know my mind never really stops going so I've also been thinking a lot about a story I've been meaning to write. While I haven't had a lot of time to commit to it, I had worked on the beginning a little while back. I think I'm going to end this post with the first paragraph (because I really like it hehe), let me know what you think and if you want to know more you know how to reach me =)

Peace!

(and let it be known that if this is owned and created by Wesley Knee and don't try to steal it... I'll find you...)

_________________________

They say that the first lines of any story, gives the reader an insight into the rest of the book. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," "It is truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," "Call me Ismael..."I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong impression of my story. This is no epic, no guaranteed happy endings, the boy won't find the girl, and this is certainly no bedtime story. I can only promise you my story, told through my eyes, and therefor equally jaded... be sure to take that under consideration if you chose to read on. I've been called a great many things in my short life; brother, student, friend, thief, beggar, coward, orphan... although many titles have been passed my way there is one thing I can say for certain... I am a lost boy.

Guilt

2009-07-08T05:27:00.000-07:00

I just had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine, which made me really think a lot about… Well the degree program I attended the students in my degree. I can’t help but really want to write this right now, and while I’m positive there are those who won’t agree with me, this isn’t about changing opinions. Perhaps these are just some of the notes of my experiences and thoughts on students, what we give, and even sacrifice for.

It’s so hard not to be a little bit competitive, but that’s healthy right? Of course it is, it makes us all better… We look to our classmates, see what they are doing, and we want to improve. No we must improve if we want to have any chance at a future. That’s what it’s all about right? We can speak about how much we might want to change things, or what we might want to “do.” The end game is always the same… getting that job. If we aren’t the best, or close to it… what chance do we have in the world today? So it eats at you, gnaws at a fresh wound from your last critique. You put in more hours, you take on more projects, because it all looks good on the resume. You sleep less, study more, and sure things certainly do improve. It’s all about the resume, and in the end your senior portfolio… the very thing that you can show to the world and proclaim “I am open for business!”

We do these things but at what cost? We might not even realize it but at times we start to lose a little bit of ourselves. We become paranoid with guilt, and diluted in thoughts of grandeur. It’s the guilt that gets to us… It’s almost like some sort of strange addiction to our work. If we’re away from it, we feel guilty; almost as if we will slip behind and get lost in mediocrity. We can’t take nights off, mornings, it’s even a joke to think you might actually take a day! To take a day off is almost like a distend dream, but something you have no real desire to grasp at that moment because you know… You know what you’ll find waiting for you at the beginning of that day… guilt. Then that day will be like every other.

What will it have been for in the end? Four years lost in a blur of study and late nights as you try to focus on your monitor? Perhaps… I felt myself getting lost once. In fact I was lost, and perhaps in some demented way still am. Work and school was my life, and there could be no other mistress other than Maya… What was I to expect though? I was “Wesley Knee” and I had to keep up appearances. Take this as you will but it’d be silly of me not to recognize that I was a role model for some, and while this filled me with pride. It also helped feed the guilt. It certainly came to a point where I wasn’t sure who I’d be without my reputation, maybe ironic that even in College peer pressure seems to seep into our lives.

I consider myself lucky, I had a friend… a really good friend who made me feel equally as guilty if I didn’t see her either. She helped me some of the way out of the hole that I was in, and helped me stay sane. While I never truly left the hole, which was in some ways was it’s own form of depression, she continued to teach me how to have fun… even take time for myself a little. It helped force me to become really good at managing my time, while I was still a workaholic, I had to schedule in time for her too. Now when I look back at College, I am sure to think fondly of all of my hard work, but even more so of the fun times I had with her. If I were to give any advice to those still in that degree program, I might say that while you need to work hard, you need to schedule time for her too… no matter who or what she is.

I get concerned sometimes, because I can see the same sort of depression in others… the guilt… the “Dark Passenger” whose always there telling you that you are not good enough, you must work harder, and is always there to remind you when you are away from your work. We get stuck in this sort of “mode” and we just become animated machines, we give our souls to our school work and equally as much to the EMC. This is all supposed to be fun right? Hell we’re working on video games! There is a point though were it stops being fun and becomes a lot more about the work it’s self. I consider myself lucky to have my friend who helped me through this, I hope that others won’t give up too much of themselves. I was like you too, still am in many ways, but hope you can find your peace in some way. While our minds go a mile a minute, sometimes we just need time to sort it all out… even if we are feeling the weight of the world… or perhaps just the UN.

If your wondering, then yes… perhaps I am still a bit bitter about somethings. Although I won’t dwell in the past, because right now the present is much more interesting.

~I hope anyone who reads this doesn’t take this post too negatively… this was just something I had to get off my chest~

On the inside looking out...

2009-07-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

I find it ironic really... small town kid. Born from farmers and taught to enjoy rural America... Grows to find himself in very unlikely situations. At what point did Wesley, farmer kayaker boy, become Wesley, international 3D Artist. Perhaps I wonder more when this whole "international" bit started playing into my life. Perhaps it started my Senior year of high school, with a German friend who I affectionately refer to as Hanz. I thought it was crazy when I actually went to Germany to visit him in 2005... sort of funny now considering I've now traveled as far as South Africa. I find it ironic (I find irony and many things lately apparently) that in my Senior "Government and Economics" class (in high school), we had this project that we had to find a possible job that we might hold in the future. We then had to calculate how much we might earn and spend, on everything from rent to food. At the time I thought I'd go above and beyond and find myself a job in Montreal... It's funny thinking that five years later and I'm there. Almost a sort of a self prescribed destiny...

I find myself working in a studio with mostly french speaking people (Persian or Quebequa), living in a foreign country, and living with two guys from France. There are times I have to wonder how the hell do I get myself into this... situations. I'm not really complaining mind you, apparently I'm all for new cultural experiences. Yet this is all very exhausting at times. Communication seems to be my hardest point lately, and while I'm finding ways of discussing with my roommates... sometimes it feels strained.

I spent my first weekend with my two new roomies, who I do refer to as my "Frenchies" behind their back. They are definitely very nice, and it was interesting meeting some of their friends that they have in Montreal. It's an odd feeling being the "American"... An odder feeling not being bi-lingual like everyone else. I try my best to stay engaged, and even harder to listen to french constantly. Yet there are certainly times where I feel as though I'm on the outside looking in. Perhaps that's not quite right though... in all reality I'm on the inside looking out. Inside my head, the last corner of comfort at times, peering out into a world that can be very foreign to me. I continue to try to understand, both the culture and the language. If you know me at all, you'll know that I'll survive just fine. Sometimes being inside your head is the best place to be.

Roads less traveled

2009-06-25T10:12:00.001-07:00

I dug my fingers into the soil, searching for a better grip. I could feel the grit reaching up underneath my nails and I took hold of the loose earth. My calves quivered under the strain, and my feet slid slowly on the soft ground. I wiped my brow, reached for another hand hold, and new positioning for my feet. This time a rock would hold my grip... I felt a little better about my current placement. I took a moment to catch my breath, and I looked back down the way I came. I couldn't help but laugh a little...

"Why did you choose to go this way Wes?" I had to ask myself... but I knew the answer. I had grown tired of the nicely groomed trails, all with benches to rest on every few hundred feet and... well... people. I found it sort of silly that if I was going to climb a mountain, the way before me would be paved. I found this "trail" off to the side of the paved on, and I couldn't resist. This was a bit more like what I was used to.

I swung myself up higher, this time finding a root of a tree to hold onto. Sure it didn't help that I was a little bit frustrated this afternoon. My plans for the evening, which included me being social for once, had fallen through and I found myself alone once more looking for some way to pass the time. Why not go hike a mountain alone, find a sketchy trail that goes straight to vertical, haven not drunk water all day and refusing to bring more, but not to worry... I brought a camera. Mom would be proud.

It felt nice to be outside "in the woods." As far outside as I could be anyways in my current position. There was a faint breeze, and I'd try to capture as much of it as I could to cool me down. It was probably the first really hot day for me in Montreal, and my mind instantly went to a lake and a kayak. Unfortunately such things are but day dreams now, or perhaps something to drive to on the weekends.

I pulled myself up, I had finally reached the top... of this little hill anyways. Feeling accomplished I continued on some rocks, to what looked to be a clearing through the trees. As I hiked up higher I couldn't help but think that if I was homeless, this would be where I would go. At that moment I looked up to find a shadowed hole underneath a fallen boulder. I waited a moment, hoping my eyes would re-adjust just enough for me to make out what or who might be inside. No such luck though... Normally I'd be concerned about finding a bear or other woodland creature, but not so much here. Instead I was a little concerned about finding a person. Is it weird if I preferred a bear?

I had to make my way past the hole, and as I got closer, finally I could see a bit inside. It was empty of course; spare some garbage and maybe something used for bedding. Perhaps someone else got the same idea of where to stay. I couldn't let my apartment hunting woes get the best of me; I shook the thought out and continued upward.

I was feeling pretty accomplished at this point, with all of this city walking, and poor diet, I've begun to lose a little weight. This short hike was actually pretty easy; ignore the part where I hiked up the cliff face. I could see now that I was almost to the clearing; a breeze picked up and welcomed me as I made it out. I wasn't at the top, but it was close enough for me and well... I'm pretty sure there would be plenty of others at the top and this place had some seclusion to it. I was rewarded with a terrific view of the city, I smiled and pulled the camera out from around my neck. "This will be an excellent picture for my blog," i thought to myself... lame I know.

Sure enough I turned on the camera, only for it to inform me that the batteries were dead. There was a bit of cold irony to it, to the day in general. I laughed, what else was I to expect? Something to go my way? I realized then that this moment and this view would have to be mine alone. I took it in and appreciated it... I couldn't help but be a little sad that I couldn't seem to escape the sounds of people. Yet I had been able to escape people for at least a little while. Don't get me wrong, this may sound as though I'm pretty miserable. Quite the contrary, there are many things that are going well for me right now... mostly work. My social life could use a little tweaking but I think this is soon to change.

I used my shirt to whipe away the sweat from my brow and face. It was time to head back down the mountain and back to civilization... back to my life as it stands now.

Identity

2009-06-15T10:21:00.001-07:00

My eyes drifted to the clock. I was anxious and couldn't wait for the end of the day... and then it came. Five O'clock Friday afternoon came and I was ready to leave work for the weekend. Today was different, I had something to look forward to... I had somewhere to go. I said myau revoirs to my co workers, as they chuckled at my anxiousness and my large bag I had slung over my shoulder. I was so eager I passed right by the stair well, laughing at my forgetfulness I went down and exited the building. It was sunny, ironically after all this rain the day that I had to be somewhere the sky opened up and smiled. I smiled back and went along my way.

It was a bit more awkward squeezing by the ticket terminal and finding my place on the metro. I was lugging a large army bag my Mom had given me to use since college. This bag seemed to have no bottom and I could fill it with anything, today though it was dirty laundry. With me, of course, I also carried my man bag. Inside this I kept items I felt I might need for work, and today two extraxbox controllers . I'm fairly certain I looked goofy, as I stood, smiling with my luggage... waiting for my stop. Which was a bit further today than usual.

I took a moment, and studied those who rode the train with me... as I usually did. Noticed the slight changes in types of passengers as we went further out of the areas I was used to traversing. One lady in particular made me extremely curious. She sat across from me, hair done up, holding her bag under red painted nails. Her face looked a little distressed, but with held at the same time. It's really quite amazing how much we can give off about what we are thinking by just our faces. I'm used to watching people practically want to sing along to their music, or watch their expressions change as an epic moment happens in their books. This lady though, she was in her own world today. I noticed several times she straighten her fingers, swayed them lightly, and shook her head,almost to say "No" or "That's it, I'm done." Of course I have no clue what was troubling her, but as much as she tried to hide he... she wasn't doing a very good job. I hope that perhaps she's well now.

I left the metro, and walked back out into the sun. My smile returned as I remembered my destination. At first I was a little turned around, as this was only my second time coming in to this station. I got my barrings though and lugged my self and my luggage along with me as I headed towards a football field. I passed briefly inside the gates, and noticed the set of apartment buildings where I knew I had been before... Then there it was. My smile was unmistakable now, the hair raised up on my forearms, and goose bumps rippled my skin. Grass had started to grow around the tires, but Jarvis was right where I left him. It was almost like seeing an old friend, and finding that both your friend and your friendship hadn't changed one bit. I got in, set up Tom, myiTouch... My hands grabbed around the bumpy steering wheel cover, some bumps now missing, but I still find plenty of character in this car. As I started the car, and adorned my sun glasses, I couldn't help but whisper "Hello." A greeting to an old friend... a representative from a previous life... and then we were off.

As silly as this might sound but while there were many things I was looking forward to, Grandma's cookies ranked pretty high on the list... as ironic as that sounds. It took me quite sometime to get out of the city, but it felt good once I was. The environment opened up and I could see green all around. Open farm fields that reminded me of a time where cows were not a foreign creature by any stretch of the imagination. I practically felt giddy as I began to see the flat land scape start rolling up into hills and finally mountains... I was going home. Only not quite home home, but home to New Hampshire and some family.

I've come to realize that in most times in my life I seem to maintain a duality inside myself. Two parts of me that make up the whole, but twoseparate identities nonetheless. In college it was sort of like my "gamer" side and my "Residential Assistant/Peer Adviser" side. People would know me as one side or the other, and I could be recognized for each and separate identity. I found it strange yet sort of fun. Keep in mind though that these two identities aren't ones that compete with one another, but rather they learn to live symbiotically witheachother. This still hasn't left me... The identities I find now are of my past life and my current one. Neither compete, but both come together to make up the whole... to make up me. It had been a while since I had been able to be my other half, and well... going away made me realize that it was still there and that I needed it... even missed it.

While it was sad leaving on Sunday, knowing it may be some time since I can play with that part of my life again I knew I had to return. This is who I am now, but I'll always be the Farmer, Grandson, Cousin, and Son that I've always been.

Eleven days in...

2009-06-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Today is my eleventh day in Montreal. I've started to develop a bit of a routine, but have yet to feel settled. It's hard knowing that I'll be moving again at the end of the month, harder still that I'm nervous about making a good impression... hoping that perhaps this won't end in December.
I'm feeling better about work, I was already really happy with the environment don't get me wrong, this is more of I'm feeling better about myself at work. I seem to be picking up 3Ds fairly well, I think it's more of the implementation that has got me worried. I've been doing just some busy work lately, but I'm definitely ok with it... It makes me feel productive... Like I'm actually contributing.

I won't lie, I've been feeling a bit lonely as of late... but I knew this was going to happen. It will all get better but for now I'm sort of alone. I'm not focusing on it though, I'm trying to give this place a chance. It's got potential, I just gotta meet some people maybe...

I will tell you one thing that's bothering me, the amount of homeless people. It's so hard because it not only happens all the time, but to walk by and not acknowledge a person just feels sort of wrong. For some reason I can't help but think of that boy in Langa (I think) who asked me for money. It makes me wonder about these people, do they have families somewhere? What is their story? Do you ever think that you might have met or known someone who might end up like that? Who knows? Not I, but I sure do think a lot.

Well this is just another night in for me... at least I brought my xbox =)

Later!

In my Shoes...

2009-06-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

I wake... my room is freezing. Making it incredibly hard to remove myself from my covers, and yet the beeping alarm on my watch beacons and reminds me that I have work to do. I stumble out of bed, grab some clothes that might be good to wear for the day and head for the shower. I tip toe around as I am the first to wake, why am I afraid to wake my roommates when I hardly know them? Well... wouldn't you be? I fumble the nosel on the shower, still sleepy and confused I always seem to have a hard time managing to get the water warm. Eventually my brain kicks in to remind me that the cold and the hot water faucets are backwards...

Once dressed I make one more check of my laptop before convincing myself that I'll be late if I don't leave right that moment. I put on my head phones before I'm out the door, familiar music seems to make the walk that much more enjoyable. As I step outside I put on my sunglasses, both to shield my eyes from the sun, but also to shield my curious eyes from others. I've found that I tend to be more curious on my journey then others.

I walk at a brisk pace that matches the beat of my music, I smile as I pass the bakery. The smell of freshly baked goods seem to waft across the street every morning. In another few paces I'll smell what I take as Italian. It doesn't take me long to reach the street I need and I turn right, and I step out from the shadows of the buildings and finally I meet the heat of the day. As I walk, I inevitably pass by a boy with a orange backpack, walking with his father to school. His eyes are just as curious as mine, but have no sunglasses to mask them.

I find the metro, I push hard on the swinging door. I'm still not used to the effort required to get it open. I'm now in the stream of people, rushing out to meet the train. I walk by a boy with a ukulele, singing and playing a different tune every morning. I typically stand and wait for my train, peering around looking for familiar faces. Inevitably finding one who I've shared the same journey with another morning. While I ponder if we'll ever meet, it occures to me that my eyes are no longer shielded... and I should stop staring at people.

After packing ourselves onto the train like... well like pickles. I reach for something to hold on to, I have yet to acquire my sea legs. Most people read, some people listen to music, some both... I wonder what they read or listen to, and hell what language would it be in?

At the end of the short ride, like cattle, we rush to the red sortie signs. Around now I'll be serenated by a guy with his guitar, or perhaps the lady with the accordion, or even the guy who likes to give life lessons. After avoiding a guy trying to pass out religious literature, I'm outside again.

I've almost reached my destination and my pace quickens. I pass by the "Soup Soup," and recognize that in a few hours Alex will head right next door for work. I finally approach my building and dislodge my headphones as I pass by security at the front desk. I make my way to the second floor, make a few friendly smiles to people, even a head nod, and hope they won't speak any french to me. I take out my pass card and enter the studio. I smile and say good morning to a few programmers who undoubtedly beat me to work, but I'm happy to say that I'm right on time.

I find my desk and boot up my computer. I set down my "Man bag" from Africa, and go back to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. As I return to my desk and ready myself for the day I can't help but chuckle to myself a little. You think that after four years of study I wouldn't actually be surprised to find myself where I am, and yet I still can't believe it. It's time to start work... It's time to make video games.

Welcome to Mistic!

2009-06-01T16:12:00.001-07:00

I'm typical "Wes" fashion I over thought this morning... I woke up pretty early, rushed out, found my metro, and got to work extremely early =P Yet I wouldn't really have it any other way.

Although just as in any experience thus far in Montreal, it started off a little rough. I didn't know anything about a "SIN" card that I apparently needed to begin work, and had yet to be issued. You'd think this might have been in large print on my beginning paperwork to go to Canada, unfortunately it wasn't. Mistic was awesome about it through, and the HR lady drove me down to the appropriate offices so I could get my SIN number and she even waited with me while it got done. After that, and finding a bank account, I went out the lunch with her and the Lead Designer at Mistic. This was really pretty awesome and a great meal but I was anxious to actually get introduced to the team.

After lunch the Lead Artist eagerly introduced me to the team, and everyone couldn't have been more inviting. I spent most of the afternoon getting aquanted with 3DS Max, and some office tools. Some of my co-artists were pretty helpful with this. It's really interesting interacting with this bi-lingual bunch, while we have very different backgrounds, when it gets down to it we speak the same language.

While there was lots of french spoken, that I regrettably couldn't understand, I feel like the atmosphere at Mistic suits me pretty well. I could definitely see my place here, which is really exciting. I think that was what hit me most today, finally arriving at Mistic and becoming apart of the team, it doesn't feel like it's just a temporary position... and I'm certainly hoping it won't be.

As I left today, mostly everyone made an effort to smile and wave me good bye. I couldn't have felt more welcome in this intercultural bunch... with me a bit of a minority =) As I adjusted my bag, that hung by my side as I left, I couldn't help but smile. This bag I had purchased in Cape Town, followed me to San Francisco and Arizona, and would follow me still to the first steps in my new life. It was raining outside as I walked home tonight, and while others grimaced I couldn't help but smile... Today I'd forgive Montreal for the rain... today was a good day.

Adjusting... Montreal Day 3

2009-05-31T21:08:00.001-07:00

I've just finished day three in Montreal and can say that things are starting to look up. Certainly a bit hectic at first, but I'm figuring things out. I think my god send was meeting up with my friend Alex who is already living up here. I think I was really in need of a friend and being able to hang out with him and some other friends Saterday and Sunday was really good for me. It's hard to not feel alone at first... my roommates weren't helping with that too much but oh well. I'm figuring things out on my own.
I finally found a good place to park my car indefinitely, it's a bit out of the way but cheaper then what I ever paid in Burlington. I figured out that I'm a 10 - 15 minute walk to the closest metro. Figured out how to get to Alex's place and yea finally starting to get a feel for the area.
Coincidentally the sun has started to come out more =) Just as the first day had been gloomy, it seemed like Montreal was trying to make up for it.

Today I was introduced to a regular sunday event called the "Tam Tam" where a bunch of people just bring their drums and other instruments together in this park and play. It seems to be an interesting gathering of people out to just enjoy the day. Nearby there was a group of kids "LARPing" (Live Action Role Play) where they take fake weapons and basically attack eachother. Extremely interesting to watch =)

Well it's late and I feel like I need to sleep so I can be prepared for my first day of work tomorrow!! I starting to find my way here, and am looking forward to finding my way around a new work environment as well. This is enough for now, I'll try to write some more tomorrow.

G'night

A rough start...

2009-05-29T14:21:00.001-07:00

Today it rained, and was generally pretty gloomy. Which certainly isn't how I intended it to be... I tried to get rolling early to I'd have the day to do things here in Montreal but fate had other plans. Beyond being detained at the border for quite a while, my parking spot (the one promised with my room) well let's just say I couldn't park there. So I had to spend the afternoon trying to figure out what to do with my car, ended having to pay more money and miss a meeting at Mistic. I'll admit that I'm not extremely impressed with how things are going thus far. I can't help but to keep wondering, "Wesley... what are you doing here?!"

Yet I keep reminding myself that while it may have a rough start... it's a start nonetheless.

Ready to move on....

2009-05-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime since I graduated something has changed. I arrived in Burlington yesterday, it was a rainy day but it was still good to see it again. Sort of like returning to an old home... It was great seeing friends and co-workers but I was stuck with an odd feeling through it all. I don't know when it happened but somehow I feel like Burlington isn't my home anymore. It's been nothing but home for me for the past four years, and many of my friends still reside here. While it was great to see the EMC, the place I spent many sleepless nights, somehow I had transitioned and felt like I was on the outside looking it.

It's sort of an odd feeling I guess, while I really want to be here to see everybody... I feel like I don't belong here anymore. It's both sad but almost liberating at the same time. I think I'm ready to move on...

Tomorrow I move to Montreal... I wonder what it'll feel like there.

G'night

Next Steps...

2009-05-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

Hello again, most haven't heard from me since graduation and well I've been sort of aloof; with some much needed time. I got back from Arizona at the beginning of this past week to visit and help move some stuff for my parents. They just bought a house up there in northern Arizona, which at times looks surprisingly like New England. It's been a while since I've been to Arizona but I really love the state, funny thing was that I went four years ago and afterwards was struck with a lot of creativity and inspiration. These developed into some different personal projects, but not too much really came of it. Interestingly enough I feel struck by this same sense that I felt before my college career, as always I seem to be bringing aspects of my life around full circle. I'm hoping between work this summer that maybe I can develop some of these ideas, I feel inspired nonetheless.

Since Arizona I've been trying to figure out all of the logistics of moving to Montreal, and it seems like I finally have everything mostly worked out. I'll be officially moving up to Montreal on Friday, and I'll be living with three others in a shared apartment for the month of June. The beginning of July I'll be moving to another apartment just across the Saint-Laurence and will actually be taking a train to work every day =) I'll be moving in with another intern from Mistic from France whose a programmer. From what I hear he speaks a little English... so this should be interesting!

It's interesting taking the first steps for the next part of your life, and I'm certainly still filled with mixed emotions. While part of me is eager and looking forward, I can't help but reflect on the last part of my life... it's odd with it just sort of ending the way it did. While I've been able to keep in touch with a few people, I haven't really talked to anyone from Burlington. I'm already missing College and Burlington... It'll be wierd starting over in a new city. Burlington had turned into a place where I knew not only the city but it's people. While I'm sure I may be lost for a little while, it'll be interesting finding my place all over again.

I still receive notifications about what the UN team is up to, meeting updates, updates to their repository, and some messages back and forth. I can't help but wonder how things are going, what new things they have discovered, and where the team is headed next. Things at the EMC change constantly and they change fast... I'm sure whatever direction the team is headed now it's in a good one =) My last few weeks at the EMC, I was also preview to interviews for the new positions on the team. I'm curious about how the dynamics have changed, especially with receiving two new artists and losing one. I'm proud to have been apart of it all as long as I was, and I'll miss it. If anyone from the team is reading this I wish guys the best of luck.

Next you'll hear from me I'll probably be in Montreal, working on who knows what? Either way I probably won't be able to share it =)

The next Chapter

2009-05-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I graduated... A moment that was a long time coming, and yet extremely anticlimactic. It's definitely feels like the turning of a new chapter in my life, and while I'm looking forward with anticipation, I can't help but feel like I didn't tie up all the loose ends. It was certainly a time for reflection, and this came most as I began to clean out my room. It started with some name tags that I had hung up on my wall, I had begun collecting them from different conferences and events.

Its crazy to think about how much has happened in such a relatively short amount of time. From Florida, to Boston, to Houston, to Montreal, and even San Francisco... It's surreal to think about how many events I've had the opportunity to attend... how many people have I talked to? How many people have I had the opportunity to present to? In high school I remember when I started doing Drama and I had this nervous tendency to talk in an accent on stage when I was nervous in front of people, and to think now I've been on stage presenting to 2,000+ business professionals, I've taught classes to freshman, given presentations to representatives from the United Nations, and even gave a presentation at the Montreal International Game Summit. It's almost like a dream really... with it all being over it almost feels like it didn't quite happen.

On my next wall I had concept sketches from our America's Army map, and some concept stuff from our game Transcendence. That's another thing that I hadn't given much thought to... I worked on a released a map for America's Army that people are still playing online. People have logged about 13,900 hours playing our map since December... it's nuts really...

And quite possibly my biggest experience was going to Africa, which I've blogged plenty about and is something that will just never leave me. These past four years have been nothing short of amazing. There have been hard and stressful times, but working through it and coming out the better for it... I guess it's sort of a growing experience. I can't really believe it's over.

For the most part I have no regrets, I took chances, I was ambitious, and I took what opportunities that were available to me. I said "Yes" to everything I could, which certainly made it hard at times but I think I'm the better for it. It's hard to write everything I've been wanting to say right now, I've been meaning to blog all this week but I had been trying my best to soak what I could out of my remaining time in Burlington. Thinking now I do have a few regrets... I had really only begun to be friends with a group of my classmates that I was graduating with, fairly recently. That was one thing I never was really, I was never tightly knit with the others in my own degree program. I made plenty of friends for sure, and my two best friends I had known since my second day at the school and remained friends with them all fours years. Yet to feel like a bit of an outsider with other people in your major, who you might possibly relate to more about some things... I dunno I just regret it. I also feel as though I don't have much closure with a couple of my professors and even a few people I worked with, but it's truly the time to move on.

On that note I guess this is a good a time as any to say that I am accepting a 6 month internship with a studio in Montreal called Mistic Software. I couldn't be more excited about this tremendous opportunity! I was able to say, before I graduated, that I have something lined up... and to be honest I was very nervous. With the economy the way it is, and with it being so hard to get a job in industry anyways, I wasn't sure I'd find a place too quickly. Granted this is only an internship, but I can't help but hope it may turn into something more. I have a job in a gaming studio, doing what I love to do... I guess that's the goal isn't it? I know that starting with Mistic will be my first step to hopefully a long career. What scares me is the move to Montreal, while the city is beautiful, it's been hard to find a place to live thus far and well I'm moving to a different country! AH! Although I'm still as close as I can be to my friends and family, this is really the ideal position for me and again I couldn't be more excited. I can see the first chapter in the rest of my life... and I'm filled with hope.

I was able to party after graduation with some friends but mainly my parents and the families of my friends Steph and Niki. I met Niki the second day I arrived at Champlain, because I was at the cafeteria too early for breakfast and so was she. I don't know how we became friends but we just did, and Steph was her neighbor at the time in Cushing Hall. Steph and Niki got introduced when Steph needed to borrow scissors for something haha and well the rest is history. It's been the three of us for four years strong, we've had our ups and downs but we've stuck together and I couldn't be happier to have met them. Near the end I've been getting nervous that we may lose contact, going our separate ways... but that doesn't scare me now. We're friends for life and I don't plan on letting that happen =) What was so neat about this afternoon was that it was the first time our families actually met each other, after all these years. It was all like everyone belonged, and in some way we're all one big family brought together by an early visit to the cafe and the need of open something.

I really need to end this post! I'll finish with saying thank you to everyone who I've met while I've been on this path, without you (either good or bad) you helped shape me to be who I am today... and some definitely more than others. To others I regret that we weren't friends longer, and had the opportunity to really get to know each other better. I hope I had the opportunity to help others as much as everyone has helped me to be who I want to be today. Thank you for picking me up when I was down, helping my find my path, or just listing to me. If I didn't say good bye it's because I meant to, I'd rather not say good bye to anyone. While the chapter has closed on Champlain, I hope to keep a spot open for you in the next...

Thanks,

Wes

( I found it completely necessary to document this liquorish brick I found in my cupbord with I'm pretty sure is 2 years old haha)

Last class... ever

2009-04-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Today I had the last class I'll ever have at College... really sort of strange. It hasn't quite hit me yet, but this time that I've been looking forward to is finally here and it's like I'm not sure how to feel about it. As I sit here, after class and after work, with no homework ahead of me... it's an odd feeling. To have worked so hard, for so long, and then for these projects to end... almost leaves a bit of a void. Transcendence, our Senior Production game, is finished... minus a few things that may need tweaking but really it's done. My demo reel is done... I've already begun conversations with companies about my next steps and this all feels just... I don't know maybe a little too grown up. It was pretty appropriate to have our Senior Production class be my last class, and seeing a year's worth of work in action. It shouldn't feel this strange being done, with school and our game, having always known that it was coming eventually. It's been a long time coming... and now it seems a bit melodramatic.

I think life is sort of funny... We keep going through these cycles of starting new to becoming a veteran, only to go back to being a noob. It’s sort of like playing an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), you begin in the starting area, level your character to the highest level, and then it’s sort of like putting that down and starting a new character all over again with the experiences from the first time around. We go through this in elementary school, high school, and as I’m graduating college now as a Senior I’m back down at the bottom of the totem pole about to enter the workforce… so I can gain enough experience and level up again. Each time it’s all new and extremely exciting, and scary at times as well… I look forward to playing my next character… I wonder who I’ll be…

Website Update!

2009-04-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

If your reading this, it's because you still haven't made the move to my website. That's ok! But be sure to check it out! I've just updated the layout considerably and like I've said my demo reel is finally up! So if you haven't checked it out yet, get to it!

Demo Reel!

2009-04-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

My Demo Reel is complete!

Please check it out!

Oh and you should check this out too! Completely unrelated but awesome!

The Righteous

2009-04-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

So there’s been a topic that’s been on my mind a little bit lately, I’ve been debating on blogging about it, but really was inspired to talk a little bit after reading Heather Conover’s latest blog post. I’ve been taking a class in World Religions and this has really got me thinking a lot about belief, and different belief systems… where many are the same just in different contexts. It seems as though the basis of a lot of different faiths is to make it somewhere special in the end, whether it’s Nirvana, becoming one with the Brahmin, or just going to Heaven. Each have their own set of standards on life, and how one should live it.

Maybe I should just pre-empt this with saying that these are just my opinions, and I have nothing against any of the faith based religions, or even atheists. Just been trying to think broadly about some of these things…

In any case I find it strange to have a sort of guideline on how to live your life, and on what you think. I suppose the appealing part would be lay in the promise of great things in the afterlife. I’m not one to doubt that there is a God, Brahmin, or some state of enlightenment even though I don’t necessarily follow any Religion. What I do believe that if there is a God in some form, that someone who doesn’t go to church could have his or her life judged just as equally as someone who goes to church regularly. I believe it’s in living a good life, doing the “right things,” and really Karma is all that matters.

Recently a guest speaker came to our Religions class to speak, who had been affiliated with the “Church of the twelve tribes.” Essentially a cult, or alternative religious movement, located in Northern Vermont and other places across the globe. What I found interesting is that they have the view that there are not only two places or categories for people when they die. The believed that those who follow their religious practices are called the “Holy” and have their special place in Heaven, of course there are also the “Unjust” or “Filthy” who have obviously made bad life choices and end up in hell. Yet there is a third category they consider, and these people are those who do not necessarily follow their religious practices but live a good life and have a good conscience. These people are called “The Righteous,” and they also have their own place in Heaven. Now I thought this was really interesting, the part I didn’t find too interesting was that the “Holy” rule over the “Righteous” in Heaven, but for them to consider others to be on their own path to god I think was neat.

Well I guess that’s sort of the end of this rant, just some interesting thoughts I’ve been having.

Hopefully my Demo Reel will be online tomorrow! So keep an eye out, as I’ll post a notification when it’s up. =)

Remembering Africa

2009-04-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed of Africa... I find this to be pretty curious as it has been nearly eight months since returning from South Africa. I dreamed that I was in one of the townships that we visited, and even was living there for a while. I think I remember even having conversations with people that I had met in Africa, about the UN project. Perhaps I've been thinking about work too much... but in reality I still can't get over the enormity of the project, it's goals, and the people... as well as how much progress we've been able to make thus far. It's a pretty amazing project and opportunity, which sometimes I think gets lost behind deadlines, scheduling, and milestones. Maybe I'm the only one who may have forgotten a little just how amazing all this is. To think we've traveled to South Africa, spoke at the United Nations in New York, and had our prototype shown to hundreds or maybe thousands (the exact number of people I'm not really sure) attending a conference about the issue in Brazil... It's a little out of this world.

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut, we establish our routine and we go through our "daily grind." I don't know about you but for me sometimes it's like I'm getting stuck behind technology a bit, constantly working and having a sort of disconnect from the world. It's easy to forget people sometimes, and I'm ashamed to say that maybe I forgot the people behind this project for a while... being a little too focused on the here and now... seeing work on the UN project in terms of hours and time management. Saying something like "Oh I can only give you this much time this week," sounds a bit silly and even selfish thinking about who the project might touch. Yet these things we have to do, in order to do such things as graduate college. I guess I'm sort of talking in circles a little... I guess part of the point I'm trying to make is that I hope others on the project can take a moment and remember the people too, and not just the design, the art, and the programming.

While this hasn't always been the forefront of my consciousness, I don't think Africa will really ever leave me. Someday I hope to go back... or perhaps visit someplace else and make some more friends. Experiences like these help us determine who we are and who we chose to be. I know that I'll never really forget Africa.

Updating Art!

2009-04-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I just thought I'd direct your attention to the gallery section of my web site, I'd just put some images up there of things that I've been working on lately and will soon be featured in my demo reel. These things are still being refined but yea... Check it out!

Be sure to check out both Traditional and Digital work! wesknee.com

Beta

2009-04-10T16:19:00.000-07:00

Today we had our Beta deliverable for Senior Production, and I'm happy to say that I think it went really well. Transcendence is really looking good, as frustrating as this project has been at times, it takes it to a whole new level actually seeing your art in action. I think it's so funny how the art sometimes can take on a whole new life when you see it finally implemented, putting so much time into every screen sometimes makes me feel like I never want to see it again, but then seeing it in action can't help but make you proud. Today was an interesting day seeing what everyone has been working on, and with all of them being pretty promising is really awesome. Sure there have been extreme ups and downs, but I think our class has done a good job tackling these and creating some quality work.

All this aside, today felt like sort of a somber day seeing every one's projects so close to the end, and then in class we were asked if we'd write a post mortem that didn't have to include just this project but could also be our career at Champlain. Beta is a good title to put on this point of the semester, we're so close to the end... so close to delivering what should be a product of our time here, and ending this production cycle we call college.

I know I've run the gambit of emotions as far as graduation is concerned, but at this point I can't help but be so excited. It's sort of like looking bright eyed into the future, wondering what you'll do and how things will end up, but knowing that there are infinite possibilities. I'm confident that I'll find my place, wherever it may be...

On another level I've been thinking a lot of things I may want to work on in the near future, I know it's ridiculous... I'm finally getting to a point where I may actually have some free time soon, and already I'm filling it up with projects in my head. Yet I'm really inspired right now, I want to explore my skill set and the possibilities of what sorts of things I might be able to create. Right now I've been talking with another artist whose art is... well pretty much the polar opposite of mine and I'm really interested in finding ways we may be able to combine our styles into an interesting juxtaposition. I think that's the biggest thing I want to do now... explore. Explore my craft, my possibilities, and myself.

Ugh I kind of want to start ranting about some of my concepts but will be keeping these to myself for a little while longer at least. Anyways I suppose that's all for now... I've reached Beta, looking forward to GoldMaster.

Light at the end of the Tunnel

2009-03-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

Well I'm still reeling from my experience at GDC, since then I can't help but be extremely optimistic. It helps that our production group is going so well, granted we still have things to get done and with Beta coming up next week it's a little nerve racking. Yet comparatively our group is in a pretty good state where we aren't scrambling to get a lot of things done last minute, and it makes me really happy that Lauren and I were able to plan this out so well. It's really cool when fellow classmates, whose original teams were cut and they were added to your group, say they feel lucky to have been put on our team.

I can't help but feel anxious for this next month, I still have a tremendous amount on my plate but I know I'll get it all done. Things are starting to fall together a little bit, and well things are good! I'm starting to have some great conversations with some people I've met from GDC and while nothing is definite yet, it's exciting to start some of these conversations.

Alright I'll admit most of the reason why I wanted to blog tonight was so that I could get some images up from our game =) So I'll leave it at that. Enjoy!

A sense of Belonging, GDC Post Mortem

2009-03-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Well I made it there and back again, and am still amazed that I had the opportunity to attend GDC. I know in the past when I've attended conferences I've tried to note every session and major thoughts about key note speakers, but right now I'm not really sure I can really go into adequate depth about GDC. It was an amazing experience on many levels, and I had the opportunity to meet some incredible people in the industry, and being able to put a face behind their games was just so cool.

I think what struck me the most was feeling so apart of everything that was going on at GDC, I didn't feel like I was an outside observer but a professional talking to other professionals about the industry that we're in. Without sounding too much like a poster boy from Champlain College, I really have to give a lot of credit to my education. A few years ago I would have just been another fan boy at a conference like this, even if I made it in to listen in on sessions I wouldn't have really understood what most speakers were talking about. Instead this experience was quite the opposite, it was like we were all speaking the same language... a language that I've learned in the past few years. It was truly exciting sitting in on sessions and actually understanding the art pipeline from games like Gears of War 2, and not be shocked or amazed in how they were doing it. It's not often that I'm surrounded by people that all speak the same sort of industry lingo, and to be in a place surrounded by others who not only speak the same lingo but also run into the same crunch times, frustrated feelings, and tensions with co-workers that we've all felt in a production cycle... and learned to laugh about later. I'm still in college, granted not for much longer, but to be able to understand and relate to these people is just amazing. Thank you Champlain, if it wasn't for you I wouldn't feel as prepared for the industry as I do now.

Although I'm keeping this post vague for now, with the intentions of trying to elaborate more on thing later I do have to mention that I was really inspired by a talk I had with a guy by the name of David Hellman. If you don't know who he is, he was the artist who worked on Braid. Since then I've been thinking a lot about some different areas of the industry that I might be interested in going into, that perhaps I wasn't before. Although I still don't have a clear idea of where exactly I'd love to end up, my goal is to get my foot in the door somewhere, or work on something substantial with someone, and from there I will figure things out. Although there are still many unknowns for me, I'm much more confident now about being able to find my place in this industry.

Sorry for the short post, I'll try to post some more detailed thoughts later... but for now I must really get back into school work!! AGH! One month left!!

(ps these guys weren't the same Army guys I worked with earlier, and I thought they were. It was sort of awkward at one point when I asked them if they had Canyon loaded up on this system and they didn't have a clue what I was talking about... haha)

So close to the end

2009-03-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it, but graduation is getting SO close! I know I've been talking for a while about mixed feelings about graduating, and wanting to stick around a little... but really I've moved passed this and really I'm ready to graduate. It's so exciting to think that I'm so close to ending this chapter of my life. As scary as it is that I don't know what is in the next chapter, I can't help but be excited now... I'm not sure where I'll be, I don't know if I'll be in the gaming industry or somewhere else all together. I'm ok with that though, I've worked hard to get where I am today and believe that this will carry with me into whatever I decide to do. In any case I know whatever I'll do, I'll probably be working my ass off, but I'll enjoy it.

I'm still very hopeful of meeting some interesting people at this year's GDC next week. I still can't believe that I'm going, I remember anxiously awaiting to watch Tech TV after school to see what new things were announced at each year's GDC. I find that I've been extremely lucky these past four years, and still can't believe some of the things I've been able to be appart of. Yet I can't think that the ride is going to end, if anything it's just beginning, and if I've been able to do this much in four years in this part of my life... I can't imagine the experiences I will have as I continue on in life. I learned once that a person is merely made up of their experiences, and then on my goal has been to fill my life with experiences and allow them to shape me into the man I am today. That's right, I said "Man," being this close to graduation I can probably infer that I've earned that title by now I guess.

I still have a lot on my plate, and these last six weeks won't be any less busy... but I'll get through it... I'll graduate... and life will go on. One way or another.

Next time you hear from me I'll probably be blogging about GDC, either there or when I get back.

Later!!

Spring break!

2009-03-05T18:23:00.001-08:00

Spring break hasn't exactly been what may be considered a typically college spring break. Instead of partying I've been spending my spring break trying to catch up on quite a bit of work, I can't really complain though... with "work" being mostly artsy stuff, I mean I can't imagine if I was freaking out right now trying to write term papers or something. Sometimes it's hard to explain to friends, "oh man I really just need to finish this painting" or "I gotta work on this model," and that's typically when people really get confused. All joking aside though I've been able to be pretty productive this break, yet as good as this feels I do kind of wish I had joined my family in a trip out to Arizonia. If you had guessed anything about my last couple of posts, I've been pretty stressed this semester and couldn't decisively say that I could go. As introverted as this break has been, it's been nice to have a little time to think about things... My college experience is coming to an end in merely two months... which I'm sure is going to go by fairly quickly. As scary as I find this, I'm also getting a little excited. No more school? Huh?!? Sure I could go to graduate school but I don't really see that in my future. At what point do we stop thinking of ourselves as kids? I still can't help it really.

As nervous, scared, and worried as I might get, I've come to an understanding that I really can't be. I don't know where I'll be in three months, but have I ever really known? Working hard and confidence has brought me this far, this ride isn't over yet. I've been able to really excell here, and although I can't say where I'll end up, I can't help but really think that I'll do well there too.
Well first things first, I hope to stay up in Burlington for at least the summer. After that? Who knows? Hopefully at that point I'll have at least an internship somewhere (hopefully vicarious visions hehe). For now I'm going to try to enjoy what I can of the last few months of college, as work filled as it's going to be.

I just heard a pretty good quote that I thought I'd share, "Maybe lost is where your meant to be, and just because your lost doesn't mean you lack direction." I thought it was pretty neat... G'night!

OH! yea I was on VPR recently talking about video games and it’s roles recently. Check it out

Depart not from the Path

2009-02-18T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last time I wrote things hadn't really been the most positive in my life, and it seemed like the trend continued for a while. I seemed to struggle for a bit to stay the course, I felt betrayed by some, began to let my own insecurities get the best of me, and a friend of mine passed away... I've found that these times for me really make me doubt my faith. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself a religious man, by faith I really mean faith in myself and what I've chose to do with my life. It seemed as though for a while a lot of negative things just seemed to keep happening around me, and while I tried to see the silver lining it became pretty hard. Thoughts of graduation doesn't seem to help any, while exciting as this may be, it's also a very scary time... especially when I don't exactly have a plan. While I do seem to be pretty organized most of the time, life has been fairly unplanned for me and sometimes it's the unexpected that's proven to be the best thing for me. I guess one of my greatest fears is that these unexpected things will just stop happening, that karma will have run it's self out and this will have been the best time of my life. Yet I got a fortune cookie the other day, and while I typically don't pay much attention to these, this one read "Depart not from the path which fate has assigned." Sort of ironic considering my mindset lately...

Just as things have been hard for a while, things are beginning to look up and I'm beginning to find some sort of normalcy again. Work both at school and at the EMC have been going fairly well recently, and not to mention I won a scholarship with Lauren and Mike to go to GDC!!! It sort of finally struck me the other day, just how amazing this is! I mean I remember watching coverage of this event as a child, eagerly awaiting what new things will be released and what will be said... and this year I'll be there for it. I feel like my life has continual been extreme ups and downs, while I've been granted many great opportunities, I've had my fair share of hard times as well... As long as the good times continue to follow the bad I guess I'll be alright. Assuming I'll be able to find a job of sorts after college. Ugh, while I have so many fears still I've been trying my best to remain positive. This has been the greatest adventure of my life, and I just hope that another awaits me after college.

Anyways I'm not sure what else to say for now, as always I remain fairly busy with everything I get myself involved in... Here's to hoping the ride isn't over.

Maya

2009-01-25T20:20:00.001-08:00

I've avoided writing for the past couple weeks, as these have seemed to be the most trying and didn't necessarily want to be completely negative. Things have been a bit hectic with ramping up with school, and especially the UN project. These past two weeks had been solely focused on a presentation that we were to give on Thursday the 22nd in New York, to our benefactor and others from the UN. During all of this our senior team project had given some specific guide lines that we had to address in order for our game to make it pass "Green Light" and continue with production, and that presentation was the Friday after New York. As trying as this time has been, we gather strength from continuing to walk forward and not falling down. I'm happy to say that I had a really relaxed weekend, although not being glued to my work always concerns me but I'm sure I can make it up during this next week.

The presentation to the UN on Thursday was a pretty big success I think, as nervous as I had been it went fairly smoothly. Getting into these intellectual conversations is something that I seem to live for, somehow I've become a talker... Not exactly sure when that happened but yea New York was pretty awesome. As happy a day Thursday was, though, I also recieved word that my childhood dog had died... Something pretty hard to hear between meetings, and trying to stay on track. He was very old, and if anything this was probably the best way he could have gone but I still wish I had been home. This had been my dog since I was really little, and I named him Rex, a little cliche I know... but I was really into dinosaurs and he was my T. Rex. I wasn't always as social as I am now, and during that time he was my best friend... and I'll miss him. Before I begin to sound any more like a bad country music song I'll just change the subject haha.

So upon returning from New York I ended up having a pretty late night preparing for our Green Light deliverable, which I have still yet to hear about. We were told that we wouldn't hear until the beginning of this week, but I think it went over pretty well. I'm not sure I could be happier with how the group seems to be shaping up, I think if we get the green light we'll have something pretty great to show in April.

I've had a lot of different strong emotions in the past week or so, and I'll admit that I've been a little all over the place. Through it all, though, it has been educational in a sense. I'm learning more about those around me, some things more shocking then others but needless to say pretty revealing, and I'm always learning more about myself. I know I'm being incredibly vague, but I'd rather think I'm being tactful =)

One thing I did want to share though, this may sound sort of random, but I find it odd that the word "Maya" keeps popping up pretty prominently in my life. Growing up I was deeply interested in mayan mythology and lore, coming to Champlain I've ironically become deeply invested in a software called Maya, and now through a world religions class I've stumbled upon Maya once more... This is an excerpt taken from a book called "The Illustrated World's Religions" by Huston Smith, and it's talking about Hinduism but yea,

"The Hindus have something like this in mind when they characterize the world as maya. The world appears the way we see it, but that is not the way it really is. Maya comes from the same root as magic. In saying the world is maya, non-dual Hinduism is saying that there is something tricky about it. The trick lies in the way the world's materiality and multiplicity pass themselves off as being independently real.... Maya is also seductive in the attractiveness with which it decorates the world, trapping us for a long time within it and postponing our wish to journey on." (page 53)

What do I do in maya other than "decorate" a world, in which may appear attractive and engrossing but in all reality does not exist; and it's existence hinges on others taking a pause on their journey... I can read a lot of different things out of this, but what I'll share is that I think it's all about perceptions. While somehow I've become invested in the business of false perceptions, and I'm finding that everything is in how we perceive the world around us. Perhaps we need to keep a critical eye to it too, just like any bit of reading we need to evaluate our own "realities." It's about how we choose to perceive things and how we choose to react to things that fall in our journey's path, and while things get tougher and really hard at times... You've got to have faith that you'll keep walking, that you'll topple the next rise, and that it may seem as though you've picked the steepest slope... You've picked it for a reason and you should climb it and claim it as your own.

Walk your own path, even if you have to trudge though a little shit every now and again.

Seeing the Finish Line

2009-01-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a while I admit... but I think I had to let go of things for a little while. Coming back home has been pretty good for me I think. It had been a long time since I had actually had time to think, granted I practically have too much time to do that at home, it's been nice to reflect for a little bit. Something that I haven't been able to really escape from is the concept that I'll be graduating in a few months... Between being increasingly busy because of both work and school I hadn't given it much thought, yet many of my family members kept asking when exactly I was going to graduate and then its sort of hit me. This four year journey is nearly at an end... And as in anything it seems as though the climax of this story has been it's best part. I've fallen in love with my life at school, I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of really great people and make some connections that up until now I hadn't really thought much about, but really I've made a lot of great friends... a lot of friends that rely on me in some way, as I rely on them. Some friends I've had for longer, and some are new, but all accumulate to a pretty interesting dynamic that I've got going at school. It's hard to explain to others who I am and what I've been doing, and it's hard to understand I'm sure, but I've come to really value it.

It's hard not to feel sombre in the fact that my life is bound to change drastically in the next few months. I can't imagine where I'll be even this summer, but for some reason I hold some faith that this ride won't be ending May 9th but a new one will be beginning. Maybe in the end the best we can do is embrace uncertainty, because that's really all we have.

What is certain though is that Lauren and my game is going forward! We got the news yesterday and I'm sure she's as excited as I am. Even from home I can't help but get my mind back into "work mode" and begin thinking about scheduling and how we'll deal with the integration of new members. Unfortunately we were only given one new artist when I asked for two, which may change our scheduling a bit... and concerns me that I'll have to take on considerably more work. I was hoping to not work quite as much next semester, being my last semester, but I'm not sure how that goal is going to work out. Yet I'm convinced that this semester I'm going to fight to have at least one day off, novel concept I know haha but it sort of feels like a guilty pleasure at this point.

I guess it's already apparent in my last paragraph that its going to be a struggle this semester to think beyond the work that I'm doing now to my future, and as much as I know I need to be thinking of the future I can only hope to focus on the here and now and hope to excel one last semester at Champlain College. That is sort of my goal though, to not only excel at Champlain this last semester but really to enjoy my time in Burlington knowing that it will soon be over.

We live our lives to tell a good story... and so far I'm enjoying mine.

Also I'll be making the slow transition of this blow over to my new blog location at wesknee.com, it's still a little underconstruction but is close to being up. Please check it out though and you can check out images and a trailer from Lauren and my prototype... Enjoy!

Oh! I almost forgot (if your not viewing this from wesknee.com you should go there now) but on the right hand side you'll see a list of links that go to articles that include me in them. The most recent is "Q&A with Canyon Makers." Check that out too!

Canyon: People keep talking!!

2008-12-14T17:13:00.001-08:00

Hey,
I just thought I had to do a quick check in to post up links to these threads, listen what people are saying!!

"Actually Canyon is a great map and District needs some cleaning up (way to much stuff on that map). These maps are the best maps to come out since Urban Assault. All the new maps that have come out recently are awful."

"I agree. I absolutely love canyon, and I think I could learn to love district too. Both are well designed, fast action, and fun. Exactly what a pub map should be."

"IMO Canyon is the best map released in a long time."

"canyon is quite good, requires a really good comp but it's funny on a 26 man server."

"Tried both maps in single player and both look good.By the way, there is a Yeti in the hills on Canyon." ~Damn it took only three days for people to find him!

Also check out this Youtube video someone posted up...

It is so incredible that people are enjoying our map!! Considering our map was the underdog for so long, I couldn't be more proud =)

On another note Lauren and my prototype is coming in so well!!! UGH! I'll try to post up a picture of our slick at some point... Can't wait to present a semester of long hard work. December ended up being amazing.

Canyon

2008-12-13T14:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a pretty crazy week, last week of classes, running around trying to ensure that everything is getting done for our impending final presentations, and finally the release of our America's Army map to the public. It's sort of funny because I really didn't have enough time to think about this too much before it actually happened, and then when it finally did it was pretty big. Funny thing is I had stayed up pretty much all night the night before the release trying to fix last minute bugs in our map with my team, and the next day I was feeling more miserable then excited. Then it happened, probably literally with one button press our map was released to the public and suddenly forums and websites were reporting the news of the new maps and our achievements, and naming us by name! Sort of a HOLY CRAP experience when it came down to it. To think that suddenly there were other people, that could be anywhere on Earth, that were excited and speculating about our maps and then to think that people were now playing what we poured our hearts and souls into... WOW! The next day we kept checking in and at one point there were around twenty different servers running our maps in thirteen different countries, all at full server capacity. To think now that sure anyone can download and play our maps, but there are something like 9.3 million active users already on America's Army and have full access to our map! That's pretty crazy to think about... The exciting part is this is technically my first game release, and I'm not even out of college! The EMC threw us a pretty awesome LAN party last night, it was sooooo much fun to see so many people in and being excited playing our maps and just sort of generally heart warming to hear people actually like your creation. So far response has been pretty positive on forums and such...

As far as how I'm doing? Well I've been at work all day to try and finish up last minute finals homework and really get our production game finished. I'm pretty excited for that presentation, Lauren and I have done some pretty awesome things with this concept this semester and I can't wait to show it all off =)

OK have to get back to work but if you havn't downloaded AA yet, go download it and play our maps!!

At least check out the info on our maps on their site.

Also be sure to read the press release, it's on alot of different websites but all pretty much say the same thing.

Wanderlust

2008-12-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately how fortunate I've been throughout my life to have gotten to know the right people at the right time of my life. This may sound sort of weird but I feel like I've had the opportunity to really get to know the right people to influence me during the right times of my life... At times they have been Teachers, Coaches, and even peers; all who have helped shape me to be the person I am today. Speaking about this, if I had not had the opportunity to meet one of these people I probably wouldn't even be consciously recognizing this right now. That person is Alan Stracke, who I had my Freshman year for "Intro to Sociology." Funny story is I originally wasn't even signed up for his course, if I hadn't met my friend Niki in the first days of school I wouldn't have even known about it. Since then somehow he's changed the way I think, and perceive the world around me. I've been able to work in many of his teachings in not only the way I handle myself, but also in what I do in game development (I'm even using his book as a resource for a research paper I'm writing haha). He'd probably laugh if he heard this, considering he's not the most familiar with what exactly I do but his teachings still stand I believe. Really a lot of the models we use at the EMC to do games for learning, and even the PMC's "Sobido Method" falls right in line with what Stracke used to preach in class... engage the audience (user, student, whoever) and if they are engaged, they are learning and they are personalizing the information.... I'm not sure what it was about that 8 AM class I had when I was a freshman, maybe it was the funky reggae music first thing in the morning, or Stracke's crazy antics and stories but it's stuck with me...

It's sort of funny to think of him now, after all of this time. I was reminded of him by a article that was done about him in the Champlain Current and since then I can't help but reflect back on what I've learned from him, and others like him in my life. I feel bad that I've fallen into this crazy busy life I lead, because I really miss him... and yet I haven't taken the time to really reach out because that's the thing I'm short of most these days. Which has become more and more apparent with this semester's closing.

Thinking back on people who I'm thankful for meeting, it's sort of funny because I actually think of a friend I work closely with right now... It's weird to think that we haven't always been friends, but she's not only been great to work with but inspires me to be better at what I do.

That's another thing, I really think a great thing has happened at the EMC. I remember as I was going through college I had little to no contact with the grade above me, and with the culture and atmosphere that has been created at the EMC it's been so great to get to know people from different years through the EMC. Really it's been sort of fun watching them get into Maya, because I've had the opportunity to help out with some of their projects through some interesting late night work sessions we've had at the EMC as of late. The EMC is going to help further develop a stronger community and bond amongst the "e-gamers" here at Champlain College, and everyone is going to benefit. I could only imagine if I had received help when I was a sophomore and learned about more advanced stuff then I could only image how much more I could learn during my time here. I fully expect the Sophomore class to learn more, and go farther than I had the opportunity to do here, but don't take this as me being bitter by any means. I'm actually really excited for them.

Actually I was really touched the other day when two of my peers started talking about how they wished they had a "Wes in a Pocket," haha which I thought was pretty cool =)

These last couple of weeks have been hard, a lot of work and not a lot of time to do it but I've been hanging in there and am confident in the weeks on finals ahead. I'm planning on posting some stuff from our game soon after our presentation, but for now I'm keeping most of it under wraps. With these busy weeks I've had my ups and downs, but I'm doing alright and am looking forward to Christmas break that's closing in. I sort of wish Ann was around because there's a lot that I'd like to talk to her about but she's on some well deserved vacation.

OH! I almost forgot to say! I guess it's ok for me now to say that our America's Army maps have been officially accepted!!! They are releasing our maps later this week, with us fixing a few more bugs in the mean time but yea there has been an official release!!! Check it out at Americasarmy.com and in case any of you are curious, "Canyon" is the map concept that I worked on most of my summer. So yea it's been so exciting to see people actually writing in forums and speculating about our maps, not to mention being excited to play them!! UGH SO EXCITING!!! We'll be having a release party at the EMC on Friday, I have a lot of work to do but I'll take some time to celebrate... even though I didn't really for my own birthday haha but this is sort of bigger!

Anyways I'll end with the fact that through it all Stracke created a sort of Wanderlust in me, that has stuck with me and quite possibly will forever...

G'night all

Wanderlust:
A desire to travel, to understand one's very existence.

It's an odd feeling getting older

2008-11-30T20:26:00.000-08:00

On drives back and forth from Burlington to home, I think about a lot of things... today was no different. As I approach my 22nd birthday it's really sort of weird to see the "adult" (if that's what you can call it) I've become. This Thanksgiving when asked stories of my life and how things were going, I gave up tales of friendships made in townships in South Africa and talked about how busy life is for me working on three gaming projects. It's hard to think that not too long ago I was in High School, and I wouldn't believe anyone if they told me that I'd be able to do what I've been able to do in the past four years. It's sort of funny this sort of paradox that I have with myself, I like to think I keep becoming wiser. Reflecting on the past I think, "If only I was that knowledgeable then." Many people probably feel this but fail to realize that they will think that about themselves in the present in maybe a month's time. So maybe it's good to realize that we're never as wise as we might think we are... Ugh sorry about that rant... Anyways I just can't help but think of this last phase of my life, the friend's I've made and memories created here... I can't see where I'll be a year from now, but I'll most definitely look back at this busiest part of my life (thus far) and as hard as it is right now, I'll look back and smile... and I'll miss it.

Vicarious Visions

2008-11-24T09:38:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I don't have very long to blog but I felt the need to blog quickly about my experience meeting two incredibly interesting people from Vicarious Visions. This pretty much was the topping on an already pretty incredible week, but I can't help but be so excited about what they are doing at Vicarious Visions. The most attracting factor is just the work environment in general, it really seems as though they have gone out of their way to make it pretty exceptional. They actually encourage their employees to have a life outside of the office, crazy idea! It sounds as though it's fairly easy to move around the company internally depending on your interests, and that's the other thing... They recognize that there are really two different kinds of people, those who can focus solely on that one thing and be really good at it and those who have varied interests and good communications skills. That is so exciting because I had become increasingly nervous that I may not be able to enter the industry based solely on my art and that if I did they may not care that I have other skills and it may be difficult to move to a more communication based position, where I think I might do my best work in the future. Also they look for people with leadership potential, which my background is riddled with. Also they aren't in a huge city, which is incredibly appealing to me, they are located in Albany NY. To top it off they consider people right out of college! UGH! I probably shouldn't be getting this excited but it's really awesome to hear about a such an incredible working environment, when I've heard so many horror stories of how it might be working for a typical AAA gaming company. I was getting a little nervous that my future might just be consumed with more work and not much of an actual life. Well the future may not be as bleak =)

Check them out at www.vvisions.com

It feels like it may not be a bad fit, and so I'm very hopeful about hearing more in the future.

Ghost of Wes's Future... MIGS Post Mortem

2008-11-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

It's pretty hard to start debriefing about the Montreal International Game Summit... I had the opportunity to talk to some great people, see some great sessions, and so have quite a bit of new thoughts you can imagine. I really wanted to go through each session here, day by day, and give my two cents but really I think I'm going to be a bit more vague then I was originally intending and just go through my two days in Montreal...

I think I have to start with talking about my epic journey to MIGS, no I'm not referring to the packed yellow school bus ride up there, I'm actually talking about the next morning. Mike Fowler and I (dressed to look good, not necessarily for warmth) were following some of our classmates to MIGS when they decided that they were going to take the Metro. Yet we didn't have any Canadian money and so we thought we couldn't buy tickets (later we found that there are ATMs down in the subway stations). So they gave us a couple of simple directions and we were off. And so we walked... and walked... and walked... and inevitably got a little lost. It was a pretty cold and windy morning in Montreal, and when we thought it couldn't get much worse... it started to snow... This wasn't exactly how I was planning on spending my first morning at MIGS, with a little luck, and a lot of backtracking, we did find our way to MIGS and in time for the first key note.

Warren Spector's key note was most definitely an inspiration! After starting on the UN project, and with working on CIMIT I can't help but be intrigued and ultimately end up working games with moral meaning and inevitably games for social change. With Spector advocating that games need meaning, it was just such a great way to start this conference for me.

I was very excited about the next session that I went to with Jason Mitchel from Valve, who gave a talk about "Connecting game play to Visuals," which is something I'm working intimately with on our Senior production game. Any lecture that starts with the Presenter opening with "Ravenous Zombies," you know your in the right place =) I most certainly got some interesting ideas out of this conversation on how to increase the tension of the level that I'm currently working on, and I hoping these are things that I can hopefully implement. Mitchel touched upon two games from Valve, "Team Fortress 2" and "Left 4 Dead." I was pretty interested in hearing more about the unique style of TF2, and after hearing their artist influence I now know why I found this style so appealing. One of their major artistic influences came from Normal Rockwell, who was really my first favorite artist, an odd choice maybe but ugh! Love his work! To think that people are using these sorts of influences in the world of video games is just so cool! Left 4 Dead seems to be a pretty awesome game as well, as much as scary games do just that to me, I think I may have to check it out!

I followed Jason Mitchel into a panel discussion afterwards about "Alternative Stylization," which was really a neat sort of thing to be involved with. In the panel we were able to really get into some conversations with industry professionals about what exactly do they think about key topics and design decisions. Really my take away from this one was an interesting part of the conversation in which it was argued that with less detail in character design, the more association the player can make with their avatar. Which is awesome, not only because I believe in this but also I've been advocating this point for our artistic direction in our UN Concept!

After a... unique oriental lunch with items that I'm still unsure about, I sat in on a lecture given by Laura Fryer, A Microsoft Executive Producer who's most title was Gears of War 2. I couldn't help but love this talk as well, beyond her wonderful "puppy" slides, some of the key points she gave about team management are things that I've implemented since I was a Peer Mentor Sophomore year. Leslie Averil would be proud! Really, without using this term, Fryer discussed the importants of Servant Leadership! Ugh! Which I totally agree with, as the leader you need to be the "catalyst" for the rest of the group. I couldn't help but envy her a little... More and more I'm seeing that I'm very much interested in Producer/Creative Director positions, which are extremely difficult to come by.

The next couple of sessions were equally as interesting, Chris Doran's "Engineering mood and Atmosphere with Light" (which definitely gave me some more ideas for our Senior Game), David Lightbown's "Under the Surface," and Randy Smith's Games are Art, and What to do about it." Smith's talk was pretty animated and fun, and I definitely like the direction of what it seems that a lot of industry professionals are headed.

After dinner, at a place with more things on the menu that I recognized, a bunch of us hit up the Microsoft-Ubisoft Party. This was pretty awesome, but a really hard environment to actually meet people in. It was a pretty small bar, packed with people, loud music, and dark lighting... not really conducive to networking to say the least. Yet I was able to have a pretty great one-on-one conversation with Laura Fryer who gave the key note earlier that day. It was so interesting to hear more of her perspective of not only her job but her work in general and how she got to where she is today. She also gave me some pointers about my talk for the next day, the key one being to NOT vision the audience naked... Unfortunately she didn't have any business cards to give me, so I kind of struck out there as I'd really enjoy talking to her further about her position. I was able to meet a few others that night, one specifically from Mystic Entertainment which may prove to be extremely interesting.

After a long walk, on what still seems to be a bum ankle from our "adventure" from that morning, we returned to our hostel... my comfy half-bed, and I crashed for the evening, knowing that tomorrow would be my turn to speak.

The next morning Mike and I woke up early to hit up a Tim Horton's for breakfast, which was considerably better than my quarter of a muffin and half a hot chocolate I bummed off of a friend the day before for breakfast. Let me just say that this first key note was AWESOME! Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner (from Mass. General Hospital) have been doing research on the possible negative effects of video games, and what impact really does it have on the user. Dr. Kutner made some great correlations between Paperback novels, to Gangster Movies, to Comic Books, to Television Violence, and how much the public all thought they would corrupt the youth and how this sort of stereotyped view is no different today for video games. They gave some pretty hard evidence showing that players, even young players, make the distinction between the real world and the virtual one. Knowing that some of these simulated actions aren't necessarily ones that should be performed in real life. I found this to be great, but at the same time concerning... are we arguing that Video Games have no effect? So I approached them afterwards and asked what they thought about Serious Games and Games for Social Change? Is it possible to make a positive difference even though we argue that games aren't making negative impacts? Is this hypocritical? No, after a pretty interesting and brief conversation Dr. Kutner responded that he very much believed in the impact that Serious games have the potential of having, and that if anything they can be more effective on the user experience then violent media might be suggested. I'm not going to lie, I forget some of his supporting evidence but it was still inspiring nonetheless.

Afterwards I attended Ben Mattes' "Evolution of a Unique Artistic Direction," where he proposed the question "Does a game need to look real in order for it to be beautiful?" Mattes proposes that it doesn't and walked us through some of the design decisions for the Prince of Persia game... one with an artistic direction I wasn't completely sold on... until I saw a bit more. I truly think this may be the new wave of innovative video game creation, we've proved that we can almost match photo-realism, we can pump an engine with shaders, and yet ironically it's not eye catching to our audience. Our audiences is looking to escape to a surreal world (at times), and if we can give them just that... well we have something truly special. Ironically enough after this and a session with Reid Schneider on the "Army of Two Post Mortem," (both of which given by producers) couldn't help but reinforce my feeling of how right a position like being a producer might be for me in the future.

I didn't get much of a lunch this time, for I was meeting with Brian, Heather Conover, and Ann to discuss our presentation to be given later that day. Ironically enough some of my nerves had begun to shake off me, at least mentally anyways... my bowels were telling me a different story haha. I was pretty excited though, and confident because in this arena (while yes we are still very much students in a sense and learning) we were professionals, and I couldn't wait to engage with other professionals about our pretty large... "Problem." After this meeting there was a great key note given by David Braben, talking about how can we plan for the future of video game development. While that was all well and good, I couldn't help but be keenly interested in their rapid prototyping model that his company has been using to develop ideas for working titles. Sounds a lot like things that Lauren and I have thought of since Learning 2007, and to see it implemented seems like a very viable solution maybe for wherever I may work in the future.

I wasn't able to attend any more sessions, as I was tied up in a press interview and then it was time for our presentation. While I was hoping for a larger turnout, yet there was a plethora of interesting designers from many AAA Game Companies. It actually was a pretty awesome session, only because ours was so interactive and the fact that our audience were actually engaged in the discussions we were hoping for. It was also fun to see designers from studios like Ubisoft working with a designer from A2M, or maybe it was EA to be honest I'm not exactly sure but still was awesome nonetheless.

From here was one last key note speaker with Jonathan Blow, who gave a talk on the "Fundamental Conflict in Contemporary Game Design." He had some really interesting points about gaming and the inherent meaning behind certain game mechanics, and most definitely some interesting positions on narration in video games. While I could see where he was coming from, there were a few things that I disagreed with when it comes to narration and video games... yet he's the professional =P

After probably the best pizza I've had in.... well a long time, I went to the Gama 3D party which was organized by our very good friend Heather Kelly (who's been working with us on the UN project if I hadn't mentioned that before). This was a blast! I really sort of laid back atmosphere and some pretty revolutionary games using some interesting tool sets. There was this one awesome block game (which I can't remember at the moment but will be sure to find it and link something more about it here), in which took a pretty simple game of trying to fit a shape to a hole, and utilized head tracking so you could actually look and peer around the block you were rotating to fit. I'm sure this description doesn't do it justice, but it was pretty spectacular. At the party I was able to meet someone who was actually at our session earlier that day named Thomas Anderson, who's an animator at A2M. He was so awesome to talk to, because he runs into the same problem that I've had for a while now... I'm not just interested in art, I have a broad range of interests from design, to producing, and other major aspects of a project. It was really cool to talk to another artist who thought sort of the same way I do. I hoping to talk to him some more, if not to possibly get some help getting a foothold somewhere in the industry, to at least get to know more about what his job is really like and maybe what I should be expecting for the future... if I have future that is. UGH! It's so very scary to be a Senior right now! I don't have much time to worry about this though.

Anyways I have many, many more thoughts on my experiences in Montreal and some thoughts and concerns for me and my future, but for now I think I must end this. This was my experience in Montreal at a glance, and even though I know this was pretty dense... it's been condensed haha.

It's late now though so G'Night All!

MIGS!

2008-11-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

So this will be pretty short, really I just wanted to post up some renders of the "Exile's Hut" for Lauren and my senior team project game.

I'm pretty excited to go to Montreal later today for MIGS, anyone who's going up there be sure to check out my session on Wednesday 4-5 pm called Turning Tides: A Game to Combat Gender Violence, with Ann, Heather C, Heather K, Brian, and me! It's pretty crazy to see my bio is put up on a site with a list of speakers who have done some pretty crazy things in the industry. Getting a little nervous but still really excited to hopefully make some great contacts for my near future. Anyways wish me luck and if your in Montreal see you soon!

I'm in a hurry to get things done

2008-11-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

Life still has me running all over the place. I've fallen into a routine, and depending on the day it changes a little but it mostly goes with waking up, going to work, going to school, going back to work, a little more work once I get home, trying to relax a little before bed, and repeat. At times it feels monotonous, I lose track of days, and without weekends anymore things just seem to blend together. People ask how I'm doing and sometimes the best I can come up with is a status update on all of the stuff that I'm working on. It's all I think about, it's pretty much all I do, but I'm pretty happy. Working on new projects, texturing new objects, or seeing projects move forward excite me. It's all I got right now, that might sound a little pathetic but mostly everything I work on right now feels pretty worth while.

Sometimes it's really hard... It's hard to keep up with everything, switch from one project to the next, and to keep my head straight (Please note, this doesnt not by any means imply that I would rather be on one project right now or that I'd like to be taken off of one. Just stating it's complexities). It's hard to hear that I should be learning new things, exploring new areas, and investing my time in researching new methods that no one else in my classes are trying. I'm not saying that any of these things are bad, but when your investing all of your time and your told that you should be giving more... I'm nervous that I'm reaching my breaking point. Lauren and I have been pretty ambitious with our game concept, but I wouldn't want it to be anything less with us. I'm just not sure how feasible it will be if I try to split more of my time away from generating art and focus more on trying to find new methods. I'm hoping if I can get through this next environment pretty quickly, I'll be able to have the time to do the polish work. It's hard having your artwork be compared with Riven or Exile, when I just don't have the time or the resources to make it to that quality... but I'm trying. I think this all is very good experience nonetheless, it may feel hard but it'll make me stronger for it in the long run. Perhaps it will make it easier for me to handle so many things at once with a potential job in the future, this sort of crazed multi-tasking that I've got going for me right now. I don't think I've ever looked forward to Christmas break more than I do this year... the thought of having a couple weeks, even weekends for a little while will be great. Anyways, CIMIT is looking to go through some more mechanics revisions in the near future. I've taken a more designer role on the projects which is sort of interesting but I'm excited. UNFPA I've taken more of a managerial role right now, trying to get my group nailed down, my designers to possibly work a little more effectively, trying to find a good character direction with my co-artist, and all the while doing possible interface concepts. In Lauren and my game I've started working on another environment, which I'm pretty excited about. The renders already are looking pretty decent so I'm hopeful for it.

Next week will be extremely exciting/hectic for me as well, as I'll be headed up to the Montreal International Game Summit!! I'm so excited after reading some of the key note session descriptions, it's such a weird feeling heading to a conference that's actually on games this time around haha. Actually I'm really excited about this one talk about mood with lighting, hopefully it will help me with our production game. Another exciting piece is that I'll actually be speaking at MIGS!!!! I couldn't be more excited, but also I couldn't be more nervous haha! I've spoke in front of thousands of others in the past, but none of them I really considered potential employers! I hope I do well, but luckily I'll be joined by Ann, Heather, and Brian! This is such a huge opportunity, that I'm still just in awe of it a little. I actually ran around trying to get business cards printed up, and even bought myself a URL wesknee.com I haven't had the time to actually build the website, so I have a pretty bad placeholder up there for now and people can access my resume. Which is a pretty good thing I think. On the flip side I can't help but think of what work I may miss due to MIGS, but I'll figure it all out and get it all done.

I think that's all that's going on with me right now, I'd like to post a new render of what I'm working on right now but I think I want to finish some of the textures first =)

Seeing others where I began

2008-10-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting past couple of days, on a last minute cancellation I found myself on a bus to Boston on Tuesday night to attend the CIMIT conference. This was a pretty great trip, granted it was only for a day it felt a little bit like a vacation. Our demonstration went well, it was truly heart warming to see a lot of the things I had worked on functional and working in front of a crowd. I forget sometimes how fun it can be networking and interacting with the crowd as well, and how second nature it's become. It's sort of funny now that there has started to be familiar faces at these conferences, one in particular is John Able. I've grown used to seeing him on my travels and it's sort of neat to get into a good conversation with him. He really gave our prototype a critical eye and I think we survived haha...

What I really want to write about in this blog post is actually about the people working there ironically. The group that went down to CIMIT was just phenomenal and beyond any sort of camaraderie we all had during the trip, they were just great at interacting with people as they passed by. I was truly impressed with some of their networking skills and their ability to draw them into games like Spore and Trauma Center. It was also really great to see and hear from Ann and how the team in Learning 2008 was doing. I feel a bit awkward talking about the team in this light but I feel so proud of them. Hearing about Elliot Masie's new challenges for them and their experience in general is just so cool. It's sort of come full circle... A year ago I was in that place, a year ago on the plane ride back I was hoping that this ride wouldn't end, and so much has happened in that year. I know an experience like what we do at the Learning conferences is a bit changing, and I can't help but wonder if in a year from now this team will feel as I do today and be proud of what the next team has accomplished. I feel awkward saying proud, it implies some sort of ownership I think so maybe it's not quite the right word... but in any case it's pretty awesome. Seeing how much we've grown this past year, how far we've begun to push our boundaries, and wondering what will happen in the rest of this year; makes me sad that there's an end in sight. In that respect I know all good things must come to and end, and that I must move on but I can't help but feel like the Emergent Media Center has become much more then a place of work but also a bit of a family. It's nice to feel like I belong, I haven't always felt that in life. It's going to be mixed feelings for me when I graduate, but I'm even more excited to see how the EMC will progress... and be proud knowing that I was there to help it take some of it's first steps.

Im gettin really good at barely gettin by

2008-10-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

It's been far too long since I've last blogged, trouble is free time has become more and more difficult. I'm not really sure where to begin... I've been working pretty intensely on CIMIT these past couple of weeks to try to prepare for the CIMIT conference in Boston next week. Unfortunately I won't be attending, in fact I'm the only Lead not going but that's ok I've got plenty on my plate to do and no time to fall behind. Doubling up on hours for CIMIT has made it hard to put in a good week for the UN, even harder trying to get everyone organized enough to have a meeting. I'm pretty excited with what progress we've made thus far and I continue to be amazed by the scope on these projects... and by scope I mean impact potential they have. This has been really apparent with all of the press we've received these last couple of weeks. You can find all of the links at the Emergent Media Center Blog on my right hand panel, so I'll spare you all of the URLs... needless to say I've become really comfortable being interviewed and having intense conversations about emergent media and well a lot of things. This past week we had the Emergent Media Center's Grand Opening, this was quite the event. I freaked out before hand and got a resume, cover letter, and portfolio CD together with some amazing help from Ray and Ken at work. I was able to hand of a few of my resumes that night to companies like America's Army, EA, and some others. To be honest I had a great conversation with Scott Connolly of Population Media Center. He went to Africa with us and so it was sort of fun to be able to catch up with him, and really since Africa I had been curious to see if they may be getting into the game space and perhaps looking to hire. I really think I could enjoy a position with them, not only would I be working on media for social change (a worthwhile objective), I'd get to stay in Vermont, and maybe even travel a little more =) Yet at the same time I can't help but be enticed by the prospect of working for America's Army. After a bout I had with a certain governmental organization last year, I still would be interested in working with the government. Beyond all that though, I haven't really had time to think ahead too much. People asks me what my plans are, and well I could tell you my outlook on Senior production, CIMIT, or UN stuff, what art assets I plan on working on this week, what paper I need to write, but beyond that well... I need to get through all of this first. Oh that reminds me, when I was working on my resume... It's pretty awesome to be able to put United Nations on there =)

As far as other stuff goes, I've completed the Forest Level assets for the game Lauren and I are working on. I still need to tweek a few things but for now I'm actually continuing onto the next environment I'll be modeling. I had been nervous trying to combine senior production and art seminar together, but it's been working out for the most part. It's hard though because in class I'm just doing things that are so far different then anyone else, and most of the atmospheric effects Buck can't help me with. I had been really nervous for our critique because of this, I wasn't just showing one asset, instead I was showing 20 swfs containing loop animations, stills, and movement cycles. I was surprised that Buck had been so supportive of it and really I think he likes it. In all reality though I'm so happy to start on this new environment, it's sort of refreshing and exciting at the same time. I remember at one point I used to think it daunting to start a new project or character but it's not like that this time for some reason. I sort of like receiving a new piece of clay, and it can turn out to be so many different things... it's exciting... Especially knowing what I know now of new maya rendering techniques.

I don't think I have anything really too thoughtful to put in here... I haven't had much of a social life as of late, but it's ok I'm doing a lot of really great things. When I think of how I'm doing, I always think that I'm just "Surviving" or "Getting by" but I'm not... I'm striving ahead, working hard, and hoping it all pays off =) I'll leave you with a render of a snow scene as a teaser for our game, sadly I can't get all of my renders up here or blogspot would kill me.

Oh! One last thing, Champlain's Team for Eliott Masie's Learning 2008 just left today! I'm not sure where to find them online, but I'm sure Ann will blog down there. Be sure to follow them on what is sure to be an intense four days. It's sort of weird seeing them go off, Learning 2007 was sort of my entry into the Emergent Media Center, and it feels sort of like the torch has passed on. Best of Luck to Kate, Dan, Austin, Chris, Max, and Vanessa! My thoughts are with you guys.

Today it rained...

2008-09-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Today it rained... appropriately so. There were a lot of emotions leading up to today, with not only dealing with a death but also with tensions within the family. I can't help but have mixed feelings about today, on one hand obviously it was a sad day, and yet I got to make contact again with family members I havn't seen in seven years! You start to feel your age when you bump into someone and when last you remember then they were three feet tall, and now nearly as tall as you are! Not to mention trying to catch with people and when they ask you what you've been up to and where I've been these past few years or even lately... My life is all kinds of complicated I've decided, and at times very hard to explain haha. Between my work in 3D (which can sometime be a hard concept to grasp it's self), AA, CIMIT, and even my most recent trip to Africa... It's quite the laundry list of exploits to a pretty interesting life. What did I do exciting last summer? I created a map for a gaming company (funded by the Army), worked on a training simulation for emergency responders, and oh yea went to Africa to create a game targeted against gender based violence... Oh you worked at KFC? That's nice too....

Beyond all that I was truely touched by talking and hearing others speak of my Grandfather today. His time in highschool playing hockey (he always said he used to be a "goo-lee"), his service in World War II on Iwo Jima, when he married his wife Olive, and right up to the end hearing how much of an impact he made on so many lives. He was pretty incredible in his own right. I certainly had a hard time keeping a straight face at times, and most definitly when the bag piper started playing... I don't know what it is about bag pipes that get to me so much, maybe it was growing up going to the scotch highland games with my family and seeing the pipers march, or the mere fact that it's my heritage...

It was great to see everybody today and I find myself at some peace at home. I don't slow down much, and can forget what it's like... as rediculous as that sounds. Yet I'm somewhat restless and can't wait to get running again. I know in my last post I wrote about how I can never seem to slow down and that I just keep running at every opportunity to do so, but I've decided the reason why I sprint is because I can =)

Douglas Knee Sr... My Grandfather

2008-09-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

(Douglas Knee Sr.)

My Grandfather died yesterday at 5:15 pm… Where was I? I was off getting a hair cut, ironically in case I have to see family in the unforeseen future. A bit shallow I admit. Since then I’ve tried hard not to think about it, because let’s face it… who has time for a bit of an emotional breakdown? I know I don’t. Instead I’ve been hurrying and worrying about ensuring that missing a full weekend’s worth of work won’t put me too far behind my own goals. Sending out e-mails to teachers, planning what work I can do from home, and for what? I get in these moods where I find this new “work-a-holic wes” to be frustrating. I get nervous about running through life, I try to slow down but at every opportunity what do I do? I sprint… then trip over something I hadn’t planned for. It’s something like this that reminds me that I need to slow down and be able to see into the here and now… instead of having lofty thoughts of the future.

I’ve become so strategic, almost mundanely so. I’m plan out most things that I do and even now I’m avoiding childhood memories of my Grandfather, oh no that time has been allotted to when I go home. In which case afterwards I’ll brush myself off, acknowledge others when the offer their shoulders or an ear, and pretend that everything is all right. It won’t matter whether it’s true or not, but needless to say I’ll have to be in order to get back up to speed with my oh so exciting life. I acknowledge this is a pretty dismal outlook on things at the moment, and I promise you that it will pass. In any case maybe I’ll feel more comfortable writing about him after this weekend.

I’ll miss you Grandpa…

“Rest in peace, you’ve told us lots of stories…”
(A quote that is traditionally said in an African funeral)

Under Pressure

2008-09-21T11:55:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I've last blogged, and I'm not gunna lie, I'm not exactly sure what to say but I have a lot to show.

First off a week ago we heard back from AA, and they wanted us to retool some things on our map once again. So I did what I do best apparently, and really tried to drastically change things (shake things up). I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out, we drastically changed the mountain set up, lowered the high area, and I was able to create some neat new elements to the south that I think really helps it out a lot. Visually our map is still quite beutiful and I think it just keeps getting better. Although while getting these screen shots I noticed one floating item... =(

So yet again I'm feeling pretty positive about our map, but we'll just have to wait and see what the devs think about our latest revision.

I've also been working pretty hard on assets for Lauren's and my game for Senior production. I'm near completion of a Shack for part of the Forest level of our game. I'm still working on the texture and havn't done the spec map yet.

Lastly I've been workin on trying to figure some sort of art direction for the UN project, and possible promotional art. This is my first go at artrage (a digital painting program) and I was pretty impressed. I sort of used a style that I used on an archetecture study once and well I think I'll them speak for themselves, I was pretty happy with them... We'll have to see what the rest of the group thinks of them.

(The one above is my least favorite... I'm not sure what I was thinking...) So yea, this would usually be about the time where I'd give some thoughtful tidbits about life and my thoughts in general about to be honest, I'm just going on a day by day basis. In some ways I think I've finally lost it, I chuckle nervously at the prospect of all of the work ahead me, and somehow it's all become sort of funny. I'm not meaning this to be negative by anymeans, I'm very thankful to be in the position I am, and excited about everything but... I just try not to think too much about it =)

Not making the cut...

2008-09-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

I think it’s fairly safe to say that I’ve been through a lot in this past year… I used to say that a person is merely made of up their experiences and I wanted to experience. In some sort of twisted self-fulfilling prophecy I haven’t just had “experiences,” no that would be understating the places I’ve been, things I’ve seen, and people I’ve had the pleasure to talk to. Through all of this I continue to learn and become some kind of better animal, more able to adapt with the intensities of life. Yet every time I feel as though I have a stable footing, I’m reminded that nothing in my life seems to be written in stone. I used to embrace this flexibility, still do in most respects, and have learned from it. Once such lesson I’ve already blogged about, knowing when exactly to kill a project or creation that is deemed un-necessary. There could be many reasons for doing so, but the lesson learned is to not be married to your creations. I’ve recently read quite a bit about companies who make the same sorts of pruning many of us do in our production phases, these cuts help make the company more lean and productive. Today I saw this in another context… Today I was cut from someone’s life (someone who I care deeply for), in hopes of possibly increasing their own productivity in a sense…

In many ways I understand where this person is coming from, this doesn’t mean I have to agree or even like this decision. I’m not meaning this to be a vengeful post by any means, and I hope that others who read into this won’t think of me as being too bitter. This is just something that’s obviously stuck with me today, and I feel as though I had to comment on it.

Today I lost my footing, tomorrow I’ll get back up again… because it’s what I do and how I survive.

...and hey things could always be worse and let's hope our AA map doesn't meet the same fate =)

We're responsible for what we create...

2008-09-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight I worked at Burlington's Art Hop helping to showcase some of the work coming out from the EMC. I was signed up to represent my group's America's Army map to visitors that stopped by, and it didn't take me long to feel sort of awkward about it. I was stationed right next to my CIMIT group and also down the line from the Information Literacy games and as people came to me they would ask me questions like "And so what do you do in your game?" This was sort of awkward... how else would I reply other than "You shoot people." I tried to change the wording around, threw in words like "Tactics" and "Urban warfare" but in all reality even if it didn't pale in the eyes of whomever I was talking to, it did in my own. Has my constructed reality changed so much?? Then I started to feel somewhat of a hypocrite for feeling negatively about this game and my map. It's not like I don't play these sort of games and enjoy then but it left me with one resounding question... Even though I play these games, are these the sorts of project I want to work on? Dealing heavily with projects from both CIMIT and the UN it's hard to answer that question, especially when I can see the medium put to better uses. I hope anyone reading this isn't thinking that I'm turning into a anti-violence/anti-entertainment industry type person, but I have turned into one that has enough conscious to think a little deeper about it.

Not quite re-adjusted but getting there...

2008-09-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

So I'm pretty excited, as well as nervous, about this upcoming semester. The classes that I've had thus far have been pretty positive and really I've been excited about my senior production and art seminar courses. It felt really good that I could show both teachers ideas that I've worked on over the summer and in all reality I was expecting to get shot down a little but what surprised me is that I haven't been! In fact they both have been supportive, and I think if I work things right then I'll be able to work on one cohesive project that will coincide with both classes at once. This sort of thing is going to be my friend this semester, with what little time I have between work and school, any consolidation will be a good thing. Although that's not to say that I'm not still nervous about the prospect of all the work I'm creating for myself, and the fact that I keep second guessing if I'm on the right wave length... I'm feeling pretty positive. Also it's been really sort of funny, things the teachers in both classes have asked if we're familiar with, are certain things (or concepts) I've been working with all summer long. It's really nice to see that knowledge gained this summer has already seeped it's way into my other work. So I have a lot of questions in mind about my process, and I've found that I've been venting about it quite a bit. Although I won't be venting about it here, because I've decided that for the most part no one really understands what I'm trying to explain and it's most likely that I'll have to come up with a solution on my own.

Africa is still very much in my mind though... Yet I've been able to find some people I met in Africa through facebook and was actually able to chat with someone I met at UCT the other day, online through facebook chat! It was pretty radical and incredible to think that I was chatting with someone across the world.

One last thought... I've been reading up on globalization (for my history course) and I've made a correlation to globalization in my own life. Just as globalization has enabled businesses to outsource labor and production accross the globe, in a sense globalization has enabled a small college in the woods of Vermont to work on a video game targeted at moral and social issues for young men in South Africa. Sort of funny to think about...

(Just as Globalization has enabled this South African boy to not only know but wear a shirt featuring Disney's Buzz Lightyear on it)

Disconnected

2008-09-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

(Sunset over Robben Island)

It's been sort of weird attempting to return to normality... I'm still unsure why I feel this way, and yet I can't help but feel disconnected from everything. Nothing has really changed, it's the same room I've had all summer long, same roommate, same friends, same life... but I feel sort of lost. It was weird to come back and enjoy my materialistic possessions, I have my cell phone, my car, my computer, my xbox, my "things" in this perfect little world that I inhabit. It's sort of funny really, I return to a place that has so many things to do and I'm unsure of what to do. I've become bored, yet recluse. I feel bad that I have been sort of shying away from people since I've returned, yet when I get an opportunity to talk to someone that went to Africa too I relish in it. It's become hard to answer the question, "How was Africa?" What am I supposed to say? "Cool?" Even now I try to describe the experience and so I stare at my monitor clueless of what to write. Instead I think of the people I had the chance to meet and can't help but wonder how they are doing, how are they surviving? What would they think of my world? They'd think it to be foolish I'm sure, exaggerate beyond all means. They have so little, and I have so much and yet find opportunities to complain... even now ironically haha. I can't help but look at my world in a different light and feel somewhat out of place. Not to mention the school is getting ready to rev up for another year, and the campus has become populated again. Seeing many new freshman run to and fro and me trying to remember what my first weeks here were like. It seems like so long ago, and really sometimes I forget that I'm still attending school. My mind has been maintained by so many other things and issues that I had forgotten about my upcoming academic commitments. It’ll be different attending class tomorrow, no the classrooms haven’t changed but I seemed to have. I probably won’t be able to not think about Sinethemba’s class rooms and their learners…

I’m sorry, I hope this isn’t coming across as too down or depressing because that’s not necessarily what I mean here. I am just trying to explain the disconnection I feel, and yet I don’t think I entirely understand it myself.

Cape Town day 6 & 7

2008-08-31T11:28:00.001-07:00

While writing this I’m sitting on the floor of Cape Town International Airport, waiting for my flight home. Our flight has already been delayed by forty-five minutes, which makes me really nervous about our connection in JFK. Hopefully everything will be ok and I won’t lose my luggage. Anyways I didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday and I do have some notes about what happened and so I’ll start with yesterday…

First thing in the morning we went off to the UCT campus again to talk with Steve Vosloo(spelling?) and Maryanne Walton. During this talk we discussed key points from our research and had a conversation about the feasibility of what we’re trying to do. Which all and all was great conversation that challenged us to defend what we’re doing. Afterwards we had lunch at the UCT café and afterwards we had another conversation with a guy named Gary Marsden. He was a really interesting fellow who is trying to invigorate the gaming industry in South Africa. He’s sort of like the Ann of UCT, and even had a center called the ICT4D (I’m not sure my notes are correct in this but I have it meaning, Information Communitive Technology for Development). We had a great talk about the mobile market here in Africa and really how viral things can be amongst the townships. What was really funny was that he said that he had spent some time in New Hampshire, and when questioned about it I found out that he worked for Story Land!!! Haha I just found this pretty funny, and sort of strange about just how small the world really can be.

Afterwards we returned to 40 Winks to have a talk with a lady (whom I forget her name at the moment) who is deeply involved with animators around Cape Town and is trying to invigorate the industry here as well. What I really took away from this talk was, not only more information about how we could possibly go about our game, but we also talked about how big and hard this project really is. She called us “brave” which I thought was pretty interesting.

I’ve found in many of the conversations we’ve had with academics her e in South Africa, they are sort of taken back by our objectives and goals, but also equally as taken back by our findings and our knowledge of gaming and learning.

We were also able to finish off the night at this really neat “Cuban” restaurant down “Long Street,” which seemed to be pretty perfect for our final night here in Africa. The food was good, the atmosphere was amazing, and there couldn’t have been more smiles… or dancing… Ann always seems to work that into whatever trip we go on!

Ok as far as today goes we woke this morning to venture up Table Mountain. The morning was a bit too foggy to go all the way to the top, and so we went parts of the way up and took some pretty awesome pictures overlooking Cape Town. From there we went to this awesome like Harbor area where there were several street venders selling goods and a guy with a Seal… no joke a guy hanging out with a seal.

Afterwards we went to a Rape Crisis clinic, which was both good and bad. I’m not sure I’ve shared in the past how much crimes of rape and child abuse bothers me, but it does… ironically after taking on this project huh? Anyways we got some really great information, and insight as to why such things happen and the culture enabling it. From there it’s a pretty easy story, lunch, grabbing luggage, and well now I’m here at the airport. It’s raining like crazy outside, I just saw a luggage box blown off of it’s cart, and yea… it’s just a little bit cruddy. I’m still nervous, flights to where we’re headed go every three days… so yea this could be interesting!

I’ve been really trying hard to put into words how exactly this trip has been but in all reality there is no possible way I could describe that this trip was like. I was talking about it last night with Keith and Brian about this trip and how its really turned this project into something else for all of us. This is no longer just a flaky concept, this has become real for us. I can’t help but feel like it’s bigger then “just a game” and much bigger than any of us. We now have a face to Africa, and it’s exciting how much we all feel for it now. I still find it somewhat scary because, in my opinion, we can’t let this fail. Too much is at stake and too much good can come of this to let it slide. This is so far different than anything we’ve ever done (of course I’m making generalizations about the group), but this is bigger than any sort of class project where a grade is at stake. Thinking about returning to school and starting a new semester seems somewhat silly, as important as school really is to me, this is just… well I don’t want to say more important because I don’t want anyone to get the wrong opinion, I’ll still be diligent about my work at school, but this is something that will seep it’s way deeply into my life and has already seeped it’s way into who I am.

Before I left I blogged about changing, I knew that this trip would be pretty big, and I knew that I didn’t know just how big it was going to be. Epic would be an understatement about the scale of this trip, I’m still reeling with finally having a moment to try to think about some of the information we’ve received. I’m not going to lie, Its been a tiring journey because we’ve done so much in such little time, with no real time for processing all of this information. It should prove interesting these next couple of weeks as we all begin to really think about it all and remember things we didn’t pick up on while we were here. I’m beyond lucky in life, and this trip… has meant a lot to me in my own personal journey. As much as we learn about others, sometimes it’s good to recognize how much we learn about ourselves. So much this week I’ve introduced myself as a Senior Artist at Champlain College… I’m a Senior… This is it… what will I be in two semesters? Who will I have become? Will I have a job? Will I leave these amazing projects behind? Could I really?

As it is now I should finish up this post, I’ll probably be posting this by the time I’m already back in the states. I feel like I should say thank you or some other words of insight here but words have escaped me…

Thank you South Africa.

The Rapper, the Soccer player, and Me... Cape Town day five

2008-08-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! I’m writing this post day five during breakfast this morning, and am not sure how much time I actually have, so I want to blog about yesterday as quickly as possible…

We went back to Sinethemba (the high school we went to the day before), to join in on a morning welcoming assembly. Unfortunately due to rain there couldn’t be an assembly so we just sort of toured the school. I was happy to see one of the learners that I had talked to the day before, I talked to two boys the day before (one being the “Rapper” and the other the “Soccer player”). The Rapper met us early and wanted to partake in the tour. It was immediately present that we had become considerably better friends then we were the day before. It was like seeing an old friend, we were able to joke and he wanted to lead me to see his classrooms and tell me the real “ins and outs” of the school. The Soccer player was able to meet us half way through, its so fun to see the contrast between the Soccer player and the Rapper. The Rapper is much more vocal and just extroverted, while the Soccer player was a little more reserved but so completely genuine. The tour of the school was really fun but we had to leave for lunch, but we said our good byes knowing we’d return later.

Ok lunch was an adventure! We went to Mophindi’s Butchery, at a place like this you go to the counter and order what sorts of meat you want in quantity of pounds... It’s all uncooked first and they cook it all for you before you eat it. While we were waiting we got an awesome tour from the Manager, he was a pretty interesting guy. He told us of a story of an American from Boston who had actually came to visit the townships in Khayelitsha. He really wanted to see inside one of the shacks and so the manager took him into the township to show him a friend’s place. While the Bostonian was talking to the manager’s friend, the friend started talking about his mother in the states. He pulled out a packet of letters from his mother to show the Bostonian the address… Only to find that the address was the address of the Bostonian’s neighbor, and that he actually knew the man’s mother! The Bostonian pulled out his cell phone and was actually able to call the man’s mother, and it was the first time they had talked in 20 sem-od years. It’s a small world, no?
Lunch consisted of a pile of meats, consisting of chicken, pork, beef, lamb, and sausage. No plates for all of us except for napkins, and no utensils… Image 20 Savage hungry Americans chowing down on a pile of meat in the middle of a township in South Africa. It was quite the experience and the meat was actually really good.

We went on a little tour before returning to the school, at the school we talked to two journalist before getting into our large group discussions. The journalist opinions were sort of interesting and yet it felt as though they had a jaded view of us and didn’t think that we had been as deep into Africa as we could have been. He may be right but we have done some pretty amazing things since we’ve come here, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve been able to get a better view of who these people are.

Afterwards we were supposed to do our large group discussion, I was supposed to facilitated 5-8 people in a discussion but when we made it to our room only two people had shown up. My friends the Rapper and the Soccer player. I was half disappointed, but really happy to be able to really talk one on one with them again. I can’t divulge the exact nature of our discussion but needless to say it was eye opening, and these two learners have such an insightful look into their own culture. I can’t help but feel I made some really neat friends of these two guys. When we left, we left with the intention of returning in the morning, which I’ve just learned that we now have to go back to UCT for some other interviews. Part of me knows this is a good choice for more information, but emotionally I really want to return to Sinethemba so say goodbye to my friends. I have their e-mail though and perhaps I’ll be able to talk to them again… hopefully anyways.

Yesterday night we returned to the V & A for dinner and some more shopping. I did some quick running around trying to find jewelry for Alicia… which I felt completely clueless about! Haha but yea afterwards we went to a restaurant and I had Ostrich again and Spring buck. Ok that’s what happened yesterday and I should really eat breakfast… Until later!

Cape Town... Day four

2008-08-27T13:49:00.001-07:00

I’m trying to blog quickly before dinner, because I’m fairly certain I won’t be able to blog again later. So I’ll just jump right into it, this morning we split into two groups. Part of us went back to Langa (a township we visited earlier with my jumping friends) and in the afternoon went to an HIV clinic… yet the other part of us stayed at the bed and breakfast to talk to a guy named Mark Williams, who flew in from Johannesburg, and in the afternoon they went to a school at a township called “Fillipe” (spelling?!) to do small group interviews. I was apart of the group that stayed at the bed and breakfast and went to the school to do interviews.

Mark Williams was an interesting fellow, he created a sort of business game aimed to teach individuals entrepreneurship. We talked a lot about “disguised learning” and how businesses in the area are figuring out that everyone is getting tired of learning the same ways. As interesting as this was, it wasn’t necessarily pertinent to the UN project I felt. It was sort of reminiscent of our talks from Learning 2007, which was great and made some possibilities for the EMC I feel but again I’m not sure if it really related to our project at the moment. We actually had an opportunity to play his game, called “Vantage Point” which was actually really fun! We kept trying to make under the table deals with each other and this social aspects to this game really made this so much fun. This sort of social interaction kind of gave us some inspiration towards game design… this may be something that may be incredibly effective for our audience who is already playing social games in the first place. This sort of social interaction also enables one to personalize the information a lot easier as well.

On the way the way to the high school Ann was telling us a story about how she was talking with one of the people who works at the bed and breakfast that we’re staying at. After explaining the point of the project the woman actually said “Thank you for coming to South Africa.” This sort of hit home for us =)

My experience today at the school was amazing, I’m really not sure where to begin. I don’t think that I’m going to post the name of the two boys that I had the opportunity to talk to, for confidentiality purposes. Yet we were really able to have an in depth conversation over the course of about an hour and a half. Surprisingly we talked about some pretty intense issues, media, sex, “Manhood”, peer pressure, and even home lives. I don’t think I’ll share my findings here right now, I don’t have much time before I sleep so I think I’ll move on. Perhaps later I’ll tell you more details of what sort of things that I heard. Either way I’m going back tomorrow to facilitate a large group discussion with seven or eight young males possibly. I’m excited to go back and make more connections with these kids.

My final memory of the evening was going to a UCT dorm and talking with some of the college students going there. It was really kind of fun to have a casual conversation with people our age and they really seemed to be interested in what we were working on. They also invited us to come look at their rooms, they kept calling it a hostel but it really didn’t fit my preconceived notion of what a hostel is. We looked at a single and really it was about the size of a normal double back at Champlain. It’s crazy just how big UCT is! We’re pretty tiny =) Although we’re small, we do a great many and big things… Something that was really funny was the fact that they invited a couple of us out to go party with them at a bar that sold 1R shots… which would be maybe 13 American cents. I couldn’t imagine a worst idea haha but it was funny to think about.

I feel as though I’m breezing through all of the events today and for that I apologize, but there really aren’t any words for how amazing this all is… I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go further in depth over all of my findings at some point but for now I must sleep. G’night and thank you all for your support =)

Friends... Cape Town Day Three

2008-08-27T01:22:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty crazy day. It started relatively innocent enough; we went to the University of Cape Town to meet with someone there. Unfortunately the person’s car had broken down and was unable to meet us, and so we watched a local station for a while. This daytime drama was pretty weird, illustrating women as the ones who were asking for sex, and were liars as well. They also somewhat showed males as the weak person being bullied into such things. Kind of a twist on things no?

Afterward we went to the UCT book store, and while buying some shwag I met one of the students in line. He was buying accounting books for class, and so I asked him if he was studying math. I found that he was actually majoring in Engineering and is interested in electrical engineering sort of stuff. I wished him luck with his classes and we then went to the UCT cafeteria, there were different stations or venders in the cafeteria and I was just sort of lost about what to get. Standing their confused I found my friend again and so I approached him to ask him for guidance. He directed me towards the chicken burger (which was actually pretty decent), and then I got to talk to him further and he was really quite interesting. He actually grew up in a township and thinking about it, it is quite an achievement growing up from a township and making his way to actually study at the University. I can’t imagine the struggle he must have gone through in order to get where he is today. Much like the other children that I’ve met, I managed to get him to write his name in my journal; Mashilo Moabelo. It was really neat to make this contact and be able to talk to someone in the same position as I am (in schooling) and be able to see eye to eye. He’s currently taking six classes this semester and is very stressed… sound familiar? Mashilo had to go and so we said our farewells. While waiting for the group to get ready for the bus I noticed some kids sitting around a table playing a card game, I tried my best to be outgoing and went and talked to them as well. They were playing a card game called Klaw Chess (which is Dutch, there is a lot of Dutch influence everywhere in the area), still unsure of the rules but they were incredibly friendly.
From there our group piled back onto our bus and made our way to Ikamya Youth (an afterschool youth organization). There we met Joy and Luyanda, two incredibly interesting people who were running this innovative group. They are sort of the pilot program for other youth programs in the country. There is one specific program that we found to be incredibly interesting called “Media Image and Expression.” From this program “learners” (students) are able to “polish” their computer skills. Joy mentioned that in some respects learners attend the program because the computer lab is a safe place for these kids. Apparently there are a lot of gangs in the area, and recently some of the xenophobic violence have even touched this area. I’d urge people to visit their website, and their blog, through Ikamvayouth.org. I haven’t had a chance yet but I’m sure it’ll be enlightening. We gathered a lot of information from Joy and Luyanda but I’ll just post some remember able quotes (and information) from them here now.

June is the youth month.

“People are either infected or affected by HIV.”

“Educational games are the way to go.” ~Luyanda

“Mobile phones would be the best way to reach the children.” ~Joy

Next we were able to actually enter the class rooms of Ikamva youth and sort of observe and help out with the youth there. This was so extremely awesome… we were able to go around and actually help students with their homework, although some of the subjects being covered were ones we hadn’t seen since high school (Biology, algebra, and some history). I was able to go and talk with some students who were doing research on one of their computers. I talked to a boy named Themba about what he was working on, and he was actually working on a play with some other boys. In this play all the actors are animals and they felt that they could address equality through these animals because then everyone is an animal and there aren’t any racial lines. I asked them to elaborate on this and they spoke of the recent xenophobic violence in their community and they felt the incredible need to address some of these issues. I found this incredibly fascinating that these youth were really trying to address a monumental issue (yet I should be used to that sort of thing). Themba talked about games that he plays with his friends and one specifically is called Sastsan, in Sastsan (I don’t know the official rules or anything) there is a lot of singing and dancing including music from many different cultures (and places) to promote equality. It seemed as though these kids were really into community based play… I keep calling these new friends “Kids” yet I have to keep reminding myself that they were 20 years old. They looked much younger, and when I told them I am 21, they laughed! I was confused and asked why they thought it was funny, and they said that I looked much older physically. These “kids” were fascinating, they were running their own “Shi Shi Ravi” classes, and have made their own group called Tafari (meaning “Conqueror of Judah”). Tafari is meant to be a nonprofit youth organization that these 20 year olds are running… Fantastic…

I was also able to sit down and just chat with a boy named Khanyisa Gwangaa, and was able to have a really casual conversation with him and some of his friends. About all kids of things like movies, and even fun stories from home. They told me about their home lives and I talked about my own stories from the farm in which they loved =) Before I knew it I was laughing and joking with these kids without any problems… no kinds of social or cultural barriers percent, just two kids laughing and talking together. What I hadn’t noticed, until I started talking to people from our group again, I had started talking like them and I hadn’t realized it. My voice had become lower keyed, I talked with a different accent, and even my vocabulary had changed somewhat. I felt sort of silly and had to make a conscious decision to be like “oh wait this isn’t how I’m supposed to talk.” Yet as weird as this sort of was, I really valued it and felt as though it helped me connect with these new friends… Zinzi Maureni, Thabile Nelani, Aviwe Thyinkala, Banele Adam, and more.
Another little note on this there was this girl who was showing me pictures of her home from her camera. While showing me pictures she showed me one of this little girl, and I asked her if this was her sister. She then told me that the girl was her daughter… she’s 17 years old.

I’m incredibly lucky and touched to be here in this place. I also couldn’t help but think of home some today as well. I wonder how my America’s Army group is doing, and can’t help but wonder how our meeting with our presentation went in my CIMIT group as well. I hope they are well and striving forward, I can’t wait to talk to them when I get back. Through this my thoughts have also been to Alicia, hoping that she’s surviving training and how I wished she was here to share this experience with me. Also to my folks, and how I can’t wait to share this incredible experience with my family. So many are in my thoughts…

That’s enough for now…

Cape Town... Day Two

2008-08-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today was a bit lower keyed then yesterday. We spent most of the day actually at the hotel having discussion groups with two interesting people about our goals, Raymond deVilliers from Wisdom Games and Tino (not sure of his last name) a graduate from UCT. This post won’t be too long, most of what we talked about were statistical data and theories of how our game could reach out demographic. A lot of the conversation turned to games that could possibly played on a cell phone. It’s really interesting; South Africa is actually ahead of the US in cell phone technology. Where we’d think a cell phone game would be typically played one someone is bored or waiting for the bus or something, this is actually their medium here. People may be playing on their phones in their home and even before bed. I’m still unsure how effective we can be in this medium, but either way we have to make something that will reach our demographic. I think I’ll include some quotes from my notes today, rather than go in depth on everything that was discussed.

Certain black children who grow up in well off homes and typically grow up with a “white accent,” are teased and called “Coconuts” black outside white on the inside.

South Africa began a large cell phone campaign, holding the belief that “Communication builds wealth.”

There’s a large anti-alcohol campaign that promotes “no drinking and walking.”

The people in South Africa are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, they are merely trying to survive. Therefore there aren’t many creative or innovative people.

The last major thing that I want to talk a little bit about was that we went back to V & A tonight to do a little shopping. I felt like I spent quite a bit of money but I have to keep remembering that it’s all in Rand, and the US dollar equals roughly 7.5R. So needless to say I found some pretty interesting things, but at one point one of the cashiers gave me the wrong change back on one item… Actually giving me 50 more rand back, I went back and fixed things and was feeling extremely positive about it. Sort of like a karma thing ya know? Then when I was on my way back to meet up with the group for dinner, and I was approached by a young male asking for change. He kept talking about how he needed to buy bread, so I reached into my pocket and tried to find the largest coin I could fish out for him. I didn’t want to give him all of my change and so I pulled out a 2 Rand coin. He began to beg me for more as I tried to back away, telling me that bread is 8 Rand and how he really needed it and that he was starving. By now my friends were already ahead of me and I was desperately trying to rejoin them and I kept refusing the man. Eventually the man gave up and I was able to move on, but not really… he really stuck with me and it bothered me a lot. I could have given him more Rand, and yet I couldn’t help but ask myself if he would really spend it on bread? Yet I feel like a horrible person for thinking so, and left having a sort of tension in my stomach that wouldn’t seem to go away. I then met up with everyone at our restaurant, which ended up being incredibly fancy. Looking at the menu seeing most meals at 70-150 Rand, I couldn’t help but feel completely horrible. I turned a blind eye to possibly someone in need to return to my privileged way of living. I just felt gross… and sort of lost my appetite. Granted the meal was fantastic and I was actually able to just call my folks to wish them a Happy Anniversary! Yet this feeling has stuck with me some, and I can’t help but feel just a little bit guilty.

Cape Town... Day 1

2008-08-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

“Rest in peace, you’ve told us lots of stories…”
(A quote that is traditionally said in an African funeral)

Well it’s been my first official day in South Africa. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to actually blog so I’m blogging first and seeing if I’ll be able to upload these later. Or maybe it will be one long blog post at the end of the trip, but who knows. I guess I’ll start with the trip over, with a total of twenty-four hours of travel time and sixteen of that on a plane alone… we were all pretty exhausted to say the least. It was sort of an interesting experience, which I’m not sure how to explain. Either way we were pretty excited to actually reach land. My first actual glimpse of South Africa was of a sunset over Table Mountain, which was an amazing sight. The first night we went to this restaurant/bar called News City, which was pretty good and all but I was too exhausted to really enjoy it and I was excited to get back and get some sleep. Also the Forty Winks hotel is really nice, I have to share a bed with my roommate Keith but who really cares at this point. It’s just awesome to be here.

I slept hard through the first night and breakfast was pretty good, from there we headed straight to our township tour. This was a crazy experience… Not gunna lie it hadn’t really felt like we were in Africa yet. I was feeling sort of disconnected from this place until we visited this church, after visiting a youth center. First of all the church was in this large hanger like warehouse, painted aquas, blues, and purples, with loud speakers set up for the preacher (also there wasn’t a cross anywhere to be found). At first glance it was just sort of loud and overwhelming, with people singing and praying quite loudly. What shocked me most was what came next, a young man came up to be with his hands out, I wasn’t sure what he wanted until he took my hand in a hand shake. I then started to notice others were doing the same all over the church; everyone was embracing each other welcoming them including us… Many people, women and men, came to hug and shake our hands welcoming us. This was just very weird for me in a sense, I’m not much of a touchy feely person, but this was really kind of different. We continued from there into the actual township, to find that man older males who were not attending church had already begun drinking. It was hard to see the poverty of this place, what was harder to see was the children. They approached us tentatively at first, but then became interested and started to follow us. The first boy who I interacted with sort of hung around me for a while and kept trying to get into my pictures. Yet when he asked for money, and I refused, he left looking sort of embarrassed. I felt sort of bad after the encounter too, sort of like I had done something wrong. Yet other soon came and I began to interact with them. Two such boys were very funny, as they ran and play fought with each other constantly. What worried me though was the fact that they kept marbles in their mouth, not sure if they were chewing on them or what but we were all nervous that they were going to choke or something.

I made two interesting friends, one named Theo, the other I couldn’t understand and am unsure that he even spoke English. What touched me the most was when we began to play, it was simple at first and I didn’t really think too much about it until they kept urging me to play with them some more. Really it was nothing, they would hold my hands as I walked and they would say “1, 2, 3, JUMP!” and as they jumped I’d sort of strong arm their jump higher, shooting them into the air. Before I knew it other boys began fighting for my attention and it was… well… fun and neat to sort of make a quasi connection with these kids half way around the world. I’ve been able to make connections with kids before back in the states, but it was fun to see some of the same mentalities in these kids. Enforcing the fact of how similar we really are. I let the kids write their name in my journal because I knew I couldn’t remember them by myself. These are some of the friends I made today Theo, Lantu, Sinazo Leke, Sisipho, Esoha, Akons, Sikota, Habonka, and Zukhaye.

What was hard to think about later was the fact that the reason why so many of these kids were so attached to many of us were because they just don’t really receive much attention elsewhere. Most of their Mothers have died of HIV and in most cases these kids are made to stay with elder family members and such. It is really weird to think about how far different American childhood is to this one township, we’re always told not to talk to strangers let alone play with them, and these kids are not only just wandering the streets alone but warmed up to us quite quickly. It was also sort of hard leaving, getting on the bus afterward I pulled out a bottle of Purel. Many of the other kids around were asking for some and I knew that I needed to as well, but I felt sort of guilty about it… sort of like I was washing my hands of them and returning to my fortunate life… while they go back to return to not much at all.

Afterward we went and had lunch by the harbor, I had the “Earth and Sea” which consisted of chicken wings, sausage, French fries, and calamari… interesting to say the least. From there we got onto a Ferry to Robben Island (spelling), where the large Apartheid prison where Nelson Mandela was held. Not gunna lie, I crashed on the boat ride over, but then upon waking up I realized just how high the wake was as we made our way to the island. These swells weren’t really for anyone who gets just a little sea sick. Anyways the Prison tour was pretty interesting, and I guess the island was also a Leper colony before it was a prison… Anyways I got some really interesting pictures, and even managed to see some penguins! I guess I don’t have too much to say about the island it’s self, it was pretty scenic and stuff, and educational for sure. Looking at my notes I wrote something about how there was one inmate (who’s name I forget at the moment) who wasn’t allowed to actually speak to anyone for several years… and when he would see his fellow inmates at a distance he would grab some dirt and let it run through his hands. This was his way of saying, “You are the Sun and the Earth, you mean everything to me. Fight until you get the land back.” (Or something like that ) I also found it odd that the tour guide kept referring to people as comrades, which makes most Americans think of Russians… go figure.
Afterwards was an amazing Dinner by the harbor. I sort of went all out and had Antelope and local wine… pretty awesome =) I’m trying to keep this as short as possible, even though this is already fairly long, so I’ll be ending it here. Either way this was a pretty intense day and was the first day I really felt “In Africa” and in some way apart of it.

Changes in latitude, changes in attitude…

2008-08-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

(Last time I was overseas was in Germany 2006, visiting my friend "Hanz")

I'm actually in the process of making the final preparations for South Africa, and I'm still in somewhat shock thinking that oh yea... I'll be leaving the country tomorrow, to go to Africa for ten days on a research project funded by the United Nations... HOLY CRAP! I've been able to distinctly say before that I haven't had the typical college experience and now, well school is still very much a big part of my life but there's this whole new professional in me and dedication to things much larger than I can fathom. It was really an interesting day, I found it odd before switching thought processes between America's Army and CIMIT, and today I was bouncing between AA, CIMIT, and this UN project. It's really interesting switching gears from project to project, and being involved with some drastically different themes.

Speaking on that I had a pretty good talk with the two members of my America's Army team that will be spear heading this final push for our map. I have a lot of faith in them, and I think we came up with some really good approaches. I think their strength could come from support of other's at the EMC, I've heard interests in helping us out and the more eyes on it the better really. It's hard for them, one has to leave by Thursday of next week while the other is moving to Montreal on Friday. This will be a crunch time in all meanings of the word. Both are designers and I think they have a good grasp of how to fix the game play mechanics, I also feel that things need to be drastically added to the visuals as well to really bring home the "Shock and Awe" we're hoping to achieve. I have faith and I will try to support them as much as possible, and they will undoubtedly be in my thoughts.

I've talked about tipping points before, and I can't help but feel like I'm on the cusp of a new one in my life. I've talked about sociology and the "five agents of socialization" and truly believe that we are made up of our experiences. This ideal drives me to do much of things that I do and I can't help but feel as though this trip to South Africa will undoubtedly change me some. When I say change I don't mean in a negative context, we're always changing and growing. In this respect I wonder how things will feel returning, I know I haven't even left yet but to come back from being apart of what I'm about to experience... it should be fairly interesting.

I'm not sure what else to say, and I'm not sure when I'll be bloging next... I'm off to face a whole new adventure, and see life on the other side of the world. Also I know I've been negative lately and I'd like to thank everyone for their thoughts and comments. It means a lot =)

Getting back up isn't the hardest part...

2008-08-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

So I had intended my next blog post to be positive, and in all reality was feeling sort of guilty that my last post was such a downer... yet I'm not in the greatest of moods. We finally had a phone conference with the AA guys, only to hear another harsh critique of our map, one that we could have had earlier. There are certain elements in our map that we like, but they find broken. Mainly it evolves around the center market, such a topic we've had heated debates in the past and a specific part of the map that I enjoy. There were certain things that had happened during their play test, that hadn't happened in ours and well as much fun we had playing our map I guess they didn't in the big scheme. They suggested a major overhaul and intense work be put into our map, as well as more polish. I guess this is a good experience when dealing with a client, where your views may not always meet, in the big scheme of things I can't help but think that maybe it's good for us. My concern is that we only have one week to do something drastic... this is another moment where we really have to "shock and awe," we've done it before and hopefully we can do it again. The frustraiting part is that so far only two members of my team can definitly be commited to it during the next week. What's equally as frustraiting is that I'll be in South Africa and unable to help for the most part. This is an intensely frustraiting moment for me and yea I can't help but worry. It's not that I don't have faith in my group, I do, it just stinks to not be appart of it I guess. On another level they are both Designers, where I hope they'll be able to have an artist's touch in some aspects. It hurts that I have to be so hands off for this last and most important week... expecially since I have become quite attached to it. I'm hoping that from the support from others at the EMC that maybe we can pull it through.

I have many mixed emotions after this meeting... I am happy for the other group, they still have some things to tweek but in a sense they have pretty much gotten the "Ok we'll publish your map." It also seems as though Champlain will be throwing a block party for them if their map is published, something we would do without... we would be forgotten. Would our efforts be in vain? Sure we had learned through the experience, and well perhaps we don't deserve recognition for attempting the risky map. I also can't help but contribute this to my own failure in a sense, perhaps I'm nothing without working with other extremely talented individuals. Have they been carrying me all this way? Had I been wrong all along about this map? Had I wrongly influenced my team in a bad direction?

There's a certain feeling of helplessness with being unable to be there with my team during these crucial hours. This is another moment where we have to get back up, and now I see that getting back up isn't the hardest part, it's watching your team try without you.

Awake

2008-08-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

We were told my grandfather wouldn’t wake up… Since Friday I had been expecting the worst and just sort of waiting to hear it. Preparations were even already underway and it broke me somewhat… For a moment I felt the weight of two worlds colliding and I was left speechless… thoughtless… I wasn’t sure what to do. Beyond preparing for South Africa I’ve become lost in CIMIT. It’s like I’m trying to see through a dense fog of uncertainty. Yet I see light. Somehow my grandfather has woken up, he just talked to my Dad on the phone. I’m not sure of the specifics but I guess it doesn’t really matter… He’s alive.

Through my elation though, I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with a friend who works for the EMC, which left me unsure of what to think. He seems frustrated, and spoke of how there were certain “favorites” at the EMC and me specifically being one of them. I guess he had wanted dearly to be apart of the AA project and UN as well, (not to mention being apart of the “EMC Road show”) two of which I’ve been chosen for. I can’t help but feel guilty, part of me says I shouldn’t because I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at, and yet the other part of me that says I should feel guilty… well I still can’t quite find a reason why. Am I being greedy for wanting/hoping to be picked for more conferences? I’m beginning to think I might be. I’ve never bloged about how I can tell there’s a stigma surrounding me now, that’s been with me since Learning 2007. It adds a certain awkwardness with new groups and leaves me second guessing what people think of me. My friend says it’s just jealousy, something he needs to get over. I just hope there isn’t more animosity with him or others, but I suppose that’s normal when it comes to being somewhat successful. Sometimes I feel like saying it’s not easy, I don’t have all of the answers, I’m far from perfect, my art is mediocre, and I don’t really have a “plan.”

But who am I kidding, no one would believe it…

I’ll stay the path because it’s all I know…

INTERFACE INTERFACE INTERFACE!

2008-08-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

(CIMIT Interface Concepts, click to enlarge)

So here’s what I know… It appears that my grandfather had a “massive stroke,” as daunting as that sounds I guess it isn’t too bad. Last I knew he was responsive, knew where he was, had strength on the left hand side of his body but is fairly weak on the other. There is no internal bleeding or anything and by the sounds of it they are just going to get him into rehab as soon as they can. Half of his face isn’t drooping or anything and so I guess this is the best news possible. I still feel bad that I’m not there, but I’m continuing on with life as normal…

And as far as that goes all I have to say is INTERFACES, INTERFACES, INTERFACES!

This has been a truly new thing for me, as I have never really thought too heavily on interface design, interfaces was new for me several weeks ago because it was the first time I had thought about layout and functionality… now it’s turned into design, use of color, and consistency. I’m not going to lie, it’s been fairly frustrating experience for me but I have learned much because of it. As you can see my interface designs have come a long way in a week and with interface 6 and 7 I really believe that I’m finally heading the right direction.

As far as CIMIT goes that’s pretty much it for me as it is now, on the other hand I’ve been thinking a lot about Africa. It was really strange to realize that I’ll be flying out next week, suddenly things got very real and still feels very odd that I’ll be heading there very soon. I’ve started trying to make a list of what I should bring, what I should be looking for, and really organizing my thoughts because this is going to be our own shot to see our demographic… and we must make the most of it. I can’t stop thinking about the Sabido Method and how we can get this to apply to what we’re trying to do. Today I’m doing more research on it because even on this we’ve only really scratched the surface.
Oh! Today is also the three month anniversary of dating Alicia now!!! So yea, that’s fun =)

Alright that’s enough for now…

Ups and downs

2008-08-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

In a meeting today I got a txt from my Mom that my grandfather had a stroke today at 3:10 pm. I called her shortly after but we really don't know much of anything, I asked if I should come home and she thought I should stay here for now. It's hard to not be home when something like this happens, and when something like this does happen it makes you realize that you aren't there.

For now I'm just waiting to hear more...

Heroes...

2008-08-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

I see how powerful being a positive influence can be… Earlier today I had planned on blogging about who or what I consider a hero might be. I just left a session on the Sabido method presented by Bill Ryerson, President of Population Media Center, and this has only fueled my thoughts much further. I’ll start with my initial thoughts though… I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “good” in people and specifically heroes and role models and the power of “influence.” This all began with a blog post that I read here Blindfolded , about “Heroes never die…” This was a really intriguing post about heroes and role models in everyday people and the impact it can make on another. This really got me thinking, and it seemed as though things in my everyday life was adding to these thoughts. Morning before work the other day, I turned on the TV and left it on as I was making my morning coffee and there was an infomercial on. There was a guy talking about how much god has helped in through life and about his new book. He proceeded to tell a story about how he had received a lot of guidance from a friend of his, who was then later shot and killed. This influenced his book, and very recently he had received a message from his friend’s family talking about how much the book has helped them through their crisis, not knowing their connection with the author he met with them and explained how much his friend had helped him through his time of crisis. It ended up being a circle of support and his next comment threw me off base… “Isn’t God wonderful?!” This bothered me a little bit. I’m not extremely religious by any means, but I don’t discredit that there is a god, but I couldn’t help but feel as though there wasn’t faith in a person’s ability to do good in another’s life. I have this intense belief that when you put belief in yourself and others it’s truly the people who are doing much of the “good” in this world, and if you have to call that god’s will I guess that is your own prerogative but what I suggest is a little more faith in the capacity of people.

I’ve also just finished “Starwars: Knights of the Old Republic 2,” I know I’m a nerd, but I was honestly surprised about many of the morals expressed through the game. I played as the “Light” or “Good” side of things, where you do have the options of being “bad,” but I found many of the dialog cues and actions represented things that I may say or do in a real situation. Your character has a “shady” past and there is a point where you are asked that if you could have changed what you did in the past would you? One of the replies was something along the lines of “No, those decisions and choices have made me into the person I am today.” I almost laughed at this because I couldn’t help but think “Well that’s a very Wesley thing to say.” A final point from the game rang true to me and have really got me thinking… A big part of your character in the game is the fact that your character can make connections easily with others in the world and that your character easily takes their friend’s pain as their own and gathers strength from others. Of course this was explained in relation to the “Force” and was to the extreme but a big part of the game was to explain that your character wasn’t doing this necessarily through this fictitious force but because you’re a natural leader. This really rang true to me and my thoughts of the relations of leaders and followers in today’s world. I was once told by a friend, professor, and colleague (yes all of that in one person) that I needed to be very careful of my influence on others, because I do this inherently when I talk and present my ideas. I have the possibility to possibly even convince others of my ideas even if they are wrong. This almost made me think a little, and have made me more cautious in a group setting, and just because I get excited about something doesn’t mean that it’s the right path. Anyways some of what this game was saying is really true, what makes a hero? It isn’t the force, it isn’t super natural nuclear abilities, it’s the person and who they truly are.

What makes a hero? I can see it every day, it’s going that extra step for someone, it’s karma, being a role model in someone’s life, and being a little selfless along the way. Heroes, real heroes, aren’t perfect… but that’s ok and that is what makes people whole. It’s ok if they fall or stray from the path, as long as they follow their path and have the ability to learn from this falls to help become a better person. As Bill Ryerson would put it, it’s a person’s “Ego Strength” (a person’s ability to deal with setbacks), and “Ego Drive” (a person’s ability to get over barriers). Perhaps it’s all about inner strength… This inner strength and the ability to drive yourself further may consequently also influence others to do the same.

For example, two up in coming artists just sat down at the same computer pod as me and literally just said “Oh hey, I feel as though we haven’t officially said hi yet… Your kind of someone we admire from a far.” I find comments like these daunting and somewhat scary at times… The idea that I can be someone that others aspire to is scary! I’ve heard comments like these before and it’s always something that resides in the back of my mind… As much as I’m humbled by this, there’s a lot of pressure there and sometimes it’s somewhat lonely feeling as though you have to be the one on top most of the time. Leading is exhausting… sometime everyone has to follow as well… And as much as I may influence others, it’s the thought that I am that encourages me to continue the path I walk. I always found this quote neat,

“I was what others did not want to be. I went where others feared to go and did what others failed to do. I asked nothing from those who gave nothing and reluctantly accepted the thought of eternal loneliness ....should I fail. I have seen the face of terror, felt the stinging cold of fear; and enjoyed the sweet taste of a moments love. I have cried, pained, and hoped... but most of all, I have lived in times others would say were best forgotten.
At least someday, I will be able to say that I was proud of what I was...”

Who have I been? I’ve been and continue to be a great many things =)

OK so some last minute thoughts about the Sabido discussion we had earlier today… This may or may not make sense to those who don’t know the Sabido method and maybe I’ll blog more in depth about what exactly I’m talking about later… The main question I began to think about was “Can players play a transitional character?” I think that’s how players play now in RPGs like Fable, SW KOTOR 1&2, Mass Effect, and even GTA. I think we could develop a system where rather then the game being neutral it would show obvious tendencies towards positive actions and characters, and negative consequences. Mass Effect is a great example of allowing players non-violent solutions and rewarding them for it. I remember that at one point my “Charisma” was so high that I could talk a hostile down out of a fire fight… alleviating me from fighting and coming to a peaceful solution. If we could incorporate an engaging mechanic that allows the user to play their role and commit any actions that they’d like but influence them through negative and positive characters in the game, this could be really effective. We could tie this into the behavior change example that Bill Ryerson showed us… “Pre-contemplation, contemplation, intention/determination, action, and advocacy and maintenance”. Tying these into real life stories and accounts could make this very real for our demographic. Making positive connections in this game could very easily translate into their real life. I’m feeling a lot better about our goals, this is something that could really work through the sabido method. Bill Ryerson also spoke of how our project could have historic implications, and I think I’m beginning to see it:)

Faith

2008-08-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

(Tree Hut concept that's a work in progress. I've been experimenting with water reflections and atmospheric fog.)

I see that it is ok to feel defeated... I just got out of a debrief meeting with my America's Army group. We have still yet to hear what will officially become of our map, but I have high hopes. That is sort of the point of this post I think... Having high hopes. Leaving today, and lately in general, I'm beginning to feel... well old I think. It sort of feels like defeated but that's not really what I'm trying to explain. I think what I really mean is that I just feel war torn, battered and maybe bruised, but a veteran because of it. It was interesting hearing the reflection of other group members about their experiences and working in the Emergent Media Center and being apart of this group and much more at the EMC has given me quite a bit more experiential learning to base my thoughts off of. I've learned a lot from everything I've done and been involved in but it's neat to see some realizations that I've already had because of other projects sort of pop up in others. Our discussion led to many things today but something it brought me back to something I thought quite a bit about and that was the short period of time after the phone conference we had with AA, the one where they were incredibly concerned with our map... the lowest moment for our group. I learned a lot from that short period of time, after that phone conference I felt crushed. If you've read the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, I'm most like Jan... When I work on something it's my baby, and I had worked really hard on the map. When they criticised the map, they were criticising me... Yet as I looked to my other group members I could see the looks of concern on their faces, and I knew this would be the tipping point. This would be where we would make or break it. I couldn't allow myself to be a downer at this moment, for this moment was the most crucial. I whispered to Joel that we're staying for a meeting and I'll be right back. As everyone else began to file out of the room, I found that I had to compose myself before I went back to try to address the group. I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, and I remember looking back at myself. I could see the fear and frustration in my own eyes. I knew I had to wash it away. When I returned to my group it was pretty obvious that moral had hit an all time low. We looked defeated, we felt defeated, but I didn't want to allow myself to show that I was. That was the moment we came up with a drastic plan, with such drastic measures such things had to be done. Some of these things meant that we'd have to delete weeks of work, but it had to be done. After we left from that meeting it still felt pretty rough, but I didn't have any doubts that we would succeed. Falling may be inevitable sometimes, we just have to get back up. We have to believe... I really into the concept of "Belief," yet when I talk about it I don't necessarily mean that you should believe in god or any other faiths. I mean that you need to be able to believe in yourself, and put a little faith in others too. I remember getting frustrated with my group mates and telling them that even though I came up with a lot of answers, that didn't mean they were the right ones or that I had all of them. It was great after this, group participation increased, and some real constructive ideas came out of it. Our group needed to fall a little, in order to become stronger.

A little while back I think I blogged about "The Secret" and the methodology behind it was that if you wanted something really bad, you have to picture yourself having it... you have to have no doubts that you will achieve whatever "thing" you want the most. I've applied this to my life, sort of, believing that maintaining a good humor on things will only bring good things your way. Yet I do think it's become bigger, in my view. This may sound sort of weird but ever since I was little I had this belief in my head that someday I'm going to do something big. I remember talking to my Mom about it, and I remember saying that I wasn't sure what it was going to be but it would be big. I've carried that with me, I've never really doubted it and somehow it's settled into the back recesses of my mind. I've already found that sometimes a little action may have a big effect, and I think I'm on the path to my goal. I've accomplished a lot thus far, and am increasingly excited about my upcoming projects. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you have to believe in yourself and your abilities. You have to be able to jump and reach outside of your comfort zone at times. I had no doubts that our map would somehow prevail, and even though it's yet to be decided upon by AA I couldn't be happier with the results. I have little doubt about the UN and CIMIT project and that's exciting...

See it's ok to feel tired, worn, beat up and defeated... but never show it, because that's not really who you are.

Humbled...

2008-08-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

(Eagle's Cliff on a hazy day)

I see that sometimes people need the smallest things... bear with me this may be a long one...

I have been thinking for quite sometime now, to give you a reference probably a few years, about social interactions. One kind that I find the most fascinating is when two males, that don't know each other, pass by one another... Or even if they do know each other a little bit it can be a bit strange. Several things may happen, first of all there's an awkward moment where one considers whether or not we are willing to make eye contact. When we decide against it, we may grit our teeth, keep that "I can kill" expression on your face and continue on like the other doesn't exist. BUT! if we decide to make eye contact there are many other rules one may follow. First of all there is the general head nod, making eye contact and then continuing on. BUT! if we decide to say something, immediately our voice has to go just a little lower (to show our masculinity), we maintain eye contact, and the most we say is "How's it goin?" Funny statement as that is... being a question... yet when asked no one ever really expects to get an answer. Instead what is really being said is "I acknowledge your existence," as I continue on my day. I find it fun to play against the rules with something like this... my neighbor, who I've yet to officially meet, keeps bumping into me in the hall way. I've slowly worked him up to a "How's it going," before he nervously continues on. He's sort of squirrely. This bring me to a point about my day. At the end of a long day of somewhat depressing research, I decided to go for a walk. As I walked by the river I walked by two girls talking to one another (they were probably around my age), a women walking her dog, and a middle aged couple. Nothing too out of the ordinary but what came next was, as I approached I saw a man with long, somewhat ratty, black hair, dressed sort of punk-ish, and definitely older. Here came my dilemma, do I make eye contact or do I pretend he doesn't exist. I was prepared to stare straight ahead, yet as he got closer somehow I changed my mind at the last minute. I looked at him, I saw his old weathered face, faded tattooed arms, and clothes to match. Yet as I looked at him, he looked back at me and I couldn't help but crack a smile and say hi as I passed. As I did his face shattered a smile and his longing eyes thanked me as I continued on. I'm fairly certain this man was homeless, and I don't think the two girls, women walking her dog, the middle aged couple, or anyone else on this path had acknowledged his existence. Maybe all he needed was someone to see him... I'd like to think so.

This past week has been a very interesting one, it started with a hike with my Mom up Eagles Cliff back home. Sometimes it's hard to visit home, I enjoy it though... things are simpler for me there and I do miss it. Yet I have another life now that I had to return to, a life that is creative and fun but all the while can scare me nonetheless. It's hard talking about other things that happened this past week other than a talk that I had with someone whom I really respect. As always I've recently have had my fair share of worries of the present and the future in my life and he managed to take some time to sit with me and talk. What he said surprised me quite a bit... He talked of what I have done and continue to do, who I am in his eyes and others, and he talked about his faith in me... and this shook me to my core. For quite sometime now I've relied on my own faith at times, sure my folks believe in me and that's all well and good but to hear someone of his stature state it humbled me. I wasn't sure what to think about it for a while... he helped me shed away some of the fog that life had spread over my eyes and I began to get a glimpse of my effect on others as well. I feel somewhat pompass writing this, I don't want others who read this to think that I'm just inflating my own ego and I don't suppose there's a way to make you think otherwise. This is all just something I need to get off my chest. Looking at what I've done and continue to do, it's quite a task. I can see the magnitude of most of it and it's fairly daunting. Yet I've begun to see that hard problems and tough situations seem to have become my forte. As scary as it may be, it's equally as exciting and I can't let fear swallow me whole. As I sat at Ann's house (Saturday Night), playing Wii with her family, some friends from the EMC, Lauren, and my girlfriend I couldn't help but feel so very adult. It felt so natural though and I really couldn't be happier with where I am and the friend's I've got. I've felt very alone in the past, yet have had the strength to continue on my own accord. What that talk helped me realize is that I'm not so alone as I might think, I still have to stand on my own two feet mind you, but there are others around to help tell me which foot goes first. Maybe that's all I needed, to know that I had been seen.

I don't regret anything... and it's taken me a while to get to that point... to here.

Tipping Point

2008-07-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

(Click to link to the UNFP Page)

I see the path never stays the same. I had a fairly interesting day today with having our first official meeting for the UN project. It's actually pretty inspiring to think about it... I had already thought our problem was a difficult one, but the fact that if we can pull it off will have major results. Hearing people speak about how much of a big deal this is really put this project in a bigger scope for me. I feel so incredibly lucky to be in the position I'm in and yet there are some things that stink at the same time. Today our teams were announced and I'm sad to say that I won't be directly working with Lauren. It's hard to say I'm disappointed, because this is still so huge, but I was really looking forward to tag teaming this with Lauren. I got an artist I had been interested in working with and the same programmer I had worked with on the CIMIT project so that's all fine, but it became pretty apparent that they were intentionally splitting Lauren and I up, and taking some with me I think. When asked about it Ann told us that either way we wouldn't have been put in a group together, because we both have the most experience. I took this as a big compliment, and I could see where she's coming from... but it doesn't have to mean I like it. I know I constantly talk about being worried about stuff, and thinking too much, but it worries me now that perhaps they will continue to separate Lauren and I from future projects and possible trips. Again I find it flattering that they consider us "Top Dogs" in some respects but I just enjoy working with Lauren very much and find we do some great work together. Further on this I could definitely see us not going on trips this fall, which would equally stink but I agree with giving others an opportunity at these events. What I'm hopeful is that perhaps Lauren and I will be brought on to consult with new teams as the prep and even go to conferences. I had a thought that perhaps we could even play more of a PR role at these conferences, give our advice to new teams but talk to conference goers as they stop by. This way the students that really need to get work done could avoid getting interrupted, while still giving conference goers a student to talk to. I've been debating on trying to suggest this to Ann, but I probably won't because I'm too chicken =) Either way I hope I'll get to have a hand in these "Away Games" in the near future.

I find it interesting that in considering our next daunting task, I'm brought back to thinking about Professor Stracke's Sociology class. Many of the questions we have can't be answered until we know more about our targeted culture. In thinking about this I'm brought back to the 5 Agents of Socialization, Family, School, Media, Special Interest Groups, and Peers. These "Agents of Socialization" determines what are the major influences on our lives and essentially how we turn out as people. I think taking these factors into account and focusing on them will bring us closer to understanding our demographic. In our group conversations today, some of my group members kept referring to our goal as educating our consumer... I really sort of disagree with this statement. We can't assume to educate these people, the most we can do is hope for some sort of reflection based on what we present. Meaning we need the player to be able to personalize the situation, and in doing so enables them to reflect back upon it more critically. Hopefully this is where the paradigm shift will happen... To assume that we can educate them feels pompass in some respects, and we need to ensure we're as respectful as possible. These are just some of my initial thoughts on the project... it's now fairly late and I should retire =)

(A group we're working in conjunction with on the UN project)

Green means GO!

2008-07-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

I see the road I'm on... Yesterday morning I wrote my last blog post before I went off to an early meeting with Amanda and the CIMIT team and then eventually to our group EMC meetings where each group gets to present what we've been working on. This ended up being another heart warming event for me, hearing my producer talk about our map (mainly using my words, which is ok) and what steps we took with this new direction, was pretty cool. Hearing it come from someone else was just sort of neat and for some reason sounded better haha. "It looks 100 times better," Ray remarked during the meeting. I was about to jump out of my skin! I couldn't be more happy that people really think the map is interesting now, and the funny thing is... I didn't change the mechanics of game flow, just certain aesthetic decisions and the layout seemed to make all of the difference. Fallowing this was a presentation on our CIMIT project, another project which I've felt that I've had an intimate connection with. Ann arrived part of the way through the meeting, this really excited me, hoping that she'd bring news on the UN project! She did bring us some at the point, she officially announced that Heather Kelly would be working with us on the project. Here's her website http://www.moboid.com/portfolio/ and here's an interview of her that's interesting http://gamedev.sessions.edu/design-interviews/heather-kelley-game-designer-moboid/. Also that two business professors will be joining the marketing level of the project, all very exciting but there was still no news of who exactly was on the project. The end of the meeting I rushed out, with other plans in mind...

(This is a quick screen shot of our map, it looks a lot better in game with the area fog... but you get the idea)

I rushed out because I had plans of driving home to surprise my Mom! Mom was still home alone, as Dad was off on a fishing trip but would be returning at mid-night. So I wanted to surprise my Mom at home, my Dad coming home, and some of my family is actually coming over again because my cousin's baseball tournament is continuing and so I wanted to be here for them as well! I really like surprising people you might say =)

Although something I didn't expect happened on the drive home... I got a phone call from Ann, instructing me to pull over my car because I was in on a conference call and they had something they wanted to talk to me about. Ray began by saying that I forgot to sign my time sheet, which confused me and they got a laugh, and then Ann started to say the real reason why they were calling. "I want to officially ask you if you'd be interested in joining us on the UN project." I tried to keep my cool... by replying "YES YES YES YES!!" hahaha I was so ecstatic! Yet I then had to ask if this meant I'd be apart of the team heading to Africa, in which they replied that I would indeed head to Africa by the end of August!! HOLY CRAP!!! I just can't believe the life I'm living right now and just couldn't be any happier. I now had two surprises for my family... both me and another amazing opportunity.

The rest of the drive home I started to reflect back upon this year once again and specifically to a conversation Lauren and I had at the end of Learning 2007. We had such an amazing time at our first conference and felt at a loss returning to the normalcy of school. We then started to talk about how we didn't want this ride to end. Thinking back now it's almost as if Lauren and I got the green light at Learning 2007, we sped ahead and took every advantage of opportunities in the road, yet as this summer came I was sad to see we took off at different exits and went our own roads for a while. These roads being mainly filled with those flashing yellow lights, yet now I see that the lights have turned green again, and Lauren and I can meet up at the next exit and be on the same road once more. It's going to be a terribly exciting year, I can just feel it. That green light I was talking about in my last post, really did mean GO for everything else along with it=)

I don't know if Ann reads this blog or not, but I'm going to risk saying how thankful I am to her. She's truly an amazing individual who inspires greatness in those around her. She's accomplished so much and continues to bring amazing things to others. I really don't know how she does it. Thanks for talking to me before Champlain, thanks for creating my major, and thank you for these amazing opportunities... I don't know quite what to say because thank you just doesn't quite feel like it's enough. It occurred to me a while back that she reminds me of Ti'Anna sometimes, from the Myst series... Anyone who's a Myst geek may get my meaning, but after re-reading the book of Atrus, Ti'Anna is the reason why I address all my posts with "I see." Anyways I'm off to enjoy time with my family before I have to head back to Burlington to pretend to be, as my cousin Bryan calls me, "Mr. Important" again =)

The Green Light...

2008-07-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

I see that I'll never truly grow up... It's been a long time since I've blogged, and I've had quite a few revelations since last I wrote. I'm not sure exactly where to begin but I think I'll just start with heading back to work after GIVIT. The first week back seemed really tough for some reason, I think mostly because I missed the great experience I had at GIV. It didn't necessarily end well either, at the end of the week we had a conference call with AA in which it was our first conversations with the two new AA employees we'd be dealing with. They had some pretty harsh criticisms of our map, and I'm not going to lie I was somewhat crushed and frustrated. We've had quite a few ups and downs with our group and this almost seemed to be the brink of it for me. Yet looking at my other two group members (yes only three out of six showed up for this phone conference) I realized that I couldn't allow this to bring me down. If I allowed myself to become negative I could very well bring the rest of the group down with me, instead I found that we should hold our heads high and just be better. We had a group meeting immediately afterwards, where it was obvious that some of us were thinking inevitable doom for our group. I came up with a new game plan... we needed to make the fixes they mentioned and really drastically change our map, enough that it's obvious that we've put a lot of work into this and yet not too much as to take away from a seemingly working mechanic. Leaving that day, I had sort of a mixed feeling. We had a new game plan, we were striving forward, but there was a mixed feeling of being crushed and being hopeful at the same time. The next day I found it ironic that I found my inspiration again and started work on concept art I had been conceptualizing for Lauren's and my game. Last time I wrote about being concerned about not having the ambition to start this sort of work, and within a few days I had it back =) Since then I've really made some great strides towards an interesting new art direction and couldn't be more excited!

While continuing on with our new map direction, working on new interface designs with Ken Howell (who recently joined in on CIMIT), and working on my own art assets I had to write an essay about community service, in order to try to get it waved. My first draft was sort of fluffy, and the professor was quick to catch that, so I had to do another version. This time talking more of what I've learned about myself... I couldn't help but refer to my blog, I started talking about "mini-me" from GIV, and ended up talking about my experience with "Al and Bob" (referring to a blog post I made in April). This may sound sort of lame but looking back of what I've been able to accomplish, pretty much brought me to tears... The main thought I took out from the paper was an idea I sort of fleshed out with Alicia the day before. I had been looking at old letters of recommendation for high school and was shocked to see that many of the same descriptions still sort of fit, yet I feel as though so much has changed since then. I think the main thing is that as we grow, we don't necessarily change.... our core stays the same, we just keep adding layers to it as we grow. Sort of like paper mache, each experience another layer to who we are... never changing, never taking away, but always adding. Thinking of it this way, I was always scared of growing up... I realize now that growing up isn't what scares me, it's change that scares me... but excites me at the same time =)

I also had my interview with Ray, that week, in regards to the new UN project that I'm eager to be apart of. I found that Ray and I had a really great conversation, yet I wasn't sure if it related much to the position. Instead we talked about how diverse my interests are, and how I've really become accustomed to being apart of the design process... yet I'm not a designer but almost would like to be. I love what I do, don't get me wrong, but since working with Lauren my eyes have been open more to game play mechanics then ever before and find that with everything that I'm involved with now, I'm not just a 3D Artist anymore. Which is neat, but also worries me because I'm not specializing as much as I should be in my selected field, instead I've become far too interested in practically everything! Yet that is sort of who I am, I've always had a diverse interest and I think it may benefit me in the end... Oh and if Lauren is reading this Congrats again on being one of the design leads! I couldn't think of anymore more deserving... I just hope I can join you in this next endeavor. Our next great adventure =)

I know I'm writing a lot but I just feel as though I have a lot to cover so I'll continue haha... I went home this past weekend and it was really great! I couldn't believe how much I had missed home, and this may sound lame but how much I missed Mom. It was so fun just being together because we are another kind of team that I had before I got into all of this mess. Two sides of a coin and we just seem to be pretty awesome together, whether it be fixing dog runs, or just plain out dealing with certain family members... I missed us. It was also really neat to see some of my other family. I got to see my two cousins (Bryan and Tyler), my aunt and uncle, and my Grandparents. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen them since Christmas, which is sort of sad to think about. My family has never been super close but we try our best... well my side does anyways =) I find it hard sometimes though, because I feel bad for our cousins quite a bit. Their parents are extremely pushy when it comes to sports, chores, and whatever else they deem necessary. It's hard to see their childhood slip away behind a list of chores and practices... I see this most evident in my younger cousin Bryan. He has that inquisitive mind that I've become so familiar with, yet he has not outlet. It worries me because I can't help but feel that there's going to be a breaking point for him, where he may start to push back against his father's brutness. I'm not sure what may happen in result of such an event, but either way I value Bryan as being an individual. It's harder for Tyler, it seems as though he's been sucked in too deep into the thoughts and dreams of his father, and it's come to a point where if he doesn't end up playing in the major leagues in any way, he may think of himself as a failure... at least in his father's eyes. It's hard because since he has had to focus so much on other things he severely lacks computer and other technical skills that could possibly propel him in other areas. I'm not sure what will happen, but there will be a point where my cousins will be able to start walking their own path, out from under their father's shadow.

(This is a picture drawn by my cousin Bryan=)

One thing I feel as though I want to address quickly that's been bothering me, is that I've been reading a friend's blog and been talking to another friend who's been at home this summer. They seem to share many of the same feelings I share at home, we don't really communicate with anyone back home anymore, other than our family, and we become eager and miss friends back here in Burlington. Another thing that makes it hard is the nature of our field, and how many people back home don't quite understand what we do... What bothers me some is that my friends seem to literally be counting down the days until they return. I can't really say much because I don't know the exact nature of what their home lives are like, but I can't help but feel that rather than constantly looking forward to leaving again then perhaps we should look and value on the time spent now and today. It's hard feeling so alone, yet this sort of reflection time only makes us stronger in my opinion... I've felt alone a lot over the past few years and still in some areas but rather than focus on it, I've decided to become stronger because of it. How we react to situations judges who we are, in a certain aspects we judge how miserable we choose to be. I choose to be strong, I choose happiness and hope other do too.

Returning from home this week was harder for me then usual, I had found that I missed that "down time" I seemed to have lost here in my hectic new life. I couldn't' help but be flustered returning to work, as massive amounts of information was thrusted at me and I tried to cope with dissecting it again. As I defined it in an e-mail to my cousin Bryan, I've become "Mr. Important" again. Which is great but hectic and stressful at the same time. Leaving for a few days seems to have made that apparent for me. Yet I love the life I live =) Speaking of hectic though, yesterday we had a "surprise phone conference" with the America's Army guys. You might remember that my last talk with them hadn't gone quite as well, and was pretty much defined as a low spot for me. Yet I think it could also be defined as a pinnacle moment for me as well, where I consciously chose not to be negative. During this talk they started with mentioning a few fixes that we needed to make for our map and then there was this pause. My group wasn't sure what to think of this, and we sort of tentatively asked "Is that it?" When they replied that yes that pretty much the criticism they had for us today and that they had noticed we had gone through some major changes and the map really seems to be coming together... and they ended with "We're giving you the Green Light to continue on for another week and then hopefully publish your map." At first I had a sudden odd jolt of joy, they liked our map! They actually like our map!! Then my stomach seemed to fill with butterflies as I started to think... They like my map! In a big sense this was my brain child and this is going to be mass distributable! People are going to be able to play an idea I had, all over the world! This is what it's all about isn't it? Granted I've only scratched the surface of what I'd like to accomplish, but this is a very definite start. I strive forward now, a little more confident, and eagerly awaiting to hear about the UN project. Yet I can't help but feel as though I not only got the Green Light on my map, but on life in a way =)

(here's a hint... click on the text)