The Game of Life: Scream or Run Away

Smiley is just your typical hovering face, he only wants two things out of life; cheese puffs and to not die. Guide him through his adventure using the arrow keys and decide whether he should "scream" or "run away" to get out of danger (just like in real life!).

"Scream or Run Away" features three levels and a bonus room where Smiley can enjoy some cheese puffs in between his untimely deaths. When he encounters a monster Smiley will ask what he should do, it is up to the player to type either "scream" or "run away" into the answer bar. Upon hitting enter Smiley will one of two actions that will either get him killed or defeat the monster and allow the player to advance onto the next level.

I Made A GIF

My very first experiment with Flash resulted in the monstrosity you see before you. Behold and cower before my mighty GIF (pronounced Jiff– like the peanut butter). It's not pretty, but first tries seldom are.

One Coffee Everyday

I've been hopelessly addicted to caffeine since I was in high school. So when I was trying to think of something that I do everyday coffee instantly came to mind.
It was really interesting for me to see the progression in this video. The changes on my tastes and obsessions over the last few months are pretty easy to see. As the semester progressed more and more travel mugs showed up because I got busier and anyone watching close enough can get a feel for my usual weekly schedule. This was a fun project, but I'm looking forward to no longer having to record my coffee before I can enjoy it.

Shameless Plug: The Potter Virgin

When I started my Harry Potter class I decided that it would be very fun to write about my first encounter with the wizarding world, and The Potter Virgin was born. Five days a week I post Harry Potter related news, musings, and most importantly recaps of the books from the perspective of a person who has no idea what's going on.
It's probably obvious to anyone familiar with The Boy Who Lived that I drew a bit of inspiration from the font used on the Harry Potter books.

I borrowed the sharp angles, uneven letters, and the notable shaped stem on the P. Unfortunately I'm not a Dark Lord defeating witch with a totally awesome scar on my forehead, I'm only a writer. So I took up my wand and transfigured my P into a fountain pen.
Back when I started the books I had to take a quiz on Pottermore to be sorted into my Hogwarts house. I'm a Slytherin (so was Merlin... shut up!) and I tried to reflect this in my blog's color palette by making dark green and grey the primary colors.

After creating my logo I decided to create a header for my blog that includes the title and blog description. All of the text on my blog is Georgia font so I used that for the body title letters and description.

Fahrenheit 451: It's Getting Hot in Here

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

There's nothing quite like spending a Friday night stretched out on the couch catching up on some Netflix. I've always been a bit of a film buff, and Netflix really helps me keep up with my favorite shows despite my increasingly hectic schedule. As much as I like watching movies when the end credits roll I don't feel the same way as I do when I close a book. When you read a book everything that happens, happens in your head not on a screen in front of you. You are forced to fill in the spaces between the words with your imagination, making the experience a very personal one. While Breaking Bad was an incredible experience, it was someone-else's experience.
Now enter the newest craze sweeping the nation! Books! They're wireless, have an infinite power supply, and are basically indestructible! Go ahead throw that sucker against the wall! or into your bubble bath! It'll be fine! You can bookmark, highlight, and even share it with friends (face to face contact required for sharing).
When I was a kid I read books constantly. As much as I liked watching cartoons they never felt the same way reading books did. I would sit with a book hidden under my desk with my eyes glued to the pages (a practice I continue to this day). When my teacher inevitably called me out for not paying attention I'd hastily dog-ear my page and sit up feeling like I just woke me up from an unexpected nap. I never got that feeling from a movie. The library was my safe haven, the one in my middle school was always my favorite. It was a large room, quiet but full of life if you knew where to look. It was here that I mastered the Dewey decimal system. The librarian there liked me and would often get books for me out of the teacher's collection which was usually off limits to students. I read a lot of the classics there and became a big fan of Poe and an even bigger fan of Doyle, so much so that I've since written multiple papers on the great detective.
Reading is what ultimately drove me into the comforting arms of writing. When I was in high school I spent many Friday and Saturday nights shut up in my room writing fantastic tales about heroes and heroines in far away lands. The dream of one day becoming an author planted itself in my head and I still haven't been able to shake it. I discovered my beloved Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Tolkin became an old friend that I revisit often. I took every assigned reading in stride and honed my taste in literature. (The Good Earth? No thanks. The Great Gatsby? Yes, I'll take two please) It was in high school when my habitual reading began to draw unwanted attention from my classmates. They would pause from relaying how totally wasted that weekend, or discussing how totally wasted they were going to get the coming weekend, to ask me why I was always so quiet and why I always had a book. Apparently my idea of mental stimulation was a bit different than theirs. They would begin to talk about me as if reading somehow impaired my hearing. When I finally got to college it was a fascination with Ender's Game that made a history professor suggest I consider writing as a major.
If I had grown up without haunting the library I'm not sure if I would have ended up where I am today. I am sure that if I hadn't read as much as I did I would not have the same mind. If I had only watched cartoons and sitcoms I would probably have willingly subjected myself to a life of mediocrity. George R. R. Martin once wrote,

"'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,' said Jojen. 'The man who never reads lives only one.'"

When you read the thoughts of the main character become your own. Their sadness and successes are yours to experience with them. It is impossible to get wrapped up in a book and have your mind wander. Those hundreds of lives I've lived through books have shown me what life can be. The lessons books teach reach a bit deeper than those taught in television shows. Those ideas that I learned from books I read as a kid still guide me. I firmly believe that if I didn't read I would have developed a "Target-esque" style of thinking and followed the crowd into mob-mentality. Jumping cheap trend to cheap trend with each changing season, never questioning quality. Letting someone else think for you is the easiest thing to do, but nothing worth doing was ever easy. Books are not dead, furthermore they will never die. They are simply becoming less popular. Maybe this is because in our volatile world we have enough to worry about in our single life without throwing the problems of thousands of other lives into the mix. Maybe we want to forget and slip into a sort of comatose complaisance through mindless sitcoms. Sometimes I need to shut down and let someone-else's imagination take me on an adventure, but if that was all I did I would never be able to create for myself.

Graphicstudio: The Museum Scene

I've been to art museums from the city of brotherly love to the city of light and have seen everything from DaVinci's anatomical drawings to Warhol's Brillo boxes. I am no art expert. I know that I like the impressionists much more than rococo, but most "modern art" tends to leave me in the dust. What drew me to Christian Marclay's "Klak Klak Klak," was probably the similarities I could draw between the piece and one of my very favorite art forms that I'll never be able to draw from any Manet: Comic books. This piece looks like a comic book firefight to me. It looks like bullet holes chaotically splattered across the canvas filled with the a gunshot like onomatopoeia. I did a little extra digging and I quite like Marclay's work, I've never heard of him before and I'm glad this assignment introduced me.
I'm a pretty big fan of art museums. I spent a spring break up in Philadelphia for a Van Gogh exhibit and walked across Paris to visit le Musee d'Orsay. The Tampa Museum of Art looks pretty cool on the outside, but I am wildly underwhelmed by it on the inside. It doesn't feel almost sacred like other art museums do. Maybe that's a good thing.

One of Christian Marclay's pieces is being featured on the Tampa Museum of Art's website as cover art for the Graphicstudio.

Mark My Work

Fall 2012 was my first semester at USF. While my grades were good they improved in the spring, possibly due to my adjusting to the school but more likely the result of my desire to study abroad. The colors, red and black, are the colors of the school I attended while studying in Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University. I used them because during those two semester I was pushing myself to get the grades to be guaranteed acceptance into the study abroad program of my choice.
Numbers wise I focused on my grades, the levels of the courses I was taking and my GPA. My first semester despite taking lower level classes I received fewer high grades and my GPA was lower. After adjusting to the school and setting my sights on Napier my GPA went up as did the number of As despite my taking higher level courses.
I chose to keep the design very simple, the title and GPA tracker framing the actual substance. A GPA means nothing without seeing the actual grades, and grades are pointless without context. Therefore I thought it was very important to include the levels of the courses I took. I didn't want to include the course titles because I thought it would be far too much to have to look at without getting enough information in return. After four years of college I have discovered that a class title doesn't offer nearly enough information about what the class is actually about.