Do All the Things

Posted on 21st August 2011 in Something Daily

I’m at home for another week and a half and then I’m back to NYC. Downingtown has been nice, but it’s getting a little bit boring. I’m definitely ready to be where the things are happening. All of the things. I’ve got a lot of stuff planned for this semester.

People want me to make stuff for them. A lot of that stuff is websites. Some of it is other stuff, but it’s mostly websites. I’m doing that a lot – I have 3 projects going at once at the present time. Of course, I always do that. It’s both for the experience of making sites, getting myself exposed to new technologies, building a portfolio and also making money, which so far this summer has proven to be something that I am not very skilled at.

I don’t want to talk about how lifeguarding is going. I only have four more shifts, then I will never have to sit staring longingly at a pool for 8 hours on end ever again in my life. But I’ve been getting money. Ok I’m done talking about that.

Speaking of money, my recent purchase of an iPhone will probably be both the last thing I do that makes me feel wealthy for a while and one of the many causes of my impending poverty. I’m willing to deal with it if it means I get to live in the best city in the world (with the possible exception of Muenchen). That’s going to be fun too.

I’m fighting poverty by applying for internships, both for credit and kicks, and taking on odd web design gigs (also moonlight programming…going to be a rad semester). Those interviews have gone surprisingly well, though, as they were my first real job interviews evar in my life, technical or otherwise. I got a majority of the internships I applied for, and actually had to turn down one as I’m not made of time.

But as it stands right now, I will be spending this fall interning at parse.ly, a web analytics company, as a PROGRAMMER or programmerlike entity. It’s going to be sweet.

Also, in the spring I will be working as an audio production intern at RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL. Combine both of those with a bunch of other smaller freelance jobs, my classes, and a few shifts as a Steinhardt tech…and I guess I’ll talk to you in May.

Seriously no. But that’s the news. It seems that my attempts to put myself “out there” in the professional world have been largely met with success so far. Hoping it continues.

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Line Up Right Over There If You Don’t Mind

Posted on 6th April 2011 in Something Daily

“What do you want?”
“I sit in a chair – a huge line of people forms – each in their turn telling me that I am wonderful – it is as if I have done something great that only I could do but I can’t recall doing it.”
“Well – stop wanting that.”

How applicable. This is a great distillation of my unreasonable mindset toward success, or more broadly, just “being good at stuff”. The guy who writes pictures for sad children is a wise person. I think it would be pretty beneficial to attempt to reach the goal of “making things that people appreciate” by just making a lot of stuff instead of reading webcomics, yet that isn’t what I’m doing. I am in fact reading webcomics.

London, my roommate, asked me to design his website for him. That will be a great learning experience, as he wants a lot of media stuff to be integrated into it. It’s an exciting prospect to start putting a portfolio together, because it would mean that people might hire me to do their stuff and I would get money and experience from that hiring thing.

I’m really prone to just talking about my work all the time, and I’m pretty sure that people are bothered by it, or at the veyr least find me less interesting to talk to than I could be. I’m working on this by trying to actually get out once in a while; also by, when I am out, concentrating on talking about anything other than what it is that I’m working on. I don’t want to be the guy who always talks about his projects and builds people’s excitement up for a product that I never really expected to be big and then when I’m finally finished with it people’s expectations have been raised so much that they’re totally let down by the thing I end up putting out. Not doing that would be cool. I want to keep being insanely productive, but I’m not going to talk about it as much.

There I go, talking about it again. Off to a great start.

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Failed Attempt at a Speed Run

Posted on 31st March 2011 in Something Daily

When I miss a day of blogging, it’s pretty often for one of two reasons. Either I’m working really hard and obsessively on something and I let it carry me into the evening without looking back, only to realize at 1:30 AM that I didn’t write today, or I’m video gaming. Somewhat predictably, yesterday was the latter – I foolishly attempted a speed run of Ocarina of Time in one sitting. This is of course something that I’ve tried before, and, historically, it’s always had the same outcome. I start off so enthusiastic, celebrate when I finish the Deku Tree in ten minutes, get annoyed by the long interval between that and Dodongo’s Cavern, and push doggedly onward until about the point where I get the horse. At that point, about halfway through the forest temple, I get really sick of it and I’m forced to quit. Maybe it’s too long of a game to do in one sitting – I mean I literally tried to do it in one sitting, like I didn’t stand up at all. My legs were starting to go numb, which is bad. The experience of failing at the one-sitting run of OoT yet again just makes me want to eventually do it even more. I think it’ll happen one day, I just need to really have nothing else to do, and be willing to stay up all night. And a treadmill or something. But if I can watch all of the Lord of the Rings movies in a day, I can certainly do this. So that’s why i didn’t write yesterday.

On the topic of my developing website, I today implemented a tagging system for the entries in the gallery of creative work I’m including on the site, which the user can use to filter the list by any of a set of chosen criteria. I’m learning PHP very well during this process, and it also occurred to me that it could be a very viable option for me to do freelance web design jobs for extra money. So I’m going to start getting my name out there, which will be made a lot easier once I have a site to show for myself. Coming soon – probably within the next week or two. Not probably, definitely.

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