I think it's often easy to overlook how unbelievably vast the internet is. It's one thing to read the number of pages Wikipedia has, or hear how many hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every second, but I don't think anyone can actually comprehend how much content is stored across the world at this point.
This is compounded by the fact that at this point, my internet browsing habits are pretty circular. I check my emails and Facebook, read through the webcomics I like, look for updates on blogs I follow, browse Reddit's main page and the subreddits I actually care about (Starcraft, Gaming(news), RPG, Warhammer), etc. I even have almost a routine of websites I tab through when first logging on my computer every day.
Even though I visit a lot of websites through Reddit, I wouldn't really consider that finding new territory. It's easy to see the internet as consisting of a lot of content I purely don't care about (celebrity news gossip anyone?) or pages that I glance at for one second before moving on and never looking back (hello image memes).
Therefore it's always a very nice surprise when I actually find a website that I end up returning to and browsing much of the content, and I had just such a surprise the other day. A friend has recently started up a website where she blogs about reading A Game of Thrones and that she drew the inspiration from two of her favorite blogs, Mark Reads and Mark Watches. I was very much intrigued by the GoT project; I had just recently finished reading the series and expressing my reactions to a friend, and then turned around and talked to another friend as he started the same journey. I was very curious what another person would think of what I consider a fantastic series. Out of curiosity, I clicked through to the websites that inspired this venture, not suspecting that I would spend the majority of two days reading the content there. (Also, forward apologies for no pictures in this post)
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Beegu News Des!: An Announcement of Sorts
Today I spent a large majority of my day reading a blog (something I intend to return to at some point), and this naturally led me to think about the current state of this, my own blog. After some considerable thought, I've come to a decision that I hope to keep: I'm going to start blogging more.
Specifically, a quota for myself: once every two days. I feel like daily might be a bit too much, whereas every other day gives me a bit more breathing room and even time for editing.
There are actually a number of reasons for this, which follow below in no particular order.
- I enjoy writing. I don't think I'm even one of the best in my group of acquaintances, and I usually at least somewhat question how much/little other people enjoy the writing, but I like doing it, so I'm going to. I don't think I work up the energy enough for it enough, and by setting a deadline I hope to propel myself into doing it more.
- I need something else to do over the summer. I'm starting to get annoyed at how often I'm sitting there wondering what to do, and this gives me one more option.
- I have a large stack of ideas, some of which have been sitting around for probably close to 8 months now, and which I have not acted on probably due to just pure laziness or inertia or whatever. I should probably set a better precedent.
- It provides an outlet for thoughts, in a way. Not just for reviews, which I do enjoy writing, but perhaps more serious topics of discussion. I think I've been focusing on reviews because they've been easy (I watched something, now write down what you think!) but there have been other thoughts I've been having that I'd be interested to see responses to, like the e-sports post, and this seems a much more viable platform than IM or Facebook status updates, for instance.
- On the theme of reviews, I really should start writing longer ones. In looking over the last 3 Mini-Review Rampages, I noticed that the individual reviews kept getting longer and longer over the trilogy, which probably means I have a lot more to say about these pieces than I'm allowing myself. And at least one person has expressed interest in reading them, so that's enough for me :-P
- This last reason is probably the biggest one, in retrospect. Recently an epilogue was completed for last year's Dark Heresy campaign that I ran, which brought back a lot of fond memories. I ended up going back through Mister Flask's blog to reread the various hijinks the group got up to, and looking through the content and comments, it kind of struck home how our little circle of blogging has kind of died off.
I obviously can't make that come back by myself, despite how much I enjoyed the content of everyone's various blogs. What I can do is at least force myself to start contributing more regularly, and in a perfect world this might inspire the rest of you to follow, or at least compete :-P. I don't know how many of you actually regularly check any of these anymore, though.
I guess what it comes down to is I'm privileged to have a large number of very talented, very creative friends who are willing to express themselves via electronic medium, and while I feel my own material is never quite up to par, I'm happy to be a part of it. Whether it's Aaron's impressive ability to condense humor into unlikely places, Max's impressive analysis, Rome's excellent reviews, Jesse's expressiveness, or Matt and Kory's immersive fiction, I always enjoy reading all of your works and end up wishing there was more. So on that note, thank you.
So maybe this will have the desired effect, and maybe it won't. But regardless, after today you'll be a seeing a new post every two days on this blog, at least until summer's end (hopefully further, but I have no idea how hectic my semester might end up being). If I don't, I ask you to publicly harangue me in whatever fashion you feel appropriate. I do hope you enjoy though!
And to end with something completely unrelated but awesome...
-HTMC
Specifically, a quota for myself: once every two days. I feel like daily might be a bit too much, whereas every other day gives me a bit more breathing room and even time for editing.
There are actually a number of reasons for this, which follow below in no particular order.
- I enjoy writing. I don't think I'm even one of the best in my group of acquaintances, and I usually at least somewhat question how much/little other people enjoy the writing, but I like doing it, so I'm going to. I don't think I work up the energy enough for it enough, and by setting a deadline I hope to propel myself into doing it more.
- I need something else to do over the summer. I'm starting to get annoyed at how often I'm sitting there wondering what to do, and this gives me one more option.
- I have a large stack of ideas, some of which have been sitting around for probably close to 8 months now, and which I have not acted on probably due to just pure laziness or inertia or whatever. I should probably set a better precedent.
- It provides an outlet for thoughts, in a way. Not just for reviews, which I do enjoy writing, but perhaps more serious topics of discussion. I think I've been focusing on reviews because they've been easy (I watched something, now write down what you think!) but there have been other thoughts I've been having that I'd be interested to see responses to, like the e-sports post, and this seems a much more viable platform than IM or Facebook status updates, for instance.
- On the theme of reviews, I really should start writing longer ones. In looking over the last 3 Mini-Review Rampages, I noticed that the individual reviews kept getting longer and longer over the trilogy, which probably means I have a lot more to say about these pieces than I'm allowing myself. And at least one person has expressed interest in reading them, so that's enough for me :-P
- This last reason is probably the biggest one, in retrospect. Recently an epilogue was completed for last year's Dark Heresy campaign that I ran, which brought back a lot of fond memories. I ended up going back through Mister Flask's blog to reread the various hijinks the group got up to, and looking through the content and comments, it kind of struck home how our little circle of blogging has kind of died off.
I obviously can't make that come back by myself, despite how much I enjoyed the content of everyone's various blogs. What I can do is at least force myself to start contributing more regularly, and in a perfect world this might inspire the rest of you to follow, or at least compete :-P. I don't know how many of you actually regularly check any of these anymore, though.
I guess what it comes down to is I'm privileged to have a large number of very talented, very creative friends who are willing to express themselves via electronic medium, and while I feel my own material is never quite up to par, I'm happy to be a part of it. Whether it's Aaron's impressive ability to condense humor into unlikely places, Max's impressive analysis, Rome's excellent reviews, Jesse's expressiveness, or Matt and Kory's immersive fiction, I always enjoy reading all of your works and end up wishing there was more. So on that note, thank you.
So maybe this will have the desired effect, and maybe it won't. But regardless, after today you'll be a seeing a new post every two days on this blog, at least until summer's end (hopefully further, but I have no idea how hectic my semester might end up being). If I don't, I ask you to publicly harangue me in whatever fashion you feel appropriate. I do hope you enjoy though!
And to end with something completely unrelated but awesome...
-HTMC
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Unstoppable: Mini-Review Rampage #3
So being summer, I find myself without any way to "productively" spend my time (emphasis added by parents) which results in a majority of my time still be spent in the consumption of media, which once again means I have a large back-log of things I've watched and want to write down my thoughts of.
I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!
I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Mind Games, Son, Mind Games: Viewing Traditional Vs. E-Sports
Anyone who has been hanging out with me in the last couple months has probably had me bring up the Starcraft 2 competitive scene, something I've been following rather closely for many weeks now. Indeed, I'm not alone in this; although places such have South Korea have commonly had video games streamed live to audiences of hundreds of thousands, it is only recently becoming more popular in the Western scene. With that said, now that it's catching on, it's growing incredibly rapidly: for instance, MLG Columbus' 3 day tournament had a 16,000 member live audience and served over 1.3 petabytes of livestream data. Impressive numbers, and they only seem to be growing.
When I first started seriously watching the games and began getting really into it, I figured it was another kind of phase; I would get really into it for a few weeks, and then I would lose interest and move onto another hobby. However, here I find myself almost 6 months later still firmly entrenched in this world, and even watching a game while I'm typing this.
I had never really considered myself as someone into sports; I'll watch the Super Bowl, and the rare sports game when it's on TV and others are watching, but in general I couldn't name most sports team or major athletes, and I would never go out of my way to watch a game, especially alone. Despite this, I find myself staying up regularly till 4am to watch GSL and devoting many hours to watch VoDs and Youtube videos from major tournaments. Because of this sudden shift, I began wondering what makes the SC2 competitive scene different than any traditional sports scene that most of my other peers are fascinated with.
When I first started seriously watching the games and began getting really into it, I figured it was another kind of phase; I would get really into it for a few weeks, and then I would lose interest and move onto another hobby. However, here I find myself almost 6 months later still firmly entrenched in this world, and even watching a game while I'm typing this.
I had never really considered myself as someone into sports; I'll watch the Super Bowl, and the rare sports game when it's on TV and others are watching, but in general I couldn't name most sports team or major athletes, and I would never go out of my way to watch a game, especially alone. Despite this, I find myself staying up regularly till 4am to watch GSL and devoting many hours to watch VoDs and Youtube videos from major tournaments. Because of this sudden shift, I began wondering what makes the SC2 competitive scene different than any traditional sports scene that most of my other peers are fascinated with.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Blood, Swords, and Honor: A Review of 13 Assassins
Being back home means catching up with old friends, and I did so the other day by seeing a movie. My friend suggested 13 Assassins, and after quickly skimming a synopsis and seeing Rotten Tomatoes had overwhelmingly positive reviews of the movie, I agreed and off we went to the local art-house theater to see this imported Japanese samurai movie.
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