"Courage and perseverance are important if one is to run anything resembling a news organization...the folks at theOtaku.com have demonstrated themselves to have ample quantities of both."
~ TCJ (The Comics Journal)
"A couple years of experience in the Otaku circle have taught me at least one good lesson--to trust Adam."
~ myO member
"Adam is actually a decently accomplished troll."
~ Allamorph
"The scale of Adam's cunning genius is truly frightening."
~ TimeChaser
Today was great. I ate nothing but junk food, played Dr. Mario on the Wii, watched a little Tivo'd Dr. Who, and was out and about. It's my reward for eating healthy and exercising the rest of the week...
A lot of people seemed to enjoy my third game, which makes me happy. I should have just posted the link on the official world and not here too, which has led to comments being spread out about it
I think that everyone should take up *at least* one epic project that pushes their strengths/experience to the max at some point in their lives. It'll not only grow you as a person, and give you a shot at creating something "great," but that's how society moves forward
For example great novelists always try to make their next novel even bigger and better than their last; the same with movie directors, artists, etc
There's a big caveat though...in between projects you should spend a lot of time experimenting in small ways. This will keep your mind sharp and lets you develop new techniques
If you're a game developer, it means working on a huge, epic game. Then taking a break and making lots of small/stupid/quick games that try different things. Along the way you'll be learning a lot and eventually you become ready to try again to produce an even better next epic game
There's a chance though that your epic project won't succeed in the way you imagined. But that's OK, because the learning and experience and contacts you gained from it will always stay with you AND often you can reuse or modify epic projects which will succeed in another form down the line
Congratulations to all promoted members
My third game is ready, though I've heard reports that music sometimes doesn't load--I think it involves connection speed since it's streaming an mp3. Music is REALLY important for this game since it's unbearably long without it.
Try my third game out and tell me if you can beat it. I can beat the game in my sleep now but SabrinaM and Lady Katana both gave up.
The thing I'm most proud of is that all the backgrounds are dynamically drawn, so you'll never seen the same blade of grass or mountain/cloud shape/size twice. This was the hardest part of creating it.
I went to the famous Macy's Fireworks show here in NYC, I had to wait 2-3 hours in order to get a good spot
I came online tonight and found out that Crystia, one of my favorite members, was hit by a drunk driver today and is recovering in the hospital. She should hopefully be released tomorrow. I thought it appropriate to come out of my card-making retirement and make one for her
For those of you who didn't understand my last post, Square-Enix announced a DS port of the classic Super Nintendo game Chrono Trigger. Now, CT is my favorite video game of all time, I must have played it through dozens of times, but it also has sentimental value for me
When I was a hooligan, after seeing the game at a friend's house, I rushed to Toys R Us with $50 worth of quarters, rolled up, and asked the cashier to purchase the game. The cashier laughed at my attempt to pay in quarters and my dad quickly gave over his credit card
I played the game dozens of times, getting to level 99 with each character, getting 99 of every item, etc.
One of my friends asked to borrow the game and I lent it to him quickly. A few weeks later he had beaten the game and asked if he could lend it to one of his friends (a good acquaintance of mine). "Sure" I said.
Anyway that person ended up dying in a car accident soon after, which was very sad for my school and community. I of course never asked for my copy of the game from his parents or got a new copy, so the DS version will be the first time since I'll own the game again.
In my slow quest to vaporize this small gut I have, I've started experimenting with a type of workout called HIIT. It's a bit taxing so I don't recommend young members pursue it, but wow I see potential. They say that HIIT burns 9 times more fat than normal aerobic activity in a fraction of the time.
Here's how it works:
Most people, to lose weight and gain aerobic fitness, will jog for a long period of time, say 60 minutes.
The problem with this is that after a certain period of time the body gets used to the light jog and rather than really burn fat, it goes into fat preservation mode.
The idea behind HIIT, which can be applied to anything, is that you constantly force the body to work. You do this by alternating going all out and going at a leisurely pace.
Today I was on the elliptical machine, here's what I did:
5 minutes - warm up
1.5 minutes - leisurely pace
30 seconds - go as fast as I can
1.5 minutes - leisurely pace
30 seconds - go as fast as I can
etc.
5 minutes - cool down
In total I was on the machine about 20-30 minutes. After I got off I felt a little wobbly and thought "that wasn't so bad"
A few hours later I suddenly found myself REALLY thirsty and hungry. I did some research online and found out that after you do a HIIT work out, your body continues to burn calories up to 1-2 days afterward.
You shouldn't do this type of exercise every day, but once or twice a week in addition to a normal workout might do wonders. I'll keep you updated on my progress with it.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry.
