Childhood Dreams

Ten years ago, I had dreams of being a veterinarian. I loved my dog and going to the zoo, so I figured that being surrounded by animals would be one of the greatest things known to man kind. My parents were floored with this, as my last dream occupation was to be one with the force and be a Jedi Knight. However, through the years I learned that math and science weren’t my strong points and that being a vet requires a lot of those terrible subjects. Today, to the dismay of my parents, my dreams have shifted. Now I want to be a game designer and program or produce video games. Ten years is a long time and the future is a flexible and fearsome thing, so this will probably change. But for now, in ten years I hope to graduate FSU with a computer science major, have landed an internship with a major gaming company, and have had my masters completed in either game programming or producing. Ideally, my dream job would be for the video game company of Bioware or Blizzard making and innovating new video game concept and ideas. I would love to walk into a Gamestop, see my game, and have people (hopefully positively) talking about the particular level and game I helped design.

Blog Proposals

Blog One:

One of my passions in life is videogames, so naturally one of my blog proposals would gravitate towards that interest. By using a perspective of a female gamer, I want to analyze video games. I will  focus on its affects on American society, pop culture, and what it means about the perception of women in our society. Many girl gamers face a lot of prejudice and sexism within the gamer community, so I want to attack my blog from this angle in order to analyze how far we have truly come as a society in regards to sexism.

Blog Two:

My other blog idea is centered around someone in the Renaissance era somehow being transported into 2011. This period of time contained the boom of math science of the middle ages, and I want to analyze our period of time through their eyes. I would take into consideration their technology levels, values, knowledge of geography. I think it would be an interesting take on showing how far we’ve come since then and what ideas have been born. It would be a unique way to analyze American culture.

Blog Reviews

Kotaku:
This is one of my favorite gaming blogs of all time, and probably one that I will mirror my final project after. This blog reviews video games and contains many editorials about the game industry. Everything is incorporated, from editorials about the in and outs of game art, to music, to programing.  I really enjoyed the quirky and witty writing style of the bloggers, especially when they described the voice acting scene in Japan. Over all, they are very informative, intelligent, and well thought out. The ability to switch from a more comfortable traditional blog format to their new layout also shows credit to their ability to design.

KittyHell:
Anyone that knows me, knows about my obsession with Hello Kitty. This  particular blog is all about everything Hello Kitty from the perspective of a man forced to live with a Hello Kitty obsessed wife. (My poor future husband. He’s going to be this man.) The writing style is filled with dry humor and is filled with wit. Its an enjoyable read and has further enforced the point in my head that everything, yes everything, has been hello kitty at one point.

Free write

Yesterday, for the first time I watched the movie Up. In this movie one of the main characters, an elderly man that had lived his life dreaming of going to Paradise Falls in South America with his wife, let his life pass him by until his wife was no longer alive. This brought to the silver screen on of my greatest fears in life: living with “what ifs” and “could’ve beens.” I never want to look back upon my life and see a golden opportunity passed up and see my potential wasted. I have this strong urge to  get the most I can out of life. Maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s a dream forever trapped in the naivete of childhood innocence. But aren’t most our dreams? We are after all inherently human, and as human beings we all have a want, no a need, for self preservation and a thirst for the ever elusive goal of happiness. So even if it may be futile, I will do all that I can to achieve what I can from whatever controls our fate to reach the ultimate goal of happiness before my life flashes before my eyes.

Expectations for my future

Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m what one would typically call unconventional. I don’t think I’ve ever followed a set path in my short span of 18 years, nor do I plan to. I was that kid in high school that no one could define, categorize, or put under any sort of stereotype or umbrella with friends in every single different social group. While my dream career path, a video game designer, will hopefully happen in my future, I do not want to start at my career right away. I want to travel the world and experience other cultures, learn multiple languages, and fully explore all aspects of life before I settle down in any given career. I’ve been to a vast multitude of countries (Canada, Mexico, China, Philippines, Japan, England, France, and Belize) yet I have not achieved my dream of visiting every single continent. (Yes even Antarctica. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. Who knows it may happen.) I want to have had the ability to say that I have had multiple jobs or careers of varying levels of fascinating and tedious, thus having a resume that would make any employer scratch his head curiously as they attempt to deceiver my personality and work ethic through a piece of paper. I want to become well rounded in all aspects and be able to say that I have lived my life to the fullest. And most of all, someday when I have grandchildren, I want to be the grandmother that has lived a crazy life with even crazier stories that can captivate a child throughout every stage of their life. I want to live a life worth living.

In Class Add analyasis

http://www.adbusters.org/content/gap-head

This particular spoofed ad speaks to me because I believe a lot of the main stream fashion industry is very standard and restrains creativity in people. I believe that clothes are an expression of who a person is and who they perceive themselves to be, and the avocation of certain mainstream fashions of what is perceived to be cool and what is not restrains the creative force that fashion should be. By saying what is “in” and what is “out” and ridiculing or belittling those that do not fit into the first category, the creation of the next big thing in fashion becomes that much harder to produce. Famous designers did not become innovators by following the herd as the add suggests, they did so by creating something new and closed the gap that stifles creativity. Each season designers are pushed to come up with something new and innovative or put a new twist or spin on an old favorite, and they can not do so by following the mainstream ideals. I believe that fashion is a creative outlet and the furthest thing from stagnant, and to treat it as such and follow the cookie cutter fashions that others tell you to like instead of following what you like is the exact opposite of the purpose of fashion and why the industry exists.

Advertising Journal

When advertisers market towards my demographic, as an Asian American its always the same formula. A nondescript Asian is always used, often called Chinese even when their features say otherwise. A type of martial arts is involved, often coupled with many inaccuracies, such as the common misconception that “kung-fu” is Japanese or “karate” is Chinese. The Asian in question either falls into the category of the helpless nerd, the token Asian present for comedic effect, the martial artist, or the Asian sex kitten. Not only are these stereotypes untrue, they are offensive.  This can be seen in movie commercials for action movies or for Asian style restaurants that are trying to target my demographic. If these industries want to become more successful in targeting the often ignored Asian demographic, they have to first take a step back and realize that Asians are people and some some odd type of mythos with an odd knack for math that happens to be skilled at hand to hand combat.

The Rich Uncle Magazine Entry

If my rich Uncle were to give me his inheretence in order to make a magazine, I would create a magazine around the gamer girl culture. Most of these magazines are male dominated and have articles that protrain to guys. This needs to change as us females are out there also prestiging in Call of Duty and wracking up the actions per minute as Terran on Starcraft II. My magazine would contain articles about games and give inside information ala Game Informer. It would have game reviews, tricks, and layouts on incoming games. I also believe in keeping the classic games alive, so it would have an article show casing an older game every issue. A lot of the articles would also protrain to current geek culture. However, what would set my magazine apart is that articles that aren’t traditionally in a magazine of this genre would appear. I would have articles on fashion and general cosmotology as well and give certain articles, such as an article about breaking into the game industry as a designer and what it takes, a female perspective. I would focus on interviewing a lot of female driving force’s within the gaming industry, including the current game producer of Activision Montreal’s branch’s Assassin Creed game series. Furthermore, I would have articles on game equipment geared towards girls, since a lot of the gamer gear featured in magazines are geared towards a male audience.

Introduction: Tones/Audiences

Within today’s tech driven society, we get our news from a vast multitude of sources. While past generations were restricted to newspapers, radios, and television, our ability to access our news expanded to levels of even more rapid and sophisticated medians, such as the internet. However, as Peter Parker once infamously said “With great power comes great responsibility.” With the influx of all these new different ways to receive news, this does not mean we as a generation are more informed. The excess of different ways to access our news has created a more competitive environment where different platforms must compete. As a result, today’s news networks have become more entertainment rather then fact based in order to increase viewers.

Gender:

Today’s society has many outlets for their new sources. Each contains their own set of biases found within the confines of society that it came from. The differences on the news media bias reporting between men and woman are vast, as each perspective has a complete different outlook.

Research

The reading from the Curious Researcher has helped to refine my researching skills in order to create a better paper. From it, I learned that just “winging” it as far as research goes and mindlessly typing away into google wastes more time. As a college student with a heavy course load this is a luxury I cannot afford to spend friviously.  Google, as much as I adore its existence, contains way too much obnoxious junk that one is forced to search through. Because I was so used to doing so, I did not notice exactly how much time it took me until it was pointed out to me by my text book. Instead, I will definitely be using the library resources located on campus, as it is faster. Plus, the sources are automatically legitimate, as google can be filled with all kinds of scum just waiting to muddle your thesis statement with. With it, Boolean Searching makes this tactic even faster, as key words such as “and”, “or”, and “not” help to refine your search even faster so the 43490549053480 results that appear on the screen can be narrowed down to a more manageable number. This has definitely helped my research process astronomically so more reliable sources can be found a lot faster then my previous experiences with research.