Well, summer is here at last. And now that I'm FINALLY out of school for good after nearly 9 years, I can actually relax this summer - well, as much as my work schedule will allow, anyway.
But as much as I will be trying to relax this summer - lounge at home, go to the beach, etc - this is also going to be a learning summer. Now that I've completed my Web Development and Design certificate (unless I have issues with my grades, I should be able to get it no problem), I want to start looking for work. But I know I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of code and stuff if I want to be a web designer. Not to mention my writing career has been sadly neglected since last summer.
So I'm delaying the job search till fall, and this is going to be a learning summer. I might even keep a physical record of it, like those scrapbooks my mom had my brother and I keep one summer. Maybe a journal or diary? I'm definitely going to be taking notes at least. Maybe I'll document it here and/or on my Tumblr.
How am I going to learn? Well, first off, I'm going to finally start that Code Year thing I signed up for so I could learn JavaScript. Then there are the many blogs on the subject, particularly the e-zine Smashing Magazine. Lynda.com has a lot of good tutorials also. There are also the certificates from W3 Schools, but they're kinda pricey at $95 apiece (by comparison, W3 Schools' regular tutorials are all free), though it might be a worthwhile investment to get at least the HTML and CSS ones, and maybe the PHP one too, if for no other reason then to put them on my résumé.
Besides these specific ones, I will definitely make use of the free podcasts on iTunes, and especially the large catalog of courses (all free) available on iTunes U. Plus, I'm sure there's a crudload of other sites, including the huge list of ones I have in my 2 OneNote notebooks of design resources. So I'll find ways to learn.
Other than design, I hope I can learn other stuff this summer. Learning to drive is kind of a priority. Maybe I can get my parents to finally teach me (especially if I can't afford the MiraCosta course again).
Let's hope this summer is a success!
Originally posted via Blogger for iPhone, edited on desktop Blogger
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Interest List Analysis
Recently on my Tumblr, I posted about finding out that someone had beaten me to the punch of making a Pokémon Ranger series fanlisting. At the end of this post, I proposed the idea of making a list of my interests and determining which ones I might want to make a site or a fanlisting about.
And so I have done. But the analysis, determining which ones I like enough to make a site and/or fanlisting about, is another matter. So here goes.
I ranked my main interest categories from 1 to 12, 1 being the most liked, 12 the least.
1. Literature
2. History
3. Anime/manga
4. Technology
5. Music
6. Languages
7. Mythology
8. Video Games
9. Film
10. Trivia
11. Art
12. Astronomy
Let the analysis begin!
1. Literature
Since I love reading and writing stories, I'm not surprised I ranked this one first. My "sub-interests" under this category are British literature, non-modern poetry, kids' books and some YA, fairy tales/folk tales, my favorite fiction genres (fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, Christian fiction), and my favorite non-fiction genres (history, technology, travel, culture, and some literary commentary, i.e. books like The Hunger Games Companion, Finding God in the Land of Narnia, and The Keys to the Chronicles, and essays that are NOT those dry theory essays I had to read in school).
As much as I love literature, I don't think I could make a whole site about it. It's too broad an interest. I think I tried with my previous personal websites (even doing book reviews on one of them) but failed. The closest I have in this category is my author website. I can certainly join fanlistings and communities on literary subjects. (Which reminds me: POTTERMORE! STILL WAITING FOR MY INVITE!) The only such groups I have joined are The Anomaly for writing, that one Yahoo! Group run by the guy from the Anomaly, and The Leaky Cauldron's MyLeaky, a pseudo-social network which I quickly grew tired of.
(I signed up LAST JULY for Pottermore btw. And STILL NO INVITE. What the heck is going on?!).
***
2. History
History is, like literature, something else I've been interested in for as long as I can remember. I am essentially interested in any and all history, but my "specialty" areas seem to be Chinese history, Japanese history, and the Holocaust/World War II period. The Holocaust interest sprung out of reading books like Anne Frank's diary and Johanna Reiss's The Upstairs Room as a kid. The Chinese and Japanese history came later, mostly in college through a World History class (and a great textbook that was the only World History textbook I've ever had that wasn't totally West-centric) and an Asian Philosophy and Religion class I took as an elective, though I've been interested in Japanese history really since I got into anime and manga in 1998.
Springing out of this is a minor interest in archaeology. Though I don't think I'd ever be an Indiana Jones type, I do enjoy hearing about archaeological discoveries and so on.
Again, my interest in history is one I've tried to integrate into my personal sites in the past and failed at doing. And I think it might be too broad to make a site about, plus lots of sites about history exist. I guess I could create some fanlistings related to it. It might be a subject worth making a Tumblr about actually, as there is a pretty healthy tag group on Tumblr associated with history. (I follow three history Tumblelogs myself: Today's Document, run by the U.S. National Archives; The Ancient World; and Forgotten Antiquities). I suppose there might be a market for it when I do web design too, especially locally with all the museums at Balboa Park and elsewhere downtown.
3. Anime/manga
I first got into anime in 1998, and manga around the same time, though I didn't become serious about manga until 2003. And, to be honest, I've been trying to make a website about my anime/manga obsession since I've been making websites. My best friend Amy got ahead of me on this, with her site Everything Anime (for which I wrote the Sailor Moon character profiles). These have ranged from really basic sites to ambitious projects like a database of every water-type Pokémon.
The anime/manga website idea is finally coming together, however, with my still-in-the-works wiki project, the Anime Guide Database. This site would be a database of spoiler-free episode guides for animes, along with guides for related movies and for manga series. I was inspired to do it after spoiling myself one too many times on the plots of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic when reading Wikipedia articles on them. (Knowing big plot reveals ahead of time spoils the suspense. Trust me. And especially for series like those two, with so many plot twists). I initially thought it would be a site supported by a forum where people could contribute stuff (because not even us really crazy otaku can watch/read every anime/manga series known to man), but some helpful fellow Miss Dream staff members steered me away from that idea, saying that what I really wanted was a wiki. So that's what I've decided to do. But it still needs a lot of content just based on the series I myself have seen/read. So I'm not ready to debut it yet. And I think I may try joining the staffs of other anime fan wikis, such as Bulbapedia (Pokémon), Wikimoon (Sailor Moon), and Cure Wiki (Pretty Cure), first to get a feel for how this whole fan wiki thing works. I also did a search on some library databases and found quite a lot of books on wiki making.
Besides this, there are a few minor anime sites I have up or are working on: Myu Corner, my revived Sailor Mercury and Ayeka shrines, Sparkle Moon, and my revived fanlisting Memory of Time (Fancy Lala). (Still debating whether to bring back my Kusaka Hina and Hina x Mamoru fanlistings - I could host them on Sparkle Moon's server...am thinking of even adding a SeraMyu fanlisting to Myu Corner; there was one on The Fanlistings Network, but the link was dead so I reported it. If it becomes open for application after my report, I'm going to snag it ASAP).
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4. Technology
I've been interested in technology for a while, though very minorly until recently, when I began following the tech blogs Mashable and Smashing Magazine as an attempt to become more informed on the topic after deciding to go for the web design certificate I'm currently finishing. (I also started following Wired and TechCrunch - two big tech sites - on Twitter, as well as the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, a group called Social Media Trend Reports, and a feed for talk updates for the Technology, Entertainment, and Design [TED] conference).
My sub-interests in this category are web design, tech devices, social media trends, tech & science (or, as I wrote, "how things work"), and "possible tech in the future (sci-fi stuff)." Web design I'm obviously pursuing, and reading about through Smashing Magazine and Mashable's "Development and Design" feed. My interest in tech devices and social media trends is shown in the fact that I follow Mashable's "Mobile Tech," "Gadgets," and "Social Media" feeds. The other two come from my interest in sci-fi films and animes, combined with a lifelong passion to know how things worked. The interest in future tech stuff, combined with minor interests in space and world-building, are what inspired me to write science fiction. Whether they're enough, though, remains to be seen. I have enjoyed science programs about futuristic tech, like the recent Discovery Channel/Curiosity special Can You Live Forever? (hosted by Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage). I also like the Discovery Channel/Science Channel show How It's Made, which, as its title implies, is about how different items are made. (I need to catch up on that show!)
I listed my hobbies of web design and making videos under this topic, though making videos would also work under film.
As for websites...again, such a broad topic. And many sites on them, and Tumblelogs too (I follow some - Little Big Details, Journo-Geekery, Nerdology, and Science Tumbled). I suppose once I make my web design portfolio I'll be showing my tech knowledge in a way.
I'd have to think about this one.
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5. Music
My interests in music and in art are similar - I'm a great appreciator, but not so good at the practice. I was in some school programs as a kid and did recorder and choir in elementary school. I've been on at least one church choir (for Easter) and was involved in some choir with my friend Amy I think. I also took a piano class in college, but have probably forgotten that now. I've been told I have a good singing voice, but it "needs training." Which I know is true. I have difficulty staying on key at times and tend to sing from my throat rather than my diaphragm (probably because I breathe through my mouth, due to having a frequently clogged nose as a child), which tires out my voice quickly. Lately, though, I've begun to wonder if I actually have talent or if I'm just good at imitation, since the times I sing best are when I'm trying to really sing like the original singer. (But then this is probably just one of those irrational worries, born out of me thinking too deeply about stuff).
I've liked music for a long, long time, and enjoy going to concerts. I am a CD-buying fiend, even buying those inexpensive Lifescapes CD's from Target. I have less CD's now as I've given away some lately due to lack of storage space. I also had a lot of music on my computer, but I need to recover that now that I rebooted my computer.
Since I got an iPod particularly I've been listening to music like crazy. Not having my iPod for the first couple weeks of school (due to it getting repaired by iResQ in Kansas) nearly drove me insane. I had to resort to a not-quite-so-portable portable CD player, which had the main issue of being too big to fit in my pocket.
My main favorite genres are classical music, Celtic music, and Christian music. I also like jazz, swing, and "standards" (think Sinatra) a lot. Really, I'll listen to anything, except rap, hip-hop, heavy metal, hard rock, and most country. I do have a couple rap artists' songs (TobyMAC, MC Solaar) though, and I like country artists Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. Beethoven is my favorite classical composer. For Celtic music, I'll listen to any of it really, no matter who it's by. Christian music I'm pretty impartial with as well, though I do have fave artists/bands: Third Day, Jars of Clay, Relient K, BarlowGirl, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Michael W. Smith. Rebecca St. James used to be my fave Christian artist, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I gave away all my CD's of hers because I had the music on my computer anyway, but that's not the case now with the reboot. I might just buy her compilations, which have pretty much every song she's done on them, to save money. (I used to have The Ultimate Collection, her 2-disc compilation album; I have the mass-produced autographed portrait that came with the pre-ordered CD to prove it).
I also LOVE soundtracks. I own several soundtracks, both for movies and for TV shows that I like, such as Pokémon, Code Lyoko, and iCarly (they recently released a new iCarly soundtrack actually, iSoundtrack 2, which has some good songs including a GREAT song called "Generation Love" by Sam's actress Jeannette McCurdy and a cool acoustic version of Miranda Cosgrove's song "Shakespeare"). I'm hoping with the new Nick version of Winx Club they'll release a Winx Club soundtrack. Maybe not though.
The secular artists I like are a mixed bag. Charlotte Church, a classical vocalist from Wales who my grandparents actually introduced me to (my grandmother's family was from Wales so that's why they were interested in her), I really liked - until she turned pop. From one of her songs, "The Prayer," I found out about another classical vocalist, Josh Groban. Now I am a true Grobanite (what they call Josh Groban fans) and own all of his CD's, except for the live ones (Josh Groban in Concert, Live at the Greek, and Awake Live); I figured since the live ones had all the songs I had on the non-live albums minus one song apiece there wasn't any point in buying them. (I bought the single songs exclusive to the live CD's individually through iTunes). For his latest album, Illuminations, I ordered the rare Fan Folio Edition, which I got a heads-up on through following Josh on Facebook I think. It was only available through his official website's store at the time, I believe. (Though, as the link in the last sentence shows, it's also on Amazon now). It comes with the CD, a "making of" DVD, a cool book with photos and all the lyrics, exclusive access to some streaming concert (though I think I might've missed that part) and an exclusive black-and-white photo of Josh, all packaged in a very nice linen folio case. (The only drag is that it doesn't fit in my CD tower). I also own the Polar Express soundtrack, which has one song by Josh ("Believe"), and bought his song "Remember" (from the Troy soundtrack) on iTunes.
Other secular artists I like: Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, Aly & AJ, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Michael Bublé. As you can see, very across the board. Taylor and the Jonas boys I got into because I initially liked one or two songs by them ("S.O.S." for the Jonases; "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Today was a Fairytale" for Taylor) and then decided to check them out further. (This is also how I got into Hilary Duff and Kelly Clarkson). Same with Aly & AJ (or 78Violet, as they're currently known) I think. Taylor is awesome for being so young, and she writes her own songs, which I admire so much in an artist. (By the way, if you haven't seen the video for "Safe and Sound," her new single with The Civil Wars for the Hunger Games soundtrack, WATCH IT). The Jonas Brothers also have some good songs, and I don't mind them even though they're a boyband. (I went to high school during the big boom of boybands in the late '90's, when Hanson, Backstreet Boys, Blink 182, 98 Degrees, and N*SYNC were all trying to nab that generation's equivalent of Bieber fans. So believe me, I know what boybands are like).
The Beatles and The Beach Boys are my old-school staples. I have loved "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys for ages; only recently did I discover they had other songs. And I don't know how I found out about The Beatles, but seriously, they are something, and they deserve all the praise they get. Sure, they had their issues with drugs and whatnot. But their songs are great; "Let it Be" is my personal favorite. (Thankfully, iTunes FINALLY struck a deal with whoever it is who owns the rights to The Beatles' songs, meaning you can get a lot of their songs on iTunes now, which is nice).
Michael Bublé I just got into recently. They play a few songs of his at my work. He's considered pop, but he's got that old "Rat Pack Crooner" vibe going for him, which is what makes me like him.
I don't know how you do a website about music exactly. You can do a download site, like Sailor Music or Gendou, but there's always the issue of copyright folks cracking down on you (look what happened to Napster and more recently to Megaupload). Other than that, I don't know what else you can do. I guess I could always join music communities like Last.fm or Spotify to share my music love.
***
6. Languages
I think I've been into languages since I was little and knew my name was French. Since I first took French in high school (and a quarter of Conversational Spanish before that), I've noticed that I have a knack for picking up languages. My paternal great-grandmother Anastasia knew 7 languages when she came here from Latvia, so I suppose I get it from my dad's side of the family. In the last 3 years or so I've noticed I like to talk about language families/linguistics as well.
Nowadays I know French on an intermediate level and have some minor competency with Spanish (picked up from working with Spanish-speakers) and Japanese (picked up from watching subtitled anime). I also can speak smatterings of German, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, and Chinese - pretty much just phrasebook sort of stuff (I only know "hello" and "goodbye" in Russian and "hello" and "thank you" in Chinese). Russian and Hebrew I was trying to learn through podcasts, via One Minute Russian and Learn Hebrew Pod respectively. I may continue with One Minute Russian, but with Learn Hebrew Pod, you need a subscription to their website to get a lot of their content, and it's NOT cheap.
Being interest #6 of 12, languages might not be important enough to do a site about. The primary community/social network for languages is Livemocha, but I got very overwhelmed at that site due to all the people sending me work of theirs to check. And I'm not qualified to be doing a podcast or anything on how to learn a language. Maybe in the future I will do a site relating to this stuff. I'd like to practice more first. (Having this extremely expensive but supposedly extremely helpful software would be nice!)
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7. Mythology
I don't know how or when I got into mythology. Definitely by high school, because I have Norse mythology-related poems I wrote then to prove it. I think this is almost more a sub-interest of my interest in reading, combined with a desire to know how things worked. It's a minor but ardent interest. My main loves are Greco-Roman mythology (sometimes also called classical mythology) and Norse mythology. A while back, I bought a book of Egyptian myths and liked them a lot, and I am also interested in Celtic myths such as the Arthurian legend and the myths in books like this one.
I have considered making a website about mythology, though there are several including the popular Encyclopedia Mythica and the extensive Theoi.com. Norse mythology and Arthurian legend both bring up a lot less hits on Google than Greco-Roman mythology, so there's some possibility there. I would imagine there'd be an interest in Norse mythology right now thanks to the recent movie Thor (and its in-development sequel) and Thor's upcoming appearance in The Avengers. Something else to possibly do a Tumblr about (though I follow a great one already, By the Gods!).
Will have to think about this one too.
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8. Video Games
I've been interested in video games for a long time, back when my brother played them in the early '90's on his brick of a Game Boy and later on his Nintendo 64. I initially just watched, but once we got the N64 I started getting & playing games of my own, like Pokémon Puzzle League, Jeopardy!, Pokémon Snap, and both Pokémon Stadium games. We both became fans of the Super Smash Bros. series as well through the N64.
The first video game I remember playing by myself was Pokémon Blue, which I had to play on my computer through an emulator because I didn't have a Game Boy Color. And then there were the N64 games I just mentioned. And at some point I must've played Pokémon Silver, since I remember liking that game.
I didn't really play games for a while after that, not until I bought myself a GBA in 2004. That was my re-entry into gaming, and I have gotten a GameCube, a DS Lite (I originally had a regular DS but it broke), and a Wii since then (I know, I'm a Nintendo nerd).
I am kinda picky with genres. Like the typical female gamer I read about when doing research for my final paper for Cultural Studies, I'm drawn to strategy and puzzle games, as well as RPGs. But I also like fighting games like Street Fighter, Soul Calibur II, and Super Smash Bros., typically a male genre. And I enjoy racing games like Mario Kart, Star Wars Episode I: Racer (one of my fave N64 games) and Cruisin' World, even though I'm horrible at them. Then there are the other genre games I like, such as Cooking Mama, iCarly, and Wii Sports Resort. (Ironically, even though I like Cooking Mama, a simulation game, I don't care much for The Sims).
Most of the games I have are for the DS. About half are Pokémon games - all three Pokémon Ranger games (I just bought Guardian Signs the other day, so I have all 3 now!), plus Pearl, Platinum, SoulSilver, and White from the main series. The rest of my collection consists of two Phoenix Wright games (game 1 and Trials and Tribulations), two Professor Layton games (the first game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village and the latest one, Professor Layton and the Last Specter), a "rhythm otome" game (kind of a mix between a rhythm game like Elite Beat Agents and a dating sim) called Princess Debut, an RPG called Magical Starsign that reminds me of the early Final Fantasy games, a quirky RPG about a spoiled princess called My World, My Way, and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, my first foray into the odd Final Fantasy/Disney mashup that is Kingdom Hearts (a joint project between Square Enix and Disney). (To be honest, I'm not that into it). So those are a mixed bag.
My other games are a mixed bag too. For GameCube, I have Tales of Symphonia, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. For Wii I have Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, Puzzle Kingdoms, Summer Sports: Paradise Island, iCarly, and Wii Sports Resort. I think we also own a Jillian Michaels game that came with Wii Fit Plus when my mom bought that game for us, but I don't consider either to be mine really.
Video games I could make fanlistings about certainly. It would be hard to make a whole site about, for pretty much the same reason as I said under music. There aren't many fansites for games. It's really all about official game sites and big news sites like IGN and GameSpot. Will need to see which ones are available.
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9. Film
I've loved movies since I was a kid; we didn't have cable so we watched a lot of movies. It wasn't until I took FILM 101 in college that I got really interested in how movies were made. So I am really into watching the special features on DVDs now.
I watch a wide variety of movies, pretty much anything that isn't horror or porn. I also dislike movies with a lot of violence, language, gore, or sex - which essentially rules out most, if not all, movies rated R. I have only seen a handful of R-rated movies in my life; I don't like to go see them because I figure they're rated R for a reason. There are some movies, of course, that are good but due to their content need to be rated R, such as Kingdom of Heaven or Schindler's List. Oh and I also dislike those comedies that rely on stupid humor/sexual innuendo. They bother me.
I like sci-fi movies (especially Star Wars), fantasy movies, some Disney films, Studio Ghibli's films, some anime movies, and some foreign films. I also like indie films to a point (depends on the story).
With film, as with video games, there are very few fansites that I know of - it's mostly the official sites and sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Cinematical (now part of Moviefone apparently). So not sure how I'd make websites about it. And it's a pretty minor interest anyway.
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The Bottom 3: Trivia, Art, and Astronomy
Might as well lump these together, like American Idol does during result shows. Not much to say for these, I don't think.
My interest in trivia comes through reading trivia books and watching Jeopardy!. I think it was just born of a natural hunger for knowledge. Not to mention it gives me something to talk about in those awkward social moments. :)
Art, as I mentioned with music, is something I do better appreciating than doing. I do not possess artistic talent. Every time I've taken classes having to do with making art, I've ended up frustrated and jealous of my more artistically-gifted peers. So of course, it doesn't help that I have a best friend who's an awesome artist. (But then, she has trouble with English and writing, which I'm good at, so I guess we balance each other out). Even my recent attempt to learn to draw manga-style seems to have fallen by the wayside. Maybe I'll have to stick with programs like ComiPo and Manga Studio to start after all (even though I could not for the life of me figure out how to use Manga Studio's animation counterpart, Anime Studio), or maybe Adobe Illustrator, depending on how easy it is to learn Illustrator. Either that or I'll have to give up and assume I don't have an artistic bone in my body (but I must, since my dad can draw pretty well - though he pretty much just doodles).
Astronomy I only have a small interest in; science was neither my best or my worst subject, and not my favorite. Mostly I just like constellations and the supposed stories behind them (which differ in different cultures) as well as the research going on to find new Earth-like planets and found space colonies on other planets. I guess that last bit could go under technology, since technology would be part of that, and the constellation part under mythology.
Being that these are minor interests, I don't think I would make a website about them, though my planned site Senshi & Supermarkets is intended to feature a webcomic, Enchanted Supermarket, the creation of which my learning to draw manga-style was supposed to help accomplish. But, as Gina Biggs mentioned at her panel at Animé Los Angeles last year in response to my question, I could always get someone else to do the art. I think I wanted to learn to draw myself though because I'm a little possessive of my characters. I suppose it's still worth a shot. Maybe I shouldn't try to force myself to do it every day though, as my plan was. When I feel forced into something, I tend to not do so well.
***
Well, that's the analysis I guess.
I also wrote down the books, tv shows, movies, websites, and actors I like. But I don't know whether that info will help me in this after all. Here are the lists, though, if you're curious:
And so I have done. But the analysis, determining which ones I like enough to make a site and/or fanlisting about, is another matter. So here goes.
I ranked my main interest categories from 1 to 12, 1 being the most liked, 12 the least.
1. Literature
2. History
3. Anime/manga
4. Technology
5. Music
6. Languages
7. Mythology
8. Video Games
9. Film
10. Trivia
11. Art
12. Astronomy
Let the analysis begin!
1. Literature
Since I love reading and writing stories, I'm not surprised I ranked this one first. My "sub-interests" under this category are British literature, non-modern poetry, kids' books and some YA, fairy tales/folk tales, my favorite fiction genres (fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, Christian fiction), and my favorite non-fiction genres (history, technology, travel, culture, and some literary commentary, i.e. books like The Hunger Games Companion, Finding God in the Land of Narnia, and The Keys to the Chronicles, and essays that are NOT those dry theory essays I had to read in school).
As much as I love literature, I don't think I could make a whole site about it. It's too broad an interest. I think I tried with my previous personal websites (even doing book reviews on one of them) but failed. The closest I have in this category is my author website. I can certainly join fanlistings and communities on literary subjects. (Which reminds me: POTTERMORE! STILL WAITING FOR MY INVITE!) The only such groups I have joined are The Anomaly for writing, that one Yahoo! Group run by the guy from the Anomaly, and The Leaky Cauldron's MyLeaky, a pseudo-social network which I quickly grew tired of.
(I signed up LAST JULY for Pottermore btw. And STILL NO INVITE. What the heck is going on?!).
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2. History
History is, like literature, something else I've been interested in for as long as I can remember. I am essentially interested in any and all history, but my "specialty" areas seem to be Chinese history, Japanese history, and the Holocaust/World War II period. The Holocaust interest sprung out of reading books like Anne Frank's diary and Johanna Reiss's The Upstairs Room as a kid. The Chinese and Japanese history came later, mostly in college through a World History class (and a great textbook that was the only World History textbook I've ever had that wasn't totally West-centric) and an Asian Philosophy and Religion class I took as an elective, though I've been interested in Japanese history really since I got into anime and manga in 1998.
Springing out of this is a minor interest in archaeology. Though I don't think I'd ever be an Indiana Jones type, I do enjoy hearing about archaeological discoveries and so on.
Again, my interest in history is one I've tried to integrate into my personal sites in the past and failed at doing. And I think it might be too broad to make a site about, plus lots of sites about history exist. I guess I could create some fanlistings related to it. It might be a subject worth making a Tumblr about actually, as there is a pretty healthy tag group on Tumblr associated with history. (I follow three history Tumblelogs myself: Today's Document, run by the U.S. National Archives; The Ancient World; and Forgotten Antiquities). I suppose there might be a market for it when I do web design too, especially locally with all the museums at Balboa Park and elsewhere downtown.
3. Anime/manga
I first got into anime in 1998, and manga around the same time, though I didn't become serious about manga until 2003. And, to be honest, I've been trying to make a website about my anime/manga obsession since I've been making websites. My best friend Amy got ahead of me on this, with her site Everything Anime (for which I wrote the Sailor Moon character profiles). These have ranged from really basic sites to ambitious projects like a database of every water-type Pokémon.
The anime/manga website idea is finally coming together, however, with my still-in-the-works wiki project, the Anime Guide Database. This site would be a database of spoiler-free episode guides for animes, along with guides for related movies and for manga series. I was inspired to do it after spoiling myself one too many times on the plots of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic when reading Wikipedia articles on them. (Knowing big plot reveals ahead of time spoils the suspense. Trust me. And especially for series like those two, with so many plot twists). I initially thought it would be a site supported by a forum where people could contribute stuff (because not even us really crazy otaku can watch/read every anime/manga series known to man), but some helpful fellow Miss Dream staff members steered me away from that idea, saying that what I really wanted was a wiki. So that's what I've decided to do. But it still needs a lot of content just based on the series I myself have seen/read. So I'm not ready to debut it yet. And I think I may try joining the staffs of other anime fan wikis, such as Bulbapedia (Pokémon), Wikimoon (Sailor Moon), and Cure Wiki (Pretty Cure), first to get a feel for how this whole fan wiki thing works. I also did a search on some library databases and found quite a lot of books on wiki making.
Besides this, there are a few minor anime sites I have up or are working on: Myu Corner, my revived Sailor Mercury and Ayeka shrines, Sparkle Moon, and my revived fanlisting Memory of Time (Fancy Lala). (Still debating whether to bring back my Kusaka Hina and Hina x Mamoru fanlistings - I could host them on Sparkle Moon's server...am thinking of even adding a SeraMyu fanlisting to Myu Corner; there was one on The Fanlistings Network, but the link was dead so I reported it. If it becomes open for application after my report, I'm going to snag it ASAP).
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4. Technology
I've been interested in technology for a while, though very minorly until recently, when I began following the tech blogs Mashable and Smashing Magazine as an attempt to become more informed on the topic after deciding to go for the web design certificate I'm currently finishing. (I also started following Wired and TechCrunch - two big tech sites - on Twitter, as well as the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, a group called Social Media Trend Reports, and a feed for talk updates for the Technology, Entertainment, and Design [TED] conference).
My sub-interests in this category are web design, tech devices, social media trends, tech & science (or, as I wrote, "how things work"), and "possible tech in the future (sci-fi stuff)." Web design I'm obviously pursuing, and reading about through Smashing Magazine and Mashable's "Development and Design" feed. My interest in tech devices and social media trends is shown in the fact that I follow Mashable's "Mobile Tech," "Gadgets," and "Social Media" feeds. The other two come from my interest in sci-fi films and animes, combined with a lifelong passion to know how things worked. The interest in future tech stuff, combined with minor interests in space and world-building, are what inspired me to write science fiction. Whether they're enough, though, remains to be seen. I have enjoyed science programs about futuristic tech, like the recent Discovery Channel/Curiosity special Can You Live Forever? (hosted by Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage). I also like the Discovery Channel/Science Channel show How It's Made, which, as its title implies, is about how different items are made. (I need to catch up on that show!)
I listed my hobbies of web design and making videos under this topic, though making videos would also work under film.
As for websites...again, such a broad topic. And many sites on them, and Tumblelogs too (I follow some - Little Big Details, Journo-Geekery, Nerdology, and Science Tumbled). I suppose once I make my web design portfolio I'll be showing my tech knowledge in a way.
I'd have to think about this one.
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5. Music
My interests in music and in art are similar - I'm a great appreciator, but not so good at the practice. I was in some school programs as a kid and did recorder and choir in elementary school. I've been on at least one church choir (for Easter) and was involved in some choir with my friend Amy I think. I also took a piano class in college, but have probably forgotten that now. I've been told I have a good singing voice, but it "needs training." Which I know is true. I have difficulty staying on key at times and tend to sing from my throat rather than my diaphragm (probably because I breathe through my mouth, due to having a frequently clogged nose as a child), which tires out my voice quickly. Lately, though, I've begun to wonder if I actually have talent or if I'm just good at imitation, since the times I sing best are when I'm trying to really sing like the original singer. (But then this is probably just one of those irrational worries, born out of me thinking too deeply about stuff).
I've liked music for a long, long time, and enjoy going to concerts. I am a CD-buying fiend, even buying those inexpensive Lifescapes CD's from Target. I have less CD's now as I've given away some lately due to lack of storage space. I also had a lot of music on my computer, but I need to recover that now that I rebooted my computer.
Since I got an iPod particularly I've been listening to music like crazy. Not having my iPod for the first couple weeks of school (due to it getting repaired by iResQ in Kansas) nearly drove me insane. I had to resort to a not-quite-so-portable portable CD player, which had the main issue of being too big to fit in my pocket.
My main favorite genres are classical music, Celtic music, and Christian music. I also like jazz, swing, and "standards" (think Sinatra) a lot. Really, I'll listen to anything, except rap, hip-hop, heavy metal, hard rock, and most country. I do have a couple rap artists' songs (TobyMAC, MC Solaar) though, and I like country artists Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. Beethoven is my favorite classical composer. For Celtic music, I'll listen to any of it really, no matter who it's by. Christian music I'm pretty impartial with as well, though I do have fave artists/bands: Third Day, Jars of Clay, Relient K, BarlowGirl, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Michael W. Smith. Rebecca St. James used to be my fave Christian artist, but now I'm not so sure anymore. I gave away all my CD's of hers because I had the music on my computer anyway, but that's not the case now with the reboot. I might just buy her compilations, which have pretty much every song she's done on them, to save money. (I used to have The Ultimate Collection, her 2-disc compilation album; I have the mass-produced autographed portrait that came with the pre-ordered CD to prove it).
I also LOVE soundtracks. I own several soundtracks, both for movies and for TV shows that I like, such as Pokémon, Code Lyoko, and iCarly (they recently released a new iCarly soundtrack actually, iSoundtrack 2, which has some good songs including a GREAT song called "Generation Love" by Sam's actress Jeannette McCurdy and a cool acoustic version of Miranda Cosgrove's song "Shakespeare"). I'm hoping with the new Nick version of Winx Club they'll release a Winx Club soundtrack. Maybe not though.
The secular artists I like are a mixed bag. Charlotte Church, a classical vocalist from Wales who my grandparents actually introduced me to (my grandmother's family was from Wales so that's why they were interested in her), I really liked - until she turned pop. From one of her songs, "The Prayer," I found out about another classical vocalist, Josh Groban. Now I am a true Grobanite (what they call Josh Groban fans) and own all of his CD's, except for the live ones (Josh Groban in Concert, Live at the Greek, and Awake Live); I figured since the live ones had all the songs I had on the non-live albums minus one song apiece there wasn't any point in buying them. (I bought the single songs exclusive to the live CD's individually through iTunes). For his latest album, Illuminations, I ordered the rare Fan Folio Edition, which I got a heads-up on through following Josh on Facebook I think. It was only available through his official website's store at the time, I believe. (Though, as the link in the last sentence shows, it's also on Amazon now). It comes with the CD, a "making of" DVD, a cool book with photos and all the lyrics, exclusive access to some streaming concert (though I think I might've missed that part) and an exclusive black-and-white photo of Josh, all packaged in a very nice linen folio case. (The only drag is that it doesn't fit in my CD tower). I also own the Polar Express soundtrack, which has one song by Josh ("Believe"), and bought his song "Remember" (from the Troy soundtrack) on iTunes.
Other secular artists I like: Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, Aly & AJ, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Michael Bublé. As you can see, very across the board. Taylor and the Jonas boys I got into because I initially liked one or two songs by them ("S.O.S." for the Jonases; "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Today was a Fairytale" for Taylor) and then decided to check them out further. (This is also how I got into Hilary Duff and Kelly Clarkson). Same with Aly & AJ (or 78Violet, as they're currently known) I think. Taylor is awesome for being so young, and she writes her own songs, which I admire so much in an artist. (By the way, if you haven't seen the video for "Safe and Sound," her new single with The Civil Wars for the Hunger Games soundtrack, WATCH IT). The Jonas Brothers also have some good songs, and I don't mind them even though they're a boyband. (I went to high school during the big boom of boybands in the late '90's, when Hanson, Backstreet Boys, Blink 182, 98 Degrees, and N*SYNC were all trying to nab that generation's equivalent of Bieber fans. So believe me, I know what boybands are like).
The Beatles and The Beach Boys are my old-school staples. I have loved "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys for ages; only recently did I discover they had other songs. And I don't know how I found out about The Beatles, but seriously, they are something, and they deserve all the praise they get. Sure, they had their issues with drugs and whatnot. But their songs are great; "Let it Be" is my personal favorite. (Thankfully, iTunes FINALLY struck a deal with whoever it is who owns the rights to The Beatles' songs, meaning you can get a lot of their songs on iTunes now, which is nice).
Michael Bublé I just got into recently. They play a few songs of his at my work. He's considered pop, but he's got that old "Rat Pack Crooner" vibe going for him, which is what makes me like him.
I don't know how you do a website about music exactly. You can do a download site, like Sailor Music or Gendou, but there's always the issue of copyright folks cracking down on you (look what happened to Napster and more recently to Megaupload). Other than that, I don't know what else you can do. I guess I could always join music communities like Last.fm or Spotify to share my music love.
***
6. Languages
I think I've been into languages since I was little and knew my name was French. Since I first took French in high school (and a quarter of Conversational Spanish before that), I've noticed that I have a knack for picking up languages. My paternal great-grandmother Anastasia knew 7 languages when she came here from Latvia, so I suppose I get it from my dad's side of the family. In the last 3 years or so I've noticed I like to talk about language families/linguistics as well.
Nowadays I know French on an intermediate level and have some minor competency with Spanish (picked up from working with Spanish-speakers) and Japanese (picked up from watching subtitled anime). I also can speak smatterings of German, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, and Chinese - pretty much just phrasebook sort of stuff (I only know "hello" and "goodbye" in Russian and "hello" and "thank you" in Chinese). Russian and Hebrew I was trying to learn through podcasts, via One Minute Russian and Learn Hebrew Pod respectively. I may continue with One Minute Russian, but with Learn Hebrew Pod, you need a subscription to their website to get a lot of their content, and it's NOT cheap.
Being interest #6 of 12, languages might not be important enough to do a site about. The primary community/social network for languages is Livemocha, but I got very overwhelmed at that site due to all the people sending me work of theirs to check. And I'm not qualified to be doing a podcast or anything on how to learn a language. Maybe in the future I will do a site relating to this stuff. I'd like to practice more first. (Having this extremely expensive but supposedly extremely helpful software would be nice!)
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7. Mythology
I don't know how or when I got into mythology. Definitely by high school, because I have Norse mythology-related poems I wrote then to prove it. I think this is almost more a sub-interest of my interest in reading, combined with a desire to know how things worked. It's a minor but ardent interest. My main loves are Greco-Roman mythology (sometimes also called classical mythology) and Norse mythology. A while back, I bought a book of Egyptian myths and liked them a lot, and I am also interested in Celtic myths such as the Arthurian legend and the myths in books like this one.
I have considered making a website about mythology, though there are several including the popular Encyclopedia Mythica and the extensive Theoi.com. Norse mythology and Arthurian legend both bring up a lot less hits on Google than Greco-Roman mythology, so there's some possibility there. I would imagine there'd be an interest in Norse mythology right now thanks to the recent movie Thor (and its in-development sequel) and Thor's upcoming appearance in The Avengers. Something else to possibly do a Tumblr about (though I follow a great one already, By the Gods!).
Will have to think about this one too.
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8. Video Games
I've been interested in video games for a long time, back when my brother played them in the early '90's on his brick of a Game Boy and later on his Nintendo 64. I initially just watched, but once we got the N64 I started getting & playing games of my own, like Pokémon Puzzle League, Jeopardy!, Pokémon Snap, and both Pokémon Stadium games. We both became fans of the Super Smash Bros. series as well through the N64.
The first video game I remember playing by myself was Pokémon Blue, which I had to play on my computer through an emulator because I didn't have a Game Boy Color. And then there were the N64 games I just mentioned. And at some point I must've played Pokémon Silver, since I remember liking that game.
I didn't really play games for a while after that, not until I bought myself a GBA in 2004. That was my re-entry into gaming, and I have gotten a GameCube, a DS Lite (I originally had a regular DS but it broke), and a Wii since then (I know, I'm a Nintendo nerd).
I am kinda picky with genres. Like the typical female gamer I read about when doing research for my final paper for Cultural Studies, I'm drawn to strategy and puzzle games, as well as RPGs. But I also like fighting games like Street Fighter, Soul Calibur II, and Super Smash Bros., typically a male genre. And I enjoy racing games like Mario Kart, Star Wars Episode I: Racer (one of my fave N64 games) and Cruisin' World, even though I'm horrible at them. Then there are the other genre games I like, such as Cooking Mama, iCarly, and Wii Sports Resort. (Ironically, even though I like Cooking Mama, a simulation game, I don't care much for The Sims).
Most of the games I have are for the DS. About half are Pokémon games - all three Pokémon Ranger games (I just bought Guardian Signs the other day, so I have all 3 now!), plus Pearl, Platinum, SoulSilver, and White from the main series. The rest of my collection consists of two Phoenix Wright games (game 1 and Trials and Tribulations), two Professor Layton games (the first game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village and the latest one, Professor Layton and the Last Specter), a "rhythm otome" game (kind of a mix between a rhythm game like Elite Beat Agents and a dating sim) called Princess Debut, an RPG called Magical Starsign that reminds me of the early Final Fantasy games, a quirky RPG about a spoiled princess called My World, My Way, and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, my first foray into the odd Final Fantasy/Disney mashup that is Kingdom Hearts (a joint project between Square Enix and Disney). (To be honest, I'm not that into it). So those are a mixed bag.
My other games are a mixed bag too. For GameCube, I have Tales of Symphonia, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. For Wii I have Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, Puzzle Kingdoms, Summer Sports: Paradise Island, iCarly, and Wii Sports Resort. I think we also own a Jillian Michaels game that came with Wii Fit Plus when my mom bought that game for us, but I don't consider either to be mine really.
Video games I could make fanlistings about certainly. It would be hard to make a whole site about, for pretty much the same reason as I said under music. There aren't many fansites for games. It's really all about official game sites and big news sites like IGN and GameSpot. Will need to see which ones are available.
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9. Film
I've loved movies since I was a kid; we didn't have cable so we watched a lot of movies. It wasn't until I took FILM 101 in college that I got really interested in how movies were made. So I am really into watching the special features on DVDs now.
I watch a wide variety of movies, pretty much anything that isn't horror or porn. I also dislike movies with a lot of violence, language, gore, or sex - which essentially rules out most, if not all, movies rated R. I have only seen a handful of R-rated movies in my life; I don't like to go see them because I figure they're rated R for a reason. There are some movies, of course, that are good but due to their content need to be rated R, such as Kingdom of Heaven or Schindler's List. Oh and I also dislike those comedies that rely on stupid humor/sexual innuendo. They bother me.
I like sci-fi movies (especially Star Wars), fantasy movies, some Disney films, Studio Ghibli's films, some anime movies, and some foreign films. I also like indie films to a point (depends on the story).
With film, as with video games, there are very few fansites that I know of - it's mostly the official sites and sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Cinematical (now part of Moviefone apparently). So not sure how I'd make websites about it. And it's a pretty minor interest anyway.
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The Bottom 3: Trivia, Art, and Astronomy
Might as well lump these together, like American Idol does during result shows. Not much to say for these, I don't think.
My interest in trivia comes through reading trivia books and watching Jeopardy!. I think it was just born of a natural hunger for knowledge. Not to mention it gives me something to talk about in those awkward social moments. :)
Art, as I mentioned with music, is something I do better appreciating than doing. I do not possess artistic talent. Every time I've taken classes having to do with making art, I've ended up frustrated and jealous of my more artistically-gifted peers. So of course, it doesn't help that I have a best friend who's an awesome artist. (But then, she has trouble with English and writing, which I'm good at, so I guess we balance each other out). Even my recent attempt to learn to draw manga-style seems to have fallen by the wayside. Maybe I'll have to stick with programs like ComiPo and Manga Studio to start after all (even though I could not for the life of me figure out how to use Manga Studio's animation counterpart, Anime Studio), or maybe Adobe Illustrator, depending on how easy it is to learn Illustrator. Either that or I'll have to give up and assume I don't have an artistic bone in my body (but I must, since my dad can draw pretty well - though he pretty much just doodles).
Astronomy I only have a small interest in; science was neither my best or my worst subject, and not my favorite. Mostly I just like constellations and the supposed stories behind them (which differ in different cultures) as well as the research going on to find new Earth-like planets and found space colonies on other planets. I guess that last bit could go under technology, since technology would be part of that, and the constellation part under mythology.
Being that these are minor interests, I don't think I would make a website about them, though my planned site Senshi & Supermarkets is intended to feature a webcomic, Enchanted Supermarket, the creation of which my learning to draw manga-style was supposed to help accomplish. But, as Gina Biggs mentioned at her panel at Animé Los Angeles last year in response to my question, I could always get someone else to do the art. I think I wanted to learn to draw myself though because I'm a little possessive of my characters. I suppose it's still worth a shot. Maybe I shouldn't try to force myself to do it every day though, as my plan was. When I feel forced into something, I tend to not do so well.
***
Well, that's the analysis I guess.
I also wrote down the books, tv shows, movies, websites, and actors I like. But I don't know whether that info will help me in this after all. Here are the lists, though, if you're curious:
TV Shows I Like
The Amazing Race
iCarly
Income Property
Pan Am
Once Upon a Time
HGTV Design Star
Secrets from a Stylist
The Antonio Treatment
Code Lyoko
Totally Spies
W.I.T.C.H.
Winx Club
Kim Possible
How It’s Made
Mythbusters
Books I Like – Faves
Jane Eyre
Ella Enchanted
Sarah’s Key
A Tale of Two Cities
Inheritance Cycle
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Hunger Games trilogy
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Ophelia by Lisa Klein
The Secret Garden
Anne of Green Gables series
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Quest for Celestia
The Horse and His Boy
Fave Movies
Star Wars Episode I
The Illusionist
Elizabethtown
Just Like Heaven
Super 8
Anastasia
Meet the Robinsons
LOTR Trilogy
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Tenchi Muyo in Love
(La Vie en Rose?)
(Raise the Red Lantern?)
Favorite websites
YouTube
Wikipedia
Google
TVtropes.org
Wikimoon
Facebook
Twitter
Forums/message boards
Tumblr
Actors I Like
-Alicia Silverstone
-Drew Barrymore
-Zhang Ziyi
-Kenneth Branagh
-Nathan Lane
The actors I wouldn't consider doing websites for, since I'm not sure I like them that much, though I think I did make one for Alicia once, back when I was really into her. The books...like I said, hard thing to make a website about. Movies ditto. TV shows maybe, though certainly not on every show on that list. (I can only handle so many sites). The websites, no, though a fanlisting for forums/message boards might be fun.
I also made a brief list of stuff I like that doesn't fit in the other categories - namely collecting trading cards, research, and watching interior design shows.
Ok, I have spent all day and last night typing up this analysis (part of it using my Blogger app for iPod touch/iPhone), and so I'll close here. I will probably give all this further thought.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
My Social Media Involvement - An Assessment
Happy belated 2012 to everyone (and Happy New Year to those celebrating Chinese New Year). Sorry I haven't posted. Been kinda busy I guess.
One big announcement - as those who may be keeping an eye on the Blogaversary icon will have noted, 40 days ago my blog celebrated its 7th anniversary. Happy birthday, dear blog!
This being the month of beginnings and the beginning of a new year, I decided to do an assessment of my involvement in social networks, somewhat like what I did in this post. So here goes.
Unlike some people, I am not uber-obsessed with social media. Well, ok maybe I am. But the ones I'm involved in, I'm involved really more nominally in than I think most people are. Like, for example, I use Facebook to keep up with friends and family, follow some brands, and share things I find on the internet (articles, etc). I do not use it to, say, play Farmville. Frankly, I'm not enthralled with the idea of social gaming. It's just sort of the next step up from those annoying Facebook quiz apps people used to send to me.
One big announcement - as those who may be keeping an eye on the Blogaversary icon will have noted, 40 days ago my blog celebrated its 7th anniversary. Happy birthday, dear blog!
This being the month of beginnings and the beginning of a new year, I decided to do an assessment of my involvement in social networks, somewhat like what I did in this post. So here goes.
My Social Media Involvement - An Assessment
Unlike some people, I am not uber-obsessed with social media. Well, ok maybe I am. But the ones I'm involved in, I'm involved really more nominally in than I think most people are. Like, for example, I use Facebook to keep up with friends and family, follow some brands, and share things I find on the internet (articles, etc). I do not use it to, say, play Farmville. Frankly, I'm not enthralled with the idea of social gaming. It's just sort of the next step up from those annoying Facebook quiz apps people used to send to me.
I think the reason this is so is because I grew up without social media. As I pointed out in this post, the major social networks, except LiveJournal and DeviantArt, all came out after I graduated high school. And even after they came out I avoided them in favor of forums/message boards. I prefer forums/message boards because of their structure and because they allow for deeper and more varied discussion. Sure, they can have their problems (the codelyoko.com forum had so much user activity it frequently crashed, and the one I tried at totallyspies.com, which is part of the site's Totally Spies Club, wasn't the most user-friendly thing in the world). But I like them. (In fact, I wish YouTube had message boards, the way its equivalent SplashFace on iCarly does, because I think it would allow so much more discussion than can happen just in comments). My first involvement with social media, therefore, was when I joined Facebook on January 25, 2008. (Which means I'll have been involved with it for four years as of tomorrow....wow!)
I made a list of all the social networking sites I am involved with or have been in the past, and was kinda surprised at how large it is. But how much am I involved with them? Well, let's see.
Facebook
Facebook is the social network I've been with the longest, as aforesaid. I used it for the first year and 22 days under a pseudonym (Lara Larame). I then realized that all of my friends were actually people I knew IRL, so I switched to using my real name. I now have 40 friends, all but one of whom are people I know IRL now or people I went to high school with who I no longer see. I have also "liked" a lot of fan pages for brands and the like and follow those as well. And I have a couple fan pages I admin - the Facebook fan page for LAR Productions, the on-again-off-again YouTube band I'm a part of (which band founder Amy/Maria founded and which I co-admin with her and our other, currently inactive member Reilia), and the fan page for my website Myu Corner. My main profile is here.
On May 18, 2010, I started a separate Facebook profile for my writing persona, having not had much success with my Goodreads and MySpace accounts for that persona. Thanks to mentioning my intention to found that account on The Anomaly, a writing forum I'm a part of, I managed to gain 100 friends on the first day, due to two fellow Anomaly members showering me with friend recommendations. I now have 185 friends on that account, but I don't check it as often as I do my regular Facebook account, because I do most of my Facebook-checking using Facebook for iPhone on my iPod touch, and that app doesn't support multiple accounts (like most Twitter apps do), which I guess makes sense because most people only have one Facebook account.
Twitter
I joined Twitter in 2009, when I began to try to create an author platform for myself. I had avoided it before then. Nowadays, I mostly use it for the same purpose I use Facebook for - to follow people and keep on what is going on. Often times I have found out some news item on Twitter before I found it out elsewhere!
My personal Twitter account is Larabooklover. It was originally named Bgirldotnet, like my old YouTube account, but I changed it when I deleted bibliogirl.net, my personal website domain to which the name referred. (Larabooklover is also my AIM name). I have a fairly healthy follower/followed ratio (83 followed/68 followers) and as of today over 3,000 tweets. Most of these are auto-posts from Tumblr and GetGlue though, as well as articles I've shared and replies to and retweets of other people. There are also times where I had some thought that I wanted to express but it took several tweets to get it out. (I should probably just use Twitlonger for that - the Twitter app on my phone [MoTweets] does that automatically if you post a tweet that's too long, but the Twitter app I use on my iPod [Echofon for iPhone; I'm not a fan of Twitter's official app] doesn't).
I have a writing Twitter as well, waldenwriter. As with my writing Facebook, I don't update this much. In fact, probably 90% of my 587 tweets on that account are retweets of other people. People seem to be ok with that though, because I have a good follower/followed ratio (32 following/39 followers). And many of the tweets that aren't retweets are auto-posts of my writing blog posts from LiveJournal. Thankfully, no one has called me a spam bot yet!
Lastly, I also created a Twitter account for LAR Productions, since I'm the creator of the band's website (currently down) and have thus appointed myself as our social media manager. There aren't very many tweets on that account yet; most of them are auto-tweets from our Facebook page. The account is at: http://www.twitter.com/larproductions.
YouTube
As mentioned in this post, I have had a long and turbulent history with YouTube, with four suspended accounts in the 5 years and almost 8 months I've been with them. (Technically, I have 5 deleted accounts, because I just deleted Bgirldotnet myself). This is one of the few social networks where I am actively involved, rather than just using it nominally or passively. I have three accounts - my new main account LitTechGirl, my solo fandub account WindKnightFuu, and my group fandub account imagodeidubs (created primarily to house my Dark Mercury Arc Fandub Project, the group fandub project I started back in 2007 that is still unfinished, but which I intend to finish this year for sure - and which some people like but quite a few people dislike, it seems). I'm not uber-popular on any of these accounts - I have only 13 subscribers and 5 friends on my imagodeidubs account (as well as, it seems, a lot of copyright notices - which means my channel could disappear at any time...maybe I should just give up on the Dark Mercury Arc Fandub Project?) and 10 subscribers on my WindKnightFuu channel. But I do have a lot of views on those two channels (25,963 on imagodeidubs and 6,753 on WindKnightFuu), so I guess that's good. (I'm not counting LitTechGirl in all this, because it's still so new; I just started it earlier this month).
Other Writing Social Media
Besides my writing Facebook and Twitter, I also have a presence on a few other social media sites as part of my still growing author platform.
My writing blog/journal is on LiveJournal, here. I went with LJ because I had enjoyed keeping up the LJ for my school's French club. It also allows for a lot of community forming, which will be good when I get more of an audience for my writing, and also as a way of promoting my writing. Currently, I mostly use it to write about my writing and to follow communities about my interests, such as Sailor Moon, manga, and Hello Kitty, and some writing communities.
I also have an account on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/reneedlevine. I initially started it just as a general personal account to help me get a job, but then switched it to being focused on my writing. I may still use it for professional networking in general eventually though.
I also have an account over at the document-sharing site Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/waldenwriter. I use Scribd to post samples of my writing for promotion purposes, as well as to provide a link to longer pieces for review on The Anomaly.
I used to have a writing-related account with GoodReads, but then decided it wasn't working for me and closed it down.
Other Personal Social Media
Besides these major social networks, I also have accounts on a number of more minor sites.
Blogging
First of all, for blogging. I have this blog, of course, on Blogger, and have had it since before Blogger was bought by Google. I also have another blog here that I kept for my MAT 165 class last semester, and used to host Myu Corner and my site-in-progress Sparkle Moon on Blogger as well, but didn't like the lack of control I had over the look of it (this was before the Template Designer came along).
I now also have a blog on Tumblr, at http://www.starry-dreamer.tumblr.com. I started it on June 2, 2011. I mostly just use it for reblogging or commenting on things, which is what I think a lot of people use Tumblr for. I also use it to follow other Tumblrs, much like I follow brands on Facebook.
I also have a personal account and a writing account on the blog rating/directory site Technorati.
Media
I have a few media-related accounts as well.
Probably my oldest of these is on Photobucket, under the name of Dani17 (also an old forum username of mine). Technically, Photobucket isn't a social network, but now that is focusing more on community, I think it will become one. I use Photobucket mainly for image hosting for my blog and for forums, the way some people use ImageShack.
I also have a rarely used Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12360139@N04/. I actually started it so I could participate in a photo contest the local transit district was running. I don't know what I'll use it for now (though it's definitely easier to log into now that it's tied to Yahoo).
I now have a GetGlue account, which I am enjoying a lot.
Lastly, I have an account at the anime/J-drama viewing site Crunchyroll. I started this because I got tired of seeing ads when I watched Futari wa Pretty Cure on there. I haven't even fully filled out my profile.
Other Accounts
Then there are some accounts I have or have had that are neither blogging or media-related. Two of these are Livemocha and weRead, but I closed my accounts with those sites (Livemocha because I couldn't deal with all the requests from people for me to check their assignments for them, and weRead because I stopped using my weRead Facebook app).
I also have used Meetup and Ning. Meetup I joined because an Asperger Activity Group I'm a part of uses it to announce their events. Ning I've used a few times for school, and also to join the Nerdfighters community, though I haven't gone there in ages.
I have a StumbleUpon account, which is kinda fun because I've found some pretty cool stuff through it.
Last of these is MySpace. I created a profile there for LAR Productions (since, though it isn't as popular as it used to be, MySpace is still good for bands), which, like all our social media, is in desperate need of updating.
Conclusion: My Future in Social Media
I'd like to update my social media accounts more often. And with real statuses, not just auto-posts. I'll probably need to read some stuff on how best to do this. Or at least think about it more.
I may search out even more networks, such as Google+ and Pinterest. (Though the funny video below is making me think I shouldn't join Google+. Actually, it pretty much lays out my exact attitude about social networking in general).
I'll have to think about it for sure. For now, I will leave this post alone, sit back and "use my little gray cells," as Hercule Poirot would say. Then I will confront it.
***
Hope you guys liked that. Bye now!
I made a list of all the social networking sites I am involved with or have been in the past, and was kinda surprised at how large it is. But how much am I involved with them? Well, let's see.
Facebook is the social network I've been with the longest, as aforesaid. I used it for the first year and 22 days under a pseudonym (Lara Larame). I then realized that all of my friends were actually people I knew IRL, so I switched to using my real name. I now have 40 friends, all but one of whom are people I know IRL now or people I went to high school with who I no longer see. I have also "liked" a lot of fan pages for brands and the like and follow those as well. And I have a couple fan pages I admin - the Facebook fan page for LAR Productions, the on-again-off-again YouTube band I'm a part of (which band founder Amy/Maria founded and which I co-admin with her and our other, currently inactive member Reilia), and the fan page for my website Myu Corner. My main profile is here.
On May 18, 2010, I started a separate Facebook profile for my writing persona, having not had much success with my Goodreads and MySpace accounts for that persona. Thanks to mentioning my intention to found that account on The Anomaly, a writing forum I'm a part of, I managed to gain 100 friends on the first day, due to two fellow Anomaly members showering me with friend recommendations. I now have 185 friends on that account, but I don't check it as often as I do my regular Facebook account, because I do most of my Facebook-checking using Facebook for iPhone on my iPod touch, and that app doesn't support multiple accounts (like most Twitter apps do), which I guess makes sense because most people only have one Facebook account.
I joined Twitter in 2009, when I began to try to create an author platform for myself. I had avoided it before then. Nowadays, I mostly use it for the same purpose I use Facebook for - to follow people and keep on what is going on. Often times I have found out some news item on Twitter before I found it out elsewhere!
My personal Twitter account is Larabooklover. It was originally named Bgirldotnet, like my old YouTube account, but I changed it when I deleted bibliogirl.net, my personal website domain to which the name referred. (Larabooklover is also my AIM name). I have a fairly healthy follower/followed ratio (83 followed/68 followers) and as of today over 3,000 tweets. Most of these are auto-posts from Tumblr and GetGlue though, as well as articles I've shared and replies to and retweets of other people. There are also times where I had some thought that I wanted to express but it took several tweets to get it out. (I should probably just use Twitlonger for that - the Twitter app on my phone [MoTweets] does that automatically if you post a tweet that's too long, but the Twitter app I use on my iPod [Echofon for iPhone; I'm not a fan of Twitter's official app] doesn't).
I have a writing Twitter as well, waldenwriter. As with my writing Facebook, I don't update this much. In fact, probably 90% of my 587 tweets on that account are retweets of other people. People seem to be ok with that though, because I have a good follower/followed ratio (32 following/39 followers). And many of the tweets that aren't retweets are auto-posts of my writing blog posts from LiveJournal. Thankfully, no one has called me a spam bot yet!
Lastly, I also created a Twitter account for LAR Productions, since I'm the creator of the band's website (currently down) and have thus appointed myself as our social media manager. There aren't very many tweets on that account yet; most of them are auto-tweets from our Facebook page. The account is at: http://www.twitter.com/larproductions.
YouTube
As mentioned in this post, I have had a long and turbulent history with YouTube, with four suspended accounts in the 5 years and almost 8 months I've been with them. (Technically, I have 5 deleted accounts, because I just deleted Bgirldotnet myself). This is one of the few social networks where I am actively involved, rather than just using it nominally or passively. I have three accounts - my new main account LitTechGirl, my solo fandub account WindKnightFuu, and my group fandub account imagodeidubs (created primarily to house my Dark Mercury Arc Fandub Project, the group fandub project I started back in 2007 that is still unfinished, but which I intend to finish this year for sure - and which some people like but quite a few people dislike, it seems). I'm not uber-popular on any of these accounts - I have only 13 subscribers and 5 friends on my imagodeidubs account (as well as, it seems, a lot of copyright notices - which means my channel could disappear at any time...maybe I should just give up on the Dark Mercury Arc Fandub Project?) and 10 subscribers on my WindKnightFuu channel. But I do have a lot of views on those two channels (25,963 on imagodeidubs and 6,753 on WindKnightFuu), so I guess that's good. (I'm not counting LitTechGirl in all this, because it's still so new; I just started it earlier this month).
Other Writing Social Media
Besides my writing Facebook and Twitter, I also have a presence on a few other social media sites as part of my still growing author platform.
My writing blog/journal is on LiveJournal, here. I went with LJ because I had enjoyed keeping up the LJ for my school's French club. It also allows for a lot of community forming, which will be good when I get more of an audience for my writing, and also as a way of promoting my writing. Currently, I mostly use it to write about my writing and to follow communities about my interests, such as Sailor Moon, manga, and Hello Kitty, and some writing communities.
I also have an account on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/reneedlevine. I initially started it just as a general personal account to help me get a job, but then switched it to being focused on my writing. I may still use it for professional networking in general eventually though.
I also have an account over at the document-sharing site Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/waldenwriter. I use Scribd to post samples of my writing for promotion purposes, as well as to provide a link to longer pieces for review on The Anomaly.
I used to have a writing-related account with GoodReads, but then decided it wasn't working for me and closed it down.
Other Personal Social Media
Besides these major social networks, I also have accounts on a number of more minor sites.
Blogging
First of all, for blogging. I have this blog, of course, on Blogger, and have had it since before Blogger was bought by Google. I also have another blog here that I kept for my MAT 165 class last semester, and used to host Myu Corner and my site-in-progress Sparkle Moon on Blogger as well, but didn't like the lack of control I had over the look of it (this was before the Template Designer came along).
I now also have a blog on Tumblr, at http://www.starry-dreamer.tumblr.com. I started it on June 2, 2011. I mostly just use it for reblogging or commenting on things, which is what I think a lot of people use Tumblr for. I also use it to follow other Tumblrs, much like I follow brands on Facebook.
I also have a personal account and a writing account on the blog rating/directory site Technorati.
Media
I have a few media-related accounts as well.
Probably my oldest of these is on Photobucket, under the name of Dani17 (also an old forum username of mine). Technically, Photobucket isn't a social network, but now that is focusing more on community, I think it will become one. I use Photobucket mainly for image hosting for my blog and for forums, the way some people use ImageShack.
I also have a rarely used Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12360139@N04/. I actually started it so I could participate in a photo contest the local transit district was running. I don't know what I'll use it for now (though it's definitely easier to log into now that it's tied to Yahoo).
I now have a GetGlue account, which I am enjoying a lot.
Lastly, I have an account at the anime/J-drama viewing site Crunchyroll. I started this because I got tired of seeing ads when I watched Futari wa Pretty Cure on there. I haven't even fully filled out my profile.
Other Accounts
Then there are some accounts I have or have had that are neither blogging or media-related. Two of these are Livemocha and weRead, but I closed my accounts with those sites (Livemocha because I couldn't deal with all the requests from people for me to check their assignments for them, and weRead because I stopped using my weRead Facebook app).
I also have used Meetup and Ning. Meetup I joined because an Asperger Activity Group I'm a part of uses it to announce their events. Ning I've used a few times for school, and also to join the Nerdfighters community, though I haven't gone there in ages.
I have a StumbleUpon account, which is kinda fun because I've found some pretty cool stuff through it.
Last of these is MySpace. I created a profile there for LAR Productions (since, though it isn't as popular as it used to be, MySpace is still good for bands), which, like all our social media, is in desperate need of updating.
Conclusion: My Future in Social Media
I'd like to update my social media accounts more often. And with real statuses, not just auto-posts. I'll probably need to read some stuff on how best to do this. Or at least think about it more.
I may search out even more networks, such as Google+ and Pinterest. (Though the funny video below is making me think I shouldn't join Google+. Actually, it pretty much lays out my exact attitude about social networking in general).
I'll have to think about it for sure. For now, I will leave this post alone, sit back and "use my little gray cells," as Hercule Poirot would say. Then I will confront it.
***
Hope you guys liked that. Bye now!
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Depressed and need to vent
I am officially depressed. Not like diagnosed clinically depressed or anything, thank goodness, but just depressed. Enough for it to interfere with my normal functioning.
There's really no reason for me to be depressed - I mean, I'm on vacation from work, and I've gotten the two major things done I wanted to get done during this week: the French proficiency test (Test d'Évaluation du Français) at the Alliance Française and driving school through Mira Costa. I also had a very nice birthday (yesterday) and got to go to a great symphony concert with my dad on Wednesday in Mira Costa's new Concert Hall, where we heard world-premiere pieces by their composer-in-residence as well as Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. And Beethoven is my favorite classical composer.
So why am I depressed? Well, let's just say driving school didn't go quite as smoothly as I expected. I expected that after this I'd be able to get my license very soon (after some practice with my parents, of course). But now it looks like it could be forever till that happens, because while I'm not a horrible driver, I'm not sure the instructor has very high hopes for me either. He did think I did better than he had thought I'd do on the first day, but yesterday was the first day I had to do most of the steering by myself, so I didn't do as well, and today I did things like freak out over a bag in the road that I thought I was going to run over (and stopped suddenly because of it), put my visor down at a bad time due to the sun being in my eyes (it was early morning), and accidentally changed lanes after going straight through an intersection instead of staying in the lane I was in before I crossed the intersection. Plus I have problems with maintaining speed (probably because there are a lot of speed limit changes in the area we drove in), some trouble with turns, and some issues with lane position (though I have improved with that somewhat).
The instructor doesn't want me to practice with my parents until we get his report (or until he talks with my parents, whichever he decides to do - though I asked him to send a written report anyway cause I remember things better when they're written, personally). I'm just afraid that I may drive really badly with my parents, who won't have the extra brake the driver's ed car has and thus won't be able to stop me if I confuse my pedals or something, they'll never let me drive. And then my mom will get to glorify in the fact that she was right all along and I won't be able to drive EVER. And if I can't drive a car, then I'll have to work around the bus schedule my whole life, severely limiting my job possibilities, meaning I might not be able to make more money and be able to afford to move out.
And I want to move out. Because while I love my parents, sometimes they drive me crazy. Not my dad so much. He's great. It's my mom. She constantly gets on me about my clothes and how I need to take care of myself better and you should see how she nagged me to get a physical. Granted, I know she means well, but sometimes I just don't agree with her. I like wearing jeans and a T-shirt. And I'd like to wear a dress (like I used to) but I have trouble finding them in my size. I am NOT joking - it's like impossible to find plus size dresses, though maybe I'm just not going to the right stores cause we found skirts and stuff for me before when I worked at Loaves and Fishes and had to wear dresses or skirts. Plus, like a typical Asperger's person, I am very picky about fabrics (due to a touch sensitivity - autistic people have super-sensitive senses), so I only really feel comfortable in cotton. Plus, it's hard for me to wear dresses or skirts because I have to wear something under it, like pantyhose, so my legs don't rub together, and I find pantyhose to be very formal, so they wouldn't work with a casual dress. Of course, if I lost some weight, I could probably solve that problem, because I think my legs rub together because my thighs are really big.
Another problem I have with moving out is affording it. Unfortunately, SoCal is one of the most expensive places around, and your average apartment in our area generally starts at $900/month or so, and that's just for rent. I only make around $200-$250/week (depending on my hours and how much gets deducted for taxes, health insurance, and union dues), so that's about $1,000/month, maybe more because I actually make more than $12,000 a year. I would definitely need a roommate for it to work, unless I want to live on like $100/month after rent, which I suppose I could do (considering I'd probably qualify for food stamps if I lived on my own, which would help with food costs).
The driving instructor did point out that I don't need a car to move out (yes, we did talk about this) and I guess this is true since at least some of the apartments in my area are close to a bus stop. And I suppose I could advertise for a roommate. Too bad I'm not at Cal State anymore because people were always posting signs looking for roommates there. There is this ULoop thing I keep getting e-mails from on my school account that allows you to look for roommates on it too.
I just want to move on with my life, and I feel like I'm so stuck. I mean, I am in a transition period since I just graduated from college about 6 months ago. And to be honest, finding out I had Asperger's did kind of throw a wrench in the works, since I don't understand it very well nor do I know how to deal with it. I did recently read the book Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin, a famous animal science professor at Colorado State who also has high-functioning autism (and who the HBO film Temple Grandin is about), which did help explain it somewhat. She also wrote a book about careers, Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger's Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism, which I'm going to check out. Though it may be as un-helpful as the career books I found in the Career Center (Careers for Introverts and Solitary Types, Careers for Culture Lovers and Other Artsy Types, Great Jobs for English Majors, and Careers for Foreign Language Aficionados and Other Multilingual Types). We'll see.
My brother is in town and he asked me last night about how my writing was going. To be honest, it's on hold. I still haven't started revising my novel that I finished back in April, which I was going to distance myself from over the summer and pick back up in the fall. I did intend to, but then my online classes started and I got kinda busy. Plus, I've been writing content for my websites. I spent weeks - literally - writing character bios for Myu Corner. So much I practically got sick of it. I didn't even realize how many characters there are in SeraMyu. It's insane. Thankfully, PGSM doesn't have nearly as many characters, which is good because I'm writing character bios for Sparkle Moon, my PGSM site, now, though I haven't worked on it at all on my vacation cause I've been kinda busy. Now that I'm learning more web design techniques, I can hopefully make that site how I want it.
Today I watched the opening for Yes! PreCure 5, one of the seasons of Pretty Cure, a magical girl anime. In an English trailer made by Toei to promote that season (probably for the European market as Pretty Cure has never been licensed here, except for a dub of the first season in Canada), the main character, Nozomi (pink hair), is described as being "without a dream to guide her." I kinda feel like that. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but now I'm having second thoughts. I mean, I love to write, but the whole business part of getting a book published kinda scares me. For short stories or articles like one would submit to journals I might be ok on my own, but once it comes to novels I'd rather leave that stuff to my agent, assuming I have one by then (after all, I have to sell myself to the agent first).
I was just downstairs watching the most recent episode of The Office, "Spooked," with my parents. At the end of it, James Spader's character, Robert California, makes a good point about how we shouldn't let fear rule our lives, and that it's ironic that one day a year (Halloween) we dress up in costumes and celebrate fear. (That's my summary of the quote; you can read the full-on thing here). That is a very good point. I've known for a while that I was letting fear control me. Fear makes me afraid to do new things and take risks. Now, fear can be a good thing, obviously, in some situations. We all have a desire for safety, as well as an innate desire for self-preservation (there is some place in our brain that is wired for this, I forget where...although if this is true, then why do people commit suicide? You'd think the innate desire to preserve oneself would override someone's desire to kill himself or herself, since killing oneself would be the exact opposite of preserving oneself). But you can't let it rule your life. You just can't. Unfortunately, me saying this and me actually applying it are two very different things.
I think I need to take some time and really think about my life, do some soul-searching, talk to God about how my life is, and figure out a direction. Cause right now I don't feel like life is going so well. I'm not at rock bottom or anything, but I definitely don't feel satisfied with my life. Not that satisfaction is the ultimate end, of course. By Biblical standards, I should be more interested in the needs of others than in my own anyway. But I still feel very lost. I need help, though I know I hate asking for help cause I think I can do everything myself. I just don't know what to do!
Ok I think I'm going to stop here and try to cheer myself up in some other way, cause this isn't helping much. Good night.
P.S. Speaking of the Yes! PreCure 5 opening, it's apparently also featured in a cool-looking dance game for Wii called Happy Dance Collection (which seems to have only been released in Japan as far as I can tell). Check out the video below to see what I mean. You can also find out a bit about the game here: http://reggie21.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/happy-dance-collection-wii/.
There's really no reason for me to be depressed - I mean, I'm on vacation from work, and I've gotten the two major things done I wanted to get done during this week: the French proficiency test (Test d'Évaluation du Français) at the Alliance Française and driving school through Mira Costa. I also had a very nice birthday (yesterday) and got to go to a great symphony concert with my dad on Wednesday in Mira Costa's new Concert Hall, where we heard world-premiere pieces by their composer-in-residence as well as Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. And Beethoven is my favorite classical composer.
So why am I depressed? Well, let's just say driving school didn't go quite as smoothly as I expected. I expected that after this I'd be able to get my license very soon (after some practice with my parents, of course). But now it looks like it could be forever till that happens, because while I'm not a horrible driver, I'm not sure the instructor has very high hopes for me either. He did think I did better than he had thought I'd do on the first day, but yesterday was the first day I had to do most of the steering by myself, so I didn't do as well, and today I did things like freak out over a bag in the road that I thought I was going to run over (and stopped suddenly because of it), put my visor down at a bad time due to the sun being in my eyes (it was early morning), and accidentally changed lanes after going straight through an intersection instead of staying in the lane I was in before I crossed the intersection. Plus I have problems with maintaining speed (probably because there are a lot of speed limit changes in the area we drove in), some trouble with turns, and some issues with lane position (though I have improved with that somewhat).
The instructor doesn't want me to practice with my parents until we get his report (or until he talks with my parents, whichever he decides to do - though I asked him to send a written report anyway cause I remember things better when they're written, personally). I'm just afraid that I may drive really badly with my parents, who won't have the extra brake the driver's ed car has and thus won't be able to stop me if I confuse my pedals or something, they'll never let me drive. And then my mom will get to glorify in the fact that she was right all along and I won't be able to drive EVER. And if I can't drive a car, then I'll have to work around the bus schedule my whole life, severely limiting my job possibilities, meaning I might not be able to make more money and be able to afford to move out.
And I want to move out. Because while I love my parents, sometimes they drive me crazy. Not my dad so much. He's great. It's my mom. She constantly gets on me about my clothes and how I need to take care of myself better and you should see how she nagged me to get a physical. Granted, I know she means well, but sometimes I just don't agree with her. I like wearing jeans and a T-shirt. And I'd like to wear a dress (like I used to) but I have trouble finding them in my size. I am NOT joking - it's like impossible to find plus size dresses, though maybe I'm just not going to the right stores cause we found skirts and stuff for me before when I worked at Loaves and Fishes and had to wear dresses or skirts. Plus, like a typical Asperger's person, I am very picky about fabrics (due to a touch sensitivity - autistic people have super-sensitive senses), so I only really feel comfortable in cotton. Plus, it's hard for me to wear dresses or skirts because I have to wear something under it, like pantyhose, so my legs don't rub together, and I find pantyhose to be very formal, so they wouldn't work with a casual dress. Of course, if I lost some weight, I could probably solve that problem, because I think my legs rub together because my thighs are really big.
Another problem I have with moving out is affording it. Unfortunately, SoCal is one of the most expensive places around, and your average apartment in our area generally starts at $900/month or so, and that's just for rent. I only make around $200-$250/week (depending on my hours and how much gets deducted for taxes, health insurance, and union dues), so that's about $1,000/month, maybe more because I actually make more than $12,000 a year. I would definitely need a roommate for it to work, unless I want to live on like $100/month after rent, which I suppose I could do (considering I'd probably qualify for food stamps if I lived on my own, which would help with food costs).
The driving instructor did point out that I don't need a car to move out (yes, we did talk about this) and I guess this is true since at least some of the apartments in my area are close to a bus stop. And I suppose I could advertise for a roommate. Too bad I'm not at Cal State anymore because people were always posting signs looking for roommates there. There is this ULoop thing I keep getting e-mails from on my school account that allows you to look for roommates on it too.
I just want to move on with my life, and I feel like I'm so stuck. I mean, I am in a transition period since I just graduated from college about 6 months ago. And to be honest, finding out I had Asperger's did kind of throw a wrench in the works, since I don't understand it very well nor do I know how to deal with it. I did recently read the book Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin, a famous animal science professor at Colorado State who also has high-functioning autism (and who the HBO film Temple Grandin is about), which did help explain it somewhat. She also wrote a book about careers, Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger's Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism, which I'm going to check out. Though it may be as un-helpful as the career books I found in the Career Center (Careers for Introverts and Solitary Types, Careers for Culture Lovers and Other Artsy Types, Great Jobs for English Majors, and Careers for Foreign Language Aficionados and Other Multilingual Types). We'll see.
My brother is in town and he asked me last night about how my writing was going. To be honest, it's on hold. I still haven't started revising my novel that I finished back in April, which I was going to distance myself from over the summer and pick back up in the fall. I did intend to, but then my online classes started and I got kinda busy. Plus, I've been writing content for my websites. I spent weeks - literally - writing character bios for Myu Corner. So much I practically got sick of it. I didn't even realize how many characters there are in SeraMyu. It's insane. Thankfully, PGSM doesn't have nearly as many characters, which is good because I'm writing character bios for Sparkle Moon, my PGSM site, now, though I haven't worked on it at all on my vacation cause I've been kinda busy. Now that I'm learning more web design techniques, I can hopefully make that site how I want it.
Today I watched the opening for Yes! PreCure 5, one of the seasons of Pretty Cure, a magical girl anime. In an English trailer made by Toei to promote that season (probably for the European market as Pretty Cure has never been licensed here, except for a dub of the first season in Canada), the main character, Nozomi (pink hair), is described as being "without a dream to guide her." I kinda feel like that. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but now I'm having second thoughts. I mean, I love to write, but the whole business part of getting a book published kinda scares me. For short stories or articles like one would submit to journals I might be ok on my own, but once it comes to novels I'd rather leave that stuff to my agent, assuming I have one by then (after all, I have to sell myself to the agent first).
I was just downstairs watching the most recent episode of The Office, "Spooked," with my parents. At the end of it, James Spader's character, Robert California, makes a good point about how we shouldn't let fear rule our lives, and that it's ironic that one day a year (Halloween) we dress up in costumes and celebrate fear. (That's my summary of the quote; you can read the full-on thing here). That is a very good point. I've known for a while that I was letting fear control me. Fear makes me afraid to do new things and take risks. Now, fear can be a good thing, obviously, in some situations. We all have a desire for safety, as well as an innate desire for self-preservation (there is some place in our brain that is wired for this, I forget where...although if this is true, then why do people commit suicide? You'd think the innate desire to preserve oneself would override someone's desire to kill himself or herself, since killing oneself would be the exact opposite of preserving oneself). But you can't let it rule your life. You just can't. Unfortunately, me saying this and me actually applying it are two very different things.
I think I need to take some time and really think about my life, do some soul-searching, talk to God about how my life is, and figure out a direction. Cause right now I don't feel like life is going so well. I'm not at rock bottom or anything, but I definitely don't feel satisfied with my life. Not that satisfaction is the ultimate end, of course. By Biblical standards, I should be more interested in the needs of others than in my own anyway. But I still feel very lost. I need help, though I know I hate asking for help cause I think I can do everything myself. I just don't know what to do!
Ok I think I'm going to stop here and try to cheer myself up in some other way, cause this isn't helping much. Good night.
P.S. Speaking of the Yes! PreCure 5 opening, it's apparently also featured in a cool-looking dance game for Wii called Happy Dance Collection (which seems to have only been released in Japan as far as I can tell). Check out the video below to see what I mean. You can also find out a bit about the game here: http://reggie21.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/happy-dance-collection-wii/.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Summer is Here
Long time no post, again. Oh well, never was a frequent poster here. And now I have a Tumblr blog as well, so I've been posting there a lot lately and not here.
I can hardly believe it's July already (Happy July 4th btw to every American reading this!). Not a lot has happened since I've been out of school. I've mostly just been working a lot. I finally did start my summer writing practice, with mixed results. I went to Legoland for the first time. I've been attending the CWCW summer workshops on Tuesdays, though at the moment I've just been sharing old stuff. Other than that, I've mostly been vegging.
I have been thinking about the CWCW. I think I may move on from them when the summer is over. Considering I'm a CSUSM alum now, and the CWCW is a school group, I'm going to have to move on from them eventually. I do enjoy having a way to get feedback, and lately it's been my only way to hang out with my friend Jessica, who is also in the group. But eventually, I'll have to move on.
Future summer plans: at the end of July, my family is going to go stay in a cabin like 14 hours north of us for a week. That should be awesome. It'll be nice to get away. I may take this class at the church I've been going to with my parents, a class about S.H.A.P.E. (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Ability, Personality, Experiences), which starts sometime soon. And I may take a conversation class from the local Alliance Française in August -- I just took their online placement test to determine my level of French ability, and they got back to me about possibly taking classes. Since I'd said in my info (submitted with the placement test) that I wanted to work on my speaking primarily, I think that is why they suggested a conversation class. Because I can read and write French well, but my speaking and pronunciation fluency needs help because I took French in a mostly non-immersion environment. I took the test for B1 level ("I took French for anywhere between 4 and 10 years in school and managed to practice on and off until now (through reading, travels, classes, work assignments...) and/or In the recent past, I took French lessons for more than 3 years and less than 4 years with good results , then ..."), which seemed to best describe my level of knowledge. Hopefully, I can work on my fluency and get my proficiency certified, so that I can prove a certain level of proficiency on my résumé.
And - once again - I do want to work on my websites. It's just been put on the back burner at the moment. I have been thinking about it though, and this is what I'm thinking:
So, it seems like I have a good game plan for my websites and such. Finally! Praise God!
In other news, I recently bought a few Sailor Moon items from my friend Ruth at Miss Dream! They arrived on Saturday. The items are: the PGSM Memorial Book (a long-time want of mine), a shitajiki (a.k.a. "pencil board" - you put it under a sheet of paper when you need something to write on or to avoid writing on the pages below), and the CD single for one of my favorite Sailor Moon songs, "Watashi-tachi ni Naritakute" (the first ending to the fourth season, SuperS). My meager Sailor Moon collection is growing! Since my initial post about my Sailor Moon collection, I've acquired a few more things. I bought six cool SuperS magnets at Animé Los Angeles, one for each senshi in SuperS (though the one I got for Chibimoon is of her and Moon transforming), as well as a couple Sailor Moon pins from an artist in the Artist's Alley (Sailors Mercury and Pluto). I bought three books off Amazon - Sailor Moon: Friends and Foes, Sailor Moon Role-Playing Guide and Resource Book and Meet Sailor Mercury: Ice - all of which are English-made and are pretty good (though the Friends and Foes book was underwhelming info-wise but has nice pictures). Last Friday, I bought a couple more pins at the county fair, from the same booth where I got the Sailor Moon pin and the 12" doll - one of Mercury and one of Chibiusa. (I think I bought other pins with the initial Moon pin - I know I got a Totoro pin and one other pin, which may have been of Sailor Venus). And now I have the stuff I bought from Ruth. I hoped to get some stuff at Comic-Con this year, but I wasn't able to get a ticket so I can't go. Pooh. I also pre-ordered all of the new Sailor Moon English manga that is available for pre-order, which I should start getting in September.
Oh yeah, did I mention that before? I don't think so. The Sailor Moon manga is getting re-released in the U.S.! Starting in September. And it's being released by Kodansha USA, the US arm of the manga's original Japanese publisher, and headed up by the person who was head of Nakayoshi, a popular Japanese manga serial magazine, when Sailor Moon was originally being serialized in it in the '90's! Plus there's going to be translation notes and lots of other good stuff. I'm looking forward to it. AND....THEY'RE ALSO RELEASING CODENAME: SAILOR V!!! That came as a huge surprise! Unlike the regular Sailor Moon manga, Codename: Sailor V, the sort of "prequel" to Sailor Moon, has never been officially released in English in ANY English-speaking country. So now I'll have 2 nice English versions (the mangas being released are the 2003 "Revision" versions, in which Sailor V was condensed from three volumes to two) to go with my 3 French volumes. Sweet.
Anyway, I've pre-ordered the four volumes of the Sailor Moon manga currently available for pre-order, so I should be set on those till March 2012. I also pre-ordered the two Sailor V volumes already. I'm SO looking forward to having them!!
Well, it's late; I better go to bed. I have today off again (I had yesterday off too this week cause of the holiday) but I want to get up early because I was thinking I'd like to go to Disneyland this week (particularly California Adventure since I barely got to see that last time) and I want to go to my union's office and buy a Park Hopper there (where I can get it cheapest). I'm enjoying having the time to make little day trips! Though there are probably better uses of my time.
Good night!
I can hardly believe it's July already (Happy July 4th btw to every American reading this!). Not a lot has happened since I've been out of school. I've mostly just been working a lot. I finally did start my summer writing practice, with mixed results. I went to Legoland for the first time. I've been attending the CWCW summer workshops on Tuesdays, though at the moment I've just been sharing old stuff. Other than that, I've mostly been vegging.
I have been thinking about the CWCW. I think I may move on from them when the summer is over. Considering I'm a CSUSM alum now, and the CWCW is a school group, I'm going to have to move on from them eventually. I do enjoy having a way to get feedback, and lately it's been my only way to hang out with my friend Jessica, who is also in the group. But eventually, I'll have to move on.
Future summer plans: at the end of July, my family is going to go stay in a cabin like 14 hours north of us for a week. That should be awesome. It'll be nice to get away. I may take this class at the church I've been going to with my parents, a class about S.H.A.P.E. (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Ability, Personality, Experiences), which starts sometime soon. And I may take a conversation class from the local Alliance Française in August -- I just took their online placement test to determine my level of French ability, and they got back to me about possibly taking classes. Since I'd said in my info (submitted with the placement test) that I wanted to work on my speaking primarily, I think that is why they suggested a conversation class. Because I can read and write French well, but my speaking and pronunciation fluency needs help because I took French in a mostly non-immersion environment. I took the test for B1 level ("I took French for anywhere between 4 and 10 years in school and managed to practice on and off until now (through reading, travels, classes, work assignments...) and/or In the recent past, I took French lessons for more than 3 years and less than 4 years with good results , then ..."), which seemed to best describe my level of knowledge. Hopefully, I can work on my fluency and get my proficiency certified, so that I can prove a certain level of proficiency on my résumé.
And - once again - I do want to work on my websites. It's just been put on the back burner at the moment. I have been thinking about it though, and this is what I'm thinking:
- My main domain will be starry-dreamer.net. The homepage for this will just be a Flash interface/portal, similar to this one website I saw once that did that. I might have to figure out how to make a version that would work if you didn't have Flash (like on the iPod/iPhone), that is, if I think it's really worth it. I'll look into it. Anyway, this domain would be the one for my sites that don't really need their own domains, like fanlistings. The sites under this domain would be:
- Capture On!, my planned fanlisting for the Pokémon Ranger video game series. Now that the series has three games, I can do a "series" fanlisting for it (that's TFL rules).
- Liquid Mercury, the revival of my old Sailor Mercury fansite
- Ayeka's Palace, a revival of my old Ayeka fansite, extending from the version created for my Writing to be Heard project
- The revived LAR Productions website, which I may remake via WordPress or Joomla.
- Any other fanlistings I decide to create or revive, such as Memory of Time, my old Fancy Lala fanlisting
- A possible revival of pctroupe.net, my old PotterCast Acting Troupe fansite, since a member of the Troupe recently e-mailed me mentioning how much the troupe loves the fact that there was a fansite for them. (I'm waiting to hear back from this person before I revive it).
- My writing website will remain at the same URL but I intend to update it not only content-wise but also in terms of looks as my web design abilities improve.
- Myu Corner will also remain at the same URL but will get overhauled in terms of site design as my abilities improve. I'm going to try to re-determine the focus I want for the site and probably try to watch all the musicals before continuing with it.
- Sparkle Moon, my planned PGSM fansite, will continue as planned. I think I will get the transcripts - the main focus of the site - done first and then worry about the rest of the content. Since I just bought the PGSM Memorial Book off of Ruth from Miss Dream, I should have a great start in the picture department. I may also buy the new 14-disc DVD boxset of PGSM that was announced recently; I'm just not sure I can afford it, even with Amazon Japan's 27% discount on pre-orders (it comes out in September). Brad from Moonkitty.net assures me that it is a great savings compared to getting all 15 PGSM DVDs (12 regular DVDs, Special Act, Act Zero, and Kirari Super Live) individually, since each DVD individually retails for like $60 US, whereas the boxset is, with the discount, about $285 US, not including shipping and the about $70 US in import tax that I'd have to pay. So it's about $355 with import tax plus about $25 for shipping and a handling fee, so about $380. Ouch. However, the individual DVDs, which run about $60 US apiece (which is WAY too expensive for a DVD) would go for about $900 altogether. So I just don't know. It may not be worth it.
- Anime/manga guide site - This was originally going to be under my Starry Dreamer domain, but after discussion with a couple Miss Dream people it makes more sense to give it its own domain. Also per their advice, I'm going to make it a wiki to allow for an easy community-editing setup, which is what I'd like for this site since it's impossible for one person to watch all the anime and read all the manga that is out there. I haven't come up with a name for the site yet (WindKnightFuu's Anime and Manga Guides is its temp title). All I really know is that for the anime sections there will be episode and movie guides and seiyuu information, and for the manga sections there will be series overviews and writer and illustrator info. I'm not sure whether to do chapter summaries (the equivalent of the episode summaries in the anime section) because I'm not sure how to do that without giving away spoilers. And I want the site to be as spoiler-free as possible, since I've spoiled myself many a time looking up series on Wikipedia. The idea behind the site is to provide a "one stop shop" site where people can find info on many different anime and manga series - especially newcomers to anime and manga. I've found out about many series just by browsing Wikipedia myself, so I want to provide that sort of experience to others. I'll have to come up with templates for everything as well. I'm considering getting some practice on some of the many fan wikis for different series before I start mine, to get a hang for how it works.
So, it seems like I have a good game plan for my websites and such. Finally! Praise God!
In other news, I recently bought a few Sailor Moon items from my friend Ruth at Miss Dream! They arrived on Saturday. The items are: the PGSM Memorial Book (a long-time want of mine), a shitajiki (a.k.a. "pencil board" - you put it under a sheet of paper when you need something to write on or to avoid writing on the pages below), and the CD single for one of my favorite Sailor Moon songs, "Watashi-tachi ni Naritakute" (the first ending to the fourth season, SuperS). My meager Sailor Moon collection is growing! Since my initial post about my Sailor Moon collection, I've acquired a few more things. I bought six cool SuperS magnets at Animé Los Angeles, one for each senshi in SuperS (though the one I got for Chibimoon is of her and Moon transforming), as well as a couple Sailor Moon pins from an artist in the Artist's Alley (Sailors Mercury and Pluto). I bought three books off Amazon - Sailor Moon: Friends and Foes, Sailor Moon Role-Playing Guide and Resource Book and Meet Sailor Mercury: Ice - all of which are English-made and are pretty good (though the Friends and Foes book was underwhelming info-wise but has nice pictures). Last Friday, I bought a couple more pins at the county fair, from the same booth where I got the Sailor Moon pin and the 12" doll - one of Mercury and one of Chibiusa. (I think I bought other pins with the initial Moon pin - I know I got a Totoro pin and one other pin, which may have been of Sailor Venus). And now I have the stuff I bought from Ruth. I hoped to get some stuff at Comic-Con this year, but I wasn't able to get a ticket so I can't go. Pooh. I also pre-ordered all of the new Sailor Moon English manga that is available for pre-order, which I should start getting in September.
Oh yeah, did I mention that before? I don't think so. The Sailor Moon manga is getting re-released in the U.S.! Starting in September. And it's being released by Kodansha USA, the US arm of the manga's original Japanese publisher, and headed up by the person who was head of Nakayoshi, a popular Japanese manga serial magazine, when Sailor Moon was originally being serialized in it in the '90's! Plus there's going to be translation notes and lots of other good stuff. I'm looking forward to it. AND....THEY'RE ALSO RELEASING CODENAME: SAILOR V!!! That came as a huge surprise! Unlike the regular Sailor Moon manga, Codename: Sailor V, the sort of "prequel" to Sailor Moon, has never been officially released in English in ANY English-speaking country. So now I'll have 2 nice English versions (the mangas being released are the 2003 "Revision" versions, in which Sailor V was condensed from three volumes to two) to go with my 3 French volumes. Sweet.
Anyway, I've pre-ordered the four volumes of the Sailor Moon manga currently available for pre-order, so I should be set on those till March 2012. I also pre-ordered the two Sailor V volumes already. I'm SO looking forward to having them!!
Well, it's late; I better go to bed. I have today off again (I had yesterday off too this week cause of the holiday) but I want to get up early because I was thinking I'd like to go to Disneyland this week (particularly California Adventure since I barely got to see that last time) and I want to go to my union's office and buy a Park Hopper there (where I can get it cheapest). I'm enjoying having the time to make little day trips! Though there are probably better uses of my time.
Good night!
