(no subject)
So I last updated in January huh. I'd better fix that.
So I've been employed since mid-January as an extracurricular programming instructor for grade school students. Part-time, but it's better than nothing, especially in the job market of today. "The job market of today" being "Do you have at least three years of experience? No? Then enjoy being unemployed".
It's been on-and-off, in-and-out as the school seasons come and go, and I haven't been working for the entirety of August and September since that's when summer breaks are. As a result my sleep schedule has been endlessly spiralling out of control, but that has been happening pretty much constantly ever since I came to Canada. Still, it pays a decent wage for the few hours I do work, and I teach it by helping kids make video games - so almost all of them are pretty interested. There's a few that don't want to be there and don't want to do anything but play Flash games on the internet, and that's about where my patience runs out. I can be calm and endlessly patient with students so long as they're at least trying to pay attention, even if they are making mistakes or having trouble - but the ones who don't even care, don't get any sympathy from me.
I've also been designing a new course for them, which should pay fairly well once I finish the second draft and get it all finalized and everything. Of course, like all my money, it will go into rent, groceries, and transit tokens, but whatever.
Over the last couple months, I became first a moderator and then an administrator for the TF2 servers owned by The Furry Pound (exactly what it sounds like. Don't give me that look). At long last I can noclip into the skybox and build godzilla-sized sentries... I mean, keep the peace on the servers. Since furries are the whipping boy of the internet, there's always unoriginal trolls who need to have a hammer brought down on their head somewhere.
I'll be a substitute on their team for the upcoming ETF2L tournament, but if the practices are anything to go by, I'll be playing every match what with the mismatch of schedules between people on the team. It would be great, but for the first letter in ETF2L - European. Terrible ping, anyone?
"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"
Alpha Centauri is one of those games where you get more out of it every time you leave it for a while and come back to it. Someone got me on another Alpha Centauri kick recently. It's also one of those games where you do better each time you come back to it, avoiding more strategies that get you wiped out.
So, I was trying out the free version of Minecraft, since I'd heard people talking about it so much. And I was just messing around and building things and I suddenly felt really sad. Maybe the music was part of it - music, I've found, can have a powerful effect on me - but I realized that open-ended games like that, without a real goal, offer a kind of freedom. A freedom I realize that I really, really want... to be able to do anything you want, to be in complete control of your life and surroundings, without other people bothering you. The freedom to live and exist the way I want to, away from civilization and away from its stresses and annoyances. But that kind of freedom doesn't exist in the real world. It's only in fantasy, in games and in dreams. In reality, it's unattainable... and it makes me really sad because of it.
Unfortunately, the best way to deal with that is to play more games. Here's hoping, once again, by my hand or someone else's, that Virtual Reality becomes a real reality within our lifetime - because we've got almost all the tech to do it now.
So I've been employed since mid-January as an extracurricular programming instructor for grade school students. Part-time, but it's better than nothing, especially in the job market of today. "The job market of today" being "Do you have at least three years of experience? No? Then enjoy being unemployed".
It's been on-and-off, in-and-out as the school seasons come and go, and I haven't been working for the entirety of August and September since that's when summer breaks are. As a result my sleep schedule has been endlessly spiralling out of control, but that has been happening pretty much constantly ever since I came to Canada. Still, it pays a decent wage for the few hours I do work, and I teach it by helping kids make video games - so almost all of them are pretty interested. There's a few that don't want to be there and don't want to do anything but play Flash games on the internet, and that's about where my patience runs out. I can be calm and endlessly patient with students so long as they're at least trying to pay attention, even if they are making mistakes or having trouble - but the ones who don't even care, don't get any sympathy from me.
I've also been designing a new course for them, which should pay fairly well once I finish the second draft and get it all finalized and everything. Of course, like all my money, it will go into rent, groceries, and transit tokens, but whatever.
Over the last couple months, I became first a moderator and then an administrator for the TF2 servers owned by The Furry Pound (exactly what it sounds like. Don't give me that look). At long last I can noclip into the skybox and build godzilla-sized sentries... I mean, keep the peace on the servers. Since furries are the whipping boy of the internet, there's always unoriginal trolls who need to have a hammer brought down on their head somewhere.
I'll be a substitute on their team for the upcoming ETF2L tournament, but if the practices are anything to go by, I'll be playing every match what with the mismatch of schedules between people on the team. It would be great, but for the first letter in ETF2L - European. Terrible ping, anyone?
"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"
Alpha Centauri is one of those games where you get more out of it every time you leave it for a while and come back to it. Someone got me on another Alpha Centauri kick recently. It's also one of those games where you do better each time you come back to it, avoiding more strategies that get you wiped out.
So, I was trying out the free version of Minecraft, since I'd heard people talking about it so much. And I was just messing around and building things and I suddenly felt really sad. Maybe the music was part of it - music, I've found, can have a powerful effect on me - but I realized that open-ended games like that, without a real goal, offer a kind of freedom. A freedom I realize that I really, really want... to be able to do anything you want, to be in complete control of your life and surroundings, without other people bothering you. The freedom to live and exist the way I want to, away from civilization and away from its stresses and annoyances. But that kind of freedom doesn't exist in the real world. It's only in fantasy, in games and in dreams. In reality, it's unattainable... and it makes me really sad because of it.
Unfortunately, the best way to deal with that is to play more games. Here's hoping, once again, by my hand or someone else's, that Virtual Reality becomes a real reality within our lifetime - because we've got almost all the tech to do it now.