From my last blog, it was probably assumed that I wouldn't be adding too many more gaming projects on my plate (unless, of course, they happened to be programming projects that happen to also be gaming projects). I suppose this assumption would be wrong. I'm not going to say unfortunately, since this new project has added a fun twist to my life, but getting a video capture card to capture console footage as well as buying the full version of Fraps was certainly an impulse decision. Hey, it was just my birthday... I had just spoiled myself with a new desktop for Christmas and had promised myself that I wouldn't do anything for my birthday, but we can see how well that is going.
So before I got the video capture card, I was looking at my game library and thinking "what can I do that would perhaps be entertaining to watch as well as do?" I had decided that I don't ever play video games on their hardest difficulty setting, so I set out to do just that. The result? Well, I'm not yet utilizing that video capture card, but I am using Fraps to do a Half-Life 2 Hard Mode run. I had decided on Half-Life 2 because I've never beaten it, and I have Episode 1 sitting on my computer waiting to be played, but I don't want to play that until I finish with its prequel.
I don't do it in the first video, but I've been adding commentary to all of the following videos thus far. Making commentary is actually a lot tougher than I thought, but I'm improving greatly as time goes on. Thus far, I've made 5 videos. I actually made the footage for 6 today, but I just have to add in the commentary. That's something I probably won't get around to until tomorrow... Almost done with Water Hazard! I had been worried about how difficult this was going to be, but most of the experience tells me I have nothing to worry about. There are a select few areas (aka. all of video 5) that bring back a bit of my worry, but I'm still managing to pull forward.
Side-note: I've been tweaking around with the video quality settings a bit to try to find the optimal file size so the upload to YouTube isn't so painfully long. For video 6, I spent more time on this and think I've found a condensed size that appears to retain the original quality. I believe it will go up to 720p.
20 January 2011
16 January 2011
Realizations From a Full-Time Job
I hate my job. Sometimes this makes me hate my life, but my job is not my life, so this is not always so. Really, that stems more from my current feelings when I'm leaving work.
Why do I hate my job? Personally, I don't feel that saying I hate "my job" is 100% accurate. Sure, it's true, but the underlying reasonings suggest that I hate the overall concept of having a job. At least, this is true as a programmer.
As a programmer, I am someone else's paintbrush. The company heads have an idea but aren't capable of doing it themselves, so someone like me exists as a middle ground between their ideas and their ideas' existence. I can convince myself that I have some say on what happens because I am in control of how I go about it, but in the end this would just be a lie to make myself feel better about being a mindless drone.
During college and pre-college, I would get home and feel as though I had plenty of freetime. I suppose K-12 years this isn't true, but I at least had lots of vacations already built-in to that stage of life. My home life never restricted computer or video game time, so in most cases I would feel relaxed and look at my game collection with this "there's no rush. If I need to, I always have some other time." So I never felt any pressure to have to do anything, as I imagined I had all the time in the world. I even had time to read books!
With a full-time job, my freetime is always restricted. This makes the freetime itself stressful, as I have different ideas of what I should be doing combating to win. Often, this leads to not accomplishing anything at all, as I worry more about what I should do than actually doing anything at all. I also haven't picked up a book in ages. And out of all this 40 hours a week business, I only get 2 weeks of vacation time a year.
Even if I enjoyed working at my job, I must admit that even my personal projects never took up this much of my time. Over time, the excessive time spent at a full-time job each week is degrading enough to eventually break you down to disliking something you initially thought you would enjoy. At least, this is how I personally feel on the subject.
The one thing that might be positive about this full-time job thing is that the depression is building up this motivation to work on personal project ideas. I suppose my thought is that if I could get some of these projects done, then perhaps I wouldn't need the full-time job anymore? Yes, I'll hope for that. It is unfortunate that I needed to get a job to realize this, as I had plenty of time to work on these projects before. Now I have no choice but to work a full-time job and do personal projects at the same time on the side. *Le sigh*
/end rant
Why do I hate my job? Personally, I don't feel that saying I hate "my job" is 100% accurate. Sure, it's true, but the underlying reasonings suggest that I hate the overall concept of having a job. At least, this is true as a programmer.
As a programmer, I am someone else's paintbrush. The company heads have an idea but aren't capable of doing it themselves, so someone like me exists as a middle ground between their ideas and their ideas' existence. I can convince myself that I have some say on what happens because I am in control of how I go about it, but in the end this would just be a lie to make myself feel better about being a mindless drone.
During college and pre-college, I would get home and feel as though I had plenty of freetime. I suppose K-12 years this isn't true, but I at least had lots of vacations already built-in to that stage of life. My home life never restricted computer or video game time, so in most cases I would feel relaxed and look at my game collection with this "there's no rush. If I need to, I always have some other time." So I never felt any pressure to have to do anything, as I imagined I had all the time in the world. I even had time to read books!
With a full-time job, my freetime is always restricted. This makes the freetime itself stressful, as I have different ideas of what I should be doing combating to win. Often, this leads to not accomplishing anything at all, as I worry more about what I should do than actually doing anything at all. I also haven't picked up a book in ages. And out of all this 40 hours a week business, I only get 2 weeks of vacation time a year.
Even if I enjoyed working at my job, I must admit that even my personal projects never took up this much of my time. Over time, the excessive time spent at a full-time job each week is degrading enough to eventually break you down to disliking something you initially thought you would enjoy. At least, this is how I personally feel on the subject.
The one thing that might be positive about this full-time job thing is that the depression is building up this motivation to work on personal project ideas. I suppose my thought is that if I could get some of these projects done, then perhaps I wouldn't need the full-time job anymore? Yes, I'll hope for that. It is unfortunate that I needed to get a job to realize this, as I had plenty of time to work on these projects before. Now I have no choice but to work a full-time job and do personal projects at the same time on the side. *Le sigh*
/end rant
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