inspired_mind

While knitting I tend to semi-watch various tv shows. One of these shows recently did a rerun of their first season, which I never saw before. Aside from being so low budget it was almost embarrassing, I was surprised how different the music was compared to later seasons. It was in fact music I heard in a different tv show before. This show used it in different contexts tho, which was so distracting that I couldn't fully focus on the episode itself. When I mentioned this to a friend, whom watches both tv shows as well, he said he didn't even notice the change! I knew I was pretty good at recognizing instrumental tunes/music, but I always assumed this was a generic ability most people had.

Aside from the music thing, I managed to finish various knitting projects. Tried out a pattern for a hat with cat ears, which I was skeptical about at first, but it turned out pretty nice. Decided to try make a baby sized version of it, speed knitting it in less than 24 hours to have it finished as a gift for aien_hime 's baby girl. It was a bit of a gamble, as there weren't any known baby sizes for this pattern but the result was great. As I feel a tad too old to wear the cat ears hat, I gave it away along with the baby sized one. Mother and daughter got matching hats now.

Tried another pattern for a hat with the same kind of yarn I used for my gran's infinity scarf. I loved the result, finally having a hat that's worth wearing. I really don't have the head for most hats so it's nice to have one now that doesn't make me look like a complete idiot.

Speaking said infinity scarf, gran asked me to remove the seam to turn it into a regular scarf. It was too bulky to stuff it under her coat in it's previous form. So I tried to remove the seam but apparently I did such an awesome job blending it with the scarf itself and I cut the wrong strand of yarn, partly ruining the scarf....argh! Mom came to the rescue and managed to mostly fix it. Gran said she barely noticed the damage and is happy with her new regular scarf, but as its creator I know the damage is there and it annoys me. At least I now know kind of creations to use this kind of yarn for.

Also sort of revived my WoW account, which I have been playing on and off again. Finishing some achievements and storylines, focusing on 2 chars max. Not having an active guild really limits the options you have. Real raiding is a nogo. LFR is an interesting alternative to experience raid content, even if it's incredibly dumbed down, but the kind of people you encounter in these PUGs are often clueless idiots whom don't even bother to read the tactics for the encounters... There is a freakin' ingame dungeon journal with a summary of all phases/boss abilities. Maybe I am getting too old to deal with al these idiots in videogames? Curious if the next expansion will improve some stuff, time will tell.

~*~Maru~*~

Been a bit hectic the past few weeks with the holidays and all, but here I am at last.

It has been 6ish months since I graduated. I don't have a job yet, but to be honest I haven't been super actively applying. I wanted to take some time off after 4 years of college. To sort out my life and rediscover some stuff (knitting being a major one there). Ditched a whole lot of old stuff in my home, which is still a work in progress. Making a wishlist of stuff I want to get as soon as I got some money. Caught up on some tv series and planning to read a whole pile of books I bought the past few years, but still haven't read (whoops).

Obviously getting a job is my number one goal. 6 months of slacking is more than enough. I ain't getting any younger and in world like IT you are outdated in no time. There are a number of things I need to do to stand out better tho. While my portfolio is up to date, the website itself is pretty generic. It doesn't tell anything about what kind of person I am. So I have been working on a better, more interactive design. I will also have to teach myself some new stuff, focusing a bit more on the programming aspect of web design. Even tho I don't really like it, there are so many people asking for this nowadays. Basic knowledge of coding ain't enough anymore.

I also want to pick up (digital) drawing again. The Wacom tablet I have is quite outdated tho. I would love to get one with better pen pressure support, so it actually feels like drawing with a pencil. In an ideal world I would get a Wacom Cintiq, which is basically a tablet with an actual screen to draw on (like regular iPad/Android tablets but way better) but those are 1200-2000 euros...so I figured I would go for a more affordable Wacom Intuos. Sadly those are 160-170 euros as well, so a nogo at the moment. Sucks not having money...

Going redo one of my school projects, which was a mini-comic with some mouseover effects. It was hand drawn, but really sloppily digitally colored and the mouseover effects were sub-par, often working properly. I liked the basic idea tho, which is why I want to redo it to add to my portfolio. Still deciding if I will use my old artwork or recreate the entire thing in Adobe Illustrator in a different style.

There is way more stuff to do and get, but figured it's best to focus on the major ones first. Still having a lot of fun knitting, but more about that next time. I made so many things! Found the camera, so expect a photoshoot soon!

~*~Maru~*~

A bit later than promised, but IRL got in the way. Due to image hosting issues, I won’t be talking about my knitting projects yet. Instead, today’s post will be about storytelling.

As most know I am a big fan of books. I love reading a hardcover copy in bed or curled up in my fave chair, especially if said book also contains lovely illustrations. But I also love reading fanfics on my tablet, expanding on existing universes of various fandoms. Audio books never appealed to me, due to having my own voices and such for characters. It would seriously break the immersion for me. The exception would be fairy tales. I loved the audio tapes (yes I am that old) that accompanied the fairy tale books I would listen to as a kid. I can still recall the sound of the bell that would indicate when to flip the page.

With my rediscovered love for knitting, it’s hard to focus on anything beyond said knitting. I can talk fine with people while knitting and can listen to music without screwing up. Watching TV while knitting results in barely glancing at the screen, which makes it impossible to catch up on my TV shows, not wanting to miss out on anything that’s happening on the screen. So how to combine the knitting sessions with storytelling?

Audio dramas.

How did I end up there? Well…last year Blizzard published an audio drama that’s a prequel to the World of Warcraft: Legion expansion. Each chapter is 25-40 minutes, which made it hard to “watch” it in one go so I never got around to check them out until recently. It took some time getting used to a guy telling the story, doing most of the voices. But the sound effects and music made it interesting to listen to. Available on Spotify (and YouTube), so easy to boot up my phone and plug in a headset. Perfect for knitting. The next bunch of paragraphs will go into some detail on the 2 audio dramas Blizzard has published.

The Tomb of Sargeras audio drama takes place before the mini-cinematic with Khadgar warning Varian and Anduin about the Burning Legion and before the ingame scenario where we as a player storm the Tomb with Varian and company. It tells the story of Gul’dan (from the Draenor timeline) reaching the Tomb of Sargeras on the Broken Shore with the help of Kil’jaeden, intending to find a way for the Legion to reach Azeroth. Meanwhile Khadgar is doing his best to find Gul’dan to prevent said invasion. I found the interaction between Khadgar and Gul’dan to be quite interesting. I never really was a fan of Gul’dan, but seeing his side of the story did make him evolve from the boring 2D villain to something more.

A Thousand Years of War is the 2^nd audio drama, which focusses on the story of Turalyon (ermaged!) and Alleria after the Second War and the expedition to Draenor. Having been missing ever since, many lore fans have been waiting 12 years for news on this duo. The audio drama is basically addition/prequel to Patch 7.3, explaining how both heroes ended up on Argus with the Army of the Light.

What I especially liked about this story is how it went into some detail on how the Twisting Nether works, the struggles between the light and void and how dangerous the Burning Legion truly is. Both Turalyon and Alleria get plenty character growth. I love their love and trust for each other, but also for their son, whom have only seen glimpses of in the TBC expansion as a grown man. I admit, I am a huge Turalyon fangirl ever since I read Tides of Darkness, so I might be biased. I may have squee-ed when he made his appearance in 7.3. Alleria has always been far less interesting, despite being one of the Windrunner sisters. This audio drama changed my mind tho, as it gives her so much character growth.

So yes, if I you are up to date with WoW: Legion, it might be worth checking these out. If you can stand audio dramas that is. That reminds me I still got 3 WoW novels to read…

Trying out these audio dramas makes me want to check out more. It’s surprisingly hard to find interesting ones. Most of this stuff are podcasts or basic audio books, but I really want the whole experience with sound effects and music. I know there are various official Doctor Who ones out there, with voices from the actual actors. The only free ones I managed to find so far are about pre-reboot Doctors, which I never saw episodes of (not available legally here). I want the ones of the 9^th, 10^th and 11^th Doctors :(

Audio dramas won’t replace my regular books, but it’s an interesting variation to check out at times, especially when knitting. In a future post I will go into detail about digital/web storytelling. A small spoiler: there are various pretty cool web versions out there!

~*~Maru~*~

June 30 I graduated! Picked up my diploma July 13 and apparently my ICT & Media Design / Digital Publishing studies equals a Bachelor of Science, along with some fancy "Ingenieur" title. Which is Engineer in English, according to Wikipedia. I haven't even properly coded anything the past 2 years XD

It feels weird being done after 4 years of full time studying. It doesn't entirely feel like I am done yet, but slowly getting used to it. Parents are bugging me big time to look for a job. Can't I have a short vacation, darn it? Cleaning up the laptop while I am at it, removing online stuff I no longer need. All my work is 89 GB worth of files and data! Photoshop files get huge fast, I guess? Surprisingly my laptop still works fine, tho the casing is a bit damaged from being stuffed in a backpack daily. Had to replace the battery in the 3rd year due to not even lasting 10 minutes anymore but considering how much I used it, that's was to be expected.

Meanwhile I am also sorting out my childhood stuff. The past few years I bought saved loads of G1 ponies at flea markets and I figured it was time to check how many duplicates I have. Cleaning those up, then finding a new home for them. I also don't feel overly attached to most of my old Barbies anymore, so I am considering selling some as well. I totally forgot I had some Dinsey related dolls as well. For being 25+ years old, these toys are in a quite good condition. I am glad that my parents told me and my siblings to take care of our toys. We really broke anything as a result. Maybe I'll post some pics of the toys if I feel like it later :)

So yeah, still busy!

~*~Maru~*~

This is the last week at my internship. It has been a bit hectic with the deadline being June 13. I finished it on time, but I had technical issues with the handing in part. I got so stressed! In the end I had to mail it instead of using the digital drop-offbox -_- So now I am finishing up some minor stuff. Got my presentation at the company next Wednesday. The 30th is my defense, eep O_o

Revived my WoW account after 1,5 or so months of inactivity. Needed some kind of online game to play. The short break definitely helped. Even got dragged to some Heroic Nighthold guild (friends' guild, Iron Wardens is still dead). The other 2 healers were so overgeared that I was basically useless, but I didn't die, yay =P Raiding is still fun but I really can't be arsed anymore to put a lot of time in it, especially with the way Priest plays now.

Eagerly awaiting the next season of Voltron: Legendary Defender, which is still months away (August T_T). They recently released the season 3 trailer. It looks awesome. Tumblr basically exploded. Speaking of Tumblr, I love how it shows certain trends. For certain fandoms I basically use it as a news tool. If something new is released, it will definitely show up on Tumblr within 24 hours.

Been wanting to check out some old Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks animated movies. Never saw Anastacia, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Road to Eldorado and Treasure Planet for example. Most are on Netflix, but I really can't find the time to watch it on weekdays. And sadly those movies aren't available for offline Netflix :(

Anyways, back to the internship stuff. Still got that presentation to set up.

~*~Maru~*~

Due my long days at my internship, I have very little me time in the evenings during weekdays. I usually get home at 19.30, eat a late dinner, followed by a coffee. Then I have about 1,5 hours to do something fun. Then it's shower and getting ready for bed time, followed by preparing my lunch for the next day. If I am up to it, I might read up to 30 minutes in bed, but often I fall asleep before I have even read half a chapter of whatever book of fanfic I happen to be reading. Up at 5.30, repeat the daytime cycle.

Most of the time I end up gaming, which used to be mostly World of Warcaft. As of a year or so I pay my subscription with ingame gold, buying a gametime token. It used to be only usable for WoW, so the price was fairly acceptable. Then Blizzard announced it could be used for other Blizzard games, allowing you to buy the actual games or DLC. Prices skyrocketed but I was still able to earn enough casually ingame to afford it. But now Blizzard announced that they are going to host the login servers for Destiny 2, some mmo-ish shooter that isn't even a Blizzard game, yet allowing you to buy it with the token as well. So prices went up even more. I can no longer afford the token.

Each month of gameplay I would ask myself, is the amount of time needed to earn the gold and the time I actually spend ingame worth a WoW subscription? As of this month the answer is: NO. I can't buy a new token due to the prices. I won't pay with actual money only to play 1,5 hours each evening at best, only to do bloody World Quests (aka badly disguised dailies) to keep up with the rest of the community. I no longer got an active guild and only 1 friend to do dungeons with. As much as I love the world of Azeroth, there is a time you need to let it go. At least for the time being.



So what are the alternatives? Well, there is Heroes of the Storm, a MOBA which is similar to stuff like League of Legends or DOTA, but with characters and themes from Blizzard Games. It's also more goal and theme oriented, which apparently makes LOL and DOTA players hate it by default because having different objectives is a PVE thing. It's actually why I like it. LOL didn't really manage to keep my attention years ago due to the lack of varied stuff to do and the way support classes couldn't progress nearly as fast as their tanky and damage counterparts. I also like that most matches are 20 minutes long tops (when playing versus AI at least). Plus playing as various Blizzard characters is awesome.



Aside from Blizzard games I occasionally also play Rift. It's still alive, free to play (tho you can sub for additional benefits) adding new content and expansions fairly regulary. And quite some stuff to do, even with a free to play account. I really love my dwarf lady, whom nowadays is both a ranger and bard, depending on my mood.  It might not have the high quality graphics of any Blizzard game, but despite that it looks quite fine to me.



There is also Diablo 3, I guess. But I tend to only play that for 2-3 weeks each time a new season comes out. It gets boring really fast when all Blizzard does is resetting the rankings and making you level a new char from scratch to participate in the next season. Me and a friend tend to do that in less than 24 hours so yeah =P

Apologies if this feels a bit like a rant, but felt like talking about something else for a change. More about the internship (probably) next time!

~*~Maru~*~

Apparently I am on day 64 of my internship. I need a minimal 85 days to get my credit, which shouldn't be an issue because I officially got a contract till June 20. Even with some official days off due to holidays, I should easily get those required days.

Currently working on my final test round, which will be full AR experience with some storytelling and game-elements. I am really happy that a fellow intern is building it for me, as I have zero experience in coding/building in Unity. The regular employees are really busy with a big deadline, so yay for interns!

It's a pretty nice partnership we got together. He builds stuff for for me, I give User Experience feedback on his projects. I do realise now how developers might feel, when having do deal with a designer whom barely knows anything about the backend part (even tho I got web-coding experience). It's why I try to present a proper, detailed storyboard with all required scenes and a folder with all assets (pictures and markers) to make it easier for him to understand what I want.

It's not really fancy, but this is one of the art objects I made for the user test. A blueprint of a fictional machine, with obviously fake, unrealistic numbers and functions. I really didn't bother measuring the stuff properly =P Plus it's not supposed to be overly complicated. For now a final design, unless it doesn't work that well in the application itself. It may look fairly nice on a big screen but might look/function horribly on a smaller screen.



I really need to stop interrupting him while he's actually building tho, pointing out stuff he has missed, which turn out to be stuff that's next to be added. Whoops? I should have more faith in him, awaiting the finished product before I give feedback. It doesn't help that I sit next to him, so it's easy to turn my head to the left and glance at his monitor.

Anways, back to work. I still got many items to create in Photoshop and the deadline for the user test is May 16.

~*~Maru~*~

So, I already knew the deadline of my research paper was June 13. What I didn't know yet was the date of my presentation/defense thingy, which is the day I get to know if I graduate or not. I got an email today:

June 30
10.30-12.00

So when the clock strikes 12.00, I will know. Totally not panicking...

...

...



Oh who am I kidding.

Gosh, it feels so real now. Sometimes it feels like it was only recently when I started as a new student, but it has been 3,5 years!

~*~Maru~*~

Counting down till the weekend. I could really use the extra long one due to Easter, as it has been quite a busy week. Did a lot of usertesting! Managed to find 11 people to help me out from various sources (classmates, coworkers at my internship, other interns at different companies). Sadly it also means a lot a paperwork =P

But hey, that's what Spotify for! At first I figured it was handy for the more popular stuff, but it apparantly also has loads of OST stuff from movies and even Dutch musicals. I wanna see the Soldaat van Oranje musical again now tho, argh XD I also have a hard time not singing along at the office today, whoops? Maybe I should switch to something less vocal and more instrumental...



My co-worker snapped this sneaky pic of my usertesting materials while I was busy doing said tests and she posted it on the company Instagram. Might as well post it here.

~*~Maru~*~

I really can't focus today. It's so annoying. My eyes feel heavy, despite having slept pretty fine. I actually dozed off briefly in the train this morning, the morning sun warming me through the window. I doesn't help either that I got a bloody cold, stuffed nose is driving me crazy. So here I am, at my internship at 10am, supposed to record and analyse the notes I made yesterday.

Speaking of said notes, I attended a storytelling masterclass by the company I have my internship at. I was asked by a co-worker if I could provide her with some of my own storytelling favorites. Naturally I mentioned the Sherlock tv series as a lovely transmedia example (seeing as fans can actually visit the website of Sherlock and the blog of John IRL) and some other examples. Turns out she used that one and another for her presentation. It was pretty cool to see it on a bigass cinema sized screen, presented to 19 professionals from all kinds of sectors.

Afterwards said people got to try out some AR and VR devices, including a HoloLens (awesome to use for AR) and HTC Vive (VR). I was pretty interesting to see how people got to experience these devices for the first time. An awesome addition to my usabilty research paper. Got to try the devices myself as well. I managed to bump into a table while trying the Vive. VR is really disoriënting, but cool. I wouldn't mind one myself because I saw it has this really cool soundboxing game, but sadly the cheapest one is 895 euros :(

Guess I should try to focus again eh?

~*~Maru~*~