Critical Analysis Idea

I’m gonna write my Critical Analysis paper on blogging as a source of income. Not too sure what my thesis statement will be though. My girlfriend, Amorae, who has a Youtube channel and has made a series of videos titled Scarhead (you can check them out at http://www.youtube.com/scarheadproductions), got a recent offer to be a Youtube partner. This would mean that she would collect a percentage of the profits made from advertising on her channel. The reason she got this offer is because she has more than 2,000 returning subscribers. So I think as long as you have a few thousand people that read your blog monthly, there is reason enough to let companies advertise on your site and rake in some of the cash. Why not?

But is this enough to provide a full income, or is it just something to do on the side? I’ve been reading a few articles in research for my paper, and most of the people who blog for a living are either part of a bigger company or have been blogging for years before they could ever depend on it for their primary source of income. So my current thought on the matter is that, presently, an independent blogger is not going to get a reasonable amount of income unless he/she is actually being paid by someone to blog. This doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future, which I’m sure it will as more people move away from the TV and towards the internet. As it stands though, my advice (whatever that’s worth) to any blogger with at least 1-2 thousand readers should get in on the action, however little it may be, since you’re already doing it for free.

My memory is getting worse

I seriously can’t remember more than two things at a time. It’s ridiculous. I have to write EVERYTHING down if I want to get it done. I have reminders set on every day of the month on my cellphone calendar. I send texts to my gmail account whenever I need to do something soon. Thank god/buddha/science for technology! Does anyone else have these kinds of problems? I think I just have too many things going on. I can’t even think past this weekend, it hurts to think that far ahead and know how much I need to get done in that amount of time. Urgh!

Someone please tell me if there is a more efficient way to remind myself of things that won’t stress me out so much. I feel like even though I’m doing stuff that needs to be done, there’s always something I’m leaving out. sigh

$$$

Should I invest my money in something this early on in life? I guess it isn’t that early anymore, roughly a quarter of my life has gone by. Houses, stocks, a business, whatever. I guess I would need more money before I can invest in anything. Oh well, I guess a savings account will do for now. Also, with all the wacky economic stuff that’s happening, would it be wise to exchange my money for a more stable currency? Or gold even? I’ve heard of people doing that, since they expect the dollar to go down dramatically in a few years, and gold to double or even triple in worth in the same amount of time. I have no idea, I am not good with money. If I ever happen to acquire a large sum of moolah, the first thing I would do is hire a financial advisor to tell me what to do with my money.

Collecting? Eh?

I used to collect stuff, like rocks and old coins, but I haven’t done that in a long time. I guess you could say I just have several small collections, like movies, video games, graphic novels, random nerdy paraphernalia, but nothing that amounts to anything impressive. My girlfriend on the other hand has at least 200 things related to Harry Potter. She says she just has to have something to obsess about. Sometimes I wish I was that obsessed about something, I’m not sure why, but then my conservative concsience tells me that I should spend my money more wisely and I shouldn’t waste my time on frivolous, material things. I guess it’s good that I actually obey my conscience most of the time, but conservatism is boring.

So I’m curious, what kind of collections do you have? And do you enjoy collecting, or is it just an old habit that won’t go away?

Advanced Game Development

So I’m taking this class called “Advanced Game Development”…or is it called “Game Production Lab”? I’m not even sure, because it’s not on WebCT or anything, one of those weird independent study-esque classes, but it’s pretty fun…mostly. The only reason I’m taking it is for credit really, I don’t think I’ll end up making video games in my future career. I took the first Game Development class and the prof liked the game my team made, called “Mafia.” The weird thing is we’re not really making full games, we’re just making mods using the Neverwinter Nights toolset, which basically means all the graphical assets and most of the scripting functions are already there, we just have to implement them in creative and ingenious ways.

So this time, our team’s gonna make a game loosely based on the idea of Cops & Robbers. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Heat” or the TV show “The Wire,” that’s kinda the feel we’re going for. It’ll be a big, persistant world, with two teams (detectives and thieves) that are trying to shut each other down, by way of incarceration or death. I’m in charge of level design, because I hate scripting/programming/boring stuff. My first task is to make a seaside town where most of the industrial zone is. There are also three other cities, separated by a wilderness area, and they’re all connected, not physically, but socially and economically. So it’ll be pretty balanced, with two detectives randomly stationed in each city. 

The only really hard part in making this game is that we have to include social aspects, meaning there has to be consequences for your actions, and the way people interact needs to mirror real life society. It all sounds daunting right now, but once we get rolling on the scripting and mission structures I think we’ll start to see a pretty interesting game develop.