English: Philosophy with handcuffs, expression with a restraining order.

For clarification, by ‘English’ I’m referring to School English, because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed this year doing English as a school subject… it’s that it’s quite flawed in the way it expects you to answer as analytically and as to-the-book as possible… while at the same time asking you to somehow express yourself, without expressing yourself.

Handcuffs by jodylehigh
Handcuffs by jodylehigh

“Ben must have chosen to use a picture of handcuffs to imply a sense of entrapment. The lack of colour describes a lack of joy for his writing when writing at school. The vignette closes in on the center of the picture – suggesting that he wants people to see what’s right in front of them. When metal is cold, it is very rigid – just as Ben stands his ground when he hasn’t warmed up to someone yet.”

“No, I needed a relevant thumbnail.”

I’ve received multiple marks telling me that I need to tone down my use of metaphors, and to calm down on the expansion of my ideas. Even in assignments that are supposed to be ‘Reflective’ pieces. You want me to reflect my thoughts? This is me reflecting my thoughts. How can anyone insist that I’m not following the task correctly if they’re asking me to reflect?

The irony is the hypocrisy that lies within the very essence of the course. Here is some educational organisation telling me that I need to refrain from my philosophical thoughts, in particular, I need to stop expanding the wrong ideas. All the while they follow the same train of thought. I mean for crying out loud, if you can figure out how to devote an ENTIRE YEAR’s worth of secondary education to a single word (“belonging”)… you’re either really good at philosophy, insane or have a fetish for repetition. If you constructed this English course and you’re reading this; don’t worry, it’s a multi-choice infliction. So take your pick, the minimum choice is 3.

Any question that says, “What do you think the author means when…” should be an instant A+ upon answering it. If I’m telling you what I think the author means, then I’m answering the question correctly. Even if it’s something as simple as, “Well, I think the author was just tired and wanted to finish the story, so that’s why the pig’s name is Bore.” That should be correct! But no! It’s not! “Elaborate!”, “Criteria 1”, “Link back to your text.” Why?

I’ve never actually given such an answer before, but I have given a serious ‘what I think’ response and received a whole lot of Criteria-charged flack in return. If you want me to write what you want me to write, then say, “What do we want you to think the author means when…” Much better. Straight to the truth, bypasses the confusion and no identity issues when trying to figure out if a thought is mine, or theirs.

Yes, I get it. This author did a good job on a book, this other author did a good job too. You love these authors and think that they’re trying to tell us all a deep message and that they’re all linked together in perfect harmony. Well, hate to break it to you… but often the deep messages you think you see are total bull excrement.

All the connections we’re making with the stuff we’re watching and reading – hardly any of it is intended. It’s the way humans work. When we look at things for too long, we end up seeing things that aren’t there. We go pedantic with all these tiny little ideas. It’s the same thing as when you’ve packed your bags to go on a camping trip and you think that you’ve forgotten something. The more you think about it, the more you begin to worry and question your own actions. “Did I shut the back door? Did I lock it?”

School-taught English in a nutshell.

For your entertainment, I’ve written a mark for this blog post based on actual marks I’ve received. I don’t mean to offend my teacher – obviously they have to mark to the criteria that’s given to them. They’ve told me they enjoy my writing, but they can’t mark it higher based on the ‘students must think like this’ system the education department have in place. 😉

MARKER’S COMMENTS:

“This reflection should be your own, don’t use ‘we’ , ‘your’, ‘you’re’ – don’t ask rhetorical questions of your reader.”

“Keep the balance. An abundance of original ideas.”

“Refer more specifically to ideas that require judicious evidence.”

“Write in first person.”

“Only use italics for a publication.”

“Elaborate on why you don’t like reflecting.”

GRADE: C-

Ben Screen of Death

Ben Screen of Death

I could be dead. Or at least that’s what some of my YouTube subscribers have suggested in my absence. A video showing how busy I am would merely be procrastination… this post for example is bordering on that very line of motivation…

But no, I’m not dead as of yet, though I don’t deny that I am most certainly heading in the general direction of death. It’s the kind of thing you sorta can’t avoid once you come across it on life’s road.

The real reason for my disappearance from the internet has been a particularly disliked, but required, ToDo list. On it are many tasks with a varied array of interest.  Unfortunately, interest doesn’t always overcome the necessity of a due date… otherwise this ToDo list would be a little more fun.  I’d love to be doing the ‘Design Graphics for Client‘ or ‘Play the Walking Dead by Telltale‘ tasks, but unfortunately all the tasks that are due earliest are the ones involving large word counts and overly-overdone (because just overdone isn’t enough) topics.

For some reason the people in charge of English education in our country have the idea that ‘belonging‘ is a topic worthy of an annum of revision. Something to refresh the mind every now and then would be lovely, but instead, we’re being fed the poorly ‘intended-to-be-subliminal-message’ that our generation needs to get more in touch with who we are on a consistently regular basis.

I could elaborate more on this… but I’m running out of brain at the moment, so I’d better get going. It’s going to take a while for me to process this list.

Yours Truly,

Ben (Not Dead)

(P.S. I mentioned that I’m ‘Not Dead’ – however, given the longevity of the internet, it’s highly possible that I could in fact be dead by the time you read this. Any time after the year 2076 is a safe bet. In which case, forget my previous remark of not being dead. I’m clearly a liar.)

The Internet.

Hey guys! Welcome welcome, please hang up your hat and take a seat. New post! Mind-blown right?

There has been no activity on this website for a few months now. Not anyone’s fault, but it can be safely assumed that everyone is busy with something. School, Minecraft servers, or procrastination… Personally I have been flooded with school work and assignments, presenting no time up until now for a post. So here it is, take it and do what you want with it in the virtual space of your device, whatever that may be.

For those who do not know, the internet turns 25 years old today. 25 years of development, illegal downloads, conspiracies and of course, the invention of Facebook (just to name a few). Not to mention the gaming community that has thrived from having internet access to obtain things to amuse them. The internet is now a core part of our society, allowing people all across the Earth to communicate with each other and present themselves in whatever way they see fit, to anyone who will look and listen.

Now I could do a massive essay or something on the history of computers and how the internet has created a massive push in technological advancement, but I can’t be bothered. I already will have to do enough essays this year in Philosophy, so can you really blame me?

Let put this in a short version. Without the internet, society as it is today would still be relying on letters and the postal system to talk to another person without the need for long distance, expensive phone calls. Mobile phones may well be different, with no need for internet browsing smart phones would not have the applications or games that you see everyone using, as they require the internet to download from. Unless you physically installed them from a disk onto your computer and from there onto your phone, but that would be pretty pointless. Computers would also be different, as we are now moving into cloud technology where everything is stored online. Gaming consoles that rely on constant internet connections for updates would not exist, we’d have to buy a new console if we wanted every update!

The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
– Bill Gates

As you can see, we’d be a lot different without the internet. More social too, not hunchbacked dum-dums that sit at a computer desk all day. I could keep going about how different the world could be without it. Just look at the world 50 years ago that didn’t have the internet, and apply it to today. Big difference.

Nice thought-provoking post for you. Don’t go taking technology for granted now xD

Signing off,

Fester.

All in a Timely Manner

I’m not even going to bother pretending that I’m posting on a schedule here – unless ‘tri-sometimes-yearly‘ is a schedule.  Something tells me that if my blog was my source of income… I wouldn’t be eating much.

Yes, yes. This is another one of my typical…

“I’ve been too busy! LOOK! Here’s a list of things that I’ve been doing! See! I HAVE BEEN BUSY! Am I excused yet? Good! BYE!”

… posts.

There has been a relatively substantial amount of ‘work’ going on.  Note the quotes, this is my backup plan in case you decide what I list here isn’t worthy of the ‘work’ title.  If you do, ignore the quotes – if not, absorb and keep note of these mysteriously placed quotation marks in your frontal lobe and assimilate the conclusion that the writer of this post was clearly using the word for comedic effect the entire time. Once you’re done doing that, we can continue – but next time, try not to think about it so much.  You’re really over complicating things you know.

Projects

Control

ControlBanner

My second shot at the MyState Film Festival.  My previous entry “VOID” that I entered nearly 2 years ago had many flaws.  Apart from being technically riddled with problems that the time constraints did not allow reparation of, it also had a story line that was crunched down by the five-minute limit until it was a mess of confusing mismatched sentences.

This time, would be different. I started conceptualizing the production of Control from before this year’s featured object had been released to the public.  This film was designed to make up for where VOID failed.

  • Visual effects were planned out and were streamlined to take the least amount of time needed as possible. Once the basic effect was done – additional touches could then be made to enhance their appearance – but at least in the worse-case-scenario – they would still serve fine without enhancements. No unnecessary effects.
  • The script was written and timed out to the competition time limit before any filming took place.  A month of script writing – I wanted to write a script that was dynamic, rather than finite. One that’s length could be modified without loss of story line.  Something that would be all but impossible without ambiguity.
  • This film was designed as a silent and narrated story – meaning that I could focus entirely on getting the shots done – rather than wasting time trying to get audio with no decent sound gear.  A limitation in my camera equipment did partially drive this decision – but even with decent sound gear – lugging it around in the rain with my skeleton crew would have been anti-productive.
  • But most importantly… I’ll tell you about this later. =)

I’ll tell you more about Control later this month/December.

Auriferous

AuriferousBanner

For my Computer Science class – I had to code a computer game in Java.  This is the first game I’ve properly coded “from the ground up” – and it’s… pretty basic.  It’s a point-and-click adventure game with narration (me, attempting to talk in different voices), called Auriferous meaning: containing gold. It follows the story of a character named Julian, a man who… well, you’ll have to wait and see! After I’ve spent some more time on it, I will probably release this game for download later on. The project has already been handed in and marked. (It got good marks!)

There are other projects too… but I’ll tell you more on them… LATER!

Other News

intsmlIntelligic Shouted out by PewDiePie

For those that are somewhat up-to-date with this never-up-to-date website, you would probably be aware that among my YouTube Channels, I have a gaming channel called Intelligic.

Well, on the 21st of September my gaming channel with 181 subscribers was shouted out by the largest channel on YouTube, PewDiePie. For those who aren’t YouTube Savvy… PewDiePie has nearly 15 million subscribers – and he told them about my channel.

It went mental. My subscriber count was growing by the minute and my inbox flooded with messages begging me for co-operative let’s plays and “can you shout me out”s.  Out of nowhere, suddenly people were viewing my gaming content.  As of the first of November, 2013, I have 11,500 subscribers… and I am still speechless when I try to talk about it.

Even so many days after the shotout I still am rattled by these emotions. Excitement, encouragement, worry and shame.  I’m excited by the people I have as an audience, and I want to continue making content for them.  I didn’t know what to expect, but they are the most encouraging viewers that I could have ever hoped for.  I haven’t received any (substantial) negativity, it’s a collection of supportive and positive people – and that’s fantastic.

But of course, with all positives – there are negatives.  Because I can’t help but be worried. There are so many people! So many people now know who I am, know my face.  I’m not a particularly social person in ‘real life’ – and the thought of so many people is somewhat intimidating.  But perhaps that will change.  Then of course… I feel a bit ashamed. Because I’ve been boosted into a place that would have taken me years to get to on my own.  I only just reached 1,000 subscribers on my Upload the Download channel a few weeks before PewDiePie shouted me out – and those subscribers were earned on my own, after 5 years of running the channel. (1 year of running it well.)  Then all of a sudden, Intelligic overtakes Upload the Download 10 fold… and  I can’t help but feel like I don’t deserve it. But mostly…  if my channel continues to grow because of his boost – I feel as though I would forever be seen as someone who is only where he is because of someone else’s accomplishments.  Yes, I am very grateful to have been shouted out. I’m the one who signed up to the shotout competition (I didn’t expect to get anywhere with it, I figured there would be people who would see my post in the forum and check my channel out.) But at the same time, I feel pitied for being a small channel who was mentioned by the largest channel.

benIntelli

I got to work producing a thank you video, that video I uploaded the next day, I don’t know if he’s seen it or not.  But the response from my viewers has been very positive towards it.

Time to Shut Up

Well, I’ve been talking (writing) for a while now … and I haven’t exactly hit the points I was planning on hitting… but oh well, enough is enough.  Too many words! I’ll write another post later on how Control goes – maybe even an update on Scribble’s Notepad.

But until then, I’ll see you later!

Ben,

A latch gathering dust in an old shearing shed. This latch will be seen again soon.
A latch gathering dust in an old shearing shed. This latch will be seen again soon.

While filming the other day, I was really taken in by the atmosphere that the scenery around me was flourished with. The utter roughness of time’s progression, as it scrapes away everything in existence, molecule by molecule. Like the erosion of a beach being lashed by the tide, time attacks all matter just the same.

The building itself, that this latch resides in, is abandoned. Another lonely human relic left to creak in the wind at night. I don’t know why I find the thought of abandoned buildings so intriguing, maybe because they just seem to carry so much character as well as wonder as you try to read from its walls like the pages of a book; trying to imagine what it would have been like long ago.

But yet, it’s more than just picturing what it might have been like. It’s like a thought solitude. Walking through this building all on your own, as the clouds begin to brew overhead and the wind rattles the window frames. It’s so beautiful… and I say that feeling very unsatisfied. Because despite writing three paragraphs, I haven’t been able to express how it feels adequately enough.

More thoughts for another day I guess.

Thanks for reading this short post, I’d apologize for not writing more regularly – but I have a lot of projects on at the moment, one of them involving this latch… though it doesn’t have the starring role that this post may have implied.

Good bye for now,

Ben.

A Galaxy in Motion

The first After Effects render I did of this particular project.
The first After Effects render I did of this particular project.

For those that are friends with me on Facebook, (The word ‘Friends’ loosely dangles around here – because of the way it’s been desensitized in it’s meaningfulness online) you would have already seen the image above. It’s another YouTube Title sequence I’m working on – but not only that – it’s allowing me to experiment with space renders a bit before doing another special project.

NASA is nice enough to offer Public Domain images of space… and that really helps I must say.

The main reason I’m posting this here though is that I’m a graphics nut, and I don’t mean: “GAH! I LOVE GRAPHICS!” – I mean: “THIS…HAS…TO…LOOK…NICE!”
I’m the kind of person that will download an app on my phone just because the icon looks nice and it will compliment the other colours on my homescreen. In the scheme of things it’s quite sad – however to onlookers – most people will just think I’m really organised for having 5 different To-Do apps on my first screen.

Hence the reason for posting this Galaxy render. I want to see it’s blue glow in the posts area – so I hope you don’t mind. ANYHOW. Time to get on to editing more Intelligic videos. It’s a good excuse to play games again this gaming channel. Problem is – I’m probably spending more time on it than I should. Especially since my need to make everything look nice transverses over to the videos I produce on there too.

I currently have the next 3-4 weeks completely scheduled; Intelligic is on autopilot. I would do the same with Uploadthedownload except videos for that channel require far more work…
But perhaps if I wasn’t wasting time on Intelligic – and instead spent that time on Uploadthedownload (my more successful channel) I’d be doing better?

I’m like a Galaxy in motion. From a distance Galaxies look so still and slow – but in the midst of them all is a cosmic tidal wave of activity. Actually now that I’ve written that… that doesn’t sound like me at all. Forget my attempt at creating a connection between the title of this post – and the junk that I wrote down here. *Frowns in Failure*

See you later.

Ben.