Project Management Class: Time

Managing time was pretty straight forward.
Basically it came down to the fact that projects need deadlines and to meet those deadlines the time worked on the project needs to be managed.

Like I said, straight forward.

I personally have a hard time managing time for projects or pretty much anything really. I guess you could say the stress of something being last minute is what makes me work harder. But I'd like to hope this isn't the only way I could do things.
This chapter mentioned a few things such as milestones. I've been aware of what they are but never exactly applied them in my own life. This might be due to my lack of knowing what the end goal really is at a given time. It makes it hard to really determine milestones when you don't know the end goal yet. I guess the perfect example is what I want to do as a career for the rest of my life. When I left high school everyone I knew in my grade already knew what they were going to aspire to. A couple guys wanted to be doctors, entrepreneurs, a girl I had a crush on wanted to be a librarian of all things. Point is they knew what initial goal they had when they left, even if they found something else along the way.
I never had that. In fact I still don't think I do. Having a goal like that probably would have made me a bit more confident, or maybe its a lack of confidence that prevented me from figuring out some sort of career path. Either way, whatever milestones I may have achieved right now seem more like random daily accomplishments than working towards a final product.

Time management for me, though straightforward, has always eluded me in some way.
It was a little depressing as a result

I am Surprised, This is my Surprised Face 0_0

So I guess subscribers already know this. But yesterday I tried watching some anime called Hellsing for the first time. I heard mixed opinions so I felt that if it sucked I could at least get some minor laughs from it by recording my reactions.
So I did, and bam! One hour and a half later I have a video on youtube mainly for my own reasons. And not even 20 minutes after I find out that people actually liked it. Well...great...I guess.
So because I'm really bad at dealing with peer pressure I now have to continue this on the side. Really, did not expect that one. If I can manage to make funny comments I guess I'll do a new episode for whatever people want me to watch. It should be something that can actually be made fun of though.


(Also, the 1.1 thing means the next will be 1.2 since the series isn't over yet. Just in case anyone was wondering about that)

Oh Yeah...

So quite a bit has happened since I last updated here.

I'm completely over my fever, completely fine now. The antibiotics worked for my sinus and chest infection but I also developed an ear infection which didn't go away after I ran out of drugs. Sleep took care of that luckily.

I got back into developing that little 2D thing I mentioned before. Its coming along pretty well but there are a few obstacles in the way. This is still ages away however, probably half way through the game which is waaay further than I am right now. Which means I still have plenty of time to perfect this.
This project I'm talking about is one of these 1/2 episode things. I'm thinking something along the lines of leaving the question of it being canon up to the viewer. Whether or not anyone feels like asking that question after seeing it is a whole nother thing all together.

As for the real show.
Episode 13 is almost done. I've got the footage and the audio and most of the editing done, just waiting on Krimsin's dialogue. This episode marks the beginning of A. Shephard being a recurring character outside of the game's forced radio chatter. I'm hoping to get a sort of discussion going to work out what he and the point man will talk about and what the relationship will be later in the game. Until then however 13 will have to wait a bit longer.
13 seems to be unlucky after all. Sorry about that.

Some other random things going on.

I got Minecraft.
I know I know, jumping on the bandwagon and all that. Only $20 bucks or so though, figured why the hell not. I'm more interested in building with other people though, the game seems to be much more fun that way. Obviously the multiplayer is very limiting right now. So singleplayer is where I'll have to stay.

Homefront was released.
Its exactly what I expected. White hats vs Black hats mentality. Typical NRA political bullshit, only thing that makes it worse is how bland the gameplay looks. I did not expect that part.

I got a really weird and girly JRPG!
I might make a video about my reactions to it one day soon. Beleive me, its weird...and girly....girly weird...and its from Japan soo....its really weird by North American standards.

Thats all for right now. I'll post the video once its finished off and I'll update you guys later.

Project Management Class: Scope

Just so any regular readers are aware, these certain posts will be concerning a course I'm taking. Its required that I create a blog about each section we learn about. Which is why I'm showing this here.

So again, for anyone who checks for updates on videos, this will be completely unrelated.

Now for the actual post.

This week we finally got to a section that didn't completely feel like we had covered it before. How to design and plan out the scope of a project.
The main thing I got out of it was that involved finding out the purpose and constraints of a project. Which of course means more planning is required. Not that huge of a step from the whole initial planning section. To be perfectly honest its almost exactly the same. Though at least this time we're talking in a more practical sense than before, or at least that is how I feel about it.

Its pretty self explanatory, which is most likely part of the reason it was mashed together with another chapter. That and we've missed the last 2 or 3 classes due to weather, not much of a choice there. In any case, figuring out the scope of a project mainly consisted of finding out what it requires and what the goals are. There are a few other obvious things such as the deadline and the budget allowed, all of which combines into what everyone can see as the "scope" of the project. As I said, pretty self explanatory.
Putting all of those pieces together was a bit more complicated however. It involves a "Work Breakdown Structure" or chart of some kind to organize everything. There are four versions of of a Work Breakdown Structure: Top-Down where the larger items are broken down, Bottom-Up where you start from the smaller pieces and organize them into larger ones, Mind Mapping which uses a chart where every item branches from a topic or idea, and Analogy which really just references other Work Breakdown Structures and gets inspired from there. All of these have advantages in certain situations and some find it easier to try one approach over others. From here, organizing and determining the scope of a project is simplified and easier to comprehend.

This was the most important piece of info I learned when it came to this section of the class so far. Organizing and planning out what a project is seemed to be more practical than everything before. But then again I mentioned "so far", there's a very good chance this will be overshadowed by something else a lot more important. Or at least interesting.

Getting Down with the Sickness

So yeah, my little cold turned into a big sinus infection which turned into a lung infection with all the mucus draining from my nose down my throat.
Needless to say, it was gross. Ended up face down retching into a toilet bowl more often than I would have liked. Spent the rest of the time blowing my nose dry and drinking water, which I then threw up. It wasn't fun, felt like I puked out my lungs a couple times. The blizzard that just flew by didn't help my body either.

Saw the doctor this week, got some antibiotics, should be fully up and running in a week from today. My voice is back mostly though, so I might be able to get the dialogue junk done before then. There are still a couple more things to work out but it looks optimistic.

I don't know how I got this damn thing, but I seem to have it on the ropes now. Only a matter of time.

Some 'splaining

Alright alright, I know I haven't updated and explained my absence in a while. Sorry guys.

You might be happy to know that I've gotten 2/3 of episode 13 done and all that is left is the VO junk. Which leads me into my problem, I got sick.

I don't think its the flu or anything serious, but I haven't taken my flu shot this season. And I'm living in a building where a lot of people don't understand what basic sanitation is. (IE: washing your hands after you shit). So I'm a little concerned but not badly.
The gist of it is that my throat is shot. It hurts to swallow anything including water and I can't even cough without it stinging like hell. I've got some medicine that seems to be making it more bearable but I'm not over this thing yet.

So unfortunately that means no episode 13 until I get better. I have taken this extra time to move a little ahead with further episodes to make up for it, but keep in mind I also have school sick or not. Probably not this month, sorry.

New Year, New Subscribers

I'm always amazed by this, 300? Wow.

I considered doing the sparta remix thing cuz you know, Spartans...300. lulz? But thats a little played out. So I did something that was fun to make and still kinda entertaining to watch.



I mentioned this in the description bar but the song was made by these guys http://theamazingbrando.com/fr_duaneandbrando
Check them out if you get the chance.