Using blog as portfolio good idea?

       Where as having a blog make it accessible to anyone willing to search for it, it is rather poor with navigation between posts. To defeat this problem I have added tags to the right of this blog so my audience can easily see what topics interests them, according to the content I provide/create.
   
      Since starting this Video-Games Design course I have became very fond of cloud-storage as I have as of recent installed MediaFire to my desktop so I am able to easily 'drag and drop' my documents to cloud-storage and access it from any available computer with internet access.

I was rather skeptical before using it, as I did not think I would use it more than two or three times - but now I am tempted to purchase a monthly subscription so I own more rights to my own created content.

Currently I am using the free 'Basic' price plan but gaining 1000GB of data for $4.99/month (£3.20/month) using the 'Pro' price plan seems very beneficial to my work capabilities. Although I am willing to wait for a sale as I have seen a 50% sale recently.

Project Planning

Should games be started without planning?

      Maps, character design, controls and even fundamental gaming aspects should all be thought about before anything is started. Brainstorming to figure out how and what things will work will identify and often eliminate problems before they arise. 

      As a class we have been advised to use Microsoft Excel to identify weapon and damage statistics. Excel is a great program for seeing how well weapons can be integrated into games but I believe there should be a better program for these kinds of instances. 

As a group we were asked to produce an Excel file examining weapons from an existing game to see what is worth investing time and money into. Here is my evaluation of weapons from 'Gears of War 3' (http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/en-US/AgeGate?source=%252f) created by 'Epic Games Studio' (http://epicgames.com/).

      http://www.mediafire.com/view/cld0f65vqf49dk8/weapons_evaluation.xlsx

     They used the Unreal Engine similarly to what our class is using to create our games. Clearly they have their own business and management team where everything has been decided. So they have jobs specified to certain employees with desired skills.

 "You would not employ an animator to program, or a programmer to animate." - Reynolds, Tim (12/12/2014)

 Below is a video of an interview of Cliff Bleszinski explaining what he included in 'Gears of War 3' and reasons why and how his game plays for the fans and the new players.

Project for minimum cost.

      If we were given multiple different choices we would have to identify:

• How much money it would take.
• How long it would take.
• The quality of the product.
• Estimated demand at different intervals. 

The biggest revenue is the target for most projects but for example, if you had a car that has recently broken down. Would you risk paying less for a lesser quality service that lasts for three months - or rather spending double for a better quality of service and potentially lasting a year or more. Researching or word of mouth is a great source of how well services are provided.

'Plan, do, check, act' should be used at nearly every instance.

• Plan - Creating ideas and how to overcome problems faced by said ideas.
• Do - Participate in the plan.
• Check - See if the ideas worked and how problems were created and solved if they were.
• Act - Evaluate how things worked and plan a future event or task.

11 Lessons to learn from war

Here is 'The Fog of War', a documentary telling the story of Robert McNamara. He explains his position in the cold war, Vietnam war and confrontations with past Presidents of the US and the press.

His 11 rules are as follows and what I have learnt from each one:

1. Empathise with your enemy. - Think of what will happen after your actions, don't do onto others which you do not want done to you.
2. Rationality will not save us. - Take a step back and assess the situation at hand, maybe even bring in a new mind in-case of tunnel vision.
3. There's something beyond one's self. - Respect the professionals and the geniuses.
4. Maximise efficiency. - Don't waste resources.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. - Know what your results mean and anaylse them against something you understand if you're struggling.
6. Get the data. - Predict the future according to the data you've found.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong. - Assumptions can often be wrong and you may feel regret after knowing.
8. Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning. - Look and look again before acting.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. - Do what is best overall; even if there are negative repercussions initially.
10. Never say never. - Expect any result or outcome,
11. You can't change human nature. - Mistakes will happen but you will just have to learn. History will often repeat itself.

Sustainable Development

      A part of a low carbon knowledge economy
Previous generations have used much of the earths resources
Is it okay to pollute china to get cheap goods? no because the economy is going down and we need to get this economy sustainable

 "Sustainability is like teenage sex. Everybody says they're doing it, very few people actually are doing it. Those that are doing it are doing it badly."

Available at: http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/andrew-maynard-on-sustainable-design.html .

• 9 billion people are occupying this planet. Joel Cohen claimed that in 1995 we needed 4 planets for a good lifestyle for all, but as I'm righting this it is 2014.
• 10% of the world own 90% of the resources.
• Screens from common smart phones today are made from rich rare earth materials that are often smashed from
• Lily pond one leaf grows per day per lily (concept of exponential growth).
• Many minerals from the periodic table will soon become extinct.

Many argue that 1st century industrial revolution was more sustainable than 22nd century.

• Abundance of materials.
• Low price of fuel.



http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/home.html

• Optimisation and mono-cultures.

Hewitt Packard are taking back broken down printers because they know sometime in the future the resources required to make printers in the future will be unavailable or too expensive. 

What we can do

• As professional engineers we have an explicit responsbility to design sustainable technology solutions.
• Global Green economy is worth $1.3 trillion (1,300,000,000).

      We have an obligation to come up with new ideas to save the global resources. 

For conferences why can we not use video streaming for meetings?

Earth Summits

United Nations Conferences (Margret Thatcher. 1990).

• Virtually every week we lose multiple different species and gaming is used to simulate the lose of species.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/09/a-study-the-temperature-rise-has-caused-the-co2-increase-not-the-other-way-around/

      There is a clear trend between global temperature and carbon dioxide. There are unfortunately many ways that carbon dioxide is created, but one of the main ways is production of electricity. We burn many resources that produce carbon dioxide that flies into our atmosphere and destroys our ozone; to cause global warming.

Library Resource

      Once I have finished this extended degree year I would like to move onto Video-Game design. So I have searched the universities libraries resources for "Videogame design technology". 

      
      There were 221 results over 23 pages of 10 results. You can do a more refined search towards a specific resource but unfortunately you can see how many specific types of resources there are available as this screenshot on the right shows, It is showing all the different types of sources there are available from my search. 

      The only book I believe I would be interested in taking from the library is Mastering Unreal Technology. As it was not available on my initial search but I knew of its existence previously, which is a problem.

      It tells me what is available from the three different sites of Anglia Ruskin. Its location is denoted by a series of numbers. This one is 794.815262 BUS and through those series of numbers i can detect whether I'm getting closer or further from the certain book by viewing the numbers on other books around me.
      

Digital age removes need for ink?

      Ink is one of the most expensive liquids available for public mass purchase. It may also dry out while stuck in the printer being unused for a few months, and even if it is used, the ink most probably will not last more than 200 sides of A4.

     With the invention of digital tablets and cloud storage it has made the need for print out almost useless. As you will be able to see web pages and many of other web documents on a digital tablet. 

Creating a discussion post

      There are many different free programs available to the public and as many people struggle with mathematics there is a program called GeoGebra that allows you to create your own graphs and sub-programs to save and even store online for the public to use. Soon it will be available on mobile phones but currently there is a download for PC and Tablets.

It is available here:  http://www.geogebra.org/download

Tutorials: http://wiki.geogebra.org/en/Main_Page

      I made a discussion post on the Core Skills VLE page so all other students can see the post and become aware of the software.

TimeTables - Keeping Up To Date

      Recently there was a file uploaded to the VLE (virtual learning environment) that came as a shock to my class - it was a tick list of what was required minimum on our log books by week 12. Personally it came as a rather large shock but helped as it made clear what was needed so I could complete what was required and a little bit more. It has also made me more engaged during class and at home to finish work in my log book. 

So it occurred to me that I may benefit from a personalised timetable for when I have free time away from university. So here is one I created using Excel below. 

http://www.mediafire.com/view/tf9e3zfma5zdap1/Time_managment.xlsx

Although I would like to be able to store said timetable on my mobile phone as it is nearly always on my possession. As I have an apple mobile there are many apps available to me for creating and storing a timetable, such as: 

• Handy Timetable.
• Skedule - Timetable.
• Class Timetable.

Presentation Skills

      Here is a list of presentation software  available to the public:

• Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Prezi.
• Adobe Flash.
• Open Office Impress.

     There is a website called SlideShare also that allows you to post your created PowerPoints onto the internet so they can be viewed by the public. It also allows me to embed on other websites such as this one so you can view it directly - just the example below I created about how to engage well with the audience of your presentation. 

 

Dream Job Specification

http://vimeo.com/thebehemoth

       My dream job is to be a founder and producer of an indie games studio, for example Behemoth who created Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid. 

 

      Here are bullet points of skills I believe you would be required to have:

• Quickly adapt to new ideas. This is vital as new software is being created all the time and the evolution of a game designer finding different ways to solve a single problem.
• Experience in the video game industry. So you will be less surprised and nervous when problems arise.
• Experience with many different program's which deal with different types of media.
• At least 5 years experience of playing video games so you have an idea for what the market wants and how games should play.
• Experience with multiple video game designing software's.

Turn It In!

      Turnitin is online software giving the ability to send off digital work to teachers and to see the credibility of each piece of written work compared to work already available on the internet to see whether you work was jus a copy and paste job and whether you have referenced correctly.

      Here is a piece of work I created for my gaming technology with three random placements of copy and pastes from:

• Gartner.
• BBC.
• Wikipedia.

DreamSpark

      DreamSpark is an alliance which allows me to gain access to otherwise costly programs created by Microsoft for free - as I am working as part of the alliance as a technology student. Unfortunately Word is not available out of the list.

 

       Here is a small list of applications available to me for free.

http://e5.onthehub.com/WebStore/ProductsByMajorVersionList.aspx?ws=c70fe1ab-c08b-e011-969d-0030487d8897&vsro=8&pc=ad64faa9-4c09-e011-bed1-0030487d8897

 

Some programs are more useful than other - for example Autoroute 2010 could potentially take me through a route no longer available in 2014, but Visio 2013 would come in useful for any Stencils, Templates or Digital Drawings.

 



 

 

 



IKEA Book Book

Here is a video from IKEA Singapore creating a parody of Apples typical IPad and IPhone advertisements.



      Typically you will see a well dressed man explaining how they have "revolutionised" the past design into a new slimmer and sleeker product with more useful functions. This brings up the topic of sexism and how men are thought of as being more tech savvy and better with computers in general.

      Features mentioned in this spoof:

• Size of product.
• Battery Life.
• Interface Interaction.
• Colour System.

Conclusion: This spoof shows just how generic hardware advertisements have become in recent years, although this video should be taken far from seriously as it is meant for comedic purposes and should be taken at face value.

Wii Head Tracking

      This is essentially 3-D formatting without the off putting glasses, although I am not 100% about the potential migraines. Here is the video featuring Johnny Lee



       Johnny Lee has created a piece of software enabling for a key subject to experience motion tracking using  just a wiimote and sensor bar.

      This could easily be a revolutionary piece of software to enhance the overall gaming experience for all experienced gamers and new comers alike. I would be excited to see if Nintendo or another respected videogame console manufacturer could/would implement this into their newest consoles for a virtual reality game title.

      This is just the visual aspects of gaming so I would like to see sound and controls being enhanced for a more realistic virtual reality experience. It is interesting seeing Lee using the VR set to move with him while he also used the wiimote to fire at the on-screen targets.
 
      This just shows how far gaming has come in the last 10 years and how it is constantly evolving even if you are unaware.

Making a Web Domain

      Making a web domain for any business should help in an increase of demand of their services - but it could also work as a good job application to many digital positions. It could also bring in some money through advertisements, for example this website explaining why a web domain is good for job seekers: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/04/26/why-every-job-seeker-should-have-a-personal-website-and-what-it-should-include/

Smith, J.

Why Every Job Seeker Should Have a Personal Website, And What It Should Include

 "According to Workfolio, a newly launched company that develops applications for professional visibility, 56% of all hiring managers are more impressed by a candidate’s personal website than any other personal branding tool—however, only 7% of job seekers actually have a personal website."

 

In-text: (Smith, 2013)
Bibliography: Smith, J. (2013). Why Every Job Seeker Should Have a Personal Website, And What It Should Include. [online] Forbes.

      Soon as you enter this site it brings you an advertisement which will be paying the host a small sum every so often. Just like with partnershiped channels on YouTube, you will encounter one or multiple advertisements that will go straight to Google (owners of YouTube). But you can have advertisements more subtle - for example Facebook will have ads on the right of a news feed.

      Here is a small excel screen shot I created of 6 different web domain hosts comparing prices.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/mni7o97epxuf6ib/Simple_web_domain_price_comparison.xlsx" target="_blank">http://www.mediafire.com/view/mni7o97epxuf6ib/Simple_web_domain_price_comparison.xlsx

Exit Plan, Seeing Who Is Higher Up

      An exit plan is a plan of what skills you want to of acquired during your time in a certain position before you leave. This is a good thing to do because you will know where you stand and where you would like to end up before you go so you can easily jump to bigger and better things.

https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/home/

In fact it would even be a good idea to make a plan just before you plan to leave any position so you have a role in society still. 

Write this while updating your CV which should be updated every month or two.

      Being in a Computing Science subject I can easily look at the Cambridge network and search their Directories: https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/directories/companies/

This will help me see who is high up in the digital sector inside of Cambridge.

When's My Best Work?

So I participated in personal experiment see when and where is my best work. I attempted 3 simultaneous mathematic equations and wrote 2 sentences about a YouTube video; I done this for 2 days at 4am, midday, 4pm and midnight.

4am

      At this time of the day I would make many mistakes during the mathematical equations where I would often treat one side of an equals sign but forget about the other - but I would not be able to correct myself.

      For the YouTube sentences I would struggle to get started and once I did I would get stuck fairly often on what words would work best and once I re-read later on I would notice that my vocabulary was very limited.

Midday

      At midday I would still feel a little tired and would still make common mathematical errors but I could easily see where I stumbled.

      While writing I struggled to get started but I was a lot more efficient in my vocabulary.

4pm

      I found at this time I made the best attempts and writing and solving equations, although I moved on to factorising quadratic equations where the coefficient of x^2 was more than 1. I also felt confident enough to write a lot more for the YouTube video.

Midnight

      I was completing the mathematical equations well with a little or no mistakes but I could not even start a writing assignments on one of the days.

Important University Information

Here are a list of very important links:




Regulations - http://web.anglia.ac.uk/anet/staff/rulereg.phtml


Assesment Unit - http://web.anglia.ac.uk/anet/academic/assess/index.phtml


Important Academic Dates - http://web.anglia.ac.uk/curriculum/calendar.phtml


Student Retention - http://web.anglia.ac.uk/curriculum/retention.phtml


External Links through Anglia Ruskin - http://web.anglia.ac.uk/curriculum/links.phtml

 
Essential Personal Student Profile - https://my.anglia.ac.uk/student/portal/Pages/essentials.aspx

Skill Matrix

I'm going to use SWOT analysis to explain the good and bad points about myself currently to you and to myself.

Skills:

• Creative - I often draw up ideas and have out of the ordinary game ideas.
• Friendly - I enjoy meeting new people and making new relationships.
• Team Worker - I like to see the best possible outcomes and I am not afraid to get stuck in to not disappoint.
• Motivator - I will often try to give advise to family and friends to help them get through struggles.
• Mathematics - I have a rather strange enjoyment about mathematics, as I like the idea of coming up with one specific answer through a multiple of different solutions.
• Good Planner - I like to prepare and plan before any execution.

Weaknesses:

• Struggle for Motivation - I will often not feel ready for execution.
• Shy - I struggle to talk to new people initially.
• Distracted - Often will want to get involved in a different activity during another.

Opportunities:

• Youtube - Would love to become a fairly popular youtuber.

Threats:

• Video Games - Passion for video games is fairly large.
• Youtube - Too often am I distracted by new videos.
• Online Social - Facebook and many other sites may distract me. 

Managing Digital Profiles

Social websites I often use:

• Facebook.
• Twitter.
• LinkedIn.
• YouTube.

http://quarantinestudies.wordpress.com/about-us/joana-pujades/

      Facebook has many more features available to the public than what is often used. For example you can create a public fan page for anything if your choosing or video chat to Facebook friends. It has occurred to me that keeping a social profile public to view may not be the best decision as employers may become put off by content posted on my Facebook wall by me or friends. So I have made a personal work page made public to all, with the ability to follow my posts so they end up on your timeline. Where the rest of my profile is private and only visible to friends.

      My twitter is very private to begin with as I do not share it. There is great potential to create a business or organisation through the 'twittersphere' as you can contact people in higher positions than yourself while collaborating or sharing ideas.

LinkedIn is all business related so I have not made any part of my profile private.

YouTube is my base to make video entries on the internet and is mainly for my personal entertainment.

Cloud Storage

      I would advise anyone with enough disposable income to purchase a cloud storage subscription as your rights to the service will dramatically increase - but unfortunately I am living the student lifestyle with very little income so I am only using the free services available to me.

      Personally I prefer MediaFire cloud storage as it has 16GB storage free compared to DropBox's 2GB. I only mention these two services but there are many more available if you're willing to search. Although I use MediaFire predominantly, I also use DropBox as I believe no file truly exists unless there are three different copies existing through different means. For example: USB, cloud storage, home computer, external hard drive...


: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/F5D5F6798A9367CC86256F6C007A968D

Clubs and Societies

      I have joined the Game Jam society as I believed it would help me to interact with new minds and get a foot into the door of any indie gaming developer company involved with the university.

     I signed up to Game Jam during freshens fair which showcased many different clubs and societies from outdoor rugby to anime and manga club. I took an interest in many different choices but only signed up for Game Jam as it was most appealing to me out of all the other choices, and I wanted enough time to study and socialise outside of the university.

      View all Anglia Ruskin clubs and societies here: http://www.angliastudent.com/experience/socs/

     
: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150444631765529&set=o.158569017533090&type=3&theater

Ways to store useful information sources

This is my universities digital library system. I intend on studying Video Games Technology once I have completed this extended course. So if I search for relevant books on my universities library searching resource I get 21'185 results.

This is a fair amount of results but not every result will useful for my studies or interesting to me.

As you can also click the star icon and put it into a digital library which is handy but unfortunately my account will be deleted and i will lose all my saved books.

So using Microsoft Word i can easily make a list of references and sources. It will also be easier to understand the references as i have to physically write a small part about it rather than just click a small icon. 

Adding text to the citations also will help jog memory about exactly what is going on, and also a link so you can re-read the source.

Fasting with Lydia

Click here to read a small Wiki entry about Atys (King of the Maeonians)

Fortunately Jane McGonigal explains the history in alot more depth at 12:10 until 15:00.



Below is my first video explaining what the experiment is I done and how i felt at that current moment of recording. It was 13:30 at the time of the recording.







Here is my first update recorded at 16:10 explaining how my day had been since the time of the first recording.

Update key points:

•  I felt little to no hunger and had been playing just single player games.
•  I had an hours walk to help a friend with a favour.
•  At the time of the recording i had been without gameplay for an hour.
•  I had drank very little drink and still no food consumed thankfully.
•  Then about to start competitive multiplayer games.

This video was recorded at 22:00.

Update key points:

While not playing video games i nearly gave into hunger.

Gameplay kept me away from food easier than cut-scenes in games.

I will be repeating the same experiment on Monday (13/10/14).

Monday 13th of October.

Unfortunately i did not record a video for this day but the results were very similar.

Taking into account that i had lectures and practical lessons to attend, and having no food around me take my focus away from my goal. I found Monday a lot easier to get through than Saturday. Because of the results on Monday i would like to see if there have been any weight loss diets based on video games or general activities taking your mind off food, although potentially very unhealthy.

Is Purchasing Pre-owned Games Wrong?

Is purchasing pre-owned Games wrong or damaging to the video game industry?

There are positives and potentially negatives to purchasing second hand video games.

 As i am currently a student, I am sticking to a strict budget as i am currently not earning money. So this means i look to get the most out of my money whether it's supermarket deals while food shopping or searching for a video game in interested in.

So being a very big fan of video games but having very little money to spend on entertainment i commonly search the pre-owned sections of video-game stores and online.
The problems with purchasing second hand games is you are not directly giving money to the video game industry and you are potentially buying a broken/unusable product.

EA tried making a new system where you had to pay for an online pass.


"EA's controversial policy of charging buyers of preowned games an extra $10 to access online features has drawn outright ire from customers." - ORLAND, K.

EA says goodbye to the Online Pass, we say good riddance

In-text: (Orland, 2013)

Bibliography: Orland, K. (2013). EA says goodbye to the Online Pass, we say good riddance. [online] Ars Technica. Available at: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/ea-says-goodbye-to-the-online-pass-we-say-good-riddance/.

Fortunately EA dropped this potential service May 2013, but it is rather worrying for a consumer like me who does not have a large income. I believe although this was dropped over a year ago that other companies may still try and make pre-owned games obsolete.