If you're a frequent reader of our site, you may have noticed the fall off in posts towards the end of January. The last couple of weeks have been taxing on me as coursework has begun to pile up and finding time to both play games and write about them has dwindled to a level that makes posting twice a week very difficult. Thus, I have decided to cut myself back to posting once a week (Monday or Friday), but not including the MIDI Week Singles that has become a fun staple that both Dr. Potts and I contribute to on a whomever-has-an-article-written-and-ready-to-go-come-Wednesday basis. Actually, I might post twice a week if I'm feeling up to it and am overly talkative.
That being said, I have managed to put in a fair amount of time with Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call on the 3DS that will garner at least two posts this month. I also started up playing Dungeons & Dragons again last week, which will hopefully turn into a weekly or biweekly event. That DMing experience will also earn itself its own article, probably mid month. This revised interest in D&D had also got me thinking again about painting miniatures, something that I haven't done since July 2011.
Around mid-January, Extra Credits put out a couple of videos about making your own video game and their recommended steps to going about that arduous process. These series of videos got me motivated about using RPG Maker VX Ace to make a game in the same way that listening to Robert Rodriguez talk about making movies convinces me that I could shoot, cut and score my own movie. It's simple things like starting out small and not trying to make Final Fantasy VI on my first attempt are more important than churning out a masterpiece and getting bogged down on my first attempt. All good points and based on their most recent video (part 3 in this game making series), I've realized that I should still scale back my plan just so I can get the mechanics of using the program down.
And then there was that Super Bowl MLLXVXLIX that happened last Sunday as well. Now, I know it's stereotypical for someone who plays video games, D&D, paints miniatures and cross stitches pixel art to either not know or care about the NFL (or to go to a Star Trek convention instead. . .1999 I think it was), but after the 49ers were eliminated during the playoffs, I sort of turned my brain off and until the middle of last week, I had forgotten all about the Super Bowl. Plus, without expressed consent from the NFL, I'm not supposed to talk about or give any kind of recap about the game. Besides, who was I supposed to root for? The Seahawks eliminated the 49ers so I can't cheer for them, and the Patriots have that whole deflatinggatenonesense going on, but more importantly is that I've never been a New England (team, not the region) fan so I don't plan on aligning myself with them at the present date. I also don't feel that I should hoorah for the Seahawks only because they're a West Coast team and are closer to Portland than San Francisco, or because 90% of the football fans in the Portland metropolitan area are Seahawks fans. I ended up picking Seattle.
So that's what happened last month and what is looking to happen in the upcoming/presently circumcised month of February.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
