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Personal

No my fellow Adeptus Astartes, I didn't fall off the face of Terra. It's only been 17 days since my last blog, but it feels like it's been longer than that, kupo. I was plugging away enthusiastically at my first playthrough of Dark Souls, regularly updating the Dark Souls Diary, but then I stopped suddenly. And before you know it more than a fortnight has passed! Maybe it's time to reconnect with all of you, bother you a little, and drop some Warhammer 40k references on you from time to time because I'm a loser and it's what I do. 

Back around the beginning of the month I became depressed. I lost interest in the normal socialization I do, and I started doing other things to keep me busy (science, music, games) while waiting for the depression to ebb and flow like it always does. The depression has lasted for a couple weeks but I think it's on its way out lately and I'm starting to mobilize again. This year has been pretty good. So far this is the only period of depression I've had to deal with in 2012, and it wasn't too bad to cope with, relative to what I've dealt with in the past. Back in high school I would deal with periods of depression that might last a few months, they were very intense, and I wouldn't cope with them well at all. Now that I'm a few years older I've had more practice, and I deal with it better. It's just chemistry and clockwork now. The depressive episodes suck still, but even with depression I find that I'm still far more optimistic, imaginative, creative, inspired, and loving of life than most of the people around me who don't have depression. It's amazing how many misinformed, pessimistic, and fear-soaked people out there are still scared about imaginary Mayan apocalypses, Anti-Christs, religious superstition, myth, and other things that aren't real problems.

During the couple weeks of depression I've been keeping busy in the free time with science journals, programs, and news. I was so excited when Curiosity landed safely on Mars and sent the first pictures back to Earth. JPL are rockstars. Every year I take time to watch the height of the Perseid meteor shower at night any chance I get, but this past weekend it was too cloudy here in Colorado to see much. I caught one meteor, but then decided to go inside because the cloud cover and light pollution was too much this time around. Last year I saw like 30 from my backyard before I went to sleep.

Recently I joined Tumblr, and I'm not sure why. I don't really blog there much but I found some blogs I like to follow so I check in there from time to time. I made a nice (and quite brilliant) friend on Tumblr, her name is Mae and she does my favorite Tumblr blog named The Science of Reality. It's a great blog full of lots of educational and artistic goodness. Her blog also led me to a cool website named Coursera.org that offers some free online college courses, and I see some stuff there that I might do to keep busy. There's some programming, software engineering, earth science, math, and astronomy classes they have that I might enroll in or do self-study in if they offer it.

Gaming

As I mentioned earlier, I was playing Dark Souls and doing the DS Diary entries but I took a little break from it. The last thing I did was beat the final bosses in Anor Londo and I'm currently at Firelink Shrine deciding on where to go next. I was burnt out after Anor Londo, so I had to take a break. The thought of wandering off into New Londo Ruins, Demon Ruins, or some other place was too much so I gave it a rest.

In the absence of Dark Souls, I've been juggling a few games. I've mostly been playing Minecraft on my 360 because I've had a creative surge and need to build things. Most of the structures I've built in the game have been built for function and not for beauty. For example most of the structures I put together early on were just stone buildings and bunkers built to serve a purpose and not extend beyond that cause. For example a few of my houses are just staging grounds for huge underground mines I dig out deep beneath the houses to gather materials. The houses I've built are designed for defense by having walls a few blocks thick using blast resistant materials, and my houses always have multiple exits or escape routes in case something ever does sneak in. Now I'm finally thinking more about making them not only serve functions, but also be more epic and appealing to the eye. My first go at making something "pretty" was building a water fountain lol. It looks good actually and it works, I like it. At the moment I'm taking a break from mining underground and I'm building huge towers into the sky and connecting said towers with an epic "skyway" lol. I got my inspirations from the things I've seen in Myst games.

The towers themselves are like stone tree-houses and I've been building houses high up in the towers.  The skyway is a series of long and winding glass bridges suspended far up in the sky towards the top of the towers. It's painstaking but it's been going a lot faster than I imagined. There's one tower I've built where I'm going to try to put together a small forest at the top of it. Like how people in big cities sometimes create gardens on the top of high rises. I'm going to make an area of dirt, surround it with water blocks, and encase it all with stone. Plant some trees and crops, and see if my sky garden experiment turns out to be cool.

Music

As I explained in that music series I did a few months ago, listening to music and playing guitar always keeps me busy. I put some new heavier gauge guitar strings on and they rock. I still play riffs in standard tuning, and the thicker strings make things more tight, less wobbly, and they give me more bass to accommodate the speed and crispness I need. Thicker strings are tougher on your fingers and you need to apply a little more strength to play them, but I think the extra effort is worth it. The added bass makes things sound so much more powerful.

Sylosis is coming out with a new album in October called Monolith and I'm so excited I'm swooning like a school girl. I love it when they come out with new music because the riffs are always the most fun things to learn. Back in the day Dave Murray of Iron Maiden inspired me to pick up guitar and start plucking away at it. Josh Middleton of Sylosis inspires me to keep playing and the rhythms he writes challenge and keep me coming back to practice more. When I listen to Sylosis guitar riffs they just make perfect sense to me and I start learning them by ear in no time. I can envision them in my brain like math and it's all in neat order to me. They've been releasing some songs one at a time to pump fans up, and I've already learned the riffs to this song "Dying Vine". The thicker strings I have on my guitar definitely help get my guitar's tone heavy enough to do this song justice. This is so much fun to play. It's going to be bliss when the full album comes out and I can listen to it all and start playing guitar with it.

 

I love this song by Eagle-Eye Cherry too and have been listening to it a lot. I don't play it on guitar, I just enjoy it. Even I can't shred all day and blast out spicy riffs. At some point I have to wind down and enjoy something more smooth.