Saturday, December 25, 2010

Post 16: Christmas 2010

I'll bet you're expecting a "Merry Christmas" somewhere in this post. Well, you won't find one except in this sentence. I don't have the holiday spirit, and I don't really get it very much. Although I'm mainly an ISTJ, I believe I also have several INTJ traits, and one of them is a bent for practicality. (ISTJ and INTJ are personality types; look them up on WikiPedia.) Holidays don't really mean much to me now that I'm in my early adult years.

However, I do recognize some significance of this day. It's when we celebrate the birth of Yeshua Hanozri the Messiah (or, if you speak English, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ/Anointed One). This date isn't actually the one Jesus was born on, but it was established as such by the Roman Catholic church. My memory is a bit hazy as to the reason, but I recall reading something like it was set as such to make it fall on the same day as an important pagan day, thus making it easier to transition them to Christianity.

This holiday has all but lost its meaning to me. As a Christian, I probably should esteem this day pretty highly. After all, it's celebrating the birth of the Christ, of the Savior of the world. However, I grew up in an atheist home and wasn't often exposed to it. No, I didn't hear the story of the infant Jesus. I heard the story of Santa Claus. For me, Christmas was about the tree, the candy, the food, and the presents. I knew early on that Christmas involved Jesus's birth, but that for me was one of two equal meanings to the day. I preferred the presents, though. In addition, the fact that it's not really Jesus's birthday also makes it sort of pointless.

Last night my parents decided to give me my presents early. I had given them a list of things I wanted for Christmas.

Things I needed: new work shoes, new work pants.
Things I wanted: "The Colony" DVDs seasons 1 and 2; new computer (I ended up buying it on my own); bass guitar.

What did I get? Anitvirus software and a Wal-Mart gift card. At work a couple days ago there was a sorry excuse of a gift exchange party where I received some candy, popcorn and a Blockbuster gift card. The antivirus would actually be useful. I use AVG Free right now but what they got for me would offer more features and protection. The gift card, if I ever activate it, would give me enough money to buy my work apparel. As for the other stuff... I'll probably just go ahead and buy it myself one of these days.

After they gave me my presents I decided to give them theirs. It was a small box of glass picture cup coasters. I had gotten them from an event at church a week or so before Christmas. I felt a little conflicted about giving them the present early since it would take away from the next day's meaning but I figured, one half of the exchange is over, may as well do the rest. They actually seemed to rather enjoy the present and we all exchanged hugs.

For Christmas, we ate around 2 PM (14:00 for international readers). I stuffed my face with ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and buns. When we finished, I was given the task of cleaning up. After that, everything returned to normal. I spent much of the afternoon watching people play Minecraft on LiveStream, as well as brushing up on my JavaScript/PHP skills.

Also, my grandparents sent me their usual holiday card and check for the holiday. I'll have to send them a thank-you e-mail eventually.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Post 15: Inspirations to Succeed

One of my passions in life is to be a computer programmer. In the field of computer programming, like any area, there are those who made it big - Bill Gates with Microsoft, Steve Jobs with Apple, Linus Torvalds with  Linux, etc. Then there are the smaller ones who don't get as much recognition. I've encountered a couple of these in the past year. They really inspire me to get serious again about programming.

Blue Frog Gaming (http://www.bluefroggaming.com) is a small Ohio-based company with about 15 members. They don't make fancy games like World of Warcraft or Halo. Instead, they write browser games, and most of their creations are Facebook applications. I play two of their games: "Starfleet Commander", which is their cash cow; and "Hockey Tycoon", which is sort of a sports game. Consider this. They have something like 5 or 6 games in the Tycoon series, and each one is identical to the other except the interface is tailored to fit the sport it's designed after, be it hockey, baseball, soccer, etc. Then there is "Samurai Warrior", which is like the Tycoon games but with the style of samurai combat. These are instant-action, button clicking games. Facebook applications. Free to play, people only give them money for in-game credits that expedite game play. And they make money off of this!

Now their biggest success is "Starfleet Commander". Again, free-to-play, Facebook application that can also be played from its own website. You only spend money if you want in-game credits to temporarily boost game play. Despite the simplicity of the game, there are somewhere around fifty thousand people playing this game, probably more. And this game is raking in the dough. They have made enough to hire 15 people! They are essentially doing something that could do! For a college essay I decided to ask their CEO some questions about the company and he happily obliged. They started off as three friends with an idea and are now a successful company.

Another interesting example is Markus Persson, aka Notch. He is the writer of "Minecraft" (http://www.minecraft.net), a sandbox game written in Java where one uses the surrounding world to build things while fighting off enemy monsters. On December 20, it will go into beta meaning it will be in the phase before completion. This game is not yet finished and the code hasn't been optimized... and he has made over 5 million dollars! Enough to start his own company (Mojang Specifications) with five people including himself. 

Can you imagine being one of these people? Making millions for relatively simple games, or even incomplete ones? The field of computer programming is one full of possibility. I'm into programming because, when I made my first webpage using HTML, it amazed me how a few lines of sort-of-English code could do so much. It's also a lucrative field of expertise and one I want to make a career out of. Who knows? I could make a game or a suite of games and it could be like these - major successes with lots of people who play them and sources of revenue in the thousands or millions. Such simple things, yet they are big hits. This is what inspires me to be a programmer.