Category: Articles

People often ask me why I do not do New Years resolutions. I really don’t see the point. I prefer to just have goals and stick to them in my day to day life. I also do not believe in the whole “New year new me” shit. It excuses you of shit you did last year and you’re putting your faith in a number changing. Nah fam. I will fix my shit and change how I am throughout the year to improve.

I may not see the point but I get the point of doing a resolution. You want to fix your stuff and set goals to improve your life. Jan first just makes it the easiest way to measure yourself. You can see progress over a year directly compared to actively keeping track. However, I think that is the negative of resolutions. When you don’t have to put in that small bit of extra effort you already give yourself a lazy out. I also think people put too many goals or too big of goals without a proper road map or understanding of what the fuck they’re doing.

Another fun thing about resolutions is I often destroy them for others. This is always by accident but it is funny how I destroy them. How do I do it? I ask, “How do you plan to do this?” and “Why do you want to do this?” These questions aren’t meant to harm but inform.

An example I have is I knew someone who wanted to lose 100 pounds in a year. “How do you plan to do this?” at this question they gave up. They had no idea. They said “I’ll just diet and exercise.” “Do you know how to?” “Yes…” no they didn’t. When they asked me how I lost a lot of my weight and I explained the long process I went through to lose 60 pounds it was too much for them.

What was my process that was too hard for them?
First, I monitored my diet for two weeks. Here I logged everything I ate and drank. When and how much. I noticed I was drinking a lot of soda.
Second, I cut my soda intake by a can a week. This is important because if you just quit your body freaks out. Even now, I am having issues cutting soda again since I picked it up as a comfort drink again. It is very hard to do. However, I am doing a good job so far cutting soda back out of my life. I still have days where I am just drained or can’t sleep unless I have a Coke, addiction sucks.
Third, I looked back at my diet to see what else needed to be cut. Unhealthy snacks and unneeded eating. Slowly shaving this away.
Fourth, I started to cook at home. I didn’t even massively change my diet here. I just started to cook at home. Cooking at home I lost a lot of weight with too even though I was eating the same shit. I just knew what was going in it and was able to control it.
Fifth, I cut down on how much I ate.

Eventually I just started to lose weight and a lot of it. Cutting soda and cooking at home just had me shedding weight. This entire time I did not go to the gym, go for walks, or anything. It was pure diet control. By the time I started to go to the gym that was actually to just improve my cardio and general health. At this point the gym wasn’t even causing me to lose weight. I gained muscle and my weight loss started to crawl because I was turning fat to muscle. However, it picked back up again.

This is what I mean when I say the “How” question ruins people’s resolutions. A lot of people just say they’ll do it and think minimal effort will cut it. Think “I can just go the gym and lose weight” No, you gotta do a lot more then that. You have to improve each aspect that is causing you to gain weight. Right now I am trying to get down to 70KG and I am starting this up again. I am monitoring what I am eating, trying to cook back at home, and do it all over again. I got a lot of weight to lose.

Next the question of “Why?” “Why do you want to do this?” often people have no real answer or a horrible one for why they want to do something. I remember one person wanting to find a girlfriend as a resolution. I asked why. The dude said so he can stop being lonely and learn to love life and have a reason to live. Yeah, fuck that. I had to tell him he was looking for a relationship to fix his issues and would instead just cause way more. That he needs to fix that shit himself first then find a girlfriend. This is the thing people need to realize. When we make a resolution we also need to have a good reason why we want to do it and a plan on how to do it.

It also needs to be obtainable within your power. I have seen a lot of people say they will get 1 million subs, 10k subs, 100 subs, or whatever on YouTube/Twitch/Social media of choice. Look, this is not an in your power obtainable goal. This is up to the whims of others. You should never put your resolutions or goals into the hands of others. You can do everything perfect and one bad algorithm change, off joke, or new person coming up could ruin everything. I am actually writing a piece on my dissection of YouTube’s algorithm. Which was dissected so much my Google AdSense account was banned over it. Different topic.

I’d also just advise against any that rely on your internet presence. That’s just my personal suggestion.

With all this said I am continuing my goals from before the new year:

I am trying to lose weight.
Why? So, I can find clothes that fit easier (half joke) and so I will just be healthier. I want to have a family of my own. I can’t die early due to heart disease or other issues and leave my family in trouble. It will be better for me. My body will hurt less and I will live a better life.
How will I do this? With the steps outlined above and getting back into a work out regiment. I am setting up a workout system at home to get my body ready to going back to the gym and jogging outside. I am also working on finding a trainer/class to go to.

I am trying to finish my RPG.
Why? I have been working on and off for on this for a bit now. I really want to finish it and get it out there just for me. I do not expect this game to even be played or take off in anyway past like 10 people. Even that I am pushing it. If I manage to sell a copy I’ll actually be happy. This’ll also help me get back into programming and designing. Which can be the jump start I need for Alien Outkast Studios.

How will I do this? I am writing my design document. I am organizing it. I am writing pseudocode again and trying to get everything operating. I am trying to price out music, art assets, and software needed. I am documenting what I can and doing what I can do get this started. Everything is going slow right now but I am shaking off the cobwebs. I have a lot of things I need to convert between files and organize in the main design document. To get everything easily accessible and legible.

I am trying to publish my first story.
Why? I’ve been writing things in private for a while and never finished due to the fear of being laughed and rejected. So, this is just me conquering my fear. I want to get over this fear because I actually like to write but I am so terrified of showing it to anyone. Even writing up blog posts is a challenge for me. Oddly enough these have helped.
How will I do this? By writing a small story that I have already outlined and mildly fleshed out. I am working on fleshing it out now and writing it. It’s not going to be written in a traditional story sense. So, this’ll make it easier to write. It will help me get used to writing, feed back, publishing and all that again. The story will be free and available here. More on that when the time comes.

Learn more Chinese.
Why? 我在中国。I am in China. Life will be easier when I can learn to read and speak.
How will I do this? Study and attend my Chinese classes regularly. I am already doing a better job of studying.

With that I want to say happy new years and if you have a resolution try to make it realistic and plan it out. It’s okay to fail but don’t give up and do your best to make it possible!

I actually wrote this four days ago. I just never got on my laptop to publish it. In those 4 days I have lost 1 KG. Almost finished getting my design document organized and I am doing better in my Chinese classes.

Title is a The Faint song. Just felt right.

Many people have asked me through out my life where I’ve gone. Why did I just leave? There’s a few reason but I will be going over why I vanish online from time to time.

Many do not know this but I’ve been doxed quite a few time on the internet. “Doxed” means to have your information leaked online. Usually this is an intimidation tactic. Many people do not think having your name and city out there is a big deal but you would be surprised with what information you can dig up on someone with just their name and even county. I’ll make a post on that later as I used to do that professionally for flood determinations. Again, later date.

Why was I doxed? I got too cocky, jealousy, lulz, to silence me, because I was the wrong political affiliation. Many reasons. Due to repeated doxings at a young age there is actually a good time frame on the internet where every website I signed up to had a unique email address, user name, and password. I signed up for tons of sites under various names with newly created emails from all providers. Gmail the least because they started to limit new accounts the most. There are still websites I can go to and have not a fucking clue what my username or email was.

Now the few stories that stand out:
The first time I was doxed I was about 10 years old. Maybe 9. Some guy thought it would be funny to dox me because I was a mouthy asshole on these forums. Yeah that caused me to delete my account, swap user names on everything, and even ditch some internet friends for fear of how the fuck he got my info. Now, when this guy doxed me he knew I was 10. He still did it. He then kept attacking me. He even signed my home address up to a lot of spam. This guy I later found out was in his mid 20s. Like, he followed me across websites. He would try to get people to go to my home. A few people joined him in harassing me but ultimately I just went dark. Before swapping usernames on everything I just went dark. He got bored finally and left us alone. We also luckily moved, not due to him, during my time going dark. Which is why I went dark actually.

This event taught me no matter what your info will get out. Friends will leak your shit. Also no matter what your crime is people will punish you infinitely harder then what you deserve. Was I an asshole on the forum? Yes. Did he drive me off? Yes. Is that an acceptable level of punishment? Yes. Community was happier with me gone. However, publishing my info was not needed. Especially when I was 10. Dude was in his mid 20s. People online do not stop at online damage. Remember this. They have never stopped.

Next time I was doxed I was 14 or 13. Here I was doxed for being a left wing nut job, or libtard as the common phrase is. Which is funny because my left wing views didn’t come into life until much later. I just said let people fuck who they want to fuck as long as they are legal. This caused some right wing wacko who I have no info on to dig up all my info. Dude got it all. Then not content with just harassing me he dug up shit on my family. He would call my sister taunting her. Bringing up some super traumatic stuff that happened in her past. The dude did not relent. He called a lot at all times of the day and sometimes night. How my older brother never got involve I have no clue. The dude kept fucking digging into my family. With 0 demands. Just to show me whats what for believing it’s okay to be gay. He managed to get someone to actually knock on our door. I answered it and told the person to fuck off after he brought up that gays don’t deserve rights. I then called the police because I was scared. I actually have no idea why this guy stopped but he did.

What I learned from this is that some people take religion and politics way too fucking serious. See why I don’t talk about it too much on here. This is still the worst experience I have ever hard with doxing and that is counting the time people tried to get me fired from my job.

Next we have the time I was doxed for being a right wing whack job. Noticing a pattern already? This time I was doxed for saying that communism can’t work because people are inherently selfish and that affirmative action is a crutch that does nothing but hamper businesses in the current world and tells black people they aren’t good enough to be hired on their own without daddy government. – Yes, this is a very right wing ideal. I know.

This dox led to people trying to get me fired. The funny thing is the job they were trying to get me fired from was my own on the go tech repair I started at 16. I would repair people’s computers or teach them to download porn for money. Fuck it, I had games to buy. This basically amounted to nothing but it showed me the vast difference of right vs left doxers. Right side fucks with you and your family until you all break. Left wing just tries to get you fired so you starve. Both are fucking awful but the left wing one can easily be dealt with if you are on good terms with your manager/hr, or own your own business. Second time jobstuff happened was when I worked at Domino’s. My mom’s BF was the manager. They weren’t getting me fired especially because all phone calls are recorded and logged under our IDs. So, HR could prove they were lying.

Finally the last doxing I will talk about is my favorite. Here I was doxed for standing up for a friend who later turned on me because… actually no idea why. He thought doxing wasn’t a big deal then I showed him what you can get with the info and I told him how to fix it. However, to buy my friend time I agitated and went after his doxer to be a bigger target. My friend did what he needed in time. At this point I just changed my Facebook display name and let the guy fail to work. So, he was able to get my name. Big whoop. The dumb ass did what I thought he was going to do and was surprised to find out there was 0 info on me. This is because officially in my old city I was homeless. My information was not on record. In fact, there was no info of me living there for a few months. The guy became obsessed with me and eventually gave up as we used his YouTube channel against him. shit was funny.

What this proved is being homeless rules when it comes to doxing. Also that when someone is attempting a dox to you and you can use their YouTube channel to dox them back, privately I might add (kept the info), and use their YouTube channel to show them breaking the law and stalking children to their homes (not a lie) over a guy not giving you the stop sign. Funny part about that is someone else had the scene on video and showed the jack ass trying to dox me was in the wrong. I love when the internet comes together. sometimes. This also showed the mentality of doxers. They are power trippers trying to right some wrong even though they are usually wrong. This guy was insane and someone later reported him. Dude has been awfully quiet since the police came a knocking.

So what does this have to do with me going dark? Well, after numerous doxings I just get tired of it. When I get too popular or too much attention (positive or negative) I bail. I just leave. I do not want the headaches anymore.

I’ll also bounce when I feel like I am no longer needed or wanted. I tend to annoy people. I end welcomes quick. I know. So, I’ll leave. Between not wanting to make someone feel worse and not wanting to get popular enough for a target again I’ll just bounce. Even here. My last post before my “Just not Today” one hit over 1k. I’ve been getting some high hitting posts now. I panicked. However, here I am. Now, I am trying.

Posting from phone

I hate holidays. Loathe them. One of the main reasons i took my current job is because they said i wouldn’t have to celebrate them in my interview. That matters a lot to me. Every job forces me to and tries to goad, guilt trip, bribe, and even once threaten me to celebrate them. Please stop.

I will not go into why i hate them. I have talked to many people. I have talked to professionals over it. There is no helping this. To get help you have to be able to see the light. There is no light, only chilling darkness. Trying to show me the light only reminds me that, for me, there will never be light. I feel cold. Next to a heater in my jacket. I’m cold. Not because it is cold but because of how cold the darkness is.

I don’t matter the rest of the year. Please let me not matter this season. These days especially. Y’all don’t want me around until you feel obligated to by a day. A day that will always bring pain and suffering.

Not to be. That is what i wish. Every holiday i just want to be alone. Imaging what it’s like to be dead. The nothing the void. To not feel. To not desire. To not wish. Then how happy everyone will be.

Just not today. Every day I’m ignored. Its fine. I serve no purpose. I know i don’t matter. On the day i want to not matter please let me. It’s cold where I’m at. Not physically cold and yet I’m physically freezing. This passes. Once the holidays are over. Then I can go back to not mattering without a question.

Please, let me sit in the cold. You grow numb until heat comes.

I know I’m the bad guy. I know where i belong.

A lot of people look at my RPG characters and find them weird. I can never make a normal character, they say. What brought this about? I was talking about table top games on Twitter and it reminded me of one of my favorites: Dylan and Maxwell.

What is a table top RPG? It is a game where you make characters and pretend to be them in a world the game master creates. They decide what you come across and you decide what you get to do.

We were playing a zombie game called Dead Reign. The GM, game master is the person in charge of the game, was asking us about our character backgrounds before he’d finalize our characters. My friend was an ex police officer turned detective. Another a doctor in the bad side of town spending his nights fixing up addicts and fighting them off on his way home. The other friend was just a drug dealer. Me? I was a veterinarian student.

Before I continue onto my character I need to explain some things. Dead Reign is a zombie apocalypse game. However, the GM told us we are starting on day 0 and we had no clue what zombies were. Like not even in pop culture. We actually asked that question. The class I chose gives you an animal companion and the skills to take care of animals. I had to choose a real life job where I would understand animals and have one. However, I also needed a reason to know how to shoot guns. This is where we get back to my character.

I didn’t know he was going to ask us our backgrounds. I didn’t know we needed one to prove why we knew how to use guns. I mean for fucks sake the game took place in South Carolina. People shoot for fun there. Dylan was a vet student. However, in class one day he fell asleep and shit his pants. From then on everyone at the school bullied him and the girl he loved was grossed out and made fun of him. He decided to go to the gun range to learn to shoot. Why? He was planning on shooting up his university. Maxwell was my dog.

When pressed on this I explained he focused mainly on rifles with secondary on pistols and never really learned how to properly use a shot gun. Just load and blast. When the GM looked at my character sheet he saw this displayed in my points for each weapon. The GM laughed, as did my friends, and asked if this was my background. I said yes. He said this is the first time he had ever had school shooter as someone’s background.

Why did I choose a school shooter? Simply because I needed something that made sense. For me I tend to make characters that make sense, aren’t god like, and have serious flaws. Dylan was easily manipulated and had a distrust for the law. He was also argumentative in situations he thought he would be safe in. So, why would a guy who spends most of his time studying and taking care of animals know about guns? School shooter. I could’ve done more but it fit with his easily manipulated personality and argumentative cowardliness nature.

I’ve done a lot of weird characters that had flaws. Like, I had a character who would forget everything he’d hear, not read, 5 minutes after he heard it. Then a hour later he’d remember it but the time frame would be wrong. For instance, he would think you told him it last year, 7 hours ago, what have you. If you said something like “Meet me here at night fall” he’d think you told him that a month ago and just never show because he assumed he missed it a month ago.

The deal is he played with a lot of “edgy” goth types and the “darker” types. He would constantly try to one up us on “dark” shit when we were just fucking around being us. Frequently he said we were the smartest group he played with. He also loved our attention to role playing.

What about the title of this post? Well, I’ll combine that story here too.

Dylan met up with the drug dealer and became friends. I forget how but it made sense. The detective I was standoffish against. Doctor I mocked because he couldn’t identify animal meds for people. Then we all had high IQs in the game, except the detective. Well, he had a IQ of 140. Ours were all 200+. Every single one of us mocked him and called him retarded or Radio. That’s besides the point. So, I didn’t trust Radio because he was a cop. I was a planning school shooter. I was afraid he’d try to stop me when I was shooting. Radio and I were never around each other often.

When we were driving through the woods on a bus a tire went flat. We stopped and tried to help the driver. At this point we had seen no zombies. We didn’t know what was going on. We were rushed into a bus and told to put our shit under the bus. Guns were allowed. So the drug dealer and I try to break into the underside of the bus to take our guns and sneak them back onto the bus. When we hear a rustling from the woods.

Out runs a zombie and starts to bite someone. Sorry, not a zombie. A bear. We didn’t know what they were. We just saw people get taken down and eaten in the woods. We called them bears. Luckily drug dealer and I had our guns so we were able to open fire and get others back onto the bus.

Detective:”What the fuck was that?”
Dealer:”Nigga that was bears!”
me:”That doesn’t look like any bears I’ve seen.”
Doc:”Maybe a meth head. We see them often.”
Dealer:”Nah nigga. We wuz in the woods. That shit be bears.”
Doc:”May..”
Dealer:”NIGGA METH HEADS DON’T EAT PEOPLE!”

That is when we dawned the term bears. They were not zombies but bears from that point. Every special zombie we met we came up with some bear name for. Like Papa bears, moma bears, polar bears, grizzly etc… Later a person who played Dead Reign before joined us and kept getting mad that we had our own names. Every time she would use the book terms we called he a retard. Mostly because her IQ was 90 but also because she was meta gaming. That is knowing things you are not supposed to know.

So, one point we got a bunch of spray paint. We spray painted on our bus “Fuck the bears”. However, we kept writing over it with random shit. “Bear the fucks” was ultimately what we landed on. That bus was a mess.

Lately I have picked up watching Mac Repair YouTuber Louis Rossman’s NY real estate adventures. He often brings up the outrageous prices for renting empty buildings in NYC. For me this is really interesting because I have always been confused by real estate prices. What do you mean? Well, let’s go over it!

Before leaving the US a lot of my friends were starting to buy houses. My friends are all mid to late 30’s. None of my friends in their late 20’s early 30’s can’t even dream of owning a house. How did this happen? However, a thing I noticed is many of these friends all have mortgages that are 25-35 years. Meaning they will be either 60-70 until the house they bought will get paid off. They will have to work until then unable to retire. HOW!?

All of these friends that bought houses have great jobs: cloud engineering, programmer at Microsoft, programmer at Lockheed, professional hacker for a company to test their software and fix it, accountants, and such jobs. As you notice all of these are amazing jobs. I have friends who are programmers who can’t even afford to buy a house, as a FYI. They will have to pay off their house, and student loans, for a long time.

How did this happen to people with great jobs? “Affordable loans”. A comedian I listen to once said “NEVER ASK FOR AN AFFORDABLE LOAN! THAT IS HOW THEY FUCK YOU!”. This is the truest thing ever. See loans weren’t always this long. My grandparents paid off their house before I was born. “Oh but that… ” shh…. They bought the house after my dad was born. My grandmother used to tell me about how she would stay in the tiny apartment and take care of my dad for the first few years of his life, same with my uncle. My dad had me in his mid 20s. So, let’s say they had paid off the house in 20 years.

5 years may not seem like a lot but there is a big reason for me to bring this up. My grandparents are both Mexican and grew up picking fruit as kids to help their family. My grandparents were not rich in the least bit. My grandfather, until he had to retire due to health issues, was a janitor. My grandmother worked random jobs until she landed a job as a secretary at MENSA. I don’t even think my grandparents graduated high school, to be honest.

Why the 5 years? Well, houses were priced correctly that anyone could afford them. My grandparents worked menial jobs and were able to pay off their house in 20 years. My friends with college degrees working as engineers and accountants have to take loans that are 25+ years to pay off their houses because the housing market is insane now.

This is why you need to stop saying you want things to be affordable and switch to “priced correctly”. As houses sky rocketed due to the late 90’s early 00’s housing boom they never actually sunk after the housing crash in the late 00’s. Something that should’ve happened. Some how they just went up. What should’ve happened is the prices of houses should’ve sunk hard. Instead banks are just giving you longer loans. A house that should be 15-20 years to pay off now takes 25-30. This way you are paying less per month but more over time. Everyone wins, except you.

Not only are houses taking longer to pay off they are climbing in prices to where friends working as engineers can’t even afford an amazing giant house like people could in the 90’s and 00’s. The costs of houses has drastically gone up and instead of fixing the prices they just extended loans making them take longer and longer to pay off. If this continues I am sure our grandkids will have 40 year loans for houses.

I’d like to point out. My grandparents could afford a house working unskilled jobs. You can’t even dream of paying for an apartment, or a family, working such work anymore. Go ask your grandparents, or great depending on how young you are, what they did after high school. How did they buy their house? What job did they have? I have found asking many senior citizens a lot of them just got jobs out of high school with 0 training and paid for a house with no issue. Even the ones working unskilled jobs were able to do so.

How does this relate to Louis Rossman? NYC is having an issue where 500 SQFT businesses are costing 8000 a month, or more, for rent. People can’t afford these places. There are places that have been vacant forever, according to him. Rent has gone up as costs of everything else has too and income has dwindled. People can’t afford this shit anymore. We are not like our grandparents. Able to buy up things for cheap and afford a life with that.

Take from this what you will but understand that simply “getting a better job” isn’t anywhere near the leg up people had before.

This is something that has bothered me for a while. Why don’t phones come with screen protectors? Actually, why doesn’t any touch screen device come with a screen protector?

I’ve asked this before and many people have given me responses that make no sense. Most of them just spout “costs costs costs!” but a high quality screen protector costs like $2 to make. A reason why you see them for sale at $5-8. That’s pure profit. Cheap ones cost like $.70. Besides if you are paying for premium phones those companies can spare the $2 of profit.

Another thing about this that makes no sense to me is how every company talks about how they want to reduce “e-waste” by removing essential things like a charger. Also just say waste. You want to reduce waste. “e-waste” is a BS term and it bugs me. Any who, putting a screen protector on the phone would actually help cut down on waste. How? Well, all the companies that sell screen protectors for every phone would need to reduce inventory drastically.

When you buy a screen protector you often get it in a cardboard/paper package, extra plastic covering, a plastic bag, two peel-able plastics, paper instructions, and sometimes hard plastic to level it. So, by providing a screen protector the companies are cutting down on all of this waste.

“Oh but it’ll just be in the box!” No it won’t. Just apply the screen protector at the factory when you are making the phone. No more extra crap with your cheaply made screen protector. Not only that you don’t have to apply it anymore, or ask that one friend who can actually do it.

The funny thing is I said “why does no phone” but my phone did. I know it did because the screen protector is applied correctly on it. Also because I was amazed at it. It saved me $5 and reduced waste. Then I remember my old Blu phone. It came with a screen protector too and two cases. One shock absorbing case and one flip case. Both cases were hella ugly but I used that fold one. Man did that one help my screen drastically and also reduce waste too. This Blu phone had third party cases but they were rare because everyone had two with the phone. So, it was just the pretty ones not a generic black like I have on my current phone. Screen protectors were impossible for find for it, however. Waste reduced.

I understand that if phones came with a case they wouldn’t really stop much waste because people aren’t like me. A lot of people buy cases to customize their phones. I just buy a shock absorbing one and call it a day. Usually they are black but that is because the black ones are cheaper. However, for people like me including this cheap plastic to just absorb some shock would reduce waste too. That’s less plastic cases being made which means less packaging to go with them. I don’t know the costs but for my current phone I paid $5 for its case. They can’t be a lot.

It sounds weird when you think about it, but why don’t they come with a screen protector? It’s simple and would reduce waste, sorry “e-waste”. Which the tech industry loves to say they are doing their best to reduce.

I don’t get how this is so hard for people! I don’t care if someone is left wing or right wing everyone wants to throw everything on school’s shoulders! It is so god damn annoying. “I only learned how to find the square root of x not how to balance a check book!” hur hur hur. Shut the fuck up. If you can’t tell this is going to be a super angry post.

For those that don’t get it. School is supposed to teach you academics. School should not teach you life skills. This is because school is an academic environment. You should learn life skills from your parents, family, or community out reach programs. “Well, I am not lucky to have both my parents!” Cool. Neither did I. You know what I did? I asked my uncle, aunt, grandma, occasionally my mom, and I even faked as being interested in Christianity to go to church outreach programs to learn skills. Just because you have half a deck doesn’t mean you can’t play.

My story? My dad went to prison when I was young and my mom was always working. When she wasn’t working she usually spent her time depressed watching TV and eating ice cream. Am I upset at her? Back then I was. As an adult I understand more of what she was going through and honestly have forgiven her.

So when I needed to learn to sew? I asked my grandmother. When I needed sex advice? I asked any family member to be honest but my uncle gave me a lot of advice. When I needed advice on growing up as a man? Uncle. To get my driving permit? Aunt helped me get it. Learning to repair and random stuff? Church outreach programs. I did not have the best of hands dealt to me, but I managed to learn stuff through other means because I didn’t have both of my parents.

Why shouldn’t the school teach this instead? Because it is fucking academics. You don’t go to your parents to learn algebra. You don’t go to your priest for that either. You go to them for life advice and skills. Many parents don’t want to teach this stuff and want the schools to do it. Kids since my age group have grown used to the school’s raising us that many people my age bitch about schools not teaching us to be adults. No shit. The school isn’t our parents.

A prime example is sex education. TEACH YOUR KIDS SEX EDUCATION! You have no idea who is teaching your kids sex education. Like South Park once famously said,”Your kids can be learning from someone who has never had sex, has a warped view on sex, or is a sick pervert.” All of which are very valid. For those that don’t know. In the US 1 out of 10 kids are molested by teachers. This is an actual study done by the US. If anything, having a pervert teach your child sex education is the easiest way to get away with it. They’re just “teaching”.

Don’t approve of school teaching a certain curriculum? Too bad. It is being taught. Do you want your kid to understand how to have safe sex? Then you have to teach them. STDs? Can’t rely on schools. Hell, my friend had a sex ed teacher who kept showing deformed dicks in class due to STDs that my friend was scared of sex for years. My sex ed teacher just said “wait ’till marriage”. What fucking knowledge is that? I was then tested over it.

School is also an awful way to learn life skills. Why? Because when you get too many people together it decreases the chances of questions being asked. Which is why ever since school’s have taken over sex education in the US sex knowledge is on a decline. If it is a one on one you feel safe asking questions. As more people show up you are afraid of sounding dumb. Which ends up with a class never asking questions even though no one knows. In my calculus class this was such a problem that I would ask questions I knew the answer to just so people would feel comfortable asking questions.

“Well I don’t have family.” Church? Community out reach programs? I know most community out reach programs are gone but it is important we petition to bring these back with funding. Community out reach programs help us a lot. Sure the person could be a pervert like a teacher but most community out reach programs are people in your immediate community. Where as a lot of teachers drive from all over to work. Church is the exact same but even more smaller of an community.

Why does everyone want school to teach anything anyways? Do you really want to get tested on how to balance a check book? Which is just basic addition and subtraction; for you people who keep bitching about math being worthless. School does not actually foster a good learning environment because we constantly have to succeed. There is no trial and error when it comes to tests and homework. You fail or pass based on your immediate knowledge. Save My Dears came with a lot of failures. Hell, I uploaded it without death scenes working correctly. Had that been graded by school I could’ve failed. Instead I was able to learn from messing up and then people reporting the death scenes didn’t work. Fixed it and learned from my mistake. Willingly asking to cripple our life learning skills like this is idiotic.

Then comes the funny part. People who say teachers make too much, when they don’t (and no they don’t get summer vacation pay unless they choose to take money from their regular paycheck to be held for summer pay), so they keep defunding teachers. Teachers are already overworked with many bringing work back home nightly and having to work a second job just to live. People want to keep throwing their parental jobs onto parents and cutting their pay. Schools are already over crowded and under funded. The last thing you need is someone stressed and tired teaching your kids life skills in that state. Many teachers can’t even teach academic skills in this state.

I don’t know how to end this! So, fuck it! Teach your kids life skills. If you can’t. Ask their friend’s parents you trust or their other family members. Ask your church leader or find a community out reach program. Fuck.

Recently I decided to get into speed running. I will start speed running Twisted Metal Small Brawl next week, actually. I am setting everything up as we go. What is speed running? It is where you compete to see who can complete a game the fastest within certain rule sets. However, getting set up for speed running has been annoying. With numerous tools and programs I’ve never used before. These tutorials were so awful I just took the time to learn how to use it all on my own because I was not about to waste a hour of my life of “uhms” and wasted explanations.Which is how this subject came to my mind.

Make better tutorials. Christ how is that hard? I want to go over types of tutorials too because it is very annoying how alike all of them are because people can’t make decent ones. Before I go over them I want to go over what I think the best tutorials have:

• Split into sections
• Keeps uhms and stutters to a minimum.
• Has a script
• Audio
• Properly mixed audio
• Cut the useless content
• Know what you are talking about

Split into sections: I know why people don’t do this, but screw you. Do it. It is very annoying to go through a 40 minute video for 2 minutes of content I need because people don’t even bother to do time codes. This is because people are trying to get YouTube watch time for higher ad rev. However, these videos I tend to ignore.

I once watched a tutorial over map making issues I was having when I made Killing Floor maps. I kept getting this one bug and people kept linking to this one video for the fix on it. Everyone linked to this video. The video was a hour long and the part I needed was under 5 minutes. The video was poorly edited with no time stamps or anything. So, after spending some time trying to scrub through I just gave up and watched it. 40 minutes into it what I needed finally showed up. Split your content up or at least provide time tables.

Keep “uhs” and “ums” to a minimum: Nothing is more annoying then when you watch a tutorial video, or any video, and it is full of uhs and ums. Unless it is supposed to be a live recording. It is clear these people had no plans to make a tutorial. They just opened up their screen recorder program and just went to town. I’m sure if you go through and edit out the uhs,ums, and pauses you could cut some of these videos from 25 minutes to 18.

I recently was linked a video for LiveSplit, from their official website, and it was the worst thing ever. The video was full of uhs and ums just wasting time. The fact this was the programs officially recommended tutorial is pretty sad. Later I will go over this video more.

Has a script: As with the above mentioned uhs and ums it often feels like people just create a tutorial with no script or outline. They just open the program and go. So, it is disorganized and disjointed. You can go from talking about how to set up keyboard short cuts to editing the theme then to how the short cuts actually work.

You need to keep things progressively linear. If I am teaching someone about programming. I don’t explain an int, for loop, switch statement, and then increamentation. No, you’d explain variables at once, basic math, increamentation, if statements, do while, for loops, and then switch statements. There is an order you should teach things to keep it simple. Like if you are learning the ABCs you don’t go A,B,Y,R,F,H,E,C,Z,X,L, and D in order of learning the ABCs. You learn them in order.

Audio: Speak in your videos. I know this isn’t common these days but back in the day people just used to do either text to speech or text on screen tutorials. Depending on the tutorials you are looking up these can still be common. Not only that if you are looking up something sometimes people will link to a video that is over 10 years old and has no voice. Just make a new god damn video and stop linking to tutorials that old.

Properly mixed audio: Look, audio is important. So is making sure it doesn’t sound like you have a upper respiratory infection when you are talking. It is also important to learn how to mask your microphone noise and to not add music that makes you hard to hear. That last one I never understood. I am here to learn from you and I can’t hear you.

Cute the useless content: When looking up videos for LiveSplit many of them included how to download Livesplit, WinRar, how to extract files, how to move files to a new directory, how to create files, etc… This is a lot of extra steps I see often in tutorial videos.

I was looking up how to connect a Switch to a USB ethernet cable adapter because mine wasn’t working. Turns out mine was an unsupported chipset I had to find out through a lot of Googling. I wasn’t sure if I needed to do something special or what; so I tried a tutorial to at least see. The guy in the tutorial spends 5 minutes explaining how to plug in a USB cable, how to remove your Switch from the dock, how to plug your Switch into the dock, and how to plug in an ethernet cable. The tutorial was 6 minutes long.

Know what you are talking about: This is the biggest offense there is. It is very annoying to watch a tutorial video and they just say “Click this box for this option. I have no idea what it does but click it.” Explain the fucking option if you are going to recommend it or recommend against it. For the LiveSplit one it had the opposite effect and the option it told you not to check is the MOST IMPORTANT THING for speed running on PC.

I am fine if you make a tutorial video and you don’t know everything. However, at least be honest and don’t cover that part. I was watching a tutorial on digital audio workstations, or DAWs, the other day. The guy says “These options I have no idea what they are for. I do not touch them so I will not try to explain them or tell you to mimic my settings.” That I can respect. If the guy told us to load specific settings and drivers without explaining anything then it would’ve made me upset.

It’s like when people get random PC performance tips from random people and install all this shit that ruins their computer without understanding what it is doing. There was one person I knew who installed custom network drivers that were designed for a single network line system so they could play games better. What happened was only one connection could be active at a time. She’d connect to CS:GO and steam would die. She’d load steam and YouTube would die in the background. Etc. It made whatever she was using faster but it gave her internet tunnel vision, so to speak. She came to me for help and when I explained this she refused to listen. The guy who told her to install that driver basically then convinced her to make a bunch of fake networks to connect to and run things through. Which slowed her PC to a crawl performance wise and then her network too for it being split so much.

So now let’s go over types of tutorials:

• Videos by people who can’t teach
• Videos by people who have no clue
• Good videos by experts
• Bade videos by experts
• Long videos that say nothing

Videos by people who can’t teach: This is the LiveSplit video I will have a section on in a bit. The guy who made this video can’t teach. Every rule one has for being a teacher this guy broke. However, he at least knew what he was talking about for the most part. I feel like these people would make great tutorials if they didn’t just load up their screen recording tools and go. Spend time writing it and planning it.

Videos by people who have no clue: You run into these in the tech field a lot. Someone will just read a wiki how and make a video on it explaining nothing but step by step instructions they got somewhere else. They often get a lot of things wrong and cause a lot of harm. I ran into these a lot when trying to learn how the AndroidOS worked.

Good videos by experts: These are the best! These follow all the above guide lines I have, except for split/time stamps most of the time. These people take very confusing instructions and make them easy to understand. These people can make a video for beginners that experts can use at the same time to get that small bit of missing info. There was a great PS2 HDD mod video that turned this confusing mess of forum posts into a easy to follow video.

Bad videos by experts: These are still good, oddly enough. The only reason these are bad is because they gloss over a lot of stuff they have forgotten people might not know. While you can still get some great lesson from these videos they are not good for beginners. The people who need these tutorials the most.

Long videos that say nothing: That stupid Switch ethernet video. 6 minutes may not be long but it wasted 5 minutes on stuff it didn’t need to show. However, I have seen tutorials for modding consoles and software that are over 30 minutes long but honestly by the end of the video I felt like I learned nothing.

The live split video: This video is the main reason for this post so I feel it is important to single it out. This video is awful and the fact it is on the main website for their tutorial is bad. This video clearly had no script or outline, the guy did no editing, full of pauses, had useless content sections that were of sections being repeated, was over 20 minutes with no time stamps, and didn’t know what he was talking about randomly.

I feel this video could be drastically improved. I watched the video for two bits, how to set up LiveSplit and use it into OBS to make sure a internet connection wasn’t needed because people kept saying I had to connect to an online database. The internet part wasn’t included and setting up was pretty awful. Most of the video was how to make it look pretty. Where he even stopped midway through going over setting it up on how to make it look pretty then went back to going over how to set it up. Then went over the same thing he just did later in another how to make it look pretty section.

He also told people to not check global hot keys because it was useless despite not knowing what it is. Global Hotkeys just means you don’t have to have LiveSplit active to use it’s hotkeys. Say you are speed running a PC game and you need to stop your timer or mark a section. Without global hot keys you will need to minimize and have LiveSplit be your active program to stop the timer. This is a very important thing and he told you to not turn it on. It took me 20 seconds of testing to figure this out. He said he’s never used and had no idea so to not turn it on.

How to make the video better? I think splitting the video into a function video and then a make over video would’ve been better. This way if you are like me and want to focus on getting it running first before making it look pretty you can.

Then you would write a outline and basic script to keep you in check and cut down on wasted time/sections for each video. Fun fact, preparing with a basic outline and studying it helps cut down on stutters, uhs, ums, and pauses. Those happen because you are stuck thinking and are uncertain of where to go. If you keep an outline handy you can always reference it.

It was very clear he was just recording with no idea of what to talk about or discuss. In fact, when he was going over how to create splits and all that jazz he stopped confused and then after a bit decided on Wind Waker to be the example. He should’ve had from the start “When I get to this section on creating a game and custom splits the game should be titled xxxx and there should be y splits, each of which titled a,b,c,d….. Even him wasting that small bit of time trying to come up with a game and then splits is still wasted time. Even if it only amounts to say a minute that is still 1 minute out of 20 minutes. That’s 5% of the video wasted. Add in the pauses and uhs you can probably cut down 2 minutes. Which makes it 20% saved with a script. Possibly more with the wasted extra content.

I also think learning how to actually use all the sections of the program before telling people what not to use and to use is important. This is also something an outline is good for. When I am teaching something and there is something I don’t know I include in my outline to study it then create an outline of that sections. It is more work but you will be a much better teacher for it.

His audio was perfectly fine and I think it was well mixed.

This has always been a thing that bothers me. A lot of people get away with this truly awful tutorials simply because no one knows any better. I am tempted to start making some to cut down on unneeded content. Not sure. Yes, I am aware this is long with a lot of repeated things said but it was still a oddly organized rant.