The Life of Zam

Update on Life

2011-01-25T21:21:00.000-08:00

Goodmorning everyone (or whatever time it happens to be when your reading this). Thanks for once again coming to read my blog of random thoughts and stuff. Things have been insane recently and now that finals are over (as of today) I decided to give a quick update on whats been going on with me. I had realized that I had made a new years resolution to blog more, and this is only my second blog post. Thus, here I am writing.

So as I mentioned, finals were this week. I am happy that they are over. Finals is always a stressful period for students of all ages. I have been having a little bit of a hard time with stuff recently and the stress of finals has pushed me far. I am fine but it has been a little hard to get through these last couple weeks. Lots of things running through my mind. I don't know why but I'm really good at hiding emotions. If you asked any of my friends who see me on a regular bases how I have been these last couple weeks, they would probably respond "Hes doing great!" and thats how I want it. There is no reason (that I see) for people to be fretting about my problems and thoughts.

In other news, I have made a new friend. Actually a couple, but I'm going to talk about one in specific. Remember that I don't use real names so HA! I don't know if she would care if I use her name, but I am keeping things consistent. Anyway she means a lot to me and we are supe

r good friends after only a week of talking. We literally had over 500 text messages between the two of us in, something like three days. So yeah, thats awesome. She has become a close friend fast. I really hope this friendship becomes something special. What do I mean by "something special"? You come to your own conclusions.

Media wise, I have been filming some different things lately. Including a live TV show. I want to talk about how bad it went, but there was a live band there. I honestly doubt they read my blog, but I still want to play it safe and not talk about how bad their vocals were. Or how annoying and demanding they were about problems that we had not physical way of doing. Or how special they were because they go to some "School of Rock". Literally, they go to a school of rock. Instrumentally they were great. But they need some work on vocals. Anyway I don't want to talk bad about them so lets move on ;)

I have found a band not to long ago that is absolutely amazing. They

are called the Diablo Swing Orchestra and they are fascinating. If I had to label them with a genre, it would have to be "Swing/blues/rock/deathmetal with a touch of classic western". Yeah, they are cool. I don't know if I like them more for the uniqueness, or because they are actually making cool music. I think both.

Game wise, I have been playing a lot of Plants Vs. Zombies. I picked it up for Xbox Live awhile back (like a month ago) and have recently really gotten into it. I am really enjoying it. I played it on the PC and now that I am playing it on the Xbox, its so much better. Controls are better (in my opinion) and its easier in a way. I have only died once and that was due to experimental stupidity.

I have also been playing minecraft when I can and I found an awesome flash game. Its a zombie game that has the perfect amount of strategy without making it super tedious. Its called Rebuild and you can find it here.

I have just started using Blender. No not the food thing. Blender is an open source animation software. It is completely free so anyone could download it. I have to say, this is the most complex piece of software I have attempted to learn in quite some time. I am enjoying it :) My mind can wrap around a 3D space so easily. Thats one reason why I enjoy video games so much and am good at them. I memories layouts quickly and can navigate them

without thinking to hard about it. Maybe its due to the time I'm growing up in, but 3D in a digital space just makes sense to me. I can move through a 3D space and use that to my advantage. Blender is hard, but once you grab some basics, its not the worst. Being open source, its not the most user friendly. When you first open it up, there are so many buttons, its super scary. Now though, its a great friend. You can find more about it here and be sure to check out the page of stuff that Blender has been used for. Some of those things are amazing.

Alright well I am super tired and close to passing out at this point. Also, as I finished typing that last sentence, I got a notification on my computer that my new video editing software has finished downloading. Maybe I will stay up a little later to get starting on some video editing. I also have a plan for my next blog topic so be sure to stay tuned. Its going to be good! Thanks for reading!

-Zam

First post of 2011

2011-01-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2011 my friends! Wow, hard to believe it is 2011 already. One more year until the end of the world... supposedly. Let me just tell you now, I have some big plans for 2011. I am still keeping a tight lid on most stuff right now, but soon. I promise you my good people, soon you shall have news of my recent projects. One of my new year resolutions is to post more. I know I do not have a strong reader base but I still want to keep people happy and give them something to read when they come here. I know I talked about this last time, but I do plan on posting more and making things overall better. Hopefully my readership will grow as my projects are released and people start coming across my name. This is just a quick update that I am here and 2011 will be amazing. I hope to see more people involved with this blog... maybe... we shall see. Anyway Happy New Year and lets make this year a good one!

-Zam

Happy Holidays

2010-12-31T19:29:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays to all of you from the cast of The life of Zam... or more... Happy Holidays to all of you from me! I hope you all have enjoyed whatever Winter Holiday you celebrate and (if it is a present type holiday) you got everything you wanted. I do want to quickly apologies for not posting in awhile. I have been busy with many things and unable to share my thoughts. However, I would like to let people know I am working on something big! I don't want to give anything away just yet, but this is going to be cool. Also I would sadly like to announce that my podcast has ended. For numerous reasons we have decided to end it. That being said, "Skeletons and Tea" will still be held as a name relating to my new project I am working on. Anyway I hope you all have enjoyed this past year we have had together and I hope next year is better than ever. I also make a New Years Resolution to post more and give you guys more content! I know I don't have a huge following, but I do want to give you guys stuff to read when you come here.

Thank you for the wonderful year, lets make this new one even better!

-Zam

ThanksGiving

2010-11-25T08:28:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone I decided to take a couple minutes out of this crazy week to sit down and write this little thing on Thanksgiving. This great holiday brings the family together and reminds us just how much we care about one another. We are reminded to be thankful for things that normally we take for granted. Its a day of great food, telling stories, and its the day before people decided to go crazy because they remember that Christmas is just around the corner. What I am referring to is Black Friday.

Now before you yell at me for being racist, Black Friday has nothing to do about race. Unless you count the races for the best prices of the year which many people literally kill over. Seriously. Its called Black Friday because its the day where stores can come out of the Black and continue being a store. Like say this blog was my income. No one (or not enough people) reads my blog all year long. I'm just about to shut down the blog because there is no point wasting time/energy/money on it. But then from no where the day after Thanksgiving EVERYONE reads it. Suddenly I have my reading quota and I am safe for the rest of the year and don't have to shut down my blog! Thanks in a basic sense what Black Friday is. For some reason people get so caught up in the Thanks part, they forget about the Giving. Until the next day when they decide to go nuts and trample people to GET that thing before someone else does so they can GIVE it to someone else. People are crazy.

Well thats my big Thanksgiving post for everyone. I know its not much, but I hope you learned a little about Black Friday, considering I spent more time talking about that than actual Thanksgiving. But I digress. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and be sure to not only be thankful for people in your life, but remember to give them something too. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading my blog. Special thanks to those of you who have stuck with me from the beginning. I know things have changed a lot, but I hope its just as good or better as before. Thank you and Happy Holidays!

-Zam

Twitter

2010-11-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

So guess what? I'm back on Twitter. I don't know if I am more scared for what I will become/what it will do to me, or happy for the entertainment and such that comes with Twitter. For those of you who don't know (you and 3 other people apparently) Twitter is a website in which you write "Tweets" which are short (140 characters) updates into your life. Some people use it to tell everyone in the world what they are doing, every, second, of, their, life. There are people who just re-tweet funny tweets that famous people make. There are people who are actually funny. There are people who use it for news, and so on.

I feel some of the spin-offs or make-fun-of sites are often better than the actual Twitter. One of my personal favorites is Tweeting Too Hard which is a site that makes fun of people who take life to serious and post about it on Twitter. Sometimes its so pathetic what people tweet. No offence to anyone but seriously. The number 2 tweet on that site when I was writing this was as follows "Ugh. Friend on Facebook tagged me in a note saying 'hey guys, I've been away 8 months, please send me parcels!'. So. Attention. Seeking." Alright you can't not look at that and feel sorry for this person. Or laugh at it. Yeah I'm going to go with laugh at it.

The language of Twitter confuses me to no end. I feel like I am just starting to grasp what things mean. The first thing you need to know about Twitter language is the whole @ thing. So just like you have your profile, you also have an @ address which is how people mention you or find you on Twitter. For example, say I want to write a tweet that has something to do with my friend *(NAME WITHED FOR OBVIOUS REASONS)* I would not type his name into my tweet. I would write @ and whatever his @ address is (I think it has something to do with BS(Bull Sh*t)) and type my tweet. The next thing is the # symbol. Apparently there are "trends" that people follow on Twitter and use those to continue though trends and show people that they are cool for following the trends. For example, I could write something thats obviously stupid like "Lost my keys but found them on the hook" after that I would write something like #dontjudgeme which is a trend and basically it labels me as a trend follower and thus more people will continue that trend. I have no idea what RT means (*Editors note, I found out it means Re-Tweet).

Twitter has many functions and uses. It has let us mortals take a peak into the lives of great people. Twitter can be used for good, or it can be used for evil. Maybe I'm just really tired from having that Red Bull and don't know what I'm typing about. Nonetheless, if you feel the desire to join Twitter, by all means, enjoy. If you find the need to follow me for some obscure or weird reason (stalker?) go ahead I guess. I can be found at @ZamShadow. If that does not work, someone let me know and I will fix it, or something. Anyway yeah. Man Red Bull never does this to me. Maybe I should tweet about this...

-Zam

P.S. I'm actually going to tweet about this...

Minecraft

2010-11-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

So many of you might have heard of a game called minecraft. It has been sweeping the internet nation. I played it when it first came out last year when no one knew about it, then recently it has almost become the most popular game on the internet. I recently gotten back into it and I enjoy playing on my own, and with some friends. The game is divided into two different games in a way. Minecraft classic and Minecraft Alpha.

Minecraft classic is the game that came out last year, the one I played originally. It is free and anyone can play it right now. Basically you appear on a island with the ability to click and remove any block you see and place any block you see (including bookcases and dynamite). There is no danger, no way to die, just freedom to do whatever you want. There is no day or night cycles just daytime all the time.

In Alpha its much more restricted, but much funner in a way. For one, you have to actually "mine" and "craft" object to acquire them. If you want to place some dirt, you need to go dig up dirt and then place it. If you want to mine stone, you need to cut down a tree to get wood,

craft it into planks and a workbench and then craft a pickaxe. So in a way its more realistic. Also there are whats called "mobs". There are neutral mobs like chickens, cows, sheep and pigs that wont attack you but have resources that help you. There are also evil mobs like zombies, spiders, skeletons and creepers. They attack you but only come out at night. The world in which you live is practically infinite. The more you explore, the more there is to see. The absolute max size of a map is 8 times the surface of the earth. Thats massive. You will never run out of the materials you need, trust me.

The multiplayer modes are limited right now but soon will be fully supported. It is lots of fun to play with a friend. You can mine together, craft together, fight zombies together and survive together. Once on a friends server, I built an entire island of fire. It was lots of fun. There was so much you could do when you have another person. You can mine a precious ore in an infested dungeon while they keep the mobs at bay. You can build a house in half the time as it would take normally. One person could even build while another collects materials for the building. There is even supposed to be a survival mode at some point where you just try to survive against hordes of mobs with your friends for as long as you can.

You have probably noticed from the pictures that the game is very blocky. Thats a major appeal to the game. It shows that you can have fun without having the most realistic graphics there are. I love the colorful blocky style. It keeps things fun but still makes it creepy when night falls. Also many people are making mods that change the look of the game. Some are really cool! I mean look at the picture above!

Many people out there are putting up videos of creations and experiences that have been made in minecraft. One of my favorites is the Fan-Made Trailer. Another is a poor sap who lights his house on fire. Yet another is a "Interstate" that takes you through some of the beauty of the game.

Overall the game is amazing. Its simple but has a underlay of complexity. It has a steep but low learning curve that once you hit, you got it. It is just such a fun game. There is beauty in it and I (like many others) love the game. I would highly recommend trying it out. And don't just play classic, you need to try alpha as well. Its a very different experience.

-Zam

P.S. Episode two of the Walking Dead was amazing!!! Thats all.

The Walking Dead

2010-11-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

This Halloween I did something I had never done before. Not go trick or treating. However I did watch the world premier of The Walking Dead on AMC. Oh my that was amazing. Let me warn you right now, this is a violent seres. The amount of blood and gore is disgusting. However there are many other reasons for watching this show.

The story is simple yet effective. The writing staff does such a good job of keeping things real, dramatic and scary without it becoming cheesy. From the blocking to the actual duologue, its hard to not believe whats happening on screen. The cast of characters really helps the mood and they each fill their role perfectly. I'm even enjoying the slight mid-western accent the main character (Rick) has. I thought the cast and writing aspects of the seres are amazing.

The Zombies in the show are scary realistic. If zombies were real, I'm sure thats what they would look like. From the gory and bloody realistic flesh wounds to the look in their eyes and animistic actions, its hard to believe they used to be human. The make up team working on

this show does such a fantastic job. In fact there is a contest going on where you can win a chance to have a "stagger on role" where you get to be a zombie in the show. I think that would be tons of fun. Though I.won a contest when I was at PAX earlier this year where I'm going to be a zombie in their video game. I'm waiting for that e-mail guys! But I digress. The zombies in this show are so amazingly real and I cant wait for the rest of the zombies.

As you have probably noticed from my writing so far, the show is incredibly realistic. From the sad family troubles to the bloody and gory realism about life, its hard to not look at this show and not believe its real. Now obviously zombies are not real, but the way they are portrayed in this show makes it really realistic. If there was a zombie outbreak, I feel this is one of the most realistic possibilities for that doomsday scenario. From the easiness of humans to revert to primal beings (willing to loot and ignore laws), to the difference of fighting to survive/giving up easily, to the zombies feasting on the flesh of the living, The Walking Dead gives a realistic image as to the possibility of Zombies.

Overall The Walking Dead is one of the best TV shows I have watched in a long time and if you can hold your lunch, this is definitely a show for you. If you enjoy zombies, this is the show for you. If you just like amazing story and/or blood and gore this is the show for you. I will continue to watch this show because it is just so amazing. I can see some flaws, but I wont talk about those ha! I hope this helped form your decision about this show. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!

-Zam

New layout and new information

2010-10-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hey guess what! The blog has a new format. You probably realize this when you came to this page. I hope you enjoy it but this is just part of my revamping of the blog. I'm updating from the old classic template I had to this new one. I really enjoy the look of it and hope to keep new content on the site more often now. I hope you all enjoy the new layout!

Also I would like to let everyone know that I will be removing the old posts because of the new changes on the blog. I will probably just hide them because I am taking the blog in such a new and different way that I don't really want those old posts anymore. Thank you people who have been there from the beginning, I hope that the new format and content does not make you like the site any less. I hope you continue to stay as a reader and enjoy what I enjoy.

Also if you look on the right side of the page, I created a new page which is a small personal Bio of myself. I hope it teaches you and any new readers everything they need to know about me.

-Zam

AVATAR 2 CONFIRMED!!!

2010-10-28T09:50:00.001-07:00

I don't know if I am happy about this or not, but Avatar 2 has been confirmed. It will be out in just 4 short years (2014) in December. You can read the full story here. I hope it is as good or better than the first. It would be terrible if this followed so many squeals and was worse than the first. Anyway yeah. Prepare for the new highest grossing film of all time in 2014!
-Zam

Music Videos

2010-10-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago my good friend asked my if I would be willing to be the sole director/film-er/editor/distributor/etc. of his bands music videos. To say the least, I was up for the challenge. I had never filmed a music video before and I felt I was able to do it. Now having said this, I have never heard his band before. This makes it very difficult to come up with ideas for a music video having never heard the music before. It can change the mood of the video (whether upbeat and fun, or serious/sad etc.) and so I decided to start watching a bunch of music videos to get inspiration for this project I am to undertake.

If you want a fun or upbeat music video, there is no further to look than OK Go's MV (music video) talent. From the Rube Goldberg machine to the green
screen
color fusion to the wallpaper men (and women) dancing and performing in different ways to the classic and popular "Treadmill Video", OK Go is one of the best and most inspiring experiences out there. Now obviously I don't have the time or resources to make a camo marching band or a time lapse at the park. However they have given me many ideas which I could implement into a MV that would have an upbeat and/or fun mood.

Another set of videos I have been watching have been the Lonely Island videos. I don't think I could ever use this kind of material in such a small budget music video, but you never know when something might help you out. So I have been watching such classics as (and please note these are the clean versions as I have no knowledge as to the age range of my readers) I'm on a boat and Boombox or even Like a Boss (Crazy by all standards remember). Now I don't think there would be times when I could use this kind of stuff in the MV that I will be making, but then again its good to be well rounded just in case. I have noticed some techniques that could be applied in the after effects to add a little here and there. Maybe having watched those could help me out after all.

Another band that I listened/watched because of there MV talent is a local band called Menomena.
From there Child Food Fight which brings a smile to your face, filming of this Wet and Rusting recording and finally the animated life of a worker bee (not your typical one by any means) in Evil Bee. I feel I learned a lot from those videos. I don't know how much I will be able to use in terms of the videos I'm shooting, but you never know.

Having watched so many different types of MV (more than just those let me tell you) I hope that I know have the knowledge I need to film my friends MV. However, like I said at the beginning, I don't know what to do yet because I don't know what the songs sound like. You can't make a MV without the music. So once I listen to them and film them, I will be sure to post them up here so you people can bask in my glory... or something like that. So, yeah...

-Zam

Question of the Day

2010-10-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

Ok so I was sitting in class today and I thought of something. I didn't know exactly what to think about this question and thus I am a little hesitant about putting this up on the internet. I don't want people to think I'm crazy or anything, I'm just asking questions.

Ok so the question is this. If we are what we eat, and if everything we eat is dead, are we dead? Maybe not literally in terms of the commons sense of life and death, but everything we (or any consumer for that matter) eat is dead. The plants that herbivores die as they are chewed. The meat that we and other omnivores (carnivores too) eat is dead. So everything that we eat truly is dead. Even if you somehow get something down that was living, it dies when you digest it and thus everything we eat really is dead.

Many people say "we are what we eat," and I would agree with that. If you eat garbage, you feel like garbage and can start looking like garbage. If you eat well, you start feeling better and overall your body becomes better (I have experienced that personally) so if we only eat dead things, are we dead?

I don't know the answer to this question. I don't know if there IS an answer to this question. But this question entered my mind and I started thinking about it more and more. I thought it might be interesting to share it with you. If you have anything to add to this or you think you have an answer, feel free to comment and let me know what you think. Thanks for visiting my thoughts and minds!

-Zam

The Hobbit

2010-10-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Ok all you Lord of the Rings fans out there get ready. The Hobbit if finally going to be filmed in a two part movie in 3D. They are supposed to start filming in February. I really hope that 3D movies don't kill the movie industry.

The news story

"Filming on The Hobbit is set to begin in February after it was finally given the go-ahead by film studio bosses."

-Zam

Revamping of the Blog

2010-10-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

Now I know what you are going to say. "Zam you have started and stopped this blog so many times." But once again I am saying "I'm Back!". Because I know how school is running smoother now I can plan my posts a little more effectively. That being said, this is going to be a more stereotypical blog in the sense of it being used more to show off cool stuff that I have found, with less actual writing and such. Some good examples can be found here. That person who used that blog (Chris Hardwick) posts cool things that he has done, found, realized, experienced, etc. and the blog is just a place for him to show it off. That being said, that is how I am going to be using this blog for that purpose. So check back often to find cool stuff and maybe the next big internet thing!
-Zam

blogging from my phone

2010-09-22T21:13:00.001-07:00

hey I can blog from my phone now! hopefully this will help me update more regularaly... also like I said before, this is going to become more of an actual blog instead of just my (well used to be) weekly updates... thanks for reading and stay tuned!
-zam

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