Geek Pride Day – What are my Geek Credentials?

A Postsecret.com submission

Apparently it’s geek pride day and this geek test has been going around across multiple blogs for us to test how nerdy we really are. I took it myself well-knowing that I was not going to score high.

48 is pretty representative of my status as right in the middle – depending on the company, either too geeky or not geeky enough.

However, I found the test to be very lacking, so… all that makes a geek… I mean nerd (I’ve heard that geeks are like nerds, just without the social ineptitude) are sci-fi, math, physics, chemistry, technology and a little gaming.

A second test, version 2.0 in fact, is also available, but it was still hugely simplistic and didn’t include all the ways one can be a nerd/geek. What about memes? How can one not include internet memes? What about anime? Not that I am into anime, but it’s one of the things that come to my mind when I think about the people I study with. Trust me, they are actually quite representative of geeks and nerds out there… mostly geeks ’cause they are not that socially awkward. We all study computer games in one way or another, that’s pretty geeky!

A Postsecret.com submission

At the end all I could think of was that they forgot a few crucial questions: Are you male? Are you white? Are you cisgendered? Are you heterosexual? It’s my impression that especially the last one is important.

Very Lemonade basically said that unless geek culture becomes less excluding, there’s nothing to be proud of:

“Stamp out harassment of women, increase visibility of PoC, kick the fucking slurs from your language, stop making rape jokes, build video games that are accessible and stop shitting all over people that don’t fit your stupid geek identity. Embrace and build a geek culture that includes everyone in a healthy, positive way.“

But if I am a geek, what kind of geek am I? What are my geek credentials?

Pros:

• I study computer games, that has to give some good points!

• I have recently made my own character in 3ds Max.

• I work at a university library.

• I like books and computers.

• I spend a lot of time on the internet doing random things. “A lot” is an understatement.

• I like cats a lot, lolcats!

• If people had to describe me, I suspect the word hipster might come up (does hipster even overlap with geekiness, I’m not sure?).

• I own a lot of LEGO. Working for LEGO would be a dream come true!

• I’ve been playing computer games since a very young age.

• I sometimes get the urge to actually say “lol” IRL, sometimes it happens…

Cons:

• When I was a kid, I thought that Wolfenstein 3D Demo was the name of the actual game, and that the reason I couldn’t progress that far was because the floppy-discs were damaged. I’ve always wanted to go back and actually complete the game.

• I don’t like anime much, it creeps me out.

• I don’t play first-person shooters – too stressful.

• I’ve never been into Star Wars nor Star Trek nor any other Sci-fi.

• I’ve never tried LARP’ing, but have tried a little tabletop role play.

• I don’t wear glasses.

• I’m not strong in neither math, physics nor chemistry.

• I don’t own that many gadgets. F.ex. I don’t have a fancy multifunctional phone, and it’s not retro either, it’s just really lame and cheap.

… Nah, I’m still just a general 50/50 geek.

Making a 3D Game Character Myself

This is what I’ve been doing in the past month of inactivity here on the blog:

If this guy seems familiar to you, it’s because I tried to recreate Carl Fredricksen from “Up”.

I know this is not stunning work, it’s my first time working with 3ds Max, so I am an amateur. I decided to take a course this semester called “3D Game Art”, it’s a beginner’s course so I figured I should be able to pass it even while being a total noob.

At first I hated it so much. Some classes I would sit with crashing programs and a computer that didn’t want to cooperate. If that wasn’t the problem, then I was – clueless and trying to figure out the modeling program 3ds Max.

To pass the course, we had to make a low poly 3D character. Low poly means in layman’s terms “simple”, all the characters we control in WoW are fx. low poly. We had to texture it and rig it. Rigging it means giving the character a skeleton which enables you to pose and even animate it. We didn’t have to use animation and I haven’t even looked into it yet, so I wouldn’t know how complicated it would be, but I am tempted to give it a go, just for fun.

I hated working on my character at first, but the further in my progress I was, the more I started to enjoy it. I’ve been used to doing writing heavy assignments in the past and now I was doing a production course, it was actually liberating!

At the end, I felt as if I had unlocked a secret code. I had made my own 3D character, and now I knew a little more about what’s behind our mobile virtual world repositories.

I can’t code, but I’ve been forced to learn some as part of my education. In one way it’s fascinating and as if you get a glimpse behind the curtain of the graphics and UI’s. At the same time, it was as if the magic of computer games was also endangered by me learning more and more about the inner workings of them.

The world suddenly seemed more artificial. In the past I used to be fascinated with the edges of Azeroth. They appeared to me as critical borderlines that could reveal something about the true nature of the virtual world, like trying to figure out what a house looks like by only investigating it from the inside. But now falling through into the nether is no longer a mysterious event, that used to leave me puzzled and curious, it’s just a glitch.

Making a 3D game character from the bottom reveals these “secrets” the same way. It becomes a reversed deconstruction. Carl is human enough that he has a skeleton, that he could be told to walk, but when removing his “skin”, his robotic truth is revealed.

Carl is the intellectual property of Pixar, so I don’t think I am allowed to port him into Second Life and buy him an animation and bring him to life, which would have been an awesome finale. Regardless of how imprisoned in 3ds Max my dear Carl is, I can now be the creator of my own shape and form in a virtual world if I’m willing to go through the process again.

That is after all a strange feeling of power.

2011 in review

Last year I didn’t post the WordPress generated “2010 in review”. It had some errors that didn’t match up to the stats, but this year, it looks like “the stats monkeys” got it right, so here we go!

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 71,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

In 2011, there were 84 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 121 posts. There were 608 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 59mb. That’s about 2 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was August 19th with 688 views. The most popular post that day was Introducing – “The Visual Roleplay Gear List”.

The only reason that old post introducing what is now “WoWRoleplayGear.com had that short surge of hits, was due to the news about Transmogrification being revealed around that day.

How did they find you?

The top referring sites in 2011 were:

• roleplaygear.wordpress.com
• doraslog.blogspot.com
• orcisharmyknife.com
• facebook.com
• reddit.com

Some visitors came searching, mostly for minecraft, wow rp gear, minecraft pig, minecraft wallpaper, and secret cellar gallywix pleasure palace.

A silly big proportion of search terms are indeed about Minecraft. I’ve not written that many posts about it, although I’m considering writing a few more. The secret cellar in the pleasure palace search term had me up and running when it first appeared, it looked like the perfect Cataclysm secret.

I’ve visited the Palace several times but there really is no secret cellar. Apparently this rumour stems from the short story Trade Secrets of a Trade Prince where the palace was said to have a grenade golf course, a secret booze cellar, a luxury pool and a sauna. The secret booze cellar, however, did not make it into the game.

Who were they?

Your most commented on post in 2011 was The Overlooked Heroes of WoW – Unconventional Ways to Level

These were your 5 most active commenters:

• 1 tomeoftheancient 39 comments
• 2 Döra 33 comments
• 3 Zinn 15 comments
• 4 Rades 7 comments
• 5 Syl 6 comments

Tomeoftheancient is one of my most vocal readers, Döra not far behind. Thanks to both of you and of course everyone else who commented for being so supportive and bringing good observations to the conversation! I fear that I have not been active enough with my own commenting to be granted top 5 commenter on anyone’s blog… perhaps that should be a new years resolution of mine for 2012.

Attractions in 2011

These are the posts that got the most views in 2011.

• 1 Introducing – “The Visual Roleplay Gear List” 13 comments November 2010
• 2 Cataclysm Secrets and Hidden Locations 52 comments December 2010
• 3 The 10 most Creepy Things in WoW 35 comments September 2010
• 4 You Should Know About Minecraft, You Need to Know About Minecraft 2 comments March 2011
• 5 Minecraft – The Lego Game 9 comments March 2011

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2011. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

This is one of the stats I am very proud of and I do intend to write more about these topics that appear to intrigue others as much as me. One of my plans is to split the Cataclysm secrets post into two, detailing the pre and post patch 4.1 secrets separately. I’ve also been collecting more creepy details, I’ve not quite hit 10 yet, but I’ve got some good ones waiting that I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere, so I should get to it soon.

The fact that some of my more popular posts are also old posts has the peculiar side effect that my hits don’t really go up when I post something new. I had an inactive period over November/December 2011, my schoolwork took more and more time and WoWRoleplayGear.com needed crucial updates to keep up with the new readers who wanted more mog-friendly outfits. During this time, this blog seemed to keep itself running without my input, of course not as actively as before.

Looking back I spent new years eve 2010 in WoW. This year I took the opportunity to host a new year’s party at my place. When you live in the suburbs people will rarely be enthusiastic about partying at your place when better locations are also on offer, yet my apartment was blessed with sparkly glittery paper and festive people, so I was happy.

I wish everyone a great 2012!