When I first began to redesign the website, stepping away from the “GamerTagged” domain and into a more consistent RamblePak “branding”, I decided to try and do regular monthly reports as personal encouragement and accountability regarding productivity. I had not only wanted to be transparent, but to also help explain my progress towards the next video.

These updates instead became yet another method for me to feel inadequate, measuring myself up to impossible standards I’d impose on no one else. Nevertheless, there is something appealing about the “monthly report” concept. So many of my drafts sit incomplete either due to my own high expectations, or due to all of the different projects occupying my free time. By giving myself a regular monthly update to provide, it not only allows me an opportunity to keep the blog somewhat active, it also affords me the opportunity to enjoy writing without the stress. In other words, better to treat it as an opportunity to enjoy a hobby than another way to self-flagellate.

So once more I’ll be attempting to conclude each month with a summary of what I’ve been working on as well as media I’ve enjoyed that don’t necessarily warrant their own posts.

Of course, we might as well start August with one of the most time consuming necessities of my personal life: getting back to basics with JavaScript while job hunting.

It’s probably foolish of me to be writing something so transparent while seeking employment. I’ve been without work since February, which would be six months now, or half the year. This is not a pleasant circumstance to be in, and I am constantly concerned that any update to this blog will be viewed as me doing anything but honestly seeking new work. After all, I should be scrambling to assemble a new portfolio of sorts, correct?

The issue is that, in the past decade I’ve worked as a web developer, each of my positions has allowed me to get by with sufficient use of the jQuery framework for any JavaScript implementation. Once upon a time this was a wonderful little library that, from my perspective, improved upon JavaScript by simplifying much of its syntax and providing quick and easy tools for visual animations.

This framework was so appealing to me as it fit very nicely with my preference for front-end web development as a whole: it was inherently visual. I took to HTML and CSS in ways I never could with C++ or Java because the former revolve around the Document Object Model; a sort of “logical structure” that can easily conjure an image in one’s mind of what it ought to do and look like. It’s far more natural to me to work with the front-end in this manner because I can see the modifications in my mind as I work on the code. Back-end programming was always more difficult due to its focus on raw mathematics and logic without an inherent visual element.

When working with jQuery, it interacted with this visual space in a far more efficient and simplified manner than plain vanilla JavaScript. However, reading up on blogs such as CSS Tricks, it would seem that jQuery is looked upon less favorably in the more enthusiastic communities of front-end web developers (despite popular frameworks such as Bootstrap making use of it). Now everyone’s looking to libraries and frameworks like React, Node, or Vue; frameworks I’ve had no professional experience with. A quick examination of the “Get Started” pages and tutorials of these alternatives revealed just how far behind I’d fallen with JavaScript itself.

So I’ve recently been prioritizing much of my time to “getting back to the basics”. I’ve picked up plenty of neat and little tricks throughout the way, developing a better understanding of how the language operates under-the-hood while simultaneously flexing the problem-solving nodes of my brain with practice tasks and “homework”. However, the deeper I get, the more JavaScript resembles those old programming languages I struggled with in College.

It goes back to what drew me to HTML and CSS in the first place. I’ve always found myself to be a sort of blend of logic and art. It’s why I love writing critically about entertainment media. Front-end development was comfortably seated in that space as well, leaning a bit more towards logic without leaving the artistic side behind.

The developers writing these guides and putting together shortcuts for JavaScript seem to lean far, far further into the logic spectrum than I do, however. What would be comprehensible syntax is transformed into some abstract collection of logic symbols that resemble a mathematical equation instead, all for the sake of “shortcuts”. Sure, I understand how you can write a task in three lines rather than seven or eight, but the end result is hieroglyphs rather than a clearly communicated statement using actual words.

Perhaps this is why I ought to refrain from writing so honestly about my experience on this blog, yet do so anyway. Any potential employer would discover this about myself in an interview or on the job. I could try to hide these weaknesses and to market myself as being something different, but I would do neither myself nor my potential employer any favors by doing so.

Nonetheless, I am pushing forward in my endeavor to learn and catch up with modern JavaScript and its frameworks. My plan is to get comfortable enough so as to build a sort of prototype RPG combat system using either React or Vue. Not with the intent of actually building a whole game in the long-run, but just as an experiment to see if I can make something a bit fancier than a typical web page. Plus, it would start to push me closer towards the User Experience end of the spectrum, a career shift that seems like it would be appropriate for me given my interests and abilities.

Moving onto the subject of the YouTube channel, progress is being made on a new video, but unfortunately in an unfocused and slow manner. I’ve returned to capturing footage for Darksiders, a game that continually excites me due to the volume of topics to discuss. From presentation to combat design, there are plenty of good and bad things to discuss that it’s difficult to refrain from pre-emptively piecing a script together. Unfortunately, I’ll undoubtedly become tormented by the specter of doubt and self-criticism once I try to put all my thoughts together. For now, however, I feel excited about this video in a way I hadn’t since working on Final Fantasy VI and IX, which is a good thing.

I’ve also begun to write my notes in a different format, emphasizing timestamps in ways I hadn’t before. Honestly, I probably should have done this a long, long time ago, but I didn’t have as much of a need while running Windows Movie Maker 6. However, as that program runs insufficiently on Windows 10 despite migrating to a far more powerful desktop than before, I’ve decided to finally move on to Adobe Premiere Elements.

Yes, Elements. I’m still not running a “full-fledged” video editor like other YouTubers, but I’m also not making money off of the platform. You get what you pay for, and therefore I’m paying for the affordable Adobe products. Nonetheless, I’ve dabbled with it a bit and believe I can put together good videos just as I had before. I don’t know if I’ll be pulling off some of the fancy visual effects you see in the full-time YouTuber clips, but I’ll at least be able to put out videos at higher resolutions and framerates while simplifying some of the audio-focused requirements for myself.

I have a smaller script that is nearly completed and focuses on three separate things I enjoy, but I’ve hit a bit of a mental block on completing it. While I’d like to get some practice with Premiere Elements before tackling a big project, there’s something that just doesn’t feel sufficiently “RamblePak” to make such filler, listicle style content. I feel as if it’d be more appropriate to make more focused videos instead. The film and anime I examine both also contain an emphasis on sexual content or sexuality, which is material I don’t often cover on the YouTube channel and feels out of place.

How stereotypically American that I have no qualms with posting video analyses of bloody, gore-filled video games and yet discussing sexuality makes me uncomfortable.

It could be this smaller project will never see the light of day. Just some small practice for myself to get used to the new software and a new approach to video editing. Which, admittedly, is how I should have prepared and practiced before I ever posted to YouTube in the first place.

I’ve also struggled to renew my enthusiasm with Godzilla 2014 and comparing it to King of the Monsters, so I’ll be putting that script on the backburner. I’d love to continue digging into Godzilla content, however, so I’m contemplating doing an analysis of the Netflix trilogy. What this likely means is that Darksiders will be the next video, followed by a video on those three films. I’d love to have both of them out by the end of 2020, but with the job hunt taking priority I’m uncertain how long it will take to get either of those finished.

Also competing for time is my position co-leading a Bible Study over Discord. Many of you know that I’m a Christian, and it is something I’ve been wanting to write about more often but fail to find the right approach or topics. That I’ve been given an exciting opportunity to not only help serve in my Church, but to also assist in a ministry on Discord with a men’s Bible Study has been a delight. However, this naturally means I have yet another hobby occupying my time.

Perhaps these clashing activities all demanding my time are why music has been so important to me in August. I’ve been able to listen to whole albums while coding, reading, writing, and researching. Two albums have recently dropped that I’ve been listening to repeatedly with varying levels of enjoyment.

Orbit Culture is a band that hits harder and heavier than is typical for my musical tastes. Something about them beckons back to my middle-school days when Metallica’s were the most dominant cassette tapes in my Walkman. Whereas I’d gradually fall in love with more complex, ambitious, and melodic metal, the appreciation of the deep, punchy distortion of a thrash metal guitar has never gone away. It’s the growling and screaming that has always been a bit of an obstacle.

I thoroughly believe in the idea that “anything can be an instrument”. I was a percussionist in concert band, so it sort of comes with the territory to believe anything in the environment can be used to create music. Growling and screaming, however, are often unleashed in such a fashion as to sound completely separate from the rest of the song. The secret to blending in, I’ve found, is to match the rhythm, beat, and overall tone. In this regard, Orbit Culture gets the sound right. The harsh destruction of the singer’s own vocal chords matches the heavy guitar distortion while also coinciding with or becoming the song’s rhythm. It’s monotone, as growling often tends to be, but the guitars and drums themselves are filling in for that sense of melody. A dreadful sounding melody, perhaps, but a melody nonetheless.

Where I’d say Orbit Culture’s true strength lies, however, is the manner in which the songs on this album escalate. Often my favorite part is the chorus, more melodic while retaining that rough edge that defines the harsher genres of metal. However, a song is a story and my favorites tend to develop the “rising action” into an explosive conclusion. You could call it formulaic, and there are certainly a few “tropes” that the band relies on in this album. For example, the sudden silence followed by a soft moment of acoustic guitars, only to then transform into an explosion of sound. This is executed on at least three separate tracks on Nijin alone, not to mention its appearance throughout their greater discography. Despite these tropes and formulas, each track on the album feels as if it escalates particular to its own tone and mood. It has made for a surprisingly satisfying album to listen to, and perhaps the first 2020 album release that I’ve enjoyed.

I haven’t had as much time to listen through Abyss, the latest album by Unleash the Archers. This is a band that I’ve always felt had a stronger vocalist than it did musicians, and in some ways I still stand by that. Brittany “Slayes” Hayes proves to have a great, classic sounding range that competes not with your typical operatic female metal singer, but your more traditional male performers. Like Kobra Paige from Kobra and the Lotus, she is a metal singer that happens to be female rather than a singer defined by her gender. Possessing a higher vocal pitch than most of their male compatriots is certainly a tool they capitalize on, but the interest is more in just making good metal music than appealing to a demographic stereotype.

I’d say that Abyss is the first album of theirs where I’ve found every track to be worth listening to, but not every track is worth listening to solitary of that whole album experience. More specifically, some of the tracks work nice when filling in between the others, but taken on their own sound like generic power metal. Some songs, such as “Return to Me”, are strong enough until they hit the chorus. At first I believed it to be the more by-the-numbers tone to the chorus, turning a powerful verse of a heavier track into yet another light and fluffy power metal number. I think instead, even with the harsh vocals of the second chorus repetition, it’s the sudden shift in tone. Gives it a bit of a “modular” feel, as if they were constructing a new song out of random, pre-existing tracks that other bands had already written. A problem that, in hindsight, explains why I feel so removed from my once favorite genre. New songs, albums, and bands just feel as if they’re grabbing pre-written material and assembling it in a slightly different order rather than creating an identity of their own.

Really, I’d say the first three tracks of Abyss are the strongest, with “Afterlife” providing a solid conclusion to the album. Everything sandwiched in-between may not be as strong, but it’s still good enough to make for a solid listen.

As for what I’m actually playing, well, I’ve got plenty of stuff I’d like to write up regarding Ghost of Tsushima. As can be seen with games like Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ and Personal 5 Royal, however, it’s a matter of finding the time and the confidence to punch all the necessary words out.

Really, it’s been more difficult to just sit down and play something throughout August due to the above projects. There’s also been a lot of mental health struggle that makes it difficult to find enjoyment in any one title. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve been streaming to my Twitch more often. It has allowed me time to interact with friends through my hobby and, most recently, provided an excuse to game together.

At the moment you can expect me to finish Lost Planet 3 either the 14th or 21st of September, as Monday shall be my standard streaming day around 8pm ET. The first Monday of the month, however, will be reserved for Mario Kart 8 with friends, as well as each second Saturday being devoted to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Those will also stream at 8pm. If you’d like to take part, send me an e-mail requesting access to the Discord.

That should do for this month’s report. Steve and I will be resuming our podcasts on the Star Wars prequels in September, and I hope to have those entries on Ghost of Tsushima ready for you guys at some point. I would not expect a new RamblePak until October at the earliest, however.

Perhaps see you again next month.