Visually Reviewing 2010
2010 will be coming to an end soon. It’s been such a great year filled with memories and milestones, and it’s a year that I certainly won’t be forgetting anytime soon. These are a collection of my memories, events, and experiences from this past year. There is one photo for each of the past eleven months and they work together to create an abstract representation of my life throughout the 2010 timeline. Enjoy.
Garage Sale
My close buddy Anthony, also known as imaGenius, is a passionate enthusiast when it comes to exploring the very unique aspects of music and everything that it has to offer. Today, he has released Garage Sale, a well organized assortment of thirty tracks featuring various sampled tracks that promotes music in the old school hip-hop style. If you have any musical listening interest in hip-hop, rap, pop, house or lounge, or even enjoy music from artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Common, Will I Am, or Kanye West, then I would encourage you to take a few moments to listen and enjoy it for what it is. Below you’ll find a just few of my favorite tracks as well as the download link to the entire mixtape so that you can experience it for yourself.
Download Here
When I Wake Up
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Your Life
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See
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Three
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I know where you got this one from, lol.
Fireworks on the Fifth
My friends and I tend to be very nocturnal creatures. We stay up all the time into the wee hours of the night, which explains why we started our little fireworks show after midnight on the 5th of July. It was a total blast playing around with explosives such as firecrackers and roman candles. Here’s a small compilation of our event. Everything was recorded from my phone, so please excuse the quality. Other than that, enjoy! :)
Joy of the Stick
These days, I have been committing to a lot of things. Running for miles to raise my stamina. Reserving time for my wonderful ‘miles-away-but-oh-so-close’ girlfriend. Studying two different languages. Korean for my family, and Tagalog for hers. And just simply working hard in preparation for moving to College Station and starting my university career at Texas A&M. One thing that I have not been committing to anymore though, is Street Fighter IV. *gasp* Yes, that’s right. The game that I have unwisely played for an accumulated 23.2 days in an eight month period has been placed on the shelf. I’ll gladly play whenever I’m with friends but I just don’t have personal time for it anymore. But one thing I want to note: while in my Street Fighter prime, I had a small passion on the side for modifying MadCatz SFIV SE Arcade sticks. They were really fun to take apart and be creative with. I don’t think that I will see myself modifying anymore arcade sticks anytime soon. So with that said, below you’ll find all of the arcade sticks I’ve worked with in the past and a little bit about them. Consider this as a small tribute to the end(?) of my Street Fighter IV career.
Women of Street Fighter
- Original artwork: Street Fighter Tribute Cover by Arnold Tsang
- Paint used: None
- Print finish: Lami-label from Fedex Office
This was my first arcade stick mod. After learning about how easy it was to modify, I decided to give it a shot. I wanted it to feature Crimson Viper, the main character that I fight with. Because Viper is a new character, finding decent artwork for her was tough. I chose this work of art primarily because the Viper work was very well done and also because it features every other female character in Street Fighter. If that’s not something good to look at on an arcade stick, then I don’t know what is! SFIV has a design concept of using brush strokes as a way of illustrating the art of ones moves. With this in mind, I added colored brush strokes to the buttons to place emphasis that the template is more focused on SFIV than Street Fighter in general. This was also my first time using Lami-labels from Fedex Office. Though the print quality was top-notch, the quality of the laminate was questionable. Cut it wrong, and you could end up tearing the paper that the laminate was supposed to protect. I ended up going back to the store three times to get it reprinted due to small mistakes while cutting it. All-in-all, it was a quick job and ended up looking great.
Inverted Viper
- Original artwork: C. Viper Official SFIV Character Art
- Paint used: Dupli-Color Vinyl & Fabric HVP104 Gloss Black
- Print finish: Lami-label from Fedex Office
I quickly became tired of how the “Women of Street Fighter” stick looked. Giving it color seemed to be a good idea. For the template, I changed the color to black and used the official SFIV artwork for Viper. To have her match with the black environment, I inverted all of her neutral colors while retaining all of the rest. I didn’t change out any buttons so the brush strokes from the WoSF tempalte stayed. For this design, it was the first time I’ve painted an arcade stick. Though it was easy to do, I failed to do it perfectly and it was only moderately satisfied with the result. The paint began to peel after a few months. The print was also lami-labeled and revealed small air bubbles all over the print due to the black background.
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Happy Birthday Baby Ko
Though my birthday has not come yet, on the evening of Friday, April 16, 2010, My girlfriend Krizia, along with the help of Anthony and Rachel, gave me one of the biggest but simplest birthday surprises I have ever received in my life. The floor was filled with balloons and the room was decorated just for me. As I walked in, Krizia presented me with a beautiful chocolate birthday cake with only half of the candles lit. She was rushing to get them all lit but gave up as I was entering. :) For my birthday present, she gave me a gorgeous, hand-made, one-of-a-kind, straight-from-the-heart birthday scrapbook filled with her thoughts and the sweet memories we spent together over past few months. I’m usually thankful enough to receive just a birthday card from someone with their thoughts written down. Receiving a gift like this not only makes me feel happy, but it also makes reminds me of why I’m so thankful to be blessed.
This picture is a comic book style compilation of my birthday surprise, the way that I saw it. Thank you mahal, I love you. God bless you.
For reference, “Baby ko” means “my baby” and “Mahal” means “love.”