I finally have a new YouTube banner

This post is over 13 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

It’s been a while since YouTube came out with their new profile design (the “One” design, I think it’s called).

I actually don’t think it’s that bad, but I haven’t really gotten around to really looking into it and customizing it to make it look nice.

After a lot of pressure from my supporters, I’ve gone ahead and finally uploaded a banner. The best part is that it’s very characteristic of a banner I would make.

Yes, my banner is literally plain black with a random white X in it.

(For those of you pointing out that a lot of the graphics I make are well-designed, yes, that is the case for a lot of things, but I also have a tendency to make very simple and minimalistic designs as well.)

 

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Gas pump on the wrong side of the car? No problem.

This post is over 13 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Have you ever pulled up to a gas station, only to realize the pump is on the opposite side of your car’s gas input?

I went to the gas station today and found a woman who ran into that dilemma.

To her, it was clearly a non-issue.

 

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LoL Patch 3.9: Problems with Draven’s new passive

This post is over 13 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

I recently read the patch notes regarding changes to Draven’s passive that will be coming up in patch 3.9. I usually don’t voice my opinion on balance changes because I feel as if I am underqualified to make such statements. However, Draven’s new passive is so blatantly bad that I feel as if balance expertise is not needed to point out its negative aspects.

For those of you unfamiliar with the passives, here are the old and new passives:

Wicked Blades: Draven’s critical strikes deal 30 + (4 × level) bonus physical damage over 4 seconds. Spinning Axe also causes this effect even if it does not critically strike. If Wicked Blades is re-applied to a target, its duration is reset to 4 seconds and any damage not yet dealt is carried forward, increasing the amount of each tick of damage.

League of Draven: When Draven catches a Spinning Axe, or kills a minion or monster, he gains one stack of Adoration. When Draven kills an enemy champion, he consumes half of his Adoration stacks and gains 3 gold per stack consumed. Draven loses half of his Adoration stacks upon death.

I’m going to cover three of the biggest points from three diverse perspectives – why the passive is mechanically bad, why Riot’s justification of not fixing the old passive is bad, and why the passive is unfitting to Draven’s character.

Winners keep winning and losers keep losing

If you’ve known me for a long time, you might know that I was a diamond-level player on the old Twisted Treeline, before they revamped the map and added altars. Since then, I stopped playing the new Twisted Treeline because I don’t like it for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons I dislike it is because the map is oriented towards helping winners keep winning and losers keep losing.

The same concept applies to Draven’s new passive. If he is winning and getting kills, he gets rewarded even more by his passive. However, if he is losing and he is never getting kills, his passive never goes into effect. If he is losing even harder and keeps dying, his passive becomes even more useless – the amount of gold he is never going to get becomes lower.

This is a bad gameplay mechanic for both scenarios. If Draven gets more gold for getting kills, he becomes unfun to play against, because he snowballs out of control and gets exponentially stronger. On the other hand, if Draven never gets anything out of his passive because he is doing poorly, it becomes discouraging for the Draven player.

Do-nothing early-game passives don’t make them invalid

One of the reasons Riot gave for remaking Draven’s passive instead of adjusting and balancing the old one is that, if they were to balance it, the passive would become nearly useless during very early levels. They say that as if it is a problem, even though, in the past, they have demonstrated that there are balanced champions who fall under this category. For example, Tristana’s passive has no effect at level 1, and kicks in at level 2. Syndra’s passive has no effect at level 1, and continues to have no effect until level 9.

Where is this money coming from?

Finally, the concept of the passive conflicts with Draven’s lore and character. Previously, he was one of two blood brothers, and Draven’s passive made his enemies bleed, just like Darius’. Now, he randomly gets gold out of nowhere.

Twisted Fate is able to use the concept of gaining money because it fits his character – he is a gambler and has close ties with casino games. One could argue that bounty hunters could use the concept of money, but Draven isn’t a bounty hunter, he’s an executioner.

Overall, it creates a disconnect and breaks continuity with how the lore and character development was originally made.

Is Riot going to change Draven’s passive? I don’t think so, because a lot of people complained about it with valid arguments when it was released on the public beta environment, and Riot still chose to release it as-is. However, now that it’s about to be released to millions, I think the potential for Riot to reconsider the passive more seriously, due to the imminent public disappointment, will increase.

 

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Looking at stars is underrated

This post is over 13 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

While I was playing League of Legends earlier today with my buddies Hao and Lalo, Lalo mentioned that he windshield wipers on his car were broken.

“How did you break your windshield wipers?”

“Because I was sitting on my car.”

“Why were you sitting on your car?”

“Because I was looking at the stars.”

Both Hao and I burst into laughter, to which Lalo responds, “Looking at the stars is underrated!”

 

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Getting hit in the face by a dodgeball, and other adventures

This post is over 13 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you’ve been a religious reader of my website and a dedicated viewer of my videos, you might remember that two years ago, we had a massive storm that swept through my neighborhood during the summer that resulted in a bunch of downed power lines and flooding everywhere.

A very similar thing happened this year, and in some areas, the flooding was actually worse than it was two years ago.

On the way to our family business, we passed a road we usually take, that was closed down. Upon closer scrutiny, we found out that the road was closed because the power posts in the area had fallen over, and there were power lines on the ground everywhere beside the road.

Upon arriving at our family business, I used a inkjet printer to print out a sign to post up. This was the first time I had used a inkjet printer in an extremely long time, because I usually use commercial laser printers at university or at my workplaces. I had forgotten that inkjet means that there is actually ink on the paper.

Oops.

After sticking around the family business for a little bit, I went to martial arts. After the curriculum and sparring classes, we had two students stick around, and we played a modified version of basketball with them, using a dodgeball.

One of the students went for a shot from a distance. D’Shawn, one of the assistant/training instructors, who was my teammate, jumped up and spiked the ball so it wouldn’t go into the hoop.

(These photos are poor quality because they were taken from security camera footage.)

The ball made full-speed impact into my face, and bounced off to the side.

The ball then proceeds to continue traveling and collides with the student’s face as well.

The destruction finally ends, and both of us die, giving D’Shawn a double kill. Simon, the head instruc­tor who is standing near the blue pillar, facepalms.

As you can see, D’Shawn can get very passionate about games, even at the expense of his own team­mate.

 

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Lunch with Taiki and the epic frisbee adventures

This post is over 13 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

Earlier today I went to Jameson’s Charhouse with Ed and Taiki – Ed you know, and Taiki is a buddy I’ve known since junior high.

Before my burger came out, I got this bowl of soup (as well as some bread we could eat before our soup arrived, which you can see in the background behind the knife):

It had a bread-boat of powdered cheese.

For the main meal, I got a Jameson’s burger, which came with fries, cole slaw, and pickles.

After finishing our food and dropping Taiki off back at his house, Ed had this sudden urge to play with a frisbee. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a frisbee in his garage, so we went to Walmart to buy one for $0.97 ($1.05 when including tax).

While we were walking around the sports area, I came across these license plates for bikes. All the names seemed normal, until I came across…

BUBBA

BUBBA.

After purchasing a frisbee, we came back and started throwing it around, until we realized how bad we were at throwing frisbees. I successfully chucked the frisbee into a foresty area near our subdivision, and Ed was brave enough to enter the dark depths of the abyss to retrieve our new toy.

After exhausting ourselves with the frisbee, Ed took this photo through tall grass on our way back to his house.

No, we did not encounter any wild Pokémon.

For dinner, we went to Ed’s restaurant (that his family owns). Upon arriving, I came across a bamboo tree with a sign on it.

In case you can’t read it, it says “Please don’t shake the tree.”

Yes, apparently, they have such massive problems with people shaking the tree that they had to put a sign on it telling people not to shake it.

After a short while, my food was ready – I had beef, broccoli, and rice (with other random vegetables).

After finishing our food, I came back to my house to play some League of Legends, respond to emails, and go to sleep.

 

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