so who is this Keith guy?
in a nutshell, i’m a long time programmer in the web industry. my primary hobby these days is gaming, particularly war strategy and RPGs. on the side, i do fiction writing for stress release and tons of blogging mostly on gaming.
why blog?
I blog mostly as a form of mental masturbation. Yes, I just said that. I tend to prefer writing my thoughts down as opposed to yapping on a cell phone like so many others do these days. I think it’s more efficient to allow people everywhere to access your more public thoughts in a very open forum. Also, I prefer being able to organize my thoughts rather than shooting from the hip.
Also, I blog in the hope that certain people read it, gain something profound and hopefully someday make a change in their lives or other people’s lives and improve this world somehow. I’ve got a lot of ideas and enjoy sharing them. Whether you agree or not, that’s up to you. But at least leave some comments so we can generate interesting debates.
gaming
I’m a long time gamer. I’ve been gaming since I was a child. I started on an Atari 2600, graduated to a Colecovision, went to a Commodore 64 then 128, and moved to the world of the PC. I never owned a console and have been with PC games ever since.
I had been an old school pencil/paper style RPG gamer as well. A long time ago, I had been a fan of Shadowrun and, of course, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. My love for RPGs started out from The Bard’s Tale 2 and eventually branched out to other computer RPGs such as Might and Magic, Ultima and the Gold Box AD&D series.
At one point I tried doing shooters like Doom but never really got into them. Same with action games like Star Wars. I’ve never been a sports fan and pro-wrestling has been the closest thing to a “real” sport that I’ll ever get into.
But for the most part I’ve stay with RPGs (now MMORPGs) and war strategy games like Starcraft or Command and Conquer.
Having a love for gaming for so long, I’ve also attempted to design my own games. I’ve written up game modules long ago for AD&D and Shadowrun and have been working on the rules and ideas behind a fantasy style RPG for quite a while. One day it is my hopes and dreams to receive funding to be able to create such a game.
Movies, Television, Literature and Writing
Straight out, I wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t for movies like Alien, Aliens and Star Wars. Star Wars, I think, gave many of us growing up in the late 70’s the fantasy of being a young Luke Skywalker in flying in outer space, shooting down bad guys and getting a princess of our own (well, that didn’t necessarily work out for him, but he became a horse face so what can you say?). However, I think Aliens and Alien were the driving forces, especially Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of both movies, that helped push my literary desires.
Before all that, I had other aspirations as a young child from working at Lego, to becoming an inventor, to being a pro-wrestler (that wouldn’t have worked out so well no matter what) and even an astronomer (btw I hated my astrophysics courses in college). Most of these jobs probably wouldn’t have worked out so well realistically and in many ways I’m glad they didn’t.
However, if there’s one passion I do have, it’s for writing. I probably don’t put out enough quality writing as I should (I try to do some writing at some level here and there). But I feel that above all else, writing is where I can handle it indefinitely. Programming is fine as a job and making ends meet but I think it has limits as a pure career path because of the hardships a developer must face.
Writing though is pure imagination where you’re not required to work with a team as much as a developer. It’s very self-oriented and comes from your inner soul if you’re not doing it commercially. Whenever I feel down or incredibly angry, it is writing that helps elevate me back to a reasonable mental state. I find that writing is my real world because it’s the place where I want to be some day (not always but maybe on a movie screen).
A lot of my personal writing is centered around postmodernism, Japan, fantasy and/or cyberpunk with a dash of science fiction (remember, I hated astrophysics). I like combining these elements to give it a very diverse feeling on top of adding my own sense of identity as a 5th generation Japanese American, trying to make sense of this nutty world. I like bringing in numerous issues both contemporary and (hopefully) universal. I try to look at things not just through my eyes but as if I’m the other characters around my own (whom I tend to personalize quite a bit)
Ultimately, my goals in writing are to finish some of my works before I pass away and to be published. I honestly don’t care about making money with writing. I think it’s more important to be heard and recognized as well as (most importantly) describing the world as you see it.
Lego
Another aspect to the blog I’m adding is my lifetime hobby, Lego. I’ve been a fan since the age of 2 and have over 1000 sets with an estimated 200,000 parts (and still growing!). My primary collection centers around Town, Space and Castle with some Pirates and other one off themes that catch my fancy.
One of my ultimate goals is to own a house with a large enough room as a display case area. I would love to create the ultimate Town that attempts to use the existing sets and my own interpretations and see what the result looks like. I’ve conceived of building the perfect fire station, having bought every single fire station since Engine Company No. 9 to present day as well as the best police station. I can hardly fathom with all the vehicles and parts I’ve collected how it’ll turn out, but I do know it’ll be an awesome site some day.
Part of the town I want to create is the result of being inspired from the movie Beetlejuice. There’s several scenes of one of the protagonist in the attic, where he shows a beautiful town depicting their little city. A neighbor years ago, who was into collecting trains, had something similarly set up on a long table. While my town might not be perfect architectually, the goal is to see if I can create something that can satisfy all my Lego peon…I mean city dwellers.
Another challenge I would some day like to accomplish is building the ultimate space craft. I thought the SDF-1 from Macross/Robotech was the ultimate space craft in that you had a city inside of a space craft. How epic is that? Not to mention two aircraft carriers as arms that had some of the coolest transforming jets robotics around. I don’t think I’ll replicate the SDF-1, but creating that epic mother ship with all types of air craft and vehicles that you can detach sounds like a visual and structural challenge.
Lastly, I hope to some day build my own version of Minas Tirirth. I remember watching the old Ralph Baskin animated version of Return of the King and seeing this multi layered castle that spiraled up a mountain, having numerous gates while orcs laid siege. It was a visually stunning idea, something that with my collection I wish to achieve. Now, with the Lord of the Rings official Lego series, I can not only build that, I’ll have the orc mini figures, etc. to compliment it all!
With regards to my hobby, I hope to post occasional reviews of sets that I pick up. I will add my own images and hope to really get into some nice details to influence other Lego hobbyists into buying/not buying these sets. Maybe if they discover this blog, there will be some good conversations on certain topics.