Month: December 2015

A short and spoiler-free post about Star Wars

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I thought it was great.

The mythical girlfriend said it best when we were discussing it after the film, but we both agreed that it is best described as a true labor of love, by JJ Abrams.  The film doesn’t try too hard, which was probably hard to not try and do, given the vast expansive canvas that would be the Star Wars universe, but in doing so, there’s a simplicity behind the plot and execution that is just so wonderful.

Really though, as cliche as it sounds, you can almost feel the amount of care and respect that Abrams has for the property, based solely on how smoothly and well-thought out the plot and pace of the movie went.

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Could LeBron become the GOAT?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No, not this GOAT, but the acronym Greatest Of All-Time. Could LeBron James become that guy?

I don’t know why it’s so easy for me to write about basketball sometimes, considering I generally don’t care about the NBA like I once used to.  It’s safe to say that I don’t even watching NBA basketball, much less any basketball on television these days, but still, the occasional news snippets I see about the happenings in the NBA still occasionally pique my interest, and sometimes inspire words to be written.

But I read this article about how LeBron James star-struck the hell out of a Special Olympics teenager, simply by approaching and showing a little bit of love, respect and admiration for the young basketball fan.  It’s stuff like this that restores faith in professional athletes, and the world as a whole, especially when the media really loves to talk about when people, namely professional athletes, do shitty things like commit various crimes.

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You guys must be new here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR – Black students at Emory University kindly request that the anonymous messaging app, Yik Yak be banned on campus, due to incidents of students anonymously making racist comments

Man, who would’ve guessed that if people were given the shroud of anonymity on the internet, they might just say some critical things!  Who would’ve also guessed that in spite of the idealistic world full of equality for all, that there still exists, racism?  Who knew??

Not that I’m condoning the behavior in question here, but honestly these students must be new, to like, modern society.  I’m also not saying that they should sit around and take it, when racists are capitalizing on the veil of anonymity and saying some racist garbage, but the harsh reality is that shit is most certainly nothing new.

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Ye old fashioned link post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In other types of postings I haven’t done in ages, I bring to you today nothing more than an old fashioned link post, which is another way of saying that I am acknowledging the fact that I am not really writing anything focused, and that these are the things that I’ve seen today that have piqued my interest enough to warrant writing a little blurb about them, but nothing more substantial.

Needless to say, I’ve been having somewhat of a writer’s block lately, as well as having some other tasks that are occupying my time when I am sitting in front of a computer, so I haven’t really had the leisurely chunks of time that I prefer to have when I can sit, read, formulate thoughts and write more substantial things.

Anyway, I still like reading the news and the various bookmarks that I visit on a regular basis, and these are the recent stories that have managed to elicit reactions from my brain.

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No walls left, apparently

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was vaguely aware of Xavier Woods’ social media presence, and the general existence of his YouTube channel, Up Up Down Down, but it wasn’t until a randomly recommended video did I actually take the opportunity to check it out.  And I ask myself why I even took that long, since I’ve made no secret that I’m a fan of his, and all the fantastic work he’s doing as the more or less heart of The New Day.

To no secret, Woods, going under the name “Austin Creed” does a fantastic job of entertaining, engaging and being a fun guy to watch.  I think the appeal for me is the fact that he’s just such a charismatic guy that he could probably easily entertain people who have no idea that he’s also a professional wrestler, because so little of at least the clip that I watched, had really anything to do with wrestling, aside from the fact that everyone in it was basically a WWE guy.

Anyway, it was an innocuous link to a video that basically summarized The Miz playing Xavier Woods in Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, with an adequate thumbnail to get the point across.  And in no time, the video creates the scenario, where Miz and Creed play a best of five in SF2:CE, where I can’t remember what Creed had put on the line, but the Miz had wagered his replica of the white-strap Intercontinental title, that all wrestlers apparently get to commemorate the fact that they were a holder of it.

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How to build an Academy Darius axe in a week

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Something I never did in a timely fashion that I remembered that I wanted to write about, was a post about the construction of the Academy Darius axe I had made for my corresponding costume, that I wore to Worlds.

Two key challenges were in play when constructing this prop: time, despite the fact that I had the idea to make this costume for quite some time, I’m stupid and waited until later in the game to start, everything, including the axe.

Additionally, there were size limitations to the axe; because I was transporting this prop in my luggage to Europe, it had to be able to fit inside of a standard full-size piece of luggage. My solution to the size limitations was to modify the scale of the axe in general, as well as creating the axe in components, fit inside of luggage in pieces, and be somewhat easy to re-construct and break down in Brussels and Berlin.

Ultimately, I would say the size of the axe isn’t 100% scale, but when it comes to League props, 100% scale isn’t always realistically feasible; otherwise, I would’ve had a 56” Riot Graves gun that probably would have weighed 30 lbs, and my pink Taric hammer would’ve been taller than me and more than 60” hammerhead.

But anyway, here’s a fairly quick run down of what I used, how I did it, and the general process of how I made an Academy Darius axe in a week.

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General brogging

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The formula for my writing over the last few years is that typically I find a particular topic that piques my interest or inspires words to formulate, and then I write as much as I can about it, and vomit it up onto the brog.  I’ve tried not to write for the sake of just writing, but on a day like today, I’m also thinking that there’s a little bit of value in such an exercise as well.

Basically, I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic lately, and I think it was spurred on by an old picture I came across while perusing through some old folders on my hard drive(s).  A picture led to a corresponding brog post back from the pre-WordPress days, and naturally it led to that awkward feeling of looking in the past to see how much style has changed from past to present.  Undoubtedly, back then, I wrote in more of a diary style that captured more of the mundane and daily living, and I could probably say that I wrote more for the sake of writing back then, then I did with a particular topic or goal in mind.

Sure, that means that anyone who read any of that kind of stuff, it would be safe to say that they might have an interest in my life in general, but for an outsider, or someone who doesn’t know me well, or at all, it’s something that’s definitely not worth reading.  However, that style of word slop was often times better at conveying my emotions, moods and feelings, because frankly I was more blunt and obvious with such things when writing about shit like going faster than another car, or my anal-retentive Uncle Tom of a superior at that current job.

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