Love

As of my typing this, it is 2:39am on Monday, May 9th, 2016. Sitting here, just minding my own business and unable to sleep due to a restless mind, Tweetdeck open on the monitor to my right. I couldn't help but notice an argument spark up involving a couple of friends of mine. It started, to the best of my backtracking, with someone stating that online dating and long-distance relationships being "fake."

If you know me, I generally try to steer clear of such arguments, usually to fail due to my wearing my heart on my sleeve. Both a bane and a boon.

The argument quickly came down to this strange concept & construct we call "love." Four years ago, I was fresh off of a brutal break up and rejection in rapid succession. The thoughts I will present were formed within the last eight months due to the "recovery" period preventing my thoughts from broaching a topic that was still so sore. Even now, the topic still rends open those wounds, but recent developments have eased the pain and reinforced what I have come to realize and live by.

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Love, whether it is on or offline is a force that is extremely real. In my own eyes, it is a transcendental force. These artificial limiters that society has placed on love, like distance, gender, race, or even time, are shackles are so easily thrown off and yet...we just take them as they are. Many do not even question them. This saddens me to no end.

To get to the topic in and of itself, "are online dating & long-distance relationships not real," both are very real. Speaking as someone who is currently in a long-distance relationship with an absolutely amazing & beautiful woman, the distance actually makes the love we feel for each other increasingly stronger by the day; the old saying of "distance makes the heart grow fonder." The screens and the miles between us are no such obstacle to us. We do what we are able to.

Here's the key to these kinds of relationships: the internet itself. The internet follows a certain principle that allows people to show who they truly are, the majority of the time anyways. If two people communicate with this "veil" between them, then the chance of a relationship (which could just be a friendship or something else) could increase because being online terminates certain "physio-social" constructs which generally inhibit interaction at all, especially in the case of those who suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder, like myself. If anything, being online makes communication easier. I have made many more friends online than I ever could have hoped for offline.

But, I'm getting off-track, as I feared I would... I will leave you two

1. "Love knows no space, time, race or gender. It is a universal force that is oft misunderstood. Love, simply put, is love. If you're too ignorant to understand that simplistic concept, then please, leave others to love as they desire and love who they desire." (From my Twitter; over two tweets)

2. "Relationships [of any kind that are] built on unbridled love (not necessarily romantic) are, by far, the most fulfilling & rewarding. An ultimate goal." (From my Twitter)

If you think that love is purely physical in nature... I beg of you: Grow. Up.

Postscript:

I do apologize if this seems discordant, it is late and my thoughts are beginning to scramble. If you have found happiness, whatever it may be, I implore you, keep at it.

Bullying and Me

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen this tweet from me:

"Y'know... I see all of these anti-bullying ads everywhere. Why can't they put up ads saying "be someone's friend?" That'd put an end to it." (https://twitter.com/MrGeo_Terra/status/509129806605471744)

Me and bullying go way back. I'm talking back to kindergarten. I was that quiet kid in the back that was far ahead in his years (I'm not kidding, I could read Harry Potter-level books at that age) that was happy to sit off to the side of the playground, lost in his own little world. Unfortunately that opened me up to the brutal bullying that kids are prone to enacting. Vicious little buggers...

The unfortunate thing was that I was speech-impaired at the beginning of my life; I didn't start talking until I was about three and I was still learning how to even in kindergarten. Fortunately, I found and made a tight little group of friends that helped to kill the pain. Thank goodness.

Bullying followed me through the school system and became really pronounced in Grade 3. A girl pushed my, now, ex-girlfriend off of the jungle gym and on to the pebbles below. Without thinking, I rushed up the jungle gym and pushed the offender off myself. Fortunately, a teacher had seen what happened so I didn't get into trouble. Unfortunately, as I was walking home a bunch of Grade 6's jumped me and started beating me up. My mother's intuition went off at that point and she came running to see me at the bottom of a pile. She threatened to push charges against the kids and they were immediately moved to other schools.

Skip forward to about Grade 7. This is where things get a bit dark. Bullying was, for lack of a better word, rampant at this particular school and I fell right in the middle of the monster's rampage. This was also the time where my ADHD (even though I didn't know it was that at the time) was being irritating. The bullying I received started me on my deep spiral into depression. At first it was me sitting against the wall at lunch curled up and bashing the back of my head into the wall. Yep. Toward the middle of the second half of the year, I seriously began considering suicide as way to silence the abusive voice both around me and within my head.

Normally, I have a near-perfect memory, but I can't recall for the life of me what happened to pull me out of that spiral, but it worked. I got out. I HATED it. I loathed the pain that the whole situation caused me and the people around me.

After I enrolled in mixed martial arts in the summer between Grade 8 or 9, and someone saw me practicing kobudo out on my front lawn (I was practicing with my Bo staff at the time), word spread around and everyone stayed clear of me.

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Anyways, enough of that before my depression returns just from re-reading that. The point I'm trying to make is that bullying could be fought so much better if these companies would stop telling people what the problem IS and started to telling people HOW to solve the problem: "Make friends." (That and give up on earning money from their damn ads...)

Looking back on my past, it was friends that helped get away from bullying or to be each other's safety net. Friends are priceless. Cherish them please. I am BEGGING you.

It literally hurts me internally to see so many people in pain from bullying or their own problems. It also hurts to know that no matter how much I try to connect with them, they'd much rather suffer in silence; to keep the hurt to themselves which does nothing to help them or me because it hurts me too.

My shyness aside, I would LOVE to be friends with all of the people I come across, if not actual friends, then I want to be the person they come to for a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. I love helping people.

I am one of the few men out there that has learned that it's okay to let my feelings show and am not afraid to get close to people. This has been my key to breaking through many people's walls and being able to help them.

I suppose this is a good time to explain something: my avatar. The crystal heart. My feelings have been tested over and over again, especially with my being dumped by my ex-girlfriend (Yes, she dumped me). We all know how diamonds form, and that is how the concept for my avatar was born. I let my feelings shine like a diamond.

In any case, this was something I felt that I had to get off of my chest. So, I will bid you all a good timezone.

Just remember, no matter what, I will continue to care and be concerned for everyone's safety. I love you all. I don't care what walk of life you're from, or what you look like; we're all same deep down... and, well... Just remember, "You've got a friend in me..." (Yes, Toy Story).

Take care all,
Geo Terra

Minecraft Modpack Madness

As some of you may be aware, especially if you're following me on Twitter, I am currently working on a modpack that I will, more-than-likely, be distributing to the public.

What kind of modpack? Well, it definitely won't be some mish-mash of mods just haphazardly thrown together. When I first thought about making my own modpack, I was playing a lot of UHS3, Agrarian Skies, Magic Farm 2, and Blood'n'Bones and I loved seeing what the pack authors did to REALLY lay down the challenge on the player via config tweaking or the MineTweaker/ModTweaker mods.

I held off on actually working on it as I was working on learning how to use Mine/ModTweaker and their syntax, but now that I have a decent handle on it, I think I could really do some damage.

As for the "focus" of the pack, what I am envisioning is a pack that is a marriage of sorts between the packs that I mentioned above and a few other packs that I have played recently. It's going to be really difficult, but not impossible. Good resource management (and some luck) will be a huge help.

At current moment I have a few goals for this pack, and I will be developing more as I go on:

• Create an arrangement of mods that provides a challenge while remaining lightweight and relatively lag-less; I'm aiming for less than or equal to 100 mods, although I will allow a variance of 10 mods
• Find ways to integrate the mods together into a well-made mesh with a tough, staggered, but satisfying progression (UHS3 style)

Yeah, those are lofty goals. I know. But, I believe that I'll be able to pull this off.

I'm still thinking about the mods I will use, but I have an idea of the "core" of the pack. I will eventually figure out the full list and post it somewhere.

Now, onto something I'm still iffy on. Showing the pack's progress. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I took a break from making videos for YouTube due to stress already wearing down on me (I suffer from anxiety, and the fact that I kind of need better equipment to do videos "properly" was getting to me). However, I'm thinking that I will do a series on YouTube very similar to mDiyo's videos as he was building his Magic Maiden modpack. Unfortunately, on September 2nd, I will be returning to school which will force me to record said videos over the weekends, assuming that I'm not absorbed in studying, I will try to upload them over the weekend too, but I can guarantee that I will slip up.

What will this mean for my other videos? I honestly don't know. If I find the time, I will continue the series.

In any case, that's pretty much it from me, so take care everyone. I'm out! Take care.

Autism Awareness

Under normal circumstances, I try not to reveal too much of my own life on the internet, but today's, for lack of a better word, special. It's World Autism Awareness Day (#AutismAwareness & #WAAD on Twitter) and, for reasons described below, I decided to type up this post. I'll try to keep it short, but no guarantees.

While I was browsing Twitter on the bus to college this morning, I came across a link that Cloudhunter had tweeted that led to his own blog and a post titled "Autism and me" (Link: http://cloudhunter.co.uk/post/70732371271/autism-and-me). It gave me the inspiration and final push to write this as I have been trying to formulate something in my head for the past while now. As I type this, I have his blog post open in another tab as there's a few points that I want to echo.

In case you haven't figured it out, I have autism, but more specifically, I have Asperger Syndrome (I'll abbreviate it as AS). AS is a form of autism that give the "afflicted" (I loathe negative labels) a form of "hyper-intelligence" in a certain field. If you need a frame of reference, think of the character Sheldon Cooper from the TV show "The Big Bang Theory," although, personally, I'm nowhere near as neurotic. On the other hand though, AS can severely diminish a person's ability to perform at a social level. I am riddled with social anxieties as I am not aware of the proper "social protocols," this tends to mess with me to the point where I am a recluse. Not fun.

I was diagnosed with not only AS, but also ADHD about two years ago. I won't go into too much detail on ADHD, but it was a part of the reason why I remained undiagnosed for 18 years of my life.

Like anything in life, AS, for me, comes as a double-edged knife (my favourite metaphor/simile; I can never remember which). On the one hand, there's the intelligence I possess plus the other multitude of nuances. On the other, there's the social anxiety, very slight and mild OCDs and a whole bunch of other things.

Even though it may seem that AS is more negative than positive, it has been a huge boon to me. Throughout my entire life, I've known that I was different, but never knew why. Now that I know why, it has quelled a good number of demons that I had and brought me a semblance of peace.

Over time, even before I got the diagnosis, I managed to retrain myself and my brain to figure out social matters to a degree with the help of my parents, but it's still extremely stressful and draining on my emotions. And so, making friends for me is difficult and I have to be careful how I spend my energy. However, like Cloudy said in his blog post, the internet REALLY is a wonderful invention. It's allowed me to make friends and talk to people from all over the globe without having to deal with the anxiety of face-to-face interaction. If it weren't for the internet, I would've never been able to become friends with Max Firestorm and Pandora (awesome guys).

I think I've rambled enough. Suffice to say that this is no where near what I want to say on the matter, but I promised myself to limit this post and not let my long-winded tendencies run rampant.

For anyone looking to get, or are unsure whether or not to get tested, I say do it. Speaking from experience, it can bring a great deal of peace, even if it does raise a few other issues.

If you have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, don't give up. The whole of the world is still "your oyster," but you'll have to go about it a little differently. It can, and will, still work out.

Fun fact: If people like Einstein, Da Vinci, Alan Turing, HP Lovecraft, Nikola Tesla and even Beethoven were alive today, there is an extremely good chance of them being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. Here's a link to a page that lists a bunch of famous people that are confirmed to have AS or are speculated to have it: http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.shtml. Point is, success is very much possible.

Love you all,
Geo Terra

Let's Play Information

If anyone actually reads this blog, I am getting close to being able to start a Minecraft Let's Play that I will be uploading to my YouTube channel (link at right), and I decided that I'd post a bit of information about what I have planned.

First off, this will be a modded Let's Play; the list of mods will be "released" once I've finally decided on the medium, spreadsheet, PDF or a Google Doc. If enough people request it, I'll release my config files as a zip file. Counting mods that have multiple modules as one, there are currently 93 mods that I will be using (includes Forge, library files, utilities, content mods and plug-ins for NEI).

Secondly, I will be playing & recording this entire series on a laptop. Before you either laugh at me or start thinking that I must have one helluva laptop, I don't actually. It's fairly average. But, I won't be recording this on Windows (blech, too much resource overhead), I'll be using Xubuntu Linux, a variation of Ubuntu that uses the XFCE desktop environment with the recording program "Kazam." I adore this set-up. In Minecraft itself AND recording, I can hold a steady 30 fps without a problem and the program will encode the file to an .mp4 file live, which allows me not have to deal with TOO much editing and upload it directly to YouTube (unless at some point, I end up having some sort of intro sequence), but my upload rate tends to be rather dismal, so I tend to save the file to the shared partition between Windows and Xubuntu, reboot to Windows, then convert the file to .flv to shave off more bytes. I haven't quite found a decent enough program to do this all under Linux yet, but I'm open to suggestions.

Now for the LP itself. Due to the fact that I will be returning to college on the 6th of January, I'm aiming to keep a rate of at least one video a week at least until I've adjusted to the workload, then I may be able to record and upload more often, but no guarantees.

The series will take the form of a modified version of the "Refugee to Regent Challenge" (Link: Refugee to Regent Challenge - home) that I've taken the time to tweak to fit the mods I'll be using. I have a document that I might publish that outlines the rules of the challenge, some "micro challenges" that I've set myself, the areas of development that I've "taken" from the wiki, and the "chapters" that I'll be going through with their "limitations." The whole thing will be rather chaotic (unless my OCD smacks me around) until the point I enter into "Chapter 7" where I will be taking on the challenge's core: becoming an emperor (yes, I know it's SSP).

Admittedly, I was hoping to have the Let's Play ready and raring to go on New Year's Day (Jan. 1), but some unfortunate crashes have prevented me from starting until I can get those fixed (my own procrastination and anxiety got in the way too) and I doubt these mods have retroactive world generation.

However, this won't be just a "you-watch-me-play" kind of thing. If you're looking through my mods list and come up with a challenge that you would like to see me try (and probably fail), then by all means, let me know! If I like the challenge and can pull it off with my current set-up of mods, then I'll add it to a list of challenges I'll have on hand whenever I'm sitting at my laptop. I like other people interacting with what I'm doing. Also, if you notice a mistake that I made or know of another way I could do something that might be more "fun," LET ME KNOW! Leave a comment here, on my G+ page, or tweet at me, I might take me a little while to respond but I'll strive to interact at some level with my viewers. I will give credit where it's due for a challenge or a correction vocally in the videos; yes, shoutouts. But, if I end up getting popular, I may stop this or figuring out something else.

Finally, one last thing. IF you would like to see a certain mod included in my LP and it doesn't have any world generation or has retrogen, then please do suggest it on any of the three places that I brought up in the last paragraph, include a link to the mod, and I will seriously consider it.

See you all sometime else.

F1RST P0ST!!!

*ahem* Excuse the so-called "trolling" in the title (relevant: http://xkcd.com/269/). But yeah, this will mark my first post on this blog and will hopefully lead to many more. I'm normally very proper in my language.

Anyways, depending on how I'm feeling at the time, I may occasionally post up some information here in regards to mods that I'm developing (some people already know about one such project) and might talk about my YouTube channel. Also, it will depend on how busy I am as I'm returning to college on January 6th. As to which college; duck you. (I kid, but I'm still not telling)

I'm going to try to keep the content of this blog to just development & videos, but no guarantee. I will have a "personal blog" on Tumblr at some point in the near future. If you want to learn, maybe, a little more about me, that'll be the place. It'll be linked in the sidebar once I've set it up.