Izziebytes has moved to Izziebytes.net!
Izziebytes has moved!
If you’re a Guild Wars fan, head over to Talk Tyria! All my GW posts have been migrated over.
The rest has gone to Izziebytes.Net! All other posts (Warcraft, Reviews, etc. along with my photo and food blogs) have been moved here.
Don’t forget to update your feeds / bookmarks. <3 ~Izzie
App Review – Canva for iPad Pro
You ever that feeling when you’re really craving a specific food or flavor, and you might spend hours or even days trying to find it? And when you do, you’re super excited only to find that it falls just short of what you were looking for? That disappointment – The feeling of being so close but just not good enough? We’ve all been there at least once.
That’s how Canva feels for me. Ultimately, the app is great for non-or-new-designers looking for a quick and easy way get a project customized and out. For trained designers, the lack of basic functions and limited manipulation makes it more frustrating to work with.
I’ve been working on design and digital art for over 10 years. I’ve seen the industry, hardware, and applications evolve dramatically in this last decade – the landscape is totally different from the days of my pre-intel 2004 iMac.
But when the world of design and art is going increasingly digital, you’d expect a little more from your apps.
I was tipped off to Canva via another artistic co-worker earlier in the year – before I had my iPad. At the time, the app didn’t exist and was a fully web-based service. The jist is Canva offers hundreds of free, pre-designed templates that you can change and manipulate to make your own. It offers thousands of shapes, images, and other design elements that can be customized and moved around. It focuses on simplicity and is actually extremely great for inspiration or getting a quick design out – internal blasts for instance.
I didn’t spend much time on the site, but I remember thinking it was pretty fun and enjoying my short time experimenting.
Not long after the developers came out with an iPad app that I was sure was going to change everything, now that I had one. When I actually had an opportunity to spend a lot of time trying to do real design work, however, I found myself getting increasingly frustrated with it.
It started when I realized I couldn’t edit a stroke’s thickness. It increased when I realized most of the shapes could not be re-sized freely: I had to scroll down several pages to find a square I could reshape to a rectangle. And I reached my peak when I realized the exported files were low quality.
Along the way, the user experience frustrated me greatly as well. Trying to select text to move around will usually result in opening up the full text editing interface. The search function is very rudimentary – images aren’t always relevant, and the previews are sometimes warped. There’s no rhyme or reason to the sorting, either. I can’t zoom out or in for fine tuning.
Where Canva does shine, though, is in its very robust offerings of free templates and elements. You can import your own images, the font selection is small but very diverse, and you can pay for credits for more options. And it IS fun overall. It’s great, as mentioned before, for quick designs. If you need to get out an invitation, a quick menu, business card, etc. you can customize one of the templates and get it out in under an hour.
But if you’re a professional designer looking for the real precision and control that you’re used to from the likes of InDesign, Canva may end up frustrating you more than helping.
Get Canva on the App Store here; I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Why this PvPer doesn’t miss PvP servers
As habitual as I am, I tend to re-boot ye olde’ World of Warcraft as a time killer since New England winters can sometimes put Hoth to shame. #excuses
So here I am, back for Legion after a two year hiatus. I’ve been spending my time split between two servers that couldn’t be more different – a high-pop RP/PvE server with an alliance leaning and a low-pop PvP server that’s just shy of 70% horde.
Previous to this recent stint I would consider myself a tried and true PvP player – anybody who can survive LoL needs to be at least a little bit. Although I had a brief period of raiding back in the days of Burning Crusade, by and large my end-game has always centered around of PvP – be it world, battlegrounds, or even arenas. But as I’ve gotten older and the culture of WoW has changed, so does the dynamic of PvP – and lately I’ve found myself preferring to roll with PvE servers. As to why? Well, that’s a multi-layered answer.
Back when we took camping seriously.
For WoW players, rolling on a PvP server included a certain rite of passage – the deeply rooted classic adage “pvp happens” is oft thrown around when anybody complains about encounters they felt were unfair. But that’s how it was, really, and we all kind of knew it and we kind of liked it. But a lot of that had to do with a slightly more fair environment.
I once wrote a rather extensive (though incomplete) set of posts about 3 1/2 years ago when Cataclysm was looming. Back then a lot of things had changed or were about to – flying mounts in Azeroth, PvE to PvP transfers, and ever exponentially increasing gear gaps. I pointed out a few times how I felt about what world PvP had become, and unfortunately very little has changed since, if any.
This makes choosing a PvP server as a home so much less appealing, even to fans of PvP such as myself. Certain aspects of it is still fun – and every now and then when I run into a fellow player around my level out in the wild and tagged red, the anticipation of a fight is still there, and it’s still exciting.
The problem, though, is that this is rare these days and I’m much more likely to find myself on the receiving end of a gank. Being ganked in my opinion is not “really” PvP – there’s no versus. There’s no fight. Theres 3 level 100+ camping a 25 outpost, killing the flight master and any lowbie who’s unlucky enough to cross their path. Sometimes this sparks real world PvP when people hop on their mains to shoo the culprits out. But the moments are fleeting. The pests flee, the defenders mull around for 20 minutes or so just in case, and the situation fizzles faster than it started. Hit-and-run, basically. At the end of the day, nobody really desires a fair fight much. They want to stomp the enemy as quickly as possible, be that a group of low players who stand no chance or by summoning 3x the force to pick off a few bored nags.
What’s left is griefing the weak, and that is a in my opinion no way to play a game. Perhaps that’s why modern MMO’s choose the co-op route more and more – help each other out in the world and pummel each other in controlled, consenting environments.
Our idea of stealthily summoning 100 people to attack Iron Forge. Because stealth.
I am part of the problem – somewhere along the line, the passion faded. Sometimes I long for the old days of Burning Crusade when there was active fights all around. Isle dailies. Hellfire Peninsula. Elemental plateau. The chaos outside raid entrances.
Ah, nostalgia.
To The Readers Anybody out there old school WoW Pvpers? Or even current? Is World PVP still alive on your server? Do you like or dislike how things have generally changed for world PvP, or PvP in general?
Snapseed Review for Android – 200 Word App Review
App: Snapseed
Developer: Nik / Google
Platforms: Android via Google Play (This Review), iOS via App Store
Category: Photo Editing, Photography
Price: Free
As a hobby photographer who’s spent the last 10+ years using Photoshop and Lightroom on computers, finding a mobile photo editing app that meets my standards was a challenge. Not counting Adobe’s robust mobile apps, I’ve so far found nothing better than Snapseed.
While not as feature heavy as a full-blown desktop photo editing software, Snapseed boasts more of the sort of basic fine-tuning options like contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. without being weighed down by too many cutesy clichés like bubbly text and stickers.
What I love about the app is that it supplies me with the most critical editing options I need, especially the coveted highlight and shadow adjustments that help to make up for limitations of mobile cameras. Your edits can be as detailed or simple as you want.
As for as ui, Snapped tries to keep it simple with basic swiping left and right for adjustments, and up and down to choose options. It takes some getting used to but quickly becomes second nature after a few goes, getting you to your desired look quickly and easily.
So Artsy
In-Depth Sense8 Review – Diverse, Captivating, and Unique
The Wachowskis are often known for their willingness to pursue creativity over trying to mimic mainstream success. Their boldness has produced a wide range of results, from the industry changing Matrix to the recent (perhaps underrated) flop of Jupiter Ascending. But while not every project can muster widespread appeal, we can’t accuse them of being boring. Every time they put their minds to a new idea, they bring something fresh to entertainment.
This is brilliantly exemplified by the most recent gem that is Sense8.
Queen
This mystical sci-fi drama follows the lives of eight individuals across the world who become inexplicably linked mentally and emotionally – or what are known as sensates. As the group faces challenges in their very different lives, they begin to borrow from each other’s skills and experiences to get by. Though each character has their own tale to tell, another overarching story unfolds – what exactly is happening to these people? Somewhat expectedly, he group finds themselves the target of a unknown but far-reaching entity lead by a turncoat sensate known as Whispers. Who are they and what do they want? These are the questions the audience and the protagonists face with each episode.
While the series is still under the radar in terms of what we consider a mainstream hit, where it has really found a strong and adoring audience is with often-ignored demographics of minority groups worldwide.
Dedication to Diversity
I suppose they’re all beautiful, though
Sense8 wears its diversity with unapologetic pride, boasting a central cast who range in race, gender, orientation, and culture. Adding to the in-universe representation, the production team pulled in actors who are actually well known in their native countries and were dedicated to filming on location. This often involved painstakingly weaving two separate scenes from characters across the world into a single, shared moment.
Furthermore, each character’s identity and culture is central to his or her arc, from their challenges, to the way their story is filmed, to the mood and lighting in their scenes.
For instance, overdramatic flare follows Lito, the devilishly handsome but closeted Mexican actor whose life plays out like a telenovela. Warm tones and a vibrant Bollywood dance-number paint Kala’s life as a privileged pharmacist in Mumbai. Meanwhile Riley’s scenes often reflect her drifting back and forth between her own inner world and reality, with the background fading away and the mood being cool and detached.
The foreign actors speak in English using grammatical structure that more closely resembles their native language than ours – as much as it can be for us to understand – intentionally done to show us that they are actually speaking, say, German or Korean, but somehow understanding each other.
At times it’s not hard to imagine that every note, every word, every color was carefully selected as a filter into each character’s unique point of view. It’s more than just telling us, but showing us in every detail who these people are, how their cultures affect them, and where their differences and similarities lie.
And yet somehow none of this feels invasive or forced. Despite the unfamiliar worlds of each of these people, the natural and comfortable way in which the actors perform almost makes it feel like home, perhaps the same way they begin to see each other’s worlds as another home.
The Only Drawbacks – Pacing, Complexity, and Inconsistent Character Focus
Warning – minor spoilers ahead in this section
Sense8 is absolutely the type of series that benefits greatly from the Netflix model. I admittedly struggled with the combination of a complex story with extremely slow pacing, at least for the first half of the series. This is not a background-noise type of show. You can and will miss important details so it’s best to give Sense8 your full attention to enjoy it.
I believe this largely has to do with the attempt to tell many individual journeys alongside one major plot. In order to achieve this, some characterization sacrifices had to be made.
Nomi, for instance, is a trans character played by a trans actress who I severely want to find more interesting than she is. Likewise, Will Gorski, while charmingly precious and sweet, isn’t particularly engaging, either. Coincidentally, both of their arcs are central to the main plotline where the sensates are being hunted. Nomi’s hospitalization and Will’s traumatic childhood flashbacks are directly related to the sensate mystery. Meanwhile most of the others get their own unique and culturally driven story that makes them more complex, interesting, and colorful.
Still utterly loveable even if she’s a bit boring
In full circle, in all the time it takes to dance around Kala’s marriage indecisiveness, Sun’s horrible family, and Capheus being far too sweet for the world he lives in, the main plot and action doesn’t get going until well into the second half of the series where it picks up dramatically.
But once it does really get going, it’s a fantastic ride.
Also, the long-ass opening sequence is annoying.
End spoilers
Conclusion – If you love character-driven entertainment and enjoy or don’t mind soft sci-fi, watch this series – now.
Despite pacing and minor characterization flaws, Sense8 delivers a wonderful character-centric global story that celebrates the diversity of humanity. You can’t ignore the powerful message – our fate as humans is directly tied to everyone in the world. We are stronger together and our differences turn into strengths when shared. It’s an appreciable evolution from an long history of egotistical sci-fi that seems to forget the world doesn’t revolve around America and Europe. But the series does so by paying a great deal of respect and homage to cultures without reducing them to one-dimensional stereotypes.
It’s a fantastic and captivating journey that will absolutely leave you craving season 2.
Watch the conceptual trailer. It’s awesome.
Remembering Guild Wars – Happy 10 Year Anniversary
The original Guild Wars was and probably forever will be my favorite game ever. As much as I enjoy Guild Wars 2 these days, it still doesn’t hold a candle to what GW1 meant to me.
I was a high school senior when Guild Wars was announced – myself and a handful of friends played in the first open beta weekend event, exploding Gwens and all. It was the first game I ever reviewed (for my school newspaper) and the first online game I discovered on my own. I’ve made lasting friendships from my time there – it inspired me to start blogging (back then on some horrid platform like greatest journal? Dark times), and kicked off my decade+ love affair with MMORPG’s.
I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane and list out my top five moments from Guild Wars.
1) Pink Day in LA 2010
I’d say that 2010 was the peak of my involvement with the Guild Wars community. The hype-train for GW2 was at maximum. Guild Wars had a surge in activity as players returned to fill their halls. I had launched Talk Tyria and it was doing pretty great.
That year I met a lot of other community project people, including GW-EN (AKA Gamers Giving Back) who invited me to help with their Pink Day in LA charity event – a multi-game virtual fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. It was the first time I had done anything like it – months of planning and unprecedented involvement from ArenaNet (Pink dye!) and players alike made it an amazingly successful event.
The original goal was $1337 dollars but the final tally hit $11,000. It was one of my proudest moments as a member of the Guild Wars community and would not have been possible without the outpouring of support from players and developers alike. We were all pleasantly shocked at the turn-out – and the Canadian Cancer Society was grateful for our efforts. I will never forget that weekend.
2) Zaishen Elite Marathon
ArenaNet Delivers on Heart of Thorns Hype at PaxEast
It’s been awhile since ArenaNet has pulled this much punch at PaxEast – and what a comeback! I was absolutely delighted to have taken even a small part in the celebration of Guild Wars 2’s first expansion, Heart of Thorns, which was announced recently at this winter’s PaxSouth. Arenanet delivered on promises to have pieces of the expansion available to play in the expo hall (in grand fashion, I might add) as well as sign-ups for the upcoming closed beta.
Since I was only able to attend Pax for one day this year, I unfortunately was not able to get a chance to play or really spend much time watching – I had a lot of ground to cover in a short time. However, I DID get to attend ArenaNet’s charming fan-party Friday night at the Hard Rock cafe which was chock-full of good food, great company, and even greater prizes (none of which I managed to get my hands on…boo).
It was a total blast greeting familiar faces, some of which I had not seen in years! I also had an opportunity to spend time with some twitter folk and fellow guildies who I’d not met in person (NSP, REPRESENT!)
ArenaNet’s Heart of Thorns booth took center stage in the expo-hall and was impossible to miss. Their impressive set-up was made to give the feel of walking through an exotic jungle, with a rich green atmosphere and enough plants to offset the thousands of breathing fans.
It was gorgeous, as were the smiling faces of the dev team and fans alike.
The hype is real here, and I can’t wait for my first shot at playing, even if that means waiting ‘til release day.
Gone Girl Movie Review – October’s creepiest movie for all the best unexpected reasons
It’s the kick-off for Oscar season, and what better way to start the spookiest month of the year than with a terrifyingly creepy film?
Although not without its casual (and minor) gore, Gone Girl’s scare-factor isn’t about flying heads and slashing knives but rather something that’s much more frightening – that of the human condition (Yikes!).
The movie is based on a 2012 novel of the same name and follows the mystery of Nick and Amy Dunne – a couple whose outwardly fairy-tale relationship is disrupted when Amy suddenly vanishes on their 5th wedding anniversary. Over the course the investigation into her disappearance, a deeply hidden Pandora’s box of marital problems leads the formally sympathetic public and authorities to suspect Nick as the central suspect in her unknown fate.
As the story unfolds, we are given (often conflicting) narration from both parties – Amy’s in the form of a written diary read to us through her voice, and visually following Nick as he struggles to handle the stress of his missing wife and media bombardment.
The film is exceptionally put together and paced – it manages to turn on its heels from a mystery to almost a thriller as an abrupt plot shift mid-way through drags us from our original journey to a completely new one. It’s never boring despite being almost 2 1/2 hours long. Gone Girl forces us to choose a side, and it’s unclear right up until the end who’s worth rooting for, if anyone. In fact, it’s unclear who is telling the truth at all. Unreliable protagonists be damned, someone (everyone?) is sketchy here.
The cast was wonderful – Ben Affleck (Nick) is really in his element as a begrudging husband while Rosamund Pike (Amy) is downright haunting in her role. The supporting cast were all a pleasure to watch, although the secondary characters didn’t demand much (with the exception perhaps of Neil Patrick Harris and Kim Dickens), but the film is very much about Amy and Nick’s relationship more than anything.
Without spoiling the heart of the film, I will say this much – Gone Girl had me and many of the watchers on edge at several points. It brings to light a lot of issues that are downright spooky to human beings – raising a privileged child in the limelight, how often we fake who we are to get what we think we need, whether or not you truly know the people you love, and the pressure to be perfect for the world regardless of what goes on behind closed doors. Also, sociopaths are frightening people.
I would definitely recommend this film, but despite being good it’s not easy to watch. It makes you uncomfortable from very early on, as a result of its realness, and it leaves you feeling almost defeated. But it fits right in with the point of the story, however dramatic the plot may be- the question it’s asking is directed at us.
Diversity Thoughts – The movie’s only notable person of color holds a powerful position, but he’s one in an otherwise largely white cast, so it completely fails in diversity. Female rep is solid, though – head detective is a woman, and the other key supporting actresses play complex and diverse roles. They talk to each other in regards to the case.
PAX East 2014 Photo Gallery & Videos
Better late than never!
Here’s a compilation of my favorite photos, moments, and videos from PAX East 2014.
I had a blast, and had a great time hanging out with friends.
Can’t wait for next year!
Warning – VERY Media Heavy (more…)
League of Legends URF review and why it SHOULD NOT be a permanent mode
Let’s face it – Ultra Rapid Fire was probably one of the most amazing things to come out of Riot recently. This is in no way discrediting their other, wonderful products and features – but for an April Fool’s Joke, URF just had something magical that the community perhaps didn’t know they wanted.
I had a blast (literally, Karma RQ fo days) these past few weeks playing this game mode and was happy to see that it would be extended through PAX East, which I attended. But it also made me really appreciate the delicate process of champion balance. And now that the mode has been disabled, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a bittersweet farewell that I felt came just at the right time. URF needs to be put to rest for now, otherwise some severe and long-term damage to League could be inevitable.
Surely, URF will be terribly missed, but there is something extremely dangerous (and broken) about a mode like this staying permanent. A lot of it has to do with the community and player mentality, and a lot of it boils right down to mechanics and being realistic about Riot’s grand plan for League.
Some mechanical reasons are completely obvious, judging by the slowly expanding list of champions who had to be straight up banned from the mode – URF favors a very specific subset of play style while axing a specfic need for control and elegance to game play. This mode severely punished certain champions who general scale better with time and patience – they often got obliterated by those in which cooldowns and energy costs were an extremely necessary restriction to curb their power.
AP champs, for example, start out fairly strong and scale extremely well with items almost immediately. Traditionally, cooldowns and mana restrictions keep them from being able to faceroll at level 2, but not so in here.
If you didn’t know your champion intimately enough to execute their cocaine-infused kits well, you were probably in for a hard time. Tanking and defense become almost completely useless and it boiled down to a race for which team can out damage the other faster, with little to no weight put on other tactics that make League whole. And of course, players started to just take it too damn seriously.
Already there are complaints about the switch back to normalcy – everything feels slow, and in some extreme cases completely less enjoyable. This is the result of prolonged exposure to handicaps in a game. Lots of players, especially ranked, are opting to take a break either completely or to settle with normals for a while until they can re-train their fingers and brains to normal play.
Outside of the technical, there’s also the issue of popularity. Obviously, queues for ranked, normals, and arams dropped considerably during URFs reign, and there was a big risk that URF would just be more favorable in the long-run to any other mode. And why not? It’s fast, powerful, and chaotic enough to be the perfect storm for addiction, and I feel that would take away from the other very delicately created worlds Riot has set up for their community.
This obviously isn’t doomsday it won’t take long for fans to get back into the swing of things, surely, but I think URF’s was a drug that’ll be harder to shake for a lot of players. I’ll be glad to see it come back in the future, but for now I am relieved to see it take a breather and to get back down to normal
To The Readers How did you like URF? Love it? Hate it? Miss it? Do you want it to be permanent? Why or why not?
Ms. Marvel Volume 1 Review
I guess if I’m going to call myself a geek, I’d eventually have to give western comics a go. So there I was at the ripe ol’ age of 29 and I picked up my first comic that wasn’t a manga or based on another form of media.
It’s not surprising that my choice was the 2014 Ms. Marvel, featuring the cute-as-a-button Kamala Khan. She and I have a lot in common, being brown girls from Jersey, first generation Americans (sort of, as my parents were born in Puerto Rico), and unabashed dorks. How could I not love her? Spoiler: I do.
Adorkable x Infinity
The thing I love about the first volume, a collection of chapters 1-5, is the way her identity is so central to her story and ties directly into her powers. Growing up the youngest in a traditional Muslim family (but, from what I gather, not super conservative), Kamala struggles with where she’s supposed to fit in between inherited values and assimilating to American culture. At times she rejects the strictness of her parents’ and religion’s views. At others, she genuinely feels out of place when asked or forced into a position that other American teens wouldn’t think twice about.
It’s amazing that we have her as a central focus, because there are doubtless many young women and men out there who struggle similarly. Many immigrant families come to the United States for a plethora of reasons and thousands of youngsters out there deal with the clash of cultures that Kamala is going through. That she is here to represent those individuals is a gift.
The other thing I love is how meta Kamala is, in more than one way. It’s easy to put yourself in her shoes for simply being a follower of heroes that we’ve come to love both in print and on the big screen. This is a point of view we rarely get to see and does kind of put things into perspective. The Marvel Universe is one in which superheroes are common and ubiquitous in culture. In their world, Carol Danvers is as much of a household name as Taylor Swift. Kamala puts that in perspective by being a hardcore fan – fanfics and all – and being unabashedly proud of that fact.
Every actor’s worst nightmare
Every Fangirl’s Dream
Now, this might be my unfamiliarity with comic-book pacing but I did kind of feel removed at times at how quickly things happened. Sometimes I found myself re-reading a few pages because I felt like I had missed something. But this issue got better as I read on! It also felt a little juvenile – and again, this might just be my inexperience talking. Kamala is a teenager and she definitely comes saddled with lots of teen corniness.
But overall, I really enjoyed the first five chapters of the new Ms. Marvel. Kamala is beyond precious and I have high hopes that she’s going to be a fantastic role-model. I’m deeply interested in seeing her grow and evolve, and perhaps branch out beyond to see how she interacts with other established super heroes!
To the Readers – What are your impressions of this Ms. Marvel? How do you feel about Kamala?
10/08/2016 at 9:54 am Leave a comment