I found the above fortune in a Mandarin fortune cookie earlier today just hours after receiving my double degree in paper form. I think this is a good sign.

More important than fortune cookies and Chinese buffets is the fact that I have graduated! It took me four years, but I did it. Most people aren’t aware that I wasn’t at just one campus for my entire university career. Because the New Media program I was accepted into was a joint program, I moved around quite a bit.

So actually, my first 2 years were spent at the University of Toronto at Scarborough campus, the next full year was spent at the Centennial College HP campus, the summer after my third year was spent first attending an internship course at the Centennial College Centre for Creative Communications and second, attending summer school at the University of Toronto St. George campus while simultaneously interning at a small new media company’s office as a junior producer, and my final fourth year was spent back at the University of Toronto at Scarborough campus. What a ride.

In total, in the four years I attended university/college classes, I attended 4 different school campuses and 1 work place as a student intern. Why am I giving this so much attention? Because after reading the above fortune and reminiscing about my education for a little bit, I realized that this constant change-up of location greatly enhanced my education and has given me more experience in a rapidly changing and evolving world than I asked for. And that’s good!

I’m now ready for almost anything. I can’t wait to see what my future holds in store for me. Without a doubt, the options presented in front of me are expanded considerably because of my time at University of Toronto. So yeah, thanks UofT!

Click the More button to see a somewhat awkward jumping picture of me celebrating my freedom from sleepless nights of essay writing and hair pulling days of coding.

(more…)

Last night, Davy Bell, Heather Whitney, and I launched a new website. It’s a webcomic about relationships. It’s pretty funny, I think. I’m pretty sure you’ll find it funny too. So, if you haven’t already scooted over to boy-vs-girl.com, you’re probably just waiting for me to describe the site a bit more. Well, for you, and only you, I’ll quote our talented writer’s description of our website:

After sitting down and discussing relationships we realized, that despite how wrong everything can go, in the end, relationships are funny…to someone. This site was created in the hopes that you, who have been in a relationship or two, or are in one now, recognize the similarity between yourselves and the characters in our comic… and from there you can begin to laugh with or at us.

We’re going to be updating the site on a weekly basis, so definitely check it out and keep coming back.

Love,

Adam Sawicki.

*Photo credit: Heather Whitney

I’m free. See that sailboat? See how free it looks just floating ever so freely? It’s untethered, unconfined, unchained, unrestrained, unrestricted, free and clear. That’s me. I’m the boat. Before metamorphosing into this boat, I was tethered, confined, chained, and restricted by school. Now the thing is: I enjoyed my time at university and I believe that my time there has been beneficial to me, but it kept me away from friends, family, and my own ideas and projects that I wanted to create, explore, and work on.

Enough with the complaints! I’m done! I have a lot of time on my hands right now. A LOT. One of the things I’m currently working on is just about to launch. It’s a project between me and two friends of mine, one of whom is more than a mere friend to me. Heh. If you know me, you’ll hear about this project very soon. Keep an eye on this space, my Facebook, and/or my Twitter account.

What else? Well, I want to create more and more! If you’ve got any ideas, let me know.

That’s it for now, I guess. I’ll be updating this here blog much more often now. Actually, you know what? Let’s try to update this blog daily. I’m up for it. Yes! Here we go…

Love,

Adam Sawicki.

I’ve wanted to make a Flash game for a very long time now, but I just haven’t had the time to build one. Just recently however, I was given a chance to make one for a school project. And that’s how Hellacious began its life.

It’s currently still in development, so right now the only way to play it is to try out the demo. It’s short, but should introduce you to the world of Hellacious.

One more thing: I’m thinking of changing the character. I’m just not very good at drawing, so I may be looking for help in producing art for this game. We’ll see how it goes. But if you’re interested in helping me out, let me know.

See the ‘N’ key? I’ve been using it a lot for the past few months. You’ve no doubt heard me say, “Nah, I can’t tonight. I have to finish a damn essay.” Or “Not until this school year is finally over.” Or “Negative ghostrider.” Okay, that last one; something my brother would say.

So here’s this post. It’s basically an apology for saying “No” to so many of you for the past few months. It’s also a little bit of a plea for sympathy.

You know what makes this all bearable though? I’m not alone in suffering through this year of nos, negatives, and nevers -alliteration FTW! Heather’s by my side pretty much everyday, enduring through an endless torrent of assignments with me. Essentially, there’s a bunch of you in the same boat as me and the boat is sinking super fast. But keep in mind my fellow studious sailors, the water is a warm blanket under which we rest at two in the afternoon after sleeping in on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. And we don’t drown. We graduate.

What I’m saying is, hey, I’m still your friend! You can call me and we’ll hang out…sometime.

Presenting Overheard at EB Games, a feature wherein I quote a conversation I overheard while working at my part time job at EB Games. Sometimes people say something funny, sometimes people say something interesting, but most of the time, people say something stupid. You be the judge.

After calling on me numerous times with the attention grabbing and oh so eloquent, “YO!” I finally answer two gangsta’ kids (maybe in their late teens) looking for a sick game to play. I answered their questions but did not recommend any good games for them to take home as I had no intention or hope of having an engaging conversation with these two incredibly intelligent young adults. After fielding their inquisitive questions, I overheard their conversation:

L’Mo: Yo, Ima return Army of Two.

BigJ: Ye?

L’Mo: Ye. I beat it. Game’s sick, man. You can turn you gun gold and shit.

BigJ: Siiiiiiiiiiiiick.

Gangsta’ kids’ names are completely fictional. I’m probably not far off though.

Yup. I haven’t finished a song in I don’t even know how long. So, I just quickly made a small page for all of the unfinished music I’ve made. The page holds songs I started working on and just never got around to finishing.

When you’re listening to these songs, I encourage you to think about how you could make them better. What can you add?

So have a listen and let me know what you think:

adamsawicki.com/unfinishedmusic

Love,

Adam.

It’s funny. I wanted to go to sleep early tonight, so I looked around for something to watch to ease me into a nice and relaxing deep sleep. I noticed one of my friends on MSN had a link for a Google Video video (wow redundancy) posted in their name. I thought, “Ah what the heck. Let’s see what this video’s about.”

Well, it’s about a lot. I still have not gone to sleep. I’m inspired. I want to see what others think about this video’s take on money, society, resources, energy, technology, and love. I don’t want to say too much about it because I don’t want to influence your opinion in any way. When you have 2 hours to spare, have a watch. Like with everything you watch, you should view it with an open mind, criticize everything you see and hear, and ask yourself how this video makes you feel.

So, as Oleg so efficiently put it, “What do you think about this?”

This is too cool. Well, I think so anyways. Microsoft has created this barcode technology that embeds digital information in a 2D image, like the one you see to the left. It’s a lot like QR Code, which is apparently widely used in places like Japan. The main difference: Triangles. QR Code barcodes are just black and white and look more like a pixelated mess. 

The cool thing is, you can now go to http://www.microsoft.com/tag/, create your own tag, and publish it for the world to see. Your next step is to use an app like Microsoft’s Tag Reader (iTunes Store link) on your iPhone, or other mobile device, to take a picture of the 2D image, and wait for the app to do its magic. If you were to take a picture of the above image, your phone would take you to my website, adamsawicki.com. Cool, eh?

The app also works on Blackberry, Android, PalmOS, and other devices. Get it here: http://gettag.mobi/

The app is free and so is the image creation tool. I doubt the creation tool will be free forever, so use it while you can. If you create a tag, post it on my Facebook wall, I will give you a Rock Band 2 t-shirt. Embed whatever you like in the image. 

I am definitely an Apple supporter, but when Microsoft brings something like this to the masses, I embrace the gigantic company with my skinny and boy-ish muscular arms. I think it’s a great move on their part to get this kind of technology into everyone’s hands. 

Love,

Adam Sawicki.

As a sort of apology for not updating this blog for a while, and as a sort of nudge for you guys to read more (don’t worry you don’t have to after this), I’ve decided to give away the many Rock Band 2 t-shirts I have laying around the house. I have a lot because I love the game and because I work at EB Games. I tried giving these away to customers, but most of them said I could keep them or give them away to others. So I kept them.

Now I want to share!

I also want to have a little fun with this. So to win a t-shirt, all you have to do is answer the following questions related to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll:

1) What is your most embarrassing guilty pleasure (band and/or song)?

2) What was your first favourite band?

3) What do you think is the best song to copulate to?

There are some rules:

-You must live within a reasonable distance away from me.
-You must be at some sort of gathering that I’m at in the next few months (this is easy if you know me).
-You must reply truthfully and honestly, only because it makes it more fun.
-You must reply in the comments section.

That’s it! So let’s hear your answers.

Love,

Adam Sawicki.