So, for most of the other text on this site, I have been writing it in a largely formal and stiff tone, but here I am going to try and write a little more candidly and hopefully put a little more personality in it. Since this is the first entry I am writing in the blog, this one is going to be a bit long, I'd imagine, an will also serve as an extended bio, as the about me page on my site is a little lacking at giving any real insight into the person behind this site. I am Jake Spondulio, you can call me either. Also since these blog posts are going to be less formal and potentially long, please forgive any typos, as I will not be holding this page to the standards of my other writing on this site. I am also noticing the tone of this is literally as stiff and cold as the rest of my site LOL sorry, I'll try to loosen up as I write this.
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Break for readability's sake
So, some basic info about me beyond what's on my about page. I was a computer science major for 3 years, but have not graduated, as I took a break in 2020 that has gone on a little longer than I anticipated. I have been coding since high school and really like math and science, so I was very stoked when programming clicked with me. I have wanted to make games since I was little and finally got to do just that with some of my little projects, some of which you can find hosted on this site if you want to play something I have made. I am primarily interested in making 2d platformers, as it is my favorite genre. My favorite game of all time, however, is Pikmin 2, which I think everybody should play. I think there is something about the game for everyone to enjoy, and there are some people like me who will enjoy everything about the game.
My hand hurts LOL
I have not typed this much since high school. And you might think, "wouldn't you have typed more in college?" and the answer to that is no LOL I was not a very good student and constantly slacked on my work. I had the curse of being smart enough where school was really easy for me my whole life (academics wise, but I had a whole slew of other problems with school) which made it so I never had to study or put in extra work. This sounds great at face value, but the longer you can go without developing a work ethic, the harder it becomes to eventually develop one. So when college hit and the classes got harder, I did not have the skills developed to actually study and put effort into my work because I genuinely coasted through so many of my AP classes in high school through sheer confidence and innate ability. This led to me having a serious problem with time management in college, as I never wanted to do my work, and only wanted to play video games. This problem was exacerbated when I started making friends. In addition to my time playing games and pursuing my creative hobbies, I now also had to juggle a surprisingly robust social life. I also started playing a lot more Super Smash Bros. Melee since I finally had a close friend to play it with at least once a week. Melee led me to become interested in traditional fighting games and Guilty Gear, so now I would say I have a solid baseline of fundamentals for fighting games across the board, but am really good at none of them. The closest thing to a fighting game I would say I am good at is Guilty Gear Strive because that game is kind of easy and I put 180 hours in LOL. I forget what I was trying to convey in this section but tl;dr, games good, friends good, school bad.
Creative endeavors
I started drawing in 8th grade when a friend of mine told me I should join advanced art so I could hang out with her there and I told her I was not good at drawing and never have been and she told me that she already talked to the art teacher about it and that I had to submit my drawing tomorrow LOL. So I did and I got in, to my surprise. I did not really improve much though and kind of just had fun there doing whatever. Art was a massive negative force in my life for a long time, as I never was able to drw the way I wanted to, even to this day. However, Now I have a much better relationship with art, as I no longer lament not being able to draw how I want to, but by enjoying the fact that I can draw something that can make me laugh or smile. I mainly draw self portraits, and almost every one I draw is in a different style or tone. I use a wacom intuos tablet and firealpaca because I have no need to learn better software unless I become better at drawing, which I am not holding my breath for. I also started making music in FL Studio using the rugrats search for reptar ps1 soundfont, and have since added more soundfonts to my lineup, such as glover and warioware diy. I love making music, and really like listening to my own music, as narcissistic as that may be. I have coined the term, "Not to narse my own cyst, but..." and then praise my own music, likely due to chemical imbalance in a lobe or two. I already talked about programming, but I used GameMaker Studio to make my games, and really enjoyed it.
What I like
Most of my days consist of playing video games, watching twitch streams, and an occasional anime series. I also love spending time with my cat Luna. My current favorite streamer is Grayfruit. I have been watching him basically since he started his youtube career making smash 4 montages, and now I watch every stream he does. If you have not heard of him, give him a try. I just started playing Psychonauts 2, which I love so far and is an amazing follow-up to the first game. Sasha Nein is probably my favorite character, but I also love Razputin a lot too. I love psychic related media, as my favorite anime is Mob Psycho 100. I have also been watching Dandadan, as it is releasing now (time capsule moment. have fun reading this in a few months.) I also just got into TF2 for the first time this october. I went from 10 hours played to 160 in like, a month. I am talking about pikmin 2 again right now, as I will often do so get used to it. I have been eagerly awaiting the release of several new pikmin 2 romhacks and am getting so impatient lol. If you are a pikmin 2 fan and have never played a romhack, try Pikmin 251 or Pikmin 216. Speaking of romhacks, I love Kazio Super Mario World romhacks, so try playing those too if you like challenging platformers.
I forgot to say I am an only child anywhere, but that is true. I have no siblings, so if I am weird, use that as a scapegoat.
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About this Site
I started making this site kind of on a whim. I don't even remember what made me decide to just dive in and go for it, but my initial inspiration for this site was seeing Hackerling's neocities page, hackerling.space, which I think is very cool. My main objectives here so far have been getting a bunch of my backlogged materials uploaded, as before I made this site, basically only one other person on this earth had seen my drawings and heard my music. I have never and will never use social media platforms, and if you would say that neocities itself is one, I'd disagree, especially the way I have been using it. I am kind of just like a weird old man yelling into the night, like that scene in Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed. Also, it's crazy to me how young the userbase is here??? If you are reading this and younger than 20, I am very impressed at the amount of talented kids on here making gorgeous sites and better progrmmers than I'll ever be LOL. I will say though, I have never used html, css, or javascript before about a month ago, if even that, so I am still a beginner here. My experience is in Java, C++, GML, Visual Basic, and I think C# a little too. Object oriented out of my gourd.
I love video games
I have gone back and forth about how I feel about video games emotionally. There was a period in high school where I was so sorrowful and pessimistic about the state of gaming. The game that saved me then was Nier Automata, which was the first game I had played since I was little that really resonated with me to that degree. Nier Replicant is now maybe my second favorite game of all time, behind pikmin 2. I also love tetris a whole lot. If you aren't good at tetris, I am cracked at the game, but if you know what albatross is, then I am pretty average to bad probably. If you don't know what albatross is, learn albatross. Google "albatross tetris opener" and then you will beat everyone at school.
I think I am almost done, but I don't know anything about blogging/journaling so I don't know if I did it right. If you read all that, thank you so much, but more importantly, please tell me if there is something I should have mentioned, or even just questions you want me to answer next time. That being said, this thing is so long, there is no chance anyone gets this far and read the whole thing. If you just scroled all the way down and saw this, that's cheating and I condemn you for it. Although cheating, if not punishable in any capacity, is wholly reasonable to perpetrate, so by all means, trample upon my integrity.
-Jake Spondulio
