Blog & Media

Another few months of on-and-off development and once again the site is refreshed. This time around rather than doing a complete design overhaul I instead just added more features, including but not limited to:

• Rotating background logo
• New cursor and scrollbar designs
• Static overlay
• New settings menu in the navbar
• Demon Realm

Also since October I have had a new job working as a web developer for College of Eastern Idaho. Pretty cool.

After a few months of on-and-off development, the redesigned version of the website is nearly complete. The layout for the Blog/Media page is finished and now all that is left to do is port over all the blog posts from the old site to the new one. You can learn more about the development cycle for this project on my code page.

Written in Fall 2021, Ghosthunt is my second song and was also produced in FL Studio. A relatively simple Halloween-themed song(though it wasn't released until November), my goal with GhostHunt was to create a deeper and more fleshed-out piece as opposed to the incredibly simplistic nature of Pending. I also got to use Adobe Animate for the first time when creating the animation. I originally uploaded this song on a different channel shortly after its completion, but I rereleased it in July 2022 with some slight musical improvements and a better background animation.

A couple months ago I was interested in learning more about the socio-political relations in East Asia. While perusing for books to learn about this subject I kept seeing Three Tigers, One Mountain being highly recommended as an informative yet entertaining text. After picking up the audiobook version of the text for a few bucks I listened to it over the span of a few days. Here are my thoughts:

I will say right off the bat that this book is phenomenal. Author Michael Booth writes with a lot of humor in his sentences, and narrator Julian Elfer captures this perfectly in his vocal performance. While the book was not strictly made to be an audiobook, it contains no images or figures so this doesn't result in any issues for the listener.

The content of the book follows author Michael Booth as he travels throughout East Asia, with each prominent stop involving a recounting of East Asian history and culture relevant to the region. This results in the text taking on the form of a travelogue with periodic injections of deeper historical context, which I admit is not a style I am used to reading as I usually stick to strictly historical texts. All the same, listening to Booth describe his introductory Taekwondo lessons he took while in South Korea was amusing, as were the other countless personal anecdotal stories. More than just entertainment value, however, Booth's travel experiences also serve as a more genuine lens into the social and political atmosphere that currently exists within East Asia, and how that seems to affect everyday people living in those countries.

The only reason I might hesitate to recommend this book to people interested in the subject is that the travelogue formula, while entertaining, results in an unorthodox and shallower coverage of the topic. If you are expecting an in-depth and conventional analysis of East Asian history, you will want to look elsewhere.

All the same, Three Tigers, One Mountain deserves its reputation as a humorous and interesting book and is well worth a read (or listen).

Before moving to Idaho in 2018, I don't think I had ever actually met a Morman before. I didn't even really understand who they were and what they believed - a fact that remained true to some extent even after I had moved to Pocatello and its growing LDS community. While over the years I would pick up on the crucial aspects of this strange branch of Christianity, it wasn't until I read Benjamin Park's Kingdom of Nauvoo for one of my university history classes that I truly understood the underlying meaning and beliefs of the LDS faith. While I usually don't like discussing textbooks I read for school on here, I felt like this one deserved an exception due to its relevance to me and my local community. And besides, it's not really a university textbook anyways. Here are my thoughts:

The narrator, Bob Souer, does a serviceable job reading the transcript of the book, though he does have the tendency to be a bit monotone. Additionally, as is usual for most audiobooks the pace at which Souer talks is rather slow, though a simple adjustment of the speed fixes this minor issue.

The book itself follows the Mormans shortly after their exile from Missouri and their resettling in the town of Commerce located in the bordering state of Illinois. Over the next few years the Mormans, under the guidance of their prophet Joseph Smith, rename the small town "Nauvoo" and convert it into what is essentially a self-autonomous theocratic city-state. Eventually their religious fanaticism and devotion to Smith causes both the government and the public of Illinois to assassinate Smith and drive the Mormans out of the state.

The content of the book largely focuses on the Morman's time in the city of Nauvoo from 1839 to 1846, as this was the period in Mormanism's history that many of its peculiar beliefs would first develop. While not strictly a biography of Joseph Smith, his importance within the LDS community at this time was so great that he was tied to essentially every moment in the Morman's history in Nauvoo. As such, Smith along with his brother & wife are heavily discussed within the book.

A short read, I believe that The Kingdom of Nauvoo is an excellent recounting of one of the most pivotal periods in Mormanism's history. While I am not usually interested in historical books that deal with a super specific timeframe, the book did a great job of keeping me engaged in its retelling of the strange story of the Mormans.

Recently I was in the mood to hear about the Middle Ages in Europe and learn how many of the current states on the continent began to take shape. Browsing Audible, I found Medieval Europe by Chris Wickham and gave it a shot. Here are my thoughts:

While I dislike starting these reviews with something negative, I believe it must be said immediately that this book has some sentences that can be incredibly difficult to follow. Wickham has the tendency to try and cram as much as he can into a single sentence, resulting in long, run-on sentences that always seem to have some kind of anecdote or subthought contained within the them. This is made all the worse when listening to it as an audiobook, as it is often quite difficult to go back and relisten to the absolute maze of sentences Wickham enjoys constructing.

Another aspect of this book worth definitely worth mentioning is that it is less about the chronological history of the Middle Ages and more about analyzing the socio-economic status of Medieval Europe and how it changed over time. Little time is spent covering the history of the era, if anything Medieval Europe expects you to already know it as the book is constantly making references to historical events as if the reader already knows what they are. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but just make sure you've done your homework before choosing to pick this audiobook up.

The book covers the timeframe which you would expect - roughly from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. This is somewhat ironic, as part of Wickham's overall thesis is that the "Middle Ages" aren't really as distinct as we tend to think and the start & end points of the era are somewhat arbitrarily decided. Additionally, as is common among many pieces of writing covering the European Middle Ages, Medieval Europe focuses more on Western Europe than it does East (though it does discuss the Byzantines on numerous occasions). This makes sense, however, as the book focuses on the socio-economical situation of Medieval Europe and how it evolved over time and, generally speaking, many more developments and progressions occurred in the western half of the continent during the Middle Ages.

Ultimately I still recommend Medieval Europe with the caveat that the reader should already possess some historical knowledge of the titular subject. While the writing can at times be frustrating to follow, the book makes up for this by delivering a sophisticated discussion on the realities of Europe's 'Dark Age' and gives the reader a deeper understanding of the period beyond just learning the names of kings and the dates of battles.

After finishing The Mongol Empire I was in the mood to learn more about other the great empires that once dominated the Earth. As the Roman Empire is arguably the most well-known, I decided to continue my journey through The Great Courses series and purchased The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome. Here are my thoughts:

As mentioned in the my review of the The Mongol Empire, the Great Courses series is designed for audiobooks and in doing so accounts for the ways in which listening to audiobooks differ from conventional reading. This results in a relatively smooth experience compared to a lot of other audiobooks. The narrator, Gregory S. Aldrete, does a serviceable job though he does have the tendency to talk extremely slow (I had the book on 1.6x speed the entire time). Aldrete also often tries to make the text "conversational"; he regularly asks questions for the reader to ponder on and while I understand the purpose of this, in practice these questions just end up ruining the pacing of the text.

As the book's subtitle suggests, its contents primarily cover the Roman Empire from Augustus's victory over Mark Antony and subsequent succession as the first Roman Emperor to the fall of the Empire in the 5th century AD. Obviously this means that the history of Rome's rise during its time as a kingdom and a republic are not covered, and only a single chapter is spent discussing the surviving eastern half of the empire following Rome's collapse.

Like all Great Courses books, The Roman Empire serves as an introductory text that does a good job of explaining the basics of Roman history. At times the book even delved a little into Rome's culture and deeper societal structure, to my surprise. This does unfortunately leads to some awkward structuring of the book, however, as you will go 7 hours of straight history before abruptly getting a chapter entirely devoted to chariot racing and gladiators. This isn't a huge issue, though, and upon re-listening I just simply skipped the chapters focused on Roman society.

Overall The Roman Empire is a decent audiobook, but I do think there are better alternatives - even within the Great Courses' catalog. The History of Ancient Rome is arguably better in every regard and I definitely recommend picking this book up first before trying The Roman Empire. You can save money this way too, as The History of Ancient Rome covers the entirety of Roman history instead of breaking it up into two halves.

After finishing The Mongol Empire I was in the mood to learn more about other the great empires that once dominated the Earth. As the Roman Empire is arguably the most well-known, I decided to continue my journey through The Great Courses series and purchased The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome. Here are my thoughts:

For starters, as The Great Courses series is designed for audiobooks The Mongol Empire flows seamlessly when listening to it. There are no abrupt descriptions of images the listener can't see, for instance - a common issue I've found with history texts that have an audiobook variant. Additionally, the narrator (who is also the book's writer), Craig Benjamin, gives a pretty good vocal performance with lots of expression. He can talk a too slow sometimes but as Audible has a built-in speed modifier this isn't really much of an issue.

As for the actual content of the book, it's pretty solid. As is probably to be expected the lion's share of the first half of the text is spent covering the life of Ghengis Khan, though it also briefly recounts the history of nomadic warriors in Central & East Asia before Ghengis's time. The later sections discuss the four khanates that emerged from the Mongol's conquered territory as well as Tamerlane's short-lived Timurid Empire before closing the book with a discussion of the legacy of the Mongol Empire and its successor states. With a length of only 11 hours the book is really more of an introduction to the subject, but this does have the benefit of allowing the book to maintain a quicker pace and no get bogged down with excessive details. Needless to say however is if you are hoping for a deeper dive into the history of the Mongols you will want to look elsewhere.

My only true issue with the text is that the The Mongol Empire puts far too much emphasis on individual names and the specific historical figures to which those names belonged to. As the book covers centuries of history, this results in the listener trying to keep track of dozens of people that may or may not have played a pivotal role in the Mongol's history. While not a huge flaw by any means, it did make the events of some chapters difficult to follow.

Aside from that small (and possibly subjective) gripe, The Mongol Empire is a pretty good audiobook and well worth a listen for those wanting to get an introduction into the Mongol's history.

Hey, look at this cool skeleton dude I painted:

Previous Next

Another miniature I painted for D&D. This time it's a cloaked skeleton guy who I used in a campaign to play as a Reborn necromancer. I'd say he came out pretty decent; the mini's backside in particular has some neat detailing on it.

Yup, too spooky.

Hey, look at these cool knight dudes I painted:

Previous Next

I needed to get some knight miniatures for a D&D campaign, and since I'm a big fan of G.R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" franchise I decided to get a set from the series' miniature tabletop game. I found this box for about $20 on Amazon, which I think is a pretty fair price for what it comes with - especially when compared to the average Warhammer 40K set. If you want to pick up a box of your own you can find one here.

These guys are Queen's Men, followers of King Stannis "The Mannis" Baratheon and his Red Priestess advisor Lady Melisandre. Below is a close-up of the standard-bearer, boasting Stannis' personal sigil of the flaming stag (though I just left the flag white on mine).

Previous Next

Here's to hoping for an official release date for Winds of Winter soon...

The first song I ever produced, Pending was originally written back in December 2020. The song was made in FL Studio while the background animation was made with Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop. While little more than a simple tune, I'm still pretty happy with how this song turned out.