Do Not Underestimate the Power of School

Revisions:

8-21-10:  Initial release.

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For many of our readers, we are going back to school whether that is going back to to elementary, middle, high school, college, university, or other type of training.  Regardless of what you are learning, or studying, there is an important message that I want to relay to all of my viewers:   Do not blow off school.

Why?  Do you hate school because of the homework?  Maybe its the essays or the assignments?  Do you have bullies at school that boss you around? A teacher that is notoriously known to be “evil”?

Whatever the reasons may be, I ask of you to just find a way to deal with it.  Sure, while you are at school everything seems like a pain, but in the end it has a better purpose.

Let me illustrate.  When I was going through school as a kid, the teacher made us do all kinds of reading assignments. They say that the more you read, the better writer you become?  Why is that?  This is because you are exposed to new vocabulary, as well as different writing styles and ideas. Through reading, you immerse yourself into how others are expressing their ideas, and then you slowly start to adapt this type of knowledge into your subconscious without you even knowing it.

Now fast forward about 10 years or so and here I am graduating from a university debt free. Yes, that is right. No loans, and no debts. How is that possible? Well, I filled out several scholarship forms (which were a pain), and I had to not only write a personal statement, but I had to get 3 letters of recommendation from my teachers and within the community where I had done volunteer work.  Long story short, I won enough scholarships that paid for my tuition throughout school, and all I had to cover was my textbooks and living expenses which were nothing compared to the 10K+ tuition fee I had.

So what is the moral of my story?  Everyone knows that school is important, but why do some students begrudge it?  It is at school where you are given the chance to practice your reading, writing, and arithmetic skills.  It is the place where you start to do public speaking, and learning how to do research. Are these skills useless?

Absolutely not. As a working professional, I can tell you right now that communication skills (verbally and written), as well as people skills are the most important skills to have. Sure, you need to some kind of intellect and reasoning skills, but learning how to talk and write really is at the top of personal self-development list.

If you find yourself at school and wishing you can just go back home and play that newest game, or just skipping your homework, I ask that you do not. Look up how to stay motivated if you must.  School is always number 1. I ‘ve seen people leave their jobs, their girlfriends, and even their families to go back to school because honestly, it is the gateway to other doors.

Got a bully problem? Report it to the counselor.  Schools take student violence very seriously, and if you are trying to learn and your education is being distruped by others, then report it!  It is your money! You paid (or your parents did) good money so you can go to school to learn to better yourself and one day have a successful and lucrative job. 🙂

More knowledge = more skills = more jobs.  What do you think?  Are you in school and find it useless or beneficial?  Let us know!

Secret Project Revealed #2

As you guys know, the Underground Blog is always bustling with activity.  We may not look like much when there are thousands of blogs on the Internet, but whatever.  I know we have an audience, and real people are being helped by real people.

The first secret project was revealed several months ago, and the result of that was the birth of our sister blog, “Welcome to the Other Underground.”  If you haven’t seen it, you can go to http://tug.cjb.net

On that site, we have articles on topics that may not be worthy to post here on wordpress.com in fear of another suspension or worse.  I cannot risk that anymore, hence the sister blog.

Now what is secret project #2? Right now it has no release date.  It was just an idea that has been stirring around in my head for the past couple weeks and now that I am starting to have some more free time (wait, what free time? – see newsletter 2), and it will be a committed effort to get it done, when I feel it is done.

What am I talking about?  I am seriously thinking of writing an e-book and when its done to have it released here on the blog for free.

What’s an E-book?

An e-book is basically a book converted to PDF form.  It has a title page, table of contents, chapters, sections, etc.  Pretty much everything you expect from a book.

What will it be about?

I don’t have exact details yet.  In short, I will be taking all the top hitter articles and putting them into the book.  The funny part is there has been times when I wanted to learn or remember something, and instead of searching google, I just search the blog for the answer!  When you get to that point, I think you have something gold here.

This blog in short is almost like my technical diary of knowledge.  But I felt like I needed to go the next step, so here we are at with the e-book idea.

I will most likely have stuff related to console modding, various PC tips, and maybe, just maybe, exclusive underground content that is not on the blog.  Perhaps one of the tips from the newsletter will be in the book, you never know.  Also, I maybe have specific articles on gaming to play online, as well as life tips?  The role model for this is Lifehacker’s “Upgrade Your Life”, and I wanted to do something like that too, but for underground purposes.

Will I accept contributions?

Of course! If you want to do monetary donations, I’m down with that but seriously that is not necessary.  If you want to submit an article into the book, by all means you can.  Just email me and I will have your name with your article fit into the book.

Right now I have Voltaire on board to be co-author, so we will be collaborating and making sure the content is just right.

The book will most likely be volume 1, and over the course of time as we get more tips, I’ll make a new series.  We shall see once I get to that point.

Graphics Designer Needed

The old saying goes “You can’t judge a book by its cover”.  True.  In creating the new underground E-Book, I want a flashy “book cover”.  With that said, if you are a pro in photoshop, or have a friend that is one, let me know.

I don’t have any ideas on what the cover art should look like, but maybe we can throw ideas around and see what sticks.

Release Date?

It’s too early to tell when it will be release.  The goal is sometime in 2009, but when exactly I don’t know.  It depends on how hard I work at it and how the community contributes.  What I do plan to do is have an update maybe once or twice a month, either here on the blog or perhaps the newsletter to internally motivate myself to keep the project alive.

I’m sure with your anxious support, this will not be difficult at all. :-0

If anything, at the end of this project, I will have an offline book in my possession that I can refer to for years to come.  It is similar to like school or at work.  You write your notes on a bunch of sticky notes, and over time you forget or lose them.   By putting everything into one place or document, you have all your important notes at your fingertips.

Sounds interesting?  Want in on the fun?  Let me know!!!

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December is Redemption Month!!!!

December will be known as “Redemption Month”.  What does that mean?  This means I will do what I can to redeem myself (and perhaps the other authors as well), but posting articles that I meant to post in weeks past.

V1 or V2 hasn’t been getting much love lately, and that is partly my fault.  Hence, the goal is if I can get at least 5 substantial articles out, then I will have “redeemed” myself.  Sure, it won’t make up for lost time, but the truth of the matter is its not the quantity of posts, but its the content of the posts that matter.

At the end of the month, I will total up how many articles each author has written for the month of December, and I will post that article count online for the rest of the world to judge.  Hence, redemption awaits at the end of the month. ;0

[Misc. Monday] Music Is Missing?

Hello everyone. Did you miss me? Unfortunately that is probably a “no” if your name is “Offbeat” or “God” but I can take that. So here is my Misc. post for today…

Why you haven’t seen me (Music/Musicmasteria) post that often:

Well I guess I’ve just been busy… School mainly but that will change soon. In about 1 month I and Millions of other students get to go on Summer Vacation! So that will be fun for everyone, adding time to spend to every ones schedule. Hopefully this allocated time will give all the writers here on The Underground that have wandered off time to come back and post a little. Yes, we all know Versatile1 just loves to write stuff every day and watching him struggle to find contributors with Sucker Free Sundays is fun to watch and laugh at. Seeing our beloved Main Writer Versatile1 wither away in confidence in his fellow writers is what we live for but with all jokes aside, we need new (and old) writers for the blog to help him out, myself included.

So to get to a point, but not the point (because we are supposed to be random/miscellaneous today), I’ve been spending most of my time on a little project which actually gives a reason to my name, Music-Masteria.

That’s right, I’ve been trying to write my own song(s) using a nice program called FL Studio (aka Fruity Loops). All my work is a work-in-progress so it really isn’t anywhere near being finished but it’s a start I could say.

Both my songs are techno-like but I have very little experience in making this kind of music compared to others so please bear with me as you listen to them.

All my Music can be found on my Myspace Music Profile found here: http://myspace.com/musicmasteria 

Please check out my music! I love constructive criticism and all comments are very appreciated.

My main song right now is called “Journey”. I currently have 4 versions of it uploaded on Myspacefor all to hear and hopefully give me tips on. It is about 2 min. long at the moment and I’m still in the middle of making it. Check my myspace page every once and a while for a new version of it.

Journey 4 (Just rest you mouse over this and listen to it in the “SnapShot” player that comes up OR go to my Myspace Page.

I also have another song called “Rise” but it is very underdeveloped at the moment. It can be compared to “Journey Unfinished 1” in the list of my Myspace songs because I had 2 starting idea sounds (which i called ‘Journey’ and ‘Rise’) and then I started developing Journey first.

So ANYWAY… for this day of randomness I have 2 requests:

1. PLEASE listen to my songs on Myspace.com/Musicmasteria and then if you can, give me some tips/ideas for how either songs might continue or what might change in what I already have to make it sound better.

2. PLEASE HELP VERSATILE1, AND THE UNDERGROUND, OUT BY BECOMING A CONTRIBUTOR so you readers don’t have to listen to my randomness instead of some Quality Underground Guides, News, etc.

Thanks for reading this weeks issue of Misc. Monday!

I’ll see you when I see you!

~Musicmasteria