Hi there, it's JayDaniels again (again). Today marks the end of the 2013 school year! I can't begin to express the joy associated with not needing to do any homework until next year... because I actually do have assignments due after the break. It's quite painful. I don't get to see most of my friends for 2 weeks, my girlfriend has left the country, I'm all alone... the internet will always be there for me though. Anyways, last week (actually just a few days ago) I talked a bit about programming, and this week I was going to talk a bit about art. Sadly, art isn't my strong suit, I personally am just a beginner so I won't bring it up until I feel I have some foundation in it. I figured this time I would talk about something quite important, not exactly for game development, but more so for personal interests. This entry is going to be about friendship .

The title of this journal entry is courtesy of a close friend and fellow programmer, Maya (yes, she is a girl). Over the course of this past week, it seems the question "what are your post-secondary plans?" has come up 100% more often. We're all a bit on edge, we all need to start planning on universities and colleges and programs and stuff, pick a career path so you don't spend the rest of your life working at McDonalds, etc. In just this past week, I've found 18 people interested in going into the same field as myself. Some of them want to go into the same university program as me, others are more interested in art, computer animation, software development, and the list goes on. What're the benefits of being friends with some, and trying to befriend the others? We have something in common, a mutual love for video games and a deep desire to build our own. If all 19 of us decided "hey, we should start developing our own game right here, right now" we'd have an indie team, a very inexperienced indie team, but that's not the point. It's important to build networks. Some of those 18 people I'm very close friends with, one of them is my best friend. I've known him for 12 years, we consider ourselves brothers. I'm a better programmer, he's a better artist. Does that not scream "INDIE TEAM!!"? Only problem being our lack of experience, but ideally after university we'd both be a lot more knowledgeable (not necessarily wiser though). By making friends along your career path you open up more job opportunities (if you happen to be friends with the CEO of Blizzard or Ubisoft) and it allows you to enjoy your work more. Oh, and by making friends with people in the game development industry, you will often find that they play the same games as you, that's 18 more friends in Guild Wars 2 . I'm really not sure just how useful or helpful this entry will be to anyone ever, but it felt good to write about friendship, and that's what counts.

Now I know I keep talking about things as if I know them despite having yet to experience it (75% intuition, 15% wishful thinking, 10% guessing), but one of the reasons I'm doing this whole "blog" thing is to see how I evolve from day 1... all the way to day 150... and then to 275, and so on (assuming I always have something to talk about... which I'm often told I do). While on that subject, if anyone has any suggestions as of what they'd like to see future entries about, I'm more than willing to oblige (within reason). Thanks again, have a nice day everyone!