New Direction

It has been a while since I last posted any content on my blog, but I been really busy with work and finding a new place to move to for the last few months. I am now settled in Tampa, closer to where I work, so I have a lot of free time on my hands. Work at Technology Transfer Services (TTS) has been work. Developing in OpenSim is not an ideal development environment for someone that learned how to do game/simulation programming. On the lighter side we are slowly but surely migrating to something better; Unity Game Engine. Hopefully, things will get progressively better working at TTS.

Web Fiction

It has been made clear I enjoy writing a lot as seen through out my previous post. I especially enjoy writing fiction; as last year I wrote a novella for the National Novel Writing Month. I really want to participate in that event again this year. My one problem with the novella I wrote is the grammar and I want to get it edit, but I don't think I am the one for th job. I'm looking for someone to edit it on their free time for me while I can work on some other projects. One project I have in mind is posting fiction online. Recently I stumbled onto a website that gives people advice on being an author, but specifically on the web. In this one website called NovelR pointed me to another website called Pandamian which is meant to work as a blog but for online fiction. Via Pandamian a web author is able to have a place to post their written work as one whole web address and publish it to Amazon as well as other ebook stores. I would be stupid not to look into this and attempt to take full advantage of it. I have began posting on the website with a collection of short stories that come to my head and I dubbed the collected works as The Macabre Vaudeville of Franz K. Dieppa.

I have also taken it upon myself to set up an Author Page on Facebook to promote the website as well as me. This is the direction that I am being pointed in, and that is to be a fictional writer. I enjoy making up stories and telling them to people. The only thing to do is now focus my energy into making it happen

As always, thanks for reading and for following my blog. Enjoy yourself! Love and peace

Best of Orlando Weekly

Hello to all my readers out there please vote for me Andrew C. Dieppa as Best Writer/Author and Enigmatic Brain Mind as the Best Blog.

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Please and thank you! You guys make me awesome!

Diving Into Concert Photography: My Meeting with Jim Carchidi

This weekend starts as any other before it; Friday after work I'm back in Orlando having a drink and smoking cigars with my old boss Joe Adams from Adam Jones Productions. The time is 8:00pm EST sitting with me are my best friend Dillon and Joe's date Alex. Dillon has recently been taken under the wing of Ben Sawinski an artist and upcoming curator as well as a good friend of mine. Dillon, Joe, Alex, and I are sitting down around this table at Corona Cigar Bar smoking and having a drink (non-alcoholic for me) all conversing about what we are doing in our lives. Dillon spoke about how he happy he is working as a personal assistant for Benjamin. For the first time in a while I never heard such a passive voice of content tone in such a long while. I was happy for him as I was happy for Ben who needed someone to do some of his workload. I was happy for Ben who had found a very cool girl to have a relationship with named Kayla who is an artist as well. In the midst of our conversing a waitress who is pretty regular for me accidentally spills water on my arm and my mobile. She was quite embarrassed and I was a bit shocked from what occurred. I explained to her it is not a big deal that the water just spilled on my left arm and only on my phone and nothing else. My phone is still working, so thank G*d for that. However, the waitress explains to me she has been having an off week and not just having an off day due to a family member passing away the other week. I gave her my sympathies, but it felt like she was trying to make me look like a jerk in front of my friends.

At 9:23pm EST Dillon and I decided to make tracks to an event that was taking place at Taste Orlando featuring a photographer, belly dancing, and a burlesque show. How could I resist a temptation to see the works of a professional photographer and attractive women dancing, so off we went into the night. Arriving at Taste was a short drive and I noticed I was running on one bar of gas in my Toyota Yaris (The Yaris gets 29/36 MPG, and is now affordable at your nearest dealership). The first person I see is the artist Cake, but he was engaged in a conversation, so I let him be and not bother him. But there I see Ben, Kayla, Tracy, and John Snapp. I shook hands, hugged everyone, and then sat down with them to converse about our weeks. Funny story about Tracy Brown is I chaperoned her children during the The Muppet Art Show where they became fans of my little novella The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. I told my friends to give me a moment I was going to go inside and check out the set up with Dillon.

Entering Taste was a gentleman managing the podium taking entrance fees and donations for The American Cancer Society. I gave the man $10; $5 for the entrance and $5 for a donation. Entering through Taste and making our way down to the event section to see walls and walls of photographs of musicians during concerts. The sight of these photos were breathtaking! All these photographs were taken by a gentleman named Jim Carchidi. In the back of the room I see someone looking like King Diamond, but I recognize the woman as Anna who sold me the painting that Cake did of Morrigan from Darkstalkers (Vampire Chronicle in Japan). Anna gave me a hug whilst wrapping me in her cape. I asked her who took these fantastic photos and she pointed at a man wearing a snazzy ensemble. Anna introduced me to Jim Carchidi who took almost a decades worth of photographs of bands and musicians performing live. I told Jim Carchidi that I was very much blown away of how he captured each moment of these performers. Jim was humbled by my compliments and here is the part that got me; all he wanted to do is hear about me. I explained my back story to him of how I'm a simulation designer at an e-learning company, and I'm a writer as well. He then asked me about my book, and I explained it to him.

Later on in the night the performances began first starting with the belly dancers who moved their bodies to a very relaxing melody. I was in tranced by how they moved and coordinated themselves to the background music. After they finished my friends and I recessed outside to smoke cigarettes and joke around. During the conversation I brought up how I been looking for someone to edit my book for a price so I can then self publish the novella already on some online stores. Enter John Snapp who offered his services and would do it in one day. I gave him a number, shook hands, and verbally agreed he would edit The Departing Tale of Christopher Lamont and the Hereafter. A man came out by the name of Matt (the husband of Anna who I also met earlier in the week when I picked up my Cake painting), informed us Grotesque Burlesque was about to perform, and we proceeded inside to watch the ladies perform. The women performed to such great tracks of music and baring their skin for the audience to see. Of course this was all tastefully done. I talked to the technical coordinator between the performances how I enjoyed the two acts, but I had not money to tip them. Katia was her name and she informed me I can also purchase them drinks which I was more than happy to oblige to. As her and I talked waiting for the drinks to come up we watched the next performance of two young ladies doing a silk performance. Once again I blown away. The night was fantastic filled with humor, friends, beautiful photographs, and pretty women. I could not ask for such a great night on Friday.

The Writing Technique of Andrew Dieppa

What Motivates Me to Write

I been ask how can I just sit down and just crank out a short story in such little time. The answer is quite simple I enjoy writing. I log onto Grooveshark, put on a playlist of music, light up some incense, and open up Microsoft Word. It does not matter what I end up writing, as long I write something by the end of the week. This may sound corny, but I feel like my friends and family are another element to my motivation of writing. This is because I like to weave them stories of my experiences, and my thoughts projected onto paper (word document). Everyday I wake up from in Sunnyville Florida my mind percolates many ideas that may or may not come to fruition.

Sometimes the people or the situations I write about are not just drawn from real life, but from the depths of my imagination. I am a very observant person and the world is my muse. For example the weekend nights of Downtown Orlando features a menagerie of characters. I'm talking about friends going out to celebrate, a woman with her friends on a bachelorette celebrations, and the Christians on the megaphones calling everyone sinners. Observing how these people act and interact with another always catches my attention.

Humble Beginnings

As far back as I can remember and according to my family I have always made up stories. When I was a child I would make up far fetched tales to entertain my family and friends. Even to this day I still make up stories and people can never determine if they are true or not. People end up calling me a liar, but I don't think I am a liar. My real life is boring, why not make up a story to make me sound interesting. I like to think of myself an Improvisational Story Teller. I recommend you try it sometime because it can increase your creativity.

The Inspiration

My inspiration just draws from pondering of several things: life, death, love, relationships, religion, existence, and social interactions. I like to feel these things should be the motivators of our daily lives. These elements occur several times in my head throughout a given day. Quite honestly, I fall in love with different women and I think about different ways I can die and a daily basis. When I see a woman, observe how she acts, how she articulates when she speaks; then what follows a love story I create in my head and see I can use it for a story down the line. When I think about death, I think about different ways of dying. I'm not talking about taking my own life, but how I would just die from an accident or being murdered. For example: I cross a street to run an errand during my lunch break at the Bank of America. I had enough time to make it ac across the street before the light changes but it changes green and a guy was speeding down the street but didn't see me because his view was blocked by a semi truck. The guy who struck me with his car was a 18 year old kid going to see his girlfriend to ask her to go see a movie this weekend, but now his life is ruined because he killed me with his carelessness.

The Writing Process

When I am finally inspired to write something I go through this process to put it into words for someone to read. One of the approaches I take is I think about a situation, then I think about the characters who are going to be involved within the situation, and then I think about the dialogue between them. I feel it is important to write about the character first before writing the story because what happens when you write the character it evolves itself and forms the story. For example: I thought about a little boy who lost his mother, he had no other friends, and would do anything to see his mother again. This how Christopher Lamont was born. Another time I was given the idea to write a story about a zombie boy that falls in love with a living girl. However, I ran with the character and decided to think of the zombie boy as an outcast who suffers through bullying by living kids. This is why when people read one of my short stories they feel the characters are pretty identifiable. I put a lot of concentration into developing a character

The part I write about is the scene. One of the thing people most likely notice about my writing is how I over describe a scene in the text. The reason why is because I like to imagine myself as someone viewing everything. I then ask myself a series of questions: what am I seeing; what do I hear; what do I smell; who's there in this scene; what are they wearing; do they have a scent; etcetera. I want to paint my readers a picture that allows to see a vivid scene in their heads. Doing my best to leave no imaginary stone unturned for them.

The last thing is the dialogue between the characters. This one takes me a bit of time to write because I have this odd approach of taking on the persona of my characters I write about. One character says one thing and then I think about how would I react if someone said something to me in a given situation. Very often I catch myself talking to myself in different tones. This makes me look very crazy, but the end result is hopefully good dialogue that progresses a story.

Challenges

Some of my challenges happen to take the form of overwhelming thoughts of ideas to write down. Another challenge I face is when someone request I write a story about them. As much as I want to; I feel like in the end I will disappoint them. One of the last thing that challenges me is sometimes I just don't feel like writing. I want to write; I have this story in my head I want to write, but I cannot bring myself to write it.

Hopefully this might shed some light on how and I write. I thank you for being a reader and following my blog. This is Andrew C. Dieppa saying Love & Peace.

Seminars and Being Informed

My Journey into an eLearning Conference

In March 23rd of 2011 my job had me attend an eLearning Conference in Orlando which is where I live. Beneficial to me because I got a chance to sleep in for once, but I did not because I woke up at 5:30am. The reason why I had to attend this conference was to be present at key seminars that would explain experience in working in a virtual world environment. I noticed at a certain point from attending two seminars that they were talking about things that I already learned from previous seminars I already attended from other conferences or from a class at DeVry. What did I end up doing? Well, I went exploring like my favorite Hispanic explorer, Hernán Cortés. I did my best to absorb what was around me, but really the conference had nothing to offer me in terms of virtual world development.

During my explorations of the Hilton Walt Disney Resort where the conference was being held I found a kiosk that was selling books about eLearning development. There I found three books that caught my interests including the one by Jane McGonigal called Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. For those of you who do not know who Jane McGonigal is and work in the game/simulation industry; slap yourself for your ignorance because she is one the leading game researchers out there in the perspective field. I learned more from reading the first chapter of her book than I did listening to a few people at each seminar. When I finish reading this book I will post a review about it and share my thoughts on it.

Well, that is it for now boys and ghouls. Keep a look out for my next blog post in the future. Thanks for following, and thanks for reading. Love & Peace

Genitorturers and a Local Film Festival

The Story of My Mis-adventured Vampire Weekend

A friend of mine who's name I cannot reveal in this blog invited me to accompany her to a rock show on the 19th of March, Saturday. Now not having been to a rock show was thoroughly intrigued to come to this particular show because it was a Genitorturers show. When I was way younger and full of hope and dreams I was heavily into the heavy metal genre of music. I remember reading an article from Hit Parader about the band and how they have these provocative shows. Before I get into that I am going to rewind back to 9am in the morning on March 19th.

I get a phone call from my masseuse who I schedule an appointment with for a massage. Once I get to my masseuse's place I am blown away by the amount of well known figures that have been his clients one of them including Game Designer David J. Sushil. Jorge the Masseuse gave me a magnificent treatment of deep tissue, hot towels, and paraffin treatment. I walked out of there feeling a Phoenix rising up from the ashes that were my stress and despair. Thank you Jorge for a great treatment!

In the afternoon I go to a BBQ hosted by my friend and local artist Benjamin Sawinski. I hung out eating bratwurst and burgers while kicking a hackey sack around. I felt like I was in 1992 all over again! My best friend Dillon was there to explain to me that I just committed a sin; I had broken one of my Lent promises! I was supposed to be fasting for the entirety of Lent; I have failed. I will be punished for this treachery to my own beliefs.

Flash forward, I sent a text to my friend (a fake name will be in place of her real name) Lane Senna Elm, asking her how long she is going to be for you see I wanted to catch a nap before this rock show. Bzzt! Bzzt! Loud rings go off, and I answer my phone "Hello Lane?" From the receiver of the phone came "Andrew, I got off the wrong exit to get gas and I am really low right now! I am just really scared to get back on I-4 because I think my car will just run out of gas!" I explain to Lane to calm down, that I will go out and purchase a gas tank to fill up, bring it to her, and escort her to a gas station.

Now I am at a Wal-mart my most hated place in the world. I never thought one of my worst enemies in the world would take the form of a super store with low prices and convenient locations nationwide. After dealing with the lousy customer services of this store, I was able to find one of those gas jugs to fill with gas. Let me stop this fictional story for a moment and ask my readers a question: How does someone not know what a gas jug is? I am sure it is pretty obvious the name is describing without me going into detail of its main functionality. It's a jug you fill up with gas for emergencies such as the one Lane gotten herself into (Resuming the story in 5...4...3...2...1). As soon as I get to the cash register, swiped my debit card, enter my pin code (which is 0000), and asked for cash back I walked out of the store with the intention of rescuing Ms. Senna Elm from her distressful situation. All of a sudden Bzzt! Bzzt! "Hello Lane, I got the jug and I'm going to fill it up then head over your way," I said. Lane's response was that she found her way to a gas station and is heading her way to friend's house now. Needless to say I hang up the phone and spontaneously combusted.

I picked up Lane Senna Elm from her friend's house and we promptly went to the Firestone venue to watch her favorite band perform. This is where is gets interested. Let me describe the genre of music the Genitorturers play industrial rock, so imagine the appearances of their fans look like. A lot of black, gothed out, piercings, and tattoos. I am wearing a bright red Old Navy shirt, dark blue jeans, and my orange Puma shoes. Not exactly following the crowd at this point, but I was not scared; I was terrified. No, really I was fine I used to hang around these people in my youth.

The lights go down and these two people come out on stage each holding their instruments of rock (bass and six-string guitar). Hansel und Gretyl an industrial rock band from Deutsch Land. They honestly rocked the house, and I enjoyed their performance. At some point of the night I had the chance to meet which I got to wear Hansel's awesome German eagle helmet. Conversing with Hansel und Gretyl I explained to them I never heard them nor heard of them, but I thoroughly enjoyed their show and I asked for a hug from. Upside to this story is I got to hug two crazy Germans ::crosses off something on his bucket list::

During the intermission my friend Lane needed to grab a drink as I stood there looking around the Firestone venue admiring the scene of black clothing audience and how pale they are. Out of the distance I heard some yelling. The voice was so familiar that I ended up shaking my head and slapped my face into my palm because I knew what was happening; Lane was getting into an altercation. Apparently this person kept hitting on Lane asking her if they could buy her a drink. Lane got so frustrated with this person that she yelled at the top of her lungs that struck the venue almost near silent. I ran over to the bar to see if I can mediate the situation before it gets out of hand. Finding Lane I asked her what is wrong, she pointed and filled me in on the situation. I turned and asked Lane where is the guy, but Lane said it was this woman who was making a pass at her. My eyebrow raised I explained to the woman to please leave Lane alone because she is currently not looking, but asked her what she would have done with Lane Senna Elm. I learned something that night I cannot take a punch, and Lane really knows how to throw a punch.

The intermission was over and crowd was gathering back to the stage to watch the headliner Genitorturers begin their awaited performance. As Lane walked back to get a good spot, and I followed behind her with a bag of ice on my injured eye we waited for the performers to come to the stage. Once again the lights go dim, three musicians walk on stage with their instruments in hand. To explain what happens Genitorturers is pretty easy to describe. Do I want to describe I saw: No. Does anyone here want to read what I saw: Most likely no. Therefore I am going to describe it in a few words with one event that took place. Genitorturers description: loud rock, female lead singer, S&M apparel, rubber phalli thrown, floggin, bondage, and on stage sodomy. At a certain point Gen from Genitorturers likes to get a volunteer from the audience to join on a performance. This particular gentlemen was put up on stage in his undergarments on all fours, and then he was somodomized with a wine bottle -- a full bottle of wine. The crowd around was bouncing up and down "rocking" out watching this as I sipped my water with a twist of lemon said to myself "Huh, did I leave the oven on?" Really I said "Huh, this is something I do not see in my average life," and then I proceeded to cross another thing off my bucket list.

After the Genitorturers finished their set we got the chance to meet the band and the front woman Gen. Lane was super excited, she has met her before, but she just idolizes her I guess. I got two good shots of her and Gen. Then I had my little talk with Gen and explained to her I never heard her music before. However, I have read about her performances and the show she puts on and she did not dissatisfied. She thanked me, and then I told her she was no Disney's Imagination Movers, but I still enjoyed the show. Once again I learned the a similar lesson from the earlier lesson; I cannot take a punch, and Gen can really throw a punch. Now, with two black eyes I then took Lane Senna Elm to her friend's house to get some sleep.

The Next Day

I been looking forward to this other event since Sunday one of my good friend's brother entered a film festival which was called a "Film Slam." Alex Sushil who is the younger and better looking brother of my friend/mentor David J. Sushil made a short film called Vestiges. I have been to these types of film festivals and I have been disappointed with what they show in terms of "art house" films, but this one had a lot of good short films with unique narratives. Of course Alex's film was the best one of out of the bunch in my opinion (and no I am not being biased you terrible reader). At the Film Slam I had the chance to meet Clan Sushil Representatives included David's mother, grandmother and father. This was such a surreal moment for me. I talked to David's mother and she asked me how I felt about her son. I explained to David's mother that it has always been an honor to know David because every time I talk to him on the phone, online, or whatever I always walk away a better person. I also explained to her that I haven't gotten the chance to really get to know Alex, but I know he is a sweetheart and obviously has an eye for film. Then I got a group hug from Sushil's mother, grandmother, and father. I know I am huge hugger; just love to hug people.

Thank you for reading my blog. My next blog post will be about something more creative, but come on what is more of a creative journey of than seeing an on-stage sodomy and a mini film festival. I have somethings going into the works at the moment which I will more than happy to talk about next time.

 

Side note most of this blog is fictional and therefore it was an average post for Andrew C. Dieppa's Enigmatic Brain Mind Blog :P

 

As always thanks for reading, thanks for following. Peace and Love and take it easy.

My Spiritual Brain Mind

Inquiry of the Spiritual Nature

Recently, I been having a conversation with a co-worker of mine about religion, spirituality, and overall the idea of god. Her and I had agreements as well as disagreements what it means to be spirituality. What we agreed is that we both want to believe, but find it difficult to believe. It is no secret that I stopped believing in Catholicism when I 18. However, there lies a journey of self discovery. If anyone here that follow my blog knows I have friends that are Atheists, Christians, Jewish, and Agnostics. They seem to be comfortable in the answers they found (except for Agnostics of course), but I am not comfortable with a simplistic. Saying there is no higher power is just as arrogant as saying there is higher power.

 

A Simple Breakdown

This is what makes sense to me: Knowledge, Wisdom, and Spirituality. Knowledge: the gaining of experience or education to understanding of subjects. Wisdom: the deep understanding to realizing of people, situations, events to have the ability to choose how to act in a manner that optimizes the individual's time and energy. Spirituality: the inner path to discover the reason of an individual's being. What does that mean? It basically means the answer is not as simple as we want it to be. We are human beings and we have this tendency to simplify so we can have an immediate understanding of the world around us. The problem with that is end up cutting corners, and we miss some find print that is written in the world around us.

 

I find it is very important at some point in someone's life to have an internal search to find themselves. Explore the world around! Read up on mathematics, read about other religions and philosophies, go out to commit mistake. The more you learn the more you realize how much you did not know before. This makes you a better person in the end. If G-d exists then he/she/it asks one thing from you be a good person. You can be good with G-d and you can be good without G-d, but in the end just be a better person tomorrow. Remember, the answers are never that simple, but if you are comfortable then more power to them. However, for me as an individual find things not to be as simple.

Obviously I can keep going on and on, so I will be sure to continue this another day, but until then this is Andrew Christopher Dieppa and just want to say "God Bless You. Namaste! Amen! Take care! Love you guys :)"