Relic Short Story: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

I found this in a tablet box today. I wrote it in sixth grade—the assignment was to write a myth or legend, and since I couldn't think of anything better, I decided to piggyback off of a title I had seen in the children's section of the library: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears. I figured since I didn't know anything about the storyline, it wouldn't be plagiarism, and if the teacher asked I would just play dumb. She did, and actually had a copy in her classroom library, but was impressed with the story overall. It's not bad for an eleven-year-old's work, but I still wonder why the drum was stolen in the first place, and why the three animals who are in on the heist are so adamantly against the justice that should be served them. I guess the moral is "no one likes a tattletale."

Never-Ending Comic Hearthstone Cards

I've really enjoyed Hearthstone for the past year that I've played it, and since it came out with its latest expansion, Goblins vs. Gnomes, I've been thinking a lot about the game's mechanics. After finding the Hearthstone Card Generator online, I got the idea to make cards based on the Never-Ending Comic. My goal while making these was to both do justice to the comic and create mechanics, minions, spells, and hero powers that I wouldn't mind seeing in Hearthstone someday. I didn't worry too much about balance—the majority of the cards are Epics, for example—but it was interesting to think about how these cards would work in a real game of Hearthstone. I wish the game had a game editor like all of Blizzard's other games.

10 of My Quirks

Here are some interesting quirks of mine that I've identified in myself. Some of them are really weird, and others I have in common with members of my immediate family. It makes me wonder what quirks other people have. If you're comfortable sharing, post some of yours in the comments, or tell me which ones resonate with you!

Battle Card 2.0: Black Magus

Hurray for graphic art! I got the idea to remake a few of my old Battle Cards, and while at it I decided to experiment with a new art style: overlaying textures over each color. I think this one turned out pretty well, and I'm excited to make four or five more to present to you!

The old version of the card looked a lot more like a Black Mage from the Final Fantasy series, so I added my own twist to his look. I also took some liberty in making the description a lot more interesting.

Word Lore

This has been an interesting year for projects. Even though I feel like I haven't given Pretzel Lectern as much attention as I would like, I've been busy working on projects like Knight Guy and some long-term projects like my autobiography.

Happy Halloween from Knight Guy!

And sorry this month was so sparse with updates! I've been updating Knight Guy once a week, trying to work on editing Alfred's Story, doing extensive research for my Personal History, and setting up a writing group!

Recipe #6: Crunchy Punk1n S33dz

This pumpkin seeds recipe may be plagiarized from somewhere else, but I can't remember since I can't find the original. So I'm just going off the assumption that, like many other recipes I've made over the years, it's probably a mixture of a couple of recipes I found. Which makes it original! (Please don't sue me)

Crunchy Punk1n S33dz

"Made with 0% olive oil! (Cuz olive oil's gross)"

 Ingredients

• 1 or more pumpkins
• Water
• Salt
• Cracked pepper
• Paprika

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Oh wait. Don't do that yet. They're not ready to cook.
2. Disembowel the pumpkins by cutting a hole in the top or bottom and scraping out everything inside. Set the seeds aside, discard the guts, and carve/sculpt the pumpkin and put it out on your front porch with a candle inside it.
3. Wash the seeds to remove as much of the pumpkin intestine as possible. This can easily be done just by swishing them around in a bowl of water. Drain as needed.
4. Put the pumpkin seeds in a large bowl with enough water to cover the seeds (they'll probably float, but that's okay). Add 1½ tsp. of salt to every cup of water in the bowl. Let it sit overnight.
5. Now preheat up the oven to 400°F in the morning before work. Drain 'n' strain the seeds.
6. Put the seeds in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with tin foil. Sprinkle with more salt, cracked pepper, and paprika. Put the sheet in the oven and let it roast for 15–18 minutes.
7. Remove the seeds from the oven. They may be done at this point if they're golden brown (one or two of the seeds might be burnt). If not, sift and turn them over on the sheet with a wooden spoon and return to the oven for 5–8 more minutes.
8. Done! Let them cool and then feel free to enjoy. If you want, you can spray them with a bit of oil and toss them with more seasonings like garlic powder, cinnamon and sugar, ranch powder and smoked paprika, or anything else. These are the crunchy variety of pumpkin seeds, not the chewy, oily kind. They'll be a great high-magnesium snack for you during your work day!

YIELD: 1 mess of pumpkin seeds per pumpkin used.
____

Washes down well with...  Water. Them's pretty salty, so you'll probably want to keep on washing 'em down.

Sculpture?

I don't know why, but until this year I've never tried to actually "sculpt" a pumpkin before. Unlike most art projects, I never really took pride in carving a pumpkin. I would just cut a scary face or an outline of Trogdor the Burninator in it and call it good for the year. But I've been missing out!

This year I tried actually making a pumpkin sculpture, varying thickness to make different brightness levels in the pumpkin when it's lit. It was surprisingly soft to carve, even though all I had was a cook's knife, a teaspoon, and a cutting saw from a pumpkin carving kit. Next year I'll hopefully have access to better tools so I can more easily transmit my imagination to the "canvas," as it were.

Not my best work, but it is my first work! I'm looking forward to a new tradition!

World of WarCraft login screen

I've been really in to WarCraft III lately, which happens once every year or so. It's my favorite game of all time, and the map editor in particular never gets old. Indeed, it only gets funner as I get more ideas and time goes by. While playing the Frozen Throne campaign again, I realized the game had just the right materials to make a remake of the original login screen for World of Warcraft. It didn't take long to make, but I like how it turned out. Listening to the music brings back good memories of the original game that no longer exists. Rest in peace, Vanilla WoW and BC.

How far I've come indeed...

I found this while looking through the Ark the other day. I had almost forgotten all about it. As far as I remember I drew it in the same manner as I draw the Knight Guy comics today, but it's surprising how much my drawing skills (or perhaps just dedication) has improved since then. What's really funny is that I actually submitted it to Blizzard in their comic contest, hoping it would show up. Not only did Blizzard not accept it (and frankly, I'm surprised that I expected them to), but there was another comic that I saw a few months later that told basically the same joke, only better.

As a side note, the reward for that class is the choice of a weapon, not 30 copper.
I kinda like that imp though.

Avatar: The Last Hamburger

Cheese... Veggie... Bacon... Ham. One evening when I was preparing to grill dinner, my daughter called lighter fluid 'water' and charcoal 'rocks,' and the idea for this video came as a result. 

Nadrian Diplomacy: Argae's Ancient Precursor

The other day I was backing up stuff to my external hard drive, The Ark, when I stumbled upon my original profile folder for my old computer when I was a kid. Back then, every person in the family didn't have his or her own laptop, so we all shared one home PC. We sometimes had our own computer accounts, with passwords and everything, but mostly we just shared one profile for simplicity's sake, and had our own folders. Mine, "Austin's Folder" has been virtually preserved from its original state when it was uploaded to an external hard drive back in 2004.
As I looked through the folder, I was surprised and interested to see a folder labeled "Nadrian Diplomacy." It was an unfinished web-based game I had started a decade ago, and the pictures, compiled web pages, and forms in the folder brought back a lot of memories. It was fun to see the broken remnants of a project I had never finished, yet had reincarnated into a large universe in the form of Argaenothruzil years later. It was interesting to see the seeds that had planted such big projects.
So without further reminiscing, here is an overview of the RPG that never was,

Nadrian Diplomacy:

The War Has Begun

New Feature Unlocked!

I finally figured out how to make GIFs work! But seriously folks, check out the Knight Guy Facebook page and click 'Like' on it today!

Knight Guy comic speed color!

I finally got around to doing this, though the quality of the screen recorder wasn't nearly as good as I had hoped. If I can find a better way to do it in the future, I'll also include a timelapse of me actually doing the sketch. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy it! And please check out Knight Guy!

Haiku #1

This is a haiku I wrote while in Seventh Grade. I still like it a lot.

Dessert

by Austin Ballard

Whipped cream, lots piled high

over fruitéd Jell-O looms,

and is eaten soon.

Abelhawk's Top 10 Most Nostalgic Computer Game Songs of All Time: Honorable Mentions

Well, I've officially moved on into adulthood, and with it comes less free time than I've ever had before. I've felt bad for how seldom I update Pretzel Lectern. It's definitely not out of boredom. There are several posts I've been meaning to make, but I just haven't had the energy. At least I've been mostly keeping up to date with Knight Guy and my Personal History. Until I get the time to make a decent post, here's a slight cop-out. For the original lists, click here and here.

WCAnimate video

Yesterday was my last day working at the BYU campus Writing Center, and in one week my coworker Ashlyn and I were able to make this video. It was a fun and simple style for a video, so it was really easy to make for the most part. I did learn a lot, though. For example, before filming, figure out a way to turn off the auto-focus on the camera lens, or the constant brightness adjustments will make the drawing look like a timelapse of clouds. And if you want to animate something, don't actually draw it, just pretend to draw it. That way you have a moveable image to work with without anything beneath it interfering. Either way, I'm glad I could end my employment there with a fun project like this.

Summer Update '14

Hey there! I don't always like to give out news because it gets dated easily, but I just thought I'd give you an update because this is a particularly busy time with projects now that I'm back from Independence Day break.

ChaCha's Guide to Monster Slaying

I don't use ChaCha much anymore because I have a smartphone, but it was useful (about 40% of the time) when I just had your standard Nokia brick to have quick answers to questions through texting. I compiled this list a couple of years ago after asking ChaCha how to kill certain beasts. The results, and helpfulness, of the responses varied, but here it is published for the first time.

ChaCha's Guide to Monster Slaying

Pretzel Lectern Essays, vol. 1

About six months ago, I designed and laid out this book for my print design course in college. I was going to get it printed professionally, but I got lazy and never got around to it. So instead, when my wife got some free Shutterfly book codes, I made it using their website. Worst. Site. Ever. I understand they're meant to make photo books and not text-based books like I wanted, but some of their features (or lack thereof) were inexcusable—no text styles, no automated page numbers . . . oh well.

Letter to Past Self

I did this just for the fun of it, but it made an interesting writing prompt. What would you write if you could send a one-page letter back in time to when you were eight? For mine, I made sure not to be too specific and ruin future events for me. I tried to stay vague on the details while still giving useful advice. I even made it unclear how many future siblings I would have. Anyway, I think a letter like this can say a lot about your personality, as well as your current situation and the events of your life in between.

Comic: Fatherhood

In honor of Father's Day, I present to you a comic. 

***

I personally believe that God is literally our father, and such a knowledge can help us trust in Him even though He may not make sense sometimes. It can also give us insight on how to be good parents ourselves—God is neither too lenient nor too strict for us. His only interest is in teaching us the correct way, letting us choose for ourselves, and honoring our choice with relevant consequences.

WarCraft III Map Movie #7: The Odyssey

I really wish I could be posting more varied projects. I'm working fairly consistently on Knight Guy, but I'm hoping another project will come up to work on soon.
Anyway, I made this particular map movie for a school project in my junior high Mythology class. I'm really embarrassed at how awful and lazy I was on the scenery, but of course the whole class was amazed at how I did it and stuff. Good times.

Minecraft Corridor Tour

My brothers and I were able to fit in a game of Corridor during our Memorial Day break, and after we had rendered the dungeon I wanted to see what it would look like from a first-person perspective. I constructed the dungeon in Minecraft with embellishments to see what it would have looked like, and even though the Master's Lair turned out to be stupid and the Treasury a bit cramped, I was still pretty impressed.

One thing I forgot until now was the matter of perspective of the dungeon. On this version (and in the storyline of the board game) the adventurer chooses to descend into the dungeon, fighting each level's Master and descending deeper until he beats the final boss at the bottom. In the older versions, however, the hero was thrown into the deepest level of the dungeon, and had to climb his way out, level by level, until he fought the final boss who had defeated him in the first place.

A Riddle of Color

I present to you a visual riddle: What am I?

WarCraft III Map-movie #6: Morrowind

This next WarCraft Cinem was one of my favorites, but looking at it now I'm a bit disappointed at how it turned out. I could never get the stupid camera to work correctly, and the decor left something to be desired. I do like the comedic choices I put though, and I think I captured the overall feel of that memorable beginning to the game. 

Golden Corridor Card: Healing

I got this idea from golden cards on Hearthstone. Obviously the final product will be hand-drawn, but it was fun to embellish a live-action picture of myself. And myself.

Easter Egg: The text revolving around the Healing Circle is a latin translation of the Hippocratic Oath, flipped horizontally.

Recipe #5: Pizza Omelet

When cooking, I really like to mix up genres. I think it would be so fun to make a list of different burgers to make, for example, and see how many different twists I could put on them—nacho burger, Chinese burger, Italian burger, etc. This idea came when I wanted to put a twist on the common breakfast omelet. I was partially inspired by a pizza-flavored pastel I had in Brazil that was really good.

Pizza Omelet

Farewell

Today marks three weeks that my son, Carver, died. I had never had someone that close to me die before. I've lost both of my paternal grandparents, but I was a naïve teenager when my grandma passed away, and my grandpa had basically been gone due to Alzheimer's for years. A couple of classmates also died in high school, but I didn't know them that well. But this... not only was I present during his first and last minutes of his life, but he was my offspring—my very flesh and blood. I learned a lot from this ordeal. I would never wish the emotions of loss and sadness I experienced on April 21, 2014 on anyone, but since I was chosen to experience it, I figured you may as well benefit from hearing Carver's story, and the things I learned about life, family, and God.

WarCraft III Map-movie #5: RPG

This was mainly a simulation of what I wanted to make as a game. I knew how to script and program movies on WarCraft, so it was easy to stage things. I'd still like to try actually programming one sometime though.

WarCraft 3 Map-movie #3 and #4

A two-for one sale today! I wish I could release these more sporatically, as in, between posts about other stuff. Projects have been hard lately with a baby on the way (Monday!) and finishing up finals. I haven't even touched Knight Guy for a week. Hopefully I can get back in the swing and have a summer full of projects! 

WarCraft 3 Map-movie #2: Apotheosis

This is probably the longest cinematic I've made. I have no idea where the concept came from, but I'm glad I can show it to you via FRAPS, because when I tried to share it on the internet in high school, its size was so big due to the many imported songs that few even bothered to try downloading it.

WarCraft 3 Map-movie #1: He's Flying!

I got FRAPS for my birthday! Now I can make some gameplay videos. It'll take a bit of time for me to get the hang of it (mostly just utilizing hard drive space and making the most of the video sizes) but in the meantime, I'm going to start showcasing my old WarCraft 3 maps for your viewing pleasure! These are probably only going to be interesting if you've ever played WarCraft 3, but it's fun for me because I made these when I was thirteen, and hey! another project type to start adding to Pretzel Lectern.

Lost Projects Vol. 1

Lost Projects Vol. 1

You all know I love projects, that I'm sentimental and nostalgic, and that I like creating things. Unfortunately, I have not always been as careful as I should have when preserving projects. I have silly audio files from when I was a Fourth Grader, and tablet drawings from much earlier that I've saved all these years, but there are some projects in between now and then that have slipped between my fingers and into the unknown... forever. My purpose with this post is to at least preserve their memory, and wistfully wish that I could have them to showcase for you today.

Relic Short Story: Journey to the Center of the Earth

Hi! I haven't forgotten Pretzel Lectern, I've just been working hard at updating Knight Guy as often as possible, which is an extension of this blog since it's a project. If you haven't looked at it yet, check it out!

Meanwhile, I've been nostalgically poring through old Wordperfect files on my Ark (that's the name of my external hard drive) and I found this rather funny gem of a story I wrote. The date on the file says 2/20/02 and is stamped as an assignment for my 7th-grade Geology class. I'm not sure what our assignment was, because this is laughably scientifically inaccurate. Enjoy!

Spotlight: How I Draw Comics

I've been having a blast drawing my new webcomic, Knight Guy, and I even spent some time outlining the entire epic story from start to finish, which is something rare for me. I sincerely hope that my motivation for this awesome project will remain strong till I finish; I understand it'll take me years to complete it, but I'm okay with that.

New Big Project: Knight Guy webcomic!

It's time to work on a project I've wanted to start for seven years: a Webcomic! I finally have all I need to get started: a decent scanner, Photoshop, and most importantly, a storyline. I've also discovered a comic book club at my university, which will help my drive to work on it even more.

"Knight Guy" is a comic about Corlis Cneet, a celery farmer who is unwittingly thrust into what annoys him most—adventure! Sound cliché? Maybe, but I'll make it work with my own twist on it. And plus, here on Pretzel Lectern you guys will be able to see behind-the-scenes stuff, such as a timelapse of me drawing a panel, or background information about the story. I'm still working on the layout of the site, but I have a bunch of comics already drawn and ready to be colored. I'll probably upload three or four just to get the series started, and then get a weekly upload going.

How will Corlis's adventure begin? Go to knightguy.the-comic.org to find out!

Attikos

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make the Knight Guy webcomic. I've got a basic storyline, and we'll just see how it goes. I'm going to break out of my fear of failure and just make a mediocre, fun-to-draw, fun-to-read comic. This is the secondary character, Attikos, whom you saw using his Fireweaving powers in the comic earlier this week.

Essay: The Planet Dirt

This is an essay I wrote last summer, a manifestation of my pure fascination with etymology. I was thinking about trying to get this published in a journal or something, but after a few months of revising I don't think it's that ground-breakingly good. It's still one of my most favorite writings I've done, and I hope you enjoy it!

Knight Guy issue #241

I really want to make this comic! Curse you, writer's block! Curse you, hesitation! Curse my lack of a comic-designing and writing committee! Anyway, to combat these setbacks, I decided to just draw a strip set in the middle of a story arc, since starting at the beginning was too intimidating.

Dream: The Order

January 30, 2014

This dream was highly unsettling. While in England or some other European town, I was chosen to become part of a secret order. The order was highly secretive, and I had to either accept and join forever, or decline and never hear from them again. After some thought I decided to join. I went there to the secret location. The place seemed to be crafted out of stone. There were lots of people there, all in uniforms. A girl I knew happened to belong to the order, and I felt comfort in seeing her there. But she looked at me wistfully, almost like she wished I hadn’t joined the order.

Corridor Class Pictures Set #4

It's been way too long since I've uploaded a set of these. Even if I'm not actively working on the game anymore, I have to get these done. There's one more set after this, and I'll try and get it out as soon as I can!

Beat the Sweet Challenge complete!

Well, I spent the last month not eating any sugar at all (minus one day I made as an exception). I kept a daily log of my feelings about the fast in general, and here they are:

Disney Droppings: It's All Pocahontas's Fault

A start to a possible new collection of mini-YTPs I might make (If I can get the footage and ideas flowing).

Continental Map of Shaarzahn

Here's the map of the upcoming forum RPG, Shaarzahn! I had fun this time trying to make it look like a realistic bird's-eye view, almost like a shot from Google Maps. It obviously has some flaws, but I was still impressed with the way it turned out. This will be the base for other maps I'll make for the game, including political boundary maps and a "hand-drawn" version for lore's sake.

Updates

Well, the Beat the Sweet Challenge is going okay. I've kept to it, avoiding anything sweeter than 3g of sugar per serving, for the past two weeks. This meant turning down some amazing-looking desserts at work and a dinner party, but it felt good to have that much self-control. It's amazing how much we really don't need sugar at all. Unfortunately, I'm not really seeing any beneficial effects from doing this sugar fast. I don't have any more energy, I still have down days with little motivation, and I don't feel any difference in my health or weight. I think I'll cut down on it after the month's up as a habit, but I'm definitely not going to go without it forever.
The hardest part is breakfast. I think it's great to start off one's day with French toast or something else with syrup in it. Or even sweet cereal. I've missed that most of all. But thank heavens for fruit, especially bananas and tangerines. They've kept me going. Halfway there!

In other news, I got quite a scare this week when Argaenothruzil went down for nearly three days. I thought I had lost all of my lore writings, as well as several of my best stories. In fact, my cousin Robert (of the Whited Wall blog) and I planned on making a new one, with several differences that would mitigate some of the clichéd aspects of Argae. Fortunately, Argaenothruzil came back online this morning and I was able to save the stories, but we're still excited to start something new for a change. I know most of you readers won't really care to join us, but it may be a good source of stories and graphic art for you from us.

This month has been an amazing start to this year! With this post, I already come in to the 3rd-highest number of posts in a single month in Pretzel Lectern history. Thanks for reading, and here's to keeping my post count high this year!

Abelhawk's Top 10 Most Nostalgic Computer Game Songs of All Time (Part 2)

Click here for the first 5 of the list!

Graymansnight and Other Holidays

What is a holiday? Etymology clearly spells out "holy day," which explains how they originated. In ancient times they were times of celebration and commemoration. I'm sure I'm not alone in that I have several "made-up" holidays that have come about over the years to celebrate or commemorate.

Obviously, everyone has his or her own birthday to celebrate each year, and most of the time you won't meet anyone who shares that day (I have, a fellow I met while in Brazil, in fact), and anniversaries are universal as well. But what about days on which something great happened, or a day that you just wanted to remember for years to come? Here are all the holidays I can think of that have meant something over the years.

Abelhawk's Top 10 Most Nostalgic Computer Game Songs of All Time (Part 1)

Time to get nostalgic! For an optimal experience while reading this post, I suggest you play the song while reading each description. It may help you understand what makes the music so memorable to me.

The Beat the Sweet Challenge!

Okay, it's official: I now need to come up with a month-long project every year. Two years ago it was the Techno Quaresma, last year was the memorable Data Month, and this year's is the...

BEAT THE SWEET CHALLENGE!

Children of Gods

I've been a parent for a year and a half now, and I've noticed something about the way my daughter regards me. She treats my wife and me like gods.

Think about our stature, our power, our knowledge. Think of the way my year-and-a-half-old daughter perceives this.

Out and about, she finds a granola bar or a cheese single, or even a simple plastic snack bag with pretzels inside it. She knows by now that food brings happiness and fullness, so she does the only thing she can do in order to eat them: she gives it to one of us to open.

The Creation of the World poem

I've been working on this for a while. With my exposure to Anglo-Saxon poetry, I decided to follow their patterns of alliteration to make my own. This is now an official canonical piece of Argaenothruzilian lore on my forum. For the original story I based this on, see this post.