So I am going to apologize in advance for the fact that this is not going to appeal to my audience at all, and the fact that my site has almost none of the posts I was supposed to put on here post shift to online learning. Taking 18 credits all online realllllllly sucks and I just want to thank Professor Hodges for being so understanding this semester and apologize for letting his course fall mostly to the wayside. I actually had some really good ideas for the content on this blog and the podcast but my motivation was just completely gone with the lack of live events and drama in real life (and somehow still in school). Eventually I will return to this blog and use it to actually do something, or I will probably just nuke it and start a new one.

I really did learn a lot in this class, the thing that stuck with me the most is the idea of always on audiences, which seems wholly irrelevant and ridiculous now since well, its kinda hard to do stuff now. I have always loved media studies and being able to take that lens into the digital world and learn how to personally apply it is an immensely valuable skill I will (hopefully) use in my future esports career.

Hello there fellow tournament organizers, today we are going to be doing a quick run through on how to set up and run your small one day events on challonge.com. Originally I planned on including a smash.gg section however, that part made the video far to long and I do not want to encourage anyone to use smash.gg for their small local events. Note that this video only covers double elimination brackets on challonge and I will be posting future tutorials that will run through brackets with pools and swiss brackets. Let me know in the comments or reach out to me on twitter @GradyHenick if you have any additional questions about challonge.com.

Sites Used

challonge.com

birdcult.sport.blog

My header image is incredibly basic because I have seen far to many terrible amateur photo shops as website headers and did not want to bite off more than I can chew and end up with an ugly, cluttered header. The main image on the header is an overhead shot of one of the events I ran (the Scarlet Classic V at the RAC) with a small bird holding a playing card I cutout of an image and placed in the corner to go with the Bird Cult name. While the bird does not connect to my target audience, seeing tons of people mill about should help my target audience associate the bird cult name with larger events, which is important because most people would rather fill convention centers than class rooms and comic shops.

The Scarlet Classic V image was used with permission from Rutgers esports which is why I am sure I am able to use it. The picture of the bird was found on Flickr using googles advanced image search and limiting the images to free to use share or modify. I am not going to be monetizing this site or image so this level of usage rights is fine for my purposes.

My production process was fairly straightforward but slightly more time consuming than I thought it would be. I struggled with photoshops blur filter but eventually got it to work the way I wanted. It did things like blurring only certain points, not blurring enough or the way I wanted to, as well as blurring the whole image instead of just the background layer. Cutting out the bird was also annoying until I started using photoshops very helpful and mostly functional smart area selection tool. The tools I used only work in this non traditional medium although the eraser sizes do somewhat pull from reality, what the erasers actually do is nothing like the real world.

This kind of photo manipulation would not work on a bitmap editor such as paint, since paint does not support layers or advanced tools like blur, smart selection, and most importantly layering. I could theoretically blur the original image and cut the bird out separately in PS and then “stack” them in a bitmap image. However, if I did this I would not be able to move the bird without having to completely restart my image since it would not “save” what pixels/image is underneath the bird and would just have white space in its place since as I stated before paint and other bitmap images do not use layers.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.