This one is for devs and gamers.
But first some background story.

My girlfriend is special. Not just generically lovey mush mush special. She is 1 in 100 more accurately 1 in 10000. She was born with a rare Congenital Heart Defect {CHD}. Called Truncus Arteriosus or TA for sake of brevity. TA's main thing is the two main arteries going into the heart are fused together and never seperated at birth. It's bad news. There is no cure for this kind of thing. Simply repairs that happen over the course of life.

So here is me. Desperately trying to find a way to get the word about this and the 40 other types of CHD out there in the world. I thought. "What if I make a game..." Not based around the medical jargon but on a level people could understand. I spent the better part of the last six years attending appointments with her and still don't get it. What I do get is her Emotional state. How her CHD causes her to think and feel.

So here is the pitch.

The game is about a girl who is diagnosed at birth with a CHD. She is now in her 20's and has to undergo an open heart surgery to repair the defect. The day comes. She goes under but when she wakes up she find herself in a final fantasy style environment. This new world has a darkness cast over it. She is unknowingly the hero of this world and she has to face off with multiple bosses of varied degrees of evil.

Then after beating these bosses she really wakes up from the surgery. Waking up to the realization that the world she saved was herself. And all the bosses were manifestations of her own internal feelings. Depression, anxiety, hopelessness, Denise, desire and so on.

I would sell this game with the caveat that 2/3 of all profits get split between the Adult Congenital Heart Association and Project Heart. As those are the two main organizations that deal heavily with creating standards of care and raising awareness for CHD survivors.

Thoughts?

Note: I am still learning game dev. This is an eventual goal for me.

!dev, more about social media
(and suicide)

ugh. social media.

recently a girl from a nearby high school committed suicide. it's sad, and i know what i'm about to say is going to be controversial, but i think it shouldn't be on social media. maybe her close friends posting it on instagram, to remember her, but that's it.

of course, that's not what happened. people started posting "❤️" on their snapchat stories, and theyre saying they are raising awareness. (they don't know this girl or why she did it or anything, they're just doing it because their friends did it.)

this awareness, is well, temporary.

the point of snapchat is that all the pictures go away, so why would they talk about suicide prevention on there? do they want suicide prevention to go away? this is most prevelent on snapchat, but on others, too.

trend after trend after trend.

thats what people turned her death into. a trend.

just like #prayforparis, and others, but on a local scale.

the problem with social media is that things go away. in a day or two it'll be like this never happened. she won't be remembered like she would if she weren't on social media.

i know what you're thinking. they're just "raising awareness." but for how long?

well, until another trend comes.

people disagreeing with me are extremely welcome to comment.

and any ideas on how this problem can be fixed?

Please, don't take this post seriously. I wrote it from anger.

I hate a lot of humans.

I was at a church today because family ties. I'm agnostic. That sums it up.

And now, I'm at a mall, and it's crowded, and I'm bumping into a lot of people with very low common sense. These fucking apes here have ZERO walk awareness. And a lot of them probably drive, which scares me.

When they make a line in a food shop, and the line gets too big, they curve the line so that the line can continue, like an L, but they leave TOO LITTLE GODDAMN SPACE TO WALK THROUGH!

There's a narrow ramp, next to some stairs, that I use to get to the nursery of the mall, but it also leads to the bathrooms. A lot of these disgusting beings use the ramp. Jesus fucking christ, USE THE SHITTIN FUCKING STAIRS.

tiday I was walking with the stroller the 9 month old which was (thank you alpha omega) sleeping.

I see one of those nice comfy couches, and there's a couple hugging in it but there's an empty spot. I come closer and it's occupied by their trash, some cups with ice cream.
I could not believe my eyes.
That shit's expensive. I would never leave shit with ice cream in my couch, and it's also a horrible gesture because it looks like you're denying it from others with your trash.

I just stared the trash down like really disappointed. They took the trash but I moved on because I was very salty at that point.

I find a seat next to a dad and his kid. I sit down, relieved. His daughter comes over, and almost yelling complains about him buying his brother.
I stared this little shit straight in her face because she could wake up my kid. She and her family was totally oblivious.

These are just minor events, but I come across a plethora of situations like this every day, like people turning on their turn lights 1/2 second before turning, or people that I meet on the street giving me fucking advice on raising kids.

That's the average mall experience. It's a place where selfful people thrive.

I shit you not, sometimes I imagine that a meteor strikes earth and while it makes me sad that all the people I consider kind will die, I orgasm at the thought of these filthy parasites just evaporating.

But then I realize that I'm being very cruel and intolerant. And feel guilty.

Sometimes I think that I should live in Japan or a similar place.
Japanese city people are very organized.
But then I remember that Japan has a suicide problem. And that it has a poverty problem. And a lot of outcasts. And that they barely have sex.
i dunno.

Hmm...recently I've seen an increase in the idea of raising security awareness at a user level...but really now , it gets me thinking , why not raise security awareness at a coding level ? Just having one guy do encryption and encoding most certainly isn't enough for an app to be considered secure . In this day an age where most apps are web based and even open source some of them , I think that first of all it should be our duty to protect the customer/consumer rather than make him protect himself . Most of everyone knows how to get user input from the UI but how many out here actually think that the normal dummy user might actually type unintentional malicious code which would break the app or give him access to something he shouldn't be allowed into ? I've seen very few developers/software architects/engineers actually take the blame for insecure code . I've seen people build apps starting on an unacceptable idea security wise and then in the end thinking of patching in filters , encryptions , encodings , tokens and days before release realise that their app is half broken because they didn't start the whole project in a more secure way for the user .

Just my two cents...we as devs should be more aware of coding in a way that makes apps more secure from and for the user rather than saying that we had some epic mythical hackers pull all the user tables that also contained unhashed unencrypted passwords by using magix . It certainly isn't magic , it's just our bad coding that lets outside code interact with our own code .

NOT DEV RELATED - JUST SPREADING AWARENESS...

For most of us, a PJ Day sounds like a luxury, but for those with lupus, it’s too often a necessity due to their disease. PJ DAY is a way to honor and support the many people with lupus while also raising funds. #knowlupus

WEll, I never know the automatons took it from me, but thanks for raising awareness! 👍

I just finished posting this but think it deserves its own post.
If you're creating a business or "startup" (as people like to call it these days) don't assume the idea is novel or investors will just jump on board. Focus on the business fundementals, money and cash flow, even before launch, unless you can afford not to. But really you can't afford not to. Selling before launch means that you're effectively doing two things 1 you're collecting new customers and income for the business and 2 you're. raising awareness at the same time. Obscurity is death and failure.

Get you a good sales team and marketer when the time is right.

Have a year of runway.

Identify the sites and groups your target audience and investors frequent. Start conversations now, buzz is the hardest thing to generate.

Start building relations with customers and potential clients now. Discuss launch, ask them if they'd be willing to pay up front before launch, in order to secure a "lifetime membership", offer it as an early opportunity and charge extra. Giving a discount out of the gate is a mistake B/c it says to potential investors that you don't think it's ready or worth it yet. Of course if it's between making 1. Some money or 2. No money, don't let it be a deal breaker, offer a discount. Going from no clients to any clients is a BIG deal. If you can do 1 you can make it to 10, if 10, you can reach 100, we etc.

No one likes asking for money and yet it is as important if not more important than development.