So I went to the 9th annual Ice Cream festival in Piedmont Park, I was really excited to go. I was planning to try a bunch of new exocit flavor each vendor had to offer. Sadly, that wasn't the case most of the vendors had (what I like to call it) all the same flavors but in a different package. No one really had any flavors that were there own, and also for an "ice cream" festival there were alot of just regular food trucks, I mean I know that there had to be at least some actual food vendors, but then again it's an ICE CREAM festival. I had went to BBQ festival with my brother a few years ago, and at that festival there was nothing but BBQ food trucks, I don't even remember seeing a truck wasn't BBQ.  Not only were there just regular food trucks there were was also a lot of the non-food vendors as well like there was freakin' didjeridu dude there selling didjeridu and other australian crafts...

Speaking of instruments, there was a stage there at the festival, and at the start they had a woman on stage singing. She was pretty good I was hoping to get some footage of her singing once I got good angle because we were walking around alot. Though, by the time we had gotten to area with a good angle of the stage there was a dude teaching TAI CHI on stage like....WTF?! I mean it was kind of funny since there was basically no one in the audience actually doing tai chi. Another funny thing was near the front of the festival there people selling alkaline water and talking about how healthy it was, and I thought "Hmm... that's weird to being selling a health product at ICE CREAM festival" I mean nothing wrong with trying to live healthy, but I don't that would be on someone mind when there going to an festival that (at least  supposedly)  is dedicated to ice cream.

More on the other weird things happened at the festival was there was big empty space in the park that really wasn't being used all that much.  It was a big empty space with walking trail  around it, which is where I thought the heart of the festival would be at considering how spacious it was, but only like a corner  of the space was being used for things like bouncy castles, and bungee jumping. They had one those giant hamster ball things which I guess they were planning for that to take up most of the space, but I think at least a considerable amount space could be used for  like people to bring there picnic blankets and stuff. 

The Ice cream festival wasn't that much of bust at least I got some shaved ice (Pineapple Mango Pink Lemonade flavored), and the festival had a nice atmosphere, and I got to take a lot of pictures and footage that could use for drawing references.  It just wasn't what I expected (as with most things in life), but I should have known it wasn't going to be a festival full of new, exoict and strange flavors (I really wanted to try a shaved ice stacked top of ice cream) when I got home and looked up how was mainly sponsoring the festival..

Everything made sense once I found the festival was sponsored by a hospital and few other health sponsors as well.  Not only that but I went to the site a pop-up came up with the festival name and subtitle that I didn't see until now....

Not to mention, the festival also boasted about free health screenings, and my sister remembers staff member saying you would get a free ice cream with a free health screening. This was mentioned under the activities section of the website, which I didn't check because spent a good chunk of my childhood doing lame "fun" activities with strangers at these types of events, and I was only there for the ice cream. The way they talk about how healthy these activities are, I should've knew something was up. 

Again, It's not like I don't think health is important, it is. I just find it weird that a health organization is having a ice cream festival, just seems like way to guilt trip into being healthy, but then again that just an opinion of a 19 year old kid. I also think that was a major hindrance and maybe a deterrence  to having vendors have unique and special flavors.  Brown Butter Bacon Ice Cream  doesn't sound all that healthy, also hipsters despite being pretentious and annoying at times) can come up with some really interesting flavors.  I should have known this ice cream festival wasn't going to be anything special there wasn't at least one weird hipster food truck, but there tons  at the BBQ festival I went to. 

 I was really excited for this festival but what could I have expected from a ice cream festival sponsored by health organizations. That's like expecting a teen movie to be good when it's directed and written by out of touch old people with no grandchildren of their own to speak of. Again, the festival was still worth it for the pics and the footage taken (that I was *hopefully* able to put into a decent video) 

I'll try to do more blog like this if I ever go to any cons and/or festival and especially if I'm able to get any footage of it.

Until next time...

Blast From The Past: Mini-Room Maker.com

    So, since this is my personal blog thought of best way for you to get to know more about me is to share some of my adventures on the internet. I've been online since I was 6 years olds, I been on a lot of websites (most that are long gone now) and played a lot of games (majority that are also long gone. Even though, most of these games and websites are cheap and haven't age well they still hold a special place in my heart, and they have sorta shaped me into the person I am today. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be the only post like this on my blog, I thought this would be a nice balance to the semi-cynical and over-analyzed rants/review I post on here. (I'll try to come up with something more creative than Blast From Past but it was all I could think of for the moment...so..eh)

    I have always had appreciation and respect for pixel art, I love how detail you can get with  it, how colorful it be, and how alive the art can be. I guess you can say that goes for all mediums, but it's just amazing what one can do with such little pixels. While I can't really see myself doing any pixel art anytime soon, I still enjoy looking at other's pixel creations. Currently I have one favorite pixel art whose on Tumblr ( who found through Pinterest because I try to stay as far away from Tumblr as possible) Pixelin (a.k.a Pretty-Transparent). She has a very nice cute and soft aesthetic with her art Here's some my favorite pieces from her collection:

Seeing Pixelin's art reminded me of an old website that I used to visit a bunch as a kid. I had stumble upon the site when looking for some more games to play.

  Mini-Room Maker was ( and still  is) a pixel art room decorating website (as the name implies), as the description says you can use the pixel art in each category to make a scene, and with the power of creativity could make just about any room/scene from your dream room to fairy tale castle . The description also stated that the site has been around since 1996 but I found it in 2006 (Oof, 10 years later I just noticed). While the description doesn't sound like much the site was still a blast to use, and it was pretty popular for the time being with regular weekly updates that added new pixel art. It ranked 2nd place in a" best dress-up game leaderboard".

Also something interesting I had learn while doing some research for this website was that it was made in Korea, which makes so much more sense now since a good chunk of people who visited the website often (or at least posted alot of their creations online and on the website itself)  were korean. The website also had some pixel art with Korean text in it, which is something I never really thought about as a kid because a lot of the games I played a lot were in Korean (and I'll probably do a completely different post for that) so it wasn't really weird for me to see it. (the english on the website was a little bit weird some of the words that would use for certain categories were a little off. Like when looking to add a chair to the scene you have to go the Sits section to find chairs and stuff, but me being a little kid I don't really pay any attention)

 Anyways, The site was pretty big that part of the site was a hub that showcased other room maker games like this one. I have a feeling it was made the same people (or person ) that made the OG website because it was still plagued by the weird english and the little introductions each page had all read the same with a few words swapped here and there. There were different types of room maker that catered a certain theme, there were lots of them but the ones I visited mostly were the school, mall, kitchen, sleepover, kindergarten, and party room maker. Theme type of room makers aren't active anymore but you can still access them through the wayback machine (Like I did).

Revisiting the sites again took me on a nice nostalgia trip seeing all the little brightly colored people again brought a nice sense of comfort and happiness, also when revisiting the sites I tried my best to have the same goal as little me did, and the goal was to use as many pixel people as possible in a scene with a somewhat understandable storyline. I think I was able to achieve this goal best in the party room maker.  (Click on the picture to get full view in HQ)

In this Kindergarten there isn't much story to it besides a bunch of cute kids just playing around, learning, and hanging out. I d0

think though that this maker and the party one show off how bright and colorful one can make these scenes look , even though you cant really see the movement going on you still know it's there.  (Oh and most all of the pixel people move, the movement adds that extra special feeling of everything  coming together smoothly.) 

This school scene shows all of the students gathering around and watching and two classmates confess their feelings to one another, you can see two students cheering the couple on.  It a little cheesy I know, it was kind of all I could think of at the moment. While making this scene I was reminded another thing about this website, it had a whole bunch of different styles of pixel art with you can kind of see in this scene.  Some of the pixel art only had the different eye shape, while others were noticeable (and more anime-ish) bigger than the rest.

In the Supermarket scene, there's an old couple, a mother with 2 kids of her own already and one on the way, a grandmother shopping with her grandchild, mothers pushing babies in carts, a saleswoman and few people already checking out. There are a few empty spaces but I still like it.  Oh, and on this part of the website I found another weird pixel art mishap when I was selecting which people to put in a scene.

I really wanted to go all out on the beach one, but it was WAY smaller that I remember even when I stretched out the page.  I guess  this page is pretty old because even the Wayback couldn't load all the pixel art, so I was really limited with the stuff I was given.  The scene's a mostly happy day at the beach, except for the one sad girl next the happy couple. Again, I really wanted to go all out here since it is summer where I live, but the Wayback Oofed so...yeah..

In this restaurant, it's pretty slow day but the staff in the kitchen are still hard at work, preparing a cake with the help of a nice angel using her magic on the cake to make it taste sweeter.  I wanted to add more people in the dining area   but I couldn't find many pixel art of people sitting down not already in a chair (if that makes any sense).

(This one is my favorite one)

It's a birthday party for a very popular (and spoiled) girl. There's a singer on stage, a camera crew, confetti everywhere, buckets of candy, two birthday cakes , a whole room of gifts and scooter, and a robo bear. Everyone is dancing and seems to be having a wonderful time. 

This scene shows a sleepover amongst a small but close group of friends.  They were playing video games, having a indoor picnic, and do some make up, most of them are still asleep. Two of them are having a pillow fight, and one made some ramen. This maker was my second favorite one growing up, I was planning to do the same thing as the party one by making it really big and extravagant. But the best sleepover are usually among the closet group of friends.

  
There's a sale going on the mall and everyone's trying to get what they can before the sales over. Most of the shoppers are happy with their purchases, some are still deciding and are looking for a second opinion, and some are already have their hands full (not their own hands of crouse )  already on their way out. (  This one looks dramatically different than the one I remember, but I could be mixing it up the fast food restaurant maker or the airport maker.)  

Lastly but not least the original room maker

This scene shows a family early on a weekend morning the father is leaving for work and the kids are drawing, playing with toys, or watching tv. The mother is in the kitchen (trying to) prepare breakfast for her family. I was inspired by all the other family scene people made the mini-room maker flickr group. This is the first time I use different wallpaper and floor instead of the default one. 

    It was nice to find out that this website had a dedicated flickr group to it,  I wasn't the only one who enjoyed the website.  Some people made their own  irl bedrooms in the maker, and use the maker to visualize their ideal bedroom. Some people went farther than I've ever dream of doing by making whole parks, full page sceneries, and homes on the website. There some pretty impressive stuff people have made on this website.

(The Flickr group link, if you want to see more..)

 
     I haven't really thought about it until now, but I wonder if the pixel art on the website was made by the people (or person) that owned it, or by someone else entirely. I would guess the ladder on account of how drastically different the style of the pixel art can be sometimes. Who knows maybe the people who own the website just had different pixel styles, in whatever case I hope they asked permission from the artist before using it. 

Part of me feels like a site like this could still be made today, especially if you got the right group of people together. I could see artist like Pixelin making some really cute and pretty pixel art for the site. I also think would be a good way for other pixel artist to get their name out of there, if  the site were to become popular.  Heck, they could even just make turn it a app, and it would still work just well.

    I feel like the site kind went down because it was much up-keep on multiple sites, it was probably harder to maintain in the later years, plus people probably start to forget about as time went on. While that thought makes me a little sad, I'm still glad I was able to enjoy the site during it's popularity, and also for it helping find my admiration and  respect for pixel art. Even if parts of the sites is gone completely in a few years , I can still access most of it through the wayback if I want to. 

So yeah, that's my ramble blog on pixel room decorating website from the mid 2000's...yeah..that's all I got say besides..

Later days...

Here's a post on how to play Mini Room Maker in Current Year (2022)
 

I decided to change to photoshop because I was done with Paint Tool Sai crashing, and not saving stuff. I always knew I had to learn photoshop sooner or later.