This should be an interesting one... 

Many say that musical talent is born, not made. (Personally, I disagree. I was tone deaf for years... I eventually figured it out, after being at it for long enough) 

Graphics design seems to be an entirely different story. Some are absolutely great at it from the very beginning, even before they truly know and understand the tools. Others know the tools as if it were the back of their own hand, and yet their designs are still struggling. 

I think that passion is the true root of creativity. You can't really be creative until you're first passionate about it. What are your opinions?

I'm gonna go on a wild one here, and try and see what the general consensus is for what the world will be like ten years from now. It will be interesting to see how our predictions stack up. Try to be realistic. Nobody thought the cell phone/iPhone would have taken off the way that it did.

My prediction is that laptops and tablets will evolve considerably. We already use tablets extensively, but their use will outpace actual laptops and computers. We will be carrying around super thin devices (thinner than what we have now) that are running operating systems advanced enough to do graphics design, audio work, development and programming, etc. 

Windows will make another big flop after Windows 10, and once again try to get involved in the mobile sector. 10 years from now, they will have failed, and likely will be focusing on Cloud hosting and services as their main source of revenue. 

I also think cars will go back to slightly more classic look (much like websites started using square borders instead of rounded corners again). The interiors will be very nice. The exteriors will be (slightly) more boxy once again. But who knows on this one... Who knows.

What are your predictions? Who knows. Ten years from now, we will probably look back on this thread and see how it all stacked up.

Background, not really needed and slightly NSFW in the sense it involves drugs.

Quote:So I took an unknown pill after lots of testing and acetone washing to try and figure out what the substance was. Didn't have a Marquis test kit on hand, only Ehrlich and Ehrlich only tests for an indole group which you may find in LSD, DMT, regular Serotonin, or Melatonin, a common over-the-counter sleep aid.

My conclusion was that it was either:
1. MDMA
2. Amphetamine
3. Methamphetamine.

I won't disclose which one it was, but it looked like an E404 without the actual lettering imprint, just the cross on one side, so probably a press of something being sold as Adderall IR to students. Needless to say, a study aid would be nice today for me to finish up some Chemistry homework and assignments because I have a midterm coming up on Monday.

• My average reaction time is around 210 to 220ms which is slightly above average. I used to be quite the gamer back in the day, CSGO and the likes.
  
• My average typing speed sits somewhere between 70-75WPM, which is still considerably above average but nothing compared to what I was getting now.
  

For those of us who stay busy, how do you manage your schedule? I know some people who manage to work 55+ hours a week, and are in school full time. Never quite understood how they did it...  

For me, it's planning everything well in advanced. I'm very rigid with my schedule, and that helps a lot. How do you find yourself managing your time when things get busy?

http://www.rinmarugames.com/playgame.php...ar-creator

Might be a kinda weird art style, and unfortunately it's a Flash app, but it's pretty fun and is rather extensive with customization.
So instead of posting a photo of yourself because that's weird, make a photo of yourself using the assets.
Or go full fantasy if you really want, but mine's somewhat accurate to what I look like (minus the hair because although it does flange outwards at the bottom and my hair is pretty long, it's also a lot more straight than these portrayals as round. 

My coats are also a lot darker than the 'black' here.

We are stronger as a community. We have a few members that have communities that are similar to ours. We believe strongly in supporting other communites (as they have helped support us over the years). With all ado, here are some other communites made by members here, who we believe to be high quality communities. They've passed the test and meet the standards to be included here.  

Aeowulf Forums - A general discussion forum owned and managed by Guardian. 
Zalost's Gridzone - Spooky Zalost's NeoCities homepage. Custom designed and managed by the man himself! 
MeowsePad Forums - A relatively new community created by JuneBerry and Winterbear. This is a similar community to ours here at MS. 

We will update this list as more are communities become qualified!

[Not entirely related to 'creative' writing, per se, but related to literature so I guess it falls hand-in-hand.]

What's your take on the whole popular science genre?

I've got pretty mixed feelings about it in general, but I do enjoy the genre for some light reading that might actually teach me something without bending my brain too much.
At the same time, that's also why I have mixed feelings about it haha.

So, I was pretty unaware of the genre at all until first year of uni, when my roommate (studying Civil Engineering) picked up a copy of Tyson's new book at the time, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. When one of my friends was over and my roommate was reading, he asked 'hey, what's that book about?' And the only suitable response was "Astrophysics, but for people in a hurry." 

Now, I've never read that book in particular, and my roommate at the time was studying engineering, so at least it was somewhat related to what he was studying, and I guess by those standards you could call it 'complementary/supplementary reading' in his case. And the guy was really smart, got higher-than-average grades in all his classes, despite always doing a bong rip before any sort of studying.

But every now and then, I go out to some social gathering (a bar with some friends and friends of friends, or maybe an open-house at a company) and someone starts to open their mouth and talk about quantum mechanics or some subject that they only know about on the very surface, seemingly to make themselves look smart within the group, but if you ask them a question that goes any deeper than a pop-sci book, they completely freeze up, or give you an explanation of something that isn't what you asked about, but contains the same words (strawman-ing to get out of it.)

I make every effort not to be. I know I ain't perfect. I sure I am at times, just like anyone else, but it truly is one of my biggest pet peeves. 

Some people just have an inbred need to feel "better" than the people around them. They can't stand the idea of just being equals. Fighting that at work at the moment. A new person tryna be the straw boss and tell everyone else what to do. It's not flying too well with anyone except for my boss. 

That being said, you can't escape these people. They'll be everywhere in some form or another. 

How do you guys handle narcissistic people such as these?

No matter what generation if's from, there's bound to be game gems that aren't well known sometimes. So, why don't we talk about some of our favorite games that could've been way more popular than they were?

My personal favorite that comes to mind is a GBA game called Car Battler Joe. It was a game focused on a young man with a love of armored vehicle racing/battles, with a storyline focused on reuniting a family and helping others through quests. It was just a really fun racing/car battle game, but I really loved the storyline to be honest... That made it worth way more than I think it was treated as.

If you've had trouble with MS being much slower than usual lately, you aren't the only one. I'm afraid Makestation has finally outgrown the server that has hosted it since 2013.

I won't get into any of the technical details, but in short, our host has been migrating VPSs off of the specific product we subscribe to for years. The end result is that, while Makestation is normally fine, when other nodes don't behave, we grind to a halt. They recently downgraded our hardware (or likely migrated us to a lower-specced node), which has made problems worse.  

We will finally be upgrading our server sometime early in March. When that happens, MS will likely be down for most of the day. I will announce a date when the time comes closer, and will be paying for an upgrade to make sure that we are set for (hopefully) years to come! 

With that said, depending on if I can find a good deal, I may need to put ads up on the community temporarily until the upgrade can pay for itself. I'm extremely cash-strapped at the moment (trying to finish my degree and it hurts), but keeping MS running smoothly is important. All in all, we'll be making the website faster over the coming weeks.

I'll be announcing more details as the time comes nearer!