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Poopman's dedication to creating engaging games and useful applications showcases his commitment to enhancing the YWOT community. Through his programming skills and innovative ideas, he has successfully brought additional entertainment and functionality to the platform, further enriching the overall user experience. | Poopman's dedication to creating engaging games and useful applications showcases his commitment to enhancing the YWOT community. Through his programming skills and innovative ideas, he has successfully brought additional entertainment and functionality to the platform, further enriching the overall user experience. | ||
== Autobiography (Written several years ago) == | |||
'''Growing Up Poor''' | |||
I remember growing up in the ghettos of the Alief area of Houston, TX. I was dirt poor, sometimes | |||
eating "sand-crackers" (crackers with sand on them) or "wish sandwiches" (bread with a condiment , | |||
and wish you had meat.) or i would just swallow air in order to get rid of some of the hunger pain. | |||
It was not uncommon to see people who were dead in the alley way of my apartment complex or in | |||
their car, usually caused by gang related problems or drug overdoses. I could see their dim, sunken | |||
eyes and pale cheeks. I could smell the distinctive, pungent stench of rotting flesh. When I think back on | |||
this, I am reminded how lucky I am to have escaped this dark place. | |||
'''School Was An Escape''' | |||
School provided a somewhat temporary escape from the dangers of my neighborhood and the troubles at home. | |||
I tried my best to learn anything I could. Learning was a distraction from the hunger pains I would often | |||
feel in the pit of my stomach. I equated success in school with the potential for success in life. | |||
Although I focused, I was still very young and made silly choices. For example, In kindergarten, I took my mother’s | |||
engagement ring and tried to propose to a girl who I thought was beautiful. The ring was intercepted | |||
and stolen by a teacher and so, I never proposed. | |||
Although the day started out problematic, a kid from my class saw what happened to me. He was able | |||
to console me with something unexpected. He took his binder out and handed to me, on a piece of | |||
notebook paper, a drawing of an amazingly detailed dinosaur. I immediately forgot about the woes | |||
of my love life and found a new love. That day, I learned that I wanted to draw, and I wanted to draw well. | |||
This event began my fascination with tracing. I traced the dinosaur picture I was given. I proudly showed | |||
the little boy what I had accomplished but was disappointed when I saw what he accomplished; he created | |||
many more amazing images. I was only able to reproduce his original drawing. | |||
'''Becoming an Artist.''' | |||
I was determined to draw something of my own. I imagined a dragon with a long, snakelike body, whiskers | |||
on both sides of its mouth that flowed down its face, and short, stubby arms with large claws for hands. I tried | |||
to draw the image that I imagined. Much to my disappointment, the drawing did not look like a dragon. | |||
The drawing was unrecognizable. | |||
It was not until second grade that I finally had my “a-ha” moment. Mr. Baker was a substitute who would | |||
often replace the art teachers who were absent. Instead, he substituted my English class. He told everyone | |||
to get out a pencil and a piece of paper. He asked the class to emulate every stroke he made on the chalkboard, | |||
consisting of curves, lines, and ovals. Mr. Baker guided me to make my first drawing; I made the character | |||
Fred from The Flintstones. I realized that I did not need to look at an entire picture to draw. Instead, I copied | |||
each line until the image developed itself. | |||
When the school day ended I went directly home. I was an excited eight year old who wanted to share the | |||
news with my mom. When I got to my apartment, the burglar bars surrounding the doors and windows were | |||
locked. I knocked on the doors and rattled the metal bars. Eventually, my mom opened the door. | |||
“Quite, the kids are sleeping.” She said with an angry face. I paid no attention to her warnings. I walked in, | |||
kicked my shoes off, and threw my backpack into the middle of the living room. I pulled out my English | |||
folder and showed her the drawing of Fred. “Mom, come over here!” I whispered. She looked and began to smile, | |||
and she whispered back, “When I was your age, I wanted to draw too.” Her smile faded, and she continued, | |||
“I would show Grandpa and Grandma my drawings, but they always told me it was a waste of time, and I | |||
wouldn’t be successful.” She regretfully listened to my grandparents. Without any motivation for learning, | |||
she dropped out of high school and ran a children’s daycare without being licensed. My dad also had a knack | |||
for the arts but could not keep up with the technology. He eventually stopped pursuing art and got a job as a | |||
pizza delivery driver. | |||
'''Technology''' | |||
When I thought of my parents, I thought of their failures. I would feel embarrassed for them, and I felt ashamed. | |||
I wanted to be as different from them as I could. I worked hard to master my craft. In middle school, I learned | |||
about different art techniques such as drafting or perspective. When I reached high school, technology began | |||
to boom. I had to learn how to adapt my art from freehand drawings over to computer graphics. | |||
I struggled to adapt to the ever changing technology; it felt awkward to draw with a mouse. I started to feel like | |||
I was following in my father’s footsteps. Although I knew I had talent with paper and pencil drawings, | |||
I lacked skill in computer animation and design courses. Losing confidence, I turned to video games. I began to | |||
play on my computer during classes. The teacher was furious when she noticed what I was doing. After being | |||
scolded by my art teacher, I began drawing on the computer again. Ironically, the hand-eye coordination from the | |||
video games helped me become less awkward with my mouse. | |||
By my senior year, I became the “go-to” student when it came to computer design. On Fridays, I would stay after | |||
school to show my teachers about the new tools and techniques that I learned using the Adobe drawing programs. | |||
My teachers and I became friends; they mentored me and nurtured my drawing skills. My educators may have | |||
seen me as a great student. I saw them as family, and they encouraged me to pursue higher education. | |||
'''KungFu and Lion Dancing''' | |||
Throughout my time in high-school, as a way to stay away from my house, I would attend a Kungfu and Lion-dance temple | |||
called "Teo Chew Temple" in Houston. The temple was free, but they were very strict and did very traditional practices. | |||
I would often stay way past closing because i realized if i was there long enough they would feed me. As for lion-dancing | |||
that was one of my favorite things to do. It was challenging, and being one of the few to use the competition | |||
stands was a source of pride. Going here often is how I ended up learning some Cantonese (a dialect of Chinese) | |||
'''College''' | |||
In 2007, Graduating high school was a great accomplishment, but I decided not to walk during graduation. I felt that I | |||
would deserve to walk as soon as I graduated from college. My parents did not encourage higher education. | |||
I confessed to my parents that I wanted to attend college. I was their first and only child of ten to pursue higher education. | |||
They felt that what I learned from college would not be worth the costs. I offered to pay for college myself, so they | |||
agreed. We had no experience with searching for colleges, so my parents pulled out the yellow pages phone book. | |||
The first art college listed was the Art Institute of Houston, so that is the school we chose. | |||
The school was private, and it was expensive. Even though I received many grants for living in a low-income house, | |||
I still owed monthly payments to the school. I found a job across the street from my college at Hollister. I was five | |||
dollars short on tuition every month, so my dad graciously helped me with the payment. | |||
Although tuition was paid for, I did not realize how expensive all of the art supplies, food, and bus fare would be. | |||
In order to finish assignments, I would go into the paper cutting room at my school to find scraps of paper to use | |||
for my projects. Most days, if I was lucky, I could find change and buy a loaf of bread from the gas station to eat | |||
on the five mile walk home. The Art Institute also had a culinary school; the school threw away all of the baked food | |||
for the weekend. On Fridays, I feasted on all the thrown out baked sandwiches, pastas, and cakes. | |||
The Arti Institute nefariously added $10,000 to my debt over night and kicked me out of school until I paid it back. | |||
They would also hold all transcripts from me until that happened. | |||
'''Diana''' | |||
Around the same time, I met my fiancée Diana through a mutual friend. Diana grew up in a low income household | |||
with many siblings, so she related to my struggles. Unfortunately, she lived in Cincinnati, OH. After a one year, long | |||
distance relationship, I decided to move to Cincinnati in hopes of a better life. I have had a lot of help along the way | |||
while living here. One of Diana’s friends helped me get a better job as a registration associate, so I paid off my debt | |||
to the Art Institute. They were eventually investigated and found guilty, but instead of needing to pay me back all they | |||
had to do was transfer the stolen money to the state. ''(Thats like if someone robbed you, and the police took the money'' | |||
''that was stolen and left without giving it back t you.)'' Anyways, Unlike my parents, Diana urged me to go back to school | |||
at DAAP because she saw my talent and potential, just like my high school art teachers. | |||
'''Back To College''' | |||
At twenty-four years old, I began my freshman year as a college student again. My major would be The Science of | |||
Communication Design. Or in other words: graphic design. In comparison to my childhood apartment complex, | |||
my current apartment sits on a safe, quiet street in Clifton. Because I was older than most of my peers, and I struggled | |||
to get back into college, I took my education a lot more seriously than the fresh-out-of-high school students. I think that | |||
was a blessing, which helped me stay focused and vigilant. | |||
'''Full-Time Employee''' | |||
Fast forward a few years, and my focus within my Major was chosen as Interaction Design, which would be a mix between | |||
User Interface design, User Experience deign, and coding. After a few more years (it was a 5 year degree) I graduated | |||
<nowiki>#</nowiki>1 in my college at DAAP. During my years there, we did a few Co-ops and one of those co-ops was an engineering firm | |||
which ended up hiring me as a full time employee. | |||
'''Machine Learning and Inventor.''' | |||
in 2016/18 The engineering firm branched out to Virtual Reality, with me as the main artist and level designer. The firm was | |||
only using Unity at the time and Unreal did not have VR capabilities yet. I learned Unreal and had the firm start to branch out | |||
into Unreal as well. A few years later, The firm got further into Machine Learning and placed me into the newly built machine | |||
learning group. The purpose was to find ways to generate synthetic data. At the same time, one of the directors wanted me to | |||
work on making a "product viewer." I went to them with the idea of creating a Machine learning based product viewer, where | |||
you could take a few products, have them randomize their positions, rotations, colors textures, lighting, background etc and | |||
use that with some JSON data to train machine learning models. I developed the product for about a year. It was patented and | |||
I became a named inventor of the first synthetic data generation platform. | |||
[[Category:Users]] | [[Category:Users]] | ||
[[Category:Main world members]] | [[Category:Main world members]] | ||
[[Category:Scripters]] | [[Category:Scripters]] | ||