Eclectic Inventor

Saying goodbye to MrWonka

June 30, 2023 by mrwonka

Changing my branding has been something I’ve been kicking around for a few months now. What really kicked it off was YouTube’s new mention system. In their infinite wisdom, they chose to give the tag @MrWonka to a very small channel that hasn’t uploaded in years, and YouTube refused my request to use it.

The name however also had other issues. For one, it was legally questionable, as the name was based off of Roald Dahl’s character, “Willy Wonka” (The lawyers would never figure that one out 😉). I also don’t create works based on the movies or books anymore either, so the name no longer makes much sense to new viewers. Finding a new name however proved to be extremely difficult. It needed to be:

Short (no more than 2 words)
Not already in use on YouTube
an available, non-parked URL (Some domain names get bought by companies and re-sold for thousands!!!)
Not tied to any one specific thing I make (I change mediums a lot)
Mildly whimsical, not too corporate sounding

So a friend and I brainstormed names over about a month. Here’s a few rejects:

The Excog – Too similar to Ex-con, or Ex-convict
Digital Excogitator – No one knows what “To Excogitate” means
Digital Artificer – Sounds too similar to Artificial, which has a negative connotation
Digital Smithy – Digital is tied too much to computers
Eclectic Output – Sounds too automatic

Finally I decided on (the) Eclectic Inventor. I figured most people would automatically add the “the” automatically, and it helps keep the name shorter. I feel it nicely represents what I do. Creating a variety of different projects, and not just sticking to one type, medium, or idea.

Thoughts

Sinking

August 5, 2022 by mrwonka

So things for me have been very hectic, busy, and stressful. So much so that I’ve effectively halted ALL projects I had been working on (about 4 or so). So here’s what’s been happening. Rent at my apartment went up so much that it would cost most of my paycheck. Thanks to my mother, we were able to finance a condo, but it’s in much worse shape than we had initially though, for example:

The water heater was literally sinking INTO the floor of the second story. After it was removed, all of this concrete crumbled away like Play-Doh.

So this has become my life now. It feels like that I’m not working or sleeping, I’m doing all I can to repair the condo. So far this has included:

Replacing a door handle that was taped on
Installing a new deadbolt lock
Patching many, many, many, holes
Replacing a low hanging lamp I’d repeatedly whacked my head on
Removing blinds that had broken strings

So as you may imagine, that has all been a bit much for me, mentally, physically, and financially. On the bright side, I’ve gotten to install and play with several different smart technologies, so in a way, this has become my new project, albeit not fully by choice. I’m considering making a showcase video. Hopefully in a few months I’ll be able to return to creating content.

Hollow shell
Look me in the eyes and see I’m numb
I’ve come undone
Let me go
I’m sorry that I can’t be what you want
My heart is gone

Disconnected
Don’t know why we fell apart
The feeling sets in
But only after dark

After Dark by Essenger

Youtube

Bronchitis ow!

May 10, 2022 by mrwonka

So lately I’ve been working, A LOT. As a side effect of this, I didn’t have much time to work on personal projects. For a while I had a goal of getting a YouTube video out every month, but this didn’t align with my policy of “only work on what you like”. As such I’m going to release things as they are ready. I’ve also deactivated YouTube memberships because I don’t feel comfortable accepting money if I’m not regularly outputting content.

Also likely as a result of work, I’ve gotten sick with bronchitis. We’ve been having guests come in coughing badly near us, so it’s not too surprising. Now that I have oodles of free time, of course I don’t feel motivated to work on projects. Isn’t it funny how that works?

Thoughts | Universal Orlando Resort

How to decipher ride down times

October 10, 2021 by mrwonka

For some reason, if you ask ride operators at most themeparks how long a ride will be down for, or why, they will refuse to give you a straight answer. It’s almost as if they don’t expect guests to understand the technical reasons a ride might be down, or they themselves don’t completely know the status of what is going on!

What’s especially frustrating for us as ride operators, is most guests assume that ride down times are because of a malfunction or something breaking. In my experience so far however, 70-80% of ride delays (excluding weather) are because of GUESTS.

Granted, most guests are good, but here are just a few things I’ve seen cause down times: guest sneaks prohibited item onto ride, guest freaks out after ride started and demands to get out (even on the calmest attractions), guest comes into unload area from the exit, guest gets off the ride while it’s in motion, guest passes out on ride, guest jumps onto ride track from load, guest gets off ride on the wrong side, guest lost an important item on ride, etc. Yes, I’ve seen all of this happen in just 2 months.

Vague answer	Translation
We expect to re-open later today We recommend you stay in line Brief delay	Short down time. Usually back operational in 30 minutes or less
We do not know when we will re-open	This means literally nothing
We have been closed for over an hour Loud scraping sound Fire alarm	Major technical issue, and/or ride evacuation
Closed for the day	Major technical issue, will not re-open today
At capacity	The queue is too full, may re-open if it’s over an hour until closing
Vehicles stop	Could be literally anything. Sometimes a ride stops to load someone with a disability.

Either way, the best course of action to take is to not try squeezing answers out of ride operators. There is almost always an app that you can check the status of attractions. Most importantly, do not hang around the area hoping to be the first one in. This clogs the walkway for other guests, wastes time, and stresses out staff.

Universal Orlando Resort | Website

The last suit I’ll ever wear

August 14, 2021 by mrwonka

Now I’m back, like before
I have fought the fight and won the war
For their love, for their praise
And I’ll love them ’til my dying days
When I was gone, I went mad
So I didn’t throw away this thing we had
‘Cause when push came to shove
I sent a well written resume to remind you of my love
A parody of “You’ll Be Back“

I completed my bachelors at the University of South Florida in Communications. I’m back at Universal Orlando Resort, after almost two years. Click here if you want to read about that. I now work at ~~Men in Black: Alien Attack~~ The Universe and You!

Jarret wearing the Men in Black: Alien Attack uniform

This time, half the training was online, whereas before it was all in-person. I must admit its a bit weird to not be spending every day working on college work… That is now replaced with gratuitous feet pain. Also, I have completed major maintenance on the website. For whatever reason a lot of stuff in the back-end broke, (plugin and theme updates, modules missing) so I fixed it all.

Computer Creations | Sneak Peak

Let’s Rok(enbok)

June 17, 2021 by mrwonka

I recently re-discovered a toy I had wanted when I was younger, Rokenbok. Someone had setup their Rokenbok to be playable over the internet, via surrogate.tv (check it out here). After playing that 30+ times, I decided to look into getting some of my own. Sadly, most of the vehicles and marble system had been discontinued in 2015, so I was only able to get them used off eBay and goodwill auctions. I joined the discord community, and built my first layout.

I learned that this was VERY similar to an unreleased layout, so I re-configured it to that. A video about it will go live next month. I began working with the Roklink team to help with archiving parts, and fixing broken components. Some pieces I have are from 1997, older than me!

But it was time for something bigger, more grandiose! Now with a larger space, and more parts, I created monorail metropolis plus! I’ve still got MORE parts arriving soon… This may be getting out of hand.

In total, so far I’ve repaired 5 parts. You can find a guide I wrote about two of them here, on RokLink. Perhaps in the future I’ll connect mine to the internet as well, but that will be some time off, due to the crazy amount of things I’ve got coming up.

Lastly, I got Game Builder Garage. I was very excited when I saw this announced. I reminded me of Construct 3, a tool I used to create some of the games listed here on the website. The main reason I stopped, was because programming proved frustrating with it, and if you want to make something with more than 50 code objects, then you must pay $80/year. Compare this to the one-time fee of $30 for Game Builder Garage, and it was an easy choice. Right now I’m working on a de-make of the 3Ds game, Steel Diver.

Computer Creations | Website

New Logo and Merch

December 31, 2020 by mrwonka

This is the new logo for MrWonka. It replaces the former top hat logo I used for the website. It also now acts as the logo for our Discord and Steam group. I’ve replaced the top hat because it was a public domain image, and I wanted something that would be more specific to me.

The logo is representative of a few things to me, more obviously, the MW stands for MrWonka, and the colors, gray and purple, are representative of Willy Wonka. The placement of the letters draws a line upward, pointing to a better future. The M and W are actually the same character (the M is an upside down W), showing how we are more alike than different. The overlapping (the light blue streak) shows how together we can make something new.

ALSO I NOW HAVE MERCH. And its on sale too! Use the code 2021 for 10% off. (This ends in 2 weeks!)

I’ve created a new graphic design using the overview image of the FunLand themepark, with some tacky info for good measure. Now you too can become a walking advertisement! I also have the MW design available as a small logo on a shirt.

Literally Everything

So a friend and I brainstormed names over about a month. Here’s a few rejects: