I’m going to start off with the easy one: the card. The card was just an overlord saying happy birthday. It was pretty simple.

Initial Sketch

Outlining the Overlord

Overlord complete!

I planned to have banelings as the balloons, but then realized I didn’t know what they actually looked like up close. I ditched the idea.

For the drawing I used prismacolor pencils, prismacolor pens, a pencil, and a fine point black sharpie. I haven’t used the colored pencils and pens for maybe three years, so it was more fun (OR DIFFICULT) than I thought. I forgot how terrible I was at coloring.

Next was a perler and hama bead project. I wanted to make some sprite work and feature some of his favorite games from the past and a couple from the present. I didn’t own any beads or peg boards and actually didn’t have any storage for them either. This was not a cheap endeavor, hah, nor was it quick.

I ended up buying hama minis from a seller through email. It sounds really sketchy, I know. Luckily it ended up okay and she had really great communication. The product’s website sells them, of course, but they don’t sell them in the US.

I wanted to be more budget with my bead spending, so I bought a tub of 22,000 perler beads from Amazon for maybe $20. It took me about 10 hours to sort through 1/3 of the bucket.

I have no life.

I watched a lot of Netflix during that time. However, I was introduced to Matt Bomer and I regret nothing! What a doll.

I have random photos of the process. I didn’t do a good job of documenting because the process was sort of painful.

Latios with hama minis

Background with perlers

Metroid ALL the characters!

Oh, did I mention each character took an average of one hour to create? Flammie took a really long time. I kept messing up the count and had to redo basically everything three times.

Anyways, here is what everything looks like put together.

The final piece

Here’s a list of all the stuff you see:

• Cake from Minecraft
• Dekar from Lufia II
• Latios from Pokemon
• Flammie from Secret of Mana
• Basilisk from Secret of Mana
• Link from Zelda
• Quest Arrow from Skyrim (Self designed. Didn’t have gray :c)
• Overlord from Starcraft (self designed. I couldn’t find a good sprite version.)
• Zero from Megaman
• Glenn/Frog from Chrono Trigger
• Metroid from Super Metroid
• Mario-esque background (self designed)

Check out the Dustforce Soundtrack. You can listen to the tracks for free on bandcamp. Purchase for support!

It’s so good, it makes me giggle.

The sound reminds me of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest and Yoshi’s Island. It’s got that nostalgic 2d platformer feel that I love.

They met the $400,000 in just over 8 hours.

They met $1 million in less than 24 hours!

I’m so happy. This is so exciting. Congrats to Double Fine and I can’t wait to see the game later this year! If you need more time for development, I’m double fine with that too.

Introduction

I attended Blizzcon 2011 in Anaheim, CA last year and wanted to document my experience for several reasons. Sorry for the crazy late delay. I had this draft for months and forgot about it.

For starters, this was my first time going to Blizzcon and I had NO idea what to expect. These notes are for me to remember what to do and what not to do the next time I attend. Secondly, it might help some other first timers on the internet. I will bold the important notes.

If you see words in all caps, pretend I’m yelling those words at you. :U

Part 0: Getting Started

Blizzcon is NOT cheap. If you are traveling and/or plan to buy merchandise, prepare yourself and save money. Here’s an example of what I had to pay. It includes expenses for three nights and four days and general purchases:

• $150 per Blizzcon ticket
• $200-$300 worth of merchandise
• $90+ Travel expenses (gas for 370+ miles)
• $5 snacks per day
• $130 per night at a hotel
• $14 parking per day
• Breakfast ($5), Lunch($5-$10), and Dinner ($30 + drinks…lol) per day

Of course, you could be a budget planner and do a much better job than I did. If you have family, try to stay over with them. If you have friends that live in the area, see if you can crash on their couch. If you are attending with friends, try to split the expenses. This is especially helpful for gas and hotel bills.

Part I: The Tickets

If you plan on going to Blizzcon, you better know when the tickets go on for sale. I just happened to be lucky and accidentally stumbled upon a Blizzcon advertisement early last summer when I was looking at some game blog. It just so happened that the tickets were going to be on sale in the coming weeks, so I marked it on my calender and bookmarked the Blizzcon store ticket page.

Why do I need to mark my calendar? Well, it turns out there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) die-hard Blizzard fans and a lot of them want to attend. I wasn’t sure how the ticket purchase process would be like, so I used good old Google to see how others experienced it. I found that tickets sold out fairly quickly, so I had to be prepared to click the purchase button as soon as the tickets go on sale.

The tickets went on sale May 25 at 7:00pm PST. It was 6:50pm and I was so anxious to get off the train from work. Once it stopped, I ran home, turned on my computer, and opened my browser to the store page. Then I waited. It seemed like forever, but I couldn’t afford to go pee, even though I knew it would take less than a minute.

I logged onto Steam to make sure my boyfriend was online and ready to purchase as well. We waited. When the clock almost struck 7:00, I hit F5 to refresh the page. Nothing changed. I refreshed again, and THERE it was! I selected two tickets to purchase and then I saw this:

Blizzcon 2011 ticket queue

I was put in a queue! I guess it would make sense to put customers in a queue if the demand is high. I was in position 1851 and it was already 2 minutes into the time when I hit the purchase button. The scary part? My boyfriend was in position 17,000 (somewhere in there) and he hit refresh within the first seconds after 7:00pm as well. I got lucky I guess.

Side note: I talked with some guests during Blizzcon and one person said he had a group of six friends do the same thing me and my boyfriend did just here. However, only two of them were able to successfully purchase.

I highly recommend that you get a group of friends to do this process with and buy as many tickets as you see fit. I thought it was silly I only bought two tickets, since there was a max of four per person. We could have brought two more friends with us, but I wasn’t thinking… about… others. :U

Trivia: The total number of attendees for Blizzcon 2011 was 26,000.

After you purchase your tickets, you are given a month to name the attendees for the tickets you just bought. Here’s what that interface looks like completed.

Blizzcon attendees

You are able to edit this until a certain point. In this case, I believe it was mid-June. If there are changes or complications after the hard deadline, I’m sure you can contact Blizzard customer support for help.

Lessons learned here and things to remember:

• Coordinate with multiple people when purchasing the tickets.
• Plan to be home at a comfortable time, prepared to purchase.

Part II: Finding a place to stay during the convention

If you are staying with family or friends in the area where Blizzcon will be held, that’s wonderful. You can ignore this section, though I won’t be able to tell you much about how the experience is like driving or taking public transit to the convention. If you happen to be located within walking distance, that’s great, because it’s what I did from my hotel.

The first thing Blizzard does when you purchase your tickets is send you a confirmation email. It includes a summary of your purchase and it tells you to reserve your hotel at a discounted Blizzcon rate. The email even provides you a link to the website that contains all of the hotels that are working with Blizzcon and you can even reserve on that website. It’s really nice.

Reserve a hotel room as soon as you can! The rooms are high on demand. Not only will the hotels be booked for Blizzcon, but Disland as well. The Anaheim Convention center and Disneyland are neighbors.

There are a ton of hotels near the Anaheim Convention center, so there was a variety of choices to suit my needs. I mostly wanted a cheap(er) hotel that was still within walking distance. I ended up staying at the Red Lion, which is about a 10 minute slow walk to the front door of the convention center.

Here’s a photo of the bathroom for your curious needs. The stay there was pleasant. My only problems were that the bath tub drained water slowly the first night and that the shower fan was broke. Either that or I didn’t know how to use it at all.

I may consider staying at the Sheraton next time, but that’s only because I’m lazy and the convention is right outside the front door. This is also true for the Hilton, but I hear the staff there aren’t too fond of the Blizzcon attendees. Throwing parties causes insta-aggro. The first floor lobby and general vicinity is also GIGANTIC and PACKED with people. However, it is a great spot for meeting new folks. Of course, staying closer and at a nicer place means higher prices.

Things to remember:

• Plan how many people are going and how many beds are needed at the hotel.
• Calculate the rate per person and see if it is reasonable.

Part III: Idle period and before the convention

By this time, it is still summer. You bought your tickets and you have a place to stay. What else can you do?

Well, you have some very important things to do and remember:

1. Print out your tickets once they are available.
2. Confirm with your hotel your reservations when the convention date is coming around the corner.
3. Plan what you have to pack.
4. Plan travel.

Part IV: Packing

As per usual, pack enough clothes for four days and any other toiletry hotels would not provide.

Here is a list of absolute must brings. It would be very stupid to not.

• Comfortable shoes: Forget fashionable shoes. You’re going to a game convention. No one is going to give a karp about your shoes. You will be standing all day. Standing mostly in lines all day. You better bring good shoes. Your feet/back/knees will hate you if you don’t.
• Water bottle
• Camera
• Light jacket: it gets a bit chilly inside sometimes because the convention is kept cool.
• Have something to do in line: You can chit-chat with your friend or the next person over is sometimes nice. If you are alone because you broke away from your group for a couple of events or if the people around you are jerks/boogery 9 year olds, bring a book or something else self-entertaining.

Here is a list of things I didn’t think to bring at first and a list of things I wish I brought. I won’t tell you which is which. :O

• Hand sanitizer
• 1 black and 1 silver sharpie (for signatures)
• Something for people to sign. Ex: an art book, game case, photo, meme, poster et cetera. You will have all sorts of chances to meet famous and well known people, gamers, casters, artists, developers, and actors/actresses.

Part V: Travel

I had to travel 370+ miles (from basically San Jose to Anaheim). We had to drive south, so we planned to take work off Thursday to travel since the convention started Friday. We made a mistake and left home at noon instead of 8:00am or 9:00am and hit Los Angeles traffic. It was awful. We basically added another hour or two on our driving schedule.

Note: If you don’t plan to arrive before the first day of BlizzCon, do know that you can pick up your badge and goodie bag the day before. This will save you the time in the morning so you don’t have to wait in line for your badge when the doors open. This year, Hall E was open from 4:00-10:00pm for badge pickup.

We were able to stand in line at the convention around 8:00pm (the night before) for our badge. The line was long, by the way, and will probably always be long. I think we stood in it for 40 minutes, just to get our badge. We wanted to get our badge before checking in at the hotel too (because we didn’t want to miss the opportunity), so we had to pay $12 parking in the nearby lot. It was lame. At least there was plenty of parking.

Lessons learned here:

• Plan to drive around traffic hours.
• Park at the hotel.
• Walk to convention center.

Part VI: The Goodie Bag

Other than Blizzard swag found in the goodie bag, you will get all sorts of colorful pieces of papers. They are brochures for vendors, coupons, raffle tickets, marketing stuff for Blizzard, and so on.

LOOK AT THEM. The papers.

The bag will contain something called Quests. I’m sure you’re familiar with the term. These quests basically have you do specific things during the convention, such as going from booth to booth, collecting items, and taking your photo next to various things.

Multiple vendors had their own little quests with their own products as prizes.

There is also one big quest chain for Blizzcon. In the end, you are guaranteed a prize. A majority of people win either or Horde or Alliance patch, but if you are one of the lucky few, you could win a set of books and board games.

Loot elemental

I, unfortunately, thought it would be a good idea to start the quest chain after I walked around a bit and saw some things before noon. By a bit, I mean a couple hours. And by walking around, I mean waiting in line at the loot elemental! Everyone gets 60 seconds to grab and shove little pieces of paper into a little box. PRO TIP: You are NOT guaranteed a prize! You win by either getting a colored slip (which isn’t always in there), or if one of your white tickets has a special marking on it. The number of tickets you manage to grab means nothing! The prizes are also only pets for WoW, which I don’t even play anymore. Don’t do the loot elemental if there is more than 20 people. You will have a better chance if you are there REALLY early (10min after the door opens) or at night after most people have gone.

Anyways, by the time we got to the quest’s starting booth (around 1:00pm), they had run out of maps for the day. Ran out! I couldn’t even start the quest line! How could they underestimate the number of people who would do the quest? Was it less than 5,000? They also ran out the next day when the doors opened. I was a very sad panda.

Maybe they wanted to limit the number of people running around trying to complete something just so they could get a prize.

Other than that quest, here are some other mini games that came in the bag:

• Every bag had a jumbo pin with some Blizzard art on it. Each pin had a 5-digit number. There are a total of three pins with the same number in the group of Blizzcon attendees. You must find the other two people with the same number to claim your prize. I believe the prize was a graphics card. Not many people got this! There was a website where you entered your number into a database and you left your phone number in case there were 3-matches. The Blizzcon forum also had a thread going, but that’s hard to search through.
• There was a metal key attached to a piece of paper. You needed to bring it to a chest on the show floor at a kiosk to see if you can open it. The line was long (around 20 minutes wait), and I lost. I believe all false keys look the same, so if you and your friends have the same looking key, don’t even try.
• There were raffle tickets. I needed to turn them in to enter a drawing. However, here was this year’s kicker: the main prize drawing for the beast computer was during the closing ceremony.

Attendees love prizes. I love prizes. Free stuff is awesome.

Lessons learned here:

• Look carefully at all of the papers. Try to get as many free stuff as you can.
• Start the main quest early. Finish early so you can forget about it.

Part V: The Blizzcon Schedule

This was actually the hardest part of Blizzcon: trying to schedule everything I wanted to see. You will NOT be able to attend all events at Blizzcon. Schedules for events and talks will conflict and a person simply can’t be in two locations at once.

Therefore, I recommend you plan your schedule before event. By planning, I do not mean:

Look at the schedule and determine which things look the most interesting.

I mean the following:

Look at the schedule and determine what deserves more of your time and commit to it.

I wasn’t smart and didn’t commit to a fixed schedule (or even a number of talks) and had a terrible time trying to figure out what to do on the spot. I ended up just walking around the first day… going with the flow. The second day I spent mostly on myself seeing things that truly interested me.

The schedule is posted on the official Blizzcon website beforehand. There was even an iPod/iPhone app that helped you create your schedule.

Heart of the Swarm Hall

I ended up going separate ways from my boyfriend on several occasions because he wanted to play Heart of the Swarm when I wanted to see live demonstrations from some artists and learn about the alpha development stages of the original Starcraft.

CG, traditional, and 3D-modeling

I must say that the talks given by the developers and the artists were more interesting, but that’s just me. I figured that I could always see the games later and demo after the fact, but I won’t have the same chance to experience what I did with these folks. They are a creative, funny, and amazingly talented group of people.

Alpha builds of Starcraft

I did learn some things I about the early stages of Starcraft I and II, especially about the zerg creep! In the early stages, developers made the creep the generic magenta color, very splotchy, because they were… developers. There were some funny slides of it. In early SC2, creep used to be more lively (animated) and was actually really reflective at one point. Developers and testers thought that too much was happening on the screen and took away MOST of the reflective properties, but it is still there. And as for the newest changes, creep will crawl up on foreign buildings so as to engulf it. Take that, shiny nexus!

Lessons learned here:

• Schedule ahead of time.
• Attend talks and do something you like and for yourself. (Screw your friends! :B)

Part VI: The Floor

I wasn’t going to talk about this initially, but I figured what the heck.

Look around you when you are on the Blizzcon floor.

The Tyrael piece was breath taking. The base was amazingly intricate as well.

There’s amazing artwork and amazing people.

Everyone around you is a feller nerd somehow. You have at least one thing in common and that is you are a Blizzard fan. If you aren’t, then you are either family, friends, or a significant other of someone who is.

That greasy haired guy over there is actually a grand masters level Terran player.

That airhead brunette standing next to you in line for time with Day[9] doesn’t know who he is? Well, she’s the girlfriend of guild leader “Yo Mama’s Got Swag”. (I made that guild up, but that girl was real. Wanted to slap her silly. Just kidding! Maybe. Time with Day[9] also sounds dirty. Sorry, but it rhymed and I couldn’t force myself to delete it.)

That couple who wanted to take photos with the Kerrigan and Witch Doctor models instead of Husky before he leaves to cast in 2 minutes?? They are actually… they are just idiots! AH, I wanted to slap them too!

What was I getting with this?

There are people who stand in line for the sake of standing in line! It’s annoying and people don’t bother to ask for directions or ask what a line is for. Do not be afraid to ask what a line is for! Folks are generally nice and are more than happy to tell you. I didn’t meet any trolls, though I can’t promise there aren’t any.

One of the graffiti walls on the floor. Find me!

(Warning: Inserting general statement). I think gamers tend to look out for one another in the real world. People go to events like Blizzcon to have a good time, not to ruin people’s lives. Hey, standing in the wrong line could be devastating!

Besides annoying people, there’s art and kiosk with cool stuff to do that you might’ve missed before because they didn’t look interesting.

Part VI: Side notes that belong no where

Pee pee time:

• Use the bathroom before the closing ceremony. Everyone is jammed in a small place with only a couple of bathrooms around. They get cramped.
• I generally had no problem with the ladies bathroom. It was always empty on the main floor. Can’t say the same for the guys though…

Food:

• We didn’t plan to purchase a lot of snacks and food before we arrived at Blizzcon, so we went to grocery stores after Blizzcon each night. I think down there it’s called Albertson’s? At any rate, they close at some inconvenient time, usually 5 minutes after we manage to finally arrive. Be sure to make it on time!
• We didn’t bring eating utensils for breakfast/lunch, so bring spoons and forks and knives as you see fit!
• Hotel fridges are small! If you plan on purchasing perishable foods, remember that it means less room for beer. I’ll leave it at that…

Merchandise stores:

• Avoid them if you can. If you really really want to purchase some gear or merchandise, do it online either before or after Blizzcon. The Blizzcon store will be open for attendees for a couple days before the actual show begins so you can avoid the hassle and long lines.
• I actually had a terrible time with the Blizzcon store because I received the wrong posters and the lady didn’t give me my marine figurines. I had to wait in the customer service line for 40 minutes just to correct their mistakes. It was utter bullshit. TIP: If you do purchase from a merchandise store, double check your order before you leave the counter! Do NOT feel rushed.
• The stores usually have a form you fill out for your order, so don’t think you need to memorize what you need to order once you do reach the front.
• The Jinx line was maybe 40 minutes and the Blizzard store line was probably 30.

Part VII: Personal Highlight

The best experience at Blizzcon 2011 for me was the GSL finals. It was MMA versus Mvp and there was between 7,000-10,000 people watching them play.

At the end of the last game, everyone was cheering for both players.

The energy was amazing.

There was so much tension in the room, everybody could feel it. People cheered, jeered, and probably cried. The game itself was great to watch. I could practically hear people biting their lips because there were some ridiculously awesome moments.

During one of the GSL Finals nights, one of the kiosks was still open next to the game stage: Lego! You were able to start with a base piece and build a lego structure as small or as big as you like. The only rule was that you had to be able to take it out. There were maybe four or five huge bins just full of lego pieces.

Some folks made large master pieces. It was funny because most of the people around the bins were 30+ year olds, definitely there to hog pieces for their kids. I left with this wee little cave for Thrall (who came with the goodie bag).

Conclusion

Overall, I had a great time but would have enjoyed it even more if we had more company. Next time, we will go with a group of friends and plan fun hangouts afterwards too.

If you don’t already know Blizzcon 2012 is canceled this year in light of the 2012 Battle.net World Championships. Blizzard is in the middle of developing Diablo III and Heart of the Swarm, so they have their arms full. Everyone likes a solid game, right?

Yes, I’m bummed out, but not totally upset because I trust Blizzard wouldn’t cancel one of their biggest events without good reasoning.

If you have any questions or have input, I can answer them below. Thanks for reading!

That’s me.

Anyways, I made a “Where’s Weedle” image. Find Weedle. Click to see the full version.

Where's Weedle? Spin-off of "Where's Waldo?" for those who are wondering what the heck this is!

The developers are busy updating the website and adding new features. They seem to be taking in lots of feedback from the community. Pretty soon we’ll even have the color PINK!

This is an example of what the drawing interface looks like. Here, the description of the subject to draw is at the top, canvas on the left, and tools on the right. It’s fairly minimal right now, but the other day you didn’t even have the option of choosing between these many brushes.

After you submit your drawing, someone else is randomly chosen to make a caption for your piece. This is actually the first piece that I put some effort into, so I do feel like sharing it a little. :B

Anyways, I wanted to share some of the funny ones I see on reddit. Below are some that I’d like to share. Note that some of these contain offensive content.

• Gandalf
• Zombies
• The Truth
• Island Story
• More Beer
• Bloody Marshmallow
• Starts racist, ends awesome
• Like a boss

And of course, when I attempt to draw something nice again, DoD breaks. I got an error when trying to submit. When I clicked okay, my drawing disappeared. When I refreshed the page, I got a 500 error. Luckily I screen capped beforehand. I knew something would go wrong!

Some sort of PIE event was happening where six Gaian characters were in an eating contest. I didn’t know what I was doing, to be honest. So, the first thing I did was select a contestant I wanted to cheer for. I didn’t know what this meant and didn’t care too much, so I chose the funniest, pathetic looking character: Carl. He’s a very angry and somewhat rabid looking buck. Goofy looking, I’d say.

As per usual, there’s a community forum dedicated to the event and was crazy active. I wanted to see what this contest was about and if I could get prizes of any sort to bling out my avatar.

There are “Achievements” on Gaia now and I’m not sure when they were introduced. Anyways, there are event-related achievements along with the general ones, meaning you can only get these event ones within a certain period of time. I was trying my best to get all of the general achievements I could (such as changing my clothes, updating my status, etc), but could only get so much in such a short time and little investment. Therefore, I was trying to get these pie event achievements.

The one I found tough was trying to get 200 other users to throw pies at me (called “Pie catcher”). Of course, you can only get pies thrown at you if you are exposed in the forums. This means you have to post on threads and be lucky that you weren’t lost in the pool of chaos and thousands of other users.

My solution? I started a thread called “Pie Me! FREE avatar art for the 1st user on every 10 pgs” or something similar. I didn’t want to draw 100 avatars, so I said after 50 pages, I would stop the contest. Here’s the cool part: users on Gaia LOVE avatar art. It’s crazy. It’s funny and ridiculous. Because of that, it’s cute and I’m grateful people are appreciative. Why not hold a thread like this and hope to get pied 200 times? I’d be the person at the top of the thread and users WILL see me.

I started the thread right before dinner and wrote in my thread that I’ll be back with drawings for the winners right after. I was gone for about half an hour. When I came back, the thread was already at 60 pages. I got my “Pie Catcher” achievement, so I was happy.

This was a successful thread!

Anyways, here are the drawings. I haven’t done avatar art in about four years or something. I forgot how easy it was to draw nice looking avatars and how hard it was to draw ugly/cluttered ones. I had much more fun with some than others.

• Thaliawen
• The Marketplace
• Aelurius
• Ari Sterling

This was also a good opportunity for me to draw again. It’s easier to draw when I set myself up to do something (forced motivation, ahha) and if I know what I am doing.

PIPPA, CASSI, EMME, and GOLDIE

KELLY, EMME, FIONA, and CAITLIN

Unfortunately for her, one of the colors I got was back-ordered! When it finally came, I decided to keep it for myself (hehe). The color is called PIPPA and it’s a very bright, vibrant, matte yellow. I decided to use it to see its quality on my nails.

One coat of PIPPA had very good coverage. I only painted my left hand’s pinky, so it was weird going for a couple days with only one nail painted. It was quite durable and eventually after 4 days I scrapped it off because I didn’t want to paint the rest of my nails yellow. Being satisfied, I bought more nail polish from Zoya.

While waiting for my polish order to arrive, I had been anxious. I’m in the middle of moving right now and I packed away what little supply of nail polish I already had and my nail polish remover as well. I also haven’t painted my nails for a long time. It’s been probably about two years? My nails were beginning to get long, so I trimmed them just enough to be comfortable and have something to paint on. Here’s what the end product looked like. I didn’t know what I was going for and was no good at staying in the lines!

Base is KELLY with a silver layer of JULES on half. Dots are in GOLDIE.

I don’t really like fake nails because they are annoying, cost money, and require a lot of maintenance. I think I’ll just continue to paint and practice on the nails that I grow myself.

I'm not meeting my own expectations? Too much, too soon!

So I have a “progress bar” for Alcohol and Bars. Does that mean I’m supposed to meet this demand? I’m almost halfway there! That means I only have $15.00 to spend for the next couple of weeks. Judging my spending rate, looks like I’m in bad shape!

It also says I spent $15.00 total. Apparently, within the last 7 days I only had food at Bars. Sweet.

I guess mint takes into account the types of spending you do and makes budgets for you if you don’t have any. I found this hilarious.

Say hello to Alpha

My little sister and her boyfriend gave him to me last Christmas. He likes to blow bubbles every time I change his water. He used to be spoiled with blood worms, but I stopped feeding them to him because he would only eat about 85% of one and the rest of the body would float around. Corpses were bad for his water and health, making everything sickly and full of bacteria. Now he only eats nutritional pellets.

Last month, he contracted a disease called fin-rot when I was away for E3 (June 7-9). I noticed this when one of his lower fins looked unusually tattered. He must have been stressed out because the weather had been getting warmer and I hadn’t changed his water for three weeks. It was my fault he got sick and it makes me sad.

Feb 22, 2011, before fin-rot.

Sorry for the poor photo quality. This was the best one I had of his once beautiful silhouette before the fin-rot ate away his tail fins.

I went to the fish shop downtown and brought in photos of Alpha. I told a lady I thought Alpha was suffering fin-rot because I had been doing research before hand. The lady confirmed it with another co-worker and they prescribed him something called Triple Sulfa, an anti-bacterial fish medication. It comes in a powder form and came with 10 packets for about $14.00. I ended up only using one packet for his whole treatment because he’s in a one gallon tank and I split the one packet up into 10 doses. What I did was change out 25% of his water everyday with newly conditioned water and added 1/10 of a packet in with the mix. I took out his filter and let the water aerate after I added the powder for about 8 hours (until I got back from work). I turn it off when I get back because I feel the moving current irritates him sometimes because he swims funny when he runs into it. Every four days I would do an entire water cycle and continued this until I finished up the packet.

This photo was taken on June 16, 2011, a week after I first saw the tearing.

I don’t know what Alpha thought when he got fin-rot or if he even realized that his fins were decaying. Why? He behaved normally. He followed my fingers when I traced the edge of his tank and he was blowing an ample amount of bubbles, which is a sign that he’s happy and healthy.

Hella bubbles, hella sizes. June 18, 2011

But just because he was blowing bubbles and not feeling out of it, it doesn’t mean that he was healthy. He was definitely suffering. Maybe he’s just got a strong character and wanted to be normal? Or maybe he didn’t know because it didn’t touch his body yet? Wouldn’t he notice that he was swimming differently because he lost a lot of his tail?

Alpha's decayed tail. July 1, 2011

I started to notice more improvement earlier this month, but it looks like he’s still got it. I think I should start another round of medication, but I don’t want to over dose him. Cleaning the water should be what I should stick to. I think I’ll do a little bit of meds every couple of days and hopefully it’ll make him feel better.

July 10, 2011 He looks like a completely different betta

This is a photo of him today. He looks completely different than he did two months ago. I don’t like that his tails are getting really short and that its getting really close to his body. Hopefully this rot will go away soon. I’ll continue to take photos of him to record his condition.