I use Apple Music for the majority of my music listening. It works well and lets me add most of my favorite songs, but there’s a lot missing from it. From what I’ve heard, it takes a little bit of work to get your songs up on iTunes/Apple Music. Unless an artist is well known and doing well in their music career, oftentimes, it’s simply not worth it to publish to Apple Music.

SoundCloud, on the other hand, provides extreme simplicity when it comes to publishing music, and makes it easy for listeners to find your songs. So, lots of artists get their start on SoundCloud, which entices me to use it alongside Apple Music. Yeah, there's a popular and pretty true idea floating around that SoundCloud is full of mumble rappers, but this isn’t about that part of the site. If you look, it’s easy enough to find a lot of gems on SoundCloud.

Here are four good songs I’ve found on SoundCloud that have less than 10,000 listens at the time of posting this.

1. "Decadence" by Gr._.ff

The lack of attention to this song has astounded me since I found it. It starts off with a pretty sweet melody but completely switches mood halfway through, and I love that about this song. I’ve had a few friends who judged this song before it was even a few seconds in, but I think that you have to listen to the entire song to fully appreciate this one. Age of song: 3 years old Listens: 7,332 Likes: 174

2. Read the rest

This summer, I have been working as an intern at a company called Switch Science in Tokyo, Japan. I am writing about my experience here in the form of blog posts, and you can find my first post here.

On Thursday last week, I was given a thermal camera to work with along with my M5Stack. My goal was to connect them together and display the thermal data in the form of a picture on the M5Stack’s screen. The thermal camera was called the MLX90640 by Melexis. After briefly reading about it, I was confident that I knew where to connect the wires and which I2C address to use, but I quickly realized that the size of the pins on the thermal camera were too small to connect to the wires’ pins. Although I could plug them into each other, the connection would only work properly half of the time. So my coworker Kazunori helped me by cutting the end of the wires and soldering them straight to the camera’s pins. It seemed to connect well, and I continued trying to figure out how to display the data from it.

Then, Monday morning, the camera suddenly stopped connecting. I spent a few hours trying to figure this out on my own before I asked Kazu for help. He suggested we try to connect a different camera, but no cigar. We also tried a different Arduino sketch made by a different person, but it also didn’t work. Eventually, we tried using a different, brand new M5Stack, and it connected! Read the rest

This summer, I am working as an intern at the company Switch Science in Tokyo, Japan. Switch Science creates electronics kits for people to build and learn from. They produce products that are enjoyable for kids in elementary school all the way up to adults interested in electronics. Read the rest

Earlier this month, a game called HAPPY WORLD by Jimi Masuraki was released on itch.io. When I first downloaded it, I honestly thought I might play it for 15 minutes during my free-block at school, at then uninstall it and be done. But after five or ten minutes of completing simple quests and making the digital people happy, I realized that this wasn’t another free lackluster game.

Not only did the adorably simplistic art style and funny nonchalant conversations between the player and the entities in the game cause me (and a few of my classmates) to laugh out loud, but once I got home and got further into the story, I found that there was intentional – and dark – lore in the game that was left for the player to discover on their own. I immediately knew that I was going to have to finish the game to unravel all the secrets — and in just less than an hour I did — but it wasn’t the ending that I was looking for. I restarted the game and started my attempt to figure out how to trigger the game’s true ending, and I was not at all disappointed.

I do not plan to spoil anything here, but if you are looking for a quick, free, and overall fantastic game to play, I recommend HAPPY WORLD. It’s an incredible mix of a happy-go-lucky simple world, and a darker, more depressing one hidden underneath. I truly doubt you’ll be disappointed. Read the rest

I like Prince Ea's videos because he talks about important issues in the world: the health of our planet, racism, and being kind to each other. He made a video about a DNA test he took to learn about his heritage and I interviewed him about it.

What events in your early years shaped who you are today?

Good question, two events. Number one, I had the opportunity to get a decent education. Secondly I received the love of both of my parents. These very important factors that made me the person that I am today.

How did you come up with the concept for this video?

Well I had the opportunity to work with an amazing creative agency Berlin Cameron and director JJ Augustavo from Skunk, who really put the awesome video together. When I wrote the piece, I just wanted it to come from my heart. Through the MyHeritageDNA test, discovering that I had a connection to a number of ethnicities not only amazed me but visualized what I had been thinking for a long time. Namely, that we can't be restricted to one box. It was this realization and my BA in Anthropology that really helped me come up with the words for the piece.

How did you feel after discovering your diverse heritage? That is pretty cool. Despite what society told me, I'm not just "one thing." I, along with every other human, am a mix of many beautiful ethnicities.

What can young people do to improve the world? Read the rest

Richard Williams, aka Prince Ea, is an amazing spoken word artist who helps make people aware of their lives and surroundings. With his videos, he reminds us that we can make a difference. He has a new video about the modern school system and how, in his opinion, it needs to be improved. It shows that the school curriculum may not be as perfect as we thought. Does it need to change? Well, we'll let you watch and decide for yourself. Read the rest

Undertale is a new 8bit RPG that's much different from the rest. In most games, you have to kill bosses and monsters to survive. In this game, it’s up to you whether you want to kill anyone, and depending on your choices, you can make friends that you would have lost, engage in secret fights, and much more. You have so many choices in the game that you can replay it over and over to achieve all the endings. But be careful, because even if you reset the game, some characters might have a vague memory of you.

The fighting style of Undertale is also unique. When an enemy attacks you, instead of automatically losing your health, you can dodge their attack by moving your “soul” across the screen to avoid being hit. Because of this, you don’t have to lose any damage throughout the battle.

Undertale starts by your character falling down a giant hole at the top of a mountain and waking up in a world full of monsters. They were all banished to live apart from society for the rest of their lives by humans who sealed them underground with a magic spell. The monsters have figured out that the only way to undo the spell is to have the power of seven souls, but since monsters’ souls disappear after they die, they’ve spent years killing the humans who fall into the underground to gain their souls. Because of this, most of them want to kill you so they can leave, but it’s up to you if you want to hurt them back, or show them that you both can find peace. Read the rest