(no subject)

I am almost surely gonna get myself a copy of Final Cut Pro before I start editing together the first real episode of The Gameshelf. I can get it for about 30 percent of its retail price through my .edu discount, making it still pretty expensive but cheap enough to be tempting... around the same cost as a brand-new just-released game console, maybe.

iMovie is a great piece of software, especially if you have a pile of footage and just need to make it look presentable. The trouble is, everything you make with it looks like it was made with iMovie... it's intentionally not very flexible. Final Cut is nothing but flexible, from what I'm led to believe, and also makes things like cuts between multiple video sources a snap, and apparently even helps with logging. It sounds to me like a much nicer fit for helping me achieve my mental image of what the show should look like. Even given the fact that I'm still a wriggling newbie at all of this, I think I've already hit a level of sophistication that's cumbersome to bear using only iStuff.

You know, I can't tell you what a kick in the pants this TV stuff is for me. it continues to offer just the right mix of novelty, challenge and intrinsic look-what-I-made reward to keep me going, even months after I've started getting seriously involved. In a lot of ways it's just what I needed. I think I'd been long overdue to break into a new creative medium. It's playing the same role that cartooning did for me 10 years ago, or computer programming 7 years ago.

It will be a challenge to continue balancing it with everything else goin' on, but I'm gonna try.

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Heading into work now, which is crazy-early for me. I just happened to get up early this morning... shrug. I was outside to get my coffee and couldn't get over what a weird angle the sunlight was shining in at! Because it's not 11:30! La!

But the sooner I start, the sooner I can finish and start my weekend & Volity mode. I have ants in my pants plenty about getting some stuff done in that sphere, since I've been all talk for weeks now.

What's this "outside to get my coffee" business? Yes, I confess... I ate up my stockpile of coffee beans a while ago, and keep forgetting to get more, so I am back to my old routine until I can remember to pick up a bag next time I'm at Diesel.

(no subject)

I think that I am losing more than I am gaining by not attending Origins this year... darn. I just didn't let myself think about it at all, and now it's too late. I guess the "you had a blast last year" meme was evenly matched by "beware the brain-eating monster that is fandom" and then routed entirely by that damned "you're too busy anyway". The fact is, though, I really should make more of an effort to stay plugged into game culture, now that -- let's be honest -- games is looking more and more like my true vocation.

Well, I guess there's a good chance I'll continue my every-even-year tradition next year. I will miss seeing those of you I'd see, and hope you all have a great time. At least some others are threatening to evangelize Volity there in my stead, and that's pretty good.

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Here is a secret about me: I feel a little rotten about the fact that I seem to be heading into game-making (or game-enabling or some damn thing) as my first truly self-driven profession.

This is partially because, to my eye, wanting to make games is the generic career disposition for us male Gen-Xers, and there's a part of me that's continually damning myself for wanting to diddle my life away in entertainment when there's a world to save. Way to go helping the population amuse itself to death, say the detractors in my head, who if you wish you can imagine having long, pale green faces and wearing black robes and powdered wigs. (Or as potatoes with falsettos and powdered wigs, if that's more your thing.)

I have things I can say, in my own defense. Mostly the fact I'm less interested in the socially isolating video games they have in mind and more in games, electronic or tabletop, that bring people together. And then I can never help myself and start launching into my mushmouthed spiel that I want to help foster communities of thinking game-players in every level of society, that I conspire to trick a generation of children into getting addicted to logical contests, and that this is how I'm gonna do my part to save the world!

But the potato judges will have none of it, their shrieks of bullshit, bullshit echo around the hall and o it's just awful.