(no subject)

Right now, shipping three people from Boston to Columbus n back 'round Origins-time is $1,200, total. We're gonna wait and see if that gets better over the next few days, but the Andys have made it clear that driving just won't work, so we might just have to take the hit.

On the upside, it does indeed look like all three of us are set on attending Origins. So yay. (Now to deal with the hotel and everything else and bllrghhl.)

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I have been putting off making an Inform 7 post. There's miles to go before I'm done reading the docs, but let me just say that the damn thing is amazing. It makes me want to make a game. Right now.

Even though the language is only part of what makes the system great (much of the rest of it is the fantastic IDE), I want you to look at a lengthy source code example that Mike Gentry posted elsewhere. (It starts with the line '"Anchorhead" by Michael Gentry.')

Please look at the code even if you don't consider yourself a programmer. Just look at it. And start to understand why this language is blowing peoples' minds the way it is.

(It defines the first few rooms and objects of Anchorhead, Gentry's Loftcraftian IF masterpiece from several years ago that he's been porting from I6 to I7.)

(no subject)

I'm going to be upset all day today because I missed a dear friend's party last night. It was billed as a house-cooling but amounted to a going-away party too, since this is why the house was being cooled. And I just forgot to go. This sort of thing just gnaws at me all day long.

I can only blame the fact that May is zipping past, by my perception. I'm not sure why this is. But when I last looked at the invitation, I thought, "May 19, bah, that's weeks away," and then suddenly it was the morning of the 20th and I was sad. In fact, I would say that May is passing at double-speed; I was thinking earlier that I did a lot of social things last weekend, before thinking harder and recalling that I was conflating my memories of the last two weekends' worth of events. Damn.

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Yesterday was a day off of sorts anyway. Instead of working on the plan I was zapped by the VALIS and took pages of notes on an IF idea. I feel really good about this one, but of course the less said here the better... I've had ideas aplenty since I wrote my one game in 1999, and but I never wrote a single line of code about any of them, even when I gibbered in a forum like this about how I just got the best game idea evar.

This time, though, I have the whole prologue written, in my head, and the first couple of midgame scenes. I have the setting down, and I know who the main characters are. It gets ruder after that... I have a only a likely sketch of an ending and just the barest whiff of how the story gets there, but this is still the most plotting I've ever managed to do, and I'm very excited about it all.

I'm especially happy that it's based around a setting I wanted to work on in 1999, dusted off and then infused with years of experience since then reading stories and playing games. It really feels like it could work. It would be a pastiche, but very much my own, too. I hope I can actually make it. You would like it.

It's many months away. But if I start writing any code at all — quite likely, since I'm as in love with Inform 7 as I am and itching to do something with it — it will be locked in, as far as I'm concerned.

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A father and son (maybe 8 years old) are attacking each other with boffers without any protective gear on the Mass Ave sidewalk, like a foot away from traffic. This is irresponsible and my inner keimel wants to give them hell. But my outer prog is working very hard to actively ignore them, since I really can't stand urban attention-getters, which is what these guys are afaic. Or anyway the dad is.

Also their technique is horrible. Stephan would lay them both out flat. Hell, I would. But they are beneath my contempt. Hm, the dad gets points for scolding the boy for brandishing the boffer while inside the cafe, though. Maybe they both just started taking lessons or something.

(no subject)

Companies that apply to us are typically in their A or B rounds. They usually have accomplished a $500K to $1.5MM friends and family round before they reach us.

WTF. Who are these people. (This is between 25 and 75 times as much as I could get in my F&F round, with between six and eight people yet.)

I'm submitting to them anyway.

Edit I have no idea what half of the things they're asking on this application mean. I'll just make daerr do it instead.