So, yeah, hi.

I haven't written anything lately about what's actually going on in my life. I have been holding it out for myself as a treat. I can only remember so much, so lemme cash it in now.

Really, all I've been doing since the housewarming is work on one project or another, occasionally shoving myself out the damn door to go do something that is not work. I've been doing an OK job of that, so I will tell you about these things first.

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At the end of August, radiotelescope and I attended Boston GameLoop. I failed to blog about that in a timely manner, but I did at least burp my transcribed notes at one of the organizers, and you can find them spread around that wiki. I especially enjoyed the sessions on discussing non-marketing ARGs, and on baking viral aspects into digital games. I networked a lot, and left feeling, perhaps for the first time, that I really was part of the games industry now. I still have rather complicated feelings about this.

The weekend after that cthulhia and I attended shatterstripes' gallery opening of her beautiful tarot deck art. I know the artist as an acquaintance from MUDs many years ago, but hadn't actually met her in person before, so it was fun to chat for a while about all that stuff. I look forward to being able to buy a mass-printed copy of the deck someday!

Labor day weekend I sat inside and prototyped a new project, and then helped Joe with a SCAT shoot; it was nice seeing the Gameshelf crew again. Weekend after that, my parents spent Saturday with us. We took them to the Summer Shack.

Last weekend classicaljunkie, dictator555, Nate and I went apple & berry picking. I wasn't that into it, but I really needed to go far outside my bubble and walk around outside for a while. It was also interesting being in an organic orchard - really ugly apples, covered with bugs! I considered this a feature.

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Some of you are aware that I've taken on yet another commercial project. This puts Project X on the back burner, while the Volity Network remains in the freezer. That feels like a joke at first - oh, look, jmac is unable to finish something again, so here he is, serially launching a new thing. Right?

However, the new thing has enough going for it that I decided to risk taking on this extra self-loathing in order to pursue it. It's a relatively small project, it primarily uses a web-based interface, and it re-uses various technologies I developed for Volity.

As such, it's now a project of Volity Games, the company, so I have my two partners there working with me on it. It will get done.

No no no, I'm not even gonna hint at a done-date. Don't worry, you wont miss it when it's ready. But, in the meantime, this is what's taking up all my work-time (besides the bread-n-butter stuff of Appleseed contracts).

More about some of that

The fruit-picking mission got an extra kick by the fact that my iPhone's GPS + Google-mappiness proved quite useful in getting us there. At one point Nate-the-driver wasn't sure where we were, so I launched the phone's Maps and asked it to draw a line between our destination and wherever the heck we were. (I was able to specify our destination by launching Safari, googling the name of the orchard, then returning to Maps and hand-poking in the revealed street address.) We followed that line, and a little blue blip representing our current position obligingly poked down its length. It was accurate enough that I'd say "OK, we'll cross 495 in a second", a second before the foliage parted to reveal the overpass.

This shit still kind of astounds me. I'd say it was ST:TNG-type technology that's found its way into the real world, except that tricorders actually seem less flexible than modern smartphones do.

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During their visit, my parents were very good about not mentioning politics of any sort. At one point I accidentally gave my dad a really juicy opening to pounce on, and I cringed, but he gingerly stepped around it instead. I was impressed. (Not that I said so.)

I can't tell if my mom is getting wackier or if I just notice it more for not seeing her very often. Retrospective analysis suggests that she's been a total fruitcake, god love her, for my whole life, but I'd be willing to believe that old age is simply giving her natural battiness a richer flavor. Anyway, in the few hours she visited, she confirmed that her fashion sense drifts ever further into Bozo-the-clown territory, revealed that she keeps a naked steak knife in her purse now (it's useful for going out to eat, see), and showed my girlfriend baby pictures, making sure to identify the ones where I had a load in my pants. OK, I had to laugh a little at that last one, but still.