A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Passing the time at Logan, with Amy. For whatever reason, this trip has been preceded by the worst case of aviophobic freakout I've ever experienced. It's been something like a single mid-intensity panic attack, stretched over three days. I can try speculating why this is, but it wouldn't help. I've been talking about it with Amy and that's helped a little. Trying not to get into any magical-thinking modes about this.

The fact that my Xmas eve was entirely plunged into dread and fear was especially rough; reading all the seasons' greetings from my friends across the internet made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Today's better by virtue of having a really swell early Xmas dinner with a few dear friends; that really chased a lot of the shadows away, even if my appetite didn't really suit the occassion. But then we called the taxi and I'm all rather knotted up again.

Gonna throw some tweets out there as we complete legs of this trip. All I want for Xmas is the knowledge that my friends are thinking of me while I work through this. It really is very difficult for me, to the point where I'm likely to seek professional help, later.

Best and sincere wishes from your friend in the skies for a happy Christmas evening...

After reading articles about it like this one, I installed Instagram onto my iPhone, and I have to admit it's pretty fun.

It's surprising what a handful of simple, preset masks and color filters (and a fall-down-easy interface for applying them) can do to turn blah phone photos into cool little artsy pieces. Earlier today, for example, I snapped a self-portrait that turned out so remarkably well I've started using it as a personal userpic elseweb.

I have a few other fun photographs on my stream that I wanna show you, but now that I'm writing this post I realize that I have no idea how to share or even link to them after the fact. I get the impression that the Instagram people would consider this a feature; they really want to keep the whole experience on the iPhone as much as possible. Still, it's still a little surprising that I don't even have the option to save photos I like. Hrm. Well, it's, what, a month old? Give it time to breathe.

The elevator pitch that helped sell me on trying Instagram is "Twitter, except with images instead of words". I'm pretty sure that's what it wants to be, which is cool. It's not quite there, in a few ways; for one thing, the fact that you can't choose to hide comments from your feed makes following more popular users impractical, as each of their posts is followed by a dozen column-inches of insipid "Nice pic! <3" blurbs to scroll past. I'd rather just have a stream of visual tidbits from around the world, with minimal yapping. I hope they'll improve it.

I'm "JmacDotOrg" on there, if you end up on it as well.

Today's the final day of Zarf's Kickstarter drive. It hit 300% funding weeks ago, and we're vying to get him over $30,000 (and nearly 400%!) before midnight.

I wrote more about this over on The Gameshelf. Summary: supporting this work isn't just a pledge to help improve the state of modern interactive fiction. It also helps prove that passionate (read: obsessed) game creators really can turn their dreams into reality without starving to death, and in so doing enrich the world with more and better art. Art! That's right, I am dropping the A-bomb here.

Now's the time to help wrench videogames out of the mainstream doldrums of adolescent power fantasies, inspiring independent creators to redefine the medium while the world watches. Even a just couple of bucks will help. Play the (eminently safe-for-work!) teaser, and then check out the Kickstarter page (featuring a video directed and edited by yours truly).

Thanks!

I appreciate the kind words and sympathy regarding my mother. Thank you.

I don't know what will happen but I am confident that it will be as OK as it can, because I don't stand alone.

My game The Warbler's Nest tied for 9th place (of 26 entries) in this year's IFComp, which wrapped up a couple of weeks ago. I am quite pleased with this outcome; it was a very strong year, and the games in slots 1 through 9.5 all had it coming. Furthermore, nearly all the entries have something to recommend them; there were arguably no utter-garbage games this year, quite unusual in the comp's 16-year history.

I mention this now because I have just released the "post-comp" version of Warbler, which fixes all the bugs and integrates many of the stylistic critiques offered to me by its many players and reviewers. I consider this version its "1.0" release: I will continue to welcome feedback and bug reports, and quietly release fixed versions, but do not plan on any further significant changes to the game.

You can play, download, or just read more about the game at its homepage: http://jmac.org/warbler. Enjoy!

I'm a little late with this, but it's not like a have a firm date on it, so: Right around now is the tenth anniversary of my coming to the Boston area to live. I've lived in five homes over those ten years, four of them in western Somerville.

If it's hard to remember where I was before, it's also hard to imagine living anywhere else.

Howdy y'all.

My friend and colleague Andy "Zarf" Plotkin (radiotelescope to you LJ faithful) has decided to chase his dream to become a full-time interactive fiction author, starting with Hadean Lands, a new, feature-length text game that he plans to sell in the iOS App Store (for starters).

He could use your help in getting started! Please visit his project's Kickstarter page to learn how you can pitch in a few bucks, and enjoy some cool rewards as a result. Three bucks nets you the game; $1,000 results in Zarf visiting you and baking you cookies. There are various levels in between.

(Also, I made the video on that page, which features a cthulhia cameo, so you should go visit it anyway.)

Update: So it seems I made this post literally seconds before the project met its (modest) goal (and less than 14 hours after Zarf posted it). That is awesome!

But, if you want to support high-quality, high-concept, independently produced videogames that don't insult your intelligence, I still urge to you contribute. Every dollar you pledge will help Andy not just turn this into a career for himself, but create tools that will let other people follow in his footsteps.

And, y'know, cool video you should still watch. Ahem.

So apparently the "sunburned" feeling in my right arm was in fact the onset of shingles. They started poking their little heads up through the fertile soil of my right hand on Thursday, and are now in full bloom, all over my fingers and elbow. I've been whacking at them with enormous antiviral pills since Friday, after visiting the doctor yet again.

In the grander scheme it's only a passing nuisance, but it's the sort of nuisance that sits in the forefront of one's attention while it's around. I never knew until now how many common every-day activities involve casually hitting or scraping the skin of your fingers against various surfaces. Wow, do I ever know now. Every time it happens I need to stop and think about it, really hard, grinding my teeth.

Fun fact: Until this clears, I am now a possible contagion vector for ol' varicella zoster, the chickenpox virus! I've put myself under vague quarantine, and guests who haven't had chickenpox are advised to stay the heck away from our house. Furthermore, Zarf's suggestion as to my motivations is not entirely accurate.

As for the startling coincidence of this happening at the same time as a stress injury, in the same body part: My self-diagnosis is that the shingles is the true causus belli, and that the stress of its outbreak temporarily exacerbated the nascent RSI that I have knowingly lived with -- and haven't thought too hard about -- for years.

If it happens to serve as an alert before I let that get any worse, then so be it. It's mine to ignore.

(Tyiping this with left hand only.)

Bless all of you, and especially cnoocy for coming down hardest on forbidding me to type or mouse with my ouchy hand until I talk to a doctor. I have spent the last six hours playing xbox games, then board games, then Wii Fit. Arm still feels weird, but the pain is already mostly gone! Not gulping pain pills any more. I suspect a causal relationship.

Arm is less numb per se than sunburned-feeling. Kind of interesting.

Tomorrow, asking recepetionist at docs office where I should go for fast advice. One sick day is OK but i really cant stay off the keyboard for very long. A little antsy already. As you may have ascertained.

I find the depiction of men crying due to loneliness deeply upsetting, even when it's not really meant to upset. Memories from three different media:

• My trigger for thinking about this is last panel in this set of comic strips. It's meant to be darkly funny, but I find it heartbreaking.

• It reminded of a scene that affected me profoundly in last year's film Moon. Expressing his confusion and frustration over his inability to return to earth after completing his long, solitary lunar-work contract, the protagonist sobs "I just want to go home," and then cries wordlessly for a moment. This happens over an external shot of his lunar rover parked under an earthrise.

• These in turn reminded of my most upsetting moment from my long stint playing the first Sims game. Experimenting, I had rolled up a new character with a maxed-out social-neediness slider, and then proceeded to ignore this while I worked to get him a job and improve his house, spending no time encouraging him to make friends. While I slowly improved his standard of living, he began frequently and spontaneously breaking down into loud sobbing, burying his face in his hands. He'd pause to do this while just walking from one room to another. When I realized why this was, I was horrified, far moreso than I did when playing cruel Simsy pranks of walling up a Sim or deleting their toilet or whatever.

Recalling all these things brings me close to tears myself, right now.

I specify men because, casting my mind back, I can't easily recall visual stories I've experienced where an adult woman cried from simple loneliness (versus, y'know, "boo hoo, $specific_partner has left me"). I don't know if this is because of some flavor of andronormativity in the media as a whole, or because I myself tend to better sympathize with and therefore better remember depictions of sad men per se.