prog: (zendo)
This week has been quite fun and productive so far. Swung back into the groove at work fairly well, and got back into Frivolity code hacking. Got the test suite, running on my laptop, to work locally, and again when pointed at the new volity.net Jabber server that [livejournal.com profile] daerr set up. Hope to post a bugfix release by this weekend, and then start in on the new stuff that K will need for his client to work correctly.

Good game night yesterday, for me. [livejournal.com profile] dougo suggested we play Currents, which I haven't tried in years. Playing with three highly critical game geeks resulted in many rule-change suggestions being collected, some of which I can't wait to try. One in particular makes me especially excited because it might let me do away with those lame Goaltending rules. The last time I worked on the game, I was puzzling about how to fix Goaltending; it didn't occur to me to just throw out the rule entirely, making the game simpler, which now strikes me as something to strive for. I like to think this is a reflection of my growth as a writer/programmer since then!

Also got to talk about Volity with this group for the first time, which was neat. (It was a natural segue, as playing Currents reminded me that it was one of the reasons I started to invent Volity -- I wanted to be able to rapidly create computer versions of new board game ideas, allowing me to test them out with both humans and bots.) I also got to show off my pure-SVG/ECMAScript rock-paper-scissors game (sorry, not on the Web yet, though it probably should be), running in Squiggle. Oh, and I learned to pronounce "Batik" correctly, since it hadn't occurred to me Google for its real-wordedness. (It's [bə-TEEK].)

(And, link of the day: IPA alphabet table with Unicode keys and full names, the latter of which I've never seen before. All the letters are named, not after their sound, but after the position or activity of lip, tongue, tooth and lung necessary to produce the sound. Yes, you've known this for years, but it's new to me.)

And I won a hand of Lamarckian poker! And then Shmike won with a royal flush (of the strongest suit, too) and rightly declared victory over the entire concept of that game. (In Volity vocabulary he could have said, "I have beaten the ruleset", or colloquially "I have beaten this URI".)

Arisia

Jan. 20th, 2002 06:06 pm
prog: (Default)
It was okay. Gaming is always A Good Thing, but I disappointed myself -- I thought I'd want to take more advantage of the con, doing the many things and meeting the many people available there, but this turned out not to be the case. I actually became fairly cranky on Saturday, and spent much of the afternoon and evening alone in our hotel room, reading and doing Book work.

Leah, my very own LJ Anonymous Coward, wrote me a nice letter before the weekend which opened with the observation that I, in her eyes, share an attribute with another favorite blogger, The Gus, in that I move through all these distinct circles of people, but seem happiest when alone, or with the computer and writing. My first impulse was to object, especially in light of the burst of sociability I've experienced since the year started, but I can object only up to a point. I can't deny the pattern I stick to of making forays into the wild now and then, but always retreating back home alone when I've used up all my mana points or whatever, so that I can recover and reflect. I might be making more sorties now, but the strategy's never changed, and it doesn't change when I go to a con, either.

It's true that I hung out with many interesting and fun people, but they're the same interesting and fun people I see several times a week nowadays, and in much less expensive venues, such as In Someone's House, In The Cafe, or Out Side. (Note that this is, in fact, a nice reminder that my life is beautiful right now.) Notable exceptions were other Lab Rabbits who aren't a staple of the local circles I'm in, and Zarf.

Zarf is so cool, mannnn, even if I was too grumpy to go party-wandering with him, and he didn't have any comments about Currents other than "Ahh, too many rules -- sorry, I am having a Kory moment." I wonder if cthulhia tried pressuring him into LJ. Well, at any rate, I'll see a lot more of him and everyone else I really ought to meet, game-design-wise, this summer at Origins.

But, for now, boy, I feel burned out on gaming. Redlining my leisure time is, in fact, not all that fun, especially not right now, as I feel the lukewarm breath of The Deadline on the back of my neck ever-so-slowly heating up. I will need to get a lot of work done before I'm again filled with the real desire to game -- gaming tastes sweetest, to me, when it's a mix of the given mental challenge and sociabily with the feeling that I've earned the chance to do this utterly unproductive thing for a while. With luck, I will meet this requirement before it's time for Vericon, this coming weekend.

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