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

To my adored TV talent, whom I have already emailed but just in case:

Tonight's Gameshelf shoot is CANCELLED. If you were planning on coming tonight, please don't, unless you happen to want to watch the taping of this week's "Dead Air Live". We had a scheduling foul-up.

Relatedly, I've lately been thinking about ways I could become less dependent on SCAT. This accident (not the first of its kind, for me) encouraged me to go ahead and purchase this setup, after it received the blessings of Joe-the-director as probably being OK for what I need. It will allow me to do one-camera green-screen shoots in my own home. This is good.

Probably the only thing worse than spammers fucking things up directly is the mere threat of spammers fucking things up. Twice now I've happened to look at the Gameshelf blog's spamtrap, and found it 100 percent full of perfectly legitimate reader comments that never got posted. The jmac.org blog gets hammered with so much spam that MT started overcompensating, I guess. I don't know.

I have put the comments back up and posted an apology, but the blog still suffers the loss of timely discussions that never happened.

Not happy.

My stomachaches are back. The reason is simple; I stopped paying attention to what I was guzzling.

Yesterday was just terrible, and I had to chomp down lots of Pepto. Today it's down to a dull ache, without medicine. Tomorrow it'll be gone, unless I get stupid about what I drink today. If I understand correctly, what goes on here is that one's digestive system goes from its usual acerbic roiling into a gentle simmer when one is asleep, and regenerative processes take advantage of this by repairing the stomach lining from the day's abuses.

Before I knew what was going on, back when whether I had a "good" or "bad" stomach day seemed like a crapshoot, it was basically a question of whether my tum had managed to reinforce itself sufficiently the previous night. If it had caught up, I'd have a good day. If it didn't quite make it, I'd be in pain until my next long sleep. Quite simple, really.

Now that I have a clue, I will just have to pay some attention to what I drink and it will be OK. I don't think I will have to give up anything, except for the "pleasure" of having three coffees, two beers and a coke on one day just because I want something to do with my hands or whatever. If I limit my drinking of this stuff to when I actually want it I will be fine.

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.

Got to the meeting and back. Misplacing the card was an $80 mistake, all told. Hoping there isn't a zillion-dollar card replacement fee from Zipcar. Going to perform a proper cleanup and maybe I'll find my card but I'm doubtful. In this morning's ransack I collected a fist-sized chunk of cards that are not my Zipcard.

Meeting was OK. This guy knows games, and it was good to be able to cut to the chase, receive specific (and unexpected) encouragement of where our ideas are cool, and specific criticism of where we're going to have to prove 'em wrong.

Got skewered on one particular question I had no answer to, which completely disarmed one of my arguments. Homework for me. But no checks written today, alas. However, I was instructed to call back when we're beta. This is an order of magnitude better than DCUWCY[1], so: good.

If I was ever less than sure that we should be entirely focused on getting to beta ASAP, funding be damned, I am completely sure now.

[1] I haven't seen this before but I declare it to be useful and that its proper pronunciation is "doo-koo-WIH-kee".

I really hope the hunt won't involve much outside activity.

I got a temporary Harvard ID today, so at least I'll be able to board the bus to get home, instead out waiting outside for the T again. Wheeee, that was a mistake.