prog: (Default)
I saw Touch of Evil last night with [livejournal.com profile] daerr. I liked it and recommend it, though can't call it a great movie because the whole Janet Leigh subplot is kind of dopey. (LITERALLY HA HA.) Excellent and stylish piece of noir, though. Try to see the less-bastardized cut that was assembled in 1998; this is what the TiVo grabbed from TCM.

The movie is personally notable since I remembered seeing the beginning of it many many years ago at the home of a friend of my mother's, maybe in Florida. I was bored, and she put in the movie for me, thinking that I'd like a story that begins with a car blowing up. I remember _exactly_ the car blow-up scene, and also the fact that the movie was old, black-and-white, and boring outside of the exploding cars, of which there was only the one. I had forgotten the title, so it was funny to see it was that movie, and of course I liked it much more this time.



It occurred to me that learning Inform 7 by porting 1999's Calliope to it is not a terrible idea. I have started to do this, and am having a great time.

Looking over my old game is interesting. I remember it as being somewhat embarrassing crap, but it's actually a tight and often clever little exercise. The main problem with it is that its basic premise is somewhat inaccessible, and terribly naive. At the time, I truly thought that everyone would love a game about writing games! with another game inside it!! Also I thought that putting "I wrote this to learn Inform" in the intro text would be a smart move, too.

Well, whatever. It's fun.



Applied to two more angel groups last night. Hm, there's one left that I can think of, and I'll hit them today or tomorrow. There's a kind of futility in this because an unsolicited funding application is a lot like an unsolicited manuscript submitted to a publisher. They're obliged to look at it, but its chances of getting caught in a first-pass filter is very high, no matter how "good" it is.

Actually, it's a little worse than that. Professional tradition dictates that publishers at least send you a rejection slip, which can sometimes hold helpful advice on it if the editor felt moved to provide some. Capital groups are under no such expectation and usually just ignore everyone they're not interested in having a conversation with.

On the other hand, experience suggests that the capital groups remember previous applications, whether or not the acknowledge them. Since I applied to a bunch last year, I'm taking the opportunity to frame my cover letter as "Remember me?", detailing all that we've done as a company since I last darkened their doorstep. (Which is quite a lot, actually.)

The solution is to go to more networking mixers. Prerequisite to this is business cards. We will have these soon. I hope.



No lack of other stuff to do in the meantime. Still haven't fleshed out the plan outline at all, and I have a real deadline now, since I'd like to be able to bring it to a meeting with a money dude that's coming up on the 7th. This is the only money-dude meeting on the calendar, and the only thing we've got going for us is that I last year impressed someone else at $MONEY_DUDE_PLACE who is no longer there. I feel both hopeful and not hopeful about this.
prog: (coffee)
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.



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.



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 [livejournal.com profile] keimel wants to give them hell. But my outer [livejournal.com profile] 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.
prog: (Default)
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.)



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.)
prog: (Default)
I think I've been slightly sick for several weeks. I've been stressing myself a lot since the beginning of April, and my body's been giving me some seriously mixed signals. My officemates have expressed concern about catching things from me, since it's not like their lives are exactly stress-free either.

I can't keep this up forever. But things are OK for now.



It's been pointed out to me that I don't write about much other than work. Well, I write what I know, friends. I am more or less loving every minute of this, even when I'm hating it. Believe me.

There's other things to write about, and people to write to, and I've fallen way behind. I am sorry if you are one of them. Some day I will catch up.

I should really post something about Inform 7, which is absolutely fantastic. But I still don't feel that I've spent enough time with it yet. Coz, y'know, everything else.



BTW, have always hated people who drawl on about how much work they do and how little time they have for reading and so on, clearly being self-congratulatory-via-self-pitying about it. If I start getting like that please slap me. It may be the life I'm leading these days but I'll be damned if I'm gonna make a lifestyle out of it.

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