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

This is the first even-numbered year since 2000 that I've missed Origins. Sorry, folks.

If Project X had bit me earlier, I'd probably would have made plans to go. At least one party involved encouraged me to go anyway, but going for X-related reasons right now would be just a tad premature. Interesting to use this as a benchmark for my ever-changing relationship with the games industry.

Ung. I want to has prototype nao. There's a wall of fear between where I stand and my breaking ground on the UI, and I would love nothing better than to just bust through it, but I have promised myself to not look at X until I can spin down at least one of my Appleseed client plates. I expect that to happen early next week, and then I'll declare July to be UI month. It'll be a minor miracle if I actually can get the whole thing done over a month of part-time work, but I fully expect to at least work up to unstoppable momentum with it, and have it ready to show off before summer ends.

(No, Project X is not Zendo - sorry. I just haven't used this icon in a while.)

Another rare example of geek-jokery that actually made me laugh, seen at Origins:

A t-shirt with a pair of large d20s at chest-level, each showing "20", with the caption YES, THEY'RE NATURAL

I think unfortunately that if you can work in naughty bits or excreta I'll always think it's the height of comedy.

The dead license made it through four inspections in Hartford and two in Columbus. (Half TSA, half airline.) Nobody did anything with it other than glance long enough to confirm that its name matched the name printed on my ticket or boarding pass.

Sober and caffeinated, I had a squirming freakout on our first takeoff out of Hartford, but I was alone in the row and nobody had to see it. Singing along (silently) to Imogene Heap on my iPod did help a little. As always happens, maintaining a state of absolute terror takes a lot of work so I got bored of it and chilled out after a while. I was comparatively cool on the DC → Columbus leg, and the stranger next to me offered me an Altoid during descent, so I couldn't have been acting too awful.

I thought at the time that the flights over were kind of harsh in the landing department, but then there was today's flight, which really was bad. Turbulence all the way through, with a bump so awful towards the end from diving through what the pilot called "some weather" (no active precipitation, but the clouds around us were darkening and clearly up to something) that the flight attendant almost lost his footing while walking down the aisle.

It was no surprise since the pilot said it was gonna happen, though, so as horrible as it was I didn't actually fear for my life. When we broke through the clouds I turned to Zarf and croaked "The atmosphere." He said "Yes, next time pick a planet without one." Anyway, kudos to the pilot for making frequent updates over the intercom about what was coming up. Saying nothing and just bombing us into the rattling darkness would have been so much worse. I have been on flights like that, unfortunately.

And all this was on two beers. Maybe I'll try three next time, but then again maybe I'd have been much worse without any. Andy sez that he was surprised I didn't ask for more alcohol in-flight (since, surprisingly for a dinky connection jet, it was offered); I got ice water instead. The thing is that even though my rational thinking takes a back seat during all this I know that we are going to land, and that I'll be all dehydrated from travel-stress when it happens. And thinking ahead like this makes me feel a little better, too.

Today we cruised five of the expo floor's eleven aisled. It went really well; a couple of people were borderline dismissive, but about twice as many were really excited to hear about us, and everyone else was interested enough to invite followup conversation after the show. If I weren't completely exhausted I'd be pretty psyched.

My favorite vendor, I think, was a guy from Sandwich, Illinois (which he described as a small farming community) who had his own invention, a multiplayer crossword game. He had made a tactical error in coming all by himself, as he had nobody to relieve him from booth duties, and after two days was a little punch drunk, enough to get confused at his own game components. But he lit up when he heard about Volity and immediately grasped how it would really benefit his mechanic, which actually does look rather clever. So he is one of many folks we are going to follow up with.

Off to get dinner and then probably just hang out in the Looney room until EOD.

Sorted out the problems with registration, checked into our hotel room, have showered and shaved and eaten (though I probably could have chosen better than greasy pad thai given my abused stomach... oops). I have said hello to a few Looney people as I happen to run into them but haven't really debuted yet; been letting Zarf do this.

After this trip it's hard not to wonder if some malevolent force isn't throwing resistance up at every step. I'd say "other than delaying us by a whole day it's not been very successful" but that delay actually is a real bummer; now we have only two full days here. OTOH, the most recent obstacle was trying to get wifi to work in the hotel room, and that was just a matter of using Firefox instead of Safari.

I will presently go back to the convention center and seek a nice hot tea to sip.

Going to the airport soon after the Andys get back from fetching daerr's new DS from the FedEx depot.

It's a good thing I gave up magical thinking for Lent or I'd be pretty upset that my ticket number at the place I got my breakfast bagel this morning was 911.

Should I not land at Columbus, you may blame the New York Times first, but blame Au Bon Pain second.

At least the flyers printed up real nice, though they was ass-expensive. I took woodlander's (and queue's) advice and asked Rob to remove the linebreaks from the phone numbers, email addresses and URLs. This meant I had to stress over getting them printed this morning instead of yesterday, but it's worth it; they look great. Thanks!

(And I can't remember who said you can hand Kinko's a URL and they'll grab the file and work with it, but: no, at least not at the Harvard Square Kinko's. Dude told me they weren't allowed to download things. I had to take a CD-R, go upstairs, and spend an extra $10 on buying computer access to download the PDF, burn the CD, and hand it to the guy. At least he didn't charge me for the CD...)

Considering the website done for now, after spending the afternoon rassling with unexpected (snort) MSIE stupidity; the browser apparently freaks out and spews nonsensical error messages (Server not found what) if you perform a server-side redirect from one URL scheme to another. People most often see this when they try to redirect from an http to an https URL, but I hit it when trying to throw people at URLs using our own volity scheme, which launches Gamut and sends you some spot in the Volityverse.

From what I can figure out via Google, this has been a known bug for years, and Microsoft's simply not ever felt like fixing it. Nice. Well, I caulked up the gaps with JavaScript and shall think upon it no more. (One side effect of my Volity work is that I am far more comfortable using JS as a what-ails-ya tool than I was a year ago, even though I've been dinking around on the Web for a decade now.)

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Swag for Origins came today. From cafepress we got two sizes of buttons; a few big "Ask Me About" buttons for ourselves and a lot of little logo-and-url buttons for you. They all look pretty cool.

From Zazzle we got our T-shirts, and.... eh. The white rocket/moon shirts that I have seen on dictator555 and daerr look great, but the printing process that Zazzle uses with their dark shirts isn't all that good, really. The images look somewhat translucent, with the white parts of the designs coming out especially muddy. On top of that, there's a thin ghostly halo around the designs; it could be antialiasing artifacts that I didn't catch, but they're only on one side so I dunno. The shirts will serve, but is disappointing, especially since the light shirts were so good. I may just remove the dark-shirt designs from the Zazzle store.

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I have managed to make it all the way to Origins Week without getting my driver's license renewed. I feel stupid about it, but not surprised; it's exactly the sort of thing I put off indefinitely because it is stupid and boring and unimportant. Until it is, suddenly. I don't know what happens when you present an expired license as photo ID at an airport. I guess I will find out, eh?

I have already used this dead one recently to buy beer and pick up a package so I don't know. (It's so old it's still from Maine!) I may go to the RMV on Monday or Tuesday if there's time. There may not be time. But even if I do, I will only get a cheesy temp license that day, so I likely won't bother anyway.

Best idea, based on Googling: see what Delta's policy about this is, and call and talk to someone about it if necessary. And show up with a folderful of alt docs. (I have no passport either.) And unfortunately we'll need to leave earlier in case none of that works and they make me go through extra security. Sorry, Andys...

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I will soon make my monthly funds transfer from savings to checking, and this will leave me with a savings account of $0. Yes! I am literally on my last month of personal fuel. Because of all the layers of thick cottony abstract thinking that lay between my mental mind and the serrated edge of reality, I am totally not worried about this. OK, I am also not worried because I have a cunning plan. Or anyway I hope to come up with one this weekend.

If things get hairy I can go for another month or three by kicking open the IRA CDs I bought before I wised up and invested in a stock index instead, but let's try to not go there.

It kinda stinks that I won't be able to buy anything at Origins, though.

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.)

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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.)

I dreamt about dental work. Turns out I needed those fillings after all, and the dentist, a woman I didn't recognize from waking life, injected Novocain into my chest or abdomen. We were both under the impression that this would render me unconscious. When all that occurred was a vague tingle in my mouth, we both became very agitated and confused.

After I woke up I realized that she should have called my real-life dentist, who knew that I only respond to very strong painkillers (and I guess only when orally injected as well), and continued to feel upset. Then I realized that it was just a dream, and then I was so, so happy. The end.

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I may be going to Origins this year. Some nonzero fraction of the three of us definitely is, at least.

I think that I am losing more than I am gaining by not attending Origins this year... darn. I just didn't let myself think about it at all, and now it's too late. I guess the "you had a blast last year" meme was evenly matched by "beware the brain-eating monster that is fandom" and then routed entirely by that damned "you're too busy anyway". The fact is, though, I really should make more of an effort to stay plugged into game culture, now that -- let's be honest -- games is looking more and more like my true vocation.

Well, I guess there's a good chance I'll continue my every-even-year tradition next year. I will miss seeing those of you I'd see, and hope you all have a great time. At least some others are threatening to evangelize Volity there in my stead, and that's pretty good.

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Here is a secret about me: I feel a little rotten about the fact that I seem to be heading into game-making (or game-enabling or some damn thing) as my first truly self-driven profession.

This is partially because, to my eye, wanting to make games is the generic career disposition for us male Gen-Xers, and there's a part of me that's continually damning myself for wanting to diddle my life away in entertainment when there's a world to save. Way to go helping the population amuse itself to death, say the detractors in my head, who if you wish you can imagine having long, pale green faces and wearing black robes and powdered wigs. (Or as potatoes with falsettos and powdered wigs, if that's more your thing.)

I have things I can say, in my own defense. Mostly the fact I'm less interested in the socially isolating video games they have in mind and more in games, electronic or tabletop, that bring people together. And then I can never help myself and start launching into my mushmouthed spiel that I want to help foster communities of thinking game-players in every level of society, that I conspire to trick a generation of children into getting addicted to logical contests, and that this is how I'm gonna do my part to save the world!

But the potato judges will have none of it, their shrieks of bullshit, bullshit echo around the hall and o it's just awful.