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.)

I officially got burnt out today while on one of pheromone's Zendo rules... between my already-documented uneasiness about playing too many games right now and, more immediately, my own case of Arisia Plague (insert nose-blowing sfx here), it just melted my brain (though the rule is in fact a very nice one), and I bowed out and worked on Book in the corner until it was time to go to the one Scott McCloud-involving panel I had managed to not miss.

Today's moment of !! came when I shyly introduced myself to him after the panel, giving him my card and noting that a link from the URL printed thereon had a lot of stuff about this ComicsML project of mine. This caused his eyes to light up, and he said, "Ah, so you did that!" And he shook my hand. Eeeee. So I hope that maybe I can start some dialogue with him about that, later.

queue said, "See, I'm telling you, you're becoming this famous person now." I told him in all honesty that I have been vaguely famous since 1999, when I first got slashdotted for my Mac open source catalog, and that I become vaguely famous for some other Internutty thing I do, every so often, though never with any reference to previous vague-famosities. "I am the... I am a Forrest Gump of the Internet", I said, for I know the net must house many Gumps, and probably a few live in my immediate social circles, too. Perhaps you are one.

I knew cthulhia was planning something nefarious for Mostly Looney Games Night this evening, since in this month's event announcement she was openly inviting people to mail her about planning birthday abuses for me, and furthermore I could see that she had successfully started a conspiracy, due to "tee-hee" posts in other people's journals.

I would like to think that what I encountered upon entering was a subset of the many things I imagined as possibilities, but these couldn't do justice to the reality: a Zendo cake, with marzipan Icehouse pieces and Jelly Belly marking stones (And a rule that I had to guess before anyone could eat it: A koan has the buddha nature if it is edible. (Counter-examples were ordinary plastic icehouse koans surrounding the cake.)) Plus, a Green Monkey cake! Yay. I hope someone really did get pictures...! pheromone?

And then we all had fun playing games for a few hours. Some people showed up who don't usually, too; Joe did, and Josh the GM, if only for a little while. Between all this, the various 'lectronic wellwishing I received, and even cards from distant family that alll arrived at once, I am a heppy ket, of the same variety as I have been more or less since First Night,

And then, just as with First Night, people got run over by cars again. Well, actually only almost, this time, but it was still scary. Stop doing that.

But, anyway. You all rock.

My wonderful, hectic holiday week-and-a-half ended sometime yesterday, when I was able to make myself comfy with the thought of working again. Or, well, at least doing things besides socializing. Speaking of, I succeeded in the orchestrated social collision on Tuesday evening, though some badness threw off schedules and plans enough that it was a small gathering -- me and N and M and C and Q, two bags of Icehouse pieces, and M's homemade Zendo stones. Everything went like you'd expect it would, if you know any two of these people.

Today I made some nice progress with MIGS. At this time, I have a MIGS system that can set up a Tic-Tac-Toe board. Doesn't sound like much, but the upshot is that the project is far along enough to provide visible output, which is very encouraging. Of course, I still have everything to learn about SVG and, it turns out, JavaScript (actually ECMAscript, which seems to be a superset of JS, if anything), but I'm confident I can create the core of a nice little system fairly soon.

Meanwhile, feedback from tech reviewers has started to trickle in. Pre-feedback, really... mumbling about the holidays and how they'll have something in a few more days and such. (What does that remind me of.) Tomorrow morning, I'll shift back into that mode. Whew.

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Maybe from reading other people's new years' resolutions, I have come to remind myself, once again, that my diet is The Devil. Really, beyond skin, teeth, hair and nails, I think all but ignore my bodily upkeep requirements. For someone who digs the mantra of planning to be around to see 2112 and beyond, I'm actually doing a piss-poor job on my end of the contract. (I have no direct control of the research on the immortality engine nanofactories, but I trust that it's coming along apace.)

I guess I could try the Hacker's Diet again... I actually stuck to that for more than a month before losing all momentum, couple of years ago. While the writing and pace seems to be aimed at obese people (I am merely soft) the presentation and core concepts are fine for all bad-slacker hackers: exercise every day, and don't eat when you don't need food. Simple. In theory.

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I am listening to Tag's Trance Trip again. Mostly it's musical white noise, but I can't deny that it can be pleasant to work to.

I wonder what Mr. Tag is up to these days. One of things I liked best about this particular MP3 stream when I found it was the human voice who'd pop in at rare moments and talk about whatever. I think this first happened after I had been tuning in to the stream for well over a week: the DJ suddenly appeared, mumbling greetings and explaining that he had dropped by the studio to fix something. Then he dropped a screwdriver behind the desk and swore. I thought it was great.

I didn't mind as the months passed and he started feature himself more frequently to wax about Red Bull or the weather in SF, but when he started dragging his girlfriend (maybe wife now? not sure) on the air with him for lengthy sessions of goo-goo talk, I said: yecch, because I am a grump. So I explored, and now my iTunes stream playlist has many interesting channels on it. But lately I wander back to TTT-land again, and I have heard no voices at all. Hum.

Heh, I see Jim's name among the recent PayPal donators to tagstrance.com. Right on.

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powerbarf.com is owned by squatters. Feh.