Category: video games

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thanksmas2007 redux

I am sleepy and sated, product of a good family gathering. This weekend has stretched into long-ish memories, globular gelatin-like happy oblong memories… of card games and movie watching, catching-up and conversation. Thanksgiving among mine is a time for family.

In contrast or contradiction, it seems that once again time has passed in an eyeblink and I feel some small amazement that tomorrow florence and I will already be driving back to minnesota. Where does life go once you have lived it?

I was thinking a bit today about my poor memory in the context of how bad I am about remembering jokes, and I would like to think that I’m a product of a rich and varied present. I cannot live outside the moment, because the moment is too powerful, too compelling.

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nothing posting

So I finished The Amber Spyglass, and now I’m reading Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, rather than Thirteen, which I’d said I was going to start next. Stardust is shorter, and I started it on the plane to Chicago, thinking I’d get to return it to Florence’s sister Susie while we were there, rather than bring it back on the plane with us because I hadn’t finished it, which is of course what happened instead. There is also a connection between the two, as both the Phillip Pullman books and Stardust are on my “to read” pile for the same reason — I wanted to finish them before their movie counterparts are released.

I just got done uploading a few pictures from the trip to flickr, and realized they were all of people, but that we hadn’t taken any with Susie (Florence’s sister, who we spent most of Saturday visiting). I did also meet Florence’s father on Saturday too, (that was the main purpose of the trip), and that meeting went well.

We stayed with my Aunt Maureen and Uncle Michael, and my cousin Patrick, who I discovered shares my love for “casual” (mostly web-based) video games. We took turns showing each other games we like on Kongregate, and I’ll admit he took way more turns than I did. He also showed an interest in Flash game development. Too bad the program is so expensive, or I’d get him a copy for his birthday or something.

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Go Tetris! on usgo.org

Go Tetris! was featured on usgo.org last friday, and now it’s getting a bunch more hits than it was before. The numbers are not astronomical or anything (approximately 300 that first day, and a little under a hundred per day since then), but it feels good to know there is some interest.

I sort of wish this had happened a week from now, or that I’d known it was going to happen, because I would have made more of an effort to start saving highscores and userdata. (Hopefully, I should be able to upload a new version tonight with that capability.)

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The Great Games Experiment

Everyone knows I’m a sucker for social networking sites. I just discovered another one, The Great Games Experiment, a site that allows you to sign up as a game player or game developer. I’ve found some of the interface to be awesome and intuitive, but other features of the site are just abysmally hard to understand. There is definitely a lot to do over there, I’ll have to look at it more when I’m less sleepy.

Oh, and after a single day, I’m totally addicted to Travian, a web-based massively multiplayer RTS. Check it out!

I was trolling around looking for cool game developer conferences, and found out I just missed the imgd conference this very month, here in MN. Sounds like it focused more on MMO (an acronym I’m not sure I’ve encountered before, but assume is the relevant parts of MMORPG), but it still would probably have been worth checking out.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to whether I’m really interested in persuing a career in game development, or whether I really just want it to be something I do in my spare time for fun. I can honestly say I really dig my current job, and I know that’s something relatively rare and special. I think for now I’m just along for the ride. We’ll see where this thing takes me.

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impending steampunk cinema

Tonight is a sneak preview for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I’ve been excited to see this since I first saw the previews what must be at least a year ago. Feels like this movie has been about to come out forever. I’m really only going to see giant robots trampling through a steampunk city.

I reached a milestone today in my “rip all CDs to mp3” project: I’m finally into the ‘C’s. I have about 215 albums ripped at this point, and about a hundred of them are filed under A or B. At last count, I had about 800 CDs, (but that doesn’t count multi-cd sets or box sets) so at best I’m about a fourth done. Looking at my shelves at home is frustrating though, as the progress seems nowhere near that far.

In City of Hero news, the Atomic Pig made level 19 last night. I’ve sworn I’d make level 20 before the new update comes out… but seeing as how we’ve all already downloaded it (it just hasn’t been “turned on” yet), I’m guessing they’re going to throw the switch sometime very soon. (Which means I may not make my self-imposed deadline.) I didn’t even have to convince laura to create a character the other day when she did. She spent over two hours in the character creation process, and then spent about ten minutes playing before she was tired of it.

I have a new idea for blogistry.com (which I own but have done basically nothing with. I’m thinking about just writing or finding some kind of syndication software to syndicate blogs that are “known” experts in the blog software realm. Ideally, I’d only syndicate entries that were in suitable categories. Of course, this brings up rights issues and all that kind of jazz, so I’d probably want to get permission from everyone first. But the idea is that there’s no way I’m going to be an expert in every blog-related field. Hell, I doubt I’m an expert in ANY blog-related field at this point. My changes to WordPress are still sitting in the back of my brain, unmade and only half-formed.

I notice that I have more desire to read blogs when I’m actually actively blogging. A month or two ago in an IM conversation, Yami said she reads blogs like I play videogames. (Which basically meant for her every day after she gets off work. My video game schedule is much more sporadic and unscheduled.) Anyway, reading even just the ones I want to read is quite a hefty time commitment. I don’t think I was probably ever “into it” to the point where I would read all the ones I wanted to, and I probably never will be. I just hope I can at least keep up with my friend’s blogs for a while at least. (But by “keep up” I don’t mean every day or anything.)

It is interesting to note the rate at which emails and comments about my last entry have hit my ears and inbox. I suppose it carried a fair bit of “heavy” news, and coupled with your inability to leave comments here, you’re probably all just dying to express some kind of sympathy. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, other than to reassure people that it’s probably not as bad as it all sounded. I was quite depressed, but have been much better. Laura and I are good, but not really in danger of getting engaged again any time soon. (And she has certainly not expressed a desire to do so, despite having occasionally seemed wistful and upset about it herself.) I don’t think I’m going to go into all the gory details here, (although some part of me wants to) mostly because they’re over, and I want to focus on the present.

…like Sky Captain in T-minus 1.5 hours.