Yearly Archives: 2006

For Sale

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As I’ve already touched upon, I’m moving. I’d like to consolidate, and I’m planning to do so in several ways… the first of which is that I’m selling my two LaCie pro-grade CRT monitors and converting to an LCD screen with the proceeds. The link to the craigslist ad is here: http://burlington.craigslist.org/sys/194510503.html. Please note that I’m also selling off a spare graphics card I have.

It’s going to have to wait until my belongings from my storage unit in Seattle can make it out here, but I’m planning to sell my PC desktop as well. The reason I need to wait is that the cds that came with it (like, say, all the various software that came with it plus the Windows install disk, plus the Windows XP Pro upgrade disk I put on it a while back) are all still in that storage unit. Makes it kind of hard to, y’know, clean up the machine and get it ready for sale. That said, Froogle is still listing that model at $795, and that’s base… I then added an Audigy 2 Platinum sound card and a Radeon 9500 Pro graphics card, an a/b/g wireless NIC, and an extra half a gig of ram. Realistically, if I sold it for $700, it’d still be a steal. (For the record, if anyone reading wants to give me $700 plus shipping and paypal fees [if that’s how you’re paying] and doesn’t mind if I send the cds along later, I’ll send it out tomorrow. I even have the original box and packaging material, so it’d ship safely.) The reason I’m selling it? It takes up space I don’t have, I rarely use it, and what things I do use it for I can run off my laptop via Boot Camp.

I’ll post more of a “real” post sometime soon, but I wanted to get this out into the world sooner than later.

The Heat Has Broken

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I don’t know how many times I’ve said it before [just checked… 10 other times], but I’m sitting in Hanover at the moment, watching people and enjoying the New England August, which is about as close to perfection as can be achieved in nature. It is ranging between 72 and 78 between shade and sun, with a light westerly breeze and low to non-existent humidity, and just enough vivid white clouds floating by to provide texture to an otherwise rich blue sky. Simply put, this is the weather that God sets his climate control to. If you abruptly keeled over and died, wafting up to that oft-remarked upon better place, you would not notice a difference in the weather.

Depending on the weather report you listen to, it’s supposed to stay this way for a few more days. Personally, I’m hoping so. In the grand scheme, as much as we claim an immunity to the weather via concrete and steel, we are still very much affected by it, and enriched by the beauty of that divinely pristine day. But perhaps I am waxing on too much of the day, and not enough of the moment, nor my place within it.

Things have been (un)hectic since my last post. By that statement, I mean that there have been a great many things happening, but very little of it has been occupying my attention. My brother has taken a position in Washington, DC, and in fact has already moved down there (rather abrupt, I know). I wish him luck, and hope to visit him at some point soon. My car was broken into shortly after leaving my previous post, while it was parked on the street in Providence. They went through my trunk lock, so I didn’t even know anything had been taken or damaged until I was already north at Squam, and went to collect the bags holding my mask, snorkel, books, and warmer clothing (it was raining when we got there, an a sweatshirt seemed an eminently good idea). All in all, about $1600-2000 worth of stuff was taken, encompassing two bags and my leather jacket containing all the usual doodads and knick-knacks I’m wont to carry. As soon as I got back home, I assessed to make sure everything I thought was gone really was, and then arranged to report it to my insurance company and to my bank (since my checkbook was stolen). It’s proven to be a bit of a hassle, since I now need to prove to the insurance company that I did in fact own each of those items, several of which were gifts, others were part of events or other non-itemized things, and others still are either too old to have a receipt after several moves, and the remainder have receipts handily organized by my ex-wife for just such an occasion… in a storage unit in Seattle. It’s not enough of a loss to justify the money to fly out to Seattle, either. Of course, the whole point is moot until I get a police report case number, or else the insurance company won’t pay a dime… and of course, you must file a police report in person, which I have not been able to arrange yet (I’ll be heading down later this week). All that said, I find myself remarkably unstressed about it, or much of anything. It’s like someone’s been slipping valium in my water — I simply find myself remarkably beyond worrying about what I cannot change, and accepting of my situation (broke, unemployed, and unsure where I’m going or what I’m doing next). To be perfectly frank, a part of me has been thinking of just taking off for parts unknown and taking a job at a diner in some podunk somewhere no one has ever heard of.

I was pleasantly satisfied with the results of the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference keynote yesterday, where they showcased a number of features being added in the next release of the OS (Mac OS X 10.5, due out this spring), many of which I think will be invaluable additions to my workflow (their incorporation of several principles of GTD into their apps bodes well for being more organized). They also debuted the new Mac Pro (the desktop to replace the PowerMac G5), and the new Xeon-based Xserve, completing their transition to an Intel based architecture after a whopping 210 days (instead of the anticipated 2 years). Both of these new systems are looking pretty stellar, though I really can’t justify an upgrade: my G5 is still in excellent condition and usability, and my Mac Book Pro had best last me quite some time (though I will be the first to admit I use it quite a lot, and not in ideal flat-table-or-desk situations… in fact, I think it may have warped a little, as it no longer sits entirely flat with all four feet on the table anymore… I may take it down to the Apple store sometime soon and have them look at it while it’s still under warranty). Overall, the keynote meant very little to me in the present, since I have neither the money to join a high enough developer’s membership to get a 10.5 developer’s seed, nor to buy a new machine. That said, there is a lot of excitement about some the features to come in the spring, not the least of which includes what they’re calling “Objective-C 2.0”, which according to the banter on the obj-c-language list hosted by Apple, is still under NDA and won’t be elaborated on for a while yet. The little tidbits put on the Apple website, however, point to some really nice additions to the language, including ones that potentially make it an even more viable platform for using in a game development situation (I still believe it has the potential, and that we simply need to really assess the libraries and tools provided in its feasibility — the Core libraries alone hold a lot of potential).

In the next few weeks, I need to move out of my house, and line up where I’m going to be after that lease ends (I also need to find rent money for that final month, as well as pay off some bills that require cash). I’m still sincerely hoping that I’ll be able to work something out involving staying at Squam and Peterborough for a few weeks each, to get some writing done in a place that I can be alone and undistracted (both of which are very important to me right now, as I find myself more and more a recluse).

Actually, I want to talk about that parenthetical for a moment. As many of you know, in the Meyers-Briggs personality scale, I’m consistently a strongly leaning INFP (Introvert iNtuitive Feeling Perceptive). My introversion has been becoming more and more pronounced over the past months, and I find myself more and more reluctant in combating it. It has nothing to do with anyone but myself, and the directions I feel I need to go. It does not mean that I don’t care about others, or my relationships with them. It does, however, mean that I’m realizing that I probably haven’t been the best person to hang out with lately, and likely won’t be for some time to come. Caveat emptor!

Update 7.20.2006b

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I’m putting Critical Code on hiatus while I figure out the next few months. Realistically there’s no reason I had to formally state as much, but sometimes it’s better to actually say it — less guilt about not posting that way.

As I said in that post, my living situation is going to be changing very shortly, in several ways. My brother may or may not be moving out soon depending on what happens with a job offer (i’m crossing my fingers, as I think it’d be a good move for him). That would leave the rest of the house one, maybe two months of scrambling to fill the gap in rent before our lease is up and we move out as well (which is the plan to the best of my knowledge). The issue, however, is that no jobs have actually panned out, and I’ve been applying since April. I’ve had one nibble (which may still go somewhere, as I haven’t been told no yet), and one bite that got away (made it through the first part of the interview process, and then in the intervening weeks between the first and second interviews, they reprioritized to solely part-timers and removed me from the running… I don’t blame them, and wish them well). The rest have been thus far duds (VERY few bother with a GFY, so who knows how many I’m actually still in the running for and simply don’t know).

Looking at my previous post, I do not have the resources ready to actually start my own company. It’s still something I sincerely want to pursue, but for now it is returning to the backburner. The option I’m choosing to pursue (unless and until a job comes through) is writing. While I am not in as stellar a financial situation as I’d like for such an endeavor, things seem to be pointing more and more towards this, and as has been said before, hunger can be a powerful motivator.

As some of you are aware, there are a few properties that have been in the family for generations, which by and large don’t get used nearly as much as they could or arguably should be. So my current plan is to discuss with the family over the next few weeks the possibility of utilizing one of these properties for a few (3-6) weeks in September/October to get some writing done. In particular, I’m thinking the house in Peterborough would be an ideal location for this project. We’ll see what pans out with that (the family who may be reading this, please do comment either here or privately, I’d really love to hear your thoughts on the idea).

As a somewhat tangential aside, I think it’s somewhat amusing that I seem to get absolutely no comments, yet when I check referrals/trackbacks/etc, it becomes clear that I have a small but consistent readership, plus some random blips that seem to actually get some use out of what I’ve written. Once I started realizing that, I stopped feeling like I needed comments and users to validate the blog’s existence, which I think is a foible of a LOT of bloggers, and a contributing factor to why so many bloggers stop after a short while. One of the big unsurprising personal revelations, there. When I got linked to in a rather large video game related podcast by I’m still not sure who, it really made me start to realize that while I do have a lot of these self-referential maundering posts that provide nothing useful to anyone who isn’t involved in my life in SOME fashion or another, I’ve also got a lot of content buried in here as well, and should stop acting like no one would possibly give a damn about what I have to say or offer. Even a personal blog is, at times, more than personal.

Okay, tangent over, back to the maundering post. (The delight and drawback to blog posts is that they tend to be a little spastic, which I suspect is an attribute of the medium that we’ve simply tried to fight for most of its brief history.) In other news, I’ve joined yet another social network site, which means I think I’m on all of the major ones at this point… MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, OkCupid, FaceBook, LinkedIn, some others I’m sure I’m forgetting. I don’t obfuscate my name or anything on them, so I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find me on whichever they feel like checking. Please note, though, that I don’t actually do much of anything with any of them. The main reason I’m on them is because one friend or another is on one service or another, and that gives me a motivation to take the 5 minutes to create an account. The motivation for this is to make myself accessible in as many ways as I can: maybe it’s narcissistic of me, but I like knowing that in any of these places, if anyone from my past or present gets it in their heads to look for me, they’ll find me. I may be an introvert, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea of being remembered.

I’m going to wrap this up by saying up front that it’s HIGHLY unlikely that I’ll be posting again or even being on IM or responding to email for the next week. Instead, we’re going on something of a family vacation, spending a week at Squam starting this Saturday. To friends and family who might be reading this: you know how Squam works — if you’re interested for coming over for the afternoon or even a few days, give a call and chances are high that we’ll say “come on over.” And with that, see you all in a week!

Heat Vision

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It’s unbelievably hot in my room right now, and there’s nothing to be done about it. All my computers are off except the laptop, the lights are out, the window is open and still the heat is akin to a sauna, only one you don’t have the option to walk away from. It makes me wonder how people further south deal with this, and apart from the snarky response “air conditioning”, I must simply assume we adapt to our environment well enough to not notice this after a while.

I’ve not adapted, however. It’s fucking hot.

This is not the reason I’m writing, however (it would, after all, make more sense to simply close the laptop and try and get some sleep). Frankly, I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing, other than that I feel a need to write some of the things in my head out and see how they sit. The frontmost thought has been revolving around figuring out my immediate and intermediate future. I need a place to live, and a place to work, and frankly if I get the latter, the former will come based on the job. I’ve sent out dozens of resumes to various places all over the world, ranging from design positions (what I really want), to retail computer sales, and everything in between that I could consider myself qualified for that is remotely close to my chosen field. I’ve been sending these resumes out for months at this point, and frankly I’m starting to get a little tired of getting jerked around by companies that won’t even acknowledge I exist, and makes me appreciate quite a lot more the places that even bother with a GFY (“Go Fuck Yourself”, the form letters that politely let you know that the position is no longer available or that you’re no longer considered). This frustration has led me to consider another option: start my own business.

The basic gist of the idea is this: take out a loan (SBA or otherwise) to start an independent software and game development studio. Especially at first, the focus would be on small, targeted, inexpensive apps likely for OS X, while expanding into games (shareware and mods and contract work, and maybe moving into commercial games in future). I’d also work to bring in revenue via web design work and any sort of consulting or contract work I can get, especially at first.

It’s where I want to be in 5 years, the question is whether I’m in a position to do it now. That’s debatable, but even taking my friend Chris’s maxim that the best way to learn is to base your ability to eat on it into consideration, the likelihood of pulling it off isn’t that stellar. (NOT impossible, not even slim! Just also not high.)

Which takes me to my next idea: hide out for a bit and devote the time to getting some REAL writing done. Articles, short stories, and in particular, comic book script and proposals. Once I have some ready, submit them appropriately and see if I can get either some freelance work or better, a full time writing position. I have some strong ideas for comics that I’d like to see done, so I don’t think this is an unreasonable path to take, assuming I can get out of this non-writing rut and back into the habit of writing daily.

The key part to both this idea and the previous one is that they both involve taking some creative/productive responsibility into my own hands. I think an anecdote related to Utah Philips by Fry Pan Jack is the best explanation as to why it’s so appealing:

I learned when I was young that the only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it’s true the only real life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?

I’ve found ways to minimize the hoop jumping by going to alternative schools, and it would seem a shame to take that experience and throw it away by diving headfirst into the hoop filled corporate culture — there must be another way that still keeps me fed, housed, and clothed, and by damn I mean to find it!

Independence Day Update

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The first and arguably most important thing I’m going to say in this update is Welcome to the world, Oliver! To Chris and Lise, also many congratulations and well wishes are in order. I think you’re going to make damned fine parents, and I’m looking forward to meeting the munchkin when it’s feasible.

In other news, Happy 4th of July to those who have it as more than just the fourth day of the month! I’d also like to make quick nods to the folks I’ve noticed linking my last post, and hope they decide to stick around a bit. So to CW and Lichen, hats off to you, glad you liked the post. Maybe there are others that have linked it or other things, and if so please let me know: I like knowing people are finding something worthwhile on here, and because I have trackbacks turned off due to spam issues, I often don’t find your referral.

I’m going to aim to make a more significant post later, but for now, that’s all.

Virtual Home

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This may perhaps be a post better suited for my other blog, but for some reason, I felt it better suited to talk in this one about the notion of virtual spaces as a home, which is a topic recently touched upon over at Terra Nova in Bonnie Ruberg’s recent post: Grounded in Virtual Spaces. Her post broaches the topic that in many ways, blogs serve as a surrogate home on the internet.

But what exactly is “home”? Several Native American tribes believe that home is where you are born (in a geographical sense — I somehow doubt they were referring to the hospital room specifically), and that there is a spiritual connection tied to that area from then onward. This doesn’t mean you have to live there your whole life, but it will still have an effect on you in often subtle ways. Personally, I’m a big fan of this idea, and feel it works well to define a virtual home as well. Blogs (whether it’s a myspace page, friendster, facebook, blogger, or a stand alone site like this one) are often our first real forays into being a creator or participant in the virtual arena. It provides an anchor point where they are free to express themselves however they want (to let their guards down, figuratively speaking). People may move on or away from these blogs or pages, but their time spent with their own space to create and express themselves will continue to have an effect on them throughout their other endeavors.

Forums, however, serve a complementary but separate role, more similar to third spaces (Bowling alleys, pubs, places people gather that are neither home nor work), where it is a peer gathering of people collaborating to form a dialogue. It does not qualify as a home, per se, in that no matter how freeform the structure of the forum is, it is still ultimately governed by someone else. We may even end up spending more time in that third space than we do in our homes (even more true on the internet, where “home” serves as a place to toss links and thoughts before heading back out into browsing, with only the occasional extended period spent cleaning up or redesigning the site), but that does not alter the distinction between the two spaces.

I’m not really going anywhere with this in revelatory terms, but I did want to share. I may expand it later.

Announcements and General Updates

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First off: i’d like to announce my new “learning programming” blog, Critical Code. I’d also like to announce that I’ve migrated to a shared user table across my three blogs (Critical Games, Critical Code, and this blog), so if you have an account on one blog, you have an account on them all (there might be a temporary delay while user privileges transfer, but they’re all there). So please, by all means, comment! Kibbutz! Let me know my meager site traffic isn’t just bots! (For those playing the RSS game, I also have tentative plans to make a unified RSS feed that combines posts and comments for those that want such a thing, like me. I wish there was a way to send comments left on the Livejournal feed to the actual blog, but there doesn’t appear to be a way. I will reiterate, though: it’s best to leave a comment on the blog, not the LJ feed — the feed was created by a friend of mine, not me, and as such I don’t get notified of comments on there… also, they disappear as the posts drop off the feed.)

That’s it for announcements for now. As far as general updates, I’m doing alright. I’m skirting the very hairy edge of being broke, but I’m trying to stay optimistic that I’ll find some sort of employment before I hit that line. It’s stressing me the hell out, though, in a way that being broke in the past did not: previously when I was in these sorts of situations, I either had work lined up for the near future, or a new semester (and subsequent education stipend) coming up. Right now I have neither, and it’s nervous-making. I’ll simply need to continue to send out resumes and hope for the best (any suggested leads would be appreciated, and YES, I’m willing to relocate damn near anywhere including out of the country).

I have a lot of things to say, but I don’t really know where to begin. I’ve been incredibly frustrated nearly the entire time I’ve been living in Montpelier, and am frankly looking forward to moving out of here, even if it means temporarily moving back in with my parents. It has been extremely hard to spark any sort of motivation to DO anything, let alone retain that motivation. (To make something perfectly clear, I don’t blame my roommates for that. For lack of a better way to describe it, the vibe of the house and I simply don’t seem to get along — I’ve felt like an interloper from day one.) I’ve been really distracted, tired, and in a brain fog for most of my time here, and have consistently had to LEAVE the premises to get any work done (like my schoolwork during the semester). This is arguably the least productive or capable of being productive that I’ve felt, ever, and that’s a really disheartening feeling to have when I more than anything need to start DOING.

So, little steps. Here is my goal, please poke me to stick to it: at least one new post in each blog each week. That’s three posts a week: one personal/creative, one professional/design/gaming related, one programming. It’s worth noting that at least two of those need at least a little forethought or additional work, so just whipping something up half-assedly 15 minutes before the end of the week really is out of the question. Here’s to resolutions and goals: may these last and blossom!

Endeavors of Best Intent

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As I’m sure many of you are aware, I have a love-hate relationship with programming. Namely, I love the idea of being able to put together custom solutions to my problems, or (dare I say it) write my own games, but I find that actual process of learning to program simply drives me bonkers, and falls through my brain like water through a sieve. Every few months or so, I go through my increasingly large collection of technical and programming books, and take another stab at learning a programming language. “This time, it’ll be different. This time, it’ll stick!”

Only it doesn’t. I took Logo in 4th and 5th grade (even went to a summer camp for it), TrueBASIC my freshman year of high school, Introduction to Object Oriented Programming using C++ my sophomore year, PASCAL my junior year, and then a course in Visual BASIC at a community college after graduating high school. And that’s just formal courses. I’ve got piles of books on learning C, Objective C, Java, even PHP that I’ve either slogged through or started to, and virtually none of the practicum has stuck.

There is a rhyme to this rant, however. It comes down to learning styles. Different people learn in different ways, and some ways are simply more effective than others. Now, in my experience, the most effective method I’ve found for retaining new information is through synthesis and participation, and that’s simply not happening in rote situations like books and most of the programming classes I’ve taken. So, my idea is this:

I’m going to blog the whole damn thing. As I go through the books and exercises and programming attempts, I’m going to write about it and post it here, in a new “Code” category on the blog. It will help me think about and restate the things I’m trying to learn, as well as hopefully serving as a helpful resource for others trying to learn. I’m hoping to start this task on Monday, as that will give me a few days to get things set up on the site and otherwise (I’m installing Xcode 2.3 as we speak). My focus (unless one of you convince me otherwise) is on learning Objective-C, so if anyone has any suggestions on books, sites, articles, et cetera, please post them here or IM me. Also, those of you out there who are gurus on the subject, if you’re willing to help me through pitfalls I might run into, it would definitely be appreciated.

For reference, the books I plan to use/reference:
Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass
Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming by Mark Dalrymple and Aaron Hillegass
The Mac Xcode 2 Book by Michael Cohen and Dennis Cohen

The Moment

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I’ve been trying to write this post all morning, to no avail. I tend to get two or three paragraphs in, and then scrap the lot in the hopes of making something at least slightly more approachable. While there is certainly merit in grandiose, elaborate posts under the right circumstances, it would really defeat the point of this post, which is largely to try and describe something about me that I really want people to understand (and, hopefully, appreciate). Some people live for their kids, or their work, or the sports game, or partying, or books, or any of these things. It’s their passion, what they geek out about, it’s an essential part of who they are.

My passion is the moments. Let me explain: while I geek out about a great many things, like anime, science fiction, games, and various dribs and drabs of technology, the oft-unspoken core principle behind all of it, is the usually brief periods of harmony and deeper connection between myself, the object, and the larger world. I don’t really follow cars all that much, but I can sit and connect with a driving afficionado when talking about that perfect road, where the car handles exactly as you intend, and you get that moment of exhiliration as the world scrolls by outside the vehicle. It’s the moment that I’m geeking out about. I believe that it’s not the experience that causes us to feel a connection, but the act of experiencing it, the process of being in and sharing a particular moment of time, and being aware of that allows us to find ways of connecting to anyone we wish to.

My favorite movies and games and books and music are filled with moments, whether captured intentionally or unintentionally, moments that epitomize a raw emotional response that you are then encouraged to share. Which I think is kind of the point: the sharing of the moment is more important than the moment itself. It is being able to glance over and know that someone you care about is sharing that moment and at least in some incomplete sense, understands. Maybe it’s imagined and they see that beautiful moment and instead notice the buzzing traffic and are annoyed by a mosquito bite, and feel not one whit of harmony. But the perception of understanding is there, and in a lot of ways, that’s just as important.

I’ve come to really value the friends I’ve made through Erica; her friends have welcomed me into their circle in a real and genuine way, and it really means a lot to me. More, perhaps, than I think they probably realize. To have that feeling of connection and kindred spirits is incredibly important, and so hard to pin down and distill into something that can be understood or explicitly encouraged. Suffice it to say that in a period of my life where I have felt overwhelmingly disconnected from my past, it has been heartening to find a connection in my present and potentially my future.