So. I watched Fight Club Saturday night.

I think it’s one of the best films ever made. A classic. And not because I agree with it, though agreeing with it isn’t really the point, I think.

One of the things I appreciated about it was that it’s a black comedy. It’s not a serious moral fable. It has its serious side, of course, as all good comedy does. But, first and foremost, it’s a funny flick. That keeps the movie from becoming self-righteous.

I also appreciated that it contains some real, serious philosophy. And much of it is stated, right there, on the screen. Tyler says, “Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives. We were raised on television to believe that we’d all be millionares, movie gods, rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re starting to figure that out. And it’s making us pissed off.”

Some of it is a little more subtle. After threatening to kill a man unless he pursues his life’s dream, and the man gurgles agreement then runs off, Tyler murmurs, “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.” It’s a glimpse into Tyler’s mind. This is why he does all these crazy things; not for the thrill, but because he wants to make all men truly live.

It reminds me of the Bene Gesserit idea of humanity in Dune, that not every homo sapiens really deserves to be called a human being. Many people live humdrum lives, never reaching, never pursuing, never fulfilling their potential. Humans not only can reach for the heavens, they should. That’s part of what makes us human, that creative impulse to build greatness where possible.

That’s much of the philosophy behind Fight Club. Are you the man you want to be? Well, why not? What’s stopping you?

It’s also a fascinating perspective. The whole film, practically, is one man’s perspective. Some of that perspective is warped and wrong. Some is so right it hurts. It’s a full, three-dimensional perspective on life, and it’s a privilege to hold it up to the light and consider all its facets.

Great film.

Not much to write about this week. Had a good weekend; the major event was that I watched Fight Club for the first time, which I’m not willing to write about just yet.

On a completely different subject, Lee Sheldon writes on the MUD-DEV mailing list, about using lots of explicit numbers (like a ”+3 sword”) in online games:

It always amazes me that when we provide the explicit numbers, wethen seem sad that players are grinding instead of enjoying all theother things our worlds provide. It’s mainly because the numbers area tangible measurement whereas socializers are given “tools,”explorers are given blank maps, role players are given “contexts”(if they’re lucky) etc. However much we might want to boast thatsome games are not only about leveling, these other activities arestill red-haired stepchildren because there are no tangiblemeasureable rewards the games track as voraciously as they do combator crafting experience. Our punishment for not balancing measurement systemsis not only a slap in the face of immersion, but discontent amongplayers who max out and then are told that wasn’t how they weresupposed to play the game. Why didn’t they stop to smell the rosesalong the way? Because they got no experience for it.

Fascinating thought. I definitely agree. In the vast majority of massively-multiplayer online RPGs; everything you do centers around combat. All the most visible goals are achieved by killing monsters. No wonder players focus on it so much.

Well, my life finally seems to be settling down. Every morning this week, I arrived at work closer to my regular time of 9:00, and this morning I arrived two minutes before nine. Hooray! I can sleep eight hours now.

My evenings are becoming more productive, too. I’ve begun scheduling my off-hours, which works wonders for my productivity. You’d think this turn my off-hours into drudgery, but the opposite is true: I’m excited and charged by the number of things I accomplish.

I’ve also begun revising The Plan, which is a set of (relatively) long-term goals I set for myself about a year and a half ago. The current Plan is, by July of 2004:

• Save $10,000.
• Be debt-free.
• Be making money–or well on my way to making money–in the following areas: programming, writing, animating, and composing music.

I’ve already accomplished the middle goal. The first goal was devised when my expenses were much lower than they are today, so I’m halving that number (which will still be rather tough).

That final goal is too vague. So, my new Plan is as follows:

• Save $5,000
• Have several hundred dollars in STUN Software and Otherspace Productions bank accounts.
• Be writing a story every month, and have all stories in circulation.
• Have several quality short animations on Otherspace Productions, made my real artists.
• Be composing one (small) piece of music every month.

We’ll see how I’m doing in nine months.

In other news…read this. It has more imagery and power than everything I’ve written in the past year, combined.

Test-Driven Programming

So. Let’s say you want to write a program.

First, let’s assume you know what you want to write, and you’ve broken the intended program down into small pieces of functionality. Index cards work well for this; you can write a description of each bit of functionality on an index card.

So. You have a specific bit of code to write. The natural urge is to dive right in and begin coding it.

But what if you could build a testing framework, that simplifies the code that you have to write? Hmmm. “Testing framework” sounds awfully heavy-handed; I mean a little set of tests. Just something that can give you a thumbs-up when the code works.

Why would you want to do this? You know when it’s finished, right? Well, do you? Have you ever forgotten to implement some aspect of the code?

Also, how do you know if everything else works with this new bit of code? Wouldn’t it be nice if you had tests that would tell you?

Even better, wouldn’t it be nice if those tests were completely automated? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tests every piece of functionality in your entire application with a few keystrokes? I do.

So, let’s do that. Make up a name for the function/subroutine/method/whatever you’re about to write. Create a little program that calls that function, sends it some input, and tests its output.

Run your test. Golly, it doesn’t work! Better write that function. As you develop, keep running your test, to see what works. When the test runs without failing, hey cool! You’re done.

Now, here’s where things get fun. Do the same for the next function you write, but put those tests in the same test program. In other words, run all your tests every time.

Imagine. Before you know it, you’ll have a test suite that covers every piece of your system.

Writing Thoughts

Just uploaded my latest writing exercise, The Last Train. Warning: it’s not very good; it’s very much an exercise. But it sets a mood nicely, in my opinion.

Oooh. I want Joel’s office. I love the diagonal walls.

I had a great time with my parents last night, watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The film was much more enjoyable than I expected it to be; it was a great reunion with the characters, and a darned good story. Emma Watson (Hermione) did a surpassingly excellent job, too; her emotion when explaining the term “Mudblood” was incredibly subtle. And Kenneth Brannagh was perfect, of course.

I wrote a bit of a short story Monday night. The plot itself…well, isn’t. There’s really no plot. It grew out of a writing exercise, which called me to copy down the last line from a book, and start a story with it. It ended up being about an old man who’s shutting down a train station for the last time.

I’m proud of it. Not because it’s a great story; it’s not. But I think I managed to capture a mood, which is a difficult thing to catch. Much of my writing lacks a strong mood, so I feel proud of myself for achieving it. I’ll post the story the next time I get a chance to hook up my laptop to the ’net, which probably won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest.

Dang. I’d really like to get ahead on this journal.

My regular blogs are sparse on new text today, so I don’t have much to write about there. I have a few other things in the works, but haven’t had a chance to upload them yet.

I’m doing surprisingly well, considering it’s a Tuesday. We had a relaxing Monday Group last night, just three of us talking about creative power. How we see it in our lives. How it’s touched us.

Five days later, and we’re still recovering from Isabel; one major thoroughfare was flooded today. Well, that was probably caused by last night’s downpour, rain rain rain. It’s like the weather wants to get in one good drenching before autumn begins.

And it’s autumn! First day of autumn. How exciting.

…Blah. This is going nowhere. I think I’ll quit before this gets any more boring.

Light, I’m tired.

I need to start cordoning off my weekends. I was on my feet practically all weekend, and that’s just plain not healthy. It keeps me from decompressing after the work-week, so that I’m a zombie the next week.

Like I am today.

The first night of AWANA went well. It’s amazing how good I feel when in AWANA; I just know what I’m doing and can really lead and help everyone to have a great time. It’s like I fit there, in some strange and spiritual way. You know how you’ll work some place, and there’s one guy who just fits, who looks like he was born for his job, and does it well, and you can’t imagine the place without him? I feel like that guy at AWANA.

Forgot to mention: I watched the first six episodes of Texhnolyze (the latest series from the makers of serial experiments lain) last week. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Certainly much more violent than their past work. I’m not quite sure what I think of it, much like lain makes very little real sense until you watch it all the way through. So far, Texhnolyze is certainly a fascinating SF tale.

Other news. Hmmm. I’ve assembled a list of features to implement for the next prototype of Contract Tycoon, so hopefully I can begin working on it with Sasha soon.

I’m still contemplating building that MMORPG; I’ve received some great ideas from people. If I do implement it, I need some sort of access method. I can’t imagine writing a full graphical client, as I don’t have the experience in either Windows or MacOS. Perhaps make it a text-based MUD to begin with?

Ahhh.. I spent a good hour this morning snapping photos in the crawling mist, and this is the result. Lovely.

I finally regained my power at 5:00 a.m. this morning, after a day and a half without power. No fun.

Isabel has raged through, uprooting trees and spraying brush all over the roads in her fury. As I drove into work this morning, I noticed that a surprising amount of the area has power — about every other traffic light was working normally. Though it was odd to pass through one dead light, then through a working one, then through another dead one.

And yes, I did go to work this morning; we were notified that we’d have to take vacation time if we didn’t come in. I’m still a bit angry about this. They expect us to work through a hurricane. How dehumanizing.

And those arguments about finances – “But they couldn’t afford to…” – are bull. You can afford it. You can make yourself afford it. We’ve got water five feet above the streets in some places, and this company’s decision makers can’t show the compassion to let people not come in? You know how much a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal costs? D’you know how many companies placed full-page ads in the WSJ after the 9/11 attacks, expressing their sympathy?

Anyvay. My power went out early last evening, so I spent most of the night talking to Saalon and reading Moby Dick. I’m about twenty pages from the end of that novel, and it remains quite unusual. I can’t wait to finish it and write up a review.

Saalon and I chatted mostly about online worlds, and their potential. We agreed that most MMORPGs focus too much on combat, where the essential resource of the game is monsters. In order to do anything, you have to kill monsters to build up your character. We talked about ways of addressing that, of making a game where the focus is on interaction with the world rather than killing monsters. Interesting. I’ve written up about half a page of notes on one possible game that would address this.

Imagine a game set on a verdant, newly-discovered island. You are a settler who is dropped off a boat onto this island.

The island is divided into squares, where each square is about 15 feet wide, and has a set of attributes: soil type, height, percentage of rocks, etc. Each square can contain bushes, trees, or a building.

The player can harvest certain materials from soil: clay, iron, or sand. Players can harvest wood from trees, and fruit from bushes. As material is harvested from soil, the soil slowly reverts to a ”neutral” state, but you’d have to harvest a lot form a given chunk of soil to deplete it of that material.

Wood can be used to make a fire, which can be used to forge iron into various implements, including knives. Knives can be used to whittle wood.

Every week, a ship stops by the island, drops off supplies, and will buy stuff from the players. Moreover, every week the ship posts a list of items that it will pay top dollar for — difficult-to-construct items that might require the cooperation of many players.

Each island is a server, of course, so the game would have multiple servers. All the islands are ranked by the value of the goods they export. You want your island to be #1.

Thoughts?

Brennen was kind enough to point out that I actually got something done. It made me think about getting things done.

It’s amazing, really, how rarely I do get things done. I think about it. I imagine myself having done it. And if I let it sit there for long enough, the novelty wears off and then I never actually do it. So nobody else can experience it, and it’s never really done. It’s just a neat idea. And neat ideas are about as common as dirt.

The problem with neat ideas is that they don’t really change anything, not until they’re put into action. You have to do things to really have an impact.

So, I’m becoming progressively less enamored with ideas in and of themselves. Ideas are important, but they must be implemented.

(Note that I’m not talking about changes in perspective, which can change how you view the world. Those are important because they only exist as ideas.)

Heh. Nothing earth-shatteringly revolutionary in anything here, but then truth rarely is.