Thursday, June 30, 2005
Watched recently: The last half of Paranoia Agent, a psychological thriller anime series. Absolutely brilliant. Human, thought-provoking, dramatic, funny at times. Wow. Wheels on Meals, a Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung/Yuen Baio film. A great, classic Chan film. More of Gundam Seed Destiny, which has gone from fun fanfic to powerful drama in the space of four episodes. I just finished episode eight, in which the world tilts towards war (again). I’m […]
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
If you ever plan on baking with Ghirardelli chocolate, you might want to know that Ghirardelli baking chocolate chips are delicious, and quite useless in baking. They have a melting point of about 80 degrees, so that once you start baking your cookies or what-have-you, the chips will remain melted for the next 29 hours. Oh, and by “double chocolate” Ghirardelli really means “dark chocolate.” Just thought […]
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Tuesday night, I was invited to attend the high school graduation of two friends of mine. The ceremony was traditional in every way, from Pomp and Circumstance to the throwing of the hats. The only time I was really intrigued was during an amazing speech by a graduating senior, in which he pointed out that these students started their high school experience a few days before 9/11. He was a great speaker. Tuesday night dropped […]
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
My desire for a stable routine has become even stronger at work. After weeks of comparatively little work, this week my to-do list has multiplied four-fold. There are sudden fires everywhere—one immediately resolvable thanks to some work I helped push through recently—and I have to keep on top of it. Thank goodness for GTD. I actually am on top of all my tasks, to a degree that sometimes amazes me. I spent yesterday playing catch-up at home, […]
Monday, June 20, 2005
“Nowhere along the way does anyone emphasize the importance of social, interpersonal, and emotional skills in determining our success in professional life. Then the day arrives when we make a terrifying discovery: The world is filled with people.” — Patrick J. McKenna and David H. Maister in First Among Equals
Friday, June 17, 2005
And suddenly, it’s beautiful. After a week of rather punishing heat by June’s standards—highs in the upper 90’s—it’s now comfortable and breezy, occasional clouds drifting lazily across the baby blue sky. I’m now extra grateful for the hour I spent in the garden yesterday evening, trimming lawn edges and generally cleaning up. I’m now enjoying it, as I recline on the front window seat and glance out at the lawn. It’s been a great week at work; I helped […]
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
I’ve entered a new phase in my understanding of the Getting Things Done system. For the past few weeks, I’ve been dumping everything into my system. If I notice something I want to buy, I add it to my “To Buy” list. If I think of something I’d like to do, I add it to one of my lists. As a result, when I have free time, I can’t scour my brain for something to do. All my projects are out of my head, in my system. My brain literally […]
Monday, June 6, 2005
Last month, I spent several hours going through a rather frustrating process: I changed all my passwords on all my computers and websites. I now do this every three months. This was prompted mainly from my webserver, which has been hacked twice in the past couple of years. I know it’s important to change passwords occasionally, but I never bothered to until I lost data on hacked websites. There’s an unexpected benefit to this: I’ll […]
Saturday, June 4, 2005
Note there’s more VR story. I’ve also uploaded all of the VR story so far to the VR story section of my writing website. The VR story is getting difficult to write. I wanted it to be a story I could just write without worrying about an intricate plot; nevertheless, a plot has evolved. And […]
Friday, June 3, 2005
I’m cleaning out some old webpage on this site, and instead of deleting them or making them individual pages, I thought I’d post them here for posterity. And here’s one now! Dramatic Theory and Video Games Dramatic theory is hard to research. There seems to be very little material readily available. As a result, distilling dramatic theory down to a single reed-thin theorem is difficult. I’m going to try anyway. […]