50 Games in 50 Weeks, Complete
In July of last year, I took stock of myself as a gamer. I wanted to understand games better, and eventually design games. I realized that I suffered from a deficiency: I could play a few games well, but I knew only a few of them. I decided to fix this by setting myself an impossible-sounding challenge: 50 Games in 50 Weeks. I would play 50 games that I had never played before, all within the next 50 weeks. Last […]
Doc
In an attempt to counteract the emo tendency of my previous posts, time for some content. I’ve been in a mood for documentaries. We live in a golden age for them, and here’s what I’ve watched recently: Legendary Sin Cities — A CNBC retrospective on the three infamous “cities of sin” of the 1920’s and 1930’s: Paris, Berlin, and Shanghai. Fortunately, the filmmakers take pains to explain the socio-economic forces that brought in all the prostitues and drugs, as well as the forces that ended those […]
Points
As I mentioned in my last post, I feel lost. Not depressed; just unmoored. So I’ve been thinking about how I want to spend my time. That’s a clichéd phrases and an important thought. How do I actually spend my time? What do I actually do every night? I work on lots of little things. I keep up with Google+ and email. I chat on IRC. That’s not how I want to live my life. Unfortunately, I don’t know how […]
No More
Good gravy, I’m tired. I’m tired of outrage. I’m tired of walls. I’m tired of anger. I’m tired of working late into the night on yet another project. Because everybody’s busy. So what are you working on? I’m tired of feeling tired. This exhaustion is thanks to a wonderful Monday night with historicula (not in that sense!). We saw Snow White and the Huntsman, which lived down to its […]
Advice Taken
It’s 1:00am. I’m writing a distressing number of these posts after midnight. A few days ago, my Google+ stream gave me this video of photographer Scott Kelby. [iframe_loader width=”500″ height=”300″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/FpHMuK7Htic” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen] In the video, he exhorts a room full of photographers to understand the basics of photograph composition. He spends no time on lenses or cameras; he explains concepts like the Rule of Thirds and filling the frame, then walks through […]
I have Walked the Deserts with Aurens
One advantage of a client with stringent child care requirements: she leaves at 4:30pm, so we’re done, thank you. I drove from the client site back to my hotel along highways that have become familiar over the past few days. I wonder how comfortable I’ll be driving around foreign cities a few months from now when I’ll be doing this alone. The weather certainly won’t be this […]
The Dark Hotel Room
I’m sitting up in a hotel bed at two o’clock in the morning. The room is dark. The hotel’s silent. This would be a good start to a Stephen King novel. And books are on my mind. I recently posted this photo of my (physical) to-readpile on Google+: In contemplating that mountain of wood pulp and ideas, I came to a realization: I should be smarter about my reading. What would be wisest to read? That question bounced around my head for a few days. I quickly […]
The Problem with Blogging
I love having a personal blog. Yet it sits in an awkward place, like the new boyfriend at the dinner table. It’s not a cathartic private journal that records one’s angers and fears. Neither is a blog about anything other than the self. I’m too much of a Renaissance Man to give my personal blog a single topic like politics or cooking. As such, this has become a wildly inconsistent record of my interests and thoughts. On one hand, […]