Feeds:
Today
Whew! After dithering for months since I decided to do it, I finally dusted off my domain-registering know-how and reclaimed 3feet.com - at a discount, no less - and grabbed another one for the baby blog. When it's ready, I guess? If it's ever ready?
For those aggregating, there may be a few back posts. Sorta forgot how broken that gets without the domain in place.
Tuesday
Watching Bell, Book, & Candle, I'm amused by dated jokes -at least, the ones I catch. Multiple references to the Kinzie Report, and at least one so far to "unAmerican activities".
I like to use the term 'mythology' to refer, not to things that are false, but to connected systems of explanations for phenomena observed in the world. Id est, Greek mythology has stronger, better organized intelligences pulling the strings -literally pulling the sun across the sky. Christian mythology has the world created by an all-powerful being for an unstated purpose, that we are supposed to trust because He loves us. (I know that sounds cynical, but mind you, that's my own belief system.) Scientific mythology tells us that light is both a particle and a waveform, and that quantum events exist in a superposition until collapsed by being observed.
But Science has qualities rare in other mythologies. For one, it is based not on what we want to believe, or what we have been told to believe, but purely on collected observations. It has less dogma, and actively encourages throwing away older parts of the mythology if contradictory evidence is found. But most of all, it lacks a moral overlay.
Most mythologies have associated with them a moral system, after all. They seek not only to explain how the world works, but how we should interact with it. And most moral reasoning tends to be unfortunately circular - eg. we know what is bad because the gods show us by example, we know that this god is good because She does only good things, and not bad things (and we know this god is bad because...). Much of the rest is based on arbitrary decisions or assumptions about what is 'right' and 'wrong' -which is only a problem if you think arbitrarity is wrong (more circular reasoning there, I know).
Well, I was thinking this out yesterday while walking around, because I'm writing a religion generator. Not for real life -that verges well into what I would consider immoral, don'tcha know- but for videogames. Specifically for Teacup & Co, more generally for SNARLS, but in theory accessible to anyone who wants to use it. So what makes a religion? Mythology plus morality. BAM.
Nothing says thinking like overthinking.
Thursday, Thirteenth Week?
"If we were doing the dishes, and we couldn't find the nipple rings, that would be a catastrophe." -Claire, 10/23/11
In theory, spent empty time today at the school working on the Baby Blog; this was derailed by an exploration of top-level domains. In theory, I'm working on it right now; but I got distracted by an error I found in the local version of Smallhouse, and wanted to make sure the online version was working as expected. And while I was here...
It's odd. I can't really be sure of why I stopped writing my usual stream of introspective drivel here. There are a number of factors: Spending more time with Claire, developing a strong external focus, having someone with which to discuss introspective musings and get useful and meaningful feedback in real time; working more, programming projects, having less time for web tinkering and self-fascination; the rise of social media as a means of interpersonal communication and web presence, blogging having gone from an unpopular antisocial wave of the future to a popular ubiquitous wave of the present to an unpopular outmoded wave of the past. I'm sure being poor enough that I couldn't make hosting payments for a year, and the break in continuity that resulted, were also significant factors.
Whatever the reason, I feel like I've lost the knack of it. I know that anyone reading this can go back through the archives a bit and see that my writing (Do you still call it writing if it's blogging?) was never the stuff of greatness, but it usually felt right while I was typing it. Now I feel more artificial, stilted. I guess my options are to get back in the saddle and crank until it feels natural, or to let the past be the past. After all, I'm a changed man. I've got a family that depends on me, real adult situations all up in my grille. But it's not like I've stopped thinking that writing is a good idea. I'm probably not going to try to throw the Milleverbium into Plan I - its track record is frankly too terrible, and I don't want to weight down a fairly successful endeavor - but the appeal of writing a thousand words every day cannot be denied.
How mature is it to retain a reckless ambition?
And speaking of crazy writing, a Trib article today used the word 'Hogwartian' to refer to the U of C campus. Kids these days.
Tuesday, Tenth Week, Fall Quarter
"I used to go an entire year in Texas without wearing pants." -Cesar, 5/20/11
Riding home from work, thinking about how to implement randomized religions, considering plausibility of a moddable (and randomizable) religion module. This would be used for Teacup in its various forms, of course, but I wonder if anyone else would get some play out of it? Or what else I could use it for?
I was going to describe it here so I don't forget it, but Claire is hitting me in the leg because she wants her laptop back so she can watch Gossip Girl.
Sunday, third week of break
Insomnia. But on the plus side, Step Up 3 is fantastic, if a little thin on the plot and a little heavy on the greenscreen and framesplicing. I really regret not seeing it in 3D, in the theatre. Claire promised to take me, but...
Ugh. Insomnia. It's worse when you're married, because you can't just turn a light on and read.
Wednesday, Fifth Week
Two thirds -619 out of 960- of the unread e-mails in my inbox are labeled as Scav-related. Correction: Two thirds of e-mail threads are Scav-related. If we count individual messages, I'm sure it is at 90 percent. This is ridiculous.
Of course, I'm rather more distracted by the two-year anniversary of meeting my wife.
Sunday
I've finally recovered to a point where I can work a shift at Haymarket, as long as I'm on painkillers and antacids. And it's a good thing, too, because I was sick of sitting around, and starting to get anxious about money. I was even getting tired of video games, despite recent version releases from Bay12 and Mojang.
But now I'm back on the horse. The Herakleophorbia horse. I've finished the libtcod tutorial and begun scrapping the tutorial code (which was an unsightly mess) and adding my own. I'm liking libtcod, and I think I'll make my own library on top of it.
Because I'm assuming I'll be writing more roguelikes after this.
Because I'm a dork like that. Also, game programming is my creative outlet.