Those who are most loyal to me may recall the project I was working on forever ago: A computer game called Warlords of Weldrovisk. Because I have a lot of productive things to be doing at the moment, my brain wondered into nostalgic reflection upon what I did wrong and why I couldn't quite make the game scale. I think the biggest reason was that I had too many playable factions. I couldn&#. . . [more]. . .

Over this past week, I've played a lot of Mario Kart DS. A lot of it. I also got plenty of chances to stress out about my job and the work I wasn't doing. I suppose the Canadians on the Rubber Room are right: I do suck at vacations. Whenever I played Kart -- as well as a great variety of other racing games -- it always seemed to me like whichever racer was in the lead was always in t. . . [more]. . .

Lots a folks complained about how monstrously long that gWave was. I confess: Though I was enamored with the content, the presentation had a lot of empty babble in it that could'a been not-there. Thankfully, I was able to find this abridged version that cuts out a lot of dead time... a bit awkward to listen too but you get the general gist of it: The long/short of it is this: E-Mail and ins. . . [more]. . .

"Zenith on deck!" The chatter of crewmen and clatter of keyboards immediately stopped at the call. The elliptical room echoed a synchronous and succinct stomping of boots hitting the deck, their heels snapping together, as their wearers stood firmly at attention. A grizzled, tall man stepped into the room and surveyed the array of computer consoles and personnel that dotted the curvature of the. . . [more]. . .

I sit here in my own little bubble, the moderate-sized fish in the little pond and think to myself: "Yeah, I can develop web apps." No I can't. I can't even come close. My greatest, most glamorous successes are but spittle compared to the sorts of things Gewguhl trawls out in their sleep. I am a poor, pathetic little man with a clumsy PHP blog and a few clients to his belt. I am noth. . . [more]. . .

It should be illegal to pay children to use Dreamweaver. Each passing day, I run into more and more companies who hired some high school kid to build them a web site. He uses Dreamweaver to kludge some piece of crap together. When the natural limitations of his tools and intelligence are reached, he surreptitiously abandons them, taking his slightly-better-than-minimum-wage paychecks and leav. . . [more]. . .

Seriously, I'm a trekkie. Always have been. I watched Kirk smash the snot outta Aliens before I even knew how to ride a bike. Every week of my childhood was spent in passionate anticipation of the next episode of "Picard orders Data to outwit another plot device." The Star Trek series inevitably defined my childhood. Most other shows I ever bothered watching would be rated in their appr. . . [more]. . .

So last night, I got FWD'd an e-mail conversation from a prospective client that went a little something like this: "The web site is broken." "Works fine for me." "This thing doesn't work right here." "Yeah but I can't duplicate that behavior on the development system." "Well it's happening on the LIVE system." "It's a configuration problem." "I configured it exactly lik. . . [more]. . .

Two players play Yellow or "Defending Team." One player plays Black or "Attacking Team." If "Attacking Team" sinks the ball, that player gets a point. If "Defending Team" sinks the ball, a "Rotation" occurs where all players rotate around the table clockwise: Player on the black bars becomes the Yellow forward. Player who was on Yellow forward becomes Yellow Goalie. Player who was on Yellow. . . [more]. . .

It was too clever a headline for me not to notice and the article is at least a little interesting. It's perhaps inevitable for me - a career nerd whose entire existence is awash in aspects of gaming - that an interest in JG Ballard's prophetic, psychological fiction would feed into how I thought about my chosen subject. The same seems true of anyone who reads the author with any kind of a. . . [more]. . .