State of the Michael, Circa Now
AT THE TOP OF THE HOUR
General status level: good. Also, Happy Birthday to anyone who is celebrating today. With ~7 billion people in the world, many of you probably are.
FAMILY
We’ve had our rough collie, Penny, for over 2 months now. We haven’t taken her back this time, so things are going well, I guess. The lowest moment so far, besides the (still present) anxiety of moving from crating her every night to sleeping in our room, was when we met with an animal behaviorist. Penny is still not crazy about going outside and can be anywhere from concerning to exasperating depending on our current mental state. A neighbor recommended someone to us and we finally took her up on the suggestion.
At the end of a 2+ hour consultation, the behaviorist seemed quite worried and gave us a few options:
- Get a more confident dog to act as a “service dog” for Penny, since she seems to follow other dogs for leadership when outside more than she follows us
- Allow the behaviorist to take her to her ranch and do intensive flooding training, so as to continuously expose her to new environments, in the hopes that she’ll become less scared
- Get rid of her :(
Obviously, she hesitantly brought up the last option, as it’s the most emotional. Still, the fact that she thought the training needed to “fix” our dog was probably outside our grasp due to our work/lifestyle was pretty sobering.
It’s been almost two weeks since our meeting with her and we’ve only decided on nixing 1 and 3. We’ve vacillated on 2 the whole time. Sure, it will probably help her, but it’s a big commitment, both emotionally and financially. And when she returns we’d have special training we’d need to do and get her other handlers (parents, dogsitters) to follow. It’s a lot to take in for someone who’s never had a dog before!
In the last week, however, I’ve walked her home from a dog park, and walked her to a major shopping center and back, with only sporadic trouble (pulling, spooking, etc.). In other words, with a little confidence in myself to be the leader and control her better, things are looking up. She’s still not exactly happy to be outside and I’m sure intensive training would help alleviate it, but I feel like by just being confident with her she mirrors my energy.
In other words, we haven’t made any decision on what we’re going to do, but we’ll both keep trying for now. Having a dog around the house is still somewhat weird, in that this “presence” is constantly around, being somewhat unpredictable. Everyday is a little better, but it’s hard to say whether I’ll ever be 100% fine with it.
READING
I read the Steve Jobs biography and enjoyed it. The criticism that it doesn’t always paint an in-depth picture of Jobs, but instead merely reports it, is somewhat valid. You see the good and the bad of Steve, but you never really know why. Even when pressed, he doesn’t articulate why he can be such an asshole, or why he felt that was the only way to get people to do great things. He controlled through fear instead of love, I guess. It was a great History of Apple at the very least.
Robyn started reading the Ender’s Game series at my behest and apparently loves it! This is surprising, but awesome. I got her all of the initial quartology for our anniversary, so she should be good for awhile.
ANNIVERSARY
Speaking of which, Robyn and I celebrated 2 years happily married last Monday. For lunch, we went to the Seaside forum, just as planned. We went to the new cafe on the second floor, which was just an empty construction hazard when we got married there. Both of us had very interesting sandwiches, she a butternut squash pannini, and I a tuna melt with red onions and carrots in the mix. For dinner, we hit up the 94th Aero Squadron, mainly because the 5 restaurants we tried before it were all closed on Monday evening (wtf?!). We had a nice, low-key meal while watching some ducks near the airport waddle around. I love her very much and am so glad to spend my life with her.
GAMING
The last major game I played and finished was Dead Island, a really engaging and visceral zombie eviscerating simulation that takes place on an infested land mass surrounded by water. I actually got really sick (food poisoning or flu, not sure) over the holidays and was playing it at the same time, making it all the more real. I did not eat anyone’s brain, however.
Long-form gaming is in the guise of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I waited a while for this to get cheap, but it’s worth full price. The MGS-style gameplay is fun and it’s rad to sneak around enemy encampments and try not to rambo it up. It’s a little choppy on my 2011 MBP, which detracts from the flow a bit, but still doable. Short-form gaming (the chaser, as it were) is Dustforce. Think Super Meat Boy, but with less emphasis on barely beating the level and instead more emphasis on beating the level with style. It’s a bit on the punishing side of the difficulty scale because it forces you to get reaaaally good at a few initial levels before opening up subsequent ones, but the gameplay (with a controller) is fun and almost Sonic or Tony Hawk in nature with its never-ending (if you’re good) combo mechanic.
On the iOS front, Hero Academy is devouring my soul. Take Dungeon Defender’s crystal guarding and add in a chess-like tactical game mechanic and you’ve got something I’m constantly checking on my phone. I’m so addicted I’ve got about 10 games going right now, half or more with random strangers. Asynchronous multiplayer on a portable device is perfect for my gaming style.
As far as board gaming goes, my friend Jawn came down from NorCal for a weekend and brought several from his ever-burgeoning collection. The main event was surely Eclipse, an epic space war. It took us about ~5 hours to get through it, which was about 1 hour per person, plus an hour of explanation. Games like this are experiences for me, meaning it’s fun to do once, but the thought of spending so much time on one game again feels kinda rough. Any game that complicated and with a million pieces to keep track of feels like it would work better as a video game. Still, hanging out with friends is paramount, so I’ll do it again if it comes up.
PROGRAMMING
The desire to do any programming that isn’t required by work is currently dead, just like it’s been for a while now. I have no idea when it will come back.
MUSICAL
December and January have not been productive, compositionally or recordingly. To be honest, having a puppy around takes up a lot of my time and mental space, leaving little for musical ambition. Penny seems pretty sensitive to music/sound and the one time I played guitar she actually growled and barked at me! Maybe she can get more comfortable if I play more, but I haven’t been in the mood to test the waters. I believe I’m going to make a more concerted effort in February (at least on the weekends) to try and get her used to it, but that remains to be seen.
One way or another, I’m going to be releasing the soundtrack to the indie game I scored last year in March 2012. I need to polish some stuff before saying it’s “done”, but for the most part it’s pretty solid (in my mind, at least). Look for it for cheap on Bandcamp around about then.
FOR THE ROAD
I began a massive decluttering of stuff in the music room downstairs recently. There’s junk all over the place as I reorganize and rid myself of things I’ve been keeping and moving from place to place for no real reason besides packratdom. How many black, grounded power cables does one person really need, anyway? And yet, it’s hard to just throw something away when I could put it in a container, all nicely zip-tied up. This is the disease, people. Learn to fight it! Keep only what you need, not what you think you’ll need some day in the year 6545 when you’re DEAD.
Zoetic Update: New Tracklist
I keep toying with some of the track names on my upcoming instrumental rock album Zoetic. Some names just seem right from the get go and others never quite seem right, changing a lot in the process as I listen and work on them. All-instrumental albums are like that: fluid until the time I call it “done”.
The current list is as so:
On the whole, it’s changed significantly since last time. A few songs got name changes and a few even got lopped right off. They didn’t actually get removed, but instead repurposed, something I do quite a lot. Other projects come up that need inspiration, or a song doesn’t work within the overall context of the album, so it gets stripped off as a single. When you write music so haphazardly, these kinds of things will happen.
A nice solid ten tunes for one album always feels nice, even if one of them is kind of a cutesy “throwaway”. I still enjoy listening to the rough drafts, even after repeated listenings, which means that Zoetic is pretty solid. Jamming a couple of them with friends worked out well, so I think I got something good here. There’s always parts here and there that I need to improve, which I will…eventually. Mixing and mastering is a pain for me, too. I hope to get it polished off to a tasteful shimmer before mid-March.
The Last Few Weeks, Visually
Blogging with words doesn’t come as naturally to me anymore. I feel that the community once engendered by LiveJournal, of which I was a proud member and contributor for many years at one time, does not exist on the Open Internet. We are scattered all over the place, micro-bloggingly and macro-bloggingly. Comments are few and far between and there’s no cohesiveness to the whole thing.
The hardest thing is just letting go and blogging for the sake of blogging. When I know there’s a very small chance I will get any direct feedback, my mind wanders and my focus wanes. I imagine myself speaking into a dark, empty cave, hearing only myself and the boredom and tedium of my thoughts.
For now, I will simply post some pictures that both sum up and don’t sum up at all the last few weeks, which encompassed my birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s.
Seeing Everything Again For the First Time
Taking care of a puppy is not the same as taking care of a human baby. The level of responsibility is very different. However, both activities really make you rethink and reevaluate things.
Our collie, Penny, sees and reacts to the world in a different way than we do. Right now, she’s very skittish when outside. Outside has a bunch of unknown variables. Keeping her to a simple routine when we go on our walks, taking her along the same route to the same places, helps to keep her calm (relatively), but is no guarantee. Planes, cars, bikes, people, and other dogs are just some of the things she tends to tense up around.
When she’s calm, she walks at a constant pace, stopping sporadically to sniff and look around. When she’s in panic mode, triggered by something strange she can’t quite process, she walks much faster, tugging on the leash, heading back to our house. She won’t make eye contact and she’s not interested in treats or petting.
It all takes you back to being young and new to the world. There is so much stuff going on at all times, guys! In life, it seems like we just grow better and better at filtering out what we’re not focused on. Penny, on the other hand, does not seem to currently possess that ability. It takes little to freak her out, much like someone who is simply fearful of the unknown. It can be frustrating for her owners who are not flinching at every horn honk or vent noise.
Hopefully, this is a growing pain and she’ll be less terrified of the world outside our home some day soon :-)
Meet Penny (Again)
Penny, asleep on our living room floor
Sundays are the day for a new beginning.
***
You may remember that we acquired a pooch almost 3 months ago. A 3 month-old, female, rough sable collie that we named Penny. You may also remember that after 2.5 days of absolute meltdown, we took her back to her original owner.
Sigh.
Not our proudest moment, for sure. A combination of lack of experience and anxious overwhelmingness drove us to a place not far outside of madness. We tried to take on a huge responsibility all by ourselves with oversensitive brains and failed hard. Our mind paralysis was absolute.
I remember the night before we were going to get back into the car and take this most likely frightened little baby back to her original home. I tried to take her on a walk to a grassy area in the middle of several rows of houses in our housing complex. She didn’t like leashes and would only walk and follow me without one, so after much frustration I gave up on restraining her and just hoped she wouldn’t run away. She didn’t.
She eventually followed me to the grassy area and we sat down on a bench in the middle. I quickly learned just how many other dogs existed in our neighborhood as I was soon surrounded by people and their pets. I introduced myself to a bunch of people I’d never met before, despite living there for 15 months. I met a bunch of dogs of all kinds. Penny didn’t bark, but she was definitely skittish and scared. I felt really popular. That popularity was tainted and short-lived, though. I couldn’t tell anyone that they would most likely never see Penny again. The moment was both blessed and cursed.
After returning home from Arizona a second time in a week the release of tension was immediate. Breathing became less labored and anxiety was extinguished. We both felt much better for weeks afterward. Perhaps we weren’t dog people, and it was better to realize this sooner than later. Being called by an obedience center to tell us we missed our first class stung, but it was better than the alternative.
However, a different feeling crept in once a month or so went by. The short-term relief was replaced by a marked decrease in Robyn’s confidence to take care of a dependent, pet or kid. We’ve talked about kids many, many times, and we both vacillate heavily on when to pursue them. The longer we wait, the more selfish we get. Getting a dog seemed like a good “practice” baby, except we failed miserably at that. How could we handle an actual kid that you can’t (without some truly disastrous consequences) take back?
Time went on and that feeling grew stronger in Robyn and even started to seep into me. I didn’t really want a dog, but I also didn’t want to feel like having a kid was this insurmountable obstacle. The bad thing was that the absence of Penny, when I really stopped to think about it, felt exactly like that. Lots of people have dogs and lots of people have kids, many in our own neighborhood, and yet we couldn’t seem to handle it. What was wrong with us? Was it too late to change our habits and behaviors? Were we just too selfish and set in our ways? Just imagining the dog being around set off anxiety triggers. And yet, there were so many good aspects of having a dog: going on walks, taking her to work, getting bagels in the morning, playing fetch, meeting people, etc. The reality of the times when that wasn’t what you were doing continued to cast a pall of panic over everything, however.
Left to my own devices, I would probably not do anything about it and just embrace bachelorhood. Robyn, on the other hand, hungered to get over this feeling, and finally decided to do something about it. I remained hesitant, but supportive.
Here we go again.
***
Peter the Anteater vs. Penny the Pant...Many?
About three months and a week after that fateful August weekend, we’re back where we were, except…things are different. For one, Penny is still with us. As I sit and write this she is safe in her crate at home, most likely sleeping. We’ve got a dogsitter coming by in the middle of the day to take her out so she can stretch, go to the bathroom, and play a little. We’ve got an appointment to get her spayed at the end of the week. She likes, and goes manually to, her crate, which we have situated next to the TV in the living room. She doesn’t bark much and she doesn’t chew on too many things. She’s (almost) potty-trained. She seems happy and content when inside our house.
She’s fairly petrified of everything outside, however :-\ We’re working on that.
Overall, this time around has been much, much better than last time. What’s different? This time we exploitedused family. Namely, Robyn’s parents, my mom, and Robyn’s brother and his girlfriend. Since it was Thanksgiving last week, Robyn decided it would be a good time to try again, as having a few extra people around to distract and entertain her was paramount to getting through the first few days. She drove out to Arizona with her parents, put Penny in the back of our Outback, and drove back to Anaheim with her. I used the days that she was in California, but not yet at our home, to collect my thoughts and do the kind of things I like to do when alone. It was kind of a bachelor party for one, but it was greatly needed. This little independent life, soon to be wandering around, not being able to communicate with us directly, requiring training (on both of our parts)…it’s a lot to add to one’s life when you’re not used to it. When they finally came down to our house the following Tuesday, I was anxious. You’re never quite ready for a change like this.
As can be seen by the picture above, she’s grown quite a bit. She acts pretty much like we remember her, but she’s much better about being on a leash, and going up and down our stairs. She won’t go down them as readily as she’ll go up them, but with a little nudge we can usually get her to climb down. She seems to understand “sit” quite well, and we’re working on “down”, “come”, and “stay”.
For the most part, she sits and lies around a lot. She doesn’t seem to like to do anything for more than a couple minutes, going from “let’s play!” to “I’m fine sitting here for a bit” in a moment’s notice. We wager she’s just not totally comfortable, having been taken (yet again) from a sandy, remote environment filled with lots of her own kind, to a semi-bustling suburban landscape, replete with cars, bikes, people, garbage trucks, and other dogs that aren’t like her. She’s taken to shaking a lot when we go too far from our house, obviously panic-stricken from being out of her comfort zone. She got away from us while we were testing a new, longer leash, and bolted straight for our house faster and faster as I ran to chase her. I was worried she’d wrap the leash around something and choke herself to death, but thankfully she just ran into an alcove between our house and the next, and pooped herself instead. The bath that came after that changed my very nature as a caretaker.
***
The paralyzing interest in her well-being when we’re at home hasn’t exactly depleted, but it’ll get better. I’m hopeful instead of doubtful now. I can’t really imagine taking her back anymore, even while I feel my whole life has been upset and I find it near-impossible to “let go” and just let her be. Last week was very unusual for us, and this week is the first “real” week in that we go to work and then come home like usual, only we have a puppy who is happy to see us and needs to go outside and eat and be played with for a while. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop at night when we try to go to sleep, as I’m just sure she’s going to start whining, crying, or barking. Thus far, every night has been the same, and she’s been totally silent. Maybe she really has learned, and pretty quickly, that this her new routine, and we’re going to wake up in the morning and repeat it all over again.
Maybe we really have learned, a little more slowly than she, that this is our new routine, too.
Naming The Things
Oh, no. I need to name something.
The situation: An idea, concept, or event is currently in limbo, with either no name or a temporary one that’s incredibly generic and/or automatically generated. It now needs some official nomenclature. It needs a name.
Names are a crazy thing. Lots of people who are not me probably have no problem with coming up with names. They just pull some magical title out of that place in their brain where such things lie dormant, waiting to be called upon. They probably don’t even think much about it. It’s not a process. It’s not a…well, a thing. Definitely not a thang.
You gotta name your kid. You gotta name your pet. You gotta name your computer, both internally and colloquially. You gotta name your RPG character. You gotta name your “New Folder” or “Untitled Document”. You gotta name “IMGFROMCAMERA923423.JPG” to something more useful. There are other things that don’t necessarily need names, but you might think they do, like your car, your plant, your musical instrument, or your condition where you do something clumsily or endearingly (someone else’s probably got that for you, though).
For the things that really need a name, we use them as shorthand for reference, and they’re really useful, but they’re also a double-edged sword. On one hand, they’re a necessary and efficient tool that will become indelibly linked to the entity attached to it, and on the other hand they’re a necessary and efficient tool that will become indelibly linked to the entity attached to it. Gah!
OK, I’m not really that emotionally unstable about naming things, worrying that the wrong choice is going to create cataclysmic chaos and the downfall of man. That’s just silly. However, I can definitely get caught up in the act of naming, losing some minor amount of sleep and otherwise productive time going over the myriad avenues of titleship. Once you name something you gotta stick with it. Whether it’s a good name or not, I believe you should stick with it in the long run to maintain consistency and integrity. No one wants to have to relearn the name of something once learned if they can avoid it.
So, what do I need to name? As a musician, this comes up all the time: either a song or album. Yep. I may have entitled my latest production A Nebyoolaeous Experience, but I’m thinking I need to not rely so heavily on my creative and online namesake for lasting musical roadmarks. Not that I’m planning on abandoning my handle, but I’d like my songs and collections of songs to have a more personality-neutral bent. They blend better in the greater sonic soundscape that is the Internet. However, I also don’t want to go too far in the other direction where there be beige dragons and faceless NPCs walking from coordinate to coordinate in a loop, spewing the same lifeless line over and over.
Some previous album titles and how I came up with them:
- Clocks Striking 13 – I thought it sounded cool, in an edgy, dystopic future. Little did I remember that I was essentially stealing straight from the maw of Orwell with that one.
- Music Unsolicitedly Started Idiosyncratically for Karma, or M.U.S.I.K. - /deep breath. I really like to overthink things, don’t I?
- Ebben Flow - RPG music that massages a typical water-related characteristic (“Ebb and Flow”, get it?). Most RPGs aren’t much more creative.
- Majicking - My initials, MJC, as a gerund.
- Scraps - Short odds and ends from my mind.
- The Matic - Collection of themes. Yeeeeah.
- Gamey Mixture - A collection, or mixture, of video game remixes
- Adversapolis - A made-up Greek word that mixes “adversity” and “polis”, as it described the personal difficulties sung about on the album. I think I used the Internet to come up with this one.
As you can tell, I like to be clever, but often end up being cheesy. When your music largely consists of wordless instrumentals, the underlying theme to things can be hard to ascertain.
Thus, I’m on the prowl for a new moniker to go with Album #12. Inspiration can come from anywhere…I just need to find it.
I Don’t Say Anything to C# Regions, Actually, Because They’re Inanimate Constructs
I do C# programming for my job. Yesterday, I did a search for something relating to the #region construct, which Visual Studio uses for code-folding organization. I found this article where an emphatic programmer slammed their use and essentially publicly shamed people for using them. His is an extreme position and an extreme headline, both which garner attention (it got mine).
Extreme positions, while useful in providing a clear, unadulterated opinion, just never seem useful in the vacuum of the post, speech, or article they reside in. They can only be understood in the greater context of the idea they describe. Thus, people commenting and saying “Man, your opinion is extreme and I don’t like it” or “Man, your opinion is extreme, and I like it” is also not useful to me, because it’s all extreme commenting with little to no nuance.
The author later admitted to recently having a very negative experience with #regions and that it may have influenced his extreme article. His admission is pretty predictable, as I find most extreme positions coming from an extremely one-sided environment that doesn’t easily allow for opinions that differ. Basically, he had to deal with some overwhelming use of the programming construct and it screwed with his day, and then he wrote a scathing screed against them. He doesn’t use #regions and his code is brilliant, so others who “abuse” them must be wrong.
I don’t believe using an IDE’s organizational tool to help you code is wrong or bad. The abuse of anything is always an issue and checking yourself before you wreck yourself is always useful. In other words, an article stating that you should try not to overuse an element that can lead to difficulty in understanding something later for both you and someone else would probably be more constructive. It would also probably just be disregarded by people because it’s not a strong, extreme position. It’s misconstrued as flaky or wishy-washy. A headline that says “Use C# Regions Sparingly, Wisely” is not as attention-grabbing as “C# REGIONS ARE ONLY USED BY JERKS”, and it never will be.
So it goes.
iOS5 Quick Review
I got home from work yesterday and plugged in my trusty iPhone as quickly as I could.
Why? iOS5 is out, people!
For the deep, invasive, and overly analytic take, I’d suggest checking out Ars Technica. For my shallow, roughshod, and scattershot review, read on.
NOTIFICATIONS
This is the biggie, right? No more modal dialog boxes popping up all in your face all the time like a whiny brat. Just a nice little rectangle that drops down from above, hangs out for a few seconds, and then disappears. If you miss it, just go to The Center and you can check out all your stuff. This is good. There is also more stuff on the lock screen, which can include all the same stuff, only without having to unlock your phone and go into the app. This is good. However, I can already see how all those notifications can get out of hand, much more likely than before when it was just one per screen real estate.
ICLOUD
I’m not sure I want to use iCloud full-on-like, but I’ll let them sync my Calendar and Photos for now. My Mail, Contacts, and Calendar are all in Google’s hands for now, and I have such a huge non-iTunes batch of music that syncing it all through iCloud seems like it would overpower their free 5GB limit. Using the Find My iPhone thingy is cool, though.
IMESSAGE
Brilliant. I need to discontinue my SMS plan since most of the people I text have iPhones. The few that don’t probably won’t make a big ding in my budget. Pairing it together with the existing Messages app was genius so that you don’t even have to think about it.
TWITTER INTEGRATION
Jury’s out on whether this will be useful because I use Echofon, and not the official app. The deep integration would be useful, but not so much that I feel the need to switch right now.
CAMERA
The minimal additions for cropping and enhancing photos is keen (and well overdue), otherwise it’s pretty much the same. Being able to get to it from the lock screen and being able to take a picture with the volume rocker is also overdue.
CUSTOM VIBRATIONS AND TEXT MESSAGE TONES
Sweet! I’ve been wanting to make new text message tones forever. The few originals that came with the iPhone 1-3GS were all right, but only 1 or 2 didn’t make me cringe. The batch that came with iOS4 were laughable: too long and way too much reverb. It’s like they were made by someone who lost a “Design the next round of iOS text message tones!” contest. Now, all that is moot because you can make your own, which I will soon. Being able to make custom vibration patterns is definitely one of those neat things I didn’t know I wanted, but know I can’t live without now.
EVERYTHING ELSE
I don’t really want a Newstand or Reminders app, but they are there and functional. The new Airport Utility is boss for people who use Airport Extremes/Expresses. There’s a bunch of other little system stuff that’s fun to play around with, too.
All in all, the hype is probably overrated in that iOS4->iOS5 is more incremental than revolutionary. The Notifications Center is long overdue, necessary, and awesome. iCloud will be useful if I change my stuff from Google to Apple, but I’m not sure I want to in totality. Everything else is neat, but not necessary. There’s no reason not to download it, however.
Do it!
Camping at William Heise
99! 99! 99! Visions of senior year high school pep rallies come to mind all of a sudden.
My wife and I finally got around to going camping last weekend; it was something we’ve been wanting to do again for many years. A bunch of friends joined us up at William Heise County Park in Julian, CA, a wonderful little spot nestled deep within the windy roads about an hour or so north of our house. We’d been here about 5-6 years ago with just two other friends. This time, we were going to have five additional adults, including a 7 month-old baby, and a 2 year-old toddler. That’d be a grand total of 11 human beings; the max on our spot was 8. So, yeah. Thankfully, it wasn’t a problem.
Our newly-purchased 2011 Subaru Outback worked out really well. We were able to get several crates of supplies, sleeping bags, a tent, cots, a tarp, some backpacks, a couple coolers, and various other sundries, and still get 3 people in comfortably. I doubt I’d be able to accomplish that in my old Saturn Ion. Our friend Josh and we arrived at the campsite early enough to get all our sleeping arrangement squared away before night fall, so we were able to help everyone else set their stuff up once they got there.
Sleeping in a tent on an air mattress, while fully-clothed and in a sleeping bag, in 40 degree weather is a far cry from our warm and inviting bed back at home. However, we braved the nights and had a great weekend, too. There was lots of food prepared and eaten, including beans and weenies, breakfast sandwiches, tacos, pie, coffee, and (of course) smores. We chatted and played some nerd party games at night, all the while warming ourselves by the ever-crackling fire. It was really nice.
The neighboring campers were all nice, and one of them had a lively evening on Saturday tossing all matter of things into their fire, trying to start a forest firemake it as magnanimous as possible. We also went on a semi-grueling, but invigorating, hike at one point, and I unfortunately fell, tweaking my left wrist and tearing a hole in my jeans. That was not so nice. All in all, though, I think it was successful and people enjoyed themselves. Everyone pitched in to help on all accounts and things went smoothly.
The next time I go camping, however, I will definitely try to not also be on-call for work. I got an early morning support request, as well as a couple later in the day. That didn’t rule. I was having issues connecting to things and I didn’t know how to figure out the issues presented, so I had to contact my boss, which you usually hope to be your last resort. I guess you could say it was a little trial by fire when I least wanted it. It threatened to ruin the weekend when it really shouldn’t have been an issue, so I know now to do things differently in the future.
I’m kind of excited to go camping again someday soon, and not in another half-decade. Maybe Yosemite?
Minecraft, Again! Now in Beta, Version 1.8
CONTEXT
The last time I played Minecraft was in late 2010, back when it was still alpha. There were a lot of bugs, but it was playable. My friends and I enjoyed exploring and surviving and building on our mutual friend’s multiplayer server for a couple weeks. It rocked!
As is usual with me, my interest waned the more I played and my initial projects finished. I saw what others were doing (both in-game and on the Internet) and my desire to build (in my opinion) lesser creations shriveled up. Logging on to the game seemed like more of a chore than a joy, and I eventually lost interest.
WHAT’S NEW
As time passes, your hobbies can change (hell, my wife and I even got back into World of Warcraft for a little while a couple months ago; it’s cyclical), and old interests can become new interests again. I’d followed the development of Minecraft loosely over the last year, and thought it’d be fun to try it out again.
Besides the simple passing of the time to renew interest, two major things changed this go-around to make it more fun for me: 1) I’m running the server, and 2) I set up the rendering of an isometric map of our world each day to show progress.
Being able to see what everyone has been up to each morning really helps improve the engagement with the world. Also, being able to teleport myself around, or change the time, or turn monsters on and off gives me that power trip I didn’t know I’d been missing.
Thankfully, a lot of the people who made playing this game back in 2010 a joy have returned to make it fun again. Several of my friends joined almost immediately and, through our combined efforts, took to constructing buildings and towers and mines and farms and lava-enveloped minecart tunnels and portals to the Nether and land bridges connecting everything. Even without the community element, building things like you had a bunch of digital Lego pieces is still really fun. Mining into the depths of the world to uncover hidden ore caches and abandoned mineshafts and ravines and lava or water deposits brings an exciting sense of discovery to your efforts. Co-operative multiplayer sandbox gaming is really fun when everyone pitches in here and there. Monsters add a bit of flavor, and I’m still for their inclusion, but we ended up turning them off again (just like last time) so that we could all spend more time enjoying the creative aspects, and less time fearful of the “game” elements.
It’s all new and shiny and fun again, but I know that’ll go away, as you can only build and explore so much. However, I hope to leave the server going indefinitely so that anyone can come in and have a look-see or try their hand at exploring and molding the world, even if it’s been a day or week or month. It’s a cube-based Internet bulletin board, really.
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