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  Caught in the Web 06:21 PM -- Thu September 15, 2005  

The web is an evil thing. I should just learn to disconnect and do my work while offline! Today I did no work at all, and it's 4pm. I've spent the whole day flitting back and forth between a few websites reading comments, articles, stories, forums, whatever. Well, I also hauled trash to the dump, which was a remarkably long process. The web is evil!!! Such a nasty addiction. I clearly need to get back to having some rules against it (the poker chip thing I was on previously has died out).

Two nature notes: we saw our first roadrunner out here. Also, there are these little boring birds that cluster on the power lines on the main road near here every afternoon... I wanted to get a picture, but today was apparently the exception, maybe because it was hot for the first time in a while. They cover the wires, maybe 2 inches apart from each other, a solid mass for several hundred feet. It's creepy! I did try to get you a picture, sorry I couldn't. Oh, and did I mention before that there was a praying mantis who came to hang out on the screen of my office window each evening? Pretty big too.

I'm working on putting the merge together (oh yeah, I sorta did some work - tested out some merge levels and started on the hub for it), and will be getting together with Sol tonight to whittle down the HH name list. So hold on and tomorrow both of those things should be ready to rock. See you then!

Oh hey, speaking of Buffy, if you are in a Buffy box-set buying mood, definitely check out The Chosen Collection. We have only 3 of the 7 seasons left to buy, and it would be almost a break-even for us to buy the collection instead! It's all of the seasons (same exact content as the individual box sets, commentaries and all), plus an extra bonus disc with a documentary, for $130. Once we Ebay the sets we already have, we'll actually sort of make a profit by switching to it! I mean, we won't actually end up gaining money, but we'll probably end up having paid a total of about $30 for all 7 seasons. So I just wanted to point out that deal. If you want Buffy, that's the way to get it!
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  Kung Fu Hustle Up! 06:24 PM -- Wed September 14, 2005  

Hey gang, listen up! You have until tomorrow to suggest Halloween Horror names (as if the 65,000 names up there weren't enough...), and to finish your level for this month's Monthly Merge. Hop to it!!!

Me, I've been working hard on the 2 secret projects that you know nothing about! Ha! Tomorrow is designated as a Ninja work day, although I will also spend a good junk of time on the Merge and Horror stuff too. Busy busy. Oh, and I have to haul trash to the dump. Yay!

Most interesting thing I can tell you today is that we saw Kung Fu Hustle the other day, and it's really good. It's not as good as Shaolin Soccer, which is a definite favorite of mine, but it's still a lot of fun.

Speaking of Hong Kong movies, in the introduction to the Iron Monkey DVD, Quentin Tarantino says something about how Hong Kong movies have everything - they're not a romance movie, or a comedy, or a thriller. They pack in all that stuff into each movie. He said something about how peasants would go see them, and they were really poor and had no other entertainment, so they had to get everything out of one movie. I don't know about that theory, seems kind of dumb to me. If I could only see one movie a year, or every 5 years, I would probably just pick a really good comedy, because I like comedy. What I'm trying to say is it's not like vitamins and minerals - you don't have an FDA daily requirement of witnessing each emotion. If the only movies you ever see are romances, are you really missing something? You can get drama, action, horror, and comedy in your daily life. Movies aren't your only way to experience feelings.

Anyway, that was actually an aside, because what I wanted to say was that Buffy, which we have been plowing through another season box set of, is just like those Hong Kong movies (so are Angel and Firefly - the entire Joss oeuvre). It has elements of every genre in every episode, and it jumps all over the place through them, yet ties them together incredibly well. It's the best thing about those shows. They meet your FDA requirement of every single emotion!

Wait, didn't I just say that didn't matter? Whatever. It's good TV.
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  Perfection Of Flavor 04:48 PM -- Mon September 12, 2005  

You know what the perfection of flavor is? Wheat Thins lightly dabbed with just a bit of Laughing Cow cheese. It is almost is if the two products were intelligently designed to merge together into an unholy burst of saltiferous cheesiosity, a conspiracy of flavor straight from the Illuminati's top chefs. Of course, I'm not actually a snooty opera-goer in a top hat, ergo I can't actually afford Laughing Cow, so thanks Kakey & Joe for making this glorious amalgamation a reality. Ah, but alas, just like hot dogs and buns, the cheese in a Laughing Cow box is no quantitative match for the crackers in a box of Wheat Thins, and so now I sit, alone and dejected, with nothing but stacks of rectilinear salty wheat before me. Of course, I will still eat them. But I do miss the cheese.

Okay, I'll admit the truth. I am working on 3 separate projects at once and have been for a couple of weeks. But I'm still keeping two of them secret! The only hint you get is that I do hope to have a Halloween surprise for you this year as I try to every year. And you can rest assured that that surprise will not be the release of Ninja Time! Not unless I discover my own time-traveling moonshine still.

So what do you find to be the perfection of flavor? I'm well aware there is more than one - a good apple pie with crumb topping for example. But it's the hidden ones that are so special. Just as the duality of cheese and wheat disrupts the time-taste continuum, so surely are there others which can accomplish the same. Aren't there? I'm looking at you, chocolate and peanut butter!
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  Busy Week 02:04 PM -- Sat September 10, 2005  

So it's been crazy all week. Sunday, we stayed the night with my sister and her family at a timeshare in Carlsbad. Monday, big Labor Day BBQ at my parents'. Thursday, trip up to Anaheim to visit my aunt & uncle. Friday from there to Disneyland (and then the looong drive home!). Thursday and Friday were spent with a cold too (thanks to the sister's kids!), making them more difficult. But still quite fun! So, here's the tidbits:

  • The radio controlled Hummer is amazingly accurate - the battery runs out in a few minutes*, and it has the turning radius of a brick that's been glued to the ground. Seriously, the turning radius is funny - you crank the controller hard left and the wheels tilt about 5 degrees. It has to be intentional!
  • Said in complete innocence by my nephew when asked which ride was his favorite at Disneyland: "The one with the frickin' laser beams!" What makes it so funny is that he wasn't making a joke, he just thought that was the proper way to describe something that has laser beams, thanks to Austin Powers. Specifically, that was the Astro Blasters ride, which is way cool because you get to use a laser gun and can spin your car around with a joystick, so you shoot at targets, and it keeps score.
  • As you're facing the Matterhorn line, the one you want to enter is the left-hand one. It's way faster and more exciting than the right-hand track!
  • Yay, Space Mountain! Twice!
  • This was a great time to go to Disneyland - even though it was a Friday, there were almost no lines at all. What was scary was that we were still shoving our way through dense crowds the whole time. It must be horrendous to actually walk around there when the lines are full!
  • News flash: food at Disneyland is not very high quality, and extremely expensive. Shocked?
  • Some internal work on Ninja Academy got done on the couple of days between adventures.
  • You know what's sad? When you were in the very first Power Rangers season, and you came back this season as a special surprise. That guy is like 30 years old now! Guess his feature film career must not be taking off. And yes, I recognized him because I watched Power Rangers in college! Why wouldn't I!?
That's all. Or it's all I can remember. We drove late into the night, slept in late, and are still recovering from illness.

*Just kidding about the battery - for the little time we drove it, it was fine. But it really helped the story!
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  Personal Responsibility, My Eye! 01:59 PM -- Sun September 4, 2005  

Warning: hurricane oriented.

Extreme looting!! Oh the horror! What an awful kid to have committed such a heinous act! Hopefully they can punish him severely and let that be a lesson to anyone else who dares to save 100 peoples' lives.

But anyway... In other news, a bunny died in our yard, and now we have a buzzard! It's the cycle of life. My sisters came out to see our house yesterday and seemed to like it a lot. Unfortunately, my sister's kids got to discover the dead bunny with us. I think they got steered away pretty well, though.

I will try to be more on top of this journaling thing. I have not been very bloggy of late. I will surely have wonderfully exciting things to tell you about, but at present, nothing much. I hope the disaster management starts actually getting managed to some degree in the near future. What's happening now is as much travesty as it is tragedy.
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  Sneak Peek: Super Happy Go Go Ninja Time 04:59 PM -- Wed August 31, 2005  


This is the work in progress on the Timeline screen. That's where you pick which Era you want to play. Each one is a glowing blob on a wavy timeline of the history of the world (there's no reason it curves, I just thought a straight line would be very boring). The inset shot shows you that (I just made repeated copies of the Ninja Academy era for testing, so there's a lot of Feb 11, 1925). The not-inset shot shows what happens when you try to move from a nice normal year like 1925 to a far away year like 30,000 BC. It's a really cool effect, it scrolls at ludicrous speed and all those globs that were floating around happily turn into streaks of light. By the way, you don't actually control the ninja on this screen, he's just floating through space-time from each era to the next as you select them. The menu stuff at the bottom is going to be all replaced, it's not what I want at all.

Technical note: this was the first time I ever tried implementing bezier curves. I of course grabbed the code off the net as usual (hooray for the internets!), but I was amazed at how easily it worked, it was great. Makes me want to make curvy things all over the place.
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  Long time, no update 07:37 PM -- Mon August 29, 2005  

It's been a while! What's news... I have come in very very low in the rankings on the latest Game Design Showdown at the boardgame site I visit. I knew I wouldn't do well with the game design I entered, but I still think it would make a fun game if it were fully developed!

Ninja news: not a lot. I've mostly made up the screen that lets you know about your goals before you begin a level. I've also got a good start on the Timeline screen, that shows all the available Eras and lets you pick which one to play. I also did some fixing up of little stuff in the game. Did you know there are poles to swing on? Those aren't in Ninja Academy, and they're kind of nifty.

Today I made the enhanced version of the last Monthly Merge, which won't be available until guessing time has closed, of course. It's pretty cool - there's a final level where you have to punch in all of your mystery guesses in order to earn the Loonykey. Unfortunately, it gives you NO feedback to let you know which ones you don't have right, so you just have to get them all right! I guess I'll also post up all the solutions and explanations at that time too. It'd just be cruel otherwise. This was my favorite merge, loads of fun and surprises.

The next Merge is all ready to go when the time comes too, and we'll start the name-dropping for HH6 at the same time. I guess 2 weeks to drop names, 1 week to vote, and then a little over 1 month to build. There won't be a Monthly Merge in October because of Halloween Horror.

Nothing else, I think... have a lovely evening, while I go review some games!
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  New Experiences 08:27 PM -- Mon August 22, 2005  

Earlier tonight I was having an experience I've never had before (and I bet you haven't either): I was stirring a pot of sweet and sour sauce with one hand, while holding a jar with a spider in it with my other hand. It was certainly not a life-changing moment, but it made me stop and think "weird." I also thought "I hope he doesn't get out."

Very little Ninja progress of late. That's a combination of laziness and a bombardment of other things needing to get done. But I have implemented the tutorial system, which makes scrolls of text pop up at certain points to teach you your moves. I've also created the moonshine still, which is kind of the 'end of level' marker. If you touch it, the screen warps away into whiteness (because you're traveling through time) and the level ends. It's a cool effect.

On a side note, Kid Mystic for the Mac has begun! I have been informed that it is already playable (since the code is so similar to Loonyland, the guy porting it had very little trouble), and may in fact be done. It just needs to be tested out and have whatever problems crop up get fixed. How's that for a sudden surprise?! We're almost a full-fledged crossplatform studio here.

I wanted to say this too: I finally finished Kingdom Hearts. I have no idea why I finished it, but I did. I was compelled by the whole collecting-of-various-things element that all RPGs have, despite the fact that Kingdom Hearts is a horrible game! It's AWFUL! There's just too many things wrong to properly complain about. But let me say this, a lot of people play RPGs for their stories. I hope those people never play this game. Because they will seriously hurt their brains. This was a game that really got me thinking about all the things in videogames that we just do because it's a game, and you know you have to do it to advance. Like you see a glowing pillar of light, so you walk up and touch it, knowing that it will do something. That is not real life. If I see a glowing pillar of light in real life, I move away from it, to avoid third degree burns. I also don't look directly at it. Games are just so random. They have their own internal non-logic, and you just follow it without even thinking. There's a monster, you start smacking it. There's a door, you open it. There's any item that looks not nailed down, you start grabbing. That's videogames!
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  Nature Pix VI: In The Mix With Twix 03:13 PM -- Sat August 20, 2005  

(a sponsored edition of Nature Pix!)

This is the grand finale because I don't want to do these anymore! I'll put up pix as interesting ones arrive in the future, though, just no mega-picture barrages anymore. Anyway, it's an extra large edition today, to close things out with a bang. Let's start with something decidedly unnatural:

This is our handiwork! It's the half of the cat run we have built so far. Unfortunately, without the other half, it can't contain cats, so it's not doing anyone any good right now. But in this small, dark, picture, you can't tell how poorly constructed it is! Also note the comfy hammock in the background.

Speaking of cats, remember how I said Zazzy looks really bad when you take her picture? Well, I got some good pictures, so I don't feel too guilty sharing some horrible pictures with you. They're funny:

She looks... special. But here are good ones!


In the lower picture she is playing with a water cap, the toy she loves.

And now without further ado, the big nature pix surprise that I happened to snap while I was on the phone with Solee shortly after starting this whole nature pix thing...

Serpentus Mariachius!! It's a rattlesnake! The lower right picture is to give you some size perspective (provided you know how big our propane tank is...) - he was maybe four feet! That's the first living snake we have seen out here, and what a monster it was! You can kinda see the rattle sticking up in the lower left picture. So wow! What a finale! A rattlesnake, people! Lucky for us, he was on his way into the neighbor's yard when I got the picture, so he's not our problem now. Hope they're enjoying his company!

So, that's the big finale to Nature Pix. We hope you have enjoyed your stay here with Nature Pix, and please make sure you don't leave any of your belongings behind. Happy trails!

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  Nature Pix V, Earl Of Picturedom 08:11 PM -- Wed August 17, 2005  


Hoppitus Nibblia. Short of lizards, these bunnies are the most common lifeform (well, okay, ants) we see around here. There are probably more than a dozen of them that live in our yard. I was avoiding posting this picture for a long time, because I was hoping I could get a jackrabbit picture to contrast him to. I always thought jackrabbit was just a word for wild desert bunnies, but no. They are very different! They stand up on their legs instead of huddling flat to the ground, they are huge, and their ears are huger. They actually look like little deer with giant ears instead of antlers. They're also very skittish, so I never got to take a picture of one. Interestingly, all the bunnies we have around here have a very distinct rust colored spot on the back of their necks. A quick google tells me "May be caused by fading through over-exposure to the sunlight, dirty hutches, or dead hair about to molt." - I'm guessing it's the sunlight (although their hutches are holes in the ground, so they're not exactly clean). And now, the wrath of nature, since we only had 4 kitties to share with you:


This is a dry wash that runs through our yard. Or at least it was until the most intense rainstorm in the history of the world, about 2 weeks ago. As you can see, it became a raging river! See how it's eroded several inches down the left side? It was pretty much flat ground before the rain started (about 10 minutes before this picture). What rain, you ask?


This rain. Look at the ground. Oh that's right, you can't see the ground because there's an inch of standing water over our entire yard!

I have it on good authority from someone who's lived here for more than fifteen years that this is not anything like normal weather. And actually, the weather has transmogrified since then... it's so beautiful now. Every day warm and sunny with a strong breeze, but not hot. It feels like the beach! Luckily, for now, without the water. I no longer lock myself away from the absurd heat, I can leave the windows open all day. The biggest problem now is that the nights are getting rather brisk. You know, it can snow in the winter around here. That'll be something to see!
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