These photos were taken at Blandford Nature Center , April 3, 2005.
Shut That Thing Off and go Outside
Where have I been? Walking around outside taking pictures in the warmest weather since early November. When not enjoying the sunshine, I have been spending my time doing contract work at the Steelcase University .
So far the life of a contract worker is treating me well. I am immersed in challenging work with extremely talented people and I am my own boss.
Though I could potentially be buried in Steelcase work for a good long time I have just joined Business Networking International , with the idea that I should not have all of my eggs in one basket, businesswise. I was kind of wary when I first heard of it, but when I went to a meeting as a visitor I walked out with the cards of half a dozen people who needed some web work done.
Does all this mean I will be too busy to have fun? Hell No! I will try to keep my hours down to ~30 a week, once I get settled into the new schedule. And, hopefully, a fair bit of that will be done from home, or from various cafes and bars with wireless internet connections.
I have begun work on Whirling Vector Shapes of Doom, version 2. Updated graphics, tweaks to the gameplay, and optimization to smooth out the animations. And maybe some sound.
The web design class at Kendall College is sliding into the crazy last weeks of the semester. I have not made any of my students cry yet, but I still have a month to turn up the heat.
Yeah… life is good.
Back to Work
Well, it looks like my days as a Gentleman of Leisure are coming to an end. Starting Monday I am back to somewhat regular work hours, albeit this time as a contractor rather than a full-time employee. No more soap operas. No more sleeping in until noon. No more spending the entire day in my pajamas.
So it is appropriate that I hereby announce the release of Whirling Vector Shapes of Doom v1.0 . This is the first game I have completed in eighteen years. The last one was a dungeon crawl written in BASIC on a Commodore-64.
Having reached every milestone I set myself for this release I already see room for a dozen improvements, and I have ideas for the creation of another dozen games.
Stay tuned!
Sunday
Reading: The Milagro Beanfield War
Drinking: Caol Ila 18-year single malt Scotch whiskey
Playing Flying Vector Objects of Doom (beta)
I Am Slowly Becoming a Professional
Almost A Game
I took a few days off of this thing, then returned with a vengeance. The arrow keys [UP,DOWN,LEFT,RIGHT] control the direction you move. [Z] fires your gun.
The Game, Day 3
Another hour of coding and re-coding. Now we have a multi-layer background, and the enemy ships explode when shot. Left Right and [Z]. Click here to launch.
The Game, Day 2
Another hour of coding, and the .swf is up to a whopping 3.97k. Now the enemies fire back. As before, left and right arrow keys to move, [Z] to fire. Reload the web page to restart the game. Click here to launch.
We’re Having Some Fun
The beginnings of a simple arcade game. Two hours of work. Arrows move left and right, [Z] to fire. Click here to launch.
Catch-22
Yup. I am finally reading it. Don’t know why it took me so long to get to it.
The nightmares appeared to Hungry Joe with celestial punctuality every single night he spent in the squadron throughout the whole harrowing ordeal when he was not flying combat missions and was waiting once again for the orders sending him home that never came. Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe’s shrieking nightmares that they began to have shrieking nightmares of their own, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from their separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 .