Waiter, These Pancakes Taste Like Blood

YTMND Watch: I'm Making a Note Here

Well, it appears my one true Internet Love is, like GLaDOS, is still alive. Another day has dawned on YTMND; more importantly, I still can offer you a sample of its genius to digest at your leisure. The first one is in honor of my first real guest (sorry, Pat you don't really count) to Gaming Zen, Amy. Amy is also competing in the IMBC, and she was kind enough to share with me her favorite site. It is a classic, and hilarious to boot - and so it becomes the first site of OML's YTMND Watch. Enjoy - but careful how loud you play this one if you're at work or school.

Being confronted with the possibility of losing YTMND has forced me to reflect on our relationship, and one powerful truth has emerged: I spend way too much time there. (My beautiful girlfriend, Christine, would definitely agree.) It's not healthy to have a single website consume so much of one's time. It's not healthy to have a single anything consume so much of one's time, really.

Maybe this blog will keep my mind off of it.

Readings From the Sutra

Gamasutra is the Web's best site on game design and game development. I've been reading the game design and postmortem¹ articles here for years; it's been an incredible resource for someone like me that has always been interested in video game design.

I love Ernest Adams' column, The Designer's Notebook. His semi-regularly published columns are always a must-read – he talks about game design theory in clear and accessible ways, and covers a wide array ot topics, from genres like educational games to general design principles like symmetry. I would suspect there would some of you out there who, even if you had no interest in making games, would find these articles interesting.

Anyway, I'll be doing regular readings from the Sutra in this blog, as game design is my thing. I am looking to get into a game development industry – mine eyes are fixed upon it. So, as I tend to be thinking a lot about this stuff anyway, I'll likely be writing a lot about it. Readings from the Sutra, I suspect, will be a semi-regular thing. Like Ernest Adams.

So a Gamastura new feaure in my RSS feed begs to be read, and after I get back from getting groceries tonight, I'm going to take a look at it: Fixing Online Idiocy: A Psychological Approach. So, they think they can stop dumbass kids from being dumbass kids online while they're sticking each other with plasma grenades, huh? Through the proper application of psychological technique? Yeah, I gotta read this.

I think I'll post my thoughts on this later, if the article turns out to be as interesting as it sounds.

BRB Groceries

This is enough to qualify me for today, but I do want to come back and write a bit more. And I have a few pebbles to throw in the pond. I'll see you soon.

Back from Groceries, Now Dishes to Wash, But First a Little Oui, oui, hohn, hohn, etc.

Actually, I don't really have much more time for this post, but I did want to say something about French.

I was a French Immersion student in Junior High school. Our family moved to New Brunswick when I was just finishing up elementary school. In Nova Scotia, you don't start taking French lessons until Grade 4. In New Brunswick, you start in Primary. So when I moved to NB, I was just getting my head around bonjour and au revoir while the kids my age had already been speaking French for some time. My first NB French class in grade 5 was an embarrassment; the teacher asked me in French what my phone number was, and the only word I understood come out of her mouth was "number" so I started counting, "un, deux, trois, quatre" like an idiot. The class thought that was pretty funny.

I had to go to school early for a month to get tutoring in French. It took a while, but I eventually caught up. Eventually I decided to study in a junior high French Immersion program, and at one point in my life I would say I was fairly fluent in French. I can still order food and find the bathroom and whatnot, but I couldn't sit down with someone and discuss Eastern philosophy.

OK, done again for another day. See you tomorrow.