http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=6053af813a9f65eb4941933fd9eb1cf2

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/09.html

fungible: interchangeable.

Unfortunately, I think this is going to be another one of those posts where I sort of apologize to my own LiveJournal for not posting in it enough. The last time I went for a really long period of time without posting was about 3 years ago when I was depressed. But I am very not depressed now, so I blame Facebook and Twitter. ^_^

Oh, Facebook/Twitter and your instant gratification/ease of posting-laziness. A lot has actually been going on in my life. Last month I went back East and took a road trip with my family to New Jersey. We visited my 92-year-old grandmother (Dad's mom) and spent a couple nights in a hotel. I think my favorite part was when we got frozen "hot" chocolate and went to the beach at Point Pleasant for about a half hour. It made me think of when they went to Montauk in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" because there were very few people on the beach. Just one old man fishing and a couple of people walking. On the way back we stopped for a night in Mechanicsburg and I got to spend about 4 hours talking in the hotel lobby with my "old flame" Jason. He's still cute :)

Part of the reason I timed my trip for that week in October was to go to my 10-year high school reunion. It's funny to think about the fact that when I started this journal, I was only 3 years out of high school. A high school reunion at Winchester Thurston is not just a high school reunion, really. It's more like a step back in time because I attended that school for 12 years in the same building. Now they have a spiffy new Upper School building that looks like a University building. But I also got to see rooms in the old building and the strange new things they've done with them. It's so odd to see the library I used in Middle and Upper school transformed into administrative offices and a gallery/lecture room, the physics and chemistry labs being used for art classes, and the former art gallery/student lounge being used as a Spanish classroom.

I saw several people from my class, but like Stacey White (one of my classmates) said, it's not quite as surprising to see everyone at the reunion because we can all reconnect and see each other on Facebook. It's a changed world. I was never very close with most of the people in my graduating class except for nay01. Except for a few marriages and the obvious growing up and getting jobs thing, people are not extremely different. I am glad that a few people from a few grades before me and a few grades after me showed up though. My high school crush Marty was there too. It was good to see him doing so well, since I'd seen him once while at a club during college and I have to admit I was worried about him. But now he looks exactly the same, except for the loss of a little hair.

I got to kind of continue the reunion even when I came back to L.A. I met up and had dinner with Matt Engelberg, one person that I was good friends with at WT. Fantastic to see him and I hope we can get together again soon.

I'm getting sleepy. I went on a tour of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery today and then came home and spent hours on my feet making turkey meatballs.
What advice do people have to get me to update on LJ more often and not give all my energy to Facebook?

[index] Sunday, November 08, 2009 - Health Care Bill Overview

- finished the 'connections between rooms thing mentioned yesterday; now it correctly warps you to the nearest 'door' when you enter a room, so the doors on bordering rooms no longer have to line up exactly
- centered cursor on the letters more in the name selection screen; fixed a few other tiny bugs with the name input screen like an issue where the cursor would start on the last letter rather than the first in the name entry screen, made pressing space correctly go to the space character, using space twice on the same letter not working and a bug where a random 'space' character would insert occasionally when you held down an arrow button so on; there were a number of rare bugs if you played around with it which i think i mostly fixed now, except for some of the \# bugs (although i did fix that if you delete a # character it turns to a / character) but i blame game maker for those (gm treats # as newline so using actual #'s in strings is very difficult since you have to use \# instead, which messes up my name input system a bit
- added an 'enter' button and 'delete' button on the name entry screen, now it feels more like a real name entry screen (pictured)
- of course all the above is useless if the name someone chose gets erased, so i fixed a bug where it wouldn't correctly load the name you selected on the name selection screen (it'd show up on the continue screen the first time, then revert to 'no name' after you loaded from a continue)

EDIT: changed formatting a bit: http://pics.livejournal.com/rinku/pic/0010z2gg

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=651a68f235b3ba9c4ec23db090257e78

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/08.html

billet: to quarter, or place in lodgings.

[index] Saturday, November 07, 2009 - This is what you want, this is what you get...

- got into a bug where i'd kill a creature right when entering a room and since it autosaved i was stuck in an infinite loop. created a trick where you cannot hurt creatures in the first second and a half after entering a room; this fixed it mostly since that's time enough to move out of the way or move back the way you came. this also gets around the 'not saving healthbars' thing, i'll add in saving healthbars eventually.
- made a way to friend alpharepo (yeah i know it's not a creature but i like the idea)
- tried and failed to create the system where it'd warp you to the nearest empty door (so that doors between areas don't have to line up exactly), but at least made some progress and have some direction about how to code such a thing

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=fb926dfe7d8f9a9789fd9443992ff0e7

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/07.html

abeyance: suspension; temporary cessation.

- centered the upgrade gui shown yesterday (i think)
- made rooms you've friended everyone in pink, leaving rooms where there are creatures yet to friend peach

note the alpha repo is friended in this screenshot, this should not happen normally

today was another poor day for productivity, i blame the cold. i need to move my computer to somewhere other than a huge drafty window that can't be totally closed even in winter

http://blogs.wefrag.com/lion2/2009/11/07/test-demo-immortal-defense/

french review of ID

google translate has this funny translation:

"In addition to advance the story at every level, besides the demo ends when one learns that the fucker who was our mentor in pathspace sold our planet to the enemy to save the loaves was his. Behind the story, we just find some moral value of family, the notion of God and stuff like that."

http://www.mikemusic.com/wordpress/?p=348

This week’s selection is a bit of 1940s-esque big band swing, originally written for a poker video game. We recorded with a dynamite pickup ensemble, including some longstanding musical collaborators.

And, since I have your attention: come check out my Facebook artist page, which you can reach via this convenient link. I promise, I won’t invite you to join any agrarian, mafia, or vampire-related online games.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Poker Night

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=4ba4305b9f3c012fccdbd75ececf7136

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/06.html

felicitous: apt or appropriate; also, delightful.

today i played jet set willy online with evajolli, mrpodunkian (maker of 'the underside'), nyarla, and two other people i forgot the names of (quenten may have been one of them). it's based on an old zx spectrum game.

mrpodunkian cited it as the best 'exploration game'. it's pretty good, but i think it lacks a lot of things normal for exploration games: it doesn't have items which expand your abilities (but then again, neither did seiklus or small worlds), and it has lives, and you start at the beginning when you lose them all.

it also has an online mode, and online multiplayer exploration games (the goal was to explore more of the map than the other players) are rare; if i were able to i'd make SD multiplayer, but it'd make no sense story-wise and it'd be hard to code anyway

anyway the game is pretty great: http://jsw.ovine.net/

- all i did today was work on the above (the upgrade menu system), although it was a complex enough thing that a day or two of work on it is required. it works correctly so far, with only some polish issues remaining.

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=8f339e5bc8210c1c9f5e0695e7ef3f9b

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/05.html

maunder: to talk or wander aimlessly.

- read and replied to more playtesting reports (replying to a super-long starmaker one took like half an hour, there was so much she found)
- watched ortoslon playing SD (he took a video of his first play experience), and wasn't as experimental as i thought he'd be! he used the fade on the flower to get past it rather than the line, tried to use the weapon on the bushes and couldn't, skipped the alpharepo in the first alpharepo room, got a pegai stuck to him and couldn't get it off, haha
- fixed a gap (several, actually) in a room that starmaker found which let the player go to an unauthorized area.
- fixed that sababoo wouldn't increase its friending meter when it was flying over the player's head
- added the name of the map to the map display
- made it so the map isn't displayed during the camp menu, level edit mode, text script running, or exiting text
- made it so names are initialized from an array of creature names rather than per-creature using a select case structure (functionally this does nothing in the game, it's just an internal tweak that makes it easier to code the following)
- made it so that sounds, when used, display the name of the creature whose sound it is

[index] Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - Peter Schiff for Senate

[index] Sunday, October 18, 2009 - Turning on Water

http://www.mikemusic.com/wordpress/?p=338

Identity - Zhongshan Zuang, a new concerto for orchestra and guzheng (Chinese zither) premiered at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse on October 24th, 2009. The performance featured guzheng virtuoso Chang Su as soloist, and a 69-piece orchestra led by conductor Case Scaglione, music director of the YMF Debut Orchestra. Identity was composed by Michael Gordon Shapiro, incorporating themes by composer/producer Victor Cheng.

The piece is currently in preparation for a second concert in Los Angeles, with plans underway for performances in Taiwan and mainland China.