Lately

March was not a productive month for me, gamedev-wise. I spent more time playing Civ VII, reading, watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and re-watching season 1 of Jessica Jones (each!), than in Godot or other creative tools.

I don’t mourn the time spent or not spent, but the loss of momentum burns. In April, I want to turn that around. I find that if I launch the game, I’ll quickly find the thing most annoying or unsatisfying at the moment, and naturally get to work on it.

I just need to rebuild the habit of doing that more days than not.

Finished reading: The Absinthe Forger by Evan Rail 📚

Not quite a “whodunit”– the forger in question is known right from the beginning. Rail spends the book exploring Absinthe’s history and present day makers and collectors, trying to understand the how and why the forger did what they did.

Currently reading: The Absinthe Forger by Evan Rail 📚

welcome home dctechevents dot com

Someone reached out a few days ago, trying to sell me “dctechevents.com”– which once upon a time was the domain for my DC Tech Events site.

Have I grown to like dctech dot events?

Yes.

Am I nostalgic for the old domain?

Also yes. But not $500 nostalgic.

Thankfully, my friend S here didn’t actually own the domain. When they wrote that email, the domain was in PendingDelete status, which is final. Whoever had owned it, stopped paying the bill. Once a domain has reached PendingDelete, nothing can stop it from eventually hitting the open market. At that moment, S might as well have been trying to sell me the Brooklyn bridge.

If I had expressed interest, they probably would have tried to grab it once it hit the market, through a back-ordering service, sell it to me, and pocket the difference. That would be the most honest way this scheme could work. Would they have taken my money before having the domain in hand? What if the backorder failed? If they have my money, why even try?

I don’t have to find out, though. I didn’t respond to their emails, and I was able to back order the domain successfully. It’s all (once again) mine!

Finished Listening: Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris 📚

I really enjoyed this combined history of The Graduate, Bonnie & Clyde, In The Heat of The Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Dr. Doolittle.

Rex Harrison, though. What an asshole!

My day is always improved by Lice.

The Mystery of Rennes-le-Château, Part 1: The Priest’s Treasure

I’m a sucker for “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”-style lore. This makes me think I should check out Gabriel Knight 3.

My first run at Becoming Saint did not go well…

Finished Listening: Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee 📚

Repairing our microwave by replacing the fuse? Failure. Replacing the CMOS battery on my laptop seems to have gone OK, so I feel a little bit redeemed.

quarterly AI post

I have a theory about creation with AI.

(wait! please come back)

My gut says this can’t be original, but I haven’t seen it exactly expressed anywhere.

  1. The best art (and I’ll extend this to products in general) reflects the taste and discernment of just one person, or at least very few people.
  2. LLM’s represent the antithesis of that, the voice of the masses, and perhaps worse: the voice of the masses digested by a deflavorizing machine.
  3. The skill in creating with LLM’s is then to remain in charge, to make sure YOUR taste and discernment are dominant. If this effort gets in the way of creating, then the LLM is harmful to your endeavor.
  4. Code has the opposite dynamic! You generally want the most generic, boring, un-creative implementation of a thing, unless you’re trying to break new ground in computer science. The voice of the masses is an asset.

I think one way to navigate #3 (at least for digital projects) is tool building, using AI not to necessarily make the thing, but make to make peripheral tools that improve your life or make creating more productive or pleasant. For SpinDoc, I don’t plan on using AI for graphics, game design, level design, etc– but the level editor is a place where “taste and discernment” doesn’t matter so much (at least not yet), and letting the LLM do most of the work on that has been helpful to me.

From the Smithsonian American History museum

Finished reading: Criminal: The Deluxe Edition, Vol. 3 by Ed Brubaker 📚

Some SpinDoc progress

So, instead of putting the SpinDoc level editor aside, I dug in and now the thing generally works. I even got online level sharing to work: it spits out a URL that anyone can use to play your level. That’s something I’ve been day-dreaming about for over a year.

Next, is making the game more presentable and fun, and I’ve got some ideas for new puzzle mechanics and a whole new game mode I’d like to try.

I am experimenting with a 3D view (only dots and wands have been implemented so far). No decisions on that yet.

Finished reading: Criminal Deluxe Edition Volume 2 by Ed Brubaker 📚

Finished Listening: Box Office Poison by Tim Robey 📚

Moderately satisfying: fixing a home appliance

Supremely unsatisfying: attempting to fix a home appliance, and failing

Finished reading: Criminal Deluxe Edition Volume 1 by Ed Brubaker 📚

I’ve been working through Complete Blender Creator 3: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners , and the first project was this lighthouse scene. I think I pretty much understood what was happening. I’m a little fuzzy on sculpting, but I can loop cut and extrude shit all day.

Bird Bonkers ranked 234 out of 699 (that received ratings) in the GitHub Game-off. That puts it just on the edge of the top and middle third. I’m OK with that. I did basically ignore the theme, and I could have used my time more wisely during that month. Congrats to the folks that did well!