Journal

.: Moving
So, the move is now pretty much complete. It struck me as interesting to see that even with my compulsive minimalism I had gathered more things than I expected I had. I think it’s in part to do with the fact that Moulsari and I had quite a bit of storage space that you couldn’t see. Out of sight, out of mind. It was easy to put a few things up in our storage area every once in a while and forget how much stuff had been piling up there. Also, I had a few boxes with schoolbooks that I thought might be handy in the future and they went untouched during the three years I lived in that beautiful apartment, so I thought it was time to throw those out as well. So I am once again the owner of even less stuff. I gave a lot of things away, threw things away, and borrowed a few things that I don’t want to get rid of just yet to my brother, like my computer screen. The only two pieces of furniture I owned I donated and loaned to my brother; my desk and my deskchair, respectively. I am now down to two boxes of DVDs, two boxes of books, one box of CDs, one box of administration a box of random things and a baseball bat. Then I’ve got my laptop, a computer and my clothes.

My thanks go out to Moulsari, Ruurd, Robin and Eva for helping me out. Also, I was really glad that my sister was okay with me storing the boxes at her place. At least for now.

The only things that remain is to register at my sister’s, cancel a few subscriptions and notify the different institutions of my change in address. Sounds easier than it is, but whatever, I’m sure that my dentist can do with the wrong address for a little while until I get around to it. :)

.: Eddie Izzard
I already mentioned this in a previous entry, but I went to see Eddie Izzard live on stage in Amsterdam some time ago. It rocked, but what I probably didn’t mention is that he’s been doing quite a few marathons lately. And when I say “quite a few,” I mean that he’s done 43 marathons in 51 days, totalling a stunning 1110 miles. He did it for sportrelief.com. Here’s a great BBC article on his achievement. Last Saturday he was a guest on the Jonathan Ross show where he said that he had to continue doing marathons in order to “cool down,” so that his body wouldn’t crash from the lack of exercise. He was down to two a week now. Isn’t that absolutely nuts? I think it’s an amazing feat.

.: Shadowrun: Corrosion
Shadowrun: Corrosion is coming along well. The character generator has been all but finished and now we’re planning on designing, developing and populating the sprawl with locations. We’re looking at putting up a map of the sprawl with different clickable locations on it. I had found this great Manhattan map taken from the excellent DOS game Bloodnet and I would really want it to be just like that. Sadly, none of us have the graphic or design skills to actually realise a map like that so we’re going to have to find something else. Hopefully, I can manipulate the map in my old Shadowrun section to do what I need it to do. I’ve also looked at 3D Google Maps type stuff, but that is too inflexible and too…ugly to do the job. Also, I’m afraid that such a third-party application is going to slow down the interface to the point of being unworkable. We’ll figure something out.

.: Winter
So it’s winter and I know this because the country has been swallowed up whole by Snowpocalypse, the angry snow god. I don’t think I remember the last time there was snow in December, and definitely not a significant, lasting amount of snow. It’s funny to see people go nuts and the whole country basically closing down due to the snow. We’re not used to it, we weren’t prepared for it, and it’s funny to see the panic spreading needlessly. What I also found cool was to see a whole new economy spring up at the shopping street around the corner from my office. Homeless people were offering their services in removing the snow and ice from the sidewalk to different stores. What a clever way to make a buck, man!

In the mean time I’m wearing leggings underneath my trousers and I’ve considered wearing my rash-guard when things get really cold. It’s working out well and lends credence to the saying that “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.” The only thing that I might need to do soon is get some winter shoes. The only shoes I have that can withstand the snow a little bit are kind of dressy shoes, and they’ve got next to zero grip. I think they might also come in handy when I go to Chicago. “Chicago!?” I hear you say…

.: Chicago
So I’m going to Chicago between Christmas and New Year’s. I had a few days off, had a bit of financial breathing space and Jim couldn’t make it to Amsterdam even though he did everything but threaten the CEO of his company. We decided I should come over to Chicago. Not a bad idea. Initially it looked like it wouldn’t be possible because the tickets were hellishly expensive, until Jim brought the collective weight of his trillion frequent flyer miles to bear and managed to widdle down the price to 70 US dollars, which is krankzinnig. So yeah, I’m departing around noon on Christmas day and I will be spending most of Christmas on an aeroplane, which suits me just fine. Unfortunately, I have a 7 hour lay-over in DC, but hopefully I’ll manage to blag an empty seat on an earlier flight to O’Hare.

.: Fifth Element
I’ve always been fond of the Fifth Element opera bit. Here’s someone who’s done it live, without auto-tuning or processing. Enjoy. :)

As some of you might have heard, my brother and I are developing a browser game together, which is awesome since if you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you might have seen a post by my brother a few entries down and seen that he’s in a massive existentialist crisis. In short, this game is either going to suck, or it’s going to be absolutely brilliant, but there’s not going to be a shortage of excitement. :)

The game concept is definitely not new; a browser based game that’s mostly statistical in nature with heavy Roguelikeinfluences. (Anyone not familiar with that term and interested in games should really have a look at the Wiki page I linked.) There’s a ton of those games out there, a lot of them migrating to Facebook, something I’m not considering (unless there’s money to be made, then I’d be happy to jump on the bandwagon), like Mafia, BiteFight, The Dead Awaken, Starfleet, etc. and it’ll follow in a similar vein. Since I don’t particularly feel called upon to design an entire game system myself, I have decided to base the game on the world and rules of Shadowrun and try to stay as true to it as possible while still trying to shoe-horn it into a browser game.

The game is currently being developed under the working title SRx: Corrosion, is set in Seattle in a year that’s yet to be determined (2055-2060) and will feature metahumans, cyberware, magic, hacking and guns…lots of guns. There will be Fixers and Johnsons and Streetdoctors and many more. If you’re interested in being a play-tester you can send me or my brother an e-mail or put up a post here. We can always use fresh new ideas.

So far we’ve made quite a bit of progress about the shape we want the game to take, how to deal with some of the design decisions – like how to deal with ranged vs melee weapons – and we’ve got some idea about what we want everything to look like. I’ve also started doing some of the preliminary coding, created some of the database tables, set up parts of the frame work and started designing the character generation process. We should have something for the current play-testers to look at pretty soon.

Meanwhile, we’re still taking suggestions as to what the official name of the game is going to become, so let us know if you’ve got a good, catchy title!

I’m excited about this, I haven’t really had a good coding project to hobby at for a while. :)

Everybody knows YouTube, but for those few that don’t: YouTube is a website where you can upload videos for free, enabling you to share them with anyone you want. YouTube’s motto is “YouTube, Broadcast Yourself!” Their website went live in February of 2005, created by three former employeers of PayPal, first as an unofficial project and later as a new business opportunity. In April of the following year 35.000 videos were uploaded every day and according to the site more than 40 million videos were being watched daily. YouTube is so popular that TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 was “you,” referencing the rise of personal broadcasting.

YouTube has recieved a lot of criticism due to the low quality of the videos and the video- and audiostreams not always being in sync. Also, a lot of copyrighted material is uploaded to YouTube, angering organizations like the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). Only four employees check the uploaded videos for copyrighted content, so it can take a long time before these videos get taken down.

Being a proponent of free distribution of information, I’m big fan of YouTube. Everybody can let their voice be heard and there is always someone out there willing to listen. I love the website even though I don’t always agree with the changes they make. YouTube has regular updates to the site, changing the layout and user experience.

Now, this isn’t a problem if they would take it slow. But sadly, YouTube regularly changes their layout so drastically that people have to relearn how to navigate the site. People are creatures of habit, and the longer they are used to one thing, the harder it gets learn another. Because it’s such a popular site, navigation becomes almost second-nature to the visitors and changes to those habitual actions is best introduced gradually, giving everyone a chance to get used to it. If they don’t take it slow they risk bombarding and frustrating the visitor. When they fix this, they won’t need to worry about any competition from other sites like Vimeo.com which has been steadily rising in popularity.

Ken Levine, BioShock Developer wrote:

Let me let you in on a little secret; If certain member of your D&D group starts handing over primo loot drops to other members of your D&D group that don’t necessarily deserve these loot drops, and the beneficiaries of this generosity happen to have names like Heather, Kelly and Pam, the days of your D&D group are fucking numbered.

I’m going insane.

Weird, right? Yeah.

Lets start at the beginning. 07-29-2007 my mother died of cancer. I was 17 years old at the time. Now, my brother and sister handled everything like you should, but I, I didn’t. I bottled up. Its what I do with my emotions.

In the 2 years that my mother suffered of cancer, I cried twice. In the 1 and a half year after my mother died, I cried twice. And thats with the funeral. Unhealthy right? Yeah, but it seemed fine.

I was cruising through life, relatively, for about 9 months. And then suddenly, I realised, I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ve actually been sleeping less and less. To the point that it was worrying. To the point of being so tired that thinking about my alarm-clock, having to start my day was horrifying.

Again, I ignored it, just like my mother ignored the orange-sized tumor in her head. And, another month went by. At this point, I was sleeping for about 4 hours a night. I was getting sad, feeling like I was sinking and couldn’t handle it.

Around this time I started hurting myself. It started simple, just punching a wall untill my knuckles bled, you know, the usual for a boy with troubles. And, as my feelings grew stronger, so did my urge to hurt myself. I was never quite there when I did it. I mentally zoned out. I could, in fact, discover that suddenly, I had another scar on my arm.

I hear a lot of “I hurt myself because I want to feel something”-type phrases from the girls I know, and it’s nothing like that. It’s not that I feel empty inside, it’s not that I do it to feel anything, it’s the opposite. I started to cut myself, and as I felt that hot sting, as I ground my teeth and thought of something else, I didn’t think about me feeling sad. Or depressed. I think about nothing. It feels like when I bleed, everything around me turns to black. When I’m done, I feel better. I sleep better, I feel relaxed, the sun seemed to shine a bit brighter, the cold seemed to feel a bit more frosty. I loved it. So, I did it again. And again. And again. Untill, one day, I realized I was in the wrong. Sure, I felt great for a day or two, I could sleep for more then 6 hours again, but when the high faded, I crashed. I felt worse then ever. Best to describe it as being very tired, and staring at static. But then, the static is your life. The static is you.

So I stopped, and I slept even worse. I sleep for 4 hours, but I don’t really sleep. I’m awake for 20, but I’m not really awake. My dreams and my realities started to overflow, to the point of me hearing voices. They don’t say anything interesting, or scary, they just say my name. I just hear them calling my name, sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering, just behind me. And they keep me awake.

Actually, at this point, I don’t know what came first. Did I hear voices, causing me to sleep less, and feel bad? Did I feel bad, causing me to sleep less, and hear voices? I honestly don’t remember. Only thing I know now, is that I think I’m getting worse. I think I started to hallucinate visually. Its started vague, about two weeks ago. I had the idea that I was surrounded by invisible fireflies. I thought, that if I squinted, I could almost see them flickering, and I believed it to be true. Thinking about it, after it had subsided, its nonsense ofcourse. But it felt so real. Like if I reached out and caught one, I could feel it between my fingers. Insane, but interesting.

For the last two days, I’m thinking that I’m actually walking behind myself. That if I turn fast enough, I can see myself run to get behind myself again. That if I would look in the mirror to see myself, I would see me looking in the mirror to see myself. Its hard to explain, but for some reason my vision felt like it had shifted from first-person view, to third-person view. It’s the most annoying thing, because it not only seems to impede my judgement in depth, but I’m starting to question myself a lot. If this is actually how I feel, a warped vision of how I percieve the world, then what else isn’t real. Did I really have that conversation with that person? Or was that all in my head? Am I really hearing that music coming from over there, or is that just me again.

I want this to stop, I want to feel good again without self-mutilation, I want to sleep for a full 7 hours and I want to be sure of what I do and what I percieve. I want to be better again.

I’ve started to talk to a psychiatrist, and I want to document my decline and progression. I choose to do this because I find this all extremely fascinating, and maybe I can benefit from it. From now on, I’ll document anything I find odd, anything I’m not sure about, and how I feel. There will be a lot of pulp, a lot of stuff that is irrelevant to what I’m trying to write down, but I’m going to filter that out as much as I can.

-Robin