So… what’d I do this vacation? I didn’t travel anywhere, and Ei-Nyung was in Atlanta, so I mostly spent it pretty laid back, enjoying a lot of quiet nothingness. Still, I got some stuff done:

• Finished Mass Effect – great game with one or two major flaws, but really does show how good a story in a videogame can be.
• Finished Half Life 2, and Half Life 2: Episode 1 – also a great game, and though the fact that it’s a shooter means the mechanics can get a little repetitive and dull, HL2 also completely redefines how a story can be told in a game. Alyx Vance is hands down the best, most fully realized character in a first person game ever. I’m a bit through Ep. 2, but am not likely to finish it this vacation.
• Finished Undertow – a short, simple Live Arcade game that’s a lot like Geometry Wars with context and a story. It’s getting sadly overlooked, and I can’t find an online game to save my life, which is a shame, because really, it’s quite excellent. The single player game is short but worthwhile.
• Finished The Cuckoo’s Egg, by Cliff Stoll – borrowed this from a friend. It’s a nonfiction account of a guy who ended up chasing a hacker through Lawrence Berkeley Labs’ computer systems in the eighties. It’s a really compelling book – not as good a book as A Voyage For Madmen, but definitely a worthwhile read.
• Did some weeding – didn’t finish the front yard, but did some damage on the weeds with some help from Ei-Nyung. Looking better, for sure.
• Played a LOT of Rock Band – somehow got a lot of 4-player games together, and had big, big fun.
• Picked up and started practicing the bass and the guitar – inspired by Rock Band, I started playing around with the real instruments again. Because of my broken left wrist, it’s tough, but I think I’m able to play bass, at least. Complex chords on the guitar are tough, not only because I don’t have enough practice, but because hitting the strings with my fingers with my limited wrist rotation is tough.
• Went to the optometrist for my regular checkup. Prescription’s drifted a bit, but not enough that I’m gonna get new glasses. Yet. I took a look at a bunch of frames, and the one that “fit” the best was the Oakley Gasket. For some reason, when Oakley frames fit my face, they do so better than any of the other alternatives.
• Took the dog out a whole mess of times to various places. He jumped into the bay at an inopportune time, when it was closed due to an oil spill a month or two ago. Good times.
• Went to dinner at a couple people’s houses. Every time it was awesome. I’m really lucky to have friends who are both great company and great cooks. 🙂
• Went to some friends’ very informal City Hall wedding, which was awesome, heartfelt, and beautiful.
• Cleaned up around the house a bit, chucked all our mix-and-match plastic food storage crap, and bought a single set of stuff. Now all our stuff matches. Everything fits, and works together.
• Sent Super Mario Galaxy back – I’d gotten a defective disc, and it kept crashing at a certain point in the game. Hopefully, Nintendo will send a new disc back.
• Got a new jacket – it’s sort of a blazer-y jacket, but much less “refined” or formal. I think at this point, I’ve got all the jackets I need.
• Tried, unsuccessfully, to do a “quick” Peking duck for dinner one night, but did successfully make some awesome fresh Guacamole from America’s Test Kitchen. Not that that’s hard, but it’s pretty darned good, and a really quick meal.

Yeah. So, that’s about the size of it. Sure, I could use another year or two of vacation, but hey, it was a pretty good time. Not really looking forward to going back to work for a couple reasons, one of which is pretty obvious.

I think I’d like to spend some time working on this text adventure, but at least at this point, I think it needs a little time to mull around in my head. Though obviously, stuff develops successfully most when you start banging on things, starting with an idea that’s really compelling would be good, and I haven’t hit that spark yet. Still, I like the concept of a console text adventure with animated text, and it does seem simple enough to do. Generating the content would be the bulk of the work, but that’s the kind of work that I really, really enjoy anyway. It’s building up the infrastructure, or programming the actual game that is beyond me.

Still, worth looking into XNA – there’s probably even basic examples of how to do exactly what I want to do there already. We’ll see.