Got in late last night after an unremarkable flight. Grabbed the rental car, drove to the place to pick up the rental stuff, then to the cottage. Played some Word Ace and then crashed.

Woke up this morning, and we were immediately off to the beach. It was as close, and as amazing as expected. Wow. Bobbed around in the waves, walked down toward Lanikai, grabbed lunch at a little convenience store (good sandwich), then crashed for a bit.

Got up, went out to get some food – tried a couple places, but ended up at Teddy’s Bigger Burgers, which Ayyana had recommended. I had a burger. It was bigger than I should have eaten. 😀

Then we went back to the pad, snoozed for a bit, went back out to bob around in the waves (literally, that’s almost all we’re doing), then got ready to go to LK’s family’s for dinner.

AMAZING dinner. Smoked pork, some beautifully done steak & brisket, some Okinawan sweet potato, salad, home-grown cucumber kimchi, and then a bunch of fruit, and chocolate chip cookies.

Spent some time with the K’s, and had a really good time. Invited to come back the next week, which we’ll definitely do.

Day 1? Big success. Tomorrow? Turtles. Maybe Macadamia nut pancakes.

Word Ace launched on Thursday! I’m pretty excited, as I think this is probably the best game I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. Oh, sure – other games were crazier, or weirder, or whatever – but this one’s got that “pop” – that addictive, “gotta play just a little more” thing that’s hard to consciously chase down.

Of course, that’s when we’ve got a trip to Hawaii scheduled. Now, I’ve been trying to get my sorry as to Hawaii for 15 years, and this looks to be my first time actually succeeding at the endeavor, so we’re GOING, DAMMIT – but I’ll definitely end up being a little more plugged-in than I would have otherwise maybe hoped for.

Still, it’s not a bad thing. I’m excited to see how the game does, and talk to people who’ve had the chance to play it. I LOVE playing with new people, and seeing the kind of craziness that ensues from having 10,000 people playing a game that earlier this week, only maybe 20 people had ever laid their eyes on. I’m hoping that by the time we get back from the trip, we’ll have 100,000 downloads. We’ll see. 🙂

But yeah – a week+ of chilling out. Definitely looking forward to it. And it’s a week of relatively low-design work at work (other than the more PR/marketing-like stuff I flail away at), so things should be alright. I’m just antsy, is all.

Looking forward to lying on the beach, exploring the island, eating the local food, and spending some time with Ei-Nyung somewhere new. Our last trip alone for the forseeable future. It’s strange how quickly life is about to change. For the last what, eleven years, it’s been the two of us. We make a great little team. 🙂 Hopefully the new intern will do alright, too.

1.) District 9? Awesome. Will definitely see it again, and the Blu-Ray’s a no-brainer.

2.) It’s a great situation when your biggest stresses at work are that you have too many awesome opportunities, and not enough time.

3.) Big things soon. Can’t wait.

4.) Impending parenthood is… wow.

So, we got an estimate for taking a comprehensive look at fixing the water leak. $40K. Ridiculous, but finally, enough I guess to re-motivate me to do the fundamental testing to try to get a better assessment of what’s going on, I guess. And enough to wake me up at 3 in the morning in such a way that I can’t get back to sleep. Fun!

So, I know where the source for one of the leaks is. At least, I know where I can shoot the hose to guarantee the window leaks there. The second part of that is to make sure that if I shoot somewhere else, it *doesn’t* leak. So I’ll probably start there, ’cause that’s the easiest thing to do.

Second thing to do is to route the backyard hose through the house, and out the dining room window to test both above the window, the window, and the little ledge roof under it, because I know there’s some water coming in there – I can see it in the edge of the floor.

After that, I need to get up onto the roof. This might mean borrowing a ladder from a neighbor (if anyone has an extend-able ladder that’ll be tall enough to get me on the roof) and hosing down the roof for a bit.

Then I need to somehow get water above the living room window. This is tricky because it’s really high up, but maybe the backyard hose through the house, out the window, then just stick an arm out see what I can do holding the hose.

It all sucks, because if it leaks, it’ll damage the new drywall. But I guess we should have ripped off this part of the drywall when we had the chance and didn’t. Gargh.

Oh, well. Live and don’t learn then maybe learn. That’s me.

So, we took Seth to the airport, and sent him back home. It was fun having him come hang out. Had soup dumplings before he left, which is always a nice plus. 😀

Weird to think that while he was here, we got a new car, and Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite, and Karl Malden all died. Not that those are the big markers of time passing, but it was like a whole suite of recognizable characters from my childhood passed away in the last month.

After dropping him off, we headed down to Laguna Seca. A coworker/friend races his Honda S2000, and he’d offered to take people for rides around the track.

It was something I’ve always wanted to do – well, I suppose realistically, I’ve wanted to drive – but I’ve always wanted to go around a racetrack at the speeds one would actually go around it while racing (or as close as a street car will go). Sure, I’ve driven around Laguna Seca hundreds of times in videogames over the years, but it’s MUCH crazier in person, without question.

The Corkscrew? Bonkers. The speed going into the sharp corner at the end of the first straight? Craziness. Also spectacular.

Definitely awesome. I’d love to do that again, or get a chance to drive on the track myself. Went down to Cannery Row in Monterey – I don’t know why I hadn’t imagined it’d just be Pier 39, but it was. Bleh.

Drove back, and am exhausted. Big fun.

The various iPhone games I have right now. Recommended in bold.

must.eat.birds
Fieldrunners
Dr. Awesome
Monkey Ball
Word Warp
Tris
de Blob
Morocco
Enigmo
Mazefinger
Uniwar – close
Top Gun
Peggle
Blimp – close
Eliss
Textropolis
iShift
Azkend
The Last Cannon – close
Real Racing
Rolando
Topple
iDracula
Tap Tap Revenge 2
Galcon
GeoDefense
Scramble
Pocket God
Flight Control
iSR
Lemonade Tycoon
Underworlds
The Creeps!
Car Jack Streets
Apple’s Texas Hold ‘Em
Zynga’s Live Poker
Trixel
Pew Pew (It’s FREE!)
cs.one
Star Defense
Hero of Sparta
Knights Onrush
Let’s Golf
Mass Effect Galaxy
Warpack Grunts
Doom Resurrection
Zombies & Me

While I’d say most people could get the bolded titles and have some fun, there are a couple others that are close, and some that are well done but I still can’t really recommend without substantial reservations. (Uniwar, iSR, etc.)

Some are clearly well-put-together, but for whatever reason, totally failed to grab me. Underworlds and Car Jack Streets are both more “involved” games, and one’s basically a Diablo clone, which I thought would have been a sure recipe for success, but I can’t bring myself to be bothered to play them. I think it’s that I don’t feel like there’s any reasonable return on the time I put in, unless I sit down with it for longer than I’d want.

Some that I’d actively anti-recommend:

I *hate* Mass Effect Galaxy. Mostly because I really enjoyed the console game, and ME:G is *so* bad that I find it offensive. The combat sections are boring, unremarkable, and the loading in between every section is inexcusable. Worse than all that, the story sucks. The writing is horrible, the interactive dialog is really poorly done, and it’s an insult to the franchise. I want to like it, but I can’t.

Warpack Grunts, on the other hand, is just a bad game. The control scheme is incredibly poorly thought out, and despite some charming humor, and really nice explosions, the game is actively awful to play. Clicking on the screen to move and double-tapping to shoot means that when you’re panicking, it’s impossible to either more or shoot reliably. Since screwing up basically means instant death, and there’s no save system, the game’s just a constant “fuck you.” Easily one of the worst game I’ve played on the system.

I also wish EA’s Zombies & Me was more fun. I like the concept, but the execution is really sloppy. When you die, there’s no “game over,” or death animation – the game just abruptly switches to the “Game Over” screen – it’s incredibly jarring, and really feels more like the game has just arbitrarily stopped you, and not that you lost. The game could be a LOT better with a 1.1 update, but as it is, even at a buck, it’s not worth getting.

Also, cs.one seems to be really highly acclaimed, but I hate it. Maybe it’s just the “thrust” genre (think Asteroids’ control scheme), but the game basically kills you with poor controls, then insults you when you’re dead. While it’s got a really neat aesthetic, the overall game structure isn’t very compelling, the controls are incredibly difficult to use well, and overall, I find it more tedious than fun.

Of course, all of these games took a lot of people a lot of time to make, and some of them are clearly ambitious and challenging. But some of ’em just aren’t worth the money. :\

Of all of them, if I had to recommend only one other game, it’d have to be Real Racing. Firemint’s gone way, way beyond anything else on the iPhone so far, and it’s an incredibly compelling racing game, even with the simplified controls.

Second would probably be Doom: Resurrection. Yes, it’s a rail shooter. But it’s a rail shooter that’s so appropriate for the platform that you really don’t even feel the lack of control over the movement.

Yeah, they’re expensive at $10 each. But I’d take either of those over 90%+ of any 10 $1 games.

So, a handful of years ago, Klay & I had a bit of a competition, to see who could lose the weight we’d put on over the previous few years. While I won the competition, Klay kept up the habits, and achieved his actual goals. I didn’t.

I’d lay some of the blame at changing jobs, which radically shook up the habits I’d been developing before they had a chance to “set,” but realistically, it’s that I just let it fall apart.

The thing is, it was simple while I was doing it. Don’t eat to excess. Let yourself stay hungry – you’re not going to starve to death. Don’t eat garbage – soda, unrecognizable non-foods, etc.

The simple fact of competition was enough to keep me adhering to good behaviour, and the end result – looking and feeling better – was reward beyond anything the competition had set up.

Why didn’t it stick? Food’s delicious, and there’s definitely something pleasurable about eating whatever it is you enjoy, and however much of it you want.

I’d hit a plateau at 213 – I couldn’t get below that. Now, I’m at 218ish, and while that’s only 5 lbs, it’s a really critical and really difficult 5 lbs for me – makes the difference between being “chubby” and being “okay,” to me. Realistically, I’m still ~30 lbs more than I should be, but I’m willing to make this a long-term project.

The key, I think, is to develop simple, easy rules. If I put half a meal in a takeaway box up front, it takes a little “activation energy” to bother to eat it later. It’s also cold, having been in the fridge, so it’s a little less appealing. If I’m genuinely hungry, I’ll eat it, but I won’t eat it “because it’s there.”

No more soda. Work makes soda really accessible, and I end up drinking a Diet Coke almost every day. I don’t even *enjoy* it, it’s just a habit I’ve developed for some ridiculous reason.

So, those are the first two things. No soda, and eat less. If I focus on rebuilding those habits, they’ll build the foundation for the rest.

So, we had some left over Black Truffle Explosion centers from the Alinea dinner, and we were up for BBQ this week (we do BBQ every Wednesday at work). Given that we had a bit of short notice to put the lunch together, we had to do something interesting, but quick.

So, using the gelatinized truffle/butter “centers,” we stuffed ’em into the burgers.

HOLY CRAP THEY WERE GOOD.

I mean, the first bite was good, but the second bite got into the truffl-y center, where it was like the burger equivalent of the BTE. Amazing.

I don’t know that I’d ever want a non-truffle burger again!

Was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s take on Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” and was struck by two things:

1.) The price you pay for free content isn’t money, it’s time. There’s a reason I don’t download every free App on the iPhone App Store – it’s because most of it is garbage. Where the future is going to come from re: free content is in ranking and filtering systems that people trust. Otherwise ALL free content is going to be filtered out as garbage, because no one can sort the wheat from the chaff.

2.) Anderson’s charging $26.99 for his book? Fuck that. For someone who’s advocating the bullshit that “information wants to be free,” he’s charging a hell of a fucking lot more than free.

Took Mobius to the beach today – made him chase after sticks in the surf ’till he was worn out. Good times! I took him in this:

…which is our new car! Got it for a couple hundred bucks below invoice, which was nice. So far, it’s a blast. Quieter and more powerful than the Civic, and roomier as well.

We’re selling the Civic to a friend, so it won’t stray too far from the family. 🙂 I spent the morning vacuuming it out, and pulled out enough hair to make a small dog.

Gotta wash it and get it smogged, but that’ll probably have to wait ’till later, when it’s a bit less hot.

Work’s going well – we’re closing in on the end of our next game, and the update for Taxiball’s sitting at Apple, waiting to be approved. Still having a blast, and the new game’s surprisingly addictive. It’s weird – it’s one of those simple ideas that I’m really surprised hasn’t been done and done to death already, but I expect once we launch, it’ll be a few weeks ’till the App Store is flooded with clones. We’ll see. I think we’ve got such a high-quality product – both functional and beautiful – that we’ll be able to beat back any competitors. Should be a good time.