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.

Been a while since I’ve written anything. Since you can’t RSS this blog, I’m sure no one’ll see this for weeks. Ha.

So. If you haven’t already heard, we’re having a kid. Specifically, if everything continues to chug along as it has, we’ll be having a son in October. No, we don’t yet know the name. Stop asking. 🙂

Ei-Nyung’s younger (I’d originally written little, but he’s not that little anymore) brother is coming out to visit for about a month starting Saturday. Starting *Wednesday*, we’ll be getting the floors refinished. It’s all pretty crazy. We’ve been painting the new drywall for the last five or six days – I’m just about as sick of painting as a single person can be, and more, both hands are totally cramped from the pressure required to get a thin coat of paint out of the rollers. I picked up a Napa cabbage at the store this evening, and could barely hold on to it.

Tomorrow, we’ve gotta move the remaining stuff outta the living room so that the floors can be sanded. Should be fun.

It’s pretty crazy how different it all looks.

On the work side, Taxiball’s been out for a couple weeks now, and it’s chugging along. We got featured in the “New & Noteworthy” section of the Games page on the App Store, and while it’s been good at generating momentum, and the game continues to sell, it’s not taking off like a rocket. We’ve got lots of really, really positive reviews from review sites, but it’s not driving traffic to the game. Advertising on Penny Arcade’s really entertaining for me from a personal perspective, but hasn’t paid off in terms of a return on the investment.

The next few things we’ve got in the pipe are all really, really exciting – and given Taxiball’s positive response, I’m confident that the next games will be as good – it’s just a matter of getting them out to an audience. We’re gonna keep updating Taxiball with new content, and see how it does – we have some really oddball plans coming up, so who knows what will eventually make the game “tip.”

Anyway. Gotta get someone to look at the outside of the house – if we can get the water leak fixed before winter, then that’ll be all the major house issues, save the upstairs bathroom, complete. Who would have thought?

So… Taxiball’s been released to Apple. It’ll be up on the App Store when they put it there, it seems. Who knows how long it’ll be.

Quite strange. There are a couple previews posted on the web – one on iphonegamenetwork.com and one on theappera.com – looking forward to seeing their reviews. Also had someone very, very influential play the game today. It’ll be interesting to see what happens from there…

Hrm. Odd. Pensive. Nervous.

Was reading the Alinea cookbook again, and Grant Achatz mentions that he was inspired for a dish by some tree roots he saw while walking with his kids through a park. He also talks about how he’s always pulling inspiration for his food from the rest of his life, and how basically, everything he sees passes through this filter of “how could this influence food?”

Reminds me of two things – the first, Shigeru Miyamoto’s descriptions of his inspiration for Zelda (exploring caves as a youth) and Pikmin (his then-recent obsession with gardening). And obviously, they’re fundamentally the same thing – someone who is so saturated by something that he breaks apart the rest of his (or her) existence and views the world through a very specific lens.

The second thing it reminds me of is a thought I had a couple months ago, but couldn’t really explain. I’d been reading a bit about how the mind processes things, and I haven’t read enough to really talk about it with any certainty, but there’s this idea of “chunking” things – creating shortcuts in how you process information around you so you don’t have to process every detail every time you see something.

Ei-Nyung used to say that she never really noticed what model cars were – basically a car had chunked to “car” where all cars were fundamentally the same, where for me, I’d chunked Mazdas and Toyotas and Ferraris and the like, then later broken up those chunks into RX-7s and F430’s. I find that the idea of chunking seems to explain the holes in my memory – how I process past events is really reduced down to a few (to me) critical details, and almost everything else appears to be disposed of. I dispose of who was at an event, for instance, while this is clearly one of the critical things that many (most?) people seem to place as a high priority.

So, the thought was this – basically, Achatz uses food as a hammer to break through the chunks. Most people look at a tree and see a tree. He understands food as flavor, form, presentation, etc., and then breaks the tree down into those things – the tree then becomes the inspiration for some aspect of the food. Miyamoto understands gaming as interaction, character, game systems, etc., and then un-chunks his world based around those things.

It seems to me that a lot of these sorts of creative breakthroughs seem to happen when you take something very ordinary, that you look at every day for weeks and weeks and weeks, and then use some “hammer” to break apart the chunks, and find some detail that’s relevant, or interesting, or that other people are overlooking. In which case, a person’s specific expertise is basically their mining hammer, and the way their brain has stored information is the quarry. You can enrich the quarry by learning new things, but until you take your hammer and break the stuff apart, you’re not really mining.

Hrm.

In most weekends of mine, any one of these things would have consumed the entire weekend on its own:

1.) Flew to Chicago, and ate at Alinea. The most mindbogglingly insane meal I’ve ever had, without question. Would recommend to anyone, but it’ll really only be worth it if you’re a bit of a foodie.

2.) Went to Kraken’s wedding and hung out with a bunch of TEPs.

3.) Met (for the first time in person) three people I’ve known for almost a decade, and hung out with some other good friends as well.

Then flew back. Exhausted, happy to see Mobius, missing Ei-Nyung (who continued on to Philly for a week), and looking forward to the future!

Taxiball’s close. Very close.