Periodically.org

One of the things we forget as we get older, is how terrifying childhood is. Or at the very least, reasonably uncomfortable. Case in point, lessons, about anything: swimming, reading, soccer, or in this case, ice skating. I never took ice skating lessons as a kid, I think at one point my dad may have given me a pointers over a span of about 15 seconds. As he was an immigrant from a country where humidity meets monsoons, that was the entirety of his knowledge on the subject. We have Owlet in classes, all that 'give your child the opportunities you never had' thing coming into play there. Thinking back, the only reason I didn't have this opportunity is that my parents were busy signing me up in all sorts of other activities to feel awkward and self-conscious about.To my everlasting regret, there was never a summer camp for 'sitting quietly in a corner, reading books while taking breaks to watch cartoons'. So anyways, yes, it's difficult, this thing we call c...

Owl Jr. is still very much into Thomas the Tank Engine. Periodically he'll ask me to read him the toy catalog, which I'll staunchly refuse the first 97 times. But he has taken up Hotwheels to some extent. It does seem all hopelessly gender stereotypical but I suppose I'm just too old-fashioned, lazy, and cheap to get him the Mother Jones approved Green Nurture Truck from the Gaia Solar Empowered Rescue Team (made from carbon neutral renewable Fair Trade non-invasive species bamboo). Also, it means I can hand him down my Hotwheels. Likely made from lead-paint, cast from asbestos casts and formed from depleted uranium with a special DEET-infused glass for the windshield. It's a bit of a trip to see him play with the milk truck tanker which I pretended to be a tanker with mini-laser turrets where the tank caps are. Or the grey funny car which quite EMPHATICALLY belonged to my brother. Or the 007 Aston Martin which even MORE emphatically belonged to my other brother.  O...

This is a draft, one of many drafts on different topics I've found in my draft archives. This particular one is from 2010... Yowsa. The PNE is the Pacific National Exhibition, which is a very Canadian and overly complicated way of saying 'State Fair'. Owlet is four, if my math is right, which it rarely is. Owl Jr. is two, possibly/probably. There are  rides of various speeds and sizes and death-defyingness, sweet and salty and questionable treats that all have ceased being technical 'food' during the long slow cost-cutting and profit maximization that is industrial food production and regulatory slackening which began in the 80's and has gone as unabated sales of Atlas Shrugged to undergraduate commerce majors. Owlet is a smaller fireball, and I'm not sure how she'll take rides. They trundle and whizz and bang and some go at speeds which used to fill me with excitement but now just have me worrying about the frequency of federally mandated safety c...

I'm at the last bit of my game, LaunchCraft. I still think I implemented it poorly, but I just want to be done with it. Which is a really crap reason for wanting to finish a game, but at this point I need any motivation to get through it. Game development is alot of pain working with obscure tools and uncertain documentation aimed at MIT compsci gradutates who read WC3 specs to wind down, I find. To be more accurate, working with open source tools is like that. I could very well use any manner of commercial prodcuts to get my game done, and that would likely be the wiser course. But I have this thing for freedom, and have various, radical scenarios where entire swaths of my PC goes down, or companies dissolve, and then I have to rebuild whatever I was working on from scratch. With open source, that option is there. The code never dies. There's no company to die and leave you in the lurch. You can always work 'light'. That is, with as few dependencies on the nefarious ...

Remember when you used to look forward to being one year older: more mature, more responsibilities and opportunities? And now it's just hoping that the degeneration of your body isn't too catastrophic and that maybe you can make it to a peaceful death without smearing your name on the walls with your own feces? Those were great times. This card is made from pristine, supposedly protected redwoods of California. The image on the front is of a idyllic untouched coastal scene, though, so there's that. Another year older, another year wondering if that delightful absent-minded professor routine you've cultivated since 19 is really just masking advanced dementia. Well, you're well past ever making anything of yourself. We love you anyways. Happy Birthday! You know using today to get a free meal at Denny's means you've lost, in not an unsubstantial way, some very real points in life. Breakfast all day though, have a great one! Batmobile, Porsche, Ducati, Eur...