Aquarionics

Time to move house.

Decision made. The thing I came down here to ponder and decide upon has now been made, you heard it here first. I might be able to survive March in Cambridge, if I can borrow money to pay the rent, but it’s just too fucking expensive to stay there without selling body parts longer than that. I have to get out of Cambridge, there is no longer any way I can stay there.

One day, I’ll move back.

There. Said it. You heard it here first (Before either parents, girlfriend nor other-housemate. Might regret that later, but still…)

Moving to Cambridge was the first time I’d managed to suceed in a goal I set myself. I failed to get the qualifications I wanted, I failed everything else I set. Moving to Cambridge redeemed quite a bit of the self-esteem I lost. To allow myself to admit that that’s fucked as well took a lot of effort.

I’ll be back home on Friday/Saturday, with any luck.

Now what?

Ahh well, seems like I’m back now.

From Dave Taylor’s (ex-ID, ex-Transmeta, ported Quake to Linux, founded (with American McGee (also ex-ID, and also creator of AM’s Alice, one of my favourite FPS‘s ever)) & worked for C₆, then left it in December) Blog^[1]:

[T]here will be no laws in Davetopia unless they can be programmed in a standardlized legal programming language and implemented literally into code.

This way, lawyers will be replaced by a sophisticated web interface available to everyone, for nothing. So it’s basically gauranteed that every member has free access to the actual code governing his life. Instead of having to pay $300/hr to interpret a tiny piece of it.

Anything that doesn’t suit the programming language basically becomes a kind of useless case law, completely unenforcable, nothing more than a code of ethics that some people choose to follow. Most likely, several different codes of ethics will emerge. The system will be corrupted by coders that start incorporating the citizen’s membership within a particular code of ethics into the coded law, which will break the legal system by letting the inputs become subjective, leading to complete failure: lawyers. But that’s OK, because by then, as soon as we spot the first lawyer and realize we’ve hit a losing condition, we’ll know how to start over and make society even better.

On the down side, programmers will now be the most powerful, corruptable politicians in society. But on the bright side, programmers will now be the most powerful, corruptable politicians in society.

XMLaw, anyone?

[1] One day, I will follow though on my idea to create the worlds greatest Games site, so I have somewhere to store all this useless information I have without burdening future generations with it. However, before that I should really finish Epistula. And Nomical. And Project Alice and Toffia and Ceavern and Albertross and Forever and Afphrid[2b|!2b] and… and… and… gamabase will have to wait.

I’ve finished another computer game, which makes the second this week, and indeed the second this year, and third in the past two. Generally, I either don’t buy games that get “Completed” (SimCity, for example, where you just play until you stop) or play games until a) I get bored and buy a new game (common when I have an income) or b) I get to a point/mission I can’t pass without cheating. Since I won’t cheat on any game I paid for unless it’s just fate (For example, saving when I have 5% health and no ammo, then encountering a room full of enemies just before the save) or bad design (If I get stuck on a puzzle with absolutly no progress for over 45 minutes, I find out what I do next. This is Game Enjoyment rather than cheating). So tend not to cheat at games.

That wasn’t the point of the post. This could be, it depends on how the digressions go:

I have this affinity for worlds outside stories. This may be a common thing – I don’t know, most of my social circle I met though literary preference which means they tend to share this trait, so isn’t a random sample – but I tend to enjoy any book with a complete world outside the story more than I do worlds that live around the story in progress. A case in point would be my own stuff – unhelpful, since nobody besides LoneCat has ever read any of my worlds-based stories, but nevertheless – where I have two interconnected worlds, distantly related, one of which has a couple of thousands of years history, with absolutly no stories that touch upon any of it.

Er, better example. David Eddings’ Belgariad and Elenium worlds both had histories, worlds, stories within stories and fine detail down to the grain. He published an entire book of his writings about the world that he had used for writing the histories. The history bore the ten books of the tales well, and a volume of prehistory excellently. (Polgara The Sorceress, fact fans, doesn’t exist in this timeline. I’m charitably ignoring it) (It’s not that I hate PtS with a passion unholy, or anything, it’s just that… ahh..).

Robert Jordan’s universe is holding up nicely, too. Or was, the last time I looked at it, which may have been book six. If Jordan’s going to die before finishing the bloody saga, I’m not going to start it. If he doesn’t, I’ll read it if I can get back to book six without wanting to strangle the female characters (Don’t care which one, they’re all the same).

But the plot has to hold up too. The Eddings’ last-book-but-one was a five book epic in a single volume, and managed to get through an entire epic plot without touching the sides. Somewhere behind it was a detailed, well-thought-out magic system, a rather interesting prophacy system, some nice politics and some great battles. None of which you saw in the book, because they had a macguffin to save Eddings writing the “wandering along travelling” bits that he did so well the previous 19 books.

That wasn’t the point of the post either, hang on a second, it’ll get here. Wrong sort of digressions on the lines, apparently.

So, I just completed The Longest Journey, which was hailed (as every Adventure Game for the five years previously and the three years – so far – since have been) as the Final Swan-Song Of The Dying Point And Click Adventure Genre. This time, however, they could have been right. TLJ was the last (As far as I’ve seen, and I’ve been looking damn hard) true point-and-click adventure game professionally published, which it was in 2000. Adventure games since then have been 3D turn-and-point (Escape From Monkey Island) or 3D turn-and-click (Syberia, Cryo’s entire hateful catalogue), and this doesn’t seem to be likely to change (Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max 2 will both use the Grime (Grim Fandango-style, sucessor to Scumm (Script creation utility for Maniac Mansion) which powered every Lucasarts adventure game from 1987 to 1998) engine (Fear the brackets in that sentance)), and (We’re back to TLJ now) enjoyed every minute of it.

Partly (Warning, fast point approaching, please step away from the pointer) because it mixed an engrossing and very much classic fantasy-style storyline (Overuse of words “Destiny” and “Prophacy”) with a less classic future-based storyline and a overarcing world architecture that made everything fit logically at the end. Which it didn’t.

Oh, the story ended. Role resolved, apocalypse averted, Plot pointed, heroine hooray, but the world was left open for more stories within it, and hints of the story that wasn’t told, and possibly never will be. That’s kinda an interesting point, there. It has everything beyond a notice at the end saying “We’ll make a sequel if this sells”, whilst leaving you satisfied that the story is over, almost. And they will make a sequel. They (FunCom, who later created Anarchy Online) have said they want to. And they can, because the world didn’t close with the story like it does in most games.

(From a comment I just submitted to the BBC Bloogle Story that everyone is talking about)

I run an online journal (I hesitate to call it a weblog, I hesitate even more to call it a “blog” because the word isn’t one I like) which discusses such things as weblogs (ahh, navel gazing), the news, the state of the Nation, as well as Wot I did On My Holidays.

Most of this isn’t journalism.

You can say weblogging isn’t journalism if you like. You can also say “writing isn’t journalism”, or “Talking isn’t making speeches” or even “Hurting someone isn’t war”, and you would be equally correct, and win awards. Go You.

But some of hurting people will be over war, some of talking is spent making speeches, and some of weblogging is journalism. Writers for the newspapers, magazines and other journalistic outputs also have weblogs, where they are able to write something that doesn’t conform to what the leaders decide is the Official Position.

Equally, some weblogs are unsubstaniated piles of something nasty, but then again so are some “proper” news articles, pick your swings and take your places on the roundabout.

And the prophacies were made of those threads of time that will certianly be woven, and the time when the veil will be lifted and threads past the veil seen again, and the prophacies speak of a savior, as prophacies usually do….

(Spoken in the middle of one of the most clichd explainationary monologues I’ve ever had read at me, in The Longest Journey)