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Updates are kind of hard to come by. The venerable Aquarius has celebrated his blog’s 10th birthday, which kind of made me think “Gosh, 11 and a bit years. I should update more often”. And Thus.

So, an update, then. At work, I’m working on the Next Big Thing for Work, which will have absolutely no impact on the tech industry at all, and because of the inward-facing nature of same will be worth not much.

Home-wise I’m working on The Book, which continues… well, crap, really. The story is there, and the writing is as not bad as is reasonable, but it turns out the actual story is far too slow to actually get moving, let alone get to anything that will hook the reader. The writing continues apace, and by this method the pace will be fixed, we hope.

Also, Lifestream, and more specifically the current incarnation of NicholasAvenell dot com. The actual display of which isn’t anything revolutionary, but I’m having fun writing the grid system it all runs under.

PiracyInc continues as well, with a new Combat system that I really should have worked out ages ago, but may end up being rewritten (again) into a language I know, because learning at the same time as doing does not appear to be producing the results I need it too. Right now the economics system works fine without any player input, so now all I need is added pirates.

So most of what I’m doing is entirely invisible to the public eye.

The only actual visible thing I’m producing right now is a series of parodies/satire on UK Larp systems, and the idea of the “perfect system”, which isn’t really interesting to my current readership who aren’t already involved, I think. It’s an interesting vector for creative writing. More interesting, to me, is the aspect of user feedback that centralising on Facebook provides. The frictionless UI that supplying a “Like” provides appears to increase user feedback, or at least enough positive feedback to avoid the “I’m shouting into a black hole” feeling that I’ve found posting anything on the internet tends to engender. This, I predict, will last until something I’ve invested actual mental effort into results in significantly less interaction than previous throw-away jokes, at which point the frictionless interaction will turn into a more friction-focused stick with which half my ego uses to beat the other half. The problem with being a feedback junkie is that the comedown is rough.

Also, the highs are hard to come by.

So, tomorrow work, and then on Thursday up to sunny Glasgow, Saturday the Brewdog AGM, Sunday Glasgow again, and Monday the long trek home. It’s entirely possible you’re in for a great deal more introspection over the next few days, for which I can only apologise.

Since I have to get up in seven hours, I should probably take my leave of this pub.

2 comments
  1. I know what you mean. Having feedback is nice, provided it stays good and keeps coming! The “like” button does seem to be very good for getting feedback quickly.

    Also, I should resolves to comment more, given I know how I like getting comments. Hopefully I’ll remember this for future posts!

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