Sad things happen

Ever since we came back from our summer holiday I didn’t feel like going online. Partly because we didn’t have any internet access during our vacation – which was very peaceful – and I didn’t want to disturb that silence too much. But the main reason for not wanting to return online was that a friend of mine was very, very ill, and I just didn’t care so much about what went on outside.

Friday afternoon the inevitable happened: he passed away.

He has been my best friend since the first day I met him at school; we share so many memories and have done so many great things together. I’m absolutely gutted, I will miss him so much.

I love this silly picture of us together. It is a recent one of us enjoying (more than) a few beers in the Heartland Brewery under the Empire State Building. What a fantastic holiday that was… it makes me smile.

Matthijs worked as an architect, but his real passion was photography and graphic design. He was only 37 years old… cancer is a bitch. Five years ago my mother and now my best friend…

I can’t even begin to imagine how his wife, his mother and his brother feel.

Cheers mate, you will be missed by many people!

gr.jakko

Today in Spotify: Gwendal – Destination Irlande

After three months of Spotify I noticed I’m hardly using it to its full potential. I’ve fallen into the pattern of listening to the artists I know and love and the albums I already own. I don’t need Spotify for that. There is so much music to be found in the Spotify library, time to make use of it… or cancel my subscription.

So, time for a little project to expand my musical horizon by listening to randomly selected albums usually found in the What’s New section. Well, somewhat randomly anyway, there’s always something that triggers the decision to listen to something new: an interesting title, appalling cover art, a monkey, nudity, etcetera, etcetera. And if you have a Spotify subscription you can even join me, isn’t that great?

So, first up is Gwendal – Destination Irlande. It was the mischievous look on this dude’s face that made me listen to it, he looks like a real Gwendal to me. I did some searching around and it seems Gwendal is a French band playing Irish folk… interesting. And indeed, the album sounds VERRY folky Irish. It was all very pleasant and I quite enjoyed it as background music, but I’m not sure if I will listen to it again.

Out of a god no, meh, okay, or YEAH it scores a very decent okay.

gr.jakko

The Perfect Sunday

It doesn’t happen very often that a Sunday comes very close to being The Perfect Sunday. Today turned out to be one of those days where a lot of good things added up to make it a great day.

In the morning we went to a local produce fair with the kids. The fair itself was not very crowded and the location was beautiful: the garden of a local hotel slash conference centre, with huge trees providing the much-needed shadow to escape from the blazing sun. The kids ate ice-cream and strawberry cakes and made a bit of butter. There was local bread, local ice-cream, local fruit, local pottery… you know, the kind of stuff you expect at a fair like that. It was all very country side. Which strikes me as a bit odd since this is not a very country side like area. I think they abandoned that in the late eighties over here. Mud and muck on your shiny SUV; I mean gross!

Back home we had a summery lunch outside (a salad, bread and some watermelon) and forced the kids to take a nap afterwards. I started reading a new book… in the garden. Drank a bit of white chardonay… in the garden. And closed my eyes for a bit… in the garden.

After waking, the kids played most of the afternoon in the garden while we supervised with a book and a glass of wine. Followed by diner… in the garden.

It is probably the amount of time spent outside in the sunshine and the shade that made it such a perfect day. And in ten minutes the new Top Gear season starts, not much that can top that.

More Sundays like this please.

gr.jakko

Get out to flow

I have struggled all day with the story of the game I’m working on. Too much distractions around me, a short meeting in the morning, and a head buzzing from a severe cold. I wasn’t able to get in the groove; the plot points and characters just wouldn’t fit. I even tried herbal tea and nature sounds to kickstart the flow of the creative juices. It didn’t help. So after a couple of hours of staring at a blank screen I finally decided stop hurting myself and to take off.

I grabbed a notebook (the papery kind) and a pen and rode my bike to the canal that flows nearby. I found a lovely spot bathing in sunshine, surrounded by trees and the sound of flowing water. I planted my backside on a bench, opened the notebook and stared at the blank paper for a while. I had a bit of a false start, but then it happened: I just couldn’t stop writing. The loose ends finally made sense and it all started to fit. The dangling characters had the right motivations and the plot points actually matched the level structure. Forty five minutes of manic scribbling and I was done. What the hell happened there?

Of course I shouldn’t act so surprised because I have been there before; sometimes after days of struggling it can all just come together at once. Any creative knows that, it even has a name: Creative Flow. I just wish I had more control over those moments. I think getting out of my regular environment without my computer and its distractions was what did it today. I should do this more often: when stuck for a while -> get out. Unfortunately the “for a while” part is so hard for me to judge. Man, this coming up with stuff business is so much hard work.

gr.jakko

No more E for me

Nine months ago I bought an e-reader, a Sony PRS-600 and at that time I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet. It’s bright sexy red and it is a pleasure to hold. I even bought a cover with a built-in reading light for it which, unfortunately, makes it look so ugly and nerdy I will never leave the house with it.

Nine months and a load of books later, do I still feel it is the coolest thing on the planet? Time to evaluate.

Good things

• I still think it is a sexy device, it looks nice, it is sleek and feels solid.
• Delivery of books is FAST. Buy and you have it on your reader a couple of seconds later.
• The ability to quickly look up words in the dictionary is great. This is one of the best features.
• Very good reading quality in direct sun light, aaaaaalmost like a real book.
• It can hold a crap load of books, which is great if you travel a lot. Which, unfortunately, I don’t.
• Ehmmm… good things. Did I mention it is a sexy device?

Bad things

• No bath time reading. Almost a deal breaker for me, as I used to read most of my books partially submerged.
• Maybe this is a Sony thing, but as it gets darker the words are barely visible on the screen while a paper book remains perfectly readable. This reader needs a lot of light.
• You look like a dork when you take it outside where the ordinary people roam.
• HOW much more for that ebook? How can something digital be more expensive than the physical product, are they serious?
• How come I can’t buy that ebook? I’m allowed to buy the damn paper one, why are there region restrictions on ebooks, but NOT on regular books. A lot of ebooks I want to read are apparently restricted to a region I don’t live in. Why, why, why?
• I can only install it how many times? Okay, maybe DRM just pisses me off in general.
• Why are there more typos in the ebook than there probably were in the first draft? Seriously, I’ve caught so many already, it is like they scanned in the proper paper books and completely trusted the software to handle the character recognition correctly without bothering to check up on it.
• And publishers please, please hire someone to properly lay out your ebooks. Why would you want to waste twenty percent screen space by adding way too much whitespace. And why can I only choose a character size that is either too small or too big?
• I love book stores and I’m not ready to give up on them. Shelves filled with books make me happy, happy, happy.

So, there are just too many things that piss me off and I’m so disappointed by this whole ebook wave. I wanted it to be the coolest thing ever because I love to read and I love gadgets. For now I feel it is bad execution all the way. It is exactly like when we were first allowed to buy digital music online. The music business has caught up a bit and now gives us DRM free good quality music.  Lets wait for the book publishers to get smart.

Last week I decide to switch back to proper books again. I already finished two… in the tub.

gr.jakko

Punctured start of the day

The day started so well: great weather, cooperating kids, a whole schedule in my head for what I needed to do today. Then, just after I dropped my son off at school, I walked back to my bike and noticed it had a flat tire. I silently cursed for a bit (there were a lot of other parents around, don’t want to sound too much like a weirdo) and started walking home again.

It was a pleasant walk that I would have enjoyed even more if I wasn’t dragging a bike along. There is so much to see when you’re walking. When I’m on my bike I constantly need to pay attention to the traffic, much less so when you’re walking. I saw rabbits, birds, sunlight bouncing off fresh green leaves, a guy who brings his kids to school in a Bentley Continental GT even though the drive is less than one minute. “Wanker” I thought, still… it is a damn nice car. Checked my wallet, no Bentley for me this lifetime.

At home I flipped the bike to check the damage. MY GOD… that’s no puncture, that’s a damn chasm! Half the tire ruptured, how did that happen without me noticing it? And to make things worse, it’s the back tire, that’s the one that’s the hardest to change. So, I have to collect my tools now so I can start dismantling  half my bike and then I’m off to the shops to buy a new tire.

At least I kicked the stupid bike. It made me feel a bit better.

gr.jakko

Winos

I don’t believe I have a particular unhealthy interest in other people’s garbage. What fascinates me though are the empty bottles the recycling truck picks up every two weeks. Neat rows of crates filled with empty bottles in front of the houses. Empty wine bottles. MOUNTS of empty wine bottles.

The other people in the street must lead fun and exiting lives, friends for dinner every day, closed business deals at least twice a week. Like the people in the commercials. Still, they all look so normal, and I have never met a drunk neighbor.

Before we moved to Vught we lived in a small village where the situation was completely different. Hardly an empty wine bottle could be found there, they either didn’t drink, or they wanted to hide their habit. Knowing the neighborhood there a bit, I suspect the latter. The only crate that always stood out was ours: filled to the rim with empty wine bottles.

So glad we moved here, it is good to be among normal people again.

gr.jakko

The last weights

In Holland we have a proverb that goes a bit like this – the last weights are the heaviest – and I’m sure most languages have similar sayings.

So as most of my fellow Dutchmen were enjoying this bank holiday poking the barbecue, enjoying festivals, or relaxing in the garden, I was locked up in the office trying to outrun a deadline.

The deadline I want to send in the BIG Springball update is tomorrow and I’m sure I will make it. I saved all the last technical issues for today, so it turned out to be a dreadful day filled with tedious code hacking and cursing at the screen (and today was a religious holiday tsk, tsk). But, I’m glad I dragged myself through it because it is all done now. The remaining tasks for tomorrow are mostly graphic related: a whole day without a code editor to stare at. WOOHOO!

When I have technical and creative tasks to do, I find it is always best to completely separate them. I find it almost impossible to design a fun gameplay twists or a nice looking color scheme when I’ve done a lot of programming that day. The opposite is also true, there’s no way I will come up with a decent algorithm after a day of drawing graphics. For me at least, the left brain/right brain switches take some time, so it’s best to anticipate them.

Now I’m going to relax a bit.

gr.jakko

Today was not rubbish

Had a great day today, I spent most of the day doing something that I enjoy a lot: creating things.

Usually my days are filled with hours and hours of programming game code. You could argue that programming is also a form of creating things. Possibly, if it wasn’t such a tedious and draining job. It is hard work and I almost never get a sense of achievement out of it, not even if the outcome is better than expected.

It’s nothing like drawing, (game)designing, writing or making music to me, I always feel great afterwards, even if I created a pile of rubbish. Okay, well maybe that’s a bit of a lie… if rubbish is what I get after trying to create something great, rubbish is how I feel afterwards.

I’m very satisfied with the game graphics that I finished today, and I had a lot of fun creating them. So it is strange that I choose to spend most of my time doing the game development thing that I like the least – the coding. I really need to balance things out more.

gr.jakko

Early start again

Early start again, which is not so bad. No car sounds outside, no rattling of passing trains, no distant drone of a motorway, no little running feet. I had plenty of time now to collect the kid’s clothes and prepare their breakfast. I would have taken an early morning stroll if I lived in a city center, there is something magical about a city that wakes up. As there’s not much going on in our neighborhood at this time of day I took out the trash instead.

The sun is out and the garden is flooded with birds rummaging through the plants, looks like it’s going to be a fine day.

gr.jakko