ramtower

I need a new background image. I’m still using the default for this template, and that’s just not the way the hip kids do things. If I want to masquerade as one of them and walk among them unnoticed, I must emulate their ways. And also wear their skin as a suit. A flesh suit.

I suppose if Brian is going to link to me, I ought to start doing something with this ol’ weblog thing.

Only thing is, I’m so tired from all the baby rearin’ that I don’t have the brainjuice to figure out exactly what.

Lunch today was a trip to the local soba shop, only a block from Nintendo and strangely uncrowded for a being what looks like the only restaurant within walking distance. I wonder if most of the employees eat at the cafeteria or from the local convenience stores (both of which looked as crowded as the soba restaurant did). We ate tenzaru soba, with rice and pickles, and when the meal was finished, our server brought a teapot filled with the soba water, which we then were meant to pour into the soba dipping sauce (whose name escapes me, and I’m writing this note to remind myself to look it up, which means if this note is still in here, I got lazy and just pressed publish without doing so). The soba broth apparently holds more nutrients than even the soba itself, and many sang of its benefits to skin, cholesterol levels, cancer prevention, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and so on.

The real gem, however, came after lunch, when we stopped in at a local 7-Eleven to pick up drinks to sustain us through the jet lag that was only just beginning to knock us on our asses. Nescafe sells a canned coffee drink branded with the image of Golgo 13, legendary assassin of the manga of the same name. I’ll post an image later when I get a chance, because it turns out I was too lazy to finish this post properly… Ah, well. Blame jet lag if you must blame something.

Off to Kyoto for a business trip. The business-class experience of travel is still weird to me, like I’m in an entirely separate airport, a phantom airport superimposed over the one I’m used to wandering through. Meals are expensed, the lounge seats are quite and comfortable, and I’m not constantly watching my bags out of fear that something will happen to them. Tim’s on his second glass of (complimentary) Jameson, taking full advantage of the amenities, while I’m stocking up on free bagels and packets of cream cheese–my feral coach-class roots are showing, and I’m hoarding food out of fear that I’ll never see an attendant once the flight begins. I think I might have snarled at a guy who got too close to my snack cache.

I’ve been in the habit lately of emptying the various contents of my brain either on twitter or into e-mails directed at my friends, and that’s not really doing anything but cluttering the internet, irritating said friends, and possibly pushing us closer to the coming infopocalypse. In all honesty, it’s mostly because, when I write to my friends or on Twitter, I know the audience, and when I write here, it’s all imaginary and hypothetical, that audience. I get all stuffy and don’t know how to explain myself. But it’s time to get over that, so I figured I’d better do my part and move the conversation here, where it can and should be safely ignored.
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My friends at Metanet have posted an interview on their upcoming Xbox Live, DS, and PSP releases of N+. For those of you who haven’t played N yet, I recommend checking it out. It’s a Flash-based platformer with roots in Loderunner, with all sorts of fun physics and potential for speed runs and strange tricks.

The console/handheld versions of N+ are due just about any time now, I think, and Raigan and Mare’s comments on the differences between each of the versions (as well as the differences between those versions and the original game) provide great insight into the design and development process. I adore their work just as much as I adore them, so click on through and give them a read:

http://www.metanetsoftware.com/blog/?p=36

I know you’ve been clamoring for cat news, especially after that horrifying (and, admit it, titillating) post of just about a month ago. Short version: Cat’s fine. Bad bladder infection, possibly chronic, and it’s being treated now.

But what’s really at issue here? I haven’t written a damned thing on this site for over a month. I’ve been getting myself sorted out, finding a look I wanted to use, trying to figure out why I should even bother with the site, things like that — the big, meta questions, the ones for which I still don’t have answers. But with Reed’s help, I’ve found a good offline editor for posts, and I’ve figured out a little more about how to make this weblog thing work, so…maybe I’ll start using it properly this time. We’ll see. If I don’t post again for another month? Maybe I was wrong.

Now there’s a google search that gets you some interesting results.

Now that it’s 2008, it seems like a fine time to start using this site we reserved oh so many months ago. I haven’t established any resolutions this year, but I have decided (based on Kelly Sue’s post), to put together an uberlist for this year, just so I can have some kind of tracker for what I want to do.

Thing one on the Things I Want to Do is to be more in control of my time. I spend too much of my idle time idling, and that’s not getting me anywhere.

So today serves as a starting point, a transition from one year’s way of thinking to the next. And now, as I’m adding to the uberlist, I’m trying to define what this year’s thinking is going to be.

Also, I need to learn more about this whole Wordpress thing. Gotta learn how to do neat Wordpress tricks.