Random Notes on Computer Games
I've just played through the old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game with Frotz on my iPhone. With a puff of nostalgia, I was reminded of being maybe 10 years old, sitting in the basement with our Apple //c, fishing through the cardboard box of 5.25" floppy disks and pulling out a host of classics. Karateka, the cheerfully awful Castle Smurfenstein, Dino Eggs, and finally, the Hitchhiker's Guide game.
Now THIS was something cool: the game opens with the computer giving you the introdiction to a story. Then, you just tell the computer what to do in more-or-less plain English, and it'd go ahead and do it ( or, sometimes, refuse hilariously) in the story world, telling you what changed. It was so simple -- just text on the screen, a virtual 'intelligence' and a virtual world to explore.
Being a kid, I pictured myself an ellite hacker-type, typing into the night, peeling away the layers of puzzles to see the core artificial intelligence living in it's artificial world. The glow of just text on the screen made it easy to pretend -- I already was a bookworm, so I was used to imagining my stories anyhow. This took it to another level. It was my story!
Soon, of course, the interactions get silly. I'd try random things ( KICK THE DOG, EAT MUSHROOM ) just to see what the game would say. Often, you'd just get the standard "I couldn't do that! Fido is your best friend!" or "I don't know how to eat that.", but once in a while you'd get a great response: "you chew up the mushroom; it tastes like gooey dirt. Slowly, the colors drain from the walls and the dog begins to quote Glengarry Glen Ross. Funny; he never liked Mamet before."
After spending hours in front of these games, getting horribly stuck in all of them ( Adults need hints for these games; I was 7 or 8 ), what else could I do? I started writing my own. My friend Brian and I started crafting a brilliant piece of interactive fiction called "The Good Day". Brilliant, I tell you! It had three whole rooms! It was written in Applesoft BASIC! You could fart and belch, you could kick stuff, you could use two-word commands! It was very nearly a work of art, ready for publishing... Except that it took about ten minutes to get through all the fart jokes and then ended abruptly, and had no real plot, and...
But it was ours.
So nowadays, that GOTO-laden mess of code seems quaint to me as I write software that processes millions of transactions, but I miss the unbridled enthusiasm for hilarity we had. So in my next program, I think an Easter egg needs to be hidden: from time to time, in the midst of the millions of operations in the code, my fancy processing code will have gas, and leave an "oops, I farted" in the logfile.
Because no, I still haven't grown out of fart jokes. And admit it, neither have you.
Pacify Me, Part Deux
...so where was I? Oh yes, fatherhood ( I'm not gangsta enough to call it Father Hood like Mr. Dogg). Did I mention that those books don't say a damn thing about being a dad? And when they do, it's to tell you that you have a laundry list of things you really should already have been doing but clearly haven't, so by the way, you're not a good parent. "But I'm not even a parent yet!" you may protest, but the books' clear, black-on-white text just stares back at you.
Pacify Me, on the other hand, gives you a good old-fashioned buddy heads-up. Here's a beer: muscle relaxant. It's going to feel a bit like your molecules have been shifted through space; you'll get through it. Now, Have some peanuts. Ready?
Ready....maybe just one more pint?
Throughout the book, Chris touches on the twists and turns that make it tricky to take on that Dad title, like how everyone has advice for you which you must find a nice way to blatantly ignore; how your social life will change (though not totally evaporate, unless you want it to); how to handle the fact that your wife has become at least one, but possibly two or three different people; what to do when your baby screams at you ( hungry? diaper? just crabby? accidentally saw "Daisy of Love"? ); how many things people will try to sell you in order to make you a better parent (answer: how many will you buy?); how much easier it is to *actually* play with your kids than it is to *imagine* playing with them beforehand; how your kids are the best captive audience you'll ever have...
I really, really wish I'd had this book when I became a dad. I would have laughed a lot more, and laughing at yourself trying to raise kids is probably the healthiest, most effective solution of all.
So, whether you're a new dad or an old one, you'll find a good laugh and lots of comfort in Pacify Me. Pick it up at the publisher's site or at Amazon. They even have a Kindle version.
Pacify Me, part 1
Becky got this anonymous-looking Manila envelope in the mail a while back. It put me in a bit of a quandary: opening someone else's mail is a federal offense, y'know, but what if it were blackmail photos? My secret life as an undercover agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. could be over before of really got started, and I just wouldn't stand for that.
So I popped it open* to find a single sheet of paper: a ransom note! It said, "Becky, here's that copy of my book you said you wanted to read. Enjoy!" And then, underneath it, a top-secret new device for subtle influence of people! A....what was it called? A B-O-O-K. I was hoping for a Melt-O-Mind 3000, but this'll do, I suppose.
And then I realized I wasn't the only man in her life. She had other male friends. Heartbreaking. And this man had children, too. And he wrote about being a Dad, and how it scared the hell out of him at first. Kinda like me! Wait a second, I needed to read this book -- no guys out there had the balls to write about something so gentle and scary as being a new Dad --feeling worried about fatherhood was for girls, right?
...uh, right?
Well, the truth is, we guys have just as much, if not more, anxiety about what it'll be like to have a kid of our own, and the "what to expect" books give us a footnote: Don't worry if your husband is quietly freaking the f*** out; this is normal and will pass soon. We hope. Now, on to lactation!...
So I did what any dad who never had such a book would do: I snitched it and started reading it on my commute.
...to be continued...
* actually, Becky had already opened it, but that little fact just sucks storytelling-wise, so we'll just keep it in our back pockets, shall we? Shhhhh.
Tweetaholic
- Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you. Today? I'm bear food.
- @hinsoncl @diaphanein Slack, yes. Utter disregard for the written English language, no.
- @alotofnothing I'm kind of like a fungus. I grow on people.
- My Pet Peeve: Business emails that disregard punctuation. How does one say, "That makes you look like a tool" in a proper business manner?
- @alotofnothing seconded. RATM sez: "Fuck you I won't tweet like you tell me!"
The Dwinkosphere
Oldest + Youngest, Best Buds
Ben & Amelia, proving that a 7-year age gap is nothing when it comes to brothers & sisters & Playmobil..
Posted via web from dwink | Comment »
New York, New York
The last time I went to NYC, it was for a conference. I brought along
Becky and Ben, and they went off to visit friends while I went to listen
to people talk about some Compliance thing or another. I don’t remember
much of the conference, to be honest, but I DO remember ditching it one
afternoon to walk around Central Park, Ben happily chasing his “Pumball”
(a wadded up piece of paper — yeah, he’s always been this way). It feels like a lifetime ago. Now, we have too many kids to bring them along, so it’s just me. I’m
going to work, and it’s cold outside. Probably will be so busy that I
won’t even make it over to Central Park, much less to wander around it.
Will be wearing dress clothes, and sitting in meetings, and maybe
getting some of the locals to show me something interesting after work. I’m thrilled to be going again, though. There’s something about NYC that
feels really good to me; maybe it’s that it is unabashedly City, that
it’s such a hodgepodge of buildings and nooks and crannies and people.
Or maybe it’s the streets and bridges whose names are famous nationwide, thanks to
Sex and the City and countless other movies and shows: FDR Drive, Park
Avenue, the Jersey Turnpike, Brooklyn Bridge — as a visitor, there’s
great novelty in seeing that you’re riding on these streets that have
been mentioned a million times. I imagine it’s the same feeling Chicago
visitors get about Michigan Ave or Lake Shore Drive. So, this time I intend to breathe in as much as I can while rushing from
airport to office to hotel and back to office again, embedding another
fond memory into my cortex to tide me over until the next time I get to
visit, because while Chicago is my home, I will always love New York.Posted via email from dwink | Comment »
I gave some advice. Is it good advice? You be the judge.
You Said…
- Mrs Soup on Now THIS is just a little excessive:
- Bill on Now THIS is just a little excessive:
- SoccerMom on Why The iPad Isn’t The End Of Society As We Know It
