Bad stuff
It's been a bad couple of days for blogging, so much has been happening that it just hasn't been very high up on my priority list. My best friend's mom died last Thursday. Shaun and I grew up in each other's homes, and Aunty Anne was like a second mother to me, as bad as it is that she's gone, what is really painful is seeing how it's hit Shaun. She's been sick and suffering for a very long time, and through all of that she never complained and continued to be an amazingly giving and loving woman. We went to the funeral in Witbank on Monday and it hit me really hard.
Aunty Anne, we will miss you dearly and will never forget you. You touched the life of everyone that knew you and you were one of the most amazing people I ever knew.
My own Mom was admitted to hospital with pneumonia on Tuesday morning. It's not life-threatening or anything, but it's not fun seeing her in hospital. She's in the same hospital I spent a lot of time in as a kid, and walking those halls (and stepping out into the gardens) brings back a lot of memories.
On top of that, I've been reacting badly to my immunosuppressants over the last couple of weeks, and this got particularly bad on Tuesday. I really struggled through work on Tuesday, and had to take yesterday off. I'm feeling much better, but the doc has taken me off those and just raised the dosage on my others, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully by next week I'll be feeling 100% again-for the first time in months.
Tech stuff
To keep this from being a totally depressing personal rant, I have two tech things to mention. The first is YouOS, an experimental web-based desktop (not quite an OS). It allows you to have a Windows-like desktop with multiple web-based applications running in windows. I tried the demo, and while it's a bit sluggish over our lousy connection speeds, I could imagine the idea working very well in countries with decent, prolific broadband. While any PC running this would obviously already be running a 'proper' OS, it offers some interesting future possibilities for file availability across machines, especially across machines of varying capabilities (for example your cell phone, PC and PSP).
The other little tech tidbit is that Goal Technology Solutions is about to start offering their Broadband Over Power lines competitor to Telkom's ADSL in selected Tshwane (Pretoria) suburbs-and at significantly lower prices than those of the monopoly. They will also soon be offering 'traditional' ADSL at much lower prices than other ISPs. It looks as if we may finally be seeing a fixed-line competitor to Telkom.
Other stuff
I thought I'd mention that my friend and ex-colleague, Andrew Paterson (who also happens to be something of a Commodore-64 nut) is remaking the C64 game 'Space Crusade' on the PC with funky new graphics for the Retro Remakes competition. He's blogging his progress at AndrewPaterson.blogspot.com, go pay him a visit. Good luck Andrew-and don't you think it's time to start playing games that come on media other than tapes? :p
7 comments:
Oi! Tapes were the bomb... with all the time between waiting for levels to load it was possible to do so much other stuff. Not that I ever did: just stared at the screen and waited.
Also you may have noticed that before even reading your blog (thanks for the mention) I put a link to it. How good am I!
I hope you and your mom are both feeling hundreds soonest!
Cheers,
Andrew
Your mates blog is cool. Thats actually a fun idea, a game dev blog. I don't talk too much about my game on my personal blog, for fear of being boring to most people, and because so often the stuff I'm working on doesn't result in pretty screenshots.
You know, I think you'll find more people would be interested in your game dev efforts than your day to day life. That's not a comment on you, but rather an observation about blogs in general. That's why I've always the avoided the 'and this is what we did on monday, and this is what we did on tuesday..' type of posts. I mention the odd personal thing here and there, but I try and make a point of posting stuff that people may actually find interesting. An excellent commentary I once read on blogs said something along the lines of:
"If you're using 'I' more than twice in any single post, you need to rethink that post and if anyone will really care about it".
I went into a bit more detail with the honeymoon (which I really should blog on again) because it's a foreign country and people might be interested in the travelling.
Yeah, I hear you, which is why I generally try to avoid writing about my personal life, unless I have something meaningful to say, or something funny.
Thats why my blog can be a bit sarcastic. I have a sarcastic sense of humor. I don't write about day to day pleasantries that much.
Same with forums really. I find "How was your weekend? Good, you? Also good." type threads snore inducing. Juicy debates I can sink my teeth into, ftw.
Well, my blog is there specifically to keep my family and friends up to date on what's happening with my travels.
My gamedev efforts aren't blogged so far, but maybe that's a good idea... hm.... nah, too much effort ;)
Jus your's is different-you're living the dream man! :p
You're exploring a different country while sinking your teeth into 'proper game dev, ad making us all jealous with super-budget game purchases! There's nothing wrong with blogging about that :)
Post a Comment