Update #101 If you really wanna go

Oh, hi there! Late? Me? No, you've got the wrong guy. I'm Gary.

Did you know Joe Strummer was in a band called The 101ers? No? Well, now you do.

Been listening to a live album of his (Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, actually): Live at Acton Town Hall. Really enjoying it, it's great even without the context of being one of the final shows he ever played.

It's also very educational. For example, I didn't know skinny people only eat eels.

I'm going to mope, and you can't stop me!

I mentioned reading Name of the Wind not too long ago. I've gathered some thoughts about it. The start is really engaging, and for about half the book I was absolutely hooked. The technical quality of the writing keeps being just as excellent, and Rothfuss really has an astonishing ability to make you feel like you're in the story.

But in the latter half of the book Kvothe starts talking to women, and I die a little bit inside every time. Just... You know every stereotype of dudes who are upset about being friendzoned that we have on the internet? Those vibes are all over the book from that point on.

I've heard it gets worse in the second book, so not sure I'll read it. On the other hand I kind of do want to make a bit of a study of the book simply for the prose, since I do still think it's amazing and I'm sure the second book will have more of the same.

I was going to make a reference to the book here by saying something like "If you aren't a reading-snob, I don't expect you to understand." But even writing that out with the ironic reading-snob bit feels arrogant. I don't like feeling arrogant, so I hedged my bets by writing it like this and now it's not a subtle nod to the book anymore. Oh well, can't win them all.

Did you hear the one about some fowl or somesuch crossing a street? Or was it a road?

Scene 15 was a ridiculously short one, so doing that this week isn't much of an accomplishment, but at least it's done. Only two more scenes to go, but one of them is spicy which takes time, and the other one is simply huge.

Then there'll be a little bit of fixing stuff, adding some credits, adding an option to change the transparency of the text box and such. Nothing big or particularly time-consuming.

Gonna finish up my final critiques/responses by Monday, and from then on I'll have nothing but time to work on the game. That'll be nice.

It really is tricky critiquing stuff. You want to stay constructive, but at the same time want to point out perceived flaws. Sometimes it's really hard to find a good way to phrase things, so I tend to err on the side of kindness. Which sometimes is appreciated, and sometimes leads to people being annoyed that they aren't getting feedback that is as useful as it could be.

Yeah, tough balance. Makes me even more appreciative of the effort some people have put into their feedback on Trouble iN The aRena. Just wish I'd had someone take a look at the name of the game before settling on it.

Anyway, that's about all I have for you on this... uh... Saturday. If I claim it's Saturday, surely no one will suspect anything, right? Yeah. Saturday night fever babyyyyy!

Thank you all very much for your support, and I wish you a week bereft of other people's arrogance.