Within the past week, I think I've heard 3 or 4 references to "Soylent Green". I didn't know what it was until recently, but http://en.wikipedia.com hooked me up with the info. I'm becoming a big fan of that site. For those you haven't heard of it, it's an on online reference, like an encyclopedia, but the content is generated by users. If you browse an article and find something that is incorrect or missing, you can add it yourself (it somehow gets reviewed by peers, I'm assuming). Pretty neat.

It's a good example of a concept that was written about in Wired magazine recently. The article was basically about the birth of the web. At the beginning, it was a big question of who was going to basically be "in charge" of presenting information to the consumer-based audience. The existing paradigm was that of cable television, and the thought was the the internet was going to be like a cable company, with a fat provider on one end, feeding thousands of channels to users. But with the advent of browsers, it turned the public from consumers of television to producers of information, which is really a huge leap. All of a sudden, we have people writing down and posting all sorts of information collectively, for no other reason than to be helpful to others. If you can look past the spam and adware and porn and viruses and hackers, the Internet is really a good thing.

Anyhoo.

The other night, I was making myself a drink of vanilla vodka on the rocks. I filled my glass with ice, and then filled it most of the way with vodka. I noticed there was only a tiny bit of vodka left, so I poured the rest of it in. I guess there was more than I thought, 'cause I found myself with a glass filled all the way to the brim, so I ended up dumping some out. When Diana asked what I was doing, I explained that because I drink it slow, I didn't want the ice to melt and cause my drink to overflow. She immediately laughed a little laugh and reminded me why I need not worry about it. THIS is why I love her.

I've been working on some game-programming stuff lately. It's been a ton of fun. The driving force is re-creating the original Castle Wolfenstein (not the 3D one, but the original for the Apple ][), but I'm going to add my own twists to it, if possible. Right now, I have an animated character running around a (randomly generated) maze of rooms (each room is one full screen, and exiting north, south, east, or west loads a new room). Not much, but I've spent a lot of time cleaning up the code so that it's a good foundation to be added to.

The hardest part of game-programming for me personally isn't learning new technology, but just having the patience to spend months on a single project. I recently checked out my old hard drive and found about half-a-dozen started projects (including the Wolfenstein one). So, we'll see how it goes.

SYL