july 29, 2004
i'd rather be reading a book.
The other day I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed reading good books more than any other thing, including sex, eating or music.
I'd like to clarify that. I enjoy reading good books as much as good sex, good food or good music. But over the last six months of full-time work I've come to value the act of reading more than I ever have before.
Now that I've moved into town I walk to work, which means that I'm missing out on the 30 or so minutes of precious reading previously enabled by bus travel. So the reading time I do get is the few minutes in bed before I crash out after a hard day of games development related "fun".
Books which previously would have taken me two or three days to complete are now taking a fortnight to get through, and as a result of reading slowly I'm enjoying the process of reading even more. And it means that the pile of books I want to read grows at a rate far faster than I can keep up with.
It also means that I've finally forked out huge amounts of postage for some books from Amazon. Persepolis, McSweeneys #13 and The Stolen Lake.
I may never leave my new house again.
pipstar @ 11:45 PM | link | Comments: **
july 23, 2004
consensus
ok. so the other night i was shooting lasers out of my bum, not my back... happy?
pipstar @ 07:48 PM | link | Comments: **
july 21, 2004
the mighty atoms at play
I tell people that I'm working when I stay in the office late, but truth be told I don't want them to know just how glamorous this industry is.
I might look tired, but it's not because I've been sitting in front of a computer waiting for tens of thousands of lines of code to compile. I'm not tired because I haven't seen the sun for more than 30 minutes a week nor eaten properly for a month. My sleep pattern isn't suffering, not one bit!
At about 6.30pm we switch off our computers and then we tap on what appears to be a cardboard display panel for 8 Mile. I say "what appears to be" because in actual fact it is a teleporting device which transports us from our dreary office in Adelaide to a fantastical land in which we get to eat anything we want, where the sun shines and we have superpowers ♥.
We then put on our awesome costumes and play inside a bona-fide, virtually real computer game. This game is so amazing that you can do anything you want!
This game world is like a rollercoaster and an action-adventure movie all at the same time. There's the energy of an amazing concert and people look happy all the time.
The physics feel real even though you can do amazing things like fly, the colours are glorious and the soundtrack plays whatever song you want to hear.
You never die because God mode is enabled all the time. You can fall from 20000 feet in the flight simulator room and just bounce along the ground. If you want to play with guns, you're invincible! Smash your superfast car and you're unharmed!
So we play and play and play, while everybody thinks that we're hard at work drinking Jolt Cola, only breaking to read Dilbert strips and post to Slashdot. (That's just a cover story.)
Then, at about 10.30pm, we all have to leave the game because it requires such processing power that it's a huge drain on the Australian power grid. And we wouldn't want people catching on to our secret lives, not one bit.
It was only just last night that I flew around space with rockets in my shoes and lasers shooting out of my back... Yes, just like Astro Boy...
♥ Not at all unlike the land inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, except we have more tropical fruit and less chocolate.
pipstar @ 07:50 PM | link | Comments: ****
july 18, 2004
four brief answers.
The other day a lovely gentleman by the name of James suggested that I write about a number of things, namely my new house, living in the city, my favourite album cover and "is love addictive?".
The first two things? Easy, and I will return to those topics anon, but the album cover? That stumped me.
The f#a# oo album by godspeed you black emperor came with a coin and photograph in the cover. That's pretty darn cool. And the paper was really nice.
So I'll nominate that.
I do have a new house and it's in the city, but I haven't moved in so I don't know what to say about it yet. Of course I will write more at a later date.
And Is Love Addictive? Well, I haven't had a hit for a while, but I can say Most Definitely.
pipstar @ 07:31 PM | link | Comments: ****
july 17, 2004
words
Last year I wrote about my grandmother and realised that I love writing and that I seem to do it fairly well. At least, I think that the process of realisation began then.
For a long time I've always told myself that I couldn't write. High school English classes were tedious because they largely prescribed a dogmatic approach to interpreting literature and ignored the craft of writing. I feel cheated that I have never thoroughly learned the rules of English to be able to use the language to its full extent.
Reading is a pleasure I hold in the highest regard, and as such I've always been in awe of the people who write books. Reading bad writing is painful and who would want to be guilty of writing something bad and therefore painful?
And so I've avoided consciously "writing". I've demurred when previous employers have asked me to edit content. Many times I've told people, "I am not a writer, words aren't my thing".
Hello? I've been maintaining a website for almost four years now. Sure, there's photographic content, but it's taken me a long time to realise that battlecat IS about words. It appears that words are my thing.
Over the last two months I've hardly written at all, either online or in my paper journals. When I have written, it's been unit specifications for work or draft entries for battlecat. I've loved the technical writing for work because it has a clearly defined purpose and audience, but I've laboured over blog entries and hardly ever posted them because I've either felt that my everyday life is quite tedious, or not felt that my writing is up to scratch.
And because I haven't written enough, I've realised how much I enjoy the process and how it is actually something that I want to do. I want to write.
pipstar @ 08:33 PM | link | Comments: *****
july 07, 2004
waking up...
I'm sure that it's been a little bit boring if you've been checking my blog regularly.
Sorry.
I'm trying to think up exciting things to write about, because I'm afraid that if I were to just recount my days, you might fall asleep at your desk. Don't believe me? Well here goes...
The last couple of mornings I've been waking up a few minutes before my mobile alarm starts its incessant beeping.
While I secretly congratulate myself for now being a fairly good approximation of a morning person (I now get enought sleep to not be a complete bitch), I still don't enjoy getting out of bed. I have not yet reached the level of a morning person who relishes starting a new day so much that they wake up by choice, throw the covers off and jump into the mid-morning chill singing "Oh What A Beautiful Morning". ♥
Then I check the clock.
7.13.
I berate myself for not taking advanatage of seven more minutes of uninterrupted sleep. So I huddle down underneath my flannellette sheet, feather quilt and three blankets and return to sleep for an extra seven minutes. When the alarm does go off, I press the snooze button and sleep some more.
At 7.32 I begin to feel guilty, so I look at the window and feel a little depressed. As we're heading towards the middle of winter, the darkness in the morning has become more significant. Over the last year or so I've increasingly noticed the effects that the weather has on my wellbeing. Luckily I live in South Australia and not Lapland, so I can still get out of bed when the weather is grey.
:::...
Sorry to devastate you, but I have to go to Karah's for dinner. but tomorrow I may just continue on with a description of my typical day! Or maybe a description of something which is actually interesting!
♥ If I ever did do that I'd probably be high and therefore in need of sleep. In that case, slap me and send me back to bed...
© 2002 - 2007 Pippa Buchanan