Emo stuff

Okay -- beware, friends. I usually talk a complete mountain of irreverent bullshit on this blog, but there's a bit of a tone swap in this post. I'm afraid you'll have to get your herpderp fix somewhere else if you decide to carry on. There's not enough derp to herp around right now -- what follows is a 9.3 on the self-indulgence scale, so you have been warned.

Two years ago yesterday, my father passed away. It was a sudden, merciful and non-violent death, which is probably better than can be said for many people.

My relationship with him was heavily strained and arguably quite bitter. He'd said and done a lot of stuff that I'd considered wholly unforgivable. By the time I was out of university and living my own life away from the family, it was my mission to never see the man again. I guess I got my wish.

I was thinking of waxing lyrical here about all the little switches that his death flipped in my head -- my seemingly permanent loss of core inspiration for game design, an overwhelming obsession with finding a partner to get close to, that still-lingering inability to get an unbroken night's sleep short of blackout drunkenness, the general change in my perception of existence and people and all that other stuff ... but I think what screws with me the most is the growing realisation that I'm very, very much like my dad, no matter how much I hated him at one point, and that often means far more to me than I'm comfortable with.

He wasn't the perfect human being, and he made a lot of mistakes which I hope to avoid emulating, but I feel a real stab whenever I sit down and let myself imagine how he must have dealt with life. He was a spot-on representation of my own character in countless ways -- the perks AND the flaws -- and if he didn't have a 30-year head start on me I may have realised that sooner.

He was confused and confident and insecure and weak and happy and sad in so many of the same ways I find myself to be. And I'm pretty sure that as much as he loved people, he found it monstrously difficult to relate to them as deeply as he wanted to. But there I was, genuinely one of the few human beings out there with the experience, personality and capacity to truly *get* him, and I'd deliberately isolated myself from him for a number of years.

It feels cliche, but there are so many things I want to say to him now. I want to tell him that I forgive him and understand him. I want to share bonding experiences with him that I didn't ever get to do before because I was just so damn angry and so damn stubborn and he was just so damn stupid. God. But most of all, I really just wish I'd been a better son towards the end.

After his death, I asked about his last year with my mom. He'd gotten better, she said. Set his life in order. He was happier. My mother and brother were getting close to him again. He'd cut out all the crap and finally returned to the self we'd all well and truly missed -- someone I hadn't known since childhood.

And in this emergence, he never stopped telling people how proud he was of me, of all the things that I was achieving out there (Desktop Dungeons had just taken off massively, too). He was sorry about his mistakes. He was sorry that I'd been chased off. He was sorry about everything. He wanted things to get better between us, he wanted to earn my trust back, have me open up to him again. He wanted us to get along and smile and relax and be happy together. But he didn't know how to make that happen, so he waited and hoped that I would forgive him one day, come back and let the wounds start healing.

In the end, none of that happened. When he died, I didn't even return in time for his cremation. I'd made no offer of reconciliation, relief or understanding -- that's just how things had ended between me and my father. It was the closing point of one of the most important relationships that will ever exist in my life, and there will never be a second take.

And, well, a part of me dies whenever I think about that. Sigh.

I miss you, dad. I miss your guitar, your music, your easygoing nature, your pride, your passion, your compassion, your patience, your little mannerisms (pretty much ALL of which I've found myself adopting, by the way) your strength, your vulnerability, your abnormality, your smoky study room, your awesome office chair, your equally awesome leather jacket, your weird obsession with collecting small change (again, guilty here too), your laugh, your sneeze, your road trips to Pretoria, your unparalleled pap 'n vleis recipe -- hell, I even miss the infuriating way you'd stare at me for half a minute before answering my questions because you knew just how to piss me off. There's a lot that I miss about you, and I only got around to thinking about most of it after your death. It all feels kinda weird now.

I love you, dad. And I wish I'd told you that in time. Rest in peace.

Facts about mountains

In Cape Town, people basically do two things: get super drunk on local wine and climb mountains. Not at the same time, of course*, but these two resources share the convenience of being close and abundant.

The tracks of Table Mountain and its surrounding environs afford budding hikers / climbers endless entertainment, and if you haven't yet sampled the joys of walking uphill for several hours followed by walking downhill for several hours, here's a few interesting factoids about our rocky friends.

Fact 1: Mountains are not your rocky friends. Mountains are trying to kill you.

Mountains are dangerous and awful things which actually come equipped with a startling number of hazards. Injuries and even deaths from falling are disturbingly common in the Cape area, while other nasty effects like dehydration and general exposure are always legitimate concerns. A mountain would probably break into your home and steal your TV right now if it was small enough to get through your door and smart enough to know what a TV was.

Thankfully, mountains are dumb.

I tend to overprepare for just about any trip nowadays, mainly because my first hike up Table Mountain saw me and two unfortunate friends getting very, very lost and very, very thirsty for a good couple of hours before stumbling across the cable car station and buying grossly overpriced Powerade because we hadn't brought enough water along.

Fucking around with mountains can lead to injury, death and getting ripped off by station vendors. Remember this and be careful out there.

Fact 2: Mountains are taller than other things.

Since ancient times, society has been built around people trying to put themselves in positions where they can look down on other people. Mountains are pretty much the epitome of looking-down-on-ness. Even humble climbs such as Lion's Head tend to provide some pretty nice views of the surrounding environs.

Camps Bay on one side.

City Bowl, Gardens/Vredehoek area. You may have noticed my house there.

Signal Hill.

Some dude's head.

It's all a lot nicer-looking with a decent camera, but capturing any sort of picture is ultimately awkward and half-hearted compared to seeing the real thing as a real person.

Lion's Head in particular is a popular hiking choice due to its relative ease, the fact that the track circles all the way around the peak, and the almost guaranteed safety from shark attacks. But this also means that the narrow route can get pretty crowded from time to time, particularly if you're climbing at sunset or during a full moon -- the evening sky looks REALLY pretty from up top, and it gives you a brilliant view of the astounding floodlights that illuminate the side of Table Mountain later on.

Fact 3: People's butts.

This isn't really a fact, per se, just something I thought I'd share. This isn't even the best butt picture -- some other dude took a picture where one person's butt was, like, in another person's face and stuff. It was hilarious.

This is a small section of the aforementioned Lion's Head climb that uses a bunch of neat little chains and footholds and stuff to help you get up. It's not absolutely necessary to go up this way, but the other way around is longer and much more humiliating because all the cool kids are going ahead and using the chains and taking butt pictures and you're totally missing out.

Fact 4: Mountains have a top.

One of the things that I really do love about hikes is that with a reasonably-sized group, you have yourself a perfect activity to take your own social pace with, complete with a massive payoff at the top that involves snacks and chatter and basking. If you're anything like me, you'll find that there's times in any social engagement where you kinda just want to drift off and absorb the world without talking much or taking butt pictures, and mountain climbing presents just that opportunity: if you're not immediately engaged in conversation, you're concentrating on your movement, taking in the lovely views and generally just feeling "alive".

And if you REALLY want annoying talky-talky social people to sod off for a few minutes, just start sweating and panting profusely. Sneeze / fart on them for good measure. It'll be disgusting but understandable in context, causing people to leave you alone without feeling like they were deliberately chased off. I've never actually had this problem, mind you, but I'm pretty sure my solution would work if I ever had to use it.

Fact 5: You cannot zorb down a mountain.

My friends have told me this, repeatedly and insistently. A part of me still believes that it could be done with enough padding.


* Actually, a lie. I have a rather interesting story to tell about that

Newly Bachelorated

The last few weeks have been astounding. I mean jaw-droppingly crazy and interesting, though also kinda harrowing. Change is good and exciting and all, but there have been waaaay too many things going on in every single life sphere right now, making things a bit of a cluster-screw* overall.

At least in all of this I've kept my health -- though the gums near one of my back teeth are a little sensitive due to overambitious brushing, and I got a headache from reading Game of Thrones in poor light yesterday.

Okay, so this is what you get when you type "anything except tombstones" into image search. Damnit, google, you're not even trying.

Cluster-screw or not, I'm being 100% serious when I say that I'm pretty stoked at all of the exciting stuff going on. I'm wibbling between absolute wreckage and utter ecstacy, and while I can't really sustain that sort of swinging tempo for any sensibly long duration, it is providing me with lots of things to remark upon that I really should've taken the time to sit down and write about.

So here's the biggest one. Behold my new house place:

Yeah, just realised I took portrait pics instead of landscape. Facepalm.

It's a lovely little studio pad in Vredehoek within walking distance of Cape Town's city centre (well, a considerable walk, but I've got a bus nearby too). I'm quite stupidly excited about it, because for the very first time ever ever EVER I've got a place all to my selfsome. And don't let the inept photography fool you, it's pretty respectable in size.

I've been on my own fairly often before, but not in any sort of situation which provided the complete nesting opportunity presented here. Aromatherapy candles, alphabetically arranged kitchenware, walls smeared with fecal matter ... it becomes whatever I want and the possibilities of bachelordom are giddying.

Toilet on right, though I think I'm technically allowed to pee anywhere I want. What are the bachelor rules, again?

Of course, I just need to stop being dirt poor, first. There's been a lot of startup expenses involved in this whole moving-into-my-own-place thing, even with the studio itself being fully furnished. I'll be spending the next month living in an amazing home in an amazing neighbourhood eating amazingly artificial survival rations. And I obviously had to secure myself some mobile internet on top of it all, despite the fact that it reduced my grocery budget from "passable adult intake" to "wouldn't satiate an anorexic fieldmouse".

"Starved to death, but at least his connection was reliable"

April's gonna be a belt-tightening month, and I'll have to exercise my polite-invitation-turndown muscles quite regularly until I get my finances in order. Fortunately, lots of the healthier activities out there are kinda on the cheap side, so maybe I'll be more inspired to hike or run or occasionally entertain friends with the cheapest beer possible. Stuff like that. Oh, and blogging. I have a data bundle and a computer to write on, so I may as well keep myself busy with that.

I'll write more things about more specific stuff soon -- it's surprisingly hard to focus fire on any single thing that's happening in my life at the moment. I may be inclined to write an essay about my new washing machine, though, because that bugger has definitely given me a run for my money so far.

* Trying not to write "fuck"** on the blog.
** Oops, fuck.

Bowling for beginners

Bowling is known to many nowadays as a fun and novel offshoot of the popular Wii Sports title. Like LARPing, it has attempted to bring a social and imaginative activity into the "real world" through the use of special equipment and as few rule adjustments as possible. Its remarkable level of success is due in part to its notable inclusion in The Big Lebowski (still considered by many critics to be the Citizen Kane of 20th century film) that caused the game's popularity to skyrocket in the mid-70s.

As a player who regularly cracks at least a hundred bowl-wickets per session (often in as little as 20 balls), I thought it would be nice to introduce beginners to this fascinating modern ballgame. Here's a few pointers that everyone would do well to learn:

- One of the most frequent problems that beginners face is the matter of ball selection. There's a wide range available and it can take a while to figure out which one you'll be most comfortable with, but a general rule of thumb is matching the ball's Rolling Value (RV) to your shoe size. The RV should be prominently displayed on the ball's surface, though the occasional Mystery Ball is manufactured without this number displayed. This is the bowling corporation's way of keeping players on their toes and you can usually find at least one of them in every pack.

- Don't make the mistake of using your thumbs for the bowl itself. More experienced players will see this as a sign of weakness and attempt to attack your pins earlier than usual, sometimes even during your own turn.

- As a beginner, you should also take care when YOU decide to attack an opponent's pins -- it can backfire easily and most decent players are quick to punish any mistakes you make. It's generally best to play defensively until you get a little more comfortable with your own bowling ability.

Diagram of typical bowling lane. Markers (a) and (b) denote pin and player positions respectively, (c) is an attacker's slip-lane and (d) is the Lagrangian Point. Nobody knows what (e) is.

- Approximately 20% of a bowler's success lies in how they place their toss, while the rest is down to manipulating the ball's path through emotive gestures and fluid dance techniques. the art of post-throw influence is deep and nuanced, but professional bowl-swingers generally agree that the most important modifiers are your shoulder positions, hip swings and overall sexiness (The Big Lebowski was able to subvert this through extensive use of facial hair, but its value in actual high-level play is questionable at best).

Having a nice butt helps.

- It should be noted that the above is a good reason to secure a decent pair of bowling shoes. Flexibility, support and low friction for the more advanced dance manoeuvers are all essential. Bear in mind that you want to preserve the aforementioned match of shoe to ball RV -- if you find that such a pairing isn't possible, consider temporarily changing your shoe size.

- If you want to bowl a straight ball for the middle pin, make sure that your throw is fluid, leading into a graceful release pose that can be maintained for at least three seconds (five if you bowl a slow ball, seven if someone is attempting to take a picture). If the middle pin is the only one left and you know how to moonwalk, you may opt to try that instead. Be mindful of other bowlers behind you, as a disrupted moonwalk can spell disaster for your long-term strategy.

- Dealing with split pins is a simple matter of bowling a curve ball with your off hand, aiming for the most laterally inverted pin first. As soon as the ball leaves your hand, begin the process of bending your body in the direction of the second target -- and don't forget those hips! From here, it's all about moving at the correct pace: bend too quickly, and you'll waste your empathic energy before the ball has enough chance to curve. Bend too slowly, and you may wind up in the Alligator Grotto. Tread the line carefully.

- Gutterballs are a tactically important but emotionally draining technique used by players of all levels to get ahead. If you plan on making these a significant component of your strategy, make sure that someone in your group has a kitten. Its soft fur and gentle eyes will offer you the support, comfort and resolve needed to face the challenges ahead.

Do not bowl the kitten.

- Throwing the ball, turning away and putting on sunglasses like you're an action hero walking away from an explosion will not earn you any extra points in standard tournament play. It will, however, look absolutely amazing in the event of any real explosions in your bowling lane.

That should be enough to get you started. Sally forth to your nearest bowling ring and try these techniques for yourself -- though far from perfect, they'll get you going in the right direction and you'll have oodles of fun in the process.

Happy pin running!

GDC: A guide to caffeine satisfaction

The annual Game Developer's Conference (or GDC) is a bitchin' yearly event in San Francisco which has people like me flying halfway across the world to experience a unique and uncomfortable blend of jet lag, American culture and industry peer engagement -- often without the assistance of even the most rudimentary illegal narcotics.

Didn't get violated by US security on the way in, but there's always hope for the journey back.

For many, this will be a simultaneously exciting and draining experience. And if you're not psyched enough to fight off the despair and/or Thai food poisoning, you're going to get doubly fucked over. Techniques for beating back the madness differ from person to person -- a little "time out" here and there, an extra hour of sleep per night or maybe just a simple hotel bathtub filled with custard and/or rabbit blood.

But let me tell you this right now, dear reader: if the mere thought of caffeine deprivation has you in tears faster than watching The Descendants on a (hypothetical) booze-soaked international Emirates flight, then don't make the mistake of coming to San Fran unprepared.

Until approximately three hours before writing this, I hadn't touched coffee in a week. I regretted this decision more than the time I punched that kid in seventh grade. I was on a miserable anti-binge of socially disastrous proportions, and the GDC Moscone Center provided me with just the fucking remedy for that:

Bottomless. Motherfucking. Coffee.

Look at that shit. LOOK AT IT.

And this isn't just some whiny, bitch-ass "yeah I'll spinelessly sit down at some restaurant forever and be happy with it" bottomless coffee. No, we're talking about a smooth $12 flask that bags you a right to refill it forever.

FOR-FUCKING-EVER.

As long as you're packing one of these metallic-finished tickets to heaven, you can haul ass to one of several stations that exist throughout the conference, shove your face under the taps and begin chugging your way to a medically irresponsible oblivion of caffeine intoxication. I have seen it with my own eyes, brothers and sisters: Jesus has returned, and he's baptising kittens in the fucking Cafe Mocha river.

Now, you may just be thinking right about now: hey, that sounds pretty nice dude, but it's not as if I'm saving enough money to snort coke off a hooker's ass or anything. And you can just shut your brain the fuck up right now because IT IS WRONG.

SHUT IT.

So you're nice and cocky, and you think that you can get by on, say, a single cup of Starbucks magic per day. Just spend a little bit here and there and that'll do you, right? Yeah, good luck with that -- especially if you're swinging over from a place like South Africa. A single drink from Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe can cost up to ten US dollars -- in SA money, that's approximately seven hundred thousand million BILLION Rand. This is bullshit, and you should get that damn bottomless coffee already because it will also turn you into a fucking viking.

It turned me into a fucking viking too. Look at that damn hair.

If I don't start seeing more of these glorious orange-and-metal flasks doing the rounds at GDC tomorrow, I will *officially* declare the whole conference a failure and do my best to single-handedly ensure that the entire industry collapses upon itself out of sheer shame.

Developers, I am coming for you.

These damn flasks were formed from the steel-coated titty hairs of Odin himself, and have been single-handedly responsible for bringing the light back into my life. Thank you, GDC 2012, for definitively showing me the true joy of being a game developer.