Inertial Tumblings

As I eat a sandwich filled with last night’s bolognese, deciphering the disappointing sauce’s many imperfections*, I think about the week ahead. What’s my plan? I have a plan, right?

Of course I do. Having finally got UCAS out the way, there is now one less thing people can nag me about in the world. I also feel I can now start getting things done. I agreed with myself that this year, I would try and make something every week. Trouble is, just what do I make? And how?

And on top of it all, it’s awfully tempting to simply sink once again into the warm embrace of Skyrim, lost in another world as hours evaporate into the ether, never to be reclaimed…

Time is a horrible thing. As Horace Mann would so smugly put it:

Lost — Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

Which is a bit sad.

I think I might make a game. I need to learn to use Game Maker better, especially if I’m going to enter the Mini-Ludum Dare contest next weekend, so this can be practice.

I also started putting together some notes on the Sahara at the beginning of the year, and that needs finishing. It’s going to be aimed at people who are interested in using the Greatest of Deserts as a setting, mainly for games, which is something you don’t see enough of. There is more there than meets the eye, I promise, and hopefully I can prove this to people and make them interested. Perhaps I can dip into that side-project in between game making.

I have some ideas for games I’d like to make and a whole week is plenty of time to develop them in, provided I manage my time well. I’ll choose a concept to stick with while I have a go at RAGE.

*I didn’t have any garlic, for one thing, so the sauce is lacking in that much-needed tang. Also, I think I put too much of that red wine in, and it had been open too long.

Black Mirror: The National Anthem

Last night the first of three episodes of Charlie Brooker’s new show aired on Channel 4, and if you missed it, you can watch ‘The National Anthem’ over on 4OD. The whole thing is about 35 minutes long, but it was so heavily intruded upon by advertisement breaks that it really lasted not much less than 50, which was annoying. Kinda makes you dislike watching things on the telly. Regardless, it was excellent to watch.

Black Mirror is pitched as a kind of modern-era Twilight Zone; contemporary worries and woes explored through speculative fiction. ‘What if?’ questions frame important societal debates, sci-fi settings are used to say unsettling things, and strange stories stray into territory all too close to the viewer’s own fears for comfort. And it’s all so well-laced with deliciously cruel humour, one has to worry why one’s laughing. Writing in the Guardian, Brooker declares:

That’s what we’re aiming for with Black Mirror: each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they’re all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy. And if there’s one thing we know about mankind, it’s this: we’re usually clumsy.

It’s a noble mission. It’s the kind of thing I’d like to see more of.

The next episode, enigmatically named ‘Fifteen Million Merits’, airs next Sunday at 9 on Channel 4. I can’t wait.

Jhereg

You know, it’s actually very good. Which goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover! I mean really. Only morons do that. Yes.

Moving swiftly on…

(I’d intended to write a bit of a spiel about what I thought of the book in more detail than just ‘I liked it’, but I’m a little tired at the moment. I’ve moved onto the next story, Yendi, now, anyway.)