Risk of Rain

Or, how I lost spent an enjoyable nine hours of my life (and possibly even more) playing a rogue platformer.

Risk of Rain’s mission statement is simple: Traverse a platforming stage, find a teleporter, activate it, and survive long enough to use it once it’s powered up.

Initially it doesn’t sound compelling. There are no skill trees. Its graphics are a sparse, minimized representation of a barren world. It is running and jumping with randomized items.

But that’s not entirely what it’s about.

Risk of Rain is about dying. More accurately, it’s about dying, and then selecting, “Try Again?” Continue reading

Breakfast

A small latte and an everything bagel.

Simple.

Watching it rain outside, while being inside and enjoying coffee.

Back in California and all I want to talk about is Captain EO

I am sitting in a Starbuck’s enjoying a breakfast sandwich and a dirty chai, and as of this writing, I have already spent 12 hours at Disneyland, and I am still pretty tired, as I have that three hour time differential to deal with.

I highly recommend Disneyland at some point. At some point, Tomorrowland rides got a sort of steampunk makeover, and I was able to watch one of the last showings of Captain EO, which was the Francis Ford Coppolla, George Lucas and (wait for it) Michael Jackson 3d movie slash music video collaboration.

The theater also has external lighting that matches the on screen action and the floor actually thumps in time to the beat of the music and for explosions.

Continue reading

The New Keyboard

imageThis is my new keyboard.

You may notice that it is black and shiny.

Oh, and the keys are unmarked. Which means that I have to trust myself to know where the special characters are. It’s replacing an older keyboard that I wasn’t really keen on using, and honestly, had neglected to the point of being a little gross. That’s now sitting on a loading dock in my building. It’s up for grabs if you want it. I noticed my wear patterns on the older keyboard, and I was thinking about how I never used any of the special buttons, like back in the web browser, or launching the calculator.

Those keys were completely unnecessary. They weren’t needed, they were useless. So right now, I’m typing this, listening to the clackety clack of blue switches. Which is apparently a thing I didn’t realize. All the different variants of the switch types for mechanical keyboards. I went with blue for two reasons:

  1. It’s loud, and I like the feedback of the keys. There is a definite resistance to the keys, and a completely tactile feel of the key being depressed.
  2. I live alone.

Two is important because this is a really clicky keyboard. I’m not sure how I can drive home how clicky it is. There is a tactile feel to it, a physicality that I can’t really compare to membrane keyboards.

Oh, and you may notice is has no letters or symbols on it. I figure I live the rest of my life on hard mode, I might as well start doing it here. I also am somewhat amazed at physical memory. We’ll see how well it does when the time comes and I have to enter some new passwords.