Something I’ve wanted to do ever since that first time I thought about starting a blog - I was in the middle of a threesome - was to maintain a backlog. What is a backlog? It is a list of the media I intend to consume in the near future including books, movies, video games, and whatever else I want to talk about. Consuming ideas - which is what media contains - should spur conversation, or at the very least do so more than my continued whinging and complaining.
So, hot off a trip to the bookstore, lets take a look at what is in my bag as onto the backlog it goes now that His Dark Materialsis finished, entirely underwhelming third book and all.
jPod, by Douglas Coupland
I got this book because it uses video game development as a theme, and thats one of those things that at the moment I’ll indulge most anything in. A flip through revealed some interesting typographic games which can be interesting if not abused (I am looking at you House of Leaves you stupid arbitrarily dense oh-I-am-so-clever book of stupidity). I certainly did not buy this book because I enjoyed his previous writing because oh boy I did not. I actually kind of hated it. It will be fun to see if I can finish this.
Head First PMP, Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman
Because I’m going to finish what I started even though Agile Development is so much better for software.
I Don’t Believe in Athiests by Chris HedgesÂ
This guy was on The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright and man did he say some smart things that were correctly critical of the secular left which I otherwise adore. His book was really overpriced but I want to read more of his ideas, I hope he doesn’t let me down.
There are many reasons I make a poor blogger. I suppose the biggest would be my lack of frequent updates. After that, I suppose it would be that my updates tend to be short. Indeed, they may come across as feeling obligatory, as if existing just to fill the void that otherwise exists without their arbitrary creation.
And allow me to assure you that if they ever come across as existing solely to make the last posted date on my blog closer to what the common time traveller would refer to as ‘now’, well, thats probably pretty much exactly true sometimes.
I will go on at length at a future time about how I have no idea how bloggers brains work. Nor the brains of blog consumers, but today I dwell on the automatic processes in place that vomit spam onto the blogs of the world. Despite being utterly irrelevant, my blog gets spam.
While thats a good bit less than my personal all time record for 270 it goes without saying that this is no good and needs some attention. Now, since we moved I’ve had less opportunity than ever to exercise, and am blessed with an employer that graciously provides all the croissants and bagels you can eat. Mix in the natural stress of a new and extremely challenging position and a strong tendency for emotional eating and you can see how I managed to blossom into a small planetoid once again.
So what do we do about that? Well, last time I lost 50 pounds it was through Weight Watchers, so we’ll try that again. Day 1, as expected, sucks and I’m hungry and someone get me some damn Doritos. But even with snacking on some of that free ice cream they also give us at work I managed to stay on track.
Stay tuned for exciting updates and a large amount of whining.
My move to Edmonton to work at BioWare brought many things, and one of those things is semiregular video game sessions with my friend Sebastian (nee phenyx) who I’ve known for a very long time, and who started as a programmer with BioWare about two years ago. We play popular single player titles together, swapping who gets to play on level switch or player death.
What we’ve chosen to tackle right now is No More Heroes, a game for Nintendo Wii that has obtained some noteriety for its extreme level of violence on the “family friendly” console. You can see video evidence of this over on YouTube here if you require edification.
