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Software engineers should write

This appeared on my dashboard a few days ago, and I finally got around to taking a peek at it.

Code and essays have a lot more in common. Both begin as a blank slate and an idea, then end as a discrete product for an intended audience.

Good writing skill, much like well structured and commented code increases the value of the person doing the writing and coding as well as making communicating  ideas and software maintenance easier for not only the original, but also future maintainers of a piece of code.

Thinking clearly is such an underrated skill. I also agree that good writing takes time (and some focused effort.) I totally had a particular writer/developer in mind as I read that post.

If you’re a code poet that happens to also write non-code on a regular basis, then that’s a good thing.

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This will be the year that I will end with a shorter, not longer, backlog of things to do. That’s really been my problem in recent years is that the things I’m able to do increased, but not the time to do them in. Time management is probably my biggest challenge, but I’ve got the tools at my disposal and am getting better at it, so less overlapping things will occur (I hope.)

That means I’ll be getting caught up in more of the reading, writing, learning, and playing of things. Getting more things done is what’s going to be different. I’m already doing good, I think, with 1/365 daily posts done.

Basically, I want to reuse the resolutions I made a year ago as well. I’ve pretty much lived all of 2014 with those in mind.

How about you, dear reader? What is going to make this year different than every year before?

via Daily Post – 1.1.2015 – Daily Writing – Desk Community.

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Now that Blogging 101 over at The Daily Post has wrapped up, it’s time to take a quick look at my resulting posts. Here’s a short list of what I think of as the “highlights.” In no particular order, but numbered, nonetheless:

  1. Take…a red shirt – I didn’t really get any responses on office shenanigans, but I’m sure there are more interesting ones that the one I posted out there.
  2. Salad Days – Lamenting the trouble I had getting my brothers to play games with me.
  3. We all want a hero – I commented on another’s post, and had a bit of a conversation as a result.
  4. Valuable Data – I really enjoyed thinking about a “what if” situation that also tells a bit about myself.

I don’t create lists often, but it’s nice to go over some posts to quickly review, so this might happen again, from time to time. I’m doing my best to fit the theme of the Countdown Challenge here. You’ll probably see better efforts there.

 

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The past 30 days has gone pretty quickly, I must admit. In between work and extracurricular time, I’ve been participating in Blogging 101. At first I had intended to take part to simply motivate myself to post more often. I think, however, that it kind of did a bit more. It got the gears turning, and I now, at the end, just created a bit of an editorial calendar of things I’d like to work on through the end of the year (30 more days).

The first is to post a bit more activity from one of my other fun activities, Saberguild. Also on the calendar is a game review, which is a bit scary because I’ve never written a lot about how I feel about any particular thing and I used to hate book reports in grade school, so this’ll be interesting. Last, but not least, I might try a few challenges, starting with the weekly photo posting challenge, the One Word Photo Challenge.I want to take, and post more photos as well, so I’m challenging myself to do that more. Having a goal is helpful and sometimes tricky. I mainly wanted to achieve something, though.

All this should hopefully lead into the next phase of learning and growing in the new year. Here’s to a fun month had, and to come!

 

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An Entrepreneur’s Struggle to Understand “Need” and “Want”

Wherein, a serial entrepreneur explains his journey to try to better understand the difference between “need” and “want”.

 

Tucked away in a hallway at GDC was the Videogame History Museum.

I couldn’t be there, but, fortunately, IGN posted a set of photos. I bookmarked this months ago. Have a look.

 

Speaking of history, here’s a quick look at how manga and anime changed over the years, visually.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Dear Anime,

Thanks for being such a fun form of entertainment, anime. It’s because of you that I can’t sometimes find some pretty unusual stories and even situations that would be highly unlikely to occur in real life. Even when you get a bit heavy on the fan-service, you still manage to have some grain of pretty unique situations. I also like your associated art forms, such as Manga and the cosplay that inevitably arises. Continue reading →

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Is there a period in your own personal life that you think of as the good old days? Tell us a story about those innocent and/or exciting times (or lack thereof).

Salad Days | The Daily Post

That question got me to thinking about some of my earliest gaming memories. Was it really better before online gaming came along? Some gamers lament that things were simpler then, especially since playing with friends meant everybody on the same couch in front of a TV. For me, it was not that simple, or even always that much fun.

My brothers and I were indeed lucky to game together during one of the most well-known time periods; the days of the Atari 2600. Our collection grew pretty sizeable over the years, due in small part to the fact that an uncle also had some games as well. But, I digress a bit. The experience of playing games is what I’m remembering. That was not terrible, but it was not as ideal as I would have liked. For one thing, I was the eldest of 3, and it was sometimes tricky to convince the other 2 to play with me, especially on competitive games, of which there were many, as I, due to a bit of an age gap, was usually better, and would often win (in games that had winning conditions, like sports titles). The loser would sometimes just plain quit playing, leaving me to play alone for a while.

I grew less and less willing to want to play video games with them, and didn’t really see that getting better over the years, even through the golden age of the NES and later systems. It really wasn’t until Xbox came along that it started to get a bit better. I think more gaming with the 3 of us able to play together helped, and online play made it possible to play even separated by distance. I still think it’s better now, even though I’m mostly solitary gaming again, but now, I have friends who I can connect with online sometimes, and sometimes those sessions are hugely fun. Even though I do play in a well-known MMO, I do not fall heavily on either the solo adventurer side or always grouped raider. I just flow as the situation demands it and I think that I’m better able to deal either way.

This is all to hopefully say, it wasn’t, for me, “the good old days,” but that doesn’t mean it was all bad, and it’s definitely not terrible now. I’m going to keep on gaming and having adventures.

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“Where’s My Super Suit?”

 

That line from The Incredibles totally caught my eye in the WordPress Reader, so I stopped, and gave it a read. It then further drew me in since I’d heard some of the rumblings while I was wandering around the Anaheim Convention Center area during this most recent Blizzcon conference. There was a rumor circulating a bit that the just-announced new game in the works, Overwatch, was just the remnants of the scrapped Titan project. Now, since I had heard otherise, from a person who had friends on the Overwatch team, I felt the need to pipe up and comment. You can check out my comment at the linked article above, or you can jump to the comment, and the reply by the author by visiting this link.

 

There’s not been official word yet on what happened to Titan, and I believe it will be quite some time before there is. What, dear reader, do you think? Let me know by commenting or posting.