Everything I needed to know, I learned in the 9th grade, in Geometry. I remember hating writing proofs that a particular kind of three-sided shape was, in fact, a triangle. Any two year old can look at it and tell you it's a triangle. There aren't even any tricky triangles: "Gotcha! It's not a triangle, it's a rhombus!"

For a long time I thought that every useful thing I learned from the class could be taught in under a week. It turns out that the class is not really about what you think it's about. It's not about shapes and rules and proofs - it's about discussing the obvious. We have to do this all our lives, with other people and with ourselves. It's not good enough to just state the obvious (let alone just assume that the obvious is...obvious), you have to be able to state the obvious convincingly.

"Why, Bill, should video game developers play video games?"

Because video game developers need to know what fun is as it pertains to video games.

In other news, the initial numbers we're getting from Gigex through Ubisoft on X1 downloads put live to shame. And before you ask, I'm not at liberty to say how many that is.

Lineage 2 began their open beta yesterday. Login problems, downloads breaking, disconnects, even questions about whether "midnight Sunday" is between Saturday and Sunday or Sunday and Monday...but if you really want to feel like you're in the Uru beta again you can read this thread. This time it's from the company that runs the biggest MMO in the universe.

Now that we've reopened those wounds, head on over to zombo.com, it'll make everything feel better. (You'll need sound on.)

I'm entirely too clean-cut to be a chaotic good elven bard, but it's freaky how INTP I am.

I've been in workplaces that do lengthy Myers-Briggs team-building sessions and unless they're handled with great care and skill, they ultimately result in ready tools to devalue someone's opinions. "He's just acting like that because he's an NT." Etcetera.

After taking the MBTI test, you'll often here people say things like "oh that's why I..." or "that explains why he..." But MBTI doesn't answer "why" anything. You answer a series of questions about your preferences, and the MBTI gives you a general behavior type that describes you:

You like libraries more than flying jet planes. Yes. No.

Yes.

You are a library-liker. Library-likers generally like libraries as opposed to jet planes. A library-liker might be over-stressed by frequent exposure to high-decible engines and sudden unexpected physical displacement. Optimal careers for library-likers include: librarian.

Still, there are so many ways the 4 variables can play against each other that you'll be surprised what can be inferred about you from just a few datapoints. The percentages matter a great deal. My T and P are rather low and I find I can move between all the IN's without expending too much energy. But make me live as an ES and you'll wipe me out fast.

I think the best candidate for a Live Producer of an MMO would be an ESTJ. Of eight people at Cyan who know their type, there isn't an S among us. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole gaming industry is INT-heavy. I'm tempted here to say something like "perhaps that's why it seems to be taking so long for the industry to get it's act together professionally." But there's that deceptive "why" again. Basically I'd be saying "if there were more natural administrators involved, the industry would be better administrated." Which is probably true, but not very enlightening.

That's Moo Moo. He's the eldest and patron of our four-cat family. (Apparently cats are perfectly capable of mating and conceiving before they're old enough to have those features deprecated.) Time was if you came at Moo Moo with a tiara, he'd dart like a...well...like a cat darting away from someone coming at them with a tiara.

As you can see, times have changed. Now I confess that I myself have, over the years, tried to put the occasional baseball cap on Moo Moo. My three year old daughter succeeded where I failed. I'm in big trouble.

Moo Moo and I shared a beer tonight. We understand each other. Scoff if you will, young men, at your tiara-wearing elders, but your time will come. Oh yes, your time will come.

Ack. Foiled by gay porn again! I suggest you don't investigate who owns rocketchat.com. Hmm...spacechat, rocketIM. Is "rocket chat" slang? I need to get out more. Or maybe I don't.

OK so the whole cancellation of Uru Live and the ensuing depression did have some influence on the dearth of posts here. But. The real reason behind the brain fog: Final Fantasy XI. MMO's have too much brain gravity. When I'm playing one, it's mostly all I think about. Me working on an MMO is like an alcoholic driving a beer truck for a living. So in a fit of maturity this weekend, I quit.

In other news, the last magazines I sent short stories have had them for 3 and a half months with no word. Maybe that's a good thing, but I suspect they're just lost. The first two rejections were both within a few weeks of submission. Weird. Glad I didn't quit my day job.

And lastly, I don't really know what this is yet, but I like where it's headed.

Projects I'd be working on if I wasn't squandering my time on this blog (that's funny, see, because my last post was three months ago):

• wireless garden
  
• Vikings vs. Pirates (VvP) for the PC, ports to other platforms to follow
  
• building a biscotti empire from my home kitchen
  
• hacking my car's computer and building a wireless docking port in my garage
  
• RocketChatTM
  
• writing
  
• adding comment fields to this web site so you can ask me things like: "When are you going to post to your blog?"
  
• my taxes
  

What I'm doing instead is typing at myself and keeping an eye on Jay Leno chatting with Snoop Doggy Dog about things like the etymology of Snoop's children's names. This is a strange place, this world. Here are some more examples:

• If you had to choose one or the other, would you rather feel guilty or stupid? Discuss.
  
• I wonder if Jesus imagined one day there'd be people watching him die on the cross while they munched some popcorn, lite butter.