Archive for April, 2006

Maxima and minima

Monday, April 24th, 2006

Took a break, as you see. You all survived without me. Anyway, this is going to be a rather personal post: lots of use of the word “I”. Apologies in advance, very poor form.

Mid-twenties angst is a peculiar thing. It’s rational, unlike its teenage counterpart. I’m not confused by the world. I’ve come to terms with the person I am, and it’s a person I quite like. You could say that things are “fine”. Work is fine. My social life is fine. I’m achieving some of my goals (particularly the easier ones). I drink a bit too much. I procrastinate. I’m still single. But all in all, I’m content.

In short, you could call it a local maximum. A “good enough”, a comfort zone. Pretty much everyone has one. The difficulty with local maxima is that to get to higher maxima, you have to first go down. Disassemble, change, reconstruct. And that takes energy, not to mention the damoclean fear that once you take things apart you won’t remember how to put them back together.

Well, here I go regardless. “Good enough” isn’t good enough. Disassemble, change, reconstruct: the whole root-and-branch thing the politicians promise. My friend Jo has challenged me to come up with five BHAGs (that’s big hairy audacious goals) to meet by Christmas. I’m still finalising the list, but hell if I ain’t going to go public with them. Expect them in the next couple of days.

I’m only sure of one so far: New York.

Categories: angst, lifehacks, bhag

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An unholy alliance

Thursday, April 6th, 2006

Microsoft have bought Lionhead. News to make any gamer shudder.

I like Peter Molyneux’s passion for innovation, all too lacking in the games industry. The games that result though… well, they’re all very impressive, and they’re all very dull. Microsoft, though are the EA of hardware: same old crap, blockbuster tie-ins and sequels. I think I’m right in saying there’s not been a single “new” game on Xbox360 yet.

I just can’t see it working.

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