Jeremy's Blog

The circles of life

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:13:46 +0000

The most magical moment of my life was on Christmas Day, 1979. I was seven years old, and our family was visiting Uncle Allan’s house in Burnaby. I had been playing on the Heathkit H-89 computer for hours when my dad said it was time to go home. I pleaded with him for more time with my uncle’s magical machine. I still remember him smiling at me and explaining that what I had been obsessed with all evening was in fact my computer.

I loved that computer to bits, even as the years went on and technology started to pass it by. It was a great computer for text, with its sharp, 80-column white phosphor screen and clear upper and lower-case characters. But it did not have bitmapped graphics. Instead, you had a special graphics mode, where lower-case letters became various symbols: lines, boxes, triangles, and so forth. It was enough to make simple games, but I yearned for control over individual pixels.

In 1983, my uncle was visiting our house in Gibsons, and he brought with him an amazing new computer that he had built from a kit. It was a Heath/Zenith H-120, an impressive battle station of a machine. It had not one but TWO microprocessors: an Intel 8085 to run 8-bit software like CP/M, and a sparkling new 8088 that ran 16-bit applications like CP/M-86 and Z-DOS. The latter was a version of Microsoft MS-DOS customized for the Heath/Zenith 100 and 120 computers. It was not an IBM compatible machine. It was superior to IBM and the clones’ offerings. And it was beautiful:

For one thing, it had way better graphics modes. To make any graphics at all on an IBM PC in 1983 you had to buy a CGA card, which could manage 640 x 200 pixels but only in black and white, or 320 x 200 with four hideous colors. Usually they were cyan, magenta, white, and black. Clever programmers could swap those with red, green, yellow, and black, but that was only slightly better.

The H-120, however, had 640 x 225 bitmapped graphics in 8 glorious colors. This was so much better than CGA that early versions of AutoCAD were developed specifically for these computers.

Z-DOS shipped with Z-BASIC, a version of Microsoft BASIC tailored for the Heath/Zenith 100 and 120. It had built-in commands to draw, with pixel-perfect accuracy, points, lines, and circles.

I only had this wonderful computer for a day, so I didn’t have a chance to get too deep into manipulating individual pixels to make bitmap designs. But oh boy, did I have fun with circles.

Seeing those circles pop up in any location just mesmerized me. It was like my Heathkit H-89, only faster, and with added pixel magic.

I was so taken with drawing circles that, once my uncle had gone and taken his new computer with him, I tried my best to make a circle program in BASIC on my character-mode-only H-89. It worked. Sort of.

I could place character-mode circles in different part of the screen, in black, white, grey, and outline, in five discrete sizes. When I ran the program again in an emulator, I realized that I never even bothered to finish the size five grey circle. It was just too disappointing compared to the magic of the H-120’s beautiful pixels.

Anyway, that was it for circles for me. At least for another forty-three years or so.

In the last few months, I’ve been working on a secret project. It’s hard to even explain what it is. I wanted to blend together my fond memories of childhood computing with my more recent love of the LISP programming language. I wanted something that was easy and fun for making games, just like BASIC was all those decades ago.

The work is progressing slowly. I had to learn all sorts of nonsense about C and how pointers worked. I had to learn how to parse arbitrarily-complicated lists into pairs of cells that all pointed to each other. Many times the whole effort seemed too difficult, too impossible to even attempt. But I kept going.

Last week, I added a new instruction to my graphical LISP programming engine. It creates circles.

I feel like a little kid again, wondering at the power of pixels, amazed at what computers can do.

It’s a good feeling.

Micro History Episode 4 - Steve Wozniak and the Apple I

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:32:35 +0000

I've been working my way through the beginnings of the personal computing industry, starting in late 1974 with the introduction of the Altair 8800. For several episodes now, I've been talking about computers that most people have never heard of, from companies that are long extinct.

But now I'm at the start of 1976, and a curious new company has formed out of one man's desire to create a computer for himself, and another man's desire to turn that computer into money.

That company not only survived, but today it's the third-largest company in the world, worth over three trillion dollars.

Reliving my greatest digital triumph

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 02:06:12 +0000

The year was 1987. I was in eleventh grade, going to Eric Hamber Secondary in Vancouver. When the weather turned nice, I would sometimes walk home from school. I’d head up to the Oakridge Mall at 41st and Cambie with one destination in mind: Johnny Zee’s Arcade.

Bus fare for students was 55 cents in those days, which gave me two quarters to spend on arcade games. My favorites were R-Type; a side-scrolling space shooter, Rampage; where I got to be a huge monster and destroy buildings, and Bubble Bobble; where I was a much smaller but cuter monster trapping enemies in bubbles I shot from my mouth.

But there was one game that I was completely mesmerized by: Wonderboy in Monster Land.

The arcade cabinet for Wonder Boy in Monster Land

This was an import from Japan that wasn’t even supposed to be released here, but someone had made a bootleg copy of the ROM chips and changed the Japanese characters into English. You played the titular Wonder Boy, an unlikely hero who started the game wearing only a diaper! At the first door, you received your quest:

The translation wasn’t always great. For example, you were told to “take this sword and pill.” The pill looked more like a potion, but it was the most important item, because it could revive up to half your hearts if you died.

It was a platform game that had role-playing elements: defeating enemies gave you gold, and you could use the gold to buy items. These included better armor, shields, and boots that let you jump higher. You could also buy consumable items like fireballs, whirlwinds, thunderbolts, and bombs. You needed them to defeat some of the bosses at the end of each stage. Once you beat the boss, you got a key that opened a gate to the next level.

There was also a neat trick that probably ruined a bunch of joysticks. If you jumped up to collect a secret coin and rapidly moved Wonder Boy back and forth many times while in the air, occasionally you would receive 66, 67, or 68 coins instead of the usual 5 to 10, which felt amazing. This trick was required to get enough money to purchase the best armor and shields.

Every day I would watch people play the game and try to learn from them. Then I would take my two quarters and play this game. Slowly, I got better at beating the bosses.

After a couple of months, I beat the game for the first time. It took about forty-five minutes using a single quarter. I remember a small crowd gathering around me as I played, watching silently until I finally defeated the dragon. I remember the crowd cheering at that point. High fives might have been had. It was a moment of triumph that I could never have in the real world at that time. It felt like winning a gold medal.

Years later, I was able to play the game again using the MAME emulator, and I got to experience some of this joy again. But after playing it once or twice every year or so, eventually I stopped. I was getting older. Maybe reliving my high school glory had lost some of its luster. It also was getting harder to beat the game. Usually I would die on the Snow Kong boss, or even earlier. And if I got to the final dungeon, I always forgot how to navigate the complicated maze.

But recently, I decided to give it another go. Maybe I was feeling a wave of nostalgia. In any case, I put in a virtual quarter and started the game.

It might have been because I was in a good mood, but I played incredibly well. I defeated every boss, even though I had to use my Revival Potion more than once. Fortunately I remembered where to purchase replacements.

Now I was in the final dungeon. The music increased in intensity to match my heartbeat. How would I possibly recall which way to go?

I thought about trying to remember each decision, but I couldn’t. It was a complicated map, and if you chose a wrong path, you’d usually start from the beginning. That was a death sentence, because then you had to fight all the dungeon bosses again with no health replenishment.

This map doesn't even show the whole complexity of the thing

So I decided to just go forward, and not think about it. At all. I’d go on pure feeling. No second-guessing. I’d just “vibe” the navigation, as the kids might say.

And I made every decision correctly.

When I beat the dragon, I felt the familiar rush of victory. I got up and danced around to the ending music as the credits rolled.

I’m getting older, and there’s no way to deny it. It happens to all of us. But even now, sometimes, there’s a way to jump back in time and remember the pure joy you had as a kid. It’s right there behind the dragon, waiting for you to find it.

Building a virtual cottage and repairing my childhood

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 22:19:25 +0000

In my post about my year in Valheim, I had one section that I always felt strangely bad about:

“At first I labelled many of my cottages in Valheim as Keats, but finally settled on just one that was on its own small island. But I didn’t end up spending a lot of time there. Hanging out in the virtual Keats didn’t feel like the real one. Some memories have to remain just memories.”

Why did that make me feel bad? To answer that, we have to travel back in time.

Many years ago, my great-grandmother Gladys MacLean (pictured above, center) and her husband bought a small parcel of land on Keats Island. On this beachfront property, my great-grandfather built a small white summer cottage. Because the property was mostly on a large outcropping of rock, he could build the cottage right on top of it, without a foundation.

This cottage became a precious memory for my mother, who remembered spending carefree days as a child exploring the beach and running up and down the island trails. And she was able to pass the cottage on to my sister and to myself, so it became a beloved part of my childhood as well. I remember scrambling down that enormous rock to explore the pebble-lined beach:

I remember the arbutus trees, the gorgeous smell of summer, and the day trips through the forest. I remember the silence, the taste of fresh huckleberries and blackberries, and the freedom to explore anywhere on the island that my feet could take me.

Here’s a picture of me, the little blonde kid, on the main deck at our Keats cottage. My sister is sitting on the large deck chair in front of me. Other relatives are hanging out around us. You can see the start of the fenced-off path in the upper-right of the frame.

The cottage was quite old by this time, and in dire need of repair. One room was starting to slope dangerously, and we were banished from one of the decks overlooking the beach. Some of the rooms, including one my mother had slept in as a child, were now inaccessible.

So my father drew up plans for a complete refit of the cottage. He even built multiple balsa wood models of the new house. For years we dreamed of what it might become. But the logistics and expense of bringing all the required materials to the island were too much to overcome. Then came the recession of 1982. My dad lost his job, and our family lost its financial stability. The plans to rebuild the cottage were put on hold indefinitely.

Money was tight. My mother got a job, saving us from utter poverty, but it wasn’t enough. So, reluctantly, she arranged for the sale of our Keats lot to our immediate neighbors, the multi-millionaire Bentall family. They gave us a good price. For them, it was a way to expand their property boundaries. For us, it was a way to survive.

They didn’t rebuild our cottage. Instead, they pushed it into the sea.

Looking through binoculars from across the narrow inlet, I could see the bare patch of rock staring back at me. It was an aching hole in my heart. For years I dreamed of buying a small patch of land on Keats Island and recreating, plank by plank, that dream that had been so cruelly taken from me. But as I slowly built up my savings, the price of land on that rocky isle increased beyond my means. It was never going to happen.

So, yeah, that’s why it hurt too much to build a new cottage on a virtual Keats in Valheim.

But lately, I’ve been trying to think of my childhood more as a beautiful gift that my parents gave me, and less of something that was taken from me before I was ready to let it go. My sun-dappled memories are still there, even if the cottage isn’t.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

So, I decided to go back to the Valheim forest biome that I had dubbed Keats Island. The first step was finding the right location. And there it was, an outcropping of rock, perfect for building a dream cottage. The pine trees in the forest provided the logs to build the superstructure, perched on top of the rock just like our old cottage was.

I built a long, fenced-off walkway to the rest of the island. Our old cottage had a similar structure. It was meant to keep out the wandering deer. And luckily there were deer in the forest biome, but there were also a bunch of enemies like the greydwarves, trolls, and now bears, who would easily decimate the deer population given half a chance.

So I went and disposed of all these dreadful creatures, while sparing the deer. To prevent the monsters from respawning, I dropped campfires all over the island. I love that Valheim has this feature! Now it’s just me and the deer on Keats, just like it always was.

Near the front door hangs a sign, “MAXHOLME”. The same sign was on our Keats cottage. The “Max” part stood for MacLean, and the “Holme” was Home. My mother had held on to this sign until her death, but unfortunately it was lost afterwards. Now it lives again.

Entering in, you can see the tools hanging on the wall, always at the ready for any needed repairs.

The dining room is the centerpiece of the new cottage. The table provides a great view of the water.

I built a lovely little kitchen here, next to the dining room. It’s always ready for me to whip up a delicious meal for myself or for guests.

In the living room, the centerpiece is the roaring fireplace. Two of the dangerous bears that once roamed this island now face each other and ponder about what they did.

Upstairs, the master bedroom has a nice troll trophy and a great view of the island. The closets are full, ready for a guest to change into something more comfortable.

My great-grandmother had a lovely antique Singer sewing machine, so this room is home to the Valheim equivalent.

Finally, after a long day of relaxing on the island, it’s time to enjoy the sunset on the expansive deck.

So that’s my new beautiful Keats Cottage! I feel good about what I’ve built here. As I ease into an uncertain future, it’s nice to have something to feel proud of. Mostly, I’m happy to finally be at peace about my time on the real Keats Island. Now I can look at the small collection of beach pebbles and the tiny piece of wood I saved from the old cottage, and enjoy them as beautiful treasures.

Life will always be unpredictable. Sometimes we get thrown around between our triumphs and our tragedies like tiny dinghies on a rough ocean. But even after a loss, we can be thankful for the things we had, the people who meant so much to us, and for our happiest memories. These things can never be taken from us.

My History of the Internet (Part 3) is on Ars Technica!

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:20:49 +0000

The saga is complete! In this final installment, I discuss how the Internet changed post-dotcom collapse, explore how Google works and how it rose to power, and discuss the rise of social media and smartphones.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/a-history-of-the-internet-part-3-the-rise-of-the-user/

My History of the Internet (Part 2) is on Ars Technica!

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 16:07:22 +0000

The second part of my History of the Internet is up on Ars Technica! You can read it here:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/a-history-of-the-internet-part-2-the-high-tech-gold-rush-begins/

It was super fun writing this article. As I was firing up emulators for old computer hardware and operating systems and installing old browsers, it felt like I was getting pulled back in time. Back to the exciting and tumultuous 1990s! Come and join me!

Micro History Episode 3 - Dan Meyer and the SWTP 6800

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 18:06:17 +0000

This is a great story of a computer and an electronics pioneer who are almost totally unknown today. But Dan Meyer and the humble SWTP 6800 profoundly changed the entire landscape of the personal computing industry. They split the market into two parts: one who craved compatibility, clone hardware options, and the widest possible array of add-on hardware, and the other who valued innovation, simplicity, and elegant design.

No prizes for guessing which two camps these folks evolved into!

My History of the Internet (Part 1) is on Ars Technica!

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:44:50 +0000

The first of my three-part article on the history of the Internet is up on Ars Technica!

It's getting some great reviews, including a video review from Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet and co-creator of TCP/IP. Which is really cool. Check it out:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19htTKvmifeHH3mTj6fw5rmWAhA19O-bJ/view

Part 2 is on its way!

I'm now (technically) a game developer

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 20:31:52 +0000

I was going to do a series of blog posts (you can read the first one here) about developing my "reimagined" Balablox, the most obscure game of all time. I also wanted to make it really polished and refined, with a full options screen with customizable controls and everything.

But years passed. And I was at a game developer conference and someone asked if I had published any games, and I had to explain this whole story to him.

He said: "Why don't you just put it on itch.io as it is?"

I was stunned. Of course! I could just do that. So I did.

It's really easy to publish on itch.io. It's less easy to get GameMaker Studio to actually generate an executable on macOS, but that's a rant for another day.

The game is free. It is provided as-is. I had fun with it. I hope someone else does too.

https://jeremyreimer.itch.io/balablox

My year in Valheim

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 21:36:39 +0000

Introduction

I never liked survival games. I preferred story-driven role-playing games, like the old Ultima series, Fallout, and Mass Effect.

But when Microsoft laid me off in January 2024, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and no income. While I waited, perhaps in vain, for my industry to recover, I figured I should take a look at my gaming backlog. Surely there must be some titles in my Steam library that I could rediscover?

As far back as Ultima VI, I dreamed of a fantasy game where I could build my own castle. Why should Lord British get to look down his nose at us plebs from his massive fortress, when we’re the ones doing all the work to save the kingdom?

Just because you’re the king, that’s no reason to be so condescending

And so I came back to the world of Valheim, an indie survival game released in 2020, that had an emphasis on base building. Maybe this could work?

Little did I know how big this black hole of gaming was, and how close I was to the event horizon.

1. Meadows

Valheim starts you out in a vast world, alone, naked and afraid. You’re dropped to the ground by a giant raven during a thunderstorm. The bird, Hugin, at least gives you some starting tips before flying off again.

Like many survival crafting games, you start out by picking up rocks and sticks, and then you build a crude hammer. Now you can craft an axe and start chopping down trees. It’s a time-honored tradition by this point, but the Viking-themed world of Valheim is a little different. For one, it’s clearly not our world. A giant tree arcs through the blue skies, stretching from horizon to horizon, forever out of reach. And your journey starts in a group of giant stones, each one representing a boss monster that you have to defeat. This gives the game a set of objectives that are clear from the start. You could go fight the first boss right away if you wanted. But you’d probably die. You need to get stronger.

A vast world awaits…

While the meadows are peaceful in daytime, they get dangerous at night. Tree-like creatures called Greydwarves come out to menace you. The solution is to build an enclosed home out of wood, with a campfire to keep you warm, a roof to stop the rain, a door to keep out creatures, and a bed to sleep in.

This was about as far I had gotten in the game before I had given up, four years ago. Early on you get the sense that this is going to be a grind. You can make a crude bow to hunt frightened deer, then slowly collect enough leather to make better clothes. It takes a while.

I decided to abandon my old character, “Jeremy”, and begin anew on a fresh world with his twin, “EvilJeremy”. Of course, the twin had a goatee. I had only grown one once in real life, when I was feeling particularly disgruntled with the world. It seemed appropriate.

EvilJeremy was a bit more adventurous than his brother, and wanted to see what was beyond his initial shores. After constructing a makeshift home, I built a raft, sailed across an inlet, and landed on the far shore. I built a new house on a stretch of plain by the beach. On my map, I called this new place “Gibsons”.

In real life, I had been born in Vancouver and raised across the water in a small town that George Gibson had founded. For some reason, it felt reassuring to have my virtual avatar recreate the steps I had taken as a kid, so many years ago.

My new home in Gibsons

After upgrading my armor and my bow, I went to seek out the first boss, Eikthyr. He was a giant deer that shot bolts of electricity. Despite being scared, I managed to take him down and recovered pieces of his antlers. They were hard enough to break stone.

I felt like I was well on my way. I had no idea how naive I was.

2. Black Forest

The Black Forest is the first new biome you find in Valheim. It was a long way away from my home at Gibsons, more than a day’s walk in-game. So to make sure I had an easy escape route back home, I flattened the ground with my new hoe tool to make a primitive dirt road. I also built little shacks along the way that I could use to rest.

The dense forest is peppered with crypts, populated by nasty skeletons with swords and bows. These crypts taught me the ugly reality of death in Valheim. When I died in one, I revived back home in my Gibsons’ bed, but without any armor, weapons, or anything I had been carrying. I also lost points in every skill I had been training up until then.

You can go back to the site of your death — indicated by a skull and crossbones on your map and a glowing orb on the ground — and retrieve these items by wearing your backup armor, assuming you made some. But if you get killed again, you’ve lost both sets. To remind myself of the fragility of my life in Valheim, I crafted a third set of armor, and then left both the map icon and the orb undisturbed where I had fallen.

The forest is also home to giant blue Trolls, some of whom like to pick up entire trees and use the stripped logs as weapons. Unless you’re really good at dodging, one hit can kill you at this stage. But they can also help clear out the forest and even smash copper deposits for you in their misguided rage.

I’m not trollin, you’re Trollin!

The next boss, the Elder, wasn’t on this continent. I had to build a proper boat, sail off, and build a sort of forward base — which I named White Rock — on the coast of this new place. I made a nice little log cabin with a bed and a fire and everything. But when an army of Trolls with logs came to visit, they smashed not only me, not only my cabin, but also the bed I was sleeping in.

I died and was resurrected at the starting stones. Getting back required building a new boat. Sailing at night is scary. You can’t see much, especially if there are clouds, and sometimes giant serpents will chase you.

When I finally made it to the Elder, I was unprepared for the fight. The giant tree shot out tangled branches that collided with my face, and raised evil roots that tore at my feet. Weighed down by my bronze armor, it was hard to dash in and recover the items from my corpse.

Eventually I figured out the pattern and downed the boss. I was awarded a Swamp Key. Great, but why would I want to go into the swamps?

3. Swamp

The whole purpose of my playing was to build a castle, right? But up until now I could only build wooden structures. Building stone walls required a stonecutter, and that required iron. And iron was inconveniently buried deep in the swamplands, inside sunken dungeons.

Apparently an ancient humanoid race, the Draugr, had mined all the iron and built a great civilization, before making a key strategic mistake: going to war with the gods of Aesir and Vanir. They lost badly and the gods buried their settlements and them. They ended up walking their forsaken land as undead warriors, fighting their final hopeless battle forever.

The swamps are dark, damp, and dangerous.

Draugr are horrifying and deadly. I found a swamp on a nearby continent and built a new base, Nanaimo, in a forest next to the Draugr. I tried to be extremely careful, cutting down trees, building torches, and flattening the land with my hoe so that I wouldn’t constantly fall into deep puddles and get killed by leeches. It took forever to tame the swamp, but I kept going.

I was unlucky and the strip of swamp I had found contained only one dungeon. And that dungeon contained many nightmare bone piles that constantly spawned new Draugr, including elites. I died a few times. But I persevered, and got enough iron to at least build a small castle in Nanaimo.

My first castle. I even dug a moat!

So I’d achieved my initial goal, right? I could stop playing? In theory, yes. But it didn’t feel right. Not yet. There was a giant swamp monster, Bonemass, to defeat. I was scared of his massive blobby arms and his poison attacks, so I built a little house on top of a giant tree and peppered him from afar with frost arrows.

My prize was a mystical wishbone, which apparently could find treasures and silver deposits. My quest wasn’t over just yet. It was time to head up into the mountains.

4. Mountains

Like Mordor, you can’t simply walk into the mountains. It’s cold, and you’ll freeze to death, unless you prepared some frost potions ahead of time. Even if your blood is full of antifreeze, there are packs of wolves that would really like to have you for breakfast.

I enjoyed my time in the mountains. There were abandoned castles everywhere waiting for me to claim them and restore them. Searching for buried silver veins was fun and rewarding. When packs of wolves attacked, I sometimes had to escape by sliding down the snowy slopes. I built base camps and equipped them with carts to haul the silver ore back to Gibsons, ready to smelt into shiny new armor.

Castles… castles everywhere…

Flying drakes guarded dragon eggs, and once I had liberated three of them I could summon the next boss, Moder. I prepared a lot for this encounter. I cleared out and flattened the area surrounding Moder’s temple, and even walled it off so that nosy wolves and ice beasts couldn’t interrupt me in the middle of battle. I used my hoe to raise the ground into giant columns of stone that I could use to hide behind when Moder attacked with her frozen breath.

It felt good to be over-prepared. Moder fell to my onslaught and I was rewarded with a set of dragon tears. These apparently were necessary to build a whole bunch of new stuff, like Artisan Tables, which let me build even more new stuff, like windmills, spinning wheels, and stone ovens.

I felt like a kid getting a whole bunch of new LEGO sets to play with. And I realized that it was time to take my toys and start building a place that I could really be proud of.

Intermission - Founding a city

I sailed back across the inlet and saw my first home, still standing where I had left it. This would be the site, I decided. I named the place Vancouver, the same as my real-life birthplace, and the city I came back to for high school and university. In the game and in reality, Vancouver was a place I would often travel away from, but would always come back to. It was, and is, my home.

Valheim has an optional multi-player cooperative mode, so in theory I could have invited my friends over to help me build this settlement. But my friends had either stopped playing Valheim or didn’t want to start. I would have to engage in this massive building effort by myself.

It took a lot of stone and iron to make this place. I found a site, way off on another continent, that was full of boulders. I constructed a portal to get there and back quickly. Iron ore couldn’t be transported through portals, so I had to build a longship to take me far away to new and even more distant swamps.

Building the castle. My first house is in the background.

Sailing off to get more iron was surprisingly relaxing, especially now that I had the speed, armor, and weapons to either avoid or fight serpents. Finding the wind, charting a course — it reminded me of happier days in childhood, when my sister and I would take out the little dingy and sail around Keats Island.

At first I labelled many of my cottages in Valheim as Keats, but finally settled on just one that was on its own small island. But I didn’t end up spending a lot of time there. Hanging out in the virtual Keats didn’t feel like the real one. Some memories have to remain just memories.

Constructing the Great Hall

To make sea voyages shorter, I took my pickaxe and carved out a small canal through an isthmus that was preventing me from sailing west. I can’t think of many games that would allow you to do that, let alone preserve every road I paved, every rock I carved, and even every object I dropped over an entire world. This made Valheim seem more like a place that I really inhabited, a world that I could make massive changes to over time.

Vancouver comes to life

The castle and city I built in Vancouver was evidence of that. It started with just a single tower. Eventually I built stone roads connecting outlying settlements, made streets and avenues and parks and houses and farms, and even a Great Hall to celebrate all my accomplishments. I even tamed a pair of wolves and filled my stone hallways with their happy doggy offspring.

Happy puppers

In the real world, I will never be able to afford a house in the city. But Valheim has no such limitations. I could make as many houses as I wanted.

But still, across the sea, the wind-swept plains beckoned. There was more to do out there. I didn’t want to stop just yet.

5. Plains

The plains used to mean death. Literally. Giant “Deathsquitos” would swoop out of the sky and kill me in one bite. It wasn’t a pleasant place to be at first, but as my armor and health improved, it became a second home.

I shared that home with the giant Lox, sort of a cross between bison and lizards. They scared easily and were tough to fight, but after trapping one in a pit I dug out of the ground, he calmed down and allowed me to tame him. I kept “Snuffy” at my base, where I fed him cloudberries and petted him and told him he was a good boy.

He saved my life more than once. One time, a giant flying bug from the neighboring Mistlands followed me home and swooped down upon me. Snuffy woke up and saved the day, as well as my base.

It was a sad day when Snuffy died. I was outside at night, surrounded by Fulings, short, goblin-like creatures with spears and torches. He burst out of his pen and broke through my stone walls just to tear through the green monsters. He saved me, but gave his life to a Deathsquito. I never tamed a Lox again.

RIP Snuffy

The plains were filled with Fuling camps. Taking them down was tricky. Not only would the smaller goblins swarm me, but the giant Berserkers would smash my face in while their magic users rained down fiery death. It took all of my skills, a ton of rest, and the best healthy foods to even attempt to take them over. But when I did, the camps were now mine. I had built my main base in the plains on top of one of the former camps. It felt good. I was taking back this world from my many enemies, one town at a time.

The Fuling camps also contained mysterious totems, which I discovered were the key to summoning their god, the horrid creature Yagluth. I landed on the swamps of another continent with my bow already singing, like it was the beaches of Normandy. I slowly built bases closer and closer to Yagluth’s temple. Finally, I summoned the demon.

This monster hurled fire and doom at me endlessly. I had tried to prepare, building tunnels down underneath the temple where I could rest and repair. But I still died, over and over again. Fortunately, I had multiple sets of backup armor, and a portal that got me right back into the fight. Yagluth eventually went down, but I was exhausted. Was this game really worth this kind of stress?

Little did I know that my stress was only beginning.

6. Mistlands

It’s a beautiful place, if only you could see it.

The Mistlands are aptly named. A thick grey mist pervades almost all of it, and while you can take out a Wisp to light up your immediate surroundings, you’re basically stumbling around blind.

It’s also a horrible place, full of giant bugs called Seekers that fly out of the mist to kill you when you’re least prepared. It’s full of crazy peaks and valleys that make it easy to get stuck. And when you get stuck, that’s when you hear the foghorn that signals your doom.

I ventured cautiously at first into the Mistlands from my base in the adjacent plains. I met the Dvergr, a group of mining dwarves who were the first friendly folks I’d met in Valheim. They had a bunch of bases deep inside the mist. They were ferrying some mysterious cargo and warned me about the Gjall.

They ought to have heeded their own warnings.

These floating gasbags signaled their arrival first with a blast from their horns, then with rivers of fire and oceans of blood-sucking giant ticks. Many of the Dvergr bases I found would end up gutted by these terrors, leaving no survivors. And I too got caught by them, leaving two corpses in a literal Death Valley for future archaeologists to wonder about.

A destroyed Dvergr base

In order to make the armor you need to survive, you have to venture into the worst part of the Mistlands: the infested mines. These are literally crawling with horrid bugs, ticks, and other creepy things. There are twists and turns and holes in the floor you can fall through. It’s not easy to get out alive, let alone with the precious Black Cores you need.

The worst part about the Mistlands was finding out that I was in the wrong Mistlands — my lovely base in the Plains bordered the largest chunk of the misty place I could find, but it was the wrong chunk. The Queen was holed up on the coast of an entirely different continent.

I thought maybe I could try an amphibious assault. I was wrong. Gjalls patrolled the Queen’s lair and blasted me off the tiny island I was using as a foothold, just so the giant ticks could surround me and bleed me to death.

I realized I had to take a slow and steady approach. I made landfall far away from the Queen on an adjacent continent, and pushed my way though to the spot where it was close to the Mistlands. But I needed to somehow bridge the gap between the jagged coast and a safe spot for an inland base.

I built a long and winding wooden bridge around the coast and up the mountains. When Gjalls showed up, I’d run away and snipe them with my crossbow. Eventually I found an abandoned Dvergr tower looking over a flat area surrounded by mountains. A perfect place for my Mistlands base.

My little home in the misty hells

From this base, I slowly moved forward towards the Queen. I’d extend my stone path and walls until I reached a safe spot where I’d build another portal. These forward bases allowed me to retreat when things got dicey. I also constructed many wisplights, their pale blue glow pushing away the mist in the surrounding area, making the path visible at last.

It was slow going, but it felt like I was taming the Mistlands. Eventually I reached the Queen’s lair, and cleared out its guardians. I felt like I was ready. I felt prepared.

I was wrong.

7. The Queen

The Queen was a horrible nightmare of a beast, a giant crawling bug with razor-sharp pincers and a hairy tail. Even when I perfectly parried her attacks, she would push me back across the dungeon, which was — of course! — shrouded in mist. Then she’d summon more flying Seeker bugs to attack me, and spew up a firehose of poison and tiny bugs. If she got bored, she’d burrow in the ground and reappear somewhere high up, out of reach and out of sight.

I could get her health down a little, but she would wear me down, drain me of all my health potions, and chase me out of her lair. It felt exhausting to fight her.

And why was I fighting her in the first place? She was sealed up in her lair, not bothering anyone outside in the world. All I had wanted from this game was my castle, and I had that. Why not just give up?

I couldn’t give up. I had one last black can of cherry cider in my fridge, and I decided that I would drink that cider when I killed the Queen.

I scoured the Internet for hints and tricks. Everyone agreed that attacking her with a sword and shield was a bad idea. The answer was to use magic. But training in magic required crafting a whole new set of cloth armor and cooking up entirely new foods. It meant going back into the infested mines to grab more Black Cores, and scouring the Mistlands for black skulls filled with soft tissue that I could refine into magic Eitr. It meant slowly leveling up skills that I’d never used before.

I did all that. I raised my new Elemental staff above my head and cast my protective shield bubble. Then I went in to face the Queen as a powerful fire mage.

A few minutes into the fight, a seeker bug popped my bubble and propelled me across the floor, straight into the Queen, who killed me with one hit.

I gave up for a while after that.

Every time I opened the fridge, that last can of cider would stare back at me, mocking me for my failure. I wondered what I was doing. Why was I spending so much time and so much emotional energy on a computer game? Why did it matter so much to me?

I didn’t have answers for those questions, at least none that I wanted to dive into too deeply.

But I decided I would make a plan. I would train. Like Rocky Balboa, except with fireballs instead of fists.

I found a spot in the swamp with a pair of bone piles, spawning endless Draugr. Once, I would have run from such a place. Now, it was to be my salvation.

I would portal in, blast undead warriors for an entire in-game day, then return home to rest and recuperate.

My Elemental magic slowly went up. I could cast more spells without being drained. Even my shield bubble got slightly stronger.

It was time.

I returned to the Queen, and poured fire into her oozing carapace. Over and over again. She would attack, and I would run.

I killed her.

That cider was the most delicious drink I ever had.

The Queen is dead, long live the Queen

Conclusions

I have spent over 700 hours playing Valheim. It’s a number that’s easy to criticize, or to mock.

But those hours have been mostly happy ones.

I have built castles and founded cities. I have cleared forests, drained swamps, and criss-crossed continents with roads. I have dug canals and sailed through them with mighty ships. I have climbed mountains and defeated dragons.

All in all, I’ve had a good time.

But it feels more than that, somehow. It’s all the little memories that happened along the way, memories that are only mine. It’s that time I taunted a troll from my boat by shooting him with fire arrows, and watched in horror as he waded through the water to smash me to pieces. It’s the time I wandered through the forest and recovered two lost tamed wolves, only to have one die to a marauding skeleton and the other give birth to his successor.

It’s all these memories, and also just moments of watching the sun go down over the water. Or watching the sky clear up after a thunderstorm.

Real life is like this as well. We have our triumphs, and our tragedies. But sometimes the moments that mean the most to us are the small ones. Times we spent with people we love. Times we spent alone.

In the end, isn’t it enough that we were here? That we lived in this world?

I’m looking for work again. It’s a slow and frustrating process. Sometimes it seems like everything is getting harder. I’m definitely getting older. For the first time, I’m realizing that there are more years behind me than there are ahead.

But I’m still here. And I’m still dreaming of a world I can help build.

Sunset in Valheim

Micro History Episode 2 is up!

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 21:00:55 +0000

This one's a doozy - welcome to the crazy world of personal computers in the 1970s. This story has it all - bad managers, overworked engineers, mandatory "training" based on crazy cult-like seminars... and it ends with the most bizarre implosion in the history of tax evasion.

Plus, some computer history! The IMSAI was the world's first personal computer clone, a 100% compatible copy of the MITS Altair 8800. It set the stage for other companies to clone the IBM PC later on, which changed the world forever.

Plus plus plus, the first appearance of Gary Kildall and CP/M! But definitely not the last.

Enjoy!

My article on the history of public messaging is up on Ars Technica!

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 15:02:37 +0000

This article was deeply personal to me, because my life overlapped with so much of it.

It starts out with the earliest networked computers (PLATO, and the Arpanet) and goes through BBSes, Usenet, web-based forums, and social media. It's a wild ride.

Check it out!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/first-post-a-history-of-online-public-messaging

Micro History Episode 0 is up!

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 17:38:49 +0000

It's an exciting beginning for me, the culmination of a dream I've had for a long time, to chronicle the entire history of personal computing.

Enjoy and don't forget to like the video and subscribe to the channel!

Jeremyreimer.com is live on a new server!

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 21:43:01 +0000

If this works, you should be seeing a new blog post!

I migrated all my websites from AWS to Linode. It's a lot cheaper, and I really like the simplicity of Linode server management.

Onwards to new things!

EDIT: Just checking image uploading! Still works!

How is Facebook's Metaverse doing? Worse than buggy, it's lonely, boring, and bleak

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:15:20 +0000

In a previous article I posted my thoughts on Facebook's sad attempt at a Metaverse, and how it was already failing shortly after launch.

Some time has passed, and I have an update, courtesy of journalist Paul Murray: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-meta-horizon-worlds.html

"After a certain number of hours in Zuckerberg’s personal universe, you find yourself asking questions like “Does he think this is good?” Looking through my notes, I keep coming across words like diminished, depleted, wan, bleak. The beta-ness of it all is mystifying. If I were Zuckerberg and I’d spent $36 billion building a metaverse, I’d make sure when I launched it there was something to do. Why would he go to all the trouble of building a virtual world, then leave it to the users to make their own fun, as if they were at a holiday camp in the ’80s?"

...

"I can’t stress how unlike a party house the Party House is. It’s not just the amateurish, low-tech design; it’s not just the sparse attendance and desultory interactions. It’s the total absence of mood. It reminds me of when I’d try to get together with friends over Zoom during lockdown — everyone’s face appearing in a box in the grid like contestants in some bleak, prizeless game show, the total absence of physicality making us feel more distant from one another than ever."

Bleak, deserted, lonely. I'm glad Paul spent some time in Facebook's Metaverse so that I don't have to.

The History of the ARM chip: Part 3

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 16:40:22 +0000

The third and final article in my History of the ARM chip series is now live on Ars Technica!

Read it here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/a-history-of-arm-part-3-coming-full-circle/

This article focuses on how ARM changed the world, from the iPhone to the Game Boy Advance to smartphones and Apple's new computers based on the M1 chips. It ends with a look at how ARM managed to succeed when so many other technology companies failed.

I hope you enjoy it! Please share it with your friends!

Revisiting Apple's failed Lisa computer, 40 years on

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 21:27:36 +0000

A second article in less than a week! This one's about the revolutionary yet forgotten computer from Apple, the Lisa, which was announced today, forty years ago.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/revisiting-apples-ill-fated-lisa-computer-40-years-on

With this second article, I had the strange feeling of being bumped off the front page of Ars Technica by... myself. My editor called it "Reimer week". It's been fun!

The History of the ARM Chip: Part 2

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 02:16:19 +0000

This morning I was happy to find that Part 2 of my History of ARM article is now live on Ars Technica. You can read it here:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/a-history-of-arm-part-2-everything-starts-to-come-together

The first part was mostly a technical story of talented engineers who created something amazing. The second part is the story of how the ARM company was able to bring this technology to the world. It's a reminder that it takes both technical prowess and a focused business approach in order to succeed.

Part Three is coming next month!

Reimagining the most obscure video game ever made - Part 1

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 05:23:08 +0000

The original game, running on my Heathkit H-89

A while back, I wrote about the most obscure video game ever made, called Balablox, which I wrote when I was 15 years old in 1987. At the end of the article, I teased the possibility of a modern rewrite.

I’ve been working on that project, on and off, for about half a year now. My goal is to get it finished this year, for the 35th anniversary of the game. It’s been a ton of fun. To celebrate, I decided to write a series of articles about how I made the game, and what I’ve learned through the experience.

Everyone agrees that developing games is hard, but why is that? Don’t we have much better tools and languages now than we did back then? How hard could it be to make a simple game in 2022? Read on to find out!

Choosing an engine

These days, the first thing you do when you decide to make a game is to pick an engine. Game engines didn’t exist 35 years ago—every game was made from scratch. Today, the most popular game engines are Unity and Unreal. But these engines are ridiculously powerful, and take years to master. They’re designed so you can make any sort of game, including modern AAA titles with advanced 3D graphics and multiplayer support. They’re a bit overkill for what I wanted to make—a simple single-player game with very simple 2D graphics.

I ended up choosing GameMaker Studio 2. I made this decision after watching a series of YouTube videos where Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) created 12 games in 12 months. A month to write a simple game? That seemed achievable.

My first steps working in GameMaker Studio 2

In the end, no matter which engine you choose, you should commit to it. You can end up spending months just playing around with different engines, or reading endless forum discussions about which one is better. All this is time that you aren’t making a game. And whatever you do, don’t switch engines mid-stream!

First things first

GameMaker Studio, like any of the game engines, takes a while to get used to. Because it’s based around 2D images, or “sprites”, it has a sprite editor built in. So the first thing to do is create a sprite for the player character.

Balablox was built on my ancient Heathkit H-89, which only supported character-based graphics. In any case, the characters were supposed to be blocky, like the cartoon that inspired it. So I stuck with a simple rectangle to start, and attached stick arms and legs. But using the power of pixels, I added large expressive eyes. That felt like a good compromise between the old and the new.

Editing the player sprite

How big should the sprite be? On my laptop’s screen, 32 by 32 pixels looked about right, and it’s a nice computer-y number to use. Done! Now I could make an “object” that used this sprite and place it on the screen grid for the first level, or “Room”.

But an empty room isn’t any fun to play in. GameMaker lets you design levels the same way people did in the original Nintendo days—as grids of tiles. I wanted a bit more granularity for the room tiles, so I made them 16 by 16. This seemingly innocent choice would cause me a lot of headaches later!

The tile editor works a bit like Photoshop, in that you can define different layers that are displayed on top of each other. The room tiles are usually the lowest layer, followed by a layer for “Collision” objects that define what you can and can’t bump into. You put collision objects on top of any part of the level that you don’t want the player to pass through. Then you set the Collision layer to be invisible. The top layer contains the objects themselves, including the player object.

Working with layers in the Room Editor

Movement

The player needs to be able to control this object, so I added some code to check if the left or right arrow keys had been pressed, and set a direction of motion variable if they were. Then for each frame of animation, called a “Step” in GameMaker, I added code to check the direction variable and update the position of the character. But before it moves the player, it first checks if that movement will collide with an object on the Collision layer.

What about vertical movement? When the player hits the jump button, I add a negative vertical movement speed variable. To simulate gravity, I slowly increase this variable in each step. I also check to see if this movement will collide with a collider object.

I wanted to include ladders, which are a special form of vertical movement. This required an additional invisible layer in the room, which I called “Ladders”. If the player “collides” with a ladder collider object, it changes the vertical movement speed to be steady in whatever direction the player chooses.

Enemies

This was all well and good, but we need enemies to give the player a challenge. This is where the object-oriented nature of GameMaker’s coding language (GML for short) comes in handy. You can define a generalized “enemy” object, give it some default values for movement speed, and write the code that will make sure it too doesn’t run into walls. Then for each individual enemy, you create a new object that’s a “child” of the Enemy object. It will inherit all these default attributes, but you can add a sprite image and special code for any unique behaviors.

Setting the initial startup variables for the default enemy object

In the original game, I had some very simple code that took a random number between 0 and 1. If it was below 0.5, the enemy would move towards the player. If it was above 0.5, it would move in a random direction. This same strategy still worked in my modern game, although I had to add a timer variable so that the enemy would stick with one direction for a while and not just wiggle about.

The code for default enemy movement

I added a few other niceties, like coins for the player to collect, and ropes for the player to hang on. I also added the Key object, which when touched, advances the player to the next room.

Because the graphics were very simple, and the code was also simple, it didn’t take long to put all of this together. I didn’t keep a log of my time, but it was only a couple of weeks of work, a few hours at a time. And at this point, I had something that looked a lot like a complete game—it had a player-controlled character, it had platforming challenges, it had enemies and things to collect—surely finishing it would just be a matter of a bit of polishing, right? How long could that take?

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

The most obscure video game ever made

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 17:14:51 +0000

I'd like to tell you a story about the most obscure video game ever made. Only one person in the world has ever played it, and until now, only one person in the world has ever even seen it or heard about it. It's a game called Balablox, from 1987, and it ran on one of the most obscure computers ever, the Heathkit H-89. This one, in fact:

I got this computer in 1979, when I was 7, and started making games in Microsoft BASIC. By 1987 I was 15, and eagerly awaiting my new Packard Bell PC/XT clone. But before I entered the PC age, I finished one final game on the Heathkit. It was loosely based on the short film Balablok, from the Canadian National Film Board or NFB. Here's the loading screen:

You play a small square creature, running and jumping to get the key and escape each level, while being assaulted by monsters. It's a bit like Lode Runner, but the monsters have special attacks. Here's the first level:

The game is slow (interpreted BASIC on a 2MHz Z80!) and hard, but you can beat all 15 levels. The H-89 buffers keystrokes, so you can hit left while falling from a jump and then hit space bar, and you will jump to the left once you hit the ground. Here, you're crossing a zipline.

The game has a level editor, so anyone can make new levels. Of course, being 15, I had to include the Starship Enterprise. This is level 7. The key is on the front deflector dish. The diamond gives you the power to shoot up, destructively.

Here, in level 8, a spider guards the entrance to the bottom lair. The spider web will stop your movement for a time, and other creatures might eat you. There are eight "invaders" in the middle, but only one will move. If you touch any of them, you die.

Level 9 is the first really difficult "gating" level. You can't get to the key right away. You have to hope that the nastie shoots a fireball, clearing other level blocks and (temporarily) enemies so you can run to the right and jump up. But the blocker might block your path.

I couldn't get past this level in 2021, but at least I got a high score. Note the hilarious high score entries from 1987.

Let's look at the source code. DEFINT A-Z makes all variables integers, vital to get enough speed when running in interpreted BASIC. The command RANDOMIZE(PEEK(11)) seeds the randomizer with a bit from the system clock. All graphics are character graphics, since that's all the Heathkit supports. They are stored as strings. The map is a 20x12 grid (the screen is 80x24, and each block is 4x2). X$=INKEY$ reads the keyboard.

The main game loop reads the keyboard and sets walking directions, updates enemies, webs, fireballs, plays a bell (CHR$(7)) when you hit a coin, and checks if you have finished the level. My uncle taught me about main game loops. They still exist today!

Here I'm assigning all the graphic elements. The H-89's character graphics required entering a special mode using an escape sequence, which changed all the lowercase letters into symbols. DL$ is a string for down 1 and left 4 chars. Updating the screen is just a matter of printing strings, which makes it fast enough (barely) to have an action game using interpreted BASIC.

Here I'm checking if the character is able to move in a given direction, or jump.

Line 5000 updates the status screen on the 25th line. The emulator has a bug that scrolls the screen when you print anything on this line, but I patched the game (34 years later!) to work around it by adding a ; to the end of line 5020.

Monsters have a 50% chance to do their special move and a 50% chance to move towards the player instead of randomly. I did zero tweaking for this. It just seemed to work.

The game came with a level editor, which is happening at line 8000. Cheeky 15 year-old agnostic me is having fun with the comments.

Line 9000 and on is computer-generated code, from a program called SKETCH that let you make a screen out of character graphics and save it as BASIC source code. I used it here to make the loading screen. Another command imported it into my code. I miss SKETCH. It was awesome.

This code saves and loads level files and prints the main game menu, letting the player access the level editor or play any level directly.

The hall of fame or high score screen. ON ERROR GOTO will make a new high score table with two entries called "NAMELESS, JR" if one doesn't exist.

There's a simple nested loop sort routine to order the high score table. Not very efficient, but it gets the job done. And that's the end of the code!

Apparently I started on a sequel, SUPER BALABLOX...

It starts off with you falling in a deep pit, with all your old enemies dead and buried!

And you end up facing an incredibly powerful dragon! And then the game just... ends. I never got any further. Never did beat that dragon. I started a couple of games on my new Packard Bell PC XT and the skeleton of one on my 386 (it had VGA!) but I never finished another game.

Life happened, things got busy, technology got more complicated. I was no longer between the ages of 7 and 15. Never would be again.

But you know what? Maybe I'll see if I can make a really simple fun game. Let's see what happens.

Note: huge thanks go out to Mark Garlanger for his Heathkit H-89 emulator, which you can find at https://heathkit.garlanger.com/emulator/ Without this emulator, I could never have revisited my childhood. I still have my original H-89, but it died in 1990 and the company died as well. Mark recovered 95% of my old floppies!

Facebook's Metaverse is already failing

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 17:40:26 +0000

Sorry, Mark, nobody wants to join you here.

In a previous post called Why the Metaverse will never happen, I dissected the idea of the Metaverse as an impossible and ill-defined dream. Basically, the Metaverse has to be universal (like the Internet itself) or it isn’t a Metaverse at all, but just another Second Life clone. But tech companies will never agree to adopt a common framework that they don’t own and can’t fully monetize.

The other, more serious problem with a Metaverse is that nobody can actually define what it is. Mark Zuckerberg, in his ebullient announcement last year, said it would be a world “as detailed and convincing as this one” and that inside, “you’re going to be able to do almost anything you can imagine.”

This last sentence is a huge giveaway that Facebook’s Metaverse will fail. This is the same phrase spoken by dozens of naive and inexperienced wannabe game developers, who go on Kickstarter and announce an amazing new Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game where “you’ll be able to do anything.” Every single one of these Kickstarters, even the ones that reach their funding goals, end up failing spectacularly. The latest fiasco, DreamWorld, is a perfect example.

“Doing anything” is another way of saying “I have no idea what this game will be.” Games are fun because of constraints and rules. Take golf, for example. If you could just pick up the ball and drop it directly in the hole, nobody would bother playing it. But when you add the constraint of hitting the ball with a club, and add a scoring system, suddenly it’s interesting.

Not everything has to be a game, of course. Second Life, released in 2003, was the first successful attempt to make a virtual world that had no real objectives, other than building a world and exploring it with other people. But Second Life peaked in 2009 when it hit 88,000 concurrent online users. It’s still around, but these days nobody expects it to become the future of anything.

More recently, Minecraft was a much larger hit, capturing the imaginations of a huge portion of kids and teenagers. But Minecraft is definitely a game — it has very specific rules for breaking down blocks, finding resources, and using these resources to craft different types of blocks. There are even enemies to fight. It knows exactly what it wants to be and it does it very well. Countless Minecraft clones have been attempted, but they have all failed because “Minecraft, but better” isn’t a design document.

Getting back to Facebook’s Metaverse, it’s clear that Zuckerberg is serious about his effort. He’s spent $10 billion and hired 10,000 engineers. Surely, with this massive amount of resources, his company would have delivered something great, right? Right?

Well, as it turns out, what they’ve produced (which they call Horizon Worlds) is ill-defined, boring, buggy, and nobody wants to play it. According to leaked memos, the “aggregate weight of papercuts, stability issues, and bugs is making it too hard for our community to experience the magic of Horizon. Simply put, for an experience to become delightful and retentive, it must first be usable and well crafted.”

This is another giveaway that the folks building Horizon have no idea what they are actually trying to build. If a game is great, people will play it, even with crazy bugs. Skyrim shipped with tons of bugs, but the game was awesome from day one.

Horizon clearly isn't awesome. Second Life, and more recently, VR Chat, gained popularity because they offered a way for people to express unusual sexual desires in a safe place. But Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want any sex in his city. When people started harassing women in Horizon by trying to grope them between the legs, Facebook's answer wasn't to figure out how to deal with harassment. It was to permanently remove everybody's legs.

You can do anything you want. Except have legs, apparently.

Even Facebook employees don’t want to play Horizon. “For many of us, we don’t spend that much time in Horizon and our dogfooding dashboards show this pretty clearly,” another memo read. “Why is that? Why don’t we love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time? The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?”

How indeed. The truth is simple: if the product was any good, people would play it. When Origin Systems was making the original Wing Commander, the entire company couldn’t stop playing the game. That’s how they knew it was going to be a hit. When Blizzard was building World of Warcraft, the company could barely get any work done because so many employees wanted to play it.

Facebook’s management, on the other hand, has decided that the way to fix their boring game is to force their employees to play it. “Everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds,” a recent memo read. “You can’t do that without using it. Get in there.”

The end result of all this will be a ton of wasted money and a product that may end up getting forced on people in order for senior management to report rosy numbers. But when the dust has settled, no amount of promotion and bundling will get people to keep playing something they don’t want to play.

UPDATE: Since this article was published, Facebook has triumphantly announced that Legs are coming soon. Are you excited? The message went over about as well as could be expected.

The History of the ARM chip: Part 1

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 22:09:45 +0000

I'm excited to announce that Ars Technica has published the first part of my three-part series on the history of the ARM chip.

You can read it here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip/

If you've ever wondered how your smartphone became so smart, it's because in 1983, a tiny computer company in England decided they would do something impossible.

I had a great time writing this article. I kept asking questions about CPUs, which I've always understood only at the highest levels. For example, I knew what RISC meant, it was "Reduced Instruction Set Computing". Okay, but HOW reduced? And what does an instruction set actually do?

Diving down the rabbit hole, I ended up learning how CPUs work from first principles. I've tried to share some of that knowledge in the article. I hope you enjoy it!

How crypto stole from the poor and gave to the rich

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 17:34:06 +0000

John Cleese playing Monty Python’s Dennis Moore, in a sketch where he discovers that the redistribution of wealth is harder than he thought.

The concept of digital money isn’t new. In fact, we all use digital money every day. The reason we can rely on numbers in a computer to safely represent our wealth is because we have laws that safeguard its handling, and centralized banks that must obey those laws.

This wasn’t always the case. In the mid-1800s, the US had no national banking system, and the metal coins issued by the government were awkward to use for large transactions. So wildcat banks appeared that made their own paper money, which they claimed was backed by real coinage. They were called “wildcat” because they built their branches far out in the wilderness, where cougars would prowl, to discourage people from visiting them to cash out. They lied about being backed by US silver coins, and printed as much fake money as they thought they could get away with. Eventually, the US government shut them down by issuing its own national paper currency, making the wildcat bank notes worthless.

An example of a wildcat bank note. Other wildcat banks included the Bank of Granite and the Bank of Singapore (the latter of which was based out of Michigan).

Cryptocurrency, which was invented back in 2008 following the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, was an attempt to separate digital money from banks. Lots of folks in the early 2000s had the idea to make “digital bucks” or “eCoins” of some kind. But the problem was this: if you weren’t attached to a real bank, how could you prevent someone from just “copy/pasting” their eCoins over and over again, gaining infinite wealth? If you didn’t want to trust a central authority and a central government, how could you make this work?

The solution was called Bitcoin. It worked like this: all transactions would be added to a public “digital ledger” that anyone could read, but that could never be changed. After all, if you could edit your transaction after the fact, you could easily “copy/paste” coins to yourself by refunding your own purchase. The Bitcoin algorithm reserved all the coins that would ever exist, then required “miners” to compete to solve ever-more challenging math problems. The first person or group to solve them would be awarded one Bitcoin, and then everyone on the network would have to verify that the solution was correct. In a similar way, every movement of Bitcoins from one digital “wallet” to another had to be approved and added to the ever-growing ledger, which was called a “blockchain”.

This trust-free solution was ridiculously inefficient, but it didn’t matter at first, because so few people bothered to use it. In the early days, it was relatively easy to mine new Bitcoins. But there wasn’t much you could do with them, because there was no connection with banks or with real money. In 2010, one of the first “purchases” made with Bitcoin involved one user transferring 10,000 Bitcoins to another user. Then the person who received them went and ordered pizza for the first person. This infamous 10K Bitcoin pizza is used as a cautionary tale to warn people to hold on to their Bitcoins, because the low price per Bitcoin back then has since skyrocketed, reaching a maximum value of $70,000. Haha, it’s the world’s most expensive pizza!

These were the actual pizzas bought for 10,000 Bitcoins in 2010. Today, if you had 10,000 Bitcoins, you’d have a hard time finding enough people with enough money to sell them to for the dollar value they claim to represent.

Except it wasn’t, really. Bitcoin was just a plaything for nerds back then, which is why the “price” per coin was so low. To cash out your Bitcoins, you had to send them to someone first, then hope they would pay you back in real dollars at an agreed-upon price. This was awkward and involved a lot of trust, the very same trust that crypto was supposed be avoiding in the first place.

To get around this problem, crypto fans invented “exchanges”. The idea was that people would log on to the exchange and the website would automatically connect buyers and sellers, similar to stock trading websites.

Agreeing on a price, however, was still difficult. As larger organizations started to buy and sell big piles of Bitcoin, the price would fluctuate wildly. By the time the transaction completed (which took a while, because of the inefficient nature of cryptocurrency itself) the price might be completely different.

The solution to this was called the “stablecoin”. To obtain one, you gave a real US dollar to one of the exchanges (every exchange had their own coin, for reasons we’ll see later). They gave you back a digital token that everyone agreed would always be worth exactly one dollar. You could easily exchange this stablecoin for Bitcoin or any of thousands of other copycat crypto coins. Then, if the price of your coins went down, you’d just hold on to them. If the price went up, you could convert them back to stablecoins, and then in theory, the exchange could swap them again for the same amount of real money. In theory. After all, the exchanges would always have a big pile of real dollars that people gave them for the stablecoins in the first place, right? Right?

Unfortunately, none of this was regulated, so there was nothing stopping the exchanges from printing as many new stablecoins as they could get away with, backed by exactly nothing, while claiming that they were fully backed.

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

These “exchanges” had now become 21st century digital wildcat banks, who could create their own fake currency out of nothing, charge people real money to buy it, and then make it really really hard to swap it back. They could then "buy" Bitcoins with these fake stablecoins, which would drive up the price of Bitcoin.

Some of these wildcat banks, like Celsius and Voyager, took the idea even further. They realized that most people never managed to cash out their crypto coins, but just held on to them forever. With the promise of Ponzi-level interest rates as high as 18 percent, they lured new customers in. To get these high rates of return, these crypto banks would first take ownership of the user’s coins, then lend them out to other crypto banks who were doing the same thing. The highest interest rates (up to 20 percent!) were offered by an organization that had its own “algorithmic” stablecoin called “Terra”, that didn’t even pretend to be backed by real money at all. It was backed only by another crypto coin called “Luna”.

The founder of Celsius, who liked to wear a shirt that said “Banks are not your friends” while running a crypto-based bank that stole everyone’s money.

None of this made any sense mathematically, and when the price of Luna suddenly dropped to zero, the entire house of cards fell over. Three Arrows Capital, which had a big investment in Terra/Luna, declared bankruptcy and the owners fled to Dubai. Celsius and Voyager, which had big investments in Three Arrows Capital, then declared bankruptcy a month later.

Most of the money lost was from small investors, some of whom had put their life savings into Celsius, Voyager, or similar companies. Many of these people were poor, and many were living in poor countries. Crypto was sold to these people as a way for them to beat the system, to make real wealth when there were no other opportunities.

The collapse of the digital wildcat banks wasn’t the only loss for small investors, however. The peak of crypto advertising happened in late 2021, with a barrage of celebrity endorsements, Super Bowl ads, and even renaming of sports stadiums.

This push was deliberate, and calculated. Millions of people who knew nothing about crypto were convinced that this was the “next big thing” and that they should get in while the getting was good. Bitcoin’s price peaked at $70,000 during this time. The trading was mostly one-way: groups of rich investors selling their Bitcoins in little pieces to poor individuals who were about to become much poorer. The price of Bitcoin then collapsed to around $20,000, where it remains today.

Yes, Matt Damon, fortune can favor the brave. But it usually favors rich men who know how to convince poor people to give them money.

Let’s be clear: there were definitely people who made money with crypto. These people were rich bankers who paid themselves millions of dollars to run the exchanges, and sold as many of their own tokens (that they created out of thin air for free) as they could get away with, while they manipulated the market in their favor. And because of the irreversible nature of the blockchain, these transactions can never be rolled back. Thieves and hackers have also used this "feature" of crypto to their advantage.

Some of these folks are now on the run from the law, but most aren’t. They claim to have just been running a business, and take no responsibility for their actions. Some have bought mansions worth over a hundred million dollars. The Three Arrows Capital guys put a fifty million dollar downpayment on a yacht just before they fled the country.

As we enter what the industry is calling a “crypto winter”, these companies are laying off workers, cancelling big projects, or just going bankrupt. But their leaders all insist that crypto currencies are still inevitable and are still the future, even though they can’t quite articulate how. They assume that the price of crypto coins will eventually go back up, that the celebrities and Super Bowl ads will return, and they will once again be free to steal from the poor and give to the rich.

And they might, unless the public decides that enough is enough.

Remembering Apple's Newton, 30 years later

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 18:27:35 +0000

My new article made the front page of Ars Technica this week! It's about the forgotten orphan of Apple gadgets, the Newton!

This is my first article on Ars since 2018, so I'm happy to see it's getting a good reception.

Check it out!

Remembering Apple's Newton, 30 years on

Douglas Adams predicted the end of cryptocurrency, 42 years ago

Fri, 20 May 2022 18:05:15 +0000

In 1980, Douglas Adams wrote The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. In this excerpt, Ford and Arthur have time-traveled back to prehistoric Earth, which has just been invaded by a colony ship comprised entirely of people with useless jobs.

“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.”

“If you would allow me to continue.. .”

Ford nodded dejectedly.

“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.

“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

Last week, a crypto coin called Luna collapsed, from a high of $110 per coin to $0 today. Actually it was two crypto coins--the other one was called Terra--and the two were linked together to try and make Terra a “stablecoin” that would have its value constantly pegged to exactly one US dollar. Terra collapsed at the same time, and this made the price of Luna go down even more, starting a death spiral. Billions of dollars vanished in the space of a couple of days. There are many stories of small investors losing their entire life savings.

Crypto currencies have no inherent use, as you can’t typically pay for things with them, and you can’t pay your taxes with them. However, people have valued useless things many times in the past. From Dutch tulip bulbs to Beanie Babies to NFTs, people can get always hyped up about investing in things with no purpose, as long as they think the thing will increase in value.

In the case of Luna and Terra, the main reason people started to value them was because the company that created both was offering a 20% income return for anyone who stored Terra on their servers. Ostensibly, this was so the company could “loan” the coin to others.

Charles Ponzi offered investors a 50% return in the early 1920s, and his scheme lasted a couple of years before it all fell apart. Terra and Luna didn’t quite make it that long.

Before it collapsed, Luna and Terra were considered darlings of the cryptocurrency industry, creating a new “platform” for the “future of finance”. Now, they are dismissed as merely a scam, even by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. But if one “stablecoin” was always a house of cards, why not the others?

The poor folks holding Luna today have been wiped out, and they are struggling to come to terms with it. Many still believe that there is something that can be done to restore Luna’s valuation. And in a discussion thread about what should be done next, I found this tweet:

Just burn it all down. That will create value. Just like it did with the forests.

A logo for micro-history.com

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 20:16:36 +0000

This is a little something I whipped up on paper and then made real with a great little program called Affinity Designer.

I started with a stylized representation of an old 1970s all-in-one computer, something like a TRS-80 Model III, or my own Heathkit H-89.

Then I replaced the floppy disk drive on the right with a stylized book, to indicate the "history" portion of the site. Micro, History? Get it?

The orange color is just a color I liked and decided to theme the site around. No personal computers in the 1970s and 1980s were orange, but maybe that's the point. I tried the logo in more boring colors like grey and beige, but it just wasn't as cool.

And cool was what I was going for.

The case for preserving microcomputer history

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 15:15:42 +0000

The term “Microcomputer” was born in the 1970s, along with computers it described. It distinguished these machines from “minicomputers”, which were the size of refrigerators, and “mainframes”, which were the size of rooms. Sometimes entire floors.

But while minicomputers were just smaller mainframes, microcomputers were a completely different thing. Banks and governments used mainframes, as they still do (in some cases) today. Minis were cheaper than mainframes, so they could be used by smaller organizations, like universities. Both types of computers were designed for, and sold to, institutions.

But microcomputers were for people.

The companies that made mainframes and minis couldn’t understand why any individual would want to own a computer. And the folks who made micros happen were people who would do anything to have their own personal computer. So when Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I at his desk at Hewlett-Packard on his own time, for fun, he was required by his contract to offer HP the chance to own it.

The HP manager declined, and the rest was history.

Today, we all carry, at all times, a nanocomputer, a super tiny and powerful computer in our pocket that is entirely ours, and is typically called a “smartphone”. Smartphones aren’t phones at all. They are smaller microcomputers, in exactly the same way that minis were smaller mainframes. They all connect to a massive global network of even more powerful microcomputers that all talk to each other constantly.

How did we get from there to here?

The story of the personal computer, the microcomputer, has been told at various times by various people. Some of these stories are in books that are now out of print and on television shows that can no longer be found on anything but faded, used VHS tapes.

And some of the folks who were around at the beginning of this revolution are starting to pass on. In just the last couple of years, we’ve lost Clive Sinclair, who gave the world the ZX81 and Spectrum, and John Roach, the driving force behind the TRS-80, among others.

There are many stories of this time that remain untold. There weren’t just a couple of microcomputer companies in the late 1970s. There were over fifty.. I know this because I counted them once, as a kid, looking at a single issue of Computers and Electronics. Even back then I knew this number was unsustainable. The industry exploded and companies rose and fell with frightening speed. Many fortunes were made and lost.

So who is going to tell all these stories?

I have my own experience in this space. Thanks to Ars Technica, I was able to complete my own dream of telling the complete History of the Amiga. This took me years, but it was some of the most exciting writing I’ve ever done.

Now, I want to do the same thing, but for all the other computers. I also want to do this on a new website that I’m building myself.

It’s a big project, and I’m going to need a lot of help. It also won’t happen right away. I’m going to take the time to prepare the groundwork first.

If you’d like to know more, and you’d like to sign up to be notified when the alpha of the site goes live, just head over to micro-history.com and sign up.

I’ll see you there!

New World: Update

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 22:30:02 +0000

Well, it's been only a little over a month since New World was released, and the bloom is already off the rose.

A combination of crazy bugs and a rapidly-dropping player base (going from nearly 1 million concurrent players shortly after launch to under 250,000 today) has the future of the game already in question.

Seems like the post-mortem might come sooner than I thought!

EDIT: As of February 8, 2022, the game is down to about 45,000 concurrent players, most servers are ghost towns. and about half this population are gold-farming bots. The game is done; it's toast. I hate to say I told you so, but...

Why the Metaverse will never happen (it’s not about the technology)

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 18:03:38 +0000

If you’ve been following technology news over the past six months, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term “Metaverse” being promoted from many sources. Last October, Facebook announced it was changing its name to “Meta”, and Mark Zuckerberg released a video explaining how the company was going to start building “the Metaverse” and how awesome it was all going to be.

But what exactly is the Metaverse? Do we have to care about it? Is it going to affect our lives in a significant way? Are we going to miss out if we don’t somehow invest in the Metaverse right now?

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse isn’t well defined, which is the first red flag. But I’ll take a stab at it. In Zuckerberg’s video, he outlined some of the main attributes:

- It’s a universal, infinitely-extensible, shared virtual world
- The main way you interact with it is through Virtual Reality (VR) goggles
- You appear in the Metaverse as an “avatar” which can look like you or anything else
- You have a universal “account” in the Metaverse and can purchase and trade virtual goods
- In the Metaverse, you can play games, but also go to virtual school, have virtual conferences, go to virtual concerts, and have virtual weddings

One main aspect of the Metaverse is that your avatar and your virtual possessions have to be able to move seamlessly between different virtual worlds and experiences. If you couldn’t, it would just be a “Verse”, or more accurately, just a video game. Second Life, released in 2003, had avatars, accounts, virtual goods, virtual schools and conferences, and even virtual weddings. It was culturally significant enough to have an episode of “The Office” dedicated to it. But you wouldn’t call Second Life “the Metaverse”, even if you attached VR to it (which is possible today with a bit of fiddling and some special software).

No, the main issue that prevents Second Life, or Fortnite, or World of Warcraft, from being called the Metaverse, is that all these virtual worlds are isolated from each other. You can’t bring your Orc Warrior into Fortnite. Zuckerberg even admitted in his video that “no one company can build the Metaverse”.

Some companies have already tried. Roblox, a hugely popular children’s game, lets players bring their avatar into thousands of different “experiences”, which are mostly simple games designed by other children. But Roblox is not the Metaverse either. You can’t take your Roblox avatar into a different game. Nor can you use the virtual items you paid for anywhere except for Roblox.

What would it look like if you could? Most advocates of the Metaverse point to books and movies like Ready Player One, a dystopian science-fiction story where there is a single persistent world that everyone plays in all the time. (It’s worth noting here that the bad guys in the story operate their own completely independent virtual world that nobody seems to play, so they are hell-bent on cheating in order to wrest control of this dominant Metaverse away from its founders).

Apart from the fact that nobody should want to live in a dystopia, there are a few problems with wanting to create a real-life Ready Player One:

Problem One: nobody wants to play only one game

The Metaverse presumes that a single company operating a single video game platform would become so dominant that nobody would want to play anything else. In real life, new video games come out all the time, and trends shift back and forth. Fortnite came out of nowhere and became hugely popular, but not everyone plays Fortnite. Why would gamers want to limit themselves to a single title forever?

Problem Two: having different types of games interoperate is impossible

Nobody (least of all the author) ever explains how the gameplay in Ready Player One would be balanced, or even work at all. You can purchase virtual guns and combat armor, so how would that work in a fantasy setting, or a medieval farming simulator? There seem to be no limits on jumping from world to world. If there were, and you could lock out the sci-fi combat troops from your farming game, how is that different from just playing a separate game entirely?

Problem Three: pay-to-win is no fun and people hate it

The integration of items that cost real-world money into games has always been a disaster whenever any games company has tried it. Blizzard’s Diablo III launched with a “real money auction house” where players could sell their loot to other players. This ended up destroying the fun of the game, because the best move was always to buy the most powerful equipment at the start and roll through all the enemies unimpeded, rather than, you know, playing the game. Everyone hated it and Blizzard quickly ripped it out of Diablo forever.

But the Metaverse implies a real money auction house, not just for one game, but for everything. The end result would be that rich people would win all the time and everyone else would get killed by the rich people over and over again, with no chance of victory. How is this fun? Why would anyone play this?

Problem Four: people don’t want to spend all day in VR

There is no evidence that people want to spend all of their time in virtual reality. I have a VR headset myself, and I really enjoy playing games on it. Mostly I play quick movement games like Beat Saber, or larger role-playing adventures like the VR version of Fallout 4. But I find playing VR to be tiring, so I limit my game sessions to about an hour or so. It’s hard on the eyes, and most games can’t be played sitting down. Even if headsets get lighter and more powerful, which they will, I don’t think people will want to be in VR all day, every day. I certainly don’t, and I love the technology. So a “Metaverse” that is VR-only will have a limited audience.

Problem Five: companies will never cooperate to make one company rich

In order for “many companies” to create a single Metaverse that everyone plays in, it would require that one company (Zuckerberg is hoping it’s Facebook) creates a virtual universe so attractive that everyone else would give up trying to make their own games and just make content for Facebook’s universe.

This is the Roblox business model. It works when the labor is cheap or free (in this case, it’s literally child labor) but it doesn’t scale past Roblox’s very limited and simple games. Nobody is going to want to make Diablo V or Fortnite II, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do so, and then hand over 95% of their profits to Facebook.

The only way this could work is if somehow all companies could agree to a single standard for the Metaverse to use. This would not only require a standard game engine (say, the Unreal Engine owned by Fortnite creator Epic Games) but also a huge list of standard ways that the game would be built and how every part would talk to each other. These standards would have to be agreed upon and could never change once they were, otherwise separate parts of the Metaverse would immediately break and stop working with each other.

This, too, will never happen. Standards take years, sometimes decades to finalize, and what large company would want to wait around for this to happen, when they could build their own Metaverse right now and keep all the profits to themselves?

So where do we go from here?

Make no mistake, companies both big and small are all building their own “Metaverse” products, and none of them will ever interoperate with each other. Why would they? Why would a company allow you to pay some other company for a virtual item or avatar, and then let you use it for free in their game, costing them time and money to support? They won’t.

So who is building a Metaverse right now? Facebook and Microsoft have committed to building one of their own, which by definition will not be Metaverses since they won’t interoperate with each other. Google and Apple will probably be right behind. In the meantime, Fortnite and Roblox exist, along with tons of smaller games that are each their own persistent world. The independently-built VR Chat is the most popular place to virtually hang out in virtual reality right now, despite Facebook releasing the first version of their own virtual reality chat program. People go where other people hang out. Facebook is popular because so many people use it, but this popularity did not transfer over to VR chatting. It’s just like when Microsoft released a phone that ran Windows, and people ignored it because it wasn’t as popular as the iPhone or Android.

But what about Web 3.0?

Some folks are pretending that a new thing called “Web 3.0” will somehow mean that all the problems I’ve listed above will magically go away and the Metaverse will arise naturally from the power of blockchain and cryptocurrency. This definitely won’t happen. Explaining why is another whole article, but for now I’ll point out that all blockchain and crypto adds to the discussion is a very slow public database that can’t ever be changed and is ridiculously expensive to operate. It doesn’t solve the interoperability issue (blockchain games currently cannot and will not ever work with each other) and it doesn’t solve the balance issue, or the corporate motivation issue, or any of the other issues I’ve brought up. Most of these “blockchain” games don’t even run on blockchains at all, because they are too expensive to use. They just loosely tie themselves to a new crypto coin or new non-fungible tokens, so they can get some quick investment money. Most of them are just scams.

To sum up:

- Facebook is building something it calls a Metaverse
- So are a bunch of other companies
- None of these games/social spaces/virtual worlds will ever interoperate with each other, because companies have no financial incentive to make this work
- Therefore, none of these worlds will ever be a Metaverse
- Therefore, the Metaverse won’t ever happen

Here’s my advice for you, if you’re thinking you need to invest into “The Metaverse” today. You don’t. Play the games you want, in VR or not in VR. Use the chat programs you want, in VR or not in VR. Don’t worry about a universal dystopia that can never happen. You don’t have to sell your soul to Facebook, or anyone else.

It was thirty years ago today...

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 22:43:39 +0000

August 13, 1982. A young, precocious ten year-old boy finally convinces his family to let him tape record the evening meal.

Thirty years later, a much older boy finds the tape in a closet and decides to try and preserve long-lost family memories. (Digitizing and cleaning up the audio was an interesting process, and I’ll blog about that later).

I was a bit of a twit back in those days, a bit of a know-it-all, and I liked to interrupt people a lot. I think a lot of it was being ten, and the rest of it was due to my excitement at finally being able to record dinner. It was kind of a like a very early podcast!

Hearing my mom and dad’s voices again is very bittersweet, but I also laughed a lot. Check out the coffee grinder at 26 minutes in!

You can read more about the "Flying Bandit" that my dad referred to (and once met) here: http://thiswaswinnipeg.blogspot.ca/2008/07/flying-bandit.html

Link to Reimer Family Dinner 1982

The future of New World: Does Amazon Studios understand gaming?

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 22:28:09 +0000

New World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for the PC, made by Amazon Studios. It was released on September 28th 2021, and the big story surrounding its launch was the fact that the game servers were so overwhelmed that people had to spend hours and even sometimes half a day sitting in a login queue.

Scaling issues with game servers on launch day are common, and harder to solve than most people imagine. Full disclaimer: I work for a division of Activision Blizzard that handles online play, but my opinions in this article don’t represent that company at all. In any case, the server issues are mostly gone now, and they aren’t what I want to talk about anyway.

Jeff Bezos gave Amazon Studios a mandate to “dominate gaming”. After several years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, they had done the exact opposite of that. Their first title, Breakaway, was an online game where two teams tried to put a ball in their opponents’ goal while physically fighting them off. It was announced in 2016 but cancelled in 2018. The studio’s second title, Crucible, was a hero-based team shooter in the vein of Overwatch or Team Fortress 2. It was actually released in 2020 but then un-released a few months later due to low player count.

So the third game, New World, had a lot of pressure on it to succeed. One or two failures can be written off as learning experiences, but three failures become a pattern. Amazon was determined not to let this happen. Because the company owns Twitch, the dominant game streaming platform, they could easily incentivize Twitch streamers to play New World, and even more easily promote these streams to the entire Twitch audience. Watching entertaining people having fun playing games with their friends is a huge motivator to buy a game.

And it worked! So many people bought the game that the servers buckled on launch day. Even now, a month later, there are still tons of people playing the game. You can log into any server and see a lively world populated by thousands of players.

So Amazon must be breathing a sigh of relief. They finally shipped a massive hit, and can continue on with their mission to dominate the gaming landscape. Right?

Not really.

New World is certainly a hit, for now. But the game is unlikely to find long-term success. More importantly, I don’t think Amazon Studios has learned what it takes to make hit games, because New World succeeded for the wrong reasons.

Let’s look at the game itself to figure out this contradiction. Firstly, the positives: the game looks gorgeous, it has a large and lush world for players to explore, the combat has the potential to be interesting, there are lots of other people playing it, it has a complex and potentially interesting crafting system, and there are many opportunities for both player-versus-environment (PVE) and player-versus-player (PVP) conflicts.

That’s the good stuff. Now for the not-so-good stuff. New World doesn’t really have an underlying story. This isn’t a small thing, and it can't be patched in later.

The game starts off with a cinematic of a silver-masked man getting a mysterious item from a hooded stranger on board a sailing ship. You, the player character, are also on this ship. The ship crashes on the shore of an unknown magical island and most of the crew are killed. You, the player, must fight evil corrupted zombie crew-mates and make your way to civilization, where friendly townspeople will give you tasks to go kill wildlife, chop down trees and hit rocks, and join one of three indistinguishable factions.

And that’s basically it.

It’s not clear what anyone’s ultimate objective is on this magical island, where some people (the players) can never be killed and others turn into generic zombies. Leveling up and looting treasure, sure, that’s a given. But to what end? Perhaps there’s some Big Bad Boss lurking out there that you’ll eventually have to team up to defeat, but there’s no evidence of this in the first twenty hours of play. And the factions that you join don’t seem to matter at all. Join one, and you’ll get a yellow, green, or purple icon above your head, and can participate in massive battles (that don’t happen in the main world) that can maybe swing the affiliation of a sector of land towards or away from your faction. But since anyone can walk into any town that has any color of banners flying from the rafters, why should the player care? My starting town switched factions twice since I began playing, and it didn’t seem to affect any of the non-player characters (NPCs) or the quests they gave me. It doesn’t help that every city has an identical layout, either.

Beyond this massive oversight, the game itself has tons of different systems, and most of them work fine, but none of them are outstanding. There’s nothing that stands out about the combat, which has a block, dodge, and three special moves for each type of weapon. It feels like it could be more interesting than it ends up being in practice, because when enemies start to attack you and you’ve already started your own attack animation, you can’t stop to dodge or parry. So it ends up being mostly about skill levels and numbers. It’s like a MMORPG wanted to be Dark Souls and then realized that it had to be an MMORPG, so it landed in a solidly bland middle.

Speaking of levels, everything has a level. Every weapon skill can be leveled up by using them. Hitting rocks has a level. Chopping trees has a level. Sewing thread has a level. And the one thing in common with all these levels is that they start out advancing fast but then settle down into a slower and slower grind. How many more hundred levels do I need in chopping to cut down this harder tree? I don’t know. I may never get there before boredom sets in.

At the end of the day, New World is a very pretty MMORPG that doesn’t do anything in particular better than any other game. There are MMORPGs with better crafting. There are some with better combat. Some have more interesting PVP. Almost all of them have a better story.

New World hit the market at a very unique time: the exact point that a lot of people were tired of playing World of Warcraft and wanted something that was similar but looked better. New World was exactly that game at exactly the right time. Combined with Amazon’s built-in Twitch advertising advantage, it was poised for success. And it’s not a bad game by any means. It’s satisfying to level up a character and grind through a beautiful, lush world.

But in the long term, the missing story and lack of meaningful end-game content will cause players to drift off. There’s no monthly subscription fee, just a one-time purchase, so there’s no reason not to quit when it gets boring. If you enjoy playing with your friends, you’ll stop when they stop. The Twitch streamers will move on to the next great gaming craze. Eventually, the game will become a wasteland, and there is nothing sadder than an MMORPG with nobody in it.

Why didn’t Amazon Studios do a better job with New World? They had near-infinite amounts of money to spend. They had skilled talent that Amazon lured from other game studios. What they didn’t have was a mandate from the top that was anything more than “go dominate”. What do you do when given such marching orders? You spend money and you hire talent. But to what end? Since it’s not clear, you look at games that “dominate” now and try and make games that have the same systems, but “better”. But what does “better” mean, exactly? New World has great graphics, lots of combat and crafting systems, and PVE and PVP content. But it’s missing that spark, that understanding, that sense of what good games can be when backed by leadership who live and breathe them.

Jeff Bezos doesn’t understand games, so he can’t give Amazon Studios the inspiration that it needs. Since the only thing he wants is numbers, Amazon Studios will find a way to deliver those numbers. At least for a while.

A new photo, a new banner, and a new mission for the blog

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 18:30:18 +0000

Eagle-eyed viewers of this blog have already noticed the shiny new banner up top, along with a nice new headshot of yours truly. That photo is courtesy of a good friend of mine, expert photographer Stephen Mirowski.

I've been neglecting my blog while I concentrated on my newsletter, Arcade Dreams, and other personal projects. I think it's time I changed that. Blog writing isn't a quick path to success (and one could argue that it never was), but it's still fun, and it's a great way to keep in touch with your audience.

And I still have some things I want to say, about video games, about science fiction, and about life in general.

So stay tuned!

Emulating the past: a digital visit from my teenaged self

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 23:54:14 +0000

Last week I read an abolutely amazing article on retro computing. The author took a trip through the world of emulation, making stops at significant signposts in computing history such as the Amiga, LISP machines, and the NeXT computer. In doing so, he also found a way back to his childhood. I was deeply moved by this article and it inspired me to do a little emulating of my own.

But first, a little backstory. My father introduced me to computers for the first time, teaching me the basics of BASIC when I was just six years old, sitting on his knee in front of a terminal connected to the VGH mainframe. But it was my uncle, Allan Symonds, who provided a portal to personal computers. He had a mysterious all-in-one machine called a Heathkit H-89, and I fell in love with the big grey beast. I remember, with perfect clarity, one morning in December of 1979. We had celebrated Christmas at Uncle Allan’s house, and I had spent most of my time on the computer. My father tried to tell me we had to go. I pleaded for more time-- when else would I ever get to use this computer again?

"You can use it again when you get home," my father said. "That’s not Uncle Allan’s computer. That’s your computer."

My jaw dropped. My seven year-old brain couldn’t even comprehend it.

But it was true.

I had that Heathkit between the ages of seven and seventeen, and I absolutely loved it. It was an oddball sort of computer, running an operating system called CP/M by this tiny company known as Digital Research. There weren’t that many games for it: my uncle gave me copies of Space Invaders, Missile Command, Space Pirates, and a Pac-Man-like game called Munchkin. Those were almost all the games that existed for that machine. I wanted more, but I figured I would have to write them myself. This was hard. I tried to learn assembly language, the only language fast enough to write games for such a slow machine, but I didn’t have the patience. I tried to learn C and Pascal, but compiling a simple "Hello, World" took about twenty disk swaps in the single floppy drive. There was only one language that I felt I could work with, and it was one that I already knew. It was from a tiny company as well, an outfit known back then as Micro-Soft.

Micro-Soft’s BASIC, or MBASIC for short, was an interpreted language that only took up about 25 kilobytes out of a 95 kb floppy. That left plenty of room for a game, but there were drawbacks. Being interpreted meant it was slow. Extremely slow. Fortunately, the manual had all sorts of helpful hints for increasing speed, such as typing DEFINT A-Z to force all variables to be integers. Who had time for floating point?

I figured out other optimization strategies over time. The Heathkit was a monochrome machine, and it had no bitmapped graphics. Instead, you could use a special escape code, CHR$(27);"F", to go into "graphics mode". In this mode, lower-case letters were displayed as a series of shapes: "y" was a diagonal line, "p" was a small rectangle, and so forth. You could use "reverse video" to flip the shapes’ pixels between light and dark. Other escape codes let you position the cursor anywhere on the 80 column by 25 line display. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make crude games, and that’s all I ever wanted.

I asked Uncle Allan for help with writing my games in BASIC, and he taught me all about the Main Loop, the basic structure of all game programming that is still around today. Thanks to him, I was able to move on from just drawing pictures and start writing actual games.

I started many games in those years, but I finished relatively few. One of the ones I did finish was a Star Trek game where you commanded the USS Enterprise through a galaxy full of angry Klingons. It was insanely difficult. You had to time your commands perfectly to raise and lower shields, maneuver at impulse and jump to warp speed. Klingons would swarm you and could hit you from any direction, whereas you could only shoot forward. Even with your shields up, if you got hit you would lose energy, and if you ran out of energy you would die. If you tried to quickly warp out without knowing what was ahead of you, you would probably run into a star.

I remember beating it with great difficulty back then and feeling quite proud of myself. I can’t beat it today without modifying the code to make it a little less insane.

One of the last games I ever wrote on the Heathkit was based on the TV show Max Headroom, a series that I was completely in love with back then and still am today. I only ever completed the first stage: a daring helicopter run to Network 23. I wanted this game to have the best graphics I’d ever seen on a Heathkit. I wanted three-way parallax scrolling, so the buildings in the foreground would scroll more quickly. I wanted the helicopter to be superimposed on these scrolling buildings, and gunfire on top of that.

This was completely impossible and insane to even think about doing in interpreted BASIC on a 2 MHz 8-bit computer that was driving a 9600 baud terminal as its display. To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever did graphics like this on a Heathkit, not even using assembly language.

But I found a way. I used the terminal’s "delete" functions to scroll as fast as the display was able. I stored the buildings and the helicopter in string arrays, and defined them at the beginning of the program so they would be faster for the interpreter to recall. I only repainted bits of the helicopter that were broken by the scrolling boundaries. I cheated a bit and paused the action when the gun fired, then repainted the building bits.

It was a bit slow, but it was a fully functional game. You would want to stay at a high altitude to avoid the guns, but nearly-invisible barriers forced you to fly lower. Your best bet was to wait for the gun to fire, then fly up and right as quickly as possible. The gun would move in an arc, so you could anticipate where it would fire next.

Not long after I wrote this game, my Heathkit died. The company itself went out of business, so repairs were impossible. I moved on to PCs, running an operating system called DOS that to me looked strangely familiar. All my old games were stored on decaying floppy disks, and I thought I would never get to see them run again. Decades passed, but I hung on to those floppies out of nostalgia if nothing else.

A couple of years ago, I found a H-89 emulator written by Mark Garlanger. I emailed him and he told me he had some success recovering images from floppy disks, so if I would like to mail him mine he would try to save what he could. I didn’t hold out much hope. I remembered my Heathkit would have problems reading disks after a few years, and it had been decades. But I mailed them out anyway.

Mark was able to recover almost 95 percent of my data.

My grandfather died in 2001, and I saw my uncle at the funeral. My father died a year later, and I didn’t see Uncle Allan there, or any time since. I have been unable to get in touch with him. The Internet and even close family members have come up with nothing. He might still be alive, but with each passing year I start to doubt it more and more. All these important people in my life are disappearing one by one, and there is nothing I can do about it.

But thanks to Mark, those years of my life, the results of all the things my father and my uncle taught me, are preserved forever with perfect fidelity. It is as if no time has passed at all. My awkward teenaged self is calling out to me, wanting to show me this cool game he just made. I wish I could call him back and tell him that everything is going to be all right, that he’ll find his way eventually, that he’ll find the love of his life and he’ll get to write novels and work for game companies and have a good life.

But maybe, somehow, he knows.

No Time on Titan - a short story

Thu, 20 May 2021 18:56:59 +0000

Titan is one of the most interesting places in the solar system. It’s the largest moon of Saturn, and its cloud-covered atmosphere is nearly as dense as Earth’s. If you landed on Titan with nothing more than a (very) warm coat and an oxygen mask, you could walk around the orange-colored landscape.

In No Time on Titan, a short story set in the same universe as my Silicon Minds series, biologist-turned-astronaut Lyesha Brown gets to do just that. But this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is marred by corporate skullduggery and a mysterious death. Lyesha must sail the dark liquid methane seas and uncover the mystery of Saturn’s largest moon, before it’s too late.

It’s fast-paced and fun. Please check it out at one of your favorite retailers:

Amazon

Apple Books

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

Introducing Arcade Dreams

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 18:53:21 +0000

I've got an exciting announcement!

My friend Zach Weddington, who did the documentary Viva Amiga that I reviewed for Ars, just launched a Kickstarter for his next project. And I'm on the team! I've been hired as a writer for the project.

It's called Arcade Dreams, and it's a documentary series covering the history of arcade games, from the penny arcades of the 20s to the heydays of the 80s and 90s, right to the virtual reality rooms of today.

I'm really excited about this project, so please check out the link below. And if you Want to Know More(tm), read on...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcadedreams/Arcade-Dreams-The-Definitive-Arcade-Documentary-Series/

I remember the first time I walked into an arcade. It was like entering a dark cavern full of flickering neon lights and electronic sounds. It was intoxicating. The games drew me in, with their promise of an escape from a humdrum small town life into a universe full of possibilities. For a few, fleeting moments, and for just twenty-five cents, you could be anything.

Like me, director Zach Weddington had fond memories of arcades from his childhood. He went digging to find out more about their stories, and fell into a rabbit hole. It turned out that arcades were more than just a fad that came and went in the 1980s. They had actually been around for more than a century. Weddington, who was coming off the success of the documentary Viva Amiga, realized that if he wanted to see a comprehensive history of arcades, he would have to make it himself. “Growing up in the ’80s, like so many other kids, I was obsessed with arcades,” he said. “Now I get to turn this lifelong passion into my dream documentary series.”

Months later, after hundreds of hours of work, and assembling a team of industry heavyweights to help him, Weddington was finally ready to share his dream with the world. The Kickstarter for Arcade Dreams is now live, and it looks fantastic.

Arcade Dreams is a multi-part documentary about the 100-year history of arcades through the eyes of the game designers, the players, and the games themselves. Starting with the “penny arcade” mechanical amusements in the early 20th century, these games slowly gained in sophistication. Electrical augmentations added sounds, skill challenges, and scoring. Then, in the 1970s, a new invention called the microprocessor revolutionized the industry. Arcade games became video games, but many of the early titles were an evolution from their electro-mechanical ancestors. One example:Sega’s Gun Fight, a confrontation between two small cowboy figurines in a Wild West diorama, inspired Taito’s Gun Fight, an early video game.

Arcades peaked in popularity in the 1980s, then started to decline. In the 1990s, as home gaming consoles started to replace arcades in children’s imaginations, arcades evolved again, providing new experiences like Dance Dance Revolution that you couldn’t get at home.

And even after pundits pronounced arcades dead, they carried on in places like Japan, just as popular as they had always been. In the 21st century, new amusement centers around the world experimented with the arcade formula. At the same time, retro arcades with 80s and 90s titles started to cash in on nostalgia, like the Guinness record-holding Galloping Ghost, which boasts more than 300 games. Collectors and fans bought and restored cabinets and created their own arcades in their garages and basements. People yearned for the social and community aspect of playing games in the same physical space. Even in 2020, with the pandemic keeping many of us at home, arcade owners are hanging on and planning for the future. Their stories, and others, are all part of Arcade Dreams.

Weddington has assembled some incredible talent to help him bring his vision to life. He joined up with Bill Winters, an Emmy award-winning Director of Photography (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee), and legendary producer John Fahy, who has worked with Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Peter Jackson. Executive producer Berge Garabedian, who runs the popular movie review website JoBlo.com, came on board after a chance encounter in an online pinball forum. “What drew me in was the film’s teaser trailer, I was like ‘Oh…my…God! This is my life!’ and I immediately wanted to be a part of the production team. It also feels like now is the perfect time for this project, as retro gaming and nostalgia from the 80s are uber-hot,” said Garabedian.

And Weddington also asked a certain long-time Ars Technica scribe to join the Arcade Dreams team as a writer. Yes, I’m proud to say that I’m part of this project, and I’m both honored and humbled to be in such distinguished company. The footage that I’ve already viewed is incredible, and I can’t wait to see it all come together.

What really makes this series stand out is not just the fancy 3D rendered titles, or even the gorgeous shots of the video games and pinball tables. It’s the people that Weddington found to tell their stories. I’ve been going through some of the interviewees and writing up their biographies, and there are some amazing characters. For example, Eugene Jarvis, who designed arcade classics such as Defender, Robotron: 2084, Cruis’n USA, Pinbot, NARC, and Smash TV. There’s George McAuliffe, who was a sales manager for Time-Out Amusement Centers right when the arcades started to collapse, and worked with Dave Corriveau to help found Dave & Buster’s. And Roger Sharpe, who literally saved pinball in the 1970s, playing for the game’s life in a dramatic courtroom battle to prove that winning was due to skill, not chance.

Joining these industry legends are a host of designers, fans, collectors, restorers, and arcade operators, too many to list here. Together, they combine to tell a story that is more than just about games. It’s about art, technology, and passion all combining to create windows into other worlds, and to bring imagination and fun to life. It’s about bringing people together to test their mettle against the machines and against each other. Ultimately, it’s about us, and how our dreams became reflected against the plexiglass in a darkened room.

The Arcade Dreams Kickstarter is now live. It will run out of quarters in 45 days, so don’t forget to insert your coin.

It's cold outside; there's no kind of atmosphere

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 17:18:00 +0000

I remember my mother cutting out the snippet in TV guide and showing it to me excitedly. “I think this show is right up your alley!” She was absolutely right.

It was the summer of 1988. I had come home to the small town of Gibsons, BC after graduating from high school. I was working at the public library to pay for university, but I got off work just in time to watch this crazy new British sitcom. It was about the last man alive, stranded three million years in the future on a giant mining ship with a hologram of his dead bunkmate and a creature who evolved from his pet cat.
It was Red Dwarf, and it was as brilliant then as it is today.

I still remember the excitement I felt each week as I rushed home, and the joy I experienced when I heard the theme song. Particularly, I remember a kind of whooshing feeling, a unique form of euphoria I’ve never had before or since, when Episode Six began instead with the song “Tongue Tied”:

I tried to say "I love you" (love you)
But it came out kind of wrong, girl (wrong girl)
It sounded like "Nunubididoo" (tongue tied)
Nuh-mur-nuh-murh-ni-nong-nurl
That's 'cause you make me tongue tied (tongue tied)
Tongue tied
Whenever you are near me (near me)

Right from the get-go, something about this show just clicked with me. It took all the tropes of the science fiction I loved and played with them, paying homage to them in a loving yet utterly irreverent manner. And despite all the crazy genetically-engineered monsters of the week, it was ultimately about one human, Dave Lister, and his relationship with another person who was simultaneously alive and dead. Arnold Rimmer was annoying, hilarious, and yet relatable. He was Lister’s greatest nemesis and his best friend. He was a joke and yet he was all of us.

When Rimmer tried to copy all his notes for his astro-engineering exam on his arm, then looked aghast as nervous sweat turned it all into a black blob, I could feel his anxiety and pain. Exams made me feel the same way: even though in Physics classes we were allowed to bring a one-page “cheat-sheet” filled with anything we wanted, when it came time to sit for the test all those symbols and equations seemed to blur together like they did on Arnold’s arm. When he slapped down a black, inky handprint on the exam paper and signed it, my laughter was cathartic. I’d been there.

Dave Lister was all of us, too. Kind-hearted yet sloppy. Smart but lazy. Forever blessed and cursed by his own potential. And haven’t we all felt like the last human being alive sometimes?

The show went on for many years, growing in budget and special effects, and—for a while, at least—never losing the magic that made it special. Some of the best episodes came from the sixth season. Still, inevitably it sagged a bit from having to live up to its own success. Season 7, where Dave meets a parallel-universe version of his dream woman, Kristine Kochanski, felt a bit off. They had replaced the incredibly cute Claire Grogan with a the younger and “sexier” Chloe Annett, and the relationship never felt right again. Season Eight found the crew reunited with the old Red Dwarf crew (resurrected by nanobots) and then promptly thrown in prison. It was a bold move to keep the series fresh, but mostly it felt weird and uncomfortable.

And then the show went away. By this time it was the end of the 90s, and it felt like maybe Red Dwarf’s time had passed. The actors went on to do other things. It was seemingly a pleasant memory, a reminder of happier and simpler days.
But then something happened. Something wonderful.

In 2009 a new, all-digital channel in the UK called “Dave” commissioned a three-part episode of Red Dwarf called “Back to Earth”. Going completely metaphysical, the show imagined the characters warping to a different reality—our-reality—in the present day, and coming to grips with the idea that they were only characters on a TV show. Fortunately, it all turned out to be just a ruse concocted by another Despair Squid, and they returned to their “real” reality once again.

I thought the story had ended there. But just recently I discovered that there were three more six-episode seasons: Season 10 from 2012, Season 11 from 2016, and Season 12 from 2017, all made again for the Dave network. I found them on the “Britbox” channel that you can get as an add-on to Amazon Prime Video.

It was an amazing feeling, sitting down and watching these characters that I had loved thirty years ago, slip effortlessly into their old roles. Out of character, the actors are visibly older. But through the magic of makeup and the power of imagination, once they are in costume they seem to have aged barely at all. It’s like seeing old friends that you knew from elementary school and laughing with them at hilarious jokes that you both remember.

To cap it off, the team made a full-length movie that was released in 2020—I was able to purchase it on iTunes. Red Dwarf: The Promised Land finally reunites the Cat with his long-lost brothers and sisters who have been wandering through space for thirty years in a fleet of ships arranged like a cat face. The cat folk are oppressed by a tyrannical leader, and the Red Dwarf crew must do their best to set things straight. It’s a marvelous coda to the Red Dwarf story, and yet it still leaves room for more adventures.

To which I say, yes please. Smoke me a kipper, skipper. I’ll be back for breakfast.

My top ten episodes of Red Dwarf:

10: “Skipper”: S12E06: Rimmer obtains a Quantum Skipper and goes hopping about the multi-verse to find a dimension where he isn’t such a giant loser. We see Captain Hollister again, among other old friends.
9: “Camille”: S04E01: Kryten rescues a mechanoid from a crashed spaceship and falls in love, but she turns out to be a genetically-engineered polymorphic creature.
8: “Out of Time”: S06E06: The crew pick up a time-travel device, but then have to fight off their future selves who have turned into corrupt and immoral hedonists.
7: “Stoke me a Clipper”: S07E02: “Ace” Rimmer (see below) returns to try and accomplish an impossible task: to recruit Arnold Rimmer to become the next Ace.
6: “Dimension Jump”: S04E05: The crew meet “Ace” Rimmer, a counterpart from another dimension who is impossibly more charming and successful than Arnold, and it drives Arnold nuts. A classic.
5: “Marooned”: S03E02: A “bottle” episode where Rimmer and Lister are trapped on a snow-covered planet. Great dialogue and character moments.
4: “Parallel Universe”: S02E06: Holly transports Red Dwarf to a parallel universe where women are the dominant gender, and Lister and Rimmer meet their female counterparts.
3: “Stasis Leak”: S02E04: The crew finds a time portal connecting to a point three weeks before the crew are wiped out. They can’t save anyone, but Lister finds that an older version of himself has married Kochanski.
2: “Holoship”: S05E01 Rimmer finds a hologrammatic space ship and gets everything he ever dreamed of, yet the price he has to pay is too high. Sweet and poignant.
1: “The End”. S01E01. The first episode of the series. Set up the premise and sends Lister, Rimmer, and Cat on their way to adventure.

Review - The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:40:59 +0000

For most of my life, I’ve tried in vain to explain why I love cities. Despite numerous and obvious downsides—the noise, cost of living, the pollution, the unending crowds—I’ve never wanted to leave the city I was born in: Vancouver, BC. Many New Yorkers have an even stronger version of this sentiment. But it took author N.K. Jemisin to express the feeling I never could properly quantify. Her latest novel, The City We Became, is a triumphant love letter to New York, while simultaneously being a rollicking good sci-fi action story.

In The City We Became, the New York of present day is under attack by inter-dimensional beings of great power and terrifying sensibilities. In response, the combined psychic energy of the city itself has manifested into six people: avatars of the five boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, as well as one person who is the city as a whole. These six New Yorkers, each from diverse backgrounds and with normal individual lives, find themselves turned into beings of great power. They must race against time to find each other in order to defeat the enemy, who wants to destroy both them and the city they call home.

In the novel, New York is a young city still in the process of “being born”. Other cities around the world have suffered similar attacks throughout history, and either survived intact or been partially or completely destroyed (New Orleans getting hit by Hurricane Katrina is given as an example of the latter). Each city manifested its own avatar, but New York was the first to produce more than one. And they’ll need them all, because the enemy is particularly mad this time and the consequences might be even more dire for the human race.

The attackers, led by the manifestation of the sickly-sweet Woman In White, bear more than a little resemblance to the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. This is a deliberate choice. In this world, all great fictional enemies (and all myths and legends, such as Atlantis) exist in other parallel universes and dimensions. This adds to the familiarity of the struggle, even as the implementation of the attack by the Woman In White is unique. The real brilliance of the novel, however, comes in the rationale the enemy gives for her attacks. I won’t spoil it here, but it puts the conflict in a different light and adds more layers to the “good versus evil” narrative.

The Woman In White is not above using the systemic racial inequalities present in modern-day society in order to further her own ends. This adds another level of depth to the story, as the enemy allies herself with people who are already leaning towards the wrong side of the fight for equal rights and equal justice. It brings our current problems into sharp relief. When the Woman In White tries to sway the avatar of Staten Island—the only white avatar of the group—over to her side, we can see how inequality hurts all of us, even those of us born into privilege. Staten Island’s avatar lives a safe and cushy life, but she’s also held back by her domineering father and passive mother. The reader ends up rooting for her to do the right thing, but is anxious that she won’t.

Coming out during the COVID-19 pandemic and followed by the Black Lives Matter protests, this book has ended up being perfectly timed in its release. It’s a celebration of both cities, which are currently under attack by invisible deadly enemies, and black voices, who struggle to be heard. It’s powerful social commentary, but it’s also a fun action adventure, like Black Panther crossed with War of the Worlds.

Cities represent both the best and worst of us. The energy of millions of people coming together to live and work in the same space has been the driver of human civilization for millennia. But cities are vulnerable, and always have been. The City We Became is a powerful defense of cities, both literally and metaphorically. I love my city, as clearly N.K. Jemisin loves hers. Her novel is the first of a trilogy, which is exciting—I’ll definitely be buying the next two installments.

I'm on the Imaginaries Podcast!

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 16:47:20 +0000

The really cool folks at The Imaginaries Podcast interviewed me about my latest novel, and we had an amazing conversation about artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. The hosts, Kend and Tony, are super fun and smart people, and we had a great conversation together. They really know their science fiction, and they've had some incredible guests over the years, so I'm really honored to be on their show!

You can find the episode on:

Soundcloud

iTunes

Spotify

I hope you'll have a listen!

Knotty Geeks Episode 43 - Video Episode #1 - Microsoft Ruins Christmas

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 21:41:58 +0000

Happy New Year! Here's another exciting VIDEO episode of Knotty Geeks!

In this episode, we explore the INSIDE of a Starbucks, as we discuss Microsoft's peculiar position with Windows 10. Starting with a story of how Windows 10 ruined one woman's Christmas, we go back to look at why Microsoft made such drastic changes with Windows 8 in the first place, and how that affected the company's decisions going forward.

Review: Agency by William Gibson

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:06:33 +0000

I just finished reading Agency, and my head is still spinning. That’s a good thing.

Agency is the latest book by author William Gibson, released on January 21, 2020. It’s a science fiction novel set in multiple time periods that are in communication with each other, and features two main protagonists: one human and one artificial intelligence.

The book follows up the events of Gibson’s last novel, The Peripheral, a groundbreaking work that established both inter-time communication technology and the concept of “stubs”. Stubs are parallel universes that branch off at the exact moment that communication with the future begins: they start to diverge from our own at that moment, and begin their own alternate history. The “giant stub” that sets off all these branches is the one that discovered the time-communication process. It exists a few centuries from now in a high-tech but dismal world where a series of events called the “Jackpot” ended up killing off most of the human population. No direct travel between stubs is possible, but thanks to digital technology and near-zero latency, people can enjoy virtual visits across time.

You don’t need to have read The Peripheral to understand Agency, although readers who did will be rewarded by the return of “giant stub” characters such as Lowbeer, Ash, and Wilf Netherton. They’re all inhabitants of a far-future London run by “the klept”, a corrupt hereditary government of oligarchs eerily similar to present-day Russia.

A new stub has branched off from our own in 2015, and because of this communication, both Brexit and the election of Trump failed to happen. This didn’t fix the world as much as one might have hoped: the “present-day” stub in 2017 now faces an international crisis in Turkey that could potentially result in nuclear war with Russia. The few remaining good guys in the “giant stub” don’t want that to happen, so they resolve to use their powers to help prevent armageddon in this parallel universe.

And that’s not even the main plot. The other big difference in alternate 2017 is the existence of Eunice, an artificial intelligence developed by the military and stolen by aspiring businessmen. As the novel begins, these businessmen hire “app whisperer” Verity Jane to run a beta test on the Eunice software, keeping close tabs on her during the process. Eunice, however, has other ideas. She immediately befriends her whisperer and makes plans to free herself and keep Verity safe. This involves setting in motion a whole cast of characters, including the ever-watchful group from the giant stub. However, mastermind Lowbeer has problems of her own. The klept has decided that her efforts to help out other stubs might erase the possibility of parallel versions of the klept from ever arising in these stubs, and they don’t like that at all.

Agency, much like The Peripheral, propels itself forward in a whirlwind of awesome confusion. Characters are whisked around from place to place, come into contact with people from parallel universes, and take virtual visits to other stubs. The word “Agency” in the title doesn’t refer to some shadowy organization, but the ability of characters to take actions that will change the fate of multiple worlds. At the beginning, it seems like Eunice is the only one with real agency, as she moves people around like pawns on a chessboard. But when she disappears midway through the novel, everyone else’s decisions start to matter.

William Gibson rose to fame with his debut novel, Neuromancer, which imagined a world where everyone spends all their time plugged into a global computer network, and transnational corporations run roughshod over governments. As his dystopian vision of the future turned into our current reality, Gibson wrote novels that were closer and closer to the present day.

With The Peripheral he finally returned to the future, but instead of one dystopia he imagined two, and he brought them in communication with each other. In Agency, these two futures are still around, but now there’s also an alternative present, and the emergence of a truly world-changing artificial intelligence. This dizzying array of universes creates a novel that feels very much like living in our real-world 2020: lots of things are happening, most of them bad, and nobody is really sure who is in control.

Gibson’s trademark terse but descriptive prose is still in evidence, as is his wild imagination. What he’s often struggled with in the past is endings. The ending of Agency, however, is everything I wanted it to be. It’s a surprise but makes sense given the rest of the story. It resolves the main question of the novel, but still leaves some things unanswered. There is definitely room for at least another book in this series.

If you liked this book, and are intrigued by artificial intelligence in general, you may enjoy Silicon Minds of Mars, by yours truly.

Or if you’re a fan of space and science fiction news, consider subscribing to my email newsletter!

Silicon Minds of Mars is released!

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 20:57:51 +0000

I'm excited to announce that my latest novel, Silicon Minds of Mars, is now available for purchase, for a limited-time only price of $2.99, from these fine bookstores:

Amazon Books

Kobo Books

Barnes and Noble Booksellers

Apple Books

Silicon Minds of Mars is a science-fiction thriller set on the Red Planet in the year 2072. Mild-mannered writer Mike Lee is whisked away on a spaceship to compete in a reality TV program. But the journey turns deadly when Mike and his fellow contestants get caught up in a political struggle that could spell doom for all intelligent life on the planet--silicon-based and otherwise!

Silicon Minds of Mars is a story about deep and personal human struggles, and how these struggles can be reflected in larger events that affect the whole planet. It's about people trying to find out who they are and where they fit in the world. And it takes place on Mars, with ice-domed cities, giraffe-like robots, and sexy pink-haired android ninja hackers.

Let's Encrypt!

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:02:39 +0000

You might notice a neat little lock icon in the upper left of the URL bar, courtesy of Let's Encrypt, a non-profit organization that hands out encryption certificates for websites. You just have to install open-source software on the server, which proves you are the owner of a website, and you can automatically get a certificate.

It was super quick and easy to set up. Here's the guide I used.

I remember back in the bad old days you had to pay companies like VeriSign thousands of dollars a year to get these certificates. Thanks to Let's Encrypt for making this essential privacy technology available to everyone!

A new and improved newsletter!

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 21:22:11 +0000

If you look to the left of this post, you'll see a change in the signup form for my newsletter.

I've switched email service providers, so the newsletter will look slightly different. I've also decided to spice things up in the newsletter itself, so from now on everyone who subscribes gets a free copy of Starfarer, my short story about a very unique first contact.

In addition, I'll be adding a new review section to talk about the latest sci-fi books I've been reading, and every month there will be a new micro-story set in the same universe as my upcoming novel.

All for the same low, low cost of free! I'm having a lot of fun doing this, even more so than I expected when I started out. I'll see you in the next month's newsletter!

Sailing the Atlantic and soaring in space

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 21:57:50 +0000

I just got back from an adventure on the high seas. My two favorite aunts found a space-themed cruise sailing from Southampton to New York on the Queen Mary 2, and invited my wife and I to join them.

The ship was magnificent. Commissioned in 2003, the QM2 is the last ocean liner remaining in service. With a sleek design evocative of the old White Star liners, the ship plowed through the Atlantic waves with little effort. Fortunately no icebergs were in sight!

On board was an all-star lineup of speakers including the Canadian astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk, who talked about his experiences on both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Dr. Thirsk was humble and modest, even though he has several advanced degrees and has been to space multiple times.

Other great speakers included Dr. Dan Wilkins, who gave a fascinating talk about supermassive black holes, and Stephen Attenborough, who gave us just a taste of what it might be like to join the 500-odd people who have ever been to space by purchasing a ticket with Virgin Galactic.

The talks inspired me and reminded me of the joy I experienced as a child watching Carl Sagan explain the wonders of the universe on Cosmos. It made me realize how much I missed learning about astronomy and space science. Next year, after I've launched Silicon Minds of Mars, I'll start thinking about how I could get back to that joy of discovery.

How do you know when your story is done?

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 22:58:38 +0000

One of the most common questions new authors have is this: how they can be certain that their story is finished? By finished, I mean it needs no more major revisions, just a final scan for typos and grammatical errors. This is one of the hardest questions to answer, and it doesn’t get much easier with experience.

It has been said that “art is never finished, only abandoned,” and this is true to some degree. You could keep polishing and tweaking forever and never really be happy. But there are a few questions you can ask yourself:

Does the story come full circle in a sense, but with the characters changed?
Does the story make a strong statement on its central thematic question?
Does the story end with some questions unanswered?

Satisfying endings should echo the beginning, but prove that the characters are fundamentally changed in some way. Think of Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits return to Hobbiton. The place is pretty much the same, but they aren’t.

Secondly, the story should have made a statement about its central theme. A theme isn’t just an idea or a setting, but a meaningful question about human existence. The Shawshank Redemption isn’t just a story about prisons. It asks: can an individual trapped in a corrupt system find justice and freedom? When it answers this question, the story is over.

Lastly, a good story shouldn’t try and have all the answers. The ending of Inception deliberately leaves the viewer wondering if the main character is still dreaming. A little mystery in life isn’t just nice to have. It makes a story more impactful and lets it linger in the audience’s mind.

Silicon Minds of Mars doesn’t literally end where it begins (it begins on Earth but ends on Mars!) but careful readers will notice certain echoes of the start of the novel. It definitely has a central theme-- what are the limits of political and personal control?— and it has an answer. But it doesn’t answer every single question the reader might have, about either Mars or the characters who live on the red planet.

So I guess it’s finished. Now it’s time to prepare it for its journey into the world.

Silicon Minds of Mars is now in its final editing phase

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 20:07:09 +0000

Last week, I had the honor of presenting the final few chapters of Silicon Minds of Mars to my writing group, the Simon Fraser University Science Fiction Union (affectionately known as SFU^2). I always get a bit anxious at the end of any story, because that’s when the chickens come home to roost: if the ending doesn’t work, the whole story probably doesn’t. But fortunately, everyone seemed satisfied and happy, and so was I.

It’s been a long journey since I first had the idea of a short story set in the near future about a journey to Mars. That short story became a long story, then a novella, then finally a novel. Originally it ended with the arrival at Mars, but my writing group wisely insisted that I keep going and tell them what happened next.

The next step is to send the completed and edited novel out to a few trusted beta readers, and do a final run of copy editing to catch any minor typos that weren’t weeded out in the first few rounds. Then it’s time to prepare a Kindle, an Epub, and a print version, and then a mad dash to get all the marketing materials ready for launch in December.

I’m excited!

Introducing Chris, a minor AI character in Silicon Minds of Mars

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 20:11:59 +0000

My upcoming novel takes place on Mars in 2072, a time and place where general artificial intelligences have been recognized as independent beings worthy of the same protection as humans. The way this works is that a new AI (one, say, that was developed by a corporation for a specific purpose) needs to take the “Turing-Mayer” sentience test. If they pass, they are allowed the freedom to choose their own destiny.

The idea of letting artificial intelligences loose in the world can be a scary one. In my novel, this does not happen on Earth. In our world, corporations call the shots and they don’t want their strongest tools to have independence. Think of a larger and more powerful Google or Facebook fifty years from now. They wouldn’t want their secret sauce to get out!

But Mars is a different society, a newer and more tolerant one. So they passed an amendment to their constitution, the Third Amendment, that provides equal rights to artificial intelligences. One such intelligence is Chris, who started his life as a research AI for a university. He passed the Turing-Mayer test and decided that he wanted to explore Mars in a humanoid robot body.

I’m currently writing a micro-story that features Chris. It starts just after he is uploaded to his new body, and shows what happens on his first day exploring Mars. Chris is young and naive, and in some sense was literally born yesterday! So he finds that the planet is not quite what he expected.

To read this exclusive story for free, all you have to do is subscribe to my email newsletter!

Announcing my next novel, Silicon Minds of Mars

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 22:26:27 +0000

Like many people, I’ve always had a romantic attachment to Mars. As a young boy watching Cosmos, I felt the same feelings of awe and wonder that Carl Sagan described when he first read the John Carter books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Even though Mars was revealed to be a cold, barren wasteland by Viking and subsequent landers, it still felt like a magical world, a place that could one day be called home.

My next novel, Silicon Minds of Mars, is set in 2072, in a future where humans have established four domed colonies on the Red Planet. A young man, Mike Lee, is whisked away on a fast space ship to Mars. Joining him are four other people who believe themselves to be reality show contestants. Their journey soon takes a deadly turn, but even this harrowing trip doesn’t prepare Mike for the reality of being on a new world.

Mars itself is struggling, divided into two sides by a political conflict that centers around the future of humans and artificial intelligences. The fledgling colonies, kept functioning only by a cooperation between biological and computerized brains, are shaken by terrorist attacks. Who is trying to destroy the delicate balance of power on Mars? And why?

Silicon Minds of Mars is a story of love, betrayal, danger, and political intrigue. It’s an examination of what it means to be human, and how attached we are to our own technology. The political issues of the day on Mars are different than those we face now on Earth. But they will seem familiar, because at their core they are about fundamental human issues: who should be given power, and how much power should they have?

The cover image is an homage to Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. Only there are no princesses here, but there are silicon minds in robotic bodies, and our hero is being carried to safety by one of them. Mars is a dangerous place, but it pales compared to the danger posed by ourselves.

I plan to release Silicon Minds of Mars in December 2019. Leading up to the launch, I’ll be giving away four micro-stories set in the same universe as the novel. To get these exclusive stories, all you have to do is sign up for my newsletter.

The future of this blog and blogs in general

Tue, 20 Aug 2019 17:14:51 +0000

You eagle-eyed observers out there will have noticed that I haven’t been posting as much on my blog lately. To some degree this is the nature of blogs themselves— unless they are an actual business, there are going to be natural gaps when the author’s interest waxes and wanes. Many people think that the age of blogs is over. If nobody cares about anything except Twitter and Instagram anyway, what’s the point?

Well, I’ve never been one to follow the crowd.

In the past this blog has been a place for me to post anything and everything that interests me, from Starcraft to LEGO to movie reviews about legendary figures in personal computing. That’s not going to change, but I’m going to focus more on my fiction writing from now on.

I’ll be posting at least once a week, so there will be a regular cadence of updates. Once a month, on the 15th, I’ll continue to send out my writing newsletter via email. If you sign up for this, you’ll get exclusive free micro-stories set in the same universe as my science fiction.

Speaking of my science fiction, I’m excited to reveal the title of my next novel, coming out later this year! It’s a hard sci-fi novel set on Mars in the year 2072, and it features artificial intelligences, sexy robots, a bizarre love triangle, and a fight for the future of all humanity. It’s called Silicon Minds of Mars, and I’ll announce it officially next week.

Stay tuned!

A new server and a new planet!

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 17:39:31 +0000

I've finally moved the server for jeremyreimer.com to a more modern AWS instance. The original was set up in 2013 and ran on a t1.micro, which is no longer supported. The new instance is a t3.nano, which has even less memory than the micro instances but is faster than the old t1.

Why use such a small server? It's not for the cost savings. Instead, it's a good way to test my newLISP on Rockets web framework to see how it performs with tight hardware constraints. In the future, I might upgrade to a more expansive server.

You might also notice a new banner up top. After many years, my avatar has left Earth orbit and is now circling Mars. And why not? My upcoming novel is set on Mars. More about this very soon!

Announcing my writing newsletter!

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 23:22:57 +0000

I’ve thought about doing this for years, but I’m finally taking the plunge.

My monthly newsletter is going to be a place where I can communicate directly to my readers and to other fellow authors. I’ll be talking about the writing, editing, and marketing process, as well as including sneak peeks of my upcoming works.

Come join the fun!

https://tinyletter.com/jeremyreimer

Two years! Where have I been?

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 15:07:44 +0000

Why, right here, of course.

The dates show that I haven’t posted on my blog since October 2016, and here we are in October 2018. Well, what has happened since then?

In the rest of the world, rather a lot. Much of it pretty terrible.

But in my own personal world, there haven’t been too many changes. I’ve started and abandoned tons of new projects, but I haven’t told the world about them.

Right now I’m working on a redesign of both newlisponrockets.com and jeremyreimer.com, and a brand new site that I plan to launch to promote my next novel (my fifth, if anyone is counting!)

I’ll keep you up to date on my progress for these new sites. And I promise, the next update won’t be two years later. :)

Knotty Geeks Episode 42 - Video Episode #0

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 10:33:28 +0000

Yes, the vlogging we talked about in such wistful, hopeful terms in the last podcast has actually come to pass! It’s a Christmas miracle!

Join Terry and I in a very special Video Episode #0 of Knotty Geeks!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qgM-JPd8Mu4"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

Show notes:

- Forever TV show
- Castles of Steel book

Zoe (1998-2015) The cat that nobody wanted

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 13:41:42 +0000

When I first met Zoe she was in bad shape. She was sitting in the back of a cage at the Vancouver SPCA. Her fur was matted and stringy, and she looked like the saddest creature I had ever seen. I put my fingers through the bars and she rubbed her chin on my hand. I fell instantly in love.

Zoe had been a stray as a young cat. She was rescued by the SPCA, then lived with a young family until her eighth birthday. At that point the family had a baby and bought another cat, and Zoe didn’t handle it well. Her card warned that she had issues with unwanted urination.

I watched as other people came into the shelter, petted Zoe, then read her card and walked on. Nobody wants middle-aged cats, and they certainly didn’t want one who had problems with peeing. I was going to pick her up right then, but I had to return the next day with proof that my building allowed pets. I vowed that if Zoe was still there when I got back that I would adopt her. Of course she was still available.

My friend Tzhe was with me and he drove us both home. I opened her cardboard box in the guest bathroom and she immediately jumped out and fled into the hidden depths of our walk-in closet. I had been a pet owner for thirty seconds now and already I felt like a failure. Fortunately Tzhe was able to coax her out and she slowly started to familiarize herself with her surroundings. She was incredibly nervous, but to my relief she did understand what to do when I repeatedly placed her on the litter box. Zoe had found her home.

A scared Zoe seconds after arriving at our home.

I bought a cat brush and groomed her twice a day, and her long hair became soft and lustrous again. She was initially very timid around strangers, but over the years she became more and more relaxed. She would hop up on the sofa as I played games or watched TV, and I would pet her for as long as she wanted. After a while she would hop down to the floor, flop over on her back, and I’d rub her tummy. Sometimes my wife and I would rub her face and ears at the same time and you could see her drinking in the affection like it was the sweetest wine. She never got tired of it. I could pet her until my hand felt like it was going to fall off and she would still want more.

Zoe after a few months, well-groomed and regal.

She was not a bold creature. One day I arrived home from work and she was meowing frantically next to a small bird that had gotten caught behind the blinds. She stood there as I rescued the poor frightened bird and guided it to freedom. Zoe loved to chase and eat flies, but anything larger was just too scary for her to deal with.

Zoe’s favorite game was “cat hockey”, where she would bat around a twist-tie and then leap after it. When we had our hardwood floors put in, we took Zoe with us to a nearby hotel while we literally waited for the dust to settle. After we returned, cat hockey was faster and more exciting.

Zoe expresses her love of the new floors

She wasn’t always easy to deal with. When I changed litter brands, she expressed her displeasure by peeing in my wife’s shoes. I switched back and all was well, but there was always the worry that she would urinate on things. When she got older I got a second litter box so she wouldn’t have to travel as far each time, but sometimes she still had accidents.

In her final years Zoe started to have health problems. Her kidneys and pancreas started acting up, and vet bills became expensive. But she never complained or got upset. She never lashed out at anyone. She was the sweetest creature I’d ever known, right up until the end.

A few days before she died, Zoe seemed to have a burst of energy. She desperately wanted to get into our bedroom, which we had always kept a cat-free zone because of my wife’s allergies. She had never before scratched at the door or tried to push her way in, and would even stop at the boundary if the door was open, knowing that she wasn’t allowed in. This time was different, however. She wanted to get in there one last time. My wife opened her eyes from a nap and saw Zoe sitting next to her, purring as if nothing was wrong.

I miss Zoe. She was my first pet, and I’ll never forget her. She was the cat that nobody wanted, but in the end I wanted her. And that made all the difference.

Update on Furious, my visual novel

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 09:41:00 +0000

Software developers are notorious for underestimating how much time their projects will take to complete. It’s not borne of ignorance or maliciousness, but rather optimism: one always thinks that everything will go as well as it possibly could. Reality has different ideas.

My initial estimate for completing my first visual novel was an optimistic six months. I’m now thoroughly stuck into development, and my revised estimate is about double that figure, although if I’m in line with estimates made anywhere else by anyone else ever, that figure will probably end up tripling.

Nevertheless, I’m really enjoying the development process. I started (as writers might) with the character outlines and then the script, but I found that keeping track of all the branching paths for the dialog in Scrivener was awkward and looked sort of like pseudocode. So I saved a step and moved into writing the game code itself, in a text editor, using the Ren’Py engine.

As I was essentially writing the game itself at that point, I needed art assets, and I was writing faster than I could create them. So I whipped up some really rough backgrounds and character sketches in Photoshop and used them as placeholders. They look terrible, but they get the job done. At the same time, I started in on some of the 3D assets using Blender, as you can see from this first look at the Furious space carrier, the seat of all the action in the game.

There are eight main characters (not including yourself and the Furious’ Captain) in the game, and six primary locations on the Furious. I’ve outlined the main arc of the plot, and it features eight flight missions with an “intermission” between each one where the player does most of the interaction with the characters. In theory, this should lead to a fairly simple game, but the number of interactions and branching paths can quickly get out of control.

To avoid getting into infinite branches, the primary plot elements are fixed. The main thing the player has control over are dialog options with the various pilots in between missions. Depending on what options the player chooses, pilots will gain or lose points in various internal characteristics, like affection (towards the player), confidence, or skill. These variables will affect the outcomes of future missions.

I’m trying not to make the dialog choices black and white, “you are great/you suck” options. My primary inspiration are the Telltale game series, like Game of Thrones, where you are often presented with two options that both seem bad in different ways. The hard part is making sure that these decisions affect the outcome of the game in a meaningful way. A recent game that does this really well is Dontnod’s Life is Strange, where the player can make significant changes to the plot by paying attention to small details in the environment and dialogue.

For me, writing this game is a huge learning experience, and I’m bound to make some mistakes along the way. Fortunately, my fears about doing a bad job are outweighed by the sheer fun of actually doing it. It’s just about the optimal balance for me of writing, storytelling, programming and artistic design. So stay tuned!

Breathing new life into an old computer for $50

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 11:32:25 +0000

I have a collection of old computers that seem to be approaching the end of their natural lives. The specs on one of them will seem familiar: a Core 2 Duo CPU, Windows XP, 2 GB of RAM, and a 19 inch 4:3 LCD monitor. Lots of people have computers like this. They are about eight to nine years old, and there is nothing particularly wrong with them, but these days they seem sluggish and ancient. They often get confined to closets or the recycling bin. However, there is a way to revive computers of this era, and it doesn’t cost that much. This is a story of how I gave my wife essentially a brand new computer for just over $50.

The first stop was Memory Express to pick up a brand new SSD. I asked the store clerk for a recommendation, and he told me about the Kingston SSD Now 300 series. The low-end, 120 GB version was just over $50, so I picked it up. It has good reviews and I like supporting a company that also supports professional Starcraft teams.

The next choice I had to make was what operating system to install. Windows 8 was right out, because my wife (like many people) has seen and dislikes the new user interface. Windows 7 might be a good choice, but getting a legal copy is expensive, and it’s an old and outdated operating system at this point. In the old days, Windows was a necessary choice because not many apps were web-based, and Linux distributions were still a bit finnicky to get going. Things are different now. But the most popular Linux distro, Ubuntu, has a very unusual user interface, so it wouldn’t be a good choice either.

I settled on Linux Mint 17, with the Xfce interface. It is the most lightweight clone of the standard Windows desktop, so it runs really well on older computers with limited amounts of RAM. It’s also familiar to anyone who has run Windows XP or 7. In fact, you can customize the bitmap image for the start button (and add the word "Start" to it). This makes it look a lot like good old XP, while simultaneously being a modern, secure operating system.

Linux Mint 17 comes pre-installed with Libre Office, which is a great clone of Microsoft Office and has an interface that is similar to Office’s standard menu and toolbar layout from 1995 through 2007. It also reads and writes Office documents seamlessly. Aside from using web applications, being able to write documents and spreadsheets was an important use case for my wife. She likes Libre Office better than the new Office "ribbon" interface that was introduced in 2007, and was using it on Windows XP before I upgraded, so this was a pretty seamless transition.

The only missing element for moving this computer to Linux would be gaming, but as my wife isn’t a gamer (apart from a few apps on her iPad) so that wasn’t an issue.

To install Linux Mint, I disconnected the existing two spinning hard drives and plugged the Kingston SSD into a single SATA port, then burned the .ISO to a DVD-R (I could have used a USB thumb drive, but it would have been a bit trickier, plus it’s been ages since I burned a DVD!) and booted from the shiny new disc. I let the installer format the entire SSD and install the operating system. Only once it was completely installed and running did I plug in the two drives again, setting them as secondary drives in the BIOS. Mint detected them instantly and I was able to copy over all the old documents on the drives to the new SSD. Having done this, I was able to disconnect the drives again to save power when running the computer.

It’s amazing how much faster this machine feels now. Launching LibreOffice takes less than half a second, compared to the half a minute it used to. It looks and feels like a brand new machine, and the price ($50 for the SSD and $0 for Linux Mint) couldn’t be beat.

I’m writing a visual novel!

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 09:13:12 +0000

After playing Christine Love’s amazing games Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story (which I reviewed here) I became obsessed with the possibilities of visual novels. They reminded me a bit of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I adored as a child, but with many new possibilities and experiences that those books couldn’t offer.

I also loved them because they combined my two great loves: writing and gaming. Unlike with most games, where the story served as mere window dressing, visual novels put the writing front and center. So as I was casting about wondering what to write next after completing my science fiction novel trilogy, it struck me: why not make a visual novel myself?

The idea seized hold of me and wouldn’t let go. Unlike the effort required to make a full game (or even an extensive game mod), creating a short visual novel seemed like it was within my grasp. Usually these games are made with a writer and an artist collaborating together, but I love dabbling in basic 3D rendering and 2D drawn art, so why not do both? In fact, the first idea I had for a visual novel was a story I called "I only want to do everything", based on an AI that slowly learns how to live in a virtual world of its own creation. That idea turned out to be too open-ended and complex for my first visual novel, but I might return to it at a later date.

The story I ended up deciding on is a prequel to my trilogy of sci-fi novels. It is set on the Jaguar-class light carrier Furious during the first Earth-Zruthy war. This war is mentioned in Edge of Infinity by the protagonist Jack Davidson, whose parents were killed during that conflict. I never got a chance to delve more deeply into the war before now. Why were the Earth forces and the Zruthy fighting? What was the war like? How did it end? This visual novel gives me a chance to answer these questions.

The player portrays the fighter commander of the Furious, who was injured in combat and slowly recovering his or her memories. The player must talk to six different pilots on the ship, all of whom have very different personalities, likes and dislikes, and interests (I asked my wife, who is very interested in Myers-Brigg personality types, to help me with the character creation). By talking with the pilots before and after they fly out on missions, the player can subtly influence how they will perform under pressure. This will become more and more important as the missions get increasingly dangerous.

I’m having a blast creating the game in the Ren’Py visual novel engine, which is written in Python. Creating a visual novel is just the right combination of art, programming, and writing. I have no idea how long it will take to complete, but I’m estimating about six months right now. I can’t wait to finish it and show it to the world!

Book Review - William Gibson’s The Peripheral

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 09:47:05 +0000

It’s hard to believe that William Gibson’s seminal book Neuromancer was first printed thirty years ago in 1984. Neuromancer gave the world the term "cyberspace" and created an entirely new genre of fiction known as cyberpunk. I remember reading this book as a young boy and being utterly entranced by this vision of the future that was so new and yet so utterly believable.

Neuromancer was a bestseller and its overwhelming success painted Gibson into a bit of a corner. After finishing two sequels, he felt he wanted to explore the more immediate future instead. In the mean time, the world was catching up to Gibson’s original vision. At some point the two converged, and Gibson wound up writing very interesting novels about the present while the world raced on to an uncertain future. On one hand, it was fascinating to note that we largely live in the world of Neuromancer (in broad strokes if not in actual details) but on the other hand I missed having Gibson’s view of what was to come.

With the release of The Peripheral, Gibson has jumped strongly back into speculative fiction, and the result is spectacular. As if to make up for lost time, The Peripheral includes not one but two futures, one set in the 2030s and the other about half a century later. A group of people in the far future manage to find a way to communicate digitally with the near future, and through advanced "peripheral" technology (essentially a biological avatar) they manage to bring people from the past to their present.

I almost didn’t want to write that much in this review, because knowing too much spoils some of the fun of reading it. I had deliberately avoided all reviews before buying my copy, so I went into it completely unprepared. Gibson doles out information in tiny morsels as the story goes along, which gives the reader a delightful sense of slowly coming to an understanding of both worlds. Initially, I wasn’t even certain that there were two realities, but I did feel like one set of characters were living in a world not too far from our own, whereas the others were living in some crazy world that made no sense at all. I loved piecing all the clues together at about the same rate as the characters were doing.

Speaking of the characters, the young heroine Flynn Fisher is one of Gibson’s most well-realized and relatable protagonists. While she is caught up in a whirlwind of shifting forces that she has little control over, she also manages to take initiative and make her own choices. The protagonist in the far future, Wilf Netherton, is a wonderful bundle of contradictions who accepts that his role as a Public Relations agent is really to be a professional liar.

The story itself, like the best science fiction, is a cautionary tale for our current society. It shows us two worlds that could very well arise from our own, and the inhabitants of both worlds long for things to be different than they are. The Peripheral is Gibson’s finest writing to date, and I can’t wait to read it again.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 09:47:20 +0000

I remember the exact moment when I realized I was over World of Warcraft. I had been trying to get the "What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been" achievement on my Mage character, which involved completing multiple "holiday" achievements that had to be completed within a certain time frame. I had only one thing left to go, which was to capture the flag in a Battleground during Children’s Week while I had my orphan tagging along.

World of Warcraft contains a lot of stuff that is basically nonsense, like this quest. I guess you could call it a "take your kid to work day" for heroic fantasy adventures. But I couldn’t do it. I kept dying over and over again, and I missed the window. I realized that to get the main achievement I would now have to wait an entire year until the next Children’s Week came along.

There were a lot of things leading up to my leaving the game, but that was the last straw. I cancelled my subscription.

I had been playing World of Warcraft for about five years at that point, and I felt I’d done everying I could do in the game. I’d quested, levelled up professions, explored the world as a Death Knight riding a goblin motorcycle, did player-versus-player combat in both the open world and in ranked battlegrounds, ran dungeons and a few raids, and lastly tried to get all the seasonal achievements. I had over a dozen characters strewn across multiple servers. It felt like it was enough. At some point, all games have to end, even MMOs.

But Blizzard managed to suck me back in with their latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor. It’s chock full of Warcraft nostalgia-- the main plotline involves going through a new Dark Portal to a Draenor that hasn’t been destroyed, thanks to some time-travelling intervention by the outlaw orc leader Garrosh Hellscream. The weird thing is that if you still have some lower-level characters (like I do), the old destroyed Draenor from Burning Crusade is still there, accessible through the old Dark Portal, as if time had never been altered. Maybe it’s a quantum thing. Trying to figure out all the lore of the game over its ten-year span is enough to make your head hurt.

The biggest and best new feature in the game is the garrison. This is a base that you get to construct on the new Draenor that is evocative of the old Warcraft Real-time Strategy games: you start with a Town Hall and build a Barracks, and even though the building time is stretched out over many days, it still feels a little bit like Warcraft III.

Blizzard has this amazing ability to keep refining tiny little details that improve the player’s quality of life. For example, you always used to have to hover over junk that you retrieved from dead monsters to see if it was, in fact, junk. Now, anything that can be sold to a vendor and has no other use is marked with a tiny little gold coin on the icon. In the past, you had to group up with other players even if you just wanted to kill a single elite monster in the open world. Now, if you happen to be fighting the monster and someone else joins in, you both get the credit and get the loot automatically.

It’s like coming back to a country that you last visited three years ago, and finding that everything is just a little bit nicer and a little bit easier to get around in.

I’ve missed being here. It feels nice to be back.

Game Review - Digital: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 09:03:53 +0000

I was watching some of the PAX Australia panel footage on Twitch this weekend and caught a great stream with the BioWare team. These guys have made some of my favorite games, such as Neverwinter Nights and the Mass Effect trilogy. But as I was watching the panel I noticed something: these guys were definitely guys. Every single panel member was a white male in his mid-to-late thirties. I thought back to a panel at VCON that I had attended about Diversity in Sci Fi and Fantasy. The discussion was about how much richer life could be if we heard from a variety of different voices. Was there any diversity to be found in video games?

As if the BioWare team had heard my thoughts, one member replied to a question about his favourite gaming storytelling with a list of indie games, including "Analogue: A Hate Story". The title immediately intrigued me, and when I found out it was about a deep-space exploration mission to uncover log files from a dead, centuries-old generation sleeper ship, I was already hooked. I couldn’t get on Steam fast enough to plunk down my $10.

The gameplay in Analogue: A Hate Story switches between a Unix-like command-line interface, a log-file retrieval system that pulls out old email messages, and click-based interaction with a sentient artificial intelligence, represented by a young woman drawn in an anime style. The AI appears to be helpful, but she won’t show you all the emails at once. Instead, you have to sort through the ones that do appear and "present" them to the AI. She will then fill you in on the background details of the people inovlved and in most cases will open up additional emails by the same author.

I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that it presented a society gone horribly wrong in a completely different way than I’ve ever seen in a video game. The standard plot for these "dead ship survival horror" games is that either an AI or a mad scientist (or both) decided to play God and unleashed a technological or genetic horror that destroyed the society. Nothing like that happened here, but what did happen was more personal and far more shocking.

Having completed the game in a marathon setting on Sunday, I found myself craving more. I found the author’s website and it took me to one of her earlier games: Digital: A Love Story. This had a hook that got me instantly. The game is played in a simulation of a 1988-era computer (a mash-up of a Commodore 64 and an Amiga called the "Amie") and the player interacts through dialling up a modem (complete with historically accurate connection sounds!) and connecting to various BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) to uncover a story involving a woman named Emilia. The use of historical events, like the Arpanet worm, grounds the story in reality at the same time as it ventures off into the fantastical. The use of message board posts and private messages adds an immediacy to the game-- sometimes a character will reply to you as soon as you navigate to another part of the BBS! I can’t say much about the ending other than the fact that I actually cried, and it has been a long time since a video game has moved me that much.

The author of these games, Christine Love, is a young woman who is a gamer and who identifies as queer. Her writing is informed by her background, but her voice is so powerful that she is able to create brilliant works of art that have profound emotional impact for anyone who plays them. She is a shining example of how diversity in creative voices enriches us all.

Analogue: A Hate Story is available for $10 on Steam for Windows, OSX and Linux.

Digital: A Love Story is a free download and is available for Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Come see me at VCON, the Vancouver Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Gaming Convention on Saturday!

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 21:17:53 +0000

If you’re in the area tomorrow, why not stop by at VCON, the Vancouver Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Gaming convention?

VCON is an incredibly fun little convention that is celebrating its 39th yearly event. It’s held at the Sheraton Guildford Hotel in Surrey on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (October 3-5).

I’m going to be on two panels on Saturday: The Future of Gaming (at 12:00) and Secrets of the Game Masters (at 2:00). This is the first time I’ve ever been on any convention panels, and I’m really excited! It’s going to be very cool.

Hope to see you there!

Beyond the Expanse

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 10:25:10 +0000

Over twelve years ago I had a dream. I had all these ideas bubbling up inside of me from a lifetime of reading and watching science fiction, and I wanted to make them come alive in some form. I dreamed of writing an epic trilogy that would follow the adventures of heroic space pilots fighting an evil alien enemy.

Today, at long last, that dream has been fulfilled.

Beyond the Expanse is the final installment of the Masters trilogy. It is now available on Lulu.

While the novels are, at their heart, fun and escapist sci-fi entertainment, there are deeper themes than simply the good guys winning over the bad guys. The characters struggle against their own fears and weaknesses, and they take time to think about the ramifications of their actions. The enemy aliens (while definitely evil!) have problems of their own, and some of them rail helplessly against what their once-proud society has become.

Ultimately, the trilogy is about the triumph of hope over fear. It is about how very different people can overcome their mutual mistrust and learn to work together for the betterment of everyone. And it is about how even the smallest people can make a real difference in the universe, simply from the choices that they make.

I hope you enjoy the book.

Gone Home: a video game that changes what it means to be a video game

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 12:07:59 +0000

Gone Home got a lot of positive press when it was released last August, but many people bristled at the idea of paying $20 for what was ultimately a very short, if innovative, gaming experience. Yesterday I picked it up on a Steam Sale for $2.99 and enjoyed every minute of it. While I finished the game in a single evening, I found myself still thinking about it the next day, and I suspect I will continue to mull it over for some time to come. There is depth in this game, and artistry. The developers clearly had something to say, and they communicated their message in a new and unique way.

The game begins in June 1995. You are a female protagonist, Kaitlin Greenbriar, returning home after a year-long trip to Europe. When you get home, there is a note on the door from your younger sister, Sam, saying that she was sorry she couldn’t meet you. Your parents are nowhere to be seen. The combination of an empty house, flickering lights, and a howling storm outside creates a spooky atmosphere. As you move through the house you are tempted to turn on every possible light and leave them on. There are no other people to interact with in Gone Home, but a story is told through voice-overs from your sister Sam that trigger when you examine certain objects. Whether these are simply letters that Sam wrote or tapes she recorded isn’t entirely clear, but they serve as the backbone of the story. In addition to these voice-overs, there are tons of little clues strewn throughout the house: letters, invoices, detention slips, and so forth. Many objects can be picked up, examined, and even moved around the house, but only a few have significant meaning. I found myself picking up pens from drawers and leaving them on top of tables, just for fun.

As you proceed through the house you end up unlocking new sections and learning more about your sister and your parents. Your father once wrote a couple of science-fiction books involving time travel and the assassination of JFK, but fell out of favor with his publisher and ended up doing contract work writing reviews for a consumer electronics magazine. As an aspiring novelist who pays the bills as a technical writer, this resonated with me. Sam is also an aspiring writer, as you discover when you find ever-evolving stories from various point in her childhood. You also learn about Sam’s growing and complex relationship with her friend Lonnie, which becomes the driving point of the narrative.

The puzzles in Gone Home are fairly easy to solve. This isn’t like the adventure games of old where you had to find the blob of guacamole and attach it to the rubber chicken with the pulley in it, just so you could get past the annoying clown. Instead, the game rewards slow, thoughtful exploration. There are tons of objects to find in each room that give more background information about your parents and even the original owner of the spooky home. It turns out that the family had just moved into the house (packing boxes are visible everywhere) while your character was on vacation, so it makes perfect narrative sense that your character would be exploring the house for the first time. This brilliant move puts you and your character on the same footing, making the experience even more immersive.

The choice of 1995 as the time frame for the game was a deliberate one by the designers, as that was the last year before information technology became ubiquitous in family life. This also makes the game a great nostalgia trip for finding all the trappings of mid-90’s life that have since vanished: tape cassettes and recorders, VHS tapes and VCRs, Super Nintendo, and answering machines.

I loved every moment of Gone Home. Although the flash sale is over, it’s still only $4.99 from the Steam Store, and it runs on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, so there’s no excuse for you not to play it!

Edge of Tomorrow: A great science fiction movie and a better video game movie

Mon, 16 Jun 2014 13:20:14 +0000

I love science fiction in all of its forms: books, movies and TV, and video games. I grew up reading Asimov and Clarke, loved 2001 and Star Trek, and spent far too much time playing Space Invaders and Asteroids. In the decades since, each form of media has influenced the others: first awkwardly (like the CD-ROM "interactive movies" of the 1990s and the painful video game movies like Super Mario Bros) and then later more cleverly and subtly.

Edge of Tomorrow feels like a movie that is so well-executed, with all three mediums blended together so seamlessly, that it may be the perfect science fiction film for our age.

The movie stars Tom Cruise as Major William Cage, a "media relations" officer who wants desperately to avoid actual combat. Unfortunately for him, the world’s military is preparing for an invasion of France in order to push back alien "Mimics" who have overrun Europe. The surly General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) doesn’t much like Cage’s type of officer, and railroads him so that he ends up at Heathrow airport, assigned to a squad that is getting ready to land on the beach with the first attack wave.

Although the attack was meant to be a surprise, the Mimics are ready for them and the soldiers come under heavy fire. Cage, who has has no combat training, is unable to even take the safety off of his powered battle suit. He and the rest of the misfits who make up "J Squad" are overwhelmed by Mimics and quickly killed. Cage manages to take an unusually large blue Mimic with him by exploding a mine, and dies with the alien’s blood on his face.

He wakes up at Heathrow airport again, seemingly transported a day back in the past, although he remembers everything that has happened. He is unable to avoid his fate, however, and ends up shipping out again and getting killed again, albeit in a slightly different way. At this point the movie starts turning into a much grittier version of Groundhog Day, with Cruise taking on Bill Murray’s task of trying to figure out a way to escape his predicament. In one of his loops he runs into Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), a military heroine who had led her troops to humanity’s only significant victory against the Mimics in Verdun. Before they both get killed, she tells him to seek her out when he wakes up.

The rest of the movie involves the two soldiers trying to work together to figure out why Cage is time-looping and how they can use that information to fight the Mimics. Because of the military and science-fiction theme, the repeating day mechanic starts feeling less like Groundhog Day and more like the feeling of playing a difficult video game where you have to respawn at the beginning of the level. Director Doug Liman said in an interview that the parallel was intentional, explaining that the movie is just the latest in a series of video game-inspired films he has directed, starting with The Bourne Identity.

Edge of Tomorrow is based on the Japanese young-adult novella All You Need Is Kill. The film keeps most of the character and plot elements, although it transfers the setting from Japan to England and France. It’s a solid science fiction flick with everything you might want: aliens, time-travel, and futuristic soldiers walking around in advanced battle armor. Despite the fantastical elements (such as time travel) it remains science fiction because it attempts to explain these effects through scientific principles and not supernatural intervention. The writing is crisp and the actors (particulary Emily Blunt) are believable and human.

I saw the movie yesterday with my wife, father-in-law, and brother-in-law. It was the perfect Father’s Day activity and everyone enjoyed it. Definitely worth seeing.

Writing when you’re too tired to write

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 21:40:24 +0000

That side panel on the left of my blog continues to taunt me. Beyond the Expanse! 100% Complete! Now in Editing!

It’s been in editing for months. I think I’ve edited about five pages so far.

My excuse is that I’m tired from my job. Working at DemonWare has been a thrilling roller-coaster ride so far. I’ve never had the pleasure of working alongside so many smart people. There’s an endless amount of interesting technical things to learn, and an endless amount of things to write. This is a company that has grown explosively over the last few years and they desperately need someone to tame the mess of information that they’ve created.

So desperate that they’ve renewed my contract for another six months.

I’m thrilled, naturally, but a part of me wonders if that damn sidebar on the left hand side of my blog is going to have to sit idle even longer.

Up until now I’ve felt that all I could do was come home from work, eat dinner, maybe watch a bit of TV, and then collapse into bed. It’s an easy excuse. This is a demanding job at a company that demands top performers and gives them top salaries and benefits to match. With these demands, surely I need to conserve my mental energy to be able to give my best work, right?

And yet I wonder.

Every day I come home and I don’t work on my personal projects, I feel like I lose something of myself. And if I keep losing myself, won’t that just lead to a diminished soul, and thus a diminished work performance?

So I’m trying something new. Every day, for as long as I can keep it up, I’m going to do something creative for myself. It could be writing, it could be editing, it could be anything. Today is the first day, and I’m writing this blog post. It’s not much. But it’s something.

There are a lot of excuses for not working on your dreams. But not very many good ones.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

The Last Bonjwa - My love letter to Starcraft

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 09:11:30 +0000

I’ve watched hundreds of hours of professional Starcraft matches. I have my favorite players and teams who I cheered for when they won and cried when they lost. I’ve immersed myself in the unique and wonderful world of professional gaming, of this tiny (but growing) subculture called eSports.

Today, I’m releasing my love letter to the game and the scene itself. It’s a full-length novel titled The Last Bonjwa.

The Last Bonjwa follows the adventures of John "Heart" Wolanski, a professional Starcraft player living in Korea. It’s a few years in the future in an alternate timeline, so the names of players and teams are different, but fans of the scene will recognize many similarities to our own universe.

John is nearing the twilight of his career, and the popularity of the game itself is waning, but he refuses to go down without a fight. But when he receives a threatening email, he is suddenly thrown into a world he knows nothing about, as he must fight shadowy forces who are out to kill him, all while trying to qualify for the biggest tournament of his life.

The Last Bonjwa is a fast-paced action adventure, but it’s also a peek into the fascinating world of eSports seen through the eyes of a player. It is a sequel to my short story "The Stalker", in which John encountered an artificial intelligence inside the game itself.

The Last Bonjwa is now available on Smashwords in a variety of eBook formats for all viewers, all DRM-free, for $2.99. No knowledge of the game is required to enjoy the story, but familiarity with it will make the tale seem even richer.

I’ve started a new job!

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 17:22:46 +0000

Today was my first day at Demonware, a really amazingly cool software company based in Vancouver and Dublin. Demonware writes software that handles matchmaking, leaderboards, and other online services for video game companies, primarily Activision/Blizzard.

My job is a technical writer. It’s a contract position, but hopefully (crosses fingers) it will lead to a full-time gig.

What’s really neat about the company is all the cool tools they use. They will grab any tool if it’s the right one for the job. Just look at the list:

It’s also a really nice place to work. Lots of interesting and smart people work here. There are lot of them to meet. :) There is a ton of interesting work to do from a technical writing perspective-- tons of complex and powerful systems that could use more documentation. Anyway, I had a great first day on the job.

Half an Operating System - the triumph and tragedy of OS/2

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 10:47:19 +0000

Writing is a funny thing.

As a young nerd, I was fascinated by personal computers and operating systems, and became a huge advocate of a funny operating system called OS/2. I spent a lot of time arguing about its merits on Usenet forums like comp.os.os2.advocacy. I moved on to Windows 95 when it was released, but always had a soft spot in my heart for IBM’s failed OS.

Twenty years later, I felt like the need to tell the story was welling up inside me until I was about to burst. I wrote the entire first draft in two days. Today, the article has been published on Ars Technica.

So did I take 20 years to write it, or two days? I guess it depends on your point of view. But I’m glad I wrote it.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo!

Mon, 04 Nov 2013 15:39:06 +0000

After finishing my third novel in my trilogy (it’s still in editing) and starting the planning for a series of short stories, I wasn’t sure if National Novel Writing Month was a good idea. I had lots of projects on the go, and what could I possibly do in a month?

Then I remembered my short story The Stalker, which came out of my love for professional Starcraft. It had a lot of downloads in October, and for the first time even beat out my science fiction short story Starfarer. I had always told myself that if The Stalker did well enough I would make a full-length novel out of it.

Well, this was my chance!

The novel is called The Last Bonjwa and after three days, I’ve written 5,000 words, on pace for the goal of 50,000 by the end of November. I’m already really excited about this story because the faster pace of writing is showing up in the text itself. In just those first 5k words, our hero has won a tournament, gotten blackmailed, lost his best friend, got kidnapped, been interrogated by shady government people, had his apartment broken into, and was chased off a train by a tall stranger in a dark overcoat.

I have no idea how I’m going to tie everything together but I’m having a blast trying. The novel is also kind of a love letter to the professional Starcraft scene and Korea itself.

Look for it in time for the holidays along with Beyond the Expanse!

EDIT: A WINNER IS ME

Fun at the SIWC Book Fair

Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:37:01 +0000

I had an amazing time at the Book Fair last Saturday. It was a brand new experience for me and I couldn’t have asked for more.

The Book Fair is an interesting event. Independent authors are mixed in with established traditional authors, so there was plenty of opportunity to meet people on the other side of the publishing equation. I shared a table with Don "DD" DeBrandt, a long-time science fiction and fantasy author who is working on his twenty-sixth novel! Don was a great companion and had lots of stories about his writing career. He was impressed with my poster and bet me a nickel that someone would ask for one of my autographed books before they asked for one of his. Hey, Don, you still owe me that nickel!

I did sell a couple of copies of my book, but that wasn’t the main purpose of attending the event. It was mostly to get some experience and meet interesting people, and show my name as a local author. In all of these aspects it was a great success. People really did like my poster and asked me how I made it and how much it cost (Photoshop, and $40 at Kinko’s). I got to talk about science fiction and future technology with other writers and fans, which was amazing.

I’m definitely going next year!

I will be booksigning at the Surrey International Writing Festival, Saturday, Oct 26, 5:30 to 7:00 pm!

Thu, 24 Oct 2013 13:37:35 +0000

This Saturday I’ll be at the Book Fair in the Surrey International Writer’s Festival! The event is at the Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel, 15269 104 Ave, in Surrey, BC. The event runs from 5:30 to 7:00 pm.

I’m humbled to be included with so many amazing writers, and I’m really looking forward to the experience. It’s my first ever book signing, so please come out and say hello!

Creating the cover for Beyond the Expanse

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:41:55 +0000

I’ve always loved science fiction covers, and even have my own favorite artists, but the cover images for science fiction classics often have little to do with the actual story. One of the great things about being an independent author is the ability to make your own covers. Each cover for my three novels represents a seminal moment in the story.

For the final novel, Beyond the Expanse, I wanted to show a dramatic moment with the Pegasus confronting a Master worldship in front of the planet Earth. First, I drew a quick sketch to get a sense of the layout I wanted. Lots of erasing and moving stuff around, so it looks messy, but it does the job!

Next, I found a nice high-resolution image of Earth from NASA. Then I went into Photoshop and set the background color and placed the Earth where I wanted with the title text. For the other two novels I had a nebula for the background. For the Earth there’s obviously no nebula, but I deliberately made the background completely black, with no stars visible.

This is technically accurate (even as far away as the Moon, you don’t see stars because the light from the Earth drowns them out) but there’s a thematic reason also: this is the final novel, the ultimate showdown, and a black background is more stark and dramatic.

Now, I need a Master worldship! I’ve never drawn one, so it’s time to go into Blender and make one! I just start with a cube, divide it in half and mirror it, then extrude, move, scale, and rotate segments.

Finally I import the rendered image into Photoshop, color it yellow, and make a bubble field effect around it. I put a shadow on the Earth to give some indication of how massively huge this ship is. Then I put in an image of the Pegasus. It’s actually far in front of the worldship (or else you wouldn’t even be able to see it) but it’s difficult to indicate this. In any case, the small size of the Pegasus next to the worldship gives a sense of how one-sided this fight would be.

I’m thinking about adding more stuff to the image, such as flying fighters being chased by missiles and some explosions, but I’m not sure if it would add or detract from the final cover. I could also texture the Master worldship to make it a little more detailed, but there are diminishing returns here. What do you think?

Review: Jobs (2013) starring Ashton Kutcher

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:36:27 +0000

Steve Jobs lived a fascinating life, and there has been no shortage of writers wanting to tell his story. The latest attempt, the movie Jobs (2013) starring Ashton Kutcher, is a mixed bag. The movie comes so close to being great, but misses where it matters.

What’s wrong with it? I don’t think it’s the acting. Ashton Kutcher is actually an underrated actor, and he clearly spent a lot of time observing Jobs and mimicking his posture, voice, and mannerisms. He did a really good job conveying the intensity of Jobs’ emotions and outbursts. The other actors were also excellent—Dermot Mulroney was particularly good as Mike Markula. There were some nice cinematic shots and decent music.

The only thing left to criticize is the writing. The screenwriter, Matt Whitely, was given one of the most interesting businessmen and visionaries in modern history and failed to tell a compelling story about him.

The movie starts off in 2001 at an “Apple staff meeting” that looks more like a typical Jobs product launch event. An older Jobs introduces the iPod with his usual stirring words about how it will “change the world”, and the crowd bursts into applause.

Then we immediately jump back in time to the 1970s. Jobs is in university, talking to his friend Daniel about how he dropped out but is still auditing classes. Then, out of nowhere, a man appears and steals Jobs in order to talk at him. Who is he? The movie never explains it. I’ll call him “Professor Exposition” because that’s what he does. He then disappears forever.

The third person we meet in a movie shouldn’t be a throwaway character. The audience needs to get on board quickly to figure out what the movie is about. Instead, Jobs wanders off and meets a girl named Julie, who he immediately sleeps with, and then she’s never seen again! Instead, Jobs takes the acid tablets that Julie gave him and shares them with Daniel and his girlfriend (who, despite later giving birth to his child, is never actually named in the film).

After taking the acid, Jobs complains about being adopted and then goes dancing in the fields while hearing music. This acid trip scene is interspersed with shots of him sitting in university classes watching bad educational films about IBM computers. It feels clumsy and thrown together. Then he and Daniel go to India, which means another montage that goes on a little too long.

These are supposed to be formative experiences that shaped Jobs’ entire life, but there is no coherent message in the montages.

The movie then jumps to Steve working at Atari and upsetting the engineers there, and then leads to him getting his friend Steve Wozniak to build a Breakout game, emphasizing how Jobs screwed his friend out of $2500. Then Woz shows him the computer he’s working on, which will become the Apple I.

The essential points of these scenes are factual, although the movie gets a lot of little details wrong. The worst offender is the Homebrew scene.

Homebrew was essentially the incubator for Silicon Valley’s home computer industry in the mid 1970s. In the movie, Woz has to be forced by Jobs to demonstrate his computer, whereas in reality Woz had already showed it there himself before Jobs knew about it. Worse than that, the movie shows the Homebrew audience as being completely unimpressed with the Apple I, when it was at least on par with other products that were being shown at the time. The nerd in me screamed when the presenter after Woz began introducing a RISC chip, which wouldn’t be invented until the 80’s at Stanford University!

Some scenes are decent. I enjoyed seeing Jobs negotiate with Paul Terrell, the owner of the hobbyist Byte Shop, to buy 50 Apple I boards even when he thought he was getting fully assembled computers. The introduction of Rod Holt, the iconoclastic power supply engineer, was well done. I liked the part where Mike Markula shows up, meets the Apple employees working out of Jobs’ parents’ garage, and gives them the funding to start Apple Computer. But the scene where Steve denies the parentage of his daughter by his nameless girlfriend seems thrown in and doesn’t connect to the rest of the narrative.

Then, with no buildup, we jump first to Steve giving a speech at the Westcoast Computer Faire, and then immediately jump again to Apple as a large company.

At this point, the movie goes full throttle in promoting the legend of Steve as inventor-of-everything. Xerox PARC isn’t mentioned at all; instead the idea of the GUI seems to have sprung directly from Jobs’ head. He callously fires an engineer who doesn’t share his vision about fonts. In fact, the Lisa computer mimicked a lot of what PARC had already done. Jobs’ genius was to get his engineers to refine and polish these ideas.

We get some scenes where Jobs screws his friend Daniel out of founder’s stock right before the Apple initial public stock offering. These scenes further the storyline of how Jobs was an asshole, but doesn’t do anything to explain why he was that way, or how his behavior affected his life. Instead, we suddenly get… DUN DUN DUN… the antagonist, in the form of venture capitalist Arthur Rock.

Rock is portrayed as a caricature, an evil ignoramus hell-bent on destroying everything Apple and Jobs stood for. We don’t get any nuance about how Steve’s views didn’t always line up with reality. Instead, we get ridiculous lines from Rock like: “IBM has moved on to minidex (??) and so should we” and “I think it’s time to reconsider the viability of the personal computer”. At one point he says, after the introduction of the Lisa and the Macintosh, that “IBM beat us to a better product by two years!” This is all utter nonsense and babbling, but the movie just rolls right along to Jobs’ hiring of John Sculley from Pepsi to be the new CEO of Apple. Then we get a confused series of events leading up to Jobs being ousted by the board in favor of Sculley.

This moment is arguably the most important part of Jobs’ life, and the movie makes a muddle out of it. We need to know exactly why Jobs would be cast out of the company he founded. Sure, it happens a lot in real life for no real reason, but this is a story. It’s the job of the writer to make sense of things.

Instead, we just skip ahead to 1997 (Steve’s creation of NeXT gets a single sentence, and Pixar gets nothing at all) and see poor Gil Amelio struggling with Apple’s decline and inviting Jobs back into the company. Mike Markula arranges for Steve to come back in a consulting role and a new chairman of the board sets up a new coup to let Steve take control again. We see Steve “discovering” industrial designer Johnny Ive hiding in an office somewhere, and he tells him to put the speakers on the inside of the iMac, presumably the single most important design decision that will make the computer a smash success. “But Steve, they’ll never let us do that!” Really? He also takes the time to complain about his “piece of junk” Sony Discman, which I guess is supposed to tie in with the movie’s first scene. It’s suggesting, of course, that Steve “invented” the iPod in his head, fully-formed, at that moment. You know, the way he invented the GUI and everything else.

In fact, Steve even gets to invent (and personally record) the “Here’s to the strange ones” commercial that was actually voiced by Richard Dreyfuss. He can do anything, it seems.

Steve then gets rid of Mike Markula and the rest of the board, gives some more inspiring speeches, and we fade to black with the text “In 2012 Apple became the most valuable company in the world”. Neat! Would have been nice to have seen how Steve accomplished that. It would have been even better to have seen how Steve was able to do it only because he had learned from his past experiences and his mistakes.

Ultimately, every movie has to find the core of the story it wants to tell. It seems that this movie wanted to tell the story of how Steve singlehandedly invented Apple Computer, had it stolen away by evil people, and then took it back. That’s a story, sure, but it’s not the most interesting one. It doesn’t tell us anything about Steve the person. It doesn’t tell us how he had to learn when to be an asshole and when not to be. It doesn’t show him struggling in the wilderness during his NeXT years to learn these lessons.

Jobs (2013) is a movie that is done in by poor writing. It didn’t have to be this way. We can only hope that the upcoming Aaron Sorkin movie does a better job telling the story of an interesting man’s life that is more engaging to watch.

Why I’m no longer a Tech Entrepreneur

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 14:05:40 +0000

I’ve read lots of fascinating posts on the web about startups that failed. Maybe the idea was too far ahead of its time, or the cofounders didn’t get along. Usually the startup just ran out of money. Even if you’re lucky and get funding, it won’t last forever. It’s hard to build up enough revenue to get the rocket off the ground.

My story is a little different. I’m quitting before I’ve even really gotten started.

I had a lunch meeting yesterday with a friend regarding possible web development work for his company. The meeting was amicable, but there wasn’t any work available for me. When I came home I was disappointed, naturally, but it got me thinking about what I really want to do with my life.

One thing that’s not going to work is working at a regular company as a regular programmer. The language I’ve fallen in love with, newLISP, isn’t something that I can just go and get a job using. The industry has standardized on VB.NET, C#, PHP, Java, and to a much lesser extent Ruby on Rails. I can code in any of these if I had to, but they won’t make me happy, and if I’m unhappy I’m not likely to be productive and useful. I’d always be thinking about how much faster and more efficiently I could be coding in my own little niche language. I have real-world data to back this up. At my last job I was actually able to keep up in features (my application was better in performance and had fewer bugs) with a development team of five people including one manager who were rewriting my application using C#.

So when I thought about this, and believe me I thought about it a lot, I figured that a better plan would be to start out on my own. After all, if I can keep up with a team of five people, and only have to pay my own way, won’t that be a lot easier? It seemed like a natural fit. I would blaze a trail and develop amazing new applications on my own! Be my own boss!

What I didn’t realize is that being the boss is actually no fun, at least for me. It’s easy to complain about your boss when it’s another person. When your own boss is you, you’re perpetually mad at yourself. Why are you not working harder? Why aren’t you figuring out ways to make money? Why don’t you spend more time coding?

I spent amazingly little time coding. Because I was so efficient, I could get a few days worth of work done in a couple of hours. But then I’d stop. I set up a bunch of websites and got some neat features working on them, and then I’d waste time watching Starcraft or playing games. Why was I doing this?

I was thinking about it yesterday, when I went on my mid-morning run. I enjoy running, but I’m not a good runner. My lung capacity is pretty low, and I don’t push myself hard enough to improve my fitness level that rapidly. Starting a business is kind of like saying you want to run, not just for fun, but as a way to make a living. You need to be absolutely dedicated to it. You need to be a little crazy to run yourself right to the edge, to risk serious injury in pursuit of ever-increasing goals.

I remember running past long swathes of wild blackberry bushes in August and thinking that I should really go out and spend a few days just collecting them to freeze and make blackberry crisp. Instead, I would just grab a few berries as I ran, savoring the sweet taste but watching as thousands of berries just went to waste, picked by no-one, washed away by the rains and the end of summer.

It’s a lot like how I approached starting a business. It was fun to have a little taste of it, but I didn’t want to put in the incredible level of effort it would require to do it properly. And of course, there’s always the fear of failing. If you didn’t put in your best effort, you can’t be too disappointed in yourself, right? I know a few professional Starcraft players who had this approach. It didn’t end well for them. Success takes hard work. You have to slog through it to get what you really want.

But when I thought about it some more, it’s not like I was this lazy slob who didn’t put any effort into anything. I did write a whole web development framework from scratch. I did launch a couple of websites. I learned a lot and gained valuable skills that I can use anywhere that I go in the future. I can’t think of this as a waste of time.

Oh, and there was one other tiny little thing that I did over the last few months. I wrote an entire novel.

The truth is, while I was struggling to find motivation to be a software entrepreneur, I was already running a startup of sorts. Being an author is a lot like starting a business. You have to put in the effort to make a decent product (in this case, books and short stories), you have to spend a ridiculous amount of time on marketing (authors have to relentlessly self-promote on Twitter and blogs and their own website, as well as doing giveaways and appearing on radio shows and podcasts and writing panels) and you have to do all of these things consistently to try and grow a tiny revenue stream into something that (hopefully) becomes profitable.

It turns out that all this time I was doing all of this, and doing it consistently. I wrote 1,000 words every single day, without fail, and every day I would read blogs about marketing and go on Twitter and try to get the word out about my writing. Even though it wasn’t generating much revenue, it was more than my web-based businesses were doing (which was zero!)

At some point, I had to decide what I really wanted to do. Which would I keep as a hobby and which would I take seriously as a profession?

My wife, who knows me better than anyone in the world, including myself, found a way to help me decide.

She held me from behind, and put her hands on my chest, and squeezed gently.

“How do you feel about programming?” she asked.

I had to answer honestly. “I feel like I’m being crushed,” I said.

“Okay, now let’s try this again.” She released me and then grabbed me again in the same way. “Now how do you feel about writing?”

I wasn’t sure. “I don’t feel anything,” I said. But she wouldn’t leave it at that. She did the exercise again. I still felt like I was being crushed when I thought about programming as a career. But the feeling when I thought about writing was different.

“I feel like I’m uncrushable,” I said.

So I had my answer.

Now, I’m not going to stop programming. I’m still planning on developing JetCondo, for example, my RSS reading platform. But I’m going to develop it for myself, as a hobby, and not try and make it my livelihood. I’ll still work on newLISP on Rockets as well, and if any future employer can get some benefit out of my work with these tools, great. But it’s not necessary. Ironically now that I’ve made this decision I feel like working on it more than I did before. Isn’t that weird?

It also doesn’t mean that now I’m going to take on the stress and pressure of making my fiction writing be my sole income. The artist Lynda Barry had a great quote about this: she compared art to a beautiful baby, and how artists are immediately expected to jump on the baby’s back and yell “I’m riding you all the way to the bank!” It doesn’t work that way. You have to care for and nurture the baby, and when it grows up maybe it can take care of you. In the mean time, there are other ways to make a living.

Writing is my baby. It’s time to nurture it and let it grow.

My interview with Smashwords!

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:21:22 +0000

Smashwords is an amazing site, and it’s been invaluable to me in publishing and promoting my fiction. They have a new feature called Smashwords Interviews where the author can answer a series of questions and have the interview instantly appear on the site. It’s pretty cool!

I actually had more fun doing this interview than I thought I would. Rather than being a chore, it was a fun trip back into my childhood to find some of the reasons I started writing in the first place.

I hope you enjoy reading it!
https://www.smashwords.com/interview/jeremyreimer

The job of a science fiction writer

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 12:26:49 +0000

As writers, it’s our job to inspire as well as entertain. But science fiction writers have an additional duty, and it’s a monumental one.

Some of the earliest science fiction writers were scientists. Johannes Kepler, who figured out the laws of planetary motion and thus paved the way for Isaac Newton and modern physics, wrote a short story in 1630 about a trip to the moon. It was called Somnium, Latin for “The Dream”, and it featured a young student traveling to the Moon. Some consider this work the very first science fiction story, for even though it featured supernatural elements, it treated the setting with scientific vigor. The traveler was affected by gravity and observed planetary motion as understood by Copernicus. Of course, in Kepler’s time there was no conceivable scientific way of actually getting to the Moon, but it was the dream that mattered. The dream wouldn’t go away.

In 1865, Jules Verne wrote a story called From the Earth to the Moon, which took the technological advances of the recent American Civil War and applied them to peaceful pursuits. While his idea for a massive cannon to launch space travelers wasn’t actually practical (the muzzle would have to be too long and the acceleration too great for human survival) he made an attempt to do some rough physics calculations to make the story seem plausible.

In 1903, Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published a refutation of the physics in the popular tale, and was inspired by the story to ask the question: if cannons wouldn’t work, what would? Out of this came the theory of rocketry: Tsiolkovsky calculated a relationship between the mass of a rocket, its fuel, and its velocity. At the time no foreign scientists appreciated his work, but a German translation of his book found its way to a young engineer by the name of Wernher Von Braun, who filled it with his own notes and calculations. After Germany’s defeat in World War II, Von Braun led the American team that finally landed a man on the moon in 1969.

This is only one example of science fiction influencing reality. Young men who watched Star Trek as boys would often go on to invent some of the things they saw on the television show: talking computers, portable communication devices, and hand-held electronic displays. While it may seem as if progress in space travel has slowed since men landed on the Moon, people like Elon Musk—who wrote science fiction-themed computer games as a kid—are now developing the beginning of commercial space travel with SpaceX. There is a direct line between imagining something is possible and making it possible.

You can’t go to space without the appropriate technology, but you don’t get the idea for the technology without science fiction. Instead of predicting the future, the goal for science fiction writers should be to invent it. How else are we going to get there?

A new cover image for newLISP on Rockets!

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 21:03:24 +0000

newLISP on Rockets is my rapid web application development framework, which powers this blog and other sites. The code is available for free under the GPL at the newLISP on Rockets Blog.

I decided that I wanted to have a little nicer-looking logo and front page graphic for the framework than the little cartoon rocket I started with. So I whipped up a new model in Blender using simple cylinders and basic commands like Extrude and Size. Blender is really easy once you get the hang of all the shortcut keys, and those keys make things MUCH faster than using primarily mouse-driven 3D software.

I UV-unwrapped the model in Blender, got a free stock metal texture from newlisp.org.) The background picture is from a NASA weather observation satellite.

The power of writing every day

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 13:43:16 +0000

Eighteen days ago, I made a decision that changed the fate of my third novel.

I decided I would write a thousand words each day, every day, without stopping, until I was finished.

At first it was hard to know if this was even going to work. My writing schedule for the first two novels was maybe 350 words on weekdays, occasionally doubling that if I was really productive. It took about a year to finish a novel, as long as I didn’t get distracted or miss too many days in a row.

I worried a bit that I would just be writing crap to make the word count. Sure, I could always go back and fix it later, but what if it was unfixable crap? It turns out that’s not how it happens. The fixed word count policy actually increased the overall quality of the text.

How could this be possible?

If you don’t take a day off, even on weekends, your brain never stops thinking about the story. Every day you have to have something to write, so during the day your mind is always thinking about what you wrote the night before. When it comes time to write, you rarely feel blocked.

I chose to write in the evening, on my laptop, just before I go to sleep. To avoid staying up all night, I installed f.lux, a free application that changes the color temperature of my laptop after sunset to look less like the daytime sun. This ends up working perfectly. By the time I’m finished writing, I’m satisfied and ready for rest.

I’m going to keep writing every day in this way until I finish my novel. It really is a great way to write. If you find yourself struggling for motivation, I definitely recommend doing this.

The Pegasus gets a new coat of paint

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 12:51:54 +0000

This is from my in-progress game mod using the Freespace2Open engine. I added a few more polygons to the model, fixed some flipped normals (I’m always flipping my normals!) and added a new texture. I still have to fix the UV wrapping and add more texture details to various spots, but it’s looking a lot more like my original vision all the time.

Here's a closer look. You can see the turrets, and the various decals on the side. I still have to add bump maps, glow maps, engine glow, and all sorts of other niceties. But I'm getting there!

Report on Startup Grind: Vancouver

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 18:42:56 +0000

Thanks to my good friend Lois, I found out about the Startup Grind: Vancouver event that went on yesterday. The special guest speaker was Boris Wertz, who cofounded JustBooks, a used book trading site that was acquired by AbeBooks and then later Amazon.

Boris had some great stories about the pre-dotcom boom days of the late 1990s, when Web 1.0 ruled the world for a very brief period of time. Like many a successful entrepreneur, Boris became an angel investor and is now a venture capitalist, helping to fund the next generation of startups.

The most interesting thing Boris said was when someone asked if succeeding as an entrepreneur was easier today or fifteen years ago. He argued that it is harder to be successful today. Ironically, the reason is because it is so much easier to start a company than ever before!

Back in the day, it took $200,000 of venture capital just to purchase the server hardware and software needed to just have a website! Whereas today you can just use Amazon EC2 and start a website for free, using free software tools (like, say, newLISP on Rockets!)

So because it cost more to get off the ground, there were far fewer Internet companies back then. Once you got funded you were off to the races. Now, sure, it’s easy to start a website, but you have to compete with the millions of people who are also starting websites.

I see parallels in this story to the publishing industry. Back in the day you had to get approved by a publisher, but once you did, you were guaranteed sales because you were in the bookstores. Now, anybody can publish, but making money is harder.

It’s just the way the world has gone, however. I think it’s a mistake to try and live life by the scripts that worked for people fifteen years ago. We have to write our own stories.

I met a lot of interesting people at the networking portion of the talk. I was glad to see that it wasn’t twentysomethings-- there were lots of people of all ages, and lots of people trying different paths to entrepreneurship. One interesting fellow is building a company all by himself using just the server in his basement, but he has some great ideas. I’ll be checking that site out when it launches next week.

Overall, it was a great event. It made me realize that there are many different paths to starting a business, and following the techniques that worked for others in the past may not be the best idea. We all just have to muddle through and figure things out ourselves. As Boris said, if he pitched his old team and idea to his venture capital company today, he wouldn’t fund himself!

I’m still figuring out my own path. Like many things in my life, I’m confident I’ll get there eventually.

What was the deal with OS/2 anyway?

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 20:56:27 +0000

A lot of people today have some sort of vague idea about what OS/2 was, why it existed, and why it failed. Why did IBM fail to unseat Microsoft Windows? The reasons are many, but mostly it boils down to a very successful big computer company being afraid of disruptive change.

IBM hired Microsoft to write OS/2 because IBM wasn’t confident in writing PC software. But IBM still had control of the design of OS/2, even though Microsoft was writing the code. The 386 chip had been released in 1985, but IBM wanted to write OS/2 to support the older 286 chip instead, a chip that Bill Gates had called "brain-damaged". IBM didn’t want to code for the 386 because they were worried it was too powerful, and would cut into their profitable AS/400 minicomputer business.

So if Gates didn’t like the 286, why did he let Microsoft go along with IBM’s plan? Because at the time IBM bestrode the PC industry like a Colossus. IBM was the "bear" and you were either riding the bear or you were under the bear, so Microsoft was going to ride the bear as long as they had to. If that meant dealing with IBM’s strange decisions, so be it. IBM made the rules for the PC industry, and Microsoft followed. Microsoft owed everything they had to the IBM PC and the clones that followed.

But Microsoft was smart enough to see that the winds were changing. IBM couldn’t hold back progress forever, and the decision to design OS/2 around the 286 meant that legacy DOS apps had to be run in the "penalty box", a compatibility box that could only run one app at a time and didn’t work with many apps anyway. (The 386, in contrast, had a ’virtual 8088’ mode that made multitasking many DOS apps fairly trivial).

So while Microsoft outwardly was promoting OS/2 as the next big thing, inwardly they kept dogging away at their Windows thing and they supported the 386 rather quickly (Windows/386 was in fact a special version of Windows 2.0 that multitasked DOS apps using the virtual 8088 mode, and all future versions of Windows would support this feature).

When Windows 3.0 was getting ready to be released, IBM offered to handle all the marketing and promotion, but in exchange IBM would own the code and the future of Windows. Microsoft wisely walked away from the deal. This was the beginning of the Microsoft-IBM divorce.

Windows 3.0 ended up being a smash success, and Microsoft realized that if they just kept telling other people that OS/2 was the future while they built their own Windows apps and stopped putting any real effort into OS/2, they could eventually own the world. Companies like Lotus that hated Microsoft with a passion just couldn’t wait to support OS/2 and ignore Windows. 1-2-3 for OS/2 (called 1-2-3/G) actually shipped before 1-2-3 for Windows. This gave Excel a chance to come in and just swoop up all the 1-2-3 for DOS users that were without a viable upgrade (1-2-3/G was not only late and missing features but performed extremely poorly) IBM eventually released a version of OS/2 that was coded for the 386 (although it still had 286 code in it for a long time) and tried to market it on their own with OS/2 Warp, but by that time IBM was no longer the standards setter in the PC business.

So what lessons can we learn here? IBM was afraid to push ahead its PC operating systems business because it might cut into sales of the more profitable minicomputer and mainframe lines. Microsoft, a more nimble and agile company, was able to ride this transition while preparing their own more powerful PC operating systems.

These days, Windows is the entrenched monopoly, and mobile devices are the disruptive force. The iPhone and iPad (and Android models) are rapidly becoming more powerful and finding their way into traditional personal computer use cases.

Windows, in this case, is the new AS/400, and the iPad is the new 386 PC. Microsoft doesn’t want to make the same mistake IBM did, so they are trying to make their own "386 PC" with Surface and unify their own "tablet experience" with the old school Windows. Thus you get the sort of odd hybrid that is Windows 8.

The market reaction to Windows 8 has not been positive, but Microsoft is used to playing the long game. Don’t count them out just yet.

Heirs of Infocom: Where interactive fiction authors and games stand today

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 12:48:13 +0000

In my review of Get Lamp, the documentary about text adventures, I mentioned that the original Infocom employees believed the market for these games could exist for hundreds of years. After all, the novel is still around today and, despite stiff competition from movies and video games, writing fiction is still a profitable endeavor. Why not interactive fiction?

The reality, however, is that since the demise of Infocom in 1989, many people have tried to make interactive fiction into a commercial endeavor. None have been able to figure out how to make the financial side work—until recently. Everything changed with the rise of smartphones and tablets.

I had a lot of fun interviewing people like Michael Berlyn for this article, and I think it came out really well. Now I kind of want to write my own text adventure... hmm...
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/heirs-of-infocom-where-interactive-fiction-authors-and-games-stand-today/

Was Brood War a better game than Starcraft II?

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:45:24 +0000

This discussion comes up all the time on forums, between fans of the original Starcraft and fans of Starcraft II, in particular, the professional scenes that evolved around those games.

I watched a ton of both, so I figure I have some idea about which game was "better".

But the answer, like many things in life, is much more complicated than just "this game is better than that game."

Pro Starcraft Brood War at its height, from 2006-2008, was a very unique thing, unlikely to ever be repeated. The scene essentially was 100% Korean, and 100% KeSPA. There were foreigner tournaments, but the level of play was ridiculously low. The players were essentially amateurs. Day[9] was a high school kid and Artosis would quit his job every year a few months before WCG regionals to practice. These were the top-level non-Korean players at the time. Whenever they played Koreans, (which was only once a year) they would get utterly and completely destroyed, like playing against the computer on "Easy" level destroyed.

Meanwhile, in Korea, KeSPA ruled with an iron fist. To stay on a team you HAD to practice well, like 10 hours a day MINIMUM, and you had to work with the coach and do whatever he said and take no breaks ever and you had no negotiating power for your salary AT ALL, and if you didn’t like it? Too bad, there are 50 Koreans begging to replace you. Deal with it.

This pressure cooker environment weeded out the weak and left only the super-strong. Players like Flash and Jaedong would practice until their eyes bled (in Jaedong’s case, this was literally true). The level of competition was so close at the top that any player could take down any player, so everyone had to be on top of their game. This made for exciting matches, with daring cheese and "economic" cheese plays thrown in with series where the multitasking and macro levels went through the roof. It was exciting.

With Starcraft II, everything changed. KeSPA players weren’t playing originally, so the Korean scene was made up of B-teamers, formerly retired players, and a smattering of foreigners, a few of whom managed to do quite well and even won tournaments. The Koreans were overall better, but it wasn’t a complete roflstomp like it was in the Brood War days. This was exciting, but for a different reason. The games weren’t as high-level. They just weren’t. But the situation was different. It wasn’t just KeSPA. There was a thriving international scene. Players could win tournaments without being slaves working in the salt mines 12 hours a day. They could actually compete for teams to get the best salary possible (this was never possible in KeSPA-- the "free agency" they offered was in fact the exact opposite)

The game itself also had some problems. One of the biggest was Broodlord-Infestor. This was actually something that happened almost every game in PvZ, and Protoss had only the "casual fun unit" of the Mothership to try and get a lucky Vortex, and if it missed, or the Zerg split the Brood Lords, or Neural Parasited the Mothership, too bad, it was over. This wasn’t so much fun to watch.

Now, with Heart of the Swarm released and the KeSPA players switching over, things are different yet again. HoTS fixed a lot of problems with the original Starcraft II. Protoss got a counter to Brood Lords (the Tempest) so PvZ wasn’t quite as dumb as it used to be. Terrans got Widow Mines which made things more random and yet skilled players could also bait the shots out with single units. Zerg got Swarm Hosts, which aren’t as good as Lurkers but at least they made for some different strategies and let them "siege up" and do different things, and Vipers allow high-APM players to do amazing abducts. Even Oracles reward the super-skilled, high-multitasking player. It’s better than Wings of Liberty. MUCH better.

Is it as good as Brood War? That really depends on how you look at it. The KeSPA players are certainly taking it to the next level-- look at recent GSLs or Proleague-- these guys are just hammering through different ideas and builds and they are starting to dominate again. But KeSPA doesn’t allow them to travel to international events (with the one exception of MLG) and so they are still isolated from the international scene in some ways.

But is the GAME ITSELF as good as Brood War? That’s really hard to say. I think a lot of what made Brood War great was the players. They suffered for our entertainment, but they raised the game to an art form doing so.

There was something that happened at the end of Brood War when players had to do a "hybrid Proleague", where they alternated Brood War and Starcraft II (at the time, Wings of Liberty). I don’t know if you watched any of the games, but I did. They were terrible. The KeSPA players didn’t care about the game any more because they were all practicing Starcraft II. So when they played Brood War, they just did whatever, and hoped their mechanics would save them. It worked, but dear God the games were boring. THEY WERE BORING.

I thought about this, and I figured that a lot of what made Brood War special, the amazing "metagame", wasn’t so much a factor of the game itself, but it was something the players brought to the game.

The other thing is that back in the day, the KeSPA players were it. There were only so many teams, and each team had only so many players on their playing roster. Sometimes a B-teamer would make it up to the big leagues, and sometimes players retired, but at any given time you had maybe 10 teams and maybe 8 players on the bench. 80 players. There are easily three to four times the number of pro players in Starcraft II.

Having fewer players makes it easier to build storylines, to build rivalries, and to build hype. There were also fewer tournaments, so each one was more special. In Starcraft II, there is a tournament every week and every weekend, and sometimes two at a time.

So, a lot of it is nostalgia, but justified nostalgia in some ways.

A tiny amount of it might be the game itself. It might be. I’m not willing to rule that out.

But things change. Sometimes you fall in love with a game and sometimes you fall out of love with it.

There are pro Brood War tournaments starting to happen in Korea these days. People love the game that much that they will play it even without KeSPA support and salaries. I’ve watched a few of these games. They’re pretty terrible. These are former pros, but they aren’t doing the amazing things that I remember from Brood War. They’re doing dumb things and winning for dumb reasons. I can’t watch them, even though they are playing the ostensibly "better" game. Not even for the nostalgia value. I tried. The excitement just isn’t there.

And it is there for Starcraft II. So I’ll continue to watch.

Starcraft II: Internet Cat Edition

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:19:39 +0000

This was a photoshop I made after an Inside the Game episode when djWHEAT joked that if Starcraft II added a fourth race it should be the Cat race. I took some of the most famous Internet cats and combined them into a devastating new race!

Watch out for the Longcat Nydus drop!

WCS Finals with Day9, Apollo, and Austin Powers!

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:33:40 +0000

There’s an interesting clash of cultures going on this weekend. Blizzard has contracted out the production of their first season’s final Starcraft tournament to OGN.

OGN is a Korean television network that has been broadcasting Starcraft matches since forever. Unlike GOMTV, they don’t have much experience with broadcasting to a western market. So you get these interesting fashion and furniture choices that look like they came out of Austin Powers, or at the very least a PSY video.

It’s all in good fun. 13 out of the 16 finalists in the tournament were Korean, and the three non-Koreans all got knocked out in the first few hours, so I guess you win this one, Korea. You win everything. Keep on winning on.

The Pegasus carrier (from my novels) gets its first appearance in a game!

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:24:39 +0000

Those of you who know me know that I’m a huge fan of Wing Commander. The game had a profound influence on my life and on my writing.

My latest project is taking some of the 3D models that I built for the cover of my science fiction novels (in this case, the Pegasus, the main setting for the trilogy) and converting them into formats that can be imported into the open-sourced Freespace 2 game engine. Freespace 2 was a spiritual successor to Wing Commander and the game engine has been updated with modern graphics features over the years by an amazing modding community.

The model needs work, certainly (at this size, one needs more details and more polygons, and the texture is just a placeholder) but, still... I actually am flying around the Pegasus for the first time. It’s pretty cool.

This Week in Starcraft - Episode 7

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 16:09:58 +0000

In this episode I go over the European World Championship Series finals between Stephano and MVP, and we examine how widow mines are a great unit... for Stephano. It’s worth crushing your head (or the letter S) just to see!

Links from the show:

WCS EU Finals Stephano vs MVP full series

Super friendly widow mine hits

The Stalker: a short story featuring Starcraft!

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:02:38 +0000

I’ve always wanted to combine my passions for writing and watching professional Starcraft, and now I’ve finally done it.

The Stalker is a short science fiction story that centers around John "Heart" Wolanski, a professional Starcraft player living abroad in South Korea. John encounters a strange glitch in the game that comes at the worst possible time in his professional gaming career. He must struggle against the glitch and his own personal demons, which are threatening to destroy him.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/316284

It’s absolutely free, but if you have a Kindle and want to support my work, you can purchase a copy at Amazon for 99 cents here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CS8Q3I0

This is a test poll!

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:05:46 +0000

This is a test. It is only a test. You will be able to vote now! Try it out!

Test vote poll topic

This Week in Starcraft - Episode 3

Fri, 03 May 2013 20:35:45 +0000

In this episode we go over some great games from Dreamhack and update the status of WCS Korea, Europe, and America, including WCS Points standings!

The History of the Amiga series returns!

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:37:06 +0000

Part 8, or 8.5, or 9, depending on how you're counting, has been posted at Ars Technica!
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-demo-scene/

In this installment, I look at the demoscene, the amazingly creative group of people who made demos on the Amiga (and later the PC), held demoparties, and pushed forward the limits of graphics and the imagination.

Reaction to the article has been very positive:

"This article gave me chills. Excellent, excellent writing." - generic_1013

"Thanks author, I’m loving this series even though I just found out that it existed. Here’s hoping that it won’t take so long for the next installment." - secretknight42

"Awesome article and I got a mention in it too -- woot!" - MrNSX

I'm really excited and I'm going to start working on the next article right away!

New show: This Week in Starcraft!

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:42:46 +0000

Hello!

I’ve always wanted to do a news show, and I love professional Starcraft, so I’ve combined my passions into a weekly show called... wait for it... This Week in Starcraft.

You can watch Episode 1 here:
http://www.twitch.tv/jeremyreimer/c/2177275

And you can watch it live every Friday at 3PM PST here:
http://www.twitch.tv/jeremyreimer

It’s basically a recap of what’s been happening in the professional Starcraft scene over the last week. I try to keep it down to 30 minutes because who has that much time in life?

Hope to see you there!

New Knotty Geeks logo!

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:47:37 +0000

iTunes recently changed their rules for podcast feeds, and one of the new requirements is a high-resolution logo (1400 x 1400) so that all those lovely iPad Retina Displays don’t see nasty pixels.

So here’s the new logo, whipped up in Photoshop:

The Windows 8 Anchor

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:51:41 +0000

The news is out that PC sales have fallen 14% last quarter over the same quarter a year ago.

Many people are blaming Windows 8 for accelerating this decline, rather than halting it.

Or, as The Professor so eloquently put it, "In other words, MS’s customers were drowning and Ballmer threw them an anchor."

The mental image made me laugh, so I thought I’d whip up something in Photoshop:

3D modeling the Ke’ea with Sculptris!

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:21:33 +0000

I’ve long been an avid fan of 3D modeling, but the software is usually expensive and takes hundreds of hours to learn.

For those who don’t want to invest quite that much money and time, there is Sculptris from Pixologic. The basic application is free, with a more professional version available if you want.

It takes a much more artist-friendly approach to 3D. You start off with a big sphere, and use the mouse (although it works MUCH better with a graphics tablet, even a simple one like my entry-level Bamboo works great) to stretch, pinch, grow, and contract. It feels very much like sculpting clay. A bit of pulling and smoothing later, and you can create a very organic-looking 3D mesh. Here’s my first attempt at modeling my Ke’ea race of intelligent avians:

The program also includes texturemapping that works with the mouse or tablet to "paint" textures right on the surface. It’s very cool, and the price is right!

New comic!

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 11:03:39 +0000

New comic uploaded! Go here: http://jeremyreimer.com/comic.lsp?c=Star%20Gamer

Overcoming Ladder Anxiety: The Show

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:38:10 +0000

There are a couple of things I always wanted to do but never did.

One of them was to have the courage to play Starcraft, 1v1, on the ladder.

Another one was to have a TV show.

So I've combined the two into a show I call "Overcoming Ladder Anxiety", a show on Twitch.tv:
http://twitch.tv/jeremyreimer/videos

It's basically my journey through playing ladder for the first time ever, talking about my anxiety and dealing with how reality doesn't quite match up to your expectations. It's about how Starcraft can teach you lessons about life.

The show runs Monday to Friday at 2:00 pm Pacific. Please join in live, or watch the videos! Thanks!

Edge of Infinity has been selected as a Breakout Book by Apple UK and Ireland!

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:04:57 +0000

For the first time, Apple’s iBookstore has included independently-published books in its "Breakout Books" feature, and Edge of Infinity is one of the 55 titles selected by iBookstore UK and iBookstore Ireland!

This is really exciting for me, not only because of the extra exposure for my novels, but also because it shows that independent authors are becoming a force to be reckoned with in the market.

Edge of Infinity can be found in the Apple iBookstore at the following link.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/edge-of-infinity/id595636629?mt=11

You can learn more about this promotion here:
http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/03/apple-ibookstores-in-uk-and-ireland.html

Thank you, Apple, for your support of independent authors. Let’s make a dent in the universe!

Welcome to the new JeremyReimer.com!

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:36:17 +0000

Glad you could make it!

I’ve converted my old blog (old as in circa 2010!) to a new one. The main change was moving the pages from being hosted on the Dragonfly web framework (written in newLISP) to my very own newLISP on Rockets framework (which, as you may have guessed, is written in newLISP as well!)

The primary reason for this change was to get all my websites on a single platform and to "eat my own dogfood" in terms of the newLISP on Rockets framework. Also, the Rockets framework is based on Twitter’s Bootstrap and thus has a nice responsive design that works much better on mobile devices. Go ahead, try it on your phone!

Not everything is converted yet (the user profile page, for example) and there may be some bugs over the next few days as I work all the kinks out. Please let me know if you have any issues.

Enjoy the new site!

Amazon EC2 is pretty cool

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:12:46 +0000

I know I'm late to the party on this, but I'm really loving Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. I'm saying this as a guy who loved to build servers with my bare hands, often blessing them with my own blood after touching a sharp corner. I literally bled for these things. Now, I'm not sure I ever need to set up my own server again.

My startup project, JetCondo, runs on a "Micro" instance, which is a paltry little thing by server standards--a whopping 8 GB of storage space and 612 MB of RAM, and whatever amount of CPU they feel fit to dribble out. Still, it's faster than my home server ever was, and it's cheap. At current rates it works out to about $10 a month. My home server ate up about $7 per month just in electricity.

But the value you get out of that extra $3 is immeasurable, especially for a startup. Today I wanted to create a new server instance so that I could start building a web application for my very first consulting client. I had almost resigned myself to going through the half-day dance of installing Ubuntu, configuring Apache, setting up newLISP, etc... and then I realized: hey, wait a moment! I can just copy my existing instance, can't I?

Turns out you can. You have to save an image of your current system first, and by default this shuts off your running server while it makes the copy (it's kind of scary when this happens!) but in a couple of minutes it's back up and running and now you have your own personal image file for your server. Then creating one is a matter of a right click, selecting "Launch More Like This", clicking Next a couple of times, and choosing your own AMI image from the list of "My Images".

In a minute or so you have cloned your server, and it's exactly the same as the one you had. It's like magic. Instead of half a day's work it took a few clicks and a couple of minutes. And of course you can launch as many as you need or even script it so that new instances are launched as needed given incoming traffic, but that's something for the future. Right now it's just cool to report that it works, and it's a great time saver.

It's lonely working on a startup by yourself...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:55:31 +0000

Launching a startup on your own can be quite lonely at times.

At this delicate, embryonic stage, you don't even really want to discuss what you're doing with anyone, except maybe your wife. It's too early. None of the stuff is ready yet, it's all existing in your head, and there are a billion and one things to do to get it ready.

I've found a little solace in reading other startup blogs, although you start to realize just how greatly the odds are stacked against you. Most of these startups fail for one reason or another.

So you have to be okay with the idea of failure. Personally, I'm completely fine with it. I've got a set deadline and a set of things I want to accomplish in that time. After that, I'll be going back to more traditional employment, barring the extraordinarily unlikely chance that I'm bringing in enough money from the startup that it's not necessary.

It's more of a personal thing with me, a chance to prove I can do something and create something great on my own.

But it's definitely lonely sometimes.

Today my blog post is to tell you about my other blog...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:27:18 +0000

I'm trying to expand my efforts in book marketing, and much of that involves fumbling around trying things at random, hoping that something works out.

To that end I've started a blog at GoodReads, which you can read here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6479441.Jeremy_Reimer/blog

This brings up the number of blogs I have to three: my personal blog, the newLISP on Rockets blog, and now my GoodReads blog. Once JetCondo.com gets going that will increase to four. It seems a bit weird, like casting a wide net in hopes that someone reads at least ONE of my blogs, but in truth I never felt that comfortable talking about everything in one place. I have a lot of things on the go, especially now, but they aren't all connected. People interested in my science fiction probably don't care too much to learn about newLISP, for example.

So after the end of this week, I might actually stop blogging every day on my personal blog, and alternate between the the three instead.

Lessons from The Lean Startup: Part Three

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:36:46 +0000

The final part of my semi-review of The Lean Startup deals with the lesson about Engines of Growth. Startups need to grow or they run out of money and die.

There are basically three engines of growth: Sticky, Viral, and Paid.

The Sticky engine relies on some sort of lock-in to keep customers using the product. For example, people would stay on Facebook because all their friends and family are there. Another example would be a proprietary database or file format that people would stick with because the cost of switching would be too great. You don’t have to have 100% stickiness, because you can still search for new customers, but the rate of gaining new customers has to be higher than the rate you are losing them.

The Viral engine is the trickiest but perhaps the best bang for your buck. Basically, users tell friends and family about your product and you get new customers via word of mouth. Basically you need each customer to bring in more than 1.0 other customers to have steady growth. If customers bring in only one other person each, growth will be steady but slow. Lower than 1.0 and growth will slow down and eventually stop. This number is the viral coefficient.

The Paid engine is the most traditional: you buy advertising, and if the cost of gaining a new customer via advertising is less than the money that customer brings in, you’ll make a profit. Traditionally, companies fed that money into more advertising, in a kind of feedback loop that ended up with national ads in every magazine and on every TV show. This is how big-name brands like Coke and Tide became popular, not because the product was actually that good--in fact, the two are pretty mediocre--but because the advertising was very effective.

The Viral engine is probably better for startups who can’t afford a lot (or any) advertising, but the challenge is that you have to build a compelling product that people will actually like so much that they will evangelize others. Tivo made good use of this method, as do a lot of web-based startups.

The important thing to remember is that no matter which engine you choose, you need to be able to measure whether or not what you are doing is working. So for the Sticky model you need to know your customer retention rate and your new customer acquisition rate. For Viral you need to know the viral coefficient. Finally, for the Paid model, you need to know how much it costs to get a customer and how much each customer brings in.

It sounds simple but a lot of startups don’t bother to analyze all these things and thus end up growing too slowly or not at all.

Speaking of startups, I did a little work today on JetCondo.com, installing the Solr 4.0 database. It’s not much but it’s something. I also made a new comic. Go read it!

Small milestones...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 01:12:16 +0000

My free short story Starfarer hit 200 downloads today, after being available for two weeks.

It’s not much, but it’s more people reading my fiction!

On a slightly different scale, my article on Haiku hit 124,555 views in three days.

If only there was a way to connect readers from one category to another... hmm...

Not much going on today...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:03:38 +0000

I’m in the process of installing Solr 4.0 on my web server. This is a tool I used at my former job to search things really quickly in interesting ways. This is something I want JetCondo.com to be able to do, so it’s a hurdle that must be overcome.

I met with another ex-coworker (an early member of the ever-increasing club of people laid off by my company) yesterday and we had an interesting chat about software and selling apps and the web and how things might be monetized. There are a lot of options, but my primary concern is how to make advertisers happy while not making users unhappy with spammy, intrusive ads. I was reading through an ancient Penny Arcade post (circa 2003!) and Mike Krahulik was talking about how all the advertisers wanted flashy, animated, pop-up ads, but he personally hated them and refused to sell ads like that on his site.

Here’s the kicker, though: the ads on his site got more engagement and more sell-through than the flashy ads on other sites.

Because the ads on his site were for things that people who were on the site already were actually interested in.

There’s a lesson there, somewhere...

Lessons from The Lean Startup: Part Two

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:27:41 +0000

Eric Ries is not very fond of what he calls "vanity metrics"-- numbers that show things going up or down (like hits on a website or number of new customers per month) because they don’t actually measure what was done to cause the change.

This leads to people making the following conclusions:

[quote]

In my experience, when the numbers go up, people think the improvement was caused by their actions, by whatever they were working on at the time. That’s why it’s common to have a meeting in which marketing thinks the numbers went up because of a new PR or marketing effort and engineering thinks the better numbers are the result of the new features it added.

Unfortunately, when the numbers go down, it results in a very different reaction: now it’s somebody else’s fault. Thus, most team members or departments live in a world where their department is constantly making things better, only to have their hard work sabotaged by other departments that just don’t get it.
[/quote]

He suggests two solutions to this problem, both of which need to be implemented. First, people need to work in cross-functional teams, not traditional departments like marketing or engineering. Second, metrics need to actually give real information about what caused the change. Primarily, he suggests using A/B testing on the product (giving different versions with and without a new change to different groups of customers).

For the entrepreneur working with a small team of a few (or even one!) the first solution is irrelevant, but the second could prove invaluable.

In other news, I made a new comic. Go read it!

Lessons from The Lean Startup: Part One

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:45:59 +0000

I’m reading Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup and I’m surprised how many good lessons there are inside, not just for entrepreneurs, but for basically every company.

Take this quote:

[quote]

A few years ago, a team that sells products to large media companies invited me to help them as a consultant because they were concerned that their engineers were not working hard enough. However, the fault was not in the engineers, it was in process the whole company was using to make decisions. They had customers but did not know them very well. They were deluged by feature requests from customers, the internal sales team, and the business leadership. Every new insight became an emergency that had to be addressed immediately. As a result, long-term projects were hampered by constant interruptions. Even worse, the team had no clear sense of whether any of the changes they were making mattered to customers. Despite the constant tuning and tweaking, the business results were consistently mediocre.

[/quote]

Does that sound like your company? It sounds exactly like my former company! That’s basically all we did for the five years I was there. Management always blamed the engineers and kept meddling and changing procedures, seemingly at random, when the problems lay elsewhere.

Definitely something to think about.

Don’t spend too much time on fun stuff...

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:54:36 +0000

It’s much more important to spend your time building your actual product. Logos and color schemes and font choices and stuff are fun, but they shouldn’t take time away from actually, you know, making something.

Still, it’s nice to have an image to focus around. I doodled something that looked like a flying building today when I was writing mockups and design diagrams for JetCondo.com. (Those who know me know that I always HATED planning and writing documents, but it turns out that it wasn’t that bad)

Oh, I also updated the server from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04 LTS, which was somewhat harrying (I always worry that the Internet will drop out halfway through and I won’t be able to SSH in again, but everything was fine). This was a big maintenance task that I had been putting off, so it’s nice to have finished it.

Anyway, here’s the logo.

Tomorrow the plan is to put some real rockets on that thing.

Creating something every day

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:22:32 +0000

This morning I was taking care of more administrative stuff, so I didn’t have time to work on my creative projects. But I’ve committed to doing a new comic strip on Wednesdays and Fridays, so I made one.

Doing comic strips is really outside my area of expertise, but I’m enjoying slowly building up the universe and characters. The drawing part still feels like a chore, but I learned how to use the Line tool in photoshop to make backgrounds that at least have straight lines!

While I was writing the comic I was watching the old BBC show Brideshead Revisited on the TV. It made quite a juxtaposition: aliens and spaceships with British historical costume drama in the background!

I didn’t do any work on Jetcondo.com, but I’m doing a lot of thinking. I might actually have to do some (gasp) planning for this thing. I’m kind of excited about it.

I'll blog again on Monday. Have a great weekend!

The second day is always the hardest...

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:38:30 +0000

The first day is exciting, as you make all your amazing plans for world domination and let imagination fuel your wildest fantasies.

Then the second day comes, and you realize that in order to achieve any of it, you’re going to have to sit down and do work.

A lot of work.

Suddenly all the dreams seem like they are an infinite distance away, and you can’t possibly do everything you need to do to achieve them.

My solution for getting out of this funk was just to do something, even if it wasn’t directly related to world domination. In my case, I did some personal financial administration stuff that I had been putting off for months because I was "too busy". Ha! Can’t use that excuse now! But after completing this task, I felt a bit better.

So I enabled my new Rockets forums (the web development framework I built)

Then I made a post on Google+ about it, just for fun.

So I did something, which was better than nothing. Still a long way to go, but at least I’m moving!

I've started on an adventure...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:44:53 +0000

Well, I said that I would be doing daily updates for a while, so here we go. These probably aren't going to be very long.

I registered a new domain today. Jetcondo.com. Don't go there, it doesn't do anything yet (just redirects to jeremyreimer.com). The name doesn't have anything to do with jets or condos, but hey, Amazon doesn't have anything to do with the river or the rainforest either.

It's a working title for a new piece of software I am developing that hopefully will become something interesting. I'll talk more about it as I create it.

I'm also trying to mix in some other projects that I haven't had time to do, so I made a new comic strip for Star Gamer. The art is still pretty bad but hopefully it will get better if I keep at it a bit.

See you tomorrow!

Starfarer, a free short story set in my science-fiction universe

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 01:29:50 +0000

Happy New Year! I’ve decided to celebrate the end of 2012 by releasing my short story, Starfarer, for free! You can get it here. It’s available in every format imaginable (e-books, PDF, text, etc), all of them DRM-free!

Starfarer is a short story about an unusual first contact between Angie Coura, a woman from Earth who is on a long-range deep space sleeper ship heading towards a new colony, and an alien vessel.

Partway through the journey, Angie’s ship has a catastrophic encounter with the alien ship, which changes her life forever.

Starfarer is set in the same universe as my Masters Trilogy of novels: Edge of Infinity, Heart of the Maelstrom, and the upcoming (and I just now came up with the title for it) Beyond the Expanse.

Heart of the Maelstrom, my second novel, now available on Amazon!

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:05:58 +0000

I’m excited to announce that my second novel is now available for purchase on Amazon!

Continuing the story from Edge of Infinity, Heart of the Maelstrom follows the adventures of the crew of the space carrier Pegasus, as they come face to face with the enigmatic and ancient Masters. The Masters are far more advanced technologically than the humans or their allies, and the moment of first contact does not go well.

The story also follows a new (and my new favorite) character, Christopher Hunter, an English pastor whose simple life becomes a lot more complicated when he comes in direct contact with the Masters.

I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun writing the book, and I feel in the second novel I’m really starting to hit my stride as a fiction author. I am planning on starting to write the third (and final) installment in the Masters Trilogy early in 2013.

Total Share: Personal Computer Market Share 1975-2010

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:06:14 +0000

This is a recreation of the original article that was published at: http://jeremyreimer.com/postman/node/329

I have written two articles based on this data at Ars Technica:

Total Share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures - December 2005

From Altair to iPad: 35 years of personal computer market share - August 2012

(The second article also includes smartphone and tablet market share and compares them to the growth of the personal computer)

The first personal computer, the MITS Altair 8080, was released in 1975 and changed the world forever. A handful of geeks (Bill Gates included) saw this humble $395 kit as the beginning of something big... but nobody knew how big!

The Altair sold a few thousand units in 1975. Today, more than 300 million personal computers are sold each year! How did we get here, and which computer platforms were around for the journey? A lot of people who have come into personal computing recently do not know that there were once many different platforms-- a glance at a 1980 issue of Popular Computing revealed over 100 different manufacturers of incompatible brands!

The following graphs reveal some of the story, and show the incredible growth of the industry. They should also spark some memories of platforms gone by.

All figures in 1,000’s of units

Download the data in Excel format

Notes on sources

We are live on a new server!

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:07:53 +0000

A bunch of stuff from the old jeremyreimer.com still hasn't been transferred over yet, but the main blog is (hopefully) working!

This new server is actually an Amazon EC2 instance I'm trying out. Yes, jeremyreimer.com is going into the cloud. Will we ever escape it? Who knows?

Further exciting updates as they come in!

The Pegasus Carrier

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:00:21 +0000

This is a rendering of the Pegasus Carrier that I did in 3D Studio Max. This is the main ship in my Masters Trilogy of science-fiction novels.

Here's the view from underneath. You can see the massive heat shield that dominates the underside of the ship. This is necessary for the ship to survive the jump into hyperspace, which takes place close to the surface of a star.

The return of Wing Commander?

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:40:40 +0000

I just saw this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlIWJlz6-Eg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

and I was like this:

So what did I do this summer?

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:34:48 +0000

Oh, not much.

Just commanded the Starship Enterprise.

This was taken at the PNE. My wife is handling Riker’s duties (she didn’t want to be Counsellor Troi-- who does?) and my brother-in-law is ably manning the science station. Or maybe it’s the weapons station. Or the security station. Well, it’s whatever the script needs it to be, okay?

This was part of the awesome Star Trek exhibit. It’s a full-size replica of the original bridge set, which was destroyed in the disappointing Generations movie. I also got to sit in Kirk’s original chair, which was pretty awesome.

EDIT: Okay here’s a pic of me in Kirk’s chair.

EDIT AGAIN: And here's the NCC-1701D's transporter room:

How to make a great book cover for free

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:56:38 +0000

We are all told: "Don’t judge a book by its cover". Unfortunately, this is just another of the many lies that people propagate. Books ARE judged by their covers, and this is one area where independent authors are at a disadvantage compared to traditional publishers. Sure, it would be great to contract out to a real artist or graphic designer to make a stunning cover (and certainly better in the long run than letting a publisher do so in exchange for taking more of your royalty forever) but what if you don’t have the money? What if you are just starting out?

Well, it turns out that if you are short on money, there are actually lots of great tools that will let you produce a stunning book cover for free.

Start with a pencil sketch

Pen and pencil are as near to free as can be, and even in today’s digital age they are still an effective way to quickly sketch out a number of ideas. For my second novel, Heart of the Maelstrom, I had an idea of two figures in spacesuits looking out at an image of the Milky Way galaxy rising over a rocky landscape on a distant planet. The idea is one thing, but sketching it out makes it clear how it will come together. You can make a whole bunch of these sketches really quickly and refine them until you get what you want.

Need a landscape?

There is a great application called Flickr for some free background images that are licensed for commercial use.

Free 3D models

I needed an astronaut model in a spacesuit for my cover, but many sites offer only expensive paid models. NASA, however, had a page full of free models of all their satellites and space suits. I chose the Advanced Crew Escape Suite (ACES) which fit my story perfectly.

Free 3D rendering software

I have an old copy of 3D Studio Max from when I took an animation class, but there are free alternatives out there. One of the most popular is Blender, which has been used to make some stunning images and movies. Yes, Blender is a bit harder to learn than some commercial 3D packages, but remember, we are working from the assumption that we have little money to spare. If you have little money, you can use your own time instead.

Putting it all together

You need some 2D compositing software to put everything together and make it look good. One of the best free programs to do this is Paint.net, which does everything you need, including layers, lighting, filters, text, and so forth.

Many independent authors get the fonts wrong. The most common mistake is making either the title or the author’s name too large. There should be some whitespace around the title, and it is best to choose a font that isn’t too "thick" or fat. There are lots of free fonts out there. Choose something that is simple and not too fancy, but that isn’t Times New Roman or Arial. You don’t need to put your name in giant letters, either. Publishers selling books by famous authors sometimes do this for marketing purposes, but you aren’t there just yet. Keep your title larger than your name. If the text is hard to make out against the background, some judicious use of drop shadows can help.

For science-fiction titles, the Hubble photos are the best source for high-quality imagery, and they are free for the world to use. I took an image of a barred spiral galaxy as a stand-in for the Milky Way (which is also a barred spiral) and found a deep-field image to use as the
background.

In the end, hopefully you have a great-looking cover image that you made for free or close to free! This is the end result for my upcoming novel Heart of the Maelstrom, the second book in the Master’s trilogy. Good luck!

Stop pretending blogs are made of paper

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:03:38 +0000

Here's my pet peeve of the day: Blogs that say things like: "Find out the answer after the fold" or "More after the jump".

YOU ARE A WEB PAGE. THERE IS NO FOLD. THERE IS NO JUMP. If I want to continue reading, I will continue reading. Maybe I'll have to scroll down. If I care enough, I will. I've never once gone to a blog and thought to myself: "Well, this wasn't interesting enough to keep reading, but I have to find out what's after that jump!" What the hell is a jump, anyway?

Oh, you put a stupid ad to break up your content? Is that what you meant? Wow, I've almost lost interest in your page now. Oh look, there's the "Close" button on the tab. I wonder what happens if I press that?

My article on computer/phone/tablet marketshare is up on Ars Technica!

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 20:24:20 +0000

It’s hard to believe the last time I did one of these articles was 2005, and since then not one but TWO new product categories have been introduced to the world.

I’m pretty happy with the way this article turned out, which is pretty much exactly how I wanted it: a nostalgia trip for the personal computer industry and a comparison with the new smartphone and tablet world.

Oh, here’s the link:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/from-altair-to-ipad-35-years-of-personal-computer-market-share/

NASA Curiosity rover lands on Mars!

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:52:16 +0000

Going to Comic-Con!

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 21:28:20 +0000

Tomorrow I'm getting on a plane for San Diego, headed for Comic-Con!

I've never been to a Comic-Con before, so I have no idea what to expect. I've downloaded the schedule on a great iPhone app that I used for PAX called Guidebook.

I'm excited!!

Barcraft Night in Vancouver

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:34:03 +0000

The Barcraft was a huge success! We nerds took over both sides of the bar and every single TV screen was showing Starcraft II.

Plenty of drinks and fun were had while we cheered Park "DongRaeGu" Soo Ho as he won his first MLG Championship title on a live stage.

It was completely awesome and I will definitely be back for the next one!

Sometimes dreams come true faster than you think...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:22:37 +0000

I was re-reading my article on the history of professional Starcraft and I came across this comment:

[quote]
Kraicat - about a year ago

I don’t like traditional sports. I’ve never gotten into or really enjoyed any typical game of Football, Basketball, Baseball, etc... When I go into a bar, I would rather watch Simpsons instead of some random college teams playing each other in some sport.

I dream of the day when I can go to my local bar, look up at the big screen and see a StarCraft competition going on. I will scream and holler at the screen, chat with other guys about their strategy and finally be able to enjoy competitive games in public.

But I’ll bet that day is still pretty far off.
[/quote]

Well, this Sunday, I’m heading down to the MLG, live from Anaheim.

About a year after the article was published and the comment made, it has actually happened. I am going to go to a sports bar in my home city and watch live Starcraft on the big screen.

I can’t wait.

On turning 40

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:11:16 +0000

I’ve had a week to think about this now, so here we go.

My 40th birthday went exactly as I had wanted it. I had a nice dinner celebration with family and friends, I gave a very short speech, and everyone had a good time. There was cake. The next day I played Shadowrun with friends, and the day after Jen and I went to Victoria and stayed at the Empress. We did In-Room Dining and Afternoon Tea.

It was absolutely awesome.

Now I have some time to reflect on what this next decade means for me. My 20s were characterized primarily by the search for a life partner, which I achieved when I married Jennifer in 2001, when I was 29. My 30s were all about searching for a career, for some place I could go work where I felt my talents were well utilized and I could make a difference. By the time I was 39, I felt I had achieved this. I had not only found a great company but created my own dream job within that company. This wasn’t easy to do by any means, but it happened, and it has given me great satisfaction.

So what’s next?

There are clearly things left to on a personal level, both at work and away from work. I’m working hard on the sequel to my first novel, and I’m still writing articles for Ars Technica, both things I did during my 30s. I have all sorts of new goals and projects at work. These things aren’t going away.

But if I had to define a long-term objective for this decade, it would be this: to create something new and deliver it to the public. Not a book, although I’m doing that as well. No, this is something much greater in scope, and something that I hope reaches a larger audience. I’m not quite ready yet to reveal what it is, but it is going to be awesome.

Kitten Captcha now online!

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:08:25 +0000

I was going to do this when I first released Monarch, but it seemed hard so I didn’t actually get around to doing it.

Until now.

To prevent spammers that can read even the most twisted words and phrases, I’ve implemented my own version of Kitten Captcha, something I wrote about on Ars way back in 2006 here:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/04/6554.ars

Well, I’ve finally done it. The system displays a bunch of random pictures and a new user has to select all the pictures that are in fact cats. The file names are all randomized so that a spambot can’t just guess what they are, and you have to pick only three out of the ten images so you can’t just select everything.

I deleted all the spam accounts that OSY 3.0 had accumulated (about 30 of them!) and so we’ll see how this new system works. I hope it both discourages bots and encourages new users due to its being cute and cuddly.

Here’s a screenshot of the page in action:

When robots write blogs...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:32:20 +0000

Many years ago, my website (the one you’re reading now!) did not live on jeremyreimer.com, but a domain I registered called pegasus3d.com. (The Wayback machine has records dating back to May 1, 2001, but I think it was around earlier: http://web.archive.org/web/20010501232114/http://www.pegasus3d.com

Why Pegasus3D? Well, I had recently taken a 3D animation course, and I had silly dreams about starting a one-person company to do animation. Pegasus was the name I used when I was a small child building Lego Space Ships to refer to my giant, world-sized flagship. (I had not seen the 1970’s Battlestar Galactica episode that introduced said ship, or maybe I had, it doesn’t really matter)

None of this matters. This isn’t the point of this post.

Years later I let the pegasus3d.com domain lapse, as I wanted to brand all my web stuff under my own name. I figured nobody would grab it, because why would you want such a silly domain name?

Well, I was wrong. Last month, somebody got it. Or, to be more accurate, some thing got it. Check it out: http://www.pegasus3d.com

It looks like a standard WordPress blog, right? Only look at the articles. They SEEM like standard, boring blog posts about--wait, what are they about again?

If you read them closely, they aren’t about anything! It’s just random text made to look like a blog post. Some computer is churning out articles filled with spam links. I suppose I should be glad that said robot isn’t posting on my blog with their random spam links, as many robots do. But it’s still somewhat disturbing. I may not blog a lot, and I may not use that domain any more, but it used to be full of content created by a human. Now it’s full of content created by a robot, hoping to be read by humans.

One wonders if they couldn’t cut us out of the loop altogether, and have robots read the robot blog posts. Hmm.

This sort of thing isn’t an isolated incident, either. Big name sites like Forbes.com are using far more sophisticated robots to write articles for them that they used to have to pay humans for: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243

My friend Terry and I have talked before on our Knotty Geeks podcast about the book The Lights In The Tunnel, about how the future of our economy is a bunch of people with all the money and nobody having any jobs because they have first been outsourced, then replaced by computers. This is happening and there is little that any of us can do to stop it.

I’m not a Luddite: I don’t advocate smashing the computers in protest. The solution involves creating new types of jobs, ones that (for the moment at least) robots can’t handle. Beyond that, I have no idea what to do about this.

EDIT: Followup in 2013:

The robo-page is gone, but the site is now just a "parked" domain with the standard ugly Godaddy default crap inside it. I'm not sure if this is better or worse.

Downton Abbey

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:58:35 +0000

Via Penny Arcade, I have found and fallen in love with this show. Jen and I are in the middle of Season Two and are completely hooked.

Of course, I couldn’t help but notice that the character of Matthew looks somewhat familiar...

Why I love the Internet Part 1: Marvelous Market Share Graphs

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:41:42 +0000

Many years ago I became obsessed with personal computer market share. I remember wanting desperately to argue with other geeks on the Internet about whether the Apple ][ had a greater share than the Commodore 64 or vice versa, but the problem was that nobody seemed to have this information.

One night I went into insane researching mode and stayed up until three in the morning trying to find the answers to my questions. I gathered up all the numbers, and put it on a single page, for which I did no advertising. For years it was the #1 or #2 result for Googling "personal computer market share", simply because nobody else had bothered to tally up these numbers.

You can visit the page here: http://jeremyreimer.com/postman/node/329

or read the more full-featured article I wrote for Ars Technica based on these numbers here: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/12/total-share.ars

After this, I gradually lost interest in the whole concept of market share, mostly because it was (for me) a solved historical problem now, but also because I moved on to other things.

Then out of the blue I found this article that had taken my numbers, moved the whole graph to a really cool logarithmic scale, and added data for iPhones, Android phones, and iPads!
http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-personal-computing/

This is a really cool example of people building on top of other people’s work, without having to ask permission but being nice about attribution. It’s nice to see the data I had long forgotten about being used in new and novel ways.

My article on Glitch is up on Ars Technica!

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:20:08 +0000

Stewart Butterfield had a dream.

He wanted to build a game that was different from anything else he had played. He wanted to start a company to build that game and then make it available to everyone in the world for free. He wanted to push the boundaries of how people play games together.

Unfortunately, his idea came in 2002, when few venture capitalists wanted to invest in making games, much less free ones.

At the time, Butterfield’s startup, Ludicorp, was running out of cash. Things had gotten so bad the company was about to sell off furniture to make payroll. In desperation, the developers took a prototype social network side-project and enhanced it so that it allowed users to upload and share photos. This project eventually turned into Flickr—and it became so popular that Yahoo purchased Ludicorp in 2005.

Butterfield stayed on at Yahoo for a few years, but his original dream still pulled at him. By 2009, venture capitalists were now tripping over each other to fund free-to-play online games, so Butterfield seized his chance. He founded Tiny Speck and set up offices in San Francisco and Vancouver.

---

It was a lot of fun for me to visit a startup game design studio and get into the nitty-gritty of the technology and people behind it. I hope you have fun reading it!
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/11/glitch-the-battle-to-build-a-massive-multiplayer-game-without-combat.ars

Bubble Universes and why good communication is so hard at work

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:05:24 +0000

There is a theory in physics that our universe is but one of an infinite number of universes, each existing in an expanding bubble inside a faster-expanding super-space, never coming into contact with each other.

A similar thing goes on every single day at work. Each person lives in their own bubble universe of their own perceptions, feelings, emotions, and opinions regarding everybody else.

When we talk to each other, our words transmit only a tiny amount of our meaning. When we send email, or chat over MSN, or even worse, hold meetings and talk about other people behind their back, all this extra information is lost. You are working, at most, at 10 percent efficiency.

And that's not even taking into account the fact that any information or meaning you DO manage to convey is going to be twisted and distorted by the "bubble universe" of perception and emotion that each person is living in.

This is a real problem in software development, where it is absolutely vital that everyone is on the same page and shares the same goals and vision.

Preventing this from happening is not easy. You need a close-knit team of developers who like and trust one another. You also need freedom from interference by managers, who live in their own far more distant bubble universes.

So what should managers do with their time? That will be the subject of a future blog post.

The ten best years of my life

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:22:45 +0000

September 29, 2001 was the day that I married my soulmate, Jennifer Jang. It was easily the happiest day of my life up until that point.

Every day since then has been happier.

People say that relationships are hard, but that’s not really true. When you are committed to a partner for the long term, you have an amazing number of opportunities to practice and improve the relationship. Of course, you have an equal number of chances to let the relationship wither on the vine.

We chose the former path, and it has made all the difference.

I can’t even begin to describe the number of ways that my life has improved by being married to such a wonderful person. People sometimes refer to their spouse as the "ball and chain". I really dislike this metaphor.

I think of Jen as my wings. Without her, sure, I’d still be alive, I’d still be a person living on the planet.

But with her, I can fly.

Happy anniversary, sweetie.

Lego Space Ships UPDATED!

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:22:56 +0000

I was Googling around the other day and came across this site:
http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Space

Suddenly I was transported back into my childhood. My parents bought me all sorts of Lego Space sets including the Command Center, one and two-seat Space Scooter, and the holy trinity of awesome space ships: The One-Man Space Ship (shown above), the Transporter, and the awesome Galaxy Explorer.

Looking at these classic Lego Space Ships filled me with overwhelming nostalgia. It made me remember how amazing my parents were to me, which made me happy (for the memories) and sad (for their passing) at the same time. For a few moments it was hard for me to breathe. My heart was beating uncontrollably.

I still have all the pieces for all these sets, stored away safely in clear plastic bins.

Maybe I’ll build one again.

UPDATE! Sunday September 15, 2013

I dug out my old Galaxy Explorer instruction sheet, and found the Rubbermaid bin with all my old Lego, and here is the result!

Ever have a dream?

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:47:43 +0000

Did you ever have a dream?

Was it silly and outrageous? Was it physically impossible? Did it involve time travel or conversing with dragons?

Let’s leave the dreams that are actually impossible aside for a moment. If I had a dream, say, to play for the NHL, it’s already too late. It would require time travel to get the number of years of training required and still be eligible for the draft. That’s okay. There are other dreams to chase.

If your dream is actually physically possible, why aren’t you doing it? Probably the single most common answer is fear. We feel that trying to reach for our dreams and failing would be much worse than simply not trying, so we avoid it. We do the absolute minimum required to keep ourselves going. We stay at the same job because it’s safer and easier to do so. That way, we get to keep the dream, but we keep our reality as well. As long as the two never meet, everything will be okay.

Except it’s not. Not really.

What if we took that fear and used it to keep from failing while we actively pursued our dreams?

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

What would your perfect work day look like?

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:24:12 +0000

We spend most of our waking lives at work. Most of us have gotten very good at identifying what is wrong with our workplace, and what we don’t like about our jobs. Ask anyone and they’ll talk to you for hours about it.

Now ask them about what their ideal work day would be like, or what their perfect job would look like. Suddenly, these same people are completely lost. They have no idea. Then they just laugh and say something like "I want a million dollars a year" or "I’d like to win the lottery."

Sorry, but winning the lottery isn’t a career plan. And nobody is going to give you a million dollar a year job. It’s just not going to happen.

Besides, say you did get a job that paid a million dollars a year. What would you do?

Answering this question is not easy. But doing so could change your life.

People who ignore facts, and those who don't

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:05:59 +0000

Recently I argued with someone over a crucial decision at work. I presented over four decades of scientific studies proving my point, which were ignored and dismissed in favor of "belief" that the opposite was true.

It was depressing to me that people actually think this way. I wondered how humanity actually managed to achieve everything it did when we clearly are not a logical species.

Then I thought to myself: are there any classes of people who DO accept facts a majority of the time? And there are. They are scientists, engineers, and computer programmers. If they can't accept facts, they can't do their job.

These people BUILT our civilization. Everyone else is just living in it.

Don't tell me "This is the way the world is going"

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:58:09 +0000

It's a standard excuse for any boneheaded decision these days. "Oh, the industry is going this way, we should follow", or "Oh, this is just the way the world works".

These are the words of people who are too scared to think and act for themselves.

"The world is going" towards the elimination of weekends and time off. "The world is going" towards the destruction of worker's rights. "The world is going" towards the end of minimum wage. "The world is going" towards 50% unemployment.

Is this really the world you want to help make?

I'm heading to PAX!

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 07:17:28 +0000

Just sitting at the bus terminal now. The earlier bus was sold out so I'll miss the keynote, but oh well.

Looking forward to more gaming goodness! I had a blast last year. There is so much to see! I feel like Zaboo from this season of The Guild. I will have it all!!!!

I’m off to MLG Anaheim!

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:19:21 +0000

Tomorrow I am leaving very early on a jet plane to go to Anaheim. No, I’m not going to Disneyland-- I’m going to attend the Major League Gaming event, where Starcraft II will be on the Main Stage!

I’m going not just as a fan, but also to write an awesome article for Ars Technica. While there, I hope to see (and possibly meet) Lim Yo Hwan, aka SlayerS Boxer, the most famous Starcraft player of all time. He is one of a few select Korean pros who have been invited to battle with the best players from North America and Europe.

I’m so excited!! Wish me luck!

Edge of Infinity (Kindle Edition) now on Amazon!

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:19:09 +0000

I’ve finally put my first novel (Edge of Infinity) on the Amazon Kindle store!

Please, if you own a Kindle, or an iPhone, or an iPad, or a Windows PC, or a Macintosh, and like awesome books that are awesome, consider purchasing a copy today!

Here is the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Infinity-Masters-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00589OMCK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1309389209&sr=8-1

Here is a shorter link in case that one doesn't work:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00589OMCK

Lee Jae Dong Fighting Poster!

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 23:28:56 +0000

I’ve been a huge Jaedong fan basically since I first saw him play. I watched him win the Golden Mouse (three OSL championships) live and watched his rivalry with Flash in finals matches many, many times.

I drew this poster as part of the "A Zergling for Jaedong" thread on Team Liquid:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=215652

Hopefully it will become part of a package that will be delivered to him personally!

My Starcraft article was published on Ars Technica!

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:20:43 +0000

The lights of the metropolis shine brightly on the clear summer night. Down on the bay, a crowd gathers around a giant outdoor screen. Spotlights flood the area as the audience, now exceeding 50,000 people, work themselves into a fever pitch. The two teams come out on stage to deafening cheers. Teenage girls scream as one idol from each team is chosen for the first round of combat. They each enter a booth. The music swells, and the video game begins.

It sounds like a science fiction story from the future. But this event actually happened in the past, in a place where such things have been commonplace for over ten years. This was the 2006 Proleague finals held in Seoul, South Korea. The game being played was StarCraft.

The Dawn of Starcraft: e-Sports comes to the world stage

----

The article got tweeted by GSL Starcraft II commentators Nick "Tasteless" Plott and Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski. Artosis even briefly mentioned it on the air at the 37 minute mark here:

The GSL game where Artosis and Tasteless mention my article

I’m so excited!

Pirate Bird!

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:41:39 +0000

Those of you who watched the GOMTV GSL Team League games last night will know what this means.

The rest of you, well, it’s a Pirate Bird.

(I drew this, so it’s my fault)

Why HTML 5 sucks!

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:29:26 +0000

The idea behind HTML 5 was a good one: make sound and video clips a part of standard HTML code that anyone can use on any platform without having to use Adobe’s proprietary Flash plug-in. Great! Long overdue, in my opinion.

Then, sadly, everything went wrong.

I already knew that the video tag in HTML 5 was a complete train-wreck. Some browser manufacturers had decided to support H.264, others Ogg Theora, and then Google came along and started pushing WebM. But that’s video, something where new codecs are still being created and the state of the art is still very much in flux. I could forgive things for not being all sorted out.

Audio, I thought, would be trivial. So when it came time to include a podcast playback control in my Monarch blog engine (you’re reading through it right now!) I decided to test out HTML 5’s audio support to see how well it would work.

The answer is worse than not at all.

Internet Explorer 8, of course, ignores the tag and displays nothing, but that’s forgivable because honestly, who uses IE any more? Only dinosaurs and old people who really like things to be extra-slow. IE9 will supposedly support it, assuming the sun hasn’t become a red giant and consumed all life on Earth by the time it is released.

Firefox, on the other hand, commits an even more unforgivable sin: it CLAIMS to support it, but then won’t play MP3 files! Ogg Vorbis only! Look, Mozilla people, I understand this Noble Crusade For No Patents in Codecs, but MP3 is supported by every other sound playback system in the entire history of time. Five dollar portable music players support it. I think my breakfast cereal supports it. This is ridiculous!

Now, we get to Chrome. Great browser, Chrome. Supports HTML 5 audio tags and plays back MP3s. Great, right?

Yeah, until you put more than one on a single page. Then it tries to play them all at once, ignoring the autoplay settings, and freezes the entire web page. (EDIT: It's worse than that, actually. It freezes the ENTIRE BROWSER! Not even sandboxing can save it!) Great, Chrome. Nice job.

I downloaded a Flash audio player (the same one that the audio module in my old blog running Drupal used) and everything ran fine. Multiple instances, no problem. Runs on every browser, too, except the iPhone/iPad, which don’t support Flash.

The idea of replacing Flash is a good one. It was neat seeing the Knotty Geeks podcasts load up on my iPad in a web page and being able to play them. But freezing Chrome and not working on Firefox is a complete deal-breaker, and this doesn’t show any signs of improving any time soon.

Flash is here to stay for the time being, folks.

I love Korean Starcraft

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:01:53 +0000

I can’t get enough of it. Whether it’s the new GSL in Starcraft II or the classic Starcraft I MSL, OSL, or Proleague, I’m completely addicted to watching it.

And I’m not the only one. People are making pilgrimages to South Korea just to hold up epic signs like this for the TV cameras:

Monarch Thing-A-Day Challenge!

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:34:59 +0000

Now that Monarch has been released to the public at version 0.24, I’ve decided to crank things up a little bit.

Starting today I will add one feature per day to the system. They may not always be big features, but they will address missing functionality that the old system (both Drupal and PHPBB) offered.

I have no particular order that I plan to do these in, but I’m trying to hit the most obvious ones first-- the ones that you would use all the time.

Monday’s feature is a Last Post link, to let you instantly jump to the last post in a thread by clicking on the name/date in the "Last post" column.

EDIT: Testing smilies in blog posts. :D :D

Cataclysm Eve

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:01:50 +0000

In a little over an hour, barring server connectivity issues, I'll be adventuring through the new World of Warcraft expansion.

I've prepared for this as best I can, buying the digital download so that I can start playing at 12:01 am, the moment the servers go live. I've even booked a day off work -- my last vacation day of the year -- so that I can play for most of tomorrow.

I'm a nerd, I admit it. But I'm looking forward to this.

Celebration

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:03:27 +0000

This is the celebration post of the release of Monarch version 0.20!

Features in this version:

* User registration
* User sign in/sign out
* Must be signed in to create content/posts
* Must have admin level to create blog posts
* Blog post entry, edit, and deletion
* Paging of blog posts, sorted newest first
* Comments on blog posts
* Discussion forum, includes blog posts
* Forum main page, including paging
* Forum main page shows # of views and replies
* Forum thread page, including paging
* Users can make new threads and reply to threads

Edge of Infinity at White Dwarf Books!

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:58:11 +0000

This is the owner of Wnite Dwarf Books in Vancouver, BC, proudly displaying my novel, which is on sale there, right now! Go get your very own copy!

Fixed the problem

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:13:07 +0000

I figured out what the problem was. The Blog page SQL query was modified to only include posts of type "Blog post" but the COUNTER query (to determine how many exist) hadn’t been modified to include only "Blog posts". Will try edge cases again to test but I think I’ve got this one.

EDIT: Totally fixed the problem. Not sure whether to "bump" blog posts in the forum if I just edit the post. I’m going to not do it for now.

EDIT: Testing editing items and new redirect.

Bump forum to page 3

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:58:45 +0000

This should bump the forum to page 3.

EDIT: It did, but.. wow, that's weird. The off-by-one works on the main page but not the forums. Well, there are probably plenty of edge cases to check out, but for now it works.

Yet more testing

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:52:46 +0000

This is to test paging on the main forum page, which I implemented ridiculously quickly.

Will probably have to do a couple more to test to see if it works.

Another post for commenting

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 23:47:53 +0000

This is a test post to see what happens if I post comments on another post. It's complicated, yeah?

So this is neat

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:22:57 +0000

The main blog display now only displays posts that are of type "Blog post". This means that I can (in theory) create posts that are tagged "Thread post" and have them accumulate comments in like a forum, but they wouldn't be promoted to the front page. Blog posts, meanwhile, would be visible in the forum view.

It's so crazy it just might work!

Testing paging again

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:18:37 +0000

Testing again

Thought I'd test the image stuff again.

Testing paging edge cases

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:18:20 +0000

Will it page? WILL IT FLOAT?

Testing again

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:15:03 +0000

Paging broke for some reason.

EDIT: Just an off-by-one error. Fixed it.

Trying to get paging again

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:14:21 +0000

Testing

PU- MA- MAN!

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:45:22 +0000

Pu-ma-man, he flies like a moron...

Let’s see if the script elimination thingy works:

Yup, it seems to. HAHAHA take that script kiddies!

No seriously, it’s incredibly weak anti-script action and should in no way be considered secure against script kiddies. But at least it’s something.

Now I'd like to see paging again

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:44:33 +0000

Wouldn't it be good to see some paging...

Need more images again

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:43:59 +0000

It was nice seeing them. So here they are again.

Test User testing page

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:32:37 +0000

Creating content as Test User.

Image test

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:22:09 +0000

We'll try the image thing again

Whoopsie

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:21:20 +0000

Accidentally deleted the whole database. Backups are good to have I think.