An Open Letter to the Western World (RE: Paris)

In the aftermath of the recent attacks in Paris and Beirut, my heart goes out to the survivors and the families of the victims. Islamic State, which has taken responsibility for the attacks, has perpetrated yet another horrible and vicious act of terrorism, which will no doubt be retaliated against.

But, from the reactions I'm seeing, they have already won.

Terrorism, is, by definition, the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. It is the act of terrorizing other people. Make no mistake, they want us to be afraid. Because our fear is the best recruitment tool they have. Because fear breeds hate. And the hate that fear breeds has a wider target than the fear it stems from. Even before the identities of the attackers were confirmed, internet comment sections and watercooler discussions were filled with fingerpointing and calls for all Muslims to be expunged, regardless of who they are or what they want. After each act of terrorism or mass shooting, regardless of who the culprit turns out to be, too many members of the western world voice mistrust or hatred of the entire religion.

With so much hate directed towards them when they have done nothing wrong, done nothing at all but be born into, and continue to follow a major world religion, is it really any wonder so many young Muslims from the western world have gone over to IS? When our culture treats them as terrorists, treats them as evil by default, how can we still be perplexed when they decide the whole world is against them with the lone exception of a solitary hate group?

We have all fallen into IS' trap. We are right where they want us, doing exactly what they want us to do. They want us to equate all who follow Islam with them. Because when we do, it makes many Muslims feel like IS is the only place that will have them. Our fear makes us hate them, which makes them hate us, which in turn causes them to commit acts for IS that cause more fear. In my field this is called a positive feedback loop - one achievement makes subsequent achievements easier. Only in this case, the "achievement" is war.

By acting exactly as they expect us to, we have continually made IS closer to its goal. They played us like a fiddle, and everyone, whether they know it or not, is dancing to the tune.

That tune has to stop. It has to stop now. We have to look IS in the eye and say "We are wise to your game. And we are no longer afraid." We have to respond to their attacks, not with fear, not with hate, but with only compassion for the victims. We have to stop viewing People of Arabic descent as Arabs first, People second.
If we are to defeat IS, either militarily or politically, we must first defeat our prejudices. Because our prejudices are directly feeding them new blood.

So it's time to stop. No more fear. No more blind hate. If you must hate, do it with open eyes. Hate the leadership of IS directly. The religion is not to blame, it has been twisted. The average IS foot soldier is not to blame, he has been duped. It is IS' leaders, and their propaganda machine, that are to blame.

So let's stop feeding that machine. If we give it love instead of hate, it will surely choke.

Enough with the command-line tools!

There's a large subset of the game development industry (and any software creation, really) that thinks "nobody but me is going to use this, and I know how it works, so I don't need to do any documentation or make a UI for this."
I don't like this way of thinking. It's naive to think that, if you make something really cool or useful, that others aren't going to want to use or license your tech and use the same tools you used to do so. It's even more naive to think that down the line, when you want to re-use or expand upon your code, you'll remember exactly how everything works. I could take a look at something I wrote 3 months ago, sans comments, and only have a vague idea of how it works.

And even the best developers fall victim to this. Valve software, who have in the past have made their games very mod friendly, have a directory full of hard to use, barely documented command line tools, which effectively lock off some of their coolest engine features. In some cases, such as their material system, it was necessary for the community to use, so some of the more code-minded members reverse engineered the material tools and created gui-based tools to use them. In other cases, such as their flowmap technology introduced in Left 4 Dead 2, there is literally no support in the tools. By reports, Valve uses a plugin for the software Houdini to generate the textures that store flowmaps. Houdini is commercial software, so its understandable that they can't release that with the free SDK. But their custom plugin could have been, and the community could have then reverse-engineered it to work with other, more accessible softwares.

But I'm sick of seeing bad tools that are bad simply because people thought "Eh, nobody else will use it". By the simple virtue of me seeing it, that has been proven untrue.

So make your tools under the assumption that you're releasing it, fully compiled, to the public in some way, shape, or form. It will take a teeny bit more effort to make the GUI and write the documentation, but when other people potentially use it down the line, they'll get more out of it, and, more importantly to you, your workflow will be boosted by the fact that you have an easier to use process for whatever it is your tool does.

Another Apocolyptic Story

AN: I spend a lot of time thinking about the end of the world. Is that healthy? I don't think it's healthy.

It was, he reflected, quite ironic. The hyperbole, he meant. Every day people would overreact over small things, saying it was such a terrible thing to have happen, that they had the worst day ever, that it was the end of the world.

They weren't prepared for the actual end.

But then, who among us would have been? He mused. Who could have seen it coming, the sudden military action, unexplained disappearances, threats of war… Entire countries and their largely innocent populations being wiped off the map like spilt milk from a countertop. ICBMs coming to life and stretching from their hidden underground tombs, reaching for the sky as bombers awoke from their steel cradles. More nuclear material than any single group could have even have estimated having been harnessed for weapons, now hurtling towards each major population centre as the world's superpowers raced to eliminate their enemy before the mutually assured destruction hit them, so they would have the brief moment of victory before being engulfed in the white shroud of fission.

And what for? He wondered, taking a swig of cheap scotch - the closest one at hand. Why must such short-sightedness happen? He had seen it time and time again. Any difference, no matter how small, how insignificant, being used to pry people into separate groups, and then those groups being shaken into a frothing rage at the mere mention of their former partners. Each group thought themselves superior to the other, more intelligent, more righteous.

How wrong they were.

Everyone had left now, warned of the imminent threat, to search for a basement or a school desk to hide under. Likely, he thought, more than a few had grabbed a nearby acquaintance for a final 'rendezvous' before the bombs hit. Instead, he sat alone, on a borrowed chair, on the roof of his building. Funny how he thought of it like that. His. He didn't own the deed. But then, in a few minutes, such papers wouldn't matter any more. A gentle breeze caressed his face.

He took another swig and stared out at the landscape before him, the concrete and steel and glass, the water and trees and grass. The beauty of it all, once the people were cleared out. They should have made more buildings like that, open and interesting, and intertwined just ever so slightly with nature, instead of walls.

But it was too late to fix that. Too late for regrets.

The story of his life.

Swig.

He could see the  bomber now, a speck on the horizon accompanied by an escort of three smaller specks.

"It's time then, is it? Think you can still press the button, knowing what you're about to do? What you're not going to be able to go home to?" He stood and took another swig of alcohol. "Are you ready to kill a million people with a single press of a button?" He paused, and muttered. "Has someone already done the same to your family?" He took a final swig and tossed the empty bottle over the precipice. "ALRIGHT THEN! I HAD A GOOD RUN!" His time came too quick. "I'M READY FOR YOU!" He didn't want to go. "PRESS THE BIG RED BUTTON!" He didn't have a choice. Nobody did anymore. He sensed, rather than saw, a change in the specks in the sky. The bomb had dropped. Soon it would be only burning light and searing heat. He closed his eyes.

"Farewell, old friends."

The bomb blossomed, it's flower of heat and smoke blooming into the sky, engulfing  the centre of the city. The initial flash over, he opened his eyes and raised his arms to greet the oncoming shockwave with an embrace.

There was a loud roar

And then,

Silence.

Feburary 18, 2013: A retrospect

Last year I committed myself to doing something that terrified me. Something that could have potentially ruined multiple friendships.
Yet something necessary.
A year ago today, I did it, and got the best case scenario.
The day afterwards, I wrote this.

The time has finally come

To bite the bullet and hope it doesn’t explode in my face

Long have I awaited this day

-Too long, long enough

Dreaded it, craved it.

A simple answer is all I seek,

To know which way to turn on the path forward.

Where to plant my feet on my next step.

She leans, waits.

-Perhaps she already knows.

I grow cold as the words spill out, and I know there is no turning back

It is time to face the consequences, whatever they may be.

I know it won’t turn out perfectly for me.

If it could, it would have already.

-But I need this, to erase one last regret.

Better to regret doing it than not

However painful the outcome may be.

She smiles sadly, and answers.

The best I could have hoped for.

Everything risked, but nothing lost.

A few quiet words exchanged afterwards, I say my thanks

Though I can’t remember If they left my head.

The feelings fade, knowing now nothing will come of them.

But she will always be more than just a friend. She will be the friend who gave me what I needed most,

Not because of something she did

but

Simply because of who she was.

Because

On that day, I stopped being a coward.

Stopped hating myself for what I failed to do.

Knew I could do it again.

Because I did, I bit the bullet.

And it didn’t go off.

An Open Letter to My Valentine

Dearest Valentine,
I have a few women in my life. They are all genuinely awesome people, and I care for all of them. I am glad to be able to call them my friends.
But they are not you. You are more than a friend. You are the the one person I will be in love with for life, that state of true, mutual attraction that reaches the top of a hard-to-define scale so many poets have tried to describe.
We enjoy each others company. We get each others jokes, share each others woes, and just being around you makes me feel at ease, like the world is truly a place where miracles can happen.
I long to be with you, to hold your hand in mine, to see the smile upon your beautiful face as you look upon mine.
You are the Kyoko to my Sayaka, except straight, 'cause I'm a guy.
You are not the Juliet to my Romeo, because that play was just depressing.
And yet... I do not know you. Or if I do, you have yet to reveal yourself.
If it's not too much trouble, could we meet sometime soon? I know we have our entire lives, but every moment spent without you seems an eternity.
(And I don't know about you, but it'll take me somewhere between a week and 12 months to realize you are who you are, so I'd like to get on that as soon as we can manage it. Let me know when you're free and I'll find some time in my schedule.)
I write this in the hopes that one day you will look back and read it. I know I'll have many other opportunities to say it, but I want to say it now as well because it cannot be said enough.
Happy Valentines Day. I love you.

A First Year's Rant

The following is an archive of a Facebook Post I made following certain unsavory comments.

It has come to my attention that some of us, I won't name names, have been saying that others are "Bad Game Devs" behind their backs.
Not only is this shit-talk, it is BULLshit-talk.
Come now, are any of us truly "good" game devs? Is anyone good at this when they first start? Did Newell and Lombardi know the first thing about developing a game when they founded Valve? Did Romero, Hall, and the two Carmacks know what they were doing when they started id? Bungie founder Alexander Seropian? Gavin and Rubin of Naughty Dog?
No. They got where they are, where their companies are, in this industry through trial, hard work, dedication, and a whole lot of error.
Nobody starts out good. They have to carve their way through.
Now, I consider myself a decent level designer when it comes to Additive-space BSP-based engines. And I should be, since I started doing level design in general at 10 or 3, depending on how you define the practice. Were my scribbled floor plans from when I was 8 any good?
There's a damn good reason I completely restarted my Half-Life mod three times before settling in to it, why those earlier revisions no longer exist in any form. There's a reason I ultimately scrapped it. Even now, settled in to Source as I am, the team I'm on have just gutted two of our areas to restart from scratch. Because we learned from working, from making mistakes in those spots and applying the lessons we learned to the others until the broken parts were too unseemly in comparison.
I have been working with those tools for 7 years and I'm still learning. I'm still improving.
I'm still not up to snuff.

We're all still first years. Are ANY of us ready for a job in the industry? Hell no!
Will those of us who tough it out and stay for the next 4 years be among the best batch of new blood flowing in when we're done? Hell yeah!

But none of us are good game devs yet. Do not presume to be any better than your peers. We are all equals here, so get your heads out of your asses. If the student is willing to learn, should the master turn them away?

And for those of you who have been accused of being below these bloated heads, I present to you a challenge:
Beat them. Prove the worth I know you have. Aim to make your group's GDW game the best of the year.
I know I will. Jeff out.

What is it about?

What is it about?
It's a tough question. A long answer.
What is it about? It's about Life. The Human condition.
It's about happiness and dispair, satisfaction and remorse, love and hate, violence...and peace.
It's about never giving up on the things you care about, protecting them with all your being.
It's about the lengths people will go to to do just that.
It's about how someone's actions and someone's spirit don't always match up.
It's about moving on when someone you feel you need doesn't return your feelings, because there's someone so much better waiting for you down the road, even if you don't realize it.

It's something that saved my life. It may seem odd, even foolish to you that I say that. You weren't there. You didn't feel what I felt. That...sense of resonance, from inside a dark place, that assurance that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It's about knowing that no matter how bad things get, as long as you carry on, it's not the end. That you can prevail against all odds, against all naysayers, and make a difference.
It's about the powers we all have in a world that wants to tear us apart.

Yes. Most of all, it's about Hope.

Hope.