Reconstructed Beauty

I once read that the greatest beauty is in destruction, and that nothing is truly realised until it has been completed and then ravaged. I can understand the appeal of it, the idea of taking away that which makes it beautiful, only to enhance that which remains. A ruined church maintains its potential for beauty; our imaginations elevate it past the limits the architect constrained by. But I think destroyed beauty is merely the first step. The true beauty is in reconstruction.

The Reticule

There’s another reason I’ve been a bit busy this week, and that’s because I’ve been helping set up a PC gaming blog with a couple of chums made through Rock, Paper, Shotgun called The Reticule. Apparently I thought up the name, and I’m sure at the time I thought it was something about hitting our gaming targets or something, but somehow we all thought it was a jolly good idea with a jolly good name, and so it was born.

I’m throwing up a few articles a week there, but I’m mostly the go to guy with minimal photoshop skills who they get to do all the icons and banners. So really just go there to admire my slightly-better-than-mspaint skills. Quake in fear at my awesomeness.

The Sunday Story

Here we are again, after a week of negligable posting I feel kind of bad. Truth is, I’ve had Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and the Left 4 Dead demo to keep my occupied. That should have kept my occupied, but of course I had even more on my plate than usual. I had that piece of coursework for Uni to hand in, I’ve had another to hand in for the workshop seminar and I’ve had work. So yeah, my posting has been kind of crap this week, but with good reason, I guess. I’m going to try and change that, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to  maintain my post-a-day that I had been doing for the last few months.

Anyway, here is the Sunday Story. Because of my utter boredom with real life at the moment, it’s going to be rather fantastical. I’m not quite sure exactly how fantastical or even what form the fantasy will take, but it sure as hell isn’t going to be about playing games, writing essays or bothering shoppers.

The Wednesday Exercise

I didn’t actually write anything in my Wednesday seminar this week, hence the fact that this is going out on a Friday, not a Wednesday. So instead I’m going to tantalise you with something I wrote a good 4(?) years ago. It’s probably one of the first pieces of writing I did.. and it’s part of the beginning of the first novel I started writing. It’s sitting at a pretty stagnant 100ish pages, and I guess I might return to it someday.. if I get the urge. Warning; it’s very TL;DR.

Why Developers Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love The Customer

This isn’t going to be an Angry Internet Man rant. I don’t have the energy to just place a few hundred words of anger on this page. Instead I’m going to brainstorm and try to get to the bottom of this, and of course, I’m going to succeed where the corporations can’t or won’t. I’m going to solve the problems of Piracy and DRM. I’ve got a few ideas on the subject, things that will help combat this vicious cycle that’s just perpetuating both sides. Bear with me and I’m sure something insightful will come at the end of it.