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zarfeblong

@zarfeblong@mastodon.gamedev.place

An interactive fiction guy. He/him.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

SJohnRoss , to random
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Random RPG memory: George Alec Effinger describing how disappointed he was (angry, even) with the quality of the Marid Audran/Budayeen sourcebook from R-Tal.

He and I were hosting a panel together, at I-Con on Long Island in the 90s, and the panel was about the relationship between folks who write static fiction, and RPG publishers who license novels for RPGs.

zarfeblong ,
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@SJohnRoss Huh wow. I never met him, not even at a distance at a con.

zarfeblong ,
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@SJohnRoss I envy. :)

zarfeblong , to random
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My conference is wrapped up, which means that I have to turn my attention to the serious job-hunting.

I'm a software dev -- generalist, but I've spent a lot of time working on scripting languages, VMs, UIs for VMs, that sort of thing. The past few years I've been in games (Unity/Unreal) but after two big studio layoffs/shutdowns in fourteen months that's not looking rosy. So it's back to general tech for me.

Looking for remote, as that's how I'm most productive.

zarfeblong , to random
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I have now caught up on Doctor Who, and I am delighted with the new season. Not everything works, but overall, a great season.

I was pretty burned-out on RTD as showrunner in 2009, but a fifteen-year break has been good for him.

It goes without saying that the cast is just miles and miles of fun.

zarfeblong OP ,
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@SJohnRoss I think he is the first Doctor to say “TARDIS” with a rhotic accent! It threw me off the first few times.

zarfeblong , to random
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“From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction”

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/06/from-infocom-to-80-days-an-oral-history-of-text-games-and-interactive-fiction/

New article surveys the history of IF, including quotes from many of us from the modern and contemporary eras. Thanks to Anna Washenko for undertaking this project!

(I am getting on the plane for NarraScope in just a couple of hours…)

zarfeblong , to random
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I guess the takeaway from the xz backdoor situation is:

If you’re an open-source project maintainer, and somebody starts getting on your case for not doing enough free work for them, you reply “big Jia Tan energy there” and then block them forever.

zarfeblong , to random
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IGF winners! https://gdconf.com/news/venba-wins-grand-prize-2024-independent-games-festival-awards

Happy for Venba (Grand Prize) and Mediterraneo Inferno (Narrative). I played and was impressed by some of the other winners as well.

(Seriously , there were so many fantastic narrative finalists.)

zarfeblong , to random
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I’m here to drink Irn Bru and chew bubble gum, and — you know what, this kind of tastes like bubble gum. Only terrible.

(Shop around the corner had Irn Bru. Don’t ask.)

zarfeblong OP ,
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@randrews It really does taste like bubble gum and quinine.

SJohnRoss , to random
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[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    zarfeblong ,
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    @SJohnRoss Fantasy metaphors only work if they’re multivalent anyhow.

    zarfeblong , to random
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    I sort of knew this but it had not sunk in: “cookbook of your favorite videogame” is a big enough genre to populate a shelf.

    zarfeblong , to random
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    Damn I love apples.

    I say that I moved to Boston because of the high nerd concentration, but it turns out I just wanted access to New England apples.

    (My local produce shop has options. I go with Pink Lady in these winter months.)

    zarfeblong , to random
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    Musings on the Infocom logo. Or, okay, musings on changes to the Infocom logo that you have to be incredibly pedantic to notice without a magnifying glass.

    Sorry. Sometimes I go down these side roads.

    https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/01/the-serif-on-the-n

    zarfeblong OP ,
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    I swear I didn’t think about this until the post was done, but 1980 would also have been when Scott Kim was working on Inversions. Infocom might even have heard of him, as Godel Escher Bach had just burst onto the nerd scene.

    Could they have rendered “INFOCOM” as an ambigram?

    I am not particularly good at this, but here’s my attempt.

    zarfeblong , to random
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    A quick meditation on tech toys that I am not buying, or that I bought and didn’t get into.

    https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/01/the-spirit-of-new-devices

    BrianBinh , to random
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    The English suffix "-ard" (as in "drunkard", "laggard", "braggard", and "sluggard") is used to make adjectives into deprecating nouns.

    "He's drunk" is just a description.
    "He's a drunkard" is a moral judgment that finds the subject lacking.

    The same process turned "he's wise" into "he's a wizard".

    "Wizard" was the medieval equivalent of "smartass".

    zarfeblong ,
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    @BrianBinh @elithebearded @bluedragon Now I wish to revive this usage and refer to a phony person as a “jiveard”.

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