• updated May 16, 2026
Been looking forward to hear some of the speakers and rubbing shoulders with peers, and getting a fingerspitzengefühl for the local game industry. Very exciting.
• creating an FPS controller for a new game in my spare time based on John Carmack's Quake approach, and adding some features on top of it to make it feel great to move around in.
• figuring out a story and an art direction for a world full of gritty robots, in the vein of Heavy Metal.
I'll be drawing a lot of concept art for it in the coming weeks, on paper. Taking a break from digital.
• Signed up for another 15k on a gorgeous mountain in late July. That'll give me time to put in a good training season and work on my stamina.
• Started reading Heretics of Dune. Alternately, still working through Black Swan by Nassim Taleb.
• looking over Javascript basics, I'm interested in giving three.js a try. I was really impressed by Bruno Simon's portfolio website running smoothly in the browser and it doesn't seem to be that big a stretch from working in a game engine.
• making this website from scratch demystified a lot about web development, and suddenly JS doesn't seem as daunting as it used to.
• SwarmUI seems to be handy for some surface finishing here and there, but it's still an unstable slot machine (and considerably less fun than actually drawing and painting stuff). But I do see why AI gen is so appealing to non-creatives, delivering surprising results and an artificial experience of "crafting" the thing, which is large part of the reward (think playing a game vs. showing the score after).
• drawing on paper, just keeping the practice. I keep seeing 3D artists (I suppose technicians would be a more accurate term) that don't have basic notions of spatial proportion that come from training the eyes in a non-screen context. Also thrifted this gem.
• finished reading Masters of Doom, currently on Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. It's the last book from Incerto that I've left to read.
• reading comics. I'm a few issues in the original run of Transformers US, Skybound's Transformers and Absolute Batman. Such a refreshing break from flashing loud videos on screens.
• finished a draconic baking season. I obsessively tried to improve a Baigli/ Makowiec recipe and treated my whole family to some tasty results for the Holidays.
