Sean's 'blog for 2009

[ 2008 Blog | Long Lost Twins ]

Snow Day!
Dec 20, 2009

We had a snow fall a few weeks ago, accumulating a few inches, but last night's storm was supposed to be major, leaving us with 10-14 inches.

It had not yet started here last night at midnight. I was wondering where it was... well, this morning, it's here.

I wouldn't call it a storm, not here, there is absolutely no wind. So it dropped like a lovely blanket on the surface of the land. It was supposed to get pretty windy south of us, but we appear to have been spared the blizzard aspect of this storm.

Here are a few picks of the lovely snowfall we got today, taken from my apartment, out onto our patio and onto the grounds:

My Latest Invention - Keeping the Christmas Tree Watered.
Dec 13, 2009

Last year we brought home a nice Nova Scotia fir and put it in our stand. Filled the stand with water. Next morning the tree stand was dry. A healthy Christmas Tree will suck up water greedily, so beware. Once you let it dry, air gets into the cells and the capillary effect stops, and the tree dies. It dries out and way before Christmas comes, you're sweeping needles up off the floor, and you have to be careful not to touch the tree for fear of the inevitable needle storm.

So I had an idea. A water bottle attached to the trunk of the tree will fill the tray when the water level gets low enough. This should not be relied upon to water the tree, just to keep it watered if you forget to fill it.

The idea is simple. Fill a bottle (it should be fairly thin - a standard bottled-water bottle will likely be too fat. So I used a dishwasher detergent bottle.

Warning: Wash the bottle out thoroughly! Any soap in it at all will not do the tree any favors!

How to secure the bottle to the tree? Well, I used a velcro strap (or two put together, actually) that I got from Ikea in a household cabling tie-down kit. Doesn't matter where you get it, as long as it works.

Fill the tray to the top level you want it to be at. Fill the water bottle. Invert the bottle (quickly) pushing its nozzle down into the water. There is now no way air can get in, so the little air pressure in the bottle keeps the water from flooding out.

However, the clever thing is when the tree stand's water level lowers to just below the lip of the bottle neck, air leaks in, allowing some water to come out. That water causes the level to rise above the bottle's neck again, sealing it off again.

Simplicity itself.

Now you've all likely seen the cat bowls that do the same thing for keeping a cat's water bowl freshly filled, but I've never seen one used on a Christmas Tree stand.

The only real hard part is fastening the bottle to the tree. As I said I used a velcro strap, but it kind of requires three hands, or someone with a lot of manual dexterity.

m
Cat-inspected. Cat-approved.

If I were to market this, I would ensure there was a bracket you can strap to the tree easily, then the bottle would slip easily into the bracket.

There are other ways, like having a bottle with a screw-cap on the top, and a hose on the bottom. A pinch-valve on the hose could stop the flow of water while you unscrew the top and refill it. Reseal the screw-cap, then release the pinch-valve, and you're ready to go again. More complicated, but would still work.

Look what I just Bought.
Oct 11, 2009

I just bought this book:

Any guesses what my next project is going to be?

geoGlyph - My New Commodore 64/128 Game
Oct 4, 2009

Announcing the release of my latest retro-coding project for the Commodore 64 and 128, using GEOS. It's geoGlyph, a full-featured match-three game that gives you a Timed or a No Pressure option, and will save your current game on quitting. There are a number of options to customize your gameplay experience. The game includes sound as well as full-color C64 graphics. Please see my geoGlyph page.

9 - Good story. Incredible visuals! Could have been Great story.
Sept 13, 2009

I really liked 9. Gorgeous film. Story was also pretty good, but as often happens, the writer himself (or perhaps Studio-backed editors) didn't see the obvious ending from the back-story provided. When that happens, it makes me sad. Especially when that alluded-to ending is much better than what we end up with, diluted by Studio heads and/or test audiences... whatever it is that robs the writer of his vision, assuming he had that vision in the first place.

And who knows? Perhaps this is how he saw it. But again, it doesn't follow the obvious alluded-to path.

Here's why: (Drag your cursor over between the [ ... ]. The text is white, so dragging will highlight it)

[ The film near the end, through a flash-back/film clip, tells the story of what happened before the film's opening. The Leader wants the machine brain to subjugate people under his rule. But the scientist objects because he knows the machine isn't finished. It has no soul. So the second it's turned on, it begins to make klling machines and turns on the humans and destroys them. The Leader immediately leads a revolt against the machine, painting the scientist as the villain. Meanwhile, the scientist splits his soul into 9 pieces and stores them into animated models. Why? He also sets them up to find the power source that the machine is missing. It is an item that can contain 9 pieces of his soul, but currently those pieces are in the 9 animated models. 9 wakes up, takes the power source, has it stolen, and it ends up where it was intended - on the machine brain, which is even now building new machines of destruction.

So the obvious ending is that 9 is supposed to see the film history, basically telling him the 9 pieces must be once again re-united inside the machine brain. So he runs back and tells the others. Five are already inside the machine. He tries to convince the rest to give themselves up to the machine, but they refuse, but of course the machine gets them anyway, because it is relentless. Then finally 9 sacrifices himself to the machine, thus reuniting all 9 pieces of the scientist's soul inside the machine, finally completing the machine as it was intended to be. Then the machine sheds its evil appendages and begins trying to make things right. ]

Why is it such a complicated story set-up gets completely ignored 80% of the way through the film, and we are sent off on a nonsensical tangent?

[ The original ending does show hope, however. It shows that 5 of the 9 pieces (why only 5?) go upward, and the souls impregnate the microbes in the rain, which we assume fall and begin life again in a new primordial soup. ]

I mean this really could have been the best movie of the summer. And instead it's just very good. I hate when that happens.

My Daughter's Guitar - Hand-Made By Her Grandfather!
Aug 1, 2009

Ok, as seen below, my cousin Mike and his family came to visit. While on their way through Halifax they met up with my father who recently hand-crafted an amazing gift for my daughter - one of his hand-made guitars. Mike took possession of the guitar and brought it with him to give to us.

I hope to put together a page showing the photos he sent me of it being built. Some photos are below.

Anyway, when Mike got here, we all had a look at the wonder that was this guitar! It is one of those things that means so much to have that it can't really be described in words, because her grandfather hand-built this beautiful instrument for her. She doesn't play guitar yet, but does play piano and violin, and she hopes to be able to pick it up fairly easily, given her already-rich musical ability.

When my father, Henry, (note the JHT emblazoned at the top of the guitar - which may not be very visible in the pics - will post more later) made this, we had no sure way of getting it down to us, and I was worried about letting a shipping company handle it. I figured it would be fairly expensive to ship safely. So I asked some friends for advice on how to ship the guitar for less than what it was worth. (I now know that was a bad choice of words.)

One response I got put it all into perspective:

Not content to stay at the lower Observation Deck, I went up the all-original-1931-manually-controlled elevator to the top of the tower:

Incidentally we found out just how amazingly well Charlotte could mimic a gull's cry!

I think some of the highlights included being stormed out of the observation tower at the Empire State Building even if my daughter caused a bit of a fuss. She wasn't enjoying that at all. Me, I only went higher, up to the top of the spire, to the observation room up there.

Also, leaving the ferry from Liberty Island, most of us walked up Broadway to City Hall. While on the way, we ate at a nice downstairs deli that had good food by the pound. The best part was while getting the Green Line subway, Morgan saw the Brooklyn Bridge, and wanted to walk it. It looked close, but I warned her that just to get to the bridge she had about a mile to walk, and that would just be the start. But I said "Let's do it" and we went. Me, Morgan and Michelle. We walked to the first major pillar, around it, and back, all the while taking pictures. I think this was a major thrill for Morgan, and I'm glad we did it.

We had planned on going to the Metropolitan Museum that day, but when we got back from the bridge, to where we left Mike and Marshall in the shade of trees, we were all pretty tired, so we took the Green Line up to the bottom of the park, and walked across the park's bottom segment to our hotel where we all went to the pool until it closed at 6:00. Then we all freshened up and went out to Junior's for supper, and to hang at Times Square for the second night in a row.

Then a half-hour of audio-torture and no trains to Science Park, so we got one to North Station and walked the rest of the way; to a blitz-like tour of the Science Center (which was, at least, free, due to my family membership); to getting my cousins on a train home while then meeting my daughter and female cousins for the Blue Man show, which was incredible! Then a walk down to South Station and finally - HOME!

Whew!

Oh, and I neglected to mention our standing outside the taping of the "Today" show, and I got to see Ann Currey, Matt and Al. But best, Charlotte got to pose hugging Meredith Vieira for a photo. She was very very nice about it. When Meredith smiles, she smiles with her whole face:

And I was happy to see Ann Curry, who I think is one of the most beautiful women on television today:

Cute factoid: When we went to the Met, Mike's claim check number was C128. This is a significant number to me, because I am a huge fan of the Commodore 128 computer, known as a C128. In fact I still develop for that machine.

This is my daughter, Charlotte, the day before, in an impromptu picture I snapped because the opportunity presented itself:

Oh... and if you look carefully, over her head to your right was a Tim Horton's sign!!! I went in and had two honey crullers and an iced latté:

I also neglected to mention the fact that when we were walking down by H&M on 5th Avenue, there was an ambulance on the side of the road, and police officers were talking to the attendants, meanwhile I walked over blood drops on the sidewalk... uh... a stabbing is my bet.

It reminded me of the time I was walking home to my apartment on Queen's Road, past the dive bar on the corner, and looked down to see chalk circles around blood drops from a stabbing that happened there the night before. Fun!

The last day of the trip we stayed local. We did a bit of shopping, the Walpole Mall, and then down to Target, then home where we got ready to see "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" at Jordan's IMAX theater. Meanwhile, Carol made Chili - amazing, sweet chilli with lots of sweet bell peppers! - which was waiting for us when we got home, (I'm still drooling thinking about it) once I took the fam to my office to see what my work environment was like.

But New York was quite a great trip, despite that little sight.

Blog Blahs
Aug 1, 2009

I have to claim neglegence in not blogging recently.

Since January, most of my free time has been spent writing geoGlyph, a Commodore 64/128 version of that popular match-three game that Bejeweled captured so well. For more info on that project, just click this link. It's going rather well.

Greg Gutless and Friends on Oh For FOX Sake!
March 24, 2009

Why does FOX (yes, please drop them a line) give air time to such idiots? I see them on my local affiliate too, but the asshole there is at least not this outrageously stupid.

Greg Gutfeld, on a paltry little show called Red Eye because it airs at 3:00am when the only thing that he can compete against is infomercials, had a go at Canada.

Here is one YouTube member's appropriate response.

This video is in response to Greg Gutfeld and idiots like him, and includes the panel of his show.

No American I know thinks like this asshole thinks, and I'm living among them. While this society (on both sides of the border) holds freedom of speech to be inviolable, there is a huge difference between the freedom to say something, and getting paid to say it to a whole country over the airwaves, and for that matter, the need to say something at all on matters like this.

During a week when four more caskets were returned from Afghanistan with fine Canadian citizens inside.

I could debate Gutless's points to a letter, shooting them down like the "scientific principles of creationism". But that's shooting fish in a barrel. Not much point.

Just remember this. On September 12, 2001, this is what Halifax Airport looked like:

Was Greg Gutfeld laughing that day? Certainly no Canadians were.

Watchmen For Dummies
March 15, 2009

I love Watchmen. Been reading it since the 1980s. But I couldn't resist this!

Go to my Comics Panels page for larger sizes.

The Luck Gene - I Has It.
March 15, 2009

I've been pretty lucky in my life. It's weird. I enter raffles, and the percentage of times I actually win is far greater than the odds of me winning. Seriously.

Larry Niven wrote about a luck gene in the Ringworld books. Teela Brown was brought along on the expedition to explore the Ringworld because she had inherited a luck gene.

Well on Saturday, my wife and I took Charlotte and a friend to the Walpole Mall where I intended to try on some Convers Chuck Taylors so I could confirm my size.

I had ordered these lovely shoes from a dealer on Amazon.com and ordered an 11 because some other sneakers I have are 11s. I usually take a size 10.5 in shoes. But it varies a bit depending on the shoe.

So they arrived on Friday and alas, felt a bit big. My trip to Famous Footwear in the mall confirmed it, so I will be sending them back. Already ordered the right size.

But while there, Carol and I put our names in a raffle. We left, told to come back around 2:00 for the drawing. We shopped iParty a bit and went back. We sat there while they read out my name.

I had 30 seconds to run around the store grabbing shoes. We planned it out fairly well. Carol went to the corner we were looking in earlier which had a number of very nice pairs Charlotte would just love. She pulled boxes part-way out so I knew what to grab. All this was legit. We were told we could do this. The only real rule was I had to run to get the shoes, run to the counter, drop them, and run to get more. One pair at a time. 30 seconds.

I managed to get Charlotte three lovely pairs. One gorgeous pair of gray and green Convers All-Stars with a double-tongue, the outer one with cool graphics, the inner one in a nice lime green. And two nice pairs of Rocket Dog shoes, one excellent for Gym, and one very nice one in bright colors for wearing.

And I got myself these:

I marvel sometimes at the luck gene, but the longer I live, the more I am convinced Niven was right.

Associated Press v. Shepherd Ferry
March 13, 2009

As most people know, the Associated Press is suing artist Shepard Ferry for this painting of Barak Obama:

They are suing because the painting is based on the following image, to which they own the copyright. (Go ahead, AP, sue me too for using it in my informational blog):

Wow. Sure look the same don't they?

Well, no. They don't. The first is a photographic image. The second is an artistic impression of that image.

Even if you put the two side-by-side and see this:

...it is shown clearly to be not the same. Because:

A simple Photoshop filter:

...makes the image different. Now, while a simple photoshop filter altering every pixel of the image makes it different, it is an automated process, and I wouldn't be on very solid ground if I decided this is a significant alteration of the original.

However, if I smeared paint on a wall in the above format, by hand, with my own interpretive artistic talent, AP would be completely in the wrong to claim I was violating their copyrighted image.

An artist has been at work here. And while he may have used this photo, even projected it on a wall as he worked, there is no way Associated Press can claim that the final product is violating their copyright. And if this was simply a wall mural, they would not be pursuing this case.

It seems to me they are pursuing this case because the artist has gained a great deal of fame, and probably fortune, based on his work on this and other paintings. He has created a meme, he has done what artists are famous for throughout history - for creating something new, a style, a cultural theme that rings true.

Marchel Duchamp painted a moustache and goatee on a postcard of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting. Was that breaking a copyright? (Well, the painting is so old that there probably aren't really any real "copyright" issues... but the idea is the same.)

Well, time and society has decided that what it is is a work of art.

As is this:

Hey, AP. Time to drop it and bask in the honor and the glory that this painting is now a cultural icon.

Tea Box Bookmarks
March 5, 2009

Red Rose tea is my favorite tea ever. And one of the benefits of buying a new box is, and this may sound silly, that there are three dividers between the rows of tea bags in the box. These dividers are made of nice, white card stock. Glossy on one side, non-gloss on the other.

For some time now, I've been using these as bookmarks.

But sometime this past year I decided to draw a bookmark using these cardboard inserts, customized for the book I am currently reading.

There are two sizes of bookmark. The larger box of tea contains 3 dividers of the longer size. The smaller box of tea contains 2 dividers, which are shorter, stubbier. So that's why you see different formats here.

Here's an archive of bookmarks I made so far:


This was for "Nightmare at Black Rock", a Doctor Who book situated near a lighthouse, by Mike Tucker, who I met at a small, intimate DW convention a year or so ago. Nice guy.	I did this one while reading "Airborn" and "Skybreaker" by Kenneth Oppel, as well as "The Hindenburg Murders".	This one was for the Inform 6 manual by Graham Nelson and "Twisty Little Passages" by Nick Montfort	"Lucky Wander Boy" by D.B. Weiss	"The Watchmen" of course, by Allan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins	"The Watchmen" with some color added in Photoshop.

This was when I was visiting the Arches in Newfoundland.

This one I did while reading "Airborn", by Kenneth Oppel.

I seriously think I should e-mail the Red Rose people and tell them what I use their inserts for. They might actually print bookmarks for their inserts.

Piracy 2.0 Nominated for XYZZY Awards
March 4, 2009

Ok, this was unexpected. The XYZZY Awards are voted awards for Interactive Fiction published during a given year.

My game, Piracy 2.0, came in fifth in the 2008 Interactive Fiction Competition. I entered that competition. The XYZZY Awards is not one you enter. People vote for your game, and if it gets enough votes it becomes a finalist, to win in one or more of several categories.

Piracy 2.0 is a finalist in Best Game, Best Setting and Best Puzzles categories, which makes me ecstatic.

Of course I'm up against games I lost to in the 2008 Comp, but I'm just glad to be a finalist in any of those categories.

Results will be announced March 14.

The Kindle Comes to my iPod Touch
March 4, 2009

Over the last week, I considered buying a Kindle. But it's a one-use device. I love my iPod Touch because it's so versatile, and I have an eBook reader on it now, on which are several of my own eBooks that I formatted for my Palm Pilot way back. I read a lot on my Palm Pilot. Now I read a fair amount on my iPod. I figured I'd like the Kindle. But its one major mistake made me not want it, for a good reason:

I like to read in the dark. And the Kindle has no back-light.

But now the Kindle is available on the iPod Touch for free. Go find it on the Ap store.

And within minutes, I had boutht a Doc Savage book for $1.56.

Love it!

Sure, Sure, Sure, It's Racial. Obviously!
February 19, 2009

What's wrong with these pictures?

Acceptable

Fine

Perfectly OK

Excellent

Sure, why not?

Apparently NOT OK????

This is just as bad as when they tried to say Obama was referring to Palin when he used the term "Lipstick on a Pig" in a statement not even mentioning or even vaguely referring to her.

Do not take it that I am a fan of George W. Bush, the worst thing to happen to the world in decades. I'm just not racist enough to see this as a racist slur, any more than the more than 100 cartoons depicting Bush as a chimp.

Get lives, people.

Funny Ad Placement on IMDB
January 21, 2009

I was talking to a friend today about the hilarious Canadian film "The Canadian Conspiracy". This is a film that stars many of the SCTV crowd, as well as some very prominent Canadian performers, News Reporters, and others you wouldn't expect to see in a satire.

But what struck me, while I was looking up some info on a film that deals with an invasion of the USA by Canada through the entertainment arts, I saw the following in-line ad (see at the right.)

Heh. Honest-to-god. A recruitment ad for the US Border Patrol!

geoGLYPH - My New Game Project for the Commodore 64 in GEOS
January 20, 2009

I was going to keep my next project under wraps until I released it, but what the heck. Instead I decided to write a Development Diary which would chronicle every stage of the project from start to finish.

(Clicky)

GEOS For the Commodore Plus/4 - Using My Disk As A Test
January 12, 2009

I found this demo video of someone who has GEOS running on a Commodore Plus/4.

During the video, he opens a second disk. It's called Huxter-GEOS1. Hey, that's MY disk!

Geos OS

He uses my geoComix program to demo GEOS on the Plus/4. Cool!

PVP Nails It For Me
January 11, 2009

This actually happened to me:

And the next day:

Followed by:

(Ok... it didn't. But it should have.)

Read the rest of the sequence at PVP's site, starting with the first of this sequence, and go forward.

My Favorite Poster
January 10, 2009

At Perks, a coffee shop in Norwood, they have this great poster of a yellow-coated man on a train grabbing a red cup of espresso. It's very nice. We got an Art.com magazine in the mail a year ago, and Carol found the very print, framed on sale! It now hangs in our kitchen.

Do you love it???

Wanda
January 10, 2009

In November of last year we went to Petco to get some food for Rowan and Willow. We noticed they now have a cat shelter there, run by the Friends of the Plymouth Pound. We met several very nice cats there, and Charlotte fell in love with all of them of course.

As we read the stories of the various cats, some rescued as abandoned, some injured, most given over to the shelter for various reasons, we saw that Wanda, a 10-year-old cat, was given up due to foreclosure. She was part of a loving family and was now sitting in a 4x2x2 box all day, (although the volunteers take all the cats out for an hour or so, several times a day, to wander around the large room they're in.)

I couldn't let this beautiful, loving, friendly 10-year-old cat sit in a box all day. So we immediately filed adoption papers.

Here she is. Wanda. A gorgeous silky coat of dark tabby, with pure white legs, paws and neck, with great little highlights on the chin and nose.

So far, she has not gotten along with Willow and Rowan, though her history indicated she was ok with other cats, and even a dog she had lived with. I'm sure she'll come around eventually. To be honest, she and Rowan would have gotten along right away, but Willow went on the attack, and now Wanda is in a defensive posture, and will be until she realizes the other cats aren't trying to kill her. Willow, for her part, has come to accept Wanda, and is no longer hostile, but more curious about her. But Wanda has yet to stand down from defense mode.

None of this affects how she acts towards humans, though, she's loving, and purry, and very talkative when she's with us. She loves being brushed.

See?

So we now introduce Wanda as one of our family.

Rowan: Here's Rowan, saying a very friendly and curious "Hello" to Wanda when we first brought her home.

"Hello, I'm Rowan. What did you do to get in here?"
(Click for larger image)

Willow: Here's Willow, stretched out on my comforter. Only the fact that I used a flash hides the fact that when she's on my comforter, she's nearly perfectly camouflaged. (The flash brings out the red in the comforter, making her blend in a little less perfectly.)

"Camouflage - I haz it!"
(Click for larger image)

A Pottery Rediscovery
January 4, 2009

While packing our Christmas tree decorations away yesterday I came across a paper bag with some weight to it. Inside, wrapped in paper towel, were some pottery barettes and brooches I once created, not long after I took a pottery course in St. John's, Newfoundland. Some of these have been given to family, my mother wears one prominently whenever anyone comes to the Tourist Chalet at Springdale Junction. My wife wears one. Some have had their pin backings fall off, and I have to re-epoxy them. I didn't create a rough enough surface on the back to hold the epoxy, so they sometimes come off.

But among the pottery pieces I found this one, unglazed. Bisque-fired only. But this one was never intended to be glazed. I intended this one to be framed as-is. So far I haven't famed it, but I will. But since I found it, I photographed it, and present it here:

(This is pretty much real-sized, depending on your monitor settings. 8.5cm wide.)

I will also photograph the other pieces soon, and post those.

Stonybrook in Winter
January 4, 2009

Stonybrook is a lovely Audubon conservation area about twenty minutes south of Norwood by car. It's a place my family and I have gone on nice days since we moved to this area. Today we visited it on a beautiful winter day. It was spectacular!

Here's a shot I like: The shadows of me, Charlotte and Carol on the ice on the lake while standing on the boardwalk. For fun, I put it next to one taken in 2007 on a sunny summer day when the lake was covered in algae and plant life, not ice. Same area of bridge, though. Same lake.


Us in winter, on the boardwalk. (Click for larger image)	Us in summer on the boardwalk. (Well, my shadow's not in this one, just Charlotte and Carol.) (Click for larger image)

A black-capped chickadee I shot today. (Click for larger image with more outer area)

And this is Charlotte: how cool, eh?

Snow
January 3, 2009

This is a photo of our back yard, which shows the accumulation of the last three snowfalls. Wind was low during the falls so the snow stacked up neatly showing clearly how much snow has fallen. Wind came later, but our back yard is sheltered enough that the neatly stacked snow extrusions remained.

Now What? (Ramblings of a Restless Mind)
January 1, 2009

I like to think I live a pretty full life. I'm very involved in my famliy, spending as much time with my wife and daughter as I can, I have very few really idle moments, and when I do I tend to get very very restless. Creative energy bursts through my skin and I get very edgy. So I'm usually meandering from one project to another, or from the six books I have bookmarks in, or the various TV series' I like to watch, and download, and watch from the past, and if I'm not doing that, then I'm usually neck-deep in writing toy reviews for Sci Fi Weekly, or into a personal project like Piracy 2.0, the Text Adventure I entered into the Interactive Fiction Competition in September of 2008 (coming in fifth place in a field of 35 - not bad) or retro-programming something in Assembler for my Commodore 64/128, or writing stories, or cartoons, or photo-stories using my GI Joes, or collecting a new line of toys that's caught my eye, or often enough, some bizarre mishmash of several of the above.

The question now, in the middle of nearly two solid weeks off and to start 2009 - what now?

1) Fix the bugs in Piracy 2.0. This is a good one, and needs doing. From February or March of 2008 to Sept 30, I spent many hours a night, most nights, working on this game. And several good people tested it, each of whom are credited in my game. But sometimes stuff slips by even the best testers. Even a full-time department of testers who do nothing all day but test can't catch everything. And as usual, not long after I released it, bug reports began coming in. Most reviews of my game do comment on the fact that it is a bit buggy, but not too bad. It would take several weeks of nights to get the bugs listed, but if I do, I can re-release my game with bugs fixed, and more people will play it. I can also enter it into the next competition that's coming up.

2) geoBots. This is a game I started well over a decade ago, and got some code done. It's a GEOS (for C64 and C128) version of the famed and oft-done "Robots" game in which you make turns to move away from robots who collide with one another (or you) and the longer you survive the higher your score. This is often done as "Daleks" by people who don't realize or don't care that Daleks are actually copyrighted. I was originally going to do it as Daleks, and I still may. Copyright from the BBC usually doesn't restrict people from doing things with the license if they're not planning on making any money. Though the new popularity of Doctor Who may have changed that somewhat. The code I have done will have to be rewritten, as collision code is complex and changes the basic move code. This would be immensely satisfying to me, and somewhat fun for about four other people in the world.

3) geoComix Editor. In the 1980s I created geoComix, a Choose-Your-Own-Path comic book player, and wrote one story "The Orb" to demonstrate its abilities. Unfortunately, I never created an editor for it, and I'd have to to get other people to write stories for geoComix. There are one or two tricky issues to deal with, the most complicated from my standpoint being changing the GEOS File Type of the Script file so it works correctly. I may have to do something tricky with the Photo Album and Text Album that I use as well. This would take a very long time.

4) Edit my novel. I wrote a novel. Not saying when. Not saying much about it, actually. Just that it needs some editing, and I'm part-way through. I don't really have a prospective publisher, and getting a publisher these days requires an agent. Getting an agent these days is as hard as it was 20 years ago to get a publisher, so yeah, not easy either way. I'm thinking of submitting it to a Newfoundland publishing company because I'd have half-a-chance of it actually getting accepted. This is something I really should do, and not put it off like I have been doing.

5) Buy a Mac and start writing applications for the iPod/iPhone. This requires some monetary investment, as I do not have an Intel-based Mac, which I'd need to run the development package for iPod/iPhone. Still, I have one or two games I'd like to write using it. And my friend bought one and is planning on doing it and we could easily partner up and get some cool stuff done.

There are others too, but the ones above require a


Charlotte and Carol at Liberty Island	Sean and Charlotte at Liberty Island


Liberty Island's luckiest crab	Liberty from the Trees


Charlotte getting her program "signed"	Charlotte with Blue Man


Morgan getting her program "signed" - She's delighted, as you can see.	Morgan loving posing with Blue Man


Marshall and Mike outside Fenway	Marshall and Mike inside Fenway - The Sox lost 6-2 to Baltimore

Sean's 'blog for 2009

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