Entry 48
Finished Masters Of Doom this week, and had a real blast. For as much as the book paints Romero and Carmack as necessary halves of a whole, it doesn’t really like Romero did a lot. Once he leaves id and creates his own company to work on Daikatana, it flops. As id and Carmack continue without him, the book tries to paint Quake 2 and 3 as uninspired letdowns. But I don’t know, they continue to be remembered well in my circles.
Started Le Guin’s A Wizard Of Earthsea, which is a ton of fun already. It’s super short– almost a novella– so it’s only laziness on my part that I haven’t finished it yet. But it’s fascinating how much she seems able to do with such small surface area. Glad this is part of a bigger series, this sounds like it’s gonna be fun.
Still playing Hollow Knight somehow. The gameplay is just so good, and with so many endgame twists and extra bosses. I must’ve spent 7 hours trying to beat an optional challenge, and I still don’t seem close to the finish line. I started Stray (because why wouldn’t I play that game), but have only spent an hour in it so far. I agree with a lot of takes about how little focus it gives to its actual gameplay, but AWWWW SO CUTE!!!
Mike Rugnetta posted a new video recently. I’ve really appreciated this new set of video essay-ish things from him. I was a huge fan of PBS Idea Channel when I was younger, and these new videos feel like they’ve grown up with me. Anyway, it’s a well-measured look at how social media has evolved, and the language around it.
As for programming-ish things, I regret to admit that I have to seriously learn c++ now. I started thumbing through Scott Meyers' Effective C++ and Effective Modern C++, but not with any real gusto. The complexity of the language makes itself abuntantly apparent very quickly - and I already think I’ve run into some nasty experiences with it at work. God it’s a painful language. But, it seems like it could be my foot in the door to real systems programming, and there’s no doubt there’s a ton to learn there for me.