three rings

Thursday Afternoon

Good progress at work today, easily catching up on the things I didn’t get done yesterday on account of having been at the Royal Welsh Show.

AbNib is proving itself popular, but I’m still not happy with it: there are a load of really cool features I’d like to add, yet. But that’s a job for another day. I’ll be up in Lancashire this weekend for Andy‘s party and to visit my folks, so I can’t do it then, either.

Claire’s gotten herself temporarily sterilized with a fantastic hyperdermic full of progesterone and with the aid of the nice people at Aberystwyth Family Planning Clinic. Woo and indeed hoo. She’s (theoretically) a lot less likely to forget to have an injection every three months than she is to forget to take the pill: something she’s demonstrated herself to be very proficient at.

I’ve been excessivley stressed for the last 48 or so hours. I think it’s mostly a result of having no money and my paycheque still being a week away, and having to live off my credit card in the meantime (which I don’t like doing). Also that my crisp-wound in my mouth from the other day has developed into a spot which would probably heal faster and hurt less if I could stop playing with it, but I can’t. And that I’m not making nearly as much coding progress on Three Rings as I should be.

I have a strange urge to go for a long walk in the rain this evening. I hope it rains.

Paul In Aber

Paul made it to Aber. Woo and indeed hoo. He, Bryn, Kit, Claire, and I went to the beach and drank beer and ate pizza to celebrate. Then Claire and I took turns in an inflatable dingy and I got soaked as a wave leapt over the side. You’ll probably see their reports of this on their journals, soon, too.

The wiki I was coding got finished. Sadly, only a few of you who read this will ever be allowed to see it, but it’s pretty sweet.

Plothole appeared in the story on Andy’s LiveJournal – he has me drinking tea, which, as everybody knows, isn’t going to happen on account of (a) caffiene being a really, really bad thing for me and (b) I don’t particularly like tea. Have reported this to him and await feedback.

This made me laugh: type Weapons of Mass Destruction into Google and you’ll get this page. I laughed lots.

Hawaii

I’m scared. Kit is researching the laws governing marriage in Hawaii, and I’m not exactly sure why.

“Hey; you can get married at 15 in Hawaii!”

Meanwhile, I’m currently coding a wiki engine. For those of you who aren’t in-the-know, a wiki is a collaborative network of web pages that anybody can edit. They’re fun, if a little anarchic.

Back to the code…

Claire’s Back

=o)

Last night was fun. After spending most of a day hacking into the BBC’s weather centre (I wanted a weather forecast XML stream, but couldn’t find a free one, so with Kit’s help I stole one instead), he, Claire (recently returned) and I went down to the beach after midnight with a bottle of Caern O’Moor Bramble Wine and enjoyed the first cool air the town has seen in most of a week.

I had a weird dream last night. Apparently, so did Kit. Must’ve been something in the wine.

Norfolk

Claire’s gone to Norfolk to help her dad move house, among other things. She’s back on Sunday.

Played a little Zelda and wrote a little Three Rings code last night, but didn’t do enough of either to be called ‘productive’. Rather, I watched The Animatrix with Kit and drank Firestoker and Hobgoblin and Newcastle Brown Ale.

I miss her already.

Gender Balance

Rengor wrote:

…

Also an interesting group are the developers, not the ringers, but all the other game developers playing this game, and there’s quite a few of them. Im curious if they can say why they chose this game instead of Sims or Everquest etc?

…

…

I’m a dev. (not a PP dev., of course), and you’ll probably laugh, Rengor, when you hear how I discovered the game…

I’m currently spending way too much of what little free time I have developing a secure online database system, which I’ll be selling at cost price to a network of charities in the UK providing night-time telephone listening and information to students. This system will help these voluntary organisations find and manage volunteers for specific nights of the week, send text messages to them to remind them when they’re due to be ‘on duty’, provide a secure forum, and (eventually) a host of other features.

While the selection of organisations which this system will serve are… somewhat diverse in their policies (much to my horror as the system I develop has to cope with all of them), one thing they all have in common is the amount of time the telephone has to ring before they will answer it: three rings. As a result, my system is called Three Rings.

So; I looked for a domain name for it… threerings.com was already gone. Oh, I thought, I wonder who owns that? So I hopped to the web site and thus found Three Rings Design Inc., and, being a fan of MMORPGs and all things MUD and puzzle games, I signed up for Yohoho!

But what about the rest of you dev’s? I know there’re more tech’s out there than just me, arr!