Otaku No Zoku

I have to apologise for the complete lack of updates over the past month. I’ve been busy with two large projects plus some personal matters.

The past week I’ve felt generally lethargic and under the weather. No specific symptoms, just a case of “blah.” Completely unable to concentrate on a single task so I’ve done almost no work and felt incredibly guilty about it.

I’ve even skipped attending the gym. Normally I jog at 6MPH for about 30 minutes. Last Friday I failed to walk at a slow pace of 3MPH for less than 8 minutes without getting winded and aching in every muscle. I guess I must be down with something. I even got winded climbing four short flights of stairs going to the car the other day.

I’m taking a “5 minute break” (seems that is all I’ve done for the past week is take a “5 minute break”) from wrapping up a lengthy review of Natural Motion’s endorphin for Game Developer Magazine & two new book reviews for Gamasutra.

The two projects I mentioned are a) starting my latest game project, which is about 6 weeks in to production and the pace has been a bit insane as it needs to be ready by August, and b) drawing furiously for a web comic that I hope to launch on July 1st. As I want the web comic to be updated on a regular basis, at least three times a week, I need to ensure I have plenty of drawn material and story lines worked out ahead of time.

Anyway, that’s been my life for the past month. I’ll try and post something worthwhile this weekend.

So I’ve had a TIVO since the early days. I bought mine a couple of months after they went on sale. I had been thinking of buying one for some time then one day I walk in to Fry’s Electronics, an electronics retail chain on the West Coast and they are just unloading the TIVO boxes from the pallet. I’m not entirely convinced I want one so I pick it up on a “Fry’s rental policy” (30 day money back, no questions asked guarantee).

I use it for a month and other than the novelty of it I probably watch more TV in that month than I have in a decade. All these great shows stacking up on the hard drive that I normally don’t think to watch and setting the VCR is too much effort.

Yes, my VCR remains at 12:00 (not blinking at me thankfully) not because I don’t understand how to set it but because it’s just not worth it.

I don’t record anything with the VCR, I’d rather have a VCP, but all the play only VCR’s I’ve ever seen have been low-end pieces of junk I wouldn’t give house room to even if it were making cute kitten eyes at me and came with a red bow round it’s neck.

So back to my point, I resolved back in September of 2001 to give up TV.

Now you have to understand I have a high-end projection system hooked up to high-end AV equipment that dominates one wall of my home. I watch a movie a couple of times a month and I play quite a few video games so I like having nice equipment to play them on. The TIVO has been sat in the original box for well over 3 years. The lifetime TIVO service subscription languishing unused.

Finally I take it out of storage intending to sell the machine to my room mate for the original cost of the subscription and I fire up the machine to make sure it still works and the very last programme it recorded, automatically, which I never watched, was on the morning of September 11, 2001, about 5 minutes after the initial attack.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch it…

While I was walking around the recent 2005 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco I noticed the absence of an old friend who I haven’t seen in several years. What prompted me to think of him was bumping in to several other old friends from my Activision days who were attending the conference. So if anyone has information to the whereabouts of Francois-Yves Bertrand, formerely of Atari, Activision, Konami, Acclaim, etc, could you please let me know where he is or point him at this page so that he can e-mail me.

While I was walking around the recent 2005 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco I noticed the absence of an old friend who I haven’t seen in several years. What prompted me to think of him was bumping in to several other old friends from my Activision days who were attending the conference. So if anyone has information to the whereabouts of Francois-Yves Bertrand, formerely of Atari, Activision, Konami, Acclaim, etc, could you please let me know where he is or point him at this page so that he can send me an e-mail . — Justin Lloyd