As you can see, I haven’t updated my blog in months. I’ve been working with the fabulous Heather and the wonderful Georgia since July to implement Bossy’s redesigned site and - four months and nearly 1,500 e-mails later - the site is DONE!

I’m excited to make a few changes to my own blog over the next few weeks, but I’m hours away from flying to Los Angeles to attend a video game convention.

In the mean time, here are two highlights from the past few months:

Standing behind Wil Wheaton on an escalator at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.

Seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in concert.

kthxbai!

When the topography of my favorite place altered significantly after a flood, I was devastated. Convinced that my memories of the place were imperiled if I could not ensure that the setting would remain intact indefinitely - exactly how I remembered it - I dedicated myself to preserving it with photographs. Realizing years later that geography is constantly shifting regardless of my determination to perpetuate it only heightened my appreciation.

The ceremony began at dusk in a garden at the Edgar Allan Poe museum in Richmond, Virginia. A friend who I have known since high school and with whom I lived for one year during college married yesterday. The reception followed under candle-lit lanterns, surrounded by twilight blue string lights and ivy-covered gates, and reminded me of the lyrics to a song by Nick Cave & The Badseeds. Reunited with old friends and acquainted with new ones, I feel rejuvenated.

We packed light, each carrying only one backpack, and did not purchase many souvenirs. I bought this figurine in the Tokyo Narita airport on an impulse as we rushed to find our gate to return home. It is one of my favorite things.

I remember our first morning in Japan, eating at a cafe that we noticed the night before while searching for the hostel, and how the sunlight poured through the windows and onto my waffles, surely making them taste better. The coffee was rich and strong, too.

I remember the night we stumbled into an Irish pub, exhausted after bicycling all over Kyoto, and laughing together over the inauthentic menu. It felt so relieving to sit and I could have fallen asleep in the dimly lit booth.

And I remember the ten short minutes that Eric and I spent in a small cafe in Osaka that reminded me of the Nighthawks painting by Edward Hopper and sincerely feeling like I belonged in Japan, proud of how well we had traveled together in a foreign country. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.

We walked a lot in Japan and I had blisters on my feet by the time we left, but I needed the exercise and after the first two days, I became accustomed to it.

I didn’t realize how little time I spend outside until I returned home from Japan. In Japan, we were outside most of the day, walking from one place to another. The fresh air and the warm sunlight made me feel alive and energetic. I realize how important that is to me now; I feel lazy and lethargic sitting in front of a computer in an air-conditioned office all day.

We also spent a lot of time on trains in Japan. There wasn’t much worth photographing on the trains, but I will always remember the way the electric lines would dip between each pole as we passed them, almost in rhythm with the repetitive sound of the wheels on the train rolling over the tracks.

I remember smiling to other Japanese tourists at a temple in Kyoto and responding with “Konnichiwa!” when they cheerily greeted me as we passed on the trail. I hope I return to Japan soon.

I didn’t have these pets all at the same time. There were petless gaps between pets when I would beg and cry for a new pet, but my parents refused. That’s what made it so thrilling when I brought home a kitten while living at home during my last year at college without telling my parents. I was counting on the kitten being too cute for my mom to be mad. It worked.

Saba was pure crazy as a kitten. He would burrow under the covers with me and attack my legs and he would chase plastic grapes from my mom’s wine rack all over the house. He has calmed down a lot in the past three years, probably because I got a new kitten last year that is even more full of crazy than he is and she wears him out. He has also become noticeably more lovable and will greet me at the door every evening when I arrive at home.

He will contentedly sit in my lap when I watch movies, rest his head on my arm when I’m playing video games, and lay on my chest when I’m reading in bed. He gets in the way, but I love it.

My dad drove our family to DelFest in his motorhome on the Memorial Day weekend. We were on the road for five hours. My sister and I played with Photo Booth on my MacBook for at least half of the journey.

I didn’t know many of the bands performing at this bluegrass festival and the few I had heard of - Sam Bush, David Grisman, Chris Thile - I’d seen at other festivals a dozen times. I went to DelFest not necessarily for the music, but for a weekend in the mountains with my family.

The festival was held at the Allegany County Fairgrounds in Cumberland, Maryland. It was on the Potomac River.

I love bluegrass festivals. I love the colors and the sounds and the people.

We camped next to a man who owned an old school bus that had been “renovated” into an RV. Its license plate was accurately “FUBAR”.

He hung hammocks inside for extra sleeping space.

For the first annual DelFest, I was impressed with the number of attendees.

My mom snuck backstage twice and met some of the performers. This is my mom with Sam Bush. Sam Bush was my favorite performer at this festival.

But my favorite part of the festival - more than listening to the live music - was exploring the fairgrounds with Eric, the faint sound of bluegrass music in the background and the backdrop of mountains in the foreground.

My DelFest 2008 Flickr set is here.

Sometimes, I make a pallet on the floor in our office to sleep on while Eric stays up late playing video games. I like to be in the same room with him all the time.

Our map is a “gimmick” map, meaning that will not adhere to the typical game play elements enforced in Team Fortress 2. In Team Fortress 2, players join one of two teams - either red or blue - and choose to play one of nine classes. Each class is designed for a unique role in the game with different weapon sets, health points, and character behavior, fostering an interesting and balanced game experience. For example, the Scout class lacks health points and is handicapped by a short-range shotgun while the Heavy can sustain more damage and boasts a badass mini gun*; however, the Scout can run faster than any other class and can double jump while the Heavy walks insufferably slow. Working together, a team with a balanced variety of classes (and players playing the classes as they are intended) will achieve the objective.

*Not actually mini at all.

Our map will only allow players to choose Scout (red team) or Sniper (blue team). The objective is to provide players with the opportunity to practice playing each class to master the subtle nuances of each. Scouts will learn how to dodge bullets and race to the capture point while Snipers will learn how to aim at an erratic target through the scope. When the Scouts successfully capture the capture point, players on the red team will be switched to the blue team and vice versa, requiring players to attempt both classes.

Inspiration for the map came from the scene in the movie 28 Weeks Later where snipers on the roof of a tall building are shooting at zombies on the street below them. In our map, a horde of Scouts (the zombies) will emerge from the front of a building at ground level and race down two streets (an “L” shape) to the capture point while the Snipers on the roof of a building at the hinge of the “L” attempt to shoot them. Scouts may be able to enter the Snipers’ building and ascend stairs to the roof to try to distract the Snipers.

This is what Hammer looks like. I arranged the windows so that I can see a 2D view of each axis (an overhead view and two side views) and 3D view of the map that I can navigate through. The tools are exceptionally simple - the block tool creates forms, the texture tool applies textures to blocks such as bricks or sky, and the entity tool creates special features such as lights, spawn points, capture points, and doors.

In the initial stages of building a map, I use simple textures and blocky forms to facilitate modifications. Once the layout of the map has been play tested and approved, textures and details will be added to give it the aesthetic of a city. Obstructions such as parked vehicles, crates, and dumpsters will be added to the street to prevent the Snipers from having an excessive advantage.

To begin, I created the frame of a cube-shaped room to confirm that my spawn point and lights worked properly. I discovered that if the spawn point isn’t hovering a few units above the ground, the player will be stuck in the floor when the game begins.

On the second iteration, I expanded the cube into a rectangle with a tall building at the end opposite of the spawn point. The purpose of this iteration is to determine the ideal distance of the street. I noted the time required to run from one end to the other as well as tested the line of sight.

I adjusted the length of the street and the height of the building and tested it in game again.

Once we were confident that the basic frame was an appropriate size, I added a Sniper spawn point on top of the building. I ran the map on my computer and Eric connected from his computer so we could test the street distances with a player on each team. The building height and street length are such that a Sniper looking through his or her scope can accurately aim at Scouts at the far end of the map.

In previous versions, we considered creating a single street rather than an “L” shape configuration with a building on either side of the street, requiring the Scouts to run through a choke point between the two buildings. We also tested a taller building and created an invisible “kill” texture in the space below the roof so that Snipers who tried to jump to the ground would die. In the end, we decided that it would be more realistic to allow Snipers to fall to the ground and become swarmed by zombies Scouts with baseball batz.

While there is not an official method to restrict players to only two classes, I found several work-around suggestions in level design forums. The one that I tried involves a trigger that fills the spawn room that, when touched (when the player spawns), sends a command to their computer to join a specific class regardless of what class was chosen. This works perfectly on my computer, but is ignored when Eric connects to my map from his computer. I suspect that he has enabled a setting that prevents the server from sending commands to the client for security. If this is the case, I’m not sure how to proceed other than to trust players to join the intended class.

The next steps include carving stairs to the roof with doors at both ends, providing full-featured respawn rooms with resupply lockers, and creating a capture point. The time required to capture the capture point will be tuned and the street will be analyzed for location and quantity of obstructions for Scouts to hide behind. Upon completion of these core game play elements, the map will be tested on private servers. As feedback is received and implemented, the map will simultaneously be receiving graphical updates.

I am motivated to complete this map because we have some pretty awesome ideas for our next map.

The first map shows the number of aviation accidents by state. 1,213 aviation accidents (or 12.92%) occurred in California. Florida, with the next highest number of aviation accidents, only recorded 647 aviation accidents (or 6.89%) during the 25-year period. Surprisingly, only 406 aviation accidents were recorded in Alaska (not shown). My hypothesis before creating these maps was that Alaska, where air travel is prevalent*, would claim the most aviation accidents.

*According to the Wikipedia article on air transport in Alaska, “Alaska has the highest number of pilots per capita of any U.S. state: out of the estimated 663,661 residents, 8,550 are pilots, or about one in 78.”

The second map represents the number of fatalities caused by aviation accidents. It illustrates a similar message as the first map, but is skewed by the aviation accidents of commercial airliners that resulted in a large number of fatalities.

Most of the accidents - in fact, 99.4% of them - caused only one fatality. Nearly 50% of the accidents resulted in 10 or fewer fatalities. Only seven of the aviation accidents occurring between 1983 and 2007 resulted in more than 100 fatalities. Those aviation accidents are illustrated in this third image (essentially, a layer over the second map).

Click on maps to view at a larger resolution in Flickr.