The astute reader will know by now that for the past few months, there’s been a lightspeedguy in the picture. The really astute reader will know that it’s a long-distance thing, and may have clued in to the fact that he lives in Edmonton.

I’ll probably have much to say in the next little while about adapting to the committed relationship lifestyle, but for now I’m having fun feeling my way around long-distance romance in the modern age: it’s a life of red-eye flights, webcams and the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

How many can say that the release today of Star Fox Command will spice up their love life?

I’ve always been amazed by the fact that despite the country’s gargantuan proportions (something I was all too aware of on the endless flight out west last Thursday), all English Canadian cities have a common feel to them. There’s a certain laid back hipness to them, and they all seem to have pedestrian streets lined with colorful little eco-friendly shops and cool, airy cafés full of artists. Think Ottawa’s Byward Market, or Granville Mall in Halifax. The other thing Canadian cities have in common is that they always give me the feeling that though I’m in an urban center, nature isn’t far.

With its superclean but deserted downtown area, its one hip shopping street, and its large, wild wooded ravine that cuts right through the city, Edmonton has that distinctly Canadian feel. Even though it’s been years since I’ve been anywhere in Canada outside Quebec, the familiarity was unmistakable.

Edmonton told me that I was home, and to take a load off and chill. I didn’t visit the Phone History Center proposed by Dr Wank, and didn’t even see the West Edmonton Mall (for the uninitiated, it’s what Kevin Smith calls the Big F***ing Mall, complete with indoor water park and roller coaster). But I did drink a lot of Chai latté and played several video games.

(Edmonton does have one eccentricity, though:
Price for a beer “imported” from Québec (Blanche de Chambly): 13$
La Maudite: 14$
La Terrible de Unibroue (never heard of it): 21$)

Critics of this brilliant GTA-inspired Coca Cola commercial, who are calling it about 5 years behind the times, are missing the point. The commercial isn’t about GTA, but what it’s come to represent (the eeeeevilness of video games). And sadly, the debate around that is pretty contemporary.

(Merci Patrick)

Last night I dreamed that I was dead, and I was walking around in the afterlife. The afterlife was made up of a bunch of different cottages and buildings dotting a sunny mountainside. In a 3d rendered environment. The only people I knew there were my parents.

I walked around from house to house and talked to a few serene people about what it was like there. From these conversations, it became obvious to me that nobody liked each other in the afterlife. They didn’t dislike each other, but love and attachment to one another simply did not seem to exist. The strangest thing was that nobody even seemed to remember those concepts from life, like they had had their memory of love brainwashed out. They were normal and happy in every other respect.

I couldn’t believe my parents didn’t like each other any more, so I went to talk to them. I remember asking my father: “But surely you remember SEX!”

That’s when he serenely explained that if you like someone, you come alive and return to the living state. But then that separates you from them, because they are still in the afterlife. He said, “So we stay like this, lest life do us part”.

And as he said that, there was a break in the environment (like a bug in a videogame) and I could see through the game world into the real world, into life, and I knew what he meant.

This is something I’m reluctant to blog, because I’m sure to jinx it by doing so: I’m currently having the best end-of-project period of my career. Bug counts are rapidly decreasing, I still eat right and get to the gym four times a week, the game is within scope, still on time, no cut levels or last-minute feature drops, and the team is still happy. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop since pre-production, but it’s running out of time to do so.

Every race teaches you something new. The first one simply taught me that I could run 10K without stopping. Then I learned that be that as it may, even 5K can be hell if you’re not prepared.

Two months ago, I ran my first race after starting work with the trainer, and for the first time, ran 10K under an hour. Under 54 minutes, in fact. This went to my head. While I’d always been happy to simply be in the top half of my category, suddenly jumping to the top 20% gave me ideas. Maybe I could actually be a speed rather than endurance runner. Maybe I could even place top three in my category and earn a medal. I looked forward to the next race, which was Sunday.

A fantastic race it was, on a crisp morning and a beautiful course in Ste-Anne, through corn fields, rolling hills and forest. I’d hoped to achieve something near my previous time, and I beat it by almost half a minute. However, driving back I wondered why I wasn’t feeling the usual post-race mood boost. It was clearly because I’d spent the entire time (53′30″, thank you) worrying about my splits and per-kilometer times, when usually my mind just wanders and feels good about simply getting out there.

Now, this could simply end with “So I’ve learned a valuable lesson and what’s important is to participate blah blah blah”, but frankly, there’s something to be said for the drive to perform, rather than to just finish. I’ve enjoyed a huge surge in motivation and, frankly, some pride in the new achievement. How do you balance caring enough about performing that you get out and train, with not caring so much that it ruins the activity?