So, Martine says if video games don’t work out for me, I have a bright future on the home shopping channel. She used to be in broadcasting, but obviously not as a judge of talent.

How’s this for timing: received final approvals for the game on two different SKUs (consoles) today, within an hour of each other. More importantly, received them within a day of leaving on a lovely four-day getaway. No phone, no alarms, no bug regressions, no take-out.

Any good spots to recommend in Boston or Provincetown?

About three days after I redesigned this blog the last time, T sent me a mockup for a kickass new design for it. Almost apologetically, he said he’d been inspired. Nearly a year later, I’ve finally gotten around to implementing it.

I’ve also switched hosts and content management systems (from Movable Type to WordPress), using Patrick’s excellent Move Your Blog for Free service. It was also Patrick, a CSS ninja, who converted the mockup into a beautiful, functional website.

So I can’t take any credit for the renovations this time, but I’m definitely enjoying my new home.

Thanks guys!

(Please update your feeds!)

A gunman opened fire in Dawson college today in Montreal, down the road from my place of work. As we madly dashed to fix the last of the bugs on our game, we heard the sirens rushing to the site of the shootings down the road.

Despite this, the events seemed unreal, perhaps because we got our updates from the Web, which fails to distinguish down the road from the Middle East. It all seemed like something that had happened strictly on the news, until I came out of work at 8 PM to a rainy night and decided to take the underground home. You could feel what had happened in the air, the commuters quiet, subdued and sad. Not Montreal.

I grew up here, thinking of the city as my own Tattooine, the backwater I needed to escape in favor of more exotic destinations. At 27 I finally moved to Sweden, and there I realized what a Montrealer I was. I listened to CHOM and read the Mirror over the net, and hung out mostly with fellow French Canadians. I moved back after a year and discovered a city I’d never really known. After spending the summer watching an out-of-towner discover Montreal, I’ve myself fallen for the city more than ever.

I’m sure there is a positive light in which to see this. I’m sure the city will prove resilient. But tonight, the fact that something like that would happen in my beloved home is shocking, sad, and it pisses me off. I don’t want this here.

So you want to make games by yourself. Oops.

Last spring, I sat at Bagel Etc on the Main, across from my darling friend Gord, and told him why I didn’t think people should get married.

The problem with love is that we expect our partner to fulfill unreasonable expectations, ideals that don’t exist, I remember saying. Your partner makes you happy only for a time, and if we saw relationships as temporary, which they are, we’d recognize when love is over and move on, without all the pain of dashed hopes. People would always know from the start of a relationship that it wouldn’t last forever, and they’d be less resentful of each other when it ended, I argued. And if people were that reasonable, they’d never get married but they’d be happier, I said to my engaged friend.

What an asshole.

I sat in church yesterday, watching Gord unite himself to his love forever, and promise to grow old with her. I was astonished at how moved I was by this, but what they must feel for each other, to be happily entering into such an enormous commitment… the beauty of that completely overwhelmed me. I was thankful to be there to witness it, and yes, in a state of mind to relate, because I may have remained cynical otherwise. I thought it was a miracle that we can all feel that way, despite being mostly reasonable creatures. Everyone, especially love cynics and curmudgeons like I was, should hope to have that faith someday. My voice of reason, so chatty back in spring, is now quiet on the topic.

Later, at the reception, someone expressed this revelation of mine in a blessing to the newlyweds: May your marriage be modern enough to survive the times we live in, but old-fashioned enough to last forever.

A long and happy life together, Gordon and Doris.

I’ve been asked by a video games publisher to recommend someone to attend to a grass roots event in a great city next week, all expenses paid.

You must:
- Be a gamer, preferably a sports gamer
- Have a high-traffic blog
- Be Canadian

Apply within, serious inquiries only please.