Spent the day canvassing the “historical district” (as opposed to what?) on foot, and baking in the heat. I find it interesting that historical accounts of Rome tell the story of Romulus and Remus with as much seriousness as they do of the Emperors and Popes that came afterwards. The twins, descendants of Gods and supposed founders of Rome, were abandoned to their own fate as babies but were found and suckled by a she-wolf. This is recounted as normally as the Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. I did find one account that suggested they may have been found by a hooker nicknamed “she-wolf”, but I guess it lacks the panache befitting Rome.

I read last year that each city can be described by one word and that the word for Rome is Sex. I don’t find that really accurate. Sure, there are ridiculously muscular, tanned and gelled studs on every corner, some of them priests. Maybe the pigeons seem to court their mates a little more insistently than in Montreal. And yes, gift shops sell close-ups of the choicest parts of nude statues with captions like “WOW!!!” on them, but if anything that’s cartoon sex to me.

If I had to choose a word for Rome it would be Sun. Ever powerful, ubiquitous sun. I can’t remember ever being so conscious of it, as in trying desperately to get out of it (and I’ve been in the Sahara). The Roman sun bakes you as soon as it hits; it washes the city in its crazy bright light, and it blasts away all the colors in any picture I take.

Others might describe Rome as Food, too, but the heat makes it impossible to think of pasta. Or of fucking, for that matter.

A direct flight has its advantages, but it really doesn’t make you feel like you’ve travelled at all. Slept deeply through the night flight then was in my hotel, seemingly in minutes. My mind knew this was Rome but I didn’t feel the journey in my bones. It felt more like I’d taken a bus to Québec City, if that.

Did, however, find myself unable to breathe upon seeing the Colosseum this afternoon. It wasn’t so much the poor Christian bastards who met their end there, nor the Gladiators whose blood I probably would have smelled from where I stood, just a connection to everything that’s happened before my little life and everything that comes after it. That feeling is always short and fleeting, but immensely comforting.

Finished the day the way you imagine a typical moment in Rome. Panacotta and espresso at a trattoria on a square, a fedora’ed quartet playing songs that make everyone sway from side to side, a group of perfectly dressed older Italian men at another table clapping along.

Will head back now, planning to fall asleep in front of bad Italian TV.

- I signed up to give some money monthly to the AIDS foundation and they gave me a bag of goodies. Inside, among other things, was a condom with word AIDS printed all over the wrapper. I think that would kinda kill the mood… but I guess abstinence is good prevention too.

- This week I’m finishing a game project I’ve been producing for the Ubisoft Campus for the past little while. I find I’ve been rebitten by the game production bug. I’ll definitely be looking for a game to produce as soon as I get back from…

- Rome. On Sunday I’m leaving for a short solo romp in the Italian capital. Will eat gelato and prosciutto, visit Roman stuff, draw, do yoga and take a side trip to Pompeii.

Silly (and now sixty) lightspeedmom on our trip to NYC last year. Bonne fête Mom!

Well boss, it’s starting to look like a real production. I’m leaving around 7:30 PM, the creative director called me a castrator in public today, and I can’t tell you how happy I am.

Since leaving A2M last year, I’ve been searching for the same level of joy I found in my first years as a game producer (especially on Happy Feet). Unfortunately, by the end of the Iron Man project, that joy had been replaced by throwing up into office garbage cans and on one memorable occasion, losing vision from the stress. Although in hindsight it seems that leaving was the sensible thing to do, it was an excrutiating decision to make at the time without feeling like a failure. I know that the more driven parts of me will always feel like it was.

Anyway, at the time I tried my hand at freelancing and was successful at it, but I missed seeing the same people every day and being part of a team. Slowly I dropped each client in favor of my favorite one, Ubisoft, where I worked in the training department. At Christmas Ubi presented me with a full-time job, saying I’d get paid holiday vacation if I signed right away. I did it for the vacation, unsure of what the job would be.

A couple of weeks ago I landed ass-backwards into Ubisoft’s campus, where 100 soon-to-be graduates are working together to make a game over one semester, and I’m acting producer on this project. The campus gig ends in May, and I finally - happily - have an idea of what I want to do next. And I’m excited about it. I’ll be able to talk about it by the end of this month.

Yahtzee excels at eloquently expressing my thoughts.

…basically I’m just so fucking bored of shit like this. The improbably Warhammer 40k-esque power armour. The automatic healing. The overcompensating macho beefcakes with voices like they’ve had their lips clamped around exhaust pipes their whole lives. The schizophrenic design-by-committee flitting between whiny drama and goofy wisecracks. The obligatory female support character with the no-nonsense attitude and permanently cocked hips. The monstrous, dehumanised, unequivocally evil baddies. The inevitable betrayal from the jaded authority figure. I’ve gone through the same banal motions so many times it’s increasingly hard to talk about them in any meaningful or interesting way.

To be honest, I’m not even really that tired of playing these games when they’re done well, I’m just really sick of seeing only these kinds of projects get real funding and attention. Of course, the cost of game development is such that publishers can’t afford to take many chances and have to guarantee hits for themselves, so it’s not a simple problem to solve.

But still, when you think of the talent, intelligence and passion that this industry has, it’s a huge shame.

The Duchess True-story period drama that actually managed to change my level of appreciation of Keira Knightley from white-hot hatred to tolerance bordering on admiration.
Eagle Eye Brain-turned-off action flick where poor bastard Shia Labeouf has to follow instructions from mysterious female voice on phone or everyone dies. Great bullshit computer interfaces throughout. Very stupid, but does the job it sets out to do. I still white-hot hate Shia Labeouf.
Body of Lies A surprisingly weak and unsatisfying Ridley Scott Iraq-war thing starring Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Starts off good enough but gratuitous romance sub-plot totally fucks up the pacing.
Nights in Rodanthe End-of-flight bottom-of-the-barrel scrape where Diane Lane and Richard Gere play damaged middle-agers who find a second chance at life through their sickly-sweet romance. An assault on intelligence, and even more on consciousness.

I’ve blinded myself with science.

Every time I read about physics, I get stuck at the whole Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle thing. I actually remember straining to understand it one night as a (very nerdy) teenager, and later on in science college, I would spew back the theory without ever really understanding it. Now I’ve finally picked up A Brief History of Time, and sure enough, nothing is more certain than my getting blocked at the Uncertainty Principle.

Here’s my problem:

Some believe that because everything in the universe is governed by a set of rules, if you know the state and velocity of everything in the universe at a given point, you could infer, by applying the rules of the universe, the state of everything at every other time. Hence everything can be said to be predictable. Let’s call this Determinism, which was at a time accepted by the scientific community. That makes sense to me.

But Heisenberg says that you can never measure the position of a particle perfectly, without changing its velocity (this is because you’d have to shed light on the particle to measure its position, and the light would alter the particle’s velocity). So, you can’t ever perfectly know the position AND velocity of a particle. Either you’re uncertain about its position, or about its velocity. Fair enough.

What’s always bugged me about this is that it seems to rest on nothing but an experimental limitation. Just because an experimental limitation introduces uncertainty, it doesn’t follow that uncertainty is a fundamental property of the universe. Yet Hawking explicity says it is; that this is the case no matter what experimental method you use to measure velocity or position. Why?

Hawking even says that some supernatural being could know all (ie. not be limited by experimental limitations), but “such models of the universe are not of much interest to us ordinary mortals”. Well, why wasn’t it a problem to accept Determinism, when there are also obvious experimental limitations to knowing the state and velocity of every particle in the universe?

More importantly, why must the very way the universe works be affected by our ability to measure it? It seems ballsy to suggest that the universe itself operates uncertainly, simply because we ordinary mortals can never know it perfectly. Sure, science must measure and predict, and the introduction of this principle increases the accuracy of our predictions. But why not say that’s the best science can do to be predictive? Why does it follow that this uncertainty is a property of the universe itself?

In other words, why assert that God plays dice with the universe? Why not say, “God doesn’t play dice, it just seems to our imperfect observational abilities that he does”?

I absolutely adore this birthday card I received from a colleague yesterday. In case you’re wondering about the pegleg, Comet’s leg got hurt last week (but she’s ok). Merci JF!