Journal entries - February 2009
The MacBooks have landed
PC makers, run! The cause is lost: Mac laptops rule the world!
While this statement may be somewhat exaggerated (ever so slightly), it is based on the ultimate proof: my observations.
During my first year at university, back in September 2004, there were probably 10 laptops present during lectures, while we were 300 students in our first year of Law. Laptops were marginal, as they have been for many a year in universities in Continental Europe, where courses are often given ex cathedra and aren’t highly interactive.
The professional world: an arena
The gladiator closes his eyes. No surroundings to take in, with the darkness around. Outside, the arena. Lots of gladiators have fought there beforehand, and some have even won their freedom. A couple of them are among the wealthier citizens present: senators, merchants. To think that they were once like him.
He breathes deeply. After years of fighting in the training arenas, this is his first big fight. A fight for a chance to live in a better condition than now. Not the only such opportunity, but best to take the first that comes by.
He wonders whom he will face: people from his training arenas, or people from others? What if he isn’t good enough?
ARPIA2 update, and yet another new song
Update time: ARPIA2.1.1 fixes a number of bugs and adds a couple of mini-features (almost invisible, but pleasant nonetheless), and includes long overdue updates to the in-game music (especially “Adieu”). Download the updated version from the ARPIA2 page.
New song & new music interface
I’ve been somewhat creative these past weeks, and so I have a couple of musical compositions coming along.
Here’s the first of them, Out There (comments more than welcome).
Additionally, I’ve fully set up KavaTunes (thank you MacHeist), and so it is now possible to listen to my compositions from an iTunes-like web interface: visit Peter’s KavaTunes page.
Caught in the web
So many hours spent on the internet!
Whether for work or for leisure, I seem to spend my days online, from looking up legal translations of terminology to accessing documents, from checking news websites to asking the almighty Google for tutorials and trivia. It is both a blessing and a curse.
I feel addicted. Yet, fortunately, I’m still able to play board games, play music, read books, …, without feeling the urge to touch a computer.
I wonder: will future generations in our computerised world even have the luxury of not using the web the whole while that they are awake?
Unbidden, doubt creeps in
With 10-20.000 words to go, the Arpia novels have reached a stage I might consider “critical”: 160.000 words are set in ink, and therefore about 90% of the writing is fully done, not counting the “revision 1″ phase half of the writing still has to undergo.
It’s strange to think that I’ve been working on the Arpia novels since the summer of 2005, over 3 and a half years.
What is even stranger, however, is the fact that I never seemed to ask myself one specific question until now: is it book-material, i.e. is it any good?