Okay, I'm ten chapters into Dan Brown's new book and I'm riveted. Yup, I should be reading some academic book thing on something else, but please weekend, feed this book into my veins...

If you've ever driven to UCSC you know the wild turkeys (and the deer) and I fear the turkeys greatly (they broke my leg first quarter I taught there). But I'll give them this, they are great at organizing a road crossing.

Final class of the week done. Got to talk about my first ZX Spectrum game "Firebirds" which I made only 42 years ago.

Watched the wedding episode of Sherlock again tonight. I laughed out loud at this pair of characters I love so much. It was great medicine for my soul.

The email I sent to everyone at Ensemble after the original Phoenix was canceled and we were told to make it Halo..

As you can probably tell I'm going through my archives because about 20 years ago I wrote some code I'm trying to find instead of just writing it again.

And I've really got to finish this game off too... we made such a cool second version and then all joined Magic Leap.

Parts of the never released original Phoenix design document when it wasn't based on the Halo IP... I miss this version of that game.

Take my money.

Day 1 impressions of macOS 26 are positive. Finder changes are really good, Xcode is cleaner, dock is easier to use. Negatives are customizing Safari makes the bookmark bar unusable, the clear top bar (for the same reason) and the new preview icon (I'm petty). I do love the new terminal icon though.

Oh my goodness, a non convex hull coding problem.. not dealt with these since Age of Empires 3 pathing... all because I want to make something look good... worth it? ABSOLUTELY.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

i wish more of us could cherish the quality of bigger indie game releases that have come out even in just this past week because i promise it won't always be this way. even with everything happening in games world the quality of some of the best stuff stays incredibly high

OMG, Preview has a new icon in macOS 26. That's going to take me a million years to get used to.

Woke up at 1am to rolling thunder.. very unusual for NorCal.. quickly checked the news to see if anything was happening, nope, it's just pouring with rain.

When I see planets like this in No Man's Sky I'm almost always afraid to press the scan button because it's going to be disappointing news and the texture will change to ... no earth like (in this case it turned into an arctic planet).

This reflects what I see in AI. It can never code as well as someone who knows their way around a CPU, and sometimes makes absolutely terrible, slow, and unreadably unintelligent code choices. gizmodo.com/workslop-ai-...

I dreamt that I was talking to and old man, he said the rapture started a few months back. The four horsemen, Disinformation, Destruction, Dystopia and Disease are already in our world. Then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "you should not be here" and I woke up.

After seeing @aleksieeben.bsky.social release a 6502 assembler, I've been tidying up my version of Chip Morningstar's 6502 Macross. It's x86 which I first developed for the Z80 port of Ballblazer. I used it until I stopped coding in assembler (around 2000). Even made a 6502 version for NES Spot!

Class today. Remembered my slides. Forgot my code. Doh!

This would be Bella as well.

When Seamus calls for people, it's worth listening. He's an absolute genius and any project he needs help on is worth your time.

Michael is 100% worth connecting to if you are in the game industry.

Me.. slides all ready for my new class tomorrow.. sends announcement to students... Students remind me that class starts on Friday... Well, at least the slides are done!

I've played NMS for almost 500 hours and never seen one of these exotics out the wild until today. And I've spent a lot of that 500 hours looking for such a find. I have to keep on looking though since I really wanted the tiger striped variant..

Always nice to see a new 6502 macro assembler on the market. Love the carve out that you can't use it to program a T-800.

Okay No Man's Sky... quit with the jump scares.

Every article this issue covers the cover topic. Good.

I have secured the most important part of my commute. The parking pass. I once heard that the university makes you write a 500 word essay if you park without a permit. I'm too chicken to find out if that's true or not.

If you ever want to realize just how much makeup and costuming goes into a Star Trek production, follow @startrekshots.bsky.social for a few days. I absolutely love this stuff in my timeline, and getting to see the world building detail has been really something.

Echoes of Magic Leap and Apple events...

The murder of emails from the university to remind me classes start next week is always sobering (I teach at two universities, one semester based and one quarter based). Looking forward to it though. Full class!

So. Fracking. Tired.

Negamax class code session done! Even added alpha beta cut-off showing how much that helps.

Going to be epic!

I think I quite like that Localthunk person. www.gamedeveloper.com/production/-...

Good. www.gamedeveloper.com/business/dev...

Both of my classes tomorrow are live coding demos. Those never go wrong! First one is in Lua and second one in C++. And I’m not nervous at all! Nope. I’m good. Comedy gold will ensue.

My brain: "Nope, no idea what you said to these slides you made 6 months ago" Also my brain: "Hey, I worked out how to scroll text quickly on the TRS-80, here's the Z80 assembly for that"

RIP Robert Redford. Spy Game and Sneakers are two of my favorite movies. His quote “Not taking a risk is a risk. That's how I see it.” often bubbles up whenever I am thinking about life. The world is darker without him in it.

I've talked about the awesome fan-created version of Rescue on Fractalus! ("Fractalus") by Luke's Software. If you don't, you have to check it out. One area Luke could use some help with is the Jaggi animation. Luke's not an animator. Know anyone who could volunteer? www.lsdwa.com/contact/

Talking about my new game in class today!

I have the concept of slides for class tomorrow. That’s fine right?

Still flying, still dreaming..

I would love if I could make an Eagle in No Mans Sky, it sure seems like the ultimate modular ship design. And with that I've talked myself into trying...

I watch a lot of my TV on my Apple Vision Pro. Normally in one of the cool environments. It’s awesome for that and on AppleTV+ it works wonderfully. Disney+ has a great AVP app but it chews battery so fast you can’t even make it through a single episode of anything. The new age is strife with issues

Peeks out from cave, looks around, nope, still not a good day to be able to read.

You know, I think the best decision I can make today is to go back to bed with my head under a pillow blocking out the world.

I agree with this, I think the Netflix model doesn't work for video games at all and I'm glad to see some discussion on it.

Just got incredibly passionate in a meeting when the subject of AI came up. I didn't know I had that in me waiting to get out.