Back in June (of 2008) I alluded to some of my thoughts about how the subjective experience of time depends a lot on our state of mind or consciousness in general. A later post also teased at the follow up to all those intriguing topics.

This post isn’t going to be about any of that.

What this post is about, is the fact that it has been sitting in a draft in my WordPress for nearly a year. Eleven months! Why is that?

It really goes to show just how funny of a thing time really is. June 2008 felt like yesterday and oh my how the time has flown by. The second half of 2008 was an interesting time. I made my share of mistakes but set the stage for some great successes as well. And so far in 2009 those successes have been falling into place. Six months ago if you’d have told me that the love of my life would be moving in with me in late June I would have laughed.

Work has taken its fair share (some might argue more than its fair share) of time lately as well. It built to a head not that long back but I learned an important lesson in the process. I learned that while I have capacity for taking on a lot (not just work, but many other things as well), I do have some limits. A lot of that has more to do with keeping myself happy than it does with any actual “limits”; sure there are of course real limits to what I can handle, but the bigger question is how much do I want to tackle, why, and will it bring me closer to my goals?

It’s interesting (to me) to see how my life has progressed to this point, and I’m really looking forward to the next chapters. Does that mean a new begining around here? I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

I’ve been meaning to take care of this for a while now. My site is now also accessible from NaimFalandino.com. Both LNFalandino.com and the new one make sense to use since those are the two most common ways I’m identified on the net.

My long term plan is to get the blog moved over to a sub-domain and have a more free-form root where I can put up content and other various things. We’ll see how long that takes.

Not much of an update, I realize. Life has been pretty busy lately.

Every twelve months or so I decide that I haven’t had White Castle in a while and the need for it hits me. And every time afterward I decide not to have it again any time soon. The pain is forgotten in time though, perhaps similar to the forgetting process a woman goes through after giving birth.

Maybe this time I’ll remember.

[Note: I know I haven't been posting hardly at all lately. I have tasked good buddy Paul with giving me a topic to write on to start getting me back into the habit. This is the first one.]

The hype machine for Assassin’s Creed 2 has started up apparently with the realease of a teaser ahead of the official reveal next week. As I watched it got me thinking back to the first game a bit (which I posted some early thoughts on) and how it ended.

Those initial complaints of mine carried through the entire game pretty much. By the time I finished it I was left empty by how badly the gameplay itself fell flat. It was great in short bursts but the lack of variety and “meh” combat really hampered the experience in general. In my opinion you really did get some sense of the fact that the vast majority of the development cycle was spent on technical aspects of the game, not the gameplay itself.

Luckily, however, I did also get the feeling that while the devs were working on the engine they did manage to work out a story that was pretty interesting. I do think the dialog was a bit rough in places, but the overall story did grab my interest and by the very end with all its lose ends I felt that they were setting themselves up for a successful second game.

The majority of the technical aspects should have been worked out at this point so now they can focus on something that didn’t quite make it in the first game: Making it fun.

The teaser doesn’t say much, but here’s what I got out of it:

• the handy-dandy hidden blade will make a return
• it will most likely be set during the Renaissance (or at least, we’ll be playing in that time period through the genetic memory magic machine)
• there could very well be a flying contraption

Sounds good to me. The sections where I was most interested in the first game involved slowly walking around a modern apartment engaging in linear, non-branching dialog or looking at bizzare scrawls on the walls and floor. Let’s hope the second one improves on that.

Naked singularity > Loop quantum gravity > Doubly-special relativity > Oh-My-God particles > Dugway Proving Grounds > Dugway sheep incident

We live in interesting times.

Maybe if I change the theme that’ll get me to write something a bit more substantial here. Yeah.

Must… find time… to write.

I was tagged by the venerable John Phillips in the “7 Things” meme where I’m required to disclose seven various things about myself that I think are worth noting about myself. I’m sure a lot of the people who read my blog will already know some of these but here we go anyway.

1. I love Detroit. This is probably a pretty obvious one for most people who have talked to me at any length, but it’s true. I love the area and the state I live in. No, I don’t have rose colored glasses on and think that it’s perfect, but I do think that far too many people sell it short. Ultimately I think a place you live in is what you make of it and I love working a bit to find the hidden gems and small things about this area that make it really feel like home to me. Locals always know how to have the best time, as they say.
2. I am a philosopher at heart. Even before I went to college and studied philosophy fairly extensively it was always an area of great interest to me. The sciences are as well of course, but deep down I feel that they ultimately go hand in hand. Elegance of solution when it comes to unlocking the mysteries of the universe should include the philosophical implications, although we may not have a good enough understanding yet of either side to draw any real conclusions. Yet it is something I do spend a lot of cycles thinking about, even if I don’t discuss it much.
3. Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies. I’m a guy with a lot of hobbies, yet cooking and baking are actually two of my favorites. I see each opportunity I get to spend in the kitchen as another outlet where I can try and flex my creativity. More than that though I’m getting pretty good, so I get a nice meal out of it too! I’ll also note that I don’t typically follow recipes. I might check them out for inspiration or ideas but beyond that I don’t really pay close attention to them.
4. I consider an open mind to be one of the most valuable things a person can have. There isn’t a whole lot more that needs to be said about this. Suffice it to say that anyone who isn’t willing to reconsider their opinions about any given topic is only hurting his or herself in the long run.
5. I don’t consider socialism a dirty word. The fact of the matter is that there have been lots of good and worthwhile social programs by many democratic and free countries, including ours. A moderate approach that blends the best of “socialist ideals” (or perhaps “humanist ideals” fits what I mean more) with the undeniable virtues of a free market society would provide a fair and just system that would benefit a much larger percentage of people than an government at either extreme. At least, in my opinion.
6. I know that music is one of the most important things we have. Music is one of those amazing things that could easily be considered one of the most wonderful things that we as a species have created here. Granted, a lot of it is derivative and awful, but there is plenty that isn’t. As a musician myself I find that music is critical to my happiness… It’s hard if not impossible for me to imagine a life that didn’t involve music so heavily. To that point I think that musical education should be taught to all children at least through sixth grade.
7. I believe in the technological singularity, sort of. I do think that we as a species will set our own evolutionary path through technology, although I suspect it will be a much more gradual (and will also seem fairly natural) process than some predict. (That is, I go with the soft take off or augmented intelligence approach, rather than a hard take off or Strong AI based singularity.) I haven’t entirely made up my mind about this, but I do think it’s more likely than not. Look back just at ten years of progress and try to guess at the next ten, let alone fifty.

Bonus: I think popcorn is one of the greatest things in the world.

Done! It took me a while to get around to writing this, but I wanted to let it percolate in the back of my mind for a while and pick seven things that I thought were important to me.

Here are my victims:

• Jenn Ng
• Sandy D.
• Julius M.
• Luke Hackney
• Herbert C.
• Sarah V.D.V.
• Jeremy Tanner

And the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.