de Paul Warren

Posts Tagged ‘life’

Being a soon-to-be father is a little different than being a mother. Not that I’ve experienced both, but at least for me, it’s still a little surreal. But now that the baby is moving more, and significantly, it is beginning to feel a little more real.

It’s funny in a non funny kind of way. I once thought of posting an entry of how my dreams are starting to fade away. Things that might have been attainable several years ago, are no longer because of time or responsibilities. While at the time, I was saddened to see them leave, they fade in comparison to my apprehension to my being a parent now (soon). The complications our child is going through and what my wife has to endure, all I’m concerned about now, is her well-being. It’s tough feeling so helpless when you’d give anything to help out.

---

Now that Medea is born, the complications continue. She’s been through a lot but it might be a month at least before everything is normal. It’s frustrating to say the least. We want her home. We want her to feed like a normal baby. But despite all that’s gone on, we’ve been rather calm throughout the whole ordeal.

We had plenty to be worried about. Major surgery on a newborn’s neck. It affected the jugular vein. It could have been stressful for us, but we felt at peace. Knowing the chain of events from when Pam was found to be pregnant, to the surgery, it gave us peace and confidence that this wouldn’t be the end.

Events of late wouldn’t worry us now.

Just test and build our patience.

Various things are now pulling at me in all different directions. Work, life, hockey, etc. I don’t seem to have any time to spend on my hobbies anymore. Or at least what time I do have, I don’t seem to get things done. Sometimes I may have a fair bit of time, yet it vanishes with no trace.

I wanted to make an amateur TV show about that at one point. Unlike Seinfeld, which was a show about nothing, this was to be a show being so busy, nothing gets done. Probably lots of stupid jokes that even the small group of friends would say this is dumb after filming it, but still laughing for some reason. Lots of meaningless busy work, distractions from distractions, and plenty of mind changing events (the “lets try something else” kind, not the eureka kind).

But alas, having no camera to do this is probably what stopped us from trying to make a very very poor amateur TV show. One of us was hoping to get one, but that never panned out.

Such is life.

I feel like everything is pending right now. Netfile used by the Canadian Revenue Agency is down and I’m waiting to file my taxes. My laptop isn’t working and hasn’t for a while and I’m waiting for it to be fixed. I’ve recently filed an appeal and I’m waiting on the decision of that. My business is pending as I need to see if I am approved for the self employment benefits. If I go ahead and start the business, I won’t eligible. My current project is taking a lot longer than originally planned. I’m losing my focus and I’m eagerly hoping for the finish date. I have a friend sending me some sketches but he’s ran into some holdups keeping them from reaching me. Getting a new server for my websites will have to wait until I find out if I can get one for a good price. I have other game ideas that will have to wait until iKonquest is finished, and possibly the business has started.

~ ~ ~ ~

Being jobless is beginning to take it’s toll. I love being able to sit at home and create the things of my mind, but reality is starting to rear its ugly head and getting in my way. Getting a job cannot wait. But getting one will mean everything else must.

My Authoring Path
I attempted to create a few novels. Made a few that were 50 to 100 pages but Wooah were they bad. I was a young teenager then, what can you expect?

I also didn’t have the knack for original ideas yet. Well some were my own but it was clear where I had drawn my inspiration from. Never completely satisfied, and a good thing too, I continued to rewrite and record notes for other ideas and stories. It seemed that my originality started to bloom where my ability to stay on task and create one solid story had faded.

I now had thousands of little notes all organized into several large binders that were all unique. I could finally say I had true unique and original ideas for stories. But nothing solid as even one written chapter. My goals for writing had also changed. No longer had I written for expressing and exercising my creativity, I now had the desire to create true literary pieces. While I didn’t expect my stories would be a reading requirement in schools, I wanted the possibility to be there.

My second goal was to create something truly science fiction. Something the community would accept as worthy of the category. Any idea too close to those of “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” and my works would get shunned and called not true science fiction. So I collected many Science Fiction magazines and a few classic novels to study for science fiction is truly about. That when the reader opens the book, they know it’s sci-fi.

Now I don’t have anything completed yet, but I’m working for the first time on my first draft. The whole series has been picked at and adjusted to become more realistic and believable. The draft will be my first, but seeing as I’m currently on another path, I don’t have much time to work on it.

The Development Path
Shortly before I entered college, I didn’t even have a computer. Not that I could afford one at that. I learned how to program on paper. While everyone in the class was writing poor code and just hoping things ran, I had to be sure it ran as I had even less time to develop than they did.

I fiddled around with modding games, not that it went anywhere at the time. Didn’t make anything either, I just took a look at the code but moved on to something a little easier. It was around this time that I started to program with perl and PHP. After a year of perl programming in college, I moved on to PHP and have done most of my development in that since.

I have three projects made with PHP. These, I consider my best work. The latest which is also a game, I have posted here, iKonquest.

My other two are an advanced webmail script by the name of Hermes which is currently used at myguarded.name. It specializes in a not-so-unique anti-spam method of whitelists. Eventually I will invest some time to setup Domain Keys for further security, but the biggest few solutions involve the participation of other services.

My last project is called Themis which is the user management script run by both previous projects.

After I finish iKonquest, my next path will be

Business Development Path
Starting and running my own business. I don’t know why, but I’ve found myself too modest for my own good. I always understate my abilities but find I can’t shake myself from doing this. With the passion I have for the gaming industry, I won’t let it keep me down. If I can’t get a job as a developer, I’ll make my own.

While the company is unregistered, it’s name will remain top secret. But until then, I will be developing games on my own under my own name. I’m quite sure running this company for the first bit will take up at least a third of my time.

Designs are already coming together for a game similar to that of Dungeon Keeper 2 and Evil Genius.