I just spent the last hour and a half fighting with webdav, emacs, and MobileOrg. I thought that I had all of this settled a while ago, but, as before, org-mode just keeps surprising me with new functionality that I hadn’t yet realized that I needed. Now I can capture from my mobile, as well as update todo states.

Next up, I want to do the org-mobile-push from the emacs running on my slice, rather than from Aquamacs running on the desktop; and I want to dispatch it as a post-commit hook in my bare orgfile git repo.

People who read this (if there are such people) have probably noticed the trendy little tag cloud in the bottom-right corner of the front page. I put it there mostly as an exercise in playing around with ikiwiki, the wiki compiler that generates what you see here. The unintended consequence has been a harsh light on the fact that I’ve posted much more about gaming and programming than about faith and scripture. These are the things that are supposed to be primary, but I pay them much lower attention than comparative trivialities.

I can provide all kinds of excuses for this (a lack of focus doesn’t imply a lack of esteem); but, in the end, my actions define who I am, not some abstract internal definition of self.

This bit of naval-gazing comes to a point now as I prepare for my upcoming lesson to be presented at our worship group this Friday. As is my pattern, I will attempt to prepare in a publicly-visible place in hopes that it will spur me to action and follow-through.

In our last meeting, Amir asked how often we were going to share communion together. Though Mark and I had discussed it before we separated into smaller groups, we only came to a position of “as often as is meaningful.” That can be a bit nebulous in practice, so last week we decided to pray about it separately and come back together on Friday to discuss it (and definitely at least share communion then).

For what it’s worth, I plan to make sure that I have suitable elements (bread and grape something) set aside and available whenever we host worship, so that we’re not physically constrained in the future.

In any case, all of this got me thinking that we could probably do with a lesson about communion: it’s history, purpose, and meaning, or some such thing.

Despite an increasing catalog of experience, I am always surprised to find people who don’t share the same pervasive familiarity with game mechanics that I do. I’ve tended to play and discuss games with other people who play and discuss games. Most of the assumptions that are safe enough in such a circle aren’t as universal as we think.

When was the last time that you had to explain that jumping on enemies kills them? Or that you could go down pipes? Let alone what it means to circle strafe.

I recently (re-)listened to Active Time Babble episode V, which consists mostly of a discussion of the definition of the genre “RPG.” As is usually the case with this particular topic, there was no real definitive conclusion; but I think I might have stumbled on one for myself:

A role-playing game models the development of character skill as distinct from player skill such that the manipulation of this model is the primary expression of player skill.

I’m enjoying Chrono Cross quite a bit so far. The battle system is quite different from what I’m used to from a jrpg; and even though it seemed shallow at first, my first mildly difficult boss battle made me delve a bit deeper into it: the ability to take multiple actions per “turn,” as well as the ability to change the active character at will, let me use the “defend” command more than I usually do (that being ever).

I was afraid that Retronauts had spoiled a major plot point for me; but while I’m still aware of the general concept, I’m no longer certain of the details. I suppose that will leave me with a bit of surprise. (I don’t want to spoil the plot for anyone else, though, so I’ll leave it at that.)

The accents are already starting to get to me, though. Kid’s “Australian” isn’t too bad, but every time the “French” clown character comes out I can’t help but groan. I think my top request for a remake would be to subtle-down the dialog, even before upresing the rendering.

My attempt to follow the Ramadan fast this year is going much better than last year. (I didn’t get violently ill after one day, after all.) I think it’s about ten days to go now, so I seem to be in the clear.

It’s been an interesting experience. I’ve learned a bit about myself, and about the centrality of food (specifically eating) to society. I haven’t spent much time with my coworkers during the fast: there’s no lunch, no coffee breaks…

Yesterday wasn’t so good of a day for me, both for completely unrelated reasons and because I hadn’t had enough water the night before. We were out of food, so I was at Tamimi to get something to eat for iftar. There was Khan: “Jon! Come have breakfast with me!” For once, it just felt right. I went with him, and shared iftar with Khan and his coworkers in the back of Tamimi.

It was awesome.

I found myself wanting to revert changes made in a previous git commit… but only changes to a specific file (whereas the commit changed multiple files). As usual, git has just the combination of tools that I needed:

git diff $commit ${commit}^ $file | git apply -

Thank you, git.

I was unable to play Radical Dreamers on my DS. Absurdly enough, even the minimal audio-visual effects were too much for SnemulDS. No matter: moving to the Wii meant that Andi and I could play it together (more comfortably, anyway).

We’ve played through two scenarios so far. The game is amazing (in a “games are art,” hippie kind of way). Its presence in the Chrono series does a lot to justify the series’ classification as a classic, being so unique.

Andi was skeptical at first, but after about an hour of play time (halfway through the first scenario) she was remarking about how good it was; how it draws you in. This morning, she was the motivator behind going after another scenario.

I look forward to finding the rest of the endings, and am even more excited for Chrono Cross. (I might get it as early as Saturday!)

After three days, including time spent at home, on the bus, and in the Mall of Arabia, I finally finished the final dungeon and sequence in Spirit Tracks. I’ve got to say, Spirit Tracks is awesome. I was excited for the game, yet still it exceeded those expectations. The dungeons were great, the final (tool) item is creative and fun, it was longer than I expected (but redeeming itself by making each step better than the last). It’s not just good compared to Phantom Hourglass. It’s not even just a good portable Zelda. This is a great Zelda game in the context of Zelda games, at least in the modern (post-OOT) scope of the series.

It’s all in the characterization of characters. The main cast is emotive, sympathetic, and believable. There’s some typical wackiness, but it’s never embarrassingly over the top. It’s just good fun, and it goes on for a good long time.

All that, and I’ve only purchased one train upgrade. I understand that there’s a good quantity of sidequest content to search down. I’ll probably take a break for a bit (it took me longer to get through this than it should have) but I can see tracking down the treasures and beefing up the train, just ’cause.

Next up: Chrono Cross. I very quickly judged the game as stupid years ago, but I anticipate being wrong about it. While I wait for a friend to bring it from the states for me, though, I might try out Away: Shuffle Dungeon for a bit.

Last night I submitted my second paper to LISA. (The first was as coauthor for a paper that was not accepted). I had to hurry when I found out that the terms of submission had changed since last year, but at least I got it in (and by the third attempt, I had come to terms with my distilled “extended abstract”).

Now I have to do is wait to see if this paper is accepted. I should hear back by 1 July.