The Map, the Key and he Compass
Each Zelda fan knows there are some basic components to completing a dungeon.
There is the Map, which gives you detailed room disposition from all floors.
The Compass which indicates where the treasures are and where the final boss lies.
And of course, the Big Key, which can open the bosses door, and some times all other doors.
This of course is part of the fun of completing a dungeon, and finding all the treasures in it.
But I'm not here to talk about this marvelous game. I'm here to use this game pattern to talk about life.

In many ways, life isn't much different from completing a dungeon, or even an epic adventure.
Unfortunately for us, we don't have (as far as we know) a map that can give is the disposition of everything to come in our life. So we have to do it the hard way.
We each start our lives with a blank map. One that we fill with every experience. Each experience leads to others, revealing doors as we go through them, sometimes closing others. Sometimes we may find it easy to open a door, maybe we were prepared with a key, but this of course is not always true. Sometimes we have to complete a most difficult puzzle to bypass the closed door, or to reach the lever that opens it. To some these puzzles may seem trivial, while to others it is quite a challenge.
But even going through these doors, we still have no idea of where to go when we start. Some people might help us sharing knowledge of what is behind some doors so that we may enter more prepared or avoid it if desired, and at all possible. But still, where are all the treasures? Where is the last grand battle with the final boss?
Once again life fails to share with us a magical item that can point to all this. And more, we begin with no clue whatsoever of what is we are looking for.
But since we are on the hard path, might as well find these informations along the way. In every experience we can find pieces that we can put together to build our own compass, and so know what sort of treasures are we after, and where are the boss fights we have to go through in other to find our happiness. Some find soon what they want, some stumble upon the boss battles and sometimes even win the fight, without even looking for it.
In the end, we seek out the key to open that final door. For the final challenge.
The key that is not physical, but might still be found in any way that might allow you to reach your final goal.

The curious thing is that neither item is useful without the others.
A lonely map can show you how to move, but not the good places to go.
With just a compass you may know where you can to go, but not how to reach there.
And there is no good in reaching the final boss if you can't cross the door because you have no key.

And so we wander, gathering the pieces as we go.
Sometimes a little piece of treasure may show to us the location of the true treasure we are seeking.
We might see have to trail a path in the opposite direction of our treasure to find the missing piece, but eventually we may be lucky enough to see were happiness lies, before the path closes.
Heck, the trouble of finding the keys to go back in a path may lead you even farther away.

So it is usually better to search carefully every room. You never know if you will be able to back to that room.

Clash of Styles
Life keeps pressing on. All the rush, all the pressures, no one can stop. At least not anymore.
You have to take the offensive. Try to create you path, find your place in society. You can embrace what life gives you, but it is frowned upon if you don't do anything with it.
Everyone demands much of others. Tries to control everything.
When did we become like this?
Or more importantly... why did we become like this?
I'm not like this.
I was born to observe, to be passive, to analyze and to foresee every movement, every outcome.
I was born to take a single action to make the ripples affect everyone in a carefully planned manner.
I find myself in this paradox, where I can't sit idle and let life go by, while it is not natural for me to take point in this world. Pushing, pressing, manipulating, climbing over people.
The future is there, written... but changing every instant. Actions, passive or not changing things.
Observe the glimpses and try to make the best path you can... in your own style.

Time Sink
I've now found a new time sink.
And with it my time has decreased drastically. In inverse reason to the number of new games I purchase.
Steam's weekend deal's are too good an offer to pass. And so I experiment new games, and buy those I think will be nice.
I try to keep a good balance of things, but this is not helping.
But at least it is fun.
Especially when you get to play with friends.

Well, will try to find good words to keep posting here.

First step is the worst.
As the week begins, all that I have planned seems to have fallen apart. At least concerning the plans for this monday.
With one more failure to go take the blood test, a day began, and I knew it was bad.
I tried to contact the doctor, and nothing. I tried to complain about my broken fridge and nothing.
And within the little time I had to complete my promise at work, suddenly all these paperwork appear for me to sign, I have to help others solve some problems, so I end up getting out of work late, hungry and a bit late to take my medicine.
But the best is for last right? I discover that the parking lot has lost my key, and I have to wait for 3 and a half hours til the locksmith comes, breaks the panel of the car to make a copy of the car key. And of course, I discover when I get home that the key does not lock the car, it only turns it on.
Seeing a monday like this really discourages the spirit for the rest of the week.
But of course, the worst seems to be over, so the week tends to get better. Or so the legend goes.
This is like most things in life.
Taking the first step, passing through the beginning is usually the most difficult part.
Guess in the end you just have to power through at the beginning and hope the rest is smooth sailing.

We can no longer assist you.
What would happen, in any great RPG, if suddenly, in the chamber before the final boss, your team members turned to you and said "Sorry, we can't help you anymore, you are on your own."
Guess it can't be worse than going all the way to the princess, fighting off lots of monsters to then discover that she is happily living with her kidnapper.
"She told me once, before I left. No matter how much you have to face, or how well you enjoy your day, what really counts is whether you have a reason to wake up in the morning, or to keep on fighting.
...
She was right"
This service has been discontinued for lack of maintenance.

Braid
When you become a game programmer, there is this frequent question you try to figure out.
"What makes a good game?"
From time to time there appears a game that is so mind blowing that it breaks out of every convention in creating good games.
That sort of game has this unique way of connecting to people.
Some connect by gameplay, with a game that reacts to the way they want and allowing them to do what they want.
Some go by story, enjoying plausible and very deep narrative, with consequences to players actions.
Sometimes we get superb character development, and either identify with a character, or sympathizes with the characters reasons/decisions.
In some other cases we get this connection by feeling deeply immerse in the world, feeling as if it were real, not because of realism, but from because of what it proposes to be, and is.
Jonathan Blow is a remarkable game programmer. He alone created a puzzle game that has this feature.
You sympathize for the main character, you feel satisfaction from completing the oftenly difficult puzzles, the sound and world are what you expect from the gameplay, and the game brings new ways of playing, while keeping you thinking in ways to solves the tasks to complete the game.
It was cute at first sight, and difficult, which alone is enough for my interest. But it is very mysterious, drawing you deep into it each time you play. It is sweet and romantic, at the same time as insightful and analytic.
It is a great game and I recommend to anyone who likes a challenging puzzle.
It is available for xbox360 and for PC. You can see a demo on steam.
It is simple... but incredible in epic proportions.

I wish more games were like this.

Sunday Night Shift.
I came out of work around 19:00... It was sunday and four more days of work ahead before any good night sleep.
Things were getting more stressful in my project.
I walked up the dark street up to the parking lot to get my car.
I was already dark enough, and the street lights were dim, barely enabling a full sight of the street.
Walking toward my car I looked up to a nearby office building.
It struck me as odd, as almost all the windows were lit, as if it was a regular week day.
Do people always work on weekends?
Was it just that building?
Maybe it was pure coincidence... but at that moment it felt like a normal day of work in any week day, and I was not one of the few working late.

Voice of freedom.
I'm all for justice, anyone who knows me knows this.
So I'm in favor of freedom of speech, and the internet serves that well.
But people forget that your freedom should end when it crosses the barrier into someone else's life.
I'm a silent reader. I read web comics, my discussion groups, among some other things, but as a silent reader I only comment or say anything when it becomes clearly relevant.
While I can ignore most inane comments in most places, I sometimes have to raise and join the band to say that the internet has in some ways gotten some people more dumb.
I can let the awful grammar slide, even though I should not.
I can look away from the pointless spamming just for the fun.
But it really gets under my skin when I go to newgrounds.com or youtube to watch something funny and for some reason end up reading the comments.
I do recognize there are some insightful comments, and some are at least a simple representation of one's opinion. But most of them... and I mean MOST of them, are pure babbling about how stupid some one is, or how they praise something REALLY stupid.
The need to say incongruent words, to curse needlessly, to criticize for the sake of saying something is the worse thing to happen to the internet.
Come on, didn't anyone else's mom say to them that if they don't have something useful to say that they should (jump off a bridge) shut up?
I keep hoping that people will realize this. XKCD put it in great perspective with this comic strip: http://xkcd.com/481/
I ask if the people behind this are 8 year old kids, or maybe someone that has REALLY nothing better to do with their lives than to try to demean others', or maybe it is someone with no intellect that feel superior by doing this. By searching for flaws in others and pointing, so that they never have to look to their own flaws.
This is something I like to tell.
When I was little, insulting someone 10 years older meant pummeling. Simple and hard. And we knew it, we respected older people, and they mostly left younger ones alone.
Nowadays you see a 8 years old insulting people as if he/she was the dictator of a country with a million man army behind him/her. I don't know if it is the way kids are raise, the game/TV/movies they come into contact, or if the social pressure in school has risen to the point where this is a mean of survival. All I know is that it is wrong.
You know that feeling of wanting to toss someone in front of a bus?
Humans will never learn to respect the unknown this way, because they don't fear the consequences anymore.
Pitiful.

Time passed, time owned.
Time is one of the prime forces of the existence.
So it is no big surprise the amazing power it has. Especially when it comes to collect unpaid interests.
No I'm not talking about money here.
I know a wide range of different people, each with a sleeping characteristic. Some HAVE to sleep at least 8 hours, some need absolute silence and darkness, some get sleepier when they sleep more than 7 hours and some can sleep through any circumstance which is my case.
I've slept about 6 hours per day for as long as I care to remember. People have told me along the years that this life style would eventually catch up with me.
I was never a believer, but sometimes it does seem to be true.
We say that each body restores a certain amount of energy by sleeping some time. If you fail to meet your body requirements but still push on, someday you'll have to pay up. As a child, the weekend can be used to this end.
As a young adult your weekend is more busy than your weekday. So you have little time to pay up. Eventually the dept become to large for you to control and you end up facing some consequences.
For me it is interesting how I have much more trouble getting out of bed when I sleep a lot, but I can sustain a focused mind better after lunch.
Now when I sleep 6 hours only, I have more trouble focusing my mind, even though my body is still in perfect condition.
Time has a way to collect its interest. After all, it is a prime force.

A Brief Moment
That most beautiful sound, echoed endlessly throughout the empty room to reach a lonely heart.

Wandering
By the time you realize all that I said was true.
By the time you discover that I was away, in the streets, observing while you enjoyed your party.
By the time you notice I'm no more.
You'll see only but the shadow that I leave behind, in the dark corner of that room.
The same as everywhere I go.