Scott Hartsman - Off the Record

Adam Martin helpfully and subtly pointed out that the RSS feed from this site is only showing summaries of the posts when viewed in certain readers or when viewed raw by Firefox.

Sites that use “click here to read the rest” get on my nerves, too.

I’d only ever proofed it in Sage before. Bluntly, I didn’t even know the “/feed” url existed.

(This is the kind of professional blogger I am: I unpack a tarball, assume that Wordpress isn’t actually using my host to support terrorism,  periodically pound my head into the keyboard, and every three months accidentally hit the Publish button bringing you the valuable content that you see before you now.)

For the elite six of you who read this: Let me know if it’s broken or not for your reader - Happy to look into fixing it if it’s annoying anyone.

Tami figured out the secret. The best way to get me to do something is to tell me I either can’t or won’t. Mutter.

Four jobs I have had in my life (not including your current job):

1. Want fries with that?
2. Tutored some math and physics at MSOE
3. Ran a skate rental shop. Gave lessons. That was a lot of fun.
4. Acted (Tripped and fell into a few tiny paid things - I was my friend’s ride to an audition. Got called up and cast.)

Four Movies I have watched over and over:

1. Princess Bride
2. Scent of a Woman
3. Serenity
4. Fletch

Four places I have lived:

1. Milwaukee, WI
2. Irvine, CA
3. Costa Mesa, CA
4. San Diego, CA

My family is half afraid that if I keep up this trend, my next move will have me living over the border in Mexico

Four Shows I love to watch:

1. House
2. Heroes
3. Rescue Me
4. Daily Show

Hm. I notice a misfit theme…

Four Places I have been on vacation:

1. Orlando
2. Acapulco
3. NYC
4. One trip hitting as many places to ski in Colorado as we could fit in

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Chipotle
2. CPK - Chopped salad. (Read: Meat, cheese, and just enough lettuce to where they can use the word “salad” without openly laughing.)
3. Most any beef that lands on a grill
4. …or misses it entirely, come to think of it. (Ruth’s Chris‘ carpaccio. Not on the menu, and not all will serve it. A much food-wiser friend taught me that and made me try it. If she reads this: Thanks!)

Four favorite drinks:

1. Diet Dr. Pepper
2. …with Malibu. Failing that, some other rum + diet brown mix.
3. Don Francisco’s Vanilla Nut coffee. Grind it yourself-style.
4. You really only need those three to subsist very comfortably.

Four places I would rather be right now:

I’m really not a places person. It’s less about where you are than who you’re there with. Any old place can be awesome.

Four People I Command to do This:

…they’ll all have been sufficiently commanded by now…

What better place to put a TODO list than right here?

• AGDC impressions and comments before AGDC gets too far into the past.
• Comment on The Legend of The Syndicate. Summary: It’s great to see a guild’s history and strategy get made into a real, live, purchaseable book. Hmm. Maybe I won’t need to write a full article about it now. Whatever I say will likely be that, with more words.
• Replace the About Me graphic with something less generic.
• Dig up the original community guidelines post I made for EQ2. I keep losing track of it through mail and board wipes. It needs a real home.
• List of the things I’ve worked on and when they all happened. People occasionally ask. I consistently forget a few.
• Looking at this Sage list on the left side of my browser, there’s at least a couple dozen active people who’ve kept my RSS-reading life interesting over the past few years. I should link them and say thanks.
• Figure out what to put in the Resources links down there at the bottom.
• Archive the producers’ letters and other assorted important posts. Whenever I want to find one, I have to hunt. Hard to think about the future without having the past handy.
• Find an old argument with Rich Vogel about the long term ROI of procedural vs. handcrafted content, and the effects on player attachment of both. (I think I won that one. He and Gordon now both argue “my” side better than I probably did. A belated welcome to the light side, gents. ;).  Oops.  Looks like it was an old argument with Raph.

Anyone in the formidable audience of “you three” have suggestions? If I’m forgetting anything you want to hear about, let me know.

- S.

…that makes me want to start a blog. It always happens. Just returned home from AGDC ‘07 and there it is again.

So far, I’ve resisted the urge due to the commitment that a blog has always implied to me. The fear that it would become some kind of unwelcome chore, in a life already too busy with Other Things. (I do have a ton of respect for Busy People with Real Jobs who manage to excel in their careers as well as keep blogs up to date, but that’s a subject for another post entirely.)

Then it occurred to me. Why would I be doing this in the first place? Largely because there are thoughts that I wish I’d have written down somewhere, or posts I’ve made in assorted corners of the internet, and I’ve always wanted a place to keep track of them. I tend to lose them as computers come and go, and the net has proven much more durable than any individual PC I’ve owned.

This is a place where I plan on posting things I don’t want to lose track of. As of the instant I’m writing this, I’m not seeing it as a place where I want to shout opinions and analysis from the rooftops.

If anyone else finds them interesting or wants or comment on them? All the better. Hi. Welcome. Stay as long as you like.

- Scott