Derek W. Wade » Personal

Birthright

Derek — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:36:30 +0000

What is luxury?
Fine food, fine wine
Different lands, different people, different tongues
Water, sand, sun, sky:
Nature in all Her splendour.

Servants and service, our ev’ry whim
Fulfilled -
Singers, dancers, masseurs, chefs
A multitude of choices arrayed
To delight and dazzle us
Confounding our inner judge
Drowning out its strident
Admonitions: “You may not. You must not. There is not enough.”
“You just haven’t earned it yet.”

Freedom from want, freedom from duty
“Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”
Freedom from normalcy, free refills
“You’ve been upgraded.”
Freedom from lack, freedom from fear
“You’ve earned it.”

But Nature is in the world, if you see Her
The songs are in your heart, if you hear them
The wine is from your soul, if you taste it
The food is with your friends, if you share it
The dance is in your work, if you dance it.
Stand up, relax, and enjoy the walk.
You need no upgrade.
“You may. You must. There is enough.”

It
Is yours
And has been –
From the very start.

Pandora’s Box

Derek — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:22:18 +0000

Very much enjoying Pandora Radio while working. Good example of using stochastic input against a known attribute database to yield surprisingly useful results. Their library of my styles of music is a bit small for my tastes, but it’s a nice compliment to DI.fm

Love Subatomic Particles But Hate the Calories?

Derek — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 23:45:35 +0000

Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty, and your old favorites Up and Down, now in Fat-Free versions.

Milestones

Derek — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:50:39 +0000

This year is proving to have perhaps more than its share of challenges. After spending 26 days with my father in the hospital, I was with him when he died last Wednesday.

I’ve been writing quite a lot already, what with obituaries and funeral programs, so for now I’ll let the feature article in our local paper do the talking for me:

Local historian, intellectual Wyn Wade dies at age 62
(South Bend Tribune)

Wyn C. Wade

1944 – 2006

I miss you, Mr. Man.

Letting Go

Derek — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:55:54 +0000

After a 2-month bout with feline lymphoma, today we said goodbye to our beloved pal Kokoro. At long last the dread, the fear, the intensive care, the rollercoaster of good days and bad days is over. Now we can but remember all the joy and depth he brought to our lives, and be glad that we could be the people with whom he spent his golden years.

~ Kokoro, Koko, Biscuit ~

born 1993?
arrived in our lives December 28, 2002
moved on June 23, 2006

such an unusual cat
such an excellent friend

Doesn’t seem likely to be offered soon, does it?

Derek — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:11:31 +0000

At lunch with my wife the other day:

Meg: …sometimes it seems as if everyone on the internet is an idiot.

Me: Well, it used to be that the ‘net was the place for geeks to go and converse with other geeks. Then the web made using the ‘net easy, everyone got on, and now it’s just like the real world.

Meg: Yeah, like all the new settlers moving into the frontier.
Me: I think you can still find some bastions of geekdom though, via media that have higher barriers to entry like a wiki, or IRC.

Meg: So, don’t hang out in the AOL Chatrooms, is what you’re saying.

Me: Not unless it’s the AOL FreeBSD Chatroom… sorry, I couldn’t say that with a straight face.

Warren Spector on Gaming

Derek — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 20:23:03 +0000

Warren Spector is my gaming hero. He gets it: games aren’t about the best graphics, or the most gore, or the best level design. Games are about another reality, “a ritual space where people go and explore elements of their culture and come out changed.”

Said another way: it’s not about the list of features, silly, it’s about the experience.

This is what makes games like the first Jedi Knight, Half-Life, and System Shock 1 & 2 so smashing — and what makes shooters and eye-candy like Serious Sam and Jedi Knight 2 such trash.

I’ve known this since 1982 when I first played Zork as a teenager. No graphics, no sound, just text scrolling up on my screen. An interface which had my immersion into this textual world as its sole goal. Lucky for us Spector knows it too. Read all about him at A Spector Haunts Gaming (GameSlice).