NaBloPoMo

I was struck with an idea for a blogging-related event to run on Astaria last night.

As many people know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  People participating are encouraged to push hard on getting an entire novel written throughout the course of the month.

It turns out that November is also NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month.

So my idea is this: Any Astarian who starts a blog in between now and November 1st, and posts at least one on-topic article demonstrating at least some minimal level of real effort, per day for the entirety of November wins a prize.  I haven’t decided what the prizes are yet.

Anyone interested in participating should comment in reply to this post, and when their respective blog is up, I’ll happily add a link exchange to my sidebar.

First Post

Welcome to my personal development blog.  I plan to use this space to write primarily about my work on the MUD Astaria, but also sometimes about other code projects and other code-related and technical issues which are of interest to me.

I welcome questions about specific or general technical issues as well as suggestions for future posts or articles, though of course there are some confidentiality concerns surrounding disclosure of actual code from both Astaria and from work.

As for me — who am I?  Well, I’m just a guy who’s worked in technology kind of a lot.  Most of my work credentials won’t mean anything.  But for the Astarians, it’s a lot easier to point out what I’ve done to the game:

  • I’ve been an active wizard for six years.  I was at one time an admin, but resigned, and was talked into coming back afterward only on the condition that I get to step down and stay at Elder indefinitely.  There’s a lot of complexity to that decision, but essentially it comes down to shirking the more frustrating parts of responsibility.
  • I’m approximately one-third of the creative power behind the Druid’s Guild.
  • I did a lot more behind-the-scenes work generating some awesome new functionality that nobody ever uses for the Cat and Fiddle Tavern in Astaria City than any of you realise.
  • I coded some infamous mayhem monsters hard enough that they often despawn from inactivity rather than being killed — and they do so despite my personal standard that challenge comes from complex mechanical interactions, not just big damage numbers.  Dagoyel the Deathjester and Anise, if you’re curious.
  • I’ve been proudly sending Astarians on snipe hunts for five years now.

For a slightly more comprehensive view of individual projects and personal history, I recommend you check out my Astaria wiki page (which redirects to my old name, Kalder.)

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and welcome!  I hope to have enough content to keep people interested in dropping by from time to time.