Psychophant's Rants
25.10.07
An image, or many
Not many words, but looking through old photos (not many, as I am not that concerned about images of myself) I found this photo:
Myself, Blanca, my mother and my brother, in Versailles. Then I would drive her to Fontaineblau while my parents took my brother to the Netherlands, where he was working back then.
It is weird almost all of my images in my twenties have a woman I have loved in some way in it. A few more.
¶ 6:36 PM 
Not many words, but looking through old photos (not many, as I am not that concerned about images of myself) I found this photo:
Myself, Blanca, my mother and my brother, in Versailles. Then I would drive her to Fontaineblau while my parents took my brother to the Netherlands, where he was working back then.
It is weird almost all of my images in my twenties have a woman I have loved in some way in it. A few more.
¶ 6:36 PM
20.10.07
Low writing pressure
Although blogging is not for me a sign that I am on vacation, it still is a way to blow off the steam that builds up on my daily life. Writing has a liberating effect for me, making things much less worrying or menacing once they are set on black and white. So it is on vacations when I do not blog, but blog afterwards, when I am no longer there.
However the recent break has nothing to do with holidays, even if in-between there was the yearly festival here, and a lot with loosening pressure through other means.
The steam has been blowing on forum posts, a form of writing that is lower than blogs, as blogs are lower than novels. But oh so inmediate. In a way it seemed as if I had moved full circle and I was once again in May 2003, joining a forum for the first time, after years of mailing lists and sedate digests every morning.
Later I discovered an even faster response and inmediacy with IM, but that was too fast for me. There are few people I feel comfortable at that level of communication, and most just don't do IM. So it is a phase, some technology to explore and find does not fit me. I also joined and then started blogs. All the web based forms. Without forgetting a quite heavy e-mail correspondence, not in the number of correspondents but in the volume of writing. Many days it got to close to an hour writing personal mails.
But as Gibson above, all the hiatus in blogging brought heavier forum presence, and the forum absences brought a stronger e-mail and blogging activity. The pressure has to go somewhere, but it is a limited resource, so once it has been spent, it is gone for a while.
I feel I have gone full circle, even in my life. After some good years, I am getting discontent once again (and accumulating a growing backlog of procrastinated paperwork) at work. My personal situation resembles once again 2003 as well. But the rest of the world has moved on. The interesting people, the challenging minds, are gone or are already known rather than new. And the technologies no longer feel new, so steps go much faster than they did the first time. Rather than months, I am getting tired of it in weeks. Then, the pressure will need to be liberated again. ¶ 12:15 PM
I've found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I've most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I'm doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I'm still blogging, I'm definitely still on vacation. I've always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid's been left off. William Gibson's blog (12/9/2003)
Although blogging is not for me a sign that I am on vacation, it still is a way to blow off the steam that builds up on my daily life. Writing has a liberating effect for me, making things much less worrying or menacing once they are set on black and white. So it is on vacations when I do not blog, but blog afterwards, when I am no longer there.
However the recent break has nothing to do with holidays, even if in-between there was the yearly festival here, and a lot with loosening pressure through other means.
The steam has been blowing on forum posts, a form of writing that is lower than blogs, as blogs are lower than novels. But oh so inmediate. In a way it seemed as if I had moved full circle and I was once again in May 2003, joining a forum for the first time, after years of mailing lists and sedate digests every morning.
Later I discovered an even faster response and inmediacy with IM, but that was too fast for me. There are few people I feel comfortable at that level of communication, and most just don't do IM. So it is a phase, some technology to explore and find does not fit me. I also joined and then started blogs. All the web based forms. Without forgetting a quite heavy e-mail correspondence, not in the number of correspondents but in the volume of writing. Many days it got to close to an hour writing personal mails.
But as Gibson above, all the hiatus in blogging brought heavier forum presence, and the forum absences brought a stronger e-mail and blogging activity. The pressure has to go somewhere, but it is a limited resource, so once it has been spent, it is gone for a while.
I feel I have gone full circle, even in my life. After some good years, I am getting discontent once again (and accumulating a growing backlog of procrastinated paperwork) at work. My personal situation resembles once again 2003 as well. But the rest of the world has moved on. The interesting people, the challenging minds, are gone or are already known rather than new. And the technologies no longer feel new, so steps go much faster than they did the first time. Rather than months, I am getting tired of it in weeks. Then, the pressure will need to be liberated again. ¶ 12:15 PM
8.10.07
No loss in translation
The exorcism did work. The break between posts is no longer due to personal conflict, but because I am terribly short of time.
This time shortage comes from a project I started in July, though some preparatory work was done previously. I made a compromise to translate a set of wargame rules into Spanish, for no money, just to make sure many Spanish players can play the game.
On one hand that shows I like the game. On the other, that in the dozen years since I last took part in a paid translation work I had forgotten what a hard work it is. At least if you take pride in your job, aiming for something both semantically and stylistically correct.
Another translator on the same project (for other European language) just babelfished the whole text and then revised it. As his work is in a language I can at least read, I checked it and it horrified me. Any style aspiration is lost in babelization, and the reviewing was done to keep the literal meaning of the original, which meant butchering the language even more and portions of that dreadful written form, legalese.
Because this is a rulebook, and people from different countries will be expected to play with no common language, the mechanisms of play have to be the same, but also the small minutiae, the details, exceptions and artifacts of the rules have to be translated as well. That means that you need an excellent knowledge of the game to decide how to translate it. Which is why the translators are taken from the playtesting pool. Because that does not guarantee the rules will be nice or easy to read, but they will mean the same, and we will all play with the same base assumptions.
Most games develop rules lawyers. These are people who study the rules looking for a loophole, a particular advantage or weakness, that then they can exploit. These people do not play for fun, they play to win. And, due to the differences in sentence construction, it is actually possible to make a sentence much clearer in a translated language than in the original (as also some simple four word sentences require two sentences and eighteen words to get the same exact meaning). But this interplay thing means that the loopholes that exist in English have to be kept, if possible, while avoiding opening new ones.
A haunting work, at least for the same version. Then we will get a new original version, and we will get to plug a few holes, open a couple new ones, and start the slow cycle of improvement. But at least there changes are minor and are well marked. The first version, the initial core rules, they have to work from the beginning, as a bad translation, or even worse, a defective one, can kill a game for ever.
A terrible responsibility for something that should be a hobby that you do for fun.
There are advantages. I have improved so much my rules knowledge that I have not been beaten in the last three months. And avoiding those loopholes I know there are but I cannot change, now that the English version is closed for publishing, which means no more updates till the 1.1 version is planned, which will depend on initial sales...
And now back to one of my initial conundrums. How to translate spearmen and lancer, when the Spanish word for both types of soldier is the same? ¶ 6:08 PM
The exorcism did work. The break between posts is no longer due to personal conflict, but because I am terribly short of time.
This time shortage comes from a project I started in July, though some preparatory work was done previously. I made a compromise to translate a set of wargame rules into Spanish, for no money, just to make sure many Spanish players can play the game.
On one hand that shows I like the game. On the other, that in the dozen years since I last took part in a paid translation work I had forgotten what a hard work it is. At least if you take pride in your job, aiming for something both semantically and stylistically correct.
Another translator on the same project (for other European language) just babelfished the whole text and then revised it. As his work is in a language I can at least read, I checked it and it horrified me. Any style aspiration is lost in babelization, and the reviewing was done to keep the literal meaning of the original, which meant butchering the language even more and portions of that dreadful written form, legalese.
Because this is a rulebook, and people from different countries will be expected to play with no common language, the mechanisms of play have to be the same, but also the small minutiae, the details, exceptions and artifacts of the rules have to be translated as well. That means that you need an excellent knowledge of the game to decide how to translate it. Which is why the translators are taken from the playtesting pool. Because that does not guarantee the rules will be nice or easy to read, but they will mean the same, and we will all play with the same base assumptions.
Most games develop rules lawyers. These are people who study the rules looking for a loophole, a particular advantage or weakness, that then they can exploit. These people do not play for fun, they play to win. And, due to the differences in sentence construction, it is actually possible to make a sentence much clearer in a translated language than in the original (as also some simple four word sentences require two sentences and eighteen words to get the same exact meaning). But this interplay thing means that the loopholes that exist in English have to be kept, if possible, while avoiding opening new ones.
A haunting work, at least for the same version. Then we will get a new original version, and we will get to plug a few holes, open a couple new ones, and start the slow cycle of improvement. But at least there changes are minor and are well marked. The first version, the initial core rules, they have to work from the beginning, as a bad translation, or even worse, a defective one, can kill a game for ever.
A terrible responsibility for something that should be a hobby that you do for fun.
There are advantages. I have improved so much my rules knowledge that I have not been beaten in the last three months. And avoiding those loopholes I know there are but I cannot change, now that the English version is closed for publishing, which means no more updates till the 1.1 version is planned, which will depend on initial sales...
And now back to one of my initial conundrums. How to translate spearmen and lancer, when the Spanish word for both types of soldier is the same? ¶ 6:08 PM
3.10.07
False Memory overload
These last days I have been unable to write here. It is not an excess of emotion or sorrow, as seven years not seeing each other is enough to build quite a separating distance. It is not emotion, it is memories.
If there is one thing she did was to cross through most of my life. One of the curses of getting older is that there are more memories to keep track off, so it is easier as well to get lost in them.
When I started to plan what would be the next post, I just started reminiscing, or reflecting on those reminiscences. The coming signal of the end of the first year of my fourth decade, the new middle point in life, also helped to set the mood. So I end up with many beginnings and no continuations.
This is an exorcism, a way to mark a line so I can acknowledge all those old and new insights about myself, my life, and the zillions of lost moments that I will have lived through in countless parallel universes.
The reflections about what happened, what could have happened and what should have happened is what brings up the false memory epithet. Because rather than speculations, at times it feels as if they are memories from another me, coming to intrude on my sense of self. Which gets worse because I am well aware of how faulty my memory is, and how many times it has tricked me.
So, is a memory of a kiss of the actual kiss, of some other kiss (possibly with someone else) or just a wish fulfillment daydream? This far ahead, it is difficult to say. Does it matter?
It is worse when there were not constraints, as in the constrained case often there is only one course of action I could take without stopping being myself and becoming someone different. But in others the false memories do not ring false, because I could have done that, and still be myself. Is it true that I have never smoked? I believe so, but that belief in itself means I may very well overlook a single cigarette in my teens, when certain people could have made me do that and much more just by asking, or offering. The list can go on. In a row, was it really her fault or was I just being stubborn? The memory seems clear, but I also know how thick-headed I can be.
Once you start that way, it gets slippery very quickly. Was the Scotland trip as wonderful for my friends as it was for me? What I remember as a magic evening, was magic for her too? Or what I thought was cosmopolitan and worldy, was just boorish and pretentious? Did everyone else hate that teacher, or was it just me? The best solution is to accept we are self-centered and a bit selfish, so if I remember it as fantastic, it surely was, for the one who matters. If she and I still talk, we may discuss it, but the most likely is that we are no longer on speaking terms, so I will have to decide that I am right, as long as there is no proof of the contrary. Or nothing new will be done, just from questioning the past. Indeed, going full circle, that is what blocked me at the start.
And boys, if the London squatters house was not cool, at least it was cheap, and it has given us a talking matter for ten years. The other benefit is that I no longer travel to London without prearranged lodgings. As for other memories, they will have to wait their turn. ¶ 7:49 PM
These last days I have been unable to write here. It is not an excess of emotion or sorrow, as seven years not seeing each other is enough to build quite a separating distance. It is not emotion, it is memories.
If there is one thing she did was to cross through most of my life. One of the curses of getting older is that there are more memories to keep track off, so it is easier as well to get lost in them.
When I started to plan what would be the next post, I just started reminiscing, or reflecting on those reminiscences. The coming signal of the end of the first year of my fourth decade, the new middle point in life, also helped to set the mood. So I end up with many beginnings and no continuations.
This is an exorcism, a way to mark a line so I can acknowledge all those old and new insights about myself, my life, and the zillions of lost moments that I will have lived through in countless parallel universes.
The reflections about what happened, what could have happened and what should have happened is what brings up the false memory epithet. Because rather than speculations, at times it feels as if they are memories from another me, coming to intrude on my sense of self. Which gets worse because I am well aware of how faulty my memory is, and how many times it has tricked me.
So, is a memory of a kiss of the actual kiss, of some other kiss (possibly with someone else) or just a wish fulfillment daydream? This far ahead, it is difficult to say. Does it matter?
It is worse when there were not constraints, as in the constrained case often there is only one course of action I could take without stopping being myself and becoming someone different. But in others the false memories do not ring false, because I could have done that, and still be myself. Is it true that I have never smoked? I believe so, but that belief in itself means I may very well overlook a single cigarette in my teens, when certain people could have made me do that and much more just by asking, or offering. The list can go on. In a row, was it really her fault or was I just being stubborn? The memory seems clear, but I also know how thick-headed I can be.
Once you start that way, it gets slippery very quickly. Was the Scotland trip as wonderful for my friends as it was for me? What I remember as a magic evening, was magic for her too? Or what I thought was cosmopolitan and worldy, was just boorish and pretentious? Did everyone else hate that teacher, or was it just me? The best solution is to accept we are self-centered and a bit selfish, so if I remember it as fantastic, it surely was, for the one who matters. If she and I still talk, we may discuss it, but the most likely is that we are no longer on speaking terms, so I will have to decide that I am right, as long as there is no proof of the contrary. Or nothing new will be done, just from questioning the past. Indeed, going full circle, that is what blocked me at the start.
And boys, if the London squatters house was not cool, at least it was cheap, and it has given us a talking matter for ten years. The other benefit is that I no longer travel to London without prearranged lodgings. As for other memories, they will have to wait their turn. ¶ 7:49 PM
