paulog · the life of paul grzymkowski - [ log.paulogy.com ]

Today was a good day.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks (not that there’s anything wrong with that - I bet it was a really nice rock), you’ve probably heard about a certain little videogame that was released today. I’m of course referring to Grand Theft Auto IV, a game that was so anxiously anticipated, even I was excited about it - and I don’t even own an Xbox 360 or PS3 (yet). For just about any new technology debut (like the Wii, iPhone, PS3, Halo, etc.) I typically sit back and watch the pandemonium and wonder to myself if all that fuss was truly worth it. But this time my behavior was a little different…

[ sometimes there can be great beauty in chaos ]

Using VLSI design and cutting-edge 0.5 micron CMOS microchips to do what any pre-schooler would know how to do already.

Think you know Tic-Tac-Toe? Think again.

See it here, and here.

Hello.

This is a game I created as a high school senior project.
I call it…”DIRT“.

When I was a kid my Dad and I used to play drawing games. Sometimes he would draw a primitive shape or letter and hand it to me, and I would have to turn it into something interesting. An “S” might become a snake, a square might turn into a simple house, etc. Then I would make a squiggle of my own and give it to him to finish, and we would go back and forth like that until one of us ran out of ideas or got bored. So I guess it wasn’t really much of a “game”, but I liked creative drawing so it was fun nonetheless.

Often my Dad and I would play the game on my Magna Doodle. You remember those things, right? It had a magnetic tethered pen, a couple of geometrically shaped stamps, and a slider bar that erased your work like “magic”. If yours was anything like mine it probably looked something like that picture on the right except instead of a kitty it probably had some assortment of genitalia drawn on it. Well, maybe not back then, but if you rummaged around to find yours now I bet it would. Because really, what good are creative kids’ toys if your college buddies can’t defile them with their dirty minds later in life?

Anyway, the point is I used to really enjoy drawing, and “The Line Game” as I think we called it was one of my favorites. So I was somewhat pleased when, in my Senior year high school Psych class (of all places), I was presented with the following assignment: