I have been sorting out stuff for my website today.

I don't know whether drinking beer at the same time is necessarily the best way to go about it; I had to go for a quick nap mid-afternoon in a drunken daze.

I was browsing through some news sources today and cam across an unsettling item about a woman who threw herself from a building, blurring the distinction between life and art in the process.

Apparently ahe had visited an art gallery the night before and been filmed by artists there as she told everyone how she was going to kill herself. Eventually someone drove her home, but she returned to the gallery and jumped out of a window.

So, was it art?

I haven't gotten any fruther than running a few of the example 'bots. I haven't even looked at the code. Is this because I'm lazy? Is it because I have no commitment? No, it is because I am thorough.

I have spent my downtime reading all about Java. First, I started with an article about the Java Language Environment, which gave me a great overview of what the language was all about.

From there, I did a little thinking about the kind of algorithms I am going to use for targetting. I'm sure that there is some good pattern-matching stuff out there, but the military probably owns it all.

On a tangential note, I get paid in a week. The money is already spent inside my head. Bah, humbug!

Again, I am behind the times. But today I registered for a popular find your old schoolmates type of site, more out of curiosity than through any desire to get back in touch with people I forgot for good reason.

Sure enough, there were at least a dozen names I recognised, and at least five times that many which I probably knew at some point in time. I bashed in a quick description of my own achievements and ambitions and browsed through some of the ones my old friends had typed in.

Initially I was struck by the incredibly poor grammar and spelling, and the total failure (in some cases) to communicate anything about oneself whatsoever. But the killer entry game from someone I had shared an appreciation if computer ganes with, all those years ago.

After a brief, meandering rant about how he had earned a degree two years later than his peers due to excessive alcohol consumption (unimaginable from my own memories of him at school), ST (as I will abbreviate him) closed his entry with: "Anyone remember Outis Stanton? lol".

What the...?

So sure, I was a geek at school. But when did ST elevate himself so high in his own opinion that heof all people could retrospectively mock me? This person who decided to mock me on a public message board hasn't seen me for at least seven years. And yet he drops my name for no reason at all!

This same ST has no doubt forgotten that on sports day, oh so long ago, I was the guy who slowed down to run the cross-country race with him, the only person who didn't think it would be amusing that the fattest kid in school would arrive hame 10 minutes after everyone else was changed.

I thought we'd bonded that day, Stephen. I thought that we were friends.

Okay, so I'm a little late with this one. But bear with me -- I've only been back on the Web for a couple of months. It seems that some clever chappy has come up with an amazing game which can teach you how to program. And he's called it Robocode.

I haven't even got further than downloading the program as I type this, but I know that it is going to be great. I have vague memories of such a game for my Amiga (it seems like aeons ago now), and I can't wait to use my brain to design an "intelligent" killing machine. I don't know much about Java: like Delphi it is one of those languages I managed to avoid.

I worked hard today. I slaved away like some kind of Spartan on with a rock of crack wedged firmly into one of my orifices. So the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was struggle with a complicated piece of computer software in order to continue my site design process. Fortunately, I have been saved from this fate by the mighty Macromedia.

Not that I'm a dunce who needs my hand holding. I happen to have an above-average understanding of all things computer, and I have had experience of a wide range of software. But with Dreamweaver, Macromedia have managed to create the best interface I have had the fortune to encounter and I feel the need to shout about it. I'll probably never use more than 20% of the features they provide, but everything looks pretty and works as advertised - and that's enough for me.

Well done boys and girls; the Christmas card is on the way. Now, back to the code.

So first, a little background. I'm an alpha-tester for a computer game called Game Neverending. The developers are aiming for a Spring 2003 release, and have recruited a small army of web-denizens to help them debug the thing. I was invited to start playing the alpha version about a month ago and immediately became hooked.

I played and played and played. Gradually I crawled up the ladder until I was about as powerful as it was possible to be within this prototype. Life was fun: running around leaving little piles of items here and there, reciting poetry to other players, and generally having a good laugh. And then I decided that I had to push it a bit harder.

The game is (currently) implemented via client-side Javascript, and so I felt the urge to hack it. I don't know why it never occured to me before. Maybe the grass in this Eden was too long, and only when I had trodden it repeatedly did the snake appear. Or maybe I'm inherently lazy. Whatever. The point is that I spent a couple of days looking at the code. And I cracked it.

Suddenly I had the power to do anything I wanted to (almost). There was no need to traverse the map. People irritated me at their peril (oh yes, folks - power corrupts all right!). I brough objects into existence at whim. And for a time it was exciting, sure. But it didn't take too long for a seemingly impenetrable cloud of ennui to descend over me.

You see, the struggle is the game. Once you remove the core of the explorative process you remove a big part of the challenge. You might say that I am worrying too much, that I have set myself free to create anything I wish in this world I am now master of. But I just want them to roll out the next batch of code and make my life difficult again.

Today I achieved something: I began to build my website.