Sorry I haven't been posting much for the last few days — it's been a tiring few weeks and a few "non-essential" things have just sort of fallen by the wayside in the meantime! The weekend as a whole appeared to be one of them — I've no idea where it went. With luck, things should be settling down a bit now, as a couple of big jobs are finally over and done with.
I've been happy to rediscover reading amid all this. Enjoying some reading has been a great way to escape from absolutely everything — including computer screens. For those who've not used a Kindle before, their screen is this lovely "e-ink" thing that looks impressively like printed words on paper. There's no lighting (not on my model, anyway) so no distracting glow, no notifications, no Internet (aside from downloading and syncing books) and, to be honest, that's absolute bliss.
As I noted the other day, I've been particularly enjoying Howard Scott Warshaw's memoirs "One Upon Atari", in which, among other things, he recounts the story of the creation of his notorious E.T. game for the Atari 2600, and goes off on an impressive number of tangents along the way. He tells stories in an incredibly vivid way, however; throughout everything I've read, I've been able to picture the situation in my mind and be right there alongside him during these fascinating, curious years.
Warshaw's writing is particularly interesting because in the intervening years between him working at Atari and now, he's qualified as a psychotherapist, and as such he has a whole other level of insight to bring on all manner of subjects — be it the bizarre behaviour of Tod Frye, the conflicts between Marketing and Engineering at Atari at the time, or simply his own mental state during the stressful five-week dev cycle that E.T. was lumbered with.
That by no means makes his writing dry and boring, mind; quite the contrary. Warshaw is what one would politely describe as "a character", and I suspect listening to him tell these stories in person would be an absolute hoot. Regardless, his work is making for great bedtime and toilet reading; I'm about three quarters of the way through now and looking forward to his insights on the "great crash", which is, presumably, the climax of the book.
Anyway. Strong recommend if you haven't read it already — particularly if you already have an interest in classic Atari.
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