Giant Mice

If you’ve visited this site over the past year or so, you’ve seen a site very much in progress with an almost complete design and a not nearly complete portfolio. Oh the plans I had. I still have them, but I’m finally giving myself permission to let them go for now. I’m hoping that the return to simplicity here won’t make me feel guilty every time that I want to post something - as if I should be focusing on the design and portfolio instead of the thoughts and ideas that helped me to fill that portfolio.

I’m making no promises. There will likely be few posts. Though, I would like to actually do the Blog Round Table mentioned in the post just below this from almost a year ago. I may start that back up again if there’s interest (is there?). That would mean a post or so a month from me, at least.

Things have been insane, obviously, over the past year (and the five before it). I’ve continued working on corporate games (training & teambuilding) and with the government (military & intelligence). There’s been quite a bit of consulting with people like tv execs and ad creatives. Perhaps the most notable of my projects, seeing as it’s the only experience open to the public, has been Eldritch Errors for which I’ve been a creator, producer, and writer along with the great guys at GMD Studios.

Of course, there’s also Unfiction and ARGN, both of which keep me a bit busy even though I’m a total slacker (see above and sorry guys!). They’re two websites that I couldn’t imagine the internet without - not because of the design or the content, but because of the people involved both behind the scenes and in the community.

It blows me away when I think that it’s been six years (six years!!) since Lockjaw launched. We were so naive and hopeful and, yet, never in my wildest imagination would I have guessed where it would lead me and, more importantly, the amazing community that would take root during (because of?) it. For as much as I love my job, it is the community that has given me the most. I’m constantly in awe of it, learn from it, and am inspired by it. My job may be crazy, but it is the community that keeps me that way reminds me that I’m sane. So, thanks guys. You all are amazing.

(Wow, this got a bit sappy for a “oops, haven’t blogged in a year!” post. Hmmm, built in motivation to keep posting and to get this off the front page. Gotta love it.)

Don’t worry, I won’t fill up the blog by announcing every change and update to the site, but as this one may affect urls that you may have bookmarked or linked to (including category RSS feeds), I figured I best mention it. The permalink structure will now include “archives”. While many of the pages (ie the Quickstart Guide) will not change, anything posted to the blog will.

Pages for an individual post will look something like this:
http://www.giantmice.com/archives/2006/10/changes

Categories will also change and will look like this:
http://www.giantmice.com/archives/category/giant-mice

It’s a simple change but something that will help me out a bit in the future. Best to change the url structure now, while there’s so little here, than later.

The other changes around here are a bit more obvious for anyone that’s seen the site in the past week - a number of the pages are now formated correctly and the style has been changed quie a bit. There are still some trouble spots, but it should all be rendering correctly. If you notice any big problems, please let me know.

Obviously, this is very much a work in progress. I know that a bunch of you have gone to my portfolio. I’m flattered and a bit shocked that so many of you have wanted to see what I’ve been working on the past few years. Unfortunately, I’ve been kept busy by work and out of town guests - both of which deserve my attention far more than the portfolio. As things settle down over the week and my routine returns to a state of semi-normalcy, I’ll have the time to put it up as well as write a post a bit more substatial than “changes & status”. Until then, if you’re so interested, you can check out my old portfolio. It’s a bit out of date as it was last updated about 2 years ago, but it’s something.

After 5 years at mirlandano.com, it felt like it was time for a new and, hopefully, permanent home on the web. I love the uniqueness of the mirlandano domain and it’s meaning fit me so well (a resident of Wonderland) as a fan of all things Alice and constantly in wonder of the possibilities of the internet. But, it always bothered me that it wasn’t easy to remember or spell. So, when it came time to redesign the site and update the ol’ portfolio, I figured it was also time to move on to something bigger and better. But to what?

I played with a lot of variations of things that were meaningful to me and was trapped, for a bit, on getting something from the lyrics “the sky was yellow and the sun was blue”. From one of my favorite songs, Scarlet Begonias, it’s my personal reminder that everything is masked by our own perceptions. Not only do perceptions color the way in which we look at things, they can be really fun things to play with - especially in ARGs. But something kept drawing me back to an an old domain I purchased for a game that never came to be. So, here we are, at giantmice.com.

The enigmatic nature of the phrase Giant Mice has always cracked me up. After all, mice aren’t giant. They’re tiny and cute and still able to inspire a wide range of emotion in people. The shock of seeing a harmless little mouse scurry across the floor is really one of the great joys in life. It’s a fun term that’s a riddle and story in and of itself - just like the games that so many of us love to make and play.

As you can see, I’m back to blogging. I can’t say that there will be a whole host of new and fresh content on any sort of regular basis. I will promise, however, that when the mood strikes and I have something to say, that I’ll put it up here. I’ve also developed quite the habit of writing long postmortems after each and every project. They’re casually written and have never been written for eyes other than my own - tips, tricks, and things that I’ve learned that might help me in the future. One of my goals with this site is to share such thoughts with others making these experiences. By sharing and talking about them, we’ll all learn something and be able to push ourselves further - to the benefit of our audience. Over the next few months, as time allows, I’m going to be cleaning up my old notes and making them readable to people other than myself. So, keep an eye out for them and whatever else manages to find its way here in the meantime.