The Earth keeps spinnin' round. Last night it spun itself just so, casting a shadow on the full moon, choking out her glisten so that she had to claw back a ruddy, threatening brown glow. I tilted and stared the same way my Neanderthalic ancestors must've, transfixed by… something different at all.
In a 12-hour half-spin of the Earth, you end up on the opposite side of the globe, a full diameter away. But how far did you travel along the curved way? You know the answer: π times your straight-line displacement. Happy π day everyone. Happy birthday to Albert Einstein, who wielded the π-ish language of curvature to recast gravity as geometry rather than the tug of invisible strings.
Thinking of Archimedes today, and of Newton. Of Jeff, and Doug Buhler, and the SSBM trophy for Doshin the Giant.
π's delicious irrationality resists what has become our only weapon against the mysteries of the world: the computer. Thanks to Newton indeed we can crank out digit after digit...but to what end? Computerwelt brims with new, constructed worlds, but cannot seem to peel back the curtain that protects us from the screaming real-deal real-world. We must try to peel back that curtain — we must! — but as we come up short again and again we may resort to constructing ancilliary worlds. Worlds of music, worlds of words, worlds of videogames.
I fell in love with music, words, and videogames around the same time: the moment where I gained consciousness. I got good at reading so that I could play Pokémon; I played Pokémon to chill out with its (rather baroque) music. It did not occur to me that videogames were something one could make. That they were made at all! They might as well have just appeared as spirits inside the little plastic boxes.
What would have happened if I had started programming at five years old? I shudder as I wonder. What a waste of time, to entertain alternate realities in that way! And yet...
I can ask the question of other kids from whom I may not be so different: kids who game, who feel, who imagine. They deserve the best tool that dweeb-adults can build for them.
Hence:
The coding workspace I wish I'd had. An online site — a location — where a kid can make a game by pouring raw heart into a tool that coaxes clear thinking out of raw heart, then turns clear thinking into real-deal JavaScript code. A startup motivated by vengeance and jealousy. An AI application made by someone who reads dusty yellow books and cranks Mozart. A trauma-cycle breaker in the realm of programming education. An excuse-destroyer. We got five-year-olds coding up Cops 'n' Robbers games; we got eleven-year-olds wielding AI that'll make you freak. So spread the word. Try it out. Hit me up. Pass it on to students, parents, teachers. We are proud of what we built and we ain't done building yet.
"But what about music?"
Listen, buddy: games is music. You does not "write" a piece of music — you program it. A game is something you play. Music, you play. My aforeannounced record Leavin' Town still lies in wait and in fact the work that needs to be done to get it over the finish-line is straight-up cold-hard computer programming. You'll understand as soon as you hear it. Actually, no you won't, but you may think back to this post and then scratch a little deeper and bust through your bewilderment. Does it kill me to only play the saxophone in isolation anymore? Does it kill me not to walk across town and plop into my classroom, ready to attack God's finest puzzles with my crew of kids? Sure — slowly. But this path — pounce out of bed and straight into the codin' chair — must be taken, now. Kids deserve and need the kind of tool that distills gut feelings and daydreams into real-as-heck videogames. I partnered up with a miracle of a person, a base-of-competence to match my freak-acid; I'd give her a kidney in a heartbeat. All-in, every day, every time. The kids in Jippity's orbit kick so much more butt than they have any right to. This can work. Just a matter of time? The urgency of our message will slam into a few more open-minded schools sooner or later, right? Right? Our current partners love us! I promise!
I promise, too, that I am sneaking music pills into every helping of education-mashed-potatoes. Just this week, dozens of kids coded and tweaked their own software synths at my behest. I stole away a few minutes to MIDI-fy Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet so that kick-butt kids could slap it into their February game jam submissions. Hey, what instrument are you typing on right now? I thought so! You think that comes from nowhere? You think human beings thought in binary before they were tasked with opening and closing the pipes of an organ-like instrument? You think Riemann coulda cracked the puzzles of higher-dimensional geometry in a world where Bach and Chopin did not yet exist? ¡No way José!
It's an affine world of sidequests. If you are called, answer. Even for just a nugget. The lyrics of the first three-quarters of When I Fall In Love barely limp out of the category of "idiot slop." But those last eight bars — gasp! — hey, maybe it was worth it all along. Listen to this and tell me it wain't. Sonny: silent. Betty: divine. Paul: wow! he ain't just a demon after all; he walked right into that church wearing his Sunday best, sat his butt down and listened...even offered a kind-hearted comment. Now that's support.
"And the moment that I feel that you feel that way too: that's when I'll fall in love with you."
That moment! You could wait your whole life for that moment! The first appearance of the second-person pronoun in that song takes my breath away.
Jippity.pro. For real.