Playing, reading, watching
I’ve been losing my nights this week to Torchlight, a hack-n-slash RPG from a bunch of ex-Blizzard employees that worked on Diablo. And you can tell the resemblance at any step: the games are pretty much the same. Torchlight is basically a combination of Diablo 1 (three classes, vertical structure, just one town) and Diablo 2 (socketed items, sets, skill trees) with World of Warcraft-like cartoony graphics. That being said, it has all the addictiveness of Diablo, which accounts for many nights spent looting chests hoping for better drops. You know what I’m talking about.
On the literary front, I’m currently reading Makers, Cory Doctorow’s latest book. It’s about… real-life hackers – in the most literal sense, as people changing the world around them by creating gizmos and tools out of anything is available. It’s a very fun book, it really rubs the nerdy insides. On Monday he was in NYC so I went to the signing. The guy is really smart and funny, a great geek. No wonder there are so many XKCD comics about him 
On the professional level (at work, that is), I finished my first ever iPhone app. Which means that now I have the basic know-how to create applications for both Android and iPhone. I want get into this in my own time as well, so I’m planning buying a Mac in the near future (you can only do iPhone development on a Mac, grrrr). It will be my next gadgety purchase so I’m already giddy about it. It’s gonna be great 
This weekend I started to catch up with some of the shows I recorded on my DVR the past days, most notably History Channel’s World War II in HD. Which is absolutely great, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in WW2 history out there. Think Band of Brothers, minus Holywood, plus realism. An extraordinary documentary. Speaking of Band of Brothers, looks like HBO is preparing another WW2 miniseries, The Pacific. Can’t wait.
Sickly
After a great weekend – attended a birthday party on Saturday night (clubbing till 4 AM) and a dinner party on Sunday (with delicious home-made food) – this week started with me getting sick. Really badly. On Monday night I went to see a Comedy Central Presents show (stand-up comedy, basically) and by the time it was over I was feeling like someone just hit me with a sledgehammer. Repeatedly. The next couple of days brought some relief, but I’m still away from recovery. I can’t take any days off (my company doesn’t have sick days and I already used all my PTOs) so I have to come to work and try not to infect my friends. Hopefully by next week I’ll be done with it.
Been spending my nights – as long as the sickness allowed me to – playing Modern Warfare 2. For anybody who played the first one, this one is a must. Same fast-paced, gun-blazing, insane-action shooter, with missions all over the world. From running atop shanties in Rio de Janeiro to infiltrating Russian oil rigs (and even a prison), the game delivers on every aspect. Multiplayer is fun as well, you gain levels and equipment the more you play. I’ll explore that more after I’m done with the singleplayer campaign.
The last piece of news is that I managed to finish my first iPhone app. Don’t get excited, it’s just something simple for work – a browser for our wallpaper catalog. Usefulness: 0. Probability that anyone outside my company (scratch that, anyone *at all*) will use it: 0. Having all the time in the world to learn Objective-C and CocoaTouch: priceless.