End-of-year observation

Looking back at my achievements of 2009: This year has been really weird. I've been busy almost constantly, yet I don't really feel as though I've achieved anything. Sure, I have captured a bunch of more points for my education, but that seems to be the extent of it.

I'm having that feeling you get when you've been playing video games all day, that "Oh well I reached level 78 and, uh, that's good I guess?"

The Wave

Google Wave is a new application from Google, allowing you to share and edit documents as part of a collective. Enterprising geeks have already figured out how to use it for a rather neat online role-playing tool.

The great thing here is that, while the system has kinks and flaws (heck, it's not even officially released yet) it allows you to play on any sort of time-scale using the same system. It means that you can post your characters' action on a coffee break, and if your friend happens to be online during the same coffee break, you can act out a small scene - or just leave it be until everyone's gathered later.

It's completely text-based of course, so you lose out on some of that live actor action - but it seems to adequately solve the time-frame problem of online gaming, since you can play it as a chat session when that fits, and as play-by-post when that fits. I think it looks very interesting, so I'm going to investigate this matter a little further.