Been a bit of a busy couple of weeks for me at the day job, and I apologize for the lack of posts. I hope that Blank Verse kept you entertained at least for a little while.

Have a good Father’s Day?  I got Coriolanus on DVD.  I can’t decide whether that would be a more appropriate Mother’s Day gift. 🙂   (Credit to @playsthetart on Twitter for that joke, which I totally didn’t get when she said it).

Amusing update – through a really weird series of coincidences I bumped into the book agent that I worked with back in the late 90’s in the technical field.  He now has his own agency, specializing in non-fiction with focus on humor and pop culture.  So I didn’t miss a beat before pitching him my book idea, compiling all of our best lists and Twitter hashtag games into one humorous volume.  I did not get a happy answer, but I’m quite proud that I didn’t miss the chance to ask.

I think that’s all I’ve got for the moment.  Shakespeare on Boston Common will be coming up soon — Coriolanus.  I’ll have to make sure I watch the movie before I go see the show. 🙂

How’s everybody else been?  Got any summer Shakespeare plans?

Ok, so I haven’t been around much for the last week or so.  That’s because I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my latest project!  I call it Blank Verse, and it’s inspired by a post from just about a year ago, come to think of it.  I probably could have planned to roll that out exactly on the 1 year date.  Oh well.

Of course, when I say “finishing touches” I really mean “Convince myself that any bugs left are not the end of the world, and nobody at all is going to see it if I never hit that Launch button.”  In particular please forgive the coarseness of the design, I’ve got no skills in that area and have been trying to figure out how to improve.

I released the game early to email subscribers so some of you may have already seen it, either there or on Twitter/Facebook as people began sharing their games.  What I’d really like, and maybe some of you can help me out, is for people to hit that Contact button on the game and tell me what worked, what didn’t, what you’d like to see improved.  Anybody can take the game for a spin once and declare it “Meh.”  I want to know what it’ll take to make you want to play it a dozen times and tell all your friends about it on Facebook.

I dig the technology used to create this interactive timeline of Shakespeare’s life, first spotted on Reddit.com.  It’s clearly not done (lots of “Fill in story info here” template content), but it’s a good start!  I wonder if there can be a wide variety of content in the story cards, like links to YouTube videos?

I mentioned quickly on Twitter Friday (? is that the right order of those words ?) that my 95yr old grandmother was on her deathbed.  This was not an unexpected thing, she has lived in a nursing home for the last 4 years and has been on the decline.  This weekend was just a sharper turn.

“To me, fair Friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still.”  This one might be a little unusual to recite over your 95yr old grandmother, but I still like the point.  We all know that old age will eventually come.  But it’s up to us to decide how we deal with it.