History of the world, part II :)

...and so yes, this time around I had both passion and desperation working diligently at my side. In addition, I was resolute to fix one major mistake that I had made in my previous attempts at things - working alone. By nature I am the kind of guy that prefers to do things himself rather than involve others. Why? Because usually I can do them better, at least when "better" is defined as "being to my liking". Duh. In enterpreneurship, however, working alone presents serious problems. For one, it turns out that there is just a big shitload to do. And since quitting the day job was not an option at this stage in the game, working alone meant that it would take me a looong ass time to do that thing I had in my mind's eye. Cuz it was a pretty thing, a marvelous thing, a no compromise thing - which, of course, was pitfall number 2 that I soon realized I needed to avoid - I needed to complete the absolute minimum, get the site up, then worry about bells and whistles. Good advice from a good friend of mine. But getting back to the working alone thing, the biggest problem with it is actually psychological. People strive on encouragement, sharing of ideas and common goals. And we work much more responsibly when we know that someone else aside from ourselves is depending upon us. I know I do, anyway. And so in spite of my nature I promised myself I would try to involve other people.

This, of course, was easier said than done. Welcome to the real world: if you thought committing yourself to something was hard, try committing others. But - I promised myself. Good thing too. And so as the next order of business I determined that the best candidates for this grueling task were, of course, my close friends.

My best friend's wife is a web designer. And I needed a design for my page. The match was natural. After a bit of thought, to keep things professional, I did offer to pay her for the work at a reduced "friendly" rate, that both I and she could afford. The deal was sealed, and we met in a cafe for lunch to discuss the concept. Lesson Learned: don't do these things during lunch, at least when it comes to visual design. Why? Because the most important thing in these kinds of things is continuity of thought, and there is no way that 1 hour lunch is going to be enough to generate(and cement to a sufficient degree) a more or less complete vision between two people. Do it after work, and spend as much time as is needed.

As it were, we didn't quite figure this out at first, and relied more on time limited meetings, and worse, emails, and phone conversations. And so the first two concept designs came out great - but completely wrong. The feel and style and spirit of it were wrong - and feel and style and spirit are important things. Eventually, we managed to meet properly - at my friend's house, after work, in person. We sat together in front of Photoshop and a web browser, pointed fingers, drew pictures, tried colors and fonts - things we couldn't do in a coffee shop. The results were a quantum leap - we had a concept design, a great, gorgeous, properly spirited design.

All that was left to do was to turn it into HTML.

Hello :)

Ahh, the first post :) It's always a special one.

Let's start with a bit of history.

The original idea for GameLemon, as it often happens, arose out of a bit of desperation. This particular, and I imagine rather often-encountered flavor of desperation, was the kind that comes from suddenly (or not so suddenly) realizing that what you do for living has become a thing much different from what you would like to be doing for a living. I like to write, and play video games. I work as an IT consultant for a large consulting company. Some years ago, I somehow thought that the two paths might intersect at some point in the future. Don't ask me how, exactly. I just did. In recent years, having choked on a good, hearty dose of reality, I have arrived at the inevitable understaning that my profession and my passions are as likely to interesect as those two evergoing strips to steel that make up a railroad track.

Now understand this - I am a fairly lazy man. I like to sleep in. I like to lay on the beach. I like to hang out and not do much at all. A man like that needs to be pretty unhappy and pretty desperate to be moved to dedicate significant efforts in his already severely limited spare time to work on some kind of project - any project. I, apparently, was that desperate. Desperation, however, is not enough. I know this, to quote the infamous Tyler Durden, because vaga knows this. I have worked on projects before - besides being a lazy man, I am also an imaginative man, and ideas creep into my head on a fairly regular basis. But imagination is also not enough. All of those writing and programming projects sit in some unfinished state on my computer, long forgotten. This time around, I had both desperation (from my career) AND passion (from my love of writing and gaming).

Time will tell, but so far, I think am already doing better.