As of this year I’ve had my first experience serving on a jury, in a criminal case in a California court. Years of TV and a few school electives told me what to expect, while still knowing an actual trial probably wouldn’t be like that at all. And…it was and it wasn’t! Hence this post.

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As a kid, one of my first games was Maelstrom, a slick Asteroids clone for the Mac by Ambrosia Software (who later went on to publish the Escape Velocity series). I have childhood memories of the two-note soundtrack while playing the two simplest strategies (spin in place without accelerating, and zoom upwards in a straight line firing all the way), of the “You EEdiot” when you accidentally shot a power-up canister, and the “Pretty good, pretty good!” for when you score over 10,000 points in a single stage.

Except if I open up Maelstrom now, it says “Hot damn!” instead.

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Last weekend I spent several hours on Tunic’s “offline” puzzle: its written language, dubbed “Trunic” by its fans. Several hours was actually less than I expected it to take! And figuring out the answer was satisfying and I immediately wanted to write something in Trunic myself.

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