I've started using connectedhq.com. It's a website that integrates your Gmail, Facebook and LinkedIn contacts, and allows you to write down notes and also set intervals at which to remind yourself to keep in touch. This addresses one of my shortcomings, which is the inability to keep track of more than five people in my head for any decent period of time.

I've given some thought to the idea of networking recently, and so far the most sincere interpretation is that it's a form of marketing - you basically advertise what you have to offer, and hope that a chance to fruitfully trade comes up in the future. To network effectively, you must have something to offer (in my case I think of that as a technical orientation towards the world, and the desire to give advice / nag at people) that people will remember. Trade is a truly rewarding activity, but in lieu of that I'm pretty much willing to blabber on and analyze random situations as long as it entertains everyone.

Sports commentary was never my thing. It's only when I started watching Starcraft 2 commentators a few months ago (mainly Day9, Force and Husky) that I've really started to find game commentary interesting.

Starcraft 2 is a competitive game that is played between people. In most professional games it is played 1 vs 1, and players aim to make the right choices between building up an economy and using that economy to build up different types of armies and air forces.

The game is pretty complex, and it's often difficult for someone who is watching a professional game to understand the full significance of the professional's actions. What the commentators do is to describe the game choices in the appropriate context, informing the viewer not only about the choice that was picked, but also the choices that were not picked.

In order for commentators to be able to do this, they need to have a certain depth of knowledge about the game themselves. The knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for someone to be a competitive player - it takes significant physical training and skill to execute some of the maneuvers, something which is measured in-game by the number of actions per minute (APM) the players are sending the game. I also imagine the type of insight needed to weave a good story is not the same as the type of insight needed to play well. For one thing, there are three species in Starcraft 2 and most professionals specialize to one, but commentators need to be familiar with all three.

At the end of the day, it's storytelling and analysis as entertainment. Day9 often pokes fun at the fact that a lot of the people watching his show probably don't play much Starcraft 2 at all. It's when he mentioned this that I realized it's really not that different from football commentary.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPrd73VvmKY#t=172s

So it's become this daily routine where I have a deadline for writing this blog post, and I procrastinate until about 1 hour before the deadline and then just throw topics on the screen until one that I don't hate sticks and I press "Publish."

It's slightly stressful, but that's okay. I certainly do not buy into the notion that I have to wait for some creative mood to strike me. The way I see it it's more like working out.

In fact, I'd be more worried if I were not feeling strain. Strain is the mark of effort, which is necessary - effortless practice doesn't build muscle.