I generally dislike “meta” posts that bloggers tend to write about their own blogs, themselves, or their writing processes, but I’m going to write a short one in the wake of the publicity this essay has received following its appearance on Hacker News. I do intend a follow-up piece to it, probably later this week, since it has sparked a lot of interesting discussion and criticism.

First blog note: I just turned off comment moderation, as I felt it was an impediment to discussion. A lot of posts sat in the dark for a few hours when they should have been out in the open, generating more discussion. My blog’s traffic level used to be low enough that the cost imposed by this delay was minimal, but I found out (around 5:30 this afternoon) that I had 40 new comments. I regret that this blocked hours of discussion and cross-pollination.

Second, I’ll use my 15 minutes of fame to plug something cool that I’ve worked on. I’ve invented two card games, Balls and Ambition. Old rules for Balls can be found here. The next release of Balls (scoring improvements, simplifications) will occur around March 20, 2011. I’d like to do a final release of Ambition this spring, but I don’t always have the time for proper playtesting, and that’s the major bottleneck to the design process.