Passion. Does it work?

Had an awesome work week; got my brand new shader looked at by my FX Lead, and he's got so many awesome ideas and improvements that we implemented into it. I'm going to release the source for the shader soon once I clean it up a little. (note: that's for the code I did before I brought it to work, of course). In other news, working on houdini at work and at home does get a little stale, so I'm now switching over to python programming for kicks.

I've been going through pygame.org in order to get in a real python project. I find that I never learn something for real unless I put it into a project of sorts. Also got a side python project for houdini for generating cg env maps using isixpack and hython. Already tested some of the ground work, HDA is already setup. Just left the python side which I'll work on after I dabble a bit more of pygame :)

In any case, was reading through some AI related stuff, and on a paged linked by an A* related page, I found this little nugget about games, whiners, winners and passion. Here's a few lines that make me sit straight up.

Your passions are your own personal Yellow Brick Road. Following your passions will lead you to your own personal Emerald City.
This line is something I think I have been doing right (and wrong) my entire life. I always have loved doing cg related stuff, since my 2d CAD days on my 512k XT. Wrong because I took so damn long to say, screw this. I'm going to chase my "passions". At the very least. I'm on my way. I think :)

If you study topics that interest you, then you are starting down an interesting path. And it will lead you to interesting places (places that are interesting for you).

More related to choosing which field of studies to pick on for the game industry, but it does remind me back in the day, that most of us were probably studying what our parents wanted, or what our peers decided to study. It's especially tough to choose what you like, when you don't know WHAT you like!

In ending. Whoa. This is turning out into a real "blog" kind of post not my usual "heres my photos of touristy place xyz" or "check out this cool houdini schtuff". Well, in ending, I'd just like to say is if there is something you really really want. There has to be some way to achieve it. Sacrifices must be made, and it is something only oneself can decide...

So, do I sound emo enough to be a script writer? Huh?

GW