There’s nothing like a good manifesto to rally the troops, and Universe Creation 101 has posted a few techy, geeky, noteworthy manifestos ranging from Mickey’s 10 Commandments of Theme Park Design to Nick Zedd’s Cinema of Transgression Manifesto.

But it’s the Game Follower’s Manifesto to which I relate, including as it does:

“After solving the Stonecutter AND rune puzzles last night, only to find out that my long-desired first “SOLVED” post was trounced by 5 and 3 minutes respectively, I hereby give up and acknowledge the fact that I am a game follower, not player, not puzzle solver.”

And

“While not unintelligent, I do not know how to decompile a program for clues, and have not memorized the collected works of William Shakespeare, complete with line and verse numbering. These will be vital skills to solving key puzzles. Anything I know how to do will be useless when it comes to puzzle solving.”

Which I hereby revise to my own personal manifesto, at least for today:

“I hereby acknowledge that I am a tourist and wanderer and that LSL and Python will forever be beyond my grasp. I will never learn the logic of code, because my mind doesn’t work that way. Whenever I drop a pre-written texture rotate script into a prim it will always rotate in the wrong direction, no matter how simple the explanation for how to get it to turn the other way.”

Torley’s tutorials in spite their friendly chatter and the surrounding and embedded non-threatening bursts of neon are above my ability. When I DO watch a Torley video I will always need to toggle back and forth between the video and in-world at minimum 8 times until I’m able to do what he demonstrates. I will promptly forget what I learned and need to watch the thing again the next day.

If it wasn’t for a new AO HUD I bought I would never be able to remember the debug command to turn my typing animation off, and I would have to spend 20 minutes trying to find it on-line. Similarly, I will never be able to remember the command to hug someone and I will always forget to buy a HUD-driven hugger, and so will likely always seem anti-social and aloof.

I will constantly find myself detaching my flight feather and then wonder why I can’t get any higher, dammit.

Whenever I manage to rez a prim I will always forget to name it and my inventory will always be filled with No Mod/No Copy items called “Object”.

I’ll learn to live with myself.”