Sand Part The Third is up. No, you haven't missed one; I'm including the pitch in the sequence.

Time has been moving in a strange, thick sort of way. I don't feel particularly put out by it, it's not really debilitating, but I'm much more aware of its passage. So when I think about yesterday, each discrete experience is like a train car pushing through a tunnel filled with jam.

At one point a drizzle turned into sheets and sheets of cold water, and Gabriel and I had to take shelter together in a stable. Do with that image what you will.

I also ended up downtown somehow. This was very surprising, because I thought that I was already downtown. I wasn't anywhere near downtown. I saw the Southern Cross station from the Cab and and sorta flipped out, to the amusement of the driver. I was headed that direction to attend a party of some kind, loaded with tons of early builds and interesting people throughout the continuum of the Melbourne development community. It was on the forty sixth floor of a building and the walls were all glass. I had to stare out of them for awhile before I tried to engage with the event at all.

I talked for awhile with Brawsome, the Jolly Rover/MacGuffin's Curse people, about how making something great should be sufficient. There are people much, much better than me at writing comics, or writing in general, but for whatever reason they don't have conventions. I think it's weird, too. That's sort of what the PAX 10 (and the Boston/Australian Indie Showcase) are about. "Discovery" is the main problem in a world where fickle digital storefronts are the norm, and we can help with that. But there's a also a kind of survivor's guilt that, for me, accompanies any kind of success.

I saw a ton of games at this thing. I was blown away by Love Shack's Framed, a kind of graphic novel gone awry, where you need to place the panels in sequence to get the (exquisitely animated) protagonist through. Dungeon Dashers tries to rejigger the "Roguelike" in interesting ways, with co-op play, a wicked pace, and a hand-made campaign. Deck War, a brutal mass warfare CCG with stellar, adorable art, is called "Deck War." Nothing more need be said.

It was also nice to touch base with Alex, who made Antichamber, although thinking about it for a moment I suspect he would prefer to be called Alexander.

PAX Australia starts today. We could not be more pleased to be here.

(CW)TB out.