The Unexamined Life

Currently on my lap

2009-07-10T19:50:00.001-04:00

Look at this cute chihuahua...

July Update

2009-07-09T20:02:00.001-04:00

What's going on with me?

Been awhile since I wrote a new blog entry. The use of Twitter supplanted my need to blog outright during my three weeks in Atlanta. Since I returned home, the Twitter bug stuck with me and I've been getting by with microblogging. Feels like Twitter nets me more comments/feedback than blogging does, which is important to me for two reasons. One, it lets me know people are reading what I bother to say to the world. Two, I'm interested to know what people have to say about many of my ideas. Otherwise the blog just acts like a journal, which only interests me to a certain extent.

It's still early in July, but that only means there's less than a month until our next move and the wedding! Fortunately, life decided to add another curveball to the mix and I've lost 60% of my primary job working hours... which is more or less our sole income. Shit.

GameTap is pretty much hosed and continues to cut costs in idiotic ways. One of those ways is to reduce the amount of customer support and eliminate testing. Smart, eh?

Well, rather than pick up a third job, I've decided to look elsewhere to continue my career. The problem there is that Lisa is still looking for a job and there are only so many places where she can go. So, it's either wait for her to find something, which in all honesty could take some time, or let me find something and have an uncertain future for her career. Let's just say she didn't go to grad school to be a stay-at-home wife.

Currently, I have my sights set on Blizzard Entertainment and Microsoft's Project Natal group. There are two jobs at Blizz that I'm absolutely qualified for, another that's a long shot, and the Natal job is 50/50. I've dreamt of working for Blizzard since I was a child, so getting the opportunity to work for them would be legendary. From everything I've read about their campus, the people, the work ethic... it just sounds like the kind of business family I'm looking for.

Working on the Natal project is also very interesting to me. I'm not in love with Microsoft like I am with Blizzard, but the potential locked away in Natal is fascinating to me from a game designer viewpoint. And that's just what the job is, game design. My time at GameTap has exposed me to over a thousand games, I've gained an understanding of what kinds of games appeal to the various demographs, and I've gotten a taste of game development from our work on Sam & Max, URU Live, and Galactic Command. I've also got the background in computer science and programming to ease the game design aspect into the game programming phase. I believe that a designer who can create mock-ups and write pseudocode is a valuable asset to a thinktank like Natal. Also, working with Johnny Lee would be awesome =)

The biggest downside about these jobs is that they are all on the west coast. Guess how many people I know on the west coast? One. I only have two friends nearby in Denver, so most of my friend interaction is online already. I have to think working at Blizz or Natal is instant people connection for me, but I'd still be moving further away from everyone I know now, which does translate into seeing them less often. Ultimately, I'll have Lisa with me wherever we go and that's a VERY comforting thought. Marriage FTW!

Let's see, what else is going on... Oh! We are thinking of selling the Jetta to Lisa's parents. Her mom is looking for a more fuel-efficient vehicle and we were looking to offload our second car. Originally, this had a lot to do with the fact that Lisa commutes via bicycle or public transportation and I worked from home. I won't be working from home anymore, but selling the Jetta may be the kick in the pants I need to pursue public transportation. It's financially smart, economically responsible, and I even get to play on my iPhone or PSP on the commute. The Jetta has also retained enough of its value that the money we could get for it would help us through this difficult economic transition and would pay off the majority of the remaining loan. Can't think of any serious cons, what do you think?

Impact of E3 2009

2009-06-07T19:40:00.005-04:00

In an unusual turn of events, I was detached from E3 coverage this year. With the exception of last year's minimalist E3 trade show, I've historically sat at the computer waiting for floor footage to hit the web with tongue lolling from mouth. Back in the day when bandwidth wasn't cheap for content providers, I used to sign up for a month of FilePlanet just to get immediate access to hi-res videos and trailers.

E3 started this year the day after my return from Vegas, which was also the day before I had to travel to Atlanta for work. I only got to see the Microsoft and Nintendo press conferences live and I was only able to read textual coverage of the Sony PR show. Other than that, I've seen about two or three videos for other games not featured in the conferences. For me, that's almost like missing it completely! Especially after I actually went to see E3 in 2006 =)

Here's my take on what I saw. Microsoft had the strongest press conference in my opinion. They showed some solid games and took another step into PS3's exclusive territory by bringing the Metal Gear Solid series back to the Xbox. (MGS2 saw a version on the original Xbox.) That was the first half. Then, out of nowhere, Microsoft introduces Project Natal, a controller-less camera system which uses your body as input. At first, I was extremely skeptical. Then, they brought it on stage for some tech demos. This I did not foresee.

The demos were decent, for such raw tech. I was impressed most by the 1-to-1 link of avatar to user. The Breakout-style game and painting demos were interesting, to say the least. It starts spinning the brain about new possibilities. Then they showed Peter Molyneux, and I groaned. Peter had made a short video of his latest creation, a boy named Milo. This boy interacted with a human based solely on voice recognition and simple hand gestures. I was floored, but yelling "LIAR!" at my monitor the whole time.

I was in disbelief about this last video and I've been thinking about it all week. I came to the conclusion that it's not wholly unbelievable, given the progress in each component that made up Milo. Facial recognition, speech recognition, gesture recognition; in my time at Georgia Tech, I saw some incredible student projects in each of these fields. Student projects. When I thought about that, it really puts into perspective what programmers can do when they work with some smart people.

I really feel like Milo shows an upcoming paradigm shift in the context and content of video games. Perhaps the traditional hardcore video game and the recent flood of casual games which have expanded the population of our community will merge in interesting ways. What do I mean? Here's my first game idea based on Natal.

The main character is the young prince of a kingdom. You are not him. You are his childhood friend, another boy or girl of a family in the court. The two of you play games around the castle, such as hide and seek, play sword fighting, and so on. The way you play with the prince determines how he develops as a person. Do you always beat him when playing with wooden swords? Maybe he develops a short temper at his short comings. If he always wins? Perhaps he becomes arrogant and petulant. One of the significant events of the game is a traumatic kidnapping of you and the prince as children by thieves seeking ransom. Based on your skills, you find a way to escape your captors and free the prince. Depending on how well you and he played hide and seek plays a role in how well you elude the alerted thieves. Eventually, perhaps after six weeks or six months, you "complete" the game and the prince grows up to be king. As the person in his life who had the most influence on him, you get to see how he rules his kingdom. Did he become a peaceful monarch, or a warmongering tyrant? What could be more gutwrenching than a friendship which ends in your own exile from your home by your childhood friend? Or more rewarding than the feeling that you played an indirect role in preserving a benevolent domain?

To me, such a game is fascinating. Most of the game is played by simply talking to the prince. The "mini-games" (and I hate using that term in this case) used to play with the prince wouldn't need complex input like today's hardcore games and could be played with natural human interaction as they demonstrated in the Milo video. The thrill of the game lies in the psychological influence you may or may not be aware of as you play. Depending on the various life events and outcomes, the game could also have amazing replayability. What do you think of such a concept?

That's all my time for this evening, I hope to write on E3 impressions more later.

so busy

2009-06-05T20:06:00.001-04:00

want to blog

so busy

Poolside

2009-05-30T19:21:00.000-04:00

Josh, casey and lisa are enjoying some classic spring break style r&r
while I enjoy a little classic poolside Internet surfing.

Josh and casey in the venetian

2009-05-30T15:24:00.000-04:00

Bedroom view of the strip

2009-05-30T01:46:00.000-04:00

Vegas has been good to me so far. I am up $50. I'm sure that will
change tomorrow.

M&M World

2009-05-29T23:21:00.001-04:00

Taken minutes prior to an emergency building evacuation for which we
received no explanation. They didn't let us buy our custom m&m bags :(

Oh yes

2009-05-29T18:43:00.001-04:00

Offspring!!!!

2009-05-29T01:11:00.000-04:00

Posting this last one after the show; couldn't spare the time to email
it :)
My legs are gelatinous, voice is hoarse, and ears are ringing. Yep,
it was a great concert!

Waiting for Offspring

2009-05-28T23:20:00.001-04:00

Good show so far! I like the differences in showmanship each band has
brought. More on that later

Sent from my mobile

Alkaline trio!!

2009-05-28T22:38:00.000-04:00

Emo Ryan can't be bothered to rock out

2009-05-28T22:19:00.000-04:00

Vandals played the Team America theme :)

The Vandals

2009-05-28T21:47:00.000-04:00

"who decided to put a stage in the middle of the f---in mountains? I
can hardly breathe!!"

Waiting for The Vandals to take stage

2009-05-28T21:21:00.000-04:00

Punk rock show at Red Rocks Ampitheater!

Street Dogs!!

2009-05-28T21:01:00.000-04:00

Hailing from Boston, Mass!

I suck at blogging

2009-05-13T00:33:00.002-04:00

I tell ya, soon as I don't make a new post in two days it all goes downhill. I wish I had David Jaffe's problem. The guy has "quit" blogging about seven times now, yet he's always back within a week.

What's up with me?

I'm back on a Rock Band kick. I never unlocked all the songs in RB2 through the tour mode. I've finally got all the cities and gigs unlocked, now it's just a matter of wrapping up. I've been buying a lot of new songs lately, too. Silversun Pickups, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimmy Eat World, The Offspring. Good stuff.

PopCap has laid waste to my free time and made a small dent in my wallet. (It's PopCap, how much money could they really take from a person?) Between the Peggle add-on for World of Warcraft, the recently released Plants vs Zombies, and now Bookworm and Peggle on my iPhone, it seems like I've been giving them a lot of my game time lately. The Bookworm iPhone app is excellent! Definitely got my money out of PvZ as well. Heck, I'm still enjoying the mini-games well after completing the main game.

I mentioned iPhone apps and my previous post was sent from an iPhone... yes, I broke down and bought one. I've been getting too jealous of all the apps available for the platform that just aren't happening on the Windows Mobile platform. It's also lighter, slimmer, and easier to use. My soon-to-be brother-in-law was looking to get a new smartphone and had been eyeing my model for some time, so I sold that one to him. Apple has made a great device... looking forward to the 3.0 operating system and the day when Lisa gets her new MacBook Pro (so that I can steal it from time to time and try my hand at iPhone development).

I'm currently watching The Office and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The Office is a lot better than I thought it was. I admit I thought it was a trendy thing to watch like Lost or 24 which is why I avoided it until now, but it is genuinely hysterical. The Terminator series is... okay, but nothing great. I'm just fascinated by the Terminator universe lately and I'm hyped for the new movie.

Speaking of movies... I saw Star Trek today. Talk about movies that I was hesitant about. Up until the first screenings of the movie I was absolutely disgusted by the premise of JJ Abrams rebooting the Star Trek universe. Then I started hearing nothing but good things about the movie from people who had respectable opinions on ST. So, I took a trip to the theater and checked it out. Wow. Great job to the cast and crew for a solid flick that was both faithful and refreshing. I really hope to see additional films from that team. Zachary Quinto knocked one out of the park with his Spock portrayal.

Lisa's graduation is this Saturday. Yay!

Testing iPhone post

2009-05-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

Sent from my mobile

Legendary

2009-05-01T15:03:00.001-04:00

Amazon, you so silly

2009-04-27T13:10:00.002-04:00

I just received an e-mail from Amazon.com stating that I had purchased The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, so I am probably interested in the Twilight Ultimate Collector's Set Blu-ray. Hahahaha.

Fun fact - The Dark Knight is the only Blu-ray movie we own. It is also the only physical media I have purchased for the PS3 in one year of ownership.

Ender's Game

2009-04-25T11:38:00.002-04:00

Let me start by addressing all of my friends who share a fondness for real-time strategy games and sci-fi. I highly recommend Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game to you. Many people will enjoy this novel, but if I had to guess, my love of those two interests made the book especially fascinating to me.

A brief, spoiler-free plot synopsis: Earth has been twice attacked by a race of aliens. The military has devised a plan to engineer young people capable of the strategy, tactics, and leadership to defeat this threat. Their last hope is a six year old boy named Ender Wiggin.

The appeal of the story is tangible. What young boy never had the fantasy of being humanity's only hope against an alien race? Heck, one of the reasons I play video games today is to constantly relive this fantasy. Ender's education takes place aboard a space station battle school complete with combat simulators and student armies. Think Hogwart's meeting West Point... in space. Why wouldn't I want to read this?

Card did several things right for me in his writing choices. I loved reading Ender's experiences right at his level of thought. To see how he perceived his situations, think about them and arrive at optimal solutions. Making the main character such a young age made empathizing with his physical and emotional struggles easier than say a teen or young adult. Yet the character thinks and acts at an adult level. It's a simple read, too. Card only elaborates on details and physical description only when absolutely necessary. Most of the book takes place in thought or in conversation.

The other thing that really worked for me was Card's pace. Paragraphs can move the storyline up days, months or years, while some entire chapters are a single important conversation. It's a short book, but Card seriously doesn't waste much time. I appreciated it.

I have only two complaints and they are minor. One, there's no way that kids of this age could believably think and act the way they do. I conjured up some pretty elaborate stuff from six to twelve, but I couldn't have even played a game of StarCraft well or survived a Nickelodeon obstacle course at that age. Two, I couldn't help but feel that the Battle School sections got the most attention but didn't progress the character as much as the rest. It's fun to read the battle simulations that Ender experiences, but they are similar to Hogwart's quidditch matches. Engaging, but not where the meat of the book lays.

One more thing about Card, he is quite the visionary. Original publish date of Ender's Game pre-dates a lot of significant sci-fi and modern technology. I wouldn't have blinked if I learned this book was written in the 90s. Card displayed an amazing sense of zero-G environments and networked computer systems.

I can definitely see myself reading Ender's Game again in the future. The journey of Ender's psyche should still be interesting even when knowing the future. Perhaps that will even lend itself to alternate interpretations. I am, however, skeptical of reading future books in the series. The ending takes a radical left turn towards a direction I don't feel will stimulate the same parts of my brain.

Have you read Ender's Game? What are your thoughts on it? Did you read any of the next books? Does reading this post raise some interest in reading it for the first time?

I Watched the Watchmen

2009-04-05T23:47:00.002-04:00

This one should really be a video blog, to show how animated I am about this film, but I know I couldn't contain myself to the YouTube ten minute rule.

Watchmen was incredible! I can't remember the last time I enjoyed every single aspect of a film. Cast, direction, cinematography, story, sound effects, soundtrack, everything. Zach Snyder is officially on my Awesome List. Dawn of the Dead was decent, 300 was quite good, but this was amazing.

I can't believe this movie lived up to the hype and my expectations. I want to see it again already, with a copy of the novel in my hand. There were several scenes that I want to freeze frame and look up directly in the novel to make comparisons. That's how authentic the film is to its source.

Were some elements of the novel left out? Of course they were. Many of the sub-plots and narrative devices Alan Moore wrote into Watchmen just couldn't be translated to film or were cut for time's sake. I'm sure many purists are upset about this, including Moore who I've heard vowed never to see the film, but the end product is still everything necessary to tell the story. To be honest, the end of the film makes MORE sense than the novel. (very small tweak)

My favorite scene from a difficult-to-orchestrate point of view was from the prison scene where Rorshach pins down the midget in the bathroom. The setup of seeing exactly what Snyder wants you to see as the door swings back and forth just enough to see into the room twice. Exquisite.

The guys who played Dan Dreiberg and Rorshach were intense. The characters from the novel basically jumped off the page and into the screen. They were EXACTLY how I interpreted them from my reading of the novel. Well done to all involved who made that happen. I got chills when Rorshach yelled at the prisoners, "I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here WITH ME."

Gosh, I wish I could gush endlessly about the film...

Beer Log: Defiant

2009-04-05T23:34:00.003-04:00

I recently had the pleasure of trying some beer from Lisa's old stomping grounds, Pearl River, NY. Defiant Brewing Company had two truly delicious offerings for people who like sweet and sour beers. The first one I had was their Grand Cru, which must go by some other name or just isn't listed on Beer Advocate. The flavor immediately reminded me of something else I liked... but couldn't quite put my tongue on it. After drinking half the brew, I realized that it reminded me of New Belgium's La Folie! Not quite as strong or bitter, but the closest thing I've had to La Folie.

The other brew I tried was the Abominal Snow Beer; a great name for sure. This was one of the sweetest beers I've ever had, right up there with lambics. Probably not for everyone, but as I said before, great for fans of fruity sweet beers.

Great Nation of South Korea

2009-03-27T10:15:00.000-04:00

Pork Fest 2009

2009-03-22T12:15:00.003-04:00

Pork Fest 2009

Josh and I had a weekend to ourselves without our lovely women around. So what did we do? We cooked up an insanely unhealthy meal of pork, bacon, cheddar, stuffing, and TGIF potato skins. Holy moly. Vegans or those with aversions to greatness may not want to click the link.