AGDC '08

Just a heads up. I'll be speaking at the Austin GDC this year in the Open Source Track, September 15th. The topic will be regarding the value and effectiveness of some of the major open source 3d engines out there (and of course I'm there to explain the virtues of that certain Java engine we all know and love.) If you are planning to attend the track, or Tuesday evening's party at the Alamo drafthouse, come find me and say hi. :)

Good luck guys

I'm sure many of you have seen the recent news about NCsoft's Austin layoffs. Unfortunately, that included many of the guys I used to work with as well as others that I had also come to admire and respect. With the even larger layoff from Midway's Austin studio, I'm guessing the current prospects of hunting for a job here in Austin in the game industry are not stellar. Fortunately these are very talented individuals, so I don't worry too much for them. All the best guys!

More about Ardor Labs

Back in June when I left NCsoft, I started Ardor Labs, a company dedicated to building and supporting projects and companies using 3d Java technology. I've kept things simple and plan to keep it that way in the future, using extra talent as projects demand and so forth. So far, we've managed to contribute to some pretty big projects involving large oil companies, hardware giants and more. (And like I said in my previous post, we are working heavily with jME on those projects, so that should say how much I believe in its current utility!)

There are more projects and ideas in the works as well and we will have to grow our talent pool at some point to keep up. Candidates would be top notch Java developers with some contracting and 3d experience under their belts. Drop me a line if you fit the description and would like to be considered on future projects.

It is a scary thing to make the jump to business owner, but if you've been reading this blog from the early days, you'll know this is not my first company. I am confident you'll be hearing a lot more from Ardor Labs in the near future. :)

At the end of the tour...

... when the road disappears... - TMBG


As you probably know, I've been developing the open source 3d Java engine, jMonkeyEngine for many years now. It has been a very good experience in most regards, though lots of work (just have a look at the commit logs or my forum message history.) I've worked hard on it because I really have believed in the dream of jME. I've represented it at several conferences, advocated its use in the gaming community and pressed larger companies to use it and donate work back to it. I have toiled many late nights on its inner workings, ensuring that the jMonkeyEngine continues to debunk the myth that Java is too slow or not capable enough for 3d games and applications. Of course it's an open source project which means no monetary pay (¹) but at the same time it has been nice to me providing a good name in exchange for my work.

So yes, I'm very proud of my work on jMonkeyEngine and how far the technology has come. I never dreamed when I first became involved back in 2004 that things would progress so far. Today, I honestly believe that Java could be the next big gaming language, we just need something akin to XNA, etc. to make that happen. Right now though, I do not believe that can happen, or at least I am too tired to keep pushing past the hurdles to make it happen on this project. jME is good, but I think there are still many areas, even fundamental ones, that need to change for it to be a serious contender in the general 3d engine space. Who knows, maybe later on this project, or some other, I can see that dream realized.

What I'm trying to say is that I have recently discovered I'm ready for a break. To be clear I don't mean to stop working WITH jME, particularly at Ardor Labs, just not ON jME day to day. I'm sure the other developers will be happy to help with your patches and such though so keep them coming on the forums and issues board. I'll still be around too, so as always, feel free to give me a shout. The jME community is among the best in the world, and I have loved (and will continue to) working with them in one fashion or another.

And now, for my break... :)

1. You might point out there are donation links and a jme store, but I have no idea where that money goes.

EDIT: Really poor choice of words. Sorry, Mark. My point is there is no money in open source, even for something successful like jME. Mark tells me the money that comes in has barely covered hosting costs for jME, so guys... get those donations flowing!!

The latest

It's been pretty slow on my blog lately, and mostly that's because life has been very busy here. I've started a new corporation called Ardor Labs (site not up yet), which will be mainly focusing on 3d Java technology. I've already got a good amount of work coming in and have started learning new areas of technology in the process; namely, the Eclipse Rich Client Platform and for another project, Project Darkstar. The later has come a long way since I last saw it two years ago and I'm happy to report it can be very performant. I say "can be" mostly because you have to get your mind focused on doing things in such a way as to properly use the technology and that took a little bit of doing for a client side guy like me. :) More on that another time.

I'm also excited that jME development is moving forward again. Recently added to jME 2.0 was JOGL support (by a very dedicated guy named Steve Vaughan who has also been helping with build and source cleanup.) Also recently added was SWT canvas support and support for Fog coordinates (fog being initiated by Kevin Glass.) The fog coordinate support will be interesting for lots of things, one example being fog of war.

A number of others have been very busy in the community and I will try to comment more on that. It's a good time to be a code monkey. :)

Like a Rock Star!

Evidently enough attendees thought we did a good job at our JavaOne '08 tech session to push Rikard and I to Rock Star status.

Don't worry, we won't let it go to our heads... Now where did I put my cape?

Changes and reflections

Recently our small group at NCsoft went through a few changes, spreading us all out to other projects and teams. I think, knowing as much of the back story as I do, that this is a really good thing for the company and even the technology we are working on as well. I believe this will help pollinate many new and interesting game concepts and possibilities, especially in a company so well known for taking risks and trying new things.

That said, it was also a good time for me to step back and evaluate my own personal goals and life and see what I would really like to do next. There were great opportunities to be had at NCsoft to be sure, especially given my intuition about the future of the company as mentioned above. But finally I chose instead to take a break and perhaps get back to contracting for a while. It was a hard decision to leave full time employment, especially with this company. In the end though I really felt that stress and health and various other factors had built up far too high in my life. Things had progressed to the point where my creativity and energy were not at the levels I needed them at if I was going to progress towards those life goals.

What does this mean? Time will tell of course, but I plan to remain active in jME, perhaps even more so now (I may end up having tons of free time... yikes!) But also it hopefully means a nice one or two week vacation sometime soon.

Thank you NCsoft for believing in Java technology and for 2+ great years! It has been an amazing place and I will miss especially the very talented people I was fortunate enough to work with.

Life limps along... again

I find it depressing how cyclical life can be. You're up trying your best, enjoying the view... Then you do something stupid and crash back to the earth. It takes time to pick yourself up again, but I suppose eventually you do and you get to face hope again (only to know that the wheel will turn and you'll be back down again later.) Is it fate that turns the wheel? Human nature? Karma?

Back to the grind.

Lunch with James

During the rehearsal for Friday's keynote I was fortunate enough to sit at lunch during the break with James Gosling and Chris Melissinos. We all talked entertainment, games, kids, and yes some jMonkeyEngine. It was certainly fun times and a neat peak into the brain of someone I respect a lot.

Over now

Yeah, it's over now (but I can breath somehow. :)

JavaOne 2008 is over and done with and I'm still standing - despite doing a technical session, a BoF (basically an experts panel,) a broadcast interview and getting onstage for the Friday keynote. I definitely have to thank the guys at Sun who helped make all that possible and really enabled jMonkeyEngine to get into the public eye more than ever. It was very exciting to hear the amount of buzz about jME and Java gaming in general. It was also awesome to finally meet several people I look up to in the industry such as Ken Russel, Sven Goethel, Doug Twilleager, Paul Byrne, and of course James Gosling (and many others, sorry I'm still tired.) Special props to Chris Mellisinos who actually does so much more behind the scenes in getting the various factions to support the idea of Java as a gaming platform than most of you realize.

Once I have had time to recuperate a bit I'll try to write more, but for now, check out the following videos:

1. The jMonkeyEngine 2008 reel
2. My interview with Chris Mellisinos
3. The JavaOne keynote I took part in. (I've got about 8 mins of time on stage starting at 36:20)

Nervousness ensues

Well, JavaOne is fast approaching and it looks like I've got a full plate ahead of me. Rikard and I finished off the last of our demonstration pieces for our technical session this morning, so we're pretty much all ready to go. Yet, somehow my stomach and nerves feel like they are being dipped into alternating pots of ice cold and boiling hot water. Why am I speaking again? I'm a programmer, not a public speaker. :)

Ah well, I'm sure it will go just fine and the week will be past and gone before you know it. Still... excuse me while I go scream.

Movie locked and loaded...

After spending the better part of three days total gathering, editing and splicing together footage from about a dozen different jME projects, the video portion of movie for our JavaOne presentation is finally done and just waiting for its soundtrack. The quality of some portions is better than others and I'm guessing Rikard and I should stick to our day jobs as a programmer, because we're no video editors... but I hope you guys all like it anyhow. Come see it unveiled for the first time at our tech session on Tuesday night of the conference. I may also get a chance to show it off on other days of the conference, so keep your eyes peeled.

For those of you who can't attend JavaOne this year, don't worry... I'll also post the video up to YouTube on May 10th. For now, here's a shot of it laid out in iMovie '08.

Too Funny

Gordon Freeman calls into a radio program... really! Hear it for yourself.

Programming and Joy

I was having one of those introspective, self-examining moments the other day when I realized something fundamental about why I love computer programming. It is actually something that's been true since I started programming as an eight year old (over twenty years ago now... wow.) I think it is also a trait that has made me a valuable teammate me to some but irritated or turned off others.

I have always seen programming as an act of creation and discovery; a way to breathe life into something new and in the afterglow, observe and explore its many intricacies. The process itself ensnares me in its alluring embrace with promises of a journey into territories previously uncharted and mysteries yet unsolved by me. Of course, many of these "mysterious secrets" have been cracked by others far above and beyond my talent, but that does not matter - it is the personal journey that I find compelling, regardless of the footsteps already present in the sand.

Each step along the path often uncovers new surprises and in my resulting excitement I find myself compelled to call out to others to come view and share in the process. The difference of sharing this excitement versus holding it in it is huge to me. Not sharing would be like trying to have a party by yourself. The more participants the greater the shared joy, right? And yet, therein lies my divisive nature as this trait can be viewed by some as bragging or showing off. I have tried to address this negative reaction by curbing my enthusiasm and taking other such steps over the past year. While this has worked to a degree, it has also slowly leeched away the joy from that twenty year love affair I've had with programming.

As my self-reflection drew to a close, I realized that it was more important to keep that joy in my life than it was to be as non-offensive as possible. It was time to let go of that particular concern and embrace those who could share in the experience without feeling threatened or put out. After all, are we not meant to find joy in this life? So, if you are one of those that winces when I type up a new missive or when I come around smiling about my latest coding project, I'm sorry. To the rest of you, let's party!

Holiday Coding

Unfortunately I've been sick this holiday week - lots of coughing, sore throat, etc. - so in between a little bit of gaming and such I've had time to just sit back and code. (Yes, I find it oddly therapeutic.) My choice of projects during my vacation here is an Android port of the jMonkeyEngine. It's certainly been discussed and even poked at a bit by various folks, so I figured putting my two cents in wouldn't hurt.

So where have I managed to get so far? Well, I have jME's core stripped down and some basic Android classes going into place. I don't have a lot to show yet because I'm going straight for a true port here... But I'm guessing I'm about 8-12 hours of work away from a basic running prototype (simple geometry, etc.) Hopefully I'll be able to wrap that up by New Years and then spend a few days getting states and such working.

For now though, it's off to the doctor for me.

Merry Christmas

Season's Greetings to all ten of my blog readers. :) I hope you are all enjoying it with family and/or loved ones.

Happy 50th Mom

My mother turns 50 years young today.

She is really an amazing person. She selflessly postponed her early ambitions for a career in forestry to give her time and energy in caring for and nurturing six children. I know from my own two kids how hard it is to even stay sane with little ones in the house, let alone be a positive force in their lives. Somehow she had the strength to not only keep us all alive and kicking, but she also taught us many valuable lessons - things I still use every day in my adult life.

My mom, always the industrious woman not only taught us the basics like how to cook, clean, and sew - things everyone really should know - but also things like carpentry and animal husbandry (we lived on a small ranch for about ten years or so.) She also engendered within us a love for writing and art and other forms of creativity.

Through all the years I can not recall a single time my mom fought with my dad in front of us, squandered our family resources selfishly or belittled her children... things that (if you believe the television and media) seem all too common in family relations today. Instead she constantly encouraged us and expressed her love and pride in us, even when we let her down from time to time. I wish I could honestly say the same things about myself!

Even after her children have pretty much all left the nest, my mom continues to amaze me. Even with the pains of Fibromyalgia she's still continued her education, worked as a traveling notary public, written and published children's books and novels. She's very web savvy with her own website, blog, and profile on LinkedIn. Even with her last child close to college and "freedom" close at hand, she still insisted on stepping up and bringing her aging parents into her home to give them the care they needed.

I am not a good enough writer to really do her justice, but in writing this tribute to my mom today I really just wanted to say how much I love my mom and wish her a very Happy Birthday!

Ikea as an FPS

Earlier this week I had my first experience with the Swedish furniture store, Ikea. It was near closing time so we were in a bit of a hurry and Ikea is really not the best store to try to hurry out of. The whole thing is set up like a huge queue for some ride at Six Flags - there's only one way through the store and it twists and turns back on itself over and over. There's even the helpful signs along the way to tell you how far you have to go along this singular path until the exit. A massive food court waits at center of the labyrinth so you can stock up on lingenberries and meatballs before continuing your journey.

It was very easy to picture the whole store as some level on FEAR or CoD4, with its twisting and varied (but ultimately linear) path.

Just think of the in-game advertising possibilities!

SpAK

Spontaneous acts of kindness... I decided to drive through Jack in the Box this morning for some breakfast. When I pulled up to the window and tried to hand them my money, I was told the woman in the car before me had already paid for my breakfast. Confused by this random act of kindness in today's rushed, often rude life, all I could do was mutter "no way!" in disbelief. It was only 3 or 4 dollars, but the gesture had a very positive impact on my morning. Thanks, lady! :)

Look at my wii go!

So I've been having problems with my wii lately.

Yes, ok, I'll wait for you to stop snickering. Done? Great.

Ever since update #2, I've had lots of issues connecting to any of the nintendo content, including updates and the store. Thinking it was my wireless settings, I tried every combination of security and channel settings, etc. that I could but nothing made it better. Oddly enough, using the regular internet was nice and speedy.

Finally, I took notice of a setting I had constantly skipped over in the Wii wireless options, MTU. It was set to 0 all that time, which meant almost nothing to me.

After looking up MTU on wikipedia and learning a thing or two, I decided to set the MTU setting to 1488. The difference was immediate. It was almost like having an entirely different service. My wii suddenly couldn't be stopped.

And you're snickering again... I give up.

Harry Potter - el fin

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed up on my doorstep a few nights ago and I just finished it late last night (2am or so)... The pacing, especially in the last third of the book or so, is extremely fast and I zipped through the 750 or so pages in about six or seven hours total. I really enjoyed it, but felt a little bit like I slurped it all down without really stopping to taste.

Photosynth

Dan P., my Italian brother, just sent this link to me. It's one of the TED presentations and it shows off a technology from Microsoft (MSFT) that can scan photos of all different formats (SLR, cell phones, etc.) and arrange them around in a 3d navigable representation of the place they represent. Pretty nifty!

flying home

JavaOne is over and I'm spending my birthday flying home. This past week has been most.. uh... memorable, with everything from all day programming sprints to a mini Kiss tribute band, Battle Bots and a metal bikini clad "Grinder girl" (who did Sun entrust to make the entertainment choices anyway??) The session talk I was part of was lightly attended, (I was told by more than one person that their boss was having them go to some other session at the given time slot,) but jMonkeyEngine got a good deal of publicity especially at the After Dark party on the 10th where they showed the jME demo reel I made to a crowd of several thousand.



The contest went pretty well. I spent the better part of Thursday improving the visual quality of the contest scene and then making videos of the top five entrants. Thursday night at the party, the crowd voted on the top three with their applause. The top entrant evidently spent the better part of his week working on his entry what with his a cheering section, sound effects, various animation tracks and a bit of humor. If I understood correctly, he has six kids with a seventh child on the way and that 5 grand will go towards a van to carry them all around. Best wishes to him.

jMonkeyEngine had another showing aside from the VFD contest, the movie and the session. The old rickety JavaOne wooden prize wheel was replaced with a nice looking virtual one built with.. yep, jME technology. The wheel results were completely random, and you got prizes based of the level (1-5) it landed on. A top prize (awarded once per day) was the cost of your session pass. Not too shabby. I should mention also that the quality of prizes and swag at JavaOne was leaps and bounds better than that I saw at the last few GDC conferences. I guess Sun really shells out for this event.

Yes, it was a lot of fun seeing our touch here and there. I really hope next year we get another chance to be part of the contests and dealings at JavaOne. Also, it was nice to meet and talk with guys from other divisions at Sun. The guys I dealt primarily with at JavaOne - John Wetherill and Kevin McDonnell - are two of the most down to earth, intelligent and interesting people I have met. Too bad they are in the marketing division (programmers and tech guys though!) at Sun and not gaming!

Adventures with Ubuntu Edgy Eft

A week or two ago I was at Frys and came across The Official Ubuntu Book. I've heard a lot about this flavor of Linux lately and thought it was high time I started working with it.

The book comes with Ubuntu's "live DVD", basically a bootable disc that allows you to try out Ubuntu without going through an install process or even touching your existing OS. What a brilliant idea! The only catch is that you obviously can not update, save preferences, etc. so after playing with it that way for a little bit I wanted to install it onto my HD. This proved to be a little bit harder because of my hardware. I am running a SATA raid and had my WinXP install setup on SATA ports 0 and 2 on a RAID 1. I installed Ubuntu onto a new HD on port 1. Unfortunately the install process put the GRUB boot manager onto my port 0 HD, making both WinXP and Ubuntu unlaunchable.

The fix for this is fairly simple... You pop in your WinXP CD and repair via a fixmbr command. Unfortunately, again, my SATA raid was an issue. WinXP setup needed a driver for that and stupidly enough, it would only read drivers from a floppy. I had no floppy drive (who does these days?) Ugh. I've heard you can hack the WinXP scripts and burn a new CD to use, but instead I bought a $12 floppy drive from Frys and added it to my rig. I'll try to think of it as old school charm...

After getting XP back, I swapped around my SATA drives, putting the XP drives on ports 1 and 2 and putting the Ubuntu drive on port 0. I then ran a fresh Ubuntu installation on that drive and finally all was well. I now have a dual boot WinXP/Ubuntu machine.

The above hardware obstacle course aside, my next small hurdle was getting the native nVidia driver installed and working with dual monitors. I'm no n00b when it comes to Linux and such, so editing config files and installing packages was not a huge deal, but I can see where Ubuntu would still scare away the average desktop user. Bookmark this page: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy it will quickly become your best friend. Especially if you want to make Ubuntu really pretty and useful via Beryl and Automatix.

Setting up and running jMonkeyEngine in Eclipse was a lot easier. In fact, it seems like jME runs slightly faster when I boot into Ubuntu then when I boot into WinXP on the same box. Hard to say though. One problem I faced was that the 256M default allocated to Eclipse was too small to compile jME. Bumping that up via command line args to 1GB helped (probably could be smaller, but I had plenty of memory so I figured might as well...)

/usr/bin/eclipse -vmargs -Xmx1024M

The other problem I've found is the resolution settings it detected with my setup. I'm running dual widescreen lcd monitors on an Nvidia 7800 GTX and the only rez choices I'm offered in the default settings splash are 2048x768, 2560x1024 and 3360x1050. Hand changing the cfg file to read 800x600 works fine though. We'll have to do something to make that work a bit better.

Here's a pretty screenshot of water running across both monitors at 3360x1050:



Overall, I would say Ubuntu is the easiest, prettiest, most capable Linux distribution I've ever used. A few warts still remain, but I can definitely see myself using Ubuntu Edgy Eft (the codename of the current release) as my main home operating system.

Need a job?

Via a posting to the jMonkeyEngine blog today, we've announced that the Java team here at NCsoft is looking to add skilled Java programmers. Head count figures, salary, benefits, or any of the typical questions you might have are not available because at this point we are simply looking for resumes. However, I personally recommend sending us your resume now if you have the skills and a sincere interest in working on Java gaming technology in Austin, TX. Sometimes things move and opportunities close faster than you expect.

See the official posting for more information.

My first Mac OSX woe

I've been using OSX on my laptop and on an iMac since it first came out. Up until last night, I've had zero complaints. Things run smoothly, no crashes, no Blue Screen of Death, it's been compatible with my printers, window's network, etc.

Unfortunately, last night I found my first fly in the ointment. It was pretty late and I planned to watch a new episode of Lost in iTunes on my PowerMac G4. When I logged in though, the password box just shook its head at me, denying me access. No caps lock on, must've typed it wrong. I tried several more times to no avail. Finally it asked me for my master password which it accepted, prompting me to change the password for my user account.

Ok, no harm, no foul - except that it continually rejected every attempt to set a new password. Complex, simple, used, unused... everything I tried failed. It looked like I was locked out.

Fortunately, internet to the rescue. Searching the web I came across this simple trick to accessing a locked mac:

Restart your computer, hold down Command-S and type in the following:

/sbin/fsck -y [Enter]
/sbin/mount -uaw [Enter]
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone [Enter]
reboot [Enter]

I was taken through the "new user" part of OSX's install process and setup a new admin user. When I got into OSX with this user, I opened the control panel and saw my old user account was still there, but I was STILL unable to edit the password for some reason (yes, I clicked the unlock icon.) What the heck??

Finally, brushing off some old unix/linux skills I opened up terminal and executed a passwd [username] command and logged out, praying that that did the trick. It did, and I was finally able to enjoy Lost. (Nice hippy van, Hurley!)

Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy year of the Golden Boar! Evidently this lunar year is a an exceptionally lucky and prosperus one, only occurring once every 600 years. Gongxi facai, hongbao nalai. (恭喜發財,紅包拿來) ^_^

I am in a pretty good mood today. It seems that some good luck has already started for us at work because an important demo we gave yesterday concluded with us getting a "green light" to keep going. So hurray, we still have jobs! I wish that meant we could also start sharing what we've done and where we are going, but alas, so far we can't. I think it is safe to say however that we're hard at work on something fun and exciting.

Speaking of work, NCsoft is sending me out to GDC in San Francisco in a week or so. If any of you plan to attend this year, keep your eye out for me or drop me a line. I would love to hang out.

Weather Makes You Crazy

Or at least it does if you live in Austin, TX. Don't get me wrong, I have grown to love this city in the year we've lived here. But what is it with Austin and a little bit of foul weather? This week has been especially revealing as we watched a small ice storm practically shut down the city. My first hint of the panic was of course the reckless driving. Drivers here especially seem to get incredibly baffled at the slightest hint of precipitation. There wasn't even ice yet forming on the surface of the street and we had multi-car pileups on the freeways.

Then there was the stores... Most were closed - many a grocery store shelf was stripped bare. Now keep in mind, the weather man is reporting just 2-3 days of freezing rain. Turning on the news, or picking up a paper greeted your eyes with hailing of the ICE APOCALYPSE OF 2007 in the largest possible print.

Considering all the commotion about the storm, I expected to see the city out doing something about the ice, but driving or walking around the north west part of Austin not a single sand or salt truck was to be found. Heck, my mail has not even been delivered since last Saturday. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night..." Yeah, right. Not here.

To be fair, I did find over an inch of ice on various parts of my house and yard. Having spent several cold, cold winters in NYC though, weather stuff here often just leaves me shaking my head in amusement.

Here's some pictures of the what the storm left in my backyard. You can judge for yourself if the sky was falling...

Free Hugs

I can't watch this video without getting all emotional. For some reason I keep watching it anyway. Must be getting old.

Today's thought

For all the points upon a compass, there is but one direction we all will travel... and Time, the only measure.

Hate Me

I picked up the Blue October album, "Foiled" this morning after hearing the song "Hate Me" on the radio several times this week. Listening to the whole song (not just the radio played part) really got to me in the tears kind of way. Basically, to me it is about a guy who did a lot of things in his life that really impacted his family; addictions, hateful words, etc. At the beginning of the song is a message from his mom, checking up on him and hoping he is well and saying she loves him. Through the lyrics he is saying, after all I did to you, it would be better if you just hated me so I wouldn't keep messing up and hurting you.

Man.

To the cleaners

The other day we went to Sears for a "free 8x10". Of course, nothing in this world is free, especially when it comes to your kids. So long story short, they soaked us for almost $200. Ugh.

Life: More pics

You asked for more baby pictures (ok, maybe not YOU, but somebody else did, honest!) so here they are:

Aaron with his baby sister.


Chubby cheeked Adriana relaxes...


Adriana, after her baby blessing, Sunday.

Life: Adriana

Yesterday at 5:38pm we were blessed with our second child, a baby girl. She was 8 lbs 11 oz and 20.5 inches long. We've named her Adriana Rose Slack. Everyone say hi. :)



Jeni is doing well and looking beautiful as always. As you can see, Adriana's big brother Aaron is pretty excited about his baby sister.



And here's a picture with daddy in it too.



I'm hoping mom and baby will both be home tomorrow. The doctor tells us she has an irregular heart-beat though so we're praying everything will go alright. I'll know more tomorrow.

Life: Broken Windows

Evidently my dining room window pissed someone off last night around 3:30am. I tried to get the story from it, but it was all broken up. When I remarked it didn't look so hot, it just shrugged the way windows do and said "yeah, but you should see the other guy!"

Life: Postponed!

I was supposed to be a dad all over again today but they told us the hospital was too full. So, after a series of delays we have now been told that Friday the 14th at 6am is going to be the magic day. We'll see...

Playing with fire

Last week we enjoyed our first fourth of July living in a place that allows your ordinary citizen to find, obtain and use fireworks without going to jail. Needless to say, we made sure we took full advantage of the situation. For only $20 we were able to put together a small arsenal of rockets and sparklers which we pooled together with the neighborhood for a spectacular evening of fun.

I'm definitely loving it in Texas. :)


(son Aaron with sparkler)

On a lighter note

Our baby girl is likely to arrive sometime in the next ten days instead of three weeks from now! Our last sonogram showed her at 8lbs already, and since Aaron was a whopping 10lbs 9 ounces, we're looking at inducing. Hopefully we'll get our schedule soon. The name we've chosen is Adrianna.

Where to vent?

What's frustrating about this blog is the restrictions I often feel when posting. I can't really talk about what's really interesting to me, for example, without wondering if someone at work is reading it too and thinking I have too much free time on my hands. :)

Speaking of work, I'd also like to talk about the accomplishments I've been making there. But then, I don't really know what is "secret" information and what is "safe" for dissemination. So that's usually off limits too.

Another restriction I feel is on my desire to air out my daily stress. Unfortunately, writing out the things that rip at my heart and psyche is just likely to cause additional negative affects. So the question I have is where do you vent? If someone is continuously antagonistic towards you, purposely or not, or if you feel alone or without friends, where do you say so and get it off your chest? If someone snubs your opinion at every turn, where do you push back to stop it? If you feel like life events are a heavy burden, where can you put it down and rest for a moment?

My personality is to confront and try to work things out directly. If I feel a person is unhappy with me, frustrated, or even disdainful, I will try to call them out on it and patch it up. Unfortunately, that seems to only work half the time, with other results being either no change at all or simply making things worse. Besides, in many cases things have no clear "other person" to confront.

I suppose there is no one answer to these things. Once upon a time, long ago, I would write poetry and even novels (I think I mentioned once here in my blog that the name "Renanse" came from one of those novels?) to explore and vet my thoughts. Maybe I need to get back to doing it that way...

Update from the trenches

Life continues along at a crazy pace here in Austin. We finally moved into a house, leaving behind the outrageous cost of a furnished apartment (at about $2,700 a month for our Oakwood apartment, I was reminded of why I left NYC a few years ago.) Unfortunately, now we are back to the homeowner problems I have lamented about many times in this blog. For example, I was thrilled to discover this past weekend that we have carpenter ants and heavy wood rot all along the back of our house. That same weekend, the water valve burst in front of our house (our responsibility to pay for, of course.) Can I have a short break, please?

At work, things are going a little bit better than home. Similar stress for a while though as we found out that the head of NCSoft was coming from Korea to Austin with a few of the other higher-ups and they wanted us to present our work. Keep in mind we've only been at the company for two months now (less than that actually!) That meeting was today and it seemed very positive. I've gotten used to the whole surprised "Java can do that??" response by now. Who knows though, I am too cautious to get excited... yet. :)

Still, it's hard not to feel proud of the work that's been accomplished. I think jME was great when we came onboard NCSoft, but having these last several weeks to work professionally on both jME and tools supporting jME has really made things shine. I am also enjoying working with Mark. We definitely have different styles in several areas, but it seems like we've gotten into a good groove where those differences work towards complimenting each other rather than clashing. So, with all that, plus real artists supplying us content and a supportive and enthusiastic boss, I can't help but believe we are going to deliver a really top notch product. Stay tuned.

updates

Life is getting back to normal one piece at a time in the the Slack family. This last month was a crazy whirl-wind of activity though. We took a trip to Taiwan to see my wife's family, meet friends, and eat.... and eat. :) After getting back, we had a little over a week to prepare the house - and ourselves - for moving to another state. We then loaded all of our stuff into boxes and prepped the house for sale, afterwards immediately driving to Texas in a Passat crammed with the "essentials" (you know, like the GameCube, computers, projector... oh and a little clothing.)

The day we got to Texas (two day drive as I said in the earlier post) we began looking at homes. Then the past two weeks have been filled with various fun tasks such as re-establishing insurance, applying for home loans, getting Aaron into school and finding our way through the snarl of concrete and tar they have the nerve of calling roads here. (Sorry, I'm a bit spoiled after the streets and highways of the Phoenix valley - which are not perfect but awesome compared to LA, New York city and now Austin. :)

This past week brought even more fun when one morning Jeni had to rush to the ER because of complications with her pregnancy. It turned out to be ok, but we both did not need the extra stress.

Oh yeah, and I started work on top of all of that. Fortunately that has been the bright spot of it all. So far we have been developing support tools in preperation for a full court press on something big (you probably know from jME that I enjoy building tools and editors though.) One thing that takes getting used to is having very talented artists and modellers at our disposal. Working finally with professional content is amazing. If we are allowed to post shots later I will.

So yeah, lots of fun this past month.

On the road!

House is packed and up for sale... I loaded the car up with computers and clothing (didn't know a Passat could hold so much!) and hit the road. We'll be in Austin on Saturday after a nice 20 hour drive. Wee. :) (Stopping often of course, since I'll have a 4 year old and a pregnant woman in the car.)

By the way, we just found out that our new baby is a girl. (At least, as far as they can tell in a sonogram...) We're excited of course. :)

Work starts on March 1st so I'll be tooling around Austin looking for places to live, etc. Keep your fingers crossed... so far what people have told us about "lots of cheap houses in Austin" does not seem to be true.

Out of the bag

Well, the cat is out of the bag on the jME forums, so I might as well post about it on the ol' blog as well. :)

I've been very quiet here lately because I've been traveling a bunch pursuing a few career opportunities. The two major ones were both game-industry related: a job with Three Rings in San Francisco, CA and a job with NCSoft in Austin, TX.

Both places are staffed with smart and friendly guys and both have interesting projects, Three Rings came first and was really tempting, but in the end the expenses of living in SF - plus a chance to continue working with Mark from the jME project - tipped the balance in favor of Austin and NCSoft. (Sorry mdb, but just so you know, it wasn't the breakaway rope that did it -- you guys rock!)

So, I'm likely to continue posting sporadically for the next two months or so but I'm definitely excited to make the career move. More to come while I figure out moving -- again! Ugh.

Happy 2006! - here's your hospital bill

Happy New Year to all of you. I've just had probably the most memorable NY eve I'll have for a long time (I hope!) It amounted to sharp pain, four hours in the ER and a couple stitches. You see, I managed to cut about halfway through my thumb, about 1cm from the tip (nail and all) Fortunately I'm right handed and it was my left thumb, but I still get to s