About once a month someone, somewhere, will comment on something I've written saying how "A CEO shouldn't act so unprofessionally in public".  Over the years, I've gotten that message hundreds of times along with predictions of demise for my company due to my "public" behavior.

Now, I think the case could be made that we live in a different time.  The new age of companies have executives who hang out on forums and mix it up with people.  But I'm not going ...

  Rafael from WithinWindows visited us this past week and took some great pictures. I'm stealing this from his site.. Rafael is best known as the world's leading expert on uxtheme patching (XP and Vista).  But he's not just a great developer, he's a great guy too.

 

The wetlands on the Stardock property.



Bee hives

 



 

inside the hives

 

 

Outside the Stardock building



Rafael inside

...

Jeff Schader, the CEO of his home-based art contracting company "The Skins Factory" has decided to write about me (again).  Now, normally I try not to get involved in this kind of thing. Life is short and all that.  But what Jeff is doing is obnoxious enough that I've decided to do the one thing that I think will stop it: Write about it.

Here's the deal, Jeff will write some post or comment about me that's incredibly vile. When people naturally become outraged about what he's writte...

There's so much going on that I have no life. Life at Stardock is changing so rapidly. It was just a couple years ago that Stardock was an $8M company.  This fiscal year ends on June 30th and it's looking like Stardock is going to break the $20M mark. If all goes well, we'll double that again next year once certain big projects get launched this Summer.

The skinning world I know and love continues to evolve. The "power user" market for skinning has pretty much peaked. That i...

When it comes to skinning the OS, I'm a fanatic. I've been into changing the look and feel of the OS for nearly 15 years now.  From Object Desktop on OS/2 to working on the very first GUI skinning program on Windows, skinning is a passion of mine.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of programs, companies, and ideas come and go.  On the software side, there's been great programs like eFX and Chroma (to name two) along with the ubiquitous WindowBlinds.  On the content side, there'...

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor Info Guide By Brad Wardell
Designer and AI Developer  

Title: Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor

Description:
Expansion pack to the award-winning PC strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II

Requires:
Galactic Civilizations II: Gold Edition or Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords + Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avata...

There's something to be said about walking into a room and seeing that the 18 month old has thrown all the books on the floor making a big mess with the top most book being the book on discipline.  I think she's sending a message.

I have a lot of obnoxious opinions on a whole range of issues. But I never allow my personal opinions to be injected into software. Our customers are buying products and services from us. They don't want to be forced to deal with my diatribes.

But on-line is a different matter. If you're visiting my blog or reading one of the off-topic forum categories on one of our sites, something I write might pop up.  I value my freedom to say what I want more than anything.  I'd sooner close ...

New opening cut-scene of course...

 

So here we go, we're in the final stages. Lots of features being tweaked. The computer AI has been enhanced. I will go so far as to say that it is about twice as intelligent as the last publicly available beta. If people find this AI unsatisfactory well, they can go write their own game.

So in my testing, I want to make sure that the AI personalities are doing a good job and just make sure all the new content is working right.

 

 

Setting up a custom civilization....

I read a news announcement about a new freeware program that does some cool stuff. I check it out and it is vastly superior to an existing freeware program. Yet when I read the comments, the new, superior freeware program is being flamed. Why? Because the guy making it also offers a for-pay version that has more features.

I check out the forums of a game I enjoy playing. Normally people are singing the praises of this game. Now, the forum is full of flaming and angst. Why? Because the devel...

 

Take Windows to the next level

A look at how to completely transform your Windows experience.

  

After a full year of effort, Stardock has officially launched MyColors to the general public.

So the new bees have arrived. I got 4 packages of them today and my son and I installed them into their new homes. We were horribly inept while doing it as the picture shows (I'm reaching down to pick up the queen cage that I dropped).



Definitely not for the faint hearted.

There's me on the left and Chris Taylor on the right immediately following the signing of the Demigod publishing agreement.