I used to have more time to blog. Then I had kids. Here’s a random stream of consciousness. Wish I had something handy to clean my keyboard. I love these old Dell keyboards but it might be time to get a new one. Seen a lot of articles about lawsuits lately. It’s a shame people don’t read the actual filings and instead focus on the sensational, misleading, headline. Speaking of lawsuits, if you operate an IP-based company, lawsuits are daily life unfortunately. IP lawsui...
For those of you who have an MSDN subscription, Windows 8 (the RTM build) is now available. Have you tried it? If so, what’s the verdict? I’ll have my thoughts later this week.
Sometimes the local politics of Higgins Lake Michigan can be very frustrating. The latest example has to be the "save the dam" advocates. Briefly, MSU in cooperation with the DNR are conducting a study of the effect the dam has on Higgins Lake. The dam is used to help control the lake water level. Many decades ago, a dam was put on the lake to keep the water level high enough to use the lake effectively for for boats. As more people bought cottages on the lake, the demand to raise th...
Just curious, how serious would you take the views of someone who made their money by winning the lottery when it comes to economics and business? So picture this, 40 some year old couple with a yearly household income of around $200k suddenly has a windfall of over a million dollars in one year. Not from their job. Not from a business. Not from meeting some life long goal. The money just suddenly showed up. What do you think their attitude would be towards other people who were rich? ...
I see a lot of people in politics support the concept of "local control". But as a dogma, it falls apart at a certain point. Let me present you the example of Higgins Lake, Michigan. Higgins Lake is a beautiful lake in the northern part of the lower peninsula. It has two large state parks, a couple first class marinas and several public boat launches. The lake itself is beautiful. Shallow and sandy by the shore and very deep (over 100 feet deep) in the middle. So what problems ...
Around a campfire tonight my 5 year old daughter started singing to the moon. It went something like this: I love you moon I wish you were part of my family I love you moon If I could breath in space I would run out and hug you I love you moon If you were a human I would kiss you on the cheek I love you moon I wish you could live with us or at least near the sun But I wouldn't look directly at you if you were too close to it Because it would make me go...
So why do people demonize companies that outsource to China but it's perfectly acceptable for individuals to go and buy things made in China? Next time someone wants to rant about company X outsourcing, they should, at least, start trying to buy American if they feel that way.
As some of you know, I'm politically conservative. This is fairly meaningless since my interest in politics is much like my interest in professional Starcraft. I'm kinda interested and follow it probably more than is healthy but I don't get particularly fired up about it. But I do like to debate. I will debate anything, no matter how mind numbing. I am thinking that this is why I tend to have mostly liberal friends. I enjoy talking to people who disagree with my views ...
I'm told that my interview with Wired magazine regarding the death of Steve Jobs is scheduled to show up in the August issue of Wired. Keep an eye out!
In a recent speech Obama made the statement that implied business owners didn't build their businesses -- "someone else made that happen" I'm going to put the full text and context of what was said because I've seen left-wing writers trying to diminish what Obama said by claiming it was taken out of context. So here's the full context: I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It...
No promises…but I am lobbying for an in-game quest editor to make it relatively easy to create quests and events.
It was twenty years ago this week that I started playing the Civilization series. I remember it well as I got enough birthday money to buy a copy of it. I played and played and I discovered something fascinating – the birds start to sing in south eastern Michigan at around 4:30am. The game changed my life. Civilization was the first “4X” game I ever played and I’ve been hooked every since. It inspired me to become a game developer. Two years lat...
There’s a show on National Geographic called “Doomsday Preppers”. I’ve never watched it. But I have read a number of blogs from people on the subject and I’ve become convinced that most people, even those into “prepping”, haven’t thought through what would be the likely, and even predictable, steps our society would take as it self-destructed. The doomsday scenarios I have seen discussed revolve around one of the topics below: Economic coll...
Good gravy is this cool: Follow @draginol
Why are computer players so often so dumb? The answer is that we expect computer players to make complex, intelligent decisions super-fast. When we make computer games, we know that players have a very low tolerance for waiting for computer opponents to “think”. Historically, that has meant that computer players either cheat like crazy or are play terribly (or both). In one of the minor video game history footnotes, Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations was the first commercial compute...