As we enter the New Year, 2011 has some hope in front of it but I’m not ready to predict anything too exciting. For business owners, interest rates remain very low which makes capital for those with good credit ratings readily available.  3.25% interest rates are not uncommon right now for those who know how to obtain it.  Thus, it becomes a question of how certain you are to generate net revenue that exceeds what you borrow at the going interest rate. Historically, I’ve disl...

The BMW X5 is an SUV for drivers who want an SUV that is both sporty (read: Can go fast) as well as works as a good utility vehicle. In other words, an SUV that really is an SUV as opposed to simply a car that is shaped like a closed pickup. My previous X5 was somewhat disappointing. BMW has its “iDrive” system for controlling the internal gadgets and it was just awful.  The 2011 edition has a far superior iDrive with buttons that take you right to where you want to go. Its iPhone/iPod...

I finally threw in the towel on Starcraft this week. As a single player game, it’s amazing. Game of the year as far as I’m concerned.  It’s multiplayer design is phenomenal as well. It’s the single best game purchase I made in 2010. And yet, playing online, against humans, has demonstrated why I just cannot stand multiplayer games in general.  At various times during the beta I was ranked between "bronze” and “diamond” leagues.  In my experience, the difference between ...

I’m looking forward to not running into the 2 gigabyte limit anymore on development.

Got a lot of good stuff going on this week in terms of development. But it’s also a very stressful time as we watch retailer after retailer tell us that they’re eliminating much of their PC gaming space starting 1Q2011.  I wish the reason was because everything’s moving to digital. But as much as Steam and Impulse and the others have grown this past year, the real issue is the continuing migration of users to other platforms followed by the publishers. This is going to put further pres...

One of the struggles we’ve always had has been integrating the considerable “lore” created for our games into the game itself. Galactic Civilizations suffered in this way and Elemental has really has been a challenge.  The Kingdoms and the Empires are each highly unique civilizations with rich cultures. One of the things I look forward to doing this next year is working with the team to enrich the world with this lore.

I’ve been playing around with the Mac Book Pro for the past week. It’s amazing how primitive it is compared to even the iPad in terms of usability. Using a Mac is like going back in time.  It’s better than say Windows XP or Vista but it’s slightly behind Windows 7 which is, itself, pretty primitive. If Microsoft doesn’t get a clue soon, the iOS and Android devices are going to grow up and we’ll look at Windows in the same way we look at Sparc Stations today.

I’m trying to get some hobbies. I’ve focused on my job for so long that I haven’t really developed a sort of “normal” life. There is no home life. Only work at office and work from home. But this sabbatical I’m on has been helpful. Today my boys and I explored the woods around our house and saw a lot of deer. I’ve been researching a bit on deer habitat and it’s really interesting to find out how deer live.  Since learning more about “Deer beds” I’ve been able to spot them all over the ...

So, on the one hand, I like the idea of having a 0 emissions house. On the other I have philosophical objections to the federal government picking winners and losers. So I have some trepidation as I install the 20KW solar array because of the almost insane level of tax incentives on it.

Apple’s Air Play has the potential to be a game changer for the tech market depending on where Apple takes it. Frankly, from a business point of view, it scares me.  When every monitor and receiver and TV becomes an Air Play device, that could spell the beginning of the end of the PC as we know it. Microsoft and Sony and especially Nintendo should be afraid too. What happens when you can just tell one of your TV’s to display (and play the sound) of your iPhone 5/6 game or have your mon...

Twitter still strikes me as not having enough meat. I like blogs. It’s a pity we were never able to get a more consistent blog format because I think there’s a market niche still to be filled by something that easily supports small articles.

Fire-Watch pointed out that I’ll need to get a virtual image of Windows XP going in order to program GalCiv.  Otherwise, I’d have to take some people off of Elemental to migrate the GalCiv II project to Visual Studio 2005 or 2008. Right now, I’m on a bit of a sabbatical to get back to focusing on tech. So installing a virtual PC image (or VM Ware) is kind of cool.  I’ll let you guys know how it goes as I’m doing it.

So I’m on a sabbatical which was planned a long while ago.  Basically, it’s an opportunity for me to get back to my roots. One of the things I’m working on during sabbatical is GalCiv II (Twilight of the Arnor).  It’ll be lots of little tweaks and improvements (AI, gameplay, balance, bug fixing).  But this is the kind of thing I enjoy but can only justify on vacation. It seems like for the last couple of years my role has been less CEO and more fire fighter anyway. While...

Our family recently moved to the house I’m typing from. It’s not quite done yet and nothing is bigger reminder than that than the constant sound of contractors pounding on things from various distances. Our IT guys got me set up so I can do AI coding from remote via VPN and Incredibuild (which lets me use all the lab machines at the office as slave boxes for compiling). The main thing I miss when working from home are the people. Stardock really is a different kind of company. The peop...

Day 1 of the sabbatical has begun. Apparently I have 3 children. Today we took a walk in the woods.