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.
One of the biggest problems I’ve run into as a business person is that I’ve never treated the PC game industry as a genuine business. It was a hobby side project. I’m one of those guys who want the game industry to work better and I want to make games for those vocal people on net. When Elemental: War of Magic didn’t live up to the standards we had hoped for, it was pretty stinging to my “my people” turn on me so quickly and so adamantly. It was a bitter lesson that required me ...
When deciding what to invest in going forward, one thing that I know many software developers are seriously looking at is the ubiquitous potential of iOS. Right now, it is confined to two form factors – a tablet and a handheld. But there is nothing stopping it from becoming a fairly universal OS, potentially supplanting Windows in the long-run. This is not something I’d like to happen. But I see it as becoming increasingly likely.
So we’re in the process of setting things up so that a series of computers runs the lights, audio, televisions, heat, etc. We’re using Control4 and so far, I’m mixed on whether I like it or not. It has both an iPhone and iPad app which is a major plus. But its user interface (in those apps) is terrible and ugly (ugly to the point of being distracting). Given the popularity of Control4, I wonder if I’m missing something given how awful and primitive it seems to be so far....
So as some of you know, I recently built a big house. And by big I mean ridiculously, offensively big. Naturally, the class warfare people have come out of the woodwork in certain circles to complain. Do I need such a large house? Nope. Then why? Because I wanted it. It was one of the personal objectives I had set out for back when I started my business. But doesn’t such an extravagant display of wealth merely demonstrate how unfair our system is? Sure, I may have work...
Someone asked me recently if there were any activities that I had had to put aside that I really missed. The answer was easy: blogging about social issues. People now take politics very seriously and some people, mostly liberals to be honest, take politics extremely personally. Conservatives and liberals can be very passionate in their beliefs but in my experience, liberals are a lot more likely to hate someone for having a different ideology than themselves. One of the sit...
I’m slowly putting together the 2011 business plan for Stardock. Where to budget what. It’s a difficult challenge this year because the Windows market isn’t just fragmented but the tech market is fragmented (iOS has become a serious venue for development). Our business model for skinning has slowly broken down over the years. Years ago, we would come up with app ideas and then look out on the net to find someone who has made something similar and work with them on a royalty basis....
First impressions: Very positive. Anyone else here have one?
Historically speaking, have you ever noticed that on some games, the reviewer consensus is much higher than the player consensus? And other times, the reviewer consensus is much lower than the player consensus. What do you think causes this?
Since the beginning of my career, I’ve been a creature of the net. That is, my “real life” exists on the Internet. It may be a generational thing or a just a niche geek thing. Probably the latter. Many years ago, I created the blog, Joeuser.com explicitly so that I and anyone else could freely post our thoughts. It didn’t matter what my day job was because, there was a clear separation in people’s minds between a person’s personal opinions and what they produced...
This Fall I’m starting to get back into skinning. For the past 8 months or so, I’ve been the interim Project Manager on Elemental: War of Magic to get that game ready for release – which I failed spectacularly at. Sometimes, the answer is not to “work harder”. But I digress. The problem I’m seeing with skinning is business vs. passion. That is, Windows XP users still represent a near majority of the people using our skinning programs. The problem is, Windows XP is dead as a tech...
My beloved Thinkpad T400 is starting to get a bit long in the teeth. It’s 3 years old now, the longest I’ve ever kept a laptop as my primary non-programming machine. I’m thinking that I want to wait until USB 3 is in these laptops but I’m not sure how long that’ll be.
http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student?skyline=true&s=i A woman buys an apple from a local farmer. The woman now has an apple and the farmer has money. Both parties have made, what they believe, is an even trade. Yet, time and time again we see people who feel entitled to something beyond the original trade. In this case, the woman buys an apple and now expects the farmer to help her out on something unrelated. What amazes...
August 24th…HURRY UP! First off, we’re so ready to not be dealing with the beta content. If I have to deal with “You got Gildar!” one more time I’m going to scream. If I go into a tactical battle able to cast a half dozen spells per turn with a single unit I think I’ll curl up. Dealing with the UI as it is in beta 4 makes me cringe. But it’s more than that. A lot more than that. What is Elemental? What can you expect? How can you explain it to other people? I’ve been bedev...