Snow!
December 1st, 2011
I've been out shoveling 4-6 inches of snow off the walk as I experience my first proper snowstorm of the season. Last year around this time it snowed about this much in London and everything came to a grinding, show-stopping halt; I remember having to walk two miles because the trains had stopped running to any of the stations nearer me, and for the next two days I had to deal with delays and stoppages. Now I'm back in a world in which 6 inches of snow is nothing; the street in front of my house has already been cleared, and nothing I know of has been closed or delayed.
(On the other hand, we don't have any sort of complete public transport system here to begin with, so I do miss that. When it works.)
In the midst of starting my own game studio ... have an LLC registered, a bank account, operations agreement, etc. (all the official stuff). Am now trying to create the logo, and then business cards. And of course the games themselves! Am also still proofreading ... currently working on a romance novel, a business communications book and another I haven't yet started.
I've been told my dissertation results will be released 'soon'. But then, I was told that over a week ago, and have yet to hear a peep. The thing is, I wasn't worried about it until they contacted me, but now 'soon' isn't soon enough. Ah, well, patience ...
I hope everyone working on their dissertations back in London is doing well and not subject to attacks of blinding panic, and I'll write again soon!
(On the other hand, we don't have any sort of complete public transport system here to begin with, so I do miss that. When it works.)
In the midst of starting my own game studio ... have an LLC registered, a bank account, operations agreement, etc. (all the official stuff). Am now trying to create the logo, and then business cards. And of course the games themselves! Am also still proofreading ... currently working on a romance novel, a business communications book and another I haven't yet started.
I've been told my dissertation results will be released 'soon'. But then, I was told that over a week ago, and have yet to hear a peep. The thing is, I wasn't worried about it until they contacted me, but now 'soon' isn't soon enough. Ah, well, patience ...
I hope everyone working on their dissertations back in London is doing well and not subject to attacks of blinding panic, and I'll write again soon!
Week ... oh, who knows? Restarting anyway
November 22nd, 2011
Wow, it's been almost a month since I last wrote in this blog. And now everything's in reverse ... I'm back in the US, writing in part so my friends back in England know what I'm up to.
I survived the trip back, but it was insanely long and took me through San Francisco. The 11-hour flight was late getting in, I was stopped in Customs for an 'agricultural check' (yet I wasn't carrying anything bad), then I had to exit the secure area of the airport and come back in through security again, and they stopped my hand luggage (which had been checked already going through Heathrow) and then went through some of it item by item ... the only reason I made my connecting flight was because it was 30-45 minutes late itself. Took me so long to get home I was up nearly 24 hours by the end of it. Flying direct is so, so much better!
I'm busy proofreading like mad, trying to get the house cleaned up, and getting ready to start a games company. I'm also trying to get my dissertation edited down to journal-article-size so I can submit it.
More later, written more interestingly :)
I survived the trip back, but it was insanely long and took me through San Francisco. The 11-hour flight was late getting in, I was stopped in Customs for an 'agricultural check' (yet I wasn't carrying anything bad), then I had to exit the secure area of the airport and come back in through security again, and they stopped my hand luggage (which had been checked already going through Heathrow) and then went through some of it item by item ... the only reason I made my connecting flight was because it was 30-45 minutes late itself. Took me so long to get home I was up nearly 24 hours by the end of it. Flying direct is so, so much better!
I'm busy proofreading like mad, trying to get the house cleaned up, and getting ready to start a games company. I'm also trying to get my dissertation edited down to journal-article-size so I can submit it.
More later, written more interestingly :)
Week 53.2: Bell has another adventure!
October 20th, 2011
Well, the same adventure, really, but I've completed the port into Unity. It now zips to under 40 MB (as opposed to the old 145 MB) and should be much easier to open and play. I should have a release tomorrow or Saturday (it'd be tomorrow for sure, except I'm playing tennis and going out tomorrow night).
It's been quite the adventure doing this port, and I've learned enough about Unity to have a good idea how to do all kinds of interesting things. Arcane, mystical things. Mythic things. :)
That's enough for now. Just gigglingly happy getting another game done, even if it is the same game as before.
It's been quite the adventure doing this port, and I've learned enough about Unity to have a good idea how to do all kinds of interesting things. Arcane, mystical things. Mythic things. :)
That's enough for now. Just gigglingly happy getting another game done, even if it is the same game as before.
Week 53.1: Plans for the future ... well, some of them
October 17th, 2011
Yea! Almost done converting the Bell game to Unity. It's a good lesson in porting a game from one platform to another--you'd think that, because the Unity scripts are in the same language as the XNA game, I could just copy-paste and be a happy camper, but because the drawing and physics are handled completely differently, and the way the Unity-specific parts of the scripting alter things, and because individual objects instantiate their own scripts (each object is, in effect, a class itself inheriting from Unity's MonoBehaviour), there was very little cutting and pasting allowed. I could write a research paper on it, actually. It may sound nuts, wanting to write another research paper so soon after finishing my dissertation, but I have to be thinking about that sort of thing--it's part of getting exposure and furthering my games career.
I'm definitely going to go home and start my own company, which will allow me to publish some games and, again, get my name out there. If I succeed, that's brilliant and the hoped-for outcome. But even if I don't, it's a great addition to my CV, and perhaps gets me round that Catch-22 of needing experience in order to get a job. I'll create my own experience, thank you very much.
Starting to get everything ready to go, and so need to go shopping for various items to take home and try to see everyone as much as possible before having to satisfy myself with only Skype and email and Facebook ... had a chance to go out for a drink last week, but had managed to run myself into the ground and couldn't go for being exhausted (I think it was the dissertation catching up to me).
I also need to find indoor tennis places so I can play through the winter. Must keep playing!!!
More later ...
I'm definitely going to go home and start my own company, which will allow me to publish some games and, again, get my name out there. If I succeed, that's brilliant and the hoped-for outcome. But even if I don't, it's a great addition to my CV, and perhaps gets me round that Catch-22 of needing experience in order to get a job. I'll create my own experience, thank you very much.
Starting to get everything ready to go, and so need to go shopping for various items to take home and try to see everyone as much as possible before having to satisfy myself with only Skype and email and Facebook ... had a chance to go out for a drink last week, but had managed to run myself into the ground and couldn't go for being exhausted (I think it was the dissertation catching up to me).
I also need to find indoor tennis places so I can play through the winter. Must keep playing!!!
More later ...
Week 53.1: Plans for the future ... well, some of them
October 17th, 2011
Yea! Almost done converting the Bell game to Unity. It's a good lesson in porting a game from one platform to another--you'd think that, because the Unity scripts are in the same language as the XNA game, I could just copy-paste and be a happy camper, but because the drawing and physics are handled completely differently, and the way the Unity-specific parts of the scripting alter things, and because individual objects instantiate their own scripts (each object is, in effect, a class itself inheriting from Unity's MonoBehaviour), there was very little cutting and pasting allowed. I could write a research paper on it, actually. It may sound nuts, wanting to write another research paper so soon after finishing my dissertation, but I have to be thinking about that sort of thing--it's part of getting exposure and furthering my games career.
I'm definitely going to go home and start my own company, which will allow me to publish some games and, again, get my name out there. If I succeed, that's brilliant and the hoped-for outcome. But even if I don't, it's a great addition to my CV, and perhaps gets me round that Catch-22 of needing experience in order to get a job. I'll create my own experience, thank you very much.
Starting to get everything ready to go, and so need to go shopping for various items to take home and try to see everyone as much as possible before having to satisfy myself with only Skype and email and Facebook ... had a chance to go out for a drink last week, but had managed to run myself into the ground and couldn't go for being exhausted (I think it was the dissertation catching up to me).
I also need to find indoor tennis places so I can play through the winter. Must keep playing!!!
More later ...
I'm definitely going to go home and start my own company, which will allow me to publish some games and, again, get my name out there. If I succeed, that's brilliant and the hoped-for outcome. But even if I don't, it's a great addition to my CV, and perhaps gets me round that Catch-22 of needing experience in order to get a job. I'll create my own experience, thank you very much.
Starting to get everything ready to go, and so need to go shopping for various items to take home and try to see everyone as much as possible before having to satisfy myself with only Skype and email and Facebook ... had a chance to go out for a drink last week, but had managed to run myself into the ground and couldn't go for being exhausted (I think it was the dissertation catching up to me).
I also need to find indoor tennis places so I can play through the winter. Must keep playing!!!
More later ...
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