All things considered, I guess a lost week is none too significant.

Going to a new accountant, we have recently (up to the present) been going through seven and a half years of corporate paperwork, which reminds us of how long that has been and how much has happened during that time. That extends back to when our association with Goodsol Development involved piecemeal artwork and no programming, and the word “terrorism” was not uttered in every news broadcast.

Thinking back, though, it is somewhat surprising to realize that this company had so many years of history before 2001, with so many projects and stories having already occurred by that time. My personal programming history goes back 30 years (later this year). The history of my company reaches back more than 26 years, and we have been full time for 13.5 years. The corporation itself has been around since March 1996, and we have outlasted almost every employer I previously had, not to mention the vast majority of companies in the game industry.

This has been my full-time employment since I resigned from Spectrum HoloByte in December 1994, which was over 700 weeks ago, so a “lost” week here or there, representing less than 0.15% of this time, is probably not a disaster.

As we all (should) know, though, one cannot make up for a slipped schedule solely by working harder, especially when a deadline has already passed, so we realistically redefine our schedule and continue to work intelligently and diligently.

Next: Part I: The Founding…

Good Riddance to the past 7 days.

Have you ever had one of those days where you seem to be going in several directions, always doing something, but then at the end of the day find yourself unable to pinpoint what you actually accomplished? Have you ever had it extended to a full week? Well, now I have.

This was supposed to be a very productive week, with most of the family out of town, but what started out promising resulted in a whole bunch of… I am not really sure.

Perhaps it was the spam. I received more than 21000 spam messages in only 10 hours. (I stopped tracking it after that point.)

Perhaps it was the slipping deadline. I have been feeling an unhealthy amount of stress lately, which is not exactly conducive to productivity.

Perhaps it was the partially fallen tree. We finally had all the dangerous parts removed, but there is a reason that the sounds of chainsaws and heavy machinery (just outside the office window) are not featured on relaxation tapes.

Perhaps it was the uncertainty. Several things in which I am involved (often peripherally) have had crises arise (some real, and some manufactured), including one that is affecting several thousand of my dollars.

Perhaps it was the damn telephone. Every professional person (lawyer, accountant, etc.) we have had contact with in the last few months, and then some, chose last week to telephone. Throw in five more important calls, some technical support for extended family, and a healthy dose of telemarketers, and I am ready to throw out these phones.

Perhaps it was the lack of my usual support “staff”. The post office box did not empty itself, and the bank failed to anticipate and handle my financial needs alone. Meals required effort on my part.

Perhaps it was my commitment to quality. It seemed like every time I had something almost completed, there was a niggling little issue that required a minor change, and another, and then another… I cannot abide shoddy code. Of course, this is one thing I do not intend to change.

Whatever it was (probably a combination of everything above and more), last week was a wash. I am drawing a thick vertical line right here after the month of June. From this point, I simply move forward.

One crisis at a time…

… and the doing is busy…

As of last Friday, at about 7:59pm local time, we have either started summer or, as I prefer to view things, moved into the second half of summer. In any case, we have entered into a period where business, and life in general, tends to be a little slower.

If only.

Although I would dearly love to take some much needed time away, our projects are just coming to fruition during the next month or so, leaving precious little time for relaxation. It is getting fairly exciting around here, not only due to products taking shape, and the introduction of new development platforms, but because of the extracurriculars of the seasons.

At our “Delton office”, Winter took out not one, but both toilets, and the plumbing underneath the kitchen sink. Spring saw the demise of the front steps (which makes moving new ceramic fixtures rather interesting). [The high scrap metal prices also led to the disappearance of my ice racing car around the same time.]

The first part of summer saw fit to drop a huge tree limb outside the back steps at the main office, after being redirected through contact with the roof above my head. This lead to “emergency” removal of the larger, cracked limb that threatened the desk at which I currently sit. [Because of all the storm damage in our area, this actually took nearly two weeks to start, and we still have to wait another week for the rest of the (now unbalanced) tree to be dismantled.]

Nevertheless, despite the distractions, morale and development progress are quite good here. We officially doubled our staff to get some part time and piecemeal help for advancing a project that has been planned/stalled here for many years. We hope to launch a new web site on August 1st.

Before then, however, there is another project for Goodsol Development that should be announced fairly soon as we prepare to begin beta testing. This will be our first launch of a product on both Windows and Mac platforms in rapid succession. (In truth, it could be a simultaneous release, but because of the marketing required to accompany each SKU, one will probably proceed the other a bit.)

Three and a half platforms are in action at once. We are doing some PHP/MySQL development, C++ (native) development for Windows, C++/Carbon development for Mac OS X, plus a minuscule amount of using XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Windows and Xbox 360) when I can find a spare minute.

The fish may be jumpin’, but I wouldn’t know…

Schadenfreude!

On Wednesday, the Florida Bar requested that publicity mutt and raging loony, Jack Thompson, be disbarred for at least 10 years. This follows disciplinary proceedings (similar to a trial) late last year in which he was found guilty of 27 acts of professional misconduct, including “knowingly making a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal” and “engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation“.

For many years, this [censored] has manufactured controversy about video games and put himself at the forefront. Unburdened by facts or even relevant knowledge of the games in question, he has blamed video games for what seems like every violent act in this country in the last decade or more. I note that NPR recently [Talk of the Nation, May 1st] dismissed him quickly when he admitted that he had not played the game (Grand Theft Auto IV) he so vociferously denounced (though Fox News reportedly still uses him as an “expert”).

For some excellent and in depth coverage, visit GamePolitics.com’s Bar Trial Series.

The final disbarment decision will be made by the Florida Supreme Court on or around September 2.

East Lansing High School Theater program is en route to Edinburgh.

While I have been hip deep in development, the youngest member of our family has been working toward some success of his own. He and his fellow performers have put together an amusing video which tells it all (and then some):

“In the summer of 2007, East Lansing High School’s Theater Department won the incredible honor of representing the State of Michigan at the 2008 Edinburgh (Scotland) Fringe Festival…“

The Kiltinator
[YouTube – running time: 9:47]

Enjoy!

(For your convenience, here is the link at the end of the video: www.elderly.com/fringe)

or Happy Spring Bank Holiday if you are in the UK.

Today is the unofficial start of the Summer vacation season here in the United States, and a big day for having gatherings with friends and family. We do have some good friends coming for a visit, and the whole (immediate) family here, so we have that second part covered (for the day). As far as vacations are concerned, though, it looks like we will be so busy for the next few weeks, at least, that getting away from the office will be unlikely. The time when vacations are most needed are often the same times that one is least able to afford either the time or money (or both) to take them.

The weather is just about perfect today, although thunderstorms are forecast for the afternoon and evening (which is par for the course for Summer in Michigan). Unfortunately, I begin today hobbling about due to a badly bruised left knee suffered in a soccer game last Thursday. The swelling and pain are subsiding a bit, so I do not think that anything actually broke. (I played most of the second half after the injury, only realizing the extent of the problem after the game ended.)

I have a large pile of technical notes, plus some anticipated announcements, ready for this blog. Similar to the vacation paradox, the point when one finds the most useful material is the time when one is being productive, rather than taking the time to actually compose blog posts.

Will work on that…

or, Information Overload on Overdrive.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the first brand new primary development system I have bought in many years. Don’t get me wrong: I have purchased a large number of systems over the years as laptops, servers, secondary (Mac) development systems, and office/test machines. Through the years, though, the trusty dual-processor system that sits on (well, next to) the desk in my office has remained stable. Its last major upgrade was nearly six years ago, when I maxed out the processing capability of the motherboard. (There have certainly been several video card, hard drive, and disc burner upgrades in the interim.)

According to the PassMark CPU Benchmark Charts, the new system (quad core) processor should be approximately 10 times the combined speed of the processors in the older system. I could have assembled a crazy system that would be more than thrice this speed, but instead decided to opt for a pre-built computer from a major supplier, as I could not (right now) justify the extra time it would take to physically put together the hardware. Installing all of my development software would be time-consuming enough.

Speaking of software installation, I had planned to take several days to really get the new development environment tweaked to my satisfaction. The most basic functionality, the operating system, gave me the most difficulty, although it is probably due to one or more driver issues rather than the OS itself. I had to clock the processor below specification to keep any of multiple Windows installations (XP, Vista, and Vista 64) from blue-screening, although I restored the speed after installation and the system has been rock solid ever since. (That is “solid” as in does not crash, though Vista exhibits several reproducible bugs.)

The thing upon which I had not planned was the backlash of extra work and interruptions that come from taking a few days off to configure a new system. Wow! My last week really needed a time defragmenter, as it seems that I could never get more than 15 minutes on any single task before another issue demanded my attention. The fact that my projects build from 3.5 to 5 times as fast never really came into play.

Now that (almost) everything is working as I prefer, and with the trusty system just a double ScrollLock away, I should be able to take full advantage of the promised extra productivity… I hope.

or, Never trust any Spam over 30 years old.

On (or about) May 3, 1978, a representative of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), THUERK at DEC-MARLBORO, sent an Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE), a.k.a., Spam message, though neither term had been coined yet. The message was an invitation to view a demonstration of new DEC hardware at a couple of locations in California, and it was sent to nearly every address on the West Coast.

There was, of course, a huge backlash against the message. Interestingly, not only were there objections to the commercial content of the message, but in the days of connection speeds being measured in baud and kilobytes/second, the size of the message header was a significant load on resources.

This event predates my first hands-on personal computer experience by several months, and it also predates the birth of many people now in the game industry. It is a shame that we still do not have a solution to the problem (which has reached levels as high as 4 spams per second for extended periods on our server here). Unfortunately, most attempts to stem the flow, however well-intentioned, tend to simply make delivery of legitimate messages less reliable.

The time is ripe for a sender pays (recipient earns) system. At an average of upwards of 3000 spams per day, that could be a nice bit of residual income for us.

Today is the birthday of the World Wide Web (as we know it).

On April 30, 1993, CERN released their World Wide Web software, including a text client, a simple server, and a library of common code, into the public domain. The original proposal was published two and a half years earlier, on November 12, 1990, but once the protocols and source code for a working system were freely available for use, the foundations of the WWW were in place.

This action, along with the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, initiated by (then) Senator Al Gore, led directly to the development of Mosaic, the graphical web browser that ignited the web, later in 1993. It is astounding how far this technology has come in just a decade and a half, particularly having made the leap from an obscure network tool into a primary source of information for the masses.

Wow!

Sunshine and warmer temperatures cause me to venture forth.

For the last few months, I have been focusing on development of a new product and game engine, simultaneously, and I have spent most of the past month indoors. That was not really a problem as the bitter cold changed into grey skies and rain, with moderate cold. Now, however, the temperatures are getting into the 60s and 70s and the sky is mostly sunny, so it is high time to get out of the office for a bit.

On Saturday [April 19], IGDA Detroit will be having a “social meeting” at Penguicon in Troy (near Detroit). The party begins at 5:00pm in an unspecified room on the third floor. I have no particular desire to go to the con itself (so I won’t), but I look forward to talking with other game developers from our area and elsewhere. For more information about the IGDA gathering, visit this link.

For anybody in the East Lansing area, there is also a benefit auction for the East Lansing High School Theater Program, which has been selected to participate in the 2008 Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland. The auction takes place tomorrow, Friday, April 18; click here to find more information, including a list of items up for bid. If anybody would like to donate directly, contact me (seelhoff@sophsoft.com) and I will provide instructions for doing so.

Finally, and very unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that a friend of mine (in an unrelated field) passed away early last week, so…

Here’s to you, Wayne. You will be greatly missed.