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February 26 Roads
Roads
In Europe roads are built that go to the beach. Here in the USA we seem to build roads alongside the beach. February 13 School Drop Off II
School Drop Off II
Okay, different school, different drop off rules. Every morning Roque and I go to Starbucks and then off to school. We get in line at school and wait to get up to the drop off area so Roque can get out. Every day several SUVs (it’s always an SUV) race past me in the left lane and rush up to the front of the drop off area and swoop in and drop their kid off. Now. I appreciate that in life there are people more-important-than-me and people in-a-rush, heck, perhaps it’s a doctor who has to drop his child off before rushing off to perform some life saving operation. I just wish these doctors and important people would think a little more ahead of time so they didn’t have to rush on by me while I wait patiently in line. Imagine if they tried this tactic anywhere else. Say, Starbucks for instance and see what kind of result they would get there. I’m betting even if there was a life saving operation on the line that the result would not be positive. Why people think that their SUV makes this somehow less rude is beyond me. What gets me even more is that they will then rush off and break the speed limit in the school zone. Yup, that’s more of a guideline than a rule, you know, for the safety of our children. Graeme. February 12 Eject Button
Eject Button
I love my Blu Ray and HD DVD players. I love the picture and sound. I love movies on them. I HATE the experience. Let’s look at the eject button. Like a toaster or, I don’t know, a DVD player, it should eject the disc when I press the button. On every next generation player I’ve tried this can take upwards of 60 seconds between said finger press and actually getting the disc. That’s just not acceptable. It’s hardware. Give me the disc I just asked for NOW. I don’t care what OS you’re booting, what website you’re connecting to, what Java stack you’re initializing. Give me the disc NOW!! NOW!!! I mean, I want the disc so I can insert a new one which is going to start your multi minute loading thing again, why go through that with the disc in there when I pressed the EJECT button? So I take my revenge on the player. I hit the eject button A LOT. So what does the player do? It ejects the disc and then retracts it back in, which means I HAVE TO START AGAIN. AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH. So next time I hold onto the ejected disc tray, I fight with it because it want to go back in, it whirrs and moans, it pulls against me, it hates me back, but I want that disc, and by gosh I own you so give me the disc you little piece of electronic bad word. The eject button, in my humble opinion, is not a request, it’s an order. An order to be fulfilled instantly. I understand computers and their need to do whatever their programmer wants before they can act. I really do, but for the love of HD, JUST GIVE ME THE DISC when I ask for it. Graeme. January 29 Old Blogs
Old Blogs
I’ve been moving stuff out of our old house for a few weeks now and one of the things I’m having to go through is all the boxes of stuff from Trilobyte. I’ve avoided all those boxes for a very long time. Memories of Trilobyte are very mixed, and, perhaps fortunately, a lot of it is forgotten. But Trilobyte remains something I am very proud of and not a day goes by without some reminder of former glory. I’ve come across two things recently though that have brought back a lot of memories. Boxes of photographs and books of blog printouts. The photographs were all pictures that marketing had taken. Parties, launch events, trade shows. We had a Scottish Highland band walk around E3 for the Clandestiny launch! We had awesome Christmas parties! We had really awesome launch events! I’m very thankful to Jane LaFevre, Trilobyte’s marketing VP, for archiving all these photographs and putting them into one box. I also found my blogs which I read again with very mixed feelings. I worked almost around the clock for many years at Trilobyte, even through the birth of Roque, and it’s very emotional to go and read those blogs again. Many of them are technical, some of them are funny (I just watched the premiere of “The X Files” review) and a lot of them are sad to read with the perspective I have now. I want to get all of this onto a computer. Trilobyte was many things, but it was also many great things. We were one of the first companies with a website, we made a breakthrough game, we survived many a storm, and in the end broke many a heart. While I find it tough going through those boxes, I’m going to go through them. Graeme. January 26 I can't believe it...
I can't believe it...
The Steve Jobs reality distortion field is just too strong... I’m selling my NeXT system on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/NEXT-Computer-system-SUPER-BUNDLE_W0QQitemZ270207112548QQihZ017QQcategoryZ51046QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem So I can maybe get an Air.... Okay, so it’s a little old... Graeme. January 25 Cloverfield
Cloverfield
I went to watch Cloverfield last weekend. It made me feel dizzy and seasick but I managed to make my way through the entire movie. There are two “big alien/monster” movies I’ve seen told from a family perspective. Cloverfield and Spielberg's “War of the Worlds”. All in all I enjoyed War of the Worlds more than Cloverfield, perhaps because I related to the Father/Daughter storyline in War of the Worlds, perhaps because I didn’t feel sick watching the movie, or perhaps because it was a better movie. I do love telling stories from the social perspective. Surrounding an event with everyday events like news stories, phone calls to mom, wild speculation by the populous and blogging. I think that adds a new dimension to the story and Cloverfield has done very well from that perspective. I can imagine that there are many more stories to tell inside that six hour event that would be as intriguing and entertaining as the first. Next time though, I hope they find a better cameraman. January 03 Strange Dream
Strange Dream
I had a really odd dream last night. I was back in school (okay, that part isn’t so odd) and had to find classroom K9. I could find K7 but for the life of me could not find K9. Then I heard a dog barking in the shop next door and went in through a little small door at the back of the store and lo and behold it was classroom K9. We were studying nursery rhymes and their meaning. Ring a ring of roses is about the plague (you put roses around people for the smell and victims would have a sneezing fit before they died) but the teacher asked me well, if we have all of these nursery rhymes about our history, then how come there are no nursery rhymes about the bible? And I’m not a theological person, I don’t think about the bible or think about religion that much (but I have great respect for those people that do, no matter what faith they pursue) so it was really odd that the teacher in my dream asked me that question. And then I woke up and for once remembered the dream enough to write it down and wonder what it all meant. Graeme. December 27 Quicktime VR
Quicktime VR
I played around with Quicktime VR a little today and made a VR up of our new house. You can check it out at http://web.mac.com/graemedevine/ Graeme. December 06 Loop 12
Loop 12
I commute around 24 miles to my office every day. 50 mile round trip by the time you figure lunch in. I normally take the 30 freeway to 635 down to 75, but if 635 is backed up, as it often is, I have an alternate route I can take down “Loop 12”. I used to take the Loop 12 route once or twice a week, but recently I’ve avoided it. On Monday though 635 was backed up and I decided go. About 10 minutes later I worked out why I’ve avoided Loop 12. Earlier this year, on the day of Halo Wars “go no go” discussion with Microsoft I was at a stop light on Loop 12. My eyes wandered over to an apartment building nearby and I could see someone standing out on the third floor balcony, on the actual railing itself. Then that person jumped. They jumped down to the ground. They were committing suicide. That wasn’t the best thing to see. It wasn’t good. So now I generally don’t take Loop 12, because when I stop at that stop light and look at that apartment building I only see the jump. Graeme. December 03 I wish you could see what I've seen with your eyes
I wish you could see what I've seen with your eyes
An old friend of mine has been posting to his flickr photostream some amazing photography lately. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/ (I don’t know if links work in this update style or not, go cut and paste!) I’m truly amazed at the images and the range. I’m even more amazed that in 2007 we share information this deep so easily and yet we’re still using the computing equivalent of steam engines (when steam engines were all the rage people thought they were pretty advanced). The fact I’m conforming to this computer and not the other way around doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Which brings me to the subject. Bladerunner is back out in the theater and a new release hits DVD on the 20th. In the still haunting future of 2019 Deckard finds clues in the photographs of the replicants he is hunting. He uses a machine to reconstruct, or perhaps it’s already in the image, the three dimensional details of the picture, looking into the shadows. Which brings me to wonder. I get a lot of emotion from looking at Wili’s photostream. Does it need to be deeper? Do I need three dimensions? Am I just being the James Watt of 2007? I’m betting that Wili has processed a few of the pictures in his photostream, making them “hyper” realistic (either that or I’m outta here tomorrow to go see this stuff). When HDR was first bandied around a few years ago it’s application in digital pictures was not as clear to me as it is now, and I’m pretty sure the original thinkers behind HDR didn’t see digital imaging as the original killer app (probably wrong there). But it really is the killer app. In one picture we get the picture all the way from the squint to the blue sky. Anyway. Steam engines and Bladerunner. Go check out his pics. Graeme. November 30 How to win the lottery
How to win the lottery
So I was flying out to California to record VO for Halo Wars. That’s not a necessary part of this story, but it’s cool and ego fulfilling to say that. :-) I had a car take me from the airport to the hotel and my driver was Russian. He was quite talkative and spent quite a little while trying to get Internet radio going from his Treo into the car stereo system via a tape deck adaptor before discovering the simplicity of old fashioned always on mass broadcast radio. But his big thing was that he had cracked how to win the lottery. He said that he was terrible at math but that one night he just thought about how the lottery worked and the answer just popped into his head, “it’s formula is easy as adding two plus two!” he declared. There was one small problem stopping him from being a millionaire though, “all I need is programmer to program computer with formula” (say all of this with a Russian accent), “then kaboom, I’m in”. Kaboom didn’t sit well with me and we didn’t talk much the rest of the ride. I never mentioned that I was a programmer or that I had a different take on the lottery being possible to formulize. But Dimitri, wherever you are, I hope you found a programmer to help you out, I hope you’re in. And apparently it’s true. LA is FULL of stories. Graeme. November 28 The State of Graeme
The State of Graeme
Well. It’s been a while. I think this blog became known mostly for how to get blood stains out of furniture but it’s time to start blogging again. I switched over and blogged the Phoenix (Halo Wars) team about everything. That is, everything from the game, to the house, to Roque, and so forth. In the end, I think they mostly wanted to hear about the game but blogging is something that helps me get the day in order so I need to still have the outlet. We moved house. Actually from July 25th until November 10th we remodeled our new house and then moved house but we moved house a half mile down the road. They say the only thing you can buy in Texas is a view and so I got one of those overlooking Lake Ray Hubbard. Back in Oregon we used to sit out at night and watch life go by in the valley below and I really missed that. The funny thing is that this is actually the first house Lori and I purchased together. She got the house in Oregon and I chose the one here in Texas initially. All I can say is that being 41, having a house full of stuff, and moving do not go together. Lori has put a great deal of effort into making the move smooth but between the remodel, the move, and the game it has been a very stressful summer and fall. It’s getting there now, we’ve moved, I still own one too many homes, but we’re at least not looking at drywall and wondering where the contractor is today anymore. Today is the dayToday is the day I start blogging again. Really. March 16 School Drop off horror storiesThe school drop off. It's a daily ritual for a lot of us and the pre-commute sortie that gets the brain going. There are classes to the droppers. The dropper that waits in line, the dropper that pulls into the front of the line, the dropper that drops and then drives alongside their dropee until they get to the school door, the droppers that park in the drop off zone and walk into the school somehow not noticing the line behind them, the dropper that pulls into the parking lot to drop instead of the drop zone and the cel phone dropper who may do any of the above at any speed or angle. All of this dropping has to be done before 8:00am otherwise the dropee, otherwise known as your kid, gets a tardy notice which we all know isn't really a blight on your child's schedule but it's the schools subtle way of grading the parents. Roque, or rather I have gotten 5 tardy notices this year. I don't know if that's low or high but I do know I'm surprised it's that low given the variability of the starbucks line we wait in at 7:50am each morning. My point is that the drop off is one of those repeat games that we play every day. It's a short little puzzle that you can't get too annoyed at (you can swear a lot when you commute but with your child in the car that's a no no). I look at this like one of those MMO quests that gives you 30 minutes to take some item somewhere else, except instead of getting rewarded you get scored on your incompletes and reminded of it every month on the progress reports. There is something to reminding people of these things. Even though that score cannot go down, people replay that puzzle again and again until they feel the score won't go up either. Humans are quite interesting that way. Graeme.
March 12 Moviebeam and MacsOkay, so for a while I tried iWeb on a mac. I love macs, but MSN Spaces is the best blogging kit I’ve found so far out there in the world and it’s useful to me because I can blog from any computer on the planet and not just the one that I’m authoring my iWeb on. iWeb does make some beautiful webpages though.
So we picked up moviebeam this last week as a way to rent movies when we want them (www.moviebeam.com). It’s a convenient service that always has 100 movies on it’s box and updates them via datacasting through the UHF airwaves. It’s easy to use, just click rent, watch the movie and that’s it. No trips to blockbuster, no DVDs to send anywhere and it’s completely legal. Lori can use it at 3am whenever she wants to watch something which is much better for me than keeping media center up to date (not to mention switching over the projector/stereo to media center is harder).
I found U-POP Channel 29 on XM that seems to fit with me pretty well, turned 40, and we got a new puppy. You can check out these events on the iWeb pages at www.graemedevine.com.
October 26 XM RadioSo I got XM Radio last month and I’ve been kind of on the fence about it. Lori liked it so much that she got it for her truck, but my commute was kind of okay, the main saving grace is the “favorite artist” feature that lets you know when one of your favorite artists is playing. There really is no channel for a 39 year old lived in the UK until 1988 and only listens to alternative female singers (John Gaffey pointed this out to me back at Trilobyte, and amazingly enough, he was right.. I tend to only listen to female singers).
But this morning channel 45 played Sheryl Crow live on the BBC from way back in 1994. Everything I’ve paid so far for XM was suddenly worth it. Hands down.
October 25 Life, Halloween and iPodsSo how is the rest of life?
Life is fairly grand. Roque turned 11 and I just can’t believe how much she’s grown as a person and in height this year. We were discussing her Halloween costume this last weekend and it was pretty clear she had a mind of her own as to what she wanted to wear. It seems just last week when you could lay something out and tell her to wear that and there wouldn’t be a word back and now Lori and I are totally out of that decision and any suggestions we give are met with the “are you crazy” look.
I got the new iPod Video yesterday, partly because of the shiny new technology thing I just can’t resist and partly because I really like the concept of being able to buy an episode of a current TV series the day after it’s shown. I will happily pay for that feature and want it to succeed. Often we’ll miss an episode of “Cold Case” here in Dallas because of a football game running late and if I could buy it on Monday from iTunes then I’m all in. Lori has an iPod Nano and Roque has an iPod Mini but my last iPod was the original first generation model. This new model has 6 times the storage of that original model, has a super sharp color LCD display, can play video, and is about twice as thin as my old one.
So I guess we’re an iTunes family now.
October 24 IndyI’ve not blogged since Indy died. Work got very busy for a while as our team helped out on the end of Age3. We all took some time off in October and that flew by way to fast, I’m sure many an Ensemble Studios WoW character hit 60 while other people reacquainted themselves with their families.
Indy was an awesome dog. I remember after we got him we had an indoor swimming pool in our house. We kept the door shut to that room of course, but as soon as it opened, or anyone opened it to take a look there would be a huge KAPLOOSH as one large Bernese Mountain Dog decided it was time for him to have a swim. There was always the fun process of taking the fur out of the filter after that.
He insisted on sleeping with Roque every night and was very upset on those nights he couldn’t. He tolerated Sandy most of the time and never asserted himself as the much larger dog he was. To this day I think Sandy thinks he was the larger dog out of the two of them. The other day we were out and about in the golf cart with Sandy and we saw some dogs that looked a bit like Indy, Sandy got all excited and thought it was Indy and all the way home he was crying away, not in a “let me go look” anxious dog cry, but a “I really miss the big guy” way.
Indy knew what a camera was. Whenever one was out he jumped into the viewfinder and made sure he was in it. He knew that white boxes being carried in meant there was a bone around somewhere for him. He loved to sit in the golf cart and go through the neighborhood and see what was going on. If you were down he would come and find you and stick is wet nose into your arms and give you a hug. If you stood up he would come over and sit on your toes.
He loved his family, and we loved him.
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