I went to Australia in December for about two and a half weeks. I was supposed to go after completing my game, but the publisher decided to redesign the game after I bought my plane tickets (more on that later). So I left right before the game went beta.

Anyhow, Australia was awesome, as expected. I spent six days in Sydney, two in Adelaide, and six days in Melbourne. Sydney was nice because I had friends to visit there. Adelaide was cool, despite the fact that my friends warned me that it would be boring. If you're ever traveling through Adelaide, I enthusiastically recommend Hostel109; it's what made my stay. Melbourne was alright. I did lots of touristy things, but didn't really meet a lot of people. Took lots of pictures, yadda yadda yadda. I want to go back later this year.

The Game

I started a game as lead engineer last June. Management was kinda poor on my studio's end and really neurotic on the publisher end. In the process, four programmers quit, one was fired and the producer at our studio was fired. The publisher redesigned the game right before we were supposed to go beta the first time. Then they kept adding shit during the beta to final stretch. All in all it was pretty rough for my first game, but we shipped and that's what counts. I'm now on my second game as lead and we're doing some things differently this time that should avoid a bit of the pain encountered last time.

Things could be worse. I got to see some code from a much higher profile game than the one that I just finished and it was horrifying. If our code base was that jacked I would have hit the road long ago.

The Toy

I got a Nokia N800 for Christmas and I've been enjoying the heck out of it for the last month and a half. I barely use my desktop machine any more. I got an iGo Stowaway keyboard for it last night and I think that might be the final nail in the coffin for my PC. At least until I want to write code for myself again.

In fact, I just typed this entry out on my new keyboard. Pretty sweet. If there was a working Chinese input method for this thing I would be in heaven.

Car Shit

My car was nearly stolen last night. I got in it to go to work this morning and was greeted by a destroyed steering column and ignition. The fucking idiot failed it. Cops were called, prints taken, insurance claims set in motion. I pulled the spark plug wires out when I got home from work. That thing ain't moving without a tow truck. We'll see what happens.

This is the second time in roughly a month that my car has been broken into. The stereo was taken last time. All in all a real pain in the ass.

Moral of the story: it's time to replace my trusty Accord with a piece of shit that thieves don't want.

Puppy!

My roommates got a dog while I was in Australia. I was skeptical at first but that quickly passed. This bitch has a face that could melt the iciest of hearts and the personality to match.