zerojay

It was time to go and I needed a taxi. A quick Google search on the N900 got me a taxi company whom I then called via Skype. In minutes, I was on my way with a somewhat annoying driver whose cab smelled like burnt rubber. Not a good sign.

As the taxi rolled towards the airport, I kept talking with my wife through MSN using Conversations thanks to telepathy-haze. Security was a breeze though I had some time to sit and relax before takeoff. I bought some food at the airport which was surprisingly good and ate while watching a downloaded episode of South Park. Thank you, Transmission and Media Player. After eating, I took a seat overlooking the runway. Here’s my view thanks to the N900’s camera and built-in Flickr sharing:

Soon enough, it was time to board. And boy, was the plane ever small!

After a transfer, I landed in Halifax safe and sound. The N900 had automatically noticed the timezone change and auto-adjusted the clock to compensate. Nice. ForecaWeather desktop widget warned me that the weather wasn’t all that nice and it was right. A taxi picked me up for the longish ride to the apartment I would call home. On the way there, I noticed a coworker was still in town on Facebook. Sent him a message by MSN and we arranged to meet and grab a slice of pizza.

Walking home afterwards, I came across a comic book shop called Strange Adventures which I had heard about before. Nice artwork on the sidewalk outside:

Got home, chatted with my wife some more and then hit the sack.

So I’m going on an apartment hunting trip to a strange city this weekend and I decided it might be a good chance to write the experience up. I’m not bringing a laptop or iPhone with me. Just my trusty N900 in my pocket this time. I’m also writing these posts on the N900 with Daniel Yerga’s excellent Maemo WordPy for Fremantle.

So a few hours before leaving work, I loaded up some music, downloaded my plane ticket and instructions from work. Also, knowing I’m in a strange city for the first time, I’ll be making good use of the built-in Ovi Maps program. I downloaded the maps beforehand to avoid extra data charges thanks to Jaffa’s excellent tutorial.

Let’s see how this trip goes. Follow me on Twitter for off-the-cuff thoughts between posts. Find me on Flickr for all the pics I take. Stay tuned…

I’ve always been the kind of person that’s been an early adapter… at least when my budget allows me to be. I remembered laughing when I heard everyone talking about VOIP being the future last year when I’ve been only doing VOIP through Vonage since 2003 or so.

Something else that I’ve been doing before almost anyone else is mobile computing. I’m not talking about simply having a laptop and dragging that around everywhere… I’m talking about constant internet connection on a smaller mobile device. In my case, my Nokia N810 internet tablet with a connection shared by Bluetooth from a Nokia N95. A few months ago, I noticed that I was doing almost all of my computing on my N810 instead of sitting down at my desk and doing it all at my computer. I was still doing it despite the fact that I had a nice 21″ widescreen LCD attached to my desktop PC. I was doing it despite not using a full-sized keyboard.

And then the realization hit me. I’ve bought my last desktop computer.

I know this sounds strange, especially if you aren’t also within the internet tablet community. The truth is that almost everything I do or want to do is handled by my tablet right now. Bittorrent? Music? Movies? Organization? Web browsing? Instant messaging? All of it.

Nokia has long been saying that they don’t sell phones, they sell “multimedia computers”. It used to almost sound like they were delusional when using those kinds of words with S60 devices. The internet tablet line has really made the idea of having a small computer in the palm of your hands a reality. And the announcement of the Nokia N900, which combines Maemo 5 along with a tablet and built-in phone hardware means that this is now a reality for the non-geeks out there. The feature set is absolutely everything I could want in a mobile device.

I’m looking forward to the release of the N900. I’m looking forward to being free.

I know that title is going to sound weird right away. Most people are going to assume either:

a) it’s a joke
or
b) I really suck at videogames.

And it’s neither of those.

When I was young, I hated Super Mario Bros 2… and for about a two year period, I struggled to play the game at all. The second level, World 1-2 seemed impossible to me. Those of you that don’t remember which level World 1-2 is can take a look at the following for a quick refresher.

So, at this point, you’re probably thinking I’m out of my mind. What’s so hard about that, you ask?

For those first two years, I had absolutely *NO IDEA* that you could just throw the little guy off the magic carpet at the beginning of the stage. I just never bothered trying it… so I would instead edge forward towards the giant gap and try to jump from head of head off the flying whatevers coming at you. If I got lucky, I might get one that would fly high and towards the right, allowing me to simply run on top of his head and skipping the rest of the level entirely. But for the most part, it was two years of nothing more than hardcore frustration as I would fall into the gap time and time again, not understanding why they made the game this hard.

Do you know how hard it is to complete the level by jumping from one flying guy to the next? It was crazy hard, but I would eventually be able to do it about 35% of the time. When I went to a friend’s house and I started playing SMB2, he was completely speechless when he saw me get across the gap without the carpet for the first time and instantly called me the world’s greatest gamer. I turned to my friend and said, “wait, you finished this game already, didn’t you? How did you do it?” He showed me the way you’re supposed to do it… and I stared at the screen, shocked at the simplicity.

“Uh… oh… wow.”
“You… you really didn’t know?”
“Uh….. no.”

In the span of 30 seconds, I went from being the best gamer ever to the biggest idiot ever. Amazing.

Bivouac Urbain is the first of what we hope will be an annual event for the Quebec City game development companies. Part competition, part gaming culture celebration, the event caters to all gamers, new and old.

A DJ played some hits up on stage while some artists painted some gaming-inspired images on the canvas, all with a Pacman and a purple ghost running around.

Inside one set of tents were various games and technology set up for the public. NHL 2009 was running on a 50 inch TV, a few indy games like World of Goo had their own setups. Someone was showing off software that would replace your face in a real-time video with Mario’s. Ubisoft had DS’s showing off their latest. Various old school arcade machines were all around, including Ms. Pacman and Street Fighter Alpha.

After being egged on, I hopped on Street Fighter and took everyone down with Birdie. American buttons and sticks now feel weird to me.

A large part of this tent was dedicated to La Planque, a game store started up by former Longtail coworkers and specializing in classic videogames. They brought quite a few TVs and old school consoles for everyone to check out. A Genesis, SNES, Colecovision and more were setup and were in constant use. My kid sat and played Pong for quite a while. Mathieu and Catherine were there representing the store. It must have been a hit since I saw so many people with stuff from their store.

The second large tent was divided in two parts, one for the competiton and the other for exhibitors taking part in the competition.

The competition is essentially a team of 5 people from each participating company attempting to make the best game possible within 48 hours. All the major gaming developers nearby took part including Ubisoft, Frima, Beenox (Activision), Longtail Studios and more. We weren’t allowed to go any futher into that side of the tent to avoid possible cheating.

Each company also had their own portion of the tent to show off their games to the general public.

There was also a free climbing wall and a cool game displayed in 3d inside a teepee.

All in all, a fun time for gamers of all ages and I can’t wait for next year’s iteration!

Well, it’s that time of year again. The 2009 edition of Maemo Summit, a meeting of the minds behind Maemo, the operating system for Nokia’s line of internet tablets, is almost upon us.

As a huge fan of the tablets, this is an exciting event. Even moreso knowing Nokia has a new revision of the internet tablet line in the works along with a whole new major version of the Maemo operating system. On top of the possibility of being among the first to see and use the new tablets, the chance to meet so many people from the Maemo community and be able to thank them face-to-face is such a great experience.

I probably will not be able to attend though Nokia does offer sponsorship for developers and members of the community. Who could turn down a trip to Amsterdam with the chance to meet and be around so many great minds at once?

Get your hands on a Nokia internet tablet. It will become a part of you like it has become a part of me, I promise. Then come and meet the people responsible for your new appendage at Maemo Summit!

(Written on, what else, an internerd tablet.)

We’ve all heard time and time again about how the internet is changing the relationship between musical acts and their fans. Let’s ignore the whole piracy issue here and just focus on the interaction between the two sides, shall we?

This is a whole new era for interaction between those that produce things and those that enjoy them. The producers and artists have been getting more and more open in an attempt to get closer to their userbase. As a fan, having direct access to the artist, or even just having less barriers to the artist, is an amazing change. For some fans, this means gaining extra insight into the artist’s mind, perhaps coaxing out some interesting discussions or something else along those lines. That’s usually what the artist hopes for when they reach out… a connection with the fans that is more direct.

Unfortunately we are seeing that having an open and direct relationship with your fans can be very detrimental, for both the fanbase as well as the artist. The most well-known case in recent history is Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor attempted to fully embrace social networking as well as his fans, and for many months, it seemed to be a relationship that worked. His Twitter stream was full of interesting tidbits and attempts to bring more interaction with the fans. There was always the odd moron here or there that would use this new openness to attack him, and that’s to be expected.

I want to take a second here and specify that there’s nothing wrong with being critical about the artist’s work so long as you’re being constructive about it. That’s feedback that all creators are interested in receiving. They enjoy other people giving their own opinions on their work. It’s when people are being malicious about their opinions that things all start to fall apart. The artists don’t NEED to put themselves out there for others to sling arrows at, but they do it anyways.

Until they can take no more. Everyone has a breaking point. Everyone.

With Trent, his breaking point was reached and exceeded due to a supposed fan that claimed that Trent was attacking other Twitter users and so on. I won’t talk about the validity of the claims or my feelings about them because they are secondary to what I’m talking about. (You can judge on your own if you wish.) Finally, Trent decided that he had enough and that he really didn’t need to bother with this interaction if all it’s going to do is get him attacked repeatedly and his Tweets have dropped off dramatically since.

One of my favorite bands, The Smashing Pumpkins, have *always* had a very cynical fanbase for one reason or another and it’s something I’ve never understood. It seemed like the band was getting blasted left, right and center for every choice made, even after the band was dead for five years. The band’s since been reactivated, but that negativity has never died down. Corgan says he’s planning on keeping the official band site on a positive-minded track, but we’ll see how that turns out.

Criterion Games, the acclaimed creator of the Burnout series opened themselves and the game making process up to their fans in ways no one has ever done before. They answered all sorts of hard questions about the gameplay choices they made. They integrated fans and their desires into the game. They tried to forge a relationship with their fanbase that would be everlasting, but the negativity won out after a six or seven months. Fans started making personal attacks against the game’s creators on their own site over things changed in Burnout Paradise’s updates over the year. Then came the spambots and the porn links… until finally, there just wasn’t any sense in bothering to keep the forum up. One more warning from Alex Ward, the company’s creative director, came and went. In a few weeks, the forum disappeared from the site without a trace, just as the community’s goodwill towards Criterion had.

What makes people lash out with such verbal tirades as to force these lines of communication closed? Is it simply a matter of the creators not having a thick enough skin? Are people online simply too lazy to type out something that could be constructive, explaining what it is they didn’t like and why? Am I being a kiss-ass when I understand or agree with the changes?

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Working in the game industry, we often get to go to events held by various developer groups meant to help us learn how to get better at our craft. The Quebec City chapter of one such group, the IGDA, has been advertizing another one of their developer events, this time with a “special twist”. The IGDA “proudly” is inviting Mr. Ernest Adams to be a part of the event and to give a speech and so on.

That’s great news. I’m always interested in learning more about the industry and anytime I can absorb more information, I’m there. But… the IGDA e-mail for the event goes above and beyond the call of duty and proceeds to simply suck Mr. Adams off.

Figuratively, of course.

I’m sure most of you are wondering the same thing I was when I saw the e-mail: “Who the hell is Ernest Adams?”

I’ve got an encyclopedic knowledge of games and the people that make them… and yet, I never heard of the man. That’s fine and good and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sure he’s never heard of me either. The problem is that the e-mail attempts to make him sound like a super mega gaming star. Let’s take a quick look at his game industry credits.

Madden, Madden… yet more Madden, a bunch of random crap I’ve never heard of…

The wording used… I believe they said “game industry star”… makes him sound like he’s worked on a lot of very well-known major titles. And… all due respect to Mr. Adams, but he hasn’t. Not a single person here in the studio has heard of the man. Again, that’s not his fault. I just wish the IGDA chapter here would bring in a real big name instead of trying to make unknowns look big. It feels a bit like promising Al Pacino and delivering the mailman you see daily who just so happens to take the same acting classes you do.

Sorry for the month-long hiatus. Things have been pretty busy for me the last few weeks.

First, the release of my first console game, Grey’s Anatomy, happened a little over a week ago. It’s in the style of a lost episode from one of the previous seasons of the show, so fans of the show should enjoy having this little blast from the past. The game is out for PC, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS now, worldwide.

There’s something very different and special when you have a physical product in your hands after the project is over. That’s a different feeling for me since almost everything I’ve worked on previously have been just 100% digital. Hope you Grey’s fans enjoy it.

Secondly, the public release of our Facebook/iPhone free game, Assassin. Kill your friends by taking pictures of them while trying to stay alive yourself. A similar game was played at SXSW last week… but it would have been better handled with our game. Check it out on Facebook and on the Iphone App Store. You can also check out our developer’s blog for more info on the game.

Aside from work-related stuff, most of my home time has been monopolized by Street Fighter 4. I’ve played almost 60 hours since the game’s release about a month ago and I’ve been playing almost every lunch hour with some coworkers and having a blast. Sad to see how many people just have very easily bruised egos and can’t handle taking a loss. I’m hovering around 3200BP… so if you’re interested, add me (as zerojay) on PSN.

I’ve been using free and open source operating systems on my computer since the year 2000. Ever since I dropped Windows permanently, I’ve been attached to KDE, the K Desktop Environment. It’s hard to explain to someone that’s only ever used Windows on their PCs, but what KDE provides is pretty much everything you normally see on your desktop; taskbars, start menus, icons on the desktop, window decorations… but it also provides a LOT more software. We’re talking everything from web browsers to instant messengers to small games to e-mail clients and a million other things I can’t list here. Basically, it’s a very complete set of software for almost any task you could want to do with your computer.

I’ve been using KDE v3 for the last few years. I love it deeply and I’m very used to its style. I feel completely lost and naked without it. I just wish I could convince my boss to let me switch to Linux here at work, but that’s just not going to happen, unfortunately.

Anyways, KDE v4.0 was released a few months ago. Despite the version number, we were all warned that it was meant just for developers to get an idea of where they were headed with KDE. What I saw… somewhat scared me, even taking the warning in mind. I saw a lot of broken stuff… a lot of stuff that was just plain missing… some of my favorite options were just gone. What happened?

Aaron Seigo is one of the most promient public faces for the KDE project. He is who I see as the project leader for KDE (which may or may not be the case). His warnings when KDE 4.0 were released came with a lot of qualifiers. It was “don’t judge this now… wait for the first real public release”. After seeing what I did with KDE 4.0… which was a lot of potential, but a lot of broken and missing stuff… I lost faith in the project a bit.

Fast forward a few months to the release of KDE v4.1, which again was labeled as being for developers only. I liked more of what I saw, but it still had so many jagged edges that I really was scared. I wasn’t remotely sure they were going to polish it all back up in time for KDE 4.2. I really, REALLY don’t want to have to move to GNOME, the other major desktop environment used by free/open operating systems.

KDE 4.2 was released this past week… and finally, KDE 4 is ready for human consumption. Wow, what a difference a few months makes. Not only is almost every issue I ever had with the KDE 4.x series fixed, but it’s polished and just AWESOME. After all the bad-mouthing the project got due to the developer-only 4.0 release, this is a real kick in the teeth for all the doubters out there.

Thank you, KDE. Thank you, Aaron. My faith has once again been restored. I won’t ever doubt you again, sir.