phew... now this has been a looong time since my last entry into this blog. There are many reasons for this but the main ones are: too much work, scratched on a burn out, too much stress.
In fact, in 2009 I worked about 200h/month on average. And this even though I took some 5 weeks of vacation during the last year. There have been month with up to 240h, keeping me on a constant level of stress. That said, I've never made that much money in my life :)
Aside those 200h/month I did the software reviews (11 of them, I think) for GameDev.net, worked on a concept for a social network site, learned usage of a MacBook, Unity and a couple of other software packages. I also did a game prototype for the IPod Touch/IPhone, and a multiplayer game prototype for PC/Mac/Webbrowser. I also released a C++ implementation of one of the early SCXML drafts to open source (here).
I became professional member of ACM, joined ACCU and participated at the AI GameDev conference in Paris (see here. While I already was a member of the IGDA, I switched from free user account to the official membership (and I'm looking forward for the lifetime membership).
Aaaaaaaand... I bought a second house. Yep... I did that... well... we still have to sign for the buying contract, but I already have the keys and I started doing some work in the house. I expect signing within 2 week from Monday on. After doing some "heavy" works in the house, we're going to move there by the end of March. We didn't sell our first house because we're going to rent it. We've found a renter who seems to be OK. It's the first time we do something like this...
The above mentioned "heavy" works are the complete replacement of the electrical stuff in the house. In fact, my initial profession (before becoming a professional developer) was electrician. I've even my master craftsman's diploma. So during the Christmas holidays I've been drawing plans, checking material prices and so on. As soon as I've signed for the house, I'm going to rip out the old stuff and start putting in the new ones.
The house will be modernized from ground up. The cellar will contain a server room. All light and light switch wiring will end there in order to be connected (later on) to a home made control system. I'll place ordinary switches in first place which later on will be replaced by touch screen "switches". I'm currently setting up a prototype using 2 Mini2440 (see here) with touch screens. They'll be connected via LAN to the server which does the house controlling. The used OS is WinCE. I've quite some experience with this OS (gained while I wrote speech recognition and picking applications for PDAs), so I don't expect much problems. Most work will be done by the server itself which will be written in Java. The devices have a microphone in plug, so I'm currently thinking of using voice recognition to do some of the controlling ("Computer, lights on", "Computer, lights off", etc.).
But one step after the other :)
This year will be a little bit more difficult than the other ones:
- I have to find at least one new contract which ideally should start in march/april (HINT HINT, contact me :) ).
- I have to finish as fast as possible the house wiring so we can move in without problems.
- I want to push my PC/Mac/Browser multiplayer game to a "playable state". In fact I already have some videos of an early version of the game (see here).
- I'd like to work on my IPod/IPhone game prototype (no video, sorry :) ). While I already can move around in the game, I still have to implement enemies and get some decent art for the game.
- I want to lose some weight... ideally some 20 kg but I'll be happy to lose 15 kg.
So, as you can see, it was an interesting year 2009 and 2010 will be even be more interesting :)
Have fun...
Welcome back!