A quick update

I just need to get this out there ; I'm officially endorsing Bose from now on. I just bought a pair of Bose Triport headphones last night and they're pretty much the greatest thing I've ever purchased in my entire life. Each time you put them on, your ears are cradled by soft leather that had to be sheared from baby elk from a far away land. Each cup protects you from the outside world and all you hear is your music as if it were being performed live in your ears. If I could somehow buy fourteen pairs and wear each of them all at the same time, I would. They were worth every single penny and I probably would have paid double the price for them. (Not really. 300 dollars would be a bit much for a pair of headphones, not that 150 is all that low).



Also, I picked up a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Shark Hunt after Hunter S. Thompson became an idol of mine overnight. What an awesome guy he was. I will definitely enjoy these two novels. I just got home from the office about a half hour ago, so I'm going to go relax, cool off, have dinner and read for a while. Until next time!

Oh, one more thing - House Season Three is out next week (me=House addict), and Blue Dragon's out in a little under two!

Okay, I lied, one more thing - Happy Birthday to my boy B-Rod, who just turned 20. HAHA ENJOY BEING OLD LOL. Also I am sorry I haven't updated your site in so long. I've just been, you know, the busiest little bee in the entire land of the bees.

MiniGolf Revolution : Pirate Park First Review

So review number one for my first commercially published game is out over at PocketGamer.

Okay, so, I didn't design that game all by myself. Todd Lewis conceptualized the title and originally brought it to life, but the boss designs, alternate courses (along with some of the normal ones), and achievements system were my work.

Overall, for a mobile game, I'm pretty damn proud of it. It scored an 8 out of 10 which means the people over at PocketGamer liked it too.

The synopsis from PocketGamer;

"It's inevitable that you'd want to find a way to keep playing a game that's so much fun and has been put together with such evident care and attention to detail – take a look at the screenshots and you'll see what we mean. The packed and busy scenery might not have any direct influence on your score, but it does evoke a desert island spirit that's sunny enough to brighten up even Britain's summer weather....[The game] is highly competent, refreshing and more fun than digital minigolf has any right to be."

It also garnished the PocketGamer Silver award. Nice!

Long Overdue Update

So as you guys know, I started my new job at Arkadium a couple of days ago. I love, love, love it. The people I work with are absolutely a joy to be around and I love what I'm doing there. However, since I'm still getting into the swing of things (for instance, I'm going from doing pretty much whatever I want with myself to having a 9-to-whenever job and working a lot), my body's still adjusting so I'm tired quite often and my stomach's giving me trouble. In the words of Bender, my crappy body is crapping out on me.

I'm popping vitamins and Maalox like it's nobody's business, and it's keeping me running until my body adjusts.

I can't really talk about anything I'm doing yet, but once things come out, you'll know. Oh, you'll know.

And that's my awesome update.

The Story of the Crazy Old Italian Man and the Fire Hydrant

Today I had a nice bunch of errands to do, both for myself and as a favor to my mother. Jeff came with me to help out. We stopped at the NY Grill for brunch (which was, as always, delicious), and then headed over to the supermarket to get groceries. Since they were missing half of the stuff we were supposed to get, we just picked up everything at the corner store and then we were on our merry way.

About halfway down the block, this old, crazy little italian man stops us. He's in a wifebeater he shouldn't be wearing and a pair of shorts that were probably a size too small. He even had the classic 'black dress shoes and sandals' look, and he was balding.

He starts mumbling something to us in italian, but since I'm a failure to my culture, I have no idea what he's saying. I just know he's motioning to the fire hydrant. Finally he gets the idea and starts to pretend to speak English. Instead, I get a jumbled mess of consonants and vowels and noises that I'm supposed to comprehend as words.

"What?" Is all I say.

"I..euhhh, the hydrant, I wash mah car, how ... " he stops, picking a wrench that was laying next to the hydrant up off the sidewalk, shaking in my general direction as he finished, "..I do open to the hydrant? To..the top or the side?"

Now I get it. He wants to wash his car using the water from the fire hydrant. He doesn't know which of the caps to unscrew, the top or the side. Now I should have, by all means, said I couldn't help him and kept on walking. Instead, me and Jeff decided that we would show him by pointing to it on the hydrant. "That one."

"Than you, g'bye!" he says, and me and Jeff walk away, not paying the man another look until we get to our door. For a split second, a feeling of dread overcomes me, but I dismiss it quickly and the day goes on.

A few hours later, my mother comes home from grocery shopping. The first thing she says is 'Have you guys been outside lately?'

I was like "Not since I got errands done, why?"

"There's a river of water outside. Some guy destroyed the fire hydrant down the block and it's gushing water. Go out and get the groceries out of the car and you'll see what I mean."

My eyes widened as I looked to Jeff. We then headed outside and the first thing we saw was a torrent of water running down the street. It was deep enough that it went up to my ankles. The closer we got, the more water there was.



"Oh, no, Jeff. What have we done?"

"Nothing, we didn't do this. We just pointed to the fire hydrant."

I feel like we could have stopped this hilarious but wasteful occurrence from happening.




My brother went back inside and I went back out to take pictures. One of my neighbors was watching out of his window. I asked him what happened.

"Nobody saw it happen," he said. "All I heard was some guy was washing his car and then he couldn't get the water off. The fire department came and they couldn't fix it. Whatever the guy did, he fucking destroyed the whole valve. They're actually amazed he did as much damage as he did."

Wow.

In the end, the DEP (I think that's the name?) came and shut off the water main, so we're without water until they replace the whole valve. I hope that fucking happens soon. Thankfully, we had some warning, and we were able to get showers and stuff done before it happened. Good times. Gooooood times.

Cute!

I finally got to see my baby cousin Glenn today. My uncle Jeff flew up today from Florida with the little ball of energy and it was great getting to see him. As you can see from the picture above, he's absolutely adorable.

He's a very curious child with big, expressive eyes and a constant look of wonderment on his face. I brought my Gibson SG over and Uncle Jeff played it for him, and the minute someone starts to play guitar, the kid goes into some sort of hypnotic state. Granted, my uncle's one of the best guitar players around, but still. Even when I plucked a string or two, the kid instantly was staring right at the thing. He loves his guitars.

I can't wait to see more of this kid. He's going to be around for the rest of the week, so good times are ahead!

I've been conversing with Adam about more designs, and he's been working hard at producing the rest of the concept art for the game. As far as the design docs go, things are pretty much set to be produced. We just need the animation team to sign off on their end (after the concept art is done) and we're good to go. Once that happens, announcements ahoy.