Digital Dave

Is when I plan to leave Kansas.  It’ll be a rough 21 hours, and hopefully I don’t have to make the 21 hours back to Kansas at the end of this evolution.  I’m going to go over to Glendale, CA to stay for 2 weeks, and then going to San Diego, CA for a month.   While I’m there, I plan to aggressively pound every bit of job juice from my network.

If I have no leads by then, I’ll see if I can head back to Burbank, CA for 2 more weeks.  The rules on apartments out there blow.  I basically get 12 days to stay with a friend and her roommate as a “Guest”.   I’ll decide then if I want to head back to Kansas or rent out an apartment with somebody.

Hopefully it will not take 2 months to lock on a job.  In a stretch of 2 to 3 weeks here in Kansas I had one job offer and another offer revoked due to a hiring freeze.  Considering that I applied to about 5 companies, that’s not too bad.  I’m hoping that having my feet on the ground in California will help tremendously.

That’s the plan for now.

And if you’re hiring and reading this… I am a super-master-epic-licious toilet cleaner.  A product of the Midwest, formed by the Corps.  I know how to work my ass off doing all kinds of crazy things.  Let’s talk.

The other day I registered two domains for Megan.  We decided that we could use one of them for our wedding website.  So, on Wednesday I sat down and created a prototype of a website and showed it to her.  She loved it and so did I all of her girlfriends.  Yesterday, I went ahead and actually made the site from scratch.  I’m happy with it.

http://www.meganmcgraw.com/

I’ve been borrowing some space from a friend while I was in college and today I decided this was the time to move on out.  I’m not one who tries to overstay his welcome.

I’ve also been developing a website for a local business and we needed to find him a hosting service.  Roaming the different providers led me to www.dreamhost.com, and what looked to be an outstanding deal for MLK day.

Pay 2 years now, and get 2 years for “free.”  So, what is typically around $8 per month, pulls down to $4.  In addition, get unlimited disk, bandwidth, domains.   I had to jump on it.

The other alternative was to go with a pay-as-you-go service: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net

I understand a joke when I see one.

This was a game that targeted the length of games today. You don’t need to spend 8 to 30 hours on a game to have fun. But, then again, you probably need to spend more than 2 minutes.  I played the thing when it first came out and forgot about it until now.

You Have To Burn The Rope is a short game that your eyes may have come across over the past year. It’s a simple game, as the title in itself is a spoiler:  you burn the rope,  your weapon is useless,  you can’t die.

Is this really innovative? Absolutely not. World of Goo is innovative.  Everyday Shooter is innovative.   We are saying that if this game wins, that it is at the caliber of World of Goo, Everyday Shooter, Braid?  Well, that’s what it implies.

This year the IGF saw a 30% increase in those who thought their game could make the cake.

I don’t fathom a perfect judging system.  But the way these were judged this year needs to be seriously looked at.

This is time for independent games to shine.  This is for independent gamers.  Troll around on the other independent gaming websites and you’ll find VERY few that think this game should be in it’s position.

Well, the holiday’s are officially over.  I can hardly remember that they even started…

It’s troubling to think that I could be starting a new job today…  But, instead, I’ll be heading out west 1,500 miles.

The plan is to hang out here for two weeks while I get things in order with my new living situation out in California.  I’ll be taking a road trip over to Glendale, CA to find a job somewhere in California.  Laptop.  Suitcase.  Suit… That’s basically it.  This will be my second 21 hour road trip for me, with one more coming this year when I get married in July and have to drive all of my stuff from Kansas over to California.

While I wait around for the next couple of weeks I plan to do some programming.  A local business needs a new website, so I’ve been contracted to whip something together.   I finished the majority of it over the holiday.  Other than that, I plan to do some other things with the iPhone and the plug-in toolset.

The last couple of days I’ve been reading Beginning iPhone Development – Exploring the iPhone SDK. I’m pretty happy with it so far.  Clearly written, and really thorough.  What they don’t cover in the book, they give some good references outside.  They don’t write much about Objective-C, only things that are new to Obj-C 2.0.

I also started and finished Bioshock within the last week… Phenomenal story.  I actually listened to Ken Levine during the GDC.  What a mind. I tried the game out on the PC when it came out, but never had the chance to really play it due to school and the girl. I’m really interested to see what they do with Bioshock 2.

“Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known” – Carl Sagan

In my previous post, I reflected on the goals that I set out on through the year. I figure I’ll do the same thing for 2009.

• Move to California and find a job within 1 – 2 months
  • And help Megan find a good job too!
• Complete 2 iPhone applications or games to sell on the apple store
• Complete my plug-in based RPG toolset
• Join a open source or independent game project
• Pay 50% of my student loans off (~7k)
• Work on learning/refining math concepts related to game development
• Invest in the beaten stock market while the opportunity is there
• Get back to the gym. The Marine days are long gone. Get back in that mode!