Archive for Personal

Sargonas | November 28, 2011
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My “Big Project” for 2012

 

I had a lot of fun building my SC2 Battlecruiser. When I was 5-12 ish in age, as much time as I spend now playing video games, I spent then building with Legos. Now with the advent of the various Lego creation software, it’s even quicker and easier to prototype things as well!

I’ve come up with a project that I am really digging the idea for, I just need to flesh it out more. Here is the deal. I really want to build a 3 to 4 foot model of the USG Ishimura from Deadspace. The problem is, a model of that size will cost roughly $800 to $1200 in Lego parts alone. So I have decided to take it a step further.

What if I was to setup a KickStarter fund? Crowd source the money, and then turn around and build it. The entire process I would document and record, making an amazing time lapse of the project as it’s built over (presumably) a week or two. When completed, I hope to have an awesome video that I can then post it on youtube and set it up for ad revenue. I would then throw the model up on auction, taking the proceeds from it, the video, and any left over KickStarter money and donate it all to the Child’s Play charity for the 2012 season. What do you guys think?

Before *anything* happens though, I need to roll up my sleeves and flesh out a solid design plan in one of the common lego design tools. My goal is to have something up by time I return from the UK at the end of Jan so I can start raising the funding then!

Category: Geekness, Personal |
Sargonas | November 22, 2011
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StarCraft 2 Battlecruiser Construction In Time Lapse

 

So I made a little project this past Saturday. I came up with the idea at Blizzcon when I picked up the Limited Edition MegaBlocks Battlecruiser kit, but have been putting it off since I got back. I finally had the time to sit down and work on it this weekend, and got everything in place for what I thought was going to be a 2-3 hour project. 6 hours later at 1:30 am in the morning I was finally done however. Feast your eyes on the fruits of my labor, my best time lapse project yet!

Category: Geekness, Personal, Photography | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Sargonas | April 21, 2011
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A trilogy is only in 3 parts.

This year two eagerly awaited games will come to the gamers: Mass Effect 3 and Gears of War 3. Notice what they have in common? For years now some of our best loved and most powerful franchises have run their course with many of them being touted as “intended to be a trilogy” in some sound byte or talking point when interviewing their designers. Now this is not the case of them all, but this is the predominant theme in some of the top franchises. Others have greater ambitions and are still chugging along nicely (I’m looking at you Elder Scrolls and Fable), and don’t bring up Halo, thats a whole different breed of creature on its own right, spread across multiple platforms and developers.

At the core though, some of our beloved games and franchises that started their trek on current gen consoles are now reaching their peak, so to speak. After these two titles some other well loved friends of ours are due, having recently passed their Sequel milestone in the last year or so. It kind of makes you sit back and think… what’s next? I mean new games and new hits pop up all the time, but some of the core titles in the current gen world are entering their twilight, soon to have their swan song. Maybe they will branch out into offshoots, spinoff, prequels, who knows. As long, though, as they are not owned by Activision it is safe to assume however that their core story arcs are tying off before they move on to new things, if any at all. That makes me a bit sad and nostalgic, like when I watch a series finale of a beloved TV show.

Category: Personal |
Sargonas | April 3, 2011
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My 3DS StreetPasses its first convention!

So this weekend is wondercon, the San Francisco branch of Comic Con. The one thing I was more excited about than anything else (even hot girls in spandex outfits!) was the chance to really put my 3DS’s StreetPass through its paces. I suspected there would be a healthy dose of 3DS owners there, and I was right!

I have to say, Nintendo really improved on the whole peer to peer encounter thing that they first tried with the original DS. I really liked it on the old system, but it was fairly impractical. You had to have the game you wanted to enable it on loaded up, at a specific screen, and then put to sleep in that mode. A lot of finagling had to take place to get things ready and you can only enact it with one game at a time. With the 3DS the biggest improvement, to me at least, was that you can enable streetpass for multiple games simultaneously even if the game isn’t even in your unit at the time. It’s always on all the time, whether your system is sleeping or actively gaming.

I threw my 3DS in my messenger bag on sleep mode with both SSFIV and the normal Mii StreetPass enabled, and headed down to the event. I learned a few things from this little experiment. Firstly, if you are out at an event where you expect a LOT of activity, like Wondercon or PAX or E3, check your system often. Each type of StreetPass (Mii, SSFIV, etc) seems to have a 10-encounter limit per title. Once you max out, it stops accepting any new encounters until you clear our your queue. If you don’t load it up and clean it out, you might miss out on a lot of activity. Secondly, you can only use Miis you have encountered for the mini RPG or the Puzzle game if no one new has arrived yet to “push them off” the list. In my case, I acknowledged the 10 new visitors, and then closed the unit and went about my business, completely missing out on the puzzle pieces they had and the fights they could have done for me. Both of these issues I am sure have perfectly logical technical design reasons/limitations behind their implementation, and I am ok with them now that I understand them, just wish I had known it sooner. (Then again I never bothered to thumb through that massive King James Bible sized manual so the fault is my own really.) Finally, in the case of Super Street Fighter IV, those mini figure battles have to be processed in the Log in order to accumulate the points earned. Sadly there is no way to speed through it, and sitting down and watching through all those battles is fairly time consuming and annoying. Fortunately though you can let up to 20 of them sit in your log before it fills up and you need to clear some out.

All in all, this weekend totally made owning a 3DS right out the gate all the more enjoyable. I was thinking all week how awesome StreetPass would be come E3 or PAX, not at all thinking about Wondercon. I’m glad I got to experience this now, as to get a better idea for how I plan to approach those other events this year once I have a fair amount of various games loaded up for StreetPassing, so as not to miss out on anything awesome. Most importantly, I want to point out that at the end of the day, after logging 30 or so SSFIV matches (and watching them all) and about 50 Mii exchanges (and clearing that queue 4 or 5 times) I ended the day with about 50% battery life. Considering how fast this thing drains, and how comparatively crappy its over all battery life is, thats fairly reassuring.

Category: Gadgets, Gaming, Geekness, Personal |
Sargonas | March 24, 2011
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Corsets and Katanas and Guns, Oh My!

So I just saw Sucker Punch a few minutes ago….

wow

No, seriously… wow. Let me put it out right up front, if you are looking for a deep and insightful story that will crawl into the dark corners of your mind and toy around in there for days after, you will be disappointed. On the other hand, if you want a Damn Good Time™ that is just pure Audio/Visual/Cinema-graphic Porn that gives you a sensory orgasm and makes you feel like a 12 year old fantasizing about an action movie, you will be in for a treat.

1 Part Moulin Rouge, 1 part Anime flavored action, 2 parts Michael Bay, with a dash of Inception; this movie was the best 2 hour investment I have made in my life in several months. Don’t get me wrong, there IS a story there, and it’s not that weak. Its not story of the year stuff, but it is a solid bit of glue to help bind together all of the off the wall action sequences that are pure joy to watch unfold. I mean really, who here doesn’t want to watch a Samurai Schoolgirl take on a trio of 30 foot tall Ronin, one of which is wielding a Gatling gun?

That reminds me, something I want to thank the creators on; while the movie is over the top action packed, they do an artful job of avoiding any blood or gore without making it seem like they are obviously censoring the movie. Not that I have some strong aversion to that, it’s just that it has been such a strong point on so many over the top action movies of late, it was a refreshing change.

So moral of the story, spend the cash and go see it. I genuinely think everyone will enjoy it, so long as you approach it as a good, enjoyable action flick with a decent story and dont try to place any undue expectations on it. Take it for what it was meant to be: geek cinema porn.

Category: Geekness, Personal | Tags: , ,
Sargonas | February 5, 2011
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GameSwagPanorama



GameSwagPanorama, originally uploaded by sargonas.

Trying out stitching together a panorama in CS4. 2 simple shot with a break point roughtly where the light is and I let photoshop cs4 do the rest of the magic for me. (I did have too do a minor bit of rotation to line everything up even after that however.)

Category: Personal |
Sargonas | February 5, 2011
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Steeple_HDR1



Steeple_HDR1, originally uploaded by sargonas.

So this was myy first attempt at an HDR pic. My intent was to go for more of an artistic look than for a realism feel. Done with my D200, a 50mm 1.8 lens and Photoshop CS4. Lacking a tripod I had to actually hold the camera myself the entire time, and just spend an hour letting photoshop auto-realign each image itself.

Category: Personal, Photography | Tags: ,
Sargonas | February 3, 2011
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Game Development Postpartum Depression

I’ve encountered an unusual phenomenon. The last year and a half at EA I’ve been on a team that is considered a “shared resource”. We are basically utilized by just about every single development studio at EARS as well as a few remote ones. When you need our support, you get a project lead (myself) and a decent sized team of people under me. We tend to drop in around Alpha, and bounce just as soon as the title gets approved by First Party for release. Generally speaking, we jump into a project for the last 4-6 months of development, and then move on to the next. Also, us leads are generally on multiple projects at once, the bulk of our interaction with the team is email and weekly meetings as we do all of this from our own work space where we all sit together. This has led to a very “clinical” approach to the teams I have worked with on my part.

With Dead Space 2 though it has been an entirely different situation. Due to the scope and focus of this title no expense was spared, that meant that the team put forward by my group was dedicated to DS2 and nothing else. This also meant we tried a new experimental plan where I packed up everything in the building I was in and moved into the Visceral studio for 9 months. I sat with, crunched, ate lunch, stayed late, and partied with the Dead Space 2 team. My entire focus was this game and little else. I was treated like part of the group and given a lot of the perks of it as well. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, but more importantly it allowed me to really get involved with the project more than usual and help make it the rock star success that it is. I went from an abstract paper pusher and project manager to an involved and valued member of the Dev Team.

Now I find myself with a conundrum however. The title has shipped, the team is moving on to their next project, and they are without need of my services for quite a long time. Today I pack up my things from my cube in their studio and move back over the building where my primary team is. I need to reintegrate myself to the style of working on a project where I’m not embedded with the team, and back to a life where I am just some guy who makes the dev team’s life harder than usual with most of my emails and no one really knows or cares to know me since I’m not “one of them”. I’ve come to realize it’s possible I was a bit spoiled, but at the same time thats how my job SHOULD be in a way. Now, I’m not so sure how much I like my job anymore if I have to go back to the way things were on future projects. The Visceral guys were really great to work with, they gave every single member of their team equal respect in ways most other groups apparently don’t. Above all though, they were simply awesome guys who were so much fun to be around. No matter how rough things got, or how crazy a day was, I went home happy and came in to work excited. It’s amazing what you will gladly put up with if the environment is right. The future now is not nearly as exciting it seems….

Category: Personal |
Sargonas | August 9, 2010
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The entire purpose of this post is to point out its 05:06:07 on 8/9/10 :)

Exactly what the title says! I have this post up for no other reason than to point out, based on the timestamp, that its 05:06:07 08/09/10!! YAY!

(BTW you are gonna have to take my word for the fact it was posted on the 7th second!)

Category: Personal |
Sargonas | June 2, 2010
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How iWas burned by one iLoved.

There is someone I have been faithful to over the years. Someone I love, someone I have always stood by. I was pragmatic, when they did something rash or silly I did not blindly defend them to my friends, I listened open-minded to their opinions on the matter, some times I even agreed, but I understood that what they did for me was in the end rewarding. I stood by then through thick and thin, and today I learned I have been burned by them harshly, and I cannot forgive them.

This person? Apple.

(granted they had some help from AT&T who I have always hated with a passion).

The iPad 3G. It comes with the option of a non-contract data plan with AT&T you can pay by the month. The rate? 29.99 for unlimited dat. (Same as the iPhone). You pay it month to month and can turn it off an on at will, with no contract.

Today it was announced AT&T is moving to a new data tiered method. (gizmodo link) The new method maxes at 2gb of data a month for 25$ and includes tethering. Alternatively you can keep your old data plan and be grandfathered into the old rates. The catch though is that you cannot have tethering. If you ever change your dataplan at all then you get locked into the new rate. Fair enough, ok then.

This also applies to the iPad. Ok again, fair enough. It’s the price you pay for a non-contract data plan. No guarantees.

The catch? It takes effect June 7th. This now makes crystal clear why my iPad 3G order, promised to ship in 7-10 business days, was delayed for 14 days to ship on, surprise, June 7th. If my iPad arrives after the 7th, which it will, then I am not elligible to be grandfathered into the old ipad data rate. I am locked into a max of 2gb of data usage, after which it is 1.25 cents per meg.

Now, I have checked my old iPhone data bills. I have never exceeded 700 megs to 1gb ever, EVER. I am not terribly worried about that, yet. (not to mention I plan to rely HEAVILY on the wi-fi already anyways). What irks me, what is a down right insult and slap to the face, is that Apple OBVISOULY withheld shipments of new iPads at AT&Ts request to prevent as many people as possible from being grandfathered in once this was decided upon. Its clear, and it’s insulting. Let me be clear. I understand the new pricing model, fuck I even support it. Truly. What is so insulting though is the whole “withhold my shipping date a week to make me not eligible for the old plan” by apple. Mark my words, my current iphone 3gs WILL BE MY LAST IPHONE. I dont give a DAMN about this new “4g” phone being announced. Once my contract is up this fall or winter I am moving to an Android phone on Verizon or Sprint. This was just too much. Apple has made it clear they are no longer the counter point agaist AT&T. They are obviously willing to work with them to some degree, and that degree burns.

************UPDATE************
6/2 @ 1:40PM PST:
So i just spent 50 minutes on the phone with apple customer service. Long story short they told me to fuck off. I spoke to a very nice young lady at first who agreed the entire situation was unpleasant, but I was the first caller to bring it up to her so she had to review the internal corporate email about the situation first.

Afterwards I spent about 25 minutes on hold while she tracked down a manager for me to speak with. I was transfered to a gentleman named Tim who was a “management representative” who was extremely professional and courteous, but made it clear there was nothing they could do for me. At the very best they could locate an iPad for me at a local store, have it held, and cancel my order and let me pick that one up. This would be perfect for me, except it was purchased as a gift for me from my father on his credit card and I had no way to pay for it in store at this time.

He kept wanting to shift focus to the fact the change in plan was AT&T’s doing, and not theirs, and that really 2gb was a lot of data. I had to keep shifting focus back to the fact I dont care about the plan itself, but the fact from a consumer point of view it is impossible to treat this as a ‘coincidence’ that sooooo many peoples orders were held till June 7th, and then the announcement comes out today that is when the plans change. He also insisted that he was told this was in no way shape or form the case, and Apple would never do something like this to meet AT&Ts requirements, although I told him that while I believed he THOUGHT he was telling the truth, I cant accept that somewhere high up in Apple this decision wasn’t made with this in mind.

In the end I took down his contact info and politely and respectfully let him know my battle was not over and ended the call. As it stands though I am unsure where to take this from here without making it a legal issue, however I am hesitant to threaten legal action before my order is shipped. At the same time I just want a damn iPad in my hands before June 7th so I can have the peace of mind of unlimited data, perhaps that might make that happen? :\

************UPDATE************
6/8 @ 7:43pm PST

So just a bit of a followup, my iPad ended up shipping a few days early and arrived on the 7th. At the same time AT&T out of the blue decided to honor the unlimited data plan for all unit purchased prior to 12:00am June 7th. (Me thinks apple had a hand in that due to bad publicity). I’m still pretty annoyed at things but now I’m more apt to believe the delays were a hardware shortage and not apples full intention. I LOVE my iPad, and am actually writing this on it on the train home from work :) I do however, still plan to buy an Android phone soon on a non AT&T network. Sorry apple but there is nothing about the iPhone 4 that even comes close to making up for the pain for 2 more years of AT&Ts excuse for “service”.

Category: Gadgets, Geekness, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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