Songs I can listen to a thousand times...

Over at Comentario Loco Marq is sharing some of the songs that he can listen to over and over.  I know that this song has to show up on his list.  But I couldn't wait for him to find it, so I went searching.

 

Simpsons

The Simpsons movie is coming out soon.  If you have some time to burn, head over to the movie's web site for games, info about the movie in general, or to make your own Simpsons character.

 

The Monthly Post

Once a month whether I have something to say or not!

Oh damn.  I'm breaking one of Scott Hanselman's rules that he lists out in Blog Interesting - 32 Ways to Keep Your Blog from Sucking.  I may have passed suck a few posts ago already.  Oh well.

I'm finally settled in Indiana.  Well as settled as you can be without owning a house.  That's what is taking up all of my time lately.  Just to get a bunch of stuff off my chest, here's a dump of links that I've either consumed or am waiting to fully consume sometime shortly:

Swear Jar. (wmv)  Awesome Bud Lite commercial.

So you want to be a tracer?!  Here's your chance.  Re-inking Thor.

I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but I really want to spend some time with the latest Microsoft Robotics Studio.  It looks like they have some Sumo Robot simulator happening.  It looks like it's kind of a big brother to the SumoBots.

I really wish that I could be at TechEd this year.  But between the move and everything else, that just didn't happen.  I can still keep up with some of the goings on thanks to Virtual TechEd.  I thought it was really cool that you could watch the keynote online.  Be sure to check out the video covering Embedded programming.  NOTE: You will need Silverlight installed on your system to watch any of those videos.

If Virtual TechEd doesn't give you enough info, my buddy James is blogging from TechEd as well.

XNA (late) Update

Wouldn't you know it?  I get all busy with the move and all sorts of stuff starts going on with XNA.

Professional XNA Game Programming was released.

The Racing Game starter kit was released.  I'm downloading that right now.

Finally, not really XNA related but just general game related, the Call of Duty 4 trailer was released.

The Ballpeenhammer has landed....

For those that keep up with such things, I am in Indiana now.  I realized something as I was driving down I-80 late on Wednesday night.  I had driven that road before, going the opposite direction, almost ten years earlier.  If I would have waited till July to move to Indy, it would have been ten years exactly.  Ten years.  I guess I like round numbers.

Here is the route that I took this last week.

Here is the route that I took ten years ago when I moved from Georgia back up to Oregon.

I wonder where I'll be driving ten years from now?

Later Days, Oregon

I had a post half written out...basically a cool goodbye to Oregon.  The place where I was born and have spent the majority of my life.  But like I said, it's only half done.  I was supposed to leave this morning.  It's now 11:03 pm.  I managed to get a parking ticket today while I ran into a city office to get a permit for my POD.  Gee... thanks Portland.

So now it looks like I'm pulling out of here tomorrow.  I'm off to the flat lands of the midwest.  I'll miss a lot about this place.  My family, my friends, most things about here in general.  I was just looking through some photos and realized that I'm really going to miss the view out of my former office window.

It's not the best shot of the mountain that I've ever taken.  But it reminds me of those days that I used to spend at work... late on a Friday afternoon... waiting for the weekend to come.

Where's the best place to downhill ski in Indiana?  Anyone?  Anyone?

I Made it on Flickr Explorer!

Well, two years ago anyway.  I read about Scout over on Jennie's blog.

So I guess two years ago a picture I took while visiting my relatives was found Interesting.

My friends Marq and Molli have some interesting photos too.  But then again, they have both sold pictures that they've posted to flickr, so I knew they had some good shots already.

We See Farther - EA

Over on Gamasutra they have and article entitled "We See Farther - A History of Electronic Arts".  Great, great article about one of the biggest publishers in the video game business.  When most people think EA, they think Madden {insert year here} or NCAA Football {insert year here}.  Actually, they have a game for just about every sport going these days....NASCAR....Golf....Arena Football.  Where is the lacrosse game?  Curling cannot be far off.  But what EA does best is franchises.  That's why people, or maybe it's just me, always think Madden. 

One thing that kept EA around during the lean times of the console wars was the fact that they publish games to everything.  Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox....Console, handheld, PC.  They have their fingers in about every pot.  Since I haven't been following EA that closely recently though, I have one question about one of my favorite franchises.  What is up with the splitting on the Medal of Honor series?  You can get Medal of Honor: Vanguard on the Playstation 2 and the Wii, but not the Xbox 360?  But then on the 360 you can get Medal of Honor: Airborne.  Actually, it looks like a generational difference.  Airborne is for the 360, Playstation 3 and PC.  The only other Medal of Honor games that I have played have all been on the PC, and they were killer.

Anyway, this whole rambling post started after I read Jeff Atwood's post over on Coding Horror about that very same Gamasutra article.  His question "What happened to the grandiose sentiments expressed in the We See Farther" ad.  I think the visionary element in video games started to go out the window as the games got more and more complex, visually amazing, and all in all just started costing more to make.  Instead of a bunch of different guys each coming up with their own game that they think is cool, you now have a couple of guys driving the whole game with a staff of artists, programmers, and whoever else behind them. 

Try to find something really unique.  It's kind of hard.  Def Jam Icon sounds like kind of a new idea with new game play.  But for the most part EA is about their franchises.  Then again, maybe that's not a bad thing.  Right now I need to run out and see if I can find that Medal of Honor: Airborne game.