February 28th, 2009 by adam
So. After the recent events (1.Background and 2.What Happened?) where the IGDA Board has triggered a PR “FAIL”, and in passing made a mockery of the IGDA’s own flagship initiatives … does it matter? Does anyone actually care what the IGDA does anymore – especially after how it’s handled this matter?
Yes. Very much so.
Because when [...]
February 28th, 2009 by adam
(if you’re not sure what the IGDA and TCE are, read the Background post first)
This post lays out the IGDA event where (IMHO!) the IGDA’s own Board undermined the IGDA’s most famous public initiative, and what the Board said about the matter when challenged over it.
2008 IGDA Leadership Forum
At a public IGDA event a few [...]
February 28th, 2009 by adam
This is a series of posts about one of the big problems facing the games industry: honesty, exploitation, standing up for better quality of life, and actually “doing, not talking”.
IMHO it has added poignancy given the vast layoffs that have taken place across the board in the past 12 months. I’m splitting it into sub-posts [...]
February 26th, 2009 by adam
(4 posts in one day? Yeah! Too busy to be regular right now. GDC is on the way)
At the end of my commentary on the formation of NC West, I added almost as an afterthought a little comment about Europe and the MMO industry:
there’s a gaping hole in the MMO sphere. For someone bold enough [...]
February 26th, 2009 by adam
The IGDA Leadership conference 2009 just launched their call for speakers.
The form is pretty brief, so I wrote some personal notes on what I’ve just submitted (so I don’t forget if/when they accept the talk!). It just occurred to me that a large percentage of my blog posts are, essentially, about Leadership in companies (anywhere) [...]
February 26th, 2009 by adam
You would think this is easy, seeing as how it’s an essential, simple, part of any programming project. HA! You obviously haven’t used Apple’s shockingly bad IDE (Xcode) much, have you?
You can read the extremely widely-linked blog post – http://www.stormyprods.com/blogger/2008/11/using-static-libraries-with-iphone-sdk.html – which is incomplete, and doesn’t work properly if you want to do auto-updates [...]
February 26th, 2009 by adam
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1917163/?ps=5
If you have any interest in iPhone development (you have ideas for apps, or you want to start coding for your iphone, or just want to meet other like-minded folks over beers), then come along.
Bring friends. Bring iPhones (I’ll bring my laptop so you can download and try my current work in progress)
If you’ve got [...]
February 20th, 2009 by adam
I’m sitting in the Departures Lounge at Helsinki airport, which now has end to end free wifi (I can see 3 or 4 different wifi stations here, on two channels). It’s the “open a web browser window first and hit a button to say “yes, I agree to your terms and conditions”” variety – took [...]
February 20th, 2009 by adam
In case you missed it, due to some incompetence / deliberate nastiness from Google, I’m being forced to pre-emptively move the RSS feed for this site. Sorry.
New URL (you should change now, or you won’t receive any more posts in your RSS reader) is:
http://t-machine.org/index.php/feed/
February 20th, 2009 by adam
Today, I attempted to login to Feedburner.
I had to go through not 1, not 2, but three different adverts for “here’s why we’re forcing you to create a new Google/Gmail account, you really want to do it, it will be good for you”.
The third one has a link “ignore this and login to feedburner anyway”.
That [...]
February 18th, 2009 by adam
Disappointing
No spam filter (there is one, allegedly, but it’s invisible, non-configurable (!), and missing obvious spam words)
(there are comments on the official forums from 3 years ago saying “we need some basic anti-spam tools” and the author replying with “we’re working on it”)
Annoying
No spam controls for reactive processing (banning users, marking comments as spam, etc).
Unforgivable
Each [...]
February 17th, 2009 by adam
I mean this in the nicest possible way:
I suggest you save us both some time: have a look at my LinkedIn profile, and see what I’ve done – http://www.linkedin.com/in/adammartin – it’s shorter and clearer than a CV/Resume, too.
If you find that you have something that would interest me, personally, then feel free to email me [...]
February 12th, 2009 by adam
This is IMHO a very important point. I don’t normally tell people this – I’m quite happy for them to go around misunderstanding RS, Club Penguin, HH, et al and screwing up instead of providing credible competition for me :). But since the new CEO has just said it:
“RuneScape is different from all other MMOs [...]
February 12th, 2009 by adam
Mark Cuban’s blog is an odd one; I really can’t remember why I started reading it (presumably linked by a VC blogger would be my guess), and yet even though I read very few blogs I’ve stuck with his. It’s not like the standard SiValley other investor/commentator blogs. It’s a lot more based in the [...]
February 12th, 2009 by adam
Yesterday’s announcements of layoffs at NCsoft (both in USA and Europe) caught many people by surprise, judging from the number of emails and conversations I’ve had where people have brought it up. I think it’s interesting to try to understand why this is happening, and given Scott’s point that this is really not the right [...]
February 11th, 2009 by adam
(today Lorien joins previous awardee Aardvark Swift)
There’s an insidious new form of spam on LinkedIn: people posting job ads on the linkedin forums. This is particularly stupid because you lose all the benefits of LI’s built-in job search system.
I saw a great one today from Lorien plc (clearly, not an agency you want to work [...]
February 8th, 2009 by adam
I’ve made a highscore system for iPhone, complete with registrations, email confirmations, global highscore board, and iPhone client-side rendering.
I’d like to make it available as a free service (it’s live already, and included in a game I’m about to publish). I’m looking for volunteers who want to try integrating it into their games.
If you are [...]
February 8th, 2009 by adam
Hey, guys, I need some help!
Feedburner will be removed from the internet in 20 days time, which means I will no longer have an RSS feed.
Because of the way Google works (they do not allow multiple Google accounts to be simultaneously signed-in on the same computer), it will be physically impossible for me to use [...]
February 8th, 2009 by adam
I can no longer develop iPhone Apps. I am on my eighth attempt to download the 1.75Gb 2.2.1 SDK – without which, XCode refuses to even talk to my iPhone any more, because I allowed the iPhone to upgrade.
EDIT: I have it! I HAVE IT! YES! NO MORE PRAYING TO THE GODS OF ****ING APPLE’S [...]
February 5th, 2009 by adam
Someone emailed me recently to say he’s setting up a new game development studio, and that (for various reasons specific to his situation) the company will consist of around 90% recent university graduates. Without asking for details, I can make a pretty good guess that there’s government funding involved – I’ve previously seen grants aimed [...]
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