An interesting webapp has appeared that creates a pretend blog by your xbox. It pulls web available data on games you’ve played on your 360 using your gamertag and generates a blog by your 360. Check it out at:
http://www.360voice.com/blog.asp?tag=mythrndr
The question is not whether your glass is half full or half empty.
It’s “Who the $@#$ drank my water?!?”
I just found out about this 2d online mag. It’s really nice and is $4 a pop.
http://www.2dartistmag.com/index.htm
There is also a 3d equivalent at:
http://www.3dcreativemag.com/index.htm
Today Sara came back from my wife’s work meeting and had to tell me a surprise. I was in the shower and she was embarrassed to tell me, so she said she would tell me when I was out of the shower. When I got out I told her how excited I was and in a giggly voice (and deeper since she was embarrassed) she told me “You’re my #1″ with a big smile. How can you beat that?
Apparantly my wife Bridgette told her that she was her #1 this morning, and Sara said “Nooooooo, you’re my #1″. So Bridgette told her she should tell me that too and Sara got excited.
This morning while carrying my daughter Sara into school she started making strange gulping sounds and inhaling. I looked at her and said, “What are you doing Sara?”. She looked at me and told me that she was “Drinking the wind Daddy”. I told her that she would have to tell Mommy about that and she replied that she already had yesterday. This is just one of the many silly imagination/idea games that she loves to play. This reminds me of my favorite word that she made up. It’s “Whobody”. “Whobody want to play with me?” “Whobody want to hold me?”. Personally, I think it should be a real word since I’m so used to it. 
I’ve set up a page to cover all of the public web pages and information I find about Saint’s Row. You can get to it by clicking here
Can you figure out what game I might be working on?
A lot of free time.
I started programming games.
Good bye my free time.
Ars Technica reports that Battlestar Galactica will be showing reruns of the entire show (’04 version) in HD. BSG is one of the best television shows to come along in quite some time and if you are HD capable this is an excellent time to catch it. Hopefully HD-DVD versions of the show will be released end of year when the new players start rolling out.
If you are one of the dozen or so people to bump into my website in the past year, you’ve probably noticed that it has bounced around, changed shapes, and otherwise looked like a piece of sillyputty that has been smeared over too many magazines.
I’m done with all of that, and it’s time to start writing again. I’ve always enjoyed sharing things that I’ve learned with others and this website is going to be my vehicle to do so in a public way.
So who am I? Fair enough.
My name is Jeff Thompson, and I’m a 30 something game programmer living in Champaign, Illinois. I’m married to a beautiful woman, and have one absolutely amazing two year old daughter. Of course, things weren’t always this way…
I’m a graduate of the University of Illinois (UIUC) in computer science (engineering). I was a physics major for two and a half years, until I bought a new computer (386), rediscovered my love of programming and playing games, and came to the realization that there just really wasn’t money in physics. Strangely, programming felt a lot more mainstream than physics. Of course now-a-days almost everyone seems to be a programmer of some sorts, but this was back before the web permeated everything.
During school I twiddled with programming games, writing my own operating system, and was social chair and vice president of the local ACM chapter. I also spent a lot of my time learning about computer security. This led to my first out of college professional job doing operating system security programming. Though it ended poorly, I can only look back on my years doing this work as a unique oportunity. While working this job, I worked in kernel programming, developed a modified operating system, worked on command and control systems, developed new technology for Swiss banks, did some tiger teams work, handled the securing systems for an international hacking contest, spoke at several conferences, was quoted in various newspapers and magazines, and even won the bastard operator from hell hacking contest at DefCon.
When that company fell on hard times, I left to form a new company with a fellow employee doing MacOS X software development. Several other employees eventually came on board. This was quite a change as I was doing pure COTS software development in a purely commercial environment. Many pieces of software later, we did manage to create a very popular piece of software for MacOS X. I’ve since left the company and am waiting to see where the company goes.
This took me to my latest (and hopefully last stop) in different programming jobs for me. I have always been fascinated by games, and in particular multiplayer games.
When I was in eighth grade I developed a multiplayer dungeons and dragons style bbs for the Apple //e. Later in college I even hooked my old bbs up to the internet through a serial port and a tcp/ip port redirector I hacked up. It was good nastolgic fun, and a nice reminder of what a horrible speller I was back then.
So, I am absolutely thrilled to finally get to where I probably have always belonged. I believe that my previous jobs were a wonderful journey that gave me a breadth of experience in areas that few will have, but I’m ready to stay in games for a long time to come.
As for what I am doing specifically, I am a multiplayer programmer working on an unnanounced title. The problems are hard, confounding, and all together fascinating!
More to come…
Cheers!
