I just love the sport. Plain and simple. I love the passion of the players and the fans. There is no other sport like it.

The series that finished tonight between the Detroit Red Wings and San Jose Sharks is only the second playoff series I have ever seen that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The first one was when the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup over the Buffalo Sabres in 1999 on a goal that should never have counted.

I have no problem with a series that is decided because of a team running into a hot goaltender. I have no problem with a series that is decided because a lesser team simply outworks a better team. I do have a problem when a series is decided by poor officiating.

This series from the very beginning was clearly one sided in that department. A Red Wing gets tripped? No call. A Red Wing takes an elbow to the face? No call. A Shark closes his hand on the puck? No call.

I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is clear that there was some favoritism shown to the San Jose Sharks in this series. Was that because of the individual officials? Was it a directive from the NHL head offices? Are people tired of seeing the Red Wings just keep winning? I don’t know. I do know that I have no interest in watching a tournament that isn’t officiated fairly.

The way that the series was decided leaves me thinking that it isn’t worth watching the rest of the playoffs. Something that I always watch. Each and every year. As many games as I can. I can honestly say that I only have cable so that I can watch hockey.

In fact, I believe I will be turning the dial away from the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs this year and focusing on what will hopefully be some fair hockey. The 2010 IIHF World Championship of Hockey. I hope everyone else does the same.

The weekend is nearly here. This weekend I’m on my own for Saturday. Holly and friends are heading south of the border for a very busy day of shopping. What am I going to be doing? I expect 10-12 solid hours of playing games and hopefully continuing to celebrate the Red Wings victory that should happen tonight.

Oh, and most important of all; I plan to not work. It’s always nice to take a break.

So, what else has been going on? That is a really good question. There have been some good things and some not so good things. We went out for lunch with some friends at a cool little place called Burgoo. They serve “international comfort food”. Mostly it was just cool to go out and do something with friends. It has been far too long.

We went to the drive-in. A great, and nearly extinct, form of entertainment. We saw Kick-Ass which was remarkably better than I expected it to be. There had been a ton of negative reviews about it, but based on seeing the movie I don’t think the reviewers watched the whole thing.

Our infamous black cat King Leonidus killed the laptop. It was his latest victim in a long line of unfortunate victims. He has killed a TV, a laptop, several glass/crystal pitchers, jugs and vases, even an electric heater with a Wii sensor bar. The cat has mad skillz!

That’s pretty much it. I just wanted to be sure to put something here rather than not. I spent far too long away from my blog and I need to turn it back into a habit.

Have a great weekend world!

I feel as though I’ve become some sort of delinquent or dead beat blogger. Hopefully I can amend this situation.

So just what happens when 144 days go by? I can tell you this, not as much as you might think. Certainly a lot of things have happened in my little life that can; but it is still well within, if not below, normal human averages.

Christmas happened. Vacations happened. Life happened. Work happened. Really, it was business as usual. Except for the whole blogging thing. I’m not sure what happened to that.

If the Earth had twenty five hour days I would probably blog more. It can be tough to find those few extra minutes to pursue things that don’t have an immediate impact on your day to day life. Or really, I could just tell the truth and say that I’ve been completely swept up in Twitter. It takes a lot of time to keep up with all of those people who tweet non-stop.

I digress, let me attempt to realign this entry.

I’ll try and give a brief run down of the things that I at least have pictures for… because pictures are cool.

Holly and I went to New Brunswick in January this year to see my family. For my family who is reading this you can rest comfortable in the knowledge that I am not posting pictures of anyone except possibly me. I know how much everyone hates having there picture taken.

It was a good time. It was great to see everyone again. I really do wish I could see everyone a little more often. I wish I was better about calling more often and keeping in touch or even writing letters/e-mails. Alas, I don’t seem to be very good at any of those things. The best I have done in past years to keep everyone in the loop has been my blog, and clearly that has epically failed.

It was amazing to see how much my nephew has grown. I swear he’ll be taller than me in a couple of years at this rate. He chose to bury me stuffed animals on this particular trip.

Then we got back and it was only a few weeks before we headed off to Oregon with Holly’s family for a little vacation. We usually go every year or two. I enjoy it there and Holly’s family have been going there forever. We went right at the end of the Olympics.

While there we did a little hiking and I took a picture of snail. Yes, a snail. It looked cool. I believe Holly was actually embarrassed by the fact that I was taking a picture of the snail because she made me stop when she heard other people on the trail behind us.

On the way back that day we stopped by a place where if you pay them you can walk up hill for a few kilometers to a light house that they won’t let you in. So we decided not to go and instead when to the very wet beach where I took many pictures of sea gulls. Yes, sea gulls. I’m from the prairie. What can I say?

A day or two later we took our usual trek to the Tillamook Cheese Factory (interestingly enough we actually go for the ice cream). It really is some great ice cream! They make great cheese too! They actually have something you can only get at the visitor center which is a sampler of all thirty eight of their flavours. Imagine that. Thirty eight scoops of ice cream…

Right next to the Tillamook Cheese Factory is the Blue Heron French Cheese Company. I’m told that if you like brie and other French cheeses it is fantastic. We go for the great grilled sandwiches. Oh, and of course you have to go feed the goats and lamas and sheep. They aren’t as scary as they look. This year they also had heritage chickens walking all over the place. Rare breeds that you wouldn’t get to eat on a normal daily basis. Holly just laughed and smiled and laughed. She loved the chickens. Especially the ones that looked like they were wearing moccasins.

I think it was on the way home that day that we pulled off the road to watch what we thought might be our very last Oregon sunset. It was beautiful and special.

Other than that we wandered around a lot. We finally saw the sea lions down on the pier. We say three squirrels facing right. I took lots of pictures of lots of things. Including weeds. I like to take pictures.

I know you’re still asking yourselves. What was the catalyst that triggered the return to blogging. Well, honestly, you probably won’t believe it. It was a bottle of pop.

You see, I drink pop like most people drink wine or microbrewery beer. I am always trying to find the best root beer, the best cola, the best black cherry, the best grape, the best other random and awesome flavors. I try just about everything. Even naturally carbonated varieties instead of traditional carbonation.

Well, Holly and I happened to be on one of our many grocery store adventures when I came across a very special bottle of pop. I say adventure because as far as I can tell we have as much fun going to grocery stores as most people have going to amusement parks.

The words describing the flavour simple leaped out at me and shouted BUY ME! It was a bottle of Fentimans Botanically Brewed Dandelion & Burdock Soda. Dandelion and freaking Burdock! I was in shock. I simply had to taste that! I thought for sure it would be incredibly, wonderfully, horribly terrible.

And the truth is, I was wrong. It was actually okay. Sort of a three way intersection between the flavours of black licorice, bubble gum and cherry cough syrup. Only better.

Now back to catching up on video games I’ve missed and debating if I should upgrade my computer, buy a new camera, or pay down debt.

I have worked some soul sucking jobs during my life. I would even go so far as to say soul crushing. Yet, when I look back at those days I remember them with a fond disassosciation. The bonds that were forged back then were lifelong.

However, even during those soul crushing times there were things to look forward to. The work was interesting. I even developed a bit of a love hate relationship with the sports of Cricket and Rugby. The games we turned out even had some aspects to them which were actually fun.

After I finally got out of there I vowed not to work like that ever again. That work would be fun, and if not fun at least challening and rewarding. I promised myself that I wouldn’t wake up every day thinking ‘Fuck. Do I really have to go?’

Work is starting to get that way again. I don’t care about the product I’m working on at all. I can’t even refer to it as being a game without uncontrollable spasms of horror. It can’t even really be classified as entertainment.

If I wanted to just make software, I wouldn’t choose to do it at a game company. Plus, I would choose to make something interesting.

So far all of the technically interesting work has been cut due to capacity. There in lies the problem. You see, I like to solve puzzles.

I need something interesting to do. Something to hold my attention and keep my mind turning. I’ve had about two days worth of interesting work in the last three months.

Does anyone out there have something interesting for me to do? Gears of War 3? HALO 4? Google? I need something like that. Something fun. Something I myself would play or do.

It might be time to dust off the resume again…

Work is a use case for insanity these days. My team is slowly ramping up to five people. I can’t remember the last time it was bigger than two; and that’s including me. Plus it has been about five years since I’ve been a true lead. So I’m still readjusting.

I had forgotten how many more meetings you have to go to as a lead as well. It’s just crazy! You simply can’t be productive if you’re not at your desk.

Due to all of this I’ve been much more stressed than I have been since the old HB days. I need to rediscover the secret to pushing work out of my mind when I walk out of the office.

The scope of this year’s project is unparalleled to anything I have ever done in the past and is simply too daunting to be pushed aside. When something begins to blot out the sun; it’s hard not to focus on it.

I can still remember when making video games for a living was fun. I miss that feeling. When it was us against the world! Now it feels more like me against bureaucracy.

No, I didn’t get an iPhone. I looked at them, and yes they are cool, but I like mine even more. I ended up getting an HTC Magic; one of the phones running Google’s Android OS. It fits well since my life is basically Google-powered anyway. Everything has worked smoothly and intuitively right out of the box.

Since getting the new phone and literally having the internet at my fingertips I’ve been going through a phase that I can only compare to when I first got internet access 12 years ago. I’m up until ridiculously late every night just surfing the web, listening to internet radio and watching YouTube.

It is also my first GPS device. GPS + internet is very cool and filled with possibilities! Some of the “augmented reality” applications are very cool. One example is using the GPS+maps+camera to overlay the map data on top of the live camera image using the GPS data.

Well hopefully this post works

I hate times like these. Going from something great to something terrible.

On the plus side, it means that I got my compensation time a little earlier than planned and I have enjoyed having the week off. We headed over to Salt Spring Island for the long weekend, and it was fantastic. They have one of the top rated Farmer’s Markets in Canada, and it definitely lived up to the billing. We love food, and it surely delivered.

We also had fun touring around the island. I think I could have stayed there forever. It reminded me a lot of small town life, and how in some ways I really miss that. I miss being in a community of friendly people where strangers say Hello on the street. A place that isn’t over run with the homeless. Most importantly, a place where life is a little more relaxed.

Once again, the thoughts of running my own studio have drifted back into my mind. It is pretty much a given that at some point I will end up working for myself or starting a company either myself or with others I know and would love to work with again. Being a low paid cog in a multibillion dollar machine can be a little depressing at times.

Enough of that, time for some pictures!

In addition to the Market, the view and the farms; we also found a great little restaurant. The kind of place we wish we could find around where we live. If you are ever in Ganges on Salt Spring Island I whole heartedly recommend that you should stop by Auntie Pesto’s (their homepage is under construction, so this is a link to the Salt Spring Island Chamber of Commerce site that has the pertinent details for the restaurant) for a bite to eat. I have never encountered such a perfect balance of quality, portion size and value. It was so good, we went twice and nearly trekked our way there for a third round with their menu.

And now it is time for a couple of days of dedicated gaming before making the return to the grind.

Work has been… odd to say the least. There have been a lot of organization changes in the last month. This all leads to uncertainty for everyone as to what product they will be working on next. There are some great opprotunities career-wise, but they don’t sound like fun. There are also some fun sounding opportunities, but they won’t necessarily be good career-wise. I guess we will all just have to wait and see what happens.

We’ve been watching some movies lately. It has actually been quite a while since we spent much time watching movies. Generally we stick to the longer, more involved, plotlines of good television shows. (Speaking of which Torchwood – Children of Earth was absolutely fantastic and you should go watch it right now if you haven’t already seen it.)

However we have managed to have a run of good luck with some quirky, yet excellent, smaller films. In no particular order:

Franklyn (IMDb)
- An interesting split narrative. Essentially one story is taking place simulatneously in two different realties and time periods. Pulled off quite well.

The Fall (IMDb)
- This one is by the director of The Cell. I’m not sure I need to say too much more. The bulk of the film is a story told by an injured stuntman told to a little girl as seen through her imagination. It is well crafted and well acted. I’m not sure how the world managed to miss this film.

The Science of Sleep (IMDb)
- A quirky french film about a man who often gets reality and his dreams mixed up; and how that complicates both his work and his personal life.

After watching those movies, which were all basically independent films, I started thinking more about all of the movies made around the world that don’t make it to North America. I miss the days of my youth when so many of the Asian action movies would make there way here.

So, I started looking around for some Top 10 lists for various countries. Japan, Korea, France, even good ol’ Canada. And much to my delight I discovered that martial arts action movies (which have slowly been dying out in North America) are still very much alive over seas. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (IMDb) or John Woo’s latest Red Cliff (IMDb). I’m talking about campy, over the top action like Crows Zero (IMDb) and Marine Boy (IMDb); or what people like myself would call “fun” movies.

Along the way I found some pretty cool sites for Asian movie reviews such as:

• Koreanfilm.org
• HanCinema The Korean Movie & Drama Database
• LoveHKFilm.com
• Midnight Eye – The latest and best in Japanese Cinema
• JAPAN CINEMA

It is indeed good to know that there are still good, bad action movies being made out there. Even if I do have to watch them with subtitles.

That kind of situation is never good for team morale.

Regardless, that period is behind us now. I am now on the last day of a three day weekend and I am finally starting to feel like a normal human being again. I know the push to all of the milestones between now and beta will be tough, but at least we won’t be getting heaps of new features piled on us.

Alpha to Beta is one of my favourite parts of a project. It is the home stretch of the project. The point at which you are just fixing bugs. Grinding away at them until you finally hit zero and then scrambling to keep them at zero.

As much as I do enjoy this part of the project, I really can’t wait for the whole thing to be pushed out the door.