• Writing Resources

    2009 – Wrap Up

    This is my year end summary of my writing endeavors for 2009. I was still working at BioWare for three quarters of this year, so I’m expecting my productivity to increase for 2010. That said, I’m quite happy with the number of acceptances I’ve received this year. Stories Written in 2009: Four science fiction stories and one fantasy story (one of the sci-fi stories being my Writers of the Future winner). These were longer stories than I normally write, in the 9K+ range. I also wrote three chapters of ‘The Novel’. New Stories Published in 2009: ‘From the Sea’ On Spec #78 Fall 2009 ‘The Tale of Lady Spite’ Tales…

  • Review

    Review – PHP Cookbook

    The PHP Cookbook by David Sklar and Adam Trachtenberg is an excellent reference manual for PHP. I’ve meddled with PHP a bit in the past, but now after going through the book, I feel a lot more confident about my ability to use PHP and know that if I’m stuck there will likely be a recipe in the book that will help me out. The book, like all the O’Reilly cookbooks, is organized into problems and solutions, which are clustered into topic chapter, such as Web Basics, Database Access, et cetera. I read it front to back because from past experience I’ve found that doing this lets me stumble across…

  • My Life,  The Lazy Designer

    BioWare-Brent Year 5 (Fall 2003 – Summer 2004)

    This is the fifth of ten posts, one for each year that I worked for BioWare. Conquering the Hordes of the Underdark As summer 2003 turned into fall, the Hordes of the Underdark team was hard at work on the second Neverwinter Nights expansion. We were fast approaching our deadlines and I was able to poach writer Drew Karpyshyn from Knights of the Old Republic and have him join the team. The extra writing manpower, plus all the hard work from the existing team members powered us through and Hordes went gold in November. I am still very proud of the effort we put into Expansion Pack 2 — the…

  • Review,  The Lazy Designer

    iPhone Game Development

    iPhone Game Development (Paul Zirkle and Joe Hogue — O’Reilly) is the second iPhone development book that I have read. The first, The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook was a general introduction to development on the iPhone while this book is focused on building games. To start with the book does a good job of laying out the iPhone game development process. I especially liked the section on the registration process (developers have to sign up and pay fees to be allowed to develop iPhone applications). I feel the authors did a good job of walking a new registrant through a process that some might feel intimidated by. The primer on Objective-C…

  • My Life

    Snow

    Generally I enjoy the cold and the snow. That is probably a good thing given where I live. But every year, usually around the time that the first major snowfall hits us I do wonder… why am I not living somewhere warmer? Somewhere where I’m not spending afternoons pushing cars free of snow-entrenched alleys, or shovelling multiple times a day? The first snowfall actually happened a while back but it was mostly just a light fall, enough to build a snowman that would end up melting a few days later. This dump of snow (in the picture at the top and the other one at the bottom) happened on Friday.…

  • My Life,  The Lazy Designer

    Leaving BioWare… three months later

    Three months ago I left BioWare after having worked there for ten years. It was a big decision, probably the biggest I have ever made. In a previous post I talk a bit about why I left. Since I ‘retired’, BioWare released Dragon Age, a title I had worked on for 5-6 years. I do not know how well it is doing financially but it is maintaining a respectable, if somewhat disapointing (to me) game ranking. It is holding at just about 90%. I would have been happier to see it at 91 or 92. I have noticed that on both the PS3 and the XBOX360 that its extra download…

  • My Life

    Google Reader

    This post isn’t for those of you who already have your own favorite way of keeping track of blogs and websites that you frequent regularly. It is directed towards those folks out there who, like myself a year ago, really want to read all the interesting things people were posting and updating frequently but are getting overwhelmed by all the data. Google Reader keeps track of blogs (such as this one) for you, keeping all the posts in on convenient place. You can read the full explanation at wikipedia. Basically you subscribe to as many blogs as you want and you can organize them and categorize them. It makes keeping…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    Fallout 3 Game Review

    Okay, finally finished Fallout 3. Yeah, I know it took me a year but while working at BioWare I was too busy to actually finish games… I could only try them out. So retirement has been nice in that I can actually enjoy games again. And I did enjoy this one. Beware… there are spoilers ahead. If you don’t know what a spoiler is, continue reading and you’ll understand. Overall I really enjoyed the game and if the ending hadn’t messed up everything I’d still be playing it (instead of moving onto BioShock, another game I have yet to finish). What do you mean the ending messed up? Basically if…

  • Writing Resources

    Rich Horton – On Spec

    Every year Rich Horton’s does a year end summary of all the fiction he has read in the year (how does he find the time to read all these magazines?!). He has recently posted his summary for On Spec 2009. Last year he said he liked “A Ragman’s Vow” and this year he mentioned me in his “also good work from” category (for my story ‘From the Sea’), which pleased me. Rich Horton seems to have three tiers of mentions when reviewing — the “good work from” is his lowest tier, the middle tier is when he mentions the title of the story and a short blurb, and one story…