I’m just sitting down at 6PM after getting home from another full day of working at Champlain. We have our first review of our Good Games project tomorrow. I’m pretty nervous about it.. But I’ll tell you … I really can’t remember a project that didn’t involve blowing stuff up that was this much fun…

Oooops.. Gotta take a break.. Susan and Sumner just showed up!.. More later !

Ahh.. just back, It was great visiting with Sumner and Susan.. Sumner is in the Stowe Ski and Snowboard academy this year.. so he spends his weeks at a dorm in Stowe. We miss seeing him up at Bolotn. Sounds like he’s having a great time, though…   He’s such a cool guy.   

Where was I.. oh… I as talking about my day…    I stayed up ’till two again last night hunting down pictures and movies that we can use in the Good Games media package .. I was pretty sleepy when I went to bed.. but somehow I ended up dreaming about the project.. My dreams were all mixes of Flash code, Maya animations and JPG’s… not too restful. When Chai jumped in our bed at 7:30 I just wasn’t ready to get up. I had to get up though, the team was showing up at the EMC at 9 AM again. I went down stairs and started cleaning the kitchen.. I was thinking hard about Max for some reason.. as I was thinking of him, the phone rang… and it was Max.. and this is 8AM … so I was a bit freaked.. why would Max be up at 8AM.. well.. evidently my goofy cell phone had called him from my pocket.. I had a nice short talk with him then he fell back asleep. I know it may not sound like much, but the fact that my phone would come out of it’s locked mode, find Max’s number and call it from my pocket just as I was thinking about him is pretty cool. Blood is thicker than radio waves….

Anyway.. I left home and stopped at the Duncan donuts again and grabbed another day’s worth of fuel for the programmers and artists..  I figure you get about half a page of code per donut .. and 2 pages of code per quart of Mountain Dew. You can get 2 pages of code fro a Red Bull.. but the code will have more mistakes in it. I think I should write a paper on this.   I showed up and the room was full again.. I’m hoping that the team went home last night.. since they were all sitting in their same places.. I couldn’t quite tell..

There was some signs of activity.. there was broken glass everywhere and this sign.. I’m still not sure what happened.. but no one would tell me the gory details

We got rght to work,. One team (Laren and Bryan) worked on the interface in Flash.. they were writing tons of code.   Another team (Mike and Tony) were working on the artwork and design will another team (Max and Awesome) were working on the content.  Ray worked on some of the documentation while I bounced from team to team trying to help.. but mostly got in the way. I was looking pictures and videos, drawing some others..

Here’s our storyboard

Here’s a cool video of the PS3 processor helping do real time MRI processing

Here’s a dated picture of the new IBM video game that’s about to come out for Engineering week.

Here’s a stylaized picture of the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death)  we’re using to illustrate a point on Game testing

And.. here’s a simulated picutre of a frerari done on one of the new game consoles.   Looks lamost real.. or is this real.. I forget..

Our freind Wes showed up for a while to heckle us.. He’s one of our Maya programmers.. Tomorrow he has a job interview at the CIA…. (but don’t tell anyone). I told him not to tell them he knows me since I  have an FBI record… but that’s annother funny (and true) story.

We finally had eaten all the food by about 5PM.. After two weekend days of working all day we decided to take a break.. though I know some of the students will be working more tonight. We all headed for home….tired but happy with what we’d accomplished so far… it really has been an amazing time working with these guys.. I’m looking forward to dong more projects with them in the future !

When I got home. Diane met me at the door and sat me down at the computer to listen to something. She’d just heard a radio program all about Nikola Tesla .. one of my big  science heroes.  Tesla was an amazing inventor in the early part of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. H invented may of the worlds most important electrical  gizmoz including the AC generator, the AC motor, the florescent light, radio  and the tesla coil.   etc.. but somehow, history has given him a fair shake..Every school age kids know Edison or Ben Franklin.. few have heard of Tesla..  He was certainly a genius, but also an eccentric and complicated person.. Somehow his personality interfered with his rightful legacy. I’ve been so taken by his story that I do a traveling talk/show on him called “High Tension: the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla;

I’ve only had a chance to hear one of the sections. fro the Studio 360 piece… but it’s really great .. Check it out..

I’ll listen to the rest and pick out some choice nuggets to share.

OK.. Now I’m going to try and relax.. I’ve bee  working something like 16 hour days for the past several days and I’m beat…  

TTYL folks.. ttyl Sam…
-me

-jc