The Disturbance in the Force was...

For those of you who I've not told in person what's going on yet... there was a huge disturbance in the force on July 11th for me. A shift sideways, if you will.

The planet Alderaan. This is obviously an "after" pic.

I left Surreal Software.

That's a big huge enormous step for me... I'd been there for 3 and a half years, and because of that have worked with some of the most amazing people I've ever worked with. And I mean ever. These guys were awesome - almost like family. They honestly care about the people who work for them, and even though the company is getting quite large these days (its doubled in size since I started there), everyone there is a rockstar. That's rare.

Before you start wondering... no, I didn't leave because of the project I was working on, or problems with co-workers or anything else you might be imagining which is untoward. In fact, I'd have loved to have stayed and seen This Is Vegas all the way through to completion, because it's one of those projects which has the potential to just completely rock the gaming world. I've got faith that those guys will come out with an excellent game.

This Is Vegas: It's like someone took GTA 4 and gave it several large dirty martinis and a backstage pass to a Frank Sinatra concert

Nah, I left because working with your fiancee blows goats for both you and your fiancee. It removes that safety valve that everyone needs to vent about what's going on at work, because if you work together, often times you'll both be venting about the same thing - and from two different sides. Not good. That, and absence (even for a few hours each day) makes the heart grow fonder.

So where did I end up going? (And please, if your name is Andrew K, Pete I or Sean Ph, forgive me - I'm totally slammed right now, and this whole thing has been a bit of a roller-coaster. Emails are about to fly your way explaining what's going on).

The New Hotness...

XRK: You only think you've not heard of us because you've not been paying enough attention... yet

I've just started a new gig with the incredibly talented bunch X-Ray Kid Studios. Did you heard of Google Lively which hit beta about 3 weeks ago? Well, notice all that art and animation goodness? That's us.

I've come on board as Director of Engineering, which is a position I've been itching to sink my teeth into for a few years now.

We're working on our own IP right now. I can't tell you any more details, just please, rest assured that I've never seen a group of people so... well... synchronized. Everyone is on the same page as to what we want to create, and that's making the early stages mindblowingly smooth.

(BTW: I will be looking for at least 3 senior guys to join me on the team in the areas of general engine/tools tech, graphics and gameplay, and probably 2 or 3 mid to junior ones before the end of the year... although the details right now aren't fully figured out. If you know anyone in the games industry who's looking, let me know).

My Job So Far...

So far, over the past two weeks, I've been down to our Newport Beach offices in Orange County, California, and met the rest of the team in person. (All of whom are great... I spent a good part of my first week in complete and total utter fanboyish shell shock regarding the caliber and credentials some of the people I work with).

We get our offices up in Seattle on August 1st (X-Ray Kid North is the Video Game hub; X-Ray Kid South is the 2D/Animation/Cartoon/Comic Book/TV/Movie hub). The offices are right across the street from Surreal Software which is great (and means that I can still carpool to work), and literally right across the corridor from FXville - a group of mostly ex-Surreal Video Game FX and Character artists, whom I consider to be the absolute best in the business. (And if this all sounds rather incestuous and sparks your conspiracy theory neurons... that office complex is probably the best creative space for the price available right now).

I went to Gamefest 2008 last week and met up with some old friends, and made some new ones, did some networking, attended a number of talks, and discovered that - weirdly - about 75% of the attendees this year appeared to be Microsoft employees.

O Rly?

Meanwhile, the rest of my co-workers ended up at the San Diego Comicon. Unlike most people who go to the Comicon, they're the kind of people who actually go there and sign autographs and stuff, instead of lining up to get them. (Going to Comicon as superstars vs. listening to talks about how to compress data for streaming on the XBOX 360 at the exceptionally nerdy Gamefest 2008? I think they got the better end of the deal).

The embarassing thing tho? Last comic books I read was ... ok, well, strictly it was Absolute Watchmen. But before that? Er... that'd be my friend Aron Dittbrenner's one that he was working on. OK, so, anything commercial that anyone else would have read or heard of? Ummmm.. yeah... that'd be the Spiderman/Venom arc way back when. Like, 1985 or so. Before that, I did read my Uncle's entire Marvel comicbook collection which comprised of nearly everything Marvel published from about 1968 to about 1978. That was, I read it before my cousins decided they were coloring books and my aunt unfortunately didn't disavow them of this knowledge. God knows how much those would be worth today.

Which means that ... um... it's quite embarrassing to realize that nearly everyone I work with is a comic-book legend to those who follow them.

Jeff Matsuda gets his Batman on

Best thing about this job so far? Everyone's huge on collaboration, so I get to dabble with my more creative side instead of just pushing da onez and zeroez.

This week, I'm back down in the Irvine area, meeting up with potential Engine partners for a console game. *cracks knuckles* Time to get stuck in! (Although getting up at 4am for a flight... meh... goes with the territory).

Big leagues. Small massively agile company. This is going to be fun.

I'm planning on interviewing the guys I work with for either my blog or the X-Ray Kid website soon, so you can get a taste of what we're all about (the usual disclaimer: if I have time). More news as it happens. Keep 'em peeled.

Looking for an old friend...

Tamsyn Hutchinson - if you see this - please drop me an email at <simon> @at@ (popcornfilms) dot !com!

Thanks!

A disturbance in the Force...

A shift... I can feel it... big things are afoot... No, I don't mean bigfoot... or that there's something wrong with my feet. Something is... different.

It's almost as if the date July 11th will have some kind of crazy significance to my life... the end of an era, maybe? A conjunction of all the major planets, and a few of the more eccentric asteroids for good measure, leading to apocalyptic earthquakes the likes of which the Pacific Northwest have never seen? Will the sun set and fail to rise? Or perhaps a plague of locusts will blot it out...

And then... some kind of strange crackling energy rippling through the dark corners of the cosmos. A new frontier awaits, sitting in the shadows, waiting... breathing.

Of course, that new frontier's going to open up on July 15th, and then spring like a viper on a ... er ... tree-mounted spring.

A new chapter of my life.

Should be fun :)

Just got back from England

More info, photos, etc, soon.

Crunch time again

It's crunch time at work again, so my posting volume is going to go down for a little bit. I'll try to find time this weekend to write at least two medical posts.

(Just in case you were wondering where I'd gone)

Mission Accomplished!

Yay! I just completed one of several goals I set myself when I first went to work at Surreal.

I'm now part of the background crowd "walla" for the game we're working on. It's not exactly getting my Sean Connery impersonation into a game in any form, or doing any of my european accents, but still, it counts!

So what have I achieved so far on my list?

• I've worked in Tech, Tools and Gameplay. I wanted to get exposure in all areas so that (heaven forfend) when I eventually set up my own company, I know how people do it these days, from direct personal experience.
• Shipped a game on a modern architecture (the old 8 bit systems don't count for much these days) - namely, The Suffering: Ties That Bind.
• Wrote some dialogue for our currently unannounced game (it's a couple of lines here and there in the older story pieces - most people don't even know that I did it - and that includes people working here).
• Got my voice in a game. (Yeah, I know, as background, but still, it means a lot to me).
• Have code shipped in some major titles - and some that haven't shipped yet. (My code is, to date, in Stranglehold, TNA Wrestling, Wheelman, our unannounced game [obviously], possibly the next Mortal Kombat game, and possibly Blitz 2008... and one of the systems I architected is used across Midway to handle crash reporting and post-mortem debugging).
• Worked on all the major current platforms (except the Wii and the DS, unfortunately).

Not much left to do... time to come up with a new list :)

A Little Family History

So I'm sitting here on the couch watching Sicko (Michael Moore's investigation into America's healthcare system vs. socialized medicine in the UK & Canada), and at one point he's interviewing the Rt. Hon. Tony Benn (Labour MP).

And what did I spy in one shot?

A SOGAT mug from 1982.

Most people won't know what SOGAT is... in fact, for the longest time I didn't. It's a print-workers trade union in the UK (specifically, the "Society of Graphic and Allied Trades").

Why do I know this?

Strangely, because my grandfather (on my mom's side) was the secretary of Sogat for a while. I don't know any more details. I'm hoping that someone will eventually read this and fill in the blanks for me.

I remember being 7 or so, and visiting him in an office building somewhere near Manchester. What do I remember from the visit?

A big wooden desk. A pen holder. Some kind of phone. And the coolest thing of all, a pen holder that looked like a little animal, with a spring like a slinky in the middle.

We got to the office via an elevator. But that's all I remember.

At one point, I visited a newspaper printers in what's now called the "PrintWorks" in Manchester - refurbished now as a cool nightlife/entertainment zone near the Manchester Arndale center. (The IRA bombing in 1996 brought about a number of changes... this was one of the cooler ones). All I remember? A big green door, and a huuuuuuuge roll of paper near the entrance in some kind of machine.

The other memory of my Granddad's work was seeing him on the news, walking and talking with Margaret Thatcher during some kind of trade dispute. They talked over everything he said, cutting to her for the soundbite.

Oh, he also had the occasional trip to Hawaii (I think he stayed at the same hotel I've been to), and had at least one meeting on Robert Maxwell's (head of the Mirror Group of newspaper publishers) yacht the Lady Gislaine - about a year before Maxwell was found dead floating overboard.

My granddad - Gerard Foley - died in 1986 of a double heart-attack. And he has this life that I know very little about.

My grandmother - Kathleen Foley - was a nurse. That much I know. She died less than a year after my grandfather of cancer.

They both grew up during World War II; my gran was evacuated to Wales if I recall correctly. She had photos, and at she still had the gas mask.

More than that? I don't remember. I was 12 or so when they died.

Some of these facts may be wrong - they're all from memory. Either way, if anyone has any more info, please let me know :)

My art portfolio (well, half of it)

... because life's too short to just be a programmer.

Graphic Design & Art Portfolio

There's more stuff out there, but I need to get them off my old backup disks and my old computer.

LA Trip Photos

I popped down to Santa Monica for a few days to catch up with some friends.

I've not seen my friend Si since I moved to America, and he moved to Australia about 9 years ago. I miss him a bunch. It was great to see him :) We've known each other since we were about 11 years old.

He was in LA post-Burning Man, which he'd been putting together some awesome choons for. You can find his blog (and some of his music) here: Some Freakish Behavior

I also popped down to see my friend Noah, who moved from Surreal to Activision several months ago. He's one of those people who have an amazing calming influence on me. And he frankly rocks.

Flickr Photo Set here

Computer's back up

Damn memory stick. No idea what data got corrupted. *sigh*.

Time to backup, and wipe the bastard.

Of course, I should have done the backup before it failed... ahem...

Dead Laptop

Damn... that'll teach me not to make backups.

If I'm not responding to your emails or answering IM, now you know why.

Looks like the HDD crashed. Either that or PerfectDisk torched it. Not sure which... but it looks more like a HDD crash.
Si

Off to Gamefest

I'll be at Gamefest for the next couple of days... w00t :)

Nice change of pace... lots to learn... friends to reune with. (OK, so that's probably not a word, but how else would you turn reunion into a verb? :D)

Should be fun.

Programmer Birthday

Well, on August 10th (Friday), I miraculously made it to 32. That'd be a programmer birthday right there - 2⁵.

Next one of those I get will be 32 years from now. I'm hoping I'll make it to 2⁷, but I'm not counting on it. Barring hitting the Kurzweil singularity some time soon, I'm not expecting to get anywhere near 2⁸ though.

:D

Finding Balance

Name of the game right now?

Finding balance.

Yep, I know, everyone's on the search for balance, aligning their chi, making sure their karma's net positive, looking after themselves, etc etc etc. Sure, it's old hat, it's cliche and it's boring. But frankly, that's what I'm trying to do with my life right now.

I think I'm getting there. On the whole I'm feeling better than I've felt in ages. My brain has started working again. If anything, it was running at about 20% capacity for the past year... if not longer. Now? I'm back up to about 70%.

How?

The old chestnuts of exercise and diet are helping a lot in that regard. (Exercise: Lots of walking and cycling, at least 8 hours a week. Diet: lots of greens, oddly, seems to be helping. Limiting my alcohol consumption is helping too. Marianna's by the Market has a lentil soup and a thing they call "Horta" which is frankly fantastic).

Not on any drugs any more - other than strattera, which seems to help with sleep and my sinuses, and gives my system a bit of a bump - which was surprising.

Lots of supplements - Omega 3, L-Tyrosine, L-Lysine, 5-HTP, and a couple of really good multivitamins, sublingual B12, and B6 before I go to bed.

I've nearly eliminated High Fructose Corn Syrup from my life too.

Net effect? I seem to be feeling a lot better than I have in ages. There's another part of this puzzle though, and that's just plain old listening to yourself.

I've started listening to myself. When I feel tired, I go to sleep. When I feel like staying at home, I stay at home. I always used to listen to the big emergency signals of "I feel restless", and "I wanna play" - but now I'm listening to the other ones. I don't stay at a bar until 2am just to close it out any more - I leave when I'm done. (Even then, most of the time all I'm doing is drinking cranberry juice).

All in all, I feel much better now than I have in ages. Are all of these changes necessary? Well, the diet and exercise ones were mandated by my doctor for high cholesterol and high fasting blood sugar, so while I don't know whether they make a damn bit of difference, they're getting done anyway. I think that the listening to myself ones are the most important ones right now.

Big changes at work too. I've managed teams of people on and off for about 6 years total, and general consensus is that I'm really good at it. But with everything else going on in my life right now, I've just been dropping the ball in too many ways. Fortunately, the people I work with are really really ultra cool. They saw this happening, and decided that the best way to deal with it was to lighten my burden (even though I'm already through the worst of it and coming out the other side). So instead of leading a team now (bye bye, Lead Gameplay Programmer!), I'm going to be exercising my mental muscles a bit more, and have become a Principal Gameplay Programmer (hello, Principal Gameplay Programmer!).

Basically, it means that I can stop worrying about intrapersonal dynamics, and start worrying about the technology. Most importantly, it means that I should be able to tailor the amount of multitasking I do to the amount I've actually got enough bandwidth for right now.

I'm not 100% sure about this change... in some ways, it bruises my ego... I've been on the manager track for a long time now, and I have a lot of my identity tied up in the fact that I was able to steer the careers of the guys on my team, and be someone they could depend on to fight for them when they needed it, and shelter them from randomness.

Although frankly, sheltering from randomness has become more and more difficult since we switched to an "agile development" model at work. I'm still not convinced that this method actually works for software development except on ultra small teams.

Either way, my load's lighter, and I'm thankful for that. It'll help me while I'm balancing myself out.

I live in interesting times :)

Why do I do this to myself?

I went snowboarding again at Snoqualmie Summit today. This is the second time I've gone. Last time was about a year ago.

Last time, I spent a month finding it very hard to sit down because I bruised my hip or my coxix (hey, steady now...) or some other bone in that neighborhood by falling flat on my ass about 40 times in a row.

Ouch.

This time? 5 minutes into my first run (after taking my first ever chair lift), I find myself cartwheeling, jamming my left wrist straight into the snow pack, and all of a sudden one bright white flash before my eyes later, I'm nursing a badly sprained wrist. I spent five minutes covering my wrist in ice, sat there in pain, smoked a cigarette, then unhooked my board and trudged down the mountain on foot.

Fortunately it does look like it is just a sprain. The Ski Patrol guys checked me out at the bottom - they pushed against my hand and told me it wasn't broken, because if it was, I'd have nailed them with a right hook when they did that. (Nice test, huh? :) ).

So, a grand total of maybe 40 minutes there, at least 25 of which were buying new goggles and putting on my gear.

Work are doing another snowboarding trip in the next month or so. I may go. If I do, I'll probably end up just staying in the lodge drinking boozy hot chocolate.

Ouch.

To Departed Friends

Eric: I miss you man. I didn't know you as well as I'd have liked, but I considered us good friends. I hope things are better wherever you are now.

To my readers:

Don't let depression go untreated. Go see a psychiatrist, get your vitamin B12 levels checked out (it's a simple blood test), and get treatment. You don't have to live life feeling black. Do something about it.

It's snowing really hard

Heard on Monday on the weather report on the radio:

"I came out of the University of Washington on foot, and the snow was coming down so hard it was coming down in pellets!"

I just wanted to call said newsreporter and tell her "We have a word for that, dearie... it's called Hail."

Ice and Snow!

I've never done donuts in a car before.

Woohoo!

Winter's here in Seattle, and it rocks. I've taken my new Subaru WRX Impreza Sport Limited Wagon around to a few parking lots tonight with my friend Aydin, and we wellied it around.

It spun 720 degrees.

It spun and then slid sideways.

It slid and spun all over the place.

It was AWESOME. And probably the best education a driver can get for winter weather driving. There were only a couple of Oh Shit moments where we nearly hit lamp-posts in the parking lots too.

Apparently I was all kinds of scared when we first started, but I relaxed immediately once I got the hang of it. Aydin's been doing this since he started driving, so he's an old pro. (Although he did scare the bejeezus out of me a couple of times).

Anyway... er... yeah. I loved it :)

My music

OK, I'll probably never live down the embarassment, but here's a link to a couple of finished tunes I've put together.

Well, kind of finished. The first one is as finished as it's ever going to get - because it's meant to be unfinished. I wrote it for a friend of mine who checked out of life at the beginning of this year.

The other one? Welllllll... let's just say it's my only ever attempt at rap. And frankly, I'm beginning to think I just don't have the chops for rap :) Not my thing, perhaps. Who knows? As for the subject matter, it's a long long story. And even though my sister swears otherwise, the lyrics are "Crack Whore like you, sitting in my car, don't know where you're going but you won't get very far". Not "Crack Whore like you, sitting on my cock". Sheesh. Claire - take a bow.

(I may post the full story that I'm telling in the song up here at some point in the future... and yes, it does involve a crack whore. And no, I wasn't so hard up that I needed to visit one).

I need to get back into music again. I've got two guitars I can basically just about finger pick - no chords - and a synth that's sitting in my bedroom basically up on bricks. (I use the synth as midi input to FL Studio Pro XXL - the first track's sax is a really good soundfont I downloaded from somewhere, and played freeform on the keyboard.

Of course, I can't really play the synth, but heck, it's a lot of fun and makes for a nice distraction from my day job. I should really crack all these discarded toys out again and start playing with them.

The guitars? I've got a Squirer Stratocaster I bought at the Experience Music Project on a whim, and an acoustic that I got to replace one that I destroyed to make a short film. It's a pretty basic one from Guitar Center.

The Strat appears to get quite a bit of fret noise, but I have no idea how to fix that.

I've also got a Line 6 POD - which rocks - and a harmonica. I picked up a rainstick, a set of pan pipes and a recorder while I was in Peru too.

Why do I have all these instruments when I can't play them? Because it's fun to try :)

New Car Smell

Well, my Neon finally died. After owning it for 8 years, and putting 127,000 miles on the clock, the final tally came to:

• Reverse lights no longer worked
• When braking, the left turn signal would turn on solidly and stay there
• Clutch was slipping really badly. (This was the final straw)
• At low speed when turning, there was an odd thunking feeling to the wheels, like they were egg shaped or something. (At highway speeds, it was fine)
• Handbrake would lose its ratchet at times

So... time for a new car. I ended up getting a rather spiffy brand new Subaru Impreza WRX Wagon. Some people tell me that the wagon part will make it more difficult to pick up chicks, because it makes it look like I have kids. Me, I'm just thinking it'll be handy for going on camping trips.

Oddly, for a turbocharged car that takes premium gas, because I'm taking it easy driving it (break-in period, dontcha know), I'm actually getting better gas mileage than I expected. If the gauge is at all correct, I'm getting about 28mpg - which isn't bad at all, especially for Seattle. My Neon would get that (before the clutch started going), so I'm pretty happy all in all.

And it's peppy. It has Get up and Go. Vim. Vigor. All that good stuff. Basically, it moves like shit off a shovel. And it's bright shiny blue, which is always a plus in my book.

I'm just going to hate the payments though :( One of the great things of having paid off a car is not having to care about the payments any more, and this'll be about $460 a month out of my pocket that I'm really going to miss.

Ah well, if I quit smoking and eat in at lunch, cook at home more, I shouldn't miss it that much. And given that I'm not going to smoke in my new car, I might be able to manage that.

New Photos

I've been quiet for a while... but I've got some new photos up online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fleetingshadow

:)

More posts soon...

Back in the USA

Just got back from my trip home to England. More later :)

Sad Fanboy Admissions

There's one person who I'd really love to meet - namely Gigi Edgley. I was massively impressed by her performance in Farscape - she was captivating, with an amazing presence and motion in everything she did (it certainly doesn't hurt that it was very erotic). She's definitely someone I'd like to sit down with and chat over drinks for a evening. Of course, the chance of getting to do that are slim - unless I ever finish writing The Witnesses and get enough money to make it. (The female lead is written for her - whereas the male lead is written for my friend Joseph DeLorenzo).

She's currently touring the US. If she was to hit Seattle, I'd take her out for a drink and get her to meet the Surreal Software crew (a more talented group of scum and villainy you'll never meet).

Other actors I'd like to meet and/or work with some day?

Meg Ryan, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Anthony Simcoe, Wayne Pygram (ok, so yes, that's the whole Farscape cast... not too surprising to be honest), Hugh Laurie, John Hurt, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Kevin Smith, Janeane Garofolo... I'll add to the list when I remember who was on it. It's a long list.

Some times I wish I was still a journalist... much easier to meet people that way :) But when I moved to the US, it got much more difficult to get into the biz - in the UK, it was easy (at the time, anyway, provided you had a bit of history)... it seems much harder to network into it over here.

Photos!

I'm finally getting around to putting some of my archive of photos online. You can find them at Flickr.com.

Cool photos? Sure! The NSA ones are exceptionally cool. You don't often get to see an Enigma machine up close, never mind play with one :)

There are also photos from the Good Samaritan film shoot, the premiere of said short film, people I work with, and more.

I'll try to expand this over time.

Halloween

It's that time of year again. This year I decided to put together my own costume, based on the movie Reanimator. (Hey, it seemed like it'd be much cheaper than doing a really good Harry Potter one, or a Prisoner one, and a lot more fun).



Of course, when I set out to do this, I didn't realize that the syringes I'd ordered from a small lab supply company wouldn't arrive on time because of a hurricane. Or that the labcoat I ordered wouldn't arrive in time either. Or that I'd then go out and spend $20 on a "flavor injector" at Williams Sonoma, which looks suitably evil. Or that glowstick fluid will eat through the seals in said syringe, and also remove the markings from it. Or that I'd end up with 20 glowsticks in my garage. One thing I did find out is that each glowstick doesn't hold much liquid. Also, this year's severed heads weren't all that cool, so I ended up having to buy one and sew a wig to it to give it a little... extra.

Still, people liked it - those who actually figured out what it was - and the big glowing syringe is certainly a good way to get people to stop and stare. Unfortunately, halfway through the party I had to put the syringe back in the car - it was leaking, and even though that stuff is "non-toxic", the fact that it can eat through rubber kind of worried me.

Next year? I'm thinking of doing a cast of my own head, and going around headless for the night. :)

Sideways...

Just a quick note to say that I just moved sideways from being Lead Engineer on the Tools team at Surreal Software, to become Lead Gameplay Engineer on the As Yet Unannounced NextGen Game we're working on.

Opa!

I think this calls for a drink. Or five!

I'm an Uncle again!

Welcome to the world, Mr. Jake Andrew Douglas Cooke. My sister has some more pictures up at her Fotki site: http://public.fotki.com/cuuky/jake/

Inscrutable looking bugger, isn't he?

He was due on my birthday, but apparently he was in a bit of a hurry to get out. Probably didn't want to miss out on all the good weather - either that, or he didn't want to share the date. :)

I am the moon...

Apparently, I'm the Moon. (My sister's blog shows that she is The Devil... which is highly appropriate knowing her... so I thought I'd give this a go).

You are the Moon card. Entering the Moon we enter the intuitive and psychic realms. This is the
stuff dreams are made on. And like dreams the imagery we find here may inspire us or torment us. Understanding the moon requires looking within. Our own bodily rhythms are echoed in this luminary that circles the earth every month and reflects the sun in its progress.. Listening to those rhythms may produce visions and lead you towards insight. The Moon is a force that has legends attached to it. It carries with it both romance and insanity. Moonlight reveals itself as an illusion and it is only those willing to work with the force of dreams that are able to withstand this reflective light. Image from: Stevee Postman.
http://www.stevee.com/

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

So now I'm beloved of Spongmonkeys everywhere. Woohoo!

(Note: I'm not a big believer in random pseudo stuff like Tarot cards, but it's fun at parties to get read by people)

Look at me ... I'm Doctor Zoidberg, Home Owner!

Welcome to home ownership. I've discovered that, like a lot of software, it's full of bugs. Not the traditional creepy crawly insect kind of bugs - the other kind. Usability issues. Design issues. Downright mistakes.

So Friday night we officially took ownership of the place. We waited until the legally appropriate 9pm, opened the door and...

... well, actually, we didn't get as far as opening the door. The key we had only opened one of the locks - the deadbolt, it would appear, was locked. Not the best of ways to get into the home ownership mood. Kind of puts a damper on the whole first-time-buying experienced. Frankly - and this is putting it bluntly - it harshed my mellow.

(We eventually got in when we found the garage door opener in the mailbox... not the smartest of locations to leave it in. Our real estate agent is officially pissed on our behalf and is going to have harsh words with the selling agent. Good thing him and his assistant are available on the phone up until 11pm at night).

Anyway, back to the bugs. One previous owner of this home appears to have been either a very very bad contractor, or an avid Do It Yourselfer. Let's call him Mr. DIY, whether he is or not. He may even be more than one person - who knows? Anyway... Mr. DIY appears to have had a penchant for... well.. screwing things up.

Let's look at the list, shall we?

The Replacement Water Heater
The original water heater needed replacing (it's kaput). So we got a new one. Which required new venting (the original was not up to code), new earthquake protection (original not up to code)... and le piece de resistance: being hoisted up over a set of stairs in the garage to get it out, and to get the new one in.

This is because Mr. DIY built shelves in the garage which blocked the water heater, as well as getting a new furnace installed - right in the way of the water heater. Bravo Mr. DIY.

But wait... blocking water heaters isn't all that Mr. DIY is good at! He's also great at:

Mystery Lighting Wiring

(Which isn't just a mystery, but also wasn't up to code).

The Dimmer in the Dining Room!
It Doesn't Dim - it just Turns On And Off!!!
    (...and is COMPLETELY ungrounded!)

The Hallway Of Terror!
Does the downstairs switch turn it on? Does the upstairs? NOBODY KNOWS!
(well, actually, both have to be turned on for the light to work... which is not how you wire up 3-way lighting)

The Utility Room Of Doom!
It'll make you dizzy! You won't know whether you're coming or going! EACH SWITCH WORKS DIFFERENTLY!
(because, as we all know, it's impossible to make two switches both turn on when you flick them the same way)

Still, these are all reasonably easily fixable. I've not checked out all of the other outlets in the house to see if they need any kind of fixing yet. But that's next on the list.

It has been kind of a busy weekend though... we repainted one room, replaced all of the locks (twice - apparently You Get What You Pay For - don't buy cheap locks unless you know what size the holes in your door are), fixed the dimmer, installed fan timers in the bathrooms, started fixing the hallway light, replaced the water heater (well, ok, we paid someone to do that - after all, you don't want to mess around when it comes to methane), did a little trimming back of a few vines in the garden, bought all kinds of bits and pieces (including a garden hose), bought new plants for inside the house... replaced burnt out lightbulbs...

I must admit, I didn't expect to need to do all of this stuff right now. But needs must, I guess.

Welcome

Welcome to the Accidental Scientist. I'm Simon Cooke, and this is my blog. I'm a senior software engineer at a startup company in Seattle, where I program embedded and Windows software. I used to work at Microsoft (on the .NET framework), and at Sierra (on Generations and Photo Lab).

My interests include writing screenplays, making movies, and just general chicanery.

Once upon a time, I used to be a freelance journalist - but if you remember me, it's probably because of the regular column I wrote for Your Sinclair magazine (oh, the nostalgia!). Or you might have seen some of the articles I wrote for .net magazine, Internet Today, Internet & Comms Today, Net User, How To Get Online, or arcane.

How I got started on all of this was the SAM Coupé - a little-known British computer that came out in the early 90s (although my first system was a ZX81, it wasn't until I got the SAM that I started to accelerate). Once upon a time, I ran a demo programming team called "Entropy" - we put out a few demos, which you can run on the SAM Coupe Emulator SimCoupe.

So that's it. Welcome. You'll find all kinds of weird ramblings here - everything from snoring cures (no, seriously... I think about this stuff and dig out what info I can) to utilities and bits and pieces. At least, that's the plan.