Archive for January, 2008
Will Design Games For Car
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 01/28/2008
Almost the same day I sprained my ankle, I noticed my car acting a little funny. Last Tuesday, I took it in to get the transmission and the breaks looked at… and the diagnosis wasn’t good. Well, sort of. There was definitely something wrong with the transmission, and it would’ve been another $680 to pull the transmission out just to finish diagnosing what’s wrong with it. I didn’t think the whole car was worth $680, so I decided it was better spent adding to the down payment on the next one. I took most of the money I’ve made off of Filler so far–and some that it hasn’t made yet–and put five grand down on a new ‘08 Honda Element EX. That’s what emergency funds are for, right? Read the rest of this entry »
Fun With Google Spreadsheets
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 01/22/2008
I could relate a fun story from last summer about 30+ Electronic Arts interns editing a collaborative spreadsheet at the same time (with such important columns as “Do you like things?”,”Are you wearing pants right now?”, and “Are you stuck at work right now?” popping up in real-time). Instead, I’ll relate something I just noticed today–more in the category of Google quirks than anything else (like when Google Maps gives you directions for swimming from New York to Paris). In the spreadsheets, any time you type a date in the form of mm/dd/yy, it automatically converts the 2-integer year into a 4-integer year. Normally I could care less how many numbers are in a date, but it got me thining–is it smart enough to put 1999 if I type 1/22/99? Indeed it is. That got me curious enough that I figured out where the cut-off point is between the 19th century and the 20th century: ‘30. What’s most amusing to me is that there are probably bugs filed for this somewhere and people probably debated what the cutoff should be. I’d probably go with ‘50, personally.
Busted Ankle and Filler Redux
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 01/19/2008
I had a little rock climbing mishap on Thursday night–the end result being a severely sprained (if not broken–I’ll know more at the orthopedist on Tuesday) left ankle. On the down side, that means I’m an invalid. On the plus side, that means I’m pretty much chained to the computer for the next 6 weeks or so.
I posted Filler a week ago on Kongregate. Some time on Saturday, it hit the main page of Digg and stayed there for most of the day. Read the rest of this entry »
Why I Like Dreamhost
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 01/15/2008
First off, a little disclosure. Before signing up for Dreamhost 6 months or so ago, I found a TON of blog posts on how much people love them and blah blah blah… all riddled with referral links. And discount coupons, etc… Their referral network is pretty… pyramid-ish. You won’t find any referral links here, but if you’re desperate for one leave me a comment and I’ll go cook up a discount code.
When I started looking for another host (this blog is hosted on Yahoo, which I continue to love and have used for over 5 years), I just wanted somewhere I could tinker with Ruby on Rails. Dreamhost doesn’t support it fantastically (they do it through Apache & Fast-CGI), and by that I mean it’s slow as balls. But that’s okay. They let you host as many domains as you want out of your space/bandwidth allocation (Yahoo only does 1), so I’m free to come up with an idea, register a domain, and have a prototype up (in either PhP or RoR) in a manner of hours. So in other words–it’s a perfect canvas for tinkering. Read the rest of this entry »
filler: a game
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 01/11/2008
Not much activity lately, but all for a good cause. After negotiating with various sponsors (the game’s been more or less done since mid-December), I released my first sponsored game today: filler. I had several offers on the table upwards of a couple of thousand dollars, but in the end I decided to go with a non-exclusive sponsorship from Kongregate. The game will be living on their site exclusively for a week or so before I start an upload-fest and try to get it as widely distributed as possible (which will bring in even more money via MochiAds). Because Kongregate offers non-exclusive sponsorships (meaning I can resell ad-free, site-locked versions to individual portals), I’m eventually expecting to make several thousand dollars off of this game. I may do a longer post-mortem later, but for now it just feels so good to have it out there. Read the rest of this entry »
Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 01/01/2008
It was a pretty busy year–I finished my Master’s thesis, graduated, moved to California, and started a new job. I got my passport and went to Greece for two weeks. I released one (albeit not very entertaining) game, learned a load about the flash game business in general, and won a BarCamp application contest (for Bike vs Car). I took up biking to work,went kayaking a lot, fishing a couple of times, hiking a lot, and camping a lot–and I’m actually in better shape now than I was a year ago at this time. I consolidated my student loans, opened an IRA, started putting a little money onto Prosper, and just yesterday opened a high-interest savings account at WaMu. Though it’s not a new development, she’d kick me if I didn’t mention that I have a fantastic girlfriend.
In short, I lead a pretty charmed life. I was trying to think up resolutions yesterday and all I could think of was to keep on doing what I’m doing. After sleeping on it, I figured I could enumerate that a little better. So here are some concrete goals for 2008:
- Finish paying down my college credit card (high interest), which is still sitting at around $1800.
- Put as much into my Roth IRA as possible before April
- Max out the full amount for next year.
- Put $100 a month into Prosper
- Bike to work at least two days a week on average (but aim for three)
- Catch a fish in California
- Release six flash games (including the one I’m hoping to publish later in January)
- Work on a design document for my first downloadable game (more on that later)
I could do a whole other set of goals for Piqqem, but I’ll leave that for the bosses and just focus on making my stuff work great (though we’ll be having a planning meeting sometime after everyone on the team gets back to California).