Bored, Time for a New Blog!? -

Why not eh? So lets see what I've been up to...

I quit my job in May, moved back out to Ontario and am now living with my fiancee and 3 other people in a house near my University. I basically am taking the entire summer off to focus on my studies, practice some programming, and altogether be a lazy ass while the gf brings in the dough.

Things aren't going too bad, I'm finding myself having a lot of free time on my hands, which mean I have a lot of opportunity to focus on things. I've been cooking a lot of new food too, last night I conjured up some garlic bruschetta with basil, mushroom and shrimp penne with alfredo sauce, and an awesome berry crumble for dessert for my housemates. I honestly hate the effort in preparing food, but if it tastes good in the end then I'll go for it.

I've also began programming an adventure RPG with Java and swing, which will hopefully turn into an MMO in due time, once I get down multithreading and working with MySQL. Still in noob stages, working on the basic class and swing algorithms, but hopefully the skeleton will be working within the next week. The name of the game and characters in still up in the air... possibly something.. Mystical?

In a little over a month I'll be back to concentrating on my University courses, this semester I'm pretty much just finishing up with my second year classes, because I took half of last year off to move back to the east coast. Not a lot I'm looking forward to, matrix algebra, advanced discrete structures, data structures, operating systems.. blah. I guess I'll see how it goes. Because of personal issues, bi-polar depression, relationship issues, my old best friends passing, I totally bombed some last years courses, leaving me in academic probation coming this Fall. This means I really have to buckle down and hit the books, or I'm screwed.

Of course, I haven't been just weaseling my time away hacking out code, studying, and cooking. With my insomnia I often find myself sitting alone late at night until about 9am when my body decides to give out on me. My external hard drives are being filled with my ever growing movie, song, and tv episodes collection, now topping over 400gb. I've removed the monitor from my old Dell inspiron, hooked it up to a 32in flatscreen, my external HD's and home theatre system, so it makes for pretty sweet movie nights. On top of that we've got DDR and Guitar Hero 1-3 to rock out on, so we've had some entertaining parties. And I must say, I'm getting to be quite the competition in GH, I'm no 9 year old prodigy but I can get most expert songs down, but there's always ones I fail horribly at.

If you haven't noticed, my Maple days have pretty much run dry. I'm waiting on pirates, saving my funds up to potentially build one epic infighter, but in the end you can expect that to not last long. I played off and on for 3 years, and I've grown out of it. As for sticking to moderating BasilMarket, I'm not sure how much longer I will. I have no point going there except to moderate, it's like babysitting a bunch of foul mouthed adolescents who show no respect. I can't say they're all running blind, but in the end it's just an immature community, and I almost prefer to have no part in it. Regardless of who hates me or doesn't even know I exist there, I'm expected to put in my effort, so I may end up staying with it, on a low priority basis.

I can't say my MMO days are over though, I'm still constantly hunting down new innovative games, something to keep me entertained these long nights. Recently I've searched out a few decent titles; Sword of the New World : Granado Espana is fairly decent, very solid graphics and classic but unique gameplay. The lag when loading is quite a drag though. I'm also trying out Rappelz, so far it seems alright, but feels a bit too much like a WoW ripoff. I still occasionally spend some time on Cabal, slowly getting up there. And then there's all the little time killers like Shot Online, Fishing Champ, Gunbound, and Gunz that I might pop on now and then. I tried the Concerto Gate closed beta for a few days, before realizing it's a complete letdown, SquareEnix did a horrible job developing it, not to mention the hundreds of bugs kept me from exploring anything, even class changes. I may give it another shot after the second closed beta, but it really seemed like a bad game. I am always looking for new innovative MMO's so if anyone has any input feel free to recommend some that you've enjoyed. Any of the bigger names I've probably tried, so many I can't name them all, but any little hidden MMO titles being secretly hidden from my exploration would definitely be a treat.

One thing I am hugely looking forward to in September is the release of Spore. I pre-ordered it last week, it looks like it will be one hell of a game. The thing that attracts me is it's huge expansive and wide range of gameplay, taking aspects of adventure, RPG, RTS, and sim genres and combining it all into a series of customizable evolutions, enabling you to personalize everything from your creature as it develops and evolves, to building and structures, vehicles and spacecrafts... can't wait!

To wrap things up, as for my future I am slowly trying to get my life together, and get my plans all in order. I've been looking into several Ontario and BC based game developers, their requirements and openings. In a years time I will probably be applying for some low level employment there, and possibly some training programs, so hopefully I'll work my way up to a high end career by the time my university program is finished. Aside from that I'll be taking summer courses starting next year to get a diploma in 3D gaming animation and graphics design, which should give me a lot more opportunities for my future. Next spring I hope to get married if all things go well. My fiancee will be done her university in 2 years time and then be starting an internship. After that we plan to probably stay in Ontario or move out west to BC.

That's about it, I commend and thank anyone who cared enough to read this. I miss all you Maple buddies, I'll make sure to pop on sometimes to annoy you

. Take care everyone!

oh and... PICTURES TO COME!