In Which I Join Greplin

Hay you guys! I got a new job in San Francisco! Starting next month I will be a software engineer (specializing in mobile) with Greplin, Inc.

Some of you may be asking “Why the switch?” Well, I’ve been an avid follower of the Valley tech scene for quite some time now, from TechCrunch and GigaOm all the way down to Valleywag. I have also been the earliest adopter of tons of weird web stuff at SPG (to the sometime-bemusement of my coworkers!)– so it stands to reason that I would eventually find myself moving out to SF and working for a web company!

Anyway, if you’re not quite sure what Greplin does or who they are, I forgive you! They’re still quite young. You can check them out at http://greplin.com — or just watch this video:

Anyway I’m incredibly excited (and also incredibly nervous!) to be joining these guys out in the bay. By the way, did I mention that Greplin is nominated for a Crunchie? Well we are! Vote for us! (I think the we/us pronouns are appropriate, even though I haven’t technically joined up yet? Not really sure, but ohwellz!)

Now somebody needs to buy my house. Quickly, get to it! It’s in a great spot in Carrboro– walkable distance from everything!

[related: In Which I Leave Spark Plug Games]

In Which I Depart Spark Plug Games.

And so it is, that after nearly three years of Igniting Fun, I have made the difficult decision to leave Spark Plug Games. Amie and I have been talking about moving out West for awhile now, and San Francisco seemed like a natural fit– given that I’m a bit of a fanatic for new web technologies and the startup scene.

In early February of 2011, I will be joining Greplin, Inc. as a software engineer and Mobile Dude.

I’ve absolutely loved working at SPG. I don’t lie or exaggerate when I tell you it’s the best work environment I can possibly imagine. This is to say nothing of the absolutely incredible people that I’ve had the privilege of working with. The guys at SPG are nothing short of world class talent and I can only hope to work with them again someday.

Obviously there are reasons for my decision, which I won’t go into here, but I think the best explanation is a simple one: I got the “itch”.

I need to see what else is out there and I wouldn’t mind getting away from games for awhile. Seeing that I’ve been fascinated by Valley culture and the tech race for awhile now, it really does make perfect sense for me to be there at this point in my life.

Now buy my house… Seriously, you guys! It’s in a great part of Carrboro and we don’t need it anymore. I’ll love you forever.

[related: In Which I Join Greplin]

Soooo…

...Yeah

I’m sorry I abandoned you, Internet! I know I haven’t called or written lately, and I’m really sorry for that. I’ve been spending quite a bit of my off-hours time developing noncritical engine features for NYMPH, and haven’t really had much time to write on the ol’ blog.

I’ve got a couple ideas for posts kicking around that you may find interesting. Firstly I want to write about why the hell it’s so hard to turn a profit over here in Gameland while Techland over in the Valley seemingly has more money than it knows what to do with. I mean– I know we’re kind of commoditized as a field, but don’t we get a pass by sheer virtue of the fact that we’re in a creative industry? Evidently not.

But there’s more!

iSlap v1.0 available on the app store!

Truly a milestone– my company, Spark Plug Games, have officially released our first ever title for the iPhone. We should (hopefully) be getting a small media blitz going among the iphone/apple blogosphere in the coming days. With any luck people out there will find it as amusing as we have

Support my company, buy it for $0.99 today!

http://tinyurl.com/8wg4pr (link opens itunes)

When it rains, it pours!

Well, I guess living in a state with a severe drought can skew your perspective. It’s really just more like your average spring storm.

By that I mean– I’ll be doing 20 hr/wk of scripting and coding for Spark Plug Games, starting tomorrow. This is on top of the web software that I’ve contracted to develop for a friend. In addition to that, there will also probably be work with Spark Plug’s parent company in the flash/php space.
Looks like I could very easily be back to 40 hrs/wk pretty quickly with all this going down. Torrential downpours of MONEY!

Current Job Status

Since I’ve still got people asking me what’s going on employment-wise, and I don’t really have much extra to say– I’ll say what I can here.

Things more or less fell through with the casual studio I was in talks with, as they won’t be able to start development until July, and I am definitely in need of employment now. No hard feelings, definitely. The head of the studio is still working hard to get me in as a Flash developer with the parent company. No big change there, just waiting for the hiring guy to get back.

Otherwise, what’s up? I’ve turned in my Tech Test at Emergent, and am just waiting to hear back. Evidently all their HR folks are super-tied-up right now with training new hires (and I hear the head of Gamebryo HR is out for two damn weeks).

Basically, if I don’t hear back about the Flash position this week, I’d bet on my being out of a job for a few weeks at least.

In other news, it’s my fucking birthday! Amie’s taking me out to PF Chang’s tonight (I didn’t really have a preference so I allowed myself to be swayed). She also went out hunting for a present yesterday, and returned with a traditional bag-packaged object of not insubstantial weight. I tried to convince her to let the openings proceed early, but she’d have none of it. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m going to get measured for a tux for Mike’s wedding tonight as well. Any longer and I may miss out on groomsmanship imo.

My Second Flash Demo!

It’s basically a demo of the concepts that go into flash webpage design. It’s very heavily Homestar-Runner inspired, as well.

Link

My First Flash Demo

Jesus it’s amazing.

Link

On Flash and its Idiosyncrasies

  I’ve become fond recently of saying that “Flash is as professional-grade as Y is a vowel.” The thing just befuddles me in some ways, while being really neat in others.

I’ve definitely become a fan of just drawing stuff on the screen with Flash, because the vector conversion makes all my lines look really deliberate and sharp, where in real life they’re nothing but (it takes a special kind of algorithm to create cool stuff from freehand mouse-drawing). Tweening is also really cool, with all the control you have over ease of transition, etc.

Then you get to the programming aspect of Flash and the pungent reek of terrible design slaps you in the face like month-old fish. I respect that they made their own custom scripting language, and it’s passable for that– but then adding in OO-style classes, and I’m like… wtf– how does that tie in with Flash’s concept of an object: “Symbols”?

I’ve been able to so far bypass any OO style programming with flash, and put any object-specific code into the symbol’s own actionscript file, but I get the feeling that won’t last.

I also effing hate the IDE. If you want to earn my love, you will use an open language that produces plain text code files, and that can be integrated with something like MS Studio or Eclipse. They have invented not only the wheel, but also suspension, A/C, and internal combustion. There is no reason to try to do it better.

I’ve been keeping my projects in a local SVN repository, and it really pisses me off that even the source for these things is binary. At least give me something that can be parsed and diff’d by Subversion!

Ugh, closed-standard-mongering asshats.

Consolidation is the way

So, I got uber-stressed yesterday. I’ve been promising my friends back home that I’d come visit them (and then breaking said promises) since forever. First it was early December for a party, then it was January… February. The most recent offense was my promise that I would visit for the Rock n Roll Prom at the Bluebird in April… Go on and take a guess how that’s turning out. I’ll wait.

So Kristen just posted on facebook asking if I’d be leaping joyously into her arms in 17ish days, and I have to say that up til this point I had been totally planning on it. I’ve just put off ordering the tickets until I hear definitively on this job. After getting another no-news update on the job, I decide fuck it– these tickets aren’t gonna stay cheap forever, so I decide to bite the bullet and plunk em on the credit card.

It is at this point that the price jumps by $40-$80 per ticket.

I decided that with the cost and the really fucking shitty travel times available, that I’m just going to have to put it off, yet again. My buddy Mike is getting married in June, and I’ll just make that an extended trip.

Sorry Kristen!