Company Loyalty = Stockholm Syndrome?

It’s been a tough week in the day job but finally this week is over and I can throw it on the memory slag heap and relax over the weekend with the kids. For the first weekend in a long time, I feel pretty content. That will speak volumes to those of you who know … Continue reading “Company Loyalty = Stockholm Syndrome?”

It’s been a tough week in the day job but finally this week is over and I can throw it on the memory slag heap and relax over the weekend with the kids. For the first weekend in a long time, I feel pretty content. That will speak volumes to those of you who know me personally.

I read an interesting monologue about company loyalty being very similar to Stockholm syndrome and I’m tending to agree. Back when I worked for Nortel, I ate, drank and slept Nortel blue. I bought the “global citizen” line and I pushed the “right hand turn” initiative when it came. I worked late. I didn’t mind when I was up for an award and, at the last moment due to a contractual mistake, I was suddenly rendered unable to accept it! Receiving an empty envelope on a stage in front of photographers and hundreds of my peers is certainly one of those defining moments!!!! I didn’t progress as fast as my peers in development (who would leap-frog from team to team, spend 6 months retraining and then make another leap) or even in the IT team (who would make even the biggest political suckup look like an independent consultant) but I have to say they really looked after me. In return I didn’t go to Canada or the US once to meet and greet with the team over there because, simply put, with modern communications technology (ie, the whole POINT of the company) there was no need. My on-site manager would encourage me to go on these jollies simply because he would go along too and be able to justify a jolly for himself. Well, he found he’d get his kicks elsewhere.

Was I being held hostage and didn’t know it? Or was I just working hard, doing work I loved, with people who inspired me?

I reckon it was the latter. Everyone else should be so lucky.

I’m not saying that the article above is wrong. People do suffer like that. I just don’t believe I did (which means I was obviously an extreme case).

As an employer, I obviously want to encourage this behaviour in my employees. I want them to put the company high on their priorities. I find that the guys who work for me believe that I would never compromise them for a quick buck. That I’d always do whatever it took to make them happy in their jobs (as the events of this week will attest). My team do not suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

We’re a family.

Schmackbooks

Apple’s latest offerings, the MacBook, completes their lineup. This evokes many little brain explosions over here at Infurious’ International Corporate Headquarters.    ?????? These represent Apple’s foray into ultra-mobile computing. They admit the Macbook line is now complete meaning we’ve gone from 5 models (2 iBook, 3 PowerBook) to 3 models (1 MacBook, 2 MacBookPro). Ya … Continue reading “Schmackbooks”

Apple’s latest offerings, the MacBook, completes their lineup. This evokes many little brain explosions over here at Infurious’ International Corporate Headquarters.


   ?????? These represent Apple’s foray into ultra-mobile computing. They admit the Macbook line is now complete meaning we’ve gone from 5 models (2 iBook, 3 PowerBook) to 3 models (1 MacBook, 2 MacBookPro). Ya boo sux.

   ?????? Some people thought the 12″ Powerbook was still a little too bulky. Ya boo sux.

   ?????? Some people thought the 12″ PowerBook was a bit rubbish because the graphics card was a bit rubbish. Ya boo sux.

Has Apple abandoned the ultra-portable market? Looks pretty likely. But are we to expect something from Apple in tablets after recent patents for on-screen keyboards?

Wait and see….

Games? I’ll give you games….ZAP!

Those words, uttered by Kevin Flynn in TRON more than two decades ago really inspired me. I love computer games. Sure – I may not like them as much as this guy or even these guys but I do love games. I especially like games which allow me to kill my friends in fun and … Continue reading “Games? I’ll give you games….ZAP!”

Those words, uttered by Kevin Flynn in TRON more than two decades ago really inspired me.

I love computer games. Sure – I may not like them as much as this guy or even these guys but I do love games. I especially like games which allow me to kill my friends in fun and creative ways. I’ve organised LAN meets for the last 4 years which have always been “Mac heavy” but we’ve had PC guys there and it’s always been good fun. Admittedly the Mac gaming market is in a little bit of flux right now as some of the best games out there haven’t and won’t be Intel native so performance is going to be a little less (though Halo on my MacBook Pro is flippin’ lovely). As more and more Universal games come out we’re going to see a raft of people wanting to upgrade. My brother is already sold on it 🙂

We have a product roadmap here. Some things that we really want to get started on once SyncBridge 1.0 is released. We’re going to need to have more people on board for them which is cool. One of these things is a game. Or, if it works out, a series of games. I have the basics of a game world, we have discussed the first game release and I’m really quite excited by it. Much like SyncBridge, this is software designed by someone who really wants to play it.

The biggest difficulties we see ahead:

   ?????? game engine.

   ?????? me no do grafix.

   ?????? platform support.

   ?????? licensing.
Obviously we want to do a game that will be popular. I’m really only interested in supporting the Mac but it’s entirely likely that the Mac market ain’t big enough for that. My model for this would be early days Bungie which was, in my pinion, the best thing to happen to the Mac games market and if I’d been The Steve, I’d have bought Bungie with some of that War Chest cash rather than leaving it to Redmond. But then I loathe the idea of being an Armchair CEO of someone else’s company. I’m in fanboy mode here.

 

Engines of Change

This means some tough decisions. I’m not a coder (as I think you have all gathered) and we have a choice – license a game engine or build one. Licensing seems to make more sense and will make us actually a huge heap closer to release. We have to then look at the costs of licensing as well as the development languages and where the engine can be deployed to. This is a tough decision. We considered Unity3D but the lack of multiplayer is a major issue. (the web site talks about networking but is stunningly silent on the actual aspect of multiplayer).

 

Where are the pikchas

I don’t do graphics but I know how I want it to look. This means getting people who can not only make pretty pictures but who can also read my mind. Graphic designers can do this. Apparently.
For the first game I just want it to be FAST. The textures and background are really important and I want the immersive quality to be such that people complain to us about motion sickness. (mostly because there’s an ex-colleague of mine who gets motion sickness and I will laugh when he tries to play it. Bleargh.

 

Platform Nine for the 10:30 to Little Thaxton

I’m only interested in Mac gaming but it’s plain to see that if we wanted to do this right, as a networkable game, then we need to include Windows support. And if we’re going to be supporting Windows we’ll need Windows dev guys. And if we go that far, do we look at Linux? What about porting to consoles? To be honest, as I don’t own a console, the idea of writing a game for one doesn’t appeal in the slightest and if I had to choose, I’d probably aim at PSP/Nintendo DS. Which consoles do you choose? XBOX? XBOX 360? PS2? PS3? Wii? That just seems like a huge worm kettle (or whatever the metaphor is). I vote for Mac and we’ll add Windows support if people are nice to us.

 

Can I see your license, sir?

I don’t want to get obsessive about this. One of the things I loved about Myth II was that it was really LAN party friendly. I personally own about 4 licenses for HALO (3 Mac, 1 PC). I want to make it as approachable as possible – but how to do that and end up with sales that justify the costs of the game engine license? Too hard a question for now.

This has turned into a mad rant. I’ll have a wee think about it and talk more later.

My stormtrooper mates

My buddies Neil and Nick cause havoc in the streets of London while showing their own particular (Star Wars) fanatacism. Related posts: London, City of the Future The Realm of the Possible: Inventing a New City Dystopia UK AR

My buddies Neil and Nick cause havoc in the streets of London while showing their own particular (Star Wars) fanatacism.

Private Beta Update

For those unlucky buggers who are on the private beta, we have yet another download for them. It’s really important to read the release notes and that’s why I’m blogging this as no-one ever seems to read the README.    ?????? do not use this beta on production data. I’m serious about this. We will wipe … Continue reading “Private Beta Update”

For those unlucky buggers who are on the private beta, we have yet another download for them. It’s really important to read the release notes and that’s why I’m blogging this as no-one ever seems to read the README.

   ?????? do not use this beta on production data. I’m serious about this. We will wipe the server clean. I’m not joking.

   ?????? the GUI is complete but unpolished. Please provide feedback on usability as well as bug reporting.

   ?????? you’ll have received the password for the encrypted DMG in your email.

   ?????? use the enclosed report form for feedback. Make sure you include approximate times for synchronisation as well as the numbers of items reported by the system.

   ?????? the various bugs reported in the previous beta versions have all been fixed. If you find a re-occurrence of them, please report them again!

   ?????? yes, this could be the first really usable version.

So, from now on, RTFREADME and go get the files.

Making It Purty: a user interface gripe

We’re implementing some user-interface gubbins tonight and we’ve bumped into one of those things that remind you were dealing with a work in progress and not the be-all and end-all of Integrated Development Environments. I’m not a coder so it just annoys me. The annoyance? I like rounded text fields for the uid and password … Continue reading “Making It Purty: a user interface gripe”

We’re implementing some user-interface gubbins tonight and we’ve bumped into one of those things that remind you were dealing with a work in progress and not the be-all and end-all of Integrated Development Environments. I’m not a coder so it just annoys me.

The annoyance? I like rounded text fields for the uid and password entry for SyncBridge. They look neat. They fit with the interface. It flows.

But you can’t have a NSSecureTextField (the password field) with rounded corners.

Why not? Is it a user interface faux-pas? This forum post from January 2005 says:
“It’s not possible to make a NSSecureTextfield with rounded corners without subclassing the hole thing and thats a big party. So let’s wait for 10.4 and hope this one gets fixed.”
I guess it’s simply not to be.

It’s not that I really mind, it just reminds me that this whole thing is a work in progress and sometimes some things don’t get fixed before ship date.

Progress Update: It works. It works bloody well. And I did a happy dance in my chair when we saw it doing everything perfectly. And though it’s not running on the production server, it was quick enough to happen when you launch iCal. Mucho pleased. Now we just need to make it purty.

Don’t quit the day job, pal.

Erick Schonfeld at Business 2.0 has a rather fabulous article about how you can start and maintain a business without quitting the day job. His points:    1. Use Your Salary as Funding    2. Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan    3. Make Your Boss a Beta Tester    4. Take Advantage of Your Company’s Reputation    5. … Continue reading “Don’t quit the day job, pal.”

Erick Schonfeld at Business 2.0 has a rather fabulous article about how you can start and maintain a business without quitting the day job.

His points:

   1. Use Your Salary as Funding

   2. Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan

   3. Make Your Boss a Beta Tester

   4. Take Advantage of Your Company’s Reputation

   5. Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner

Of course, We’ve done all of the above certainly with respect to my day job.

An important part of it is realising that i reduces the costs of starting up. This means you can go longer and further without angel investment which, for the entrepreneur, is useful. It enables you to hold onto much desired equity meaning that if someone offers you investment, you’re not losing quite as much. ???100 000 is a lot of money to a startup company with ???134 in the bank and not much more than a dream to go on. ???400 000 is not as much if you know you have ???500 000 in revenue every year. Angel investment never comes to those who really need it after all. Nothing excites investors more than knowing that someone else is pitching in for a slice of the pie.

It’s a human failing isn’t it? We have a natural urge to herd – that’s one of the reasons why you see the internet plagued with Mac versus PC arguments. And you’ll see the same sort of debate on audio forums regarding who uses what. We need people to help justify our decisions by encouraging them to invest the same way we did.

Anyway. Read the article. Enjoy.

Planetary icons

I didn’t realise until recently just how much association I create between an activity and the icon for its application. This has come about because I’ve started using a few new apps (and had others open more frequently than I used to before) and I’ve noticed I’m spending more time than I would like trying … Continue reading “Planetary icons”

I didn’t realise until recently just how much association I create between an activity and the icon for its application. This has come about because I’ve started using a few new apps (and had others open more frequently than I used to before) and I’ve noticed I’m spending more time than I would like trying to decide which icon to highlight when using Cmd-Tab to switch between apps.

I think this is because too many of the apps are using a stylised planet as part of their icon. The culprits in my case are OmniWeb, Colloquy, NetNewsWire and MarsEdit (the first three all use the Earth as part of their icon). Whereas before, I think my brain had a connection between blue/circle/earth and web-browsing, now I find I have another blue/circle/earth (NetNewsWire) and a purple one (Colloquy) just to confuse issues.

In a somewhat reversed way, I know I have an association with blue/speech-bubble for chat, but because I’ve got a lot of conversation happening in other chat programs (Colloquy and Adium), I sometimes get lost about where I’m trying to go.

Not sure if there is really any point to this post, except as a reminder to myself (and possibly other application developers out there) that choosing an icon for an application is important, especially if it’s one that can expect every day use.

Apologies for feed spam

I moved the blog to a new server (one which actually allows me to run PostgreSQL), and this may well cause a feed refresh for people (it did for me). Apologies for that. As MJ said, we had the long weekend off—it’s been more like two weeks off for me because I’ve been virtually off-line … Continue reading “Apologies for feed spam”

I moved the blog to a new server (one which actually allows me to run PostgreSQL), and this may well cause a feed refresh for people (it did for me). Apologies for that.

As MJ said, we had the long weekend off—it’s been more like two weeks off for me because I’ve been virtually off-line for that whole time—but now I’m getting back into the groove. Current activity: getting the SyncBridge server up and running at its new home, and ready for testing.