Month: February 2011

You can take any day of the year and decide to look back upon the last 365 days. For me, today is as good as any to examine what went on in the last year. If you live in Vancouver, it’s not difficult to remember that it was exactly one year ago this weekend that the 2010 Olympic Winter Games kicked off. It was the beginning of a very special two weeks for anyone who was lucky enough to be in Vancouver during that time. I was not prepared for how great it was to have such a spectacle of an event in your city. It was literally a two week long party that went on day and night, the likes of which many residents had never seen before. Vancouver often gets labeled as a city that is no fun but at least for those two weeks, you couldn’t tell if you were partying on a Monday or Friday because either day had the same amount of people packed into the downtown core. I managed to attend three official events during the Games, all contests of the ice hockey variety. One of the games happened to be a game that had Team Canada playing which was a genuine treat. Outside of all-star games, it is very rare to see a single team with that many talented players. The game itself made me slightly nervous in that it required Canada to go to a shootout to defeat Switzerland, not known as a hockey powerhouse. Overall, it was amazing to see the country come together in my home town to cheer on our athletes. It was only fitting that the last day of the Olympics featured one of the greatest hockey games the country had ever witnessed.

Of course the Olympics did end after two weeks and it wasn’t long after that that the first of many bumps showed up in my career during the year. About a month later, I was pushed out of the job that I had loved doing for the last three and a half years. Working as part of the skate team, for Black Box, and in the Games label was an absolute joy. It went from that to doing stuff that I didn’t really care for, on a team that had no future for me. It was a terrible six months that made the summer of 2010 quite the unpleasant experience. I saw a lot of things that I did not like about the Sports label. I’m not sure if I would ever choose to work on another sports game going forward.

The pain mercifully ended in late October of 2010 when I was granted the layoff that I had requested. I was planning on leaving anyways and if they could give me a going-away present that would be even better. My tenure at EA lasted over four years and it represents the longest I’ve ever worked for any company. I was unemployed for just over a month before I got a contract gig at UFG. Things were looking alright for me work-wise but then things happened last week. The harsh reality is that I might not have a job beyond this Tuesday.

So the last 365 days overall were not so great mainly because my career took a nosedive. The last two game teams I’ve worked on, I was pretty much a nobody. Will that change in the future? I don’t know right now. So were there any highlights in the last year? Yes, I mentioned the Olympics above and in April I took a trip out to Washington, D.C. with a good friend. We saw some amazing museums and exhibits and ate some really pricey but great food. It was a reminder that I still love to travel and it is so rewarding to see what this world has to offer.

I sure hope the next 365 days are better than the last 365.

With no where to be today, I slept in until around 10am. Awake, but still in bed, I grabbed my phone and surfed the Internet for about an hour. I glanced over to the window and saw that it was fantastically sunny day. I knew it was probably a good idea to get out and enjoy the sun but I merely rolled over and closed my eyes. It was 2pm before I awoke again and this time I really did get up. A quick breakfast/lunch, I left my apartment and walked five minutes to reach the boardwalk down by the water. I then had a lovely stroll in the bright sun along the Fraser River. Later this evening, I had dinner with a friend and then I played video games until well after my usual bedtime.

I am hoping Friday will be just as relaxing, if not more so.

I was told by some important people at work today that I shouldn’t blog about what happened at the studio today. Their reasons are pretty good so I’ll abide by their wishes. Perhaps I’ll have more to say in the next few days.

The video above is from a prank call that comedian Lance Krall made a few years back. I swear I made a blog post about this before but I can’t find it. If you’ve seen it before I apologize. Anyways, I love this video for several reasons. First, Krall does an awesome Vietnamese accent during the call. It’s an accent that rarely is mastered in the comic world and he’s done a great job. To be fair though, Krall is half Vietnamese so should I deduct points for that? Second, the call is about a Vietnamese restaurant owner and I love pho. Sure pho isn’t mentioned at all during the call but I’m dreaming about rich, pungent pho broth the entire time.

In many of my posts I’ve mentioned the various roles that contribute to making a video game. You’ve read about software engineers, designers, project managers, and artists. When you think about that last role, that of artists, you probably are envisioning people who create art on the computer, using 3D modeling packages, Photoshop, or Flash. While you are right about that, in the digital world of video games, there are artists who still use traditional pencils, pastels, and paints to create art.

Concept artists can use traditional methods to create drawings, paintings, and sketches to help visual the various aspects of the game. Their work is invaluable at the initial stages of game development where the direction of the artistic vision is not fully known. A concept artist can provide a sketch of a wide overview of the gaming world or go into the fine details with a character design. Their work can help visualize the theme for a particular section of the world. Having all this art from the concept artist allows the world builders and character modelers to have a reference from which to work from.

On the skate franchise, I had the extreme pleasure of working with two of the most talented concept artists in the entire industry. Shaun and Tom are two of the coolest cats I’ve ever met. Being artists with roots in the traditional methods of creating art, they are both laid back and awesome to work with. Shaun was born and raised in Vancouver. He worked for 18 years at EA and has done art for just about every single non-sports game ever made in Vancouver for EA. He did a lot of the concepts for the various parts of the cities in the skate franchise. Shaun also worked on a lot of the various skateboard deck art to help promote the games. I have one of his decks as a gift for working on skate 3. Tom grew up in California and has worked in various industries ranging from industrial design, movie special effects, and finally video games. He worked for special effects house Digital Domain when James Cameron (the Avatar dude) was still a partner in the company. Tom also did a lot of concept art for the various set pieces within the skate franchise cities.

A post about art is pretty useless without seeing the art itself but lucky for us, both Shaun and Tom have online portfolios for us to look at. Shaun’s site is here and Tom’s is located here. Go look at some of their fantastic work.

Like many of you, I don’t get the required amount of sleep that I need during the week. As such, it’s left to weekends for me to catch up on my sleep debt. Despite being quite tired on Friday night, I managed to stay up until 4am before going to bed. I woke up around 11am the next morning. I was slightly disappointed that I didn’t even get eight hours of sleep but I was prepared to drag myself out of my bed and begin the day. Before I did that though, I grabbed my phone and began surfing the Internet over my wi-fi connection.

Between Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and the plain old, regular world wide web, an hour had passed and I was still in bed. I remember putting the phone down for a second and then closing my eyes. The next thing I knew, I was awake again and realized that I had fallen sleep once more. Grabbing my phone, I turned it on to find that it was just after 4pm. Whoa. I hadn’t slept in this late for a long, long time. The last time I remember waking up at 4pm was when I had come back from Las Vegas for the first time in 1999. It wasn’t even a fun trip as I went there on business of sorts to help a friend with a potential start-up company. We were at COMDEX, a large computer trade show that no longer exists. Anyways, we did lots of walking and standing on our feet, so I was exhausted by the end of the trip. The first night back I slept so soundly that I did not wake up until well after 4pm.

I sure wasted most of Saturday sleeping but I felt awesome after waking up.

In a previous post, I mentioned I had decided to sponsor a child somewhere in the world that could use my assistance. When I applied I was given a choice of the gender, age, and country of origin for my sponsor child. I decided to leave it up to the people at the aid agency. It was my hope that they would pick for me someone who was most deserving of assistance.

I received in the mail yesterday a package which detailed who my sponsor child is. The agency had chosen a young girl from Niger as my sponsor child. I was given a few details about her, including the makeup of her family, where she lives, and a few pictures of her. To protect her privacy, I will not be using her name nor posting photos of her here. I can tell you she is four years old and that she has a nine year old sister. Her father is a farmer and her mother runs the household. They live in the northwest part of Niger, in a village with less than 20,000 inhabitants.

The agency encourages all sponsors to write to their sponsor child. They suggest sending along photos or postcards from the sponsor’s home country and/or city. I will write her a short note and give her some postcards from Vancouver. I’ve been told that I will receive updates on her every 12 to 18 months. She doesn’t go to school because she is still too young. Like so many developing countries, educating children in Niger is difficult. She won’t start school until she is seven years old. Unfortunately, the majority of children in Niger who finish their primary education are boys. I know the issues are complex but it is my hope that my sponsor child gets the education she deserves and needs. Often, children cannot continue their education because they are required to work to help their family survive. Given a choice between either simply surviving or going to school, it is a choice they make out of necessity. That’s where I’m hoping my dollars will go to work, to give enough stability to the family so that they can allow their children to go to school without worry.

I am looking forward to the day where my sponsor child will be able to read my letters and write her own replies to me, all by herself.

Say what you want about the Vancouver Canucks on the ice but off the ice, there is no doubt they are a classy organization. A few years ago the club invited the fathers of the players to join their boys on the road so they could share the experience of being a professional hockey player. It was a great bonding experience for both fathers and sons. This was followed up with a road trip where the players’ mothers got to accompany their beloved sons. Again, you can imagine how special it was for the players to have their Moms along.

Not to be outdone this year, the Canucks invited their players to bring along a sister or a brother on a short two-game road trip to the US. This is another great idea from the team and I know I certainly would be excited if my NHL playing brother invited me along. The Canucks allowed the siblings to travel on the team plane, bus with their brothers to practice, eat with them during team meals, and of course attend the games. What an awesome way to show them what NHL life is like on the road (which mainly is fantastic).

Though most of the players invited their brothers, I was glad to see five sisters on the trip. Some of the players had no choice as their only sibling was a sister. Some players had to choose a sibling since they had more than one. I wonder how that went over with the sibling that didn’t go.

The Canucks have posted several galleries that highlight various moments through the siblings road trip. There is gallery one, gallery two, and gallery three. Last but not least, the sister of defenseman Dan Hamhuis, Erin Hamhuis was picked to be a guest blogger during the trip. She has written a couple of posts detailing when she was told of the trip, how nervous she was that she might be the only girl on the trip, and what a thoughtful big brother Dan is. She even sneaks in a bit of juicy gossip. Apparently, one of the siblings, whom she will not name, overslept in the Dallas hotel and missed the bus to the game. Wow, how embarrassing! Have a read at the day one and day two posts.

The siblings were good luck as the Canucks were dominant on the road trip, beating Dallas and Phoenix handily!

I was way too busy playing with Mint.com tonight so I don’t have time for a lengthy post so I’ll just send out some random thoughts.

I am currently eating some yogurt that is one day past it’s “best before” date. As many of you know, I’m a thrill-seek and risk-taker type of guy so this behaviour is pretty much inline with my crazy lifestyle. Ladies, I’m the guy your mom warned you about… mostly because your mom dislikes nerds.

Even though I don’t work for EA any more, I still intently read every quarterly earnings report that they send out. Today they released their latest earnings report. It was no surprise they posted yet another loss but somehow beat out analyst expectations. In a surprise move, they also mentioned they’ll be buying back approx. $600M worth of stock in the next 18 months. Since I still hold several hundred shares of EA stock, they can buy it back from me, at $50 a share, so I can break even on most of shares that are under water.

It’s already February and one month of 2011 has gone by. About a year ago in Vancouver, we had a small sporting event. Does anyone remember that?

I picked up my tax preparation software while I was on my lunch break today. By the way, I would not have been able to do that if I was still working out in Burnaby. Yay for downtown! Anyways, I usually don’t buy my tax prep application until March. I bought it early this year because I believe I am in a tax situation that I’ve never been in before. Specifically, I received several months worth of severance pay in November which skews my earnings for tax year 2010. Unfortunately, my T4 is not ready yet so I only have a rough estimate of what my earnings were for 2010. What I do know is that I artificially made more money this year than in previous years due to being laid off. I personally think severance payments should be tax exempt. Anyways, I have all my other receipts now which mostly came from RRSPs. I bought a significant amount of RRSPs in hopes that I would be able to somewhat offset the lump sum severance payment. Because I still have another month to buy more RRSPs should I need it, doing my taxes now is a good thing. I haven’t had time to enter in all the data so we’ll see if I owe money to the government still.

In other money news, popular personal finance web site Mint.com now caters to Canadian users. I’ve heard for years how great Mint is for US users and Canadians finally have the chance to try it out. I signed up for an account this evening. I was surprised (perhaps in a naive way) that Mint asks for your online banking info. They do this so they can automatically sync your bank account info to your Mint account. In this way, they can gather all your financial info in one place and it’s always up to date. I understand this makes it easier for Mint to do its thing but I was immediately hesitant to enter in my online bank credentials. Mint swears that it’s tech is secure and that everything is “read only” so that money can’t be moved. That’s nice and all but still not a 100% guarantee. In fact, in their terms of service, which you need to agree to join Mint, they absolve themselves of any responsibility should something go wrong hacker-wise.

On the other hand, in the two years or so that Mint has been running in the US, I have yet to hear about any online breaches of security. This does gives me some confidence that Mint is somewhat secure because I cannot imagine that someone has not tried to hack their system. It would seem like a really logical and sensible place to go looking for financial data. I would really like to try out all Mint’s functionality but for now, I will do a bit more research before taking the plunge. For anyone who is using Mint in its full capacity, how do you like it?