I just spent nearly four hours on Saturday evening moving web hosts. If you’re reading this, then it means the updated DNS records have propagated to your part of the world. You are now requesting and receiving data from my new host, located in a data centre somewhere in the continental United States. I haven’t had a chance to test every nook and cranny but so far everything looks fine.
Thanks for your patience over the last few days!
By next Monday I have to move web hosts so this evening I began preparations to archive and backup this site for the move. I started with archiving all the files in my WordPress installation, which is what powers this blog. Then I realized that archive would only be a snapshot of this blog, current to this evening. Inevitably, there will be a few days between when I make the archive to when the site goes live on the new host. If I write new posts in that interval, that content won’t be in the archive and they’ll be lost forever.
I thought of a few solutions to this problem. The first is to archive my blog at the last possible moment. I usually write my last post of the week on Thursdays and start again on Sunday evening. I could attempt to move hosts immediately after my Thursday post and hope that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday would give me enough time to get everything moved over and up and running again.
Second, I could just announce that there will be no more posts until the move is complete and that the move begins essentially now with tonight’s archive. This is the most safe route as it gives me about a week to work out any problems before my hosting agreement ends next Monday. This does mean a few days without any new content. Let’s face it, only a few people read this stuff so it’s not like I’m going to disappointing millions. Also, since I don’t make any money off this blog, it’s not like I’ll be losing revenue either.
The last option is like the second one, except that I continue to write content while I do the move. Those posts will be lost of course but at least you, the readers, will continue to read these nuggets of wisdom that you’re so fond of.
I’m still not sure which option I’ll chose. If you come back one morning and there isn’t a new post, you’ll know that I’ve decided to concentrate on the move.
See ya on the other side!
Several months ago I mentioned in a post that I was working on a game that featured an Oscar-winning actor in one of the roles. This weekend at EA Play 2017, EA revealed details about Madden 18, including a story mode which features Mahershala Ali, who won an Oscar for Moonlight.
I’ve been working on Madden 18 since mid-December in a temporary assignment to the team in Orlando. As this is their first year using the Frostbite engine, it’s been all-hands on deck to get this thing out the door. I do all my work remotely, which is possible since it’s all code and data. There’s actually quite a few people in Vancouver who are working on Madden 18 as well. What I’m working on specifically in the game isn’t too exciting however and it doesn’t really touch any of the story mode stuff.
My temporary assignment ends once this month is over. I wasn’t expecting to have a video game credit for this calendar year but I will now. As a software engineer, this is only the second time I’ve worked on an EA Sports title, the first being Fight Night Champion. Madden 18 is out on August 25, 2017!
This weekend kicks off EA Play 2017, EA’s own showcase of games to be released in the near future. The highlight of the three day event will be the opening press conference at noon PDT on Saturday. It will be there that people will get to see new stuff from games already announced (like Star Wars Battlefront II) and most likely reveals for games that have been kept under wraps until now.
At the beginning of the year, I wrote that I was temporarily loaned to another team at EA to help them with their game. This weekend, more details about that game will be released to the public. I’m actually not sure exactly how much info will be given but hopefully it will enough for me to safely write about it. If you remember, I mentioned the game features an Oscar winner. Perhaps by the end of the weekend, I can say more about that.
The press conference will be livestreamed on Saturday and I’ll be watching with great interest.
This weekend marks the unofficial start of E3 2017, which means it’s been about a year since I went to my first E3 in Los Angeles. Though I used my industry credentials to get in, I was not formally working at E3 so it was purely a vacation for me.
That was such a fun week. I went with my friend Garrett, who is also in the games industry. It was also the first time we traveled together. E3 this year is slightly different in that they will now officially let non-industry folks into the expo. Yes, prior to this, non-industry people still scammed their way in but now the flood gates are open. This may reflect upon me badly but I’m of the opinion it’s a better experience for industry people when the general public isn’t there.
Well, I’m not going this year but I’m sure there are quite a few people I know who are. I hope they have fun!
I didn’t realize it until tonight but today was my one-year anniversary of my return to EA as a full-time employee. If you’re keeping score, I came back as a full-time employee in June of 2016. Prior to that, I had a four month break where I did lots of traveling. Previous to that, I did a one-year contract at EA on the same team I’m on now.
If you add up all the stints I’ve done at EA, as both a QA dude and a software engineer, I’ve worked for the company about ten years now; a decade! My tenures at other companies don’t even come close to my time at EA. In terms of time, the next company clocks in at about eight months. Crazy huh?
Well, tomorrow is one year and plus a day of my current tour of duty. Perhaps, I’ll get poutine for lunch.
For several years now, this site has been hosted on GoDaddy. I know GoDaddy hasn’t had the best of reputations but for the little dog and pony show we run here it’s been fine. Unfortunately, it now costs twice as much to host with them compared to when I first signed up. I haven’t received any discernible improvements or feature enhancements with the added costs. If there have been, I don’t use them. So why pay more for the same service?
I went looking for alternatives and I found a host that costs half as much. Their uptime guarantee is pretty much the same as GoDaddy’s. My site isn’t really mission critical, so I can be very tolerant of even minor issues. If my site goes down for ten minutes, I don’t lose money or anything. I can afford to experiment with a new host.
My current hosting agreement ends in about two weeks. Before then, I’ll be starting the process of moving everything to the new host. Hopefully, the move should be transparent to you and the three other people who read this blog on the regular. Since this site is pretty simple, the move shouldn’t require that much work.
I’ll let you know when everything is done.
In my last post, I detailed my evening of discomfort and nausea where signs pointed towards food poisoning and future vomiting.
I went to bed that evening feeling quite tired but as I mentioned, the nausea seemed to subside slightly. It got to the point that I was able to fall asleep. I woke up feeling much better though I was slightly dehydrated. The nausea was gone and I was able to go to work without any problems. I didn’t have to vomit, which is always a plus in my books.
I’m still not sure what caused me to feel ill in the first place. Now I’m all suspicious about that pho place. Even though their pho is just average, I think I’ll stick to that now, instead of trying their lemongrass chicken again.
After work I went and had dinner with a friend. Said friend lives quite close to me so we decided to go somewhere near both our homes. We settled on a pho place that is relatively new. I’ve been there twice before. Their pho is quite average and for some reason their beef slices are tough and chewy. How difficult is it to use beef that is sliced thinly? Every other pho place seems to be able to figure it out. This time around I decided to have lemongrass chicken and rice instead. It was pretty good. Dinner ended and my friend and I parted ways.
I spent most of the evening playing video games. Toward the end of the evening I wasn’t feeling so great. It took me a few minutes to realize what the discomfort was. I was feeling nausea. Whatever it was, it was coming from the upper part of my chest. I’ve had food poisoning and norovirus enough times to know how it starts and it always starts with nausea. I began to burp a few times too. That usually doesn’t happen so long after dinner. For me at least, burping can and has been a precursor for my body getting ready to purge itself through vomiting.
It’s been about three hours since the symptoms first appeared and I feel slightly less nauseous now, though I wouldn’t say I feel awesome either. A concern is that my upper back is now very tight and a bit sore. This is really difficult to explain but there have been times where I’ve had food poisoning and norovirus and for some reason, my back muscles tighten up and get sore. I’m not sure why that happens. It could be because I’m dehydrated. I haven’t been drinking a lot of water tonight.
If there is some good news in all of this, nothing is wrong with the rest of my digestive system. There has been no extra farting tonight and I certainly have not been peeing out of my butt. The next twelve hours will be very important. If I really do have some food-borne illness, it will most likely prevent me from sleeping. The last time that happened, I could get comfortable enough to fall asleep. I was in a lot of discomfort and eventually got up from my bed, and then forced myself to vomit into the sink. I instantly felt better and was able to sleep after that. Will this repeat itself tonight? Who knows?
I’ll update everyone tomorrow.