Category: Uncategorized

Over the last few days, several people have indicated they didn’t know I had a blog. Most of these people discovered this little dog and pony show when I did a status update on Facebook that had a link to the post I wrote about being laid off. Wow, I got laid off. As you can tell, I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I had employment terminated. Writing it that way doesn’t make it any better. *sigh*

Anyways, while I always welcome new readers and hope that they continue to read, it can be interesting to think who they might be. When I first started to blog, I think maybe two or three people were kind enough to read it. That number is too small to make a blog worthwhile to write. As I met more people in grad school and the years went on, I started to pick up more readers. Even more started to read as met I people in the games industry.

As my audience widens, however, I have to be increasingly more vigilant about what I write about. When two people read my blog, I could write anything because no one was reading so there was no need to censor myself. Now, I gotta be careful not to insult anyone because I can’t be too sure who’s reading this. Last week, I could have written about so-and-so’s outfit not matching but now I can’t. A terrible loss indeed.

I just want to thank everyone who sent me kind words of support and encouragement over the last two days. The sheer number of people who have shown genuine concern for my current situation has certainly made a difficult situation that much easier to deal with.

I am in the process of discussing with HR what other teams might be interested in my services. One other team has already expressed their interest in me. I’ve met with representatives from that team from both the managerial and technical side. I am taking my time to think about the position they have offered me. I have a few days to decide.

There’s one last thing I want to discuss. Anytime there are tough changes at work like this, there can be a danger of focusing purely on yourself and ignoring others who are going through the same thing. I suppose this can be somewhat understandable but it doesn’t change the fact that over 20 other of my co-workers were affected yesterday. These are my friends and colleagues, some of whom I have worked with on three great games, spanning a four year period. Some of them weren’t offered alternative employment on another team and were laid off outright. So while I deal with my own situation, my thoughts are with them as well.

I’ll provide an update when it’s appropriate.

Well, I got laid off today. I got pulled into a meeting by my manager as soon as I stepped into the studio this morning. I was told there was a need to reduce costs at the studio and I was unfortunately one of the ones affected. I was also told it wasn’t related to my performance but I don’t entirely believe that. If I really was doing an awesome job then why was I chosen over others to leave?

Anyways, I was also informed that I had a job waiting for me on another team in the sports label. This job is for me to take or turn down, my choice. It would, however, get my out of the games label which I rather quite enjoying working in. I know very little about this new position so that’s why I’m meeting with some managers later on today. I’m going to keep an open mind about this.

New job or not, I feel very disappointed in having to leave the skate team and Black Box in general. I’ve been part of an awesome team with great people for almost four years. I’ll be missing working with those great people and that’s the toughest part of this.

I know that I have a standing offer from this new team but I have to stress I am keeping all my options open at this point. My loyal readers, if you or anyone you know has even an inkling that someone might need a software engineer to make video games, you let me know. At the very bottom of this page on right, there’s a link where you can find my e-mail address. Feel free to contact me.

Don’t worry about me in the meantime, I’m still part of the skate team until the end of the month. I’ll have a job no matter what going forward. The only question is, where will that job be?

As some of you know, I maintain a simple visitor log for this web site. The tracking service I use recently upgraded the level of information they provide to me. In particular, they have now started to provide domain resolution from IP addresses, meaning that IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX resolves to something a little bit more meaningful.

In the image above, I’ve chosen a select few to show you what I can see. The first entry isn’t a surprise, that’s probably Cam at UFG, one of this blog’s most loyal readers. If this web site ever went public with an IPO, I’d probably have to give a million shares just out of principle. It’s a shame this site will never reach that stage.

The second entry is quite interesting. Greedy Productions is actually the company that produces the local TV show The Electric Playground. That show is about video games and stars Victor Lucas, whom some of you might have seen on TV if you’re a gamer. I could let my imagination run wild and think that Lucas himself stumbled onto my blog and read it once before deciding to take a nap. Should I dare to dream? In all likelihood, it was probably someone on his staff.

The third entry is interesting because it comes from Sweden. If you see the referrer line, this person came to my web site because they explicitly typed my full name into Google. Were they actually looking for me and not some other E-dawg? Who do I know in Sweden? Some people whom I work with and know at EA were recently in Stockholm to visit DICE. Maybe it was them? I think they’ve been back for several weeks now though so the timing isn’t right. Maybe someone at DICE knows me? That would be super cool because I have much respect for the people working there.

As always, don’t be alarmed that I have these visitor logs, every single web site on the Internet does the same thing. In fact, other sites know a lot more about your surfing habits than I do.

The OT meal at work tomorrow is going to be KFC. I may not have to work late tomorrow but part of me hopes a single, easy bug gets assigned to me late so I can have me some fried chicken.

I cannot recommend Fortune House restaurant at Metrotown. Making a reservation there doesn’t really mean “making a reservation” as it means with other restaurants. At Fortune House, having a reservation means you get to wait in line with other people that have “reservations”. Sure, there’s another line for “walk-ins” and you supposedly get priority over that line but that’s no consolation. Having a reservation shouldn’t mean I get the privilege of standing in line for over 20 minutes for my table. If you want to sample Chinese food at Metrotown, go somewhere else other than Fortune House.

One of the halogen bulbs burnt out in one of my track lights this evening. It took me ten minutes how to figure out to take the bulb out. I’m thinking about replacing it with an LED bulb.

I had pho for lunch today. It was average in quality. If I had my way, I’d go to White Spot for lunch tomorrow.

This is the last sentence of this post.

During the Olympics there were so many things to do and see. Some of the things were grand in scale, like flying through Robson Square or touching and seeing an actual gold medal. Other activities were simple in nature, like just seeing the cauldron with your own eyes.

One of the simple Olympic activities I enjoyed was seeing the various street performers around town. There was one that stood out in my mind. During the first week of the Games, a friend and I were walking along Granville when happened upon a man dressed as Batman. Yes, the Caped Crusader himself. He was standing on a box of some sort. I noticed his costume, while admirable, was not entirely authentic nor form-fitting, yet you could not mistake him for anything else other than the Dark Knight.

My friend wondered aloud why Batman would be at the Olympics. People didn’t seem to care as he had attracted a small crowd around him, with children along with adults among them. We kept on walking and as we got a few steps past him, we heard him yell.

“WHERE ARE THEY?!?!?!?!?!?!”

Both my friend and I paused ever so briefly as we looked at each other and laughed. Vancouver Batman had, for just a few seconds, channeled the deep Christian Bale Batman voice. He had done it well. It was impressive enough that my friend and I endeavoured to go back and see him, to drop off some change for the man behind the mask.

Unfortunately, I never was able to find him again in the next two weeks afterwards. Fortunately, many other people did see him. Click here for one of many photos taken of Vancouver’s Batman. I wonder who is the man behind that mask. Was he in town just for the Olympics? Where is he from? Is he still out there now? These are mysteries that are almost as compelling as the real Batman himself.

I awoke this morning to discover that Conan O’Brien had announced a 30 city tour of North America. I also discovered that he was coming to Vancouver. I immediately went to the Ticketmaster site to see if tickets were still available. Tickets were indeed still available. I must have been still in a sleepy stupor because I was given two tickets in row 12 (or was it 15?) and then released them because I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to go.

I proceeded to spend the next 40 minutes trying to get seats that were just as good once I realized what a moron I was. At one point, I settled for some pretty decent seats but had the Canadian Ticketmaster web site crash on me. I had to quickly switch over to the US site before finally getting two tickets in the 19th row. The seats are decent but not spectacular. Well, at least I get to see the show. I’m excited! Some people go see bands live, I see talk show hosts. After seeing Letterman two years ago, this will be a great follow-up!

Did you know the Honey Badger has been labeled as the world’s most fearless animal and the most fearsome land mammal on the planet?

This carnivore is well-known for its fierce fighting skills and adept hunting methods. Honey Badgers have an amazing ability to kill snakes, even poisonous ones, for food. They have also been known to take on larger animals, such as lions, tigers, and bears, coming out victorious in glorious nature battle.

Though purely an urban myth, there are stories of man-eating badgers that roam around the Middle East.

It’s a good thing Honey Badgers are not native to North America.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4XRwWBBayU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

A lot of video games feature Hollywood talent, either for the voices, models for in-game characters, or both. Until skate 3, none of the games I’ve worked on had a well-known actor attached to it.

With skate 3, we’re proud to have partnered up with actor and former pro skaterboarder, Jason Lee. In our game, he extends his “Coach Frank” character which you can see in the above video. “Coach Frank” is the guy who tells you what to do in the tutorial section of the game.

I’d love to say it was a blast having Jason Lee around the studio but the truth is, he stayed in LA. We went down to him to get his voice recordings done. A select few of my coworkers actually got to work with him in person but I certainly was not among that group.

In any case, I’ve always enjoyed Jason Lee’s work and his “Coach Frank” character is awesome. If having a Hollywood actor associated with our game sells a few more copies, then I’m ok with that.

A few weeks back, I wrote about my desire to update the look of this blog by choosing a new template. The current template you see here is derived from a standard template that was available to the public from around 2002. I’ve made my own modifications to it since then and you can bet your ass she’ll make point five past lightspeed.

I was still in the process of looking at new templates when I received an e-mail from Blogger, the blogging service I use (who are owned by Google). It turns out Blogger is removing the option to do FTP publication for blogs after May 1. If you’re curious as to what “FTP publication” means, I’ll let you in on how this little dog and pony show works. When I want to write a post, I log into Blogger and then type my grade school vocabulary words into my browser. I then hit the “publish” button. That causes files over at Blogger to be created and then those files are transferred over via File Transfer Protocol to my own web server. The great thing about this is that all my posts and my blog files are stored on my own server. Should anything happen to Blogger or Google, I have all the files in my control.

Blogger is now going to remove the option to do FTP publication. Instead, they want to publish all blog files to their own servers. Some of you may have seen blogs hosted on the blogspot.com domain. This is where Blogger wants me to put my blog now. All blog files going forward will now be stored on a server that I don’t have any control over. Also, I’d have to go through some hoops so that blog.erwintang.com would still direct you to my blog. As you can see, there are some drawbacks to this development.

At this point, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I have two choices. First, I can go ahead with the Blogger migration and move my blog over to their servers and try to make the change as transparent as possible for my readers. Even if it is transparent to you, my loyal readers, I still don’t like the idea of my blog files being stored elsewhere. My second option is to move my blog to another blog service which allows me to retain full control over my blog. This sounds great in theory but the change over requires a bit of effort. I’d have to setup up my new blog and also ensure that my old blog is still accessible. Ideally, I could convert all my old posts into the new format. If I were to go this route, WordPress would be the likely candidate for my new service.

I need more time to explore each of those options and weigh the pros and cons. Thanks for your patience. In the coming weeks, you might see some interesting changes around here.