blog.erwintang.com

I was in the designers area this evening to check out something in the game. I was at someone’s desk, when of the designers said, “I was talking to Cam and he told me you wrote about a Chinese restaurant in a basement on your blog. Let’s hear more about this place!”

The Cam he was referring to is the Cam who frequently comments on this blog. My first thought was, “Hmmm… someone on the team now knows I have a blog.” Before a second thought could enter my brain, a second designer piped up.

“You have a blog? What’s the address?”

I feigned not to know what he was talking about. It’s always interesting when people at my job find out I have a blog. I usually wonder how long it will take. At Backbone, it took about four months. Somehow, someone found out. I think they Googled my name. A few people started reading but now, I think only person reads it regularly.

So, about eight months in, someone on my team knows I blog. The good thing is that I always blog about work in very general terms. It’s a good strategy for you young kids out there. Always keep your stick on the ice!

Oh, the David Banner reference? It’s from the TV version of The Incredible Hulk. Dr. Banner went from town to town, waiting for the inevitable moment when people discovered he was the Hulk. I go from job to job, waiting for the inevitable moment when people discover I have a blog.

I know that my commenting systems sucks. Just look at the last few posts. No one has commented. While yes, the content of the posts might not be comment-eliciting but I’m also guessing people can’t or don’t want to comment because they feel the system won’t take their text.

I am in the process of looking at what I can do to switch over to the native Blogger commenting system. It shouldn’t be too hard but I don’t want to lose the existing comments either. In nearly half a decade of blogging, you, my readers, have written some gems.

I’ll do some experimenting on the weekend.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-is63goeBgc]

Almost three years ago, I featured a video in a post where two amateur filmmakers made their own lightsaber movie. It turned out to be quite a hit. They promised to make a sequel and now, here it is.

They’ve made everything a lot more impressive this time around. There are a ton of environmental effects which look awesome. The sabers make contact with objects numerous times which produce sparks. They even have the sabers cut into metal and the molten mess that results looks as good as if ILM did it for them.

The YouTube version is fine but the high-quality version can be found here. It’s worth a download if you’ve got the bandwidth. It’s this version that really shows off the special effects.

A couple of weeks ago at work, we had a studio meeting. They have these about twice a year. It’s a state of the union for the studio and also a good chance to ask the studio head some questions… like how big the bonuses are gonna be this year.

Anyways, the meeting was held the at IMAX theatre at Canada Place. When we were done, everyone left the theatre at the same time. We blocked traffic trying to leave the cruise ship terminal for several minutes. When we got back to the lobby of the studio, the elevators got crowded quickly.

I stood in front of one near capacity car. I was going to let it go but Christi, one of the project managers on our team, told me there was room for me and that I should squeeze in. At the last second, I jumped in and stood behind her. Someone else next to me was scratching their head or something and then moved his hand down by his side. As he was doing this though, he brushed up against Christi’s back, quite close to her butt. In the nearly silent elevator, she protested this invasion of her personal space.

“Erwin! Don’t put your hand there!”

I swear I didn’t mean this in any other way, but I quickly blurted out something I instantly wanted to take back.

“That wasn’t my hand.”

The elevator erupted in juvenille laughter while Christi only could say, “Ewwwwwwwwwwwww….” The doors opened onto our floor and she sprinted from the elevator. And that’s story of how HR flagged my name in the database for the very first time.

Most of this post will be about work since I was there both days. Don’t feel sorry for me though. The game is getting good buzz. People are excited about what they’ve seen. The positive comments far outweigh the negative ones. That gives me incentive to make my area extra kick-ass. The last two games I worked on got no attention, so this is new to me and really cool.

Well, other than my financial advisor, good old Joel M. remains the only person to have visited me at work. Yes, the lawyer we all know and love graced us with his presence all the way from Manhattan. Since his schedule was very tight, we only had time for a workplace visit. He was nice enough to bring his better half, Julie along. I took them both to the 19th floor lounge and patio where they were duly impressed. I treated them to a lavish feast of pre-packaged snacks and drinks, one fit for an overweight video game developer. Sitting in a breakfast nook, we had some delightful conversation before our time was up. I saw them off and went back to work.

Hey, remember a while back I couldn’t stop raving about the OT meals we got one weekend? It turns out there was a reason why the food was so good. Apparently, there was some sorta misunderstanding and someone thought $30 was the budget for each person for the meals. So the catering company got a massive amount of money from EA and prepared accordingly. Thus, came the Alaskan king crab, roast beef, and other delicacies. The actual budget is something like $12 to $15 per person. On Saturday, reality came crashing back where we were greeted by seafood sandwiches and pasta salad, not bad at all, but it wasn’t Alaskan king crab.

Last but not least, I spent almost the entire day at the office padding around in stocking feet. I even went into the elevators and to the 19th floor in my socks. Moving around in a high-rise office building with no shoes… why does that sound so familiar? Wasn’t it Roy Rogers that did that once? Yippie ki-yay!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwFqZPg9d8k]

UPDATED: Added movie clip after Phil was declared the winner.

“There is something I want to get off my chest. It’s about that summer, when you went away to community college. I got an offer to do Playgirl Magazine, and I did it. I did a full spread for Playgirl Magazine. I mean spread man, I pulled my butt apart and stuff. I was totally nude. it was weird, I… I mean you probably didn’t hear about it because I went under the name of Mike Honcho. But I just wanted you to know that. If you can hear me, if it got into your brain somehow. That I spread my buttcheeks as Mike Honcho.“

http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=17381

Today, EA released the first bit of gameplay footage from skate, the game I’m working on. EA held a press event in San Francisco this week, where media people from both gaming web sites and skateboard mags got to play an early build of the game.

Several preview articles have already been posted, with more coming for sure Friday morning. The reaction has been fairly positive from the media. The peanut gallery, though, has already voiced a few opinions on message boards. I will make no comment on their comments.

A list of previews:

GameSpot (includes video from the press event with interviews with my co-workers and a reference to features I worked on!)

“The demo build we played had a few events to compete in, such as video challenges, where you have to pull off a number of tricks within a certain amount of time while your tricks are being ‘recorded’ on video (after all, if a skate trick happens but nobody is there to record it, did it really happen?). There are also photo challenges where you’ll be able to take pictures of your skater in action. Speaking of recording, the game will also include a pretty cool replay feature, which will let you rewind the action and focus in on your best tricks. This is complete with a number of different camera angles and even a currently unspecified method of ‘sharing’ your replay footage with your friends (presumably via the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3’s online capabilities).“

IGN

1UP

Here’s an alternate link to video if you can’t see it above.

We’ve still got a lot of work to do on the game, so it’s gonna only get better!

As a student of the fine art of comedy, I believe there are just a few sure-fire bits out there. In my book, we have “football in the groin”, “little kids smashing into bushes on bikes”, and “groom passes out at his wedding”. Actually, I’m not sure if those are sure-fire bits or just my favourite America’s Funniest Home Videos pieces.

Well, it’s time to promote another bit into those lofty heights. Please welcome “middle-aged guy sings Don’t Cha from The Pussycat Dolls”. We’ve seen this with Big Red’s interpretation on YouTube. Damn, TV’s Uncle Jerry sure does kick some ass. Now, here comes Kyle Gass with his version. Gass is of course, one half of the dynamic duo known as Tenacious D, partnering with Jack Black. Unfortunately, Gass’ performance is embedded within a blooper clip from the new movie Wild Hogs. It really picks up near the middle but wait for his fantastic finish, you got it goin’ on!

I’ve decided on a new route to work now. My old commute consists of one bus, which basically takes me from door to door. Travel time is usually 45 – 55 minutes. My new route consists of one bus, Skytrain along the Millenium Line, and then Skytrain along the Expo Line. Travel time is anywhere between a swift 40 minutes to no more than 50 minutes. Is it more of a hassle along the new route? Yes, I gotta get off the bus, onto a train, off the train, and then back onto my last train.

The positive is there’s a lot more room on a Skytrain car than my old bus. When it’s crowded I’m sealed in that bus for almost an hour. Combine that with the stupid bus heaters and possibly wet umbrellas and clothes, it’s unbearable at times.

I just enjoy the commute a lot more when I’m taking Skytrain. I almost always get a window seat, I’m above the roads, I can see for kilometres in every direction, and interesting people get in and out of the cars. When I say interesting, I don’t mean smelly old people.

On the way back home, I’ll still take my old route because it’s a lot less crowded in the evenings and I like sleeping on the darkened bus. Without having to change buses, I can usually get a 20 to 30 minute nap in there.

To a better commute!

Does March 24 have any significance to you? Of course not. Anyways, it was the day erwintang.com came into being. This year marks the seventh anniversary of this web site.

It’s also the last day I can renew my domain before really bad things start happening. For example, some Russian hacker group can buy my expired domain and then start re-directing my vistors to porn sites.

Why I only renew my domain a year at a time is a mystery to me. Maybe I like the excitement. Who knows. Well, if I wanted excitement, this year I got it. My domain is registered with a Mickey Mouse operation. GoDaddy it ain’t. Anyways, my registrar went through some sorta name change and their web site is a mess. The kicker is that they changed over to a new billing system, which includes the functionality to renew domains. They’ve sent out e-mails to their customers for them to request the new billing log in info. Guess who’s tried to send that request out to the four times now? Yep, yours truly.

I’ve gotten no response from them. The next step is now to call them. Of course, being a shoddy operation, they have no toll-free line. I gotta call them long-distance. I won’t do that though. I’m going to call them collect. Who wants to bet they won’t agree to the call?

So what are my options? I can transfer my domain to GoDaddy and get all my services consolidated under one roof, domain and hosting. I could do that now… except the control panel that allows me to do that is broken because my registrar has responsibility for that.

I also could let my domain expire and then re-register my domain, using a more reliable registrar, on my behalf. It should probably slip back into the pool of available without too much fanfare since it’s not exactly largeboobies.com. I am, however, writing about this now, so there’s a small chance one of you jokers out there could beat me to the punch.

There’s less than a month until D-Day! Johnson! Move us to Defcon 4!