Another post to say I aten’t dead. One month to go on the PhD write-up, and everything still feels only half done. Still, you’ve got to submit with the thesis you have, not the thesis you’d like to have. I’ll be in crunch mode from now until mid-September. I’ll still be posting now and again on the forums so I have some contact with the outside world, but don’t expect such luxuries as “coherence” in the stuff I type in the next few weeks, m’kay?

The only game related stuff I’ve done in the last month or two has been business planning related. Since I’m the only one who needs the whole plan I’m using a personal wiki on my computer for the planning. It’s great at the moment as it’s very informal, and if an idea pops in my head I can quickly jot it down so I can focus on other things, safe that the idea is recorded. These personal wikis are great for any non-linear document, and I only wish I started using them earlier.

The other business related thing I’ve been doing is more brainstorming of business names. Since I’ll be operating on-line I’ve made it a rule that whatever name I own must also have the dot-com web address available. I’d also prefer it if I didn’t have to tack an extra word like “Games” on the end, like having to register randomnoungames.com because randomnoun.com is already taken. I don’t particular mind having something like “games” or “studios” at the end, but it does make it longer and it also limits me to using the business name in one area; if I decide to branch out to do a bit of consulting on the side I’d probably need a second name.

Unfortunately I’m bad at picking names. I spent ages trying to decide on “Trapper Zoid” for example. A good name needs to be memorable, relatively unique yet identifiable and spellable, represent something about you that you want to project to others. And on top of all that it needs to something you can live with for a while without you hating it.

My current plan is to register half a dozen or so dot-com address (already done) and then sit on them for a couple of months while I finish up my studies and set things up. During this extra time I can mull over the names in my subconscious and try them out on random people until I get a good feeling over which name I like the best. Then I’ll register that one as my business name. I’ll also have a few backups which I think are almost as good in case something goes awry when registering.

I’ve currently got three names that I think would be workable. However an issue has cropped up: while I like all three names and think any of them could be suitable, they all do project a slightly different image. Ideally I’d like to pick the name that projects the image closest to what I want the business to be, however I’m currently quite flexible about that. I don’t particular need on an artistic level to make a specific sort of game; I like nearly all genres and would love to work on any of them. So it’s not as if there’s an obvious choice based on my future vision of where I want to be.

I reckon that something as simple as the choice of name I go with could shape the future direction of the business. The choice of name will shape the logo I make, which will in turn shape the coloration and style of the webpage. And since I’ll be spending a lot of time working with that logo and style, it’s bound to have some effect on my inspiration and creativity. A certain style could suggest playful, cartoonish casual games, or it might skew me towards stylish niche indie games instead.

But then again, it could just be that deep down in my subconscious there’s a particular direction I want to go in that I don’t realise, and that my preference in name will reflect that. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? It’s an interesting question.

…probably because the travel clock is next to it. But I am also nearing the end of my PhD. I’ve set myself the deadline of eight weeks from today to get everything done, signified by a hard deadline of when I move out of my the postgrad college I’m living at. That gives me 56 days to finish up my PhD write up, as shown by the countdown calendar I’m using to constantly remind me what time I’ve got left. I’ve still got a lot to do, but I figure it’s enough time to get everything done. Now I’ve got a fixed deadline I’ll feel better about cutting things to get it finished.

Once my time is up I’ll be heading back to Melbourne to the family house to crash for a month or two while I figure out what to do next. I’ll probably spend a lot of the first month alternating between holiday and catching up with stuff I’ve let slide for the last year or two, such as watching any film released in the last couple of years, ditto for computer games and checking what’s changed in Melbourne since I left it. Then I can start the next chapter of my life. I’m planning on factoring in some game development and webcomics in there somewhere, but we’ll see.

Thus I’m hoping to get this journal back up into to speed some time in late September, but I’ll probably get things really going in late October once I’ve had time to settle down. I’m looking forward to that, but until then though I’ve got a dissertation to finish. Expect my sanity to be increasingly strained in the next couple of months.

Despite wanting to make an effort in updating this journal, it seems I’ve once again let it stagnate for a while as life churns on. Unfortunately I’ve been strapped for energy the last week or two and this is shown in my level of creative output in all areas.

Part of this has been due to the tutoring and lab demonstrating I’ve been doing the last couple of months, but that’s now all but over bar the marking. It’s been a pretty good run, although I felt I didn’t have as firm a grasp of the material as I’d hoped. Fourth year subjects are always a bit like that; I prefer first or second year where you know the subject well enough to focus on the actual teaching methods rather than understanding the material yourself.

The tutoring ran on a one week on, one week off basis, which meant every other week I’d have time to focus on my own thesis write-up. But the weeks on tended to be dominated by the teaching, and on the days where I’d take a three hour lab class in the evening I wouldn’t have energy to do much more than watch DVDs or sleep.

Plus there’s always winter to factor in. My metabolism always seems to switch into hibernation mode when the weather gets too cold. It didn’t help that the season just seemed to toggle from a particularly warm autumn overnight; the maximum temperatures seemed to drop by 15 degrees Celsius.

The upshot of the winter months is that if I’m not careful I tend to spend the bulk of my time daydreaming or idling surfing Wikipedia or TV Tropes for hours if not days at a time (TV Tropes is particularly bad for this). Sometimes hours seem to pass me by without me noticing them go. It’s a dangerous habit to get into, and it’s something I’ll need to force myself to break if I’m going to get anything done.

This week I’m going to attempt to break the winter slump by forcing myself to remain active and productive despite a lack of energy, even if this just involves writing posts for my blog like I am now. It beats passively reading wiki pages!

I’m also going to spend a little bit of time putting in some preparation work for my webcomic project. To recap: I’ve pledged to myself to start a webcomic some time this year as an outlet for improving my own drawing and writing skills. I tend to idly doodle cartoon while I’m watching DVDs, but without some project to give me direction I haven’t really improved much in the last couple of years. Due to my lack of focus the last week I’ve churned out dozens of pages of sketches that are all pretty terrible, so I mean to start putting some of that time into actual improvement.

I’ll also start posting more entries here about webcomics in general to help me put my thoughts together. Part of my problem at the moment is that I haven’t made up my mind what kind of webcomic I should be aiming for. I’ve got a bunch of conflicting goals, desires and time constraints for this. Putting some time into writing this down will be a good way to put things into focus.

The Olympic torch is passing through Canberra at the moment (it’s probably finished its public tour by now). I’m not entirely sure why, given it’s a bit of a detour from the path between Greece and Beijing. I suppose it’s to help build support for the Olympics, but it’s not as if you need much hype for such a major sporting event in sport-mad Australia. Especially since it’s being held in roughly the same time zone as us.

I didn’t bother going to see the torch, as it’s not exactly super important to me. Given this is Canberra, it’d be attended by a mix of Chinese nationals and supporters (we’ve got a big multicultural mix here), combined with the protest groups for Tibet or Falun Gong that seem to have permanently camped outside the Chinese embassy. I doubt there’ll be any violence, but the whole show just doesn’t seem like my kind of thing.

Apart from not doing anything regarding the Olympic torch, which unsurprisingly has not taken a lot of effort, I’ve been spending a bit of time thinking ahead for what I’m going to do with the website after I complete my studies in a couple of months time. I’m most likely to be wrapping up my Ph.D. thesis write-up in June, but I have not yet got anything definite planned for after that.

I’ve still got dreams of starting my own on-line game business; selling indie games over the ‘net to make a living. I’ve got plans for how I could get that up and running, but it’s not without a whole truck load of risk. I’d probably be burning through my savings pretty quickly for the first year at least. So the question I’m debating is whether I go for broke by running with the online business idea full time, head into a more traditional career path, or (my current favoured option) a blend of some type of possibly part-time employment that also allows me to run the online business on the side.

This isn’t something I’m going to decide upon very soon. I’ve still got a couple of months left before I’m done here, and it wouldn’t be amiss taking a couple of months holiday afterwards. I’m moderately astute at saving money up for a rainy day, so it’s not as if I’m going to be begging for scraps this year, at least. But it is something that now the end of my formal education is nigh I’ve got to keep bubbling around in my mind so I make a decently informed decision.

Geez, I’ve been meaning to put many more posts in this journal this year, but I keep forgetting to get round to it. I guess it’s partly because I haven’t been up to anything that interesting, with the exception of some of the Python work I’ve chronicling over at my GameDev.net journal (under Trapper Zoid, if you aren’t from there originally).

Today I’ve started teaching tutorials and labs again, after a several year break. It’s a way to refresh the ol’ teaching skills - and the extra cash will be handy too. Today went a bit badly by my view - nothing disasterous by any means, and I’d probably view it as okay back when I was younger, but given I’ve got experience at tutoring I should’ve been a bit peppier and more prepared. Unfortunately though the content of the tutorials isn’t very fixed until right up before I teach them and I’ve been up early in the morning most nights the last month so I’m pretty fatigued (up to three last night preparing for this weeks classes, an hour later than usual).

Hopefully the rest of the week’s teaching will go better now I’ve had one to learn from, but I’m too exhausted tonight to do any extra replanning.

Incidentally, if any of you need to know tips on computer vision, as a tutor I should be up to speed in a month or two

Today I turn thirty. I thought that was important enough to warrant a post in my journal.

I’ve (finally) got my MacBook Pro back, now with Leopard. The techs said it didn’t show and problems with the new OS, so I’m hoping it’ll be a lot more usable and a lot less crashy now. So far I’ve been using it a fair amount and it’s had one lock up - one too many perhaps, particularly due to the behaviour it showed (screen backlight went out, required hard reboot to fix) but I’ll see if it’s a reaccuring problem. For now I’ve installed a widget to control the MacBook fans and am running them at higher rates than normal - my hunch is that with all the fixes this particular MacBook as had that something might be overheating, so with some extra airflow it might be more stable. We’ll see if that proves true.

I’ve also placed an order for a 20″ iMac to replace my beige box PC. I like Mac OS X as an operating system and it’ll be great to have a desktop capable of running it and Mac apps; I think it’ll make a better workstation than my current computer. I also sprung for the wireless keyboard and mouse, mainly because Apple forces you to get a keyboard and mouse and I’ve already got a wired version of their new aluminium keyboard. I might go back to using the wired model and a corded mouse (the Mighty Mouse is weird, although it does have a nifty horizontal scrolling function), but it’d be useful to have the wireless models as an option for a cluttered desk.

I spent ages deciding between the 20″ and 24″ models; the 24″ looks impressive, and the LCD panel is of noticeably higher quality, but I decided to get the 20″ so I can pair it up with a second display; the 24″ is a bit big for that. To start with I’ll stick with just the iMac, but I’ll keep my eyes open for a good deal on a top notch LCD display to go with it. The Mac1 Apple reseller in Canberra often has firesales where they slash the price of a good-as-new Apple Cinema Display by about a third; so I’ll pounce next time that comes around.

A minor annoyance is that I won’t have a copy of Windows for a while, so I won’t be able to run Win software until I get a license I can use. I might give WINE a go to see how well it runs under Mac OS X, but I’m foreseeing problems. Still, at the moment not being able to run PC games can be considered a benefit; gives me one less thing to be distracted by.

On the weekend I spent a bit of time estimating how I can fit my Ph.D. program, webcomic project and game programming alongside each other for the next couple of months. My conclusion is that I can’t - not extensively, at least. For the next few months at least I can’t really set any deadlines or milestones except for those involving my studies.

While I am still going to work on both cartooning and game programming as a break from my work, I am not going to be setting any targets or projects until my Ph.D. is over; I just don’t have the energy for it. As far as I can see, I don’t think I’ve got the time to work on anything substantial until about April - not unless I want to give up sleep.

This might be for the best, as it’ll give me some time to work slowly on building up my skills rather than feeling pressured to rush things out. While I really wanted to launch my webcomic early this year, I feel I can’t really warrant the time to do so until I’ve got my Ph.D. thesis off my back. Instead I can put the extra few months into more planning, getting my drawing skills up to scratch and getting familiar with the tools available. Likewise, instead of working on any decent sized game I can use the time to get to grips with Python and Flash without feeling guilty about not releasing anything.

Of course I’m still not sure if I’ll have the time after I’m done, because it’s still up in the air of what I’m going to do when all this is over. I’m hoping a month’s holiday isn’t out of the question.

I’ve been feeling guilty about letting my journal stand idle for so long, so it’s time for a general update. It’s not as if I haven’t been busy, it’s more an issue of not really meeting any milestones that I felt were worthy of posting about.

Mainly I’ve been writing up my thesis dissertation, which is an exercises fraught with writer’s block and bad grammar. It’s a painful process that’s moving slower than I’d like, but it’s starting to come together. Hopefully it’ll be in a better position by the end of the week.

As a break from writing I’ve started working through some beginner Python exercises. Python looks like a nice language for quick development, and with a Tk library built it it’s probably a good platform for home brew GUIs and tools. I haven’t yet figured out the best way to approach building applications or games in Python; I still haven’t done anything sizable enough to get to grips with the language. I’m puzzling over the best way to get from a Python dabbler through to building proper Python programs.

I’m also chipping away at my webcomic project, which may have come a little off the rails too. I find it a lot of fun developing characters, sketching out what they look like and getting a broad idea of their personality. But I might have reached the point where the combination of what I’ve got doesn’t really make sense. My idea about the whole premise of the comic has shifted multiple times over the last few weeks, and I’m not sure if the stuff I was doing a fortnight ago works with what I’ve been doodling now. I may need to take a step back and ruthlessly prune what I’ve got to something that actually works as a comic premise.

Also, I haven’t got my MacBook Pro back yet; will be picking it up sometime in the next day or two. I think the verdict from the repairers was that there’s some bizarre conflict between Mac OS Tiger and my machine, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The laptop was working fine with Tiger before the screen blew the backlight, and I don’t know how replacing that could cause a hardware conflict. But if upgrading to Leopard seems to fix the problem (and their tests seem to suggest it does) then it might be enough of a reason to upgrade so I can get my working Mac computer back.

I’m also keen on getting an iMac sometime soon as a desktop replacement, although I don’t as of yet know exactly which hardware configuration is best for me. I mainly would like a second Mac with a better screen on my desk so I can use that when working at home. My current Windows PC is okay for what I used to use it for, but it doesn’t run my Adobe CS3 software or VoodooPad, plus my CRT monitor is positively ancient now. When MacWorld is over I’ll start making the decisions I need to choose a desktop replacement.

For now, that’s all. I’ll post more regularly in 2008 so I can get my money’s worth out of this site. I also need to replace this long running poll with something a bit more topical; first I need to think of what I’d like to ask.

I got my MacBook Pro back yesterday with a new hard drive. With Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) and a copy of my applications installed it seems, but [i]not[/i] my project and work directories for some reason (which thankfully I’m mostly sure I’ve got backed up).

Since I only own Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) I decided to wipe the hard drive and start afresh (plus most of my apps did not like their forced change of OSes). But unfortunately, after I had a fresh install of Tiger I found that the new hard drive did not fix my problem - it still randomly reboots. So I’m without my MacBook Pro for a few more days at least.

Dammit.