Squidpunch.com

Things are pretty much the same as usual.  It’s summer and the weather is nice, so I have been spending quite a bit of time outside with the kids so they could enjoy the outside and such.  We went on a family vacation to Toronto & Niagra Falls you can read more about that and check out some pictures over at my family blog.

I still am working over at 360voice - and recently I had a trip to Boston to visit the parent company GamerDNA.  I previously blogged about that little adventure, just look a few posts back.  Part of that trip was to discuss possible options of me working with GamerDNA - partially because now 360voice is owned by them, but also because there is plenty of work to be done for gamerDNA as well.  So in the near future my coding obsession will include some work on GamerDNA as well.

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So after my post yesterday I was headed out the door of the hotel to wait for Trapper and Steve for the BBQ as I said.  I would have never guessed how the rest of that night played out though - sure some of it went as I expected - food, rock band, and meeting Trapper’s wife and kids, but so much more happened.

I left the hotel, and there wwas noise and banging going on everywhere, then I noticed a bunch of streets shut down - apparently it was Pride day, and there was a parade going through - so to try and keep the boys from having to deal with closed roads and congestion from the parade, I thought I would be smart and take the subway over towards Steve’s apartment.  Well I thought I was a big shot and knew what I was doing, unitl I realized I went 3 subway stops the wrong direction, ending up deeper into Boston - no big deal right?  Just hop off and get on the other direction to make up for the mistake.  Except when I  got on the other train it kept stopping and waiting for trains ahead of us, extending the time it was taking to get there - and of course being underground my cell wasn’t really working so there was no way to warn them of my screw up.

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Yesterday was a bit of an adventure - some serious congestion with security to get to my first flight making my boarding somewhat tight, then I took a cab from boston to GamerDNA, a trip that cost $40, which was much more then I originally had guessed.  Just to put it in perspective, and this might have changed since I lived there, but you could take a cab from the airport to most of the central portion of philly for $25.  Then I headed up to the office, and got to meet everyone that was in the office and not busy with meetings and such.  Steve (Fatty Chubs) and I had an ongoing meeting for most of the day in releation to some 360voice changes, and “Badges 2.0″ in a whole.  We made some pretty serious progress, at least in our planning process.

It was Carla, the office manager’s birthday so we all headed over to a restaraunt of her choosing for a few drinks and food - followed up by some seriously loud and seriously large rock band on a huge projector.  Quite an amazing end to the night.  Then I stopped in and took a quick look at Steve’s place and hopped a cab over to my hotel.

This morning I just roamed all over the cities of Cambridge and Boston - like seriously roamed, I started in a direction randomly turned and just looked following my path of randomness.  I actually walked so long that the sneakers I was wearing started blistering my heals, which I should have known that was going to happen - converse all stars seem to do that to my feet anytime I walk excessively.  I stopped in a mall that I stumbled upon and picked up a few shirts for the kids, their favorite characters, Dora for Summer and Thomas for Oliver.

The family seems to miss me, again not suprising - I rarely go away without them.  My son told me that I was away on work, but when I came home I was going to get a treat, then he continued to tell me the treat was birthday cake and we were all going to eat it.  Today was the first time that I talked to him on the phone and he actually communicated back, rather than just talked about whatever was on his mind about Thomas, or the wiggles or his matchbox collection.  It is crazy to just take a step back and see how big he is getting.

Rumor is that Trapper is headed over to pick up Steve and I, then we are heading back to his house for a BBQ and some gaming.  Which reminds me, Trapper - Fix your blog header, you are a Bostonian now!

Well I noticed my blog entries have cut down since I decided to keep the blogging to more of a personal level - but then again who needs yet another news site anyway - and lets be completely honest (I am a big boy I can take it).  It is very highly doubtful that you are heading over to my humble blog to get the latest news stories in the gaming world anyway

It’s Sunday afternoon and I randomly decided to take a moment and blog about my weekend, and other recent happenings.  

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Well, its been quite a while since I posted on here, except a quick congrats to steve519 on the birth of his new daughter, and a quick mention of the friendcast, and i don’t have any real excuse, just going through the motions I guess.  Perhaps it is time for a quick status update for those of you that care what I keep myself busy with.

First of all this blog isn’t my only neglected little internet home - I also have not been keeping up with the family blog either.  I recently posted an entry over there and uploaded about 200 images that were waiting to be put on the site.  Granted that blog isn’t filled with entries on a regular basis, only when we do something or have photos to put online - but I was a bit behind. 

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So the UnlockTheAchievement.com contest is over - that turned out to be a pretty interesting little project to build - and it ended up being a pretty good success in my opinion.  As stated before it brought to light some issues on 360friendspot.com which I am looking into and moving some stuff around on the site, so if you see something funky that is probably why.

This weekend we recorded Episode #5 of the 360voice podcast.  It is a short and sweet episode, mostly just to officially release information on the big news releasing today about 360voice’s merger with gamerdna, on that same subject you can hear me speak a little on The Xbox podcast.  It is a great move for the site which will allow it to expand, flourish, and shine even more then it does today.  ChangeAgent and Fatty Chubs have all ready (mostly) moved up to Cambridge, and are rocking out as full staff at gamerdna.  No longer do they have the distraction of a day job in the way of working their 360voice (and other gamerdna properties) but the day job IS working on those sites.

I am sure there is more, but another post is just a click away when I remember what it could have been

This is the time of year when it comes to food for me.  Just a few weeks ago was St. Patrick’s Day, which if nothing more means you can get Shamrock Shakes at McDonalds, oh how I love Shamrock shakes.

If that wasn’t enough, this past weekend was Easter, which means tons of candy random plastic eggs, and usually a big family feast.  My other secret obessesion is peanut butter eggs.  I probably gained 10 pounds in just peanut butter eggs this weekend, and I have a pretty good supply left - because everyone knows I like them, and feeds my obsession.

Speaking of obsessions, I picked up a copy of Lost Odyssey which i always seem to spell wrong (I looked it up to write this sentence) and I have been playing a bit of that lately.  I seem to be pretty bad at it though because every boss battle I make it to ends up taking me 10 or so tries, oddly I go back for more.  I have also been playing Super Mario Galaxies (up to 45 stars), since I felt the Wii wasn’t getting its full value of usage.  I never played the Smash Brothers series, so I don’t completely see the draw to that game, but I will at least give it a rent sometime soon - maybe it will be the game to make the Wii take over my main gaming focus…but I doubt it.

I have some interesting things in the works at 360voice, just doing some further testing and tweaking, my goal is to have it online this code night (tomorrow for those of you that don’t stalk the dev blog).  I also opened up 360friendspot to allow for each and every one of you gamers the ability to have your very own blog - for those of you that want that kind of thing.  You dont have to set up anything or manage it, thats mostly done by me - and I plan to provide themes and plugins that you guys request, so head on over and sign up for one, just another way to make the friend spot, a spot for friends!  User blogs was a pretty common request a while back, hopefully it isn’t too late and people actually use the feature.

So I had no clue what to title this post, hence the title above.  Normally it’s pretty easy “INSERT AWESOME GAME NAME HERE” COMING! or something to that effect, but with all the changes with 360friendspot, I am going to try and seperate my blogging duties.  What exactly does that mean?  Well I will probably keep this more of a personal blogging approach, about myself, gaming, coding, etc - kind of like the status report whenever the mood strikes.  Those of  you looking for news and such - check out 360friendspot.com, I (and my blogging buddies) will keep that kind of thing updated over there to the best of our abilities, over here you will see just ’Squid Stuff’, at least for now - lets see how it goes

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Things are same old same on here in squidland.  I recently picked up a copy of Commanders: Attack of the Genos and have been working on a review for it - I used to think I was good at turn based strategy games.  Either I really wrong, or I am realy rusty - its kicking my arse.  I would have the review out all ready probably - but I wanted to progress a bit more of the content covered in the review.

I was selected as an Xbox Ambassador recently, joining the ranks of my friends Pat2k9 and ZaaM IT, from what I hear Tallboy2005 also got selected (congrats buddy)

Still cranking away at Support and Code at 360voice - my wife things that I am crazy for the amount of code that I work on during the day and also at night - maybe I am.

TheLiveEye.com is officially no longer tracking gaming - I want to compile some stats about the tool and put it on 360friendspot, I just haven’t decided what stats to build yet.

360friendspot.com is officially moved over to my hosting, and all my baby now - minus the domain name transfer, its all mine to make or break.  It has been covered before, but maybe not here on my blog, or maybe you missed it.  ZaaM decided to step down developing at 360friendspot, and I wish him well in all that he does in the future. Everyone make sure to vist ZaaM IT and tell him hi once in a while OK?

I have a few things in the works to try and revive 360friendspot, especially after theliveeye and friend finder parting ways with 360friendspot.  I picked a few people to try and do some blogging for the front page, some people to help out with game reviews, and we are always kicking around the idea of a podcast. 

One request that we never got to before was member blogs - so I started testing out some stuff to make them happen, its kind of like a “3FS Profile” if you will but allows you to blog, or connect to an RSS of another blog.  It still has a long road to travel, but give it a look - what do you think?

http://www.360friendspot.com/blog/squidpunch

Would you like a free blog, all centralized with other gamers like you, and showing off some of your gamer info?  Well if I ever finish it, 3FS blogs will be open to all of you that wish to do just that.

Just realized I haven’t posted anything on the blog lately, which got me wondering why that was. Especially with all of the new GDC news - the blog should be exploding with info!  Long story short, I have just been busy I guess.  Doing some major code changes at work during the day - and filling my nights with some coding as well :-)  You might have seen me respond to one of your support requests at 360voice (boy you guys submit alot of support requests!), or you might have noticed the recent rollover changes on your challenge page on the 360voice front, and in relation to 360friendspot - it went through some pretty major (background) changes which I am working on it here and there - we are still battling a DNS issue - so if you cant see the site (like me at the time of this posting) its because somehow the DNS got out of wack again  - so I had to ask ZaaM to update it again, I really am begining to hate DNS issues.

I also just re-built a LAMP server in my house to play around with - mostly to try out Ruby on Rails.  It’s a bit different but interesting.  If I ever really get a handle on it, maybe some new tools will show up using Ruby on Rails

Finally my wife accepted a new job, starting tomorrow - so we have been reorganizing the office - mostly taking out her work stuff that she no longer needs - and rearranging my desk area with the new found space.