I was having a conversation the other day with a customer and we started talking about what each of us had been reading (non-technical, no work related).  It is always fun to learn about a new author and share opinions on common books.  I thought I would post on what I have recently finished or am currently working on.

Recently Finished:

The Dreaming Void (The Void Trilogy, Book 1) : Peter F. Hamilton
I am a huge Peter F. Hamilton fan.  His The Reality Dysfunction Series was absolutely fantastic, as was his series starting with Judas Unchained.  The Dreaming Void is set in the same universe he developed for Judas Unchained.  It was a bit of a slower start than his other books, but it really started to move in the second half of the book.  Hamilton is a master at developing a complete world and the characters within it, and setting a fantastic pace at the same time.  If you like "space opera" type novels, I cannot recommend Hamilton enough.

Drive to the East (Settling Accounts, Book 2) : Harry Turtledove
I picked up the beginning of this series American Front (The Great War, Book 1) (actually, it's the Great War series but the story and characters continue between the series) on a bit of a flyer.  I had avoided Turtledove since he has so many books (lots of ghost writers maybe, I don't know???) so I was a bit leery since its hard to imagine that much quality work being turned out.  It turned out to be a great move since this is another series that I have fallen in love with.  While the twists on the historical timeline are interesting, it really is the characters that drive these books.  Another top recommendation.

In Progress:

Titan (Gaia) : John Varley
Another recommended book. It has been interesting as well but only about a quarter of the way through it. A few reviews compared the series to Dune (as far as scope) but so far I haven't seen it. It's an easy read so hopefully it to begins to grab me.

Thirteen : Richard K. Morgan
I really enjoyed Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs Novels and thought the premise of this one sounded interesting as well. I've been a bit disappointed. Slow start and Morgan seems to make a few too many pointed "political observations" in his book that I don't entirely agree with, so I've spent a few pages rolling my eyes at his views. It has slid off the active reading list as I work on the others I am reading, but I'll return to it as I finish the others and hopefully it will get back to the quality I have previously enjoyed from his novels.

Harrington on Cash Games: Vol. 1 : Dan Harrington / Bill Robertie
A poker book on playing No-Limit Texas Hold'em Cash Games. I have played limit for almost ten years and have dabbled in tournaments, but I have yet to step into the no-limit cash game arena in any big way. That has, for good, bad, or indifferent, become the rage in Vegas and even online to a large degree so finding good limit games has become hard (I like $8-$16 or so, but it's hard finding more than a $4-$8 or the occasional $6-$12), so it's time to get better at no limit. I have done ok when I have dipped my toes into the no-limit games, but I was not beating them to the same degree I do when I play limit so I know I have holes in my game and am not always thinking right. I have faired decently in the tournaments I have played, but in general I do not like tournaments and deep stack no-limit games play (or should be played) differently than no-limit tournaments. I'm halfway through and have already learned a great deal.

Well, I've decided to start a personal blog.  Really just more a place to rant, vent, muse, and comment on stuff I read or hear about.  I don't suspect anyone to read it really, but somebody might and maybe even comment.  I enjoy debating so feel free to agree, disagree, whatever.  Then again, it reminds me of the old saying...

If you blog and nobody reads it, are you really blogging????

Brand Name Productions Blog

I was digging around in a cabinet I hadn't probably opened in years and years.  I'm thinking about selling my townhouse and trying to move a bit upmarket since prices are good, and its got me doing a bit of house cleaning.  I digress.

What did I find in said cabinet?  A veritable treasure trove of old RPGs.  Yep, a bunch of Shadowrun stuff, some Torg, and a good stack of GURPS, and some other pieces and parts.  It was so much fun to flip through the pages and revel in a lot of old gamer memories.  I can't remember the last time I actually played an RPG.  It has been at least a decade, maybe more. I continued to buy RPG stuff that caught my eye even after I stopped playing since many of them are almost like buying a mini-novel in a way.  That little trip down memory lane really made me miss playing, though I am not sure if I could get into it as much as I used to, but maybe I could.  Finding the time to do it is one challenge, and getting a group together is likely to be an even bigger challenge since walking into a group of unknown gamers is not something I am likely to do and I tend to run the game instead of be a player.

So with the sad realization that I would probably never RPG again, what did I do?????

I read a few pages here and there from the various games, put the books back, closed the cabinet, and will plan on digging back in there for another nostalgia trip in a couple of days......

Brian Moore, my boss BTW ;-), tagged me on answering some questions about how I got started in software development.  This post is actually part of a series of posts from different bloggers - kinda of a blog based chain letter and could eventually turn into a Six Degrees of Developers type of deal. ;-)

Here is how it made it's way to me...

Michael Eaton (post) —> Sarah Dutkiewicz (post) —> Jeff Blankenburg (post) —> Josh Holmes (post) —> Larry Clarkin (post) —> Brian Moore (post)

See my answers below...

How old were you when you started programming?

Hmmmm... I'm trying to think back that far.  ;-)  I can remember hanging out at the local Radio Shack watching older kids play the pre-cursor to Zork on a TRS-80, but I didn't really start writing my own programs until I could bang out copies of BASIC programs on a C64.

What was your first language?

BASIC

What was the first real program you wrote?

My first "real" program was written on some terminal based system as a freshman in high school.  I don't know if it was a VAX or what (I didn't care really), but I wrote a program that allowed you to enter up to three "martial arts" commands, like Block Middle, Kick Low, Punch High.  Another player would then enter his commands and I would use a matrix to look up and report the damage results.  You played until you knocked the other guy out.  It was actually based on an article from Dragon magazine.  It was real popular for a while. ;-) 

What languages have you used since you started programming

Hmmmm... BASIC to start.  I learned some PASCAL on my own, had to do Fortan in my orbital mechanics class, I then moved on to C/C++.  After that, I've done serious programming in Java, ADA, VB, C#, and javascript.  I've played around with Perl, Ruby, and probably one or two more that I can't remember.  I'm not a language geek.

What was your first professional programming gig?

In the Air Force, despite being an infrastructure guy, I helped write some help desk software for our department.  I followed that up with an inventory management application that sat on top of SMS 1.0.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Probably, but I always wonder what would have happened if I had pursued my dream of being a professional butt model.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Wow, it all depends on where they want to go.  If you want to be a programmer forever, then focusing on the the "disciplines" is the way to go - design patterns, architecture, etc.  If you don't think you will be a programmer forever, those things are still important, but soft skills, articulating technology, etc. are very important. 

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?

The thing I love most about programming is just solving a problem.  Its the "art" side of the job I appreciate and enjoy the most.  Because of that, I think the stuff I wrote early was the most fun since I really didn't care about "good" code, it was just about creating something.  I remember developing a C++ app that took the gaming system for cyberspace combat from the game Shadowrun and turning that into a computer "game".  I use "game" loosely since it only allowed the GM and player to "fight" each other via the keyboard than rolling dice. 

It was cool. It has a designer for laying out the "Matrix" and a way to trick out your hacker console and load various combat programs on it.  The GM did the same and then you would fight.  It wasn't a perfect replica but it was good enough and I had a ton of fun writing it.  I slept only a few hours a night as I would code all day/night after getting of work from my Air Force day job. 

Who am I calling out?

Scott Colestock

Javier Lozano

Bryan Sampica

Kirstin Juhl

Let me say that I grew up on Indiana Jones.  Loved the movies (except for the crap of second movie).  I can still remember being enthralled as I watched ROTLA and standing in line for on over an hour in college to see the last one and coming away totally satisfied.  But I just saw the trailer for the new Indy movie, and let me just say that the potential lame factor appears to be very high.  The "highlights" seem to be following the over the top stunt action that marred the last of the Die Hard movies.  While certainly not a lot of time has passed in the "movie-verse" the fact is that Indy is looking old since Harrison is old.  But the stunts they show, the corny one liners, etc. but this movie on my Highly Dubious list.  If that's the case, sad to see Steven Speilberg and Harrison Ford sell out such a great franchise.

Last night I was recording another Minnesota Developer Roundtable podcast (we punted on the MS Roundtable video since it was pretty large when all was said and done and didn't add much) and it came out that Second Life was going to start using Mono (Novell's implementation of the Common Language Runtime and parts of the .NET Framework on Linux).  I forget which of the guys mentioned it, but I hadn't heard that.  Very cool.  So a bit of sniffing and I came across this post announcing the Second Life Mono Beta Launch which then points to this Wiki entry talking more about Mono in Second Life.   I find this cool since it gives me that six degrees of separation feeling to Second Life (.NET -> Mono -> Second Life).  Personally, I don't the Second Life thing - tried it, got bored, never went back - but the technology is cool!

I just switched from Verizon and my Treo 700w to ATT and a BlackJack II.  That also means I am moving from Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6.  Thoughts so far?  It is a much snappier device, that is for sure.  I miss having a touch screen interface, but mostly when I am browsing the web.  The biggest thing I miss is that the Treo would try and anticipate text recipients and words when I typed text messages.  No such feature in the BlackJack.  The BlackJack II does come with a pre-installed RSS reader and that has been a great addition.  I also was able to enable the GPS feature and it works great with the Live Mobile search app.  The only other thing I miss from the Treo is you could add Speed Dial entries directly to the home screen.  I haven't found a way to do that on the BlackJack II - it could be because that was a touch-specific feature on the Treo, but it would be nice to be able to scroll through pictures of the people you usually call based on your contact list.  But the perf and nice screen seem to balance out the missing features - so all in all things are going well.

How many award shows do people in movie and television need?  Not only do they need a lot of them, apparently, but they need to televise all of them.  We have the Emmy's, the Daytime Emmys, the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the People's Choice and a few others I am probably forgetting.  That is not even listing the half dozen different award shows for music.  OMG!!!!  Talk about narcissism at its worst.  The thinking must go something like this,

Hollywood Type #1:  "You know, we are great."

Hollywood Type #2: "You are right!  We should have an award show to tell our people how great they are."

Hollywood Type #1: "That is a great idea.  It's so great, we should have at least seven award shows that basically give the same awards with different names to the same people!"

Hollywood Type #2: "Outstanding!  And we can let each of those people spout inane babble, empty platitudes, and irrelevant social and political commentary when they get their awards!  And we can put it all on TV!!!"

Hollywood Type #1: "Excellent!  Let's do it!!!!  Ummmmm, what does platitudes mean?"

I guess the only thing sadder is that the American public tunes in to enough of these shows in sufficient numbers to make them financially viable.  If you are a movie buff or TV buff then I guess I can see you being interested enough to watch one show.  Apparently its a big deal for a certain gender that is not male to tune in to see what everyone wears to these preen-fests.  But six plus shows?  Come on, get a life already!  And I'm talking to both sides of this sad situation.

Just on a whim, I picked up the director's cut of Aliens.  I'm not a film person by any stretch so I am not sure if it is ok to say this or not, but in general, I like James Cameron's work.  Anyway, I figure seeing a few extra scenes or whatever would be fun while I watched one of those "great films" from when I was younger.  Lo and behold, the Director's cut weighed in at 2 hours and 39 minutes.  This was not just a few extra scenes thrown in, it was almost like watching an entirely different movie. Not that extreme maybe, but it made the film even better.  You learn more about Ripley, the colony, and some of the things that just seemed disjointed in the theatrical release fall into place (a la why Ripley seemed to become attached to Newt in a split second --- the background on Ripley is now there to explain that).  All in all, I'm really glad I picked it up!

I had to pick up something this weekend at the local Best Buy.  I walked into the store about 5 minutes after it had opened on Saturday.  I quickly strolled to grab my item and headed to the check out lane.  It was already a bit of a line, and as I looked around, I noticed of the 15 people or so in line, almost 90% of them had a Wii in their hands.  I asked the lady next to me, "Is there some kind of sale on the Wii?".  "Nope," she said, "they are just hard to find."

Hmmm... everyone has heard the Wii has been immensely popular but I had never actually "seen" that effect in real life.  It was kind of amazing.  As I stood there, at least three other people joined the back of the line and all three also had Wiis.  There were others visible from my point in line still wandering the store, Wiis clutched to the chests like they were rescuing an baby from a fire.

Pretty impressive.  I am not a big Wii fan.  I've played it - it's cute for a few minutes, but I must be from that hard core gamer set (even though I don't play a ton of games and even play all that often) because it just didn't resonate with me.  My ten year old son is in the same boat as he has said many times, "the Wii is weak".  Of course, he is a big Halo 3 fan which does not seem to be the market segment the Wii is aimed at.

Regardless, it was fun to see a "phenomenon" first hand...