Corrections

I realized I cannot live without a personal blog so I made a new one at elmerandes.wordpress.com.

Blogger has become to slow for me and I need to have a single blog manager for all my blogs.

Please point your readers there.

Thanks!

He wants us to get on with it

Grish and I decided to pull in the wedding schedule since we (sort of) agreed to cut-down expenses, which would technically spare us a few months' worth of savings. So from November 8, we moved it to September 8, 2007 - the first year anniversary of our engagement.

We have been working with the Nov 8 date for quite some time now, although we never really reserved that date in the UP chapel. For some reason, we were able to secure reservations first with the reception venue (Balay Kalinaw) and the photographer (Pat Dy). But for the single most important thing (the church), we haven't been able to tick that off our checklist.

Something happened (which I don't have the heart to share yet) that prompted us to make do with a (first time I heard from Grish) nuclear wedding (must be more explosive than before!). Fewer people, fewer guests, and thus fewer mouths to feed. ;) Simple, quick, and intimate. We decided to go for the next significant "8" day - September 8.

We should not have gotten September 8. It was (again, terms I learned from Grish), a Catholic "day of obligation" as it was Mother Mary's birthday. People are expected to go to mass, and, for the devout couples, would be a perfect day to get married. So it was that when we knocked on the glass pane window counter of the parish office, I wasn't really expecting that the date would be free - although I was crossing my fingers and toes. As the clerk paged through the reservation logbook for July, then August, the improbability of it all prompted me to think, "Lord, if you really favor this marriage, you'd give us this date." I'm not one for signs or for challenging the divine - but I guess I got careless.

The logbook page for September 8 was clean - no inkblots, no erasures. We were the first to sign in on that date. It's corny, but right then I *knew*, with a feeling far stronger than when we decided November 8. He wants us together. And He will bless the union in THIS church.

Grish was equally suprised and ecstatic. She took a picture of the clerk as she was writing our names on the logbook. "I-b-blog namin", she explained.

She didn't get it, and her boss went out of the room to escape from the picture-taking. But she went along with it and continued scribbling our names.

...
It turned out that Balay Kalinaw has a scheduled event at September 8. But it's okay.

...
We used Grish's phone to take the pic. I haven't gotten a copy yet.

All things must end

After more than two years in Blogger, I decided to take the compass down and just randomly sail the seas. (Yuck.)

I realized it would be more productive to continue with the vision I had for ogretech. So I decided to minimize this blog - it will still be up, but I doubt that I'll keep this updated. Efforts will now be focused on blog entries that can hopefully be of help to other people. Which hopefully can be a seed to professional blogging.

Personal concerns, hangups, complaints, and happy thoughts would be best shared with my wife-to-be. (naks.)

Anyway, it's been great guys. Thanks for reading!

(Jumping ship to http://ogretech.wordpress.com)

Sour cream for breakfast

I'm already (more or less) satisfied with my work, it's potentials, and the future it may bring for my career. But when I hear stories of people (friends of friends, previous coworkers) who got hired by game companies and/or are making their mark in the games industry, I still get jealous.

It's that kind of jealousy and repressed envy that sours your gut.

That should probably tell me something.

Always a sucker for DOS games

A way back, I got a copy of a pilot strategy guide for Falcon 3.0 from a discount bookstore. Falcon 3.0 is an old DOS flight simulator - the most celebrated one because of it's accuracy and graphics (at the time). I played a few sorties on it way back in college and I just HAD to buy the book.

While browsing it, it took only one look for me to realize that they don't make games like they used to. I would bet that the guide is no different than the actual F-16 manual, filled with charts and diagrams to fill my geek heart's content. What other game and genre can make you study and execute moves like this???



It was clearly made at a time when hard-core simulation was also the stuff of PC games. (Why the sim genre has died was probably Doom's fault.)

Anyway, I walked in that same bookstore again and found these two babies:





To the uninitiated, Wing Commander ushered the era of space sims, while Dark Forces was Lucasarts' first foray into first-person shooters.





As a bonus, at the end of the books, there are developer and producer interviews. It's amazing to read how the programmers from Lucasarts had to build their own (and pretty good) FPS engine from scratch without having to rely on the Doom engine, which was the norm at that time. This proves that as long as you know the fundamental concepts, you never really need to license a 3rd party engine - well, during that time anyway.

I actually haven't bought the books yet - they cost 300 bucks a piece. But these treasures have been sitting there for months and I bet will still be there when I get back. :)