RonForbes.net

I just set up Wordpress on my iPhone which means I can now write posts from anywhere. I’m on the Connector riding to work at the present moment. Pretty cool, right? (No)

Quick update on life in rapid fire bullet point form:
- the sun finally came out in Seattle. I’ve completely forgotten how depressing the rainy season is
- I’m moving into a house with @jrose and @daniel-san in June. My rent will be $1000 less than what I pay now
-saving the majority of the difference in rent to fund a yet to be announced secret project. Keep an eye out for it
-I’ve developed an addiction to The Wire. It starts (as all addictions do) slowly and then gradually consumes your life. I’m almost done with the first season
-I gotta get crackin on my latest music project. It’s gonna be different. But it could be cool. And might make me some change

Alright that’s it for now. The bus is pulling into the stop. Until next time, don’t talk about it, be about it.

Peace,
Ron

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h65aqWqJ2YA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McOVmkFFkHE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVyBcKEOtCw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4iN0U3IdgQ&feature=related

Do. Want.

http://www.najle.com/idaft/

Written from work.. I swear I’m testing Internet Explorer

Did someone say “early contender for XNA Roundup Game of the Year (and best soundtrack of all time)”?

As you may already know, some friends of mine asked me to produce the soundtrack for their upcoming XBox 360 game called Zoomaroom. The game just became publicly available on XBox LIVE Community Games for only 200 Microsoft Points ($2.50). Initial feedback has been pretty good, and there have been multiple reported sightings of heads bobbing to the music. Check out the trailer:

So save yourself that big mac you were going to buy today and go download it for yourself.

(Soundtrack coming to an iTunes Store near you!)

It’s been awhile since I last posted, and a lot’s been going on. I’m writing this post from the Courtyard Marriott in BLACKSBURG(!!) where I’m helping out at a recruitment event for Microsoft. It wasn’t exactly the best weekend to leave town (Monday’s a big deadline for my team), but hey, I do what I want (and my boss is awesome).

I’m staying in a hotel. I have a rental car. I feel OLD. ALTHOUGH, if you’re under 25, you have to pay extra money to rent cars in Virginia. So maybe I’m not that old. But I’m definitely not a young dumb college student anymore (even though my actions may suggest otherwise), and that still feels weird. Young adultness is an interesting time. There’s less of a concept of the start-to-finish that the progression through college has. You don’t study hard for exams so you can pass each year and eventually graduate. And I think I subconsciously try to apply this structure to real life, so I have to improvise a little and make up mini-milestones to blow through (going to Vegas in March is one such milestone ).

I’m thinking about the direction to take this site in. I’ve recently hooked this site up to Google Analytics and Adsense, which has shown me that the variety of people visiting this site is starting to stretch out. And that means the things people expect out of this site are diverging.

It’s no longer just my family reading this and wanting to know what’s going on in my life. It’s no longer just co-workers in Seattle wondering about my perspective on life at Microsoft. It’s no longer just people wandering over here from various game development sites looking for help developing and producing music for their games.

On any given day, the ads Google serves up could be on entrepreneurialism (sp?), technology, self development, game development, music production, leadership, hip hop dance, etc. Clearly, I have too many things going on here.

So I could go on growing RonForbes.net into a web variety show exploring every topic I could possibly take a slight interest in. Or I could split some of these topics into different sites, which would allow me to optimize the site towards that content area. For example:
* A video blog on music production capturing the creative process (if you can really call it that) I take to make music
* An internet TV on-going mockumentary on my dodgeball team, the Jager Bombs (I actually had this idea a couple days ago. I think it could be fun)
* Continue writing about the business side of life, multiple streams of income, leadership development
* Development blog on the various game production projects I’m involved in

Maintaining progress on all of the random ideas floating around my head could turn into a full-time job. So I think in the meantime, I start each of them, hosting them here on ronforbes.net, and the ones that take off, I consider breaking into seperate sites later on.

Anyway, I should go to sleep soon. If you’re in Blacksburg this week, I BETTER see you at TOTS Tuesday night! I’ll be the one singing soul songs on the karaoke stage.

-Omega

I seriously can’t believe the management of my apartment building allows such loud construction to go on at 8 in the morning every week day. Maybe everyone else is at work already. I tend to sleep in until 9 or 10 and work from home in the morning (what? I’m a night person). But since the day I moved in last June, I’ve been forcefully awakened by what sounds like the war in Iraq happening right above my head. The worst part is that since the construction is on the steel infrastructure of the building, even though they’re working on the roof, it reverberates down into every apartment to sound as if it’s right above it.

Perfect example of community management out of touch with the community in which it’s supposed to be building.

I pay $1500 a month for this…

When a few random comments appeared on one of my first blogs posts saying I told good stories, I welcomed the compliment. When I woke up this morning to about 20 comments on the exact same post from people called Enhace the Size of Your Wang, I cried.

I’m gonna have to take some protective measures, which may mean requiring commenters to sign up or something. But I’ll try to make this work in the easiest way.

On the other hand, if you are looking to increase the size of your wang, I have a few contacts for you…

I’m not usually one to question being in the spotlight, but why are a bunch of people leaving generic comments on one of my oldest posts from sophomore year of college?

I’m continually drawn back to my childhood addiction to classic puzzle games like Tetris Attack (Panel De Pon) and Kirby’s Avalanche (Puyo Puyo). These are both great examples of the perfect balance of simple gameplay easing newcomers into the rules and just enough complexity to compel players to practice and eventually master the game.

I spent the last couple days prototyping a Tetris Attack clone in XNA. I’ll upload a video of the early (read: dirty, slow, and tacky, but functional) prototype to YouTube sometime. But I have this thing where even if it’s a throwaway project, everything I work on has to add something new and unique to differentiate it from the competition. And there happen to be two great xbox games (Poker Smash and the upcoming Another Puzzle) that are making my attempts to differentiate quite difficult.

One memory I had of playing Tetris Attack back in the day was employing the emulator’s slow motion capabilities to allow me to play the game faster, creating bigger and bigger chains. So I immediately thought to add that to my prototype. But Poker Smash beat me to it, and it worked out very well for the game.

Another mechanic I though of adding to the game was to be able to dynamically rotate the playing field and direction of gravity. This would add a new twist to the gameplay and open up new possibilities of extending chains that were about to end. Then along comes Aurora Feint on the iPhone who does exactly that using the accelerometer (this game is awesome by the way).

Ah well. Back to brainstorming.

So I think I’m gonna put this first prototype on hold for awhile and try a Puyo Puyo clone, with some design twists thrown in. Maybe there’s something new to add to this one that someone else hasn’t already thought of and done.