I now have a hole in the ground...

As you can see from these pictures the builders have finally gone forth with construction of my new home.

Fortune Cookings, Bringing Good Fortune To All

The office went out for lunch today at a Chinese restaurant and as usual at the end of the meal we all got the prepackaged Fortune Cookies which provide some great converstaion pieces. Although the "fortune" that you get in these after dinner treats are usually pretty generic, I think that you will get a kick out of the one that I got...

Colleco Vision Returns... No, Wait, That's Just a Nintendo Revolution

Yesterday at the Tokyo Game Show Nintendo decided to go and open the curtain to fanboys everywhere a new pice of the Nintendo Revolution puzzle by revealing their innovative new controller (read more about it here).

When I first saw this abomination my first thought was that it was a really crappy looking TV remote from the 80s, but after some nostolgic thought I have come to the conclusion that it remindes me more of the infamous Collecovision or Intellivision controllers from the early 80s.

Truth be told though I wish I could say that this was a sick joke put on by the internet fanboys but it's not, someone at Nintendo (likely a person with lots of research and zero practical knowledge of what people want and need) have desigend a controller that you have to hold and point at your tv (just like a remote) and can plug in a lame ass secondary analog stick to futher control and manipulate. I don't know if Nintendo's goal was to curb the 5+ hour gaming sessions that I so fondly remember as a kid or to create an army of 'one mutant arm' superkids (since you are likely to develop some serious muscles having to hold this controller towards the TV to make it look if you want to play for extended hours) but either way I think the general consensus among the people that count, the consumers, is that this is complete garbage.

If you want my opinion though, I think a more appropriate use for the Nintendo Revolution controller is to use it as the final spike that seals the lid of the coffin on a once great company. So long Nintendo, you provided us with some great memories over the years but in the end your attempt at a swan song ending has resulted in people like me saying "just put them out of their misery already"

Dragon Animation Test

During the past 4 days I have been slowly fighting a cold and animating the Dragon so that he can go into our game engine. Here is the current progress of the animation (I still need to animate his fingers and toes and touch-up some stuff here and there, but overall its getting close to final).

View dragon animation test 1.9MB (Requires QuickTime)

Max 8 Features Videos

Autodesk has finally uploaded a whole bunch of videos that apparently shows many of the new features, changes and improvements that they have done to 3DS Max 8 (which will probably be released in October as this is historicly its new release time). They are definately worth taking a look at to see many of the great new features that are going to be offered.