Joining the Journeyman Project Tribute Team

I was contacted recently by Andy Curry, the project leader for a remake of The Journeyman Project game.  Their needs seem to align with the goals of my Aware Engine so I have agreed to collaborate closely with them.

Andy is working on some cubic panorama renders that we can use to create a first tech. demo.  For now I'll be working on:

• Supporting cubic panoramas in Aware Engine.  This should be easy as my envmap_viewer can already do it.  Perhaps the challenge will be minimizing the appearance of hair-line seams where the cube faces meet.  Some video cards seem to be more prone to this anomaly than others.
• Getting Aware Engine compiled for the big three platforms (Win, Linux, Mac).  This is always a big time sink.  Eventually I'm thinking I'll even bundle JamVM to insulate us from Java installation and misconfiguration woes.  But not yet.

Sabbatical Complete

I have completed my one year break from the computer.  Although technically it won't be a year until March 14th I figure I'm close enough (for reasons you'll see in an upcoming post).

My primary objective was to be fully present to my new son.  To this end the sabbatical was a resounding success!  I truly feel I know my new son more deeply, and am closer to him that if I had been in absent-minded-professor mode.

I must confess however that I was not as strict as I originally envisioned.  As the months went by I convinced myself that general purpose internet surfing was okay.  I did, however, maintain the will power to stay away from "neat" computery topics and instead just do facebook, email, and read about rock climbing.  Its not too regrettable because I limited this computer usage to when he was asleep or otherwise occupied.

Honestly, the demands of both time and energy of parenthood has left little time for anything else in my life.  Parenthood changes your life!  As it well should.  I think these early years of parenthood will continue to be a sort of forced break.  Only now, I'll allow myself to spend my precious little free time on computer projects.