My Ramblings

I'm still here! I realize its been a long time since my last post, if you were waiting, sorry!

Quite a bit has changed since then but largely only related to my work, everything else has been sort of static. At Dog Fight we are working on a few projects but I can't go into much detail at the moment, I should hopefully be able to share everything soon but rest assured, they are radically different from one another.

My life has been impacted pretty heavily be these projects, for one, I only get around six to seven hours of sleep per day whether I like it or not (I was always a light sleeper so that doesn't help things much), I can't explain why either since I'm not working late into the night either. My work was always pretty hectic, when I went full swing with Dog Fight Studios last year it felt like the pressure was on since day one to make the company succeed. I worked myself pretty hard when I was writing so I'm sure that didn't help the transition much either. Once the current projects I'm working on are finished I hope to take a long break and finally develop a proper work schedule since I can't keep going like this for much longer.

Other than that, I've felt an urge in recent months to get back into activities I once enjoyed. As a kid I loved making movies and taking pictures. I remained active to a certain degree with photography but not as much as I would have liked, I lost virtually all touch with film making despite enjoying it immensely as a kid. I hope 2012 is the year where this all changes. Camera technology has changed quite a bit since I stopped and I really have no idea where to pick things up again. The terminology confuses me, DSLR, point and shoot, SD/HD camcorders, etc. I feel like those people you see at grocery stores trying to choose between different types of milk (to be fair, they do all look the same)! I'm not sure which option is the best but I'm leaning away from the DSLR for videos, while they do record good video I find camcorders are easier to hold. At the end of the day though your tools are only half the battle, editing can fix just about any problem (but it can't work miracles). With film making I'd also like to experiment more with using 3D engines and programs to create scenes, if you have the resources I think such programs can create some great looking stuff.

Also, a friend of mine is working on a crowd funded photo project on Hinduism, if the subject or her photography work interests you check it out!

I think that's about it, hopefully I'll start posting more in the coming weeks, particularly about what I'm working on!

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Too many people look at raising money as a starting point. Atari started with 0. Start with what you have but start. - Nolan Bushnell

An excellent quote and something that describes my present situation perfectly.

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I picked up Blur recently while visiting a different city at a local Zellers and it goes without saying that I'm disappointed. By the game? No.

The case had no game in it! The box was still in its packaging and it had the Microsoft seal on the side so I highly doubt it was tampered with, it's very likely that it was simply a manufacturing error. It's incredibly disappointing running into an issue like this since its never happened to me before and the feeling of an obstacle getting in the way of your new purchase is almost always a bad one.

Since I bought the game in a different city I don't know if I can exchange it but I'll certainly look into it.

Update: I called my local Zellers store shortly after posting this, they told me they can't do an exchange and that I should contact the store I bought it from to see if they can work something out with my local store regarding the issue. I don't feel like anything will be done unfortunately.

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If you come across an "UnauthorizedAccessException" error while programming for your Zune device via XNA the fix is relatively simple. In my case I came across this error when trying to read an XML file on my Zune.

Lets say we have something like,

[code]XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("Content/File.xml");[/code]

This will throw an error on the Zune (and perhaps other devices too) because of how the Zune accesses files locally. To fix we simply change the code to the following,

[code]string path = Path.Combine(StorageContainer.TitleLocation, "Content/File.xml");

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(path);[/code]

This should resolve the error, if you're still having trouble please post you issues in the comments section below.

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I'm currently playing around with new site templates, if you see the template change constantly over a short period of time now you know why!

All posts should still be accessible though.

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