As I indicated in my previous post, my main focus is on games development. I have started a number of different games to test the playability of an idea and most are put on the back-burner for me to come back to when more thought has been put into it's game-play.

I recently discovered a work colleague that is an avid gamer for PS3 and also happens to be a graphic artist for the company I work at. We started chatting and got onto the topic of idie games development and what I'm doing and now we're working collaboratively on a new title.

What I am completely amazed at is how well we're working together and the ideas that are constantly coming in from both of us. Having someone else working on a game with me is providing a very different insight into what is possible as an idie. The graphic work now coming in as a result is nothing short of amazing and is clearly a skill that I completely lack. With the new artwork and ideas the game is now much improved. I can't say too much about the game or it's name just yet but it'll be ready for release very soon.

If you're an idie and also working for a company that has a marketing team with graphic artists it may well be worth having a quick chat with them over a coffee and see if anyone may be interested in working on a game title with you.

I'll update the blog later with details of the game etc. and of course, it'll all be posted with images etc. at MozzieByte.

As part of my personal career development I've embarked on a path that will hopefully lead to developing games for the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, Wii, XBox, PC, Mac and PS3.

Let's face it, life is too short and needs to be fun! Right!

I've updated my site MozzieByte to reflect this line of thought. It has current game developments I'm working on and will eventually host other interesting and fun stuff. Check it out if it's your thing too.

I'll continue updating this blog from time to time but for now my main focus and energies will be spent on MozzieByte.

Cheers,
Ed

Hi again,

I recently came to the conclusion that I’m bored or burnt out when it comes to software development. I work full time as a .NET business application developer, I do a fair bit of .NET development for a good friend and I was also developing a Point of Sale system as my own project….so it’s .NET business application development for a good 13 to 14 hours each day (7 days a week).

I’ve also been doing this for over 6 years solid and with almost no time off in that period. It’s no wonder that when I get to work or sit in front of the home PC to continue development on other projects that I’m just not interested and looking for distractions to get me away from the screen. I can’t tell if I’m just bored or burnt out and to be completely honest I don’t think that there’s any real difference.

To also add to this I’ve come to the conclusion that I simply do not have the time or patience when it comes to basic and simple User questions. This became very obvious during a recent project release into production.

So, I’ve decided to STOP all development on my own Point of Sale project. It makes no sense to continue with a project that will ultimately provide me with more stress. I’ll also be toning down the amount of time that I’m spending developing applications for this good friend of mine.

I need to do these things before I find myself completely bored and uninterested in any further business application software development.

Some years ago, I tried my hand at games development with another good friend. We had a few good ideas and I was very keen to get on board with the whole games development scene….but time was not on my side and money was a huge issue for me then too. But, lately, I have been looking into getting on with my games development life again and I’m happy to say that I’ve now got a new interest in software development and one that will also provide a bit of entertainment for both myself and my kids. I’ll be blogging more about this as time goes on.

Well, it’s getting late and I need to start work early tomorrow.

BFN!

I have been hosting my site at WebHost4Life for a number of years now and they were fine. I had no trouble with them at all and the service was great... until they were bought out.

During the transistion stage my site was to be migrated over to the new servers and for quite some time (a couple of months at least) the status of the migration for my site was 'QA' which meant that my site had not yet passed their 'quality' check for the new servers. In May of 2010 my site was eventually migrated to the new servers. Actually, the status was updated as such and the nameservers were also updated but my site was nowhere to be seen! After logging into the control panel and seeing what was going on I found that none of the web site had been moved across. In addition to this my e-mail started flooding with all the e-mail that I had ever received since starting with WebHost4Life - fantastic!! After a few days my site was restored back onto the old servers for a short while.

Soon after, it happened again but it was an improvement. At least the web site was there and one of my web services was running but the blog and other web services were still not up and running. And, again, e-mails started to flood in! After several days of inactivity and no responses to my questions I moved to another web hosting company.

Arvixe is a web hosting company that, from the surface, claims to provide great web hosting services at low prices. Too good to be true! It has to be! I needed to find out who was hosting with them and if they had anything to say about Arvixe and sure enough there were plenty of sites and plenty of comments. All the comments I found were positive in nature. Some of the sites I found I've used before and after using them again after they had migrated to Arvixe I was convinced that Arvixe is indeed providing the service they claim on their web site.

I made the switch to Arvixe. I've contacted their sales and support teams and in every instance I've had prompt responses or online chats that have answered my queries 100%. I'm happy now and so are my clients that rely on the web services!

If you're in the market for a web hosting company I would recommend that you spend a few minutes to see what Arvixe can offer.

Hello!

I recently started to look into WPF for a new project that is about to commence at my place of work. I haven't really had the need or requirement to want to know anything about WPF or even Silverlight for that matter but, due to the nature of the business and where the company is wanting to go in the future I thought it would be prudent to do some research.

I know your thinking that I should have already put my thumb into the pie and know all there is to know about both WPF and Silverlight and you're right! It's just that time is never available for me to spend on gathering details on technologies that I don't have an immediate need to understand. When WPF and Silverlight (WPF/E as it was initially known) first came on the scene I did have a look and felt that it was not yet mature enough for me to invest my time with but all that has changed.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a book (Sams Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours - ISBN:9780672329852) in an attempt to get up to speed as quickly as I could. I didn't get very far into the hours (hour 5 I think) and I realised that WPF is possibly the platform that should be used for the next project in the company. I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that WinForms was the wrong choice and that we'll need to come back and re-invent everything again in a couple of years.

Indeed, the very next Monday I arrived at work and called a meeting to discuss what I had found out about WPF and what it would mean to the business for the future. I was a little dissappointed at the response I got. It was almost as if the team was not at all interested in investing the time into implementing WPF as the next technology framework for the business. Of course I got the 'let's look further into it' standard response which is never encouraging. Perhaps I'm being a bit too keen in my approach to WPF? I don't think I am but I just can't sit still and let the business make a mistake I know will come back to haunt me a short time later.

If you have any suggestions or ideas to share on how to better sell the WPF platform I would appreciate hearing them.

Just recently I started to learn and understand what WPF is about. I've been unable to delve into WPF and/or Silverlight as I have not had a lot of time in which to spend in learning a different technology due to other projects and family committments.

I now wish that I had put some time aside for these technologies because WPF and Silverlight are both amazing! Just the small fraction of knowledge that I have now of WPF and what I've been able to do in a short time span even has me in a spin. I've put most of my time (all of a week so far) into WPF and only a couple of hours into Silverlight but my very limited experience into these two frameworks has me completely convinced that I need to spend a lot more time developing in WPF and/or Silverlight and a lot less time on WinForms.

A friend of mine, Paul Stovell, has been working with WPF for some time now and the initial work that he did was very impressive (even more so considering that there was no real IDE support in VS for designing WPF UIs at that time). I would have jumped onto the WPF scene too but felt that I really needed to continue honing my skills on .NET 2.0 and WinForms development. Now that the clock has been ticking for some time I find myself in the position of not only wanting to know all there is to know about WPF but it may just be that my place of work might be heading in the WPF direction too....all the better for me ;)

In a short time I've been able to start a new project of my own. I've used some DevExpress components for a carousel on the main page and will also use their docking component (both look very sweet). I have even been able to create my own icons using Expression Design and incorporate them into the application as Static Resources and apply them to buttons, shapes, backgrounds etc. I really like the idea of using Expression Design to create custom icons as they're resizable and do not lose defition of become granular due the simple fact that the icons are vector based.

Anyway, I feel that I'm rambling on a bit too much without actually saying much...

e.