Seven Days Remaining: The Final Countdown
Sunday January 15, 2017
I had my farewell party at Southern Cross last Friday, and then a mega Final Karaoke at K Zone afterwards. So many people turned up, it was quite overwhelming! It was great to see everyone, especially those who I hadn't seen in a while. After karaoke, a small group of us went to Sassy Loves Cash for a bit, and it was around 3am that I finally got home. It was amazing. I had so much fun on Friday, and I'm going to miss these people who have been such an important part of my life for the past nine years.
In spite of my lack of sleep, I had my Final Badminton on Saturday morning, then yum cha at Regal. I was off to Wadestown for Andrew and Claire's farewell/engagement party too, and then back home to continue the big decluttering. I managed to fob off a lot of miscellaneous stuff to various people, so thanks for helping me out in that respect!
This morning was my Final Service at Central Baptist, and I had specifically requested to be on the piano to pay tribute to an amazing church that was so warm and welcoming to me those eight years ago. I love that the church continues to be so inviting to people across different life journeys, and that they encourage people to worship in a way that has integrity for themselves. It has been a blast serving on the music team, and I'm so happy I was able to bring a smile to people's faces with my cheeky playing style.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:30am on Sunday January 15, 2017 :: 0 comments :: 
2017
Sunday January 1, 2017
2017 is finally upon us. What a year it's going to be for me! In just over three weeks, I'll be starting my Big O.E. with the first leg of my journey from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur.
The past year has been good for me. I'm very proud of Doomsday Clicker and the financial success that it's brought PikPok. It's been a fun project to work on, and exudes the signature polish and gorgeous art style that PikPok games have. It's got that quirkiness and humour, and those systems have been fun to write. I took on a greater role in recruitment and we hired some cool people over the course of the year - some of whom I won't actually get to work with! I leave PikPok with my head held high, knowing I've made a positive impact on the company and proud of what I've achieved in my nine years there.
I got to see the Final Fantasy A New World Concert in Melbourne, and almost exactly a year later, I will be seeing the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert. I walked Lake Waikaremoana and barely survived with a bung knee. I went to five weddings, played piano at one of them and was a groomsman at another. We saw the end of Strawberry Fare, but went hard with Wellington on a Plate. There was Little Penang's fifth birthday, mooncake festival, hot pot, yum cha, late night trips to see the glorious night sky, badminton, squash, crocodile biking, and of course, karaoke. There was Pokemon Go and the ensuing hilarity of me being interviewed by the NZ Herald and Flava, and scoring a mention on TV3's Seven Days.
2016 has been pretty memorable for me and it'll go down as a pretty crazy year.
I've been spending the last week catching up with family and friends. Jules, Mana and I did the drive from Wellington to Auckland on Christmas Eve without any incidents. Christmas was spent in Waiuku on my sister's in-law's farm with loads of food and presents for the nine children in attendance! On Boxing Day, I bought myself a new laptop (that I'm currently using to type all this up) and spent the rest of the day on the North Shore at Mat's house with the Pokemon Gang. On Tuesday, I took James and Navi around Auckland for a whirlwind tour, visiting Western Springs, Giapo and the waterfront to check out the massive cruise ship, Ovation of the Seas. On Wednesday, I met Jono and Charlotte for yum cha at Sun World, then Jordan, Tessa and Mana for Korean food and some arcade games. It was my sister's birthday on Thursday and we had lunch at Carriages Cafe in Kumeu, then I was back in town for Bryce's stag do. We had dinner at Elliot Stables, then did an escape room and had drinks at Dr Rudi's in the viaduct. Friday I had dinner with Mel, Jarrod, Jono and Charlotte at At Bangkok, then dessert at Ollie's, and then on New Year's Eve, I was out in Cockle Bay with Jono and Charlotte again.
I've even found time to go to the gym while I've been up here. It's nice to be relaxed enough that I can sort out all my travel plans and organise things for the trip, and fit in time to catch up with people, eat delicious food, and lift some weights.
Here's to 2017 and the surprises it will bring me.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:40am on Sunday January 1, 2017 :: 0 comments ::
A Chapter Closes
Friday December 23, 2016
Today marks the final day of employment at PikPok. I had been there for almost nine years, and in this final week, I've been too busy with making an awesome game jam game for it to really sink in. But now, sitting at home, packing away my belongings and getting ready to go to Auckland, it's hit me. It's sad! I've made heaps of life-long friends along the way, and dozens of memories that I will cherish. My workmates have been more than just colleagues I work with, they have been like family to me. We've eaten together, gotten drunk together, played badminton, played Pokemon, been white water rafting, kayaking, hiking, sky diving, we've lifted weights together, sung our hearts out at karaoke together and accused each other of being Cylons, werewolves, mafia and fascists. I am so humbled for the opportunity that was given to me, and I will look back on my time here with much gratitude.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing though. There's been some hard projects and some difficult people, but they've added to my experiences and helped shape the person I am today. And though I like having plans to eliminate uncertainty, I'm moving to the UK with no job lined up - which is very uncharacteristic of me! - but I know that it is the right thing to do. It's time to leave everything behind and see what the world has to offer, and that is exciting!
Posted by Jeremy at 10:26am on Friday December 23, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
November
Thursday November 3, 2016
November has rolled around. Work has been pretty busy for me. While mostly working on the latest Doomsday Clicker updates, I've been pulled on to help fight some cloud saving fires on our next big release - Rival Stars College Football. The soft launch was to New Zealand and Australia last month, and the hard launch will be soon to coincide with the college football season and Thanksgiving. I may be pulled onto something new soon as well - and that's exciting!
Over Labour Weekend, Mike, Mana and I went to Stonehenge Aotearoa near Carterton, a man-made rock monument very much like the original Stonehenge, but modernised. Still astronomically correct and useful, and surrounded by green fields and the blue mountains of the Wairarapa. We stopped by Martinborough and had lunch at Cafe Medici, who were still serving their Wellington on a Plate burger, which was amazing, and then we made our way to the Pinnacles near Cape Palliser. We spent some time walking the track in some gloriously sunny weather, then returned home for a quick meal at KC Cafe.
The food over the past month has been delightful. Little Penang held a fifth birthday celebration a few Sundays ago. Juliann and I were invited to this exclusive event, and boy, what a memorable lunch that was. The entire restaurant was packed with friends, family and loyal customers, here to celebrate a restaurant with such humble beginnings but truly authentic and soulful food that only Malaysian cuisine can bring. There was also haggis night at James and Navi's, as well as Canadian Thanksgiving, complete with massive turkey.
We also held a music-focused worship service at Central Baptist - the first I've seen in the 8 or so years I'd been going. Being on the piano for a full hour was pretty gruelling, but I had heaps of fun with the other musicians and the small but enthusiastic crowd that had gathered. Thanks to those who came!
I've also been playing the latest Phoenix Wright game - Ace Attorney: Spirit Trials. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, loved the build up to the final trial and the big reveals that happened along the way, with plenty of nostalgic throwbacks to previous games. I felt they went a bit too overboard with some of the dialogue, which made for some extremely unlikeable characters that you just wanted to punch in the face but never got the full justice treatment. Pokemon Sun and Moon aren't too far away, so that'll be the next big time sink for me.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:10am on Thursday November 3, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
Days Off
Monday September 26, 2016
Taking the two days off after daylight savings weekend (the weekend where you spring forward an hour) was a great idea. This morning, I got up, had breakfast, played some Final Fantasy Record Keeper, then fell asleep again until lunch time. So good. It hasn't been all relaxation though, the weeks of neglect from going out to hunt Pokemon have left my apartment in a little bit of disarray, so there was plenty of cleaning and vacuuming to do. I still want to hit the gym at some point today. I might have an early dinner and go late to avoid the regular Monday night rush.
The past week has been relatively quiet too. We released Shadow Wars, a puzzle/collection game, for both iOS and Android. I had a minor part in this one - the platform services integration - so I'm to blame if the cloud sync or your achievements goes wrong. It's been an interesting experience though, it has made me more aware of how terrible certain technologies are, especially how we have to work around Xcode to get our entitlements and provisioning profiles working. Because we're using Unity, it generates the Xcode project at build time, meaning we can't use Xcode's GUI to manage our provisioning or entitlements or capabilities. We end up having to script in our changes to enable iCloud, allow push notifications, add associated domains, etc. The whole process takes 20 minutes to test and debug as well. It was definitely one of the most frustrating things I've had to do, but we got there in the end. It's one of those things that you tend to do once and then forget about until the next project.
I still need to catch up on food blogging. Maybe that will be a tomorrow job. I'm not always one for completely vegetating throughout the whole day, but it's nice to not have a specific agenda and to just relax and take things at my own pace.
I should take more days off.
Edit: It started raining. I did not make it to the gym. I ended up making my own apple sauce though - it's so good!
Posted by Jeremy at 2:50am on Monday September 26, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
World Famous in New Zealand
Monday September 19, 2016
A lot of things have been happening in the last couple of months. It's been hectic, chaotic, exhilarating and draining all at once. I'm finally able to sit down and write in my blog because... well, I don't need to go out and catch Pokemon anymore - I've caught them all!
As a fan of the games, it's been interesting to see how Pokemon Go has represented the franchise, and especially its ubiquitous motto - Gotta Catch 'em All. Though the game lacks polish and usability in many places, what they have managed to do very well is - and excuse the pun - capture the core of the Pokemon games: collection. From a developer's perspective, it's been interesting looking at how particular features were implemented and how I could use that to my advantage - density and distribution, spawn points and timers, known locations and nests of particular Pokemon, and so on.
My last Pokemon was a Lapras, which I caught down by Oriental Parade at 7.59pm on Sunday 11 September 2016. It was pretty surreal, I was incredibly excited and sat in my car screaming for five minutes. The NZ Herald got wind of my story and published an article about my achievement, but incorrectly assumed that I was the first in the country to do so. Nevertheless, there were a few other media appearances - I was interviewed on Flava the radio station, and Jeremy Corbett briefly mentioned me during TV3's 7 Days show. It's been funny because I've never had this much attention in my life, and though I'm not a household name nor have I been stopped on the street, friends of friends have noticed my achievements and those friends have then told me about it, and that's awesome.
I think my friends would agree that it's no surprise that I would get this far. Pokemon has been a major part of my life, especially with the management of Psypoke, and it's no secret that all through high school, University and now at work, it's one of my favourite video game franchises. At the same time, I've still held my job, socialised with people, been to the gym (the actual lifting weights gym) and played badminton all in my regular routine, I've just squeezed a bit more Pokemon in every day so I can catch them all.
What now, then? There's four region exclusive Pokemon to catch - Kangaskhan in Australia, Farfetch'd in Asia, Mr. Mime in Europe and Tauros in North America. Generation two must surely be on the cards soon as well. I can prepare for that in advance by making sure the new evolutions are ready to go once the update drops. There's the buddy system too and I can continue levelling everything up. The opportunity to travel is exciting and a good excuse to get out of the country.
In other news, Wellington on a Plate was a blast, as usual. That will be a completely different write-up on my food blog - so much to talk about. On the whole, I thought the burgers last year were of a higher standard, but many this year were still very enjoyable. Mid-autumn festival was last Thursday and on Saturday I cooked a vegan dinner in celebration, and on Sunday I cooked a non-vegan dinner in celebration. Both turned out very well and people were well fed.
In short: there were a few very strong earthquakes centered east of New Zealand that were widely felt in Wellington on September 2; I went with Mana, Mike and Tim to Red Rocks to see the seals; I saw FFXV Kingsglaive and thought it was okay; work has been tough and I've had to put in a few more hours to get things done but the end is in sight.
We're only three months away from Christmas. The year has gone by so quickly >_<
Posted by Jeremy at 10:28am on Monday September 19, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
On The Go
Sunday July 10, 2016
Pokemon Go has hit the App Store in New Zealand and the entire country is going insane. People all over the country are walking, biking and even kayaking almost aimlessly across the city to find Pokemon and claim gyms. Never before has a game like this caused such a phenomenon. It's quite endearing walking through the park and spotting other people "on the Go", with telltale swipes on mobile phones and abrupt stops while walking.
Of course I am all up in this, as are several of my workmates. We've been driving around Wellington, Porirua and Lower Hutt, looking for Pokemon up hills, in parks and by water. There have been some extremely entertaining stories of detecting nearby Pokemon from the car, at which we all either scream excitedly and yell directions for where I should drive, or I park somewhere and we frantically run in four different directions trying to locate the Pokemon in question. The game is full of glitches and the server is constantly unstable. It's incredibly frustrating sometimes. But they've captured the essence of finding and capturing Pokemon pretty damn well, and the IP itself is strong enough to carry the game through these rough patches. I hope they will iron out all the problems and release something more polished.
Things have been pretty busy, as per usual. Doomsday Clicker v1.5 is out on Android, and will soon be on iOS. This update was pretty substantial and introduces "Roomies", experimental characters that are created in your Space Base and sent to Earth to boost the performance of your bunkers and rooms. I even got to do the voices for one of the characters! The next update is going to be technically challenging for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do. In short, there's been some epic karaoke for Ramon's last day, hot pot and birthday parties for Phil, Vix and James. The Moustache Milk and Cookie Bus has finally made it to Wellington, and serving up some delicious cookies by Marion St. Winter has been relatively mild and we've enjoyed some brilliant sunny weather, but the days are definitely colder.
It's hard to believe that we're over halfway through the year. Wellington on a Plate starts next month (crikey!)
Posted by Jeremy at 11:50am on Sunday July 10, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
Been a While
Saturday May 28, 2016
Things have been insanely busy, as usual. Where do I even start? So much as happened since the last blog post.
Doomsday Clicker has been performing well, and we managed to hit all our deadlines - but not without some troubles along the way. The v1.3 Android release saw a torrent of negative reviews reporting the game would not boot properly, and since we were lined up for featuring, it was of utmost priority to fix the issues. The Game Sync implementation wasn't as robust as we had initially tested, and pretty much my fault, so we scrambled to build stability around all those systems. Thankfully, things came together in the end, and we secured our featuring on Google Play and the iTunes store. I've had a lot of feedback from friends who have enjoyed the game - especially the amazing and catchy soundtrack.
In honour of its successes, the PikPok 19th birthday party was completely Doomsday Clicker themed, with an amazing volcano cake with Monkey and the Red Button on the top, and three cocktails and two shots bearing the names of some of the doomsdays you can cause in the game. The atmosphere was fantastic and it was good to see heaps of people there. There was arm wrestling - we even managed to convince Mario and Tyrone to go head to head. There was dancing and shenanigans but all in all, I think lots of people had a good time.
There was an exciting thunderstorm a few days ago, lightning illuminating the night sky just after midnight, with some heavy rain accompanying the storm. I would have counted 30 flashes of light in the five minutes I was watching, some strikes being very close to the city itself. Wellington's geography means it doesn't get many thunderstorms, so it's always such a delight to see them - as long as you're indoors and warm.
Mat was down last weekend for some 30th birthday parties. We met up with Tim for his at Spruce Goose, and afterwards Mat went for board games with that crew while I went to Phil and Will's for their flatwarming. They had moved into their new place over Anzac weekend - I helped them shift a lot of their bulky furniture and drove the truck for them. Mana and Vix rocked up with some ingredients for making mulled wine, and what a fun time that was! I didn't realise it was so simple - create your syrup first with a little bit of wine, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, orange peel, lemon peel, and any other spices or fruit you want to throw in. When the syrup is the right consistency, pour the rest of the wine in and let it warm without boiling, or the alcohol will evaporate. Easy!
Strawberry Fare's last day is tomorrow. It is truly the end of an era. They have decided to close their doors while the owners look to focusing more on their other restaurants. The past couple of weeks have seen hundreds of loyal fans trying to get the last desserts, myself and Mat included. They weren't taking any bookings, so I decided that I would try going at 11am on Sunday morning to secure my final Devil's Dream Cake. Sure enough, no one was stupid enough to have dessert for breakfast except for Mat and myself, so we enjoyed our final meal at Strawberry Fare forever. You could say that it was...a bittersweet experience.
At the start of the month, I was in Auckland for Mel and Jarrod's wedding - number four of seven this year. The weather was stunning and the location was picturesque. I was on parking warden duty, so had to be there early, but with my swanky haircut and sharp suit, I was exuding confidence and style as I greeted the guests and directed them down the driveway. The wedding was really nice, given they had only a month to plan it. Everything fell into place and it ran smoothly. The next day was Mother's Day, so we went out for yum cha to Sun World in Newmarket, and then back to my sister's to see my two nephews. They're growing up so fast, especially the little one. He's not as moody as he was the last time I saw him, so it's good to see him being more sociable and having more fun. So cute!
There's been karaoke, Andrew's 30th at Five Boroughs, NZIF shows - Eli Matthewson of Jono and Ben fame, and Taking off the Bird Suit - we had hotpot, Ghibli movie nights, Iron Giant at the Embassy, Formal Friday at work, Dianne's birthday and Vix and Tessa's flatwarming. There's been plenty of Louis Sergeant desserts, lunch at the Crab Shack and a massive seven-tiered rainbow cake for Keir's farewell. I need to remember to blog more often or I'll forget all these memories.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:16pm on Saturday May 28, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
Still Busy
Monday February 22, 2016
Been back in the country for a full week now, having had an amazing time over in Melbourne seeing the sights, eating the food, seeing old friends and of course, the Final Fantasy: A New World concert which was the main purpose of the trip. I arrived on Thursday night and spent it at Andy's house, eating some teriyaki chicken burgers and the best onion rings I'd ever had, while watching his friend play Final Fantasy X for the first time - great way to get into the mood for the weekend. On Friday, I met up with Sonny at Madame Squint where I had a soft shell crab bao, and did some shopping around DFO South Wharf, H&M and Emporium. I ended up at Lygon Street, because I really wanted something from Brunetti, the delicious desserts place with cabinets of cheesecakes, fondants, macaroons, pralines... every imaginable sweet. After that, I wanted some steak, but because it was the Friday night before Valentines and I was sweaty and gross and #ForeverAlone, I felt intimidated going into one of the Italian restaurants and dining by myself, so I went to good old Chin Chin and dined like a king.
On Saturday, I went with Andy to Manchester Press for their famous bagels, then continued wandering around town for more clothing bargains. I had lunch at Mamak, and trained all the way out to Windsor where I surprised Ben for his birthday. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the pub there, called Windsor Castle, and even tried a chicken parma. Yeeeah. On Sunday, I met Darius for breakfast at the famous Hardware Societe and had a most delectable lobster benedict. I have so much writing to catch up on for my food blog, it's not funny. I followed him to church as well, inside the cinemas at Melbourne Central, and met some of his friends for lunch at Lentils As Anything, a vegetarian "pay what you want" establishment in East Melbourne. I was back in town to get ready for the Final Fantasy concert at the Melbourne Recital Hall.
I thought I could bring a drink into the amphitheater so I purchased a large bottle of cider from the bar while mingling in the crowd of hardcore Final Fantasy fans, some of which had brought along plushies (Tonberry, Boko, Cactuar :3) or even cosplayed for the night (Red Mage, White Mage, Auron, Cloud, Aeris). As I reached the door, I saw a sign saying no food or drink inside, so I had to scull my drink and ended up extremely drunk and emotional for the first half of the concert. But even as I sobered up for the second half, the music was still fantastic and nostalgic and powerful. There were cheers from the crowd during the most epic themes from almost 30 years of Final Fantasy music, and as the night drew to its climax, we were invited to provide a single word vocal for the final song - One Winged Angel!
I was off to the airport extremely early on Monday morning. I played To Zanarkand and Let it Go on the piano in the departure hall, but there was no applause this time around - probably because the airport was pretty empty at that time of day. Of course, Jetstar was late by an hour, which meant that once I got to Auckland, I would only have an hour to get through customs, get lunch, get to the domestic terminal and catch my flight to Wellington. That lunch I had from Auckland International Airport was the most depressing meal I've had - having spent four days in Melbourne eating the most delicious food ever and having to come back to New Zealand and eat Subway of all things... truly sad.
Since then, I've been super busy still, trying to finish the project I'm on. We were at Coenn's Provisions on Tuesday for Tim's birthday, drinking heavily at Fork and Brewer and S & M's on Friday for Bobby and Cory's farewell, I was at Pete and Bronwyn's wedding on Saturday where I was the only person to volunteer to speak, and I was at music at Central Baptist on Sunday. It's been an action packed weekend and I need another couple of days to unwind... but there's no rest for the weary. I was almost tempted to go back into work to do some loading optimisations, but I think I should stay at home and relax.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:01am on Monday February 22, 2016 :: 0 comments ::
It's Christmas
Sunday December 27, 2015
The last month of work has been pretty manic, with builds of all our games going out on various platforms and systems all at once. In our last week, we had our annual game jam, which was pretty manic, but the end result was a quality set of very impressive games from all teams.
Social wise, there's been a lot happening too. There was Campbell and Linda's wedding, we got some kittens delivered to the office thanks to Uber, we went out to Cape Palliser for a miniroad trip, there was the 80's Party IV and Jordan's 30th, and we had a week-long set of Christmas events to round out the end of the year.
Last Saturday, six of us began our roadtrip up to Auckland via Owhango, where we stayed the night. On Sunday, we headed to Tauranga for some white water rafting down the Wairoa River, only open 26 days a year due to it being controlled by a hydroelectric dam. However, due to some problems with the booking system, we had to be rebooked for 1.30pm instead of 11.30am, so we went up to Mount Maunganui for a squizz at the beach. I've never actually been there before, but the sand and water were fantastic and inviting. Eventually we returned to our white water rafting meeting point and geared up for an exhilarating ride down two Grade V waterfalls. It was an amazing experience and one to be remembered for a long time!
I didn't really make any plans with people before I arrived in Auckland, but as was expected, my calendar started filling up very quickly. On Monday, I was pretty tired from the roadtrip, so spent most of the time at home. On Tuesday, I met Mat and Will in town for lunch at Ortolanas and we got some take away Milse too. I went to the cat cafe on Queens St with Reagan and Erica, then met Mana out in East Tamaki for Korean BBQ. On Wednesday, I met up with all the Wellington crew for dinner at Kushi, dessert at Giapo and drinks at the Belgian Beer Cafe, before going for a quick drive down Franklin Road - and by quick, I mean a very slow paced crawl from all the traffic. On Thursday, I was at my sister's house catching with my nephews and then off to Tatsumi with my parents for an amazing eight course degustation.
Friday was Christmas, and that was double dinner at my sister's and then a family friend's house nearby. On Boxing Day, I was at Long Bay Beach with my schoolmates, and a good old traditional Kiwi barbeque at Mat's, and today I've been hanging with the guys from KCC. There's been mafia, Love Letter and Dota, and it's been pretty full on!
Posted by Jeremy at 10:11am on Sunday December 27, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Nous Sommes Avec Vous
Tuesday November 17, 2015
What tragic news to hear on Saturday afternoon after badminton. Several coordinated terrorist attacks hit Paris, killing 129 people and wounding more than 400. In the midst of France's darkest hour, it is comforting to see the outpouring of sympathy and solidarity: the hashtag #PortesOuvertes from Parisians to offer shelter to tourists or displaced people who didn't have accommodation for the night; the stories of people who took bullets to save others at the cost of their own lives; the red, white and blue lights on landmarks around the world.
People express condolences in different ways. Some pray. Some light candles and lay flowers. Some sing songs. Some will change their profile picture on Facebook to one with a Tricolore overlay. And that's okay. As long as you can truthfully say with purpose and intent that you stand with the French people, then people are entitled to reflect and remember in a way that has integrity for them. At the same time, we should also think about other devastating attacks that have amounted to a huge loss in human life and continue to remember those in constant struggle, in places like Syria, Iran and Iraq. May we be forgiven for not always knowing about these events, because any loss of human life like this is tragic.
I was out last night at Owhiro Bay for the Leonids meteor shower. I saw an opportunity as the clouds cleared late yesterday afternoon, so I made a call to commit and recruited my trusty crew. The moon was 19% illuminated and definitely affecting the visibility of the night sky, but the brightest Leonids shone through. None of them were as spectacular as the Orionid we saw a month ago, but all in all, I would have seen around seven meteors. As the weather warms up, hopefully we can make these trips more frequent.
We had our PikPok Developers Conference for the year and I spoke on two topics: development for the new Apple TV, and ray tracing, a subject I hadn't touched since 2007 back at the University of Auckland's COMPSCI372 course. I also ran the second PikPok Programming Puzzle-o-rama with much success, and on the same day, rushed down to the council to watch the All Blacks victory parade. I've been to karaoke twice in the past few weeks, had yum cha, had all you can eat chicken wings from Tequila Joe's and watched the fireworks display at the waterfront.
The social calendar is filling up fast for the rest of the year!
Posted by Jeremy at 9:35am on Tuesday November 17, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
More Overtime
Monday October 19, 2015
We thought we'd heard the last of it, but we were required to do submit another build within 24 hours - totally not stressful at all - on Thursday. We got bounced twice before the damn thing went through processing late on Saturday, and then today we received the good news that we were all good to go.
My weekend was pretty quiet. I got to have the WOAP burger from Grill Meats Beer a second time on Friday, then had regular badminton on Saturday, and went into work for a couple of hours with Mana. We went out to Lyall Bay's shopping area to grab some gloves for the gym and hiking shoes for the Routeburn that I'm doing this Labour weekend, and we met up again for a play called Bubblelands at the BATS theatre. A friend of mine, Ben, has been touring around the North Island, starring in this play as a crayfish who meets a blue cod in the aquarium of a Chinese restaurant. Good stuff! We had dinner at Cha and dessert at Strawberry Fare.
I was up early and off to watch the second half of the NZ vs France rugby quarterfinals with Will and Alanna at their place. I was too nervous to front up for the first half, but once I saw the score at half time, I was quite relieved and happy to enjoy the remainder of the match. The weather for Sunday was clear, but very windy; I tried to get a crew out to watch the Orionids meteor shower at Owhiro Bay but alas no one was keen. Today, however, I managed to get Mana, Loic and Dana along for an hour. Despite the wind and brightness of the moon, our patience was rewarded with a brilliant streak of light heading southwards across the sky - magnificent!
Posted by Jeremy at 10:43am on Monday October 19, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Overtime
Monday October 12, 2015
It's been a while since I've done such heavy overtime. It's made me remember how disruptive it is to life in general; gym schedule went out the window, food that I had planned to cook started to rot, I was tired and became less tolerant of people as the week progressed. By the time Friday hit, I was completely over it and couldn't stay past 8.30pm. All technical possibilities for solving our problems had been exhausted. I ended up escaping to Pan de Muerto with the Frenchies. It was Vincent's last day, and I had unfortunately missed yet another departure speech because I'd been working.
The weekend was full of sunshine, but all I wanted to do was sleep and relax. I did my regular badminton and gym exercise, but I also caught the final show of the NZIF - a battle of improv between New Zealand and the international artists that were visiting from the UK, Taiwan, Japan, France, Germany and Australia. Such amazing talent and full of laughs and feels, it was exactly what I needed after a long week of work.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:01am on Monday October 12, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Mooncakes
Sunday October 4, 2015
It's October already. Time has sure flown by this year. There's been plenty to keep me busy and that's probably why things have gone by so quickly. Last weekend was pretty big; we went out for dinner at Pan de Muerto and had some delicious lamb shanks. Uncontent with the amount of food, we went to Enigma for some cake and decided it would be a great night for karaoke. So it happened! Tim, Will, Mana, Hannah, Nicola, Victoria and myself bundled into a little room at K Zone on Wakefield Street and sang to our hearts' content, finishing triumphantly with Let it Go!
On Saturday, I was at the Sprig and Fern for a mini-mooncake celebration and Wei's two year anniversary in Wellington. And of course the next day, I did my regular mooncake festivities and cooked for a big group of people, with the usual menu of fried tofu, roast pork and roast duck. Probably cut it a bit close in terms of the amount of food, but people seemed happy with what they got, so I'll mark it off as a success. It was good to celebrate with friends when I couldn't celebrate with family.
Work has been busy, and we are rapidly approaching a "drop dead submission date" of October 9th. There's still a bit of work to do, but I think we can make it. It'll be tight though, naturally, as all things usually are. Hopefully when this is done, I can let people know what ~secret things~ I've been working on.
Posted by Jeremy at 6:49am on Sunday October 4, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
It's Over :(
Sunday August 30, 2015
Wellington on a Plate 2015 has come to a close. I've been so busy eating that I've fallen behind on my food blogging, but I will be trying to catch up as fast as I can over the next few days. How much did I spend? How many burgers did I eat? What was the best and worst? You'll find out soon! It's back to cooking, gymming, and all those other routine things I do during the week. It was good having my parents down last week, and I also caught up with Reuben, Shereen, Sam, Andrew and Julia. We visited all the regular Wellington sights - Makara, the wind turbine, Mt Victoria, Oriental Parade, the Weta Cave and so on. We had a quick squizz around the Lux Festival too. Oh, and yeah, we ate heaps of food.
As a result of all these things happening, I missed a chance to go back to the US for my big secret project. Instead, I'm locked away in a room with special access, working away by myself lonesome self until Rob returns next week. Things are progressing... but that's about all I can say! Yep.
I was out with Joe on Thursday night to see Suddenly! A Musical, an improv show where a musical is created before your very eyes! That night we saw the epic tale of a recently engaged couple who return to Wellington from the OE with their cat Trixie, only to have her lost in Mumbai (it rhymes with Hataitai) due to the carelessness of the baggage handlers! I can't imagine how difficult it must be to try and come up with rhyming couplets on the spot like that, but these guys were amazing and it was such a good show. So impressed, congratulations to Playshop crew and Jen the director!
Posted by Jeremy at 11:40am on Sunday August 30, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Wellington 150
Sunday July 26, 2015
It's been 150 years since Wellington became the capital of New Zealand, and in celebration, there have been several events around town celebrating government and Parliament. Parliament House was lit up with several projected images, much like how the War Memorial was done for Anzac Day, and under the clear skies of Wellington, we listened to the Kiwi tunes of Dave Dobbyn - so poignant was the moment he sang Welcome Home. I absolutely love the imagery that this particular lyric holds:
There's a woman with her hands trembling - "Haere Mai"
And she sings with a mountain's memory - "Haere Mai"
There's a cloud the full length of these isles
Just playing chase with the sun
And it's black and it's white and it's wild
All the colours are one
Standing with the half moon and Southern Cross clearly visible in the sky, with hundreds of other Wellingtonians and New Zealanders on the lawn of Parliament - where we gave women the right to vote, where we stood strong against nuclear policies and where we recognised equality for same-sex marriages - it was hard not to tear up and be proud of the country. Though there are still issues that divide the country, it was good to celebrate what we have achieved and what we hope to achieve in the next 150 years.
I was with Loic, Tim, Mana and Mike, and after Dave had finished his set on stage, we sang Happy Birthday and then left the ground of Parliament, slightly disappointed at the lack of cake. We ended up at KFC because of Hot n Spicy, then Espressoholic for dessert, and then JJ Murphy's to meet up with Kiel, who had been drawing there. We saw Victoria there too, whose boyfriend was part of the live entertainment for the night.
Today has been pretty manic for me, I need to sort out my life due to a very short notice trip to the US! This project I'm on has been codenamed "Enchanted Fixer", from Nic's cryptonym generator. Can't say too much about what I'm working on, but it's an opportunity I can't pass up. It does mean I will miss the ski trip next week though, which is a bit sad, but with a stunning weather forecast of 25C to 35C and sunshine every day, I'm not too disappointed.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:11am on Sunday July 26, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
The Moment When You Get Internet at a New Place
Sunday May 31, 2015
Blogging has been quiet since my move because I've been lacking a proper Internet connection. Unlike several of my friends who have been waiting for fibre to be installed in their building, this failure of connectivity was completely my own fault. I bought two modems off TradeMe, unfortunately neither of them supported PPPoE/VC-MUX which was required by my ISP for their service. ANYWAY, now that I have a working modem, I can sell the other two off on TradeMe; it's still cheaper than buying a new modem. And most importantly, I'm back on the net.
The past two weeks have been pretty busy. The move went as well as it could have. We had arranged for the Salvation Army to swing by and pick up our beds, cabinets, shelves and what not. They only did weekday visits, so I had to move my bed down from the first floor on Thursday night, which meant I was on an airbed kindly loaned from Vincent for two nights. However, on Friday morning, they called us to say that the torrential rain and subsequent flooding of Wellington's northern suburbs meant they were unable to make it. Instead, we had to hire a van and drive all of that to the store in Newtown. Thankfully, the weather had cleared by Saturday, so moving was not a problem. Thanks to Phil, Will and Vincent for their help!
Since moving into my new place, I've had a solid worship session on the piano at Central Baptist, karaoke, dinner at Dragons for Wei's birthday, steamboat at Campbell and Linda's and also managed to catch the Eurovision song contest. We said goodbye to Charles and Pete on Friday with some drinks at Fork and Brewer with the programmers, then karaoke at New Kor with all the artists - so good to see so many people out having a great time. Yesterday was weekly badminton in the morning, gym in the afternoon, and drinks for Charlie and Donnie's birthdays at Goldings, Hashi's and Southern Cross. I really enjoy how the long weekend just seems to populate itself with events and social gatherings.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:43am on Sunday May 31, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Supa Dupa Cuba Dupa
Monday March 30, 2015
Last weekend, Mat was down for a visit so we checked out the Cuba Dupa festival and its eclectic shows and performances, as well as the amazing smells of the street food being served by local businesses. Got a delicious Bluff oyster from Matterhorn, and unfortunately was too full to try the smoked ribs proudly on display outside El Matador! The weather was a little wet and windy, but despite that, the crowds had turned out in force. Good times! We ended the day with dinner from Origami and dessert from Strawberry Fare.
On Sunday, I caught up with Vaughan, Alan, Aaron, Charles and Megan at Spruce Goose on a very sunny Sunday morning. The weather worsened over the day and I was a little rained out heading to the gym, but otherwise it was good to see more of Cuba Dupa still happening in the afternoon. I joined some workmates at the Bruhaus for a very disappointing Cricket World Cup final.
Ah cricket.
It was only in this last week that the whole nation suddenly began caring about cricket. Normally, we find it boring as hell, with really only the highlights being watchable. But at the semifinals between New Zealand and South Africa, there was a sense of excitement and tension. There was drama. There were epic moments. We began strong, striking wicket after wicket but South Africa posted a commendable 281 runs from 43 overs. When it was time for New Zealand to bat, we had a tough 298 to chase thanks to the Duckworth/Lewis method for calculating targets from play interrupted by rain. But what a close call - Grant Elliot's final triumph in the second to last ball of the game. With five runs needed, he smacks the sweetest six you've ever seen into a crowd of excited Kiwis - moments before, so still and nervous at the prospect of losing this match. Truly fantastic.
Quick summary of the last few weeks: we farewelled Joe on Friday with some tequila shots and a strong showing at karaoke, it was Will's birthday on Thursday so we were out pretty late at the Bruhaus, had a Disney Marathon and saw Tangled, Tarzan and the Lion King, and also saw Chappie (it was the worst). Work has been pretty samey lately, but next month will be a tough slog. It's almost April already...sheesh.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:13am on Monday March 30, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Definitely Not Anything Special Today
Sunday March 1, 2015
It's been a tough week. I've had to cram six days' work into four days (rather reminiscent of what happened on Auckland anniversary weekend), and towards the end of the week, both my lead artist and I have been under increasing pressure to complete our tasks as well as co-ordinate other members of the team and ensure we have a build to send out for our milestone. There have been a lot of distractions around our area and we've just found it difficult to focus and be productive. There was a big news bombshell dropped on us on Friday, as well as being Josh's last day at work. It's sad to see people go; we've lost so many in the past couple of months. It's not an indication of the company's health, I think people are just at that point in their lives, all coincidentally. I can't expect people to stay forever, but at the same time... it just seems to have happened all so suddenly. Sigh.
So I was thankful to Christine and Jen, as well as their co-stars Rose, Abby and Caitlin, for their performances at BATS Theatre in an improv show called Definitely Not Witches. Laughter truly is the best medicine, and the show on Friday was so impressive that I booked tickets for the Saturday show too. It was good to hang with friends and go for dinner and have the week behind me, but it was a bonus to be able to be entertained and laugh so much on two successive nights.
Yesterday was the PikPok family day too. We started off at Mission Inflatable just by the train station in the morning, then to Thorndon pools for a barbeque and dip in the afternoon. We learned that we aren't as durable as we thought we were, but still had heaps of fun on the obstacle course, mechanical bull and various other bouncy arenas. Didn't come away with too many injuries! The pools were a bit more relaxed, I busied myself with food preparation and cooking, but couldn't resist the chance to dive into the water just before lunch was ready. The spa was pretty relaxing too; again, it was just awesome to hang out with cool people whose company I enjoy. After heading home for a quick nap, I went into town again for a Chinese New Year dinner at Big Thumb, then the last night of Definitely Not Witches and finally a good solid two hours of karaoke at K Zone.
At some point heading home, I did let it slip that today was the 1st of March.
But it doesn't matter what day it is, people still turned up for a good time and I really enjoyed this weekend. Thanks to all who made it so memorable, I'm truly blessed to have people like you as colleagues and friends.
Posted by Jeremy at 1:33am on Sunday March 1, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Chinese New Year
Wednesday February 25, 2015
So much food.
I've been up in Auckland with family celebrating Chinese New Year. 2015 is the year of the sheep! I drove to the airport last Thursday with Phil and was surprised to see Dana and Angeline taking the same flight to Auckland; Dana for the Foo Fighters concert and Angeline to get back to University. Angeline is taking CompSci and was keen to chat to me about courses and careers and things like that, and it was kinda interesting to hear that not much had changed with CompSci101.
I followed dad into town on Friday and saw Andy at Wedge Juice Bar, and met up with Bobby and Raymond for lunch at Nol Bu Ne, then dessert at Meet Fresh. We went home early because they had cooked a rich abalone stew on Wednesday night and needed to finish the leftovers before the weekend, so we gorged ourselves with this amazing dish, before heading out to Musashi for dinner - soft-shelled crab!!! Still in the mood for more, we went to Chiko's for their summer special dessert - halo halo, which is like a Filipino ice kacang. This one had taro ice cream, red beans, green beans, French pastries and some miscellaneous jellies and fruit strewn throughout the shaved ice. Yum!
On Saturday, we had music practice at KCC and yum cha at Wing Wah, before I headed home to help cook for our belated reunion dinner. I did my lettuce wrap, dad made a stir-fried prawns dish, Khim made dumplings and Anita brought some roast pork and barbeque pork. What a feed! Still, it didn't compare to the feasts happening back in Malaysia. Plenty of updates coming through from WhatsApp showing us all the delicious things we're missing out on! One day I will go back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year.
Music went well on Sunday morning at KCC, and I was back at Wing Wah for yum cha again. On Sunday night however, we went to KK in Greenlane for a special Chinese New Year banquet menu for invited guests only! It was a nine course dinner with dishes they don't normally serve on the a la carte menu. On Monday, I was in town again meeting up with my school mates for lunch at Mezze. I caught up with Will, who I hadn't seen in over four years, and we wandered around town via Giapo and Moustache. Good times.
Last week was the inaugural PikPok Plunge, a company challenge to jump off the wooden plank down by the waterfront. Brett organised a barbeque and Juliann, Mana and I sorted out the food for several hungry colleagues who had turned up to Frank Kitts Park to watch a team of thirteen sport their best costumes, dives and splashes into the harbour. The weather was absolutely stunning for the event, and it really is true that you can't beat Wellington on a good day.
We also farewelled Prashant, the animator on my project, and Jimmy, who has been my designer for every project except one, for the last five years. We celebrated their time with us with a meal at Thunderbird Cafe and some French delectables from Louis Sergeant afterwards. This one I got was a violet dome of white chocolate and blackcurrant mousse. Furthermore, I brought a black forest cake, pandan cake, pineapple, melon, lychee and mango biscuits, some sesame balls and some mango and lychee jellies to celebrate Chinese New Year, my work anniversary and my birthday at all once.
This weekend, we'll be at the PikPok Family Day and a Chinese New Year dinner that coincides with the beginning of autumn. There has been so much food, but there's no other way I'd celebrate Chinese New Year. Family and food are the best.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:18am on Wednesday February 25, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
Seven Years
Sunday February 8, 2015
It has been just over seven years to the date when I left Auckland to start a new life in Wellington as a fresh graduate programmer for a video games company that no one could pronounce called Sidhe. Seven years...that's a quarter of my life now. It's been an incredible journey and I've learned so much in that time. I've worked with heaps of cool people and made some awesome games, and I have many proud achievements from my time at work.
Despite the physical separation, I have kept in contact with many of my friends at KCC, my church in Auckland, and regularly see them and hang out whenever I'm back up for holiday. This past Waitangi weekend, I flew up specially for the KCC church camp at Chosen Valley in the Ararimu Valley, near Bombay. Though I did miss out on quite a few of the team activities, I managed to participate in the clue hunt and relay, where I was the kayaker for the first leg of the race. There was amazing food thanks to Uncle Sam and Auntie Cynthia, several games of late night Mafia, karting, flying foxes, archery, a bonfire, plenty of singing and lots of good learnings to take away from the camp.
The bonfire was quite a highlight. As we gathered around the warmth of the flames, we started singing some good old Christian songs like How Great Thou Art and Refiner's Fire. As the adults started to leave, we started busting out some more mainstream tunes like Maroon 5, Backstreet Boys and every Disney song imaginable: Let it Go, Circle of Life, Be Prepared, Colours of the Wind, I'll Make a Man out of You, Under the Sea, Be Our Guest.... so good.
And of course, Mafia was another big highlight. There were so many people interested in playing Mafia... it's been ages since I've last had to juggle more than 20 players. In addition to the regular detective, doctor and sniper, I threw in a resurrecting character (aptly named Jesus, because he rises again on the third day), the pig (who can only say "pig") and the jester (who wins if they get hung by the citizens during the day). Moreover, I imposed a six minute time limit with a random death if none had been decided on during the day, and the mafioso got to kill two people per night. The dynamics worked well once I had gotten my head around managing the characters, but I find with a crowd that big, interest begins to wane quite rapidly among several players (especially since we often play past midnight, people get quite sleepy) and it isn't as intimate or intense as with, say, fifteen people. It's good to see my regular crew being strong players - I feel like I have taught you well!
When I arrived on the Friday, I was a bit overwhelmed with how many faces I didn't know, but there's nothing like a good solid game of Mafia to get to know people. The congregation has changed so much while I've been away, but the people of KCC are always so welcoming and warm, it feels like I've never left at all. It's been a most memorable weekend.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:22am on Sunday February 8, 2015 :: 0 comments ::
One with the Wind and Sky
Monday December 22, 2014
The last week of work was a fun but hectic mess of frantic game jamming, as we pulled together to stick code, art, design and sound into an enjoyable experience that would wow our colleagues. Jimmy, Linda, Jayde, Nathan and myself were Team Four for Game Jam 2014 and unfortunately, four is also where we placed - just outside of prize money contention. Nevertheless, we produced something we were quite proud of so that's something we can take away from the week.
On Saturday, Mike, Will and Phil bundled into my car and we began our journey to Owhango, on the west side of Lake Taupo near National Park. Mike had kindly offered us the use of his holiday home for the night, so we took advantage of this and enjoyed the fireplace, pool table and spa pool. It was good to break up the road trip to Auckland, especially since we had a big day the next day...
I had been keeping close tabs on the weather for Taupo all week. The forecast had consistently said showers for Sunday, but as we drove towards Taupo, the clouds in the sky began to open up to brilliant blue and sunshine. We had one agenda in mind only: skydiving. This was an idea that began during the Great Kayaking Trip in Motueka but didn't happen because of strong winds. Two months later, this crazy idea became a reality as the four of us committed ourselves to the wind and sky, leaping out over the Great Lake Taupo with the most fantastic scenery around us. Mike, Will and Phil chose the 12,000ft jump; I opted for the 15,000ft jump. I watched them as they were forced out of the plane into the air below, becoming increasingly nervous as my time approached. My tandem master signalled and I shuffled forward to the exposed hatch, and then with no time to be scared, I was shunted out.
The few moments are completely terrifying, but once the free fall kicks in, you're much more relaxed and can start enjoying the scenery. I remember the glittering blue waters of the lake below, the greens of the forests around the area and the clouds in the distance that were covering Ruapehu. It was exhilarating but over too soon as the parachute deployed. I gasped and hyperventilated as my brain started to acknowledge just what I'd done, and as we continued our descent, I was still trying to get my head around just how lucky we were with the weather and conditions. It was absolutely fantastic and such an amazing experience.
We continued our journey to Auckland and I arrived back home around 7pm, in time for some soup kambing and sambal seafood that my parents had made for dinner. I rushed off to Massey badminton courts for a few hours of high-intensity badminton before finally hitting home and taking a well earned rest.
What an awesome start to the Christmas holidays.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:51am on Monday December 22, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
End of Year Shenanigans
Sunday December 14, 2014
It's that time of the year when the parties go wild and the people start gearing up towards Christmas and the end of the year. Most of us are looking forward to the holidays ahead, even among the stress of Christmas shopping and looming deadlines, and, for the PikPok crew, the competitive nature of this year's Game Jam. Several of the teams have already begun their prototyping ahead of the final week, so it's shaping up to be a tough competition indeed.
Again, despite my efforts to try and play Pokemon or failing that, work on my Game Jam game, this week was quite busy in terms of social events. We watched a horrible Ewoks spin-off movie for 80s Movie Night on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I was out at the Fringe Bar to watch Joe's improv graduation show and then stayed for another show by Wellington Improv Troupe. On Thursday, good old Bryce had come down for Kiwicon so we caught up with him at Crafters, and on Friday... it was karaoke!
Jules is turning 30 this year so she's been having a series of birthday-related events, one of which was an amazing karaoke session last Friday. We started strong, with some good classics like Final Countdown, Bohemian Rhapsody and Keep on Movin', followed by some more contemporary songs like Tay Tay's Shake It Off. But the highlight of the night was the Idina Menzel Let It Go battle between myself and one of Juliann's friends Sarah, who rose to the challenge and duetted the iconic Frozen song with me. We channelled the frozen fractals and icy blasts, crescendoing to the final note, and at the song's triumphant end - the cold never bothered me anyway - we high-fived a job well done as the entire room erupted into wild applause.
The night had not ended there, however. We finished up at KZone and headed to JJ Murphy's to see Vigz's band Zephyr playing some cool 70s and 80s covers. There was the oldest mosh pit I'd ever seen. But the environment was jovial and light-hearted, and we ended up mobbing the dance floor during Summer of 69, so there were plenty of good times to be had.
On Saturday we had the final PikPok badminton session for the year, and then it was off to the bakery for some pies, and then to LBQ with Thomas and Astrid for another MKR BBQ. Despite the weather, Ian and Sandie had set up their equipment and were making some delectable things. I chose the Hefe marinated Lamb Loin on Bruschetta with Goat's Cheese Mousse and Mint Pea Crush, which was pretty good. The goat's cheese mousse was wonderfully smooth and had such a good flavour to compliment the other ingredients. We stayed for an hour and a bit, and then headed off to the Apartment bar for the PikPok Christmas Party.
And boy was it a party.
There was Smash Bros set up on the Wii U and Giant Jenga all ready to go. We had five PikPok-themed cocktails from Oreo, Into the Dead, Flick Kick Football Legends, Robot Unicorn Attack and Rival Stars Basketball. There was much joviality and plenty of shenanigans to go round. At one point in time I was singing I'll Make a Man out of You and also Let it Go in French. At another point in time, I started the Animaniacs Nations of the World song. I was also balancing on top of a tower erected from the Giant Jenga blocks and I was also involuntarily trust falling into the loving hands of my co-workers.
We moved on to Little Penang for some food around 8pm, where I promptly declared how amazing the night was all over the table - it must have been those three shots right before I left. Thankfully Nic, Damon, Mana and James, who were with me, took care of the mess as I was ushered into the bathroom to clean myself up. I felt much better after that, and continued on to the Fork and Brewer very briefly to see Ben off, before being walked home by Polly and Vigz.
I posted a rather dire-sounding message on Facebook making seem I was in quite a bad place, so several people had texted me to ask me if I was okay, and I reassured them everything was fine, that I was just drunk and overwhelmed because it's the first time I've ever done that, and I amended the message on Facebook as soon as I could. But it's humbling to see that I can count on all these awesome friends to be there for me if I ever need them.
For that, I am truly blessed and thankful.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:29am on Sunday December 14, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
But I Just Want to Play Pokemon :(
Sunday December 7, 2014
My copy of Pokemon AlphaSapphire arrived on Friday, but unfortunately my weekend has been so stacked with events that I simply haven't had time to play it. On Saturday I had badminton in the morning, then I met Mana at LBQ to check out the food being served by Dai and Dal, the Laotian girl team from New Zealand's version of My Kitchen Rules. I stopped by the Southern Cross briefly to say hi to Sunni who was having her 30th Birthday, but my back started playing up so I needed to move... and ended up at Mana's for the Singstar Party. Paul texted mid-afternoon for a quick drink at the Sprig and Fern that night so I obliged too. I dragged Mana and Phil along and I met Paul's flatmate Alex there too. It was a pretty crazy Saturday and I was absolutely shattered by the time I got home.
Today has been pretty tiring too. I made it to church for the second Sunday of advent - peace - and I was out to Churton Park for the last family group gathering of the year. By the time I got home, it was 3pm and I passed out on my bed for a three hour nap. So good. I'll get a bit of chance to play Pokemon after I finish blogging...!
Last weekend was pretty crazy too. After badminton, I met Jimmy at the gym (because it was still Bring A Buddy For Free Month) for some more upper body workouts, but the highlight of Saturday was 8-player Smash Bros on the Nintendo Wii U. So awesome. I seemed to have some dominance with the Pink Powerpuff Duo, Kirby and Jigglypuff. The Wii U version feels great and looks gorgeous in 1080p. We had dinner at Little Penang and I hung out at Mana, Will and Phil's for a bit before heading home for the night since I had music at church the next day.
On Monday, I was at Campbell and Linda's for a very satisfying steamboat and Mana, Will and Phil's on Tuesday for the 80s Movie Night - this week's choice was Labyrinth. It feels like I've missed out on a lot of 80s movies, so this is a good opportunity to catch up on some of the films that have been so iconic of that era. The week before we watched Princess Bride - not particularly to Mana's liking but I appreciated the odd sense of humour which would have been far more appropriate for that time period than today.
We found out our Game Jam teams for this year and have started brainstorming ideas. GJ2014 will be in the last week of work, and will conclude what has been a pretty busy year for me at PikPok. Next year will be full of challenges too, and I'm looking forward to completing my first commercial Unity project.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:41am on Sunday December 7, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Food and Gym
Tuesday November 25, 2014
I've started joining the QA Team at work on their weekly Monday morning weigh-ins. My first week I weighed 70.7kg; the second week I had gained a whole 100g to be 70.8kg. Not bad for the week, considering the amount of food I'd eaten, but possibly also helped by the fact I went to the gym for the first time ever. Those gains, indeed.
Last Monday I was at Loic's house for an extravaganza of French cuisine - a very impressive home-cooked three course meal, complete with Le Rustique camembert to finish the night. C'est delicieux! Bob and Angela were down too, so on Tuesday we met for dinner at Little Penang, followed by dessert at Strawberry Fare where I got the caramel and peanut butter cheesecake. So incredibly indulgent, and far too much to eat, I couldn't bring myself to eat the last few bites of the cheesecake. We were at Duke Carvell's for lunch on Wednesday and El Matador for dinner on Thursday. Continuing on the gluttony train, I got a patisserie from Louis Sergeant shaped like a jandal on Friday, as well as celebrated the one year anniversary of Flick Kick Football Legends with a giant chocolate cake at work.
Saturday was healthy exercise day, with a record sixteen people turning up to badminton in the morning. I had made a deal with Jimmy that if he came to badminton, I'd go to the gym, so sure enough, last Saturday afternoon, I went to Habit on Willis Street with Jimmy as part of their "bring a buddy for free" month. To be honest, it wasn't too bad and I certainly got a good introduction to the weights and machines - Jimmy's pretty awesome like that, and it seems that Hadley's teachings have been well received. However, it feels like the gym really isn't for me and I doubt I will be joining one any time soon. I might go again this weekend (the last weekend to take advantage of this free offer!) but I can't see myself paying that much for a service like that. That being said, if my metabolism slows down and I start packing on the kilograms, it might be a necessity in the future.
I went and saw My Neighbor Totoro on Sunday (neko basu!) and caught up with Raewyn and Andrew at Deluxe afterwards, but otherwise it was a pretty relaxed Sunday with some great sunny weather, even if it was a bit too windy. We were at Pravda Cafe last night for Fine Dining and Kaffee Eis afterwards because the meal was so lacklustre. It looks like my social calendar is slowly filling up for the rest of the year. It's gonna be great.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:27am on Tuesday November 25, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
The Great Kayaking Adventure
Sunday November 2, 2014
It's been a pretty busy past couple of weeks. My copy of Super Smash Bros and Kirby Triple Deluxe arrived so I've been playing those and having a great time. I love how each franchise in Smash Bros is represented in the game, with all the care to keep the characters, art style and music true to the series that they come from. Nintendo have done a great job with the 3DS version so it will be interesting to see how the Wii U version turns out, as well as how the eight player mode will fare.
I've also started my new project at work. Still getting used to Unity but it has made prototyping rapid and easy. We've tried three concepts so far - none of them really a direction we want to continue with, so we will be exploring more avenues in the weeks to come. We'll be in pre-development until the end of the year and then start full production next year. Mark my words, we'll be the first project to have a throw-away prototype.
Anyway, over Labour Weekend, nine of us boarded the Interislander Ferry from Wellington to Picton to kick off a five day kayaking adventure in the Abel Tasman National Park. Things were off to a shaky start though, we ended up leaving at 10pm instead of 7pm because they'd overloaded the ferry and had to turn back. When we did get on our way, we were through some 3m to 4m swells, which was pretty bad - Vigz and Will couldn't keep it in and chundered, whilst the others, myself included, moved to the back of the boat to ease the queasiness. After a rough twenty minute patch, the swells subsided and I moved back to the top deck with the Frenchmen and Matt. I find it's a matter of keeping your mind focused and being alert and aware of your surroundings so you don't get dizzy. It was quite an experience, one I was hoping we wouldn't have to go through on the way back. We reached Picton close to 1am and Vincent drove us to Motueka. The roads are dead empty but the stars are fantastic - unfortunate as we don't have time to stop and gaze. We eventually reached Motueka close to 3.30am and we all passed out for the night at the Hat Trick Backpackers.
We were up and about at 9am on Saturday, ready for a day of kayaking. We had some fantastic pies from Toad Hall, the cafe next to the kayaking company, before heading out to Marahau, the start of our journey. By the time we'd finished prepping and packing, it would have been close to noon when we finally got out onto the water. It was a grueling four hour paddle to our first campsite, the Anchorage and my leg had started playing up, but some painkillers soon solved the problem. The tents went up and the kayaks were stowed away for the night, and the first item on the list was to make dinner. The large plan I'd written up said "steak, salad, potatoes" except I had forgotten to buy steak that morning. A "mis-steak", says Matt. Hilarious. Dinner ended up being kransky sausages, haloumi, salad, boiled eggs and potatoes. We were all so hungry that it didn't really matter it was such a miscellaneous collection of ingredients. We opted for a few moments of star gazing out on the beach - fantastic night sky, no light pollution and no clouds, but unfortunately just way too tired to wait for any shooting stars!
The next day, we were up for an early start again but a far more relaxed paddle this time round. We went up to Pinnacle Island and saw some seals; we took a detour down Falls River - only accessible for kayaks at high tide - and we were so fortunate to see a baby seal frolicking in the water around us. It continued to swim under and around the kayaks, splashing water every so often, and it followed us out as we left the river. We eventually arrived at Mosquito Bay and since it's not on the Abel Tasman walkway, we had the whole campsite to ourselves. The island in the bay is accessible at low tide and we had a bit of an explore after we'd finished setting up our tents and all (I almost lost my glasses on the rocks), but the weather cooled down considerably and it was a pretty wet night. Nevertheless, it was amazingly peaceful area. Dinner was stir-fry vegetables and black bean dace on rice. Classic Asian comfort food!
Most of us emerged relatively dry the next day. I had wet feet; Will and Mana's tent had a swimming puddling right in the center. Vigz and Mike, whose tent had a hole on it, were protected by the bivouac set up they'd created. The plan for Monday was to head to Observation Beach and explore. The weather forecast for Wednesday was looking grim, so we decided we should start heading back towards Marahau in case things got really windy. Soon after we got to Observation Beach, the wind did start picking up and the waves were crashing on the beach quite violently. We set up the campsite and scoffed down some lunch, and tried to keep dry and warm. Dinner was corned beef ("pet food", the French said mockingly), beans (worst decision ever) and tortillas.
I was up early on Tuesday morning with Mana watching the sun come over the Nelson hills. The night was quite rough - the continuous crashing of waves against the beach made it difficult to sleep. After a quick breakfast, we were out on the calm water with some brilliant sun and a bit of cloud cover. We paddled past Adele Island and saw some seals, and continued back to Marahau at a leisurely pace. I remember being absolutely smitten with the serenity and beauty of where we were. We arrived just before noon at Marahau and made our way back to Motueka for a mean feed (KFC!) and then some pub time at the Sprig and Fern. We played Cards Against Humanity (I had to explain some awkward things to the Frenchies) and we retired for the night close to 11pm.
I was awake early on Wednesday morning and was in the kitchen of the backpackers when Matt walked in and challenged me to a few games of chess. I beat him all three times. That was fun. We packed all our stuff and made our way to Motueka Airport - Mana had decided it was a great idea to go skydiving and was psyching everyone up for it. Unfortunately the wind was too strong for us to go up so we ended up at Toad Hall for some final pies (highly recommend the wild goat curry pie) before splitting up - Vincent, Loic, Emilie and myself went to Nelson Lakes for a squizz, Matt, Mike, Vigz, Mana and Will took the northern route to the Queen Charlotte Sounds. It was cold and wet at the Nelson Lakes, but the fog provided a real eerie atmosphere to the area. We fed the ducks and eels and made our way to Picton to meet up with the others. On the ferry, we were playing Up and Down the River, and thankfully the boat ride was smooth so no one chucked.
It was an amazing weekend that was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Great company, heaps of adventures, awesome scenery and so much fun.
Posted by Jeremy at 5:41am on Sunday November 2, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Oh Geez, It's October
Tuesday October 7, 2014
I can't believe it's already October.
I've been hard at work on the site, updating its interface and structure and essentially rewriting the code from scratch. The result is something that is finally mobile-friendly and something that doesn't look like it was written by a 21 year old in 2007. Bootstrap is pretty awesome and it has made designing the site easy. Thanks to Vincent for showing me the ropes and for inspiring me to make something more contemporary and classy! In addition to this, I also have my Food Blog, which is a formalisation of all the pictures and descriptions from my Facebook page.
Work has been busy. I've been working on upskilling in Unity by making a sweet version of Final Fantasy VIII's Triple Triad game, but themed with Pokemon - aka, my two most favourite game franchises in the world. Last week, I started pre-production on my new project, which should tide us over until the end of the year. I haven't actually started a project since Dash n Drop in 2012, so I'm looking forward to all the challenges that this will hold.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:36am on Tuesday October 7, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
NZGDC
Tuesday September 23, 2014
I was up in Auckland for the New Zealand Game Developer's Conference last Friday, but thanks to some sweet organisation by our office manager, I got to stay in Auckland until Sunday night. I've had an awesome weekend, but I wish I had more time to sleep and relax - it was just completely full on and exhausting at times.
We went up on Thursday night. I managed to grab some Burger Wisconsin before rushing to the airport, and thankfully so because it would have been close to 10pm by the time we got into town and even had the chance to get food. Nevertheless, we dropped our bags at City Lodge on Vincent St and I led the team straight to Giapo, New Zealand's best ice cream. At the store, the lady at the counter enthusiastically told us all about the values of the head chef and his philosophy behind the ice cream, as well as letting us sample the many different flavours they had on offer. I love the passion when people speak about food - I share the same excited tone and expressive vocabulary. I opted for a chocolate laphroaig and peanut butter and banana ice cream. So good!
The night continued on at Vulture's Lane on Vulcan Lane, then Andrew Andrew down by the Hilton, and finally O'Hagan's Irish Pub at the Viaduct. It was 2am when we stumbled up to Kebabs on Queen for some very late night food - it was the only place open - before heading back to the backpackers.
It was an early-ish start to the day at 7.30am so we could visit Moustache Milk and Cookie Bar before the conference started. Great to catch up with Deanna and good to see business doing well, even if the landlords are threatening to hike rent by 36%. We made our way to AUT with cookies and coffee in hand just after 9.30am.
NZGDC was awesome. The keynote was from David Brevik, the lead designer on Diablo 1 and 2. Totally amazing to hear his stories on Diablo's development - it was originally supposed to be a turn-based RPG! There were heaps of great talks throughout the day, highlights being cloud gaming, boids and the tech panel featuring Alex St John, David Brevik and Chris Blackbourne. It was also good to catch up with a few ex-colleagues and meet some new people in the industry, yet a bit sad that the PikPok crew had flights back to Wellington during the afterparty! We ended up at the Bluestone Room on Durham St until around 9pm, when Lloyd, Charles and myself ventured to Daikoku Ramen for a late dinner.
On Saturday, I met up with my schoolmates at Dunk on Parnell, with a quick visit to the Chocolate Boutique as well. We had some extremely thorough discussion about politics (seeing as it was election day) as well as the regular banter about life, jobs and the good old Grammar days.
I had a quick nap back at home before meeting Mel at Orphans Kitchen, a hip-and-trendy little restaurant on Ponsonby Road. We were greeted by a man with a fine moustache (who I later learned was Josh Helm, one of the co-owners), which reminded me of the vibe you regularly get around town in Wellington. The food is an eclectic mix of ingredients that don't necessarily sound appetising individually, but provide an amazing flavour sensation when combined. Highly recommended, and a full breakdown of the meal will appear on my food blog, when I get around to it!
With room for dessert, I suggested we try our luck at Milse, a small but very fancy dessert restaurant in Britomart. We made our way down to find out that they had a 45 minute wait on a table - doesn't matter, I said! I'll wait! I found out that one of my workmates was up for the weekend and was chilling at the Green Party party watching the election results (his mother is quite involved in politics) so we went and picked him up from Beresford Square off K Road and trundled back down to the waterfront. Each of us had one dessert but the real treat was watching the entire preparation routine unfold in front of us. The meticulousness of the chefs as they prepare the desserts is outstanding - such care and pride they put into making these dishes, and what a wonderful masterpiece that comes out the other end. Again, a full review will appear on the food blog when it's done! I had a great yarn to the lady at the front of house, and again, just the way people passionately talk about food is so enjoyable and makes me so happy.
I was still keen to stay out, so we ended up at Gable's Ale House on Jervois Quay for a quick drink before heading home just after midnight. Whew! I was up again early on Sunday morning to get to KCC for the regular service, and then out for yum char at this new place in Three Kings before heading to Julia's for a spot of Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Kart 8.
In the evening, I was at my sister's house for dinner and catching up with my adorable nephews. The older one had been celebrating International Talk Like a Pirate Day and had donned a full pirate costume with swashbuckling sword action and his best attempt at pirate lingo (so cute), whilst the younger one was stared around, wide eyed and bursting into a huge smile every so often. Love them so much. I really do miss them and wish I could spend more time with them - they really do grow up so quickly.
Back in Wellington on Sunday night and back at work on Monday, but I was suddenly roped in to help out with a stall at a careers fair down by Mac's Brewery Function Room that night. It was really cool, but rather exhausting - I don't remember talking so much and to so many people in such a small space of time! It is quite exciting though, you get to meet heaps of different people and tell them heaps about industry and life at PikPok. Hopefully we strike it lucky and hire some good talent this summer.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:42am on Tuesday September 23, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Moving On Up
Monday July 14, 2014
I guess it's official. I'm moving house - 20 metres across the driveway of the apartment complex I'm in. I couldn't find a replacement flatmate for Matt so I decided it's probably time to find a different place to live. This place is slightly cheaper, my room is larger, I still get a carpark and because I'm essentially in the same location, it's still a 15 minute walk to work.
The past few weeks have been socially busy. We celebrated the Fourth of July at Goldings, where Jill kept asking people if they wanted to ride the mechanical horse at Dakota. We played Cards Against Humanity and Mario Kart and had KFC at Ants and Jo's on the following Sunday (it was actually an excuse for Jill to come over and play with the cat.) and we had some delicious steaks at Portlander on Wednesday.
We played Bubble Soccer at Shed 1, Queens Wharf last Saturday. Thankfully my leg had healed up enough for me to have a good run around for twenty minutes in a gigantic insulated bubble, barging into others while trying to kick a small yellow ball around the court. My team of yellow bubbles - Thomas, Sarah, Beau, Simon and Jimmy - played against the team of blue bubbles - Will, Josh, Andy, Dwayne, Neil and Vigz - for three 10 minute thirds, and we came out victorious with four goals to two. Afterwards, we enjoyed some food and beer at Mac's Brewery where Sarah, Thomas and I shared a gigantic antipasto platter of breads, dips, cheese and cured meats.
I was at Cami's house in the afternoon playing the Firefly board game with Tim and Juliann. The whole ordeal took five hours but it was a pretty fun game and would have been more enjoyable had I known what I was doing. I kinda got into a cycle of doing missions, just slowly building up my strength without knowing how strong I needed to be to go for the final goals, when Tim and Cami raced for the finish, leaving me far, far behind. Would try it again... possibly! It is a very heavy time investment.
Come Sunday however, my body would just not move. Every muscle was aching from the Bubble Soccer and I was having a bad time. Thankfully, I felt much better after heading to the sauna in the afternoon, and I'm pretty much back to normal now.
This morning, we gathered at work early for the finals of the World Cup, with Germany playing Argentina. More importantly however, were the scones, croissants and pancakes stationed conveniently around the office for us to enjoy while watching the soccer. And watch we did, there was much cheering as Mario Gotze struck a brilliant ball into the back of the Argentinian net in extra time, sealing the Germans as the Football World Cup 2014 Champions. Exciting times!
Posted by Jeremy at 11:01am on Monday July 14, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Drama
Sunday June 29, 2014
drama ˈdrɑːmə/ (noun)
1. a play for theatre, radio, or television.
2. an exciting, emotional, or unexpected event or circumstance.
This week has been dramatic for several reasons, covering both of these definitions.
Work-wise, the week has been pretty average actually, I've been looking at some bugs from our World Cup update release of Flick Kick Football Legends and had to get deep into the advertisement SDKs to figure out what was going wrong. It's tough having to trawl through other people's code, and when you find things wrong, you are often unable to do anything about it except notify the company and wait for the next update. I've learned a bit about how it all works though, but that didn't stop me from coining another quotable phrase - you can't spell sads without ads. Waw waw.
One of my friends has been directing a women-only improv show at BATS called "Taking off the Bird Suit", and I took the opportunity to see this on Tuesday, their opening night. It was filled with hilarity and awesome, with songs about exploring space and stories about witches. All proceeds from the show are being donated to Wellington Rape Crisis, so great work on this Christine and good on you for donating to such a noble cause. In addition to this, Damon's improv classes finished up with a graduation show on Thursday, so we were treated to more laughs at Wellington High School too. Good stuff!
On Friday, I caught up with Andy before he jetsetted to Melbourne, and then went to the Sprig and Fern to see another Andrew who had arrived back from Papua New Guinea, as well as several others who I hadn't seen in a while. There was a surprise guest there - Nats - who had unexpectedly turned up and announced she had been living in Wellington for work, so it was awesome catching up with all those people again, even if we didn't get to discuss all the ramifications of pre-destination.
Yesterday was Damon's Canadian-themed flatwarming party, where I tried poutine for the first time. Small world - I knew a few people from various other social circles there and had a chat to them, as well as having some good yarns with my workmates too. I was home quite late (by my standards) but managed to grab some brunch with the Fine Dining Club at Duke's on a brilliantly sunny Sunday morning.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:26am on Sunday June 29, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Everything's Coming Up JLai
Sunday June 22, 2014
For the past two weeks, I've been the happiest I've been since arriving back in New Zealand. The combination of spending time with cool people, having delicious foods and a general relaxed and non-stressful work environment has improved my general enjoyment of life.
The Football World Cup is well under way, with several big names like Spain and England confirmed ejected and some dark horses like Costa Rica showing they are not to be underestimated. I'm not particularly following this closely, more just hearing results as they come. We watched the opening game Brazil vs Croatia at work, and the company treated us to a scrumptious breakfast of scones and croissants. We had a big push for an update to Flick Kick Football Legends to be out before the World Cup started, and we worked hard to meet deadlines, and the past two weeks we've purposely had it light on work to give us a break as we ramp down our efforts.
We were brunching at Spruce Goose last Saturday and played some Halo and Super Smash Bros Melee at work, I had music at Central Baptist on the Sunday and an otherwise quiet day. For Spicy Food Tuesday, we tried New Zealand's hottest pizza from Hell's Pizza - the Angry Dragon, with Dragon's Fury Sauce, Fresh Chilli, Huffman's Hotsauce and legendary Ghost Peppers (usually around one million scoville) - but was a little disappointed that it wasn't as hot as I expected.
Last night we had family group out in Island Bay and played Dixit, Fluxx and a bit of chess (which I have not played in a long time!) and a rather interesting church service this morning where we tasted the elements of passover: bitter herbs and a nut/fruit paste, unleavened bread, salted water and roast lamb (roast lamb at church! yummo!) but perhaps the most notable event in the past two weeks was the Logan Brown degustation.
We managed to get a Groupon voucher for four of us to spend at Logan Brown - a seven course meal for $75 (down from $125) and $55 for a wine match. The wine match was a very poor choice on my behalf, I ended up having a very bad time towards the end, but nevertheless I enjoyed the food during the night. Once again, the outstanding dish was the dark chocolate delice with caramel cornflakes that was exquisitely rich and dark, and brought me to tears from its pure unadulterated chocolatey goodness.
Two months until Wellington on a Plate!
Posted by Jeremy at 11:32am on Sunday June 22, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Busy May Leading to a Busy June
Saturday June 7, 2014
The weekends have been socially busy while the weekdays have been focused on finishing the v1.3 International Cup update for Flick Kick Football Legends, on both iOS and Android. There's an sense of doom and gloom around work at the moment, with a few people losing hope or feeling discontent about the current state of affairs. It's tough and it certainly carries an air of unease.
A few Saturdays ago, I juggled brunch at Prefab and Charles and Megan's engagement party with Wei's Star Wars marathon birthday party, then music at Central Baptist and the latest XMen movie - XMen: Days of Future Past - on the Sunday. We went to Veni Vidi Vici for Charlie's birthday on the Monday and then we celebrated PikPok's 17th Birthday at the San Francisco Bath House on the Thursday with a quiz night and much alcohol (I think my final count was a martini, three tequila and lemonades, two tequila shots and a pickleback)
Last weekend was Queen's Birthday weekend and we started off festivities with a delightful bistro dinner at Logan Brown, courtesy of some GrabOne vouchers, followed by some after-dinner drinks at Matterhorn. Having opted for the half wine match, I was in no state to continue drinking of any sort of alcohol at Matterhorn, but the dinner itself was fantastic and nothing short of the quality that Logan Brown always delivers.
On Sunday, I was at Cami's house for board games and party games (and waffles!), including some great games of Giant Jenga, Dominion and Werewolf/Mafia. Monday was pretty relaxed, but we went for dinner at Noah's Ark before watching Maleficent (it was meh.)
Wellington on a Plate's menu and event list for 2014 has been released so you can be sure there will be some epic posts around August. Yummo!
Posted by Jeremy at 3:24am on Saturday June 7, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
First Week Back
Sunday May 18, 2014
It's cold. It has been tough readjusting to the New Zealand weather. Mornings are horribly chilly and I often wish the outside would be as warm as my duvet sheets. We're approaching the shortest day too, so the sun doesn't pop up over Mt Victoria until 8am and it starts getting dark at 5pm. I'm pretty much over my jetlag now though, which is good.
This past week has been busy. I needed to get up to speed with everything that had happened on my project, as well as get things in motion for the bug fixing week. I had a very good performance review as well, and apart from a few issues slightly out of my hands, the update seems ready to go out some time next week. Further testing will reveal whether we will be overtiming... hopefully not.
It's been awesome seeing people again and feeling sociable and all that sort of thing. I went for brunch at Cafe Polo yesterday, and then second brunch at Aro Bake. Then we missioned back to Miramar for dinner at Gasworks before watching the new Godzilla movie. I was at church today for the first time in four weeks and apart from that, Sunday was pretty relaxed. I've been playing Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask in between trying to find games on iOS to spend my $40 iTunes voucher from my sister.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:33am on Sunday May 18, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
What a Weekend
Sunday March 2, 2014
The weekend started out with a few drinks and pizza at the Sprig and Fern, and some healthy discussion on mildly controversial and polarising religious opinions. Following that, we headed back to the Greenhouse for some delicious black forest cake to celebrate a non-descript March holiday which happened to coincide with World Civil Defense Day. I had my suspicions but I was still pleasantly surprised and a little embarrassed with the attention, but the night was thoroughly enjoyable.
On Saturday, we had the PikPok Family Day Barbeque at the Mt Victoria Bowls Club. Though the day was a bit windy, the sun was glorious and the atmosphere chilled and relaxed. Charlie had found out about the aforementioned non-descript March holiday and had brought in some candles to stick in the cupcakes, it was very sweet. Thanks to a sign she had written, people well-wished me as the day progressed, again very touched by the sentiments but a little embarrassed with the attention, teehee. It was awesome to spend the day with cool people doing cool things, just out in the sun chit-chatting and playing bowls.
We ended up at the Gryphon Theatre at 8pm to catch the final night of the Fringe at the Gryphon, with three improv shows: Brooks and Brown in Literally Anything, Sketchual Healing and Here's a Thing. Mind-blowingly funny, absolutely amazing performances by all involved and just damn entertaining, capping off what was a brilliant day.
I've been house-sitting at Charles's place too, with his two kittens Hugs and Kisses. Adorable but so mischievous! They like following me around the house and they're extremely playful. I left the pantry open and they snuck in to have a look around; they got stuck in one of the large drawers in the kitchen as well. They'd go into my room and I'd try to carry them out, but since there's two, I'd get rid of one only to have the other sneak in, and repeat. Still, heaps of fun to play with, and I think they liked the attention too.
I've also been following Twitch Plays Pokemon, a social experiment giving 60,000 people the chance to control a Gameboy Emulator playing Pokemon Red. After 16 days, they've finally beaten the Elite Four and Champion but spawned several memes and a joke religion - Lord Helix the Omastar, Bird Jesus the Pidgeot, Flareon the False Prophet, so on and so forth. Highlight of the Elite Four battles would be level 36 Venomoth (nickname ATV, or All Terrain Venomoth) versus Lance's level 62 Dragonite. Due to some questionable AI programming, Dragonite kept using Barrier and Agility as they were "Psychic" attacks super-effective against Venomoth, and Venomoth had managed to Disable Hyper Beam and Poisonpowder Dragonite. Totally epic, and absolutely fascinating to watch the whole game unfold at the hands of thousands of people like that. A new adventure begins in just over two hours - what could it be!?
Today I was at church for the final in the series of "Things I Wish Jesus Never Said", and then out to Lyall Bay for Ekim Burgers with Jimmy and Charlie. After a solid afternoon nap, I was at Laundry with Jono, Andrew and Wei for dinner, then Fidel's for dessert.
My weekend has been super busy but full of amazing friends and fun times. Thanks guys, you rock.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:45am on Sunday March 2, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
Programming's Hard
Tuesday February 11, 2014
Day one of the PikPok Developer Conference has just gone by. My talk on Dynamic Programming was well received and the programming competition had a few glitches here and there, but on the whole, not too much trouble.
I think it was a pretty big gamble pushing to run a programming competition at work. There is a lot of preparation involved, a lot of uncertainty. Not only did I have to organise all the questions and answers (one answer was wrong ;_;), I had to fight hard to convince all the programmers to enter! Har har. I think most people had a good time, and if they didn't, I think at least they would have learned how programming competitions work, and been made aware of the pressures and challenges you face when having to work in those conditions - I guess it's just an extension (or in parallel?) to how we'd do it in a day-to-day situation.
Quite a few people were tripped up on how to read from standard in - who does that anyway? Luckily for the Python programmers, they had it easy in that respect. We had a lot of problems with presentation errors - too much whitespace, too many newlines, those kinds of pedantic tidbits that don't really matter in the big picture. They are there to test people's ability to follow instructions rather than test their programming ability, which I might look into changing for future installations. Perhaps I can provide some basic reading/writing code so that people only have to implement the body of a method instead of deal with input/output problems? Is there a way I could do that for all programming languages that we support? Could we integrate that into DOMjudge somehow? All questions that I'll need to think about!
Because I split the group up into random teams of two, it was also interesting to see how people tackled pair programming. The dynamic between colleagues is always fascinating to observe, especially if there is conflict or strong opinions! I say that with a bit of schadenfreude, but this may be of use to my boss.
I would like to see more of these in the future, and hopefully my boss will approve (and mandate?!) these competitions to be run on a regular basis. I'd say today was a success.
Posted by Jeremy at 7:12am on Tuesday February 11, 2014 :: 0 comments ::
All Quiet on Christmas Eve
Tuesday December 24, 2013
I was mentally checked out from work probably a week before we actually finished. The final week we spent doing a Game Jam of sorts - management presented a series of questions they wanted answered and we were to spend a week trying to see if we could answer these questions. It was okay; I felt like last year's Game Jam was way more enjoyable. I was lucky I had a great team this year and though things were a bit rocky and indecisive at the start, we pulled together and made a pretty neat toy. We celebrated the end of the year with karaoke at New Kor.
I drove up to Auckland on the Saturday after work had finished with two colleagues. We made good time; we left Wellington around 9.30am and stopped in Waiouru for lunch, Taupo for ice cream, Huka Falls for some sightseeing and Tokoroa for a quick nap, and still made it to Auckland at 6.30pm-ish. As usual, the drive was straightforward and easy, though I was a bit miserable and tired at the end of it.
I got to see the new KCC building for the first time at the Sunday Christmas service. It's very spacious and looks great, and it was great to catch up with so many people. We spent the rest of the day playing games like Buzz, Dominion, 7 Wonders and Up and Down the River before heading home around 1am. Whee.
On Monday I did some last minute Christmas shopping at West City Westfield. Not as busy as I thought it would be, but I wasn't there for too long. I picked up some food supplies as well, and I caught up with my sister and her family. My nephew sure has grown! So cute. I played soccer with him for a bit. Adorable that he's so excited to see me. Will be looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow for Christmas lunch.
After a quick nap, I was off to Newmarket to catch up with the Wellington/ex-Wellington crew for our traditional Christmas dinner at Sun World. Sumptuous plates of Peking duck, prawn balls, lamb cutlets, fried tofu, fried squid and chicken filled the table. It was an excellent meal with excellent company.
And finally today, I caught up with Amy in Ponsonby at the Foxtrot Parlour, before heading to Reuben and Shereen's to catch up with the other guys from youth group for a Christmas potluck lunch. We did a last minute Secret Santa that worked out pretty well. Everyone was told to bring one dud gift and one nice gift. I scored myself a Gucci pocket air-freshener thing (the "dud" but not really!), as well as a microfibre cleaning cloth. We played some Time's Up, although looking at Board Game Geek's description of it, we played it horribly wrong. Still, we had a fun time and everyone was satisfied and tired by the time we parted ways.
It's been almost non-stop social events since arriving in Auckland. I'm always surprised by just how busy I am over this period despite making very vague plans prior to coming up. It's not really my style to do that, but apparently it works well and it's a lot of fun (sometimes very tiring!) seeing people and catching up.
Holidays are great.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:47am on Tuesday December 24, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
December
Monday December 9, 2013
Man... it's almost the end of the year. Things have been so busy in the last few months that I've once again neglected my blog. Why do I blog anyway? I guess it's a kind of historical document that I can look at in 50 years time when I have Alzheimer's and think of all the great memories I had at the time. Even looking back at how I write and what I blog about makes me cringe!
So since my last piece about flights to Malaysia, I've managed to secure tickets back home but unfortunately not for Christmas or Chinese New Year due to full flights during this peak season. I spent a lot of time negotiating with Malaysia Airlines, but to no avail. It's understandable though, just a bit disappointing. It would have been nice to go back for my cousin's wedding and see everyone again, but no matter, I'll still have a good time when I go back in Easter next year.
The game I've been working on has finally been released - it's Flick Kick Football Legends for both iOS and Android. We're looking at churning out a few more updates so stay tuned for extra content and more amazing user interfaces. It's been a tough project but the team have worked extremely hard on it and I think that we should be proud of what we've achieved and how polished the product is.
I've been deep in the Pokemon as well. Pokemon X has been a great game - I've clocked over 150 hours on it already. I've caught almost all the Pokemon available without the Pokemon Bank service to transfer Pokemon from previous versions. I'm thinking of moving onto Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies soon - looking forward to more [OBJECTIONS]!
In short... I've found a replacement flatmate, we had the work Christmas party, went out to Makara by myself to watch the sunset and the stars, saw the fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, tried to bread Smudge, had the degustation at the Whitehouse on Oriental Parade and had an amazing meal at the new Little Penang, which has expanded to the place next door! We have affectionately called it "Medium Penang", and the food is still as delicious as it ever has been.
Life in the past two months has had its ups and downs. Sometimes I've felt lonely or frustrated about life - one time it was so bad, I was awake at 3am in the morning having an existential crisis. Other times I've felt a lot more anti-social than normal, or distant from my friends, like I need solitude to clear my head. In those times, I usually retreat to church to play piano, and I've found music to be so calming and therapeutic. It's probably just a phase though, so don't worry about me. People come and go; so do friendships. They say the only constants in life are taxes and change... and I should learn to be more adaptable and flexible in life instead of dwelling in the past all the time.
Dear future Jeremy. Count your blessings and be thankful for them. Cherish the friendships you have and be good to the people around you. Don't worry so much and don't let life get you down all the time. Never forget who you are and maintain a strong sense of integrity.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:16am on Monday December 9, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
Post Earthquake
Sunday August 4, 2013
Things seem to have settled down. We've had a few big aftershocks but things are more or less back to normal. Cordons have been lifted and there might still be a few carpark closures, but business is running as per usual and things are starting to feel routine again. The Geonet Website has provided heaps of information on the quake series, including a tally of aftershocks grouped by magnitude, probability tables for future aftershocks and the ten largest quakes since the 6.5 last month.
Work has been alright. We released version 1.2.1 of Robot Unicorn Attack 2 on iOS and are continuing to work on updates. There's a lot of bugs to fix and features that AdultSwim keep asking us for, and there's heaps of work to do on the horizon. We've had a change of Technical Manager and Technical Director, and the plans for the future look interesting and exciting, and hopefully we'll continue to improve and grow as a department.
Today has been messy. I didn't get much sleep last night and had to get up early for music at church this morning. I was super tired and it reflected in my playing. I hit the wrong chords and couldn't concentrate, I was flustered over timing and had to abruptly end the offering song awkwardly. I was not having a good time. I managed to get some shut eye this afternoon after some delicious steak from the Chocolate Frog Cafe in Miramar, but it was soon up and go time for Dale's stag do. We had some thrilling games of paintball at the new place on Willis St, with my workmates sporting some impressive welts and injuries. I escaped major injury, with maybe two or three big ones to my leg and arms. We had dinner at the Tap Haus and then back home for a couple of grim games of Dota.
Sigh, Dota.
I am out of practice and fed too much. Once things get like that though, I just feel like it's too much effort to practice and get better; it's such a huge time investment. One game can be horribly demoralising; the next exhilarating and adrenaline pumping. The same goes for a lot of online games I guess, and the unpredictability of your opponents means no two games are ever the same.
I'm looking forward to Wellington on a Plate this month, with deliciousness starting this Friday. It's going to be an expensive food month, but I'm sure it'll be totally worth it - last year I only managed Boulcott St Bistro, but this year I'm hoping to try El Matador, Logan Brown, Ortega, Hummingbird, Crazy Horse, Martin Bosley's and the Grill. Truly there is no sincerer love than that of food!
Posted by Jeremy at 12:17pm on Sunday August 4, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
Cold. Sick.
Monday July 15, 2013
It's been a tough few weeks at work, but the Robot Unicorn Attack 2 Android version is finally out on the Google Play store, and had over 10,000 downloads in the first 24 hours of release. We're continually working on updates and ever-changing requirements means a shift in focus and priorities for particular features, but hey, that's game development for you. Two of the team are away on holiday and one resigned to travel the country, so there's two programmers and one artist holding the fort. Stay tuned for more unicorn fabulousness in the future.
Andrew and Shuren are down in Wellington for a research project during one of the worst weeks ever, weather-wise. I took them around to the regular touristy places like Te Papa, the Weta Cave, Mt Victoria Lookout and the Brooklyn Wind Turbine - it occurred to me that there aren't a lot of things for people to do in Wellington when the weather is so bad. Of course, food was an important item and we were at Chocolate Frog on Saturday afternoon after badminton, and Restaurant 88 for dinner - and needless to say, we went to Strawberry Fare, twice!
After church on Sunday, we went cronut hunting at Moore Wilsons and brunching at Cafe L'affare. With reports of snow at 300m, we decided to go for a drive to the Rimutaka's to see what we could find. Driving conditions weren't as treacherous as I thought they would be; it wasn't too windy but the rain was heavy. As we reached the site of the old cafe, the wind picked up and deliver some sleet and snow flurries that danced around the car. With temperatures rapidly dropping, we headed home and played some Super Smash Bros Melee before dinner at Cosa Nostra and dessert at Strawberry Fare.
Unfortunately with all this adventuring, I've come down with a mild cold and had to stay at home today. Metservice reported 5.3C this morning, feeling like -1C with the windchill factor. My room is quite toasty thanks to the heater, but at some stage I will have to venture out into the kitchen and make dinner :(
Posted by Jeremy at 6:05am on Monday July 15, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
Not Long To Go
Sunday May 19, 2013
The word "home" in English commonly means one's place of residence or a geographical area that one identifies with as their place of belonging. When I talk about home, my home is in Wellington, where I work and live. When I talk about home, my home is in Auckland, where I grew up and lived for 20 years of my life. When I talk about home, it's odd because I'm using the word in a way that many Malaysian expats will use it - our "home" is Malaysia. When we go back "home", we're returning to the motherland; and though I am officially a New Zealand citizen, Malaysia will always affectionately be "home", because it's where I was born.
The last time I was back in Malaysia was Christmas 2009/New Years 2010. It was full of fond memories... much of it spent enjoying the fantastic food, but also a great excursion to China and Hong Kong, and of course, seeing family that I had not seen in over 7 years. I'm always looking forward to long haul trips, and I can't wait to catch up with everyone and eat everything. People often have a list of things to buy or things to see when they go overseas - when you go to Malaysia, you have a list of things to eat. Whether it be the aroma of durian from pasar malam, or the anticipation as your favourite roadside cendol is prepared, or cooling off with some barley water as you wait for the bak kut teh or yong tau foo to arrive, or playing mahjong while your auntie prepares her famous nasi lemak - my favourite memories about Malaysia are often associated with food. It is such an important part of our culture and who we are.
It's been a while since I last blogged... Robot Unicorn Attack 2 has been out for almost a month now and is doing very well, with over three million downloads the last time I checked. We also released Turbo Racing League, a snail racer based off the DreamWorks Animation movie due out in July. Work has continued to be busy as I wrap up my duties before I leave for holiday.
At the start of the month I was in Auckland for Reuben and Shereen's wedding. Though the rain was torrential, the ceremony and reception were fantastic and it was great to catch up with people and celebrate the marriage of two of my good friends. I got to play piano at KCC's Sunday service and had a great time, and I got to see my nephew as well. It was a rushed weekend, but thoroughly enjoyable. The following weekend, Surya had made his way down to Wellington after graduating in a Masters of Science, so we went out for dinner at Ozeki and milk tea at Noah's Ark.
Finally, a decent milk tea place!
I went ice skating last night with Amy, Mitchell and Chloe. I was surprised at how good they were - it never really occurred to me that they had such hidden talents! The last time I had been ice skating was probably 10 years ago, at Sunway Pyramid in Malaysia, so it was a very awkward start to getting back on the ice. I've never really been one to ice skate or rollerblade or do anything graceful like that, so for most of the hour I was clumsily flailing like a moron around the rink. Despite my frantic yelling and panicked expressions, I had a good time and was proud that I bailed only once during the time I was there, and furthermore, only Mitchell was around to witness my elegant barrel roll, from which I recovered quickly and nonchalantly resumed skating.
It's now only four more sleeps until my flight back "home". Still many things to sort out and people to catch up with before I leave - exciting times ahead!
Posted by Jeremy at 11:42am on Sunday May 19, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
Barfing Rainbows
Saturday April 27, 2013
It's finally here.
Early last year, after finishing Extinction Squad, we began development of Robot Unicorn Attack 2. I did a few bits and pieces on our store tech before jetting off to the US for a month holiday. Upon my return, I had found out that I'd been put onto Rise of the Guardians Dash n Drop instead, and there I stayed for five months. It wasn't until the start of this year that I was put back on RUA2 to take over as lead programmer while Thomas shifted onto another project. The past four months have been challenging but I know the team, myself included, are extremely proud to have the game finally out on the App Store. We've hit #1 on the Canadian store, #2 in the US, #3 in Finland and #4 in the New Zealand and Poland stores, and have had several glowing reviews and Apple features to boost our rankings and downloads.
I saw Iron Man 3 last Wednesday. I felt it was better than Iron Man 2 (which I saw for the first time the previous day), but it was pretty much still the same old cheesy action movie. Nevertheless, it was fun and enjoyable, and there was a good Avengers tie-in at the end of the credits, so make sure you sit and wait for that. Congratulations to my friends at Weta who worked on the movie!
Following that, we convened at CGR Merchant & Co for a few drinks to count down the time until RUA2's release at midnight on the New Zealand store, and then to Hadley's house since all the bars closed at midnight for ANZAC day. I had a big day ahead so I didn't stay too long after midnight.
Though Thursday began quite overcast and showery at times, the sunlight slowly broke through and produced some great summery weather. We were out at Eastbourne for an explore around Pencarrow Lighthouse and Lake Kohangapiripiri. The trail is about 8km one way, so the trek there and back took us the whole afternoon. There are some magnificent views of the Wellington region and the South Island from Pencarrow Head, and the deep blue seas reflecting the brilliance of the skies above only made the scenery better. There are numerous goats and sheep around the hills as well, and because the area is so exposed from the south, the winds were excitingly blustery. A day well spent, but I was so tired from the exercise that I was asleep by 9.30pm.
Work will continue being busy for the next month or so, and then I'll be off to Malaysia for two weeks for my cousin's wedding. Woohoo!
Posted by Jeremy at 11:38am on Saturday April 27, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
Social Butterfly
Sunday February 24, 2013
I have been doing too many things with my life.
That\'s okay though, I have thoroughly enjoyed the fun times and the awesome people I\'ve been hanging out with over the past two weekends. Now is the time to make the most of the sun before it fades away behind the abysmal weather so typical of Wellington for ten months of the year. Summer has been great and it\'s sad (if not alarming) that it is March very, very soon.
Last weekend, we went out to Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt to watch some jousting after badminton. It\'s not particularly like what you would imagine (or what Hollywood would have you imagine). The tips of the jousting lances are fragile and break easily, and are colour-coded for each person. The idea is to land a hit against your opponent (with rules around where you can and can\'t hit - no hitting the horse!) and points are given based off aforementioned criteria. As the lances break, the resulting fragments are clearly identified by their colour to assist in the judging. There were also longbow displays and sword fighting re-enactments, but none as exciting as the jousting.
The next day, we were out at Adrenaline Forest in Porirua for part one of Ben\'s birthday celebration. Swinging, climbing, gliding and shuffling (often struggling) our way through the treetops proved quite the physical challenge at times; not so much the mental challenge I was expecting since I was so focused on the obstacles, I barely had time to look down at the ground. Unlike previous ropes courses I\'d been on, this one is more individually managed so you clip yourself onto safety ropes to traverse the trees instead of being belayed by a group of people on the ground. Additionally, you\'re equipped with your own pulley and hook system so you can clip yourself onto the wire and ride the gradient to the other side with some gravitational help. There\'s some great Indiana Jones-type swings, including one into a large spider web of ropes on course six!
Part two was competitive go-karting - teams of two doing 30 laps each. Jordan and I paired up to deliver a relatively unrisky and consistent display that landed us fourth place out of eight (not last, yay!). The karts supposedly reach 50kph and handle pretty well, though my skidding and sliding were not as masterful as I would have liked. I kept feeling like I was going to topple the kart over. There were fortunately no coloured turtle shells on the track.
I went for an improv show at the Gryphon Theatre on Ghuznee St, then to dinner at the Matterhorn on Friday night. I was last at the Matterhorn in 2009 and they have changed the menu and the style of eating since. The intention is that you order a selection of plates to share instead of having individual meals. Essentially it is like yum cha, except ten times the price. We found the concept complicated and were a bit nervous when the waitress asked us if she could have the authority to place food on our tab without our explicit permission. We shared some oysters with champagne sorbet, crispy pig tails, deer fillet with blackberry, potatoes with roast almonds and various other plates that I can\'t recall off the top of my head. The company was great and the food was good, but the messy logistics put me off and wouldn\'t recommend it - would have been much better if we had just had individual meals and maybe some sides to share.
Yesterday after badminton, we had the PikPok Barbeque at the Mt Victoria Lawn Bowls club. It was a family-friendly event, with a kids-only bouncy castle (much to the disappointment of many of my workmates), face painting and board games available. There was of course the lawn bowls outside, and in defiance of the Wellington wind, beer pong on a table decked out with some fantastic Flick Kick Football artwork. Time passed quickly and it got a bit chilly around 6pm so I left for another barbeque out in Island Bay with my church\'s family group. Though it was a brief event, it was good to catch up with various people and I was absolutely smitten with the two guinea pigs called Pip and Squeak. I ended the day over at Andrew\'s flat in Roseneath, taking one hour to set up a new board game called CO2 and three hours to play. Would not recommend.
Finally, to finish it off, I celebrated Chap Goh Mei, the last day of Chinese New Year, at Big Thumb in style, with plates of chicken, pork and seafood in dumplings, buns, rice noodles and deep fried!
Though we don\'t have the fireworks and fantastic lion and dragon dance displays that the Auckland Lantern Festival provides, I\'ve had fun celebrating Chinese New Year in my own way. This will be memorable for years to come.
<<edit>> Okay we just got fireworks. Yay!
Posted by Jeremy at 7:33am on Sunday February 24, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
The Definition of Wellington's Summer
Sunday January 27, 2013
The Metservice says that we're supposed to have a sunny spell for a whopping ten days in a row. Not sure if this is unprecedented for Wellington, but it certainly seems like something novel since I've been here. Plenty of things have been happening to take advantage of the summer weather!
After badminton yesterday, I celebrated Australia Day with a few of my workmates with a low-key barbeque. There was plenty of fine meats to be had, and lots of good old fashioned Australian racism too (JOKE). I was sad I couldn't stay for longer as I had to rush to the Sprig and Fern for Matt and Claire's engagement party. Good to catch up with people and form some sort of plan for the trip down south in April. Looking forward to it!
Last weekend was Wellington anniversary, and I went to the Game Master exhibition at Te Papa with Jordan and Loic. Highly recommend it and had heaps of fun there - there's an impressive collection of video games there dating back to the old arcade-style games to the newest consoles - Wii, PS3 and Xbox360 - and with the advent of mobile gaming in the past few years, some iOS and Android games as well. I was blown away by how well some of the arcade games had aged; while some were very difficult to play, they're still incredibly fun and it was interesting to play them with their original control schemes - joysticks and track balls galore.
The exhibition really brought back the nostalgia, with Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Super Mario Brothers showcasing the pinnacle of platformers in the 1990s, and in comparison how these IPs have evolved and branched out to Sonic Generations in 3D on the Playstation 3 (though I was having a bad time with this) and New Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo DS. Moving on from the Sega and the Nintendo sections, there was Blizzard (Starcraft 2 and Warcraft III), Will Wright (Sim City... and then his later games like Spore and The Sims which I didn't care about), Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island), a large open area for Dance Central, Singstar and Rockband, then a section for Indie games and mobile games, including Castle Crashers, Braid, Flower, Flow, Journey, Minecraft, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Jetpack Joyride, Chopper 2 and of course, Sidhe's own brick-breaking phenomenon, Shatter!
There was some kid playing Shatter when I arrived and he was playing it wrong. I suggested he hit the Right Ctrl button to unleash Shard Storm against the first boss, but he ignored me and continued being wrong. Jerk.
I have been playing Sonic 4 for a while, which I bought on Steam over Christmas, and like Sonic Generations at Game Masters, I was having a bad time with it. The physics are all wrong and there's no sense of momentum in the game. The trajectory of Sonic as he runs and jumps feels difficult and nothing like what his good old 16-bit days felt like. Though the game is pretty, it simply doesn't compare to Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 on the Genesis, and it's a pity that the series has devolved to this state. Frustrated from this experience, I turned to Lego Lord of the Rings. The game has some great humour and lots of content, but is quite easy and the first few stories can feel tedious and grindy. I've progressed to the point where I have lots of abilities, so it's much more interesting and fun now.
Works has been going well. Before I left for the US, I was supposed to be on a particular "barfing rainbows" project; I was reassigned onto Rise of the Guardians on my return and since its completion in November, I have been maintaining the company's core code base - as well as the fantastic Game Jam week we had to finish the year. Though the barfing rainbows project was also supposed to finish in November, it's been extended until March and I'm fortunate enough to be put back on that project. Most of the game is there and functioning, but it's a very valuable IP so we want to make sure that the metagame and the UI system are high quality and well polished. Looking forward to seeing this out on the App Store!
Posted by Jeremy at 10:17am on Sunday January 27, 2013 :: 0 comments ::
How do I summer
Saturday December 29, 2012
For the first time since I arrived in Auckland, it has been brilliantly sunny. I took advantage of the great weather by doing some laundry, naturally, and within a few hours all my clothes were dry! It's amazing!
I did more than just laundry though, a bunch of us went out to Karekare Beach, near Piha, just to chill in the sun. Though some dark ominous clouds rolled over around 3pm, they were nothing more than extra sunshade and the conditions remained warm and pleasant.
Just got back from an epic Korean BBQ place out on the shore called Arirang with my friends from CompSci. So much news to catch up on... no one ever keeps me informed :(! There was a huge amount of food and I was blown away by how cheap it all was as well. I tried freshwater snails for the first time, as well as cold noodles, and was spoiled for choice with the multitude of delectable side dishes. Nothing in Wellington comes close to the quality AND quantity at this place. Huge thanks to Laura for sorting everything out and cooking all the meat for us.
Yesterday I caught up with some ex-colleagues - Vaughan and Roy - as well as Alan, who had driven my car up to Auckland from Wellington via Taupo. We played a few games of pool and had a great meal at Erawan Thai on Jervois Rd. It was a little weird seeing my car up here when I didn't drive it up... after dinner we went our separate ways and I ended up at Ben's house for some board games (and Spaceteam!) until 1am. Citadels is slowly becoming a favourite of the group!
On Thursday I went for yum cha with my sister and her family. Nephew is still as adorable as ever, and was well behaved at the restaurant. It's so good to go with my sister because I get to eat things that my friends don't normally eat, like tofu and tau fu fa. I spent the afternoon just catching up with them, and then playing with my nephew after his nap. I feel so proud to be his uncle!
And finally on Wednesday, I went into town to check out Boxing Day sales. Yeah, it's not really like me at all. Queen St was full of people (lots of Asians lololol) looking for bargains; peering into some of the small shops, they're crammed packed with people who can barely move around, such is the utter madness of these Boxing Day sales. As for myself, I purchased a few items from the Warehouse: some bedsheets, new shoes, some socks.... nothing really that exciting. I remember walking around thinking about how much I hate shopping and that I can finally say I did the Boxing Day thing and that the amount I save doesn't feel like it justifies the chaos I experience in the shopping malls. Never again.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:21am on Saturday December 29, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Wrapping up for Christmas
Sunday December 23, 2012
We had a game pitching session at the start of the month in the hopes we'd be able to generate some ideas for a Game Jam session in the last week of the year. Thanks to some quick last minute work by Jimmy, I put forward a pitch for an idea that had been festering for a few years. From the 19 pitches that were presented, 9 were chosen by senior management to go through as prototype candidates for Game Jam, mine included!
The great thing about the format of Game Jam this year is that everyone voted for pitches that they wanted to play and wanted to work on, and then everyone was assigned to a team they voted for. Having the initial buy-in meant that each team was passionate about the idea and were motivated to do they best they could. It works in a similar way at Facebook and Valve, I believe; you recruit your coworkers by marketing your idea and if they are interested, they'll join your project team.
In any case, what my team achieved in a single week was phenomenal, and indeed the other 8 prototypes were absolutely stunning as well. There was a great sense of camaraderie and appreciation for the amazing amount of talent the company has, and it was truly a wonderful way to end the year. I had a lot of fun in this past week, and we will be eagerly waiting to see which games make it to fu production next year.
In celebration we had some food and drinks at the Fork and Brewer on Friday night, and then the last badminton for the year on Saturday morning. In the afternoon I cleaned all the things and scurried off to the airport for the last flight to Auckland.
Ironically the Metservice has forecast rain for the next 10 days in Auckland, while Wellington gets a better forecast next week. Sure enough it rained a bit today, but that didn't dampen plans to play DotA2 and meet up with my workmates for some delicious Peking Duck at Sun World, and a few drinks at the Cock and Bull to end a great night.
Holidays are awesome.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:22am on Sunday December 23, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Labour Weekend and Tatsumi
Saturday December 8, 2012
I've been meaning to write this up for some time but immediately after Labour Weekend, it was just full on work to get DreamWorks Dash n Drop out on the App Store. And we did it, and it was great, yaaay. More on this in another blog post...maybe.
I had a good Labour Weekend. I finally got to visit my friend Deanna's famous Moustache Milk and Cookie Bar, and I came away with four delicious cookies to share with my family. I met up with the old Grammar gang in Mt Eden for a nice lunch. I even got to play some badminton with Julia and Steven! Of course I got to catch up with family - my adorable nephew had just started walking and was even saying a few words! So cute.
I also had a mind-blowing culinary experience at a restaurant called Tatsumi. My parents had been raving about how good this place is ever since they had a 10 course degustation there. I just had to try it. I said I'd take them there for a meal over Labour Weekend and my stepmum gleefully made all the necessary arrangements. Tatsumi is on Davis Crescent, just near the intersection of Khyber Pass and Broadway. Originally from Christchurch, their premises were struck by the earthquake and condemned, forcing them to relocate to Auckland. They describe themselves as "European-inspired Japanese fusion style" and you'll certainly see how the food at Tatsumi has been so masterfully crafted to bring together these two cuisines to create something rich and absolutely delicious.
Since my parents had already sampled the degustation, they decided to go a la carte. I, on the other hand, was ready for a 10 course meal.
10 Course Degustation
- Tempura Oyster
- Chef's Choice of Assorted Appetisers
- Variety of Sashimi
- Tempura Soft Shelled Crab Salad
- Crispy Skin Salmon Teriyaki
- Braised Pork Belly
- Scampi Miso Soup
- Assorted Nigiri Sushi
- Passionfruit Sorbet
- Green Tea Fondant
![jousting](\"/gallery/pictures/chinesenewyear-feb2013/IMG_3510.jpg\"){kind=link}
![Adrenaline Forest](\"/gallery/pictures/chinesenewyear-feb2013/IMG_3546.jpg\"){kind=link}
It was so good.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:46pm on Saturday December 8, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Mooncakes
Monday September 24, 2012
It's that time of the year again. That one where my inner child squeals in delight as all the Asian supermarkets begin stocking all sorts of delicious mooncakes - white lotus, red bean, pandan and durian, in one yolk, or in two for a teensy bit more money. My choice this year was the Golden Emerald 1 Yolk from Restoran Oversea in Malaysia. True to its name, the rich emerald-coloured filling is made possible by the intense pandan flavour - with hints of almond and coconut, and accompanied with a single duck egg yolk in the center of the cake. Yum!
In celebration of mooncake festival, I cooked dinner at the Treehouse.
~ Deep fried tofu with cucumber, red onion, sweet chili sauce and ground peanuts ~
~ Stir-fried bok choi, green beans, baby corn and prawns ~
~ Grilled mussels with cheese and bacon ~
~ Roast duck garnished with cucumber and tomato ~
~ Lettuce wrap with minced lamb, capsicum, baby corn and bamboo shoots ~
Charlotte was in charge of dessert:
~ Mango pudding garnished with fresh strawberry ~
~ Golden Emerald Pandan Mooncake with One Yolk ~
Everything went according to plan and the meal was a huge success.
Let's see... I had a sunny weekend up in Otaki, went to Wellington on a Plate with Mel at the Boulcott St Bistro, I've been playing a few games on my Sega Mega Drive, I went to the Japanese Festival at the Town Hall, I've eaten a few KFC Double Downs and had Hot 'n' Spicy, went to see Jeramiah "Module" Ross perform the Shatter soundtrack live at the San Francisco Bath House... and I've also been quite busy at work. Two more weeks until Beta >_> The game is shaping up to be pretty good and I'm proud of what we've done. There's still lots more work to be done and various aspects of the game still need some tightening and polish. I guess we'll be ramping up efforts closer to our deadlines to try and cram things in.
Oh and I've finished uploading all my America photos and just added photos from my springtime photodump.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:08am on Monday September 24, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Monthly Check-In
Thursday July 26, 2012
I think it took me about a week in New Zealand to realise I wasn't on holiday anymore and to feel back in routine and get over the jetlag. Only a week :( But here I am, just over a month later and America seems like such a long time ago.
Things have been busy since I got back. There was the release of Black 2 and White 2 in Japan, as well as Pokemon Conquest in English. I've been busy hacking bits of information from the ROM with a friend of mine who is originally from Canada but is on a student exchange in Singapore. The developers have chosen to lay the information out in strange ways. Normally things are aligned to byte boundaries, but in Conquest, you often find clumps of data that span any number of bits between 3 and 10, making it difficult to discern data. Progress has been slow but the more we become used to this stupid system, the more patterns we find in the data. We had some great breakthroughs using Tinke's graphics utilities to batch export the Warrior and Pokemon Gallery images - exciting stuff!
Work at Sidhe has been pretty full on as well. Upon arriving back, I'd learned that I had been reassigned to another project starting immediately, and due out at the end of October. We are still in the prototype phase, and finding many challenges with the development and design. Stay tuned for exciting updates! We'll be on both iOS and Android.
I was in Taupo at the start of the month for Richard and Tanya's wedding. The weather was brilliantly sunny, despite dropping to -1C overnight. The lake and snow-capped mountains in the distance make the area so scenic. The church ceremony was okay, the highlight being the newlyweds walking out to the tune of the Star Wars theme. The reception though was great - fresh oysters galore! It was great catching up with school friends that I hadn't seen in a while, even if some of them still owe me money for accommodation. It was a great weekend away from Wellington, and to cap it all off, I coincidentally bumped into my youth group friends from Auckland in Turangi's Burger King. Small country >_>
I caught up with one of my old flatmates who had moved to the UK four years and is back in New Zealand for a month or so. It was a socially draining but very enjoyable weekend. Also got to play a bit of 7 Wonders too! Good times.
I still haven't sorted out my photos from America. There's over 2500 of them (and not all of food) but hopefully when the dust from Conquest settles, I'll have some time to go through all of them and process them.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:54am on Thursday July 26, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Excited about Extinction
Wednesday May 16, 2012
Do you love animals? Want to do your bit for conservation? Then grab your iPhone, iTouch or iPad and download EXTINCTION SQUAD! Travel the world in search of suicidal creatures and save them with your Extinction Squad trampoline and the guidance of the one and only, Chuck Darwin!
High five to Team XS, it has been an awesome four months working with you and I'm ecstatic to see this game finally out on the App Store!
PS: I am way too excited to sleep.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:54pm on Wednesday May 16, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Counting Down
Wednesday May 2, 2012
So the project I've been working on for the past four months or so is finally in submission and we're just waiting for Apple to review it. Once that's done, it'll be out on the AppStore and you awesome people who actually read my blog will be the first to know about it. You get more points if you actually download it too. I can provide hugs and/or personalised thank you messages with the download if you so wish.
It hit me in the shower last night that my trip to the US is really close. I am really excited. Excited about the chance to travel and get away for a while. Really excited about the food. Reminiscing about all the delicious things I ate in San Francisco last year - especially that Key Lime and Mango Cheesecake, oh my goodness it was soooo good. Excited about friends I'll be catching up with and friends who I haven't met in person before. It's going to be amazing.
In short since my last update:
- saw the Avengers movie (it was awesome)
- finished the game Limbo
- still playing weekly badminton (two new recruits this Saturday!)
- average weekly alcohol consumption has increased (hopefully tolerance too)
- helped to ship a project I didn't work on (I actually just pushed buttons on a webpage) - this is now out on the App Store as DreamWorks Dragons: TapDragonDrop!
- sang "My Heart Will Go On" at karaoke on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, and scored 100% for it
- decoded a secret message that said two of my good friends are engaged (most convoluted way ever - but still better than updating your Facebook status) - congratulations to you both!
- started watching Adventure Time, Invader Zim and Samurai Pizza Cats
The days are quite short now and the cold has definitely set in. Winter is here :(
Posted by Jeremy at 7:51am on Wednesday May 2, 2012 :: 2 comments ::
Disconnected
Saturday March 24, 2012
So my phone died about a week ago, leaving me semi-disconnected from the world and suddenly realising that hey, cellphones have become such a necessity in our lives. It's not that I'm addicted to one, it's just that I'm so reliant on it being there that when it isn't, it feels like I have been majorly inconvenienced. In any case, I borrowed my flatmate's phone so I can still receive texts and calls, I just don't have everyone's number (because most of it is stored on the memory card, not the SIM card) and the phone is really difficult to use so I'm trying not to use it as much.
I've also been feeling a bit disconnected in general, which is probably from the copious amounts of overtime I've been doing at work, trying to get this project product out the door (see what I did there, Sidhe guys?). And I've got a lot of faith in this game, it's just that it's needed a lot of reworking to get it feeling good and playing well. We're almost there.
It often happens that I forget what it's like to have free time while/after I've been doing a lot of overtime. My personal projects have been progressing in tiny increments. I have something ready for Psypoke's April Fools too! Haven't been playing many games recently - still need to play Limbo and Bastion that I bought from the Steam Holiday Sales - I have been playing an old, old, old favourite called Marble Drop, made by Maxis in 1997. I really need to finish all those PS2 games that I borrowed too... sigh. Oh, does Draw Something count as a game? ¬_¬
Random ranting and first world problems list:
- This weather is depressing and the days are getting shorter.
- The new give way rules are coming into effect tomorrow and there is going to be carnage on the roads because people are stupid. Also, this is amusing.
- I went aurora spotting a few weeks ago and saw nothing. Stupid Wellington clouds.
- My credit card bill is too damn high. Probably because of those airplane tickets I bought to the US. Giggity.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:01am on Saturday March 24, 2012 :: 0 comments ::
Rugby World Cup
Friday September 9, 2011
So yeah, okay, blog post mentioning the World Cup. My wall on Facebook is filled with RWC-related hate and excitement, and it was abuzz about it even before the opening ceremony had started. I saw bits of the fireworks on television last night - they looked really amazing and I wish I was there to see it live. I did, however, catch the game against Tonga and luckily, started watching just before the hakas began. I've never seen the country this patriotic before, and you can definitely feel the hype in the air as you walk through town. I think the atmosphere will be amazing if we win - and I really hope we do.
In slightly related news, Sidhe's Rugby Challenge game hit the stores a few weeks ago and we've topped the New Zealand games charts. I wasn't on the development team for it, but I did make this nifty database exporter tool that they used. Yay. We had a launch party celebrating its release last week, with many of my ex-colleagues turning up for what was a fantastic night, and on Thursday, we got our own Rugby Challenge t-shirts. The Latin phrase "durum candidumque domi ludit" is written on the front, and it means "playing hard and fair at home".
Work has been tough for me lately. I spent a few late nights last week trying to wrap up some features and bugs. The end is in sight though, and I think we can make next Friday's deadline, though it depends on whether the company that we're doing this for can get their act together and deliver the final bits of information to us. The game will be our first social game on iOS and I'll be the first to let you know when you can download it.
Badminton time!
Posted by Jeremy at 9:00pm on Friday September 9, 2011 :: 0 comments ::
Change
Friday July 15, 2011
So for the past three or so weeks, I've tried growing my facial hair out, just as an experiment to see if I can grow a decent beard - which everyone knows, is vital to a person's programming ability. It's been received well at work; best compliment was from Dale ("Woah JLai, you look like you're 25 years old"). My parents were a bit shocked to see me unshaven though. I don't know how long I'll keep it. It's getting a bit itchy and long, and I will need to trim it to stop it looking gross.
Work is going well. Still busy. Thanks to this article, I can say I'm on the team working on the "social smartphone game". Whoo.
Portal 2 is going well. I'm in this large underground cavern with water and large broken spherical objects, and a tower with stairs leading to the top. The game is clever and humourous, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
Final Fantasy X is also progressing. I've just finished Bevelle and I'm rolling around the Calm Lands now. Eventually I'll have to do the stupid Chocobo Racing...and those butterflies...and blitzball. Blerg.
Oh yeah. I'm on Google+.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:33pm on Friday July 15, 2011 :: 0 comments ::
July
Friday July 1, 2011
It's hard to believe it's July already. On one hand, we're getting to the coldest part of the year - this week has been absolutely freezing. On the other hand, the days are supposedly lengthening, but we won't actually notice a difference until much, much later. It's still depressing getting up in the dark and coming home in the dark.
Work has been incredibly busy. I'm finding myself having more responsibility, which is great and all, but it means I have to attend more meetings when sometimes all I want to do is just sit and program in silence, har har. Despite being busy though, I'm still enjoying where I am and what I'm doing.
I had Burger King for dinner for the first time in ages, and I'm reminded why I don't eat Burger King often.
It's gross.
Now that I have heaps of time on my hands, I've lined up a healthy set of games to keep me occupied: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2 (don't hate), Final Fantasy XII, Kingdom Hearts and my most recent purchase, Portal 2, thanks to a Steam Summer Sale. That'll keep me going for a few months!
Posted by Jeremy at 11:41am on Friday July 1, 2011 :: 0 comments ::
Day Fifteen: Working from Home
Saturday May 14, 2011
The offices are in the process of being renovated so we were told to work from home. We took the opportunity to return to the pancake house opposite the apartments since they're absolutely packed on the weekends. Still, even on a Friday morning, the place was almost to capacity - we were wondering if there was some kind of public holiday that we were missing. I ordered a Hawaiian waffle - a large waffle covered in pineapple, banana, shaved coconut and sugar, topped with a mountain of whipped cream. SUGAR RUSH~!
We did actually do work though (I did at least). We went in for a rather intense meeting - there was a lot to learn and take in and plenty to think about in terms of the architecture of the game.
I went to get a root beer float from A&W and took it home where I slipped in a bit of Jack Daniels. So good.
Big day tomorrow!
Posted by Jeremy at 1:10am on Saturday May 14, 2011 :: 0 comments ::
Day Fourteen
Friday May 13, 2011
I'm just waiting for my Mac to reinstall OSX, just so all Sidhe's company secrets are securely disposed of before we leave for New Zealand. From a tech standpoint, I think we're in a good position to head back and continue the project. The biggest beneficiaries of the stint here were definitely art and design, but it's been a great experience for all of us and certainly the exposure to a different company would be one of my most important.
I had a very calming dinner last night - prime steak - and then a few drinks at the bar (see the comment about Malibu). The steak wasn't the best I've ever had, but like the Chinese meal I had a few nights ago, it was a relief to have a solid chunk of meat.
So since I don't have a Mac anymore, I guess I'll have to go back to documentation...
Posted by Jeremy at 1:31am on Friday May 13, 2011 :: 0 comments ::
Day Four: First Day at Work
Monday May 2, 2011
We set off for the train station at the relatively sane hour of 9am to catch the southbound Caltrain at half past, or so. Work starts at 10am and it was the only Caltrain that would get us there in time, so we had to make sure we wouldn't miss it.
Most of the time I've spent at the office is setting up my new MacBook Pro - getting software updates, Xcode, SDKs, etc. We haven't really been briefed on the kind of technology they use- whether there's any SVN repository or policies or things like that. I can't even really tell who's a programmer or who's an artist by looking around the room, although really the only indication is who has Xcode open.
They get catered lunches! Today's meal was meatball in mushroom marinara (which I didn't eat), stuffed capscicums ("bell peppers" in America) and brocolli pasta. There was also fresh salad and fresh fruit to compliment the mains. In the kitchen, they've got a shelf full of snacks like nuts and dried fruit and jerky. I love food!
On Fridays, they have a company meeting at 5pm (probably something like Show and Tell) and then they bugger off to the bar for Happy Hour drinks - so they pretty much leave 90 minutes early on Friday evening.
There's about 100 people on the floor, and in this particular room we're in, it's open plan so you can see from one side of the room to the other. I guess the only problem about this place is... everyone uses a Mac.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:05pm on Monday May 2, 2011 :: 2 comments ::
San Francisco
Friday April 29, 2011
I'm writing this on the company's Netbook from San Francisco airport. It's been a lengthy 12 hours on a plane over the Pacific Ocean, but I am finally here, safe and sound, in the United States of America. YAY! More blog posts to follow in the coming days.
Also it's Friday again. I'm excited.
Posted by Jeremy at 6:37pm on Friday April 29, 2011 :: 4 comments ::
Wellington Anniversary
Monday January 24, 2011
Happy Wellington Anniversary.
My injuries have been healing well and the swelling and bruising in my right eye has greatly decreased. The ophthamologist said I didn't have to take so many eye drops as well, and that's awesome because eye drops cause me so much agony. I got my replacement glasses from OPSM too so I'm pretty much back on track with my life.
Work has been going well. Last Friday, we farewelled our iPhone producer and bid him the best for architecture school. We shared our "last" drinks with him at Southern Cross, which was unfortunately right across the road from that incident, so I was extra careful when heading home. Fortunately, I made it back without any problems, this time.
Saturday was pretty uneventful, save for some badminton in the morning. Jono (Dall) and Dave came over to watch a movie with Charlotte in the evening, but we played Dominion while waiting for the DVD to burn. Sunday was just pouring with rain so I tried to stay indoors as much as possible. We did go for Laser Strike for Jono's (Dixon) birthday then to Cha for dinner afterwards, and finally back to their flat for some board games including Sunni's newest acquisition, Carcassonne. Those Germans really know how to make board games, huh?
Today, Jono, Char, Dave, Beth and I bundled into my car and we roadtripped up to Lindale Park on the Kapiti Coast. There's a cafe there and some specialty shops for Kapiti-branded cheese, ice cream, wine and honey, as well as a farm with lots of adorable animals like bunnies, chickens, calves, goats, donkeys, alpacas, guinea pigs and several ducks and geese on site. We drove a bit further north and lazed about on Waikanae beach for a while before heading back to Wellington.
I'm tired.
Edit: I've just received a text from my brother-in-law and I am an uncle to a baby boy, weighing 8 pounds, 12 ounces! Mother (my sister) is exhausted but doing well. Squee!!
Posted by Jeremy at 8:01am on Monday January 24, 2011 :: 1 comment ::