Well, it’s no secret that there isn’t much support for some serious gaming on Linux.  Actually, the whole open source community hasn’t really come together to build some decent games.

I find this pretty interesting, as the community has excelled in so many other areas.

One of the most impressive tools that the open source community provides, is called Blender.  It’s a 3D animation and rendering app.  I think it’s awesomely powerful, and quite easy to use, once you get used to their UIs.

Blender has paired up with  Crystal Space (a 3D engine) to start work on a seriously impressive 3D game.  The group that’s doing this is calling the project “Apricot“.  What’s awesome about it, is that they’re pre-selling DVDs of the game they’re going to make.  About the DVD:

Expect on the DVD the complete game, all content in Creative Commons Attribute, video blog material, and clear examples and/or tutorials for how to extend the game, add levels, change characters, and so on. Early purchasers of the Apricot game will get their names credited on the game intro and final credit roll.

I only read up about this last night, and that sucks ’cause the deadline to get your name on the credits is Feb 1st.  I highly recommend checking out the site and donating to the cause.

The main goal of this project is to ” improve the open source pipeline for professional game creation“.  I think that’s awesome.

So here’s the thing.

I really enjoy doing things with people. In fact, most things I do, I have people around. But there are also a lot of things I like to do by myself - and I’m okay with that. Especially work things. My job is very cerebral. I spend my days solving puzzles and building things. While it’s great to have other people to bounce ideas off of, sometimes I like to just focus on the complicated tasks at hand. I actually find it very fun. I’m not the only one, either - I think most of you in the software development world can relate.

What happens, though, is that people will look at a group of us developers while we’re working, and think we’re anti-social, and probably incapable of fun.

As a result of those very inaccurate observations, tech companies will often throw their developers into social events, with every action and event scripted to “perfection”. I think this is absolutely insane.

So, if you want a bunch of people to get together and have a good time, what do you do? Remember, from an executive perspective, what you’re looking for here is for the employees to get to know what each other do, so that the whole organization is more effective. Rarely is the executive perspective “fuck it, let’s go for a week in Mauii and have some fun.”

One solution is to get everyone together and stuff them somewhere and plan activities from 6am to midnight and force them all to do it, then ship them home the next day. Now, you certainly have some guaranteed level of success there, as people will be doing what you tell them to do. Especially if you force random people to give speeches. But, in my experience, people will fight back against this type of “planned fun”, and it will only be a moderate success. I mean, think about that solution with people outside a company - they’d all get up and leave. Well, everyone except those who planned it.

Here’s how I think it should work. If you want a big group of people to really get to know each other, their strengths, and what they do - then send them all somewhere fun. Preferably with a beach. Give them a solid week. Give them lots of food and drinks, and let them sign up for whatever they feel like, as long as they don’t do it on their own. In short, let them go into a place and interact normally together. I bet you anything, that by the end of that week, the whole group will be extremely comfortable with each other, and know exactly what everyone else does. Hell, put me somewhere like that for a week, and I’d even interact with a Cave Troll. Plus, it would be FUN.

I would be really interested in what would happen if someone shipped my office to Costa Rica for a week. I bet most of us would sit at a pool, eat and drink, and talk about work. We’d probably all have our laptops around, and would probably write out some prototypes and all sorts of fun stuff. You know why? Because most software developers are actually ridiculously productive when they’re happy, motivated and are having fun. And really, most of us actually enjoy building things. Companies should really take a step back and think about getting teams together in fun settings, if they want them to really be productive. Then they’ll come back to the office and want to build all the cool things they’ve designed.

For those of you who think in numbers, let me break it down like a fraction: Let’s use the Integer number system to rate “fun” - obviously relating positive numbers to a fun experience, and negatives being not so fun. Let Event A be some fun event. I want to prove that Forced Event A is a negative experience.

Fun things are a positive experience. The more fun, the better.

Event A is probably pretty fun - let’s say about +20. Why 20? Why not? 20 is a nice number - it’s got curves.

Forced anything isn’t a happy thing. It means your free will is being taken away and you have no choice. Let’s go so far as to call it a negative. And since it has 6 characters, let’s call it -6.

So, logically,

Forced Event A = -6 * 20 = -120.

Q.E.D.

In summary, give me free trips all over the world.

I just got this spam mail, with the subject “GGET YOUR UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA”:

Hi brett!!
A Genuine University Degree in nnotime![ … blah blah blah marketing speel blah blah blah …]

These are real, genuine degrees that include Bachelors, Masters, MBA and Doctortae Degrees. They are fully verifiable and certified transcripts are also available.

Just call the number beolw. You?ll thank me later?

We work with all counrys
Reach Now +1-325-204-0322

[ … more crazy text … ]

Apparently you don’t need English to get your degrees anymore. I just love the thought of someone who doesn’t have a degree, reading a message rife with typos and horrible grammar (not to mention some crazy random text at the bottom) and thinking to themselves that their ship has finally come in.

How are they certified?! And what happens if you actually call that number …

I guess I’ll thank them later?

Every year, I like to build a mix of songs that I listened to through the year that I liked. 2007 was a wicked year for music. Some excellent albums came out, and I discovered some really great artists that I didn’t know of before. As such, I think this is one of the better mixes I’ve made up. Some great music that touches from Basement Jaxx’s funky beats to Beef Terminal’s mellow vibes. Hope you enjoy!

• 01 - Basement Jaxx - Mere Pass
• 02 - Teddy Bears - Cobra Sound
• 03 - Noisettes - Don’t Give Up
• 04 - Muse - Supermassive Black Hole
• 05 - Silversun Pickups - Future Foe Scenarios
• 06 - Unkle - Chemistry
• 07 - 13 and God - Soft Atlas
• 08 - The Shins - Sleeping Lessons
• 09 - Tegan and Sara - Relief Next To Me
• 10 - Minus the Bear - Ice Monster
• 11 - Modest Mouse - Fire it Up
• 12 - Karsh Kale - Sprits in the Material World
• 13 - David Waxman - The Egg
• 14 - Bodyrockers - I like the way
• 15 - Bran Van 3000 - Feline Fantasy
• 16 - Grandadbob - Open Mouthed
• 17 - Beef Terminal - Everything is Alive
• 18 - Radiohead - Jigsaw Falling into Place
• 19 - Air - Left Bank
• 20 - Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
• 21 - Flight of the Conchords - Robots
• 22 - Iron and Wine - Boy With a Coin
• 23 - Feist - When I was a Young Girl
• 24 - Sarah Vaughan - Summertime (remixed)
• 25 - Kaiser Chiefs - Retirement