After several years of sporadic work, my Bourre game has been released to open source hosted at Google Code. As it stands it is an engine only at this point. There is no user interface at this point and only a driver program to run it. I have some short term goals listed on the summary page. If anyone is interested in participating from UI standpoint, please step forward. Pie in the sky longer term goals including porting it from Java to Objective C/Cocoa and making an iPhone app. Considering it took me 2-3 years to get this far with the java version, I suspect we will be on iPhone revision 12 by the time I get around to doing anything like this.

For more information on the game, please see the wikipedia page.

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but here is what Typealyzer thinks my blog type is. In my opinion, this doesn't line up at all with my personality but maybe these posts represent an alter ego......

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever. The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Like many of you, I have always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument.  For me, it has always been the guitar that piqued my interest.  I have no desire to play in front of millions of fans or tour the country, my interest is much more humble.  I want to learn how to read music, understand the theory behind the music, and gain the ability to play that music.  Now fast forward to reality earlier this year. 

My wonderful wife came home from work one evening with a Godin Freeway Classic Electric Guitar and a Roland 20X Cube that she purchased around the corner from Fazio's Frets and Friends.  Needless to say, I was very, very excited.  The unfortunate thing was that I couldn't do anything with it.  I knew nothing about how to hold the instrument, tune it, or play it.  After reading many reviews around the net, I decided to purchase a 20 DVD set called Learn and Master Guitar by Steve Krenz.  The quality of this set is amazing.  The instructional dvds makes you feel like you are one on one with Steve for an in person lesson.  The part I liked most about this set is that it wasn't put together with the goal of allowing you to play your favorite song.  It is a comprehensive and balanced overview of music theory and hands on guitar instruction.  I chose to go this route instead of face to face lessons due to scheduling.  While I'm sure there are situations when I would save time by having someone provide immediate feedback, overall I feel like I'll progress more quickly being able to practice at my own pace and at times that are convenient to my crazy schedule.  Only time will tell if this is accurate or not. 

Now for an area where lots of opportunity exists.  After cramming over the next several weeks, I made it through lesson 1, 2, and into 3.  My fingers were sore, my head was filled with all the new information, but I hit a spot where I couldn't easily get through and I quit.  I didn't make a decision to quit, it just kind of happened by putting practicing off and doing other things.  I've had visions of picking it back up, but have failed to do so in the last 4 months or so.  I've obviously hit The Dip that I have posted about previously.  Starting this winter, I will be picking back up and planning out a more reasonable schedule to make it through the dip.  I'll give myself two weeks for each of the first two chapters and then reevaluate each chapter independently after that.  Basically i'll take a SCRUM like approach where I iterate through each chapter and chart the details at the end as a retrospective.  I'll keep doing what is working and correct course along the way for things that are not.  This approach should help with motivation and keeping a journal of my progress.  

Just finished watching the last lecture by Randy Pausch titled Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.  Randy was an inspiring lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University.  In addition to teaching Computer Science curriculum, he is also widely known for leading the team of researchers that created Alice, a revolutionary way to teach computer programming.  This lecture is not about computer science, virtual reality, or any other high tech topics.  It's about things that matter to every one of us.  If you have 70 minutes, it's well worth watching.  Given the impact it had on me in only 70 minutes, I can only imagine the impact he has had on his students.  

So this blog has been basically dead for a couple years.  I was average at adding new content when I wore the hat of a software developer.  I used it as a place to collect my thoughts and archive interesting tidbits about what I was doing for future reference(by me or others via google).  If you plug in "Spring Hibernate" without quotes into google you will still find my write ups ranking in a page or two.  Since then, I've moved into managing the folks that do the things I used to write about.  Part of me thinks this is a standard path for many but I see other "coders", as managers like to call them, that I have great respect for still plugging away in their IDE of choice.  From time to time, I sit back and wonder if the path I've taken is the right one.  Their are many perks to each path but how do you know which one is right?  Unfortunately I don't think this kind of decision is black and white.  I'm pretty sure that I fall into a pseudo gray gradient somewhere between light and darkness.  Wow, that's pretty deep for me.  I'll assume that came from being on PTO, sitting in front the 80's music channel(And we danced by The Hooters is currently playing), and just having downed my 5th cup a joe since 8am.  Enough with this unruly rambling, I'll move on to the topic I wanted to write about today.  I may be gone for another two years after this post :)

What added value do you all get from the cornucopia of social networking avenues?  A week or two ago I joined facebook and twitter.  I don't have many buds yet, but I find both very interesting.  The problem is that I don't know why.  I've been a linkedin person for several years collecting acquaintances. I've added every tom, dick, and harry that I've worked with over the years.  I've also added friends of friends, user group people that I recognize, and many others that I probably wouldn't even talk to if I saw them at the mall.  This collection seems to have as much intrinsic value as the rounded edged baseball cards from years past.  Maybe they solve a problem I have stumbled on to yet, maybe they are just a way for people to feel better about themselves since they have 499 friends.  I don't really know but it's quite interesting to me. Hit me with your best shot(it just started playing) in the comments of this entry. I'd love to hear why I'm wrong. 

Here is my one(or 2 or 3) liner on each app.

LinkedIn - A recruiters dream.  Maybe it's useful if you are looking for a job.
Facebook - Myspace for adults.  A more professional place to promote your electronic personality. 
Twitter - Addicting way to keep tabs on what interesting people around you are up to.  Not sure I'll continue updating but I'm loving the iPhone app. 

Gotta run, Air Supply just came on and the channel must be turned NOW!!!!!

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