Nothing to do but alot on the agenda

So it's been a few days since I last posted, but I've been busy doing... ehh... stuff ;) Mostly I've been waking up, making breakfast and sitting infront of my computer doing "nothing" it would seem. Today for instance I did manage to wake up before noon, but still I had planned to code some more on one of my projects that are unfinished. Guess that I really have to put in an effort tomorrow. Today wasn't really a waste of time, I did call Ericsson AB to ask if my application for a thesis position had arrived and it had, although they where missing my grades from high school and as far as I have come now at the university so I put in an effort to mail it to them. Now I'm only waiting for the answer from them.

Oh I haven't got any response yet from my big brother about my crazy idea but some questions has come up. I really hope that my baby brother, I and my big brother can make the road trip from Skellefteå to Stockholm. However it seems that I and my baby brother are going to rent a pickup of some sort and then drive all the way up and load it up, go to my commencement (what a word never heard of it) and then on the first of June drive back. The plans are adjustable just need to hear the new plan ;)

Sweden won their hockey final against Russia today with 3 - 2 it was an awsome game. Talking about games ;) the latest game I've been playing is an old one called Project: Snowblind it's from 2005 and I must say that I can feel the "retro" feeling in the graphics in that game. It's cool and all but still I think I'm going to play it through just to have done it. From one thing to the other, since I haven't gotten any thesis work yet I've been watching alot more TV these last days and I really enjoy some of the comercials. I wish I could record them or find them on the internet somewhere.

I called my dad today and talked about my commencement and he told me that he and his do I dare to say wife or maybe his woman ;) are planning to fly up and then back again the same day as I have my commencement. My dad even told me that he could pay for the tickets for my big brothers wife and their kids to do the same over day trip by plane. Well that would be all for today.

Catch you later!

Friday the 13th

So it's friday the 13th, too bad that I'm not superstitious, then I would probably freak out, but since I'm not then I guess I'll be as calm as I use to be. Went to the bank today to deposit "some" spare change that I have been collecting, it all came down to about $160 and that is alot for a Swedish student :) so I guess I get to live till the end of this month too ;) I bought a pre-paid phone card for my cell today so now I have a new cellphone number. After I got the e-mail from my big brother that he is coming with his family on the 24th I got this crazy idea.

My school is out the 31st of May and then I am heading back home, but the crazy idea would be me and my 2 brothers help me to move back home. It would roughly take 2 days to fix everything and empty my room in the flat I'm living in. But before that my big brother and his family could come up here and be at the ceremony and enjoy the festivities afterwards and then the day after we could just take the loaded pickup and drive back to Stockholm (the drive takes about 9 hrs). I have no clue what my big brother thinks of this plan but I know that my baby brother is up for it. I guess I'll try to e-mail or call my big brother when I wake up tomorrow to hear if he thinks it would be okey.

Guess I should get some sleep now :)

Tax and stuff

Today I got rid of my tax duties over the internet, kinda easy when you do it with a secure connection and a special identification. Wasn't that hard, most of the stuff was pre-printed so I only had to change the income tax for my stock shares and then verify it and tada I'm done. Yesterday my friend and I did play through Halo 2 on my xbox, we played in co-op and started from the beginning. I thought that we where going to play for a couple of hours but instead we ended up playing through the whole game (hehe) it was fun though. That resulted in that we went to bed around 8 AM, I was fairly tired then but satisfied.

We are running out of things to play ;) since my crappy laptop can't play the new games that my stationary can. My laptop has a 1.7 GHz CPU with 512MB of RAM and some space on the hdd but thats about it, the graphics card is an old integrated one so the best game we can play flawlessy is StarCraft and that is fun for the first couple of hours. Well I guess we don't have to bother with that question for long since my friend is going home tomorrow. After he leaves on wednesday I wounder what I should do with the spare time that I have, maybe finish some of the projects I have been fooling around with.

Just got an e-mail from my big brother and I must say that it was a nice surprise, in it he says that he is coming to Sweden aswell with his wife and kids but he can only stay for a couple of weeks, but that doesn't really bother me since I'm going to be home slightly before they land in Sweden :) so I think I'll be the one picking them up from the airport. Also tomorrow is my baby brothers birthday, I think I need to write it down on a post-it or something somewhere so that I will see it and call him to congratulate :)

Well that's it for now, I'm off to bed and to a new day g'night!

"Vacation"

So I'm back now for a while, been kinda busy lately doing "nothing" hehe. I was supposed to update my blog during this last week but something always comes in the way ;) a well here I am anyway. I've almost finished DiceInvaders, just need to make the enemy move and shoot. But the development of that "game" has been put on a hold since I figured that I was in a need of a vacation of some sort. Surprisingly my vacation was that one of my oldest and dearest friens came to visit me :) and he is staying for a week (yaye!). He flew up here this wednesday so he has been here for 4 days now. We have been playing on my xbox, and I've borrowed a xbox360 from one of my classmates (his is firmware flashed so we can play backuped games), we have also been playing some StarCraft.

I'm still looking for a bachelor thesis position and now at any company that are looking for some bachelor thesis working pupils. Nothing really to report on that front. I've been BBQ:ing for some time now :) and I just love BBQ food.

It's now daylight savings and the sun is up alot more often now (duh!), I have some pictures of a nice sunset here in the north. The temperature outside is around +5 to +15 when the sun is out and down to -5 in the night so it's not that bad. I'm looking forward to this summer because my big brothers wife and their 2 kids are coming to Sweden :) my big brother is coming in the late midsummer or so.


I'm down with this new Coca-Cola Zero thing, I think you know what I mean in this next picture ;)

A well now it's time to fix my dinner for me and my friend and then we are going to watch Epic Movie. L8ters!

Rejection and resurrection

So it was a while since I updated this now, or more likely last week. Alot of things has happened since I bloged last time (apparently, conclusion of todays topic). What has happend is that I talked to the representatives at DICE and Avalanche (which where the only companies to show up), from the representative at DICE I got the tip to redo the DiceInvaders that was sent to me so I can show my programming skills to them. I did start working on that small program a while ago but I came half way and then decided to continue to work with the project we where doing in school since we really wanted to get it done (only got a prototype but still). The tip was that I should take a week to design and implement the game and then send it to the representative that came to our presentation, (got his e-mail duh!).

I have started the design today and I am going to design it more thoroughgoingly tomorrow and on wednesday, to finally implement my design on thursday and friday. I hope I will get it done in this week so I can send it to him and then he will put in a good word (or two) for me when he gives it to the human resource manager. Why the kindness is because this representative did actually study the at the same university and the same education as I am studying right now, so he knows what courses I have taken and what I am good for (if my code example is good enough).

And now for that less fun part of the topic, rejection, yes I got rejected at my bachelors thesis spot on Starbreeze, frankly they couldn't offer me any spot neither in the fall nor now in the spring (which kinda sucks) but he did tell me why the process did drag out on the time. It was because he thought I was an interesting candidate :D and I shouldn't be afraid to search for a regular programming position at Starbreeze later on. But still I got rejected and that felt kinda bad, so I was down for a couple of hours and to kill time I did what I always do for self therapy I play destructive games such as Battlefield 2. It went just fine until a classmate started downloading stuff from my computer. Then my ping went skyhigh and I was kicked from the server. A well I thought that I got rid of my aggressions and could start to design the DiceInvaders game. And so I did, I made some sort of a mockup with pen and paper. Just wrote down the basics of what I need to implement the gameplay. I will go into more detail tomorrow, now I need to sleep cause my eyelids feels like they are dragging on the floor.

I'll drop a line soon when more and more starts to come to pieces. Todeloo!

8:30 AM Miracle

Wow that was a sudden wake up call. For the first time in my life I am actually glad to see another guy in his undies. I was up late last night fixing some assignments we have gotten in school and went to bet fairly late but I woke up at 7:45 AM the first time but then instead of snoozing I shut the alarm off and went right back to sleep (and how wonderful it was) until two of my classmates starts to pound the doorbell, I woke up like if I would have had a bad dream. I stared at my alarmclock and saw it was showing 8:30 AM, I think "Shoot I should be going to school NOW!" so I throw off my bed cover and run to the bathroom to get ready, on my whay to the bathroom I see my roommate answering the door in his underware. Then I knew he wasn't ready to go to school just yet, it bought me some time to get ready.

Today is the day before judgement day so to speak. Tomorrow we all have our presentations for some of the big game companies here in Sweden. There are people coming from DICE, Avalanche, Agency 9, Coldwood and maybe Starbreeze and/or Grin. So I'm all excited about that aswell as a little "scared" for how the day is going to be. We did all the preparations for the big day tomorrow, printed hand-outs, put up our computers for the smaller presentations when we mingle with the representatives and setup the network for those computers that needs internet access and so on. I think it's time for bed now since the time is 12:32 AM and I really want some sleep before I have to be in school. The big showoff starts at 10:00 AM sharp and we should be there 1 hour before so that leaves me with almost 8hrs of sleep.

I'll write a line or two tomorrow after the event ;)

Expansionpacks are almost 2 short

So today for a couple of hours I played the expansion pack to F.E.A.R, called Extraction Point. It really extended the story but still I got the feeling of the story being based on the movie Resident Evil, atleast there are alot of similarities between the two stories. Anyhow the expansion was a bit short as most expansions are. But still, it wen't surprisingly fast to get through it.

Today I woke up at noon, made some sandwiches for breakfast and then went to school to fix some laboration assignments that I still have to do for this Game Physics class. It didn't go so well for my part though :( but I will conquer the "world ;)" problem. Once that has been done we just need to send the assignments in to the teacher. I'm going back again on Sunday (today), *sigh* I really don't like being in school on a weekend but hey if you aren't finished thats what you have to do. I'm more and more looking forward to getting to write my master thesis at a game company but still waiting for them to answer.

I also wan't to shout out a thanks to Kirby who commented my blog yesterday. It was very interesting that there actually is someone more then my big brother, baby brother and my cousin that is reading my blog :) Please leave a comment when you stop by, you don't have to write anything fancy just a message that you popped in :)

A well time to go to bed now, airwolf just finished on Channel5 and the tv-guide for the channel started rolling so I think it is best for me to get some sleep. Good night and I'll get back tomorrow :)

First Encounter Assault Recon = F.E.A.R

Well it wasn't that much of a scary game, took a while for me to actually sit down and play it through and now in like 1-2 days I'm done. Kinda feels a bit short maybe, but then again I don't get scared that easy atleast not when it comes to games or movies. I felt that the game was more or less based on the movie Resident Evil, with the Vault and stuff only that instead of zombies you fight some flying-zombie-thingie that spawns out of nowhere.

Latest news from Starbreeze is that they still haven't evaluated me yet, but I feel like I still have a chance. I told them that I have relatives in Uppsala, whom I could stay with if the case is that I get the position. If I don't get it I'm gonna try to search for a job or master thesis spot at Valve in Seattle. But I need to write a cover letter first. I maybe could get some help from my big brother in the states to look through my CV+Cover letter.

And now the time is 3:18 AM Saturday morning, maybe time for me to hit the sack so I can do something fun of tomorrow :)

Todeloo!

Crunch time = no sleep ?

Well it's crunch time (again O_o) and I'm in school writing a paper on physic simulation(s) on GPU with 2 of my classmates. Soon the cleaning ladies will come and say hello ;) While I'm here I tend to spend some of the time on youtube (can't help it) when you get bored with doing the same thing every hour you want a break. What could be better then watch some small movie clip on youtube to pass the time :)

Below is a clip that brings back alot of memories

And also this clip to pass the time it's more of a music video, it is very neatly done :)

Well I'm getting kinda tired and want to sleep, I think I'm going to put in a "last" effort and start to make the power point presentation and then find a couch to take a nap for a few hours so I can get by this day too.

Lunchbreak + projectpresentation

So here I am at the lunch cafeteria with my laptop and savour a really good meal while I'm blogging :) As the topic says for today I have done the presentation of my special project in school, it went.. uhm... well. My colleague isn't that keen on doing a presentation in english, which I on the other hand is. Why the discussion about doing the presentation in english is that 4 projects get to do it for the representatives from the visiting game companies that will come here on the 20:th of March. I'm all excited about that, even if we don't get to show our presentation we will be outside the presentation hall and demonstrating our redundant game servers.

From one thing to the other I have been multitasking while playing my games at my spare time now. On my XBOX I run Madden NFL 07 and let the computer do most of the gameplay unless I want't to take over and play for a bit (or when my Superstar is on the field). On my computer I continued to play Splinter Cell: Double Agent, although I have stumbled upon more and more bugs in that game. Bugs in the way of I'm doing some action and then I'm not satisfied with it and want to retry it, then I go to the menu and choose load last saved game, when it then loads the game does some action it is not supposed to do and has to terminate. Very annoying! And I have patched it to the latest version (1.02).

This weekend was a very "wet" one so to speak, alot of drinking came in the picture as of my class had a glhf-dinner (good luck have fun-dinner) to celebrate our "last" time togheter before we go on with our master thesis at different game companies. For myself I haven't gotten any master thesis position at Starbreeze Studios... yet. I'm not giving up, last night I sent them another e-mail on how urgent it's getting for me to get a position, still waiting for them to answer. I'm hoping to get an interview with them soon, since next period starts the 23:rd of March.

A well thats all for now, time is almost up and I need to get back to listen to the rest of the presentations.

Update: I have now finished Splinter Cell Double Agent and man what a truly great game. I almost cried when I knew I've finished it. No I'm off to bed it's 2 AM now and I should probably get some sleep before I go to school again :) Cheers!