Saturday, September 19, 2009

To Err is human, to Arrrr is Pirate.

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Quotable
(0) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Click to enlarge ...

Yep, it’s Seattle again, my hometown. Maybe I’m in a rut. Last Monday, I had a few hours between two downtown appointments. So I made sure to bring my kit with me and used the time to wander around to see if I bumped into anything I might want to photograph.

The take was pretty good for a change. I got maybe half a dozen that I could have “developed.” But of these, this one seems to have played to the best reviews. I showed it to my wife and a number of other folks and this is the one they all seemed to “like” best.

Nobody’s quite sure why they like it, but I do too, and I hope you do.

Seattle’s a great city and I’m happy to show her off.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Out and About
(0) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Act I: My son grew up in our household never knowing a time without a computer in the house. He played games on our old Radio Shack TRS-80. He played console games like Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda. He played computer games on our Macs and PCs. In college, he studied computer animation and after graduation worked for game companies like Surreal (where he worked on The Suffering) and ArenaNet (where he worked on Guild Wars). After a detour through grad school to get his MBA, he now works for NCSoft, one of the worlds biggest game companies (which is about to launch their new game, Aion).

Click any image to enlarge it ...

Brian at the TRS-80

Intermission: This past weekend, he invited me to PAX09 – the largest game conference in the world – which is held here in Seattle. And he provided a “Speaker Badge” so I could get into the show. He and I met for coffee in advance and headed to the show before opening Sunday morning. “What happens if someone asks me what my speech was about,” I asked him. “Don’t worry, they won’t.”

Game art for Brian’s (er, NCSoft’s) newest game.

Act II: In my working life I have attended many big conferences and I always thought it would be fun to crash a conference. Pick up an unclaimed badge at the last minute. Talk my way into the show. Eat the rubber chicken and hit the hospitality suites. But to this day, I have never tried it on purpose. I accidentally crashed a conference once in Spain because I was confused about which conference room my conference was in. It took be about 3 hours to figure out I was in the wrong place … the conference being in Spanish and my command of the language primitive at best. But I digress. Here’s what happened at PAX09.

There’s more ... Click here: www.DigitalQuixote.com for big high res photos. And click below to hear the rest of the story.

Click here for the rest of the story ...

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Out and About
(9) Comments • Permalink

Monday, September 07, 2009

A wise man once said, “I chose the road less traveled...now where the heck am I?” Which is why I rarely lead on our motorcycle road trips. I tell others that during my 30-year career as a consultant, I led much of the time and now I’m content to follow. But the truth is, when I lead a pack of bikers, I make wrong turns. It’s more efficient when I follow.

My daughter, son-in-law and I just got back from a 9-day road trip on our motorcycles from Seattle to Banff, Alberta, Canada. We chose the roads less traveled, but didn’t get lost. We reprised Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso when it came to weather. We encountered plenty of interesting people including an 80-year-old town historian, a lesbian couple, a Luxembourger innkeeper, a helicopter pilot for a smoke jumper team, and lots of bikers ranging from daring to demure.

In the end it was a great trip; everything a road trip ought to be. Recommended if you’ve got a powerful bike between your legs and the time to enjoy it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself … Check out the rest of the story for photos, the meaning of “Les Canards Sauvages,” and, well, the rest of the story. And click here for lots more big beautiful hi-res photos.

Click here for the rest of the story ...

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Motorcycles
(1) Comments • Permalink