About this blog...

Accidental Scientist is Simon Cooke’s blog of film-making, script writing, video games, medicine, health, programming, project management, humor and life. By which I mean it’s a blog which contains everything that interests me that I get the bug to write about.

Unfortunately for me, that also means that it’s a complete mish-mash, and it’ll never hit the top blog lists. Even though there’s a little advertising here and there, I’m not going to get rich from it. It’s just too random for people. (Well, that and I don’t post nearly often enough to make it a must-read). Blogs that rake in cash tend to be laser-focused on a specific topic. Well, if I was doing it for that reason, I’d still be writing for magazines.

So what will you find here?

  • Things I find interesting across the whole pantheon of games development. (I’m a games developer; making games used to be my day job – these days, I help games developers make better games at Google).

  • Things I find interesting in the rest of the programming world (hey, I’m a programmer).

  • Project-management/process management for software development. Hey, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and managed teams for about a decade. (I’m taking a break right now). I’ve found things that work, and things that don’t work, and occasionally I’ll share.

  • Film-making! My first love is film – the making of it, writing it, editing it, producing it, directing it. I’ve not had the chance to spend much time doing any of those things though. I aim to change that.

  • Science, Medicine, Nutrition, and assorted other intellectual puzzles. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about this stuff, and do a fair bit of my own research into published papers. It’s a hobby, but one I take seriously.

  • Humor. It’s funny. Laugh.

  • Me. Hey, this is my blog. If you want to read posts about you, write your own.

Over my 44-ish years on this planet, I’ve done a whole bunch of things. I was a freelance journalist for Your Sinclair magazine – and then four more years spent writing for a bunch of other magazines. I’ve spoken at GDC twice now (mine was the highest-rated talk in the Producer Boot Camp at GDC 2012 in March ). I’ve done graphic design. I’ve produced a short film – and edited it – and did some rotoscoping work on it. I’ve held boom mikes for a variety of friends’ film productions. I’ve written screenplays (one full, one weirdly long short… and with many more in the hopper queueing up while I find time now I have a two-year old daughter, and an incredibly time and brain-space consuming job). I’ve run a games company, pitched to big publishers, and made a lot of friends. And somewhere in there, I got a Physics Degree from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Tech. Throw that all into the mix, and hopefully you’ll find at least something of interest in this blog. And that’s all I can ask for. I don’t really write for me; I write for an audience, because that was my first ever paying gig, and I still kind of get off on it. (How’s that for an honest statement?)

I’ve kind of given up on talking about politics these days though. It’s too much hassle - one wrong step and you’ve hit a landmine. Life is officially too short.

Anyway – please enjoy. And come back. And tell your friends!

Si 💖