Posts in the Me category

Well, finally, I think I've got this up and running again. Of course, to do it, I had to move to arvixe.com for my hosting (away from GoDaddy, whose inability to properly host multiple sites on IIS means that it's time to say GoodByeDaddy).

Now that the blog's working again, I need to do a bit of work to get the style back to something I like... and then... hopefully it'll all be nice and tickety-boo.

(I can't believe I just said "tickety-boo").

Anyway, a few other changes:

• My lovely significant other - Darci Morales - has her own blog at justdarci.com now. Hopefully she'll post something on it, or I'll need to end up turning it into a resume/portfolio site or something. She is available for consulting work btw ;-)
• My homepage is finally moving from earthlink.net, where its been sitting since about 1998 when I moved to Seattle. (Before that it was on a variety of other sites, and it's one of the oldest continuously running pages on the web; the first version went up in 1993 IIRC). It'll save me money ($21.95 for 10Mb of hosting, plus dialup access per month. Woooooh! 1998 prices are awesome. I'm not sure I can imagine anything having an 10Mb!!! quota any more but now you know... And Arvixe has theoretically unlimited space). Anyway, it's now up on http://simoncooke.com
• Finally, the bastard who has been sitting on the simoncooke.com domain name let it go. :) ThankyouverymuchI'llhavethat.

More sites, more stuff to follow. But with a bit of luck I might actually be able to get everything up and running this time - without fighting web hosting issues.

I still have paid up until December 2012 for my GoDaddy hosting though. Wonder what I should put there.

Anyway... the Blog is Back! Hello again! It's been too long!

I’m transferring the Popcornfilms.com domain from Register.com to GoDaddy.com (it’s much cheaper), and my hosting from Earthlink to GoDaddy as well.

(Well, what can I say? I already have hosting – eg. for this blog – from GoDaddy, so I may as well use more of the 20Gb of space that I’m only using 5% of right now).

Hiccups:

• Register.com is going to take 5 days to transfer the domain. Grrr.
• Earthlink want me to speak to a Senior Customer Support Representative before they’ll let me cancel the hosting there. Double Grrrrrrr. Apparently they will call me back. They have not yet. (I sense a customer retention scam in the works… it almost makes me want to just cancel my whole account with them – although Darci’s mom uses the dial-up, so I can’t).

While I work on this, expect my email access at popcornfilms.com to be pretty damn spotty, and for the site to be periodically down. For the next week or so, please direct all emails to my gmail account, or my X-raykid email. Thanks!

So, in a fit of karmic retaliation, here’s what you should know (from my perspective) about Register.com and Earthlink’s web hosting services.

Register.com:

• They charge a lot more than other services for the same thing.
• More painful domain transfer process than anyone else (so far as I can see).
• Make sure you turn off SafeRenew as part of your transfer housekeeping. Otherwise, they don’t appear to send you the support email. (It could just have taken two hours… but I doubt it).
• The hard-to-find “Obtain Authorization Code” button is near the bottom of the page after you log in and click on the domain you want to transfer.

Earthlink.net

• There isn’t much bad I can say here… they’re really quite good on the whole. However…
• If you want to be able to send email and you’re on their hosting plan, you’re limited to either going via webmail, or using Earthlink as your ISP. No other solutions are available. Which is kind of retarded. You see, there’s these things called usernames and passwords which are supposed to help you do this kind of thing…

Unfortunately, due to the economy!!!!1! (scary, isn’t it?), I now have to start hedging my bets.

I really don’t want to, but it has come to this. We have a few irons in the fire right now, but they’re not done deals. So… in the eventuality that they don’t come to pass, I need a backup plan.

It’s time for me to unburrow, get my head back out of the sand, and start looking.

What I’m looking for:

• A leadership position, preferably director level, on the engineering side of things.
• A position where I get involved on the business side of things. I’ve been doing a fair bit of project planning, budgeting, networking, setting up pitch meetings, so on and so forth – in short, business development – for the past year or so, and I’d like to see that continue.

Skills:

• I’m up to speed and up to date on everything games, particularly console development, performance optimization and tool chains. You need your XBOX optimizing or your PS3 performant? I’m your man.
• I’m a dab hand at architecting new systems.
• Great communicator.
• Great manager.
• C#, C++. Hi! I’m your man. Don’t worry – I got this.

Not So Skills:

• I’m out of date on my SQL skills. I don’t know PHP, Ruby, etc. I could learn them, but I’d need a couple of months ramp-up.
• My Win32 skills are rusty, but they’d come back pretty quickly.
• Java, equally rusty. Last time I seriously hacked around in it was JDK 1.4.

Bonus Features:

• I used to be a freelance journalist, and can handle talking to editors, PR, press releases, blogging, etc. (In fact some of my blogs posts were picked up by Gamasutra back in the day when I was writing for the Surreal Software Game Design Blog… and I also have over 120 published articles in real, honest-to-goodness news-stand magazines).
• I’m a dab hand at fleshing out and strengthening story ideas and structure for video game pitches, and writing dialogue. (My short script UNSEALED won the Feb 2008 award for Best Short Screenplay on Francis Ford Coppola’s website).

Ideal Jobs:

• Director of Engineering of a video game company startup, or a studio within a larger video games publisher.
• Film producer
• Film director
• Member of a writing team on a television production.
• Involved in some capacity with a medical foundation, working on accelerating medical research via datamining (I figure I can get the usual 15-25 year cycle down to about 5 years, or at least highly focus the research on the best areas for the biggest bang for the buck. My specialist hobby is later-life diseases such as arthritis, osteoporosis, alzheimer’s, some forms of cancer – and you can find out more from my blog).
• Consultancy/contract work in the games, embedded or Win32 space.
• Port work – taking games from platform A, and porting them to platform B. (And I have a team I can spin up at a moment’s notice to do this, if that’s your fancy).
• Creative work in advertising, film or marketing. (I’ve done a fair bit of editing in my time).

I’m open to discussing all opportunities. I would love to hear from agents, or from recruiters hiring for specific high-level positions. Ideally, I would like to remain in the Seattle area, although I will consider anywhere on the West Coast.

So please, drop me a line if you’re interested. The clock is ticking, as I have potential opportunities on the table.

Thanks,

Simon

Fortunately, I didn’t get this one:

… although there were a couple of close calls…

(Oh, and Darci wants me to clarify – I didn’t REALLY drive through the night – Darci did most of the night driving on Saturday night, although we did it in shifts. She handles lack of sleep so much better than I do. Although of course, if she had a blog she could clarify it there :))

Back in March of 2008, I wrote this article:

http://www.accidentalscientist.com/2008/03/beards-and-skirts-and-sht-hitting-fan.html

Why did I write it? Well, believe it or not, it’s because I was pretty sure there was a huge storm coming. I noticed people around my office going for the bearded look – even people without beards. Heck, even I’d grown one again.

For the record, I’m so totally not immune to this stuff. I last had a full time beard around 2001. Just in time for the dot bomb. Around 2004, I shaved it off, and got my hair cut short and highlights put in.

Yep, I wanted to look risky, not safe.

I’m quite sensitive to these things, to be honest. I don’t know why, but I can feel the pulse of the economy whenever I’m tied to a moderately large company. Lots of little signals add up to one big gut feeling.

So cheers, beards. You are indeed the number one economic indicator. Now everyone – quick – shave them off and let’s party!