My wife and I took a 2 hour private lesson at Cranmore in NH, and my 6 yo son took a 1 1/2 hour lesson at the same time.

The instructors were great and we all had a blast. I think a little more practice is in order but we are on our way.

Cave Story is an action-adventure type game along the lines of a platform jumper - without the heavy run/jump action of the Mario games. The character follows a developing story line, gathering weapons and solving puzzles and whacking bad guys. All the usual stuff with a NES style look and feel. The story is pretty engaging though. The mystery of who the character is and what is happening to the characters in the world is compelling.

But, as a programmer, the really cool thing about Cave Story is that the artwork, music and the entire game were developed by one guy over about 7 years of learning to code. Super awesome.

There is a brief interview with Pixel (Daisuke Amaya) in the new issue of Play. Pixel is very humble and honest about the games development. You can also find some old interviews on sites like TIGsource.

A Wii version of Cave Story is being developed. The developers are staying very true to the original game and Pixel is involved in the new art work. There will even be an option to play the game with the original music and graphics.

Hopefully Pixel is getting his just reward for making such an fun and sweet game.

Cave Story fan site

Game Trailer from gametrailers.com

I think a Winter skills course with my wife would be a lot of fun. She and I like to hike and enjoy snowshoeing. I’ve gone to Crawford Notch in New Hampshire to photograph ice climbers and people taking mountaineering courses. I think it’s time that we do something like that ourselves. It’s a bit pricey (could be $300-$400+ per person) but I suppose it’s cheaper and more adventurous than most hotel stays.

I totally fumbled week 3 and didn’t do any, so I’m on week 2 again. Today is day 2 and I’m not sure my chest muscles will be able to take it..

1) No Home or End key on my MacBook Pro. I’m in the habit of pressing SHIFT+HOME/END to select all of the text on a line. On the Mac keyboard - which doesn’t have HOME/END keys - I must press CMD+SHIFT+LEFT/RIGHT to select the text. Same thing with just moving the caret to the end or beginning of the line. You need to press COMMAND+LEFT/RIGHT instead of just HOME/END.

2) Safari will not maximize to the screen width. This bugs the heck out of me. If I press the ‘+’, or maximize icon, safari only takes up the vertical space. It does not fill the width of the screen. 

3) Installing things often results in kruft left on my desktop. I know this isn’t a Mac issue really. Any software company can litter your desktop with installer detritus. I just get annoyed that some of the Mac installations “mount” a file to the desktop during installation and then don’t clean it up. 

4) Highlighting contents of a text field with the track pad, without clicking to finalize the selection, results in a delayed text entry. Ok, this one is kind of complicated and took me a while to figure out. Suppose I want to type something in, say, the URL field in Safari. If I click and drag to select the current URL, but then just start typing, and the mouse is no longer hovering in the text field, but outside slightly over the chrome, the text does not appear. If I then move the mouse over the field, suddenly all my typing appears. O_o

5) The title bar thingy sticks around if you close the window on an app. I don’t get this one, yet. If you close Finder by clicking it’s ‘x’ icon. The title bar still says “Finder”. OK, maybe Finder is a bad example - but it’s the same for Safari or Netbeans or anything else you want to choose. If I close the last window of an application, ditch the title bar thing. At least that’s what my expectation is. I don’t want to click Address Book -> Quit Address Book. I just did! I closed it. Go away!

“Finally got a Mac Book Pro by waiting until the price drop happened on the model being phased out. “

How I did it: I waited and waited and a friend, Mike Desjardins, told me about the price drops on Mac Book Pro laptops after the new model was announced. I just happened to have the cash on hand and did it. 

Lessons & tips: Save up and wait until the new models are announced and take advantage of the price drop. These things are expensive enough, there is no reason to finance it, too. 

Resources: I found my item on Amazon, offered by J&R Electronics in Brooklyn (I think). But Mac Mall had the same price on the same model.

It took me 3 months.

It made me Feel a little silly

This is well overdue. Makslane himself has admitted that Game Editor wasn’t lucrative enough and he had to go get a job somewhere else. Once employed, he didn’t have enough time to make game editor into the tool the user base was requiring. Many people, including myself, expressed their frustration with the lack of support and regular release updates.

Here is the Game Editor source release announcement.

Two years ago, I would have been excited to get in and work on the code myself. Times have changed and I don’t program in C++ much anymore. I’m not sure the current user base can support the product, either. There is a lot of difficulty in the forums with the C-like scripting required by game editor itself. Many of the best programmers from the community have disappeared. Perhaps this announcement will be attractive enough to bring them back.

We’ll just have to see how this plays out.

T-Mobile G1 with Google Android (Aw, it has an outie!)

However, we’ve already learned a few things about the new Google handset from TimoNews. Apparently it is only going to be sold within a few miles of the T-Mobile 3G network areas. So, it may be easier for you to get a Google phone in Aurora, CO than anywhere in upstate NY.

It wil have a 3.1 Megapixel camera, but no video capture - for some unknown reason.

Also, no stereo bluetooth. So, your Oakley ROKR Pro’s will be bumping along in mono.

It will have a nice 480 x 320 HVGA touch screen, GPS, up to 8G memory (expandable, somehow), and plays nicely with all the Google apps.

The T-Mobile G1 web portal is http://announcement.t-mobileg1.com. More product details will be up after the conference.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EOS 5D Mark II announced

Because I like Palm, kind of the way I like Lindsay Lohan even though everyone seems to pick on her, I took the time to actually mock up what I think the Palm Treo Pro should have looked like. I’ve included an image of the original for comparison.

Palm Treo Pro, as Palm envisioned it

Palm Treo Pro as I envision it