Less wires

Yesterday I fixed a problem with my PC, a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo-P. I post here in case the information could be useful for someone else.

The Scaleo-P has an ethernet port, but not wireless support. I bought an USB wireless adapter, but it wasn’t working. When the warranty expired, I tested an internal PCI board, but I got the same problems: the signal was going up and down and there was no way to connect.

Checking the hardware I found that the power supply was a 350W, so I switched to a 500W one. The internal adapter now works without troubles.

Report from IVDC

I spent the past two days in Milan attending the second Italian Videogame Developers Conference (IVDC). I was interested because I am deciding if it’s better for me to stay in the academic/research area, go back to the usual software development (business software, Internet stuff and so on) or move to the game development.

It was an interesting conference and many of the speakers were industry big players.

The conference was open by Andrea Pessino, ex-Blizzard and co-founder of Ready At Dawn, who talked about the creation of Daxter: he explained the problems encountered developing for the (at the time)  new and mostly unknown PSP console, and how the development process was from both the technical and the production point of view (i.e. hardware and operating system problems, relationship with Sony and so on).

Another vip speaker was Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and president of Eidos, who took a fun and interesting talk about his career and the Lara Croft franchise.

Carsten van Husen, CEO of Gameforge, talked about the free-to-play business model and he was very kind to spend some minutes after his speech to provide useful insights, even to someone like me who was stuttering due to sleeplessness and lack of  confidence.

Some interesting projects presented at the conference:

• The Global Game Jam by IGDA, a 48 hours competition for game developers
• Critical City, a game to be played in real life with social and cultural achievements
• augmented reality projects by SpinVector
• Naumachia: Space Warfare by indie developer Aurea Section

I may be tired of using technology

Long time since my last post. Many things happened in the meantime.

• I worked on a book chapter based on the research I did for my thesis (I am waiting for the “accepted/rejected” answer)
• I updated SoloWiki Editor, more additions are planned for the near future
• I started hunting for a job, both in the academic and the “real” world
• I was on holiday in August: a lot of sea, good food and the best company (I may post a report about that)

For the next weeks I plan to:

• finish and polish a small puzzle game using Ogre 3D (I already implemented it using OpenGL long time ago)
• check academic opportunities all over Europe
• attend the first Italian Videogame Developers Conference

.. so, sorry for the rare updates but I prefer to post once in a while about interesting things rather than to post every day about the weather or news you can find elsewhere.