The ColorWare Dream

As some of my friends know, I once had a Playstation 3.  A dark green one, actually, which I had bought from the amazing website ColorWare.  I have recently been browsing around that website again, and I can't help but be vastly entertained.  They have a really nice setup for clicking on colors and being able to see exactly how the selected color would look on whatever device you're messing around with.  It's a great enough time consumer, and you will find yourself looking into the effects of coloring devices that you have no desire in ever buying.

I was caught today by the PS3 Slim being a now-selectable option.  From checking several weeks ago, it had yet to make an appearance.  And I would argue that the options for the Slim are much better than the original.  The thing with the original was that the system had to be all one color.  With the Slim, you can make the top and bottom pieces a separate color, as well as select the color for the new PS3 logo.

I don't have my Playstation 3 anymore, having sold it several months back, but I want to go by ColorWare again when I do get around to getting another.  And I won't make the same mistake as last time.  Choosing a very dark color when it's always in a dark place?  It was difficult to tell that it was colored at all.  With this two-tone business, I think this will be the look of my future PS3:

That's from coloring the front with Sand and both the back and logo with Rootbeer.

What would my dream 360 look like?  Well, maybe I'll follow the same color scheme for all of the devices I get from ColorWare.  It's not exactly a unique route, but it would be a kind of signature.

Assuming this is not all an unfulfillable dream...  But, hey, dreams keep us going as a hope for the future.  There's certainly nothing wrong with having material dreams (especially since most all of my dreams are material).

Windows and Video Game Cops

I have been playing a whole lot of Saints Row 2 lately, which might come as a surprise to those who know how I feel about sandbox games.  I was never a fan of the sandbox games' silent motto of "do whatever the hell you want, there's this big world we created that is wholly accessible," but I'm trying my best to get over it.  My solace comes with forgetting about world exploration and striving for a goal -- doing solely missions in one sitting, or trying to find all of *insert findable object here*.  Beyond that, I rarely find myself going all Attention Deficit Disorder and trying to accomplish everything; that, my friends, is one way to make my head explode.  Too many options.

But this is quite a stretch beyond the scope of what I wish to say here.  Getting back on topic.

There is one diversion required of a sandbox game that I will always regard as the icing on the cake (all Portal jokes aside): the police chases.  Even in the games where the police is attempting to arrest you, their methods are still drastic enough to say "we want to arrest you, but just as a second option."  And really, this is one of the long-standing appeals of sandbox games.  You can be thrown into a new world and still feel comforted to know that bumping into some random authoritative figure is enough to have them spew a strangely windows-sounding error message: "The player has performed an illegal operation and needs to be shut down."  All I did was lightly nudge his shoulder, but now he wants to take it personal and contact my skull with his nightstick.

Does messing around with corrupt cops make me a masochist?  I have the urge to shout out "no" almost instantaneously, but then I remember how all of those encounters end: me in a hospital.

I laugh on the inside to think of how these events can start out so trivial and escalate so quickly.  I nudge cop, cop draws out nightstick, I use fists in self-defense, cop has friends, cops have guns, and suddenly there is a blur between now and the cops sending helicopters and tanks to eradicate one citizen who had been on his way to buy the coffee shop down the street.

I suppose it's positive they don't have the game mechanics act too realistic, and I actually have a choice for when to pick my fights.  Realistic driving mechanics of some sandbox games aside, I don't want to obey the traffic laws to keep the cops from freakin' out. Getting around quickly when you have to worry about red lights? That would never catch on.

BlackBerry, here we come! Oh, wait...

After my recent completion of Blind for the Facebook Platform, well... My thought process has been running into other ideas for what I should do to pass the time. One of which was to re-create "Medea and Creusa" from the ground up. Though I really want to succumb to such an action, it would be the equivalent of pursuing the writing gig -- I need something that has sustenance right now, and it just wouldn't be able to fill that need. Truth is, I'm running out of time. I have until November before I have to start making loan payments, and I don't have to draw any attention to how serious that scenario is.

Without further ado, my original idea: to program for the iPhone. But wait! I don't have a Mac, so I can't do that...

The BlackBerry? That's a great idea! Why hadn't I thought of it before? And yes, I loved the idea. Up until yesterday, when I was about to submit a completed app to the BlackBerry AppWorld (after extensive tests to write out what specific BlackBerry models it did work with, which ended up including every Curve model. Can easily be made to work with Storm and Pearl, just that the screen resolution and control maps have to be completely different, the Storm being a touch-screen and having an accelerometer and the Pearl... well, the controls I have just don't map the same) and discovered that you have to pay $200 to do so. But hey, they say the positive is that the $200 is good for 10 application submissions! Well, that's not very useful to me. Right now, looking at my online bank statements results in a rare South American moth flying from my monitor. One other thing I ponder is whether it will be just $200, since that's just to pass a verification of BlackBerry's RIM-deal. There's another verification that needs to be passed if you don't want your app to be free, but in order to reach that process you first have to pass the first one. And yes, they are OK with you using your own name to fill in the "Company" position if you're working on a Sole Proprietorship basis.

I'm sure I could get the answer to my last... well, I didn't post it in the form of a question, but there's a question in there. I just had a temporary loss of will to find out for the time being. Here's to wishing they could "put it on your tab" and have you pay them out of your profits. That way, if you flopped then there'd be no harm or fowl, eh? I guess they make it up to you by giving you 80% of the profits, but if you run the risk of not even breaking even...

Think positive, Trevor!

I just responded to an email today that was a questionnaire over my programming skills. It's for a job directly south about 4 or 5 blocks from where I'm living. They're looking for programmers of all experience levels, from Interns to Seniors. They mentioned a pay range, and I wouldn't have a problem getting $15/hr to be an Intern in a Contract-to-Hire position.

Right now, I've got a completed BlackBerry Curve App that will be collecting dust for a while and have my finger's crossed over 2 jobs. In the meantime, I can work on getting completed BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Pearl versions of that Curve App... There are about 3 million BlackBerry users in the US (if that online source is to be believed), and it would be a nice medium to get my name out. And another thing to add to the ol' resume.

And it's been more than a month since my last update? Whew! I should really think about doing this more often than once a month...