Posts Tagged ‘ubermind’

Fairly big life change

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

The thinly and not-so-thinly veiled allusions to big changes in my life can finally be put to rest. My last day working for Ubermind was on Friday; on Monday I began working for deCarta, a company that provides various mapping services (“location-based services” or “LBS”) for both embedded devices and the Internet.

If it seems like a bizarre manoeuvre in navigating the path of my career, well, it is, but it’s not without rhyme or reason. Location-based services is a hugely growing field in technology with the advent of so many location-aware (ie. GPS-equipped) network devices like the iPhone. I strongly believe it’s the next frontier of the digital age, and we’ve already seen the initial wave, but the quality of the existing software lags tremendously behind what the hardware is now capable of. DeCarta is giving me the opportunity to change that, and to hopefully be a really influential player in this emerging marketplace. Which rocks. I am leaving Ubermind with something of a heavy heart, but the timing is right and it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.

So I have begun work as a Senior Software Engineer there, where I will be putting my game development skills to work on redefining the user experience when interacting with maps on various handheld devices.

DeCarta is headquartered in San Jose, California, but rather than uprooting my life for a third time I will be telecommuting from my home in Redmond. This is a fairly big and slightly scary change for me; I’ve worked from home before but it’s never been my main workplace. I’ve had to give away the futon in my den, one of the pair of matching futons that has loyally and obediently followed me since I first moved out to New York City in 2004; I can assure you my heart was pierced at that sacrifice. I’ve replaced it with an L-desk from Fry’s that required a borrowed pick-up truck and (if we’d been adequately prepared) a third person to move it into my condo, but we had to make do with only two of us. It currently sits on the floor in its two unbelievably heavy boxes; I hope to assemble it this weekend and finish turning my den into a proper office that will solidify the line between my home space and my work space.

In the meantime, deCarta flew me down to San Jose yesterday for my first week. It is the first of what will no doubt be many such business trips, especially for the immediate future, as I am diving into a project that has a major milestone next month. I generally dislike flying and the stress it causes me, but the company’s travel policy is a good one and keeps me comfortable when I’m away, and it doesn’t hurt that the weather here is immeasurably nicer than Seattle this time of year. They also have a smaller office in Portland which I may occasionally visit; it’s about three hours away by train.

So: fairly big life change there. My second job switch in under a year. I’m hoping it’s my last one for a while.

I went out for drinks with the Ubermind folks on my last day. It was a good time, and I will miss them and the work I was doing there. (I won’t miss commuting to Fremont or competing for parking around that crowded block, though.)

Cannibal is closing this weekend. We’ve had some spectacular houses, and I won’t be at all surprised if we sell out on Halloween. It’s one of the few shows I’ve done where people are actually coming back to see it a second and third time… which isn’t to say it’s necessarily good, but at the very least it’s enjoyably bad. You should get tickets if you haven’t already; it closes this Sunday, and if you miss it, you miss it.

Dan.

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Priceless Picks

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

My first project with Übermind has been released: Priceless Picks for the iPhone. It’s already had a very positive response these past few days. The national TV ad campaign for it rolls out tomorrow, so it’ll be interesting to see where things go from there. Anyone with an iPhone can download it for free from the App Store.

I’ve only seen rough drafts of the TV commercials, but they look really cool. The advertising company also released this on YouTube:

It’s not as polished or exciting, but gives you an idea about the app and its functionality. (I do love how they brazenly attempt to make such calculated and clearly beautified figures play as though they are casual and off the street.)

The project is a nice showcase of my 3D/game engine for the iPhone, as well as some excellent technology I developed for 3D mapping, and some cool animation stuff I was able to do. There is yet more performance I could have squeezed out of it, but that will have to wait for another release, I suppose.

I’ve been taking things relatively easy at work as we wait for the dust to settle from this launch and find out where things will go over the next little while. I’ve returned to Theatresports in the meantime, and tried to catch up on my social life a bit. Went to a superhero party, saw a couple of movies, that kind of thing. Today Übermind is having its 10th anniversary celebration barbecue, and I’m going to try to squeeze both a friend’s show and another friend’s birthday party around that.

Other than that, there’s a lot of other complicated stuff going on in my life that I’m not really ready to discuss. The next few weeks should prove interesting, though.

Dan.

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Fraulein Teacup

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

First five days at Übermind went quite well. Had a working prototype going by the end of the week that has our client using words like “ecstatic” and “beautiful”, so I’m clearly off to a good start in the right direction. I’m a bit bemused by how far a little magic from the world of video games goes with these marketing types… not that I think the stuff I’m doing isn’t impressive, but the really impressive stuff I’m doing is all under the hood, in the 3D gaming engine I’ve been developing that makes what I’m doing efficient, scalable and portable to other projects. The stuff at the surface is cool, but in the gaming world could hardly be considered revolutionary.

My coworkers seem like a good a bunch. They obviously care about what they’re doing and they don’t balk at taking the necessary initiatives to get the work done, which is something I appreciate. There are a lot of interesting restaurants in the area I’ve been checking out with them during lunch, which is great… there’s an Indian buffet as well as a Thai place and more than one organic/hippie venue, although the most interesting one I found on my own: a seemingly authentic Jewish deli, which is practically unheard of in Seattle. Before this discovery, the only place I could go for matzah ball soup or a hot pastrami sandwich was the I Love NY deli right next to the Market Theatre (where I do improv with Unexpected), which has great food but I can almost never go to as they are only open until 5:30 or so, and I’m rarely at the theatre before 7. So, score.

Fiddler rehearsals have begun, although I’ve only been able to attend the meet-and-greet and one vocal rehearsal so far. It’s awkward for me, as I’m one of only two members of the cast who aren’t veterans of the rather tightly-knit group. Not that they haven’t been welcoming or anything (quite the contrary)… I’m just a bit weirded out by it. They also just did Fiddler about four years ago, which is awfully recent for a company to be restaging a show, so I think they share a common vision for it that I’m not necessarily a party to. The director already said he’d get me a DVD of it so I could pretty much learn my blocking from it… which is fine if it’s what he wants; I just hope this production has legs of its own and isn’t too trapped in the shadow of one that’s already been and gone.

Improvise Your Own Adventure also opens this week, so we have some madcap rehearsal going on for that. That one scares me a bit as we’ve been focusing mainly on fundamentals so far and haven’t had a chance to run the entire format yet. I’m able to have a lot more confidence in this group, though, having worked with most of them for over a year and knowing first-hand what they’re capable of, so I know it’s going to be good even if we wind up having to wrestle with the format for the first couple of performances.

I performed in Theatresports for the first time in a few weeks last night, and my team won by a narrow margin, which means we get to come back as returning champs next week. (We might have come up with a less abstract and arbitrary team name than Fraulein Teacup if we knew we’d be returning.) The team was randomly thrown together and consisted of myself, a woman named Rebecca who I love to play with for her commitment, spontaneity and joie de vivre, and a guy named Brandon who is one of the sharpest and most clever improvisers I know but rarely ever perform with as he does a lot outside the ensemble. We had a really fun audience which made things easy… I don’t know that any of our scenes achieved anything resembling greatness but they were respectable on the whole and we were suitably entertaining. I got an ovation from the audience when we played “Kick It” and I broke out rapping in the scene for four or five consecutive rhymes… it was just a shame that was the beginning of the scene; it would’ve been great to end it there. The other team was in extremely good form as well and I think it was a strong show overall, which is always nice.

I’m trying to relax as possible this morning, as between Fiddler and Improvise Your Own Adventure I’ve got about 6 or 7 hours of rehearsal this afternoon and evening. Maybe I’ll see if I can make it into that I Love NY deli before it closes and make it worth my while…

Dan.

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A mercifully major key

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

So I know I’ve been delinquent in keeping this thing up to date (sorry Richard), but not without good cause. A lot is changing, and I’m always hesitant to post when that’s the case. But I suppose it’s about time.

The big news is that I’m starting at a new company on Monday: Übermind. I am joining them as a resident expert on 3D and iPhone graphics, and will be putting my background in games development to use in the creation of games and game-like programs for the iPhone. It’s an exciting new opportunity for me to get (oddly) back closer to games development than I was at ArenaNet, and working on a fun platform that I can really use the benefit of my expertise on.

This means I’m starting my green card application over for the third time, something I’m none too keen on… but I have confidence that Übermind will make it a priority. As for ArenaNet, if it seems weird that I’m leaving at this low point in the economy, our parting ways actually began all the way back in December and was a long time coming. While I can’t discuss the details of it in a public forum you may be able to wrestle more of the story from me in private… to them I say only: “farewell”.

The other, less-big-but-still-significant piece of news is that I was cast as Motel in Fiddler on the Roof a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t even planned on auditioning for it… but I went to see my friend performing in a show up at the Historic Everett Theatre and got to talking with the director and a couple other people, and figured I’d throw my hat into the ring. Of course the role I really want to play is Tevye, but as was evidenced at the callback where there were nearly a dozen people in their forties or older up for that role and I was quite literally the only person there in my age/gender demographic, that isn’t going to be in the cards for a while yet. Which is fine, as Motel is the only other character in that show I have any real desire to play (Lazar Wolf might be okay too when I’m older, I suppose) as his song is short, sweet, in my range and in a mercifully major key.

I felt weird at the callbacks, as I was the only person called back for Motel, and had to stand there as five or six other lady actors took their turns posing next to me in consideration for the role of Tzeitel. I tried to make light of it, but all I could think was “these women must hate my guts right now” as they competed to be the “best fit” for someone whose sole demonstrable merit was being the only guy in the room who looked Jewish and was in his twenties. Our first meet-and-greet for it is tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. The show doesn’t go up until June, so at least there’s plenty of time for us to rehearse.

Meanwhile, at Unexpected, I’ve also been cast in their new show: “Improvise Your Own Adventure”, which as you may guess from the title is based on the old Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. The auditions for it were brief and it was another one of those “well, I wasn’t expecting to get cast in that” situations, but because it’s improvised at the theatre I’m already at anyway on most weekends it won’t really be impacting my schedule at all, so hey.

So lots of stuff going on these next few months. Übermind already needs me quite urgently for a specific product they’re developing, so I expect I will be burning the candle at both ends until it’s completed. But it’s been a while since I’ve had to do that, so that’s okay.

One rather interesting thing about working there is I will be a reverse-commuter, driving into Seattle every day and then back out to the east side in the evening. The extra distance doesn’t really bother me as long as I’m against the flow of traffic (which I certainly will be), although in talks with them there was already intimation about how long it would be before I moved to Seattle… I love my condo and my location, though, and am nowhere near ready to leave them behind, even for the thrill of city life.

What I do need, though, is a way to keep myself busy during the commutes, so I’m thinking of learning more about podcasts and trying to get the necessary setup to keep me regularly entertained by them while driving. If anyone has any experience in this area or recommendations of good podcasts to listen to, please let me know. I’m also in the market to purchase some kind of accessory for my iPhone that lets it play over my car’s FM radio while keeping it plugged into the cigarette lighter… again, recommendations are welcome.

Tonight I’m seeing Footloose at Tacoma Musical Playhouse, where I did Damn Yankees back in 2007. The show is nearly a who’s-who of people I know or have performed with in the Seattle area, so I’m excited to see it, even though driving to Tacoma is a pain.

So that’s pretty much it! This is my month of new beginnings: new job, new shows, new opportunities, and who knows what else… there’s still a good quarter of the month remaining!

Dan.

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