Just re-did the site with DasBlog, very easy to configure.  They should have a paypal donation box.

While Setting up the BlogRoll I found some more people who live and work around here with some very intelligent things to say and some surprising hobbies.  Sure, we all know that Casey has too much time on his hands and so does The Agile Developer for that matter. If Matt Terski had more time to pontificate you would likely see his name next to the most recognizable mantles out of Microsoft.

Today I also found optionScalper's blog by way of Gerry Heidenreich's blog.  optionScalper appears to be very knowledgable about AI and has a great deal of good material posted on the subject (among others). 

When I see things like this, all these incredibly bright people in lowly Milwaukee, it gives me pause for several reasons.  In one respect, being a Dad and having a family precludes me from a lot of the research projects I'd like to take on.  I think I even told casey at a nerd dinner that I am insanely jealous of his "Stacks of books to read" pictures he posts.  On the other hand, I have made some personal choices that greatly impact my ability to make the cool nerdy things I'd like to make.  At any given time I have some kind of billable side project business app that takes the time I might have spent finishing my O/R mapper or writing MSDN articles.  Right now I have four side projects going at very good hourly rates and I still manage to take care of the Mrs. and read books to my daughter every day.  The next time I am jealous of someone's cool side project or MVP award, I will try to remember my newly built house, home theater room, sports car, and my daughter's college already paid for.  All things are trade offs, and I have not done too bad.

I was thinking of all the various things I'd like to dig into once my house is done and I can ease off on the side work. Suddenly I thought of something I have not thought of in a very long time, the reason I became a programmer.  I liked video games quite a bit as a child.  When I was 11 my father brought home an 8086 machine running MS-DOS 5.  One day I asked him how one makes video games.  Why, programming languages, my boy.  Digging through the nonsense that came with the machine I saw something that set the course of my life that day:

Microsoft GW-BASIC Programmer's Reference

Line 10: Print "I am going to make a game"

Line 20: GOTO 10

A month later after mastering the drawig API and subroutines (give me a break, I was 11) I had a game that involved a spaceship flying around shooting lighting bolts at nothing in particular.  I lost track of the hobby for a while until High School when I downloaded Turbo Pascal from a BBS (remember those) and made my own version of "Break Out".  In college, I created a simple Quake 3 mod using C++ 5 and started learning OpenGL and entertaining the idea of making my own rendering engine.  Being in a hurry to graduate left no time for the advanced calculus you need a handle on to do serious stuff in 3D rendering and so I began a career of business apps.

So the answer hit me today: I should really get back into making games.  I seldom have much time to play games anymore, but the complexity of building a game engine is calling to me again.  Games are complex: even making something as simple as Asteroids would be a life's work for many Stored-procedure-and-HTML programmers.  About a year and a half ago I downloaded the API for Managed Direct X 9 to use for some DirectShow stuff, just embedding some movies into Winforms and so on.  At the time it planted a little tickle in the back of my mind "You know, Damon, you could use this as a stepping stone to get back into graphics, then refresh your C++ skills once you spent some time in the managed API..."; I shut the voice up but I think I'll listen to it now. 

Damon Payne: Mobile Guy, Aspiring Software Architect,  Web Guy, Game Developer