Well, the news is out (sorry, Dutch only).

In short, my honorable employer, Spellborn Works B.V. has filed for bankruptcy and as of yesterday I am officially looking for a job.

Personally, I loved the Spellborn project and my coworkers, and despite it being very hard work and long hours, I enjoyed every moment of it. If I could do it over, I'd do it all again.

The game will continue to run, with EU operations taken over by Acclaim, and development will continue on a Far East and perhaps even a re-visioned EU version.

I'd love to continue working in the computer games industry and I've got a few leads for a new job already lined up. And I've got enough savings to take a few weeks off to recover before starting something new, even.

My Internets are back to their happily working order, so I'd better finally post this huge stack of phonedoodles that's been building up for the last six months.

( Phone Doodles Week 24... )

As always, feedback is welcome.

bander.nl and bander.org are down. Should be back up again in a day or two.

(Depending on when they'll assign me a new permanent IP address and how quickly I'll manage to update the DNS records for those domains.)

A mere two posts ago, I wrote about how tablet PCs sound really neat but are overly expensive, and that sub-notebooks with touch-sensitive screens are The Wave Of The Future.

So what I end up doing a week later?

Exactly. I go around and buy myself a tablet PC, with a bit of much-appreciated help from hiryu. Meet Hamlet, a HP Pavilion tx2000. Not the most current model (that would be the tx2z series) and second-hand off of an auction site, but a model that got some okay reviews and that for certain used Wacom technology for its digitizer.

And I love it. Granted, it's my very first notebook, so I don't have much comparison material. And what happens on the screen does lag behind what you're doing with the pen, which takes some getting used to.

But it's just plain fun to sit and doodle while you've got zoom and unlimited undo and all other things software can do for you!

I got rid of the HP-branded Vista it got shipped with and installed Windows 7 Release Candidate instead, which Microsoft will let you try out for free for a year. So far, I've got remarkably few complaints about it.

Then I installed Wacom drivers (digitizer's a Graphire) and I'm currently trying out various art applications to see what works best with a tablet. I'm really liking Art Rage 2.5. Competent, dirt cheap, and if that's too much, they even have a free Starter Edition. When work calms down a little and I get the hang of it, you might start seeing tablet doodles instead of phone doodles.

It is with great regret that I wish to inform you that I've been strong-armed into that Twitter thing.

I might actually even update it. Some day.

Over the recent years, laptop computers have been getting bigger and more powerful, to the point manufacturers started calling them notebooks, because you're really not supposed to put them on your lap anymore.

Slightly more recently, manufacturers came out with a new generation of sub-notebooks, which are basically half the size of regular notebooks and quite affordable, one of the more popular ones being Asus's Eee PC range. Other names for similar concepts are netbook and Ultra-Mobile PC.

Especially the UMPCs attracted my attention. They are a continuation of the Tablet PC idea, a portable computer with a touch-sensitive screen. This is something which I'd love to have as some sort of electronic sketchbook, the equivalent of a Cintiq glued to a portable computer. Preferably at a lower price point, too.

Unfortunately, Tablet PCs suffered from a very high price, poor battery life, and poor performance; and UMPCs are a bit too small, more the size of a modern GPS unit. Rugged UMPCs found use as glorified barcode readers and units for couriers to record signatures on and the consumer market for handheld computers has been cornered by Apple's iPhone.

However, now they're starting to make, well, tablet sub-notebooks, such as the Asus Eee PC T91 and the Gigabyte M912V. Sub-notebook size and price, but tablet PC form factor and a touch screen. So far, all using passive digitizers (like found on smart phones) and nothing using Wacom tech yet, but even without pressure sensitivity these might make for a very nifty and relatively affordable electronic sketchbook. I'll see if I can try one out in a store sometime soon.

I work relatively close to the beach. Close enough for me to take a short walk along it during lunch if the weather is nice. And the other day, I ran into a sand castle that somebody made, round about here. I took some pictures with my cellphone. Like all cellphone cameras, it uses tupperware as a lens, so please forgive the quality.

[	Tags	|	spellborn	]
[	Mood	|	working	]

To my various and sundry friends in the Americas: Acclaim Games today announced their official release of The Chronicles of Spellborn.

(In case you missed it, that's the game I work on for a living.)

Also, a launch promotion will be available from April 23 to May 7 offering a free two-week premium subscription, giving you a chance to try out the game. You'll need a Window PC with a recent-ish graphics card, and you'll need to make an account with Acclaim and download the client.

If you could, give the game a whirl and let me know what you think. All feedback is greatly appreciated.

I've been asked by a good friend to pass around a survey around she made as part of a class assignment for a business plan, and is aimed at retailers and players of tabletop games (pen and paper RPGs, cardgames and boardgames). Given my circle of friends, I'm pretty sure most if not all reading this qualify. =) In her own words:

I have put together a simple 5 min. survey for people that have played tabletop RPGs. There's a little about Cons, Tabletop, LARPs, and SecondLife. I need 500 people, if I can get it. Even a couple small business owners that sell tabletop books.

It's on Yahoo!, so I apologize in advance if you have issues. And there are typos. I figured it was best to get something up there than have it be perfect. I'm working on them as I go.

Here's the link: http://www.gatewaysofdestiny.com/surveyinfo.html

Thanks in advance for helping out.

The ASUS EN9600GT/HTDI/1G is excellent value for money if you're in the market for a PCIe graphics card with 2x DVI output because your old card died after many years of loyal service.

If you appear to have video driver troubles, try running a video memory testing application like VMT to make sure it isn't actually a hardware issue. Preferably do this before you wipe and reinstall your entire operating system.

MyCom's inventory management sucks eggs.

( zaroi )

I could've sworn I scanned and uploaded these already. And it was a big stack, too. Ah, well.

( Phone Doodles Week 2... )

100 things I've done - items I have done are in bold
( The List... )

More season's greetings:

melskunk: Awaiting reference.

( o_kill )

( mietm and annakitfox )

( vlen )

( mmsword )

o_kill: Call you what?

( brianblackberry )

( rob_d )

( setfiretolife )

melskunk: Awaiting subject/character.

( shivonhusky )

( bander.net )

Any more takers?

Firstly, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my varied and sundry friends. You guys rock.

Secondly, The first five people to comment in this post and repost this meme in their own journal get to request a sketchphonedoodle of a subject/character of their choosing from me¹⁾.

¹⁾ Some restrictions apply. Prohibited where void. Nothing that'll get me fired while I'm doodling at work. The management reserves the right to refuse service. Batteries not included.

Last week I took a brief trip to the US of A. I had a long-standing invite to visit wolfbrotherjoe and brianblackberry, and I certainly needed to recover from crunch-time.

It just so happened that I was around at the time of Midwest FurFest, which is held pretty much up just the road from Joe and Brian's place, so of course we dropped by there, too. Which turned out to be great fun. Met up with old friends (Heya, Frisket!), ran into some unexpected acquaintances (Heya, Mbala!), and met bunches of new fun and interesting people (Heya, Gen and RoHo!), and some were kind enough to put up with me even after the con. As such, I'm showing up in tarinfirepelt's con report (I have an accshent?).

I also got to experience the entirely American phenomenon of Thanksgiving. To my fellow Europeans: Oh, it's all true. So very, very much food. After dinner, I couldn't move for at least an hour. Wouldn't have missed it for the world, though.

I went shopping, I helped decorate Christmas trees, I met friends's family and friends of friends, I even got some art done, I had a great time. Wish I could've stayed longer, but alas.

After hearing me mumble about how Sculpey modeling clay is hard to get cheaply in Europe, Joe got me some as an early Christmas gift. 3.6kg of it, actually. As you might expect, Customs officials become really interested in you when you try to take 8 lbs of synthetic polymer onto a plane. Other than a three hour delay due to weather on the way back, the actual travel was uneventful, though.

Now to catch up with everything and everyone, survive St. Nicolas's, and get some post-release patches for Spellborn out of the door.

The Chronicles of Spellborn will be released in Europe next week, Thursday, November 27th. Yayness! North America will be next year. Still stuff to do for that.

Edit: Darnit, North Europe release moved to Friday, December 5th.

Also, ( Phone Doodles Week 47... )