Cheers

Richard

We’ve been redesigning our corporate site on the side over the past 4 months and finally went live today. In addition to completely redesigning our corporate logo and business identity, our new site now proudly promotes our 4 core values (Positive Play, Connecting, Craftsmanship and Impact).

In addition to working on our own games this year we will also be starting to seek out new partnerships with organizations who fall inline with our core values and who are interested in harnessing the power of games and interactive experiences on the web and mobile devices to advance their cause. We have over a year of iPhone development under our belt now and will be moving into iPad development over the next month or so, which I’m really looking forward to.

We have moved. Its been a while since I posted, but we found some great office space here in North Vancouver at Griffin Centre, just behind the new Price Mart near Capilano Mall. We’ve got a really nice office that just right for our current size and very flexible in the leasing terms. As a small company with very explosive growth potential it’s really easy to go from 2 to more than double or triple your size in a very short period of time. What you don’t want is to get locked into a space for 2 or 3 years that is either too small or too large for you to handle. Griffin allows for shorter and longer term leases, which is really hard to find.

Griffin Centre has given us the professional setup we were looking for at a price we can afford and includes high speed internet, business phone and access to very swanky boardrooms. We’ve been here for almost 4 months now and it’s been fantastic.

If you are an entrepreneur who looking to make the leap of of the basement or your apartment and into some really professional and flexible office space, I’d recommend you have a look.

We have been matched with veteran expert Mike Rowlands, President of Octopus Strategies Inc who will act as our mentor over the next 4 months and help us work towards achieving our specific business goals.

Mike is an accomplished business strategist, entrepreneur, and leader engaged by organizations around the world to craft distinctive strategies and to deliver award-winning marketing.

Mike also speaks frequently to business organizations, and has lectured for MBA candidates at UBC’s Sauder School of Business. He has also been recognized by the BC Technology Industries Association as a ‘Tech Expert;’ by the Vancouver Board of Trade as a nominee for ‘Mentor of the Year;’ and by his peers as a nominee for Business In Vancouver magazine’s ‘40 Under 40.’ Mike is a Past-President of the BC Epilepsy Society, and is currently a Director of the BC Lower Mainland Chapter of the Canadian Association of Management Consultants, and a Member of the Royal Roads Foundation’s Vancouver Fundraising Committee.

We are really looking forward to sitting down with Mike and discussing how we take Ethical Entertainment to the next level!

Significant Performance Boosts
* Up to 3x faster than 1.0.3.
* Performance critical paths rewritten to take advantage of VFP coprocessor, animation skinning is up to 4x faster.
* Automatic batching of meshes to reduce draw calls.

Built-in Anti-piracy Protection
* Identify if Apple DRM was removed from the application bundle and modify application behaviour accordingly.

More Power
* Full support for native Objective C and C++ code opens full access to the iPhone 3.x APIs and custom plugins.
* Access to video-playback, on screen keyboard support, and GPS/location services.
* Support for 8-texture shading on iPhone 3GS with automatic fallbacks for iPhone 3G.

Better Docs
* Detailed instructions on iphone-specific optimizations.
* New 150 page tutorial to get you up to speed with iPhone game making.

We are particularly excited about the Objective-c and C++ bridge as we’ll now be able to tap the entire raw SDK and team it up with the full power of Unity. The only limit is our own imagination now!

For all the details check out http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/iphone-1.5

Check it out one twitter at http://twitter.com/higgyb.

Well after dropping my new baby about 3 times on the concrete and getting getting off easy with only a little scratch I quickly re-evaluated my priorities. I thought it might really be a good idea to protect my $700+ investment before it’s too late.

I also have an iPod Touch at home for the kids, and if you’re a parent, you’ll want to protect this too. Surprisingly it’s kind of hard to find cool cases for kids, so maybe some budding designers out there will remedy this situation. I kinda thought this Julius case was not bad though.

For my iPhone I ended up going with a Roots leather case with a belt clip, which has worked out pretty good so for and cost about $20. Even if all you do is get one of the jelly cases, this is better than nothing and offers some level of protection from being dropped.

On the extreme end of things I found these online, and they might be worth a look.

OtterBox for iPod Touch

and

OtterBox for iPhone

So if you don’t have a case yet, get one asap, before it’s too late.

I also admit that in the past, when things were really busy, which was pretty much all the time, working out got demoted to a pretty low priority. The problem with this thinking is that when you’re running a business, especially a high tech start-up like ours, there won’t ever be any time unless you make it.

So earlier this summer my business partner Mike and I decided that we’d start getting up around 6:30 and meet before work to workout. The first week was a bit of a challenge, but I’ve got two young kids at home, so I was a little easier for me to wake up early than it was for Mike.

I actually really enjoy getting up earlier now because in addition to ensuring I get some exercise in, I also find I have more time to prepare for my day and get organized before business hours start. It’s also strangely quite at this hour, which doesn’t happen to often when you have 2 kids in your house.

We usually workout for about 45 minutes to an hour and we try and switch things up between the weight room and cardio activities like walking and biking.

Being a programmer, I’m working on some pretty “rocket science” type stuff a lot of the time and I definitely feel the extra shot of energy and brainpower a morning workout gives me. There is actually a lot of research showing exercise boots brain power.

Mike is a avid snowboarder, so he’s working on getting in shape for the upcoming ski season. I’m interested a bit more in strength training right now since I get quite a bit of cardio hiking and walking around the North Shore. I also avoid driving whenever possible and try and do things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator whenever possible.

If you’re in the same boat that we were, try waking up a little earlier and starting off your day with your workout, I think you’ll find it makes a huge difference!