Antinormal

Ups, downs, and sideways

I haven't been able to post in a while due to being occupied with a lot of real life activities. Real life is overrated, by the way. I turned 22 in April. There were lots of cake to be had. And then realisations that I'm getting old. I managed to be selected as one of the finalists for the Mod Dash track of 2009 TopCoder Open (one of the top 8 couldn't make it), but I didn't get a visa so I'm not attending. Apparently, this time around, the interview official at the embassy only wanted to be a jerk, giving me the ridiculous reason, "this letter is not credible evidence that TopCoder will pay for your trip." Bloody joker. In any case, the qualifications were quite challenging and an interesting experience. Let's see how it goes next year.

I've not really been motivated to do a lot of things lately. I guess I'm getting a bit tired of all these web and business applications. I also haven't been able to work on the iPhone apps I planned to. I also haven't been able to improve the TopVideo application (which got a rather terrible review; video playback is planned for a future release!) which is something I keep procrastinating about. I just want to do my game development. In any case, I think I'm going to start concentrating on mobile platforms now. Currently focusing on Android and the iPhone. Look out for the next blockbuster game on both platforms. It might just end up with me being the developer.

Meanwhile, I was finally able to get my quad core system up and running. Here are the specs (I simply yanked the graphics card out of the former rig):

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz CPU
4GB DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM
PNY GeForce 9600GT graphics card with 512MB DDR3 memory
320GB Seagate hard disk drive
LG DVD-RW drive

It's pretty sweet, isn't it? I may pick up a 9800GT soon if I get the chance. I've only currently got Ubuntu 9.04 installed, but I intend to install the Windows 7 RC once I'm through downloading (I just started, it's going to take a long time). We need fast reasonably priced Internet in Nigeria. Unfortunately, sadly, depressingly, that's not going to happen soon enough.