Crazy-fast Hi-res Inkjet Printing

A company called Silverbrook Research has come up with a technology for doing full-page width inkjet printing (i.e. they don't use a traversing head, but a matrix of nozzles, presumably with some kind of switching mechanism) that can print 6-12 inches per second. That's one A4-sized sheet per second. They have videos of their prototype printers working. The A4 and label printer videos are particularly impressive.

This could have seriously interesting ramifications for small-scale commercial printing. This solution doesn't look to be nearly as fast or have the quality level of offset printing . . . but it looks competitive. And it doesn't require the setup that offset does. For a small publisher, this is huge -- if you are printing a card game, for example, and you are doing a small run (say 2500 units), prepress can be 20% or more of your total job cost.

The Saddest Thing I've Seen All Year

Well, that was the title of this post, back when it was going to be about this:


This is Richard Jeni's IMDB page, the week after his suicide. Note their Starmeter for him (which I presume tracks things like mentions in trade publications, internet searches etc.). That's a sad enough testimony to the dark underbelly of humanity. But then, I get this from Warren Ellis' blog, which clearly trumps that:

SAVANNAH, Ga. - A convicted child molester and his father took turns sexually assaulting a 6-year-old boy while the molester’s mother watched, then they choked the boy to death…

To which I can only say, WTF is wrong with you people? And also, how do we avoid making any more of you?

The only reason not to give these people the death penalty is that you only get to kill them once.

At Last, It Can Be Told

Since some people have already outed me, I guess it's time to come out of the closet: yes all you smarty smart alecks on the UO Stratics board, I am now employed by Heatwave Interactive, the company started by Anthony "Sunsword" Castoro and Donn Clendenon. In fact, I am employee #3. Or, if you consider Donn & Anthony not to be employees, since they are founders & co-owners, I am employee #1. It's some very low number, however you look at it.

Exciting times, indeed. And what am I doing at Heatwave? The same thing I did for almost 8 years at Origin/EA: make great online games. Much as I will always love UO, I have to confess it's very exciting having the opportunity to build a new online game from the ground up. It's just about the only thing I haven't done in the MMO space!

What games are we working on? Well, to be honest, we're not -- the company isn't at that point yet. It's still very early in the process. Day to day, I'm doing contract work right now, for reasons that I probably shouldn't go into. I can let you in on a little inside scoop, though: the sooper seekrit Heatwave business plan:

1. Collect underpants.
2. TBD
3. Profit!

(Note to all of our potential investors who happened to just read that: that was humor. Our actual business plan is, shall we say, a little more grounded in reality than that!)

(Although, come to think of it, if we had a potential investor who didn't recognize that as a joke, we probably shouldn't take their money!)

Now With 110% More Cowbell

Thanks to Sean McMains, I have discovered that my feed hasn't been updating for something like a year. This is now fixed! You're welcome, six people that read this blog.

Oh, Microsoft! You Slay Me!

One of my favorite things about the current state of the next-gen console war is watching the response to the success of the Wii coming out of the Microsoft and Sony camps. Here's a great one from MS, courtesy of Gamasutra:

Talking about Microsoft's strategy going forward, Kim specifically praised "...the success of Nintendo with the Wii in a certain customer segment"

Uh, yeah. I believe that segment is widely referred-to as "humans."

For Speedman

But this was WAAAY too good not to share:


This drawing was done by Binky on my white board in my cubicle at EA Redwood Shores. I supplied the caption, which reads "In my spare time, I got Ultima Online to run on my Motorola RAZR phone - Josh". Which, for those of you who don't know, is totally Speedman in a nutshell.

What The Hell Is Wrong With My Brain?

Had a bit of insomnia this morning. Woke up at 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. I did a little work, still wasn't quite there, so I decided "This is exactly the sort of dilemma for which they invented the iPod."

I listened to a random selection of soothing stuff, but didn't really start to doze until I accidentally came across "Come Out and Play" by The Offspring. Eddie Izzard popped up in my brain and said "Oh just go with it, FFS" so I put on Badmotorfinger, by Soundgarden. Somewhere around "Jesus Christ Pose" I conked out.

Seriously, some kind of deep neurological damage there.

THQ Developing a Warhammer 40K MMO

Which probably makes you think, "Isn't EA Mythic doing that?"

No, they are working on a project based on the fantasy flavor of Warhammer. The THQ game will be based on the one with the space marines.

Interview (featuring exactly the sort of informationless chest-thumping I abhor) right over here.