In a lot of way I really want one of the new Kindle’s from Amazon. I read a bunch of books, some technical but mostly fiction and my book shelf is way over full as it is. The concept of being able to keep all the books on a single small device is very attractive, but the price tag is what’s keeping me away. I’ve tried reading on the iPhone, but the screen really is too small and I’m constantly scrolling, which gets way too tiring after a while. The large screen on the Kindle would be perfect.

I can’t justify spending $360 on a book reader, so here’s a list of things that are less expensive.

Actual books – a lot of them

A new book shelf for new books

Another iPhone or iPod Touch

A new netbook – smaller laptop but larger screen = ebook reader for cheaper

My second iPhone application is code complete and now sent out to the artist so he can make it pretty. I’m going to be a little vague, but so far everyone that’s seen it has enjoyed themselves just messing with it. I can’t wait to get this app released. This will also be my first attempt at releasing a free app with ad support, I’m curious as to how this will go.

Spent a big portion of my evening getting Perforce source control installed on my home server and all my code projects dumped in. I have to say, Perforce once it’s up and running is the best source control software I’ve come across and it’s a joy to work with. The only issue is it’s setup. The docs provided give a lot of info but not necessarily the info I needed. Finally messed with it enough to get it set up the way I needed. It’s good to know that I won’t have any more issues with wrong code versions now between my MacMini and my Macbook.

Global Game Jam game

Merry Mary, the product of three days of participating in the Global Game Jam this weekend. A short puzzle/platformer about a girl and her shadow.

The entire experience was not only fun and exciting, but tiring as well. After three days of intense game deving with two great students from FullSail and two artists from the Art Institute of Tampa, we came up with an interesting little game about a girl playing with her shadow.

Since the game was written in C# with the XNA toolset, I’ll spend some time later to see if it works on the Xbox360.

I updated my iPhone Hurricane application to 1.2 last night and dropped it on my phone for testing. If I don’t see any major problems by this evening I’m going to go ahead and push it out to Apple. I’ll be doing the big update before season starts again, but this is at least a move in the right direction.

In other news, I really want to take a look at the XInput2 api. I saw the presentations from GameFest and the changes they made looked interesting.