Gems time!

It’s the final weekend for the Game Programming Gems 5 project. I still find it amazing that we’re sitting here finishing up the fifth book. I remember well the moment when I decided to jump off the cliff and begin work on book #1, and the long evenings, weekends, frustration, etc that followed soon thereafter. Sequestering myself in the house with a big cup of coffee and a purring cat. Thinking there was no way I could get it done on time. And then the satisfaction of sending in the book manuscript, and later, seeing it on the shelf for the first time. Nothing quite like that.
We’ve had over 200 authors these past five years, and the series has spawned numerous other books and book series. I’ve run into Gems in developer studios in the U.S., England, France, and Japan. I have translations to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Polish. Wacky! But there’s still nothing like the feeling when someone comes up to say that they’ve used one of the gems in their current project – that’s really what makes all the work worthwhile. (Remember that, Kim. 🙂 ) One of my co-workers came in the other day to get the Gems1 CD and score some code from it to use in a PSP demo he is writing. How cool is that?
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I haven’t had many pics in my blog lately, mostly just because I hate carrying around my wallet, cell phone, camera and keys when I walk around. It’s just too much junk for one set of pockets unless it’s cold out and I have a jacket. Fortunately, it’s getting colder (I love the San Francisco fog), and I’m thinking about buying a thinner camera. So all problems shall be resolved soon. But in the meantime, my friend Jeff of Digital Camera Resource Page shot this picture of a billboard I’ve been meaning to shoot lately. He stopped by to grab some dinner at King of Thai, since he was in the city shooting some photos with some new cameras.

I just find this ad to be… well, stupid and offensive. I mean come on, this is a bank telling me that I was happier when I was broke? That’s like McDonald’s telling me I was happier when I was skinny, or Philip Morris telling me I was happier when I wasn’t smoking.
If I truly was happier when I was broke, well then, I wouldn’t need Citibank, right? So maybe I’ll go store my pennies at some other bank. Sheesh.