Red Letter Date

So...
It was exactly one year ago, 28th October 2008, that I happened upon Other Ocean and bumped into 'Beep', the big boss lady at the Games Career Fair in the Old Truman Brewery in London.
That was a life changing day and everything on this blog started from that point.

Beep and some others are over in England right no, in London at the career fair again, looking for more talent, programmers, artists, producers - you name it. Both for here and for the Newfoundland studio.

A whole year since those friendly Canadians at Bight Games got me chatting - and I played Street Fighter 4 for the first time. A whole years since I first heard of Prince Edward Island and got excited about the prospect of moving and living on this awesome island.

Well - it's been eventful :)
We've since, rented our house out.
Paid out a ton of money to get rid of debts and ship all our stuff.
I spent 3 months away from Kath and Hayden.
Kath gave up her career as a teacher to become a housewife.
I started a new job and a new career.
We've met a tons of awesome new friends.
We've been camping, ate Oysters, Lobster and fish like never before.
Bought a car - with cash.
And had a new baby daughter.

And now I guess, that adventure may start again for someone else in London today if Beep employs them :)

LOL, good luck to them, it's been a difficult but thoroughly worthwhile trudge for us, and I don't regret a thing... except ever fixing my mortgage for 7 years.. .doh!

"Lets put a smile... on that face!"

So... those of you reading this blog know us very well.
And therefore you know how we love fancy dress.
Thus with Halloween around the corner we and being in a new place, we felt it was important to do things... well. Given our limited budget and timescale, I was determined to make Hayden be awesome at least if not ourselves. Yesterday he was invited to Locky's birthday party, which was Halloween themed. Canada... like the US... is a bit weird when it comes to Halloween.
What I mean by that is that people dress up as super heroes or faeries... or.. anything. More like New Year really. Although witches, ghouls and zombies are all aboot the place it seems that fancy dress is all a bit... well ... lame to be honest.
No gore. No... scaryness.
Hayden had wanted to be Joker for a while - it was my idea, but was only a suggestion to him after he saw The Dark Knight.
Probably shouldn't have let him watch The Dark Knight, I'm sure a ton of people out there think I'm steering him onto a murderous, violent lifestyle - what with all the lightsabre duals and pirate sword fights... and now I guess I've really gone and done it!
But hey, my philosophy on the matter is that he's intelligent enough to not become a 'complete' nutter.

Anyway.. he loved the film and thought Heath Ledger was a legend in it.. well I got that impression anyway :)

So he had the option of wearing his Clone Wars captain Rex outfit, or Vader and he was going to be Vader, but he heard that Conner was going to be Batman, so, in true Hayden style thought it'd be great to play the villain.
He therefore spent a full 6 hours.. in make up!.

He looked incredibly evil to be fair... just the way it should be at Halloween. I think he got into his role a bit too serious and started saying "Why so serious?" in a sinister voice.

At the party he was the only evil looking kid. He got respect - mostly from the adults, and then tried to scare Locky by stalking him into a corner - I explained that it was not very nice to scare Locky, but I'm afraid, bad father that I am, I was rather proud of his role play :)

I'm also glad he doesn't scare easily and I'm starting to think that the other parents around here think I'm an arse for letting him sword fight and choose villains like Darth Maul and The Joker as role models. I think it's cool ;), much better than Ned Flanders!

Bath time. This shot was taken before we tried to wash out his green hair.

Note - the nice clean water?

And this was taken after LOL.

He'll be reprising his role on Halloween for some Trick OR Treat - I may even take him on a bar crawl with me if Kath will let me :)

Strange Bird

Oh... not that one... that's just Carla!. ;)

I mean this one....

Does anyone know what it is?

Basting

Here's some pics of Taryn's first week on Earth... in no particular order.

First up, I decided that she'd been too wrapped up and cuddled. I looked back over my old website for Hayden and we were much 'harsher' with him, getting him to deal with the environment and people as soon as he popped out (perhaps it was because of the home birth?). And perhaps it's because she's a cute tiny little baby girl, that I just want to wrap her up and not let anything get near her?.

However that'll do us no good if she can't handle the unrelenting bitter cold that is reality.

I can't handle a screaming baby... and I know for a fact that they aren't delicate - you can throw them about and everything.. .they're quite robust! ;)

So off came the triple layers and swaddling blankets, and she was pulled from the cradling arms of her mummy - much to mummy's dislike :(

It's not like it was freezing in the house! But after a bit of initial moaning, she soon got used to it, and is now much more happy when her nappy gets changed... so I think it was worth it.

But she's so cute all wrapped up!!!

See?...

Her eyes were quite badly bruised as her elongated head was squeezed into existence. So it was nice to see her finally opening both eyes and focusing on things... me.... taking a picture... through a ring...

Here's T4Z... asleep, after happily looking around and making happy baby sounds from 10pm to 1am!

I took this picture, carefully lifted her up and took her upstairs, placed her in her crib and checked the time - 1:33am.

5 minutes later she got restless and demanded more food! I let Kath deal with that one :)

Aside from feeding more than any baby I've ever had! She sleeps more than any baby I've ever had! When she's not hungry or tired she spends her time being cute and gorgeous or exhaling a huge sigh of relief after making a horrid gurgling sound from her bottom!

So when she wasn't feeding or squeezing one out, the other night, we got to have a family game of Space Hulk :)

Monopoly is for the weak!

In the UK we were told by the 'authoritaa' that we could not bath Hayden until his umbilical cord had fallen off. But here in Canada they said 'go right ahead eh?'.
So she had her bath and absolutely LOVES the water...

After the bath, comes the basting. A good baste with Olive oil.. Filippo Berio Extra Virgin only for my girl. Same stuff used on Hayden, and he has wonderful skin.
Hayden enjoys helping on this bit.

Granddad Russell

So My Dad arrived on Wednesday afternoon, our first visitor from the UK :).
His original plan was to be here to help take Hayden when Kath went into labour, as she was due on the 23rd October - his week and a half early arrival should have sufficed.
Of course Taryn insisted on being earlier!

But at least now Hayden has his Granddad to play with and chat to, giving us some much needed time out. It's been difficult to try to deal with Taryn and involve Hayden or keep him busy. Our best solution was to sort of take one child each... then swap... then do stuff together... lather, rinse, repeat.
The difficulty is that Hayden is non-stop all day long, and Taryn awakes at 10pm!
So the ability to offload Hayden for a bit without offending him is awesome, and of course he's glad to have Granddad rather than us anyway! LOL

So glad in fact that I tried to get a picture of the two of them together after dad arrived, like 5 minutes after, but Hayden became a blur pulling dad upstairs to play with him...

This snap was the best I could manage!

A few hours later and a knackered Grand Father got to sit down for a bit and get the biggest cuddle in the world.

Taryn dressed for the occasion wearing her 'I Love Granddad' top. She got to meet him several hours after he arrived, when Hayden was finished showing him the house, his toys, his Lego, his Lego XBOX games, and reciting tales of adventure with his friends Locki, Conner, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Count Dooku!!?!!?

A couple of days have gone by now, and Hayden is happy to play upstairs and has no trouble helping change nappies and bath baby... because at the end of it he gets a present from Granddad.

It's all bribery really, but it's working... to a degree. Dad has bought so many toys for him, we felt it best that he drip feeds them over the stay here and that way we get Hayden to behave... hmmm...

Not sure if that will actually make things bad int he long run but.. regardless, in two weeks time Grandad Lee and Nanny Noodles visit, bringing with them probably double what dad brought - so either way the guy's going to get a ton of new presents.

It should all help to ease him into the fact that his cuddles and time now has to be shared a bit without leaving him resentful.

That's the plan anyway ?!?

Taryn got her first silver. A bracelet, that is engraved. She seemed pleased :)

T4Z

Our first trip our was for lunch on Saturday to Swiss Chalet :)

Here's a snap of her hair colour in natural light. We settled on Phoenix for her middle name because of this.

One... Billion Dollars!!.....

Awwwwwwwwwwww.......

Nooooggin..... Duuuude....

The nurse weighed her yesterday morning and she's climbing back to her birth weight, 7lb 4oz now. Probably a lot more since last morning, the amount she feeds, it's no wonder she has put the weight back on - a good thing.

Ooooz A Boo?

Begun... The Clone Wars have

H4X or T4Z?... T4Z or H4X?...

Open For Business

Doors are unlocked, phones are plugged back in, Skype back on :)

Had a lovely two days with family.
Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving, had a nice roast and pretty much chilled.

Visitors, Sam, Ben and Laura came by to check her out.

Learnt more about Taryn over the past two days, and how much she's EXACTLY like Hayden. Even her temperament at the moment. Seems to like being thrown in the air ;)
When Hayden was born I had a website up for his first 7 days. Not had time to keep something like that going for Taryn unfortunately, juggling her and Hayden between us is pretty full time until about 1am :)
Hayden thankfully has the XBOX to keep him happy whilst we change nappies... and what 3 year old wouldn't want the kind of set up that he has?


But she has been steadily levelling up. My estimate is that she attained T4Z and little T4Z on Thursday.
By the time she came home on Friday she was definitely Dirty T4Z.
Sunday saw her power level, skipping straight over Filthy T4Z - with the help of H4X, in an awesome display of smell and noise:

T4Z casts ‘Blinding luminous colour’
T4Z casts ‘Sulphurous gaseous smell’
T4Z casts ‘Wail of the Siren’

T4Z casts 'Runny Yellow Stuff'

****** Achievement Unlocked ******3 Hit Combo

(Multi T4Z – Ding!)

From Dirty to Multi in one hit was pretty good.

Long Day

Skype has not stopped since last night, the phone has been off the hook and it's been a veritable competition to get one visitor out the door before the next, less they end up fighting for a hold of Taryn!.

Last night was hard!
I think when Hayden was born I was more up to dealing with stress, I was in the middle of my MSc and long nights and no sleep was fairly frequent. But I've gotten used to PEI and a lazy lifestyle.
I tried to keep Taryn comforted last night to allow Kath some rest between feedings, but man - it knocked me proper. I couldn't even MOVE this morning.
Somehow Kath was full of beans, feeding every 3 hours yet up at dawn and, as usual tidying up.
I could hear Hayden screaming for attention as Kath wandered about baby hanging off of left breast, toddler hanging off of right foot, phone in right hand, broom in left, shouting at someone on Skype to 'hold on a minute'.
I got up to try to help out... and a great deal of effort it took me I'll have you know, only for the public health visitor to turn up at 10am.
Managed to get hold of my daughter to wind her, and answer another Skype call, to have her taken away to be weighed. Had a shower, came down Megan had hold of baby refusing, as women do, to yield ;).
Managed to get to change a stinking nappy!.
Went to have a nap with Taryn, which was impossible with Hayden screaming Star Wars tunes at the top of his voice and Kath's obsession with the washer dryer - which rumbles the bedroom.
Went shopping with the boy, who threw a tantrum due to tiredness and the fact that the human race seems no longer interested in his lightsabre antics but focused instead on this crying thing that eats toys.
Boy fell asleep as I got to Canadian Tire, pouring with rain, spent about 3 hours buying all sorts of stuff and travelling to different shops with the boy... in a broken buggy... wet... asleep... as it got dark... in the rain.... ... with an OWL!!
Got home, and promised Hayden I would play Lego Star Wars Complete Saga with him (his present from Taryn, and our attempt to show him that he still mattered).
Cooked dinner.
Ate Dinner and drank wine.
Went to wind baby... and promised Hayden a game as soon as he'd finished his own meal.
Skype rang... again...
Managed to hold sleeping baby whilst talking on Skype
Bell rang. Visitors.
Visitors left.
Told Hayden it was time for bed, hoping I could get to hold Taryn for a bit, but then realising that I'd not yet played Lego Star Wars as promised with him.
Played Lego Star Wars until 10:30pm. Read Hayden a story.. well actually got him to name 149 Star Wars characters.
Went to give Taryn a cuddle... she was feeding.
Watched Hells Kitchen. Kath and Taryn went to bed.
By this point I was on the arse end of a bottle and half of white wine and had resigned myself to the fact that I have completely missed day 3 of Taryn.

It's been a long day. Thanks to everyone for the kind comments on Facebook and the blog here, but tomorrow the PC gets turned off, the phone unplugged and the door locked :)
Kath can wash up if she really wants to, or sleep, I sit on the sofa playing Xbox... baby in one arm, Hayden on lap, beer on the table, cat by the feet... FACT!

Taryn Phoenix Rajamanie

Well!...

I told you the cat knew something was up. After the last post I went to bed at about midnight. At 5am I was rudely awoken by the cat, spilling a pint of water over my face (he's NEVER in his life done anything like that, never knocks things over and never plays around on the bedside cabinet.
We had to change the sheets.
After that Kath could not sleep and kept fidgeting about. The cat kept bounding about up and down the stairs making a racket.
2 hours later at 7:15am Kath's water's broke. Really good timing having it happen in the morning like that, up we got, changed the sheets... again... and got ready to run. Hayden awoke and before he had a chance to say anything we were shoving him out the door to go and play with his friend Loki all day... he didn't mind at all and ran into Megan's house not even bothering to say 'good luck'!! ;)

We drove to the hospital and Kath began the labour process. Longer than last time and much more painful for her. It started proper at about midday and at 4:09pm Taryn came flying out into the doctor's arms... then as usual was tossed aside for a moment whilst the rest of Kath was sorted out... eeewww.

Bat Out Of Hell.

It was awesome. I was able to watch the birth this time, with Hayden I was in the Kitchen messing about with the hose pipe for the birthing pool and missed his arrival, but not this time.

We had the iPod playing music, chillout, up until the point when the nurse said Kath was fully dilated, and then (at Kaths request), I stuck MeatLoaf on.

Her head was nearly out before Bat Out Of Hell was finished, but she finally came flying out to the nurses and doctor singing the lyrics:

Rock n roll and brew, rock n roll and brew

They dont mean a thing when I compare em next to you

Rock n roll and brew, rock n roll and brew

I was very happy to see my little baby daughter :) and proud of Kath for getting her out as she was a lot more painful this time, I could tell....

The first reveal to Kath. Weighing in a decent 7lbs 12 oz, not bad considering she's 3 weeks early. Definitely much chubbier than Hayden was.

She looks to have red hair and brown eyes, although today they look a lot lighter, so we'll see over the next few days.

She was struggling to open her eyes, but you could see the concentration and effort to focus on things close up to her face. She was quiet and made only that pathetic whimper every now and then. Here in Canada it's a law (apparently) to give the baby's some ointment in their eyes and they also give an injection of Vitamin K. It's was not pleasant seeing the expression on her face at having a needle poked into her leg. I almost cried with her, it took her breath away and she couldn't even scream, there was surprise in her hers and then horror, top lip wavering... not nice to watch. She forgot it pretty quickly though once she was back against my chest and I took her back to mummy for some food.

I went home and picked up Hayden who's been with Megan, Amanda, Loki and Conner all day. I had phoned him to tell him I had a present for him... a little sister and he was jumping for joy shouting.. 'I got it, I got my sister! ' He ran out the house to the car desperate to meet her and see Kath again.

We had dinner and watched X Factor on my laptop. The two of them fell asleep.

Although much chubbier than Hayden was, Taryn looks EXACTLY like him when he was born. I have just delved into our past photos and here are some comparisons.

Below LEFT is Hayden 3 years ago about 6 hours after he was born.
RIGHT is Taryn about 1 hour old.
LOOK AT THEM!!!

LEFT = Hayden, RIGHT = Taryn

The Raj Foot. Hayden again to the left anf Taryn to the right. Her foot is quite a bit bigger than his was, but not as mature, should have more wrinkles, so I'm going to see what it's like next week.

And here's Mother and Daughter together this morning

So work is great about it. In fact the producer and lead have pushed back our deadline with the publisher's until 23rd which will allow me to get in and complete stuff week after next... so gone has that pressure :)

I'm off now today and all next week. The company gives us baby leave, about 5 days, on top of holidays so that's going to help. Kath will be good again by then, and my Dad will be here to help her out. At last maybe she can come out and sample the awesome rare and bleu steaks at Sims Steakhouse and partake in some PEI Lobster Supper's.

Oh and have a drink :)

Hopefully Kath will be home tonight, she's going to check herself out, they try and keep mothers in for 2-3 nights, but Kath want's to get back here, so I'll be picking them up in about 3 hours time. Might blog again with a fimaly photo... one once we've had a wash and look a bit fresher than those above :)

Thanks to everyone for thier kind coments via SMS and e-mail.

Work Pressure

I do not feel pressured thus far in the games industry - or at least at Other Ocean.

At HRC, the main problem of pressure was getting marking done and then having to nag and push students to get their work in. It was stressful, but in a different way. I always found it 'physically' demanding.
When I was doing my MSc the pressure was definitely on and much more draining mentally. Most of the time it was to complete tasks and homework for portfolio, much of which I did not know. The physics module in particular I did bad at and felt very stressed with the late nights and getting nowhere.
In the beginning I even found DirectX really difficult with the pace of the course and didn't think I'd get through it - I ended up getting 85% on that module, but it was not easy. Kath was pregnant, and I was working full time, I used to stay up til all hours and I worked as much as possible in college, whilst teaching. I tried as much as possible to get students onto tasks that would take up the two hour lessons and I'd sit and do my MSc stuff alongside. I didn't neglect them, just did both at the same time - and perhaps neither as well as I should have.
Since the MSc I tried to concentrate back onto teaching, striving to get higher observation grades and setting the course right. I didn't succeed very well no matter how hard I tried with the observation grades, consistently getting 'ok' - never 'good'. And this was a lot of stress to try to get right, only to then fail.

But for the past 7 months there have been deadlines and there has been a lot of work, and a few late nights with Dream Chronicles, but no pressure or stress. My hobby was coding... but now that's my day job I have been able to fall back into my old hobbies, like Space Hulk and Talisman, and spending time vegging with the family and I look forward to painting again.
Only now has there been any real pressure.
And it's actually not from Other Ocean directly. We have a deadline to meet for the 15th for our publisher and the deadline is 'dooable'. However Kath has started to feel a difference in the baby's position and the cat has been all over her and sleeping nearby. The last time he was that clingy, Kath gave birth to Hayden :)
So she's feeling and thinking it's going to be pretty soon. She's due on the 23rd and Hayden was a week early.
So the work pressure I now feel is that if she does drop, I'm going to need/want to be off for my 5 days baby leave, but it's looking increasingly like it may coincide with this deadline.
At the moment I'm the only one who can produce a couple of the things for the deadline, simply because bringing another coder up to speed on it will take too long.
Add that to the fact that we have yet another public holiday - Thanksgiving, on Monday and there would be little hope of making the deadline at all.
Christian, who's lead on the project, told me not to worry and that we, the family, come first - which was great to hear. But I can't help feeling a bit of pressure suddenly to get it all done, in case Kath drops.

So... for the next few days it's going to be early mornings - LOL - I await Kaths comment to that statement - and late evenings in the hope that I can get it done.
And it's dumb really I'm putting that stress on myself, because she s not due until 23rd, so if she doesn't give birth I could go to work normally and complete with no real problems, no stress. Silly me I guess, but I don't like not having things done that are supposed to be done when it comes to the profession.

Who you know...

For sure it's who you know in this world. I've been fortunate to know many IT professionals in my time, and it's a huge bonus, you get all sorts of free stuff, software and hardware.

Shane the IT/Network bloke at Other Ocean gave me a DVI cable today (which is retailing for a stupid price at Future Shop), and it seems to have fixed up that green problem on the monitor.

So now I can play Call Of Duty 4 properly again :)

Funnier In The Pub...

You know how yanks just don't get it?

Neither did the duck!

Computer Games

Being a games programmer you'd think I play a lot of computer games wouldn't you?

But the reality is... no. I used to, but nowadays with Hayden and the wife aboot it's not as much as it 'should' be. However recently there's seen a revival in the XBox gaming scene due to my English chums, Kelk, Nutter and Nogger being online at stupid hours (for them), playing through to some 2 or 3am whilst I play after the family has gone to bed :)

Also Hayden's Lego games being played alot.

But PC gaming... well that's a different story altogether. Aside from my last LAN Party (Xmas Stratlan 2008), there's been a few games of Left For Dead with office chums on a Sunday evening - lasted aboot 2 Sundays :( and some Quake Live at lunchtimes.

My PC is old.. very old and tired.

I spent many hours, nay several days in total last week or so 'cleaning' the PC. I wanted to reinstall Windows XP, but there appears to be some sort of hardware failure upon setup and I cannot install it. Left with no choice but to clean or buy new components. Anyway, a full virus scan, Adware scan, Disk cleanup and defrag of all disks - one of which took over 48 hours to complete!!!

and the PC is actually running rather quickly again.

So... long over due I decided to install some proper software for my monitors. Just before I left HRC, the IT department threw out some old monitors - not the best ever, but hey! So I took one and got my Boss to grab me another.

So I have this three monitor setup, great. :) But thus far has only been used for a large desktop which windows does automatically, not gaming.

I don't want to spend any money on hardware so instead spent a few hours trial and error and lots of tinkering last night until 2am, configuring the system to run the three monitors correctly for games.

This doesn't mean stretching the image across three monitors, it means expanding the field of view to see further around and to the sides.

It's awesome, the main middle monitor still acts and looks like it normally would do playing the game on a single monitor, but the side monitors show the extra peripheral vision normally unavailable.

I played Call Of Duty 4 today for the first time in ages with the new setup, it was really a different experience having all that extra angle to view. Sadly one of the freebie monitors seems to have turned a bit green in colour as you can see above.

This is a screen grab I took, click on it to see the full size screen that I'm looking at... if you're interested...

Next up Left For Dead and I can't wait to try it out on racing games and flight sims :)

Not bad, considering that a setup like this would cost hundreds (the Triplehead2Go device from Matrox is like £300!! let alone the extra monitors), and it was all free...

ahhh good times :)