As seen here, our future house is under construction.  Some of the general goals were in that first article but to quickly summarize what we are looking to do:

1. This will be our "last" house until old folks home.
2. Needs to be completed while our children are young so that this will be their "home" when they go away to college or sugar mines or whatever they are going to do.
3. Needs to be "green". I.e. I am willing to spend extra to make the house have as little impact on the environment as I can which will be tough given its excessive size.
4. Needs to be large enough to be able to entertain (for business and family purposes) and for people to want to come there.
5. Needs to have enough "features" so that two home bodies (Debbie and I) will be happy spending lots of time in it.

So what are the specific features we're looking to have on the main floor?

• 2-story library. I go through a ton of books each month and like collecting books and other nick knacks.
• Conservatory.  I have a 55 year old pet turtle named Cuddles. My boys and I love critters. My Internet handle is "Frogboy". So we want a room where, despite being in Michigan, we can have aquatic life forms living all year around as well as plants and such in a cool space.
• Media room. We want a place that is good for getting together for watching sports, movies, what have you.
• A huge "keep". When we have friends over, we end up being in the kitchen area anyway. So we want an area large enough where people can get together and have fun.
• A large formal dining room. Someday, we hope to host holidays with our kids and such and want to make sure it's large enough that it is the logical place to host such a thing.
• Big mud room and laundry room for dealing with the laundry and dirty needs of 3 children and a..ahem messy husband.

For the top floor, our goals are:

• Master bedroom that is practically an apartment unto itself so that if our kids' are having company or what have you, we can have some privacy upstairs.
• Rooms for the kids with the boys sharing a bathroom. Ashley, our little girl, would have her own room and bathroom.
• Guest room with bathroom so that when my friend Neil or other friends from Europe visit, they can stay for extended periods and feel like they're at home.
• Extra area for future expansion.

As for the bottom floor (walk out basement). It's going to have a 10 foot ceiling so it won't seem like a basement. We haven't decided precisely what we want to do yet. We have 2 years to decide that.

http://storage.stardock.com/files/Impulse_setup.exe

Give it a try, tell us what problems you run into here.

I've seen people who argue that Sins of a Solar Empire is not a "real 4X" but is really a conventional RTS.

I suspect most people are of the same mind as I on this topic: Sins of a Solar Empire is a game that combines 4X depth with real-time gameplay.  That is what the game promises and I think that is what it delivers.

Here are some of the game mechanics of Sins that I think make it quite unique for a game that operates in real-time:

#1 Each race has about 100 different technologies to research.  I just counted them up and if you count the military and civilian technologies plus the fleet supply technologies you end up with about 100. And that does not count the fact that many technologies have multiple levels to them. 

#2 Players can win through multiple paths. I won a game on-line with culture on Saturday for instance.

#3 The pacing of the game is unlike any other RTS I've ever played.  It's not about reflexes. It's not about how fast you click things. It's not about mastering hot keys to access special powers. It's about your ability to build a coherent, effective strategy to obtain specific objectives. OODA. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.  That is the essence of STRATEGY. 

I could list many other elements but these 3 elements I think make Sins stand out from other real time strategy games.  That is why people have compared it to a Kohan in space or Master of Orion in real time. 

Certainly the game does not have the depth of say Space Empires V. But then again, neither does Galactic Civilizations.  But the fact the game does not require manipulating a spread sheet or what have you does not make the game a non-4X game.  Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate.  Sins of a Solar Emprie most certainly satisfies that.

The reason the game has become so popular with players is because there are a ton of people, people like me and I suspect like most of you reading this, that have waited a logn time for a game that is about STRATEGY. That lets us observe the strategic situation of a given map, figure out a strategy and execute on it.

Despite the phenomenal success of Sins of a Solar Empire both in terms of sales and in reviews, we are just getting started! Ironclad and Stardock have a whole host of goodies in the pipeline for Sins of a Solar Empire.

First, we've decided to split the next major update into two parts. This way, we can release an update sooner. 

The first update will be called Sins of a Solar Empire v1.04.  This version will contain some balancing updates based on player feedback, more computer AI updates, and other game play tweaking. 

The second update will be Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1.  This will be a more significant update providing a considerable overhaul of the multiplayer system with more features and updated networking code to make it more robust under a whole series of circumstances. I can't go into too much detail but it's pretty cool stuff.  v1.1 will also include new graphical options including one with very high resolution textures.

After v1.1, we'll see where we're at and go from there.  Stay tuned!

I've often been asked what it takes to be successful in starting your own business and being successful at it.

Similarly, I have seen in various political debates about how CEOs are largely replaceable/disposable which I know from experience is definitely not true.

Below are some traits that most successful entrepreneurs I've met have (some may seem incidental but they are key and few people are good at all these things):

1. Must be pretty good with money. Budgets. Forcasting, etc.
2. Must be a good public speaker.
3. Must be willing to travel extensively.
4. Must be unusually healthy - if you take more than 3 days off per year due to illness (cold, flu, whatever) forget it.
5. Must master the art of delayed gratification - be willing to work for a long period of time with no reward.
6. Must be unusually good at whatever the particular field you want to focus on for your business.
7. Must be able to do #6 above and be able to effectively communicate that expertise to lay people in a friendly, helpful way.
8. Must be good at interacting with other people. I.e. you must be a "people person".
9. Must be willing to take bold choices that often have negative short-term consequences. I.e. most entrepreneurs I've met have a reckless streak in them that is absolutely essential.
10. Must be aggressive and assertive but able to control those impulses when necessary.
11. Must have significant self-confidence which often would be described as arrogance.
12. Must be able to control ego enough to complete objectives.

All 12 of these elements (not most, ALL) I think are essential.  I meet lots of people who on the surface would seem to be ideal for starting their own business. I've had friends and colleagues who have gone to start their own business thinking that being really really smart was enough to overcome missing a few of these items.

For example, I've talked to lots of people at conferences who were thinking of leaving their companies because they thought the founder was "kind of a jerk" or "was just a total idiot" about some aspect of the business.  The problem is that most people are missing at least 1 of the traits above. 

A good entrepreneur doesn't have to be great at all of those 12 things. They just have to be "good enough" at all 12 things. Or more to the point, they can't be lacking in any of those 12 points no matter how great they are at some particular thing. 

Many companies are founded by partners. In those cases, the idea is that between the 2 or 3 partners that all 12 of those elements are satisfied and that is typically how it works.

So anyway, that's my 2 cents on that for what it's worth.

The revelations that Obama's paster is a rabidly anti-American who clearly hates this country on their own wouldn't be that damaging.

But when combined with Obama's wife's statements that she has never been proud of this country until recently and Obama's own issues with the pledge of allegiance, flag pin wearing, etc. you begin to see a pattern.

Personally, I don't think the man likes the United States at all. I think he is like a significant percentage of the Democratic left that thinks the US is fundamentally flawed and wants to "Change" it to reflect the values they think it should have.

Windows Vista introduced a whole new icon format based on 256-256 sized icons.  Stardock IconDeveloper 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the popular icon creation utility. Designed to make manipulating batches of icons a snap, IconDeveloper 2 can turn PNGs and other types of files into icons easily as well as take existing icons and make them Vista-ready.

For those of you running Windows Vista, you probably have already seen programs that look odd on your desktop due to them not supporting high resolution icons (Vista will place a 48x48 icon insize of a 256x256 box on the desktop).  With IconDeveloper, users can quickly edit those icons and create 256x256 icons relatively easily.  The ObjectDock gallery on WinCustomize.com already contains high resolution PNGs for nearly every program imaginable. Combined with IconDeveloper, users can now make their desktops spectacular.

IconDeveloper is a free download. An enhanced version supports additional file types.  IconDeveloper is part of Object Desktop presently (it will become part of Object Desktop Ultimate next month).

Download: http://www.icondeveloper.com

Screenshots:

Despite that most sales of Sins of a Solar Empire thus far have been through TotalGaming.net (direct digital download), Sins topped the charts last month at retail for PC games.

Here are the stats courtesy of NPD:

February 2008

1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. Sins Of A Solar Empire
3. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
4. The Sims 2 Free Time Expansion Pack
5. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
6. World Of Warcraft
7. The Orange Box
8. The Sims 2 Deluxe
9. The Sims: Castaway Stories
10. Crysis

Sins of a Solar Empire was released in February. No CD/DVD copy protection included.  One other note, NPD doesn't include sales at Walmart where a significant percentage of the sales of Sins of a Solar Empire occurred. Unofficial tallies we've received internally put Sins at #1.

Thank you so much for your support!

We hope over the coming weeks and months we are able to keep the game fun and interesting for you as we continue to provide free updates based on your feedback! Free updates is our version of "copy protection".

The things on my mind these days.

I have found a great community for talking to people about ways to decrease my impact on the environment.

The new home my wife and I are building is one I want to try to reduce the amount of energy it uses (despite the fact that it's ridiculously big).

If you're interested in green solutions, it's a great site.

http://forums.treehugger.com/viewforum.php?f=1