Update Much?

Wow has this ever been a busy month. I dare say this was the busiest November of my entire life. I’ll be resuming my steady stream of Cutting-Edge Blog Posts and Tech World Commentary soon, but as filler an insightful look into what’s been keeping me busy, I present you with a run-down of some of the more notable things I’ve been up to lately:

Google Wave Hack-a-thon

I’ve been pretty quiet about Google Wave since it came out, which is odd because it’s a technology I fully endorse (ok, I did have one post about the invites). The Ottawa Wave Group was kind enough to hold their own “WaveCamp” hack-a-thon with an open invitation to local technophiles. It was a great time and really strapped my boots for the wonderful world of Wave development. They have posted an event wrap-up for the curious and there are some slides there I’d definitely recommend checking out if you want to start developing for Wave but don’t know how/where to begin.

I’ll definitely have a post or two about Wave in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled and your RSS reader at the ready.

Bringing High Tech to High School

I’m involved with something called the Ottawa High School Technology Program. I should really have a full post about what the program is and what I do there (I’ll make a point to have one up soon) but the jist of it is that enrolment in high-tech fields at the college/university level in Ottawa has been way down in recent years, which is worrisome for a city that has been nicknamed Silicon Valley North. Seeing this problem, a number of local high-tech companies and organizations got together and started cooking up ideas for how to increase enrolment, and the result was a program that takes industry representatives (such as myself) and sends them to local high schools to help students develop real, working software for the XO laptop. It’s always great to see what the students are capable of with a little guidance, and every semester we’re amazed with the results.

November is a significant month for the program because at this point the fall semester students have been ramped up on the XO and its target audience, branched into small groups, and started on actual development. It’s a very fun time for them and for those of us involved, but also very busy when added to an already packed work schedule!

And then there’s my Day Job

After a few extra-busy weeks, the project I’m working on at my nine-to-five has finally hit private beta. While it’s not something I can really talk about (at least not until it goes GA) nor something that would be of much interest to most of you (it’s a very niche product) it does feel good to hit such a major milestone after many months of hard work.

With things cooling off a bit at work, I should be able to get some neat posts up soon. A lot of neat things have been traversing the net the past few weeks, and I’m bursting with arguably valuable input.

Distraction through Gaming

Busy times call for stress relief, and I often rely on gaming to fill those ever-crucial relaxation needs. Here’s a list of what I’ve been into lately:

• Typewar is a fantastic game that teaches you how to identify popular typefaces. We need more games with this blend of education and fun.
• Ka-Glom is actually the first game I’ve ever kept
  on my iPhone. It’s an extremely fun and highly addictive tetris/bomberman mash-up made by local mobile gaming firm Magmic. Apparently it’s also widly popular in Japan.

• Left 4 Dead 2 was released a couple of weeks ago, and on time no less. Some of you may remember the train-wreck of a release that brought us the demo, which we can all learn a few things from. It’s an absolutely wild time, but by now I’m sure you know whether or not this game is for you.
• Torchlight is something I’ve heard fantastic things about. I haven’t actually gotten around to playing it yet, but I absolutely will as soon as I can spare some time for it.

What’s been Keeping You Busy?

I’d love to hear about it; leave a comment!