It’s just painfully inconvenient to use OS X if you’re a game developer.  Our workflow and tool chain were fine.  Unity, Photoshop, Maya all run well on a Mac.  Rather, the inconvenience stems from interacting with the larger game development ecosystem.  Everything adds up:  Fellow developers would send us Windows-only builds for feedback, I’d want to quick reference an effect in another game, or I’d have to spot-check some problem with an IGF entry.  As a gamer, Steam by itself is a big reason to use Windows. It’s just more convenient for me to be in Windows by default.

This article will outline the services and software I used to make my transition to Windows 7 less painful and a little more Mac-like.

Cloud Control

Over the last few years almost all of my work-related stuff–email, documents, project planning–have moved into cloud services.  This has been fantastic!  Getting ready for a conference used to suck, because I had to ensure my laptop had every little piece of information I needed.  Today everything is fully accessible from any machine, anytime.

This makes operating system choice extremely portable, too.  It doesn’t really matter if I’m booted into Windows or OS X, because everything is always available.  Here’s a quick list of what we use:

• Google Apps - Google-hosted Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar.   Calendar is two-way sync’ed to my iPhone for appointment reminders.
• Dropbox - Amazing file synchronization service.  Files in a designated folder are automatically uploaded and downloaded from the web.  I keep all of my mindmaps and presentations in here, along with misc work files.
• Xmarks - Syncs my browser bookmarks.  I tried Delicious multiple times, but never had the discipline to make it work.  This lets me use Firefox’s “click the star” convenience bookmarking.  Also syncs my saved browser passwords.
• Pivotal Tracker - Web-based project management.  Super simplistic drag-and-drop interface makes prioritization and scheduling stupid obvious, instead of buried in a multiple screens.

Ninite for Initial Install

Windows 7 works surprisingly well out of the box.  I skipped all of Vista, so my last experience with Windows as a development environment was XP, which required a lot of tweaking.  Nearly everything that I did need was taken care of by Ninite, which is completely amazing.  Simply check the programs you want installed, and Ninite will generate a custom installer that does the work for you (opting out of toolbars and crap):

Ninite supports dozens of different pieces of software, which covered my bases nicely.

Adium -> Digsby

Adium is a great multi-network IM client for OS X.  Fortunately, Digsby has come around in recent times for Windows, and gets the job done just as well (and thankfully replaces Trillium as the IM front-runner).  My only complaint with Digsby is that it won’t show “OtherPersonName disconnected” in a chat window if they log off.  It lets you go on typing to them, oblivious of their new offline status.  Bonus points to Digsby for requiring a global Digsby account.  Yes, slightly annoying at first, but really saves a lot of configuration time on multiple machines (your various account information is stored on their servers).

Exposé -> Switcher

I useOS X’s Exposé feature frequently.  I have a Logitech mouse with two buttons immediately below the scroll bar, which I use to show all windows or the active application’s windows.  Fortunately, Switcher for For Windows mimics the exact same functionality.  I had to turn off window animation at work, since it was kind of jerky, but it’s buttery smooth on my Mac Pro at home.

Switcher is a mixed bag.  It actually adds features, compared to Exposé.  You can middle-click on windows to close them, which is great for cleaning up errant Explorer windows, and you can add the process name and memory consumption to each window preview.

It falls down a bit on complexity.  You can filter windows by active application, but only after you trigger it (there isn’t any way to have a second hotkey trigger with the initial filter set to the current application).  That’s needlessly completely, but overall this is a great replacement for OS X’s Exposé.

Growl -> Growl for Windows

We make heavy use of Growl, the universal notification system.  All of our source control and scheduling systems trigger notifications via Growl over the network.  Fortunately for us, Growl for Windows has matured to the point where it works just as well.  Growl for Windows supports the same network protocol as Growl for OS X, which means things just keep working like they’re supposed to.

iStat Menus -> Moo0 SystemMonitor

This is one replacement that I’m not too happy with.  iStat Menus is a fantastic Swiss army knife of system monitoring for OS X.  Tiny graphs show just enough information to tell if your system is thrashing on something, and can be clicked on to show more details if needed.

The Windows world seems to hate that kind of elegance, instead opting to show as many thing as possible persistently.  Moo0 SystemMonitor is the best solution I could find.  Its monitors are highly configurable, and I was able to tuck it away on one of my monitors fairly innocuously.  I dislike constantly-changing numbers, but fortunately you can drop its transparency to the point where it blends in with your wallpaper.

Minutes -> Orzeszek Timer

I will occasionally timebox my attention by working on something uninterrupted for 48 minutes.  Minutes is a simple Dashboard widget for OS X that will act as a countdown timer.  The best simplistic replacement I could find on Windows was Orzeszek Timer:

Volume Popup -> 3RVX

I only want two things out of my Microsoft multimedia keyboard:  Working volume/mute buttons, with on-screen display, and a working play/pause button.  Microsoft 64-bit IntelliType drivers are supposed to provide this, but they fail–volume works, with OSD, but the play/pause button just brings iTunes to focus.  It doesn’t actually work (and some Googling seems to confirm this).

The drivers themselves aren’t required for the media keys to work–you only need drivers if you’re using the other buttons–so I just uninstalled them.  Now my keys work, but I don’t get volume OSD, since Windows 7 doesn’t provide this itself.  If you’re on a laptop, or using an Apple keyboard, Apple’s Boot Camp drivers should provide this.

Fortunately, I discovered 3RVX, which is a skinnable volume OSD, initially designed to mimic Mac OS X.  If you want the volume bars to line up, one per button press, make sure you set up your volume up/down keys as hotkeys in 3RVX itself, and check “custom volume change amount” with the default of 6.25%.  Voila, Mac-like volume OSD!

Butler iTunes Popup -> Custom AHK/iTunes Plugin/Growl Setup

I used Butler on OS X for two things:  text snippets and its “now playing” iTunes popup.  Growl for Windows has an iTunes plugin that will growl on track changes, but it’s too noisy for me.  I don’t want to know each and every track that I play (or that the Shoutcast station I’m listening to is playing).  Rather, I hear a catchy part of a song and want to quickly know what’s playing without switching out my active window.  My ideal setup is a global hotkey triggering an on-demand now playing popup.

Growl for Windows is an open-source project, so I quickly looked at modifying their Growl for iTunes plugin to optionally trigger from a global hotkey.  That’s a bit out of my depth, so I went with one of my strengths instead:  Cobbling together a bunch of systems!

First, I use the AMIP iTunes plugin.  This plugin can do a few things, but all I have it do is maintain an iTunes.txt file in My Documents.  This file is either blank, if nothing is playing, or it contains the name of the currently-playing track.  Note that the Now Playing iTunes plugin does the same thing, but doesn’t handle Shoutcast (it will just tell you the station name, not the song name from the Shoutcast metadata).

Next, I simply use an AutoHotkey script to pipe this file to Growl for Window’s provided growlnotify.exe utility when I press a global hotkey.

^+i::
FileRead, Song, %A_MyDocuments%\itunes.txt
Run “C:\Program Files (x86)\Growl for Windows\growlnotify.exe” /i:”.\icons\itunes.png” /t:”%Song%” /r:”Now Playing” /n:”Now Playing” /a:”Now Playing” “iTunes”
return

This is a bit of a hack, but at the same time it’s a useful setup–it’s nice to have a quick AHK->Growl pipeline working, which I can use for all kinds of quick stat checking.

Multi-Monitor Wallpaper

Windows 7 is too dumb to handle multi-monitor wallpapers out of the box.  I used DisplayFusion to do this.  It has its own hooks/hotkeys, too, but you don’t have to run it persistently to keep your multi-monitor wallpaper working.

I run a 37″ Westinghouse in 1080p, with a 24″ Dell in portrait mode next to it.  Great for coding/IM plus media/games!  My wallpaper images are from the excellent Blatte’s Backgrounds.

Useful Hotkeys

• Windows-1, Windows-2, Windows-3, etc will launch programs pinned to that position in your dock.  This is pretty nice.
• Shift-Windows-X will launch another instance (ie another Explorer window, another Firefox window), as opposite to bringing it back into focus.
• Ctrl-Shift-Windows-X will launch a pinned dock application with administrative privileges.
• Ctrl-clicking on a dock icon will cycle through that application’s open windows.  This solved a big annoyance for me with Digsby; I know I have a new IM waiting, but to get to it I would have to click twice (once to bring up the thumbnails to all Digsby windows, and once to click on my IM window).  Control-clicking on the Digsby icon will bring you to the last Digsby window!
• Windows-Left, Windows-Right will align the current window left/right, maximum height.  Handy to throw two windows side by side.
• Windows-Up, Windows-Down will maximize or minimize the current window.
• Shift-Windows-Left, Shift-Windows-Right will move the current window between monitors (in a multi-monitor setup).  Works on maximized windows, too, which is great.
• Shift-Windows-Up will maximize the height of the current window (but not its width).
• Shift-Right-Click a folder or file will show additional context menu items.  For a folder this includes “open command window here”, and for a file “copy as path”.  Both are great if you do any command-line work.
• Windows-Space will show your desktop.  I guess this is to peek at any Gadgets you have installed, but so far I haven’t found any compelling gadgets.
• Windows-+ and Windows– (minus) will zoom in and out at the operating system level.
• Screenshots can be taken with the “Snipping” tool.  Just use the start menu search to whip it open.

Things I’ll Miss - Spotlight Menu Search

Spotlight menu search is a massive time saver on a Mac.  OS X enforces a system-wide paradigm for menu items.  There is only one active menu bar, and it’s for the active application.  Because of this homogeneous setup, Apple can do things like search this menu.  This is amazing for big applications–want to do a hue shift in Photoshop, but can’t remember where it’s hiding?  Hit cmd-shift-?, type ‘hue’, and voila–it’ll even show you where in the menu it’s located if you arrow down to it:

I would surprised if something this universal is even possible on Windows 7.

Things I’ll Miss - Quick Look

Quick Look is a feature of the Mac Finder–press space, and whatever file you have highlighted will preview.  Look at PSDs, PDFs, listen to audio files, watch videos, and generally get an idea of what it is you’re dealing with.  Super-fast, super useful.  Windows 7 thumbnails and previews are getting better, but Quick Look’s reliability and speed is something I’ll miss.

Is there a universal preview application for Windows that can compete with this?

Gripes - File System

The only thing that really bugs me about Windows itself is how slow file operations can be.  I guess NTFS is in dire need of an overhaul–that “new technology” moniker is pretty old now–because Mac OS X can do much, much faster file/folder manipulation than Windows (and I’m running my Windows 7 install on a Intel X-25 SSD).  Duplicating a 500MB, several-thousand-file Unity project is quite fast on OS X, but super slow on Windows.  Even worse, Windows actually sanitizes folder names, which breaks the project.  We space-prefix some folders, which makes perfect sense inside of Unity, and Windows will actually scrub those for you.

Gripes - Unity

This is pretty specific to game developers using the excellent Unity engine (and for the record, we absolutely love Unity).  But Unity’s Windows version is noticeably slower than its Mac counterpart.  This makes sense, since Unity was Mac-only for much of its life.  Going from clicking play to interacting with your content is probably 50% or more slower, on the exact same hardware, and pressing stop will actually lock your entire system while it thinks (no more clicking stop and tabbing over to your code editor while Unity cleans itself up).  In general things are slower, quirkier, and crashier.  Hopefully Unity 3.0 will see more speed/stability parity between the two operating systems, since Windows is now in on the ground floor.

The tipping point for me on the OS transition, by the way, was the ease in which we added XInput support to Unity for Off-Road Velociraptor Safari development.  I really wanted rumble for our publisher demo version, and it was actually easier to move my desktop to Windows than to bother with a custom Mac plugin that somehow supported vibration.

What Else?

That sums up my discoveries a few days into my Mac-to-Windows switch.  There are some missing elements still, but so far I’m happy with the functionality I’ve been able to put together.  What must-have Windows 7 applications have I missed (particularly anything from any one-time Mac users)?

]]> http://www.matthewwegner.com/switching-back-to-windows/feed/ http://www.matthewwegner.com/outsmarting-bookworm/ http://www.matthewwegner.com/outsmarting-bookworm/#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:28:53 +0000 Matthew http://www.matthewwegner.com/?p=65 PopCap’s Bookworm is a fantastic franchise. I’ve played a lot of Bookworm in my day, particularly because my company’s first game, years and years ago, was a spelling word game.  But I never became very good at word games, despite playing dozens of them while surveying the genre’s design landscape.

Word Game Players

Other people are insanely good at word games.  We spent a few days at the Independent Games Festival in 2004 demoing Beesly’s Buzzwords, and the occasional word game wizard would come forth from the crowd to spell 7- and 8- letter words with alarming rapidity.  I’ve also witnessed people who play word games daily but never seem to get any better, but still seem to enjoy the experience.

I don’t get any better.  And Bookworm is now available on the iPhone–at the everything-on-the-iPhone-is-cheap-as-dirt price of $0.99–so I thought I’d check it out.  It’s the usual PopCap fare, with fantastic polish, some new features, solid production…but it still makes me feel dumb.

How to Play Spelling Games

The skill of a word game is “chunking” your mental searches into abstract-but-useful combinations of letters.  They’re hard to see at first because we rarely build mental associations with them.  The beginner searches for consonant-vowel-consonant patterns:  pot, dog, cat, tip, etc.  However, most spelling games begin to punish short words, and Bookworm is no exception.  To expand their search the intermediate player begins to see prefixes and suffixes, like “ing” or “ers”.  More advanced players see all kinds of subtle pairs, like “av”, “dg”, “ch”, “dr”, “gr” (think changing, dodge, greater, avalanche).

Automating Bookworm

I get all of this, but I still have a hard time increasing my mental lookup times for bizarre letter combinations.  I don’t like the feeling of floundering at a task that I know is more well-suited to a computer.  So I thought:  Why not have a computer do the actual work?  I saw a great article on HN about a guy who wrote an automated Sudoku solver, where you take photos of printed puzzles and it solves them.  Doing the same with Bookworm should be much easier, since I can screenshot the game and deal with pixel-perfect data.

And all of the words for this board:

8-Letter Words:
Briskets B(0,2) R(1,2) I(1,1) S(2,1) K(3,1) E(4,2) T(5,2) S(6,3)
Sirvente S(2,1) I(1,1) R(1,2) V(2,2) E(3,2) N(4,3) T(5,2) E(4,2)

7-Letter Words:
Branner B(0,2) R(0,3) A(0,4) N(0,5) N(1,4) E(2,5) R(1,5)
Birdmen B(0,2) I(1,1) R(1,2) D(1,3) M(2,3) E(3,2) N(4,3)
Brisker B(0,2) R(1,2) I(1,1) S(2,1) K(3,1) E(4,2) R(4,1)
Brisket B(0,2) R(1,2) I(1,1) S(2,1) K(3,1) E(4,2) T(5,2)
Reynard R(1,5) E(2,5) Y(2,4) N(1,4) A(0,4) R(0,3) D(1,3)
Becrime B(2,6) E(2,5) C(3,4) R(4,4) I(3,3) M(2,3) E(3,2)
Reynard R(3,5) E(2,5) Y(2,4) N(1,4) A(0,4) R(0,3) D(1,3)
Parents P(4,0) A(3,0) R(4,1) E(4,2) N(4,3) T(5,2) S(6,3)

6-Letter Words:
Branny B(0,2) R(0,3) A(0,4) N(0,5) N(1,4) Y(2,4)
Brandy B(0,2) R(0,3) A(0,4) N(1,4) D(1,3) Y(2,4)
Arrive A(0,4) R(0,3) R(1,2) I(1,1) V(2,2) E(3,2)
Risker R(1,2) I(1,1) S(2,1) K(3,1) E(4,2) R(4,1)
Driven D(1,3) R(1,2) I(1,1) V(2,2) E(3,2) N(4,3)
Sirdar S(2,1) I(1,1) R(1,2) D(1,3) A(0,4) R(0,3)
Skeets S(2,1) K(3,1) E(3,2) E(4,2) T(5,2) S(6,3)
Veiner V(2,2) E(3,2) I(3,3) N(4,3) E(4,2) R(4,1)
Venter V(2,2) E(3,2) N(4,3) T(5,2) E(4,2) R(4,1)
Minter M(2,3) I(3,3) N(4,3) T(5,2) E(4,2) R(4,1)
Brewer B(2,6) R(3,5) E(4,6) W(5,6) E(5,5) R(6,6)
Entera E(3,2) N(4,3) T(5,2) E(4,2) R(4,1) A(3,0)
Crewel C(3,4) R(3,5) E(4,6) W(5,6) E(5,5) L(5,4)
Cymene C(3,4) Y(2,4) M(2,3) E(3,2) N(4,3) E(4,2)
Reeler R(3,5) E(4,6) E(5,5) L(5,4) E(6,5) R(6,6)
Crewel C(3,6) R(3,5) E(4,6) W(5,6) E(5,5) L(5,4)
Parent P(4,0) A(3,0) R(4,1) E(4,2) N(4,3) T(5,2)
Mercer M(4,5) E(4,6) R(3,5) C(3,4) E(2,5) R(1,5)
Kraken K(5,1) R(4,1) A(3,0) K(3,1) E(3,2) N(4,3)
Kraken K(5,1) R(4,1) A(3,0) K(3,1) E(4,2) N(4,3)
Terais T(5,2) E(4,2) R(4,1) A(3,0) I(2,0) S(2,1)
Steeks S(6,3) T(5,2) E(4,2) E(3,2) K(3,1) S(2,1)

Processing Bookworm

The first step is to get data out of Bookworm itself.  The iPhone provides a screenshot function–press home and power simultaneously–and you can email the resulting JPG to yourself from Camera Roll (you can also pull it out of Xcode Organizer if you’re a developer).  Bookworm saves your board when you exit, so it’ll be waiting upon your return.  This gives you a nice clean JPG:

Next, you’re going to want to clean up some of the data.  This is especially important for boards where you have flaming tiles going on. The simplest solution is to threshold the pixels.  I used the fantastic ImageMagick suite of command-line image tools for this, with:  convert -threshold 25% input.jpg output.png

From there it’s a simple matter of identifying the letters.  You can’t rely on pixel-perfect matches, due to the flaming tiles and other effects, but ImageMagick provides a handy compare tool in their suite.  I’m using: compare -metric mae thisTile.png letters/someLetter.png difference.png 2> compare.txt (for whatever reason ImageMagick on OSX outputs the numerical analysis to standard error, so I have to pipe it to get it out).  It even gives you a nice display of the difference between the two files:

You do need to capture each individual letter, but this is pretty easy to do, since you’re already isolating each letter to compare it against all known letters.  It took two minutes to go in and rename the temporary grid output to build my identification library:

Edit: Looks like I forgot to save an ‘H’ when I did the letter training. In the above images they’re matching as ‘R’, which is the next closest visual match. Whoops!

From there it’s a simple matter of recursing the entire board, looking for matches.  I don’t do anything particular clever on the search (it’s actually the fastest part of the process at just a few seconds).  I am checking for premature search death.  For instance, if the first few letters of a match are xyt, you can kill off the entire tree instead of continuing to search for words.  My enable2k dictionary of 180k words results in 380k possibilities (”strawberry” is stored as “str”, “stra”, “straw”, etc).

What’s Next?

I did this whole thing as one big experiment.  My thought process went from “man, I feel like a shitty computer when play word games–a computer could easily do this” to “oh yeah?  prove it, talky talk-man”.  The three hours that it took to make this were certainly more fun for me than three hours of actual Bookworm play would have been.  That was just my goal all along:  To find some way to turn a frustrating experience into a fun one.

I may launch it as a service, actually.  It would be amusing to unleash this on the hardcore Bookworm fans.  You would take a screenshot, email it to some address, and get your best words emailed back in a minute or two.  I wonder if people would actually use that?  Only one way to find out…

P.S. Trademarks, Cheating

Bookworm and the Lex character are registered trademarks of PopCap Games.  For the record, Bookworm for the iPhone has no online scoring.  I can’t do anything with this except feel less retarded when I play.

P.P.S. Wurdle

I did Wurdle, too. It uses an 8-neighbor grid, so it actually has more words (and the max grid size is 8×8 compared to Bookworm’s 7×7). The average 8×8 Wurdle board has ~1500 possible word solutions. Word lengths over 9 are rare and seem to appear in 25% or fewer layouts. Have a look:

Words:

12-Letter Words:
Criticasters C(3,2) R(4,2) I(3,3) T(2,4) I(1,5) C(2,5) A(3,6) S(3,5) T(4,4) E(5,4) R(5,5) S(4,5)

11-Letter Words:
Criticaster C(3,2) R(4,2) I(3,3) T(2,4) I(1,5) C(2,5) A(3,6) S(3,5) T(4,4) E(5,4) R(5,5)

9-Letter Words:
Freewares F(1,1) R(2,2) E(2,1) E(3,1) W(4,0) A(4,1) R(5,1) E(6,0) S(6,1)
Fricassee F(1,1) R(2,2) I(3,3) C(3,2) A(4,1) S(5,2) S(6,3) E(5,4) E(6,5)
Neuritics N(1,2) E(0,2) U(1,3) R(2,2) I(3,3) T(2,4) I(1,5) C(2,5) S(3,5)
Reasserts R(2,2) E(3,1) A(4,1) S(5,2) S(6,3) E(5,4) R(5,5) T(4,4) S(4,5)
Rectrices R(2,2) E(3,1) C(3,2) T(2,3) R(3,4) I(3,3) C(4,3) E(5,4) S(6,3)
Crassness C(3,2) R(4,2) A(4,1) S(5,2) S(6,3) N(6,4) E(5,4) S(4,5) S(3,5)
Reasserts R(4,2) E(3,1) A(4,1) S(5,2) S(6,3) E(5,4) R(5,5) T(4,4) S(4,5)
Rectrices R(4,2) E(3,1) C(3,2) T(2,3) R(2,2) I(3,3) C(4,3) E(5,4) S(6,3)
Crassness C(4,3) R(4,2) A(4,1) S(5,2) S(6,3) N(6,4) E(5,4) S(4,5) S(3,5)
Stricture S(4,5) T(4,4) R(3,4) I(3,3) C(3,2) T(2,3) U(1,3) R(2,2) E(2,1)
Frenetics F(5,6) R(5,5) E(6,5) N(6,4) E(5,4) T(4,4) I(3,3) C(4,3) S(5,2)

8-Letter Words:
Efferent E(0,0) F(1,1) F(2,0) E(3,1) R(2,2) E(2,1) N(1,2) T(2,3)
Generics G(0,1) E(0,2) N(1,2) E(2,1) R(2,2) I(3,3) C(4,3) S(5,2)
Gentrice G(0,1) E(0,2) N(1,2) T(2,3) R(2,2) I(3,3) C(3,2) E(3,1)
Efferent E(0,2) F(1,1) F(2,0) E(3,1) R(2,2) E(2,1) N(1,2) T(2,3)
Enticers E(0,2) N(1,2) T(2,3) I(3,3) C(3,2) E(3,1) R(4,2) S(5,2)
Dicastic D(0,4) I(1,5) C(2,5) A(3,6) S(3,5) T(4,4) I(3,3) C(3,2)

Check out the full set of photos here. I’ll link to the others’ photos when they start going online (many of the others are still traveling in Africa).

I met up with the other unicyclists for dinner after arriving (I was the last to arrive). Today I assembled my unicycle–everything arrived intact–and we went for a brief ride around Nairobi Central Park in the morning. The traffic on the roads here is a little bit too dangerous for a longer, more exploratory ride, but the short ride felt good. We got some funny stares, but for the most part people’s response to the unis was fairly reserved.

The weather is fantastic! Slightly humid, but today was in the mid 70s with just a few clouds. The forecast for the rest of the tour is looking good. It should be clear skies and cool nights all the way through.

There’s a surprising dearth of wireless access points. In Vietnam we had free, open wireless available almost every single night. No one on the trip has found a single open point, yet, and the hotel’s wired connection is pretty sluggish. Geoff (my roommate from Saigon) decided to take things into his own hands, and purchased a 3G modem and 4GB of download credits. He’s sharing the connection with everyone else via wireless. As long as we’re in range of a cell tower I should be able to keep the flow of photos going, which is awesome!

I just uploaded a few photos from today to my Flickr account. Here’s the link to the Flickr set; keep an eye on it.

The tour officially begins tomorrow at 5pm for dinner, where we’ll meet the local support staff and the three bikers brought in to fill cancellations. I’m not sure what I’ll do until then, since Nairobi doesn’t have a whole lot to do (the Lonely Planet East Africa guidebook literally mentions “taking in a movie” in their list of things to do while in Nairobi).

Riding begins on Sunday. I can’t wait!

I didn’t hear about this tour until last year, while unicycling from Hanoi to Saigon in Vietnam. The other riders wanted to know: Was I going on the Africa tour? My first answer was, “yes!”, followed by a more reasoned, “Wait, what Africa tour?”. Details were largely irrelevant; it sounded like an awesome thing to do and I wanted to go. I later learned this is the route we’ll be taking:

Day 1 – Arrive in Nairobi, free day. Airport transfers can be arranged. Alternatively taxis are available outside the airport, approx $USD 20 to the Hotel where we will meet for a pre departure meeting at 5pm. NOTE- please change money on arrival at the airport for at least the first week of your trip.

Day 2 - We take a short drive out to the surrounding plains. From here we begin riding on undulating tarmac and dirt roads through the African savannah. A fairly gentle day of approx 25kms to ease us into the saddle brings us to an ostrich farm where we camp for the night.

DAY 3 - Heading away from civilisation we ride on dirt roads towards Amboseli National Park, meeting up with Maasai tribesmen and various plains game along the way before spending the night under the clear African sky in the open bush. Approx 82kms riding.

Day 4 - We continue riding on dirt roads and tracks to Amboseli National Park, renown for its huge herds of elephant and stunning views of Mt Kilimanjaro. We finish the day with a short game drive into the park to the campsite. Approx 50kms riding.

Day 5 - With an early start we spend the morning on a game drive through Amboseli. Leaving the park after lunch we ride across the dry bed of Lake Amboseli and around the lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro to camp in the shadow of the massive mountain. Approx 25kms riding.

Day 6 - A relaxed morning gives us the chance to visit a Maasai manyatta, (village) and experience their traditional culture and lifestyle. We continue riding around the lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro towards the Tanzanian border. Approx 45kms riding.

Day 7 - After crossing through the Kenya/Tanzania border we drive on towards Arusha the safari capital of East Africa. After lunch, back on our unicycles and you choose between the paved road or dirt roads and tracks for approx 25kms to the Meserani Snake Park. Lunch at own cost.

Day 8 - A full day of paved roads to really stretch out the legs as we ride away from Arusha. We again encounter Maasai tribesmen herding their cattle and some plains game. The afternoon brings us to Mto Wa Mbu, a small town at the foot of the Rift Valley escarpment. Explore the town and visit local craft markets. Evening meal at own cost. Approx 89kms riding. (Upgrades to rooms available*).

Day 9 - With an early start we drive into the Ngorongoro Crater, a natural Garden of Eden, and spend the day game viewing the highest concentration of plains game in Africa, Returning to Arusha in the evening.

Day 10 - Departing Arusha we begin heading towards the coast, driving south past Kilimanjaro and the huge wide open spaces of the Maasai Steppe. We finish the day with a 40km ride to a secluded campsite on the banks of a quiet meandering river. Lunch at own cost.

Day 11 - Climbing away from the plains we head up into the Usambara Mountains, driving up for the main climb then riding on towards Lushoto - an old German colonial town nestled high in the mountains. From here we cycle up to a viewpoint overlooking the endless plains below then continue further into the mountains to camp at a rustic colonial lodge. (Upgrades to rooms available*). Approx 45kms riding.

Day 12 - A well earned rest day for those who wish. Or join with a guide from the local village for a day hike into the stunning Usambara Mountains with unspoilt forests and views that go on forever. Here we have a chance to visit a local school. ** (Upgrades to rooms available*).

Day 13 - “The ultimate day” - What goes up must come down; riding further into these beautiful mountains we pass through pristine rainforest and village farmland. This is an area that rarely, if ever gets visited by travellers and the welcome and response we receive from the local population is fantastic. You have the choice of 2 routes back down, and then after lunch a gentle 14kms of scenic winding tarmac to get us back down to the plains below. (Upgrades to rooms available*). Approx 60kms riding.

Day 14 - With the tropical coastline as our goal we ride along a little used dirt road and through sleepy palm lined villages to meet the Indian Ocean at Bagamoyo. This small historic town right on the coast is at the end of what once was the major slave and trading route through East Africa. We camp at a lodge right on the beach. Evening meal at own cost. (Upgrades to rooms available*). Approx 65kms riding.

Day 15 - We ride through old Bagamoyo town then follow the coastal road to Dar es Salaam “Haven of peace”. A quick check of the local fish market to choose our dinner then a last gentle ride along the coast to our campsite - arriving in time to enjoy a swim in the Indian Ocean. Approx 25kms riding.

It’s fairly comarable to the Vietnam tour in total distance, except for:

• Fewer rest days (there are longer stretches of consecutive riding)
• And off-road! Vietnam was mostly paved; this will be mostly dirt. This is awesome.

I’ll be covering the trip here on my blog, primarily in photo and video form. I ranted a bit last year, but this year I’ll probably be taking more video/photo footage than anything.

To kick it off, here’s what I’m bringing:

Africa Trip - Packing Walkthrough from Matthew Wegner on Vimeo.

I’m arriving a few days before the tour in order to wander around Nairobi. I expect I’ll have Internet access there, so I should be posting. If access is spotty, or I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll try to at least post photos to my Flickr account and videos to my Vimeo account. Keep an eye on those (and my Twitter account, of course).

Time to finish packing!

• Flashbang launched Blurst, which is now our company focus
• I traveled to Prague with Crystal, followed by Copenhagen for work
  (Pictures coming soon!  They do exist somewhere.)
• Flashbang launched three iPhone games and Minotaur China Shop, our latest web game
• I started working out with a local Crossfit affiliate (which rocks!)
• And Crystal and I decided to stop dating, so I moved into my own place (we were together for three years)

There were some other work-related things in there–things have been awful busy–but you get the idea.  Overall it was a pleasant fall, and I think things will shape up for the better pretty early on into 2009.  In the meantime, I snapped a video of my new place to satisfy curiosity:

This is available at a higher resolution if you watch it directly on the Vimeo site. I guess I’ll take another video when I’ve finished furnishing the place. It’s expensive to move out from a cold start!

One of the kitties, Mila, came with a nasty case of what was probably a coccidian infection.  She lost a ton of weight, but has since recovered and is doing splendidly.  You can see her in the Flickr set; she’s an odd mix of pot belly and bones right now.  The mom is actually pretty slight herself.  She has a great temperament and should have no problem being adopted after she’s back at AZHS.

The other kitty, Jasmine, really loves to jump.  She’ll randomly jump as high as she can against the wall, or over another cat, but what she really loves to do is jump for toys.  Observe:

In other updates, work is going really well! Flashbang is up to six people full-time and an intern. Jetpack Brontosaurus is still the company’s focus, but we’re also managing two active contract jobs, supporting the recent launch of another, maintaining our affiliate website, preparing the design of our upcoming portal, and pushing paperwork to develop on two new platforms. I’m also writing a Unity tutorial, an article about Unity for a prominent software development magazine, the far-too-occasional review for Fun-Motion, and gearing up for the 11th annual IGF.

I spend my free time working my through The Wire with Crystal, actually playing video games (finished GTA IV!), and hanging out at Dan and Beth’s amazing pool. I’ve unicycled three times since Vietnam, sadly. Must get out and exercise more!

Well, time to sleep. It’s 10:35pm, perilously close to our bedtime.

Photos

I had a point-and-shoot camera with me, and took a pile of photos. 170 photos are posted here in my Flickr account. Some favorites:

Posts

I had wireless nearly every night, and posted about my journey while it was happening:

• Leaving for Vietnam (Packing list)
• It’s Travelin’ Time
• Flights are Long (Some thoughts on purpose of the trip)
• 24 Hours of Travel (On arrival in Vietnam)
• I Made It! (On arrival in Hanoi)
• 60 Seconds in Hanoi (Video taken at night)
• Sleepover in Halong Bay
• My First Riding Day (Rant about country’s reaction to unicycles)
• It’s Distance Time (We start the tour proper)
• Day 2 Complete
• Riding Continues
• Best Day Yet (And Nich’s crash)
• The Long Day: Complete
• Vietnam Panorama
• Hanging Out in Saigon (Final days)
• Vietnam Conclusion (Back in the states)

You can also just search Wordpress for posts tagged with Uninam.

GPS

I had my Garmin GPS unit with me, which I used to keep track of mileage. It also spews a bunch of stats:

• Day 0 (Circular trip around Hue)
• Day 1 (Hue to Lang Co)
• Day 2 (Lang Co to Hoi An) [Note: GPS battery died]
• Day 3 (Hoi An to Quang Nhai)
• Day 4 (Quang Nhai to Quy Non)
• Day 5 (Quy Non to Tuy Hoa)
• Day 6 (Tuy Hoa to Nha Trang)