Time out for Tech

OK. I was supposed to run tonight. But I have way too much work to do, and a serious lack of energy to run. Plus I am tired of running in the snow. I will make up my run sometime this week - not sure when exactly, but I know I will catch up those 8k one day.

So, instead of writing about a run - and instead of focusing on the mountain of work I have to do - I am going to take a quick timeout to highlight three quick cool things that make up the other 2/3 of this blog's title. For those not paying attention, that would be Create and Code.

First off, I neglected to mention something very exciting last week. My company - Red Piston Inc. - recently launched our first major game, called Banzai Blowfish!. for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Banzai is the result of many, many months of hard effort from my colleagues Ali, Jakub and Patryk. They've done a tremendous job, and on Thursday, our app was selected by Apple to be featured in the "New & Noteworthy" section of the App Store. This is a HUGE deal for us, and I'm proud of the guys. And, while I wasn't directly involved in the day to day development - other projects have kept me busy - I threw in my $0.02 from time to time on level design, sounds, game play, etc. In any case, check it out and let me know what you think.

Secondly, I came across this article today on one of the sites I read daily - daringfireball.net. John Gruber is an Apple pundit, and often has great scoop on what's happening in Cupertino and on the tech scene. Anyway, he posted a link to another site tonight to an article that just shows how much attention to detail Apple pays to their products. It's stuff like this that makes owning and using an iPhone so great, and 99% of the time, you don't even think about these types of things as you use them. Reading stuff like this is a reminder that the small details do matter, and that winning isn't always about hitting home runs, but rather taking care of small details like hitting singles, advancing the runner, etc. How's that for mixing metaphors of baseball and life? Anyway, the article deals with how new email is displayed when you're currently checking out your inbox - it's worth a read, even if you're not a tech-nerd.

And finally, I came across another cool little mention from the folks at iPhoneInCanada.ca - Google has made checking the weather - regardless of what city you're in - just a little bit easier. You need to be connected to Google.com (google.ca doesn't work yet for some reason) from your iPhone or Android, and do a search on Weather. You'll get a cool little interactive weather forecast, without launching an app. Normally I prefer dedicated apps to web apps, but this is pretty cool. More details and screen shots are at iPhoneInCandada.ca.

OK - that's it for now. Next time, I'll bring the run report, but I can't promise that this is the last tech talk....