SteveCook.net

Finally finished the major coding sections for GameRadar.com’s Blog section. You can check it out at: GameRadar.com News.  Here’s a short article: GameRadar Opens!

I just finished reading and listening (mostly listening) to Ender’s Game for the fourth time. I listen to it while riding or while I’m running on the treadmill at the gym. Man, that’s a great friggin’ book.

And even through I’ve read/listened to it so many times, I still haven’t read Speaker for the Dead. And that, despite having listened to the epilogue by Orson Scott Card himself describing that the main reason he wrote Ender’s Game was for an introduction to Speaker for the Dead. So, for this month’s audible selection, I got Speaker, unabridged for 14+ hours worth.

Been working quite a bit these last few weeks on some major BidNip technical changes – hopefully fixing a lot of the load we’re seeing on Sunday evenings – Due to Sunday evenings being the most popular ending time, and the ability for sellers to pick ending times, at some points during Sunday nights (6:00:00, 7:00:00 etc,) we’re submitting thousands of bids per second… Causing some major slow downs. We’ve got the solution worked out, now we’re beta testing

CheatCodes and GameRadar are also coming along. We’ve added some intern pages and  admin pages to match. We’re also getting close with the news section (mostly story admin – I used TinyMC)

While I was waiting for the new season of Dr. Who to start (which it did this weekend, and it STILL ROCKS), I’ve been checking out some other shows on DVD (and from other sources *wink*). They’ve been really good so far.

• Hustle (aka HU$TLE) : A collection of con-artists doing various cons. Each episode is a different scam. The characters are funny and entertaining. I’ve watched the first two seasons on DVD, and the third season is over in the U.K. A&E (or BBC|America) was showing them, but I haven’t seen it on there yet.
• Life On Mars : This one sounds really strange, but I’m halfway into the first seasons, and it’s a really well written and acted crime drama with a twist. The twist? It’s about a cop in 2006 that gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He keeps getting “flashbacks” and hearing things from his hospital room in 2006, while solving crimes in 1973. It’s interesting to see the HUGE difference in police work between 2006 and 1973. I hope they make a U.S. version of this show – it’d also be interesting to see the U.S. differences.
• Torchwood : This season is over, and it won’t have season 2 until next year, but it had a great season ending episode.

Anyway, if you get the chance, I highly recommend checking out these shows.