Follow @JamesonDurall
As I was thinking over what New Years Resolutions I should have for 2014, a buddy of mine helped convince me to try 365 new beers.  I had recently started using the Untappd app to track the beers I try...so I can rank them and help remember if I want to have them again.  It has a unique beers section that allowed me to easily track my goal.  If you want to follow me on Untapped, my profile can be found HERE

Any time I went into a restaurant or bar, the first thing I would do is look on the menu for something that I hadn't tried before.  Just that goal alone got me to try some amazing beers I would have skipped over in the past...Including local brews whenever I visited a new city.  I also had beer class to help.  On Monday nights at Radio Maria we try small pours 10 beers (then finish off all the extra!) so I got to try a lot of new beers this way.


So as August 1st, 2014 rolled around...I enjoyed a nice Chocolate Stout as #365 at a pub in my home state with someone I care about.  I even got this sweet profile picture out of it :) But that left three months in the year, so what was I gonna do now? Obviously up my goal to 500!

On December 22nd, the buddy that gave me the idea to do this in the beginning brought me a bottle of 2006 Bourbon County Stout to celebrate as beer 500.  It was amazing and I got to enjoy it with a small group of close friends.

Overall this was a complete blast to complete throughout the year and by far the best resolution I've ever made :)  I recommend it to anyone that wants to be exposed to lots of amazing beer!

Follow @JamesonDurall
I'm focusing on getting back to the things I enjoy and improving myself both personally and professionally this year.  Luckily I have a lot of overlap in those areas :)  So, here's my resolutions for 2015:

Consistent Blogging - I really fell off of blogging last year and missed it a lot.  This year I'm committing to at least one post a week and hopefully much more than that. Part of what I intend to do is regular updates on the progress of the resolutions below.

Game Design Focus - This is one that will be hard to list a set of criteria for, but my goal is to use this year to work hard at improving my craft and being a better Game Designer.  It will be a combination of reading more articles, focusing on getting better with the tools I use daily, and doing more competitive analysis.  I'll just have to evaluate my progress as I go.

10 Hours Played - I realized that finishing more games wasn't realistic for me, so my goal this year is to experience as many of the games in my catalog as I can.  So, I've decided to put 10 hours into each game I play and then move on to try something else.  My hope is that I can achieve this for 25+ games, but really care most about putting in time each week and experiencing all I can.  There will be a handful of games that I play much more than this too :)

10 Pounds Lost - This is actually going to be a difficult one for me because even though I work out nearly every day, my weight is staying pretty consistent.  I'm building muscle and getting leaner, but I really want to get about 10 lbs lower than I am right now and then keep that going forward.  This is going to mean eating better, which sucks...but this isn't supposed to be easy right?

Follow @JamesonDurall

I'm looking forward to 2015 and want to get back to the things that I've neglected a bit this past year...consistent blogging being a major one.  I'll do a post soon about my Resolutions for the coming year, but first:

Update on 2014 New Year's Resolutions

$1 Increase Savings - I completed this goal completely!  I also have used the money for my Star Wars Half Marathon at Disneyland next month and will be staying an extra week to visit friends, so hit me up if you want to get together!

Try 365 new beers - Complete success and I'll have a post coming up soon about this in detail.

Watch Old Movies - Success, I didn't get to some that I wanted to but I met the goal that I set out to achieve.

Finish More Games - Fail, but I have a better plan for me in 2015...more on that coming soon.

Read more Game Design Articles and Learn Unity - Biggest area for improvement here :/ I'm focused on improving my skills this year and hope to hit these way harder.

Dear 2014,

As I looked over "Jameson's Year" created by Facebook... I realized we need to have a talk. We didn't have a great time together.

Sure there were some really positive things. Kian is healthy and doing well and I got to spend some great time with him...which is always most important.  Work was great and I'm excited about what we accomplished and where we are heading. I completed a New Year's Resolution that took a year long effort.  I'm healthier and stronger than I've ever been.

The problem is, it was hard for me to recognize and appreciate the good things because of one big problem... You broke my heart.  What made it worse is that you kept kicking me while I was down and making it hard to recover. I'm having a hard time forgiving you, but it gets a little easier each day.

I'm sorry it had to end like this, things were looking so good for us in the beginning. But, now I'm focusing my time with 2015 and have real hope that I'll be happier.  It's already looking up :)

Follow @JamesonDurall

I've decided to finally join Instagram... here's the LINK if you are interested in following :)

Follow @JamesonDurall
Good News! In addition to the normal donation rewards of choosing what games I play, each $10 donated will get your name in a drawing for some great Volition gear! Here's the list of what is available:

Volition Koozie: What better way to keep your beer cold and hand warm than with this beautiful Volition, Inc. branded Koozie!
Beer Glass - The Broken Shillelagh: Prefer your beer in a glass?  I have just the thing!

Red Faction Armageddon - Xbox 360:  Last, but certainly not least... is a copy of Red Faction Armageddon for Xbox 360.  I'll also get members of the team to sign it before sending it your way!

So, let me know which drawing you'd like your name to go into for each $10 donated.

Follow @JamesonDurall

I'm sitting at my home Gaming PC yesterday morning before work and I suddenly hear a loud pop and the PC shuts off with my UPS screaming at me.  I nearly crapped my pants, but wasn't sure exactly what caused the sound.  So I leaned over and hit the power button on my PC to turn it back on....that's when the sparks and smoke started billowing out of the back of my power supply.  Then I did crap my pants (OK not literally...probably).

I built this machine five years ago, putting in top of the line components, hoping it would last me a while.  The only thing I've replace in that time is the video card...twice, but otherwise it's been a great machine.  At this point I'm scared to death that a surge has gone through and fried most of my hardware.  Since my only real course of action is to start replacing the most likely dead components until it lives again, I decide to order a new power supply to replace my beloved Antec Quattro 850.

I decided to upgrade to an 80 Plus Gold Standard power supply and settled on the Cooler Master V1000 since it was the same cost as the 850 Watt version at Amazon (at the time).  Now at least I feel like it was a bit of an upgrade since this has more wattage and also appears to have better power effeciency.

I then spent the rest of the day researching what Motherboard, CPU and RAM I would purchase if it turns out more of my components are fried.  The power supply arrived today (Have I mentioned how much I love Amazon Prime?) and I just finished installing it.  I'm happy to say that I'm posting this from my revived PC and my wallet is super excited that I didn't have to fork over the cash for more parts.

Follow @JamesonDurall
I'm in the process of moving to another place in town, so I have probably seemed a bit quiet lately.  I have a couple of posts nearly ready about our last two races that should be coming in the next week or so!  I've also been playing a fair amount of games on the 3DS lately and hope to have some thoughts gathered soon :)

Follow @JamesonDurall
2012 was a pretty rough year for me in a lot of aspects of my life, but I've made it through and am figuring out how to go forward.  It wasn't all bad and I did have some fantastic people helping me get through. But, there are some things I want to focus on in 2013...so I guess you would call these my New Year's resolutions:

Blogging
My blogging took too much of a backseat this last year and I intend to fix that.  Expect regular updates across a variety of subjects :)

Game Design
There are several books on Game Design that I want to read this year and some other activities that I want to do in order to make myself a better designer.  I'll be updating you with what I learn.

Fitness
Now that I've lost the weight I need to, I'm working on keeping it off and improving my overall fitness.  I'll continue running and posting about races as well as trying new workout classes, etc.  I plan to start Triathlon training at some point soon!

Photography
I've been having a lot of fun with my Canon T3i DSLR and want to learn more about the art of photography.  I'll be posting about what I learn along the way as well as some sample photos that hopefully don't suck.

Co-Op w/ Kian
Now that my son is living apart from me, I'll be focusing on our game time together through online services like Xbox live and Steam.  I'll post about how it's going as well as looking for suggestions on new games we should try.

Keep in touch and let me know what topics or individual posts you'd like to see!

Follow @JamesonDurall
Happy New Year!  As I look back at 2011, I realize that it's actually been one of the biggest years of my life. There's been a lot of changes and improvements in personal life as well as in my career.  So, I'll take a few minutes to go over everything...I'll get the personal stuff out of the way first.

When we moved to Champaign back in 2008, we only had 2 days to find a place to live before I started work and our stuff was on a truck heading our way.  We found a tiny house that seemed to have most of what we wanted, but after a while we realized the 800sq ft was way too small.  This year we finally moved into a much bigger place, nearly doubling our living space.  It was a huge deal for us and making our home life better.
I had been driving a 2000 Chevy S-10 that I bought new shortly before graduating from Full Sail in 2001.  I racked up 125k miles and while it had never given me any major issues, I could tell that things were coming soon.  Also, living in Illinois with a lack of 4-wheel drive made things difficult for a quarter of the year.  So, I bought my dream vehicle this year... 2011 Chevy Silverado 1500 Crew Cab.  Jumping 11 years in a vehicle made me feel like I bought something from the future, it is amazing and I love it.

I had been running a blog series on my path to weight loss, but found that every time I would make some progress...my old habits would bring me down.  Late this year I finally decided to participate in a weight loss program that is run by my doctor and am seeing amazing results.  I'm down 32lbs already and cruising toward my goal of at least 50.  But the best thing is that the diet is teaching me to eat better and my habits have radically began to change.  Once the diet is over, I'm confident that my new way of eating along with my added exercise will help me be healthy for years to come.  I've already been taken off half the meds that I have taken for over 5 years.

I talk a lot about Disney World on my blog and used to only get there about every other year. This year we had two full family vacations that included Kian doing Jedi Training Academy and being Prince of the Day.  In addition to that, I was able to visit on three other times for at least a day and got to meet some of my internet friends for the first time.  I also got to experience my first Food and Wine Festival with my dear friend Wendy.  It's been a year full of Disney and a frequency that I hope to continue.  We already have a February trip planned for our 10th Anniversary as well as a June trip for our first Star Wars Weekends!

Now on to how 2011 has been for my Game Design Career.  After finishing up development of Red Faction: Armageddon, I moved into the role that I set out 10 years ago to achieve.  As of April of this year I am Design Director on an unannounced project at Volition and am having a blast.  Things have been going really well so far and I love my team.  Now if we can just get the price of THQ stock to rise...sigh.

I focused a lot on doing regular blog posts on Game Design which I found not only helped others but also kept me thinking about things that I either took for granted or didn't evaluate enough.  I also started posting on the #AltDevBlogADay site and it has really kept me motivated to post.  What I didn't expect is that Gamasutra has picked up several of my posts and put them on their site.  It's really nice to get emails and messages from friends informing me of the posts and giving congratulations.

Last, but certainly not least, It's been a huge year for me and Full Sail.  I stayed a  couple of extra days after our January Disney trip to visit Full Sail and do a presentation about my career.  In June, myself along with two other teammates came back to do a Red Faction: Armageddon presentation and meet with students.  I later came back to be part of the Alumni Advisory Board that looked over the curriculum and give expert feedback on where they can make improvements to the Game Development and Design programs. I really enjoy helping out and interacting with students...I was exactly where they are 10 years ago and would have died to have someone in the industry to talk to.

By far the biggest news was my induction to the Full Sail Hall of Fame and the festivities last month that were absolutely amazing.  The weekend was filled with dinners, drinks, concerts and lots of flair...they made us feel like Royalty.  It was a truly humbling experience, especially looking at the amazing people that are also included.  I made some great new friends and can't wait to go back for next year's ceremonies. I have a big post about the Hall of Fame HERE that even has video the entire ceremony.

Yeah...I'm not sure how I will ever top this year, but I promise I'll do my best :)  I guess I do have a few resolutions that may help:

• Read more Game Design books and articles
• Play more games, including with my son
• Continue my weight loss and keep it off
• Get back into Programming
• Improve my Photography skills

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe via RSS or email.  Please support the blog by doing your Amazon.com purchases through this link.

I can't stop watching this clip from last night's episode of SNL...Taran Kilam is TOO good at doing this.  It's kinda creepy but I can't stop laughing.

You should follow me on Twitter here.

Ladies and Gentlemen...I present to you Mr. Toots!

You should follow me on Twitter here. You can also subscribe via RSS, subscribe via email or follow on Facebook.  Support the blog by doing your Amazon.com purchases through this link (It won't cost you any extra).

I'm currently on my flight from Chicago to Los Angeles and was happy to find that wi-fi was available.  I'm happy to pay $10 for 4 hours of internet, especially since I need to do some work on my Game Design Course and don't have the One Note file synced to my laptop yet.  My traveling is going to put some of my deadlines at risk so I need whatever time I can find to be working on it.

I've already learned something about myself today...I need some kind of paper material to read while traveling.  I generally carry my laptop, 3DS, and Kindle...but find that i'm too anxious to use them in the airport for very long and they must be turned off during takeoff.  I brought the The Unofficial Guide to Ireland with me since i'll be heading there next week and found that I could focus and enjoy it at times I normally wouldn't feel like reading.  So, lesson learned!  I've also brought a Pokemon instruction manual so I can learn the rules and play with my soon when I get home.

I also decided to turn on Streetpass for my 3DS and see if I gather any interesting Miis while on my trip.  I hadn't yet explored the functionality and found an interesting game where you utilize Miis to play.  This does encourage finding more!  I got one in just one our of being in the Chicago Airport and am anxious to see what LAX will provide. Not to mention when I'm walking around the offices of Gametrailers and G4TV tomorrow.  I'll update if I get anything interesting.

Now that I've finished my time on Red Faction: Armageddon, I'm taking some much needed down time to recover and get ready for my first Design Director position. But, I've found that there are a lot of other transitions that are happening in my life as well.

I recently moved my desk to the new team location and have found that since the room is pretty quiet...it seems to inspire a lot of impromptu conversations from people walking by.  I'm currently trying to get myself acclimated with the new game, so my days aren't too stressful.

The bigger transition is happening after hours since we've decided to move into a bigger place.  We recently signed a lease on a duplex that doubles our living space and we are busy moving things over gradually.  I'm also hard at work designing the Game Design Course I mentioned before, so free time is something I have very little of these days.

I'm also heading to Dublin in a couple of weeks to show Armageddon to European press.  My wife isn't happy, since her family is from Ireland and she's been dying to go. So, I told her at least this will allow me to get to know the area and prepare a bit for when we do get a chance to go as a family. (Think it helped?)

Anyway, things are super busy but I'll do my best to get some blogging done soon!

It's amazing what a simple twitter post can do.  Earlier today I randomly posted that I was trying to work, but my new Dungeons and Dragons character was on my mind.  This started a discussion on DnD that quickly exploded among Full Sail students across twitter.

Within an hour we had decided to organize a large campaign of veteran and new players and some of us will be playing online entirely.  We have currently decided on two Dungeon Masters and it appears 3.5 is winning over 4th edition .  We are going to create one constant world that all of the groups will live in.  This should be an interesting experiment...

My wife and I have had an iPhone 3g for over two years now and it was time to update.  The first problem, is that I didn't see enough improvement in the iPhone 4 to upgrade...so I waited.  I started hearing about the new Windows Phone 7 models and was skeptical but intrigued.

As I looked into them more, they seemed to have all the functionality of other phones but with the added Live Tiles and Xbox Live integration.  Since I'm a fan of achievements, the though of having them on my phone was interesting.  A buddy of mine and his wife both got the Samsung Focus so I was asking him questions to make sure I would get everything I was looking for.  My wife was still skeptical but felt better when she found out she can still use her old iPhone on WiFi.

My plan WAS to wait until after the first of the year and we return from our Disney World Vacation, but AT&T was offering 2 deals that I couldn't pass up.  First, they had buy one get one free on the Samsung Focus. On top of this, each phone comes with a Free Xbox 360 game.  Both offers end on 12/31, so we headed to the AT&T store so my wife could try one out.  After she did, we weren't allowed to leave the store without them and we got out cheap :)

So far the phone is really slick looking and the interface is beautiful and fast.  Having a camera button that works quickly is a huge upgrade not to mention doing HD video.  Setup was incredibly easy...I just put in my Windows Live login info and had Hotmail, Xbox live, etc all ready to go.  The way it integrates all of your contacts from various email accounts, Facebook, etc is really nice.  I've only had one evening with the phone, so can't yet speak to it's every day use but will update once I've had more time with it.

I'm really interested to see some of the rumored phone + Xbox Arcade integration.  I'd love to be playing a game on my phone along with a buddy at home on his Xbox.  This also makes me anxious to pick up XNA Game Studio 4.0 Programming and see how easy it is to create something on my own.

Back in October of 2008, I purchased the Fallout 3: Amazon.com Exclusive Survival Edition in order to get the Pip-Boy Model 3000 clock.  I promptly displayed it on my desk at work and less than 2 weeks later...it was dead.  Turns out everyone I knew also had theirs die shortly after receiving it and one person even transformed theirs with an Ipod Touch.
Mine has been sitting on my desk at work ever since that day and mainly forgotten about, but was too cool to get rid of.  Today I walked into my office after being gone nearly all of last week and the Pip-Boy was working! How is this even possible?  I spent a ton of time taking it apart and trying to figure out the problem.  Wouldn't the batteries have to be dead after 2 years of sitting dormant?  Never the less...it lives!

I thought I was going to have to wait until April to play Stranger's Wrath again...but today there is an article on Kotaku talking about an Oddworld 4-pack coming to Steam this holiday season!

As I've mentioned before, it will be really nice to show my son the game I was working on when he was born :)

Gotta love Penny Arcade.

What is Slapsgiving you ask?  How I Met Your Mother is my favorite show on TV and a couple of years ago there was a Slap Bet.  A Slap Bet is the ultimate bet...the winner gets to slap the loser as hard as they can with an open hand across the face.

When Marshall won this bet, he was given the option of slapping Barney 10 times in a row immediately, or 5 times of his choosing.  The third of these slaps was delivered on a Thanksgiving that Marshall renamed "Slapsgiving" and it was an entire episode where Barney knew it was coming and was a nervous wreck with anticipation.  The fourth slap was delivered on the following "Slapsgiving: The Revenge".
In honor of this most excellent holiday, my wife decided to give me an early Christmas present and I shall wear it proudly!  There is still one slap to come and I can't wait to see it :)