Hello all and Happy New Year! Wow, it's been 2+ months since even a simple blog post/update. Things have been absolutely crazy here at DarkstarHQ and things are moving along at a quick pace, forcing quite a few of us here to travel to address the increasing interest in the technology around the world. Not to mention that this was one of the craziest holiday seasons I have experienced in a number of years. All of this conspired to delay my blog posting. Now that I am settled in one place for the time being, allow me to bring you back up to speed with what's happening in my world of gaming.

So grab some popcorn and let's a-go!

My Korean Adventure

I was fortunate enough to have been over to visit the Sun office in South Korea right before the Christmas holiday. While over there, we met with several companies, did some internal training and held a press conference. For those of you who have never participated in a multi-lingual press conversation, it is quite interesting.

As you are sitting there, trying to pay proper attention to the reporters in the room, you have a translator in the seat next to you whispering the English translation in your ear while the reporter is talking. Think Babelfish with two audio sources. After a few minutes you become accustomed to the sensation and it is very cool Pics from the trip right here:

Lots of good meetings, great people and a BEAUTIFUL country. I can't wait for a return trip!

Holiday party

Pete Joseph and Jeff Tokar, the aweseome guys who cover Time Warner here in NoVA had a great idea for a holiday get together and invited me to come along. Held at Ajax Amusements in NoVA, this was a party in an arcade How could I not turn out for this!?! A great time was had by all and there was some great big screen Wii playing, old school arcade gaming and even a bit of *dancing*. Pictures and movies below:

Holiday games

Given my job, I am often asked for my opinion on which games to get at any given point in time. So, here's what I picked up over the holidays and what we are playing at home:

There are a few other games that we are playing: High School Musical, Link's Crossbow Training, My Sims (!!awesome!!), Daxter and Lego Star Wars on the Wii. But nothing beats having my 10 year old daughter playing drums on Beastie Boys "Sabotage" while I play lead guitar. That was one of the highlights of our game playing over the break.

CES

Scott McNealy and I were brought to CES to do an executive tour of Samsung's booth. What an amazing show CES is. For the ADD afflicted, like me, it is paradise. The Samsung booth was full of crazy gadgets: from OLED displays to massive plasmas and 120Hz televisions, it was bliss. Here are some pics of me and Scott:

And that's a quick photo recap of my major points through the holiday season. Lots of additional work gogin on right now and will bring you up to speed in a couple of follow-on posts.

Happy New Year to all!