I stumbled across the 2012 Valve Employee Handbook online a few weeks ago and, unshockingly, it is brilliant.  The fundamental ideas behind every single thing I read, watch, and play from Valve are perfect, so of course the Handbook would be too.   

"A fearless adventure in knowing what to do, when no one’s there telling you what to do" 

Valve Handbook (direct link to .pdf)

Their well documented, "unique" (to put it mildly) approach to game design is flawlessly reflected in the corporate culture at Valve.  A hundred miles past the "trailblazer" line, this is an idiology that requires a full devotion to the idea that your employees are your company.  Once you are fully on board with that idea, it is pretty easy to see how all these other whacky ideas would evolve naturally, but I'd be shocked to see even a quarter of them being allowed to even sprout in any other company.  

This is a creative culture and flat reporting structure that many game companies claim to have, but when you see it fully realized it is painfully clear how far ahead of everyone else Valve actually is.  

One day Valve.... one day...

A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in a Developer Interview for MechWarrior Online.   If you didn't catch it you may still be interested in the read.  Maybe.  

Here is a picture that is also a link.

Dev Interview

This is an oldie, but a goodie. You can tell because it is in 4:3 and makes this entire page look like crap. Anyway, still one of my favourite TED talks, aspect ratio aside. Intelligent, future friendly architecture & design, with many applicable ideas (a rarity in this field, even today) - and all of this was said 7 years ago.

Figured my photographer friends would like this.  A pretty common misconception.  

"Nice camera! Does it take good pictures?"
"No, but I do."

- Rod Leland, 2007

 Your left ear probably loved that.

Was just watching a news report on the London riots.  The reporter said something along the lines of "we don't know why this is happening, there doesn't seem to be any real reason.  This riot is so severe that the prime minister is cutting his summer vacation short!".  ... *sigh*, I think you found some of the reason right there.  It's pretty safe to say that a lot of people are pretty well fed up with the world, I know we are in Vancouver (hey, we rioted too!) - the global economy, ridiculously expensive housing (1+ mil for the now "run down" shack some 50 year old bought for 14k, 30 years ago), arrogant and corrupt politics everywhere you turn....

It is absolutely terrible that innocent people are losing their houses, but I can't fully blame people for wanting to light something on fire or smash in a window out of frustration.  Normal human beings suppress those primitive urges, and as a 'normal person' I'll continue to watch.  And post old, partially related comics. 

Tonight there are ~1000 on duty police officers in London, there were ~5000 on duty during the Royal Wedding.  Let's get some priorities straight - when we do that, we might find that magically a lot of the reasons to riot have been solved.

"Carmageddon" didn't turn into a newsworthy happening (big surprise), but this video is sweet.  Take enough hours of film on any busy road, and sooner or later you'll have enough frames to compile a single complete road without cars.  Throw that in front of a moving background, and you have LA without cars.  Looks great too.

Running on Empty (Revisited) from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

So, the whole "blog" thing doesn't work.  Who has time to actually blog anything, especially when you can just press 'reblog', tweet, share, or countless other 'easier' ways of achieving the same end goal?  So here is the new plan; although this page has basically existed like this already, I am officially switching this to a "sharing of things that I think are cool... place". I'd bet I see at least one cool thing a week, right?  And if I do, I'll put it here!

Also, I don't know how to properly use a semi-colon, but I like them, so I am going to continue just using it and sooner or later I'll get lucky.

Anyway, let's get started.

A few posts ago (and years...) I shared pictures from the Blink reunion tour that I went to.  Well, tonight Blink released their first single off their new record.  You can listen to it below.  It is good, nice new sound, and I am properly "happy" just to hear new music from them.  You should listen to it too!

Duke Nukem is no doubt, and no argument, an organism which is guaranteed (indeed, engineered) to be offensive.  So, if we get offended...  does he win, somehow?  Is that how it works?  

Yes.