For L.

I have a garden of my own,
Shining with flowers of every hue;
I loved it dearly while alone,
But I shall love it more with you:
And there the golden bees shall come,
In summer time at break of morn,
And wake us with the busy hum
Around the the Siha's fragrant thorn.

I have a fawn from Aden's land,
On leafy buds and berries nursed;
And you shall feed him from your hand,
Though he may start with fear at first;
And I will lead you where he lies
For shelter in the noon-tide heat;
And you may touch his sleeping eyes,
And feel his little silvery feet.

--

We are all waiting for you, soon.

In a week or so. Probably while I am in Chicago, with my luck.

Life Update Part 1

Things have been really very busy for me after joining the new company. Literally two days after joining, they sent me to SIGGRAPH where I spent the past week being totally awed by all the latest academic advancements in 3D, and generally getting really stoked about getting into some of that work myself soon.

Now its back to work this week, and the pace is nuts. Not necessarily the good kind. When you're working in a startup, and not necessarily one founded by all your uber-smart computer-geek buddies from college, there are lots of issues as people feel things out, and try their best to make a 5-legged pig fly. But when you try to do that over 3 different languages and at least 3 cultures, it adds an extra dimension. I can easily see our greatest corporate challenge will be communication. I think I'm up for some interesting times.

Maybe for those who haven't followed, I can describe the company I am working for now:
The observant among you will have already discovered that the website is here. However I suspect most of you cannot read the Japanese therein.

Basically the deal is that an incubator company here in Tokyo called NGI Group (formerly NetAge) purchased a company that a friend started, and is helping set it up. The company is about developing technologies for virtual worlds (the most famous being Second Life), with the idea that virtual worlds could be a Next Big Thing, and whoever enters the market early will have first movers advantage.
As anyone who is following the virtual world (Second Life) phenomenon has noticed, there is a certain amount of speculation involved as to whether and whither this thing will go. I myself am not sure, but I think I can enjoy the ride, wherever it takes me.

My own role here is not strictly defined, as one might guess. I am nominally head of the group of programmers improving and developing virtual world clients. Specifically our team will be working on improving the Open Source client for Second Life, but our company is not limited in focus to just Second Life. Indeed our company has strategic relations with the Chinese virtual world company HiPiHi, and is working on developing our own compatible but improved system in the future. However, since we are really lacking experienced engineers, I just don't have anyone under me, so the title is entirely meaningless.

However I do get to have my input on business and strategy matters, which is fun to exercise the non-engineer part of my skill-set. Since I am a native English speaker, I get called in on a number of conferences dealing with non-Japanese and non-Chinese groups.

Goin' to Winnipeg

So gate 22A was San Diego, and gate 22B was...

Well it seems that the ticket issues got sorted out and I am going to be able to go to SIGGRAPH after all. I should be there from Saturday to next Friday. Its for work, so Ill expected to be taking lots of notes. Ill try to put some of them up on my blog as well.

If anyone will also be there, please drop me a line either on this blog or to my email.

First day

Today is my first day at work. All I can say is that by far this is the most professionally run company I have worked at in Japan (which really is not actually saying that much). We will see how the rest turns out.

Here is a link to a rare english language press release.