Archive for 'Ramblings'

2012 in review, 2013 ahead

crystal-ballAmazingly a year passed without updates to this blog, mosty due to the fact that the blog got hacked during some point in 2012 and I never found the time to fix that… until now.

So today will deliver just a quick summary of 2012:

  • It’s been a fantastic year. QuinScape hasย grown to over 70 people and we had a splendid year!
  • On the ADOM front I managed to run a fantastic crowd funding campaign and due to the overwhelming support of more than 1.000 donors ADOM Classic has been resurrected.
  • On the ADOM II front several releases have happened and although development slowed down a little due to the crowd funding campaign ADOM II 0.3.1 is currently available and ADOM II 0.3.2 will follow soon.
  • I have been pretty active on Facebook and Twitter – as planned.
  • Private 2012 has been great – with holidays in South Africa, the Mediterranean (a fantastic cruise from Barcelona to Venice with many wonderful city stops in-between) and various trips through Germany.
  • We have been healthy and happy.

So all in all a great year!

And the forecast for 2013?

  • We will continue to grow QuinScape in a steady, strategic and healthy manner. I personally hope for at least 10% growth and believe 20% to be a possibility. We will see.
  • I will have to do a lot of work to finish the promises from the ADOM crowd funding campaign… primarily a lot of programming, writing and printing the ADOM Lite RPG and other stuff. This will the primary focus of my spare time.
  • Privately we plan to remain healthy and happy ๐Ÿ˜‰

So thanks to everyone for an almost perfect 2012 and we’ll meet again in 2013! I wish you all a Happy New Year!

2011 in review, 2012 ahead

The last hours of a year for me always are a wonderful time for reflection and planning. The plans for 2011 didn’t quite work out as laid down – but I’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. I’ll also try my hand at some predictions for 2012 to see if I’m getting better at this business.


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Rank 38 on Facebook (for Germany)…

fb3880…as far as “being connected” goes. I have to thank all the ADOM and JADE fans out there for granting me this tiny moment of fame and happiness (oh dear, in December I didn’t care about Facebook – now I get a warm feeling out of such trivialities… I’m getting senile). Nonetheless the accompanying image is fun:


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Getting sidetracked… an introspection

small-gaia-gamma-coverThis weekend I got sidetracked by an ancient pen & paper love of mine: The Gamma World line of roleplaying games. Gamma World in its various editions holds a special place in my heart although I never was perfectly happy with the underlying rules systems. This lead to the creation of my new Gaia Gamma blog at the weekend. My fourth blog… besides this one, my ADOM blog and my Hexer & Helden blog. And you could count the OpenSAGA blog, too, as I currently am the primary writer there (my colleagues just dont’t want to or don’t find the time).

This got me thinking: Why the hack do I start new projects all the time? Instead of finishing the running ones (spell: iADOM, ADOM Live, JADE, Hexer & Helden).


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New beginnings

boxesRight now we are preparing our Great Move ™ from our rented appartment to our own house. Packing things always brings a lot of memories up for me and this time it’s no different. Since this is the Great Move ™ – maybe the final one in our lives (we wouldn’t mind ๐Ÿ˜‰ ) – a lot of memories come back.


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P != NP ?

homerFrom time to time it’s very cool being reminded of the exciting theoretical problems I encountered during my studies… and from which I sadly (or luckily ๐Ÿ˜‰ ? ) am very far removed these days. Nonetheless it’s time for yet another attempt of proving that P != NP and I’m looking forward to the resolution. Although I’d rather prefer P == NP ๐Ÿ™‚

Good luck to Vinay Deolalikar until the final results are in!

“Dr.-Ing. Thomas Biskup” :-)

doktorhutNow it’s official – my German Ph.D. equivalent has been documented and now I may call myself a “Dr.”. Whew… great feeling ๐Ÿ™‚ What a day! Feels even better than the day of the defense ๐Ÿ™‚

My personal Google & Android conspiracy

bulbI love a decent conspiracy theory – and because it keeps popping up when talking to colleagues here’s my personal pet believe about Google and Android. Your mileage may vary.


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OpenSAGA – my recent business pet project

opensaga1Yesterday we released the OpenSAGA website to the public. What’s the buzz about? It’s about a Java- and Spring-based web framework for which I am the project lead and principal architect and which is going to be released to the public in the first half of 2010. Let me tell you some more details…


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A song of serenity, peace and majesty…

Powerful stuff… really powerful stuff. Enjoy.