If you want to, why aren't you doing a startup now?

I had an email (of all things ! Not a comment here or on HN where I submitted the last post) asking me if I wanted to build a company so much why aren't I doing that instead of working for a consultancy doing staff augmentation at an investment bank.

It's something I ask myself a lot too.

Firstly, I gots bills to pay! Rent in London isn't cheap! If my parents were well off or my spouse was earning tons then it'd be a different story, but right now I just finished Uni and after having to pay the 3 month security deposit + a months rent + a ton of other things I didn't have much left. I want to get a cushion before I so anything too hasty.

Secondly, when I was here for my work experience year, I learned a ton, technical know-how aside I had no idea how a business really worked, I hadn't seen any of the dance everybody in business here does, how to execute a project and how to deal with things (and people) that are throwing it off course. How to build a proper relationship with someone through all the barriers some put up by default (hint, it often begins with alcohol, "I'll lose some control if you do, and we'll see what we're about").

The rules are different in the startup world, but not totally different, profit still needs to be made, people still need to get along, I began to see the sheer number of mistakes or long routes I would have taken, and I didn't even get to see that much of all this, it was only the extra projects I did after the 9-6 that I got some exposure.

I haven't got that so much at the moment as I've been working a project that's a bit 'meh', but I've learned a lot about people. Sometimes it's hard to imagine why someone would do something that seems so obviously detrimental to themselves and the team, I was surprised how much those same closed book types opened up when you ask them if they fancy going to lunch. People are complicated, as obvious as that is I need to never forget it. I'm off that project in a few days so hopefully that comes next will give me an opportunity to discover more.

So I'm still learning, I'm learning and I'm saving money, and a friend and I are trying to come up with ideas that would be worth working on, and I'm building things in my non-work time that might give me some more financial independence.

Any idea what else could I do? One thing I can think of is going to more startup-y events, the only problem I've had with that is when I go after work I can see the stares when I'm wearing a suit, like the "not one of us" vibe and I have to work extra to show that I'm a person not a suit !

The Starcraft2 wallet helps :p

Figuring out what I want, and where I'm at

Younger college me was at a Weatherspoons (cheap reasturant/bar) with two friends, Matt and Rich, Rich was just as nerdy as us but hid it well, he played a ton of games like Rome: Total War and read the books for Warhammer etc.

Here's a "great" picture of em:

 Matt's on the far left, Rich is on the far right.

  I wasn't much better:

Tonight he couldn't decide if he wanted ice cream or chocolate fudge cake, he closed his eyes and scrunched his face up.

Matt asked him what the hell we was doing.

"Shhh ! I'm consulting the council !"

After I stopped laughing I wondered who'd be on my council. To this day whenever I have something I really don't know how to handle or can't decide, one of the things I'll do is "consult the council".

"Why don't you ask your friends/family, you massive saddo !"

Shut up. I do, but sometimes that doesn't really help, they have their own motivations etc.

My council consists of: Me, me at 14 years old, the me that I want to be at 40, stupid awesome hero me and my three best friends. My biological father (who I haven't seen since I was ~5 and is a complete a hole) has made an appearance only once, when I was really lost.

Recently I've been trying to figure out what I want, and why, usually in the shower or walking to work.

UDK Multiplayer Issue: Can't connect to server on own computer

This was an annoying issue that I couldn't solve last time, I was trying to run 2 instances of UDK on my own machine for easier multiplayer testing, and I couldn't connect. I was following this:

http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/875692-Lan-Multiplayer-in-One-PC-For-Getting-Started.

and getting this when I tried to join using "connect 127.0.0.1"

Log: Pending connect to '127.0.0.1/UDKFrontEndMap?Name=Player?Team=255' failed; Duplicate UID

I'm running with steam subsystem enabled (which is currently the default) and as a result I wondered if this had anything to do with it, after a google around I found that steam does indeed do an authentication check, which fails when I'm connecting to myself (hence the duplicate UID message).

To fix this find the UDKGame.ini and change the following values to false:

[Engine.AccessControl]
bAuthenticateClients=True
bAuthenticateServer=True
bAuthenticateListenHost=True

This should clear it right up ^_^

One foot in the wagon 2 : Back in the habit

In the last few months I started working for reals ! I'm not a proper ickle software developer ^_^ Shame the project I'm currently working on is soul sucking >.<

To keep my loss-of-soul to a minimum I've been writing a Windows / WinPhone 7 game all about Math !



This has kept me busy but I've started to get an itch for the UDK again. I've decided to split my time 80/20 between my Math game and continuing to learn the UDK. Yesterday I downloaded the latest UDK and started having a tinker again. I remembered more than I expected and still have my old projects incase I've forgotten anything.

First step will be to go over all the stuff I could do before, here's to something resembling progress !