Galactic Civilizations III turns a year old this week. I'm both shocked that it has already been a year, and surprised it has only been a year. When GC3 shipped I was very proud of what we had done, but I am even prouder of what the game has become over the last year. As a designer, I know that a game is really never done, so it has been a pleasure to continue working on GalCiv3 with such a great group of people. Lets look back at Galactic Civilizations III’s first year... ...

It has been a few months now since I have have been able to do the weekly GalCiv Twitch Stream, and I find myself missing the weekly GC3 progress report and Q & A. I thought I would take a page out of Brad's book and try and start doing some more regular Developer Journals. This week I’m lucky because we are going to release 1.7, and there are lots of new features to talk about, and a few questions that I can preemptively address. 1.7 for the most par...

Despite the risk to my poor IPhone, I drug it along on the Mayors marathon yesterday so I could record a special thank you to everyone who bought the Marathon icons.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na2MBQqZp3o With your help, my wife and I were able to raise over $8000 dollars for LLS, If you include all the Team In Training runners who came to Alaska we raised over 1.7 million dollars.  I will be able to continue selling the Marthon Icons for Team in training for at least the ...

The marathon Icons have been up a month now, and I 3 weeks ago I ran my first Marathon for the Team In Training, raising money for the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Tomorrow I run the Flying Pig marathon in Cincinnati, for Team in Training. this will be #2 of the 3 marathons that I will be doing. However my main fundraising tool is the Marathon Icons. Thanks to everyone who has purchased the Icons, or donated. Wish me luck. If you want to help me out, you c...

Since I began running 3 years ago I have been looking for a way to bring my two passions together; Icons and Running. This year I joined the “Team In Training” to help raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I am running 5 marathons this year, including the Alaska Mayors Marathon, along with my wife, as a member of the “Team In Training.” We set a fundraising goal of $10,000 dollars between the two of us. This gave me my chance to finally bring my two addictions together. I’ve done this by creating the “Marathon” Icon suite.

In the Marathon Icon suite I tried to capture the scope of running a marathon by creating a uniquely colored IconPackage for each mile of the Marathon -  26 IconPacks for 26.2 miles. The result is an amazing variety and over 1200 icons that will complement any desktop. To top this all off I included three additional IconPacks, themed for the “Team in Training” so you can show your support to the world, making a total of 29 IconPackages. This, to my knowledge, the largest Icon suite ever.

Stardock has been generous enough to join in my efforts, and will donate all the profits from this pack as well, so 100% of the profits from this suite will go directly to the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to help save lives. 

I hope you will join me in supporting this cause. As someone who has lost family to Leukemia, it is near and dear to my heart. On June 20th of 2009, my wife and I will be running across the finish line in Alaska, in memory of my Uncle, and in support of my brother-in-law. In the end it will be those of you who support me by purchasing the “Marathon” suite that will have made it possible.

For additional information about our story, or to donate directly to the cause, go here:

For additional information about The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, go here:

If you don’t already have IconPackager, you can download try it out, get it here.

To help save lives, and get the full 29 pack suite, go here.

Las Marathon, 2008. Finish Time: 3:45:41, new PR. Place: Overall 593/3525, Division 85, Sex 485. Marathon #5, State #4 of 50. Is been almost 6 week since I ran down the Vegas Strip, dressed as Elvis.  When I was looking for a winter marathon, Vegas was one of the first I came across. While I was perusing the races web site, I found that they were looking to brake the world record of the most Elvi to run a marathon. Well I figured if I was going to do Vegas I...

Detroit Marathon, 2008: Finish Time: 3:46:49. Overall Place: 999 – 3551 I am righting this over a month after the actual race, mostly because I just don't know what to say. It was my best race to date in just about every way. I wanted to write something clever, and give a detail brake down of the entire race, since I have done my best to complain about how all the others went. But the strange thing is, now that I have had a near perfect marathon, I just d...

  One year ago, I was writing almost the same blog as I am writing tonight. Tomorrows morning I will be running my Second Detroit Freepress Marathon. This will not only be my second Detroit Marathon, it is my Second Marathon, this month. Two weeks ago I ran the Milwaukee Lakefront marathon, with a finish time of 3:49:56.  Tomorrow I will be running with a pace group for the first time, and shooting for another 3:50 marathon.  The only thing crazy about this r...

Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon 2008. Finish Time: 3:49:56, Pace 26.2 @ 8:46. It took me a few days to decide just what to say about my experience at the 2008 Lakefront Marathon. What I would normally be my primary focus was my Time, which was a full 5 minutes ahead of my original goal of 3:55. This was great, and I am quite pleased. It feels food to be under 4 hours at last. Perhaps more surprising was that setting a new Marathon P.R. was one of the least mem...

  Since I started running almost 3 years ago, I have run 2 full marathons, as well as 3 half-marathons. Yesterday I ran my 3rd full marathon, and set a new personal record of 3:54. The sad thing is it doesn't even count. My 1st marathon, L.A., March 2007, I trained very hard for, but had no idea what I was in for, and I burned myself out in the first 10 miles. I had a goal time of 3:30, but I finished with a time of 4:28. I was heartbroken, and it took me quite a while to be ready...

Last week I hit 3000 Miles on my Nike+ iPod. In fact I believe I hit 3000 miles of running about 3 months ago, but I don't have any proof. I started running in April of 2006, around 2 1/2 years ago, and did not get my Nike+ until July. I'm not sure how many miles In that intervening 3 1/2 months, but I guess around 200 miles. On top of that there have been many runs lost due to syncing errors, and user error. The most resent was my 23 mile run last last weekend. Which had it been recorded, would...

I will be out of the country for the next week, so I will be putting the Icon-A-Day tutorials on hold until next Thursday. Luckily I had found something good to post that should be able to give everyone something to play with while I am MIA. Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 Bringing LaST up to date Months ago I was asked to update the IO Iconp...

Before we get to much further into the 2.0 update of the Icon-A-Day icon package, I want to take a moment to create a new index page so we can keep track of each step in the process.  Day 6 (Monday, August 11th, 2008) This index will give us a convenient home for the Icon-A-Day 2.0 project. As the project continues I will update this index with links to eac...

Last week I was lamenting that we were done with the simple User folders, but wait, I forgot one. I missed it because it did not exist in XP. After digging around in the original icons, I realized that we have pretty much have everything we need to make the new Search folder. Day 15 (Monday, August 25th, 2008) The Search Folder. When I started looking around the User f...