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I've been really busy this summer. Busy with travel, busy with classes, busy with work, and most importantly, busy with games. I'll start with the games.

They Came, They Saw, They Conquered
As you might recall, I've been working on a game of sorts for quite some time now. It involves turrets, lots of fancy effects, and a handful of little black men.

Wait, that doesn't sound right. Little dark-colored men? That's better. But they're not really men, are they? We'll fix that easily enough: little dark-colored gender-neutral entities. But wait, this is 2012--I can't be insensitive to short people! Let's try that again.

As you might recall, I've been working on a game of sorts for quite some time now. It involves turrets, lots of fancy effects, and a handful of sub-average dark-colored gender-neutral entities. I stopped development for several months last year because homework and robotics sucked up what little free time I could manage. Recently I've resumed development of TCTSTC, and I'm currently aiming for a December or January release.

You can find screenshots on my Tumblr.

Thoreau
Last December I teamed up with 3D-Xelu for Game Jam 6 and we made a kickass Limbo ripoff (err, sorry, "original game").

Once we published the game, we decided to polish it up and whore it out to sponsors, but like I said, I was swamped with schoolwork at the time, so I didn't have much time to become a prostitute let alone develop games. Once school let out, my schedule freed up again and I was able to tackle the giant list of bugs Xelu compiled for me. We put it up for sale on FGL in mid-July, and after a few weeks we accepted a bid. We're currently working with the sponsor to finalize payment and branding, so be on the lookout for Thoreau v2 in the next week or two!

Travel
At the end of June I flew down to Pennsylvania to meet up with RaidTheWood. I stayed at his house for 11 awesome days of waterparks, ziplining, programming, and awkward conversations with his parents' drunk friends.

In July, I drove with my family down to St. Louis, where they'll be moving once I set off for college. It's a fantastic city, and the house we just bought down there is beautiful. I'm a bit jealous I won't ever get to live there.

I also spent a few days at a lake with an old childhood friend, and another several days at a lake with a close friend of mine who'll be attending college in New York this fall.

Work
While at the lake with my old friend, Blake, I ran into a friend of his dad's, who offered me an internship at his internet software company. I happily accepted, and have started working on an iOS application with his team.

School
Last spring I discovered Coursera, an awesome website that offers free online courses from top-notch universities. In June, I completed "Machine Learning," and in July I started "Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation." This fall, I'll be taking "Neural Networks for Machine Learning," "Scientific Computing," and "Probabilistic Graphical Models." This is, of course, in addition to my senior year schedule:

German 4
AP Literature and Composition
AP Physics
Multivariable Calculus
Linear Algebra
Differential Equations
AP Computer Science
Independent Study

I also have to complete college applications this fall. I plan to apply to MIT, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois.

It's been super crazy lately, as you can tell.
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