Introducing....

[Aaron]

I suppose since Josh took his blog as an opportunity for the proverbial "Hello World!", I'll use this first post to that end as well. Hello. My name is Aaron Kraft.

It seems unlikely that I made it this far in life at all, let alone that I would be on the cusp of starting my very own (well, partly my own) company to do something I would truly love to be doing. In fact, a couple of weeks back, when I was offered the job I am now moving (back) to Boulder to take, I was shocked that anyone would be interested in taking that much stock in me. Then again, I think I should have asked for more.

For most of my educational career, I basically just slid through; I never got outstanding grades, save for one outstanding <i>quarter</i> in eighth grade, but I always did well enough to pass on to whatever advanced class I needed to stimulate my mind. I've had an interest in computers since fifth grade when I tried to "hack" the Apple GS II in my classroom (which, to that end, I was able to see the grades of students I'd never met, through the simple mistake of a teacher leaving his disk in a network accessible drive). It wasn't until 2 years later, when my dad bought the family's first Windows 95 PC that I began to learn how to use, misuse, abuse, and as a result, program computers.

Fast forward to high school, when I took a computer programming class and found it not only fun, but easy. I took AP Computer Science as an independent study course my senior year. I aced the test, one of seven AP tests that I took and passed, and prepared for classes at University of Colorado at Boulder (I had been offered a scholarship to Colorado State; this may seem like a horrible decision, but I guess my experiences prove that wrong). I continued to slide through classes; although I had my moments of brilliance, I still lacked the necessary focus. Attribute this to being young, maybe, or just attribute this to a lack of understanding of exactly how much control I had over my world at the time.

An epiphany struck me about half-way through my second year as a result of some life changing events (the destruction of my first serious relationship and subsequently failing a class for the first time). Actually, multiple epiphanies struck me, for that matter. First off, I didn't like programming. Now, that may seem strange, but let me explain. I love solving problems, which is a huge part of building a program and I love building things. But the actual process of sitting down at a computer, digging through documents and thousands of lines of other people's code, writing a line of code and painstakingly testing and debugging it can be excruciating for me at times. The second epiphany was: I am, in fact, in control of my life. How much fun I have is in proportion to the amount of fun I try to have. So I lost <i>some</i> of my rigidity and cynicism and began anew. Sort of.

The height of my existence so far was senior year at CU. I lived with two of my closest friends with another just down the street. I began my senior project "Escher" with a group of great people and I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Escher consumed me. The first semester was tough; I worked at Target 20+ hours a week, took some of the hardest classes I ever took (Artificial Intelligence) and tried not to fall asleep during Escher's team meetings in the process.

Eventually, with my parent's support, I quit my job, and took a much leaner course load for second semester so that I could focus on the project. Now, honestly, Escher was not a well run project. A lot of the code some of us wrote never got implemented or tested. In the end, some of us felt bad for not doing enough (me) and others felt bad for doing too much (Josh). But I did learn a few things. I began to enjoy programming again, because I really enjoyed what I was creating and was invested in the outcome. I also learned that there's a lot you can do in creating software that has nothing to do with programming. I hope to fill many of these roles in Escher5D in addition to reprising my role in gameplay and sound.

Escher5D will be incredible. I say this for a couple of reasons. First, Josh is a genius, he really is. Had he not been part of Escher, it would not have been half what it is. Second, for seperate reasons Josh and I have both come to the conclusion that the only way out is through; we can't work for somebody else and get <i>our</i> results. We need to call the shots and live and die by our own word.

--Aaron Kraft

P.S. I believe a short explanation is in order. During our time working on Escher, Josh and I had many conversations over AOL Instant Messenger. Some were related to the project, others were simply musings which were occasionally too graphic to mention here. In one such conversation, Josh was attempting to find an algorithm for calculating normal vectors, and the only one he could seem to find did it in 4 dimensions. What could we possibly use 4 dimensions for? Neither of us knew, but one-upmanship and general inanity led us to declare that we would make the first ever 5 dimensional game (to be entitled "Escher5D"). This rather pathetic exchange became the inspiration for the company, and we plan to live up to it, however absurd it may be.

[Anonymous]

Hrm. Anyone buying this?

[Josh]

What is there to not believe? I admit we haven't been particularly active recently, but please understand, Gears of War (and a whole slew of other games) just came out. What are we to do?

[servers1]

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