It's been more than seven years since I signed up for my GameSpot account on the "new" registration system.

Boy, things sure do change, don't they? One of the reasons I'm writing this is because I'm curious how many people will be surprised because they forgot that they were following some ex-GSer named Adam_B. Even now, my inbox has hundreds of unread notifications of people who decided to follow. Sometimes people did it because I had an official GameSpot emblem or because I occasionally posted wacky heavy-breathing videos showing tours of the GameSpot offices.

But boy, things sure change. I had written more, but I guess that's the crux of it -- things change before you know it. But what have you all been up to, peeps?

Is Blinx still the all-time floppiest flop ever?

Hey all,

I don't know if any of you have Apple iPhones, but if you do, you know what a potentially great gaming platform it can be.

As such, a few friends and I built a site dedicated to games on the iPhone.

It's called Slide To Play and can be found at: http://www.slidetoplay.com

Let me know what you think! Thanks guys!

[-- There's a column over here.

And a column over here. --]

^

[ And a column here. ]

v

Lotsa columns. That's all.

Oh, and twitter: http://twitter.com/Adam_Buchen

Hey all,

Just wanted to mention this, primarily as shameless linkbait

So one of my side interests has always been politics: even though I'm a software engineer now, my degree from UCLA is for Political Science. For a handful of reasons, I've been even more interested in this election season than I have been in the past , especially when it comes to the Presidential campaign. And my political views? They definitely tip toward the left.

So, with all that stuff in mind, I built a political site from the ground up: http://www.flip-flop-express.com

It was a good opportunity for me to do some top-to-bottom development: from setting up the Web server, doing the backend and database, and all the way up to the design, html, and css. It was definitely a good learning experience, especially in the fields I haven't had much experience with, particularly the front-end html and css.

As far as my personal blog, it mostly died, which is okay. I've switched to Twitter anyway!

Later all!

Hi GameSpot,

It's been awhile. You look good. I saw you with whatshisface.. what's that? Oh, just friends, huh? So... um, we had some rocky times back there, didn't we?

What's that? Oh, I've been seeing other sites, but mostly pretty casually. A stop by to get Yahtzee's opinion of something, or maybe I could read a quick overview at 1up on something. That Dan Hsu is cool, but we're just not that compatible.

You know, you and I had some good times. I remember stopping by a computer lab on the UCLA campus around lunchtime sometimes just to see what kind of crazy chatter was happening in Deep Fighter... er... Goose's Garage when we first contemplated heading into Iraq. Those were good times. The time we spent together, I mean, not the Iraq war.

I didn't know what I was gonna do after college -- I knew I needed a job, but my Political Science degree turned out to be not all that practical -- go figure. I had even thought about going back to my original home state of Wisconsin. But then Greg Kasavin saw a PM I made about an intern position, and since we had been casually acquainted due to Developer for a Day (I!) and thanks to my previous stalkership of the GameSpot booth during E3, I had a very small part of a foot in the door.

I ended up with an internship in San Francisco at GameSpot, a place that was awesome. The people were awesome. And it turned out, that led to a career in development. Just turns out I had a knack for it, who knew? GameSpot gave me that opportunity, and I look back on those days fondly. I also look fondly at stuff like the DDR Arcade machine on the third floor, which I sadly do not have access to anymore.

It's been a turbulent time, GameSpot. Some bad stuff went down, and everyone's unhappy with that. But I happened to check the site today and saw fiddlecub... er.. Kevin van Ord is taking over the reigns of Developer for a Day, that contest whose first iteration I ran while I was still in college, and the TOTAL prize for that? $100.. I guess I found it touching that after everything, people like Kevin are showing they truly care. It made me realize that there's plenty of good still in you, and maybe, just maybe we can someday work things out.

We've all gotten a little older and wiser, and what's happened in the past is done. For the good of the country, GameSpot should drop out of the race... err.. wait, that's politics, not gaming. Anyway, remember what got you where you are, and with persistence, you can get back there. There are still thousands of talented people who'd love a job there. And I have no doubt that Ricardo can take care of things since the man has literally been able to break the laws of the Universe by being in eight different places at once, or so it seems.

Bring back GameSpotting Live! There are plenty of talented people in the organization who are behind the scenes. Remember Vinnie? Anyway, have a good one.

I'll be watching you!

Sincerely,

former Superfan, Intern, Data Produer, Associate Software Engineer, Software Engineer, Lead Software Engineer,

-Adam