I guess towardsmecca.com making it through it’s second year is barely an accomplishment since I’ve barely posted this year at all. 2009 has been a ridiculously busy year for me with my second child, Maryam, being born. Also, I worked on the high-profile iPhone game Modern Combat: Sandstorm and that was a HUGE time investment, but it paid off

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So here we are: 1 year, 115 posts, 842 comments and 115,992 unique visitors later and we’re still alive and kicking! What can I say, as I said in the first post, I didn’t know if I had it in me to even keep up with posting on a blog, now I can’t imagine life without it

So what has happened in the last year in my life? My son is 11 months old today My loving wife is still the love of my life! I’m still a game designer and loving that and have thus far worked on 2 released games with a third on the way! I’ve rediscovered two long lost loves: Magic the Gathering and Professional Mixed Martial Arts.  Haven’t touched my “work in progress” novel at all since last year though, and I’m really disappointed about that…

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In my endless trek to experience what the entire internet has to offer, I found myself on a free online comic called Slaughter Inc. I was immediately taken aback by the sheer quality of the comic in both art and writing.  Each page looks like a hand-painted work of art and the dialog feels straight out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The subject is right up my alley too. I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days but I can’t seem to get enough of zombies! From re-watching Shawn of the Dead, to being alarmingly addicted to Left 4 Dead … and now Slaughter Inc? What’s next, looking for brains in the frozen food section of my local grocery store?

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Ever wanted to take a course to learn something that may enhance your ability to get a really really good jobs? But you didn’t have the time or the money to go to school. Ever dream of going to an ivy league school…hmm I don’t know like MIT but didn’t have the marks, money or even knew what the application process was.

Well thanks to the open source era you can now get online courses for free from a miriad of great universities including MIT.

How you may ask? Well MIT developed an OpenCourseWare site. You have access 1800 courses ranging from Engineering to health sciences, they even have cources for Humanities and the arts.

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Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who was dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.“Journeys” are special University Lectures in which Carnegie Mellon faculty members share their reflections on their journeys — the everyday actions, decisions, challenges and joys that make a life. (more…)

In today’s day and age we are all looking to be successful somehow. Some of us play the lottery hoping to win millions of dollars. Others study toward becoming one of the trifecta of educational success: doctor, engineer or lawyer. And some of us break the law and try to cheat the system making a quick buck here and there.

How to become successful in life is something that I ponder about a lot. Being a manager of 27 employees it’s my job to motivate and support people in their career and life goals. In doing so I always look for fun team building activities to do and I look for great videos to watch in team meetings.

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I wanted to bring another amazing site to your attention. The site is TED.com.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives.

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from their archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. Like the one below. If you believe in any humanitarian causes or love entertainment and technology this site is a must see.

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A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a representative of the website OsamaLoves.com. The aim of the site is to show that not all Osama’s are terrorists hell-bent on seeing the end of all Americans and apple pie. Their aim is to collect the pictures of 500 Osama’s holding up a cue card explaining what they love! They also plan on making a documentary with the same purpose.

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When applying to a job today one of the scariest procedures is the background check or the check for security clearance. You and I know that you are innocent of anything and you are definitely not a criminal. However, in today’s market employers want to be sure that they are not only hiring the best candidate for the job, they are hiring someone who has a clean slate and are heaven bound. Employers are also beginning to search for you via Google.com searches, Facebook.com and linkedin.com. So, have you ever wanted to get an anonymous tip on how the company of your dreams really is from the inside?

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A British news site was asking for stories of how video games turned people to a life of crime.

If this isn’t ridiculous in itself, they are also offering money for these stories!

In response to what has to be one of the dumbest requests I’ve seen online, my co-worker wrote the following:

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