Hats off to 2015!

We hope 2015 has been a wonderful year for you and your loved ones. Our family accomplished various goals and had some fun adventures this past year. Here's a recap:

Trina completed her Master of Science degree in Computer Science from USC in May. She is so thankful to Jason, family especially Tracy, her friends, and coworkers that supported her over the past two and a half years. At times, it was very stressful, but it was worth it! Thank you to the many family members and friends that celebrated in various ways. Trina just completed her 9th year teaching programming and mobile class at USC. She also helps the USC School of Social Work to manage development of apps for the Welcoming Practices project. This fall they released the first versions of their iOS and Android app called Welconnect. This app connects students and their families with useful academic and non-academic resources.

Jason has been working extremely hard on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, and they recently released the Beta version of the game. Jason says he is getting too old for these 2 AM bed times. The Beta went very well, and the game is really shaping up to be something special. We're all looking forward to being done and to see it shipped to customers in early 2016. Jason was in a video about programming at Naughty Dog.

Evan is now 12 years ago and is achieving high marks in Grade 7 (despite a perhaps inordinate amount of grumbling about homework). Over the summer, Evan took 2 weeks of Java programming and one week of creating digital movies through PlanetBravo. He continues to enjoy taking piano lessons and has been playing trumpet in his middle school's intermediate band. In December, they marched down Main St in the El Segundo Holiday Parade.

Last February, the wonderful PTA at Quinn's elementary school held a Mother and Sons event called STOMP. Quinn even gave me a corsage! Then he turned 9 in March and had fun celebrating with a Mystery birthday party. He is now in 4th grade and his teacher's only complaint thus far is that he tends to get a tad distracted in class. Not surprising considering that his nickname at home is Captain Distraction. As Quinn likes to say, "My nickname is Captain... squirrel!" Quinn is now involved with Cub Scouts now, and we are looking forward to our first camp-out sometime early in 2016.

Tracy's family joined us for Easter. The cousins LOVE spending time together and still let us dress them alike.

Over the summer, our family took a vacation in Toronto to attend Mike and Gabby's wedding. Mike was one of our groomsmen, so it was fun to see him in a tuxedo again. We hiked along a creek, ate subway sandwiches in the Subway, and went to the top of the CN Tower. We also enjoyed spending time with Jason's cousins and childhood friends. We even got Jeff to go to Canada's Wonderland with us.

For our 17th wedding anniversary, we spend a weekend in Pasadena away from the boys and cats. We stayed at a really nice bed and breakfast named the Bissell House. Albert Einstein had dinners there when he would visit Cal Tech, and our room had his favorite chair. Our favorite part of the trip was visiting The Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens. We highly recommend spending a day or two there.

Trina teaches with her friend Kendra. For Halloween, our families dressed up as the emotions from the movie Inside Out. Trina is Disgust, Quinn is Fear, Eri is Joy, Kendra is Sadness, Bryce is Anger, and Jason is Riley's invisible boyfriend ("I would die for Riley").

Trina and Tracy had some great adventures this year including a quick trip to New York City in January (yes, it was cold!), fooling Trina's students on April 1, running the Tinkerbell Half Marathon together on Mother's Day dressed up as Twin Tinks, and attending the Neil Diamond concert at the Hollywood Bowl in memory of Mom. Tracy is even wearing Mom's shirt that she got from his 1983 concert.

Albert Einstein once said, "Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding." May 2016 be a year filled with joy, compassion, and peace.

Happy Holidays, 2014 Edition

Happy Holidays everyone!

2014 has been a year filled with new experiences for the Gregorys! Quinn and Evan both started piano lessons this year. Evan was promoted from elementary school to middle school (he's now in grade 6). Quinn has been learning to play the recorder in class, and after-school art lessons have inspired him to draw and paint some really great works of art. Evan joined the band at school, where he has been learning to play the trumpet. Evan also joined the First Lego League robotics club at his school, and took part in his first robotics competition in November.

As for me, I got my first experience working on the PlayStation 4 this year, as I helped the awesome team at Naughty Dog to ship The Last of Us: Remastered---a "port" of our popular PlayStation 3 game. Trina and I published our first "app" on the Apple app store this year. Trina continues to teach full-time at the University of Southern California, works part-time on various university-related side projects, and as if that weren't enough, she's also almost done earning a Master's degree in computer science! Oh, and just last week I got myself some new wheels---an amazing Tesla Model S. So yeah: 2014 has most definitely been a year of new experiences!

Quinn turned 8 in 2014. He is now in grade 3. His birthday party was themed after one of his favorite films this year, The Lego Movie. So of course Trina and I had to make him a cake in the form of a giant Lego head. At the party, we played "guess the number of lego bricks in the bottle," and had Taco Tuesday on a Saturday! (If this doesn't make sense, go see the movie!) Quinn has been doing very well at school (he's reading at a grade 4 level!)  He has also been really enjoying "Art With Jake," an after-school art class. He has been drawing all sorts of interesting spacecraft, cars, weapons and fantastic creatures. All of the animals he draws boast a black-widow-like hourglass marking---presumably this means that even his flamingo is not to be trifled with!

Quinn and Evan both started piano lessons this year. Their teacher is a wonderful lady named Karyn Adams who lives just around the corner, so the lessons are very convenient for us all. Both boys are getting quite good, and I'm always happy to hear Evan sit down and start tickling the ivories just for fun. Quinn isn't having quite as much fun with his piano lessons, but I'm proud of him for sticking with it. As I keep telling him, he'll thank himself for it later in life.

Evan's also doing well with his trumpet. He's mastered most of the notes (he'd say he knows all the important ones!) and he demonstrated his newfound skills within the last month by playing in his first school concert and his first parade (as part of the marching band). Mom and dad were so proud! (Look for Evan in the upper right-hand corner.)

Middle school has been an exciting, if somewhat stressful experience for Evan. He's had to learn very quickly how to juggle a large number of classes, each with its own rules, customs and expectations. The volume of homework has gone up considerably since last year, and Evan has been getting steadily better at keeping track of everything that needs to be done. A few of his teachers have also been experimenting with some new online and mobile technology in the classroom, including two classes that are completely "paperless." So it's been a very interesting year for Evan, school-wise.

Trina has been extremely busy this year, what with her full-time job as a senior lecturer at USC, plus her part-time jobs working with the Keck School of Medicine and the School of Social Work on various projects. She gave a presentation in Portugal about making mobile apps. And somehow, she also found time to take grad school classes! She's now one semester away from completing her Master's degree in Computer Science. You go girl!

Trina and I also got an opportunity to appear in USC's Viterbi Magazine this year. Trina was contacted by a representative at the rag because they wanted to include her in a series about the hobbies of various faculty members at USC. One of Trina's hobbies is making fancy cakes, so she and I baked two cakes in the form of mobile phones as a little tribute to Andrew Viterbi, the well-known scientist who invented CDMA mobile phone technology, helped to found Qualcomm Inc. and is also the Viterbi School of Engineering's namesake. It was fun to see our pictures in a magazine---and eating the cakes afterwards was pretty fun too.

Trina and I worked on a little iPhone app called Biogram this year. It allows users to measure or enter their heart rate, and then share it with their friends along with a "selfie" and a brief comment. It's the first app I've ever published on the App Store, so that was exciting. I also published the second edition of my book, Game Engine Architecture  (www.gameenginebook.com) this year. It grew from 800 pages in the 1st edition to just over 1,000 pages in the 2nd! I shudder to think how thick the 3rd edition might become. The book has been selling really well, and it has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean! Pretty amazing stuff. I was also proud to be part of the incredibly talented team that ported our hit game, The Last of Us, from the PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 4 this year.

As well as being a year of new experiences, I'm proud to say that it's been a year of some solid accomplishments for all of us in the Gregory family. We hope that 2014 has been a good year for you as well. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

Sincerely,
The Gregorys