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 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
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