Oxford, England

Dear friends - my European tour has come to a close...we're at the last stop.  Today, I find my self in Oxford, England.  It's a small city, but certainly larger than Horsham (yesterday).  As you can imagine, part of it has a very "college town" feel.  There is the famous Oxford University:

The Radcliffe Camera, built in 1749 as Oxford's science library (not my picture)

It's the oldest university in the English-speaking world.  The university is made up of a large number of colleges that surround Oxford - thirty-eight in all.  There are plenty of other schools that you can find in the same area. All the students want to be able to say that they attended "Oxford" - no matter what college they're at ; )

The biggest businesses in town revolve around two areas: education and car manufacturing.  The education part is easy to understand - it includes publishing, service industries attached to the colleges, as well as plenty of spin-off businesses from university research.  Walking to the developer, I passed quite a few bookstores.  In fact, in the city center, you'll find Blackwells, started in 1879:

The car manufacturing side hasn't done so well.  The hotel we stayed in, was situated in a business park that used to be the epicenter of the car business.  That company doesn't exist anymore : (

We're in Oxford to visit with another game developer. This developer isn't as well known as others, but has been cranking out games for almost 20 years. They continue to draw engineering talent from Oxford University. The made a game based on the Judge Dredd series (very popular in the UK).  This is the 8 ft statue in their lobby:

They also did a game based on the Alien movie and Aliens vs Predator movie. Very heart-warming stuff ; )

We were there to help them with a new game that will feature stereo 3D - the kind of 3D that needs glasses.  For my company, we make graphics chips that go in your PC, and will allow you to run three monitors from the same computer.  Combine three monitors with stereo 3D, and you have a pretty compelling experience.  I was really impressed with their work.  Here's our team checking out the technology:

If you can see those monitors, they're some of the most advanced that we use.  They are only millimeters thick...something I wish I had on my desk ; )

The developer had a little "library" for everyone to read about programming, art and culture.  All of this is used to create videogames.

It sort of looks like a lot of desks at work ; )

They were nice to me.  Someone told them about my toy "collection", and they presented me with this gift:

The UK has plenty to celebrate this year.  Olympic fever has hit - there isn't a shop that doesn't have some sort of "Team Britain" sign in the window.  In addition, England is celebrating 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's reign.  Even the candy manufacturers are getting into the game with this GIANT size chocolate bar:

That's it for the 2012 European Tour.  I'm excited to head to Heathrow Airport, to get home and see my family.  I won't reach Austin for another 20 hours ; ) I'm also looking forward to a little sleep.  We've only averaged about 5 hours of sleep/night and I'm ready to try something a little more healthy...