chadius

09:26 am: Bullets bitten. Bonus spent. Going to San Fran.
This is the first year where I can afford to go to the GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco. Roger offered to let me stay with him over the week (since he's going there as well) and I haven't seen his wife in a while.

And work gave me a bonus (although I've only been on for 3 months. Then again it was smaller than the normal bonus, so.)

Now I need to figure out how to travel there, and what sights I should see.

Two different transportation systems? Whoa, that's crazy talk.

-Chad

Tags: gdc, san francisco

09:45 am: You thought this was gonna be a post about the iPad
The New York Times on Thursday posted an article "A Bachelor's Effort To Understand Love." It's about a writer and world traveller named John Bowe recalling why he's 42 and hasn't found true love yet. It reflected many issues I have with romantic conquest. (Well, the lack of caring about it.)

"The goal was always to avoid being that surly alcoholic guy who didn't live up to his dreams and blamed the wide and kids for that." I still want to make a game. I still want to make some kind of mark in the world. I'm really not ready to give up on my dreams yet. It's pretty pessimistic (hey Chad! Most people continue doing stuff after they get married and raise kids!) But it's a Big Unknown.

I have a massive fear of Big Unknowns. Intimacy, Commitment, Interdependence. You name it, I push it far away and ignore it. Declare ignorance is bliss (ignore context of complete quote) and decide I don't need it. It's driving my family nuts, as I learned during Christmas break, but I think it drove me nuts because I couldn't put the issue into words. This is a good start.

He wound up writing a book, "Us: Americans Talk About Love." Guess I'll add it to my list.

PS Many marketing firms avoid brand names involving "Pad" or "Flow" because it reminds women of hygiene products. iTampon away!

PPS Bah, it was a post about the iPad!

Tags: ipad, love, relationship

09:48 am: Prisoners not allowed to play D&D
The US Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit today. That lawsuit was sent by a prisoner who wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. He even wrote up a 96 page manual for the game (96 pages, hmm. I wonder what rules he kept.)

The prison confiscated all his stuff, worried that it would present escape fantasies and gang worship. Isn't this what people said about D&D in the 1980s? Or should I sweep a blanketed "They're criminals" across the way.

Several lawyer blogs soon revealed who used to play back in the day.

Tags: criminals, d&d

09:22 am: New Tech Buzz Warnings
Despite being a techhead, I am highly skeptical of new tech (besides the Boxee Box, of course.) But CES and Google v. China fresh in my mind, here's some sprinkles of tech pessimism:

1) China is like the Wild West. Companies keep saying "there's gold out there!" and rush in. The government fights amongst itself to see who profits the most (MMOs have to appease 3 different branches of the Chinese Government, and it's not clear which one has authority over whom. Look at World of Warcraft's attempts to enter the market.) So far only China has really profited by penalizing foreign companies unless they partner up with a local company, who gets a massive tech boost and easy money as a result.

Last night's Post Mortem was about developing games in China, and it was an interesting look into localization. Mostly, I think the internet police icons are VERY cute. Er, I mean "INTERNET POLICE" buttons? Yikes. I mean CUTE. I mean YIKES. Excuse me, this is the "death by snu snu" joke in Futurama all over again for me. The games focus more on socialization than competition (you can only earn rewards for 5 hours) and everything is free to play. Which makes me wonder "where is the money" but I'm bad at marketing.

Anyway, Google is thinking about pulling out after they were superhacked a few days ago. They also want a completely unfiltered and open version of their search engine available before they consider staying. I doubt the government's going to do that (cutest symbols of oppression EVER!) But the point is, foreign companies are starting to ask "where is the money?"

2) 3D televisions. We've had exactly one good 3D film so far and now ever manufacturer is trying to push 3D TVs. At 3 times the cost of HD TVs. That require 3D glasses to view properly (why should I buy a big TV again?) New tech != New profits.

By the way, that one good 3D film took over a decade in planning and half a billion dollars to produce with no plans for a franchise. The artist in me is very happy about this, but the businessman in me cries. Also, note how no other studios are planning any 3D movies, TV shows, or channels for the next 2-3 years, when this fad may have died down already. On the plus side, 3D movies will have to be on Blu-ray disks (through 3D Blu-ray players); that would be the death knell for DVDs Blu-ray has been praying for.

3) Project Natal. Actually, I am optimistic about this. Microsoft is using its own motion-sensing system to compete with the Wiimote. They're going to do a console relaunch (and not mix messages like the PS3's sixaxis did), it operates differently enough (dance in front of a camera) and they are clearly taking the time to figure this out.

Now Microsoft needs a killer app to go with it. When Nintendo designs new hardware, they have a killer app in mind. They think up an awesome game that can't be done on their current system, build the tech for the new system, and then launch with it. Super Mario 64 was their leap into true 3D that they couldn't do on the Super Nintendo, Wii Sports was their idea of what to do if they used a TV remote control as the interface. Microsoft is going to sputter if they don't show the "game u must buy!" with Natal.

Anyway, the biggest problem is that they will be stepping into a market already dominated by a competitor. Nintendo has a lock on the "casual" market, and MS will be fighting for the piece of the pie. It won't be anywhere as profitable as when Nintendo stepped into this without any competition. MS also risks pissing off their current userbase who hates "casual" gaming in the first place, but that's why MS is launching a console with Natal.



K, done with 2 cents.

Tags: 3d tv, china, google, project natal

10:31 am: Art Clokey passes away at 88
He made Gumby. Also Davey and Goliath with his first wife.

Gumby really interested me in Clay Animation, due to its very trippy animation style.

Tags: gumby

11:13 am: I want the Boxee Box. So bad.
I haven't been this pumped about a new fancy gizmo since...the Wii. Also, I'm really happy I didn't buy any "media solution" last year.

Boxee is a superduper media sharing/playing program that is available for all major computer platforms. More importantly, they announced a TV set-top box. It plays a bajillion formats, has built-in BitTorrent support, will accept disks and USB drives, and wireless. Also, it's about 1/4 the cost of the MacMini I was thinking about. Oh, and it plays YouTube and Hulu (both are really anal about which devices can play their stuff.)

What's the catch, I wonder? Well, it was just announced, which probably means I have to wait a bit before it's on sale. Also, I am not used to buying bleeding edge stuff. I'm always suspicious something will break.

Oh well, will hope this works out.

Tags: boxee, tv

09:25 am: Of note: Houseownership rejection and Cable woes
1) A nice New York Times article wonders about people who become houseowners, then hate it and dump their houses ASAP. Married couples tend to be the largest majority of house owners (no surprise there) followed by single women at 21 percent. Single men are at around 10 percent. A few anecdotes cover the cost of repairs, no super to fall back on to give spare keys, increased commuting times for city slickers, and of course the housing crash.

2) The Food Network and HGTV, owned by Scripps, is in a transmission fees war with Cablevision. Now that Cable is pretty much ubiquitous, it's interesting to see how subscription rates will change. That is, it's no longer a luxury.

3) Like everyone else, I am interested in a Google Nexus One phone. Like some, I am underwhelmed that this isn't really going to "shake up" the market (only T-Mobile supports it fully, it is compatible on AT&T's networks but a) iPhone and b) it's on the slower EDGE network instead of 3G) and it seems to look and act like the iPhone (I'm still divided about no foldout keyboard, but at least this tries to auto-complete your words.) On the plus side, built-in diction on a phone fulfills my dream of writing down my ideas while walking without looking like a loon while I do it.

Tags: cable network, google, housing, phone

10:15 am: My mark of the decade
According to Megaman 1's plot, Dr. Wily has TWO DAYS to start the first robot rebellion.

Get equipped for action, folks.

Tags: decade, mega man

09:22 am: Media mudfights!
1) Fox and Time Warner Cable are stuck in a wankfight over how much Fox should be compensated for TW's retransmission of the channel over cable. Each company is posting their ads like political campaigns, claiming the other one is trying to rip off real Americans by paying a Fox tax/removing Fox. It looks like two kids fighting over a slice of cake. Fox's contract expires with the new year.

This brings up my bigger idea that we're seeing a shift from content publishers to content distributors. Public broadcasting does its thing by giving its shows for free then making money back in advertising and syndication of its hit shows. Tivo and the Internet have destroyed advertising money (hence my mocking "everyone hates Tivo") and cable channels make and syndicate their own shows anyway. Before everyone had a cable box, public channels benefited by having a larger audience to advertise against. But everyone owns cable now (thanks HD push) so they've lost that advantage. What's a Fox to do besides become a cable channel "in spirit?" They are at the distributors' mercy but don't want to admit that. Look at their attempts to charge money for newspapers and remove their news articles from Google for more evidence of their flailing.

The only thing I want to watch from Fox at this point is the Simpson's 20th year celebration. I heard the guy who did "Super Size Me" tried to watch over 400 episodes in a single sitting and recorded his efforts. Crazy guy.

2) One article I read on Monday was about the writer buying "shows he watched as a kid" on DVD and having the Special Effects failure ruin his childhood illusions. He states F Troop (a show I only remember because of a gag in Freakazoid!) as he realizes actors were not shot with arrows through their hats, but rather the arrow was already in the hat when the actor pretended to be shot there. He notices the abundance of strings used to lift objects, something you would never notice on old televisions (thanks HD push). And of course, I Dream of Jeannie's many, many magic cuts that are now painfully obvious.

As I enjoy old school games much more than 3D "Realistic" brownfests, I actually like seeing the strings. Watching old 80s cartoons makes me point out all the animation inconsistencies and shortcuts. Seriously, where does Optimus Prime's trailer come from? He just turns into the tractor. (As much as you may hate the Michael Bay films, one of his many tenets I agreed with was "NO MASS SHIFTING!") Did you know Mario wears overalls because it was an easy way to animate him back in 1985? He wears a hat so they wouldn't have to animate his hair. Trust me, I love economy in animation.

Besides, do you realize how quickly "realism" degrades? Try to play a PS2 or XBox original game and you can count the polygons. Remember when Final Fantasy 7 got great marks for having "Full motion video" and "realistic 3D rendering?" Try watching a playthrough on YouTube, looks ugly as sin now. When you're young you'll never notice this stuff, but when you get old it gets to you.

Tags: cable, distributor, fox, graphics, special effects

09:16 am: Christmiss
1) Going home was good. It was also bad, as I've learned that no car + no girlfriend apparently = something is wrong with me as far as my family is concerned. They seriously believe that I have both and are lying to them. Yeah, I realize posting both of these facts on a public blog is a bad idea but I had to vent somewhere.

2) Sweaters and cash, I couldn't ask for better gifts. Well, fewer sweaters and more cash but I know that isn't going to happen.

3) I bought gifts for my two nephews. Sadly, both of my sisters decided to visit the day I left. With that weather and no credit card to reschedule with, I couldn't change my plans. I got to see one sister + nephew though, and he loved the shape sorter. Yaaaay.

4) Still need to figure out what I'm going to get for my parents. Sadly they have everything they'd ever want. Bah.

5) I got back home and decided to bake some donuts. In an effort to eliminate the chocolate syrup I made for the layer cake, I made chocolate donuts with chocolate frosting. Unfortunately, I think I killed most of the yeast, because the dough didn't rise much and I have very dense donuts as a result. Oh well.

5a) I learned why the layer cake failed: The flour I'm using is so high in protein that I basically got sweet bread instead. Guess I'll bake some wheat bread for a while after I get rid of this chocolate syrup.

K, rambling over.

09:31 am: Happy Christmatepkwanzuka Soltice!
1) Finally finished the graphics engine for my game, SwordDraw. Yaaay. I can work on implementing ideas now. For this, I am happy.

2) My stay with my folks will be shorter than usual, as I didn't receive many vacation days this year (I joined in September, so no surprise there.) Hopefully my gift boxes will arrive in New York before I do (package shipping is the best!)

3) Happy end-of-year event. Whichever one you celebrate.

02:41 pm: Shortest day of the year.
It only gets better from here.

09:51 am: New Projects
Products to find to expand my penis master of the tech realm:

1) A Mac Mini to own the living room. An article in the New York Times got me interested in using a Mac Mini to connect to a TV, and a Loop mouse & keyboard to operate from across the room. You can install Hulu, Boxee and other TV-on-the-Internet apps (at least 'til Comcast is done dicking around.) I can get MPlayer on it so it will play any video (I don't have to worry about codec hell.) I can get the Mac to read NTFS and ext3 formatted drives pretty easily (I don't have to worry about someone's drive format.) Finally it's wireless so I can stream, torrent, ssh and samba to it easily (don't have to worry about network transfer protocols.)

2) A new cellphone. My contract expires in January (yay!) so it's time to jump into the "smart"phone market. Basically I need to choose which Android-based phone I want to run. iPhone gets a big pass from me; I need a physical keyboard and I know Apple isn't going to put that in. I'll need to look around, although my penis urge to look ahead is glaring at the Droid. I'll take a closer look at this in January after I finish buying Christmas stuff.

Also, Google has passed a new phone around to its employees. The difference is that this is Google's phone running Google's OS. That's a big difference, and people are taking this as Google's step into the "smart"phone foray. It is the new market to fight in, that's for sure. It could be released as soon as January, assuming Google is stepping into the hardware market. We'll see.

Tags: cell phone, living room, mac mini, panis

09:37 am: Celebrity branding: Tiger Woods
Accenture pulled its ad campaign and broke off all ties with Tiger Woods this week after he announced his hiatus from golfing. Quick, do you know what Accenture sold? *reads article again* Um, they're a stock investment firm. I think. Anyway, businesses are trying to figure out whether to dump Tiger altogether, keep him but don't advertise, or keep using him (EA sports are still on track for Tiger Woods Golf games.)

Suddenly all of Tiger's mistresses are appearing, ready to tell "their" story or whatever. (Note to self: If I sleep with someone, expect them to cash in with a tell-all memoir once I get in trouble.) *puts on cynical hat* Is there - is there an industry for this? "Snitchin' Bitches" sounds like a good name. Look at the extortion deal David Letterman was threatened with. The other guy keeps threatening to reveal the "tasty" details of the affair, the "lurid" truth that will come out during the court case. Remember Madoff's mistress (who urged her company to invest in the Ponzi Scheme?) Her book came out soon after his arrest. Sleep with celebrity = free book. Gotcha.

The New York Times pointed out a book showing the who's whos of celebrity back from the 1960s. It shows a repeatable pattern among celebrities: Media pushes to the front, they ride the wave, media pushes their human error in front, media consumes their exit.

When it comes to celebrities, the media will make you. The media will unmake you. They treat your rise and fall with equal zeal. Mr. Woods, good luck getting your life back together (and thanks for breaking the "Whites Country Club Only" feel to golf)

PS LOL Glenn Bleck. He constantly promotes selling gold on his show (to protect against economic collapse) and he's been a "paid" spokesman for Goldline, an international gold seller. Getting paid for televised spokesmanship is against the rules at good ol' FOX. Jon Stewart hilariously skewered this. Beck and Goldline have unleashed the weasel words; Bleck was apparently not paid for it.

Tags: celebrities

10:39 am: Video Game Orchestra
VGO is a traditional/rock orchestra that plays music from videogames. Hooting and hollering is allowed, but the audience mostly stayed quiet unless someone shredded a guitar/wicked solo. The concert had 3 sets and lasted about 2 hours.

Set 1: Got our feet warm.

• Dragon Quest 4 Overture - This was a great song to open up with, as DQ's opening theme has a great "welcome to adventure" theme to it.
  
• Super Mario Brothers Medley - Apparently they hadn't done this for a while and it was a commonly request. The bass guitar did an Underground theme solo, pretty cool.
  
• Super Mario Galaxy - Yeah, they pretty much had to.
  
• Bombing Mission - FF7, the first song where Cloud gets of da train. This song integrated rock and traditional pretty well.
  
• Theme of laura - They got permission from Konami to play this from Silent Hill 2. One audience member went particularly bonkers when they announced this song. The music itself was very upbeat and "jazzy"; my favorite piece of the evening.
  
• Metal Gear Solid 3 - An MGS medley? I guess it'll work.
  

Set 2: My favorite set, this involved a string quartet. Um, and an acoustic guitar.

• Chrono Trigger Medley - NOM NOM NOM I love it! Title screen, Millenium fair, Frog's Theme, and Chrono's theme.
  
• Chrono Cross ~Time's Scar~ - If you have heard a single song from Chrono Cross, this is probably it.
  
• Radical Dreamers ~Unstolen Gem~ - Unless it's this song. Normally this is done with a singer and guitar but they swapped singer for strings. Worked out really well.
  

Set 3: Weakest set of the three, due to a mix of bias and hatred of "Serious" music. The Berklee Chamber Choir Club showed up to play Chorus. One Choir member had a Mario hat, causing the audience to go nuts with cries of "AWESOME HAT!" I agreed. Also we had guest conductor Wataru Hokoyama, who did music for AFRIKA and Resident Evil 5.

• AFRIKA - Definitely has a spirit of adventure in an open world, with themes of sneaking, movement, acrobatics and the like. Very varied and very nice.
  
• Advent Rising - I wish Tommy Tallarico would do more silly songs and fewer serious songs. Case in point, this music bored me right out. More Earthworm Jim, please. Easily the weakest song of the performance.
  
• Myst - Um, never played Myst (Click and point adventure? On my 199X PC? It's less likely than you think.) Very environmental. Once again, I like melodies so I respectfully nodded along. At least it wasn't boring.
  
• The End begins (To Rock) - This is a battle theme from God of War 2. Specifically this is a Guitar Hero variant that uses an electric guitar instead of a trumpet. Great way to shock us out of environmental choir. Also, it rocked. Unfortunately, some sound errors kicked in and there were periodic bouts of feedback. Fortunately they were coincidentally in tune with the music.
  
• FF VII Suite - The last song took 18 minutes. First they did the Crystal theme (how many times will an audience cheer so hard for a piano scale?) then the episode-neutral Prelude went off. Then we did the battle songs (normal and boss music) before segueing into Aerith's theme (luckily cut short) to Chocobo Farm. Jenova was really well done; another great string/guitar hybrid.
  
  Since I mentioned FF7 and music, One Winged Angel was inevitable. A shame, I like Birth of a God (the song that plays before it) much more. Oh well. This was the funniest part of the concert, actually. They had a very heavy section that broke off from the original song in an attempt to out-badass the original. Built up a lot of tension. Finally realizing they had to return to the original, they abruptly stopped playing, except for a piccolo tooting along to the main beat. It was such a quick release half the audience laughed.
  

Encore
Surfer de Chocobo - A beach remix of the chocobo beat. Very upbeat, I liked it a lot.

All in all, a really good night. It was nice to recognize and care about 80% of the music in there. Heck, I recognized most of the music played during intermission, too.

Tags: vgo, videogame orchestra

09:45 am: Saturday December 5th: Good timing.
I woke up to rain. I promised my friends in Belmont that I would house sit their cat for a bit. I also bought tickets for a concert that evening. I planned to walk to Belmont (It's a good 2 mile walk), chill for an hour or so, then head back and prepare for the concert. Luckily I decided to leave early.

I grabbed my winter clothes. Good call, as the wind turned the weather from toasty to chilly. Right before I crossed the Arlington-Belmont border, I realized I forgot their keys. Once again, good call for wearing winter clothes and good call for going early. About 10 minutes from my goal, I turned around and went home.

So, 1.5 miles and a half hour of rest later, I tried again. This time I remembered the keys, pet their cat Cub like crazy, and relaxed until 4 PM. We're approaching the worst days of the year, when the sun sets too damn early. So it was time for me to go (Cub gave me this "don't leave me!" look. Yeesh.)

It was good that I left at that time; I barely had enough time to eat dinner and take a shower. Also, I spent around 10 minutes lost in Northern Boston trying to find directions to the Performance Hall (You would think I would remember that Dudley Station is the direction the bus is travelling in and NOT the stop I'm supposed to get off on. I navigate by landmarks, not street names.) By the way, the all-day rain switched to all night snow. Yeah, real fun.

One awesome concert later, and I waited forever next to Hynes Convention Center for the bus home. Every vehicle was caked in snow, and I realized it was below freezing (It was well above freezing in the morning. The temperature constantly dropped.)

Oh. Bought some milk when I left Belmont, as I didn't want to try to buy it Sunday morning. I didn't realize everything would be iced over Sunday morning. Good timing and good luck there.

09:45 am: *Finally realizes what Information Era means*
The age of big media has gone poof. It is now all about distribution and media.

1) In one of the worst kept secrets ever, Comcast finalized its deal with GE and now owns a majority share in NBC Universal. The big plan is to let you watch shows on any screen you want to. Basically, TV is just another screen. The same as a computer screen, or smartphone screen. The plan is to authenticate you on your devices and allow you to watch shows whenever you want to on any device. This will, of course kill Hulu. But that was their plan, anyway.

2) Sony will (again) try to let you watch any Sony published media on any Sony hardware device. Sony keeps trying this, but because the organization is like an octopus, the software doesn't know about the hardware doesn't know about the media doesn't know about the marketing. Thus a half-assed product emerges, sales tank, Sony points fingers at itself to blame, and eventually they just bury their product and run away. It cost them the (Whatever came out after the Sony Walkman but before the Apple iPod), it cost them the PS3 (although they are now outselling the XBox 360, not that it matters as the Wii is roflstomping them combined) and...um I don't know what else it cost them.

Before it costs the media empire, Sony is trying to become a centralized content distributor. The games division is already there. The PSP Go is download-only; you want games you buy through Sony and download. Same deal with the PS3, although that also allows movies and shows. Sony's problem is still getting its various groups to cooperate from the ground up.

3) Whoever wrote "The Nocturne" had her plagarism lawsuit thrown out against Stephanie Meyer's um...book whose name I can't remember right nao :P Yes, both books involve women falling in love with friendly vampires, making out on a beach, and giving birth to babby, but the Judge (who had to read both books, mind you, major ballz there) noted "The Nocturne" used older style prose while that other book used modern prose.

What was interesting to me is how template the two stories sounded, and how, ignoring the writing style, the stories sound the same. At least, same enough to think it could legally challenged. I'm too much of an engineer about this, where I think writing consists of grabbing the right tools off the shelf and carving your block of text in an optimal manner.

Or maybe it's my seething hatred of "Vampire" books, who knows? (Hypocrite alert: Alucard from Castlevania is awesome. He needs to show up in more games.)

Tags: information, media, sony, vampires

09:25 am: This had better not be true, Microsoft.
Rumors have it that News Corp and Microsoft are considering a deal to remove News Corp news links from Google but keep them on Bing, Microsoft's search engine.

Great, we're going to split up the internet again while two companies dickwave it out. Just like IE vs Netscape. If the rumors are true.

Then again, this could be our good old buddies at FOX trying to get a better bribe from Google by suggesting they would kill off their audience just to help Google's loudest competitor.

Why you gotta be like this, guys?

09:04 am: Moar DIY Madness! Also videogame orchestra!
Built a weekly planner. Wanted a digest sized planner that showed one week per two pages. Couldn't find any this weekend, so I did it myself.

Also, I bought tickets to the Video Game Orchestra, playing on December 5th. If you don't know my tastes in music, you'll be surprised this is the first concert I've ever been to.

Home page is at: http://www.vgo-online.org/

Tags: videogame orchestra, weekly planner

11:25 am: Stuff in news!
1) Culture diff: South Korea is trying to crack down on cash gifts at weddings and funerals. It is custom to lessen the costs by paying for your friends' ceremonies, but some people saw it as a form of bribery. Or an annoying IOU where someone you haven't seen in 10 years calls you over for their cash grab wedding.

2) What measure is a UI? Alabama is currently fighting Electronic Bingo, where slot-machine style electronic machines are connected to a central server. Basically there is a fine line between Pencil-and-paper Bingo halls donating to charity and casino bingo. Except, as the casinos point out, PnP Bingo also generates big money. When do you draw the line between pasttime and business?

3) Oprah has left the building. The queen of talk shows will have her last show on Sept 12th 2011 after 25 years. Many business analysts have pointed out how tightly she has controlled her image, and how much that has paid off for her. Compare her to Martha Stewart, for example. She knows when to quit while she's ahead and when to move on. Oprah is starting another TV Network, OWNed in a couple of years.

TV is trying to figure out how to deal with the vacuum she will leave behind. Some think Ellen, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz could emerge Queen or King of talk shows. Some think the talk show genre will never recover, as sponsors will never pay anyone as much as they paid Oprah. And then there's the question of what Oprah will do on OWNed. If she simply moved her talkshow to cable, it would devour public daytime TV. No one knows what will be on it; she's staying tight lipped.

Trivia: Oprah apparently has $50 million dollars, in cash, to swim around in her money big use for emergencies.

Tags: bingo, oprah, south korea, wedding