Blogs that change direction - the best?

Sometimes when I sit down to write a blog post, it comes out totally different than I intended it to be. I may start out just wanting to talk about a certain game, or a certain app, or a certain thing I've been doing, and it metastasizes into something either much more profound or, sometimes, something much less coherent (though thankfully, that doesn't happen often).

Most of the time, those end up being some of my best posts, or at least the ones that get the most response, and it's totally unintentional! Maybe it's that stream of consciousness thing sharpened to a fine point.  Maybe one of these times, when I'm facing a bout of "what should I post about today?" lethargy, I should just sit down and start writing and publish that!  It would probably be better than some of the stuff that's posted on here.

Anyway, there is a reason this topic occurred to me today.

A couple of weeks ago, on my Game Informer blog, I reacted to the news that the Xbox 360 video game Alan Wake had only sold 150,000 copies so far, pretty much a dud as far as video games sales go. I had been warring with myself since the game came out earlier in the year regarding whether I would buy it or not. I don't shy away from buying video games; if I want the game, I'll go out and buy it. But for some reason, whenever I was in Gamestop looking to buy "a game" but without a specific title in mind, I thought about Alan Wake and then decided I wouldn't get it this time. I did think I would get it eventually, but something just kept telling me "not now."

(Alan Wake is a suspense/horror game where an author goes with his wife to a sleepy Washington town. He wakes up in his mangled car, his wife nowhere to be found, and dark creatures haunting the forest. It's actually a pretty good game)

When I read the sales news, I decided to write a post about why I hadn't bought the game. Titled simply "Why I Didn't Buy Alan Wake", I just thought I would figure out a couple of basic reasons why I hadn't bought the game and then tell people about it.

However, as the post went on, it became an examination of how we purchase things like video games (and it could stretch to movies, music, pretty much anything like that).

"Unless it's a game we've been greatly anticipating, I think we all have these internal scales that we weigh our game purchases on. Do I spend my limited money and time on this game or that game? Often, we can't really say why we chose one game over another game. We just weigh them on the scales and one of them wins out. Asked afterward why you picked that game, you very well might not be able to tell them. "It just sounded funner," you could say."

With all that background, let's get to the point of this ("YAY! The point!" - The Peanut Gallery). What started out as a simple blog laying out a couple of reasons had grown into a greater post about how we make purchases in general. This got noticed by the Game Informer editor who does the weekly "Blog Herding" post (a post where she collects what she considers the best blogs of the week, both from GI editors as well as users). My post made the July 16th edition.

One of the commenters actually gave me kudos when responding to somebody who was complaining about how the editor made her choices:

"Take for example Hists' post about why he didn't get Alan Wake. What makes that a unique and thought provoking item is that he took a common thought, rethought it, and equated it to something the audience can relate to in terms they'll equally agree or disagree with. It's not a manifesto of what someone should or shouldn't do, but offers perhaps an alternative take on how people can think of things."

I don't say this to toot my own horn (though it's a nice side benefit!) but just to ask a question.

Do you find some of your best posts starting out like this? Something really simple, basic and consumable enough that you figure people will read it and then dispose of it without really thinking about it? And then it becomes something much, much bigger? And better?

(And congratulations to those of you who are able to answer that question because you've waded through all of the nonsense above. I salute you.)

American Airlines iPhone app - something weird

American Airlines has introduced its own iPhone app (don't know if they previously had other smartphone apps or if they will be doing one).

Upon reading the description of what it can do, it sounds very cool. Monitor your status for upgrades, set parking reminders, and things like that.

But there's one rather strange addition to the product description, something that just jumped out at me and said "LOOK AT ME! I'M WEIRD!!!!!" (It then proceeded to pummel me upside the head until I decided that maybe I should take notice of this)

Here's the description, from the app's web site:

• Enter your login & password only once: saving your info allows the app to push your upcoming flight details to your home screen, automatically
• Set a parking reminder
• Monitor your place on the standby list
• Track your Elite Status progress
• View personal flight details: get your gate, seat and flight status info at a glance
• Access your mobile boarding pass: the app saves it for you, so it’s always easy to find
• Use GPS to locate the nearest American Airlines serviced airport
• View terminal maps
• Play Sudoku

*SOUND OF NEEDLE SLIDING ACROSS RECORD*

What the hell? "Play Sudoku?"

I don't know about you, but in my list of airline apps to keep track of all of my travel stuff, "Play Sudoku" is not really that high on it.

(not a real AA Sudoku image...but would be cool if it was!)

There's a bunch of other stuff you can do on the app to help manage your AA Advantage account, even down to booking flights.

At the end, they say:

"We are developing our plans for future functionality to be included in our American Airlines app. Please send us your feedback. We are listening."

That's all well and good, and I'm happy that they're listening. But the first time they get a suggestion for something that every traveler needs, I can just imagine somebody in the design team slapping their forehead and saying "we could have put that in there instead of Sudoku!"

I realize that people waiting at airports need stuff to do, besides, eating, drinking, reading newspapers, reading books, talking on their phone, watching a movie on their laptop, ummmm...what was I saying again?

Oh yeah! Yes, passengers need stuff to do while waiting at airports. But surely if they're interested in Sudoku, and they've got an iPhone, they've already downloaded at least one Sudoku app? Something that's dedicated to Sudoku and not an afterthought in some app that has nothing to do with Sudoku?

Am I the only person who finds that inclusion strange?

(Note: I have downloaded the app because I do fly American most often when I fly, but I obviously haven't tried the app yet. I'm just commenting on the strangeness in the product description. So I'm not advocating this app at all.

At least not yet)

Tom Larscheid leaving the Canucks booth after 30 years

I say this with a bit of a tear in the eye, as a Vancouver Canucks fan for the last 12 years. After the first game of this upcoming season (the team's 40th anniversary), Tom Larscheid will be hanging up the radio microphone as colour analyst for the team.

In these modern times when most hockey games are available on TV, I don't listen to them on the radio much any more. However, when I do, I will greatly miss hearing Larscheid's passionate voice analyzing the play of our favourite team.

Yes, he is a "homer" (for those not into the lingo, that means that he's very obviously rooting for his team), but he was much more than that.

Yes, he rooted for the Canucks. He got overly excited about an excellent Luongo save or a great Daniel Sedin goal. But he was a hockey fan too. He obviously didn't get excited about somebody on the other team scoring a goal against us, but he did admire the beauty of it, or the tenacity of the goal-scorer if it was a scrum. And he wasn't afraid to tell it like it was if one of the Canucks fucked up to cause the goal.

"Lets face facts Jan Bulis is just a dumb hockey player." You can say what you will about whether he should actually be insulting a player, but I use this mainly to illustrate that he wasn't beholden to the team, and was willing to speak his mind about them.

"That was just AWFUL!" he shouted one time after a truly poor defensive play resulted in a goal. Unlike many homers, he wasn't afraid to rip into the team if they were playing poorly. "That's just unacceptable at the NHL level." While he did comment if the referees were horrible, he would comment if it was for the Canucks as well as if it was against them. And unlike some homers where every call against their team is a horrible call while every call against the other team is perfectly acceptable, he wasn't afraid to just say "that was a stupid penalty to take...you can't do that at this point in the game."

The best thing you can say about him was that he was entertaining. When you can't see what's going on and are relying on the announcers to tell you what's happening, being entertaining is very important. Being knowledgeable is too, and he was that. But if you're not entertaining on the radio, then people are going to tune you out no matter how much you know what you're talking about.

Larscheid was hilarious when he got excited. After a particularly awesome save by Luongo, he shouted "That was highway robbery. Call the coppers!"

Of course, as we are all wont to do when we're doing live radio/audio/whatever, he put his foot in his mouth a few times. One of his most famous ones involved Pavel Bure back in the 90s, when Bure went off the ice for an injury reason. "I just came from the Canucks dressing room and Pavel's groin has never felt better." Or when the team was sucking and Bure was pretty much the only player that was doing anything. "Bure is such a great talent, if only he could play with himself out there, it will really give the fans a show"

We will miss you, Tommy. Enjoy your retirement, and here's to many long, happy years in which you can do so.

Joining the ebook revolution?

Just saw this on Mashable today.

Amazon: E-books Will Overtake Paperbacks by the End of 2011

It's funny how this just kind of sneaks up on you, because for years I've been reading about how ebook sales are anemic and not making much of a dent in the publishers' bottom lines. Pocket Books discontinued their ebook only Star Trek: S.C.E. series due to poor sales. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Amazon reports that they sell 180 ebooks for every 100 hardcovers. Does this come as a surprise to anybody else?

Some of my friends have extolled the virtues of ebooks, and I do get them sometimes, mainly for reading on the go. But when I'm sitting at home, lying in bed (or in the reading room bathroom), I gravitate to a physical book. I haven't graduated to an ebook-only lifestyle.

Have you? Do you prefer hard copies of books or have you gone exclusively ebook? Or are you like me, a bit of a mix?

And if you haven't gone to ebooks, why not? And if you have, why?

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Yet another reason not to eat food at sporting venues

Do you go to a lot of sporting events? Do you find yourself eating there? That can be quite the expensive proposition. We go to Vancouver Canucks games at GM Place (It will take me a while to start calling it Rogers Arena), and all we buy is a large Diet Coke that lasts us the entire game. The prices are outrageous!

A rather small cup of Molson beer (basically equivalent to Budweiser as far as market saturation goes) costs over $7!! And if you want a "good" beer, like Okanagan Spring, it's over $8! Even our large diet coke costs $4.75 ($5.25 if they're doing "collector's" cups). I can't imagine trying to take a family of 4 to a game, and actually trying to feed the kids.

So do you really need another reason not to buy food at the ballpark?

I don't care. Here's another one!

Want to get sick?

ESPN has published a report on health inspections at various sporting venues around the US and Canada. It's categorized by state an then venue within that state, and some of the results are rather shocking.

Here's Tropicana Field, where the Tampa Bay Rays play baseball:

"Vendors with critical violations: 100%
Inspection report excerpt: Several violations addressed dirty countertops, utensils and equipment. Although every report indicated a critical violation, all vendors met basic inspection standards to keep operating."

That's heartening, isn't it? Here's another Florida stadium, American Airlines Arena, where the Miami Heat play basketball:

"Vendors with critical violations: 93%
Inspection report excerpt: Critical violations included several safety issues related to electrical wiring and such equipment as gas boilers."

Or how about this statement, from Sun Life stadium, where the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins play?

"In June 2009, an employee complained anonymously that small insects and other debris were blended into frozen alcoholic beverages at a stand where equipment wasn't being cleaned. When inspectors checked, they issued a critical violation for a buildup of slime inside the frozen drinks machine."

Thankfully, GM Place Rogers Arena only has 9% violations, with the statement: "A sushi display cooler was malfunctioning, and the temperature of the sushi rose above safe levels. Inspectors also cautioned one stand regarding properly heating donairs, which have been tied to E. coli outbreaks elsewhere in Canada."

Not *too* bad, right? I avoid sushi anyway.

Is it too much to ask that these venues pay more attention to cleanliness? You're servicing 15,000-22,000 people in arenas and upwards of 50,000-80,000 people in outdoor stadiums. I'm surprised there haven't been more issues with this.

Kudos to those venues that have 0% violations, like Nassau Coliseum (where the New York Islanders play hockey) and Scottrade Center in St. Louis (home of the Blues). Of course, you New Yorkers could go to Madison Square Garden:

"At one stand, inspectors found "53 mouse excreta" (38 on top of a metal box underneath the cash registers in the front food-prep/service area and 15 on top of a carbonated-beverage dispensing unit)"

Ok, maybe I should have warned you not to read this while eating dinner.

Enjoy the game!

(h/t to somebody who posted this link on the Game Informer discussion forum)

Loving the new office!

Can't remember if I posted anything on here about it, but my Facebook friends are aware that I moved offices earlier this month.  After almost a month being down here, I have to say that I'm really enjoying this.  My work environment is a lot more conducive to getting things done, and despite the fact that having a window was not a deal-breaker for me (I was doing fine without one), I have to admit that it's really nice to have one.

I also have to admit that I'm mainly posting about this because I want to post some original pics rather than stuff from the web.  So please indulge me.

My original office was situated right in the middle of everything. Yes, I actually had my own office (others are in the equivalent of cubicles), but it was still a high-traffic area, with people walking by all the time. It got distracting after a while.

(This isn't my stuff. Somebody else has moved in, and this is hers, but you get an idea of what the office was like, anyway.)

Yep.  All four walls, two lights above (one you can't see in the picture).  The desk is on the right.

Here's where that office is located.

Yes, it's the last one on the right, before it opens up into the broader room.  Just past the circuit breaker cabinet. The open door at the back of the picture, on the right, is our copy room, and the open door in the back on the left is our Associate Dean's office.  You can guess how much traffic goes by that office.

On the other hand, here is a picture from the same spot, but looking the other way.

My new office is alllllll the way at the end of the hall. You can't even really see the door itself, as it's just past that chair (there is a reason that chair is in the hall, by the way, which I'm not going to get into).

As you can see, instead of being a high traffic area, now nobody walks past my door.  If they're coming anywhere near the office, they're coming to see me.

I like that.  It's quiet (except for the damned construction noise that's going on outside across the way right now) and I don't get disturbed unless it's something to do with me.

Actually, I don't like it.  It's pure heaven.

Especially because this is my office.

Looks a lot better than that other one, doesn't it?

And there's even space around the corner to put things (no, I'm not showing you that part).

Sometimes, work life is good.

Obama in Madden 11? A different take

Wow, lots of controversial comments and vitriol in response to Game Informer's post about President Obama making a cameo in Madden 11.

For those of you who don't know, EA Sports has revamped its Super Bowl celebration when your team wins that Super Bowl trophy.  In addition to team-specific commentary and the appearance of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the team takes a trip to Washington D.C. and meets President Obama, giving him a team jersey and everything (you can see videos of this on IGN's site).




(This is a horrible rendition of Obama, by the way)

Of course, this news sparked outcries of "boycott Madden!" and "You're just a bunch of rednecks!!!" in the comments section.

I'm a conservative who has no love for Obama whatsoever, but that's the most political I'm going to get in this post.  I think calls of boycotting the game are ridiculous.



I also hope that this is just an image and that Obama didn't actually record anything for them.  I have no problem with Presidents appearing in our media (I loved Clinton showing up in an X-Men comic, for example), but I don't want any sitting President actually *participating* in something like this.

But I also think this is an incredibly stupid move on EA's part, for a couple of reasons, none of which are really political.

First, because there are a lot of people who fly off the handle really easily, you could be affecting your sales.  Probably not much, but some.  Who needs it?

Secondly, and far more importantly, it's opening up a can of worms no matter how EA does it, all for the sake or "realism."

Yes, teams that win the Super Bowl go to the White House and are congratulated by the President.  But the Franchise mode in Madden spans a huge number of years (I want to say 30, but I'm not sure).  So what happens in 2 years?  Or 6?  If you win the Super Bowl every year for the next 30 years, do you have the same cutscene presenting Obama your team jersey?  Really?  Thirty years?  Talk about an Imperial Presidency!

Ok, so maybe they thought of that.  When do you replace him?  After 2012? After 2016?  Each choice makes a sort of political statement.

I have no problem with them adding this to the Super Bowl festivities.  Complaints have been going on for years that winning the Super Bowl in Madden didn't really seem to mean much, because there really wasn't much celebration.  There were some fireworks, a couple of team members hoisted the trophy, maybe the coach was lifted on the shoulders of a few team members.  That was it.  Then BOOM! Into Off-season mode you go.  So I love the fact that EA has revamped this.

But why couldn't they use a fictional president?  That would have saved a lot of worms from getting out.

Ok, enough about Obama.  How about the rest of the celebration?

First, the same complaints about Obama above apply to having Roger Goodell in the celebration.  Is he going to be NFL Commissioner in 2035?  However, I can see that a little better, as there's no real way to say "THIS IS THE NFL COMMISSIONER" like there is with the President.  For the President, you just show a picture of the White House right before you show the jersey ceremony.

Secondly, IGN celebrates the fact that the commentary is team-specific, talking about the team's situation, even saying "I especially enjoyed his reference to how my favorite team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, were possibly going to move cities in the pre-season, and how the community wouldn't let their championship team get away now that they've won the championship."  I saw elsewhere that the Saints winning causes some commentary about hurricane Katrina.

I hope that the commentary is diverse enough that this doesn't happen all the time.  First, what happens if you win multiple times?  Does it say the same thing?  And secondly, if you win as the Saints in 2030, is Katrina really relevant anymore?

That could be enough to throw me out of the game right there, just when I was getting immersed in it.  I want commentary that's based on what's happened in the game too.  If I'm playing as the Steelers in 2015, and I've been beaten by my arch-rivals the Bengals in the playoffs the last two years in a row, I want that mentioned if I finally beat them in the 2015 playoffs!

That would be awesome.

(image courtesy of Game Informer)

Disturbed in Limbo

No, I'm not talking about watching Roseann Barr (or does she still just go by "Roseann?") doing the Limbo.

I'm talking about this wonderful new Xbox Live Arcade game called Limbo.  If you have the opportunity to check it out, you must.  Yes, it's $15 (1200 Microsoft Points), but it's well worth that money.

I just finished it last night, and it's one of the few games I have the urge to just immediately start it over. I resisted that urge, because I wanted to get some more Alan Wake time in, but I will go back to it soon.

Just what's so cool about Limbo?  Duh.  Everything!

Basically, Limbo is a simple game and a simple story.  You control The Boy as he wakes up in a completely surreal world, on a quest to save his sister who has disappeared.  In the process of the 3-5 hours you'll spend playing this game, you'll experience haunting images, grisly deaths, and incredibly innovative platform puzzles that will tax your brain trying to figure out how to move past them.

Limbo is definitely a simple game in execution.  You control The Boy with the left stick.  Jump with the "A" button (or also the "Y" button, for some reason).  You manipulate objects with the "B" button.  That's it.  Nothing more.  Yet how game creator Playdead Games puts all of this together has to be seen to be believed.  They put all of this together in a mind-bending sequence of puzzles from gravity reversal to just simple "move boxes around to give you a step up to the next ledge" puzzles.  Sometimes you have to think outside the box, but you can only use what's there on the screen.  Is there a platform that affects gravity, but you need something to stay on that platform so you can continue to climb and move through the level?  That's a handy box there.  But maybe you need a few seconds to get where you're going before you want the gravity to disappear? Wow, that hill leading down to the platform might come in handy.  Boxes slide down non-flat surfaces, you know.

I admit I had to use a walkthrough for a few of the puzzles that I couldn't figure out at all, but even knowing how to do something doesn't mean you can do it well.  I still died numerous times because some of the puzzles require you to get your timing down exactly.  While the puzzles in certain areas follow the same central theme (the ones leading up to the end game are all gravity ones), the execution of these puzzles is totally unique, giving the game a freshness as it never really repeats itself.



What makes Limbo distinct from other 2-D platformers, though, is the wonderful presentation.  Everything's in black and white, allowing Playdead to play with the shadows of the mind.  The background is a bit misty too, with dangers both stark and only hinted at.  Some will appear just to make an appearance, only to come on to the screen and make your life difficult later.  A spider scuttles aways into the misty darkness.  The game stays away from "gotcha" type scares, instead giving the player a deeply unsettling environment where you don't know what is real and what is just a figment of your imagination.  The Boy is totally black, but with glowing eyes (the wife was seriously creeped out by this).



The game alternates between dangerous areas, where you must figure out exactly when and where to jump or run, and areas where you can sit and just try and figure out what you need to do in order to advance.  This mix of peace and conflict, with the player never knowing what's going to come next, adds to the uneasiness.



There will be deaths, and they will be grisly.  Due to the surreal nature of the graphics and the lack of colour in the game, these deaths are even more unsettling than if you had seen everything in brilliant technicolor.  Blood goes flying, saws will cut the boy into pieces, electrified platforms will sizzle while The Boy collapses.  Each death will haunt you, even more so when the death is inevitable but takes a few seconds to actually happen.  For example, missing a jump and landing on an electrified platform where the power is intermittently going on and off, landing when the power's off, and just waiting for that sizzling sound. (The wife was creeped out by this and The Boy's other deaths, too)

Which is another aspect of the presentation I love.  There is no music, just the surreal setting and the sound effects of the various parts of the game: the grinding of saws, the drip drip drip of water, the pitter patter of The Boy's feet on the ground.

All of this adds up to complete immersion in the surreal and disturbing world of Limbo.

To best experience this game, turn off all the lights, turn up the sound on the TV, and just lose yourself.

It's an incredibly enriching experience.

(all game pictures courtesy of Limbo's page on Xbox.com

One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 24)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

After a night of drunken debauchery otherwise known as the weekly Vancouver Public Library Book Club meeting (What? We were discussing the relative merits of Thomas the Tank Engine), it's hard to get up and get going on this beautiful Sunday morning. But I shall persevere.

Why?

It's not just because the cat's sitting there looking like she'd make a great pair of mittens.

It's also because it's time for the next installment of the weekly post that's against the Geneva Convention in 13 countries. No, not Lindsay Lohan's "What Did I Do This Week?" scrawl.

It's one-hit wonder time!!!!

The hits that make me want to dance...

and sing...

and lots of other things that I can't really talk about (seriously, that restraining order is *so* constricting).

As usual, you can find the list I'm taking these super-wonderful songs from here. But don't you dare check it out before I'm done. Otherwise, this will come and get you.

Whoops! That's me before I had my dental work done. I thought I had gotten rid of that!

I mean this.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Here we go!

1) Oasis: "Wonderwall" (#8)



Oasis is a US one-hit wonder? After some careful checking (hours of Internet searching before finally just going to their Wikipedia entry), I find that they had *5* songs in the US Top 40, though this was clearly their biggest. They also had numerous others on the US Modern Rock charts.

Wikipedia, how could you fail me?

Anyway, I include this here so that those people who hated Oasis when they were around (and I think if all of them banded together, they could invade France) would get another free shot at demonstrating their hatred.

What do I think of the song? Liam Gallagher's voice has always annoyed the hell out of me, but the song itself isn't too bad.

2) Adam Sandler: "The Chanukah Song" (#10)



This is a fun little song, and why should the Christmas people get all the fun at the end of the year?

(Why this hit the charts in March, I couldn't tell you)

Since this is Sandler's only real song, I guess it's not really fair to call him a "one-hit wonder."

But I'm the writer of this post, so I say he is!

3) The Tony Rich Project: "Nobody Knows" (#2)



Another song that I didn't recognize until I heard it! I knew I had to have, if it was #2. Then again, I may have been familiar with Kevin Sharp's country music remake of it. I'm not sure.

Either way, it's a really heart-rending song, isn't it? The singing's pretty good, and it's kind of surprising that Rich virtually disappeared after this album (and this one song). He's released stuff, but it hasn't made much of an impact.

Kind of like bombing a city with a bunch of pillows or something.

And taking a bath with a woman in an iron tub in some inappropriate place? This guy was doing Cialis ads before that drug even existed!

4) The Fugees: "Fu-Gee-La" (#29)



A group that produced two big solo artists (Lauryn Hill & Wycleaf Jean), I didn't realize they were technically a one-hit wonder.

What a creative video! I love the island setting and the "plot" that it has as well. The beat of the song is kind of addictive, even though I don't really like this type of music overall. Consider this one a success!

Though, once again (and twice in one week!), my one-hit wonder list is wrong! The Fugees hit it big with their next song, a remake of "Killing Me Softly", and this one hit #2!!!! How could they miss that one?



It's a wonderful version of the song, too, though nothing compares to the original.

Oh well. I guess I shall carry on.

But don't do it again!

5) Lina Santiago: "Feels So Good (Show Me Your Love)" (#35)



Whew! Listen to those synthesizers!!!

Santiago's Wikipedia entry has to be the shortest I've ever seen for somebody who actually hit the charts. Talk about your disappearing acts!

Anyway, this song just hits me somewhere. I'm not sure where. I'm not sure how. But it's getting me moving in my seat!!!!

(pause)

Ahem. Ok, that was just gas. Never mind.

6) The Presidents of the United States of America: "Peaches" (#29)


Peaches
Uploaded by DarKwon. - Explore more music videos.

Ummmm, ok?

The description on Dailymotion for this video says "The band has also hinted towards the fact that the entire content of the song is a subliminal reference" to umm, how can I say this and keep it clean? Giving her oral pleasure? Yeah, that will do it.

And listening to the words, I can *so* see it! Though I don't know where they're getting all those "millions" of free peaches they talk about, if that's the case. Talk about conceited!

And what music video is complete without ninjas???? That moves it from cool to TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!

7) Chantay Savage: "I Will Survive" (#20)



And we end this week's installment with a remake!

And what a different remake it is, too. Taking a disco hit and making it into a Soul hit? I have to say, I quite like it. If you don't know the words, you'll never recognize its roots, though. I wonder what gave her the idea to do it this way? I much prefer remakes that actually do something creative with it rather than just change the music a bit.

Savage has a great voice, too. It's sad she hasn't released anything since 1999.

I feel like creating a children's book/game about her.

Somehow, I think she'd be easy to pick out in this group.

And that's a wrap for this week's show!  One of our rodents got out and I have to go look for her.

Oh wait...



Snuggles!!!  How could you??????

Note: Yes, I know the Geneva Convention is a world treaty. That was a "J-O-K-E"



One-Hit Wonders of the 90s
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
Part 29
Part 30
Part 31
Part 32
Part 33
Part 34
Part 35
Part 36
Part 37
Part 38
Part 39
Part 40

Do you hate being put on hold?

Is it because of the really lame music that you often have to listen to when you are? Or just the fact that you're either tied to your phone during the interminable wait or you have to put it on speaker-phone just so you can move around your house?

There's an app for that!

Was just catching up on my blog-reading this morning and this post jumped out at me.

There is a new web-service and iPhone app called Lucy, which will end the tedium of being on hold forever! No, it won't connect you any faster to a real, live human being. But it will allow you to get on with the 1000 other things you have to do, which you can't do when you're on hold.

Basically, Lucy will "take a number" and wait in line for you. Available on the web and as an iPhone app, you basically put the number you are dialing into the Lucy service (or choose from a large pool of numbers if you're on an iPhone). Give Lucy the number you want to be called back at. Lucy then connects you to that number. Go through the process until you get put on hold, and then hit "**"

Your call will be ended, but Lucy will then call you back when an operator is ready to talk to you. If you get put on hold again, just do the same thing. This way, you are free to move around the house and not be tied to your phone.

"While the app can be used from your web browser (you’ll get a phone call connecting you to the number you want to reach), we love using the iPhone app because it has a built-in directory of phone numbers. From banks to insurance companies to consumer electronics vendors, you can select from the list of numbers rather than trying to scour the Internet or your product manuals."

I admit that I have not used this app, but the reason I'm writing about it is because it's such a cool concept! I haven't actually had to make one of these phone calls in a little while, so have had no use for it. That may change, however.

The iPhone ratings aren't good for this app, for some reason. Sadly, none of the 1-star ratings actually left a review to say why they didn't like it. If I do end up giving it a try, I will update this post.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1) As far as I can tell, it only works with toll-free numbers, unless the number's in the iPhone Lucy directory (which may also be all toll-free ones). I think this covers most of the irritating "long-time on hold" numbers, though.

2) You should probably have your phone handy when you're using this service. According to the Lucy web site, Call Centre employees are told when the customer is using "Lucy" and then asked to press "1" to connect. Doing this is what prompts the call to you. The web site makes it sound so quick and easy, but if you're all the way across the room when your phone rings, that might be a problem! Call Centre employees' time is valuable too, you know.

According to Mashable, this is only available in the US and Canada right now, but they do hope to take it truly international soon.

This is such a cool idea that I hope it works out well in practice. Mashable really likes it. Six iTunes raters hate it.

I guess it's up to us to make the call.

And not get put on hold.

Edit: Funnily enough, when I went onto the Apps Store on the iPhone, there were a bunch of reviews/ratings for it! Not sure why that wasn't reflected in iTunes. It's got an overall 3.5 rating and lots of good reviews, along with some bad ones as well.

Edit #2: Ok, got it. The Canadian Apps Store only has 9 ratings. The US one has much more.

Constantly running behind

I must be a lazy git.

How else to explain how my Google Reader constantly has over 1000 unread posts in it? Ok, some of that is because I follow Mashable, Hot Air, and a couple of other very high-traffic blogs. But even without those blogs, I'd still be way behind.

Friends whose blogs I follow must wonder where I am, and especially if they regularly come to this blog (and, admittedly, must *really* wonder where I am when I don't post for 3 days!). The reciprocity of blog reading (but only when we both find each other's blogs interesting, as I don't necessarily follow everybody who reads mine) takes a massive hit when I'm the one dropping the ball.

So my deepest apologies to all of those people.

I do read the occasional post that I stumble upon via Facebook or what have you. In fact, I've been lucky enough to hit every one of Dawn's Healing Morning blog within a couple of days.

Those of you who don't post quite as much may not have even noticed I've gone. But for those who did notice, I haven't abandoned you! I just have been very lax. I'm making an effort to catch up this weekend, though. We'll see how I manage that.

Soon, though. This funk can't last forever.

Singularity - video game review

I bought Singularity because I had heard some good things about it and I wanted to support a new IP that seemed promising.

I'm very glad I did, though that doesn't mean there aren't some issues with the game that I'd like to share.

The game takes place in two time zones, 1955 & 2010, on an island off the eastern Russian coast named Katorga 12, where Russian experiments on the element E99 took place in the 1950s.  A terrible accident occurred, called the Singularity, and the Russians covered it up.  You're a Special Ops soldier named Renko (something I had to get from the description, because I could never hear the characters call me by name, see below), sent to investigate the strange radiation readings from the island.  You stumble upon the horrible results of the catastrophe: mutant creatures running rampant, time distortions, and even openings in time that send you back to 1955, where history is changed.  You meet the Russian scientist responsible for these discoveries, and must face off against an ambitious Russian general who wants to restart the experiments.

It's a really interesting story, much better than some FPS games.


First, the negatives, because at least one of these negatives really pissed me off.

WHERE ARE THE #@%@% SUBTITLES????

Yes, I've already posted my take on this at the Game Informer blog, but for those of you just passing by for the first time, there are no subtitles in Singularity.  Don't ask me why.  I asked Activision's Dan Americh about that, and he said he'd ask (haven't heard back, by the way).

It doesn't help that the heavily-accented English from the Russian characters is almost unintelligible, even with my TV volume turned up.  This is especially bad when the music is ramped up as well (yes, you can turn the music down, thankfully).  Another area where this is the problem are the various audio recordings that are littering the site.  These serve to give you even more of the story, but there were many of them that I just couldn't understand.  Thankfully, the game does a good job of telling you where to go, because I often missed what Barisov or Kathryn was telling me to do.

The graphics are pretty good, though they're not the best thing about the game.  They're kind of bland, overall. You find yourself in a few varieties of locations, but I was getting a bit tired of sewers, warehouses, and industrial complexes after a while.  The events of the game all take place on Katorga 12 and in the installation there, so Raven is a bit constrained in the locations they can make you play in.  Within that constriction, they do a pretty good job.

Also, the game is very linear.  You know exactly where you need to go, and doors often slam shut behind you, cutting you off from where you were previously.  If there appear to be two hallways, you can always "ping" (press down on the D-pad) and get ghostly footsteps that tell you where you need to go.  You can rest assured that the other way will lead you to a place where you can pick up extra ammo and other goodies.

The best part of the game you don't discover until you've played the game for a little bit: the TMD (Time Manipulation Device).  This device has a variety of uses, some of which you will unlock as you proceed through the game.  You can age soldiers until they are dust, you can cause de-age them to the point where they become primitive "Reverts" (monsters that will head toward noise and start whaling away on whatever's causing it).  One of my favourite things to do late in the game, when I was getting assaulted by multiple Russian soldiers, was to turn one of them into a Revert and watch them all fight it out.  Whichever one was left standing was then easy pickings for me.

Another fun thing is to Revert a soldier and then use the TMD on the Revert.  When you do this, the Revert is primed and explodes shortly thereafter, taking out anybody who's unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.  You can create a time bubble that will slow Time down to a crawl (enabling you to shoot them multiple times before they can do anything), fire a "Pulse" that will knock creatures back or kill them.  There are quite a few options, and each one is good for different types of monsters that you will find on the island.

The TMD also lets you age and de-age certain objects, letting you into locked lockers, safes, and other things.  Some of the puzzles involve doing this to big boxes that will let you climb up to a ventilation grill, for instance, or open garage doors that have been lowered enough so that you can't just crouch and walk under.  It's a really innovative technique.  You can improve the TMD powers by spending E99 at various augmentation sites that you will find.  You pick up E99 like you pick up ammo, as it's littered all over Katorga 12.

It's good that the TMD works so well, because the gunplay isn't the greatest.  It's ok, but I really got irritated watching guys I shot crumple to the ground and then get up and start firing at me again.  Even when hit with the autocannon!  There are some cool guns, though, like the Spikeshot, which will fire a spike that impales your target and then explodes, and the Seeker, which fires a bullet that you can then control.  That came in handy sometimes too.  Speaking of armaments, one of the coolest uses of the TMD was when rockets and grenades were being fired at you.  You could "catch" them and return to sender!

One final awesome thing about this game is the ending.  First, it's interesting in its own right.  Secondly, there is no massive boss battle at the end, which I kind of enjoyed.  There are mini-bosses during the game, but there is no uber-boss at the end.

Finally, you have three choices on how to resolve the situation, all leading to different endings.  You get achievements for each one.  When you make a choice, the play finishes, you get some cutscenes that tell you the consequences of your choice, and then it eventually goes back to the main menu (after a sequence that implies a sequel may be coming).  You can press "Continue" and it will take you back to just before the final sequence, letting you make a different choice.  In other words, you can get all three game-ending achievements without having to play through the game three times!  Thank you, Raven.  I really appreciated this.

Overall, I really enjoyed Singularity, and I'm glad I bought it.  While the dialogue/subtitle issue was truly annoying, it's not a dealbreaker.  It's not the best example of the FPS genre, but the innovative story and the TMD makes up for that.

Singularity is available on Xbox 360 (where I played it), PS3, and PC

Windows 7 upgrade tip

Do you currently have Windows Vista? Are you thinking of upgrading to Windows 7 because Vista's a piece of junk?

If so, keep something in mind, something that we figured out the hard way. In hindsight, it's kind of obvious, but it's something you might not think about when you're choosing whether to buy the full version of Windows 7 or the Upgrade version.

We pre-ordered the Upgrade version back in the summer when Amazon (and perhaps other venues) were offering it for $50. We had it sent to my folks' house because of the shipping, and because it wasn't *that* urgent. When I got back from my Christmas vacation back home, I went ahead and installed it on our Vista computer.

Six months later, something reached up and bit us in the ass.

Our computer was beginning to die, so we went ahead and bought another one. This time, we bought it from Generic Computer, an awesome computer store here in Vancouver. You can basically build your own computer there, and it has the side benefit of being easy to upgrade. The innards aren't like a Chinese puzzle-box when you try to just put in some more RAM.

Anyway, you can have them include Windows 7 on the machine for $119, but we figured "hell, we already have it! We don't need to spend the money."

You might be able to guess where this is going.

They went ahead and installed Windows 7 with their own product key, and all we would have to do is change the product key to ours when we got it home. This activation would keep Windows 7 running (if you don't activate it within a month, then you lose almost all Windows functionality).

I enter the product key. Whoops! This is an upgrade product key. It won't work on a new install. There's no way Generic was going to install Vista and *then* install Windows 7, just so we could then use our upgraded version. They probably don't even have Windows Vista anyway (who in their right mind would?)

So lesson learned. We went out and bought a full version of Windows 7 so that we could activate the version that's on our computer now.

The only way you'll be able to avoid this problem is to buy your machines from stores like Best Buy, Future Shop, etc, where Windows 7 is already pre-installed. If that's what you do, then you're fine, though you'll never have a use for your Upgrade version of Windows 7 again once you do it the first time. But if you buy your computers from computer shops, then be warned. Make sure you have the full version.

I have a feeling Windows 7 is going to be around for quite a while, so at least we'll have this version for when we buy our next computer in 3 years or so.

Thank heavens for small favours.

One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 23)

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

**************************

As my earlier post today states, this blog is now one year old today! What does that mean? Well, it still shits in its diaper, but it's a lot more fun at Christmastime than it was last year. It might even be able to open its own presents (though it will probably just try and eat the paper). It might start walking soon, though!

One of the things that keeps me regular on this blog is the weekly one-hit wonder post! No matter what kind of blogging funk I've been in, I've been able to keep this up for a large number of weeks without missing one.

The other thing that keeps me regular is this.

Which can also help with funks of other varieties.

A good friend of mine over at Game Informer has come out against regular blog series because it's difficult to stick to the schedule. While I definitely agree it can be hard, sometimes it's what keeps you going, you know? Some weeks, I just don't feel funny, and I think that might show on the blog ("So you mean every week, right?" - the Peanut Gallery). But I know some of you enjoy them, so I work through it and get them done! Of course, some weeks when I'm done, I look like this:

But that could just be me.

This week, we speed into 1996, and it looks like it's going to be a good year! I actually recognize some of these songs. As usual, you can find the list I'm taking these from here.

Without further adieu, here we go!

1) Deep Blue Something: "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (#5)



And we start with one of my favourites of the year! I love this song to death.

Of course, you know there's a problem if the only thing you've got in common is that you both "kind of" liked a movie. But hey, you have to start at the bottom, right? Oh, and I wouldn't try to hitchhike in New York. You never know who's going to pick you up.

Yikes!

I do love the New York scenery in the video, though (I've never seen it, actually, just heard the song). It's a pretty cool video too.

Ok, a bit too much prancing in the park, but you can't have everything.

2)Planet Soul: "Set U Free" (#26)



I cannot find the original version that actually made the charts, there are so many remixes of it.

So I'll just leave it here without comment. How can I make fun of it when it's not the original?

Though this just reminds me why I don't generally like dance music.

3) Joan Osborne: "One of Us" (#4)



Another of the big songs of the 90s that's still played today occasionally. What if God were one of us?

What's this blatant religious stuff doing on the charts?? Who authorized this? Some heads are going to roll.

Do you get the sense that I don't think this song would become popular if it were put out today? Unless it was on the Gospel channel or something. Of course, that reasoning totally backs up what Osborne seems to be saying in the song, how people have lost touch with God (i.e. if he were one of us, he'd be alone, nobody calling on the phone, etc).

Quite the heavy message, and one that a lot of people nowadays wouldn't want to hear.

And since this has exceeded my "Seriousness Allowance" for this post, let me balance the scales...



4) Folk Implosion: "Natural One" (#29)



What a f-ing bizarre video! I know! Let's put astronauts out in the desert! Interacting with wind-up animals that sometimes appear to be mating! Um, ok?

I think that if the lead singer were any more deadpan, he'd be dead! It's kinda sad when the wind-up animals have more life than the band (and yes, I know that's probably intentional...it's just stupid)

This is a weird song, too. It doesn't get me moving, thinking, or even really caring. In fact, it's putting me to sleep more than anything else.

5) Everything But the Girl: "Missing" (#2)



Now this is dance music I can get behind! I love this song, no matter how it's remixed (they say this is the original mix, but I'm not sure how a "remix" can be original. Shouldn't it be "original mix?" Anyway, this appears to be the radio version, as it's not all hyped up, but it's still dance music.

And I still love it. The song is kind of heartbreaking if you really listen to it. You don't know what happened, just that they're not together now and she really misses him. "Like the deserts miss the rain" is quite the powerful image (though it is kind of repeated a lot...um, we got it the first dozen times?)

I love the desert metaphor of the city streets at night, completely empty of anything except cars.

Can you tell I like this song?

Ok, it's not like I want to have its babies or anything, but I'm talking some serious like.

6) 3T: "Anything" (#15)



Tito's kids! Yes, we have some more Jackson progeny. They became kind of big in Europe, but this is the only song that went anywhere in the US. Why is that? I don't know. Maybe they didn't trade in on their heritage (though Michael did guest on a couple of their singles).

I'm not sure why they didn't get bigger in the US. It's the kind of sappy pop that people generally eat up. They're fairly talented singers, they could have had the power of the Jackson name behind them.

Maybe they knew that they'd eventually gain fame on an obscure blog's one-hit wonder list, and that's enough for them?

7) Seven Mary Three: "Cumbersome" (#39)



This is kind of a cool song, kind of rockish without being too heavy. The words are pretty good too (and you can see what they are!)

Seven Mary Three was big on the Mainstream Rock charts, though this is the only song that made it on the generic Top 40 list. Not sure why that is, actually. Sometimes I wonder if it's a choice by the artist? I'm completely mystified.

I love the origin of their band name, too. Seven Mary Three was the call-sign of one of the cops on the 70s series "ChiPs." Awesome!!!!

So there you have it. Part one of five for 1996, and not a rap song in sight! Let's hope it stays that way. I think there might be a couple coming our way in the future, but not too many.

Let's all breathe a sigh of relief right now.

All better? Good.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's something I've got to take care of.



Yeah, my first day was kinda painful.

Edit #1 (7/19/10): changed "prodigy" to "progeny" in the 3T song entry. That's kind of an embarrassing slip-up. Thankfully, I caught it before anybody else did.



One-Hit Wonders of the 90s
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
Part 29
Part 30
Part 31
Part 32
Part 33
Part 34
Part 35
Part 36
Part 37
Part 38
Part 39
Part 40

It's been a year!!!!

It was a sultry Saturday morning, July 18, 2009. After recent discussions with my cousin when the wife and I were back home, I had decided to re-start my Livejournal blog that had been moribund for at least a year, if not longer. After two posts, though, I got to thinking. My Livejournal page looked boring. Plus, I had signed up for a Blogger account a *long* time ago but had never done anything with it.

So why not start completely over and see what I could do? I was bored on this Saturday morning, the wife wasn't up yet and I wasn't in the mood for video games. My thoughts were coalescing around a blog idea, and I decided this was the time to do it. After doing some basic Blogger design work, I did my first post!

Not exactly the most exciting post, but I figured what the hell? Why not start basic and move on from there?

Now here we are, exactly one year later, and 447 posts in as well. I honestly thought I would give up after a couple of weeks, because that is what I do. But I was able to persevere. There were times I did so by just posting links to my favourite videos (Mystery Science Theater, Monty Python, what have you). But I did it.

I have a fair group of followers, plus I'm sure there are others that I don't know about (I still have no idea how accurate the Feedburner stats are, considering how much they fluctuate). I've "met" some beautiful people on here.

I've made some great blogging friends along the way, been a guest-blogger three times (I have no idea of the readership on any of those posts, but they were still fun to do), started blogging about video games on the Game Informer magazine site, and gone through the crises of confidence that is typical of me when I do something like this.

But I'm still here. Maybe not posting quite as often as I had planned earlier (I had wanted it to be an average of once a day over a month's period, but I'm falling off that pace right now), but I am here.

Heck, I've even been insulted by somebody! You know you've arrived when *that* happens!

I've helped hundreds of people discover who unfriended them on Facebook (assuming that the number of people who left my blog to go to the site where the GreaseMonkey script is were able to figure it out), talked about my passion for social media as well as video games and books.

I've (hopefully) made people laugh, made others cry, inadvertently pissed some friends off (don't worry, we got better) and just generally had a lot of fun. I've also discovered some cool new things that I would never have known about if I hadn't entered the blogging world.

I've learned a lot doing this, both about others and about myself too. Post #500 will be coming up soon, and I do plan on doing something special for that. What that will be, I don't know, but I hope it will be good.

I couldn't have done it without all of you, though. So thank you so much. There are times where I begin to doubt myself doing this. Inevitably, and luckily, those are the times where somebody pipes up and says "I read you every day!" and my day is made, not to mention my blogging. It does keep me going at times.

We all need that little boost up occasionally, don't we?

Here's to another great year. I know I'm looking forward to it.

Paying for multiplayer - is it coming?

As many of you know, Activision president Bobby Kotick has reiterated his desire to charge the typical Call of Duty player for multiplayer capability.

But that's just him talking, right?  Just Bobby being Bobby?  Many of us have been over and over the controversy (and I linked above to my response to it).

However, it may not be just Bobby.

In the August issue of Official Xbox Magazine, they have an interview with video-game research analyst Michael Pachter, and he thinks paying for multiplayer is inevitable. (sorry, OXM's web site is *really* bad for linking to current content, so this one probably won't be on the web site until, oh, maybe 2012 or so).

Anyway, Pachter thinks that free multiplayer is going the way of the dodo.  Right now, everything's free.  But "Pachter says that's going to change, since game publishers are busy figuring out business models that will charge you for online multiplayer across both Live and Playstation Network."  He also says "Fall 2011, I think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a subscription game...It'll probably still have a single-player campaign and some free online multiplayer and co-op - enough to hook you."

Pachter claims that EA and Activision have basically told him that this is going to happen as soon as they can figure out the best way to do it.

One interesting potential business model he mentions:

"Activision probably can't charge directly unless it's on the PC.  I don't know how they can get around letting Microsoft collect for them.  My guess is, there'll be an incremental subscription. I think they're going to say, if you want Xbox Live plus Call of Duty, it's $100/year.  And I think when people sign up for it, it'll be 'click the button to charge your credit card.'"  Of course, Microsoft's going to get their cut, but they'll make money too.  "If they get to collect their 30 percent, what do they care if Activision makes $300 million a year?"

Given that it's not just Kotick saying this stuff now, I'd like to revisit your thoughts on this issue.

Personally, I can't see this happening for any game but the big 2 (Halo and Call of Duty), because those are the only games that are going to stay at the top of the play charts for an extended period of time.  Hell, even Bad Company 2, whose multiplayer is supposedly so awesome compared to Call of Duty (I like them both, so that's not a slight on either),  has fallen down on the play charts after being out a few months.  No other games are going to be worth doing a year's subscription for.  How many games are out there where we complain, a few months down the line, "there's nobody online playing!"  Do they really think that making people pay for it is going to keep people around?

Pichter's got an interesting response regarding those who will refuse to pay it, and what that will mean to the company's business model:

"The math is pretty compelling. If you believe 8 million people are playing Call of Duty on Xbox Live, that means probably another 4 million are playing on Playstation Network.  If 12 million people are playing, what if you captured only 2 million of them (in a subscription) at $15/month? That's $360 million incremental per year, so why wouldn't you start high?

"And what are the other 10 million players going to do?  They're going to be pissed, and then what? They're going to go buy another game.  They're not going to stop buying games.  They may boycott Activision for a week, but they're going to go buy Battlefield or Medal of Honor and try it online, until EA says, 'We're charging for that.' Then they'll go buy the new Bungie game and play it online, until Activision charges for that.  It's just the way it's going to go."

I know I will never pay extra for the multiplayer experience that I get now.  If they improve it, keep it a living and vibrant community, then I might consider it, though probably not.  Fifteen bucks a month is a lot of money.
Two questions for you, and one I'm sure I know the answer to:

1) Would you pay for *any* multiplayer experience that wasn't an MMO?

2) Whether or not you personally would do it, do you think this is coming?  And how do you think it will work?

I encourage you to check out the article (you don't need to buy the magazine, as it's a very quick article, though I do like the magazine, but I don't want this to be a plug and...ok, I'm rambling.  But check it out.

Note: All quotes above are hand-typed by me, since it's in the magazine and not online.  All errors or omissions are mine and not in the magazine itself.

Podcast update - nerves of steel

I've mentioned a couple of times before that I've proposed that we do a podcast for the educational programs that my office offers.

The ideas have been percolating for a while (obviously), but we've never had the time to really sit down and do it. We've talked about it, come up with a mini-proposal that our manager has approved, and done some thinking, but time has gotten away from us and we haven't actually accomplished anything.

That's about to change, however.

The idea is to do about 30 minutes, at least for now. A short interview with somebody (either a person in the field, a student, professor, or something like that), some discussion on an interesting topic, and who knows what else.

This is all probably going to become a regular thing in the Fall, when we have a bit more time and the producer/co-host is actually working here full-time (she's just part-time right now). But we decided that we're going to do a "practice" one for selected people to listen to (assuming it's actually of usable quality). Who knows? If it's good enough, it may become our first show when we finally start putting it out for public conception, or it might not.

Because it's just "practice," we're not doing anything external, and thus I'm interviewing a co-worker. We're scheduled to record the interview next Thursday. Then, the next week, Sharon and I will record the podcast itself.

Yes, we have a concrete date for this now! And thus the nervousness is starting to kick in again. I hate the sound of my voice, even more so when it's recorded. Is this actually going to work? Can I speak at both an audible volume and in a manner that's actually understandable to somebody listening? And even if I can, will anybody want to?

Those are the fears that I have to get past. It's a bit of a safety net, doing a "practice" one, but it will make it easier to cope with for me and it's also a good thing anyway. That way, we can iron out any technical difficulties we might have without subjecting the listening public to them.

My good friend Dawn did a brilliant post yesterday on the fear of doing new things and getting past that fear. It hit home to me because this is a totally new experience for me, and it's one that does make me a bit fearful. It's also along similar lines to my recent crisis of blog confidence, in the sense that I have to wonder if anybody wants to listen to me ramble on?

Anyway, with concrete dates now established, I think this thing is going to happen! And I am excited about it. We'll see what happens.

P.S. We're using Google Docs to collaborate on show notes and interview questions, and I have to say that it's been a godsend. I know Google is taking over the world, but I can't help it. They create a lot of useful stuff!