New Years internet resolutions

Seeing as how 2010 is just a couple days away, its about time to make resolutions again. I'm more of a fan of making realistic and specific ones, than the open-ended ones most people make. Here's a handful of my "Internet Resolutions" for 2010.

1. Produce 40 episodes of Contracast. We've managed 21 so far, and 22 is most likely tomorrow, so in half a years time we nearly made an episode a week. 40 episodes is hopefully a conservative number, but its a number I'd be happy with.

2. Create 40 unique photoshop pieces. I managed to turn out somewhere between 20 and 40 pieces this year, but they weren't all great, and aren't all "portfolio quality". I want to take the better works from my 14 days of photoshop project, and make 40 of them.

3. Write at least 8 articles a month. Articles- not Contracast stuff, not pictures, not simply 2 minute reviews, I mean several paragraph long, cohesive articles. I wrote a few this year, but I need to turn out a bunch more.

4. Tweet better. Sure, its open-ended sounding- but what I mean is tweet like the pros tweet. Link my articles, link others articles, use hashtags and comment on the trending topics occasionally. Right now I don't link much, and my tweets are mainly thoughts about my daily life and so on.

5. Write 5 Instructables. I make lots of things. I have a decent phone camera. It's only fitting that I should write some of these. I enjoy reading them, and writing them is both fun and rewards with free publicity and visibility.

6. Use Google Wave. Actually use it, you know?

7. Use Google Voice. Same deal as before.

8. Comment more often. Again, a little open-ended, but I hardly comment on anything at the moment. commenting is yet another easy way to gain some visibility.

9. Start a new, focused blog. Everyone else is doing it. Fancy fast food, Stuff white people like, people of Walmart, etc. Simple idea- Step 1: Obsessively cover ______, step 2: ???????, step 3: Profit!

10. Reconnect with Facebook.

End of the month round-up

Thanks to Christmas, work, and general laziness, we've been putting off the show for a little while. It'll be back soon, don't worry. In the meantime, here's some pictures from my phone:



1337! L33T! Get it!



When did Megablocks get cool?



I used to paint Lord of the Rings figures for a game back in 2003. As of March I still have the skill. For reference- the base is 1 inch across.



This is my iPod Touch dock. Made from Legos.



Avatar tickets and glasses. Man that was an amazing movie.



Peggle for iPhone is $1.99 until Jan. 3! The most addictive game ever!

And thats all I suppose.

2 Minute Movie Review: Avatar

Synopsis: In the year 2154, we've reduced earth to a brown, resource starved planet, and need to mine our minerals elsewhere. We've discovered a distant world, named Pandora, that takes 6 years to fly to, that is rich in the mineral "Unobtanium". Apparently this rock sells more "20 million a kilo", which I will assume is slightly more than the trade value of graham crackers. The RDA- a private military organization- are running things on Pandora. The Na'vi are an indigenous people who just happen to live on the biggest deposit of the rock for hundreds of miles in any direction. The humans have built host bodies with human and Na'vi dna, and through neural link machines, people are able to "pilot" their bodies, or "avatars". (IE- you play the online sensation, "World of Everquestcraft", your character is your avatar). Plot ensues.

Loved: 3D that was subtle and never overdone. Totally immersive environments. Amazing animation. Excellent direction. Great music. Basically everything you want from a movie. I'm still blown away. Its nearly 3 hours long, and when it ends you want it to keep on going. The Na'vi are so real that they seem more real than the humans. Pandora is breathtaking. Avatar was an experience, not just a movie. All the theories about how it was going to be awful we not true. Even the previously dumb "Papyrus" font worked well. (Subtitles in 3D are cool.) Its cool to see movies finally taking things from video games, and not only the other way around. 3 quick things that were direct lifts from games: The "Scorpion" helicopters (Halo series- Pelicans and Hornets), the RDA mechs (loads of games- notably Dawn of War (Tau XV8s and Marine Dreadnaughts), the Viperhound (?)- six legged crazy predator- Warcraft.

Hated: Well, the preview for "Piranha 3D" made my head hurt.

Verdict: This movie reminds me of Lord of the Rings. I felt a certain way after seeing those movies, and thats how I feel now. Totally immersed, amazed, and wanting to see it again. I wonder how well 3D will transfer to Blu-ray, because thats how I want to see it next. 2d may look fine, but you'll never feel like you're in a room or on Pandora. 10/10

Dear Microsoft:

Please reboot Crimson Skies.



While playing it again this weekend, I realized two things: 1- it's still way fun, and 2- it's an awful like "Uncharted" in the sky. Sure Microsoft, you'll have Halo: Reach all to yourselves next year, but wouldn't you like to have some of the "game of the year" buzz Uncharted is getting? Here's 3 ways you can make a Crimson Skies reboot as successful as Uncharted 2, ready?

Story: You need a coherent, exciting plot, that takes between 12 and 24 hours to play out. Hire a full team of TV quality (as in- writers of 24) writers, to flesh out a story that will make people want to keep on playing. Use extensive in-game cutscenes to develop a deep story, and make each action level have a purpose. While there exists some story of the Crimson Skies universe, take a lot of creative license and craft a new story. The setting is great, but we need a new protagonist, new antagonist, and lots of supporting characters. You can't simply have one goal from start to finish, there have to be a lot of plot developments, and an unpredictable end.

Marketing: Take a page from Uncharted 2's book- make this THE system exclusive to get. Do combo ads with Halo: Reach for all I care. Sell the movie-like experience, and the "awesome factor", not just the typical "Look at how much fun this game might be" sort of advertising. The PS3 ads where the guy is complaining that his girlfriend won't let him stop playing because she thinks Uncharted 2 is a movie is genius on several levels. It sells it to the target demographic- 18-34 year old males with the promise of action and adventure, but it also appeals to pretty much everyone by telling them that if they like movies, they'll like this.

Gameplay: Crimson Skies is essentially Rogue Squadron- with more options. You can repair your plane, upgrade it, do missions, etc- but the main gameplay is still "Arcade Flying". "Arcade Flying" is fun, but it won't get the buzz, or the money that an "Uncharted" will, because flight doesn't appeal to everyone. Some flight though- accompanied by lots of 3rd person action would work fine. In the vision I have for a reboot- planes are tools, used for transport, air-to-air combat, and other such things. The core of the game would be 3rd person shooter. You can hop in planes, and would spend plenty of time piloting and defending planes, but to sell this as a full movie experience, you need the ground combat too. Combining the two types of play is a decent enough idea- pilot plane to zeppelin- retrieve object inside on foot- escape zeppelin by plane- land on ground and fight off enemies- sounds like an exciting enough experience. This adds possibilities for multiplayer too, where 2 teams could defend their zeppelin and try to destroy the other's, in the air, on the ground, and in the zeppelins. The inclusion of both elements also means that you can include things such as boarding other planes mid-air or bailing out over zeppelins, both of which would make a great action shot for commercials, and would make the game memorable not just for the cutscenes.

So if anyone else thinks that this might be fun, or a decent idea for Microsoft, let me know! If anything else, this is simply a game I'd love to play, whether or not MS makes money on it. And as a bonus, pay homage to the movie "The Rocketeer", and give the protagonist a jetpack and helmet for at least part of a mission.

Education vs. Online time

Turns out that the more educated you are, the more time you spend online.

The study, that covered households containing at least one person aged 16-74 across Europe, shows that nearly 90 % of the EU population with high formal education used the internet regularly, more than twice as much as the share of the population with low formal education.

The article mentions education's correlation with higher income as a possible reason- since more money means a higher chance of having a pc. I would simply hypothesize that highly educated people are more likely to do shopping online, read blogs, and use tools online, than people with less education.

Thenextweb.com article

Dear idiots...

We need to have a chat. Yes, this is about those Facebook quizzes. You know- "Social Interview", and the like. Did you know that these quizzes (and other applications) are taking you information? They aren't simply holding on to your silly answers, they're grabbing everything you have posted to Facebook. Phone number, address, interests, politics, religion, birthday- everything. In fact, they aren't simply taking your stuff, they're also taking your friends info. Why is this, you might ask? They sell your info. Advertising companies, grocery stores, even the government- all buyers of your personal data. How can you stop this? For starters, STOP USING THESE APPLICATIONS. After that, remove info you don't want getting out to non-friends. If you have to use Facebook (and let's face it, you do), just be careful.

Contracast Episode 21: DORIFTO

This week we talk racing games that influenced us, the Google phone, Crispygamer's game of the decade bracketed championship, and much more!

Link of the week: The most popular free Windows downloads of 2009

App of the week: Appvent Calendar

My usual audio program didn't want to cooperate this week, so the transition isn't so great. All the same, enjoy the show.



Download Link

This...

...Is my cat.

10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010

Original article from CNN.com

Dad pointed me to this article as a possible show topic, and while we are going to discuss it, a text component couldn't hurt. The article lays out what the title suggests, and authored by the CEO of Mashable.com, its worth paying attention to. Reading through these at first I felt like we've already seen them. However, the "web 2.0" waves were made outside the web community in 2007, not earlier when it was the web community alone embracing the user-generated content era. So now are these trends- already found online, but likely to make bigger waves outside the web community next year. Here's the list:


Real-time ramps up
Location, location, location
Augmented reality
Content 'curation'
Cloud computing
Internet TV and movies
Convergence conundrum
Social gaming
Mobile payments
Fame abundance
Privacy scarcity


Rather than do what other, bigger, blogs do and break down each point- I'll just offer some comments on a few that interest me more than others.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing was very much a buzzword of 2009, but there's no doubt this transition will continue. The trend, in which data and applications cease to reside on our desktops and instead exist on servers elsewhere ("the cloud"), makes our data accessible from anywhere and enables collaboration with distributed teams.
The cloud movement will see a major leap forward in the first half of 2010 with the launch of "Office Web Apps," free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote released in tandem with Microsoft Office 2010.
Next year will also see the launch of Google's Chrome OS, a free, Web-centric operating system that forces us to ask: How many desktop applications do we really need?

As a listener of "This Week in Google", I hear a lot about cloud computing. Unless I'm mistaken we discussed it- most likely with no depth- on an early show. My argument is that cloud computing won't be nearly as big as we think it will- for at least a few years. For the sake of how I'd like to explain it, here's three archetypes of possible cloud computing users:

What's a browser? You know, the people who may still be using IE6 (Internet Exploiter 6). These people use the internet to check email, shop, and research things. They never embraced the "web 2.0" evolutions as anything more than a young persons thing. These people may belong to social networks, but likely for no more reason than to spy on the kids, or play Farmville. They won't be using cloud computing because they have no idea it exists. They don't know that Google Docs is a fine replacement for Microsoft Word, or that its safer to store photos online than on the hard drive. They have no reason to look for other services online, thus don't know that for them- the non-web savvy- most of what they use computers for can be done entirely through a browser. Thus- they'll maybe check out the new- free- Office 2010 web apps, but in no time they'll go back to using Office 2003 and continue using the internet in the same way they have since 2001.

Cool, but why? These are the Web 2.0 power users. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, all done by these people- and often. They may "get" cloud computing, but don't see a reason for it. These people are in many of my classes, and use the web all the time, but fail to see a reason for dumping desktop apps. After all, if Office desktop works fine- why do I need to drop it for Office online? These are the people who might- just might- be willing to get a Chrome OS netbook, but might not be happy with the results.

It's impossible. This is me. Cloud computing is great, no doubt. But I'm the reason that dropping the OS altogether isn't viable at all. Glancing across my taskbar, I see 5 things I can't do with cloud computing. Photoshop- sure, paint.net may be fine for someone who wants a nifty effect for a Facebook photo, but it doesn't cut it for me, or anyone else who uses photoshop for image editing. Skype, Skype Recorder, and Audio Software- Necessary for communication, recording for the show, and subsequent editing, there is nothing online that I can use for these tasks, at least that is tolerable to use. Steam- as a stand-in for games in general, its kind of hard to play a pick-up match of MW2 with your brother when the OS doesn't support it. I'm the kind of person who is enthusiastic about cloud computing, but won't be able to utilize it in a way that will make it take off.

Internet TV and movies

Is 2010 the year the majority of our television starts coming to us via the Internet? There's certainly more activity here than at any other time: Among the early-adopter set, Hulu, Boxee, Apple TV and Netflix's Roku box lead the field.
Hulu in particular has sustained remarkable growth this year, while the movie studios are getting on board with the launch of Epix, a Hulu for films.

Let's hope so. I haven't had a tv since August, but I've managed just fine. I'd say I've managed better than before except for a few things: content needs to be delivered at the same time as original airing- or with just a slight delay (not a day or more), there needs to be a bigger back-catalog of content, and a better way to advertise. I feel like networks are stingy with content because the ads are roughly 1/5 the volume they are on tv. They don't allow for a big back-catalog because they want more dvd sales, but they could use a few episodes from past seasons to advertise the dvds. The idea of a dedicated media pc connected to a tv has been around for a while, it was already accepted in 2004, but it remains a weird concept to many people. There is still a disconnect in many minds between pc and tv, and people that hear about Hulu only think "why would I watch tv on my computer".

Fame abundance, privacy scarcity

Warhol was right: Fame is now abundant. Social media has birthed a galaxy of stars in thousands of niches: We're all reality stars now, on Facebook, Twitter and all the myriad online outlets where we hone our personal brands.
We're seeing the ongoing voluntary erosion of privacy through public sharing on Facebook and Twitter, the rise of location-based services and the inclusion of video cameras in a growing array of devices.

We've talked about privacy almost too much in one of my classes, but the fame thing is a little overblown in my opinion. Here's how I feel about the "galaxy of stars": aside from the select few celebrities whose presence graces the web, there aren't many online stars. There are however people who represent "local celebrities", the current evolution of local newscaster or high school football coach. These people don't have millions of Twitter followers, but they don't have less than 100 either. They are known to a select group of people, but aren't the full blown celebrities that they seem. As for the concept that "everyone's a star" that the news loves to toss around, its total garbage. Sorry news. If that were true, I'd fall squarely into the "celebrity" category, and thats just not the case.

Original article from CNN.com

Business Cards

I apologize, this is a cached mirror, but it should still work fine for a long time. This link got me thinking about creating a business card, and so I got right to work. I'd love to create a more exotic card, out of plastic or metal, but for now a design for cardboard is all I have access to. So without further to do- here's a card design:



I used the "arabic typesetting" font that I've taken a liking to lately, and the color palette and rough style of a piece I did back in the summer. Since putting "sales associate", "runner", or "page" on a card doesn't quite carry much weight I chose "blogger", "podcaster", and "designer". There wasn't a place for education on it, or any of the 49 cards at that link. I'd love to create 5-10 different cards, each of very different types, to warrant more than just a glance, or even a second look. Anyway, thoughts?

2 Minute Movie Review: GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Synopsis: As someone who never watched the cartoons, the only sentimental value of GI Joe comes from the countless hours I spent playing with the action figures. Despite not knowing any of the lore of the GI Joe story, the movie still appealed to me when I saw the trailers, and so I went in to the movie just looking for some mindless fun and something that would remind me of the toys I used to play with.

Loved: If I were 9, this would have been the greatest movie I'd ever seen. It perfectly captured the fun I had with my action figures- the crazy situations, the explosions, the good guys winning- it was loads of fun. The costume design, the faux seriousness that the actors treated the script with, and of course, bad guys that are straight of Connery era Bond, were all things that felt great. The movie is paced fast enough to keep any kid from getting bored, and feels like the ultimate tribute to its source material and my young imagination.

Hated: The effects quality ranged from "just fine" to "playstation 1", if you know what I mean. The plot was difficult to follow at times, and even jumps the shark towards the end when ice (!) is sunk (!!). The second you take off the rose colored glasses, the film gets pretty murky, and tough to enjoy, but luckily there are enough explosions to keep them on most of the time.

Verdict: GI Joe is a fun ride, full of explosions, stiff acting, and scenery changes. If I had to summarize my feelings about the film in one phrase, it would be "Modern 80's action movie". Low on plot, high on action. 6/10

Contracast Episode 20: Ramblin' On

The 20th episode of our little show is finally here! Myself, John, and Mike talk about the Hadron collider, Powermat chargers, a Call of Duty movie, Brazil getting the PS2, Modern Warfare 2, and the last 19 episodes.

App of the week: Project Phoenix

Link of the week: Zombie Outbreak Simulator



Download Link

Untitled Design Podcast Art

Its a prototype, but what do you think? The core components I wanted to include were a textured layer to overlay, a blueprint of some sort, and the same sort of text component as the Contracast art. The end goal is that it feels right at home both representing the show, and on an itunes page.

Sprint and the Government

Reposted from an article for a class:

National cellular provider Sprint has 50 million subscribers. Sprint allows law enforcement to use provided tools to determine the location of any of their subscribers via on-device gps. Law enforcement can access this information once every 3 minutes, over a period of 60 days. One might assume that this data would be accessed only a for a select few people, and not terribly often. While we don't know how many people were located via this service, we do know that gps information was requested 8 million times over the last year. 50 million subscribers- 8 million gps location requests. At the very least, 278 people could have been checked every time available. The real number of people is somewhere between 278 and 8 million. The scary thing to me is that this is just Sprint, and Sprint is the nation's 3rd largest cell provider. What sort of numbers would come out of Verizon and AT&T if law enforcement decided that gps information was necessary 8 million times in a year.

2 Minute Movie Review: The Boondock Saints 2

Synopsis- The MacManus brothers are back, after nearly a decade of hiding in Ireland. A priest is killed in Boston, in a church, and made to look like the brothers did the killing. This lures them back once again, and more Russian mob, slow-motion firefights, and crime-scene investigation take place.

Loved- The gunfights were fun, if not fresh. Clifton Collins Jr., while not always funny or likable, was responsible for some of the films better jokes. Where the film did well was in the few "over-the-top" scenes, which unfortunately were scarce.

Hated- Hmmm. For starters, our "lovable" Dafoe replacement, and her horrible accent. The fact that the plot not only makes little sense, but in order to work you have to fill in some major plot inconsistencies. Duffy tried to make this film less a sequel and more a carbon copy of the original. The Boondock Saints is a decent film though, with a lovable cast, fun action, and a steady pace. Saints 2 is paced like a car with a jumpy throttle, seems to have a dumber cast, and treats itself like its a fantastic film, without so much as a nod to the fact that it isn't big-screen material. The first time around the writing felt a little campy, and a little funny, but felt genuine. There were no major religious overtones, or unnecessary monologues. The script feels like a first draft, the sort of thing that anyone would revise a few times. So not to spoil the film, I'll just say that its set up for yet another film, and that the plausibility of the factions assisting eachother at the end is barely above a 0% chance.

Verdict- I had high hopes for this movie. Given the original film and the length of time between the two, I figured it would be difficult, at the least, to make a bad movie. Honestly, the only way that Troy Duffy could have made Boondock Saints 2 a bad film would have been to copy the first film, dump the charm, and then slow it down so you could watch it burn. And unfortunately, that is exactly what he did. 3/10