Paul Kwiatkowski's things of note, or not.

Brand New Site

2010-03-01T01:52:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know my last real post was pointing you to my new Wordpress hosted site, but this time I'm directing you somewhere much better. My own website! As in, owned by me! Leave me some feedback if you wish. Thanks!

News!

2010-01-24T13:40:00.002-05:00

For starters, here's the latest "5 Minutes" show: 5 Minutes of Interesting. Now, the bigger news, I'm moving to Wordpress for my primary blog. This blog will still receive some attention, but there's not much incentive to continue working on this one when my new one is superior. Through the magic of XML, I was able to import this entire blog to that one, so it has the same articles and whatnot that this does. The only thing that it doesn't seem to be able to do is work with the embed code for audio files. Thus, this blog and the Contracast blog will still be the place to go for streaming audio, and the 5 Minutes Blog is still the only place that show will be streaming. What I'm likely going to do is make a permanent sticky post at the top of this site redirecting visitors to my new site.

Anyway, hope you like the new site as much as I do. Stay tuned for more.
Contrapaul.Wordpress.com

iPhone OS 4.0

2010-01-21T18:07:00.002-05:00

Or at least- my mock-up of it. This was created for a Gizmodo contest, my idea of whats coming in iPhone 4.0.

Things of note- starting at the top:
1. Verizon- seems like the iPhone is coming to VZW this year, so its only fitting.
2. Docked applications- top right. Phone, SMS, Camera, Contacts. Whatever you want.
3. Location and weather- top left.
4. Apps and running applications- center. Scroll through them like a boss.
5. Recent Applications- last 7 apps used, on a scroll path.
6. Docked apps part 2- again, whatever you want to use.

Contracast Episode 23: Leno'd?

2010-01-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

This show is approximately 40 minutes long, it is hosted by myself, John Kwiatkowski, Mike Pawlowski, and returning after a long absence, Steven Pawlowski.

Bill Gates joins Twitter
Link of the week: Gizmodo: Behind the scenes of Avatar

Nvidia card owners, ATI card owners

App of the week: Circle Dock

We also talk about Conan O'Brien, and the TSA- in ways that will surely make people educated on such matters RAGE! Also: pack a gun to ensure bag security.

Download Link

Advertising on Podcasts

2010-01-20T17:22:00.003-05:00

Advertisers seem to have some difficulty embracing certain new technologies. For instance, while they finally seem to 'get' online ads, they are still wary of advertising on Hulu, and mostly ignore podcasting entirely. Sure, there are a handful of notable exceptions- Ford Sync, Audible, Citrix, Dog House Systems, etc- most companies seem to be totally oblivious as to how to use podcasting to advertise (and help the medium). Here's a few reasons why podcasting can be an excellent medium for advertising, and in many cases, superior to other forms of media.

Podcasts feel personal.
As much as I may enjoy Lost or the Office, I don't feel any connection to the characters, so if they were to try and pitch a product, I wouldn't care so much. With podcasts, you often end up feeling very connected with the hosts. The more you listen, the more you feel like you know X host, to the point where I feel like if I met certain hosts in town, I could strike up a conversation as if I had known them for years. For this reason, when Scott Johnson or Leo Laporte recommend a product, I'm very inclined to check it out. TV commercials for GoDaddy.com are totally unappealing to me, and yet when their services are explained on Extralife Radio, I check them out, and now feel they might be the best web hosting solution for me. This sort of advertising has been done on the radio for quite a while, with X host explaining their deep love of a product, and the advertiser trying to capitalize of the audience connection to the host. As good a technique as that may have proven, nothing makes you want to buy something like a group ad on TWiT for Audible. Listening to people you enjoy hearing talk about how awesome Audible is, and hearing their various recommendations to each other really makes you want to use that product- and that's the whole goal of advertising right?

Podcasts Cater to Specific Audiences
While most popular tv shows draw very diverse groups of viewers, podcast audiences are often very niche groups. For example, AppSlappy is a show about applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. There are thousands of weekly listeners of this show, and it can be reasonably assumed that the audience A) users of the 2 devices mentioned, B) have an interest in the devices mentioned, or C) have an interest in the applications for the devices, whether or not they own one of them. Sure, there are exceptions, but those 3 descriptions probably fit upwards of 90% of the audience. Therefore, while advertising for a specific application or device might not make sense during a show like the Office, the ad would be a perfect fit for a show like Appslappy. Podcast advertising is like magazine advertising- you can assume something about the audience based on what they are choosing to consume. In this way podcast advertising could prove highly useful to companies.

Its cheap!
While the biggest shows might cost you a fair amount of money to advertise on (I assume that the TWiT network charges a pretty high price), the vast majority of podcasters will likely accept a very reasonable offer. I would bet that with the same money you could use to get a weeks worth of tv commercials you could advertise on tons of podcasts, for much longer.

People don't skip the ads
TV commercials have to try and shock you into paying attention (thats the reason commercials are so loud), and web advertising has to be incredibly invasive to get noticed (I'm looking at you annoying '24' ads on Gizmodo), but Podcast advertising doesn't have to do anything. The medium is not good for skipping ads, and listeners are likely to pay attention to them. You don't want to try and skip ahead in an audio file, you'll probably just waste time trying to find the exact spot that you were looking for. In addition, unless the ad is done by a 3rd party (in which case it is unmistakably different from the show), the listener is likely to go right ahead and listen through the ad. On TWiT, every ad is plainly announced, and yet I haven't skipped through one of them.

In Conclusion
Advertise on podcasts. If advertising companies had to tailor-make a medium in which to effectively communicate with people, podcasting would be pretty close to what they would create. People choose to listen to the show, they choose to listen to ads, and they will likely respond positively to the ads presented rather than apathetically. If you'll excuse me, I need to go purchase a blogcast hosting package through GoDaddy, while listening to a book through Audible.

New Podcast

2010-01-19T16:27:00.002-05:00

I have just begun another show! "5 Minutes of Interesting" is a short-form news and commentary show, hosted by 1-2 people. Episode 1 is just me, and features 3 news stories. The show notes, links, and show itself can be found at 5 Minutes of Interesting.

Dear North Carolina Public High School System:

2010-01-17T23:28:00.003-05:00

It's time you made a few changes. I'm not proposing anything radical, just two simple ideas to update high school education for the 21st century.

The first suggestion I have is to update "Life Skills" classes to focus primarily on current issues, not virtues and the things we can learn from "Rudy". Today's high schoolers don't seem to understand that the way they portray themselves online can affect their futures in very dramatic ways. In an age where more and more employers are checking up on potential employees before hiring them, a negative online presence can haunt someone for life. Education of this sort, along with sections dealing with online safety and current technology, would greatly augment the existing curriculum that deals with actual 'life skills', such as saving money, and credit card use. Patience may be a virtue, but it isn't a learned skill, and in a one-semester course designed to educate young adults on various post-school matters, it has no place being taught.

The second thing I would like to propose is mandatory Spanish, and additional languages only as elective courses. I'm taking an elementary Spanish course right now, and if I had to guess, I would say that upwards of 60% of the class have never had Spanish before. Spanish, unlike most other languages, is all around us. While learning German might help down the road, if you go to Germany, learning Spanish would help the community as a whole. The more people available to translate and communicate, the better society will function. I'd like to see at least 2 years of Spanish required, and the goal be for students to graduate with the ability to understand and speak the language well enough for short conversations with Spanish speakers.

There's my 2 cents on what needs to be changed to bring schools up to date. There's much more I'd love to see change, but those two don't seem terribly difficult, and could have far-reaching impacts.

Yup.

2010-01-15T17:53:00.002-05:00

So I forgot my keys earlier today. Mike came over and I left with him to go get a tv. While the trouble getting the tv is another story all by itself, all you need to know is we got it safely, and I remembered along the way that I had left my keys on my bed. Upon returning to the apartment, I went to knock on the door and discovered that my roommates weren't in, and that I very well might be locked out. Luckily enough, our glass sliding door had been left unlocked, and I was able to get in. Unfortunately, thanks to several years of dorm life, I have a habit of locking every room I walk out of- and I was really hoping that I hadn't done the same this time. Surprise! My door was locked.

The first method of door opening we tried was the venerated "credit card system", in which you attempt to open the door by forcing the bolt open with a flexible plastic card. Although some people have tremendous success with this system, I can't say that I've ever been able to open a door with it. This time was no exception. After 15 minutes of trying, I gave the handyman a call, and like every other time I've called the guy, my call went straight to his machine... We then tried knives, and other such things, to both pick the lock, and force it open, to no avail. I found a coat hanger in the laundry room, which I was able to bend in to an assortment of MacGyver'd shapes, but nothing I tried worked.

I had been playing Uncharted 2 at Walmart while the tv was purchased, and the idea popped in to my head (thanks video game critical thinking) try the window! My window is right next to the door, although the door has wood floor outside it, and my window features a 15 foot drop instead. Yay. I gave the glass a push- and wonderfully enough, it pushed open. My blinds were down, but I was lucky enough to be on the side with the open/close strings, and so I pulled them up from the outside. Carefully climbing up on to the deck railing, I was able to put one foot on the window sill, and reach inside and grab the wall. Thankfully, my Splinter Cell window entering move ended with me landing on my bed, and not the rocks below.

My keys were on my bed, where I had left them, and I was able to unlock my room and consider the entire ordeal ended. I think I'll try the window faster next time.

Photoshop Portfolio

2010-01-13T23:07:00.002-05:00

For now- here's this link. I'm adding a Flickr gadget to this blog, so my creations should soon be cycling through. I omitted lots of repeat pieces, sub-par work, etc. Now I just need to add some.

Flickr Photoshop Album

Classes

2010-01-13T10:07:00.003-05:00

Good morning! Seeing as how my Spanish homework is already done, and I'm on campus, I believe it's a decent time for a article. Today's topic? Just my classes this semester.

Christian Controversies
In my ongoing quest to be a religion minor, this is 1 of 2 that should round out that mission. Thus far, it's been fun! Unfortunately, it's an 8 o'clock class, and even more unfortunate, we were given a choice of day to meet (the class is half online) and the religion majors- who have "long Wednesdays" voted to meet Monday morning... Despite this, the class has been enjoyable, and looks to be insightful. We're focusing mainly on the 20th century (and the few preceding it) which means it will be relevant for today rather than just the past.

Spanish 1
I took 3 years of Spanish before this. In 8th grade through 10th. We spent more time on verbs than nouns, and as such I can figure out the gist of a sentence even if I don't know all the words. This class is for people who "have had very little Spanish or no Spanish before", and while that isn't me, I'd rather get an A here than a C in Spanish 2 or intermediate Spanish. So far I feel like I'm way ahead- I understood everything from the first class, while most of the class was totally lost. My hope is to soak up all the spanish I learn now, and be able to speak consversationally after school, something I don't think is that unrealistic.

Old Testament
Henceforth known as "Hebrew Bible", is only fitting, since I had a class focusing on the sequel back at ASU. My knowledge of the Hebrew bible is much more limited than my knowledge of the New Testament. It seems like church always spent more time on the New Testament, and when covering the Old testament focused on more widely known parts (David, Noah, etc) than the more obscure books. Here's hoping I learn some worthwhile facts.

Film Studies
I was betting on this class to be fun, and it looks like I got what I wanted. My teacher held up an older edition of our textbook- and ironically enough, it was a book that I read back in 2006 when I worked at the library. I read our textbook for fun.

Political Philosophies
I may be the only upperclassman in this class. It's intro level, and it wasn't required (or offered) at ASU. The teacher asked who had already had methods, and surprise, just me out of 80 people. Looks like this might be fun though, philosophy was enjoyable, and we're discussing Locke and Hobbes again here.

And I did some research- I need 120 hours to graduate. I have 104 hours after this semester- but WAIT my AP credits still aren't applied to that, and depending on how they are counted, that's either 6 or 12. Meaning my last semester is either 10 hours, or just 2 classes.

Oh, and this whole article was composed and posted from my iPod. Photobucket App for the picture, notepad for most of the text, and safari of course for posting. Sure, it took a little longer than it would have on my laptop, and typing HTML is no fun, my iPod weighs around 4 ounces, and fits in my pocket.

A quick note

2010-01-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

Nothing much, got a few minutes before class.

RealD 3D glasses don't work with conventional polarization
This should have been obvious to me, but I figured the glasses were polarized in such a way that it was undetectable by me, but still produced a 3D effect when looking at a typical red//blue 3D image. Unfortunately, RealD uses a different technology, where the lens is polarized in such a way that it cannot see half the frames of the projected film (or a special monitor/tv), and not so that red and blue converge and pop out. Until I find some old-style glasses, I'm going to have to keep playing my games conventionally.

CSS
I had a nice chat with my dad about CSS the other day, and when I have time (summer- hopefully) I'm going to read some books and hopefully learn enough to do some basic work with CSS. I really need to grab a few books (because nothing says high tech like a book) and play around with web design, since I haven't done much in the way of coding since 2002 or so. Of course, the hope would be that I also purchase a domain by summer, and get hosting set up. Godaddy has a "blogcast" package that is priced pretty low, and if I use wordpress I'd be able to export this blog to that site easily. Why you ask? The ".blogspot.com" is fine for now, but my own domain would certainly look more professional- and would also give me a space for portfolio, shows, etc.

Thoughts for the day

2010-01-07T20:45:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty well moved in to my apartment now. Thanks to Ikea, I can see, which is always a good thing. Here's whats been on my mind the last week:

Job Hunting
I still have to go to Barnes and Noble- the closest store isn't a stone's throw away. Also Walden Books. Aside from that, I've applied at Best Buy, Borders, Target, Walgreens, and even sent a few emails inquiring about offers on Craigslist. Still have lots of applying to do though. Is the obligatory 30 minute "Quick Answer" section really that important? No- I don't think stealing office supplies is ok, and yes- I do get along well with others.

Lost
This show is good, and its all on Hulu. I'm hooked.

School
I should have genuinely fun classes this semester. I have Spanish 1, which I hope won't be difficult- I was good at Spanish in high school, and I really want to be able to at least converse enough out of school to put it on my resume. I also have film studies, and I'm really hoping that it turns out to be fun.

CES
The Consumer Electronics Show 2010 is going on right now, and honestly, nothing that interesting has come from it yet. Sure, super thin 3D tvs, 3D tvs, and 3D DirecTV are all innovative (I suppose), I just want to see something truly cool. Last year we saw the Palm Pre, and everyone thought it would save Palm, and I suppose that would have been the Nexus One, if it hadn't been revealed before CES, and was a little more revolutionary. Ford's Sync (wasn't it MS Sync last year at this time?) endeavors just don't really do much for me. Make a system that goes into cars, rather than comes with them, and I'll be a little more excited.

Poker
One poker night over Christmas break became 4, and I'm setting one up as soon as the rest of the school gets back. I don't believe in that hat wearing/sunglasses shielding business though. Thats basically an excuse for not looking tough enough.

And- thats a bit of whats been on my mind the last week. I'll give my full take on CES 2010 this weekend. Wish me luck job hunting.

Friendly reminder:

2010-01-04T16:02:00.003-05:00

The US pays too much for internet, and it isn't even that fast. That figure for Japan is the AVERAGE speed. 61mbps. At only 27 cents each mbps.

Contracast Episode 22: Avatar3d

2010-01-03T17:54:00.003-05:00

This week we discuss Avatar, the decade that was, and the year to come. Also, we discuss the article I wrote about here.

Picturing the Decade

Download Link

DERP!

2010-01-03T12:00:00.002-05:00

The show is coming- we recorded it a few days ago, and due to work, laziness, and the editing software expiring on my pc, the files sit idly by. In the meantime here's a tip for quickly accessing lots of sites in Chrome or Firefox.

You may already use the bookmark bar to keep a handful of links- to email, facebook, news- whatever, but you probably haven't filled it up, or if you have there's only 6-10 links on there. Here's what I do: erase the text next to each icon. You clean up the bar, and save space, so that you- like me- can have 20 links, and not even fill up half the bar. This way I open the browser, and middle-click on however many I want to open, and in seconds I have a couple blogs, digg and reddit, email, twitter, facebook, etc, open.

New Years internet resolutions

2009-12-29T21:52:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-29T02:06:00.007-05:00

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

2009-12-27T12:52:00.003-05:00

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:

2009-12-21T21:18:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-17T22:08:00.002-05:00

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...

2009-12-17T20:13:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-15T14:03:00.001-05:00

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...

2009-12-14T04:18:00.004-05:00

...Is my cat.

10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010

2009-12-07T01:52:00.009-05:00

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

2009-12-06T20:10:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-06T17:30:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-03T22:18:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-03T13:43:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-03T13:42:00.001-05:00

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

2009-12-02T20:06:00.002-05:00

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

That new podcast?

2009-11-29T23:33:00.003-05:00

At this point getting the "International Affairs" show up and running wouldn't be so easy. However, its looking like John and I are going to be starting a new show in mid-December. The goal is that John will helm a new show that examines design- in cars, gadgets, and more. So far we don't have a name, art, or much to go on, but thanks to blogs like Gizmodo, Autoblog, and Lifehacker there is a pretty steady weekly flow of nifty things to analyze. The end goal is that I'm not on the show very often, and that it becomes a great addition to the Contracast network of shows. If that's what we call it.

On eMarketing

2009-11-26T23:35:00.004-05:00

See what I did there? I left the "e" lowercase. I'm now hip with the business crowd circa 2003. I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to market business online- specifically how to do it for free. Here's a few suggestions.

1. Use Twitter as a constant reminder that you exist. Lots of businesses don't have any idea that Twitter can be used as a business tool, and many that do use it don't have any idea how to use it. To begin, you have to create an account, with a name that is recognizable. For this article I'm going to pimp Sakura Japanese in Boone NC. A good name for them is "SakuraofBoone", and not "BooneJapanese" or something like that. The goal is that people see your name and immediately think of your business. Step 2 is following people. Do a near:boone (or any other place, zipcode, etc) search, and literally follow every person that comes up. You want to be following thousands of people. I believe that the approximate rate of being followed is something like 18%. Thus, following 10,000 people will net you 1,800 followers. Never stop following people. Step 3- tweet often, and tweet relevant things. Often businesses don't know what to tweet. Rather than say dumb things like "Celebrate X holiday at Sakura!" or "Long day? Eat at Sakura!", make customers want to get your tweets. Give small deals, and talk about the food. Examples- "Tell your waiter X and get a free soup with dinner tonight", and "Just served a plate of hibachi steak and mushrooms, man it smelled good". This is going to give customers the desire to go to your restaurant, and a reason too. The last thing you need to do with Twitter is us it as a link hub. List every last place customers can find you on the web.

2. Use Facebook as a pseudo-website. Post many of the same things you post on Twitter to the business page. Deals are what will make people become a fan, and again, constant reminding will bring in business. Since we're talking free, I'll only say that if you want to spend money- targeted ads might pay off well. Facebook will be as good as a website at getting customers directions, and staying in contact with them. Starting discussions about the food and atmosphere will not only bring in customers, it will help better the place.

3. Create a website. Use a service like Squarespace to get a site up and running, and try to secure a name that is short, but recognizable. Go for a ".com" over any other address. On this site you need a few things- menu, pictures, directions, and text. Write a history of the place, post pictures of the setting and food (HIGH QUALITY PICTURES ONLY, as in- photoshopped as necessary), get maps, and make the site open and encourage navigating all around. Get a twitter feed going, so that the deals and enticing info you post is fed to the site as well.

4. The last step is market the digital media physically. Every menu needs to have these 3 addresses up. Have a visible display showing them near the entrance and checkout. Have the waiters tell customers about the online deals, and print the addresses on the bill and receipt.

This has been pretty restaurant-centric, but it wouldn't be such a stretch to replace the specific details with things relevant to your business. The goal in all of this is to establish a large presence in the space where people are spending more and more of their time. I believe that keeping up these free (or very cheap) digital billboards will be much more beneficial than a kitschy commercial or advertisement in the paper.

Google Wave

2009-11-26T00:38:00.004-05:00

WOOT. I'm in. Also, John and Mike are too. We'll use it for the show notes tomorrow and talk about it on the show. So far- seems like it would be awesome if you had like 100 contacts, a little less effective with just a few.

Audio Insomnia

2009-11-23T02:01:00.003-05:00

Good evening. It's been a while since I typed out one of these things, so it's high time I knock one out. I hope the fixed "Topics" gadget works for everyone. Showing all the labels was great when there were 20 articles, but the total number of "articles" is closer to 200 now, and it's too messy to have 137 seperate labels, so I took some important ones and chose not to show the rest. Anyway, here's the podcasts for the night.

Film Sack : Yet another Scott Johnson production, now into it's 4th show, the show unearths forgotten (read bad) films from the Netflix catalog and discusses them. Brian Dunaway, Brian Ibbot, and Randy Jordan all cohost the show, and just like their discussion on their other shows, it's lively, funny, and worth a listen.

This Week in Google: Yet another part of the TWiT network, Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani (of Lifehacker fame) host this weekly show that looks at all things Google. Chrome OS, Android, Wave, etc- all of it gets more talk time than it's fair to ask for. Really interesting to me right now, making me desperately want my Wave invite request to get pushed through. I have Voice guys!

Photoshop Portfolio

2009-11-22T18:57:00.002-05:00

Seems like Blogger doesn't have a good way for me to display a photo album. I guess that means that some point in the future has me creating a website with SquareSpace or Wordpress, because I kind of need one. Giving a link to my portfolio just doesn't have the same appeal. Nonetheless, here it is.

Contracast

2009-11-21T00:57:00.002-05:00

In just a few days we will record Contracast episode 20.

I started listening to podcasts all the time back around October 2008. It wasn't long before I wanted to record one of my own, and during the long, boring trips to and from ASU I'd come up with show topics, and think about what I'd like to discuss. It seemed like a good time to start the show would be Summer 2009, and we all pretty much agreed that it would be fun to do. With all the applying for jobs, and general laziness we put off doing anything until June, but on the 20th we sat down and recorded Contracast episode 1. The show was less than 30 minutes long, but when we finished we had a blast, and Contracast was born. Before the show we couldn't come up with a name, and after 10 minutes of throwing names around, Steven tossed out Contracast, and it stuck! The name is a fusion of Podcast, obviously, and "The Contra Band", and band we formed in Summer 2006. Its the same reason that "Contrapaul" exists. Over the summer, and the last few months, we've managed to record 19 episodes, talking about loads of topics. For a little while, back at episode 7 or 8 I didn't think we would make it to 10. After we recorded 17, we had 3 weeks off, and it didn't feel like we would make it to 18, but here we are, a few days from 20. At this point, we're settled in to a groove, each show is similar to the previous one, and its easy enough to find show topics. Basically, Contracast has an identity, and that's awesome.

Here's the thing though, now that it has that identity- of being the game/gadget/tech/etc show, adding other types of topics feels weird. Hence, I'm debating starting ANOTHER podcast, a political/serious one. Think "the Phileas Club". IF I do this it would be a monthly show, with guests each time. UNCC is a great spot to start one of these in, because there are loads of international students. While I'd like to start a show discussing US political issues and our opinions, I don't think that is the wisest thing to do at this point in life. After I have graduated and have a job- sure, but now its not such a good idea. Despite what may come across in discussing my views, I really do get along with almost everyone, and the last thing I want is a prospective employer turning me down because my views don't mesh with theirs. Because of this, I think a show with international guests would be great, since it would basically be an interview/forum setting, with debate and discussion.

I still have to finalize some stuff, and of course find guests, etc, but I think this show might work really well. The ultimate goal is to have a few shows, in the vein of Scott Johnson and Frogpants Studios, and Leo Laporte and the TWiT network. Contracast isn't a wildy popular show, but we have steadily gained listeners. Originally we had about 10 listeners a week, and that number actually went down. All our advertising has ever been is simply whoever was on the show (and often just me) posting a link on Facebook and Twitter. There are links elsewhere, to be sure, but our original audience came from those two places alone. Today, we get about 10 listeners a day, or 70 a week. This is due to us being on the iTunes marketplace, and is really great. Sure, its still not massive, but thats better than nothing!

In conclusion, its been loads of fun, and a great hobby. I'm sure I'll be back writing something like this at episode 50, 100, 150, and so on. Thanks to everyone who has listened to the show, give us some feedback if you like it!

Contracast Episode 19: Rapid Fire

2009-11-19T21:15:00.003-05:00

Nothing is more professional than speeding through a show because the Office is coming on soon. This week we discuss the Motorola Droid's camera woes, Google's Chrome OS, Fourcast Podcast, Modern Warfare 2's single player campaign, and much more.

Spoiler Alert- the first part of the Modern Warfare 2 campaign, and basically give away anything major in the first half of the game. We're going through the game chapter by chapter next week, so stay tuned if you're interested, but be aware that we may spoil it for you.

Download Link

2 Minute Game Review: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

2009-11-17T23:52:00.003-05:00

This review only covers the single player portion of the game, and will not discuss multiplayer or special ops.

Synopsis: In 2007 Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare shook off the tired WWII setting that the series had seen in all previous releases and instead dropped players into a fast-paced, intriguing game that revolutionized the genre. The game featured all the action of a Hollywood blockbuster, the tension of a season of 24, and more than a few "did that just happen?" moments. The biggest question about Modern Warfare 2 was "is it better than CoD4?", and to find out, read on!

Loved: Modern Warfare 2 is bigger and better in every way than CoD4. The locations are more varied, and even more memorable. CoD4's mission in Pripyat, Ukraine- the deserted city near Chernobyl- was incredible, and was a definite high point for the game. Nearly every level in MW2 is equally stunning in terms of location. Globe-hopping from a blizzard in Kazakhstan, to an oil-rig in the Baltic sea, to an eerily familiar suburban street in north-east Virgina, and a half-dozen more locations is both awesome and greatly adds to the story. Speaking of story- while you do need to pay attention to every detail revealed between missions- is amazing. A perfect blend of great characters, over-the-top action, and and frenetic pacing is to be found here, like a cinematic blend of Casino Royale, Black Hawk Down, and The Rock. The risk that Infinity Ward took with regards to the now famous "No Russian" mission payed off beautifully for me. We will discuss MW2 on Contracast later this week, but in short- as Shepherd tells Allen, "You will sacrifice a part of yourself". A little exaggerated, since I'm just a player, but it was sobering. It is the central plot point of the entire film though, and it does an excellent job of establishing the main antagonists character. Lastly (already typing out of the 2 minute range, there's just so much I loved) the game is so well crafted. The settings, the weapons, the characters- nothing is ignored, and the details make this game a true spectacle.

Hated: The campaign is too short. Each subsequent difficulty makes it longer, but when you get to the end, you will wish that there was more, and that the loose ends get tied. A few parts of the game can be unfairly hard. The Favela missions in Brazil have a lot of militia popping up out of nowhere, and it turns out that those guys are pretty good with a gun. You need to slow down too much given the pace of those missions in order to not get killed a bunch.

Verdict: The last time I played a game that had so many "wow" moments was when I played through CoD4. This game has so many more that its truly amazing. G4 said that each level could easily be a standard shooter's "standout" level, and they're right. Somewhere between making jumping a canyon on a hijacked snowmobile, defending suburban restaurants from invading Russians, and retaking a bombed out "Whiskey Hotel" (hint 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), you forget you are playing a game, and get totally lost in the best action movie you have ever seen. Enough plot twists and clever dialogue to please people looking for a captivating story, and enough bullets and explosions to make even Michael Bay envious, MW2 is easily the best game I have played since Half-Life 2, and without reserve I would say that it is equal to that game. Which is saying a lot, you know. 10/10

On Cyberbullying

2009-11-15T23:39:00.002-05:00

In my internet law class we are currently discussing the issue of cyberbullying, and reading "Bullying Beyond the Classroom". I can't help feeling like this is something that is slowly fading away, not coming in to prominence. Cyberbullying put simply is bullying through electronic means- IE text message, IM, chatroom, etc. Here's my problem with calling this a growing concern: the primary venue's for cyberbullying are gradually ceasing to matter. According to the text the vast majority of this behavior is carried out through instant message- follow by email and chatrooms. IM is dead. Maybe not by numbers, but by popular opinion. There are 2 ways I chat with people online today- Facebook chat and Skype. The last time I fired up AIM was summer 2006. Sure, some people still use this old service, but many have moved to Facebook chat. Email, while it remains integral part of day-to-day life, is not the social messaging medium it was just a short time ago. Today, Facebook messages are much more widely used for the communication email would have been used for 5 years ago. Invitations to events, personal questions, notes, and more are sent through that service rather than traditional email. As for chatrooms? They are so irrelevant now that it isn't worth even discussing.

The point of this is that the outlets for cyberbullying are no longer as relevant or important as they recently were. Myspace is dying, and that network was much better at allowing anonymous hateful remarks than Facebook. Today everyone is using that network, and name accountability is much bigger than it was on Myspace. Very little bullying appears to occur, since there are few ways to hide your name. Also, a common factor of cyberbullying is that it is done privately, even something said privately on Facebook could easily be posted publicly and the bully could be shamed.

What I would stress is that in my opinion, anonymity is integral to cyberbullying. Without that factor, its prevalence will (and is appearing to) decline greatly. If you would be so kind, please comment if you have experienced cyberbullying, whether or not it was on Facebook.

Contracast Episode 18: Not Dead, Just Distracted

2009-11-14T13:53:00.003-05:00

Man has it been a while.

Myself and John host this show, which covers way more topics than we have been, and was loads of fun to record. Mike joins the show a little late, just in time for part 1 of our talks on Modern Warfare 2. Here's a link to Volpin Props, the link of the week. Worth reading and looking at the Flickr feed if you like to build stuff. Also be sure to check out V on Hulu, its fun.

Download Link

Boycott

2009-11-12T14:50:00.002-05:00

The dedicated few who have decided to boycott this seasons most anticipated game until they get what they want. At least, that was on November 9... Of course this was going to happen. Multiplayer is multiplayer, and everyone wants to play.

Hello Weekend

2009-11-07T12:24:00.003-05:00

I realize it seems like an eternity since the last podcast, its just been impossible to get enough people together and find time to record. At the moment, I have a cold, that is impeding my speaking abilities, and no one wants to listen to that. In the meantime, here's something I was thinking about last night, while surviving work.

Why do older people not "get" video games? I'm looking at 35-55 here, so I suppose "middle-aged" is a better descriptor, but to me 25 is "older", in a purely ordinal sense. So don't be offended 35-55 aged people, just read on.

Thinking back it would seem to me that these people would have had a lifetime of possible contact with the medium, and that it would require concentrated ignoring to not play any games in the last 25-40 years. According to Wikipedia, the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) was released in Japan in 1983, and the US in 1985. As in 25 years ago. The Atari 2600 was released in 1977, the same year as Star Wars. 32 years ago. Pong? 1972. 37 years ago. If you are 55 now you would have been 18 then, and surely had access to the game. The point is, these things have been around. They have been in popular media, and in the public eye ever since their creation. And yet, there is a large population today that simply doesn't "get" them. Let me give a few examples- to clarify my position.

A 39 year-old Mom goes to Gamestop and buys a Wii, and 40 dollars worth of stick on plastic garbage, thinking it necessary to play "the game". Had she been someone who had grown up with video games, she would know that those accessories were not necessary. Its simple thinking, "does a piece of plastic augment an accelerometer-wielding wiimote in any sort of meaningful way?", and unless you are playing the clueless card, the answer is no.

A 46 year-old politician decries today's games for "giving you points for killing people". To be fair, there was a time when that may have been the case. It has not, however, been the case for quite a while. In addition, the games he is referring to are most certainly shooters, which usually are devoid of any points system. Remember when you played through Halo and got 500,000 points? Kind of hard to remember something that cannot exist. The point is that this guy has clearly ignored the medium for around a decade, and truly has no idea what he is referring to.

Now that we are on the same page as to what I consider out of touch, I want to propose a reason why. Clearly these people did ignore games for the last 25 or more years, but the question is why? Thinking about it I believe I know the answer. Marketing.

Presently, video game marketing targets all groups of people, something they didn't used to do. Walmart's MW2 commercial features a roughly 40 year-old man talking about the game with his roughly 35 year-old buddy. Wii commercials show people who are very young playing with the very old. Playstation 3 commercials are targeting people who are post college. Back in the 90s, ads targeted young boys, and more young boys. The 80s? Same deal. Basically, if you didn't happen to be born and hooked during this period, the advertising is a complete turn off.

In conclusion, I'm going to blame advertising for at least part of the older-generations disconnect. The same reason I'm not playing with Bratz dolls seems to be why they aren't playing games. Its a shame, but it seems plausible.

A word about CoD:MW2 PC edition.

2009-11-06T15:21:00.003-05:00

Hello world, we have something to discuss. The upcoming gaming juggernaut "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" is being released on the PS3, the Xbox 360, and the PC, and there is vocal dissent over one of these editions. I'll give you a hint, its not the console versions. The PC version of this game is supposedly heavily gimped, and the pc gaming community is up in arms. Here's a chart produced by one such pc gamer:

Now that you have seen that, let me voice my opinion. Most of these don't matter at all to 99.999% of gamers. For instance: Console Commands, you know, the overlay pops up when you accidentally press the "~" key. With this console you can do (dumb) things like change weapon damage, remove perks, and otherwise change the game to your liking. Why is this an issue? You can't do this on the consoles, and no one complained about that. Infinity Ward's response was that they "want users to play the game the way they intended". Sounds fair to me.

Lean refers to the ability to lean side to side, to pop out around corners or "avoid headshots". This is a more utilized feature of previous games, but still not used by most people. In fact, I only "leaned" a few times in the time I played CoD4. Mod tools, Competetive mods, and custom maps are all something that less than 1% of gamers care about in the least. And all are pretty self explanatory, and oh yeah, absent from console versions.

A slew of these complaints are aimed at the decision to use IWnet for networking, and not have dedicated servers. This has been the biggest source of OUTRAGE (ahhh!) in this "controversy". As someone who has played PC games for years, I'm happy to see this change. I hate dedicated servers. To me they feel like an artifact from a decade ago. I want to pick what kind of game I want to play, and play. I don't want to scroll through lists of stupidly named servers looking for one that has 15/16 players, or is the appropriate "all hardcore shimpment 24/7 US l33tchannel" server. I just want to play the game. As long as I can add friends to play with, I'm good to go. As far as this "banning hackers" and "bad language" goes, hackers will be dealt with, and were never that big of a problem, and on the pc version "bad language" is hardly an issue. Unlike Xbox Live or PSN, PC gamers are older, and in any given match 25% or less are using mics, compared to 75% on the console networks.

Technically, CoD4 did support up to 64 players, although the box only says 32. 64 players was not possible unless you rigged some settings to allow for it, and those matches were rare, and utter chaos. Even 16v16 was chaotic, with grenade spam and high rate-of-fire weapons accounting for a huge portion of kills. If MW2 is balanced for 9v9, then so be it. Some of the best game I ever played were 8v8, and this isn't Counter-Strike, or BF2, so why the need for loads of bodies on the field?

The demo is something I would like to have seen, since knowledge of how well it will run would be nice. However, its built on the CoD4 engine, which runs as smooth as Source engine on my laptop, and so I have some idea of what it will do. A lot of games (read most) are coming to pc without a demo these days, and I don't know why, but it is annoying, especially when console owners get loads of demos.

As far as the "more for less" idea here, I have to disagree. What we are getting for pc is the same thing that console owners are buying. We get customizable graphics settings, mouse and keyboard control, and I'm sure a few small bonuses here and there. So if we get what console versions have, and a little more, why should we pay less? I would love if the price was lower, but in all honesty, that wouldn't make sense. There is nothing really more compelling about the console versions, other than the ability to play with more people and more friends. Even if I had an Xbox 360 or PS3, I would still be more swayed to the PC version for its better controls. These arguments really seem trivial to me, and certainly not grounds for ditching the game. People are calling this "the end of PC gaming", and I think thats totally incorrect. This is the beginning of a more user-friendly era of PC gaming, where you don't need to save servers, search for certain game types, and have to see annoying "Admin" messages loop on screen. I want to play CoD:MW2 for what it is, not what it could be made into. I'll see you in game on the 10th or 11th, best of luck if you're on the other team.

A week off- or something

2009-11-05T21:49:00.002-05:00

Its been basically 7 days since anything new came to the blog, and its high time something did. Contracast is now way late, and for that I am sorry. We've all been busy, and literally had something every night for the last 6 or so days. The show will come sometime this weekend, and in the meantime here's a little update.

-Made a very cool Daft Punk inspired helmet for halloween rave, pics on facebook.
-New CoD:MW2 trailer looks very cool. Hints at segment in space, thinking it might be like the "Mile high club" level from the first game that was totally unconnected and was just a post-credits level.
-Thinking that a future Contracast will be all music talk. Emery, Basshunter, Daft Punk, Attack Attack!, A Day to Remember, and more are finding slots in show notes.
-The Motorola Droid comes out tomorrow, so if you are looking for a new phone on Verizon, look no further.
-Volpin Props is awesome. Giving us lots of inspiration for next year's costumes.
-The Left 4 Dead 2 demo is lots of fun, and they did a great job making the melee weapons worth using. Still, given that my budget is akin to 1 fall release and not 4, CoD:MW2 is it for now.
-Downloading Fruity Loops studio 9, the software that Basshunter used for early works. Planning to remix a bit of music for fun.

And that's all for now. Sorry about the delay of Contracast. Its coming in the next few days, I promise.

11:10:09

2009-10-30T15:37:00.003-04:00

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out on November 10, which is only 11 days away. I am so excited for this game. Modern Warfare was some of the most fun I've ever had in a game, and the online play was probably the best I've ever seen. Modern Warfare 2 has a story that looks amazing (DC is attacked!), and way more online play (75 levels! New perks! Customizable kill-streaks!). There's no real point to this post other than to voice my excitement for this game. Although...

In case you missed it, a particular level was leaked for by a French guy. Now, given the French language, I don't know the specifics of what is said, but I do know that you are with a terrorist organization. What occurs in the level is truly something that has never happened before in a game, and likely something that will cause a great deal of controversy due to misunderstanding. Activision released a statement explaining the scene by saying that the game features "a skippable scene of atrocities" intended to convey the evil and cruelty of the game's antagonist. According to Activision, a warning is displayed before the scene, so that hopefully nobody that doesn't want to see it will, but that probably won't due much for the inevitable response from the same people who get up in arms about GTA and other games. In response to this scene, two things come to mind: is it going too far, and what sort of response will this scene elicit. Because of the fact that it is skippable, I would say that it isn't going too far, but I worry about the fact that people are going to buy this game for their kids. This is one of the few "M" ratings that I think absolutely should not be given to children, given the possible emotional trauma that the scene could cause. Teenagers can handle it just fine, but unfortunately idiot parents will purchase the game for their young kids. Having seen the level, I know what to expect, but I know that I will still be affected by its contents. I know for a fact that as a device to create hatred for the antagonist it will work, and then some. Still, it will be something that will make you feel wrong for doing. Once in a while that happens in a game, and in the first Modern Warfare while you never felt 'wrong', emotional response were certainly produced. Playing the dying Sgt. Paul Jackson was surreal, and the final sequence was so anticlimactic. You survived, while Gaz, Griggs, and Cpt Price (who was voiced by Bill Murray!) are all killed. Those three were such a big part of the story, and being unable to save them was awful. What I'm saying is that Infinity Ward some how managed to get a very real response with only a few deaths, given the nature of this particular scene, I can honestly say that it may have a major effect on some people. Anyway, expect a lot of coverage of the game on both the blog and podcast in the coming weeks, I guarantee you we'll talk about the emotional responses games can produce on a coming show, it should be quite a discussion.

Shinetastic

2009-10-29T15:51:00.002-04:00

I have switched browsers once again. I've been using Firefox for a while, and its been great, but now feels very slow, and prone to crashing, compared to what it felt like when I switched from IE7 a while ago. So since I just reinstalled Windows 7, it seems high time to not only install Google Chrome, but to check the little box making it my default browser. So far so good, its faithfully imported what I had in Firefox, and is definitely faster. I suppose this means that John and Mike win! More on Contracast.

"Trauma" cancelled

2009-10-29T12:34:00.002-04:00

The new fall show "Trauma" on NBC has been cancelled by the network. I don't quite understand why either. It was the most expensive show for them this fall, but it also pulled its weight in viewers, doing better than NBC's 10pm "Jay Leno Show". They cancelled Southland too, which was also by the ER writers, and also was great. While both of the show were a little (lottle) over the top, they were fun to watch, had relatable characters, and kept you coming back for more. Instead NBC has ordered more of "Community" and "Parks and Recreation", both of which are worth a few laughs, but not nearly as many as "The Office" or other triple-A comedies. It seems to me that NBC cancels too many shows, in general, compared to say- Fox. Fox DID cancel Arrested Development, but after 3 seasons, and dwindled viewers. They have kept shows like "Lie to Me" and "Fringe", that by NBC rational would likely be gone. Is NBC really in such financial dire straits that they can't hold on to a popular show for more than one season? Whatever their exact reason, its too bad, I'd like a little more "Trauma" and a lot less "Community".

The shortest "article" you'll read today

2009-10-29T08:31:00.002-04:00

Good morning, here's an update:

1. My brother and I are going to be in pretty cool Daft Punk inspired getups for Halloween. They will be awesome at the rave we are going to.

2. October has been a very long month, and I am glad to see it go.

3. I have 1 test to go, and then my weekend, begins.

4. New Contracast tonight, lots of great topics, the show turns 18!

5. O from Commissionedcomic.com and Extralife radio checked out the site! Hi O!

6. My room needs to be cleaned, laundry done, car cleaned, etc. Thank goodness the week is almost over.

Have a great day everyone, best of luck in your endeavors.

New Contracast Art!

2009-10-27T17:26:00.004-04:00

WAY cooler than the last piece of work. For reference:

The new art uses the color palette of the ABR album Constellations, which I think is not only easier on the eyes, but is more eye-catching. The original design was never something I enjoyed that much anyway, and not something that I felt suited the show very much. This new art looks very cool, and even though the smaller text is a little hard to pick out when shrunk down to thumbnail size, it still works.

Hope it works for you guys too.

Demand this film.

2009-10-27T12:44:00.004-04:00

The Boondock Saints is a cult classic. Released in 1999, the film follows two Irish brothers exploits in Boston as they take up arms and begin passing judgement on the evil-doers in society. 10 years later, when many many people have seen the original film, the long-awaited sequel is finally being released. In 67 theaters, in only California and the North-East. Sigh. This means that we can either wait for the dvd release in 4-5 months, or do what people did for Paranormal Activity, and petition its release in theaters everywhere. It took 1.2 million people to bring Paranormal Activity to the mainstream, but the petition for Saints 2 is growing rapidly as more and more people learn that its not being released near them. Frankly its limited release doesn't make any sense, there are commercials for it on all the time, and it would seem that they would release it where the ads are playing. I have no idea why they would pay to run commercials down in Charlotte NC, when I would have to drive 8 hours straight to get within range of a theater showing the movie. So please, use this site to demand the movie get a broad release, it deserves one.

Contracast Episode 17: The one without music

2009-10-24T22:41:00.004-04:00

Since this episode is late, and has no intro music (the mixing software I use got updated for Windows 7, and now works better in some areas, and WAY WORSE in others), I present the annotated show notes. No "We talked about things and stuff" this week, friends, this week we talked about THESE things and THAT stuff. See for yourself below.

News: Some talk about "Lie to Me", Gizmodo reviews the Apple "Magic Mouse", Blackberry Storm 2 units begin to arrive at stores, 10 Things you should know about Apple's new products

Link: Ikea Hacker

App: Dungeon Hunter Review by Touch Arcade, and "A Pocket full of Diablo"- Dungeon Hunter review by Kotaku

Topics: Call of Duty Matchmaking service will reshape the industry, An improvement over dedicated servers says IW. Motorola Droid impressions, Motorola Calgary is cheap and "Blur(ry)". Also Bluetooth headsets. They're annoying.

Download Link

Contracast 17 done, but...

2009-10-23T01:54:00.003-04:00

Having problems editing it. Its down to size, saved as mp3 and all, but for some reason, it is playing back at a VERY high pitch, and I can't figure out how to bring it down. Different software than usual, they released a Win7 update that is messing me up. Expect the show midday tomorrow.
-Paul

Strange business of apps, websites, and software

2009-10-20T17:41:00.002-04:00

I have a problem and I don't think I'm alone. I jump on to sites and software, use them for a little while then move on. For instance: Windows Live Writer is an excellent tool for maintaining blogs. In fact, it would be more useful now that I am cross posting the show to its own blog. However, I just open 2 tabs, and paste the stuff from one into the next. Another case? GDGT.com. Its a great site, and I use it in spurts, but for all its worth I can't seem to make myself go there all that often. As for apps, I'll download some hot new super useful networking/reference/utility, use it 5-10 times, then forget I have it. I know thats whats going to happen with "Alarm Clock". Its an awesome clock that I use when the iPod is docked next to my pc, but in a few weeks I'll likely forget about it. Sigh. Anyone else have trouble maintaining use of stuff like this?

Playstation

2009-10-19T23:00:00.003-04:00

I've never been a Playstation fan. The first generation to me was way less cool than the Nintendo 64. After all, that had Mario, Rogue Squadron, Tony Hawk, etc. All the games I wanted. The Playstation just felt weird. The controller, the console, the disks (disks? pshh. I have cartridges!) By time the Playstation 2 rolled around my opinion was really the same. Those early launch games really looked pretty bad. My opinion changed slightly when I got some extended play time with the thing, but still, it wasn't my favorite. The Dreamcast wasn't dead yet, and to me it seemed better. Soon enough, the Gamecube and Xbox came out, and both buried the PS2 in my mind. First the Gamecube, with all its glitz, Nintendo flair, and eventually the Xbox for titles, graphics and controllers. (the S controller and the 360 controller remain my favorites). The 360 beat the PS3 to the punch for Gen7, and when the PS3 released I was totally underwhelmed. And again with the controllers. I hate them. Time passes. The PS3 struggles, releases a few noteworthly titles, and in the meantime the 360 gets more awesome by the hour. Except of course for RROD. May all the dead Xboxes rest in peace. It is now Fall 2009. 4 years after the 360 launched, and 3 after the PS3. The biggest game release of the Fall I plan to get on PC, and the 360 certainly is as appealing as ever (Halo 3: ODST, Forza 3, and GTA: Liberty City Stories, and Brutal Legend all make me want one), but for the first time, the PS3 is looking appealing too. Now $299, instead of the outrageous launch prices, and featuring a large games catalog, I actually want some things that only that system can deliver. Namely, Uncharted 2, God of War 3, and Blu-ray. Uncharted is the biggest draw, it simply looks amazing. Something that isn't just a "look at us, we can do it too!" and is more a "Oh wait, you don't have one of these? Huh." Halo isn't the killer app that it was 2 years ago, and Gears of War isn't as big a draw either. Call of Duty is this years big huge event, and thats not locked to one platform. In truth, if I had an HDTV I would be saving for one of the systems, and as time passes I think more and more about getting the 3rd venture from Sony. I guess money would be a good start either way, right?

First Impressions: Windows 7 Ultimate

2009-10-19T22:47:00.003-04:00

I got my Win7 Party pack last week, and included was my "Signature Edition" of Windows 7 Ultimate, complete with a machine stamped "Steve A Ballmer" signature. How nice. Oddly enough I feel like this version is slower than the release candidate, and thats not good. Don't get me wrong, its still Windows 7, and parts of it function better, but other things feel slower. For example, Firefox still responds slowly, but now even more so. I'm pretty close to making the switch to Chrome. iTunes still runs like garbage, and some things just like to stop working.

I really do like Windows 7, but I'm less than impressed with this copy. Its an "upgrade" version, which I really hope isn't the majority of what they shipped. A clean install is WAY better, and if they want people to be impressed sticking this on top of an old system is not the way to do it. I thought I would be formatting my old stuff off, but instead I ended up with a huge "Windows.old" folder that took forever to remove. Sigh. At least I don't have to bother purchasing a copy when RC1 dies. I suppose that the speed I had could have a lot to do with the time I'd spent working on it, but it wasn't like I was feeding RC1 high-octane gas hourly. My biggest gripe is that it kept all those old files instead of doing a clean install. Anyway, its better than Vista, and I prefer it to Mac OS X. Full review coming next week, when everyone else does.

2 Minute Game Review: Dungeon Hunter

2009-10-19T22:34:00.002-04:00

I figured this was more "game" than "app", so here goes:

Description: Dungeon Hunter is a hack n' slash rpg for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is very much built in the model of Diablo and Dungeon Siege, and comes in at $6.99.

Pros: Awesome graphics- PSP level graphics on my iPod Touch. Lots of loot, and lots of depth to customization. You could spend a bunch of time customizing stats, or as little as you like, but there's a lot here. Fun skills- cool looking and hard hitting attacks, and great sound to hear the impacts. Lots of customization in all aspects of the game. In game easy access to music, and nice soundtrack to boot. Lots of fun for most of the game, only starts to drag on if you can't find an exit.

Cons: No way to refund skill points, so all the experimental ones from early one are stuck. Paths feel very narrow sometimes, and you are locked in to tightly to roads. Occasional poor aiming on the characters part- usually intelligently locks into combat, sometimes, faces wrong direction for a while. Most loot is just trash, and there aren't many uses for gold other than potions and the occasional piece of gear.

Verdict: This is one of the games that made me get my iPod. I really wanted to play it, and I haven't been disappointed. Thanks to me not authorizing my computer post Win7 Ultimate install, I lost all my apps, and all my save data, and although I can get them all back, I lost the save point which was nearing the end. I had a level 34 rogue, and it was a blast. I played around with a mage and warrior, who are both fun to play as well, but I've had the most fun with the rogue. For $6.99 you get a portable Diablo, and if that sounds remotely interesting, then get this game! Unless you sit back in a Lazy Boy all day, this game will take a long time to finish, and is great to pull out for 15 minutes, clear a dungeon, and close. There are a few problems with it, but the fun of this game greatly outweighs those, and thus I give it 2 thumbs up. 8.5/10

Dungeon Hunter

2009-10-17T12:57:00.002-04:00

Got this game for my iPod Touch, and a review is incoming. First impressions coming are amazing, some of the best graphics on any mobile device I've seen. I would put this game up against some psp games, it has that much visual awesomeness. I'm a level 27 rogue, which means I'm up to the Jeremo Barracks level. So HA!

Friday

2009-10-16T13:55:00.002-04:00

Hello everybody! If it feels like its been a while since anything non-podcast was posted, its because thats true. I was home over the last weekend on break, and between work and fun, I kind of forgot to do any writing. I'm here though, so calm you fears. If you wouldn't mind giving us some iTunes reviews, that would be more than awesome, since its key to us getting some notoriety. I'm pretty seriously considering doing yet another show, a very focused one. Contracast covers a huge array of stuff, and it might be fun to do something that only focuses on one subject. At any rate, more is coming, so stay tuned.

Contracast Episode 16: Phoning it in

2009-10-15T01:45:00.003-04:00

Its that time again. Contracast Ho! 2 delays later, a good show turned in to an audible mess, and thats what you get! Lets hope you enjoy.

Paul, Lee, Mike and John host.

App of the Week: Minigore

Link of the Week: Superman!

Download Link

Contracast Episode 15: Short and Sweet

2009-10-07T23:41:00.000-04:00

Myself, Mike and John talk tv, phones, and more! This episode is short, but just because we didn't waste a lot of time hitting the topics.

Contact info can be found within the show, so listen well!

Download Link

A breakthrough!

2009-10-07T02:10:00.003-04:00

I've finally got this whole RSS thing working for me, so tomorrow Contracast will launch on iTunes and Zune. Much rejoicing could be heard in the village and surrounding hills. I also claimed "contracast.blogspot.com", and plan to use that blog exclusively for the show. Looks like show 15 will be recording tomorrow, and we have plenty of great stuff to talk about. I'm pretty happy about this breakthrough- it basically means that the next step is live broadcasting via ustream. That will be the day.

Monday.

2009-10-05T12:31:00.002-04:00

Almost every Monday morning I wake up (very reluctantly) mumble something about how much I hate monday, and proceed with my day. Usually most of the day I just want Tuesday to arrive. I think this has a lot to do with not getting enough sleep the night before, waking up feeling lousy, or just the awareness that culturally I'm supposed to hate monday. Today I had the same start as always, but sometime in between throwing out a ruined cup of coffee and not being able to find my SPSS companion, I decided to give this Monday thing a try. All I really decided to do was try and not focus on what day it is, and in a nutshell it's worked! Obviously I'm aware that it's Monday, but somehow I've been able to enjoy the rain, class, and knowledge of tests. In fact, I've spent much of the day smiling, and I'm actually kind of looking forward to my next class. I don't know where the radical uplift came from, but it sure is nice to have a decent Monday.

Contracast Episode 14: Gaz was such a good guy!

2009-10-02T02:43:00.007-04:00

May he rest in peace.

We're back (in the saddle again), and with a vengeance. Tonight's topics range from the new Call of Duty, to my new iPod Touch, to Basshunter. Its a bit of a mess, but hey, so is the floor. The hosts are of course myself, and also Mike and Lee. Until we get a more concrete recording time the host lineup is gonna be crazy, but we'll get it worked out.

Link of the week: Accidental Fresh

Download Link

Wednesday Round-up

2009-09-30T12:00:00.003-04:00

Somehow I'm able to knock out 3 Wednesday round ups in a row, but contracast remains woefully unrecorded, or even prepared for. I'm writing this on my iPod touch by the way, something that although possible on the Zune, is tremendously easier with this device. I keep holding off talking about it too much, since Contracast still isn't here, but rest assured this will get a full review, and a comprehensive comparison to the Zune HD. Having owned both I'm in a spot where my comparison will probably be better than any point-by-point spreadsheet can be. But you don't want to hear that, you want Wednesday round up!

Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story", for at least 2/3 of the run time, is an excellent film. Say what you will about the man from Flint Michigan, his films are well made and eye-opening. To be honest I understand why Conservatives hate him, but I've enjoyed everything I've seen him do. Bowling for Columbine is still one of my favorite documentaries, and a lot of my opposition to guns can be traced to that movie.

Literature reviews are horrible things.

Someone is seriously torrenting heavy duty stuff in my building, my latency will go from the snappy livable 25ms to 660ms in a few hours time. It's ridiculous.

Wendy's has a new "bacon deluxe" burger that is excellent. It's basically a bigger single, with bacon and cheese, and much more vegetables. It gets my seal of approval for being a "Tasty Burger".

Contracast may be tonight folks, so load the cannons and fly the skull and bones, audible entertainment be on the way, arr!

Pregame Show

2009-09-28T23:28:00.002-04:00

Maybe. Actually its just me telling you why Contracast isn't here yet, and a few bits o' news. Enjoy.

Download Link

Ready to laugh?

2009-09-27T16:58:00.002-04:00

After all the researching, discussion, speculation, and purchasing we did of the Zune HD, I'm afraid I no longer have mine. You see, going in, I kept on assuming that what I would be getting was a functioning pocket computer, after all, tegra chip, internet, etc. It added up then, but what the Zune HD is, is the best (according to a lot of people) portable media player there is. I wish I had known this on launch day, because I wanted a portable computer. And so, after 13 days with Microsofts gorgeous device, I realized that holding onto something I didn't want or need (my 30gb works great!) was silly (both for my wallet, and my head) so I returned the thing, and got a full refund. Which I put towards my shiny new iPod Touch 8gb. The truth is, I realized that I was hoping the Zune would turn into something that would crush its competition, and even if it still will someday, I'm not waiting several months (past return date) to find out. Sure, the 8gb iPod Touch doesn't have a Tegra chip, or an Oled screen, but it does have a crisp display, great multitouch, and- oh yeah, 75k+ apps. So far I love this thing. But hate iTunes.

News

2009-09-25T02:05:00.004-04:00

I'm afraid that if iPod Touches get video camera's and work with this sort of tech in the coming months, I'll be selling the Zune without reservations.

Augmented reality is amazing.

In other news, Mike and I decided to begin work on an XNA application for the Zune HD. Naturally, John is expected to join up as well. The application will most likely be a game, but what that is has yet to be determined. What we do know is that it won't be that easy, but it won't be impossible.

Who's among us

2009-09-24T15:29:00.002-04:00

Back when I was playing around with this blog- in February or March, I applied the "Who's among us" widget, which keeps track of where people are from that look at the site. For the longest time only one or two people viewed it, and eventually it went up to 5 or 6, including one from Spain. I hadn't really looked at the map since June- when I started working much more on here, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it yesterday. There are loads of people who have been here, including several from all over Europe, and one from New Dehli. Unfortunately, most people are still by themselves when they visit, but none-the-less, its cool to see as many people on the map as there are. Here's a link to a bigger map, it gives a little bit more clear and complete look at where people come from. Thanks to everyone who's visited the site, its seeing this and getting comments that make me want to keep on writing stuff.

Netiquette

2009-09-24T02:01:00.003-04:00

Read THIS and tell me you don't laugh. Its a guide for how to behave online! It seems so funny to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that we know this already. Anyone who has been online for more than a few weeks can figure most of it out. Also, parts are simply absurd. Who decided how emails should be composed? Mine aren't particularly correct, but does that hurt?

Sign this

2009-09-23T22:05:00.002-04:00

Its a petition for Microsoft to open up the Zune Marketplace to 3rd party app developers. Click here I don't care if you don't have a Zune HD, I do, and I needs ma' apps!

Wednesday Round-up

2009-09-23T18:40:00.003-04:00

Once again, its Wednesday. Here are some things.

Google voice allows you to send and receive text messages on your Zune HD (or iPod Touch for that matter). This is a very cool feature, and means that you can keep in touch where you might not have service, such as the basements where classes are.

Fastpencil.com is a website that makes writing, publishing, and selling a book incredibly easy. You can set up a book fast, and go in and type a little or a lot whenever you can. Its totally free, and you can make money off of each copy sold. They only print your book when a copy is ordered, so the idea is that you market the book online only- but you could also purchase several copies and sell them yourself. They have some cool options for selling on Amazon and other online retailers, and the cost of this is dirt cheap. Basically, it makes me want to actually write something.

Like my Internet Law professor says- we need to teach kids today about online safety and privacy concerns. Personally, I think that all life skills type classes should focus for a very solid portion of time on the matter. Today's kids are showing more and more of their lives online, and leaving what Daniel J. Solove calls a "digital scarlet letter". Their posts, comments, status updates, and pictures can and will come back to haunt them as more and more employers are checking up on prospective (and current) employees before hiring them. Just an example- someone I've known for a while created a public event on Facebook for "Senior Skip Day", and explained how the word needs to get around to students, but parents and teachers can't know, because last year an assistant principle had shown where all the seniors were. I left a comment about how anyone could see the event, and that most likely someone is going to see it and alert the school. Today the event was gone. The point is, this sort of thing is all too common. Kids think that they are the only ones using Facebook and other social networking sites, but in reality they aren't even the majority.

Every time I look at the image I picked for Contracast 13 I get hungry.

Finally, Contracast 14 might be a Thursday affair, or a Sunday affair, but neither is a given. Topics you want discussed? Comment below and we'll do our best.

Windows 7: The House Party

2009-09-22T01:02:00.003-04:00

As of a few minutes ago, I am a confirmed Windows 7 house party host! So what is this you might ask? Well, someone at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to sponsor house parties (like a certain political candidate last year) for the launch of Windows 7. At first, it sounds like the silliest idea ever, but when coupled with great giveaways, like a copy of Win7 Ultimate, and loads of cool party favors, this is really a great idea. They get the host pumped up to show off the cool new features of the OS, and hopefully get party-goers interested in Win7. When is this party? October 22, or around then. Got to figure out time and place, and may even record a live Contracast from the party. Who knows. What I do know, is that its gonna be fun.

Contracast Episode 13: On a Tangent

2009-09-21T02:00:00.002-04:00

Contracast is back! After an extended period of time, we are back. This episode features myself, Lee, Mike, and Steven- in an odd show. Topics are sparse, but talk isn't, so listen in! We talk about the Zune HD, Ninja Assassin, and much much more. Contact information is found in the show, and I'm too lazy to type it here.

Whats in the box? Short Film

Ninja Assassin Trailer

Mp3 Download Right click- save as

Full Review: Microsoft Zune HD

2009-09-18T16:42:00.003-04:00

It been a few days now, and that makes today an excellent time to review the new Zune. Pictures coming soon, since I can't find my microSD to SD card. I don't plan to review the software, because A) it works, and B) its free, no ones buying it.

Part 1: Hardware

Put simply, the Zune looks amazing. Its an odd blend of very small size, well chosen materials, and overall finesse that makes people stare (in a good way). I have yet to pull this out and not have curious people glancing over or asking about it.
The glass on the front feels sturdy and adds a feeling of worth that plastic just can't. It has no scratches so far, or any blemishes of any sort. Granted, I'm careful with it, but still, it has been in my pocket, been played with a bunch, and it still looks perfect. The same goes for the metal parts, which are many. They look impressive, and I personally favor them to the shiny parts of the iPod Touch- since they don't pick up fingerprints and stay uniform looking. The little slots on the sides of the device are a great way to add a little grip while adding a little style, and if you're like me, you'll like the screws on the back too. I like my gadgets to look a little like someone assembled them, not like they're an impenetrable fortress, and the Zune HD does a better job of that than most gadgets I've owned.
The OLED screen is absolutely gorgeous. Up until the moment I bought it I thought that my 30gb Zune had a decent screen, but compared to the HD's screen, its trash. The color and clarity of the screen are like nothing I've seen before on a device, and its really a shame to me that these don't come loaded with more content. They would likely win more customers over in the store if people saw how movies and tv looked on this.
There are 3 physical buttons on the device; one on top that is for powering on and off, and for locking the screen; one on the side that brings up on-screen playback and volume controls (even on top of the lock screen); and a front button that always brings you back to the home screen.

Part 2: Software

The device software is what you might call a logical evolution of the Zune software, although compared to the way it was evolving, this is a few steps ahead.
The home screen has two distinct menus, one that is constant, and one that changes. The constant menu is all text, and takes you to various places, such as music, podcasts, or the marketplace. There are enough options that you need to scroll up and down, but that action is both effortless and fun. The changing menu is on the left side of the home screen, and houses a now playing box, pins (where you can put anything on the device for quick access, history- the last 6 things done/played, and new- which is the newest content to be added. This makes daily additions like podcasts much easier to find, and allows you to go back to recently seen stuff very fast. Also worth mentioning, the accelerometer is used to add a very cool constant motion to the home screen; what I mean is, moving the device around moves the menu options around. Its only slight movement, and you can turn it off, but I think its great.
Within the submenus from the text menu, you get a very "Zune 3.0" like interface, where scrolling up and down are used primarily, but side to side options are used to change type of media- for instance audio podcasts and video podcasts. The menu system is very clean, and fun to go through, but thankfully the items menu on the home screen means you won't have to always wander a few steps to grab media.
The playback controls on the device, accessible via side button or tapping the screen during playback, are simple, but effective. on the sides are forward and back options, and top and bottom are volume options. Dragging your finger is faster than tapping, and like most things on the device, these controls are intuitive and fun. Side note, spinning your finger around the options shows off a cool 3D effect where the options pivot on a center point. Simple but fun.

Part 3:The Stuff Everyone Wants to Know
By that I mean "how is the web?", "what about apps?"- actually thats about it.
How is the web? Its ok. It can be very good, and also pretty bad. My blog loads quickly, and I've posted a few things from the Zune already. Mobile sites load lightning fast, and some full sites do as well. I've used Google voice to text from the device, checked my gmail, read a variety of blogs, and more. Some sites don't know what to do on the device- like Wikipedia, and others, like the new Lite version of Facebook, work beautifully. I've seen some speed tests that put the Zune HD on par with the iPod Touch, and some where it falls way behind. I think that the web experience will only get better as firmware is updated, as I'm sure it has on the Touch.
And of course, Apps. At launch there were (and are) 9 apps available. 7 games, and 2 utilities. We have confirmation of at least 5 official ones coming (you can bet far before Christmas), and XNA 3.1 has been released, and 2 apps have already been released/ported for the HD. Rather than cross my fingers here, I'll just say that I firmly believe that the Windows Mobile App Store is going to work with the Zune as well, and that given that this is the first week I can't punish Microsoft too much for not giving us more.

The Verdict

The Zune HD is a terrific device, with very solid hardware and great software. Is has a lot of promise, and already is an excellent media device. Will it become the do-everything-device that the iPod Touch almost is? Hopefully. A few months and we'll have a better idea. For now though, if you need an excellent media playback device, and want the prospect of much more, this is a great gadget. If you want a device for games right now- and don't want to wait, get the iPod Touch. It is September after all, and what we've got right now will not (should not) be what Microsoft pushes this Christmas. With the prospect of more to come, I give this a 10/10. If everything stays exactly the same as it is now, it still gets a 9/10. Microsoft really worked on this device, and it shows.

Cool Trailer

2009-09-18T16:24:00.003-04:00

No, its not Ninja Assassin, its a short film made by what appears to be German students. And holy cow, it is amazing. Taking inspiration from Half-Life 2, it uses only first person, and some crazy effects, and ends up looking like district 9 meets Gordon Freeman. Absolutely worth watching.

Test Film

Oh! Winston-Salem

2009-09-17T21:58:00.004-04:00

Actually the Cities marketing slogan- at least it was, not sure now. Here's the story. Last week parents were outraged over the address the president was going to make to their kids in school. Also, at least one pastor was praying for the 44ths death. Soon after, on September the 12th, Glenn Beck hosted the most ridiculous display of right-wing misinformation and hate in a long time. So what did I do? Simple, it seems to me that the Winston-Salem Journal will print most letters to the editor (at least properly punctuated ones) and the one I wrote was no exception. My main point is the same point being raised all over the blogosphere, and even by former president Jimmy Carter- at least some of the conservative outcry is due to lingering racial prejudices. Sure, you can make the argument that what I believe isn't true, but thats not the point of this article. The point is that there are CRAZY TROLLS on the Winston-Salem Journal website. The same kind of bashing and flaming happened last time I wrote a letter to the editor- in October of last year. In fact, every day the trolls bash liberal opinions, and cheer for conservative ones. Here's whats weird, today my letter got posted, and one of the first posters said this:

Posted by ( Constitutionalist ) on 09/17/2009 at 08:59 am.

Mr Kwiatkowski, you need to grow up a little yourself. Once you have your own kids, perhaps you'll have a little better appreciation for the concern. It was not that Obama was addressing the students, but the original content was the reason for the opposition. What he ended up saying was fine, but that was not his original "lesson plan". I know for a fact that you're 20, a college student, unmarried and no responsibilities to speak of in comparison to the majority of us "right wingers". Give yourself about 10 years and then you might understand a little better.

Weird huh. Initially, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out who I might know that would post there, but the most plausible explanation is simply that they typed my name in facebook and read off the first few facts. Yes, I am 20, unmarried, in college, etc. What disappoints me is that this guy feels the need to add these facts as a basis for disregarding my opinion. As much as I'd like to respond in the same way he did, I'll give him the right to his opinion. In the future, I expect the same respect.

Laziness may be a factor...

2009-09-17T11:31:00.000-04:00

Hi there! I hope you enjoy your stay at my blog. I've been busy with class and other stuff, and the amount of content is really low at the moment. New Contracast tonight though, and a reviews of the zune soon. I need to start up a 14 days project, that would work. Stay tuned.

This is what some call a test

2009-09-15T19:03:00.000-04:00

This is a test. How so? I'm writing this on my new Zune HD. The keyboard takes more than a little getting used to, but still, I'm writing this from a slim mobile device. So yeah, its very cool.

Zune HD Launched

2009-09-15T13:28:00.002-04:00

And we'll check it out in just a few minutes. The train to best buy leaves in 15 or so, but before that lets recap.
In the last few hours:
Zune Software 4.0 launches at 3:30am EST
Zune HD available at 12:01am EST
Zune software now has movies, for sale and rent (including 1080p rental)
Zune software has 9 applications (7 games and 2 utilities) available for the Zune HD
Lots and lots of unboxing videos, but no reviews yet(I swear everyone is waiting to post until the other one does. Mexican standoff interweb style)
General consensus is that device is compact, well designed
OLED screen seems to function very well

Read up on zunited, gizmodo, engadget etc if you need to know more. We'll be back soon.

Quick update:

2009-09-14T03:13:00.000-04:00

I really should quit promising content and not delivering. Either way, content incoming tomorrow and Tuesday, since the Zune HD is being released. Stay tuned.

Audio Insomnia 4

2009-09-14T02:57:00.003-04:00

Oh noes! This means I'm up, and not asleep, so let's get rolling. Here's 5 more podcasts that I've listened to and continue to listen to.

Daily Giz Wiz- Part of the TWiT network, Leo Laporte and Dick Debartolo, a short 20 minute look at a gadget or gizmo! Thats all there is to it. Good for a quick commute.

Cnet's Top 5- a short Top 5 list hosted by Tom Merrit, it is a video podcast that quickly runs through top products, worsts, and is usually worth the 3 minutes you spend watching.

Diggnation- Hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, this show is almost an hour long, and looks at the weeks top stories on Digg.com. Profane, yes, but this is a great snapshot of web-hipster culture.

Gametrailers.com Video Reviews- Entertaining and even handed reviews of almost every game that is released, fun to watch, and very much informative. These reviews more than any I've seen before, make you want to play or stay away from games.

Fourcast: Hosted by Scott Johnson and Cnet's Tom Merrit, this show features a 4 person roundtable discussing the future, both soon and far off. Fun, entertaining, and full of great thoughts.

And that rounds up another Audio Insomnia! Off to bed.

Contracast Episode 12: Droppin' a status

2009-09-12T21:07:00.004-04:00

At long last, its here! My workload, laziness, and amount of work I had to do on this one kept it sitting around way too long, but all the same, its here, so enjoy it.

Follow us at these fine places:

Paul- facebook.com/kwiatkowski, twitter.com/contrapaul

Mike- facebook.com/mpawlowski, twitter.com/mikepawlowski

Lee- facebook.com//lee.elmore

Tune in soon for the Zuneisode- this episode is going to be HUGE to say the least. We already have a lot of news to deal with, and- oh yeah- the Zune HD comes out in 3 days!

Download Link

"Its only rock and roll" and cameras

2009-09-09T18:08:00.002-04:00

Today's ipod event was a weird one. On the one hand, Apple announced significant changes to Itunes with the release of Itunes 9. The Nano gets a video-only camera (that isn't bad) and radio. Iphone OS 3.1 is almost out, allowing for augmented reality apps. And the touch gets a 64gig model, a price cut, and- nothing else... A camera has been speculated to the point of 100% CERTAINTY as of yesterday, and instead we don't have it. Gizmodo had a good article explaining why, and speculating as to why the ipod touch doesn't have a camera. Earlier this summer in Contracast we talked about how the camera wouldn't mean much, and at the time it didn't look like it would. However, things change, and the augmented reality stuff coming out of silicon valley (heh) would have worked on a touch with video, and thats a combo that would make me quit the zune. Read the article and come up with your own conclusions, the reasons make sense to me, but it stills seems odd. This is the second absolute from Apple (tablet was first) that went from 100% certainty to non-existence in a day.

Gizmodo- Why there is no camera on the ipod touch, and why that sucks

Wednesday Round-up

2009-09-09T17:57:00.002-04:00

So my content has been fairly sparse for a few days, and not without reason! I spent a ton of time this weekend working at Ross, had a paper due 5 minutes ago (I did it, thats why no blogging), and other class complications. BUT, like a banner raised amidst a battlefield, we're back online, and with lots of content incoming. The raw audio for Contracast 12 is on my desktop and will be edited tonight. My history with video games is ending this weekend (thats a good thing), a new Audio insomnia is inbound, and an article on today's ipod event is minutes away. So sit back, and bask in the glory of what is to come.

2 Minute Movie Review: W.

2009-09-04T22:53:00.002-04:00

I’ll confess, I *meant* to watch this movie last October- or whenever it came out, but the fact that this review is dated September 4 is a testament to the fact that I just now watched it.

Description: Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic. Follows the 43rd from his college days to the post Iraq war period.

Loved: Well shot, well casted, well acted, humorous at times and sad or dark at others. The script was believable, and the amount of bushisms and direct quotes inserted made this feel very real. Even handed past where I expected it to be- even a conservative (who is a little open-minded) would enjoy this.

Hated: Honestly, there isn’t a lot to hate. IF I were conservative, I might find more to criticize, but as it stands, I think its a fairly accurate portrayal of the events leading up the the invasion of Iraq, and of the former presidents life.

Verdict: I only got this because redbox didn’t have Frost/Nixon, but thats ok- W. is a great film with good actors, and tells a story that both redeems (if only a little) Mr. Bush, and casts a darker shadow over Rumsfeld and Cheney. I enjoyed it substantially, and I think you will too. 9/10

Privacy and Terms of Use

2009-09-03T19:40:00.001-04:00

So I have a “gigalaw” class. I had no idea what to expect going in, but its been awesome. Thus far we’ve focused almost entirely on privacy, and terms of use, and its been both eye opening and chilling. Basically, most ISP’s not only collect “personally identifiable information”, they have no qualms selling it. On top of them, school IT departments are equally bad, going as far as giving themselves the right to break into your computer and view any files they wish. Social networks were all over the place, but were much more forgivable, since you aren’t paying for them and they are totally voluntary. Some of the sites freely asserted that anything you post or upload can be taken by them and claimed as their own- while some sites, Twitter being the shining example, guarantee that what you post is yours, and also that while they had the right to basically “give you away” (to the government) they had no obligation to do so. While a great deal of the information found in ToS agreements is cut and paste interchangeable law jargon, the privacy policies often vary, and what I’ve found makes me wish that I’d taken the time to read each one I’ve thoughtlessly agreed to.

On a related note, this class so far has also focused heavily on social networks, blogs, and will hopefully focus on emergent media. I really thought it was going to be an “e-gov” class, which wouldn’t have been bad, but what I’ve got is something that is great.

The quest for a better internet tv experience

2009-09-03T01:20:00.001-04:00

Here’s the dilema: Internet tv is nice- for on demand content. But sometimes I want to just have it on. Hulu can do this, but hulu doesn’t have all the stuff I want. Specifically, I want Revision3, the internet tv site. Now, as of 5 minutes ago, I had two options, downloading their shows in zune format from the zune marketplace, or watching them on Reviosion3’s website. I just downloaded Boxee, and its currently installing. Boxee is a media center- with expanded features. It grabs all sorts of media from the internet that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to get in one media center. Hulu can’t do music, or anything that isn’t native to Hulu, Windows Media Center is great, but I can’t add Revision3 or Hulu.

-Time Passes, I install Boxee-

So Boxee takes some getting used to. The interface isn’t perfect, BUT thats ok, because the content I want is there. There IS room to improve this software, but it seems to do what I want to do pretty well. Listen to Contracast for more Boxee talk, but so far this feels like something I want to get my media pc up and running for.

Windows Live tools?

2009-09-01T19:01:00.001-04:00

Here goes nothing I guess. I keep forgetting that Microsoft has opted to move some of the tools found in Windows- off of Windows. So when I needed Window's Movie Maker, I had no choice but to download it from Windows Live, and when I installed it, it gave me the option to install something called “Windows Live Writer”, which promised to make life easier for blogging. What you are reading now is the result of that tool, and so far its nice! Adding things like links and pictures is done in a way such that I don’t have to see the html coding, although that’s not so bad. Basically, it takes the settings of my blog into account, and creates a custom interface that looks like it instead of the blogger input interface. In addition to the basic feature blogger provides, there are a lot of additional features, such as more advanced formatting settings, and the ability to manage multiple blogs. The amount of info pulled off the blog is pretty cool as well, as I can see previous information, such as the tags I entered, and other articles. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with it, given that its free, and has a lot of bells and whistles. What remains to be seen is whether or not it will help me blog. I’ll try to use it exclusively all week, and report back on Contracast.

Contracast Episode 11

2009-08-31T21:54:00.004-04:00

Episode 11. Paul. John. Mike. Topics. News. Excessive Punctuation. And. More.

Contact us these fine ways:

Paul- facebook.com/kwiatkowski, twitter.com/contrapaul

Mike- facebook.com/mpawlowski, twitter.com/mikepawlowski

John- facebook.com/john.kwiatkowski, twitter.com/j_kwiatkowski

Links pertaining to the show:
Lifehacker guide to free Wifi
45% of employers use Social Networks to do research

Download Link

Audio Insomnia 3

2009-08-26T23:48:00.003-04:00

Hello again! This is Audio Insomnia, the portion of my site dedicated to giving you quality podcasts to listen to in your ongoing quest for sleep. Or maybe thats my quest. Either way, lets get started:

Cnet's MP3 Insider: This show is 30 minutes to an hour long, features Cnet.com writers, and the subject matter is- well- mp3 related stuff! If you want to wander into the PMP (portable media player) portion of the gadget space this is a great way to do it. Get informed about the latest players, news, and cool stuff. Also- whil Contracast TALKS about ZuneHD, the have Microsoft reps come on the show and DEMONSTRATE the thing. Too cool.

App Judgement: Like appslappy, App Judgement talks about apps, and reviews them. however, App Judgement is part of the Revision3 family of shows, and thus it is a video show, and features lots of shine and polish, which basically means you see the thing on screen. Also the apps in question are for any platform, although so far only Android phones and the iPhone. I'm sure there will be a ZuneHD section when that comes out as well. This show makes me want an Android phone. Bad.

Film Riot: Another Revision3 show, Film Riot is an informative and funny look at how to make hollywood quality effects with little more than a camera and adobe aftereffects. Great short films for the show, and even the ads are funny, since they are produced the same way.

Windows Weekly: For only real nerds, this show is part of the Twit.tv network, and features discussions about Microsoft and Windows with Paul Thurott and Leo Laporte. This is not a slow show, nor is it aimed at a casual audience, but it is a nerd-friendly intellectual look at the products and business of Microsoft.

The Tech Guy: Leo Laporte's on-air radio program, sans commercials and in high quality. Long form, good for driving or extended work periods. Leo takes calls, talks tech, and the whole 9 yards. Its only him, with a few callers, but still a great listen. Aimed more at the radio crowd than the podcast crowd, but thats not a bad thing.

So thats it for tonight! Go download and listen! If you have any suggestions just leave a comment, I'm always looking for something new.

My history with video games, part 2

2009-08-25T13:56:00.004-04:00

Read part one here.

I ended the first part of this series right around the year 2000, and the Pokemon boom. So I'll pick up from right after there.

Games for me became a very different sort of thing around 2000. I had never really been aware of the whole gaming subculture up until then- since games were just something that everyone did to me. Around this time I began learning about more games, and games that weren't quick action type games, but longer and more serious games. Age of Empires 1 and 2 were big favorites of mine from this time period, and those games influenced how I see strategy to this day. Also they showed me history through video games, something that I had never seen before. I could go on and on about how much these 2 games affected me, but I'll save that for other games.

This time period was a huge deal for games and gamers besides me, since it saw the release of 3 new consoles, and the evolution that they brought to gaming. However, much of my gaming during this time was done on the pc. Until 2002 or so my computer was still that old Win95 machine, accounting for the time I spent with Age of Empires. When we got a new pc I was able to *gasp* render graphics! And that allowed me to play games like Allied Assault and Empire Earth, games that seemed incredibly real, and unbelievably advanced. To me Allied Assault was as real as any WW2 movie ever was, and Empire Earth took hours to complete. That game made me think so hard about strategy and how to win- it stood alone until Relic's Dawn of War and Company of Heroes.

A few of the Need for Speed games were really big to me, and ignited a love of cars that I had until just a little while ago (funny what a lack of money will do for ya). Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit was simply amazing. We played on the pc, where you could do co-op play, and that game not only created a love for cars, it brought me and my brother closer (aww). Following that I loved Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, which at the time was the most realistic looking, accurate playing, historically balanced game of its kind (That I had played, didn't play Gran Turismo for a while). That game taught me as much about how to drive as driver's ed. No joke.

This particular time period is the same time that the 6th generation of consoles were in their prime. Of the 3, xbox was my clear favorite. Even back then, when I thought some games looked as real as they possibly could, I knew that the xbox was the best looking of the lot, and that- along with a few other factors made it my favorite by far. It wouldn't be until 2006 that we would get a first-gen xbox, but that doesn't mean we didn't play an awful lot. Some games I only experienced fairly recently, so they get to be in part 3- but a lot we played back then. The need for speed underground games were just what the doctor ordered for car loving guys. And oddly enough- I wouldn't play Halo until 2003, but 007: Nightfire was an instant favorite. The system currently sits in my basement, hooked up to a sound system and floating in a sea of games. I hope that shows how much we loved that box.

Rounding out this era for me were a few games that I played out of order- I mean far past when they actually came out. I played Halo for the first time on the PC, and- being a 14 year old boy, was totally blown away. People have explained why this is so more than enough times, so I'll just say that it was something totally new to me, and I thought it was the best thing since Mp3 players (sliced bread is old news). Around the same time I played (didn't finish) Half-Life, and was scared silly, and Starcraft (although a little earlier).

I have left out so many games from this period, and I'm sure I'll remember them in due time, but the overarching story is that this was a coming of age for me and games. They were great, and I loved them. Part 3 is 2005 to now, and its gonna be good. I don't feel like writing a "impactful games" list here, because the truth is- they all did. I was taken by how each one worked, and came out loving Dungeon siege as much as I did Nightfire.

Contracast Episode 10

2009-08-25T13:50:00.001-04:00

Yay! 10 shows ftw. Mike, John and I talk college, Inglorious Basterds and more in this showstravaganza. Listen and learn. Also, I apologize, I only realized when I clicked the streaming feed, our audio is much lower than the intro song. Simply turn up the volume after the intro.

Follow us at these fine locations!
Paul- facebook.com/kwiatkowski, twitter.com/contrapaul

Mike- facebook.com/mpawlowski, twitter.com/mikepawlowski

John- facebook.com/john.kwiatkowski, twitter.com/j_kwiatkowski

Also listen to the show for how to contact us! If anyone wants a download link, please comment.

Download Link

2 Minute Movie Review: Inglorious Basterds

2009-08-25T12:09:00.000-04:00

Synopsis: The 6th film (I think) by Quentin Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds takes place in France during WW2. In an attempt to leave spoilers out, I'll just say that there are several story lines, the film is divided into chapters like previous Tarantino movies, and that the title refers to a group of US soldiers dropped behind enemy lines to kill nazis.

Loved: As with District 9, my expectations were completely wrong. This movie looks in the trailers like "the Dirty Dozen" for 2009, and in reality, there is little of that, and much dialogue. As with all of Tarantino's films, the dialogue is witty, clever, and funny. Here we get conversations in Italian, French, German, and English, with no Valkyrie-esque language fading. The subtitles are themselves funny, because often they read what was just spoken- for instance on screen "Merci" is said, and the subtitles also say that. It works well in this movie for some strange reason. It was gritty, fast paced, slow paced, and more- listen to Contracast 10 for a longer discussion.

Hated: Maybe a little more action would be nice. Don't get me wrong, it was great, but the trailers make me want more than we got.

Verdict: This summer has been above average for me in terms of quality movies, and this is easily as high or higher as this summers best. If you like World War 2, or Tarantino films, go see this. If you are easily offended, or did NOT enjoy movies like Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction, don't see this. 9/10

No, I haven't forgotten

2009-08-25T12:02:00.000-04:00

For one reason or another, I've been unable to post new stories from my computer. But, it now appears that this is fixed, and NEW CONTENT INCOMING! Including Contracast 10, My history of video games part 2 and a 2 minute review of Inglorious Basterds. Stay tuned.

Contracast Episode 9

2009-08-20T01:27:00.002-04:00

Thank God its here. I had to do a reinstall of Windows 7, so re-installing software may have been a little delayed. Good episode this week, breaking the show in to 2 segments this time, a news portion and a topics/discussion portion. This week in news we covered MORE news about the ZuneHD (honestly, not gonna stop until its out), the Apple Tablet, The textiwhile driving issue, and rumors from John Gruber of Daring Fireball. In topics we discuss GDGT.com, the film District 9, and the debate on gdgt about whether the N64 is the best console ever.

Contact us!

Paul- facebook.com/kwiatkowski, twitter.com/contrapaul

Mike- facebook.com/mpawlowski, twitter.com/mikepawlowski

John- facebook.com/john.kwiatkowski, twitter.com/j_kwiatkowski

And please give us some feedback, if you ask to have it talked about, chances are good we will in fact talk about it!

Download Link

My history with video games, part 1.

2009-08-20T00:49:00.000-04:00

Video Games. They have existed my entire life, and as such played a unique role in how I grew up. I felt like looking back and trying to pick out things that made the biggest impact to me in games after Contracast 9's discussion on the N64. I'm going to write this in 3 parts, with the first focusing on my experience with games from 1990 or so until around 2000, the second will be my experience from 2001 to 2005, and the last part will focus on 2006 until now. These time frames have been chosen for a reason, as they most accurately represent the evolution of games to me, and the evolution of gaming platforms in my life. So without further to do, here's part one:

I can't remember the first time I played a video game. In fact, I know I played with our DOS pc long before I played with any games. We never had a game system in the house when I was a kid, which meant that I developed a love for computers before I did for consoles. Right around when I turned 6, we got a shiny new beige Windows 95 system from Gateway, and that machine was amazing. The preloaded games were amazing to me, and I got the first real taste of 3D I can remember, with the game "Fury3", a futuristic fighter jet type game from Microsoft. I remember being amazed at how it WAS real, not how it looked real. That computer would play many many games over the years, sticking around past its time. I played LEGO Island on it, and that game was awesome. Looking back, I can't believe how poorly it was created, but that is the first FPS I ever played. Right about this time however, I was introduced to the incredible new system, the N64.

I've deliberately left out anything about the SNES, not because I didn't play games on it, but because to me that console always existed. Also, I played games on an old Atari 2600, but like the SNES, that was the type of thing that I assumed had always been around. The N64 was completely new. I remember going to Best Buy and seeing a giant Mario statue, and mario being played on a wall of crt tvs, and being totally blown away. Like my PC, this 3D was real, and it looked amazing. In fact, everything about the N64 was awesome, from the basic shape of the system and cartridges, to the abysmally poorly designed controllers. Given that I had never played a game with a joystick before, that particular feature cemented the fact that "the N64 is the best" in my head for a long time. The N64 came into its own during the time that I became increasingly aware of games, and of consoles. That system really stood out to me as a multiplayer platform, and thus games like Goldeneye 007 and Super Smash Bros. were absolute favorites. Like any good 9 year old American boy, Star Wars was my favorite movie, and playing Rogue Squadron was, for lack of any new adjectives, incredible. Like I said before, being as young as I was, I honestly couldn't tell the difference between good and bad graphics, and those graphics looked real. As real as the movies. I remember the N64 as being the coolest thing in existence at the time, and a huge draw.

All you need to know about my experience with the PS1, is that it always seemed like a "me too!" device to me. Sure, Crash Bandicoot was fun, but it reminded me of Mario, and the early PS1 controllers seemed stupid to me because they had no analog sticks, just a directional pad and buttons. Given this, titles like Gran Tursimo never impacted me until much later, and I never cared much for the Playstation. One of the most interesting memories I have of the system though, is wondering what you could use the second analog stick for, once they changed the controllers. To me, the one stick of the N64 was perfectly fine, and the second stick must only be for dumb things.

Finally, it would be a sin to neglect one of the most important parts of how I saw games during this time. That part is the gameboy. I remember the gameboy as being nice, and having games. That is, until Pokemon came out. When pokemon was HUGE in the US, the gameboy was AWESOME. You could link up and play against friends, carry the game around with you, and oh yeah, play on of the best games ever made. This game is really the biggest introduction to RPG's I had during these years. Sure, I'd played them unknowingly, but nothing like pokemon. The craze was so consuming you knew everything about it. How to win the games, how to win at cards, their names, the series, etc etc. Say what you will about pokemon, but its one of the few old games I enjoy going back and playing today, and also, you know that a product has a more than successful marketing campaign and market saturation when in 2009, many years after I last cared about anything related to pokemon, I can drive in to Burger King, see that Happy Meals have pokemon cards, and immediately think "I need a happy meal".

All in all, this period of time shaped how I looked at games for years to come, from embracing the gamecube, to shunning the PS2, to learning about PC's. To finish off each one of these accounts, I'm going to list a number of games that really stand out as being games that changed how I looked at games, and were my favorites. In no particular order:

-The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
-Goldeneye 007
-Lego Island
-Pokemon Snap
-Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow
-Super Mario 64
-Mario Kart 64
-Super Smash Bros.
-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
-Starfox 64
-Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Tuesday Update

2009-08-18T10:56:00.000-04:00

Here at Paul Estates, things have been fairly eventful lately. Work at odd hours, UNCC orientation tomorrow, and yesterday's full reinstall of Windows. Given these circumstances, you'll be able to see why despite having the audio for Contracast 9, I haven't been able to do the edit. With any luck, I'll have the edit done a little later today, and then all can bask in the glow of fresh Contracast!

Audio Insomnia 2

2009-08-18T01:24:00.004-04:00

Hi all! Back again with another run down of 5 excellent podcasts worth your time. In no particular order, they are:

Extralife Radio: Scott Johnson's flagship podcast, now well past 200 episodes (Its not even weekly). Also featuring Brian Dunaway and Obsidian (Sergio Velajo from Colombia, the 3 webcomic artists discuss whats new and old in the world of games, comic, movies, and more. The true inspiration for Contracast I might add.

The Movielicious: Patrick Beja' from France, as well as (the inimitable) Turpster from UK and Nicole Spagg (short for real last name I can't remember) talk movies! Its only up to Episode 7, but the show is highly entertaining, and offers a look at the latest films. Rarely are all views the same, and that makes the show that much more interesting.

Buzz Out Loud: Cnet's daily audio podcast features a full panel of commenters led by the venerable Tom Merrit. Discussed is the day's top tech and gadget news, and many opinions are also shared. This show is not a "let's take time to talk about..." show, its a rapid fire many topics show that is geared at bringing the listener up to the minute with the days technical news.

Zero Punctuation: Yes, the very same Zero Punctuation you can find online. Why do I reccomend downloading it? I suppose I'd say that rather than sit down at your desk and take 5 minutes to watch these hilariously scathing and humorously animated reviews of video games, put the webisodes on your PMP and watch at your discretion when you have time. Lots of laughs are to be had, IF you both understand the subject matter (if you can understand where certain elements are coming from, show is not for you), and also if you can tolerate this profane brit in Australia. If not, how about:

The Onion News Network: Both audio and video available, although content is different, the Onion is America's most trusted news network, broadcasting in 811 Countries. Webcentric (as in funnier if humor about google makes you laugh) in nature, the Onion delivers professionally produced news clips that look more like CNN than Fox News ever will. Show these to unaware family and friends and laugh when they actually believe Google has a mountain refuge for those wary of too much personal information on the web, or that Obama scrapped plans to build a collosal dragon-headed tank.

Thats all for tonight, after today's fresh install of Win7 RC1 (again, my issues, not OS) I need to load up again!

2 Minute Movie Review: District 9

2009-08-15T14:27:00.004-04:00

Synopsis: Aliens have been here for 20 years, and we treat them like dirt. During a mass effort to evict them from the slum we've kept them in and move them to a new camp, the human coordinator gets some "liquid" shot in his face, and from there things go downhill.

Loved: Gritty. Gritty gritty gritty. This movie is unapologetic in its portrayal of Wikus' ordeal, the human's treatment of aliens, and its violence. If this had been a clean cut movie, it wouldn't be getting the praise it is. Wikus' emotional transformation is powerful, and the final shot of the movie is perfect. Great action, good protagonists and antagonists, excellent story, and believable presentation.

Hated: Hmm. Honestly, this movie was everything I wanted it to be, and so much more. I'd love to know why cat food is so good though.

Verdict: District 9 is a must watch. It makes me wonder what the Halo movie would have been like, but perhaps its better we got a new intellectual property instead. 10/10

Twitter oddities

2009-08-14T16:56:00.003-04:00

Today I went to Pittsboro, NC. Well, I drove my grandparents there, since my young eyes can watch the road somewhat better. Pittsboro is on of my least favorite places in the world, and as such, I tweeted about that a few times. When I got back home, I found that @pittsboronc and @chathamnc, which seem to be real people and not aggregate bots had re-tweeted one of my comments. The funny thing is, they both appear to be run by people who truly love their miserable counties, so it's funny they re-tweeted "Pittsboro is like what I imagine purgatory is like. You don't know how long you have to stay, and you want to leave immediately." Not a very positive thing. In fact, it came only a little after "En route to Pittsboro, quite literally the most depressing place in NC.". I think these people thought I was joking or something, but either way, its pretty funny.

I left @Kaisergaskins and @Mikepawlowski's tweets on there as well, they are both funny.