I just sent the following spam to a huge chunk of my address book. As if that weren’t enough, I’m posting it on my blog, and then twittering about it. Guerrilla marketing Web 2.0-style, what? As I mention below, “…this is a big leap for me. It is time to cash in all my good internet citizen brownie points at once by simultaneously spamming, astroturfing, and sending a chain letter.”
A screen, a video, and a HOWTO Vote for Smashball guide below the break.
Shameless plugging of my life’s work, as it were. Please head on over to ModDB’s Smashball page, create an account if you don’t have one, and VOTE!
Hot damn, Smashball is now in public beta. What are you waiting for? Go download Smashball while you read this!
This last weekend, I built a small web farm on AWS. Somewhere in my sysadmin binge this weekend it occured to me that there was no document written for gamers about Smashball, describing how it’s different from (and better than) other games. Thus, I’ve compiled a list of 10 daring design decisions that make it awesome. And I’m not biased. Seriously. I’m hypercritical of things I’ve built or helped to build. Read all »
For the third year running, the family got invited up to Steckel Park in Santa Paula to share in an awesome outdoor feast prepared by the scouts of Troop 262 from Camarillo. G and I hopped in the car and ate those 100 miles up in nothing flat. As with the past couple years, I got to speak about Dad. As usual, I injected a message that I thought Dad would appreciate. I got a lot of solid compliments from the adult leadership, and even a few from the kids, about my speech.
The interesting bit about this particular speech is that I wrote it in a rough total of 2.5 hours. 1.5 the night before, and 1 the morning of the speech typing it up and fleshing it out. Sometimes, I work pretty well under pressure. See below the break for the rest of the speech. These operated as my notes, so what I said wasn’t EXACTLY what is written below, but it’s pretty close.
I’ve talked quite a bit about the teacher Dad was. Teaching is a big part of leadership, and something dad did often while we were growing up. I wrote a poem in high school about him called “The Teacher”, which opened with “Dad’s advice was nearly almost always right.”
Even if they didn’t sink in, the lessons sat there in my brain, dormant, until they were ready to present themselves, sometimes years, or even decades later! Read all »
Follow the link to a story about a machanima guy who recently created an all-xbox-360 beatbox video. It’s fairly impressive, not just because he did it in 4k, but because it’s pretty catchy and all done with video + sound samples. I own a fair number of the games in this video, though not all of them.
They have a 1080p version available for download, along with a Youtube link, but I’m not going to embed it here because it’s crap compared to the hires version.
Thanks Dave for the link!
