Pie to Finger Ratio
Posted on | December 27, 2011 | No Comments
I thought it would help me focus if I wrote down all the web projects I’m working on now.
Project Havana: Lot of work to go, got some pretty jQuery animations going on but very little content. Lot of data entry to go, but I feel like this project has the best odds of being monetizable. (Is that a word? It is now.) Day-to-day investment of time seems like it could be quite high for a while.
Project Xenon: Data entry’s done, and hell a lot of the code from Project FAST is reusable. jQTouch is still eluding me with regards to passing data across the POST in PHP and still getting those pretty animations. I need to buy that peepcode screencast and get it over with. If I had a week to knock this out it would be donezo. Not much oversight needed once the code is stable, especially when I’m not expecting much of an audience.
Ogre Game Labs: Pretty much from scratch. I think the stuff you learn from Project Havana will pay off here, because you’re gonna want that asynchronous data transfer. It’s a must, actually. So get Havana up and going, spread the word in the channels where you’ll get an instant audience. Then re-evaluate how much of this you can do. Day-to-day is a real wildcard, as is the eventual size of the audience. Main competitor is only about 5,000-6,000 registered users but up to 200 concurrent sessions. That’s serious stuff, but we’ve got a level of flexibility that they don’t. I think.
Ogre Lair: Operational. Needs customization and getting moved to the correct domain. I like that I’ll be able to hand the day-to-day of this one off.
Paid job for IPC: Mostly data entry and their calendar left.
Paid job for AUMC: Done? No callbacks so I think they’re done.
Paid job for NMBA: Just the one associates page left, knock that out and get it off the whiteboard.
Project CSA: Goodness this one is never gonna end. Downside of working with the end-user on a daily basis is the scope of work is always changing. Need to figure out a plan of attack, and where to start with the code. You have the existing WO tool done, maybe that can be retrofitted.
Eight balls to juggle at once is about all I can stand, I need to knock these out. Can we order them by ETA?
AUMC (done?)
NMBA (one page? come on)
IPC
Ogre Lair
Havana
CSA
Xenon (just in no rush to do this one)
Ogre Game Labs
First World Dilemmas
Posted on | December 4, 2011 | No Comments
My creative impulses are dragging me all over the place. I’ve got about a half-dozen projects I want to work on and I’m paralyzed with indecision. Maybe writing them down will help. In no particular order, I want to…
- Get started on the perfume I’m making for Eve.
- Play the hell out of some Skyrim.
- Make something in FL Studio. I don’t really have a hook in my head to start with, though.
- Finish configuring the netbook for emulator play. Yesterday’s testing was mixed. It’s fine with NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Sega Genesis, but some SNES games are choppy, particularly Super-FX enabled ones. N64 games were hit and miss, I was getting probably 50fps on Super Mario 64 but it choked up a big hairball on Goldeneye and Hot Wheels Turbo Racing. I haven’t bothered with my PSX roms. I haven’t set up Quickplay for my MAME roms yet as it’s quite involved.
- Get Quickbooks set up for Diana. She’s wanting to learn how to use it so she has another marketable skill for the future job search. The idea I had is that we can set up Shooting Star Perfumes as the business to learn with. It might get us back into making our own stuff.
- Eat the hell out of some pizza.
- Listen to some new albums that came out, particularly the new M83.
- Channel former blogging buddy Krooze L. Roy and review some old video games. I hope he reads this some time, because I miss the hell out of his writing, and I still want him to message me some time about Amplitude on PS2.
And even out of so many tempting options, the combination of pizza and Skyrim is a siren’s call I am unable to ignore. Bye.
Brevity
Posted on | December 2, 2011 | No Comments
Brevity is fine,
I need to remember this.
See you on Monday.
Am I a writer? Or just restless?
Posted on | November 30, 2011 | No Comments
There’s a certain self-righteous quality to calling yourself a writer when you have no published/paid work to your name. At that point you are closer to the truth if you refer to yourself as a “typist.” I have some friends, though, that exhibit that trait that I think is the telltale sign of a “real” writer, and that’s the urge to write almost constantly.
I have these urges, but I am usually sated by a one-liner or statement that’s been on my mind. I have several friends that are finishing up on their NaNoWriMo projects today. A novel! Jeez. I don’t think I can keep a train of thought from derailing for that kind of length. An overactive imagination needs an outlet, though, and I have many. Lately it’s been Skyrim, but other common pastimes have been making perfumes, designing houses in The Sims 3, writing, trying to come close to the talent level of my 18-year old self at FL Studio, making stepcharts in StepMania, designing board, card, or role-playing games…I can keep busy. There’s something deeply satisfying about writing, especially on a platform like this where I can toss these words into empty space and whatever happens, happens.
Every creative outlet of mine has a muse, and for writing it is two entities. The first, my long-time muse, has been Jerry Holkins (Tycho Brahe) at Penny Arcade. He puts out the most amazingly smooth, polished work three times a week and his tone just makes me happy, his sense for when to drop the flowery language and rage-curse for a while is incredible. The second, a somewhat more recent find, are several of the writers at Cracked. What’s more, they blatantly encourage writing at all skill levels. Somehow, a website that routinely publishes lists like “The 7 Most Elaborate Dick Moves in Gaming History” has become a beacon for aspiring writers.
An article that Robert Brockway (arguably my favorite writer on the Cracked staff, incidentally) put up today got me to thinking. Three posts a week on here was the idea and that fell apart rather quickly. I get a surprising amount of traffic for how little I post, so if I were to start up again I may end up with an even bigger audience. If I were a “real” writer that shouldn’t matter, but I find it disheartening to write to an empty room. And, I must admit, the fragrance industry is short on top-tier writers and I can’t help but be fascinated with the prospect of working in that industry. So expect more reviews in the future as I sharpen my nose and writing chops.
Brought to you by the letter 5
Posted on | October 13, 2011 | No Comments
This morning I started in earnest on converting a WordPress theme for thelegendofmax.net into the nostalgic, 2003-2004 era site. So far it’s going quite well. I’m not sure exactly what I will do with a new old TLoM once it’s up and running but that’s neither here nor there. Step 1 is getting it set back up, then I can figure out what I’m gonna do with it.
Music Club?
Posted on | August 1, 2011 | No Comments
I’m thinking about starting a Spotify-centric music club. They’re a lot of fun, they get you to listen to stuff you wouldn’t normally listen to, you get to share your favorite artists with others, and you get to do some critical writing. I’m in favor of all these things.
The format would be something like so: Each round, there is a theme, as vague as “Favorite Album” or something like “Guilty Pleasures”, “Favorite Release of the last 12 Months” or “8 Favorite Covers”. Each week, we listen to one member’s selection and review it. The order is determined at random for the first round and then the order is reversed every round after. So a big club can take a while, but there’s no real rush and a week gives everyone time to listen and write, and if everyone’s done early you can start the next persons entry. There’s a standardized grading scale to use, as well.
I’m probably gonna start this idea whenever I use up all my Spotify invites. If you know you’re interested now, let me know and I’m gonna start a Facebook group.
Spotify: Renunciation Now Optional
Posted on | July 25, 2011 | No Comments
I don’t remember when I first heard about Spotify, the all-you-can-stream free music service that friends across the pond may refer to as the dog’s bollocks. If you don’t yet have a subscription, you can get an invite code within hours thanks to the Googles. Justin Bieber invited me.
Who invited you?
Anyway, I’ve been playing with it for the past four or five days and while there’s a lot to love, I have a few nitpicks. I’ll start with the good though. First and foremost, it’s a free service that lets you play exactly what you want. Pandora has it’s place but more often than not I’m going to have something in mind to listen to.
Second, the application is super-responsive, every track I’ve played has started within a second of hitting play. I’ve had local files take longer due to the HDD spinning up.
Third, the social innovations are great; the service connects with Facebook, Twitter, Audioscrobbler (AKA last.fm), and its own in-built social network. Drop a song, album or playlist into someone else’s inbox to share it with them directly. Collaborate with a friend or music club on a community playlist. So many great ideas, cleanly implemented and unobtrusive at the same time.
Fourth, the audio quality is good for a streaming service, if I had to guess it’s 128 to 160kbps, and I’ve had absolutely no pauses for buffering, something I can’t say of MOG which would do it every other track or so.
Finally, the selection has been, overall and for the kind of stuff I look for, impressive. There are gaps but they’re either the old farts who are vehemently against this Internet business (looking at you, Led Zeppelin, Metallica and co.) or rather obscure acts who aren’t licensed on here. Licensing is something that generally improves with time, and when you look at it in the context that it’s been available in the US for less than a month, the selection is incredible.
Now the criticisms. I think my biggest gripe right now is the lack of ability to browse by genre, or anything remotely resembling such a feature. One feature I really like on Napster is their full Billboard lists, they have the Hot 100, Heatseekers, Album 50, and then a lot of genre-specific, Billboard-provided lists. This isn’t a feature that comes up all that often, but I do have to keep track of what’s hot at the moment, and having to bounce between Billboard and Spotify is a hassle.
The second piece regards the advertisements. Not the ads themselves, because they’re a brilliant solution to the business of satisfying the free crowd. I would like the ability to choose what type of advertisements I get. I’m less interested in hearing about how good Coca-Cola is (I’m familiar with it at this point), but I’ll sometimes get ads from new artists, or currently hot tracks/albums. Much more up my alley, and it’s the reason I’m here after all. One thing I learned in the business a long time ago is giving your customers the ability to choose the ad segment they prefer is not only going to lead to more conversions, but just lead to happier users and advertisers.
Third, I do plan on upgrading to one of the paid plans soon, but the way their pricing structure is laid out, the key feature I’m looking for (320kbps streaming) is only available at the top-tier plan, where I’d much prefer to buy that feature as an a la carte service in the range of $2-3 additional a month. I don’t honestly need the offline/mobile features, if I like an album enough to want it offline I’m going to buy it and support the artist. The difference between $7 or $8 and $10 a month is honestly not much, but mentally it feels like I’m overpaying for that one feature. Conversely, I suspect there are a lot of Premium members that don’t hear or care about the difference between the 320kbps stream and the 128 they were getting before.
But that’s really it. The good far outweighs the bad here, if you can get an invite I definitely recommend the service.
Dreamweaving Again
Posted on | July 23, 2011 | No Comments
So the good news is I’ve gone longer without posting on here, but that’s like saying midget murder is more condonable because they’re about half a life.
I’ve started on a new web project, and with the number of features I want to build out it stands to be my most ambitious project yet, and it’s gonna require some new technologies. Understand that I really don’t like the thought of relying on JavaScript, due to long-standing grudges, but jQuery does offer features I’m really gonna need in this project, in a prepackaged solution. When I hear that there are quite a few Top 100 websites that make use of it, I’m reassured.
So, Project Havana, as I’m calling it right now, is fragrance-related and fills a niche that no other industry website has sufficiently covered. This will also serve as a website I can show as a portfolio piece for both the UI and backend. That’s still a field I’d love to do as a day job again, and I’ve also just recently found all the code for the largest project I’d worked on but was under NDA on for a year. So it’ll be good to have both projects available to point to. I’m being rather tight-lipped on the particulars to this project as I want to develop it at a slower pace, get each feature dialed in before moving onto the next one, and then when I have something worth putting out there, I can do it without regret or concern. So that’s new, as I usually throw up core functionality and build out the site as it’s live, add those features as people use the site.
I’m going to try and get back on the three-day writing schedule, we will see.
BMM11 Behind The Scenes: Wheeling and Dealing
Posted on | January 21, 2011 | No Comments
Many Basenoters enjoy Basenotes March Madness, but it’s something just this side of an obsession for me as commissioner of the thing. Suffice it to say that I started preliminary work on BMM12 (March 1 2012) in December 2010. I was simultaneously working on BMM11 and in my first message on the topic to Grant Osborne, owner of Basenotes.net, I asked about the possibility of a prize this year. That was back on 12/15, but good things come to those who wait, and BMM11 officially has a prize package, graciously provided by Indiescents. Not a name you’re familiar with? It’s the niche-focused side of Luckyscent. I know Luckyscent is fairly niche as-is, but these are more independent perfumers, Laurie Erickson’s Sonoma Scent Studio, Brent Leonisio’s Smell Bent, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s DSH line, and so on. Given that I’m already in contact with many indie perfumers this year, the tie-in is great and I think people are really going to enjoy reading the selections from the perfumers, they’re all extremely interesting.
I’ve mentioned discreetly to a few people that the brackets are shaping up to be altogether different from the past two years. Take a look at the latest standings here. Everything below #96 is currently on the outside looking in, and there are some damn fine fragrances currently not in the show right now, Chanel Antaeus, AdP Colonia, Czech & Speake No. 88 (big surprise to me considering how far it’s gone in the past), LV Piper Nigrum, and plenty others that are looking mighty snubbed at the moment. This year I’m not going to be fudging these selections any more than I absolutely have to (for example, a three-way tie for the last position). So if something doesn’t make it in, it’s squarely on the shoulders of you, dear reader. I predict more first-round blowouts this year than the last two put together. To be 100% honest I’m not thrilled with this format, and it won’t be making a return any time soon, but I’m more or less committed to doing it this way this year and who knows? It might be the most exciting year ever.
I’m continuing work on phase two of the BMM site, which is the prediction contest. It will be the only way I will accept entries this year, I don’t want to have to keep up with spreadsheets like I’ve had to the past two years, and having the site automate certain things for me is what’s giving me the extra time to do two tournaments simultaneously.
After much deliberation, I think I’m going to abandon my plan of a betting system for this year’s prediction contest. The idea was that a user could bet less or more than the typical amount of a game’s value. For example, last year all Round 1 games were worth 1 point, with all rounds worth 32 points total (32 1-point games in round one, 16 2-point games in round two, etc.) In my suggested new system, we’d multiply all values by 10 (the maximum possible score is 1920 instead of 192) and for round one games (10 points), a user could bet as few as 5 points (for a toss-up game) or as many as 40 points (for suspected blowouts). Two potential problems have arisen with that system. One, Diana fears it may be too complex to someone new to BMM or unfamiliar with betting, and I could see it. Two, a bigger concern for me, is it’s quite possible someone would have won the tournament in the old points system and not win under the new system, by making poor choices with betting (or not understanding and leaving everything at defaults), and subsequently miss out on the prize. I really don’t wanna see that, so I’ll refrain from rocking the boat this year. Perhaps for a future, non-BMM event (Luckyscent has already expressed interest in sponsoring some future event of mine).
On an unrelated note, the same unrelated note as last week, my Escentric 03 arrived today. Imagine my surprise when I received a full 100mL, still in shiny plastic bottle instead of the 15mL decant they mentioned. It’s quite a strange creature this first wearing, the bitter Mexican Lime blends with light woods and a heavier base of smoky vetiver, leather and musk. Full review probably next Friday but right now it’s the most mysterious thing I’ve smelled in a long time, a dark citrus that conjures notes of anything from ginger root to cannabis. Fascinating stuff.
Great Music Has Emotion. Emotion Makes Great Music.
Posted on | January 17, 2011 | No Comments
If you and I were ever to have a long talk about good music, you’d find that I will forgive a lot of sins if there’s real, unfaked, unabashed emotion and energy present. Case in point would be something as American as…grits. (We had a discussion that few to no things were truly an American contribution) Consider blues music, a genre that at it’s most typical is very, very structured. Even the solos are generally confined to one scale. But the great bluesmen of generations past told stories that moved the soul. Maybe it’s my internal old fogey talking, but I think if the generation of teens and 20-somethings took the time to listen to some B.B. King, some Lead Belly (Miss you, Jon), John Lee Hooker’s unique take on it, or Stevie Ray Vaughan’s modern-take on the art, they might find the prefabricated pop and rap they listen to now…somehow lacking.
Ray Charles – Georgia On My Mind (Live)
I deeply regret not having an interest in the music of Ray Charles while he was still alive and touring. I reference this live take of Georgia On My Mind for two reasons. One, you can feel the emotional connection between the man and a song he’d become attached to. Many don’t know that it was actually a cover of a much older song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, about Hoagy’s sister, named Georgia. But Ray took his love for the south and left no question. Two, improvising on a long-practiced piece, personally, only happens to me when I’m inspired by the song itself. To be blind but be so spellbound as to not let that be a hindrance for improvising new solos…I can hardly fathom it.
You left me for dead, but I don’t wanna search no more,
There’s nowhere to hide, so why don’t you come quietly, my love?
I wanted to say, to say that you sure proved the death of me,
Cause now I’ve reached a dead end, and I can’t go back,
But if I’m goin’ down, you’ll come with me.
Rob Dougan is best known for his contributions to the Matrix trilogy. Few knew that he had an album of his own, a wonderful blend of classical and electronica. He has a great Leonard Cohen-esque voice, and when he gets emotional at the end of Left Me For Dead it’s both chilling and moving. The album, as a whole, is the most depressing thing I’ve found thus far.
Only a few minutes after posting the first version of this I remembered Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”, to be covered many times thereafter. She was an amazing talent, and amazingly unknown by many in this generation. Word to the wise, the scat fill at the end is much more difficult than it sounds.
One of those overattacked, underrated bands, Aaron Lewis has a gift for telling the story as much with tone as with lyrics. “It’s Been A While” had a conciliatory tone, but “This Is It” is a heartbreaking acceptance of giving up, finding the mediocre to be a good enough life. It makes you just want to shake the guy, tell him “No, there is more to life than this.”
Joe Satriani – Love Thing
Juno Reactor – Song For Ancestors
And sometimes a song can be full of emotion without any lyrics at all.