On Marketing

From the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.

Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes!

There's a nice new picture on the right nav bar, courtesy of a particularly talented graphic artist. You may recognize his art from the Something Awful forums and the hand-puppet avatars in the comic book subforum there. If you're interested, his site and contact information is here. I'll be plugging him again.

This cosmetic change is the first of several that will take place around the various puppet shows; it will culminate in the launch of a new professional blog, because as much as I'd like to avoid it, I don't think I can get away from blogging as part of my job - because it will ultimately be a necessary networking and platforming tool.

In the meantime, enjoy the new artwork and look for more changes soon.

The Long Weekend Road

I'm sitting on a National Express train back to London after a great weekend hiking in North Yorkshire. I needed a little time off, to myself, by myself. Booked three nights in a roadside inn (constructed 1680), grabbed some ordinance survey maps, planned some hikes and enjoyed getting away from London.

The trip originally had three purposes: to relax (done), to write (also done), and to try to figure out a general direction for myself. I'm pushing 30 and feel like I've been drifting, planless, long enough.

But what I realized before I left was that life isn't necessarily about plans. I discovered that I've never really gotten over my aborted plan to go to New York and Make It Big in Publishing, which was the sum total of my plans after college. In retrospect, as the magazine and publishing industry continues to contract and I'm enjoying a fairly lucrative career in digital PR, I'm not disappointed that I didn't Make It Big. But I've felt as though I've spent most of the last eight years adrift with very little in the way of a 'plan.'

My realization was this: life isn't necessarily about plans. It's about opportunities, about recognizing them and taking advantage of ones that are good for you. It's about seeing something that could potentially be good, whether it's for a career or a relationship or a hobby, and just doing it if it's right. Like moving into digital PR, or moving to London. Or taking a long weekend to Yorkshire and cranking out 10,000 words and a bunch of story and novel notes.

For the first time in my life I feel alright with not having a Plan. I regret some decisions I've made, but they have taught me much, and I stand by each one either as being good for me overall or at least teaching me some kind of lesson. And I can get caught in a snowstorm and still be prepared for it and recognize my limits - when it's time to turn back and try the mountain again the next day.

The funny thing about this is that the insight came before the trip on which I wanted to have it. I'm not complaining. I did get a lot of writing, and hiking, and thinking done. And had some really good Yorkshire ale. The black pudding, not as good. But still an experience.

I feel wholly confident that I can make time to do what I love and to separate my personal life from my work life - something I haven't been great at recently. And my Plan? To enjoy it as it comes. To go with the flow. It's funny: in college, if I'd said that, I would reply "that's Taoism, you took an entire course in that philosophy, remember!" And it only took eight years for the lesson to sink in.

Let Us Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Consoles

Yesterday I got up early to pack my 360 and all my Rock Band kit into a suitcase to drag it down Holloway Road, ride with it through the Tube, then drag it into my office so we could do our first planned office morale activity: play some Rock Band. That's doubly-cool because Rock Band isn't out here yet, so no one has had a chance to play around with it. I set up the Xbox, plugged it in, got all the instruments plugged in, ran through a test song to make sure everything was working correctly, turned it off until the session was about to start, came back and turned it on, watched as the menu froze, then watched as the startup screen froze, and then got the symbol you see above.

The Red Ring of Death.

The Red Ring of Death, or RROD, is what happens when there's a critical failure inside a 360 - it flashes three quarter-circles of red light to indicate that it's got a bit of a problem. It also means your console isn't working anymore and you have to send it to Microsoft so they fix it - and wait, console-less, for them to do so.

Now it's no mystery that I worked on the 360 account in my first days at Edelman, initially on the Corporate team and then on the Community team, before moving on to other accounts (and, that takes care of my transparency disclosure too.) I was excited to work on the 360 account because I came from traditional games, I thought the 360 was doing a lot of things right, and I liked the original Xbox a lot. I don't want to say that I was chugging the cool-aid, but I did buy the first 360 I could as soon as I could.

That one lasted about three months before its DVD drive failed, scratching some of my discs.

The next one lasted about six months or so before its DVD failed.

The one you see above is my third Xbox 360.

Additionally, I packed it into a box to ship over here around the first of November, so until recently I had been Xbox-less. It took far longer to get here than anticipated, so it was sitting unused in its box for a good part of the last few months. Since it got here, I haven't put it through any use it hadn't been through before - often I'm very good about turning it off and not playing for too long at any given time - not that I have time to do otherwise.

Now I've had a lot of consoles. I had an NES. It did start to get wonky, because some NES' had problems with their connectors going bad. Fixing it is an easy open-screw job. I have a Genesis. It still works fine. I had a SNES. Going strong. I have a Dreamcast that works like a charm. I have purchased a 2600, an Intellivision, a Colecovision, a Sega CD and Sega 32X, a Jaguar, a Turbo Graphix 16, a Saturn, and and Xbox, all of which work as well as they did when they rolled off the assembly line. I also have a PS2, which I had to replace twice, both times for the DVD drive failing. If I had purchased a piece of consumer electronics that failed three times on me, I would simply not buy it again or replace it after the third time.

Except in this instance I have hundreds of dollars of games for this device, so I'd really be screwing myself. So I will wait, patiently, for my the repaired console to come back.

I offer no judgment on this situation - I leave that up to you, Puppeteers. I'm only neutrally reporting what's happened to me and the fact that I will now likely have to wait two more months to get my console back. I also have to request my specific console back, because it's a US 360 and 360 games are region-coded - meaning if I just went out and got a UK 360, none of my games would work on it. And since I have to send it to the UK repair center (centre), I run the risk of them not returning my console to me at all but instead giving me one that won't work with my games.

In the meantime, as much as I'd love to play Rock Band or Crackdown with my friends back home - sorry guys, I'm going to have to sit the next few rounds out. I suppose you could send game requests to the repair center (centre) - I hear they have a lot of consoles there.

2Cats1Box

The cats have arrived and have adjusted nicely to living in a small flat. Well, almost nicely. The Beautiful Competition has discovered that she's allergic to them moreso than she was before - if she pets them and rubs her eyes, she has to take a Benadryl. I'm holding up alright but I can definitely tell the space is smaller.

But the biggest change is the box. I realize I run the risk of turning this whole post into some kind of poop joke, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum. But this is the first time both cats have used one litter box, and the clumping-nosmell-bakingsoda litter we used to use isn't available here. The flat is small, and the space for the box is minimum, so it's in the closet right as you walk in. So if it's dirty, you know.

Now don't surf away so quickly you read skidmarks: it's not as bad as some spoiled chocolate, only that you have to keep it clean. It's really just a matter of being careful, like stepping around roadapples or cowpies, or like you're repeatedly mulching your garden every spring. It's a matter of dilligence really. If you keep it free of floaters and regulate the tootsie rolls to the candy bowl, it's not much trouble.

The smell can get downright horrible however, as you might expect. Sometimes it's enough to give you the runs, and as summer approaches I fear that it will become even more craptacular, especially considering the overall flow of air in the flat isn't real great when we're away at work. We'll have to unplug things so that everything comes out in the end as the temperatures start to rise.

On Apple Keynote

I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong, but in this instance I feel more justified than anything else. I'm also one to avoid a hype bandwagon, sometimes (I'll admit) to my own detriment when something I would normally find cool is hyped to the point where it can't simply be that good. Especially when the person doing the hyping is one I tend to disagree with.

But I digress. I've had the pleasure these last couple of days of working extensively with Apple's Keynote software. For you PC scrubs out there, Keynote is to Apple what Powerpoint is to PC. Well that's not entirely true, because you have to own Apple-branded hardware to run this Apple-branded software (monopoly cough) while you can run Powerpoint on a Mac. But seriously, why would you want to?

When it comes to one functional program over I generally don't really care what I use. Features are the first dealbreaker; OpenOffice, for example, fucked up the formatting on my work documents so I scrapped it after a couple of weeks. UI is the second dealbreaker; how easy is the program to use? More importantly, how intuitive is it? I don't have a problem changing my habits to switch from one version of a program to another if the learning curve is low enough that it doesn't matter - and to its credit, Office 2007 is awesomely easy to learn.

But Powerpoint has always been my nemesis. I have never had a violent impulse from a video game, but Powerpoint has made me contemplate murder and other kinds of sociopathic behavior. Its autoformatting is a piece of shit and it just isn't easy to use - it's not intuitive.

Keynote is Powerpoint without the annoying bits. It is so ludicriously intuitive you'd think it was reading your mind. It gives you everything you need to adjust your slides automatically rather than making you hunt for them through a series of nested menus. It's almost fun to use.

I doubt I'm going to run out and buy a Mac anytime soon, but this does offer one answer to my favorite question for Macheads: what about a Mac actually makes it better than a PC (other than 'It's not Windowz LOL' or 'it just works,' which is a crock of shit.) Keynote kicks ass. I wish I could buy it for my PC.

Transparency Disclaimer: I worked (but no longer do so) on Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit PR team in the Digital realm.

Paper

There's something about the texture and feel of paper that I like. I don't feel the need to read things on paper - I'm fine with the movement of fiction to digital forms - but paper itself, the pulp beneath the ink, is something irreplaceable. My favorites are heavier and grainier varieties; construction paper, comic book paper, the stuff they made paperback novels out of in the 1980s. It has a certain dry feel to it like nothing else and makes a strange and chilling noise when you rub two sheets of it together. In my memory it is forever associated with reading in the back of the classroom in grade school, in stuffing a copy of Jurassic Park in my earth science book in junior high, or in buying copies of Groo before it changed to the higher-quality glossy format.

I also remember my mother taking me to COSI in Columbus and showing me the papermaking exhibit on the Street of Yesteryear, which is another vault of great memory all on its own.

For all my digital knowledge and my daily use of computers and the sheer volume of text I read online each day, I suppose there is a reason I've never read a novel on the Internet before and have no plans to do so.

Dealing With Culture Shock in a Healthy Manner

Allow Myself To, Uh, Play With Myself

So one of the things I've been doing in my free time lately is playing through old Sierra games - specifically, Quest for Glory games. I got the idea to try a 'Let's Play' for these games on the good old SA forums. I realized after investing quite a few hours into this that I should probably make a more permanent record than SA for these things - so I started another blog. Classic Let's Play. For playing classic games.

If you're so inclined, check it out. It's not up to date with the actual LP thread yet, but I'll keep updating it when I have a free second here and there.

Also if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about as far as Let's Play goes - it's a subculture of gamers and people who watch other people play video games and attempt to make humorous comments along the way. Yes, it's geeky. It's really geeky. But at least it's not fan fiction.

Thank You Gary Gygax

On my way out of work today I noticed a couple of emails and some rumblings on Twitter and online that Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away. It was soon confirmed and has since hit CNN. I'm still a little shocked, and I almost cried a bit on the way home.

I met him once for only a few seconds but he seemed like a very nice guy, genuine and fun. I won't pretend that I knew him because I didn't - I've heard the stories and have very little to form my own opinion of him aside from a handshake and a few seconds of dialogue - but what he did for me personally is immeasurable.

When I was young I struggled with acceptance for many reasons, not the least of which was a tendency to be more concerned about creative things like looking out the window and imagining stories and dreams than being worried about baseball mitts and football cleats. In my small town, there weren't a lot of kids like me. There was a guy who lived down the street named Nick and we were cut from the same cloth; we read Lone Wolf and played Starflight and Bard's Tale and King's Quest. And we played D&D.

I bought the now-infamous first-ed books used for $5 each. I still have them somewhere too, with the green electrical tape binding the DMG together just as it was when I purchased it when I was 12 years old. And in those books we found a world apart, one that we could create on our own and populate with creatures and things and characters of our choosing. The world that Gary helped make possible.

There have been writers who have been far more influential in my life, some of whom I've had the great pleasure to get to know well and call my friends. But Gary's efforts helped start it all. He helped make it OK to have an imagination and not get beaten up because you'd rather imagine yourself as a ranger slaying drow than catching a touchdown pass.

He left the world a better place for many people who otherwise might not have been OK with who they are.

So: thank you Gary. From the bottom of my heart.

Posting for the Sake of Posting

It's February 29 and I have nothing to say aside from I want this date on my blog, so here's a nice picture of Miranda.

Poem: The Ash Tree City (Draft)

The Ash Tree City

"Circle Line chain now approaching,
stand behind the yellow line."

He growls in alleys on starlit nights
In dumpsters
Piles of human shit
Clothes and vomited kebabs
Sewer grates and curved windows.

His horns crown everyone:
Drunks in Burberry
The corner barber
BTP in H. Road Station
Football fans enjoying Premium Lager

Three sharp brass nails on a tail
Witch-dreams
and Old things, breaking through
Museum-Glass History.

"Stand clear the closing doors."

This is not our place.

It is bigger on the inside
Than it is on the outside.








This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.

The Beginning

The first day is always the hardest, except for maybe the second and third day. After that it will get easier and ultimately the payoff will be worth it.

I turn 30 in October.

It is time.

Update: Didn't mean to be cryptic, I'm referring to the last rounds of weight loss I need to do.

17 and Counting

Remember that post I made about suicides in Wales?

They're up to 17 victims now.

That's fucked up.

Rumor: Massive Layoffs at CIA Following Castro's Resignation

Following today's resignation of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, employees of the CIA were told to expect "massive reorganization" in the coming days.

The federal agency, whose primary mission has been the overthrow of Castro since the Cuban leader took power in 1959, is no longer necessary as the last vestiges of the Cold War finally came to an end. Castro will be succeeded by his brother Raul, who has been serving as temporary leader of Cuba since Fidel's illness in 2007.

"It's just not going to be the same without Fidel in power," said Jim Chowder, a CIA operative in Havana. "Sure, we could try to overthrow Raul, but he's got such a pussy name. He sounds like a Dancing with the Stars instructor, not an evil dictator. Fidel Castro is a brand, you know? He's someone you can hate, a symbol of Cold War power. Raul Castro, he could be your wacky Latino neighbor."

Chowder, who enjoys Cuban cigars and Cuban rum, said he would "miss Cuba" and hoped the embargo would end soon so he could return and enjoy a life there without having to attempt to assassinate the nation's leader on a daily basis.

Experts estimate as many as half the CIA could be downsized, as the agency has made Castro's overthrow or assassination its primary objective.

Meanwhile, in Miami or "Not-So-Little-Havana" as it is commonly known, Cuban ex-pats took to the streets in a drug-fueled, alcohol-spritzed, Miami style party. One Cuban, who refused to be identified (photo left), told reporters that he was preparing to return to Cuba now that Fidel Castro was finally gone.

"I can't wait to go back and see my family and introduce them to the glorious lifestyle living in the United States has afforded me," he said. "Look at dis stuff: jacuzzi, guns, power, money, women: the US has it all baby!"

When asked about the men and women of the CIA would would lose their jobs, he said he "didn't care."

"This man's reaction is not uncommon," said Chowder as he watched a pair of bikini-clad chicanas walk by his cantina. "Too many Cubans in the US get high on their own supply. Just look at that Perez Hilton guy. That's what we've got to look forward too now."

A Lot Can Happen in Three Months

On December 1, I packed up a few boxes of my stuff in Seattle to ship it to London. It's now February 19 and I'm going to have to wait at least another week before I see my stuff, making it a good three month lapse. You can read the whole story on my other blog, thanks to the lovely company VIP Relocation, who the Beautiful Competition and I now simply refer to as "those jokes."

One of the things I packed into those boxes was my good old Xbox 360, and one of the other things was an accompanying attachment I purchased as a tax break back when I was working on Microsoft business in Seattle: the HD-DVD Player accessory. In early December Heroes had just come out on HD-DVD (exclusively), things were looking really great for the format, and I was looking forward to getting some good life out of it once I unpacked it here (should it ever arrive.)

Even on January 1, that was a distinct possibility.

Then the following happened:

Warner Bros., one of the major backers of HD-DVD, switched to Blu-Ray exclusively. Blu-ray is the competing HD optical format.

HD-DVD canceled their CES press conference. Ouch.

Paramount defected to Blu-ray shortly thereafter.

Universal hedged its bets and went with Blu-ray too.

My former client announced a fire sale on HD-DVD accessories.

Netflix dropped HD DVD from its lineup, a sad move since aside from Heroes and a copy of Hot Fuzz I never bought one, just got them from Netflix.

So did Wal-Mart. Double-ouch.

Finally, Toshiba, the HD-DVD manufacturer, gave up and pulled the plug.

And to add insult to injury, Gamestop won't give you any money for your HD-DVD stuff anymore - even the Xbox accessory.

Now there's nothing left to do but to tell sad stories of the death of kings.

It's pretty amusing that this all went down while my HD-DVD accessory was locked away on a boat somewhere. This is always the price of early adoption, and I don't think I'll ever make this mistake again. But on the other hand, I liked HD-DVD's menus far better than the Blu-rays I saw, which were basically DVDs with better resolution. The HD-DVDs were just cleaner, they looked more techie. Which may be part of the reason most people didn't like them.

On the other hand, all I'm out is an accessory that cost me $150 for which I got a tax write-off anyway and I did get some serious enjoyment out of for the short span in which I had it. Who knows, maybe it will become a collector's item someday like a Sega CD or a 32x or any other failed add-on video game accessories in the past.

I guess when it finally does get here I can just put it in my collection of old video game crap that I'll use when I have a house again, someday, maybe.

In Internet, News Chooses YOU!

So I promised no more marketing-related posts, but this really isn't that so don't worry. The Beautiful Competition returned from Barcelona a couple of days ago and has been sick, giving me a project this weekend that's keeping me in the house, and I've been slammed at work (but in a good way) so I haven't had time to come up with anything very creative. But this has been "knocking about," at my new countryfolk might say, in the back of my head and I want to get it down on paper.

I'm often wary of a lot of the iconoclastic ways people discuss the Internet - print is dead, print is worthless, this is the new way and the old way doesn't matter, blah blah blah. I realized though that the structure of the Internet has allowed a fundamental shift in how I receive information - not just news, but information of any kind.

Taken as a whole the Internet is nothing more than a vast repository for information: most of it worthless or irrelevant, but information nonetheless. At its most fundamental level, it is a series of wires (not tubes, although tubes could describe fiber optics and - never mind) connecting computers together in a huge network - but those wires would do nothing if it weren't for the information flowing between them. Series of 1s and 0s, vast volumes of information being sorted, routed, directed and stored. If I wanted to, with two or three clicks of my mouse I could make all the information on my hard drive accessible to anyone in the world who wanted a peek.

It wasn't that there was a lack of information before the Internet, there just wasn't a good way to store and share it. Right at this very second I'm staring at a device smaller than a half a stick of gum that holds 2 GB worth of information. According to an old forum thread I just Googled, it can hold about 10,000 books. Until about 20 years ago, that would have been impossible. Actually until about a year ago it would have been impossible, but I'm talking digital storage vs. physical storage. It is now incredibly inexpensive to house and share quantities of information that you could not before; imagine storing 10,000 books on clay tablets in the Babylonian era - it would have taken a small city. And to transport them around the world? Armies of slaves. Even the original Library of Alexandria can't hold a candle to what I can do with my 80 GB iPod right now.

The end result of this is that there's now a whole lot of information out there available to anyone with a computer and Internet access at the touch of a button. With broadband and wireless penetration reaching record numbers - the wireless Internet in Africa puts some areas of the US to shame, even though it's all happening on mobile phones - and the OLPC program has set the bar low enough that a world where everyone is online is actually conceivable - we're all part of a vast network of information. It's happening, right now.

And the most fundamental, iconoclastic and hyperbolic paradigm shift isn't that we have all this information at our fingertips - it's what we're doing with it. It's how we're dealing with it - being forced to deal with it really.

As I noted a good deal of the information out there is either worthless or irrelevant - either on an overall level or a personal level. While someone out there is interested in the migratory patterns of bees or what Alexei in St. Petersburg had for breakfast, I'm not. So we've been forced to develop ways to sort through this information on our own.

Enter RSS and other kinds of information aggregators - and this is the fundamental shift. Now instead of others choosing the kind of information I receive (whether a paper or a TV station will cover a story or the way they cover it, the limited number of books that a publisher or editor chooses to publish and so forth) I choose that information myself. I select which news sources I pay attention to, by a mixture of interest and trust. I'm more interested in what people like Brandon and Seth and Jon and Kevin are sharing through their Google Reader items than what CNN thinks is important.

We're only just now beginning to realize the implications of this change, and it is the cornerstone of how the Internet and the New Media is will affect how we process information. And it's not simply a matter of being able to choose; with choice comes responsibility. We're now responsible to no one but ourselves for the information we choose to process and gather and share with others.

It's an interesting, scary and empowering prospect no?

Where I Been? Where YOU Been?

OK, I know where I've been. Drowning at work. No kidding. Gug. The Beautiful Competition is doing no better - last night I woke up at 2:15, realized she wasn't home yet, called her, found her still at work. She rolled in around 3:00. That's 3:00 AM. On a Thursday. With more work on Friday. She's worse off than me, but for different reasons.

This isn't a bitch about my job post or anything, but being drained so much at the office hasn't left me with a lot of motivation to update the old bloggie or do any creative writing, although I did start hammering together something that may or may not go somewhere. If it does, I anticipate it will go beyond short story into novel territory, but I'm keeping an attitude of cautious optimism about that.

In other news, I'm going to Germany for a couple of days on Sunday. Team meeting. I suppose that's not all that different than saying 'I'm going to LA for a couple of days for a team meeting,' but it's a lot cooler because it's a different country. And I get to practice my German!

"Wenn den Katze nicht zu Hause ist, die Mause spielen auf dem Tisch."

Unfortunately that's really the only single phrase I know. Five years of German and all I can say is a rhyme, the word for 'masturbation,' a few exotic animals, and enough of the language to order off a menu, get a room for the night and find a toilet. Go American education system!

Sometimes These Things Just Write Themselves

For my next short story: hot news in the UK right now, where a 14th young person has committed suicide in the same small Welsh village using the same method.

I realize this is a very real tragedy and I don't mean to poke fun, but this is exceptionally odd and it's got the imagination going. Some kind of ritual sacrifice? Aliens? The King in Yellow? Perhaps the stars are just right?

Good story fodder either way.

Would You Kindly Endorse a Candidate

With Super Tuesday looming in a few hours for American Puppeteers, I thought it was high time this blog finally endorse a candidate for the American presidency. Therefore it is with great pride that I announce the Subversive Puppet Show fully endorses the candidacy of Andrew Ryan for President of the United States.

1. Andrew Ryan built an underwater city. Ryan is a businessman and motivator with a vision, and the wherewithal to execute that vision. Unlike other visionaries he is able to motivate his base to implement his dreams.

2. Andrew Ryan believes all men were created equal. As he is fond of saying, there are no Gods or Kings - only men. Each person can become anything he wants and his success or failure is no one's fault but his own.

3. Andrew Ryan is not afraid of bettering the species. Stem Cells? Try ADAM. It's not just curing disease, it's for making humans more beautiful, stronger and more intelligent.

4. Andrew Ryan likes golf. Name one bad president who liked golf. You can't. Most people forget the golf factor. Not us.

Ah, who am I kidding. I endorse Obama. Now get your asses out there, vote early and vote often!