Today was National Waffle Day. 2009 Vendy Dessert winner Wafels & Dinges was celebrating the occasion less than a block from my office, so I brought in my camera and spent my lunch hour enjoying the scene. Rain and the NYPD couldn't stop the crowning of Mr. and Ms. Wafel, and most everyone in line had a crudely drawn picture of the truck to exchange for a free wafel.
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Through a process that defies explanation, I have licensed the above 2005 "truck nuts" photo to Comedy Central's tosh.0 for use as a punchline in the Jet Ski Parking "Video Breakdown", which aired last week as part of episode 218. (It's at 0:55 in the clip - blink and you will miss it.)
The check arrived today, and it does in fact read "LICENSE FEE: TRUCK NUTS PHOTO".
(This differs slightly from the licensing agreement which stated the licensed material was a still photo of "truck with comedic testicular decoration on tailgate".)
Sometimes I wonder what I did to ensure my life would be so constantly surreal.
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I have become a huge fan of Pendelton Ward's amazing animated series "Adventure Time". Beautifully animated, slightly off-kilter, and always funny - a trifecta of television for me. 8PM Monday nights on Cartoon Network; also available on iTunes.
One of the side reasons I love Adventure Time: Fred Seibert has been uploading practically every scrap of production art from Adventure Time to his Flickr account. Character sheets, backgrounds, animatics, advertising materials, title cards, staff photos, props, even random bits of story notes. It's tagged, organized, and available under a Creative Commons license.
You should really plow through everything there - it's fascinating to see this much material available as a show is being created. Here's some of my favorites:
That said, sometimes he writes things I just can't agree with, which brings us to today's "10 Reasons Gamers Should Choose a Mac Over an iPhone/iPad". Besides being a weird apples vs. oranges comparison - why not have both? - the ten reasons range from shaky to silly to flat-out wrong. Corey has authorized me to do my worst, so as a general survey of what's going on with iOS gaming, here's 10 Reasons Corey Tamas Is Wrong.
"The biggest problem with gaming on the iPhone or iPad is the control mechanism."
Corey points mostly to FPS games. I'll give you that touch screen controls don't really work with FPS games, and I generally find them to not work on any mobile gaming platform. There are plenty of ported arcade games that don't really work on iOS either.
But I can't imagine Illusion Lab's Labyrinth 2, Zen Bound, or eBoy's FixPix being nearly as involving or fun without taking advantage of the iPhone's tilt controls. I can't imagine Flight Control without being able to effortless draw and redraw flight paths using my finger. I can't play Plants vs. Zombies on the desktop anymore - multitouch on the iPad version allows me to place plants and collect sunlight at a remarkable clip. Like all control schemes, it works in some places and doesn't work in others, and largely depends on whether or not the developers spent the time getting it right.
As for the claim that "many great [games] don't really hit their potential until you have at least 20 different ways to input" - any game that requires 20+ inputs is a game I'd rather avoid.
"With iPad and iPhone games, the creativity runs in one direction"
Having cut my teeth on Quake mods largely through Corey's work back in the day, I feel dirty attacking this point - but he should know as well as I do that the odds for a mod to not only get released but succeed is slim to none. What does enable creativity are well made level editors, and we're not lacking in those: Enigmo, Blockoban, Labyrinth 1 and 2, iBlast Moki, Slotz Racer, and those are just ones that I've played. And most of these have better methods for sharing user created levels than building, say, a new TF2 map.
"In computer terms, however, 64GB is pocket change."
Three quick numbers:
My 32GB iPhone has 3.79 GB of apps on it. That's 70 different games on the device (and plenty of non-games); with music and whatnot, I have 8GB free. So I could potentially triple the number of games I have before I hit the device limit, without removing any of the music I have on the device.
My 16 Steam games on my OS X machine are eating up 26GB. Most of those are using the same shared engine.
As for game size: I have all of four iOS games that clock in over 250MB. Most everything is sub-20MB (seeing as most game companies size their games so they can be downloaded over 3G).
So I don't see a strong need to size my mobile devices like I'm going to carry around multiple WoW installations.
"Even the iPad, which has a nice chunk of screen real estate, is a dwarf when compared to what comes with an entry-level Macbook."
No argument that you certainly CAN buy a larger screen - Apple's 30" goes for $1800. That's not exactly screaming like a worthwhile upgrade to me.
Also: given that most Apple machines are coming with graphics cards that start chopping framerates pretty hard at the highest resolution, does a larger monitor necessarily mean you're going to have a better experience?
"Impressed by the number of games on the App store (which number north of 30,000)? There are far more games available on the Mac."
If you count the flood of Flash games, there are far more games available on the Mac. On the other hand, if you count just the games that run natively in OS X, it seems poignant that in the two years since the App Store launch, the OS X game scene has been completely overrun quantity-wise.
That said, just looking at quantity is a poor measure for gaming platform strength, as is pointed out by gamers everywhere when Apple trots out the numbers.
"It seems like a bit of a laugh to suggest that portability is a strength for Macs when comparing it to the iPad or iPhone, but the truth is: The portability is there."
It only becomes a laugh in the next sentence, where a 17" Mac laptop is cited as an acceptable portable solution in opposition to an iPad. 6.6 pounds is only "portable" in the most basic of sense: you can throw it in a bag and strain your back if you have to carry it more than 10 minutes. The advantages in computing power do not make up for quadruple the weight when we're talking about "portability".
Portability is not an advantage for the Mac over iOS devices, period, end of discussion.
"The first thing Mac users are going to tell you about gaming is that if it's published on Windows, you can play it; not in a wrapper or an emulator, but in the real thing."
As someone who has been a religious Boot Camp advocate since the day it became available, I'm not going to deny that there's great appeal in running Windows on a Mac. It's one of the reasons I continue to stick with Apple hardware, so that I can run both OSes in a sanctioned, supported way. But with Windows comes Windows headaches, and I don't wish those on casual users who are just looking to game.
Emulators feels like a very odd card to play as an argument for OS X. If you're going to be the sort of person who seeks out ROMs, you're probably also the sort of person who is willing to jailbreak a device. At which point, there are your emulators, waiting in Cydia for you to splurge. And there are emulators in the App Store - the C64, the ZX Spectrum, and soon the Amiga. Apple's requirements of having rights to the ROMs certainly makes their development slower (and much more unlikely for Nintendo platforms), but emulation has always been in that grey zone.
Also: what happened to Linux? Oh, right: there's no reason to game in Linux.
"In this day and age when it seems as though everything is done over the internet, the LAN capacity of a gaming device might make you wonder, but don't underestimate the power of being able to hook two or more computers together and rock out."
Starcraft 2. Command & Conquer 4. Bioshock 2. Modern Warfare 2. Diablo 3. Battlefield: Bad Company 2. AAA titles, all shipped or shipping without LAN support.
Next?
Corey's story here entangles a few points about iOS purchasing and the used game market.
First, he's gifting an iPhone 3GS to his daughter, but is unaware of any way to give her the titles he's already purchased:
"I had to tell her that she couldn't sync the phone to her own computer and then take the apps she likes from my phone and keep them."
But it would be rather trivial for him to activate his iTunes account on her machine, load in all his purchases that he'd like her to have, and then have her sync them to her new phone. Katie and I do this to excess - her purchases end up on my devices, and mine on hers. The limiting step here is iTunes activations - but iOS devices can sync purchases from however many devices you'd like, so long as they're all activated on the "home" computer.
Then, an attempt to compare to having a game on CD:
"I could hand over the CD for any game to anyone I like and that'd be perfectly legal, because I would no longer be able to play (either because I can't put the CD in the drive to play it or because the code is decommissioned)."
I'm not trying to be mean here, but how many games in the last five years haven't come with CD keys to be activated, network checks, or DRM schemes? You use a CD-key on a game that requires a network check and it's gone. Bye bye, reselling.
So realistically, for small households that want to share purchases, you CAN do it on the iOS (although in-app purchases are a right mess), but you're going to be out of luck with traditional retail games.
(The larger point here about reselling and trading rights in a world where game purchases are increasingly digital? Completely valid. But Steam suffers from it just as much as the App Store.)
"If you like certain games that the iPhone or iPad excel at, such as Tower Defense or quickie casual games akin to the kind you find on Kongregate.com, you can probably find something almost identical on the Mac."
The belief that there's some unidirectional mirroring of game titles is silly. As an exercise to the reader, please find me direct Mac equivalents of the following 10 iOS titles:
I am not going to pretend that iOS provides the $adverb $adjective gaming experience ever. It certainly favors short, quick experiences, which is not what you want if you need a long term gaming satisfaction. But it astonishes me how many gamers will treat iOS titles as inferior, as though every game must be a 40-hour epic to justify wearing the title of "game".
I didn't have a home console nor a computer that was capable of complex games until I was 12. So much of my initial gaming life was spent in arcades, pumping quarters into the likes of Double Dragon, Galaga, Punch Out, or Track & Field. I have a deep appreciation for games that are seductively simple, games that leave you wanting to try just once more round.
That's what I get from iOS gaming: not a replacement for desktop gaming or console gaming, but for the arcade.
]]>Apple has done a great job bringing some of the enterprise security features (complex passcodes, wipe on 10 failures, etc) to regular users as part of the upgrade. One of the new features in iOS 4 that has been underreported on is called "Data Protection". From my understanding, Data Protection is meant to correct some of the issues with the original hardware encryption method introduced last year on the 3GS and 3rd Gen iPod Touch. It also provides developers with better APIs for encrypting your data, so that if you're carrying around your financial data or health information, you can get an additional level of security. Additionally, there's no discernible performance hit.
Sounds great, right? There's a tiny catch: if you're upgrading from iOS 3, the filesystem needs to be rebuilt from scratch to enable this feature. So if you have an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch 3rd Gen, you need to do a backup-factory restore-data restore installation of iOS 4. To break this into discrete steps:
You can confirm this has been done by going to Preferences -> General -> Passcode Lock and scrolling to the very bottom, where you should see "Data Protection is enabled."
That's it. You will need to set a passcode to get the benefit of this (but you should have that anyhow); iPhone 4 users will automatically have this out of the box. You are certainly allowed to just do a regular upgrade, but you won't get data protection (and if you're in an enterprise, know that configuration profiles can check against this as a pre-requisite.) And for those on earlier hardware - sorry, you lack the hardware chip to do the encryption.
Developers who are interested in the technical details or in leveraging Data Protection should check out Session 209, "Securing Application Data", in the WWDC 10 videos.
Enjoy the upgrade.
]]>This is not how I had intended to spend my thirtieth birthday.
WWDC 2010 was announced to be the week of my birthday for the second time in my life, and as is tradition, I am heading to San Francisco to attend. The trip that encompassed my 25th was unforgettable, if for no other reason than the keynote where Apple dropped the Intel bomb. This is my fifth trip to WWDC, my seventh trip to San Francisco, my eighth time to California. It is both a blessing and a curse, a week full of seeing distant friends while simultaneously running myself into the ground. I am already looking forward to next weekend.
Last night, my mother decided to scan the first photo ever taken of me, being held by my father and screaming shortly after my birth. This morning, I asked Katie to take a new portrait of me. (I tend to reuse the same picture of myself everywhere online for years at a time, and the old one was getting long in the tooth.)
So this is what thirty years looks like:
To all my friends, know that you are all always in my heart even if circumstance keeps us apart. I could not imagine for a greater group of friends. I love you all.
To my family, who have always supported me unconditionally, know that I could have never become who I am without you. I love you all.
To my wife, who has stuck with me through every twist and turn I've thrown at her, know that you are my everything. I can't wait to be home with you, and I'm already counting down the hours. I love you.
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Take some time out of your day and read this incredible thread from Ask Metafilter that saved two Russian girls from sex trafficking.
]]>LCD Soundsystem (w/ Holy Ghost)
May 20th, 8PM
Concert
Terminal 5
Fresh off releasing their third album, This Is Happening, James/Pat/Nancy are coming back home for a four day stint of "standing in front of people doing things loudly" at Terminal 5. This will be my first show at Terminal 5, and I have not heard one positive word said about the venue. It will be difficult for this to compare to the Music Hall of Williamsburg show a few months back, but it should do. LCD Soundsystem is fantastic live, and you should make every effort to see them if they're in your town.
LCD Soundsystem Afterparty
May 21st, 11PM-?
DJ Set Afterparty Thing
Highline Ballroom
Just announced by James yesterday, apparently there is some all-hours-of-the-night thing going on Saturday night where most everyone from LCDSS will be doing DJ sets. $5 tickets meant instabuy.
Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon
May 27th, 7:30 PM
Panel Discussion
Paley Center for Media
While I am not a frequent watcher of Fallon's show, he seems to have found his footing relatively well and is churning out bits that are worth watching. Added bonus: the panel moderator will be Brian Williams.
The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour
June 1st, 8PM
Variety
Radio City Music Hall
Conan O'Brien returns to NYC, on the same block as NBC. We will be laughing, because crying would be sad.
An Evening With Ted Danson
June 3rd, 6:30 PM
Panel Discussion/Dinner
Paley Center for Media
When we attended the Bored To Death panel late last year, we were blown away by Ted Danson's sense of humor and general perspective on television. The Paley Center is doing a special event just for him, so we felt like it was unmissable. We are also redeeming our membership benefit to attend the PALEY AFTER DARK dinner afterwards. I believe this means I'm having dinner with Ted Danson. This still hasn't sunk into my brain yet.
Big Apple BBQ Block Party
June 12th & 13th
Food
Madison Square Park
It's an annual tradition - and that reminds me, I need to buy my fastpass.
Hot Chip / Hercules & Love Affair / Holy Ghost!
August 4th, 5:30 PM
Concert
Central Park Summerstage
Three DFA artists, two of which I love, one fantastic outdoor venue. Hot Chip's new album is wonderful; I saw Andy Butler from H&LA spin last year but it will be refreshing to see the whole band. Summerstage concerts are some of my favorite concerts of the year - there's something very relaxing about seeing a band in Central Park.
Electric Zoo
September 4th & 5th
Music Festival
Randall's Island
My beloved All Points West is seemingly canceled this year. In its stead, we are doubling down on the second edition of Electric Zoo, the electronic-focus music festival which was a fantastic spur-of-the-moment decision for us last year. Performers I care about include Major Lazer, Benny Benassi, John Digweed, Boyz Noise, Diplo, and Flying Lotus. You might also care about The Chemical Brothers, Paul Van Dyk, Richie Hawtin, or Armin Van Buuren. A few more remain to be announced, so the lineup might get even better.
The Pee-wee Herman Show
October-November?
Theatre
Stephen Sondheim Theater
Just announced as coming to NYC. There's no way I'm missing this.
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Given the realities of the Mac gaming market, our Mac customers were always going to be mad at us. They were always going to be second-class customers where we couldn't invest to the same degree in the Mac version as we did elsewhere. I don't want to be in that business. I would much rather we just eat the money we've spent so far than take money from Mac customers and short-change them.
Valve, May 12th, 2010:
Whether you're a Mac or a PC, Steam has the games you want to play and a global community of gamers to play with.
What a difference a decade can make.
For those of you taking the plunge tomorrow for the first time, I am more than happy to take questions and help you make heads or tails of a fantastic (yet sometimes intimidating) gaming platform. Just visit my Steam Community and add me as a friend after you get it installed. (I would do a longer post, but there's still a lot about the launch that we won't know until tomorrow.)
Hope to see you there.
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The truth is, I don't actually watch a lot of TV. I can't remember a time that I did, at least not after college started. The list of shows that pull my full attention can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.
But one of those shows is Doctor Who.
How I fell into Doctor Who was predictably random: while reading up on long-running British gameshow Countdown, I noticed a callout back to Doctor Who, read up on it, and jumped over to Amazon to grab "Season 1" - the reboot in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor. It was downhill from there, as Katie and I shotgunned our way through the first two seasons and then promptly fell into step with the third season as it aired in England.
As the gag goes, you never forget your first Doctor. And even without much context from the previous series, I loved Eccleston in the role, so much so that I was a bit crushed when he regenerated at the end of that first series. But I grew to love David Tennant all the same over his tenure, even while slogging through some really awful episodes.
Word that David was leaving the show made the news about a solid year before he left, and a young fellow named Matt Smith was shortly announced as the 11th Doctor. My immediate reaction: mixed. The Doctor would be portrayed by someone younger than I am, someone without a lot of notable acting experience - a little peculiar. On the other hand, former show-runner Russell T. Davies, (who I had grown to dislike a bit) was on the way out and Steven Moffat (who penned most of my favorite episodes) was on the way in. I felt very wibbly-wobbly about the transition plan.
Katie, who was a huge Eccleston fan, and had rallied against Tennant for all of five minutes ("he had me at 'Barcelona'"), was adamantly opposed. And so we went through the "season of specials" with a heavy heart, because we knew the end was coming soon. (Outside of the brilliant "The Waters Of Mars", most of the specials were terrible. This didn't help things.)
While the new season has started on BBC One, BBC America will only begin airing the series in the US this Friday. This is far better than their usual track record, which is typically a year behind. Even more shocking: they've been advertising! On the side of MTA buses!
And then it turned out they were doing a press tour, in NYC, and one of the stops was going to be right in my pocket: the Paley Center, home of many past events you may have heard me blather about.
So last night, with a full house, we sat down and watched the premier episode of the new season of Doctor Who. Now, I had already seen it, and I gather that most of the fans in the audience did too. In fact, a woman sitting near me indicated she had already watched it 12 times. But there was something extra special about watching it with that group - during a sequence right near the end (you'll know which one if you've seen it), the cheer from the crowd was tremendous.
Onto the important part, the panel: Steven Moffat (executive producer/writer/showrunner), Matt Smith (The Doctor), and Karen Gillan (new companion Amy Pond) in conversation with Clark Collis from Entertainment Weekly. Just about half an hour long, mostly audience Q&A. And I have some mental notes! (The lightest of spoilers ahead.)
After the panel ended, a reception was held, and by some miracle the cast stuck around. And after gathering autographs on the cover of the most recent Doctor Who Magazine, we nabbed a picture:
So, yeah: met the team who's carrying the torch of the longest running sci-fi show in history. A pretty decent Monday night.
Doctor Who premieres on BBC America this Saturday (4/17) at 9PM EDT.
(One last thing: a huge heartfelt thanks to everyone - especially Bob Eng - at the Paley Center for putting together such a brilliant event. The Paley Center is a wonderful resource, and I cannot recommend becoming a member enough and helping an institution that's striving so hard to try and preserve modern media and culture. Museums have been hit extra hard during the economic downturn - philanthropy is way down across the board - so consider backing what I firmly believe is a very necessary cornerstone.)
]]>Yesterday, we were at MoCCA Festival 2010. After ducking into the last panel of the day, I found Katie sitting in the hallway with a few more bags. She showed me that she had picked up Volumes 1 and 2 of Cat and Girl, both signed by Dorothy Gambrell.
I suddenly panicked: I hadn't seen a Cat and Girl comic in some large length of time, to the point where I had completely forgotten it even existed. After checking my feed reader this morning, I confirmed that it had been a year and a half. How could something I loved just drift out of my field of view, without me noticing?
But wait: this happens all the time. We forget about what used to be our favorite bands when they get filtered off our playlists or don't come up on shuffle. We lose track of the friends we used to stay up late talking to because they're not on our social network of choice. We stop enjoying the works of great writers or artists because they change websites, or their feeds break, or our bookmarks get corrupt.
I'm not complaining, and this certainly isn't a screed about being dependent on technology. But it's curious how the frequency that something is in my field of view correlates to my interest in it.
]]>After three years of touring, DJ gigs, and holing up in a Laurel Canyon mansion, LCD Soundsystem's third (possibly final) LP, This Is Happening, is coming out on May 17th. One could say I am "hyped", but this would be understating my excitement.
They are also playing two shows at Terminal 5 the same week.
Attention web server admins: please remember to accommodate those who don't automatically type "www" in front of everything.
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Photo by Rob J. Brooks, reused under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
My blog is ten years old today. (Today also roughly marks me having been online for half my life.) I have a lot of navelgazing to do in the body of this post, but to sum it up - if you're reading this, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
]]> Here, then, is the somewhat embarrassing story how this all got started:When you enroll in Cornell's Engineering school, you should be prepared for three semesters of general education before you "affiliate" with a major. Affiliation is a typically minor hurdle in the grand scheme of things - the pain of college admissions should still be fresh in your mind. Not all majors are created equal, of course, and many majors may have pre-requisites and requirements for successful affiliation with the major. (Those first three semesters can't be a complete waste.) Cornell's Computer Science program has a storied history of shifting requirements from year to year at whiplash-capable speeds. Among the many stipulations when I was enrolled was a multi-phrase conditional about math grades, to the effect of "Overall math average must be a B- or better; no more than one math course score can be below a B-."
I had placed out of the initial course in the Calculus series, so I began the second course immediately, expecting to breeze through as I had in AP Calc. No such luck; a term later and I would have a C+ on my record. I was mortified - math was supposed to be my strong subject - and tried to redouble my efforts for the next term.
Again, failure - another C+ appeared, and I became worried. I scheduled a meeting with various advisors and deans to explore my options, and was assured that if I was able to bring my overall math average up in the last term before affiliation, things should be okay. With perseverance and a bit of luck, I squeaked out a B in the last term. The GPA math put me right on the line: a 2.55, closer to a B- than a C+. I crossed my fingers and put in the affiliation application.
Winter break came, and while sitting at my desk on campus at work that January, an email came in trumpeting my rejection from the major. It wasn't a shock, but I was just now hitting the question I had ignored before: what now? I considered a wide array of options: a general major, changing colleges within Cornell, transferring out to another university. While I mulled, I scheduled a meeting with the Director of Undergraduate Programs for the CS school.
Three days later, I found myself in his office, and after some trivialities, I was told that since I had three C+'s in my Math courses, it was pretty open and shut that I would not be able to affiliate. Sharp eyed readers may have noticed that my grade from the last term was not a C+, but instead a B.
After correcting him, I watched in silent horror as a pencil was picked up, something was erased on a piece of paper, and something resembling a "B" was written into its place. As he turned to his computer and typed some things into Excel, the following crossed through my head:
This Computer Science school, the one I have been aspiring to go to for the last five years, is tracking my grades on paper. I was rejected affiliation to a computer-focus major because of a clerical error on paper. Computer Science. Paper. COMPUTER. PAPER.
He turned around and offered me a conditional acceptance to the major. I accepted and left, speechless.
(In writing this up, I am amused to see that the current affiliation rules are such that this situation never would have happened.)
In a way, that was the day that everything changed. The old argument about how the next phase of your life is always going to be tougher fell apart before my eyes. I became more critical of my core education, realizing that CS was largely theoretical and designed to prepare you for graduate school. I strayed as much as I could within the confines of my major, trying to take things that could be applied in general in the outside world.
In a desperate stab to come out of college with at least one functional programming language under my belt, I purchased some web hosting that would give me capabilities beyond the basics provided by the school. I jumped in gently with some PHP tutorials and some very basic MySQL, and began writing a very basic content management system.
Ten years ago today, this blog first appeared, and this was my "Hello World":
Alright, I've got my news script working, so I'm officially making this an open page, just like I did last time. As you can tell, I'm hosting this bad boy on CSoft, a nifty little host that was suggested to me by my roommate. They've been great, and if you're at all interested in an account, give me a couple days to get up referrer links so I can maybe pay for this service via this web page. Now that I'm here, I have PHP and MySQL, so I can dynamically do everything. This is good, because now I'll be able to post news much quicker and easier. Huzzah. My next task is to move the quotefile to the database, although I may shift some more of my old content over first, and PHP-ize it all. Stay tuned.
This wasn't my first web presence by any measure - my first site went up in the fall of 1995. But it was the first time my web site was constructed with date-ordered posting, and even if I didn't know to refer to it as a "blog" at that time, there it was.
I would switch from the home-grown system (which at one point was dubbed "RemyNews") to Drupal in 2002, and then to Movable Type a year later, where I have stuck since. Most of the features that were not part of the blogging core - the quotefile, the movie reviews, a curated directory called "RemyHoo", the blogroll - are all long since dead. Traces of them can be found scattered in the archives.
Reading back through the archives is a mixed bag. My tone and focus changed on a yearly basis, and a lot of the first three years was amateur at best. I'm embarassed to have found the words "I know you love me" in the archives on more than one occasion. It was intensely self-focused in the beginning - I was trying to use the site as a way to replace email to my friends and family about what I was doing. The concept of writing for the world in general wouldn't sprout until a few years after I left college, and realized that there was some joy to be had contributing more broadly than just "here is my schedule for the next week".
As hard as it's been to read back through it, the effect this site has had on me is clear: my writing has improved tremendously. I've actually been asked professionally how I'm able to write and present information so effectively, and I've pointed to blogging as a place where I developed those skills.
(Sure, a sprawling piece like this may not be the place to make points about being concise or effective. But the editing process, finding a tone, and piecing together convincing arguments? I assure you, having done this over 1,500 times has made it second nature.)
To this day, I still haven't entirely squared with a single focus or topic, which I've been lead to believe is a cardinal sin in having a "successful blog". After ten years, I'm extremely comfortable with that. This has never intended to be more than an outlet for me to put pen to paper. I was never looking for "success" or traffic.
Occasionally traffic did start flooding my way, but rarely for the reasons I would expect. In the time since I started capturing statistics, the ten most popular posts (by pageviews) have been:
Were you to ask me which posts I was most proud of, only one of those (the Quicksilver tutorial) would be on the list. But I'm equally proud of Last Trip To Astroland, Insert Pac-Man Music Here, The Market of Boston, Xbox Support: The Text Adventure, Sing When You're Winning, and perhaps even Closer To Business Time.
What people generally want to read - count how many "top #" lists are on the front page of Delicious at any given time - is not what I enjoy writing. Writing tutorials and top ten lists is easy, and once you've done one or two, you can write the rest on autopilot. I would rather write about my life experiences and the things that personally excite me than troll for traffic with another tutorial.
At the end of the day, I don't know who to consider as part of my audience. Are the friends that I have aware that I have a blog, and do they read it regularly? Do the people I went to high school with who may be seeing this as a Facebook note realize there's 10 years of nonsense accumulated somewhere else? Are there friends out there that I've lost track of, still checking in on me occasionally? Will people who follow me on Twitter read posts without me hand-linking them?
Regardless of what your relationship is to me: if this reaches you on any site or any capacity, and you're reading it - thank you, thank you, thank you. I am deeply appreciative of anyone who takes the time to read what I have to write. I hope you'll continue to stop by when the mood strikes.
]]>Very much looking forward to Shawn Inman's Mimeoand the Kleptopus King. "Holiday 2010" better come soon.
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