Megen and I drove to work together this morning. Our street needs to be plowed. The main roads appear to be ok. Walking Blondie yesterday through our neighborhood, we saw plenty of snow, fallen branches and snow drifts as tall as Megen. It was beautiful.
Google's Super Bowl ad
My favorite ad of the night. Also, glad the Saints won!
I like the doritos slap one, too.
Toyota.
This is one of funniest segments I've ever seen on Daily Show.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Toyotathon of Death | ||||
| ||||
Lost and 24
We watched the first episodes of final season last night. It was pretty good. If this turns into a Fringe/Star Trek parallel universe thing, that will make me sad.
I have a few episodes of the latest season of 24 also waiting on the tivo. I just can't bring myself to start watching it. I only watched the first 4-5 episodes from last year before losing interest.
'MacGyver' creator wants to stop 'MacGruber' film
'MacGyver' creator wants to stop 'MacGruber' film -- pretty funny.
Fallout New Vegas tease
From Bethblog twitter:
Keep your eyes peeled for new stuff on #FalloutNewVegas tomorrow!
Future of publishing
Steven Pearlstein's column on Amazon-Macmillan describes what I hope will happen.
While markets have their flaws, over the long run they are good at executing these technological transformations. My guess is that in the not-so-distant future, best-selling authors such as John Grisham and Malcolm Gladwell -- along with unknown authors peddling their first books -- will publish their own works, contracting with independent editors and marketers and selling directly to consumers as much as possible. Other authors will turn to smaller, more specialized publishing houses that will offer smaller advances but bigger royalties and will be built, as they once were, around great editors. Publishers will sell their books through competing online distributors and traditional hard-copy bookstores, the latter of which will continue to exist not only as places to browse and socialize, but also as places to have printed on demand. Backlists will be infinite, pricing will be dynamic, and more copies of more books will be read and sold.
Sword and Poker
It's like Puzzle Quest, except you create poker hands rather than move jewels around. And it is awesome. Sword and Poker is addictive. Even if you aren't a fan of poker. For just 99 cents. Worth checking out.
Hard cover books are going to be more expensive now. Sigh.
The whole Amazon vs Macmillan disbute is interesting. Sorry Macmillan but I like cheap books. I support Amazon's policy of $10 books. Amazon is even taking a LOSS on those $10 books, since it "buys" them from publishers for $15 or whatever the cost is. Publishers seriously need to reconsider why they feel they need to charge $15+ for an ebook, which has literally no cost of goods associated with it at all. EVen the bandwidth to host them is miniscule.
Yet, just pulling all of Macmillan's books like that, including Tor (sci fi). That's just not cool.
John Scalzi writes about the authors who are stuck in the middle of this fight. I totally get his anger at Amazon for cutting off income to writers like that. It does highlight, for me, just how dependent authors are on publishers, and I don't really see that as such a good thing, especially in the age of the intrawebs.
I'm a firm believer in digital distribution and I wish authors had a way to tap into that, to bypass publishers completely. Why can't authors distribute their work directly via ebooks, and let publishers handle their hardcopies? Perhaps convenience is one reason, that publishers are able to do the ebook conversion work and authors don't want to deal with that. I also suspect publishers include the ebook rights into contracts so they don't lose out on that income.
But digital distribution would let authors keep more money. There are indie authors out there who purely distribute digital on their own, I think that's pretty cool. And the Amazon rating system lets buyers look for the ones with high rated and good reviews.
Seriously, though. I'm not buying ebooks for $15 or more. Not when I can go to costco and buy the hard cover for that same or less. Ebooks should be cheaper than the hard copy and the market demands this.
This is what will happen: hard covers go up in price to make $15 ebooks seem cheaper.This would make me very sad, but it is definitely one option publishers will have. Ironically, Amazon comes out better from this, too. They'll make more money per Macmillan's demands.
Instead, I'd like to see popular authors going direct. Bypass the publisher and do their own ebook rights, publish the ebook on their own or via print on demand services. Then authors can charge whatever they want, and keep more of the money. They can publicize the book via blogs, etc... don't need a publisher for that, and they'll be able to sell their books worldwide. I believe Amazon lets authors keep 70% of the cut.
Lost
It's the team, stupid
Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror (one of my favorite blogs) had a fantastic post where he links to an interesting talk by Ed Catmull, president of Pixar. I think most creative teams out there strive to match Pixar's storytelling power.
Jeff points out a great quote from Ed's talk.
If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it. Or they'll throw it away and come up with something else.
In my experience, ideas distract. Execution is where the magic happens. And if you have the right people working on your project, the chances of success are good. In concept, most video games are pretty much the same thing. Shooters, for instance. You have a gun in your hand, you shoot stuff. Shooting stuff with guns in Call of Duty, however, is more fun than most shooters. Those guys have been iterating on shooting stuff with guns for several years across many games, they continue to get better and better, and I wager the next one will continue to make shooting stuff with guns fun.
Anyway, Ed's talk is great, worth watching.
Pandora on iPhone
This is old news to the intrawebs, but lately I've been really tired of the music my music. On a whim, I put Pandora on my iPhone to try out. Holy Crap! The sound quality is great (even just over yucky edge) and the ability to customize music by song, artist or genre is fantastic. Great interface. I'm totally digging this.
I really never got into the internet music streaming -- Yahoo Radio was about the only one I ever used. Ping.FM on Xbox 360 is pretty impressive the few times I've seen it in action. Is the Ping.FM iPhone app better? Should I be using Ping.FM or Pandora? Any others I'm missing?
Coulton cover of Baby Got Back
This song came up on Pandora and I did a spit take when I realized it was a coffee house indie version of Baby Got Back. Awesome.
Irrational Games website
I'm jealous. Irrational Games' new website is slick, informative and fun to read. The podcast is great. Plus the forums have fraking achievements! I loved Bioshock, and I happen to be a Freedom Force fanboy. Kudos to Irrational. Can't wait to see the next game.
Body of Lies
I love Ridley Scott movies. Black Hawk Down. Blade Runner. Gladiator. Hell, I even enjoyed 1492. Body of Lies is an odd movie - full of action and cryptic conversations and beautiful shots of the middle east. I enjoyed it. Body of Lies is a movie you need to pay attention to, otherwise you'll miss important plot points. Russell Crowe is awesome in it; I liked his scenes better. The high tech CIA stuff was cool. I feel like I should read the book to get more backstory and details. I've never read any of David Ignatious' books but have heard good things.
Still on the play list -- we've got Milk, Away We Go, and Inglorious Bastards. I'm really looking forward to watching Bastards.
Got a big weekend lined up...
We're having dinner Sat nite at Old Angler Inn. First time, and read lots of good things, for Restaurant Week menu. Blondie's cousin, Max, is coming over tomorrow for a doggie play date. Nothing finer than watching dogs play. My spring semester class starts so I've got lots of reading and homework for the weekend, as well. And, of course, more Mass Effect 2. I restarted my character, decided I wanted to go back to Infiltrator (stealth w/sniper), which is what I played in first game. My wife needs a weekend break, too. She's been working long hours lately.
And now, the obligatory Hitler rants about Ipad video. Its not as good as the other Hitler rant videos but it has a few good lines in there. One of these days, I need to figure out what this movie actually is and watch it.
Ipad, my obligatory 2-cents
I'm very interested in the inside, the custom designed A4 chip. Most reports proclaim the iPad is really fast. My hope is that future iterations of Apple's A4 chip make it into the iPhone.
Other than that, the iPad is more iteration than evolution. Very much an oversized iPod Touch. No stylus, no multi-tasking, no camera. I think iBook has potential to be a killer app. However, Kindle is such a good e-reader and Amazon offers the best pricing on books. (I am biased since I adore my Kindle). I hope the iPad makes its way into schools. I can see it as a tremendous tool for learning.
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