snagger.org http://blakeellison.posterous.com Most recent posts at snagger.org posterous.com Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:22:00 -0700 Announcing BlakeyTV http://blakeellison.posterous.com/announcing-blakeytv http://blakeellison.posterous.com/announcing-blakeytv

Blakeytv

I meant to do this a while ago:

I wanted to build my own web app as a learning exercise, and it's certainly been that. I also wanted to build something that I'd really find useful. 

That became the beginning of BlakeyTV, a not-very-creatively-named video player that will let me keep up with everything I want to watch on YouTube. I just enter a list of YouTube user names that I want to follow (similar to your YouTube subscriber list, just manually entered), and every 24 hours that person's newest videos are added to the front of a never-ending queue of videos that will play back-to-back with no ads.

Here's a list of people currently in the rotation:
Theshadowloo (Street Fighter IV)
bigirpall (Battlefield 3 trolling)
XboxAhoy (In-depth Call of Duty analysis)
Bungie (Makers of Halo)
Mega64 (Gaming comedy)
Day9 (Pro StarCraft II)
TeamSpooky (Street Fighter IV, MVC3, Tekken X Street Fighter)
Freddie Wong (Mostly gaming-related comedy)

It brings to YouTube what it's missing as it tries to get taken seriously as a media delivery service: a completely passive option that requires no user action.

For all of you, people who are not me, I hope there are two possibilities:

1) With time and suggestions, it becomes a generally well-curated site with consistently good videos that lots of people like
2) I keep working on it and create the ability for people to create their own channels

I think those two aren't mutually exclusive. If you're a programmer who can handle Python, Django and Heroku, please let me know! I'd love a little advice in building up the backbone necessary for new features.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:57:45 -0700 Tablet Friendly http://blakeellison.posterous.com/tablet-friendly http://blakeellison.posterous.com/tablet-friendly
The iPad chipped away at me and now I want one. That's how I've felt about it since it was introduced. The value prop just got gradually better, little by little, and I would necessarily go past some tipping point. Here we are thanks to the new hardware and software.

I think the initial proposal was that Apple would sell you everything you wanted: books, magazines, newspapers, TV shows, and maybe the occasional Angry Bird. But it looks like what emerged instead is a fractured ecosystem in which content makers privatized and decentralized whatever it is they offer. The downside is that I have to have separate apps to read, watch, or otherwise consume the stuff I want to. The New York Times and The Economist, two of my regulars, live in separate apps. But on the plus side, apps for Netflix and Hulu hold a lot of video. I can get live Japanese TV from NHK World. And with a web browser and an RSS reader I can follow all my usual websites. And once I can get a decent TV, for $100 I can start beaming all my stuff everywhere thanks to AirPlay. And best of all, I can do all of those things all over the world. 

What's more, iPhoto for iPad is a big deal. It's a fully-featured desktop app with a wholly replaced interface. It's the Minority Report interface we've dreamed about. We're now really getting stuff done with gestures and touch. It's Direct Manipulation taken to its logical extreme. I think it's a sign of very good things to come. 

One thing I love is the Photo Journals feature, where your photos fill up the page along with contextual maps, calendars, and blocks of text:

Journals
Why am I not publishing a website that looks more like that? Why aren't there images strewn about in every which direction? Why aren't there big quote boxes setting off my best lines? Some high-readership websites are beginning to take their cues from print magazine layouts, but why isn't that in my blog software? I think Apple has quietly pushed the envelope here for web design. 

I'm so swept up in the mood that I've changed this blog's design yet again, this time to something a little better suited to tablet reading. Images will be prominent, when they're there, and text columns are much wider for much less wasted space. Colors are very e-reader-ish, too. 

I think everyone will eventually hit the tablet tipping point, if they haven't already. This is just the time where I'm convinced I need one. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:15:00 -0800 Nintendo + Apple http://blakeellison.posterous.com/nintendo-apple http://blakeellison.posterous.com/nintendo-apple

The connection - or rather, similarity - between Nintendo and Apple is incredible.

Here are a few choice quotes from Osamu Inoue's Nintendo Magic, one of the better Nintendo books from the last few years:

"I think they have a lot in common with us in that we both make unique, interesting products that surprise people. I really respect and think highly of Nintendo. I myself own a Gamecube and a Wii." -Phil Schiller, 2008

Apple takes pride in its software development, bringing new experiences to its customers on the twin pillars of hardware and software. On that count, it's certainly not unlike Nintendo. [Nintendo president Satoru] Iwata himself agrees: "We want people to be surprised, and we want people to call our approach unique. That's what people say about Apple, too.

It's cherry-picking the numbers, but if you stack up quarterly sales numbers from 2005 through 2008 the lines are identical. Apple's are higher by a steady margin of about $3 billion, but the lines are identical in shape:

Photo_on_1-16-12_at_11
That's Apple on top, in black, and Nintendo below in grey, and me creepily peering around from behind the book

The quotes are endless about how either company wants to surprise people, or focuses on R&D heavily, or holds employees accountable, or how execs use each other's products, or has been to the brink of death and back, or has millions of people waiting with baited breath before product announcements.

My personal favorite common factor about the two companies is how both reach into their back catalogues of experiences and bring them back in unexpected ways. Roughly 48% of all media coverage of the iPad has referenced the Newton (a prototype PDA from 1993, pretty far ahead of its time). Other recurring themes include the Macintosh and iMac unveils, but you'd have to find a dedicated Apple fan to get you more examples than that. 

I can give you some Nintendo ones, though. The 3DS is, in a sense, a refinement of the Virtual Boy that came about once the technology improved. Nintendo has some product failures, such as Virtual Boy, just like Apple had the entire 1990s and the Motorola ROKR. Products aside, Nintendo brings back some small details in very subtle ways. Check out this little tune, which was bundled with a DSiWare animation app called Flipnote Studio:

Seems innocent enough, until you find that someone snuck a very similar tune into a secret level of Super Mario 3D Land:

And it turns out that these little tricksters have a long history of doing this stuff. If you owned a GameCube, you may not have ever known that the calming ambient system menu music is actually borrowed from a Famicom (NES) accessory that never made it to the US:

Speaking of hardware that never left Japan, learning about Satellaview blew my mind. It was a SNES addon with a satellite modem that let players download small segments of Nintendo games and even play along with live broadcast audio tracks, creating a sort of Legend of Zelda-meets-radio drama kind of feel. 

But the "download small segments of Nintendo games" is the big thing here. New bits of content for games like Link to the Past, F-Zero and Dr. Mario were created exclusively for the service. So, in effect, Nintendo was pushing the boundaries of what we now know as downloadable content and episodic gaming. In 1995. Here's a commercial, and even though it's in Japanese, you can get a basic idea of what's going on:

So in one corner you have Apple, which tried to take the computer mobile nearly 20 years ago with Newton and failed because the technology wasn't ready. And in the other you have Nintendo, which tried to reinvent gaming by way of connectivity over 15 years ago and failed because the technology wasn't ready (at least on the small scale of Japan, which didn't have terrestrial Internet in 1995). The ideas were always there, but the means weren't.

After being an Apple user for some five years, and having read Steve's bio, I'm finally coming around to understanding why someone would be an Apple fan, someone who follows the company out of something more than attachment to the products themselves, someone who sticks by in thick and thin.

I'm understanding it because I'm the same way with Nintendo, a very similar company.

Postscript
In all fairness, Nintendo didn't invent the gaming modem. The Sega Channel beat Nintendo to the punch in 1994, but the precedent for failed gaming modems goes back way further than I ever thought. 

In fact, attempts at connected gaming go all the way back to the Atari 2600. If Wikipedia is to be believed, that failed attempt became the eventual core technology of AOL.

If Nintendo had to be 'first' at something in the field, it was the use of a broadcast satellite, although even the Golden Age-era consoles used cable TV to achieve much the same effect.

(On an aside from my aside, Ed Rotberg, the creator of Battlezone, even told me that gameplay analytics were thought of at Golden Age-era Atari but the machines needed modems to phone home. Does the gaming industry have any ideas that weren't originally thought up in the 1970s?)

And while I'm doing the errors-and-corrections segment, I may as well admit that the 48% statistic about Newton is totally made up.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:29:00 -0700 Unexplored territory [warning: OMG sooooo nerdy] http://blakeellison.posterous.com/unexplored-territory-warning-omg-sooooo-nerdy http://blakeellison.posterous.com/unexplored-territory-warning-omg-sooooo-nerdy
In ancient times, I probably wouldn't have been an explorer. The world was too big.

But now, the world is small. So what few places aren't well-charted, or known, or inhabited, always leave me curious.

In the real world, this is true of small Pacific islands used by Americans in the mid-20th century. There are places that were of serious importance for things ranging from guano mining to logistics in fighting against the Japanese to nuclear bomb testing. And since those uses they've been largely abandoned. 

For many of them, the US Fish & Wildlife Service stops in "every year or two" to check up. Aside from that, it's wild birds and wild cats that were brought along on ships. Maybe the occasional airstrip for emergency landings.

I mean, we could go to these places. It's possible. We just don't, because they're not important anymore. Who knows what they'll be needed for again in the distant future.

Meanwhile, think of the people who still do go. They're either military personnel there to clean up an airfield, or Fish & Wildlife staff to record a statistic or two. Are these jobs totally cushy positions because they're quiet and situated on the world's most private beaches? Or are they hideous for being so disconnected from modern society? 

I get the same vibe from the Internet.

No, really.

The absolute center core of the net is a more fascinating way to explore history than any museum could be. Just take the endings of web addresses you know and love: .com, .net, .org, .edu and so on. Then add in the countries: .uk, .jp, .kr, etc. And the miscellaneous stuff like .biz, .info, and even .museum. (All of these endings are called domains, so keep that in mind if I drop that word later on). But there's more than that. 

For a while there, you could just enter in http://to/ and that was a valid address. (That's really .to, the two-letter code for Tonga, but since there's no words before it you don't even need the dot). But there's also .arpa used in the root networks - the guys who tie the backbones of the backbones together. That's because ARPA, the US military's research agency, funded the inventing of the Internet. And their basic stuff, which was supposed to be replaced, is now keeping the entire world connected. 

Then there's a whole shadow Internet outside that system. Anonymizer software, frequently used in countries with repressive regimes, uses domains like .onion and .freenet. These things are "on the Internet" in the sense that you access them over a network with your computer, but they're also "not on the Internet" because it's not within this one big unified network. 

But it's not limited to just democracy advocates trying to fly under the radar. Allegedly, NSA internal email uses .nsa and Hotmail's internal workings are inside .gbl, so that they can't be reached easily by random Joes on the Internet. As far as your computer is concerned, it's never heard of .nsa or .gbl.

The Internet wasn't always so centralized for ordinary users, and technically still isn't. Leaving the domain stuff behind for a second, dial-up services in the 90s like AOL and CompuServe often listed what features their service came with. A lot of it involved special content or unique chat rooms, but it was also access to certain parts of what was coming together as The Internet. So they listed 'WWW Access' as just one feature alongside other stuff like Usenet and Gopher. Nowadays, things are much simpler: your ISP sells you Web access and off you go, because the Web ended up replicating the functions of Usenet (forums), Gopher (uh, just browsing), Finger (blogs) and so on. [Yes, techies, I'm glossing over the differences between domains and protocols. Apples and oranges. If you know, that's great, but I'm not burdening readers who've made it this far with that.]

But those things didn't die forever. You can still use Usenet and Gopher. Usenet fell into the hands of warez jockeys, so ISPs dropped it and you have to go pay someone a subscription for access. Gopher is around, and free, and usable right now with a Firefox plugin or alternative browsers like Camino. Wikipedia suggests that there are 150 Gopher servers hanging around. That's a tiny amount. On that alone I gather it's a little old club for old guys who enjoyed "the good old days" on Gopher sites and occasionally want to stroll down memory lane. 

But in a sense, playing with these things is like diving backwards in time. Gopher, or Darknet (which is a spinoff of the .onion thing mentioned above), lets you see what the Web looked like in the 90s. For me it's a whirlwind back to childhood. It's the only history museum that's ever been interesting, and it's because you can actually relive some experiences, however trivial, instead of looking at an object in a glass case and making your imagination do all the work. So it is as the root of the Internet, too. We take for granted that the entire thing is held together by some links that ARPA strung together in the 70s and 80s. 

What we have now will eventually be Memory Lane too. The ARPA stuff is staying in place, even with a big conversion we'll all have to make to IPv6, but the whole domain thing is about to get real freaky. They added support for foreign languages. So right now, if you're Japanese and you want to read about Nintendo, you to go www.nintendo.co.jp - those are English letters, which many Japanese aren't so good with. (That's probably why they picked up QR codes so fast, but that's a different story.) In the future, it'll look more like: http://例え.テスト. By the way, you actually can click that. Look at what it does to your URL bar!

This stuff blows my mind. IT'S SO COOL! 

Ahem. Sorry. Nerd freakout.

It all makes me wish I could see that root. Maybe it's like getting out of the Matrix and meeting the Architect. Granted, it's probably just a data center somewhere, but it's only in Hollywood that the inside of the clockworks looks interesting. The core of the Internet is put together by an offshoot of IEEE, which is a big academic body for engineering. 

So basically, whether you're on the world's most remote island, or at the center of mankind's greatest invention, you're really looking at a handful of academic types hanging around, being all academic-y.

There's an awesome book in that parallel somewhere.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:24:00 -0700 Shut up Internet, the iPhone 4 is good http://blakeellison.posterous.com/shut-up-internet-the-iphone-4-is-good http://blakeellison.posterous.com/shut-up-internet-the-iphone-4-is-good

In my experience, the iPhone 4 is pretty great. Relative to my 3G, which was on the verge of collapse after two years of software updates, undone jailbreaks and loads of intensive apps, it's way more stable. Not being on AT&T's California network is a refreshing reminder of what cell phone service can actually be like. Everything is way faster, which makes me appreciate how fast the network can actually be when things like Facebook updates load instantly. (Who knew that was a hardware limitation?) TomTom loads and operates quickly and navigates more accurately.

Games are great with the new processor and screen. Between Nike+ and another new Nike app, I'm back to working out with my music. The new glass is more precise and less smudgy. And I haven't taken advantage of the improved camera much yet, but I'm excited for the first time I'll snap a quick picture and think "I'm glad that got updated!"

It's smaller than my old model. And fighting with my car to get it playing music has made me discover that Bluetooth audio works flawlessly, even when I put navigation on top of the audio. It's amazingly cool getting voice navigation and music over my car stereo with the phone in my pocket.

The antenna thing is, in many ways, its Achilles heel. But in the Age of Internet Criticism, people tend to forget that except for that spot, Achilles was an all-around badass.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:56:59 -0800 Research! http://blakeellison.posterous.com/research-314 http://blakeellison.posterous.com/research-314 I landed a pretty sweet gig on campus. My program has an office called the Global Information Industry Center, which does research on IT stuff for a lot of companies including corporate sponsors like IBM and Cisco. 

I joined that team this week, and I made myself useful already by proofreading a final report that's going out to press in the next couple of weeks. Once it's out, I'll link the finished product. It's basically a census of all the "information" that's floating around out there, whether digitally or in print or on TV.

From here on, I'll probably be focusing my research on gaming issues, which should be a lot of fun while building some valuable experience at the same time. The plans are really preliminary, but I might be looking into systems like OnLive to see if they're really feasible. In theory, I'll be starting a research blog, which will be boring and dry but might be interesting to the gamers among us.

I've always been driven by solving problems in gaming. I tried to do it as a writer and wasn't very effective, but when big companies are pouring money into your work, they tend to listen. I'm pretty psyched for the chance to really try to actually solve some problems.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:16:18 -0800 OK, this Apple tablet thing... http://blakeellison.posterous.com/ok-this-apple-tablet-thing http://blakeellison.posterous.com/ok-this-apple-tablet-thing Wired has a fantastic essay on the much-rumored Apple Tablet, a mythical flat-screen portable computer that would be part Kindle, part iPhone, and part MacBook. The consumer press (and Apple-watching blogs) are completely convinced this thing is going to happen, and now that print media companies are signing NDAs with Apple, the noise is kind of hard to ignore.

Wired figures that the tablet is part of a unique pattern that comes with being Steve Jobs: find an old, stodgy business model, update the model, and profit obscenely. It worked with music (the iPod and iTunes), desktop computers ("at a time when consumer portables were the future" came the iMac), cell phones (notice how much phones don't suck anymore thanks to iPhone competition), and retail stores (brick-and-mortar is dying, remember? Hence the Apple Store..?).

The mag does get a little dramatic. The author's also convinced that this amazing device would be Jobs' swan song (on account of his health), which isn't necessarily the case. But the ingredients for the next Jobsian breakthrough are all there: print media are the next endangered species and Jobs is stepping in to save them, save journalism, save their business model and skim a hefty sum off the top from serving it all up through a sexy Apple product.

I still suspect that everyone's missing something, some kind of great R&D breakthrough. The iPhone had an unbelievably sexy touchscreen that most consumers didn't think possible. The iMac very quickly gave everyone high-quality LCD monitors for their desktops. The iPod was a unique application of laptop hard drives. 

I spent 30 minutes writing out educated predictions, but they were all totally bland and easily replicated (and probably already written by big gadget blogs or somesuch). Stuff like a ubiquitous network connection and putting everything (I mean everything) in the cloud. But that's too easy. Microsoft, Mozilla and Ubuntu are already working on that publicly. That lets you exclude hard drives, which are expensive components, but there's already flash memory for that. 

There has to be some part of the equation that we pedestrians just can't see. I'd sign an NDA to find out what it is.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:13:00 -0700 Really, are there no gamers at Google? http://blakeellison.posterous.com/really-are-there-no-gamers-at-google http://blakeellison.posterous.com/really-are-there-no-gamers-at-google

Why has there not been a single "20-percent time" project at Google resulting in anything even vaguely beneficial to gamers? 

 

Google is now The Big Dog in IT, if the price on Nasdaq is any indication. IT is inexorably tied with gaming. Ordinary office workers kill time with fantasy football or style blogs; IT guys always killed it with Quake.

It was called "Google's experiment with gaming" when it launched an abortive Second Life clone and shut it down a few weeks later. Not only was that a horrendous misnomer - that nonsense wasn't a game in the slightest - but the press sounded as if they permanently shut a door on Google's entry into an ever-growing market. Google stuck its toes in the water, the water was filled with piranhas, Google will never go near the water again. In truth, the Goog ignored the possibilities entirely, and its lack of gaming projects has left them excluded from a marketing sector.

If I had been a Google employee in the last 10 years, I would've done some stuff that gamers have wanted ever since I was just sinking my teeth into Quake III a decade ago. Stuff like:

Stats and Web integration across games
Quake III was barely on store shelves, and a stats company had emerged to track in-game performance and relay that back out to a bracket website. Basically, it automated pro gaming tournaments, gave fans the scores and numbers they wanted, and was viewable to both tournament attendees and fans spread around the world. Modern pro tournament organizers are still doing a lot of this stuff by hand, and that's shameful given the technology that was needed to give birth to pro gaming. It's just a tee-tiny baby step to bring this stuff back. 

And thankfully, someone is bringing it back. Bungie integrated basic online stats lookups in Halo 2, and really unleashed its potential with Halo 3. Players are getting a kick out of following their numbers (like accuracy, favorite weapons, best-performing maps, most likely areas to die) as much as simple stuff like Achievements. A few strategy-game makers are following suit, and Blizzard is sure to make a big feature out of it in StarCraft II. Valve also keeps detailed stats on its games for balancing and anti-cheating purposes, but its keeps all its data to itself.

Now imagine that this fun stuff wasn't limited to one AAA game every three years. Had Google thought to offer its quantitative expertise to gaming, gamers might have taken advantage by forming clans around the best-performing players, or speeding up the balance-tweaking cycle. It might have even given rise to some cool products, like Fantasy StarCraft for Korean fans. At the very least, Google would have had its name slapped on every game that had decided to open up to a sort of Google Games API.

Shareable video recordings of games
10 years ago, there were "demos," which were the term for saved replays of games. Entire matches were recorded and then could be replayed from any number of perspectives. This never really went away in PC strategy games, but they were once a standard-issue in FPS games, disappeared, and then reappeared as "replays" a couple years ago in Halo 3. These are distinct from the highlight videos you see on YouTube because "demos" or replays use game-specific data to be replayed inside the game itself. Instead of a 30-minute match weighing 500MB of compressed video, it's a 2MB game-readable data file. That's great if you own the game, but not so great if you usually play at your friend's house or just want to show off a quick move to a friend. 

As soon as the cloud took shape, the computing horsepower at Google should have tied game replays and YouTube together. Upload a 2MB demo, and in 5 minutes you have a YouTube link to your amazing come-from-behind victory for all to see. Now, Bungie is experimenting with selling this service with Halo 3 replays - but why sell a service specific to one game when Google could sell YouTube video overlay ads that are actually decently targeted to viewers for once?

------------

Hopefully those two examples show just how much impact Google could have on gaming, depending on what resources the company put to use. Whatever happened to using 20 percent time to innovate (Maps, Docs, Voice) instead of trying to replicate social networking services (the Second Life knockoff, Latitude, Wave, the list will probably go on)?

C'mon, Google. Ask around. There has to be a gamer or two in that GooglePlex of yours somewhere. Let 'em make a contribution - it could be really valuable.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:03:06 -0700 I go to gaming school http://blakeellison.posterous.com/i-go-to-gaming-school http://blakeellison.posterous.com/i-go-to-gaming-school
It's remarkable how much career-oriented progress I'm making after just a couple of days of real-deal school. I needed an answer to the extremely frequent question "what's your career goal?" and the answer of "video games" just became habit. 

Everything else is just falling into line. I'm exploring game-related work for next summer and letting it shape the work I'm doing here, from research to topics for Japanese assignments.

I was so busy doing all that that I missed the real-world culmination of what I wanna do: the Tokyo Game Show, or Japan's E3. I went back and caught up on the news this morning, and I have a few observations:

-Final Fantasy 13 will be fantastic, following the theory that every FF game on a new platform is a classic: 4, 7, 10. Wow. If you just keep counting by 3s, you get the original Final Fantasy (unarguably a classic, look what it spawned) and, of course, 13. Maybe we should update the theory.

-Hideo Kojima is Japan's best export. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker will be fantastic. See for yourself:

-Microsoft Natal came to Japan! People are playing Katamari Damacy with it, by kinda doing this retarded swimming motion, and now I understand the skeptics. Buuuuuuut...

-Natal could have some really broad implications. MS had another fantastic showing in Tokyo this year, and they had a panel where a trio of famous Japanese designers just started tossing around ideas for what you could do with the technology. Kojima was on the panel, and while he of course stated that he has some fantastic ideas for games that recognize your appearance and interact with you that way, his thoughts on the device itself were more telling: Medical imaging, or security cameras, could benefit from the tech.

That's huge. Suppose the technology works well enough to identify you from a relative distance away, say 15 feet. Tie that into the cloud, or Facebook, and you've instantly established a working surveillance society.

In short, TGS has had some really fantastic timing in terms of my life here. Professors, who I'm meeting for the first time, ask what I want to do, and now I can point a finger to this show and say "this." By which I mean "games industry + business development + exciting new technologies + big companies like MS + Japan." They may not get it themselves, but the important thing is that I'm able to answer the question.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:47:25 -0700 We've moved! http://blakeellison.posterous.com/weve-moved-9 http://blakeellison.posterous.com/weve-moved-9
Dear Blogger,

You have been utterly fantastic for the last 8 years - that's beyond an eternity in Internet Time - but our time together is coming to an end.

While your service was groundbreaking back in 2001 - "a free service that lets you make your own news site!?" the times have changed, blogging has become its own monster, and the art and science of writing your own ramblings have greatly moved forward. You, unfortunately, have not.

Which is why I've moved to posterous, a wonderful new blog provider that automates everything. I'm writing this post just by sending an email to post@posterous.com - brilliant, right? It even does cool things with video, audio, and photos, like automatically embedding video links, turning recorded audio into a podcast feed, and making galleries out of photos. I'm attaching a few recent fun pics from California out of principle. I've been exposed to the genius of the whole thing by Aroon, who has suddenly gotten back into the blogging biz because of it.

For readers, the move gives you more options to see my silliness. Facebook, as always, will get my newest posts, and the 'old' Blogger site will continue to be fed the posts from the 'new' site for as long as it's feasible. Twitter, as well, will get some love. Long story short: you don't have to update your bookmarks if you don't want to, but just entering snagger.org in your browser will ensure that you see what I intend for you to see.

I also want to thank Emily, whose flawless design work has stayed standing on my Blogger-based site for at least half an eternity (again, measured in Internet Time) - and will for half an eternity more.

As for me, I've felt the need to spruce things up on my own blog for a while now, but as Emily's talents have made her too busy in recent times I was left in a bind. With this move, I get a simple and clean new look, the technical things get easier, and more people get these posts in more ways.

It's a win-win-win, unless you're Blogger. In any case, here's to 8 more years of sharing and theorizing.

Love,
Blake

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:06:00 -0700 Give it a second http://blakeellison.posterous.com/give-it-a-second http://blakeellison.posterous.com/give-it-a-second
"It's going to space! Give it a second!" exclaimed comedian Louis C.K. in observing that we are completely spoiled by modern technology, when something ridiculously awesome shows the slightest hiccup or slowdown.

I'm the spoiledest of the spoiled, but I've tried to take Louie's advice and not let my blood pressure rise when my iPhone is a little sluggish or Safari 4 damn near crashes when trying to deal with Facebook throwing zillions of people's personality quiz results in my face. It's left me feeling a little more like grateful that I can connect into the hive mind while I'm out and about. And in theory, that lets me be out and about more, instead of connected to the computer, to do more interesting things and make further contributions to that hive mind. In practice, however, my mobile contributions are pretty slim. "I'm playing Peggle while waiting for my car to get fixed!" and a mildly funny, dimly-lit picture from a bar mark my mobile content sharing for the month of July.

At the very least, new techie things will help me be smarter on campus come next month. By the end of my college career, I was plum retarded. I forgot stuff that was written in my paper planner twice and on my hand at the same time. I accidentally stood up friends, forgot homework assignments and generally tested the patience of everyone who surrounded me.

Thankfully, I discovered an amazing toy and set it up to go through the interwebs to keep me on my game this time around.

It's called ReQall. Basically, it's a "getting things done" tool - a to-do list with some organizational flair - but this one's awesome because it plays nicely with anything you can imagine: email, texting, Google Chat, iCal, Google Calendar, smartphones, and so on. Oh, and your own voice. That one's covered too.

So, let me give you a few examples of things I've said into ReQall and had it take care of perfectly:

"Pack and ship electronics on July 14th." It made a to-do item, due on the 14th, which I'll check off when I'm done.
"Dentist appointment Tuesday at 2." It made an event item, due on this coming Tuesday (the 14th) at 2:00, and it will either email me or text me with a reminder one hour before.

It's hit-and-miss with proper names. So far it's got about 50% accuracy: it nailed friends named Netta and Red, but misspelled Professor Bohn as "Professor Bone" and got "U-Verse" right one out of two times, the other mistaking it for "users." All in all, an extremely impressive act.

Here's some more examples of cool things it can do:
“Remind Roger to buy bread after work today.” If Roger is listed as a contact inside your ReQall account, it will email or text Roger telling him to buy bread after work today. If he's your friend on ReQall, it will add "bread" to Roger's "shopping list" section and send him the email or text.
"Call Roger at home." You use GPS to tell it where "home" is, and once you're there, it will send you a reminder to call Roger.

For me, all this stuff is already amazing and revolutionary. But here's the kicker: it will push to your phone.

ReQall will automatically push your stuff to Google Calendar. It's incredibly easy to turn on, one click really. From there, Google Sync will take your calendar and push that to your phone.

So, long story short, I just say the words "Meet with Professor Joe at 2PM next Friday," and come next Friday at 1 my phone gets a text with the reminder that I'm meeting Professor Joe. And anywhere in between, I can see it on the iPhone calendar, because it got pushed to the phone.

I'm willing to have patience with technology that will do that. After all, I'm asking technology to have a lot of patience with my forgetful self.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Fri, 08 May 2009 21:36:00 -0700 @Twitter: http://blakeellison.posterous.com/twitter-4838 http://blakeellison.posterous.com/twitter-4838 You're so overrated.

Let me list your legit uses:

1. Keeping track of people during large events (like SxSW)
2. Keeping track of people during catastrophic emergencies (like natural disasters)
3. Promoting your cause if you're an activist (like Al Gore) or a performer (like your buddy who's a musician or DJ).

Now let me list the really lame reasons people actually use you:

1. To have actual conversations with friends (What?! We have phones and texting, people, how are @replies any better?)
2. As a source of news for CNN (Impending apocalypse and collapse of the American empire? Heeeeeeeeeeere's yer sign.)
3. To shill new blog entries (If your blog's that interesting, I read it.)
4. To try (and fail) to be witty using 140 characters. (The extremely witty John Mayer is exempt from this complaint.)
5. To announce one's drunkenness between 1:00 and 3:00AM. (We know.)

And to top it off, you've got a whole stack of problems:

1. My shrink dad had suicidal patients that were more stable.
2. When you're actually online, you've still got bugs like phantom follower requests.
3. I get worthless follower requests from organizations and anonymous individuals in which I have no interest whatsoever. Shouldn't this legally constitute spam?

So, with all of the above points in mind, I'm abandoning you. I'll leave my account active, and I'll probably confirm follower requests, but I'm stopping the updates, removing the iPhone app, and removing it from my favorites.

We're done, and I hope the world eventually realizes that the Twitter plague is infinitely more dangerous to society than #swine_flu.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:08:00 -0800 Touch-screen DJing! http://blakeellison.posterous.com/touch-screen-djing http://blakeellison.posterous.com/touch-screen-djing I want to do this so bad. Peep the write-up at Engadget, but long story short the latest gimmick-cool use of Microsoft Surface is to do basic DJ work.

By dragging loop icons into a central circle, that starts them playing and they'll go until you drag the icon back out. Other icons, once inside the circle, can be tapped for a one-off sound.

I've always been too lazy to learn proper DJing, and too frugal to go pick up the newfangled CDJ systems that electronically simulate turntables, but a user-friendly approach like this would be a hell of a lot of fun to play with. You could even sell more sounds in a digital market, kinda like Rock Band does.

C'mon Microsoft, do it!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:14:00 -0800 Stuff I love and do not love http://blakeellison.posterous.com/stuff-i-love-and-do-not-love http://blakeellison.posterous.com/stuff-i-love-and-do-not-love Stuff I love:

My Mac. Sorry, it's a snooty Apple User thing to say, but I started window shopping for a new machine earlier today and realized I just plain didn't need one. Back when I was a hyper gamer, everything in my machine would've been painfully old after a year and a half. Yet I've had my little Mac for well over a year and a half and I haven't had to reformat the thing once. I used to do that at least once every 6 months in my previous life. I might be lucky enough to go computer shopping once I head back to school, but honestly, I think I just need a big monitor more than I do new hardware.

Stuff I don't love:

LittleBigPlanet. Yeah, the first level is outrageously charming, but now that I'm 4 worlds in, it's just another platformer. Thanks to my newfound hatred for The Internet, I'm also not interested in user-created levels, either. Imagine my surprise when every comment left on every level is "Play my 6 new Super Mario levelz!!!" Nor do I have the desire, or the time, to make my own platformer levels.

It doesn't matter how many palettes or options or tools they give you, it would never be enough to satisfy a truly creative desire, no matter how many raving reviews come in saying that it's a "create your own.. thing" tool instead of a "create your own platformer level" tool. The reason editors for games like Warcraft III are so good is that they're built on top of phenomenally deep games - something LBP isn't. Warcraft III managed to spawn levels and modifications so good that they became their own genres, "games" like Tower Defense (now its own genre of game within iPhone games) and DOTA (whose developers are moving into full-blown game making).

LittleBigPlanet, however, is at heart a platformer, and the bulk of its creations are Super Mario Bros. homage levels as a result. I don't doubt the possibility of a few gems coming out of its online level-sharing system, but there's doubtlessly going to be too much nonsense to sift through.

This is why we pay people called game designers money in order to use research, intellect, and talent to make games that are objectively good. LittleBigPlanet is objectively good, but at this rate I may not even bother to finish the game that's actually on the disc. There's nothing to look forward to at the end of the road.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:19:00 -0700 Another thing I totally called http://blakeellison.posterous.com/another-thing-i-totally-called http://blakeellison.posterous.com/another-thing-i-totally-called Apple is going to tank in the next 5 years.

The great thing Apple had going 2 years ago with the Mac is on its way out. Even as I bought my very own Mac, I had the sensation that Apple's newfound awesomeness wouldn't last long. The famously rock-solid OSX is now buggy and unstable, the hardware is cheap Chinese-made garbage, and that's just the computers.

iPods are now harder to use and the software crashes. The AppleTV just isn't good enough when compared to what you can do with an Xbox 360, and the iPhone - while awesome on paper - is open to tons of problems outside Apple's control, such as AT&T's poor network management and billing headaches.

Apple's plan for world domination isn't working out like they hoped. The soon-to-be-famous MobileMe fiasco shows that they can't quite enter the 'service' market like they hoped.

Sorry, kiddos, but I can no longer recommend you Apple stuff like I've been apt to do for the last couple years.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Wed, 16 May 2007 13:45:00 -0700 Whoa, I just had an awesome game idea. http://blakeellison.posterous.com/whoa-i-just-had-an-awesome-game-idea http://blakeellison.posterous.com/whoa-i-just-had-an-awesome-game-idea The next step beyond the Wii is a mo-cap controller. I think you could pull it off with 14 sensors, if they were cheap. They'd go on:

hand
elbow
shoulder
hip
knee
heel
toes

And there'd be two on each side, making for 14 in all. And honestly, since people are willing to buy peripherals as evidenced by Guitar Hero, you might even be able to pull it off on the current Wii platform.

Now if we did this, we could make a real dancing game. Forget DDR and that clown dancing bullshit. (but mad respect to the guys who can freestyle at that game and make it look easy) No no, this game would actually teach you to be a badass breakdancer. The game would come with 50 songs like DDR, all taken from various kinds of electronic and hip-hop music. Each song would have a routine that you'd be scored on, but you'd unlock the ability to freestyle each song.

I think it'd be badass.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:21:00 -0700 Say hi to my new toy http://blakeellison.posterous.com/say-hi-to-my-new-toy http://blakeellison.posterous.com/say-hi-to-my-new-toy MacBook Pro 17".

I think I'm in love.

It was just part of a lovely weekend. Mom came into town to see me at UT Honors Day (I got graduation cords along with thousands of other students, whee), so she was in a good mood to see me being honored. As such, I got the MacBook, a fine sushi dinner at my fave place Maiko, and lunch today at Hula Hut on her tab. (The MBP is my graduation present, and I'm happy about it.)

Life is nifty.

Also: Japanese music is now purchaseable on iTunes. I bought my fave m-flo album just to support the idea - and a 17 track album for $10 is a good deal.

If you want to find some new music, and need something that's got electronic, hip-hop, and jazz all in one, get this. There's nothing like it outside of Japan.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:48:00 -0800 It’s the season for completely unoriginal titles http://blakeellison.posterous.com/its-the-season-for-completely-unoriginal-titl http://blakeellison.posterous.com/its-the-season-for-completely-unoriginal-titl I’m writing this from MS Word 2007. I’m testing out the new Office thing after a little year-long hiatus with OpenOffice. The online recommendations for Office 2007 just don’t stop coming in, so I made the switch and while I haven’t done much so far, the interface looks like a massive improvement. It definitely got an overhaul (finally). And yes, I’m even posting from Office, as Word supports posting directly to Blogger.

Oh dear God, I just noticed this thing manages bibliographies and sources. Suddenly I’m SO, SO happy I made the switch before I started draft work for my thesis. Supposedly all the wizards and stuff are slick, too, so the switch is already worth the trouble.

More interestingly, I’ve been up to quite a lot ever since I finished all my application work. I’ve been gaming like a madman, I fixed my desktop after a month of downtime, and I’m pouring every available minute into planning my trip to Japan. I’m gone in just a couple weeks. The planning’s been fun, though. I’ll be mostly in inner Tokyo, but I’ll be making a couple expeditions outside town for things like the Tokyo Auto Salon. My Japanese has improved a lot over the last semester, so I finally feel like I’m up to getting around everyday life in Tokyo there even amongst the people who don’t speak really good English. If you’re a reader and have any recommendations or requests for places I should go check out, hit me up – I’m more than open to suggestions, and I’ve got plenty of free time over there.

Now that I have lots of free time here (finals are easy when you’re a senior and wrapping up a language major) I’m catching up on all this pop culture stuff I missed while my desktop was out. I’m still playing the same Wii and DS games, mostly because Phoenix Wright will never, ever end. I’m taking my sweet time with Zelda since a game like this apparently only comes around once every 10 years or so. The musical front, however, has been much more interesting. I went on an acquisition rampage right after Aroon did, and we have yet to share stuff, but here’s some things among the awesomeness we’ve got:

Basement Jaxx – Crazy Itch Radio – Easily The Jaxx’s best yet. It’s new, it’s definitely in the Jaxx style, but it’s smoother than anything they’ve ever done. It’s like the late-night, after-hours version of Jaxx, and it’s awesome.
Daft Punk @ Coachella 2006 – This is just a bootleg of a Daft Punk set, but it’s revolutionary. They played a set entirely composed of their own songs, they cover all their hits, most of Discovery, gloss over Human After All, and all the while they bust out the best mixing since The Avalanches. If you’re a Daft fan, you have to have this.
Hyde Out – A compilation of Japanese hip-hop, including Nujabes and Shingo2, both of whom famously contributed to the Samurai Champloo soundtracks. If you like that stuff, you’ll love this.
Mos Def – True Magic – I’m really not sold on this one yet. Mos is always stretching the bounds of hip-hop, but on this one he decided to make his sonic theme gangsta rap, just like he used rock music for his last album. Between that and Common doing Gap commercials, I’m scared for hip-hop.
BT – This Binary Universe – OK, so I haven’t listened to or watched it yet. But I’m saving it for a good occasion, because by all estimates it’s amazing.
The Slip – Eisenhower – Yeah, that The Slip. The “accessible Boston rock” band behind “Even Rats,” the song that stole the show in the first Guitar Hero. The entire album is much in the same indie vein, and it dips into famous indie territory a little bit much, perhaps even stepping on Death Cab’s toes, but it’s really, really good. If you’ve been up with the mainstream indie kick of the last year, pick up this one while it’s still underground.

Speaking of Guitar Hero, here’s a list of what I’m not playing or listening to:

Guitar Hero II – What? I don’t like GH2? Damn straight I don’t. The gameplay enhancements (easier hammer-ons, etc.) and graphic touch-ups were great news, not to mention cooperative gameplay, 3-note chords and a much-expected ramped up difficulty, but dear God, the songlist is awful. The first game tried to be something to everyone, and it succeeded. Everything from hair metal to blues to bleeding-edge-new hits. I hear the GH2 tracklist, on the other hand, is going to be sold in a compilation called “Lowlights of the 80s and 90s.” They may as well have thrown in Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” and some shitty R.E.M. song and called it “ClearChannel: The Game.”
Excite Truck – I was excited for a Wii spiritual successor to Wave Race 64. Sadly, this ain’t it. It’s fast and furious, and the thrill of the game is definitely worth playing for an hour or so, but as you progress through the game the difficulty ramps up too quickly and the AI is horribly unbalanced.
Red Steel – I was also excited for a Wii spiritual successor to Goldeneye. Surprisingly, this game is. It’s got all the same good points as the classic shooter – a cool premise, a novel control scheme, and damn addicting multiplayer. Even stranger, this game has all Goldeneye’s flaws too – graphics that won’t age well, just plain odd AI, and a very obtuse control scheme. Unfortunately, the aiming sensitivity is just a bit too off-kilter to make this game playable for more than 15 minutes at a time, unless you’re playing multiplayer with your mates. Ubisoft has promised a sequel, so I’ll keep my hopes up for that one.
Hybrid – I Choose Noise – Not only was I already falling out of love with Hybrid for being a touch too repetitive, Hybrid definitely chose noise with this one. It’s dark, it’s ambient, it’s almost industrial, perhaps a bit Aphex Twin-ish, but still Hybrid. If that sounds great to you, you’ll love it; otherwise, skip it.
Incubus – Light Grenades – Incubus, you’re fired. After the huge disappointment that was Brandon Boyd is Mad at the World – sorry, A Crow Left to the Murder – this was your last chance. The pack-in material (errr, the .nfo file with album download) explained that this album was just like “13 different tracks from 13 different bands, [because] we tried yet again to make a cohesive album and it just didn’t work out,” in the words of guitarist Mike Einzinger. Fuck that, S.C.I.E.N.C.E., Make Yourself, and Morning view were all cohesive and they were all brilliant. The album proudly touts a new producer, who worked with such “greats” as STP and Creed in the past. Are we really surprised when the new album sounds like STP and Creed? No, we’re not. This album does not rock. It’s a travesty - Incubus has been compromised by the Music-Industrial Complex, and all that’s left is a distinctive voice and guitar on top of the all-singing, all-rocking crap of the world. The brilliant musicians of history have bad phases – The Beatles and anything after Vietnam, Clapton and acoustics, Miles Davis and fusion. This is not a phase. This is Incubus compromised – not selling out, mind you, but bought out via hostile takeover.

At the very least, I’ll have a thing or two to listen to on the 14-hour non-stop from Dallas to Tokyo. It’s funny, too – I no longer get Christmas money from family to help pay for trips like these. It may be because I’m 22, but more likely because I have no family left. My paternal grandparents left me an inheritance greater than my own father’s. My maternal grandfather is only able to recognize me on a good day, yet he put a bunch of savings bonds in my name upon my birth. Part of each of those is paying for my trip to Japan. Funny how that works – for each of my grandparents, who fought in the Pacific War, Japan was the enemy. That was only 60 years ago. And yet, upon my arrival, I’ll be greeted as a friend. “Yookoso” upon entering the nation. “Irasshaimase” upon entering any shop, restaurant, or inn in the country. I’m not sure what my family originally intended for me to do with all the money they set aside for me. At the time, I suspect “go make friends with those who were once my enemy” wasn’t too high on the list. I don’t mean that they wouldn’t have wanted me to go – they were never that stubborn – but I’m sure they knew I’d find a worthwhile way to use the money – maybe pay for a house after I get hitched, or pay for part of law school. Or maybe, if I was lucky and adventurous enough, I’d see the world with it. My maternal grandfather went to the Pacific on a ship, only to find out that he got seasick. For a month. I’ll be across the ocean in 14 hours, and I’ll be peachy thanks to Dramamine. And when I get there, I’ll be safe and sound. I’ve been given quite a lot – and maybe I’ll be lucky and strong enough to turn it into something good.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/204085/n7901690_47301950_935.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bhwSFzfEBkB Blake Ellison blakerson Blake Ellison