âTwelveâ: The fun continues
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Steven Soderberghâs rethink of the â60s-kitsch caper film âOceanâs Elevenâ was far better than anyone expected: slick, funny, glitzy and hip.
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A little less conversation and a little more action
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Tycho: Two new shirts today. One based on the Broodax Strips, which can be found here, and looks like this:   And another shirt based on the control scheme for Starfire Saga V: Laserion, which can be found here, and looks like this:   (CW)TB
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It's been a real thrill to watch Loic Le Meur roll out his new video community tool called Seesmic. He's got the French touch, a bit self-deprecating, he's good at seduction, keeps his ego in the background and puts the focus on the users, where it should be.  As he's been seeding people one by one, they create videos which then appear on Twitter (heh) so people who don't have Seesmic get an idea what it's like through the eyes of people they know. This immediately creates a feeling of envy, but if you beg Loic he gives you an activation code, and off you go -- ready to become his next evangelist. Feeling priviledged to be his next evangelist. It's like Tom Sawyer and the fence. He reminds me so much of Jean-Louis Gassee in his prime, when he had all the Mac developers wrapped around his finger, and loving it.  I have an idea of where Loic wants to go with this, and it's going to be big. It'll be a fun ride, and fun to watch a master promoter at work. PS: Here's my latest Seesmic video, a demo of FlickrRiver. You may have to turn up the audio to understand what I'm saying, or use headphones. We're going to do something fun with the people at Le Web 3 and FlickrRivr. Thanks to Loic for also having a curious mind.  PPS: Beware the exclusive.
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Now that it's all wrapped up, Chris Shiflett has posted his own look back at the PHP Advent calendar he coordinated.   Coordinating this turned out to be a lot of work, but I hope to do it again next year. [...] With a little bit of prodding, we all hopefully learned a little more than we would have otherwise, and the people who were gracious enough to share something deserve our thanks.   You can check out his post (and, of course, our own) for a complete list of all twenty-four days.
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Tycho:  We still think about Eye of Judgment quite a bit - sometimes I will sit in silence and think about it, or think about it while I lay dormant in my charge casket.  I think about placing cards carefully on its luxurious cloth mat, smirking as distant foes are gnawed by my lizard proxies.  We are overjoyed (joymax!) that they stuck with the new concept, the card thing, as opposed to the brutally sardonic original.    I don't like constantly being pushed to pre-order things, but there is also a point (it would be easy to graph) where I'm not willing to let fate's whimsical machinery determine what I play.  So during a recent mall run I put down some money on whatever I could remember at the time - unscientifically, it was Metroid, Stranglehold, Halo, Stuntman, and Mass Effect.  This doesn't account for everything between now and November, certainly, but it kind of felt like a quiz show and I was intimidated.  Then I remembered Eye of Judgement and its manifold pleasures, endeavoring to append it, listwise.  It was at this point that "John" told us that both the game and the Playstation Eye peripheral had been cancelled.    At this assertion Gabriel stood up straight and still, like a meerkat.    "No, it wasn't," said he, quietly.  A cold quiet, like space.        When I am confronted with mere distortions of facts, I can typically slice through them to the beating truth.  But when a person says something that is flatly false, this is very disorienting for some reason and I am without my mind's full power.  Then the guy compounded things by saying they had very few preorders, and this was accompanied by a sneer, as though the number of preorders was some crucial consideration when assessing quality.  He actually thought it was funny that I wanted to buy it.    I wanted to ask him if he understood that a product not being available for preorder and a product not existing, or never being allowed to exist constituted profoundly different states, but these are the deep thoughts that occur to a person while they are tucking in at the food court and not when they are face to face with strange men at the EB.       When we returned from the store, almost as if on cue the product began to appear at online retailers - for sixty dollars.  Yes, that's correct.  The Playstation Eye peripheral plus the card game, for ten dollars more than a Sixaxis?  I won't say that I expected extortion, but I at least expected profit.  Assuming you have the Triple already in hand, they're making the Eye (and Eye of Judgment) an easy decision.    Let me take a moment to welcome PAX attendees to this year's celebration, even though it isn't especially useful to readers in Glasgow.  I hope the new venue is to your liking.   Be kind to each other, even to your defeated foes!  And be kind to your Enforcers, for they have toiled in your service.
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Growth continues, the stock is on a roll, and we still love the letters.
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Proof that there still is more to do. On Saturday I got an email from Sylvia saying that a friend of mine had bought her first iPod. It took me a few minutes to figure out that she was talking about herself. Funny, I had never thought about whether she had an iPod or not, but I have been on her case to get a digital camera. So she brought her iPod over, it's one of the new "fatty" nanos with video. It was so funny to see it through her eyes, and even cooler to read her story. I didn't realize that there was a reason she had never gotten an iPod. Sylvia: Sliding into song. I seek out experiences like this. Stones I can turn over that reveal a rich experience, an eye-opener, a bright horizon that doesn't take much time or effort to achieve.
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On her blog, Elizabeth Naramore has posted some thanks to the sponsores out there that are helping out with this year's PHP Appalachia event and some last minute details for those attending.   I wanted to give a quick acknowledgement to our sponsors for the event, as posted by Ben on our PHP Appalachia site. We have so many sponsors, and so many door prizes to give away, a good time will definitely be had by all. Their donations are really helping our grass roots gathering come together, and we all greatly appreciate their efforts. I also want to give a quick thanks to Cal Evans who also personally donated numerous t-shirts and goodies as well.   She gives a rough schedule for things, including how the talks will run and links to some info on the area to let you prepare for your trip.
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Spent the last week sick as a proverbial dog. A nasty cold snap, combined with too much schmoozing and boozing, has put my heinie in a sling. So Iâve been home, nursing my few remaining brain cells back to health and perusing my favorite news sites. Itâs been an interesting few days.
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The target keeps getting smaller, so take a shot while you still can.
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Even the chip shots have become an adventure.
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The thirst to acquire new neat stuff never seems to go away.
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By Scott Richardson  Lots of good stuff has been happening while Ive been "off work" recovering from cancer surgery. Ive been trying to keep up from home so I can keep you informed.
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Life & style: Today's dilemma for Beth:  My friends are off to the festivals but I'm broke. How can I have fun?
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Tycho:  I'm aware of Spore, but it's not a game I look around for in an active mode.  Here is a preview of the game, for example, but I haven't read it so I don't know if it's good or not.  I'm especially disinclined to read previews in particular, because I think it's a game that is likely to preview well.  You aren't likely get past the novelty stage in am Official Press context - it's going to be pure discovery from beginning to end, wall to wall tendrils and eye stalks, ginning up hobbling quintapeds whose journey to the mailbox is difficult, if not impossible.  The incredible outpourings of support for the game are themselves incredible to me, but what they've done is try to create a product whose potential is as raw as possible.  We seem to value that ethereal quantity differently than most.
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Gabe: Well we had ourping pongmatch with Sucker Punch last Friday and I must say things did not go well for us. The Sucker Punch Rockets lived up to their studio's name and left us with a big old purple shiner. Already there is talk here in the office that our glorious victory march through the game industry is now looking more like a trail of tears.