E3 - The Circus That No-one Knows We Need

Written by Aaron on July 31, 2006 | 1 Comment

E 3 the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the yearly video game expo is now officially all but dead.

I am not very good at telling stories, well not at making them interesting anyway, so I’ll point you to Kotaku and Penny Arcade for the backstory…please return for my commentary when you are caught up on the events.
I work in the video game industry and believe me when I tell you that working E3 is, more often than not, Hell. Not only is working the show like russian roulette without the courtesty of a reward, but preparations for the show are at least two months of planning meetings and blueprints and telecons and everything else that people got into the game industry to get away from.

In addition let me assure you that everything you have heard about the costs of having a booth at E3 is wrong. It is more expensive than you have heard, I have an aquaintance who’s first responsibility in the game industry was to handle a Multi-million dollar check for simply the insurance for the booth at the show. And yes, game companies do give up on accomplishing anything productive during the days surrounding E3. So including the time lost to the show, and all of the time used preparing for the show, then the cost of the booth and attendants it is common for regular publishers to be putting in the neighborhood of 20 Million into their E3 showing. That’s just 3 days.

Here’s the rub…I say it’s worth it.

Most of us in the industry look at E3 as a circus, it is craziness and chaos and other non-comforting “C”-words.

 E3 is also the only time of the year that the main-stream media looks at our industry/hobby and has something positive to say. Every year when E3 comes around the “Real” media turns it’s all powerful eye on the indusrty we all give our time to, and they say how important and powerful the industry is…they will occasionally imply that games are “cool”.

Without E3 the only time the evening news mentions video games is to tell you about how the most recent youth-related killing is tenuously connected to gaming.

For three days a year games are cool and influential…I don’t think any price is too high for that return. And I fear that once we’ve lost it, it will be too late to get it back.

Posted in Life Stuff, Video Games

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What has Ben been doing?

Written by Ben on | 1 Comment

Ben has been relatively quiet on BadPopcorn. So what have I been doing? Well, I have been writing news updates for the Eisenstadt CouchSurfing Collective… For those that have sent me emails, the following links (with LOTS of PICTURES) should shed some light on a week of travel:

My first day at the Collective.

A Paella Cookout.

Violin Concert.

Sunday in Eisenstadt.

Going to Dinner.

Some work, Some play.

Watching people play music.

Another day, another party.

People finishing their work.

We finished in Eisenstadt and moved to Vienna

Final gathering for a picnic in Vienna’s Danube Island.

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Fry em up

Written by Ben on July 28, 2006 | 1 Comment

It has been a long week at the European CouchSurfing Collective for me. There is an intensity in the work, the people and the fun. I have met many great people, and have learned a great deal about CouchSurfing and the values surrounding it. This was all well and expected, but the unexpected lessons one is confronted with are generally the most interesting and fun.

There is always someone in the kitchen preparing snacks or food to share with others. This particular day Beverly had begun making North Carolinian Fried Chicken– Yum! I got in and learned how to make this incredibly tasty food.

Ingredients:

• Chicken. Cut pieces, not too big.
• Flour
• Pepper, spices
• Salt
• Vegetable Oil

Preparation:

1. Place a lot of flour in a mixing bowl.
2. Marinate the chicken by dusting the pieces with salt and pepper (spices) on both sides. A light coat will be good enough.
3. Coat the chicken pieces with flour by mixing the chicken pieces around in the bowl of flour.

Cooking:

1. Heat the vegetable oil to near boiling, but beware not to burn the oil. Vegetable oil is used because it is more difficult for the cook to burn the oil.
2. Place the chicken pieces skin (the side with the most skin and meat) face down in the pan. One should see and hear an immediate sizzle of oil.
3. Cover the pot, but have the lid tilted to allow some heat to escape (avoid burning the oil).
4. Indications that one must flip the pieces: After a brown crust form around the edges of the exposed chicken; the meat pulls away from the bone.
5. Flip the pieces.
6. Indications that the chicken is ready: The two pronged fork slides easily in and out of the chicken.
7. Pull out chicken and place on a paper towel covered place to help drain the oil.

Notes:

• The chicken only requires two flips, but one may do a third flip to make the skin extra crispy.
• Skin side is faced down first so the cook can control the crisp texture of the chicken skin.
• Red Blood will bubble up out top of the chicken before the first flip.
• The first batch is the best because the oil tends to burn after you start pulling out the chicken. The other batches will have a hint of darker and burnt grease.
• Hide away the first batch, cooks do it.

Posted in Food, Travel

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Venetian Beach Day

Written by Ben on July 24, 2006 | No Comments

[I'm still at the European CouchSurfing Collective... and I'm trying to catch up on my travel stories. :)]

The weather was baking hot the day after I walked around Venice… about as hot as the current California heat wave. So a few friends and I took the ferry to the Lido beach– a– area and spent the day swimming and tanning. One thing I found very interesting were the rows and rows of little storage huts that lined the back of the beach. People rent, or collectively rent because of $$$ costs, these huts out for the summer. Here, they store all their beach going equipment: umbrellas, heavy chairs, and swim gear. I found this odd at first, but I realized that it would be rather difficult to transport this stuff on ferries… Venice being a strictly pedestrian city.

So the day was just what I needed… Relaxation! I mean, really really chilling at the beach; and enjoying myself. This is quite a change for me because I hate going to California beaches, I am not a beach guy in general.

There isn’t much else to say because there’s only so much I did… swim and tan (nap). That is IT!

I wanted to show you photos, but the people I went to the beach with took pictures. I haven’t gotten the pictures yet.

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Lost is an Understatement in Venice

Written by Ben on | No Comments

As I write this, I am currently at the European CouchSurfing Collective (a busy schedule has delayed this writeup).

I arrived, late at night, in Venice after an afternoon of train issues. My host, thankfully, found me easily at the San Lucia station. And because cars are not allowed in Venice (except for the northern most parking lot), we walked through the night’s vibrant and lively streets. It was just too bad that I opted to rest up that evening because I was exhausted…

The next morning, I went out for my standard day of exploration, which I found to be a very large undertaking. As I walked around, I found that the maze of streets and alleys turning me around for the entire day. Getting lost is nice, but the scale and magnitude of how lost one can become in Venice compares to nothing I’ve experienced. After one evening fireworks show, I spent two hours winding the night streets trying to get back home (maps and signs where unhelpful).

The upside of my, seemingly, endless wandering was that I found myself taking many more shapshots of the picturesque city– the streets were very inspiring in this respect. So here is just a barrage of pictures:

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European CouchSurfing Collective

Written by Ben on July 21, 2006 | No Comments

I arrived last night to Eisenstadt, Austria. There are close to twenty people here already, and I hope to see more arrive this morning.

The Collective will be kicking off for real today and I am excited about it. I don’t have any pictures just yet because I haven’t sorted things out with the computers here; it is on my list of priorities.

People are starting to get up for breakfast, and I am off!

See you all soon.

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Slovenia

Written by Ben on July 19, 2006 | No Comments

The following post will be generally short and curt, but do not make a mistake in thinking that I didn’t do much in Slovenia. In fact, I think I had a full and enjoyable time in the country. However, one may infer that I am currently short on time (busy busy).

I spent a good eight hours on the train from Budapest to Ljubljana, Slovenia, during which I started and finished “Eureka Street” by McLiam. It’s not much to note except that I really did enjoy this book. I got off the train to a night’s weather likened to having a damp warm cloth wrapped around one’s face. I waited under a McDonald’s sign for Jaka to pick me up– there seems to be a McDonald’s everywhere I go. I had nothing to eat on the train so we drove for an evening’s fast food dinner– Burek. It was a nice greasy baked flaky calzone-croissant like monster filled with cheese and ham. Yummy! This induced coma gave me some really needed rest.

The next morning, Tuesday, I continued a restful pace by waking up late, lounging, and writing emails. I only went into town for a bit, just the briefest of trips.

The real site-seeing started in the evening after Jaka got back from work. We took a nice drove out to the countryside, to a small lakeside resort town called Bled– it sported just a few tourists and its main attraction is its crystal clear lake.

After a quick walk around, we went over to visit Jaka’s home village. The drive nicely wound through the countryside impressed me with its well kept (modern) roads. One would have thought the highways were completed just yesterday. At the village, we had dinner at an outdoor pizzeria and relaxed. Stuffed, we headed back to Ljubljana. The scenic drive was just that, perfectly scenic. If any place matched the beauty of New Zealand’s countryside, it is Slovenia. The Slovenian reaction would be to say that New Zealand’s beauty would be the one matching Slovenia. If one travels to either place, one will be mightily impressed– outdoor activities (camping, hiking, canyoning, rafting, etc) and all.

Wednesday day– a walk around the town, up the castle. Let me say that the castle is way up on the top of a hill. The steep climb proved to be a very challenging obstacle– started at the farmers market (first picture). But I triumphantly made it to the top for a nice modern castle. Modern? Yes, the facades were getting renovated, the castle gate was made of modern steel, and the cafe & souvenir shop were housed in modernized rooms.

Evening came and my walk ended. A nice relaxing trip to the coffee shop with other Couch Surfers completed my evening. I absolutely love talking with others about most random topics– Slovenian universities and schools.

And this brings me to my final night in Slovenia. The event was a filling dinner– bursting stomachs all around– at a hilltop restaurant near Skofja Loka, about 22 kilometers north west of Ljubljana. The dinner was a plate full of meats and vegetables, although it is difficult to see where the vegetables are in the picture. The platter was for four, and we just stuffed ourselves. The house wine was full bodied, zet somehow simple (almost plain). It went down like water, and somehow ran like water. The after dinner liquor was, probably homemade, made out of blueberry– a very sweet taste. Cappuccino, mixed with lots of sugar, made for a good stomach settling digestive. We were finished; we were all satiated. A nice after dinner walk through 500 year old buildings in town and a visit to a 14th century castle got everyone feeling better… but the drive home put me to sleep.

I headed off to Venice the following day… and looking back… I hit a wall in travelling by the time I got to Slovenia. And even though I did quite a few things in that country, I came away very happy and rejuvenated. The place is magic.

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Tunnel to Gmail

Written by Ben on July 17, 2006 | 1 Comment

I am in Venezia, Italia and my host has graciously let me use her computer to check email. There’s only one problem… Google’s services (email, reader, hosted, analytics, etc) have been unavailable to me for the past five hours. There’s a problem upstream, somewhere, that prevents me from getting to GMail. A friend, in the Bay Area, tells me– over IM chat– that he has perfect access to GMail. All this tells me that it’s just a regional access thing.

Anyways, I really needed to check my email and couldn’t wait for the problem to get resolved. So I just worked up a quick hack.

First, I edited the laptop’s hosts file (c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts) to add the following lines:

127.0.0.1 google.com
127.0.0.1 www.google.com
127.0.0.1 mail.google.com

Second, I launched the signed-jar copy of Mindterm that I have sitting on my website; I logged in to my dreamhost shell account (in the States) and set up a couple of ssh tunnels that redirected web traffic from the local loopback address to google.com:

127.0.0.1 port 80 -> google.com port 80
127.0.0.1 port 443 -> google.com port 443

Finally, launched IE (she doesn’t have Firefox installed) for immediate access to GMail.

What did that really do?

Normal Case: IE talks directly to GMail. IE -> GMail.

But the Normal Case is broken.

My Workaround: IE talks to GMail through a third party. IE -> Dreamhost Server -> GMail.

Posted in Google, Technology

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Open Letter to Rick Steves

Written by Ben on | No Comments

Mr. Steves (and crew),

Your guide book series has the motto “Europe Through the Back Door“; and the back cover of my copy of the “Best of Europe 2006″ proclaims that one can “Experience the culture like a local– you’ll spend less money and have more fun.” These books are canon for the savvy American tourist headed for Europe, and my own anecdotal experience with these books (tips and tricks) have been spot on.

However, in our travels, we will just be tourists staying in hostels, hotels, and bed & breakfasts. What have I found in these places? More tourists, nothing but tourists. Who do I meet while sightseeing (or just wandering in town)? Tourists. Who will I mostly talk to? You got it, Tourists.

And for the sites and attractions we visit, our eyes see only other tourists; our ears only hear other tourists; our food is eaten with other tourists; we are still, metaphorically speaking, on the outside looking in. So how can we really experience the true feeling of Europe, like a local, when we are just surrounded only by other tourists?

A friend of mine introduced me to something called CouchSurfing. CouchSurfing is a worldwide community of travelers– currently about 80,000 people– who open up their homes (couches and spare beds) to each other– gratis. Although free accommodation is a great motivation for travelers to partake in the community, the idea is much more about making connections with each other around the world– and really getting to know local life– through acts of openness and generosity by both guest and host. With this concept, I have been making my way through Europe and meeting many great people along the way. What I’ve experienced in this community can never be matched by strictly traveling, through Europe, with your guidebooks alone. Actually, the concept complements your advice and I have been greatly enriched by my experiences with this community.

I think that as part of your 2006 Europe research itinerary, this idea– this community– should be on the top of your research list. I think that your guidebook audience will have much to gain by learning about this community. There is a chance for you (and your crew) to get a first hand view of the European Couch Surfing Community: the European Couch Surfing community is getting together for a week long conference in Eisenstadt, Austria starting July 21st. Come, visit, and see how this strong community is working to better build connections between travelers and locals around the world. Your audience will benefit from what you learn by seeing this community in action.

Still Traveling,
Ben
http://badpopcorn.com/

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Inaction

Written by Moe on | 3 Comments

Many people feel that inaction is worse then failure. I think most people don’t realize just how bad or even what inaction is all together. Inaction isn’t simply the lack or absence of action, but the false impression that one is choosing not to make a choice. Let’s clear something up right away. You always make a choice. You either choose to act in a situation or let enough time pass by where you can no longer act, but either way you do make a choice to do one or the other. So really the word has little if any real meaning. You either act in one way or you act in a different way, but you act. There is an “act of thinking”, which by far is the easiest of all tasks. Thinking doesn’t mean figuring something out either. It just means to look at something and say, “what the fuck.” if you are in a tight spot, remember that you are making a choice. I guarantee you choose to use the act of thinking for a while and said something along the line of “what the fuck.” Basically, you still made a choice and you acted upon it.

So why are most people under a false impression? I thought about this for a while and came up with guilt. Yes guilt. When you convince yourself you are powerless in the outcome of a situation, you in turn rid yourself the burden of consequences or at least the guilt of those who have to face them. The fact is, life is just a choice. You choose to do something or you don’t. If you want to get in shape then you either choose to go to the gym or you don’t. If you want to know more about a topic you either choose to pick up a book or you don’t. You would think that a person who lives in the United States would be the last to use excuses, but it is the exact opposite. We are a nation of fat, stupid. ignorant, dumb asses who have had every advantage known to man. But it would be too much of a burden to realize the truth, so what do we do? We pretend like it is not our fault. We point the finger at fast food chains, tobacco companies, public eduction and etc. Stop being a fucking dumb ass. Read a book and then go run a mile.

Once you realize it is your fault, you also realize it is in your control. You realize that if you worked out for 6 months then you would be in shape, that if you read a hand full of books on a topic you would dominate most people alive on the subject. All you have to do is choose to do it, and actually believe you can. The funny thing is, we don’t. We do not choose to do it, because we don’t think we can do it. I don’t want to do that anymore, thats at least just my choice.

“If you change the belief first, changing the action is easier.”

-Peter McWilliams

“If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future, look into your present action.”

-Padmisambha

“Once you’ve done the mental work, there comes a point you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but being compassionate towards yourself, your teammates and your opponents.”

-Phil Jackson

Posted in Life Stuff

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