Hands-On with PlayStation Vita
One of the last things I got before leaving Sucker Punch was a PlayStation Vita 3G. They had a nice employee purchase price, so I decided to bite. I ended up getting a PlayStation Vita 3G, Vita Starter Kit which came with a 4 GB memory card, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss.
Upon opening the Vita, the first thing you notice is how light it is. Even with the size, which much bigger than a typical cell phone it is similar in weight. I’d almost say it is lighter than a iPhone 4S, but that could just be my mind playing tricks on me. The packaging is clear, fold out instructions, power cable, USB cable, some AR cards, and large manual. Clean and simple.
Job Hunt 2012 Starts Now
Last year I got the opportunity to join one of the top tier developers here in Seattle as their Community Manager, but sadly today was my last day at Sucker Punch Productions. Over the past nine months I have built up a social community just ready to explode and like that, it came crashing down. Even with the disappointment of not being able to continue building the community, I leave with what I consider some major accomplishments.
- Tripling their Twitter followers from 7,000 to over 25,000 in seven months, especially considering that it took 20 months for the account to hit 7,000.
- Moving from Fireboard to Simple Machines for the forums in about ten days.
- Being able to write content for the PlayStation Blog.
- Setting up a great panel at PAX Prime 2011 with the 2D Cut Scene Team.
- Getting to meet some amazing fans via events and the forums.
I’m sad to be leaving Sucker Punch, but sometimes good things come to and end.
Updating Videos to Sublime Video HTML5 Player
I’m always making tweaks to my website and adding more video is something I’ve always wanted to bring to the table. I have YouTube and Vimeo, but sometimes I just rather host it myself. I’ve used JW Player for a while, but decided to change things up and move to Jilion Sublime Video, which has a very nice WordPress Plugin. I’m in the process updating all my old links to new MP4 and WebM video files, which will also allow higher bitrates and HD versions if I have the source.
As a test of the new player, above is an old clip of Ben Kweller on Carson doing Sundress.
I’m also trying out JW Player, just to see the difference.
Double Fine Kickstarted!
Those crazy kids down at Double Fine have turned to Kickstarter to fund an Adventure Game! Yes an adventure game! Point & Click! Tim and his crew are asking for dollars from fans to build the most amazing adventure game ever, since publishers won’t touch the genre. And fans have jumped on board with Double Fine hitting 50% of their goal in just hours.
On top of making a totally amazing Adventure Game, they also plan to film the entire development process with the great people at 2 Player Productions, who previously worked on Season 1 of PATV, MineCraft: The Documentary, Uncharted 3: The Reveal, and inFAMOUS 2: ComicDNA. The team at 2 Player Productions does amazing work and I’m really more excited about this documentary of the development of this game! Getting to see inside the lions den of Double Fine and the insanity and creativity of Tim and the rest of the staff. It will be amazing!!
I really don’t need to tell you to support this project, as if you don’t you might get cancer or a puppy will die (just not my puppy!!!). So head over to Kickstarter and donate some of your hard earned cash to support such an awesome project!
February Concerts
February is just around the corner and a whole bunch of shows are coming up that are worth checking out. Here are my highlights worth checking out.
- 02.02.2012 – Nada Surf @ Tractor Tavern
- 02.07.2012 – Wilco @ The Paramount Theatre
- 02.14.2012 – Dr. Dog @ The Neptune
- 02.15.2012 – The Dear Hunter @ Neumo’s
- 02.17.2012 – Cursive @ Neumo’s
This is a pretty solid moth of shows, especially if you were lucky enough to get tickets to the Nada Surf show!
Andrew WK Live!!!!
FUCK YES!! Andrew WK plays The Showbox Market March 3rd!! Playing his entire first album I Get Wet!!
Going Dark Against SOPA/PIPA
Politics are a big part of my life and I enjoy being socially active in causes I believe in and against causes I think would be damaging. Recently the House (SOPA) and Senate (PIPA) have been discussing two bills for to strengthen anti-piracy laws by wrecking the way the internet works and providing almost unregulated power to intellectual property owners. While I agree that piracy is a huge concern, as the industry I work in can be hit hard by piracy, but the way that SOPA/PIPA go about solving the problem is all wrong.
These bills have the ability to cause catastrophic damage to the way we currently use the internet today and could potentially stop progress and innovation. If either SOPA or PIPA were law these sites would have been closed or gone bankrupt before becoming part of our lives today.
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- MySpace
- eBay
- Craigslist
- Twitpic
- WordPress.com
- and countless others.
Amazon S3 and WordPress
As I stated in a previous post, I moved all my images, theme files, and js files over to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service or S3. The process was fairly simple with the right mixture of WordPress plugins. I’ll give you a basic guide on how I moved everything over to S3.
First things first, S3 is just storage. When creating your ‘bucket’ (we will talk about that in a bit), you select the location in which it will be stored. S3 isn’t a content delivery network (CDN), but Amazon does offer that with Cloudfront. Even though this isn’t a CDN, it will probably speed up your website as well as reduce burden on your web host, only costing you a couple cents a month (depending on your audience).
Read more →
I’m In The Clouds!
I’ve been messing with WordPress for a while and I thought I’d take a shot at Amazon’s S3 service and move all of my assets to the cloud. With the type of traffic I get, it will be pennies a month, if that. It is pretty neat and fairly simple to setup. I don’t know if I really improved how my website loads, but a fun little project.
While I was working on moving assets to S3, it started to snow! Seattle covered in snow is pretty awesome!
Database Crash. Rebuilding.
My WordPress database died while trying to do some minor upgrades. Some images might not work correctly, but everything else should be 100%. I’ll get everything working ASAP.
In the meantime enjoy this sunset from my office window at work.