A fantastic musical dance number flash-mob.
Via (of course) my musical dance number-loving wife.
Updates for 2009-04-07
- Really sweet short film, Signs: http://www.dailymotion.pl/video/x87daz_signs_shortfilms – I’d like to go home and kiss my wife now, please. #
- Just realized I’m teaching a Time Management course tomorrow. Insert the appropriate ironic snark [here] while I run around in a mild panic. #
- Adrift: Ship’s systems still work. Impossible, according to everything we know. Then again, ‘.. http://tinyurl.com/cmnok4 #
- Random Average: Wizards of the Coast takes a? novel approach to dealing with PDF piracy http://tinyurl.com/cqlau6 #
- Holy crow: way way WAY too much good stuff from @thecreativepenn this morning (or… her evening?) to read before morning duties. /bookmark #
- RT @Three_Star_Dave RT @peoplefor BREAKING! Vermont House overrides Gov. Douglas’s veto of same-sex marriage bill, 100-49! #
- I am now up to two scenes I’d like to add to former WIP that I’ve already finished. Why couldn’t I have thought of em when I needed words?!? #
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Wizards of the Coast takes a… novel approach to dealing with PDF piracy
And by “novel”, I mean to say “utterly stupid and short-sighted.”
Earlier this evening RPGNow, Paizo, and DriveThruRPG pulled all of their Wizards of the Coast PDF products (where both new and much much much older products were available) at WotC’s request. The ability to purchase them ended at noon – the ability to download products that you’ve already bought ended at midnight.
According to Wizards of the Coast, this was done to prevent piracy. (In a followup statement, they clarified that they believe this… because they are luddite morons.)
“We have [taken these actions] to stop the illegal activities […], and to deter future unauthorized and unlawful file-sharing.”
I love the vast understatement from one gaming site today:
“I predict an increase in piracy of Wizards products.”
REALLY?
Let me take this one step further. I guarantee – not ‘predict’, but guaran-goddamn-tee that every single PDF of WotC products made available after midnight tonight will be a pirated copy.
Just… think about it for a second; you’ll see exactly what I mean.
See… before today? Sure, some people were sharing PDFs like that on file-sharing sites, and there was pirating going on. Sure, yes.
Was it because the PDFs were made available by WotC and sold online?
No. You’ve been able to get PDFs of ANY game book — hell, any book at all — even ones that have never had electronic versions available, ever since scanner technology became remotely mainstream (early 90s), because people have time, and geeks have desire for the electronic versions.
Until today, at least most of the people who wanted electronic versions of their game book were getting the PDFs the easy way: google search, got to RPGNow, click, click, download. No torrent software. No worrying if you picked up a virus with your latest PDF. Easy.
Now, the only way to get the electronic version of a WotC product is to get it from a pirate site.
I can either not get it at all (sucks for me, and WotC gets no money), or I get it from a torrent site (hassle for me, and WotC gets no money).
The pirating people? This has no fucking affect on them what. so. ever.
Well, no; that’s not entirely true.
This move by WotC, ostensibly meant to fight piracy, will actually ensure that more people will come to their site to download ALL the PDFs they want (for games, for novels… whatever — I mean, as long as they’re THERE for the DnD stuff, they might as well look around and see what else is out there, right?…).
It’s not just stupid and short-sighted. It doesn’t just ensure the piracy of their work by 100% of those that want PDFs of DnD material; it actually hurts all the other companies in the industry as well.
… and the tech support says “clear your browser cache”…
So, I hit a stupid bug on Flickr yesterday; I noticed that ‘our’ Flickr pro account (as opposed to ‘my’ Flickr pro account) had expired, so I attempted to renew the subscription.
Only problem was, I couldn’t. When I tried to do so, the Yahoo Wallet page told me it wasn’t ‘available at this time’.
Really? Because if I try to log in from my personal Flickr account, I can get there just fine. Clearly, something with ‘our’ account is screwed up.
However, while I was poking around in my personal account, I noticed that I could buy a “gift” account for someone else, which I did, and then sent it to myself, logged in as ‘our’ account, accepted the gift, and voila, we have a renewed account again.
Can I now get to the wallet site, now that we’re a legitimate Pro user again?
Of course not. *headdesk*
Anyone else ever had problems like that with Flickr, or am I more uniquely stricken than most?
Updates for 2009-04-06
- Via @Three_Star_Dave “You’ve got Voicemail. Do you care?” http://is.gd/r1QY — *looks at two VMs, sitting on his cell for the last week* No. #
- Limping everywhere. No idea why; I was not limping last night, so this happened in my SLEEP. ‘Mid-sleep ankle injury’ redefines ‘lame’. #
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Updates for 2009-04-05
- If you do any kind of web page tweaking at all, especially customizing WP templates, I *highly* recommend the Firebug addon for Firefox. #
- Random Average: Machinima: Order of Middle Earth http://tinyurl.com/dg9sb4 #
- RT: @wilw: Things you don’t want to hear from the GM: “The dragon crits.” #
- RT: @DaphneUn: SEKRITS revealed!! Want to know all about them? Check it out: http://ktliterary.com/2009/04/sekrits-revealed/ #
- Adrift: Tenth Day: It doesn’t feel like a ship so much as a vast cathedral. To some, it is; I under.. http://tinyurl.com/dybr7m #
- This was my weekend: http://is.gd/ERC (Also, it kinda rocks.) #jco #
- Finished eclectic writing/publishing interview with @thecreativepenn! Now, well-earned downtime and that most-American of cuisine: corndogs. #
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A shut in weekend != a lazy weekend
So, while the weather has been, if not as blizzard-swathed and snowbound as originally predicted, not exactly outdoor-activity-friendly, which fact was used to justify a weekend spent (almost) entirely at home, rather than biking around the area or doing HOA penance on the yard.
Unfortunately, being stuck inside didn’t really mean any time off from laborious efforts – if I were totally honest, I’d say I’ve worked more solid hours in the last two days than I have in any given week since February. Most of that work had to do with moving kt literary from Movable Type over to WordPress and coming up with a swanky new design. I fully expect the other literary agents out there will be green with envy. (They certainly won’t be purple, as I’m fairly certain we used up all of that color currently available on the free market.)
I really like the design, and so far the feedback from Kate’s readership has been very very positive, which indicates we went the right direction as far as her target audience in concerned. Kate did a great job on her portions of the redesign (which involved providing almost all of the text copy for the site, a truly gargantuan effort of layout on her Clients page, and retagging every single one of her (daily!) posts for almost a year, since MT to WP migrations don’t capture tags), but I think my favorite bit is the header image, which Kate shot herself, using only a chest in the living room and copies of her clients books.
And I completely redid the layout on this site, when I wasn’t doing anything else. (This was me. Also, it rocks.)
On top of all that, we even got caught up on Bones and Castle and Dollhouse when our fingers became too heavy to type.
But that’s not all! I’m doing an interview with Joanna from The Creative Penn this afternoon. We’re doing the whole thing over Skype, with something like a nine-hour time difference (she’s in Brisbane), and I’ll be talking about Adrift, writing stuff in weird mediums in general, books, video games, roleplaying games, books based on games, games based on books, social networking, blogging tools for the technically unsure… and… I dunno, maybe I’ll explain how wikis work, just for fun.
As you know, I do ramble on a bit.
Once that’s done, I believe I might indulge in a bit of ‘it’s the weekend, dammit’, have a couple corndogs (the most American of foods), and play a little Lord of the Rings.
How’d YOUR weekend go?
Updates for 2009-04-04
- HOLY CRAP, IOWA! WAY TO GO! As a former mid-westerner, I’m both happily amazed and a little surprised. Woot! http://is.gd/qwNj #
- Also: today is apparently National Cleavage Day. I’m already celebrating IN MY MIND. #
- #followfriday ? Okay. I say @unclepilot (I agree about story outlines), and @gamefiend (because I’m in a gamers-are-awesome mood) #
- And thanks, @jamieharrington for the #followfriday thing. :) #
- Adrift: Backtracking routes for three days now. Can’t find a way past a hard vacuum zone. The girl/.. http://tinyurl.com/dd6zhu #
- Wresting with Twitter Tools on WordPress; managed to take the mostly functional and turn it into the completely broken. #
- Up-ing and at-ing. In this case, that means wrestling with Twitter Tools on WordPress at 7am. I fubar’d it something good. Err… bad. #
- Have achieved 100/100 twequilibrium. Almost didn’t notice. #
- You know what’s good about a snowy Saturday in April? Why yes, the answer IS gingerbread waffles for lunch. #
- Adrift: Ninth day. The first time I’ve crawled into a derelict ship and felt as though I should tak.. http://tinyurl.com/d6nw6y #
- I’ve blown an hour watching http://twistori.com/ – fun. #
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