Contemplating what a mad US road trip would look like for my Oct-Nov holiday. #roadtrip #USA #route66 #NY #DC
“
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
’ Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!
Headed to Silo Park to watch… “Guys, what are we watching?” - “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” #silopark #theatre #markets #night #auckland #newzealand
romk.im is nerd: ESL to pay out overdue prize money this month -
ESL:
Over the last 12 years the ESL has paid out over $12,000,000 in prize money. Historically, there have been issues with some prize money being paid late. We have worked hard to eradicate these issues over the last 18 months and are now working on the final, remaining backlog of overdue…
Getting to spend time at ESL studios in Cologne and being welcomed to practice there prior to WCG was one of the coolest experiences of my gaming career. The whole team from Turtle Entertainment, ESL and IEM are just incredible.
Nice to hear about the scale of their success from a prizemoney perspective and celebrate it.
I haven’t posted on tumblr for awhile, I started to feel it was all consumption and less conducive to actually writing out thoughts or feelings.
Anyway, I’ll take this almost a Facebook status update, flesh it out and make it a post in order to ease myself back into the habit before I actually take action and get a real blog somewhere else potentially.
Pete Souza's Portrait of a Presidency -
“This was one of the most poignant moments of the President’s first term. He was visited wounded warriors in the intensive care unit ICU at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, May 1, 2012. He had just presented a Purple Heart to Sgt. Chase Haag, who had been injured by an IED just hours before. Sgt. Haag was covered with a blanket and it was difficult to see how badly he was injured. He was also seemingly unconscious so the President whispered in his ear so not to wake him. Just then, there was a rustling under the blanket and Sgt. Haag, eyes still closed, reached his hand out to shake hands with the President.”
Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/10/08/pete-souza-portrait-of-a-presidency/#ixzz28rGPPTyQ
There’s a perception from certain developers (or more importantly, publishers) that if you provide an SDK or allow open modding of your game, that the resulting maps, levels, missions or content created by the modding community can take away from the developers own expansions and reduce the opportunity to generate more revenue from future content.
Two of the worlds greatest games were created through modding, Counter-Strike was developed by two guys using the Half-Life engine, the Half-Life engine was heavily borrowed from ID’s Quake engine as well. DotA (Defense of the Ancients), a team based hero strategy game (or now commonly referred to as Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, MOBA for short) has spawned a huge industry with Valve, Blizzard, Riot Games and S2 Games all creating their own takes on the genre, from one time transactions, to microtransactions, to free to play.
Modding is mashup, and I think most of us tend to agree that mashup and remixing is positive for the human culture.
Anyway, what happens when developers decide to embrace modding? Well, you get an extended life cycle for your game firstly if people end up developing mods which people want to play and subsequently purchase your game in order to do so.
This is exactly what has happened with Arma 2, a three year old title created by a Czech developer, Bohemia Interactive. A New Zealand living over there has developed a mod titled DayZ,
A 225 km2 open world post-soviet state and one of the areas hit by a new and presently unknown infection which has wiped out most of the world’s population. You are one of the few who have survived and now you must search this new wasteland in order to fight for your life against what is left of the indigenous population, now infected with the disease.Go Solo, team up with friends or take on the world as you choose your path in this brutal and chilling landscape using whatever means you stumble upon to survive.
This is your story
That last line in particular is such a great phrase that really does capture the feel of the game, but anyway, I’m not here to talk about the game (which you should check out if you’re a PC gamer). I wanted to simply point out, that when you have a title which is 2-3 years old, and provide modding support, sometimes the rewards can pay off.
It’s certainly no small feat that ArmA 2: Combined Operations is now placed 2nd in the top sellers list on Steam, only behind a game developed with a multi-million budget and marketed around the world and ahead of other popular games of the year such as Portal 2 and Skyrim.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the sales from this modification alone had driven enough sales to rival the games actual release, the excitement and organic user promotion around this game has been stronger than what I saw when it originally released on it’s own.
Developers and publishers take note, some times it pays to keep an open mind and an open gate for future development.
“
IS AN MBA WORTH IT?
Someone on facebook just asked me this
ANSWER:
NO. I specifically said to him, “If you go for an MBA I’m going to hunt you down and kill you”
- why take 2 years off from this exciting and fast moving job market.
- 2 years is like 20 Internet generations
- why get $100k in debt? (the world of tutions is a LOT different than even ten years ago)
- A “Marketing” class in a business school is taught by a guy who got his PhD 10 years ago. Real marketing is done by people who are using marketing tools invented yesterday
- “Investing” is only learned by experience
- “Management” is learned by leading people and failing the first few times.
- “Sales” is learned by having the passion to sell something you love.
- There’s no such thing as “business”. There’s such a thing as making people’s lives better. Figure out how to do that and you won’t need business school.
- A school is a business. An MBA was just another way to create a skew. It turned out to be a “screw” but most people don’t learn that until it’s in the wrong hole.
” — James Altucher[video]
Was trying to fill someone in earlier today about some of the bigger things in competitive gaming and esports at the moment.
If you’re not up to speed or aware of how impressive the space currently is, you may find this interesting yourself.
Not all info is necessarily accurate and most of it is intentionally light, just a quickly thrown together opinion, but hope you can find it useful to share with someone whom you want to get up to speed on Esports.
Major League Gaming (America)
www.majorleaguegaming.com
MLG is a professional eSports organisation running events in the US and Canada.