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First Dual-Wielded Halo Community Interview - 03-27-2008 , 08:28 PM
The Halo online community fascinates me, and it's probably the one thing that keeps me chugging along after 4 years. I'm not sure we could nail down why (perhaps we'll give it a shot), but the community of people surrounding this game, and this game developer, continues to be a spectacle to many of us.
Focusing mainly on the Halo fanbase and the fansites that keeping it humming, the following questions will be directed toward to men that have been around the Bungieverse, running fansites, longer than most anyone.
Louis Wu - owner of Halo.Bungie.Org
Narcogen - owner of Rampancy.Net
Before we start, allow me to ask a question of myself...
Me: Why another interview? We've had loads of these.
Me2: Because this time I'm going to leave the games alone, and focus on the people who PLAY the games, and run fansites dedicated to the games year after year. Not enough of these questions have been asked, and that's a shame.
Me: Whatever. Just get to it.
Alright, to get this off the ground, I'll start this way. Most people that care enough to read this already know who you guys are. Instead of giving the common 'tell us a little about yourself' starter, l want to get right to the good stuff.
HIH: How did you find yourself running a Halo/Bungie fansite, and had you ever been involved in a fan project before?
Louis Wu: HBO was a logical offshoot of the bungie.org family of websites, started as soon as anyone knew there WAS a Halo. (Well... a Blam. It was a few months before we had more than a codename.) My first Bungie-related website kicked off in March 1995 - I was heavily into Marathon at that point, and Steve Wood had started the Marathon HyperArchive, a file repository for the newly-burgeoning community. I loved the idea - but I didn't think he was updating enough, so I asked him if he'd mind if I joined in. He said that would be fine, so I opened the Marathon HyperArchive NorthWest (I was in Portland, Oregon at the time), and that grew into the largest Marathon file repository on the web.
NARCOGEN: Let's see. I came to Bungie fandom by a somewhat circuitous route. Am I going too far back if I start with the Atari 2600?
Too bad, because that is where it starts. My brother and I lusted after that console for years and finally got one after it was passe. Determined not to continue buying closed game machines that could not be expanded or used for other purposes, we moved our gaming to the Commodore 64 computer and then to the oh-so-sexy Amiga 500.
When Commodore went belly-up and I finally decided I neeed a "real computer" I bought a Macintosh laptop. I'd been using PCs since Dad brought home a Compaq luggable that we used to make Christmas lists in Lotus 1-2-3 and played the text adventre Colossal Cave on.
The laptop was no good for gaming but I stayed on the Mac platform and eventually hungered for something to play on it. The PC had Doom, which I had a lot of fun on playing co-op with buddies in graduate school. Shortly thereafter, the Mac got Bungie's Marathon, and that made me a Bungie fan. I played all the Marathon games, played both the Myth games, read the newsgroup comp.mac.sys.games religiously. Late in the Myth era, I discovered a variety of community websites, like MBO (myth.bungie.org) as well as sites like Nontoxic Myth and the Townhall and The Mill and various others.
Rumor had it there was some new Bungie game coming out, and everybody thought it was codenamed "blam". A new forum opened up for this game at Bungie.org and I spent a lot of time there. Then one day in the summer of 1999 I was watching a live QuickTime stream of the MacWorld keynote when Steve Jobs brought up Jason Jones to demonstrate "Halo". And I knew I had to have it. I made plans to get a really, really expensive Mac with a very good video card in order to play it. Funny how that never panned out, and today I still use laptops that aren't really made for gaming.
On the blam, now "Halo" forum I met a bunch of other Bungie fans, a lot of them deeply involved in the Myth scene. Noctavis had been involved at one Myth site. Tyson "Ferrex" Green and Jaime "Case" Griesemer had been on another. Noctavis and I first tried to start a site called HaloNews, but the only thing we ever got done for it was a basic design and an interview with Nathan Bitner, then of Bungie. Then I left the country (which is a whole other story), Noctavis teamed up with Ferrex and some other guys to do another site, called "The Core" and Bitner eventually left Bungie and did a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not even going to get into. Just don't even ask, really.
Despite distance and connectivity issues I tried to stay as involved as I can and eventually when The Core thought of expanding I was asked on staff. Just prior to that there was a roundtable discussion among the staff about a name change. Ferrex owned the domain name "rampancy.net" and thought it was a nice tie-in for a Bungie-focused site. I liked the name a lot and so Ferrex and I outvoted Noctavis. Ferrex then orchestrated a wonderful graphic transition from The Core to Rampancy that mimicked the stages of rampancy itself.
Eventually the buyout happened, and quite a few fans who, like I had been, were Mac users first and Bungie fans second, drifted away a little bit. Some didn't want to make the console jump. Myself, I wouldn't have done it for any other game but Halo. Others got caught up in "real life" and of course Ferrex ended up actually working at Bungie-- all this time of course he hadn't just been doing fan website work, he'd also designed a bunch of killer Myth maps including the classic Raisin Barn.
So eventually it came to pass that of the people originally involved at rampancy.net I'm the last one left. In terms of total contributed posts Ferrex still holds the #2 spot but the gap has widened a bit over the years.
HIH: As a followup to question 1, and just to give people an idea of the length of time we're talking about here, how long have you been running a Bungie/Halo fansite (in years, or dog years)?
Louis Wu: Lessee... I think dog years is a mistake; the dog's gonna be dead. Now that I think about it, I'm 7 days away from my 13th anniversary of hosting Bungie-related websites... Wow. (I'm writing these answers on March 18.)
NARCOGEN: It'll be eight years this May 26th that the site has been open (including its early period as The Core).
Louis Wu (responds): this May 26, R.net will be 9, not 8. ;)
HIH: Focusing on Bungie for a moment, what is it about this company that keeps you inspired to run a fansite? Or, does the company itself play a significant role in your desire to do what you do (as a site owner)?
Louis Wu: Yes, the company plays a role - in fact, the company is critical. Something about their games has always grabbed me; Marathon wasreally the first game, EVER, that made me come back and play it after I was finished with it. Before Marathon, I'd buy a new game, play it until I'd beaten it, then put it on a shelf - never to revisit it. Puzzle games, action games, RPGs - didn't matter, once it was done, it was done. Marathon might have been my first multiplayer game, which would explain some of that replayability...but there were programmers who, very early in Marathon's life cycle, built tools to allow fans to create new maps for the game... and this was amazing to me. It was fresh every time I fired up a new creation. (Even the crappy ones.) After a while, some people in the company took notice of sites like mine - I remember going to MacWorld in Boston in 1996, and meeting Matt Soell. There wasn't really any way for the fan community to interact with the company at that stage; they had a static website, and no community team at all. But they still had a pretty loyal following... because they told great stories, and they built great games.
I was off the internet for the Myth years (I was traveling, mostly in places that didn't even HAVE internet connections, for 1997 and 1998), but apparently the cycle repeated... and was enhanced by Bungie reaching out to the fanbase. There was more interaction (Bungie.net gave Myth players a place to play, and access to the dev team, in some ways), and this drove the loyalty even higher.
By the time Halo rolled around, they had an honest to goodness 'Community Team'. (I think it was Matt, alone, at the start - but it grew pretty fast.) Bungie listened to its fans - they didn't always do what the most vocal fans demanded, but they heard - and they took it under advisement. Fans felt like the company cared about them as more than just sales figures - and fans loved the rich world Bungie created. The combination made the quantity of fan-created material explode.
So on the one hand, Bungie talks to its fanbase (and to its fansites), and makes us feel listened-to. And on the other hand, Bungie creates worlds that inspire talented people to create amazing things. The combination keeps me going.
NARCOGEN: The nature of Marathon, more than anything else, convinced me that video games were not only worth playing, but worth thinking about and worth writing about. Where other developers used classical themes as mere window dressing, Bungie embedded them in the very core. When other games just had exploding barrels and bloody body parts on giant stakes, Bungie built an entirely cohesive and convincing science fiction world that I wanted to visit and cared about deeply.
In some ways the Halo story is painted with broader brush-strokes, but in other ways it is deeper; it's a testament to the company that they're able to create a game that appeals to so many different people on so many different levels. It's been obvious that while story is very important to Bungie, they know it's not everyone's cup of tea and try hard to let it be unintrusive for those who aren't as interested.
HIH: Let me set the stage for the next few questions. In my limited amount of time around this community, I've seen drastic changes in the amount of effort by Bungie to present and maintain a community portal on the web. Back when I first started peeking around, Bungie had the old 'Truth and Reconciliation' website (am I getting that right). It was ok, but nothing compared to the marvel that is now Bungie.net.
Louis Wu: Yep - Truth and Reconciliation was the first real Halo-branded site... but yeah, it was pretty static.
HIH (continues): In all honesty, I look at Bungie.net as an example of what a company can do with the web. It's beautiful, functional, and has features that (as someone who does programming) just make me tip my hat to their innovation and work ethic. Because of this, my head gets going about us - the few, the proud, the fansites. Here's a short volley of questions related this line of thinking.
I'm guessing that in days gone by, fansites provided a very valuable service to the community that they couldn't get from the developer. Am I right?
Louis Wu: Yes. That's true in general - NO developer was supplying a place where fans could gather, and share information.
NARCOGEN: Sure. If you look back at Marathon and Myth, there were a lot of "third party opporunities" you could call them. First, both games had pretty deep backstories, portrayed in Marathon's terminals and Myth's journal entries. So there were sites and forums where fans could speculate on the meaning of the story and try to infer some of the material that Bungie didn't state outright (which is a lot).
Both series eventually had map authoring tools, so there were fansites to help people create their own maps, as well as sites to archive fan-created maps and eventually rate and discuss fan-created maps.
Both series supported small recording files that could be played-back in engine, so there were sites that discussed strategy and tactics for Myth with recording films accompanying them. Likewise, for both games you could hold tournaments and then host the recordings on the site for fans to watch and see how top players played.
HIH: Are fansites as 'needed' now as they once were, with Bungie doing so much (and more) that the fan community used to do?
Louis Wu: Yes, because Bungie does what Bungie WANTS to do. For the most part, that's:
- provide information about their games and team (static info)
- provide forums and groups for individual discussion
- provide storage for game-derived content
- provide data on your online gameplay
What they DON'T do is provide storage for any content that WASN'T created in-game, or a way for folks who create that kind of content to interact. That leaves out not only artists, writers, sculptors, musicians... but also folks who take in-game assets and tweak them in ways that the in-game tools aren't capable of. Machinima, for example, or modified screenshots, or trick compilations, or really ANYTHING that takes game content and adds something extra to it.
This is the gap filled by fansites. Folks can build their monuments to Bungie, share them with the world, and discuss them with others.
NARCOGEN: Well, let me address that in a roundabout way. What I will say is that partly because of changes at Bungie over the years, and in large part due to differences between the natures of PC and console games, Bungie.net now has taken over a lot of the functions that in the past would have been done by fansites. For some of those things, it does as good a job or better than the best fansites could have done. For some of those things, because of the nature of Xbox Live and how it works, it is the only site that can do those things.
I think there are still some opportunities for fansites to contribute in many ways, but I'd say that the majority of them either involve derivative materials created by the community itself, rather than elements created by Bungie or the games themselves: machinima, fan art, fan fiction, things of that nature. For content that's more closely related to the game itself, fansites are largely dependent on Bungie.net to expose data and/or functionality in order to work. In the latter category especially I think more could be done.
Last edited by Ducain; 04-03-2008 at 06:25 PM. .
Page 2 - 04-01-2008 , 03:10 PM
HIH: Looking around the community today, could you list a few areas where the fan community could still step up and offer services that your average web dude couldn't get from Bungie itself?
Louis Wu: Probably the biggest 'gap' I see right now is a useful way to sift through the amazing quantity of user-created content on Bungie's website. Tons and tons and TONS of fantastic map variants, game variants, screenshots are posted there every day - but finding stuff is nearly impossible. There are sites like I <3 Halo Screen shots that highlight what at least one fan considers to be great stuff...but what's missing is some sort of a filter system for the entire collection. Rampancy.net made a start, with their Forge Database...but unfortunately, it's not used as much as it could be - and any tool that relies on crowdsourced management is only as good as the crowd that does the management - if there's no audience, there's no real value.
I believe that if someone built an easy-to-use tool for filtering and rating content stored on Bungie's servers, and promoted it well... they could become huge.
NARCOGEN: Sure. If you look at the way Bungie.net right now handles a lot of the user-created content that Halo 3 enables, it's based very much around the Xbox Live interface itself, which means it is friends-list centric. The addition of friends-of-friends list expands the reach of the interface quite a bit, but it's still a bit of a kludge and is still based on the friends list concept.
The friends list is a great interface for voice chat, messaging, and gameplay, but for browsing content like films, screenshots, and map variations, it's really much less useful. The essential problem is that while the average player may only be interested in playing with people that he or she knows, there's a very good chance they may be interested in images, films, and map variations made by people they've never met or perhaps even heard of.
Bungie Favorites tries to address this, but that requires a gatekeeper to regularly update that feature. It's really only good for showing the latest films of Bungie humpdays and the latest hijinks that earned somebody Recon. If someone's just looking for a new map variation to play, or a film to watch to get some new ideas about how to play a level (multiplayer or campaign) there's really no way to search for anything, or to browse what Bungie.net makes available. You've got your friends and their shares, their friends and their shares, and Bungie favorites. That lets you reach about 10,000 people and their content if your friends list is full and all of their friends lists are full, which according to Major Nelson at Xbox.com is far from true. In any case it's a woefully small percentage of the total number of Halo players out there who may have made interesting content.
So I think there's a great opportunity for fansites to find a way to present a different interface to that content. A lot of that is being done now in ways that are very separate from Bungie.net. For instance, Rampancy's Forge Database lets users submit map variations they've created, and gives them a field to provide a link to the map on Bungie.net. They've then got to enter information describing that map to the system so people can use that information to browse: what map it is based on, what gametypes it supports, what weapons are on it, etc etc.
Of course, somewhere deep inside Bungie.net and Halo 3 all that information is already there. The Halo 3 engine needs to know about those weapons and gametypes and map variations, and Bungie.net already knows about what content you've put in your share. Potentially it could be as easy as submitting a gamertag to the site and having all that metadata about that content pulled from Bungie.net and presented in whatever way a fansite sees fit. Right now that can't really be done because Bungie.net doesn't provide most of that information, and the information it does provide is provided only in full HTML format. It requires fansite maintainers to use (or, more likely, write) programs called screen scrapers to pull out the relevant information so it can be collated and organized in a different way.
All the alternative interfaces for Bungie.net content either work that way, or use RSS feeds that Bungie.net provides. However, in many ways Bungie.net's current RSS feeds also make it very hard for fansite maintainers. Take game results and player statistics, for instance. Right now those feeds have all of their data in a single element; you again need a custom-written screen scraper to look at the unformatted text and figure out where all the numbers go. If the RSS as generated presented each data in a descriptive tag then fansites could much more easily parse it and present that data in any way it liked, allowing for all kinds of statistics that are far too esoteric for Bungie to track, but that some portions of the community might be very interested in looking at. The same might be done to most of the user content on Bungie.net: films, screenshots, maps, game results - campaign or multiplayer.
Don't get me wrong-- Bungie is pretty far out ahead of the curve in this area; I just think a few extra steps and fansites could be more fully involved.
HIH: Veering away from Bungie now, the next series of questions will be aimed at fansites in general, and the status of the community. At HIH, the release of Halo 2 was a watershed event. Literally, nothing has remained the same since that day. Even the types of fans visiting the site seems different. Give us an idea of how Halo 2 affected your corner of the Bungieverse, for good or for ill.
Louis Wu: Well, obviously, it made things bigger. More fans, more fan content, more everything. In some ways, that was great; the bigger the group, the more talent you have in one place. Plus, it came at a time when the internet was going through a major change - bandwidth was cheaper, online storage space was cheaper. And people had the first game as a template - they knew what to look for. Finding the secrets of the first game (easter eggs, glitches, etc) took well over a year - finding a huge percentage of the Halo 2 equivalents took a month or two. Machinima exploded, partly because there were more people making it... but also because you could recruit your cast online, instead of having to do most of your filming via LAN. If you didn't need to have people in your town who played the game... the chances of creating your masterpiece skyrocketed.
In other ways, though... it was hard. Halo 2's popularity meant that it attracted a lot more casual fans - folks who knew nothing except that they liked playing Halo 2. They didn't know anything about Bungie, or Bungie's past creations - and in a lot of cases, they didn't care. They didn't particularly care that they were entering a community that had been there for a while - they didn't look around much before chiming in with their two cents. In a lot of cases, those two cents had been chimed in with a few times already - often enough, in fact, that Lincoln's face was no longer even visible. These newcomers were just trying to share their enthusiasm for a game they'd discovered... but they did it in a way that irritated the old-timers. And the old-timers reacted irritably, which pissed off the newcomers. And all of a sudden, what could have been a huge community of enthusiastic fans became a biting, bitter group of polarized internet denizens.
And on top of all of it, the advent of Halo 2 multiplayer (and the tools to organize the results) shifted the focus quite a bit; folks played through the campaign, but when they were done, only the hardcore tricksters stuck around and kept exploring - everyone else moved on to multiplayer.
NARCOGEN: If I can subvert your question before answering it in order that I might follow up on the last couple of answers...
...I'd say the acquisition was also a watershed event, especially since it meant the Halo series was becoming a console game first and foremost.
Halo 1 didn't even have Internet multiplayer, which Myth did have years before. In fact, the lobby system used in Halo is very much a descendant of Myth's system. The real innovation in Halo 2 was matchmaking to replace the server browser; Myth's system really was just a glorified server browser with a pretty interface, and at times using it was very problematic.
However, even once Halo 2 came and brought back Internet play, a lot of the fansite opportunities that Marathon and Myth had afforded were bricked up. Marathon and Myth had Films support, and Halo 1 and 2 didn't. So the only way to create films was through video capture, which meant hosting large data files and endless tradeoffs between file size and image quality. It meant that a far lower percentage of the fanbase could participate in making films, and fewer sites could afford to try and host significant media archives. This was largely compensated for by the larger size of Halo's audience, but it's still maddening for a fansite looking for niches to fill.
The closed nature of Xbox Live meant that even when Halo got film recording features, the interface for those films is within the game and on Bungie.net, whereas before these were provided entirely by the community. For Myth and Marathon, as PC-based games, that made sense. For a console game, being played by people who might not even have a computer, it had to be within the game. The Bungie.net features are really just gravy.
Marathon and Myth both had mapmaking software. Halo didn't get any until the PC port of Halo 1, at which time it became apparent that custom maps were going to be absolutely huge files that were of interest only to the small portion of the fanbase using the Halo Custom Edition version of the game-- not the Xbox version and not the straight PC version. It meant that being an archive for fan-made Halo maps was going to require a lot more in terms of resources and expense, and appeal to far fewer people.
By the time Halo 2 came out most of these questions, at least with regard to how Rampancy was involved, had been answered. Shut out by the architecture from many of the opportunities that would have been afforded to a fansite following a PC game, it left me with the part of the experience that appealed most to me anyway: playing the game (primarily the campaign), thinking about it, and then writing about it. Speculating about the story, comparisons to other games, that sort of thing.
Of course that is also an area where the release of Halo 2 had a big impact, because it was so very different from the first game: Bungie's custom physics was ripped out in favor of the Havok middleware. The story was split in half so we could see the Arbiter's side of things, which meant Elites speaking English. Since the real enemy was revealed as the Flood they needed a mouthpiece, which means we got Audrey... I mean, Gravemind.
How different Halo 2 was from Halo 1 struck me quite early and eventually led to my writing the Halo 2 Impressions series, which catalogs the differences level by level. Speed bump or no I do intend to do that for Halo 3 as well, but I'll agree that the "Halo 1 > Halo 2" crowd is much more numerous and more vocal than the "Halo 2 > Halo 3" crowd, although that does exist, too.
HIH: In our neighborhood, Halo 3 was an entirely different animal. The release of Halo 3 was a speedbump compared with Halo 2. Also, things appeared to have changed in a major way for us. The deluge of content now seems to flow more toward and through Bungie.net, for obvious technical reasons (screenshot and video uploads). Nothing bad about that - just different. Explain how Halo 3 has affected your area of our community, and how is it different from the days after the Halo 2 release.
Louis Wu: Well... I got busier just before Halo 3 came out, which meant I got behind. A lot of the staff I relied on went through similar changes, which meant that even FEWER resources were being put towards cataloging more content - and when Halo 3 rolled out, I spent the first couple of months just trying to keep up on the news flood. This meant that processing new fan content took a back seat - and as a result, the entire site has suffered. (This continues today; most of the HBO staff has moved on, and I haven't had time to look for replacements.) It's different from the days after the Halo 2 release because I had more free time then - and more help on top of that.
NARCOGEN: Well by exposing at least some links to fileshares through Bungie.net it enabled the creation of things like the Forge database, so that's one good thing. In the interim between Halo 1 and Halo 3 another community feature emerged, which was fans transcribing the soundtrack music by Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori so that they could play it at home. That's sort of unique because it isn't wholly fan-created content, it's still very tied to the game itself, but it doesn't require any interaction with Bungie.net, and it does fill a need, because until recently there wasn't any official sheet music available.
In that sense Halo 3 opened up opportunities because it has a new soundtrack, but that's largely separate from what Bungie does with Bungie.net and its community features.
Last edited by Ducain; 04-03-2008 at 01:32 PM. .
Page 3 - 04-01-2008 , 03:16 PM
HIH: It's been my thought since the beginning that fansites exist as long as there is a need for them. Sure, a person could keep a dead site open, but the needs of the fanbase (and how well we meet those needs) affects the vitality of our sites. A perfect example of this kind of need is video hosting. 4 years ago, one of the most urgent community needs was finding a host for your content. Our ability to share cool stuff depended on finding people to help us host our videos. Today, video hosting has gone mainstream, and is easily attainable. Because of this, our sites have changed, and some sites have disappeared.
Louis Wu: I may be a neanderthal in this sense - but while I'm thankful for sites like YouTube, and GeeVee, and the like... I mourn for the loss of places where high-quality footage can be easily stored. We're re-releasing the Halo cutscenes in downloadable Hi-Def resolution... and while the total numbers of downloads are not that high, the feedback (via email) is tremendously positive; those that ARE downloading LOVE seeing this stuff in high quality.
I'm sad that sites are vanishing due to easy video upload options...because those options are limited in some fundamental ways.
HIH (continues): What would you say is the primary 'need' your site meets for the community? What are you good at (as a fansite), and/or what things are you most pleased with, regarding what you offer the fans?
Louis Wu: I'd like to say that the need we serve is 'fan content repository' - but these days, that's less and less true. We're still happy to HOST this stuff, and publicize it... but the tools for finding what we've posted are woefully outdated, and stuff gets lost awfully fast. So I guess what we're good at is what we've always been good at - keeping up on Halo news.
NARCOGEN: It's probably fair to say that it's a niche need. I consciously appeal to those who have a need to try and verbalize the reaction they have to playing Halo, with a particular emphasis on the single player campaign, but wandering a bit further afield than just discussion of the story itself. I tend to think of it as something a bit like taking a comparative literature approach to video gaming.
So I look at the game, and the cutscenes, and the level designs, and the character designs, and the dialogue, and I think about how this fits within larger contexts, about how it compares to other games new and old, about what I think the designers and writers were aiming at when they made it, and places where they succeeded and places where they might have not achieved everything they wanted.
HIH: How has your site changed over the years to meet new fan needs? Where have your priorites shifted?
Louis Wu: I used to put much more time into making sure that stuff was organized; I wasn't very good at building tools in those days, but I took care that the tools were useable. I'm much better now - but I no longer have time to actually CREATE the tools needed - which means that the site is like a huge attic in someone's mansion. It's full of fascinating and incredible stuff... but it's all piled on top of itself, and nobody goes up there because the dust makes you sneeze like crazy.
I don't think my priorities have shifted (with respect to the site, or to fan content) - I think my LIFE has shifted, and I no longer have as much time to devote to the site. (Or, more accurately, the rate of content accumulation has increased to such a point that I can no longer keep up with it in the amount of time I devote to the site.) To answer your question specifically - I don't think we ARE meeting fan needs. And that makes me sad.
NARCOGEN: I think it's fair to say that it shifted to fit the nature of the community at the time. When it started, there was a lot of boundless speculation and a dearth of news, and only a few places to get that news. So the sites were, first and foremost, designed to try and get any information at all about the game, from anywhere, and pass it on as quickly as possible, and then dissect it to glean even more information.
So a lot of the content was pretty short form - new screenshots here, new release date speculation there - and a lot of the real content was in forum posts.
Of course, over time, Halo became a big deal, and all the major gaming sites started covering it, and more fansites started up, so the ratio of news items to news sites started to drop. At some point I figured it was better to leave the breaking news to other sites, let things sit and simmer for awhile, and then try and write something more in-depth at a later date.
HIH: Going back to the Halo 1 days, it seems to me that campaign was king back then. It could very well be that this was simply my perception, but since online MP didn't really exist outside of a 3rd party solution, much of the community focus was on the campaign portion of the game. Discussion of the Halo story was plentiful and happened often. It seems to me that far less of that sort of discussion happens these days.
Louis Wu: I don't think that's true - I think there's still a lot of story discussion that goes on. I just think that so much MORE multiplayer discussion goes on that the story discussion gets buried. (It doesn't help that our Story site, which was one of the premier places on the web for collecting that sort of speculation, has gone into hibernation - though that might change soon.)
I'd agree with you that Campaign was king in the days of Halo 1. Not only was multiplayer confined to LAN play, but there were no ways to keep track of how you did over time; you played, you won or lost, you moved on. With the advent of stats collection on Bungie.net, you can suddenly see patterns in your play - you can find things to talk about with your friends, things to lord over them, things to regret.
HIH (continues): With Halo 2, and it's absolutely jaw-dropping XBL multiplayer experience, it seems to me that community discussion changed in a tangible way. On forums across the net, the focus clearly became the MP component. Nothing evil happened here - I'm just making observations. I guess I'm saying that to me, probably because of WHEN I first became active, the Bungie online community seemed a to be a place of rich discussions of storylines and characters, analyzing game script quotes, and picking apart tiny fragments of the campaign game, both in plot and in exploration. At HBO, the story page and the tricks page were both fascinating to me. On a purely surface reaction level, it feels different today.
Louis Wu: I think that the volume of Campaign discussion has increased absolutely since the early days of Halo 1, if only because the overall community is so much bigger. As a percentage of total conversation, though, it's dropped from a majority to a tiny minority - so yeah, I'd agree with you that it's different, and finding folks who want to hash out the details of the story is harder than it used to be. (We're still working on a full-blown Terminal site - hopefully it'll be done soon - and that might change things a little.)
I think the community definitely split after the release of Halo 2; when Halo was out, there weren't separate communities, really. (Well, there were the hardcore Xbox Connect folks... but they were a tiny minority.) Most people played campaign, and LAN-based multiplayer, and talked about both. Multiplayer was cool, but you had to lug your Xbox to your buddy's house to play it, so it happened less. So when you read about some new glitch someone found in Campaign, you were more likely to try it out yourself.
After Halo 2, this became far less true. There WERE two separate communities -the folks who played campaign exhaustively, and the folks who moved on after finishing to play multiplayer. (Going back every few weeks to run through this level or that doesn't really count.) It didn't help that Halo 2's campaign suffered from some pretty major flaws, when compared to Halo's campaign (linearity, anambitious but not universally-liked attempt to show the story from multiple viewpoints, etc).
NARCOGEN: My own personal situation informs my view on the matter, which is essentially this: I do think multiplayer on the Internet is great. It's a must-have feature in today's market, and it's certainly a big reason why Halo is as popular as it is.
Having said that, it's not my particular reason for being a fan. Rampancy.net would probably still exist in much its current form if all the Halo games had no multiplayer features whatsoever, whereas I can honestly say that if it had been a multiplayer-only game, something like Shadowrun, it's quite likely I might never have bought it, let alone spent as much time as I have on maintaining a fansite for it. That's partly just a matter of personal preference, and partly an issue of practicality, as I've lived overseas since 1999 and the performance of Internet connections between here and the US, the UK, or other places where Halo is possible is somewhat questionable. It means that at best, I'm a player with an awful lot of lag, and at worst, I can't connect at all.
That doesn't mean I can't and don't enjoy it: I was lucky enough to be invited into the beta last year and had an absolute blast playing it, even if the best ping I could get was around 250, which isn't exactly very competetive. However, when the full game came out, campaign largely took over for me.
So for me it's still about campaign, about the story, about the music, and about tricks. I'm glad, for instance, that Rockslider didn't boycott Halo 3 the way he did Halo 2, so that I get to read about his megabattle scenarios for the game as well as other tips and observations, because they're all focused on the campaign.
Last edited by Ducain; 04-03-2008 at 02:01 PM. .
Page 4 - 04-01-2008 , 03:17 PM
HIH: In a big-picture sort of way, what effect has XBL and the focus on MP had on the fanbase - good, bad, and/or ugly?
Louis Wu: I don't think I could put value judgements on the changes - the fanbase is different, but not in a good or bad way. It's just different. In a lot of ways, it's more casual; there are lots and lots and LOTS of people you'll meet playing Halo 3 on Xbox LIVE that hardly even know Bungie's name; they just play the game, and they like it. You could probably say it's more superficial - there's less focus on the backstory, more on the gameplay. But that doesn't mean the dedicated fanbase is gone - it's just not growing as fast as the casual one. The quantity of people creating cool stuff has certainly not decreased, which suggests that the pool they're coming from (the 'dedicated' pool) isn't getting any smaller.
NARCOGEN: XBL in specific, and the Xbox as a console in general, broadened the appeal of Bungie's games - or perhaps demanded that Halo, as a game, have a wider appeal. Marathon sort of had a reputation as a thinking man's Doom, and I think to some extent the broad audience of Halo has eroded that bit of elitism in Bungie fandom - or, rather, made it a less prominent feature of the landscape.
XBL gets blamed for, or at least associated with, a lot of bad things: foul-mouthed players, cheaters, modders, boosters, griefers, and general unpleasantness. Of course, all these things existed in the much smaller Myth community before. Not to the same extent and not in exactly the same way, but I think most of the ills of the online Halo community are the ills of any large group where competetive activities play a large part. So I don't see it as a bad thing. If Halo's multiplayer appeals to the point-and-shoot player who doesn't care about story or nuance, that's fine - who knows, maybe someday his Internet connection will go out, he'll be stuck playing campaign and he'll suddenly see something there he didn't before, something he'd never noticed and wouldn't have if Halo had been a game without multiplayer.
HIH: The last questions are going to be more related to you personally - what you do, how, and why.
Anecdotal evidence points me to the fact that fansites which endure over many years are ran by people that have...uh...a little age on them. :) How do you see this? Does your age/maturity play a part in keeping the doors open at your site?
Louis Wu: This is true, I think, for a few reasons. Maturity certainly plays a role - younger folks tend to jump into things with enthusiasm, but are just as likely to jump back out when something NEW comes along, while older people might not even START a fansite unless they see a niche they want to fill. But also, when you're young, your life changes more rapidly. You go from high school to college to a job all in a 4 or 5-year stretch - and each shift is a huge drain on resources you might be able to spend on outside activities. As priorities change, you might find that that site you loved is something you simply don't have time for any more.
Older people are often more settled; their life has a routine to it, and they often know where they'll be in a year, or 5 years. It's easier to stick with a long-term project because the outside influences pulling you away from it aren't as strong. I have kids - and a job I like. We have no plans to move for several years; I can budget my time to allow for HBO-updating, in a way that's easier for me than it would be for someone who's college-aged (or even younger).
NARCOGEN: To some extent it's just math. After all, next summer will mark the 10th anniversary of the announcement of Halo at MacWorld. So anybody who started working on a Halo site back then will be ten years older. Unless they became a Halo fan in high school or earlier, you'll be looking at someone with a few years on them. Then again, Claude makes us all feel young.
As for whether there's a relationship between age and site longevity, I suppose it could be true. After all, how many people are really interested in the same things at age 30 or 40 that they are at age 16? So I think there's been a constant influx of Halo fans over the years, but a lot of them eventually become interested in other things and aren't so active. There's a core that soldiers on, though, and they grow old together. And then there's people who come to the community at a later age, and I think for them if they become active at that age it's perhaps more likely that they'll stay active long-term, because there's possibly a bit less of a chance that there will be wholesale upheaval in their lives that alters their priorities. Doesn't mean it can't happen, though.
HIH: If you had to list a couple of reasons why your fansite is still chugging along today, X years after it was started, what would be on that list?
Louis Wu: The easy one is 'fans'. I'm continually amazed by what people come up with, content-wise - the ways they choose to express their love for the game or the game's universe. Sticking around gives me a chance to see this stuff as it comes out - and so far, that hasn't gotten boring.
I guess inertia plays a role, as well; walking away from the site would create a pretty major void in my life at this point. I've been doing this for so long, and it's taken up such a significant chunk of my time, that freeing that time would leave me... empty.
NARCOGEN: Firstly because I enjoy doing it. It provides me a soapbox to climb up onto once in awhile and rant at length about things I like or don't like about Halo in particular or video games in general, and I find that fun, and for the time being enough other people find it fun to read those things that it seems worth doing.
Another thing is that to some extent I feel that it's a neat thing that Rampancy has kept going this long and I want to see how long it can go on. Part of the reason for using a name like "rampancy" instead of something very Halo-specific was that so it could cover a wide range of topics: Marathon, Myth, Stubbs the Zombie, whatever Bungie does next. I'm very keen to see what Bungie does next that isn't related to Halo.
HIH: Something that I have a hard time quantifying is how Bungie/Halo has connected me with great people. Both online and in person, the people of our little online world never cease to make me proud. We definitely have our share of numbskulls, but the 'true fans' of the games that I've managed to meet seem to be a cut above. Truly, class-A people.
Give me some brief thoughts on how Bungie/Halo has connected you with people 'around the block and across the world', and how it's had an impact on your life.
Louis Wu: A huge chunk of the people I currently interact with on the internet are, in some way or another, Bungie-related. In real life, I do web design - many of my customers are people I met through Bungie-related sites, or people they've recommended me to. When I travel, if there's free time planned, I look up Bungie community friends in the destination city. (In 1997 and 1998, we traveled around the world, and I threw rocks at Chris Butcher's window in Dunedin, New Zealand.) It would be hard to overestimate the impact of Bungie's games, directly or indirectly, on my life - for the past 9 years, I've spent several hours a day, almost every day, working on material that's tied to them. I keep missing Step 3, though (profit). Gotta work on that.
NARCOGEN: There are some great people that Halo has connected me with-- it'd be far too unfair to try and list them here, there are too many. Some have been people at Bungie, either now or in the past, others are people in the community, involved in one site or another, and others are people I've met playing who are just nice people who were fun to play with.
A special shout-out has to go to the denizens of the realtime chat Halo community, a strange and amorphous group that has changed a lot over the years. These were people who were so into their Bungie fandom that playing online and reading and writing on forums was not enough, they had to be in constant contact with each other for hours at a time. It started with a series of Hotline servers and eventually moved to Internet Relay Chat, and now it lives at irc.bungie.org. They're truly a unique bunch.
And true to the observation that the eventual topic of discussion for any community becomes the community itself, rather than the thing that brought it together, some of the people in that community don't own Xboxes and don't play Halo anymore, but they're part of the community anyway, and that's the way it should be.
[DUKE: Right on.]
HIH: Allow me to wind it up with a warm fuzzy. :)
Quite simply, recount one of your favorite, or most memorable, Halo/Bungie moments.
Louis Wu: There are too many to count these days - but most of them center around fan events. (Fits right in there with the 'Community is the most important part' argument, doesn't it?) A recent one was the bus ride from Bungie's studio to Best Buy on the night of Halo 3's launch... simply for its surrealism.
The party broke up in time to get Bungie employees to a few different retail outlets around the Seattle suburbs - buses were waiting to take people to a couple of different malls. I was sitting next to Marty, and we were drinking tiny bottles of scotch as they were handed back by other riders (there were a couple of coolers worth in the front of the bus). And we were talking about stuff I hope someday to be able to share. It was a fantastic night, full of energy and enthusiasm and just plain excitement... and I was there.
NARCOGEN: Wow... there really are too many to choose from, but I guess I'll have to go with the FanFest at Neutral Ground in New York back in 2000. It was the first time I'd met other Bungie fans in person. Hamish Sinclair of the Marathon Story Page was there selling 77 MSP t-shirts and I got one; it remains one of my favorites today. There were games of Marathon and Myth, and guys from Bungie came and showed the E3 2000 video, which was a blast. I still miss the dinosaurs.
FROM DUKE: This interview really turned out to be more than I expected, and I'm very grateful for the time these guys took in responding. Much of this I've never read before, and it's great to hear from people who play a huge part in keeping our crazy community rolling along.
Good stuff. Much thanks to Louis and Narc.
Last edited by Ducain; 04-04-2008 at 08:00 PM. .
Mr. Ducain!
Great stuff, and Narc will always be the great pontificator. :D One thing I would like to add, while Matt was a big help in the old days, I would like to shine the light on Max Hoberman as well. He was the one who would follow up with me on my requests and pleas for more fan interaction. If anything, the beginnings of the 'community team' was Matt and Max, and Doug Zartman was a close third there. Doug is actually the one that replied to one of my earliest emails to Bungie.
Take care
EDIT BY DUKE - I'm leaving this reply here, because it's Mig Chavez from HBO, another *cough* old-timer. :)
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Top Casino SEO Winners
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subset: commoncrawl


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Search our database of handpicked sites
Looking for a great physics site? We've tracked down the very best and checked them for accuracy. Just fill out the fields below and we'll do the rest.
You searched for "hubble", type: Website
We found 5 results on physics.org and 29 results in our database of sites
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Search results on physics.org
A European Space Agency (ESA) site all about Hubble with news, images, facts and the Hubblecast videos. Also has lots of information about Hubble's aims and the instruments on board.
Hubble Site
A site all about the Hubble space telescope with lots of information, Hubble pictures and some games.
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Wikipedia page explaining Hubble's Law and its implications with links on to related topics.
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Weekly pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.
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This page includes links to numerous images taken by the Hubble Telescope. It also contains technical details of the telescope and pictures of the instruments developers.


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Elderflower cordial
All last summer I was eyeing off our neighbours elderflower bush trying to work up enough gumption to go and ask them if I could pick the elderflower heads. Last year however, my shyness got the better of me and before I knew it the flowers had turned into berries and the berries fell to the ground.
This year was going to be different and a couple of weeks ago I found myself eyeing off our new neighbour's elderflower tree. Thankfully though I didn't have to overcome my shyness. On Sunday, after weeding the carrots, chard and radishes I sneaked over to the allotment opposite ours and into the elderflower bush (protected by a whole lot of stinging nettles). There were so many I figured that they wouldn't miss a few. I gathered at least 30 elderflower heads and I brought them home dreaming of elderflower cordial and all the things I can do with it. I'm thinking elderflower cupcakes, elderflower charlottes, elderflower granita... the elderflower possibilities are endless. I might have to go and pick some more.
Elderflower Cordial
30 heads of elderflowers
2 litres of water
1 kilogram of sugar (I used half golden granulated and half demerara)
2 limes, peeled and sliced
1 orange, peeled and sliced
4 tablespoons cream of tartar
Into a large saucepan (I talking big), place the flowers, sugar and citrus fruits. Stir together and leave to sit for 2 hours. Add the cream of tartar (which prevents crystallisation). Boil the water and pour over the flowers. Cover and leave to sit for at least 24 hours (although I let ours sit for 48).
Filter through a J cloth into sterilised glass bottles or plastic bottles. If freezing in the plastic bottles leave some space for expansion.
As a flavouring for various dishes I'm going to reduce the cordial down for a more intense hit.


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The End is Near; After 25 years, David Suchet's iconic portrayal comes to end
The Premier British TV Streaming Service EXCLUSIVELY debuts:
Elephants Can Remember beginning August 11
Labours of Hercules beginning August 18
and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case on August 25
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Praise for Acorn TV
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SILVER SPRING, Md., July 21, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Called "One of the great TV achievements—and great TV performances—of the past 30 years" (The Telegraph), Agatha Christie's Poirot, led by fan favorite David Suchet, remains one of the most beloved television series of all time. As the premier streaming service for British TV in North America, Acorn TV is excited to have the exclusive broadcast rights to Agatha Christie's Poirot's final three feature-length mysteries, including Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. The final series, Series 13, features five TV movies and begins with The Big Four and Dead Man's Folly available on Acorn TV beginning July 28 and Aug. 4, the day after their PBS broadcast. The final three mysteries will not be on PBS and available ONLY on Acorn TV, beginning Aug. 11 for Elephants Can Remember, Aug. 18 for Labours of Hercules, and Aug. 25 for Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. Thereafter, all five new mysteries will be available ONLY on Acorn TV, along with all the 65 previous episodes. Acorn TV is the first proprietary digital channel from RLJ Entertainment (Nasdaq:RLJE).
Since its debut on television in 1989, Agatha Christie's famous Belgian detective has put his brilliant intellect and fastidious nature to the test as he solves the most mystifying crimes of the Art Deco era. Brimming with opulent 1930s period details and pitch-perfect performances, these final lavish adaptations feature guest stars Iain Glen (Jack Taylor, Games of Thrones), Helen Baxendale (Friends), and Philip Glenister (Life on Mars), as well as fan favorite Hugh Fraser as Capt. Hastings in the series finale.
Final three mysteries:
Elephants Can Remember—While Poirot investigates a famed psychiatrist's murder, crime novelist Ariadne Oliver looks into a couple's mysterious death. Added Aug. 11
The Labours of Hercules—Poirot journeys to the Swiss Alps to lay a trap for an infamous art thief. Added Aug. 18
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case—After returning to Styles with Hastings, Poirot confronts a killer and his own conscience as he tries to stop a series of murders. Added Aug. 25
Currently, Acorn TV, at www.Acorn.TV and its popular Roku channel, features the first 65 episodes (Series 1 – 12) to watch anytime. Once Curtain is added on Aug. 25, Acorn TV will be the only place with all 70 episodes. Over its 25-year run, Agatha Christie's Poirot has been a stepping stone for many top actors, including guest stars Emily Blunt, Michael Fassbender, Doctor Who's Peter Capaldi, Homeland's Damian Lewis, two-time Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain, Sleepy Hollow's Tom Mison, The Walking Dead's David Morrissey, Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville, among many others.
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Watch Agatha Christie's Poirot 'The End is Near' trailer at http://acorn.tv/franchise/poirot
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RLJ Entertainment, Inc. (Nasdaq:RLJE) is a premier independent owner, developer, licensee and distributor of entertainment content and programming in primarily North America, the United Kingdom and Australia with over 5,300 exclusive titles. RLJE is a leader in numerous genres via its owned and distributed brands such as Acorn (British TV), Image (feature films, stand-up comedy), One Village (urban), Acacia (fitness), Athena (documentaries) and Madacy (gift sets). These titles are distributed in multiple formats including broadcast television (including satellite and cable), theatrical and non-theatrical, DVD, Blu-Ray, digital download and digital streaming.
Via its relationship with Agatha Christie Limited, a company that RLJE owns 64% of, RLJE manages the intellectual property and publishing rights to some of the greatest works of mystery fiction, including stories of the iconic sleuths Miss Marple and Poirot. RLJE also owns all rights to the hit UK mystery series Foyle's War.
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CONTACT: RLJE Press Contact: Chad Campbell 301.608.2115 *138 firstname.lastname@example.com
Source:RLJ Entertainment, Inc.


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September 30, 2018 | 0 comments
September 30, 2018 | 0 comments
You Win or You Die - Historical and Political Analysis of Game of Thrones by Steven Attewell
No vase can overflow if you never fill it up.
Only the best quality canna-goods
Stories and photos from Scotland
The food pyramid is a lie, meat fat is good for you, and many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone. I'm in remission from severe arthritis (multiple joints replaced), chronic fatigue, depression and a plethora of other symptoms from changing how I eat. This blog chronicles how my family and my parents eat and what it's done for us.
The ketogenic lifestyle blog of a 44-year old husband and dad.
Keto, Life, Makeup and Dogs
Our Recipes. Our Stories. Our City.
Reading the classics, CanLit, and everything else. In bed.
Where a nerdy girl talks books and whatever else life throws at her.
Life through books and other stuff
Welcome to my Kool Kosher Kitchen where food is fun and fun is to create food!
blog of author Katherine Nabity
Talk Books. Drink Coffee.
Books! Where are the great books?
A not-so-crazy couple with 15 cats
just a girl who loves her paper & scissors


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Saturday, August 3, 2013
Like the Corners of My Mind
Going through the list, Voss' Sword and Board and Cynwise's Posterous Field Notes have also vanished into the same ether that claimed Tam's Righteous Orbs and Lara's Root and Branch. Still, the PPI especially was the great watering hole that not only had Larisa's posts, but also had the monster mess of a blogroll that people could use as a master reading list. I know I used to use PPI to find new blogs to read, and I could trace a big spike in PC's readership to the week when Larisa added us to her blogroll. Even up to a year after Larisa stopped posting at PPI, we'd see more people following a link from there to our blog than just about anywhere else.
Now, outside of Rades' huge blogroll, there's pretty much Hugh at the MMO Melting Pot keeping the blogroll flame alive. WoW Insider doesn't bother with posting interesting blog links anymore, and truth be told I've not really ventured over to WI in quite a while.
Change is the only constant in the blogging world. Keeping up a blogging schedule is not an easy task, and real life has a way of interfering with both blogging and game playing. When we started PC almost four years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. If I did, I might not have committed to it. Yet at the same time, I'd not have traded the experience for the world. I've met fellow bloggers around the world whom I'm happy to call friend, and the schedule of writing a blog has pushed me (and my writing) in directions I didn't think I could go.** the MMO blogosphere can be sniping and backbiting at times, but we all have the same interest at heart: a love of the weird wonderful worlds that inhabit a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG.
This blog, while ostensibly about "all sorts of games", really began as a WoW blog. And it remained that way for well over two years, with occasional forays into other MMOs. However, as I've moved from one dominant MMO (WoW) to several MMOs, the blog's feel has changed to reflect that. I suppose that going forward you can expect more change, but what it will entail I don't really know.
I'm not the gamer that some people are; I don't have the experience in electronic gaming that Spinks has, for example, or the endgame experience that many other MMO bloggers have. While I realize his hiatus was for medical reasons I still miss Cynwise's PvP posts, because compared to the master I'm merely playing at PvP. There are others who write great fiction, like Rades or Akabeko (The Red Cow), and many others whose humor and wit bring cheer to an otherwise dreary morning reading work e-mail. However, it is the thoughtful blog posts, the ones where people bare a little of their souls, that I cherish the most. It's the equivalent of sitting out on a porch with a beer or two, shooting the bull, while the sun goes down and the fireflies dance in the yard.
But I hope that as the blogosphere changes, one thing remains constant: the camaraderie of the bloggers themselves.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a beer that's getting warm.
*The Pink Pigtail Inn goes to another blog entirely now, and the domain for TankingTips.com has completely vanished.
**Now, if that will only translate into getting a novel written to completion....
10 comments:
That is indeed sad. :( I don't mind so much when people stop writing (it is after all understandable) but when everything they've ever put out just... disappears, that's very sad. If I had a penny for every time I wanted to go back and re-read an old Righteous Orbs post...ReplyDeleteReplies
Same here, Shin.Delete
I knew Tam really didn't care about posterity very much, but when Righteous Orbs vanished I really missed his posts. He had that incisive wit that really cut through the crap; I'll never forget his post about raiding with a raid leader who was half his age.
You'll have to excuse me for replying to something from many months ago, but I found out today that the PPI actually still exists and was reminded of this post! It's only the old domain name that's gone, the actual site is still up under pinkpigtailinn.blogspot.com!Delete
/cue nostalgia
That is so awesome, Shin!! How'd you discover it??Delete
Simple, someone mentioned wanting to look up an old post of hers, so I entered "Pink Pigtail Inn" into Google... and there it was. :PDelete
The thing is, people had used the old domain for so long that when it disappeared it dropped off of everyone's radar. If I went back over the stats, I could probably find out exactly when it happened, because we still got hits from PPI even after Larisa had retired.Delete
Although, hmm, PC isn't on the list of her links anymore. I wonder if that was an intentional trimming, or whether this is an older list. There's a lot of ancient blogs that no longer update on this list, so I suspect it's an older list.
I just had the same thing happen. Although he posted that he would no longer be blogging, Mortigan The Warlock left his very amusing blog up but on my recent visit to reread my favorites it was gone. Gone is so much sadder.ReplyDelete
I am here for the same reason, I have no wisdom to share, I don't write fiction I just want to hang out on that porch and enjoy the company.
This is a weirdly sad realization! To be honest, most of my sadness is when the blogs stop updating, because I rarely go back and reread old posts. But the idea that any links to them, any chance to introduce someone "the blog is no longer updated, but it's worth a read anyway" is now impossible...That makes me kind of sad!ReplyDeleteReplies
Yeah, it is sad.Delete
I'm glad that Vid has kept her old Pugging Pally site up, because her (mis)adventures pugging her way to L80 were great reads.
Lara's Root and Branch is especially missed, because her fiction was fantastic and her posts on tanking were incredibly well written.


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I'm at the Fairview Apple Store in Montreal waiting in line for the iPhone 5. There's about 100 people here right now -- it's the suburbs! -- but Apple is serving coffee and Starbucks muffins. We're tired but we're wired!
I'll add video and pictures here as I get them! Line on!


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Penis health involves more than erections. Find out the most common penis problems and strategies to promote penis health.
Penis health is an important part of your health — and it goes beyond your ability to get and keep an erection, ejaculate, and reproduce.
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Various factors can affect penis health — some modifiable and some not. For example:
Conditions that can involve your penis include:
Problems with the foreskin. A condition known as phimosis occurs when the foreskin on an uncircumcised penis can't be retracted from the penis head. This can lead to infections, as well as cause painful urination and erections.
Paraphimosis occurs when the foreskin can't be returned to its normal position after being retracted. This condition can cause painful swelling of the penis and impaired blood flow.
Other diseases and conditions. A yeast infection can cause a reddish rash and white patches on the penis. Inflammation of the head of the penis (balanitis) might cause pain and a foul discharge. Peyronie's disease, a chronic condition that involves the development of abnormal scar tissue in tissues inside the penis, might result in bent or painful erections.
Penile cancer — which might begin as a blister on the foreskin, head or shaft of the penis and then become a wartlike growth that discharges watery pus — also is a rare possibility.
Consult your doctor as soon as possible if you have:
You can take steps to protect your penis health and overall health. For example:
Not all penis problems can be prevented. However, routinely examining your penis can give you greater awareness of the condition of your penis and help you detect changes. Regular checkups also can help ensure that problems affecting your penis are diagnosed as soon as possible.
While you might find it difficult to discuss problems affecting your penis with your doctor, don't let embarrassment prevent you from taking charge of your health.
Original article: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/mens-health/in-depth/penis-health/art-20046175
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Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization and proceeds from Web advertising help support our mission. Mayo Clinic does not endorse any of the third party products and services advertised.
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Texas-based songwriter Joe Ely will play acoustic concert in Park City
March 1, 2013
In the middle of a telephone interview with The Park Record from his home in Austin, Texas, award-winning singer and songwriter Joe Ely paused and said, "I just looked out my window and there are half-a-dozen wild turkeys just lounging on my front yard."
The musician said a friend told him that a group of turkeys wasn't called a flock, but a tribe.
"He told me that turkeys travel in tribes," Ely said. "That's interesting."
Ely, who will play the Egyptian Theatre on Wednesday, March 6, was talking about his most recent album, "Satisfied at Last."
Critics have said the disc is the pinnacle of Ely's discography, and he agreed.
"I don't think I'll ever do quite another record like this, and I'm glad I finished it," he said. "It wasn't what I set out to do, though.
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"I didn't start writing that album from the ground up," he said. "I was working on a whole different set of songs, and one day, I looked at them and thought, 'This record has taken a completely different turn.'"
With his newfound resolve, Ely went back and finished a collection of songs that he had partially started.
"I found this bunch that seemed to fit together," he said. "They were all about living and dying and human mortality and how all that comes together."
Thanks to the title track, and a song called "Mockingbird Hill," Ely thought about the cycle that comes into people's lives.
"'Mockingbird Hill' is about a waitress in a truck stop in Texarkana, Texas," he said. "She has lived there her whole life and her family before her had lived in the same place throughout the generations.
"I began wondering about those who have the courage to break the cycles and how brave it is for some of us to go out and face this cruel world," he said. "All that stuff led up to the record and it was fun to work on."
Ely became fascinated with music when he was living in Amarillo, Texas.
"When I was about eight years old my family was good friends with a man named Jimmy Meeks, who built violins," Ely said. "Sometimes we would go to his house for Sunday dinner and I would go back to the woodshop where he was making these beautiful violins.
"He would pick one up and play these beautiful melodies, which was magic to me," he said. "At that moment on, I was just obsessed with music. We had a piano in our house and I would always pick out melodies on it."
A year later, Ely's parents bought him a violin and he played it up until he was 14.
"At that time, we moved to Lubbock, and it was right after Buddy Holly died," Ely remembered. "So all the kids were learning how to play Fender Stratocasters with reverb amplifiers."
That's when Ely's focus shifted.
"I sold my violin for a guitar and started to play," he said. "I was fascinated how I could manipulate the sound."
After forming his first band, Ely knew he wanted to be a musician, however, he learned a few years later just how hard it was to write a good song.
That came when he met Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore a few years before the three would come together as the Flatlanders in 1970.
"I had written songs, but up to the point when I met Butch and Jimmie, none of the songs I had done thrilled me anymore, because they were writing amazingly rich songs that were not only interesting to play and listen to, but also interestingly crafted," Ely said. "I realized then that songs were more than whamming out a few chords and screaming out some words. All of a sudden there was another magic to discover and that made me dig into the process more."
So, Ely took off on an adventure that could have been taken from the pages of a Jack Kerouac novel.
"I left home and jumped on trains to see where songs came from," Ely said. "I visited the places where Woody Guthrie had been and went to other areas where guys like Lightnin' Hopkins and other blues guys played. I learned how songs got written and the many different ways they could come to life."
Even today, Ely, who was honored in 2007 with an Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement Award for Performing, said he has to find the essence of a song before he can feel good about it.
"In fact, not 30 minutes ago, I was back in my studio wrestling with a song, trying to pin it down," he said with a laugh. "I'm very suspicious of songs that just take five minutes to write. I wish I could do that, but I am suspicious of that whole concept."
Still, there are times when a song will just appear.
"The idea comes and then the melody emerges and then you have to bend it, shape it and cook it and bake it," he said. "But that is rare. I throw away 10 songs for every one I keep. My wastebasket is full of songs that I thought may miraculously show their faces, but turned out to be dead ends."
To expand his songwriting, Ely has made it a point to play with various artists including rockers, punks, country artists and folk musicians throughout his career. While that may seem strange to some, Ely said a good song always comes from the same vein.
"The first time I went to England I went on the road with Merle Haggard and the Strangers for two weeks and then did a week with the Clash," Ely said. "While those two bands were totally different as night and day, there was something consistent within their philosophies.
"Merle talked about the ups-and-downs of life and the pain of being in prison, and the Clash talked about the social ills of London at the time," Ely explained. "So the thread of communicating via song, even though the approach was different, came from the same place in the soul."
When Ely plays Park City, he will give audiences the opportunity to hear as many of his songs as possible.
"I like to play different things every night," he said. "I plan to play old stuff, but I've been working on some new songs that I want to do."
Ely, who will be accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Bev Plankenhorn, promised songs from "Satisfied at Last" and said he will pull out something different all the way back to his early records.
"Bev plays the dobro, guitar, mandolin and fiddle," Ely said. "He's a great person to work with."
Although Ely is pleased with "Satisfied at Last," he is always working on new songs.
The challenge these days is finding alternative ways to distribute the tunes.
"I don't know what to call a groups of songs anymore," he said. "I don't know if I should call them albums or records, because those are going away, because everyone is getting their music collection digitally. And to tell you the truth, I'm working on a set that has only three songs in it.
"Maybe I'll call it a suite or something like that," he said. "Or maybe I'll call them a herd of songs or a flock of songs. Or maybe a tribe of songs, like a tribe of turkeys, like the ones that are on my front yard."
Texas singer and songwriter Joe Ely will perform at the Egyptian Theatre, 328 Main St., on Wednesday, March 6, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $29 through $44 and are available at http://www.parkcityshows.com.
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Heartland: A woman's POV provided for review by Good Releasing
Heartland: A Woman's POV is a lot like it sounds — it takes place in the midwest, there are women in it who are framed by a camera operated by a woman, and occasionally some scenes with Madison Young talking about airplanes making her hot or porn conferences or coyotes or whatever.
The beginning doesn't start out very strong. Madison sounds like she's high, looks like she's very sleepy, and offers her viewers a gratuitous nipple because… why not? I would have preferred for her to dribble on slowly for 20 more minutes than show me a blurry ass close-up of her nipple. It's like she got self-conscious and flipped on a default response. "EVERYONE LIKES TITS". Ugh.
All of the couples are introduced via text, documentary-style, with a bit of information about them. The first couple, Nicole and Peter are a real couple in Chicago that met at a sex toy store. This was their first experience being filmed during sex. I enjoyed this couple perhaps the most because of the obvious connection and pleasure they experience in each other. They were also the least overtly performative, I felt. The second couple, Cherry and Alea, met at a kink conference and were having sex together for the first time on Heartland. The third couple, Rita Seagraves and Red Hot Megan, are regular play partners but have never been filmed. Rita Seagraves is a sex educator. Last but not least, Madison Young has sex with Billie Sweet, a former RA in the dorm Madison lived in during her college years and subject of girl crushdom.
There's also more small scenes that involve Madison updating the viewer on her whereabouts, including a masturbation scene on a plane that more closely resembles a first year undergrad art film than porn, as well as Madison getting tattooed by a fan and "hiking" with her family. These scenes appear to function as glue for the sex scenes, similar to how a thin plot would in most porn, while also providing some insight into Madison's personality. They struck me as being fairly pointless unless you're a hardcore Madison Young fan.
Aside from these really self-indulgent scenes, my main complaint about Heartland is Madison Young's style of filming, which is apparently centered around poor quality. I understand that the free hand, one shot style of filming means there's going to be some less visually interesting moments, but there are some moments when it takes Madison (or whoever is filming) several seconds to actually put the damn camera on the people fucking. It's like she forgot she was filming or something. There are other scenes where the camera is bouncing so much it feels like you're inside a hamster ball. Not appealing.
I just wish she would care a little bit more about the quality of the films she produces. Just because it's porn doesn't mean it should exist without standards.
Favourite couple:
Nicole and Peter
Nicole and Peter's session starts off with finger sucking, kissing, slapping, and choking where you can see little other than Nicole's pleasure and pain as it is expressed in her face. Where else Peter's hands and mouth wander, that's for the viewer to imagine. Occasionally Nicole makes eye contact with the camera, and her steady, unapologetic, fired-up-and-fucking-ready gaze is titillating in itself.
They move onto anal penetration, and I really appreciate that their communication wasn't edited out, because women (well, everyone, actually) need to feel like they can say, "Can you use the smaller dildo first, then move onto the larger one?" This shit never happens in mainstream porn, and this is one of the few instances where I feel like Young's "POV" piece actually nails it, because sometimes you're just not ready for a giant dildo in your ass, but that doesn't mean you're not down to party. Nicole wasn't worried about being a good "porn star" then, she was taking care of her own needs and fucking the way she fucks. Perfect.
The blow job scene (or strap-on sucking scene, whichever you prefer) is one of the better ones I have ever watched, mostly because both of them seem really into it and it's very physical. I actually forget that Peter is wearing a strap-on and that Nicole is sucking and stroking a chunk of silicone. The fantasy becomes real for me in their moans, whimpers, heavy breathing, hair pulling, writhing, and occasional moments of delighted laughter.
Other Highlights:
– Moments where Young is clearly more interested in genuine facial expressions and the intimacy of an action than generic ass and titties shots.
– Beautiful women in lingerie (oh, and the Batman boxer briefs Peter wears)
– When Cherry stuffs Alea's panties into her mouth, and later watching Alea's pierced nipples bouncing back and forth while Cherry holds a Hitachi Magic Wand (with a condom on it, might I add) and her high heeled foot onto Alea's clitorous.
– When Cherry is visibly overwhelmed in every way during and post-orgasm, cheeks flushed, with a somewhat dazed expression on her face when she embraces Alea. I know that feeling. I like seeing it in other people.
– Megan's fantastic curls and naughty girlish-ness
– Nice angle when Megan is performing oral sex on Rita so you can see what Megan is doing while also seeing Rita's face
– When Madison and Billie were makin' out: awesome sauce
– When Billie was worried about coming "too much" while Madison fingers her, followed by Madison laughing and encouraging her, saying something like "you can't come too much", was pretty endearing and sexy
I wanted Heartland to be good. In between when we reviewed Bride of Sin and when we received this to review, I had seen that Madison Young had actually won a few awards for her work. As you may recall, I hated Bride of Sin. Fiercely. So I thought (hoped) that maybe Young had improved significantly or that Bride of Sin was a terrible fluke.
If only.
Heartland was another example of Madison Young's complete lack of regard for any of the aspects of filmmaking that require even the smallest effort. She is obviously interested in kink and fucking and sexuality but only in terms of how it relates to her and enables her to have a good time. Heartland seems more like an excuse to fly across the country and get paid to watch people have sex than it does a serious endeavor. It is almost like the documentation and presentation quality are afterthoughts.
I feel like I am being generous when assuming that the reason the quality of her films is so low is that she doesn't care. If she really does care then it means that she is hopelessly incompetent.
I won't go into horrible snarky detail about all of the things wrong because I feel like Mimi has covered that well and it would echo very closely what I said about Bride of Sin, but I will say that I have seen many, many self-made YouTube videos with more care and consideration taken in their production.
Her aforementioned accolades are the main issue that I have with her work. Tons of people make terrible porn all the time. That's no big deal. But Young's terrible porn is being congratulated. I have to believe that the reason for this is because Young is one of the few female pornographers making female-friendly work, particularly with an emphasis on bondage or rough sex. Giving Madison Young awards for the terrible, half-hearted shit that she is making actually hurts the progress made by amazing pornographic filmmakers like Shine Louise Houston, Courtney Trouble, and the unique, passionate porn stars they employ.
At the end of the credits there is a quote from Madison Young: "If I can't fuck, it's not my revolution." This paraphrases Emma Goldman's famous stance that feminism cannot be something that restricts the life-loving, fun-having, radiant aspects of women's personalities. That if she had to be well behaved and straight-laced to be a feminist, she wanted no part of it.
I think that she made a worthwhile point when she said that because there is a real debate going on about feminist porn. Violet Blue address the issue very well here. The problem I see is that either Madison Young made a flippant statement about fucking that was well received (it was part of her acceptance speech for Hottest Kink Film at the feminist porn awards) or she really thinks that she is a front runner in the feminist movement. I'm inclined to think the latter because people keep giving her awards.
Stop it.
The Naked Truth
Sound Quality:


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Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 21 June 2013 (IUCN) -- The extraordinary landscape of El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in Mexico with its sweeping dunes, huge volcanic craters and rich cultural heritage is the latest site to achieve World Heritage Status.
The decision was made today by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve is situated in the Sonoran Desert, an ecosystem shared by Mexico and the United States.
"Inscription of this spectacular site on the World Heritage List is extremely welcome recognition of its significant values and impressive local conservation efforts," says Tilman Jaeger of IUCN's Delegation to the World Heritage Committee meeting. "We hope the attention generated by such recognition will help consolidate its conservation for future generations and further increase existing ties between authorities, NGOs, scientists and indigenous peoples in the bordering American part of the Sonoran Desert."
Covering more than 715,000 hectares and a large buffer zone, the reserve is a relatively undisturbed protected area comprising two very distinct landscape types. To the East is a massive, dormant volcanic shield — the Pinacate Shield, with extensive black and red lava flows. The shield features 10 enormous and almost perfectly circular Maar craters and more than 400 cinder cones.
In the West, towards the Colorado River Delta and South towards the Gulf of California, is the Gran Altar Desert, North America's largest field of active sand dunes, some of which reach 200m in height.
El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar's variety of landscapes has led to extraordinary habitat and species diversity. Many species are found only in the Sonoran Desert or even within the protected area. The subtropical desert ecosystem is reported to host more than 540 species of vascular plants, 44 mammals, more than 200 birds, over 40 reptiles, as well as several amphibians.
The area also has a rich archaeological history and is considered sacred by the indigenous Tohono O'odham, today living on both sides of the international border.
Mexico is the one of five exceptional places added to the World Heritage List this year, at the recommendation of IUCN. Positive decisions about Namib Sand Sea in Namibia, Xinjiang Tianshan mountains in China, the Tajik National Park of Tajikistan, Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy and the extension of Mount Kenya National Park to include the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and Ngare Ngare Forest Reserve were adopted by the World Heritage Committee earlier today.


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Each summer, John Paul Caponigro throws opens the doors to his amazing studio and gallery in Cushing, Maine, inviting the public to stop in from 10-5 both Saturday and Sunday, August 1st and 2nd.
This year he will be sharing prints from his Antarctica work (2009). He gives a gallery talk at 2 p.m., with book signings to follow on both Saturday and Sunday.
To read Caponigro Arts press release with complete event details, click here.
If traveling to Maine to attend this event, note that JP has posted a PDF of fantastic photographic destinations not to be missed in Maine – bring your camera!
Caponigro Arts is on the map for reference.


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Jesus Christ has changed the course of this world and the course of millions of lives as no one else has. History is divided into B.C and A.D by reference to His birth and nearly one out of every three people on this earth profess to be his followers. Who is this man? What is it that so different about Him that people are even willing to give up their lives for Him?
Are you wondering how this could be the most important question in your life? Read on to know why.
Your response to Jesus Christ has very important consequences – both now and eternally. Pontius Pilate a governor in Israel first asked this all important question, 2000 years back, when faced with either handing Jesus over for crucifixion or releasing Him. And, during the process of Jesus' trial, crucifixion, death and time after his resurrection, the Bible talks about various people's responses, which reflects the response of probably every single person that has lived ever since Jesus Christ's time on earth. Let's look at the different people and their response to Jesus:
That you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises... And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.(Heb 6:12,15)
Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…
(1 Cor 13:7-8)
Jesus loves you, wants to bless you abundantly and wants to make you a blessing!
Your life on the earth is not a mere accident, a mistake or by chance. God has a plan and purpose for your life on the earth and He desires to have a personal relationship with you! When you come to know God personally and experience His love, when you start focusing on eternal truths and seek His plan and go about fulfilling the purpose for which He created you, then you will have a peace, joy and satisfaction that you would never have otherwise and enjoy His abundant blessings in your everyday life… you will find meaning and purpose in life and start experiencing the FULLNESS of LIFE that Jesus promised.
El Shaddai Tabernacle is our Church based in Bangalore, India, where we focus on glorifying Jesus Christ through our lives, making ready a people prepared for the Lord and help each one receive the life in fullness that the bible promises by growing in Christ Jesus. So, as you go through the material on this website may God give you a deeper knowledge of Himself and the meaning and purpose He has for your life; may you be encouraged and may your faith in Him grow stronger; may you understand eternal realities causing you to trust in Jesus and moving you to become holy like Him… that as a bride is prepared in every way to meet her bridegroom, you also may be prepared to meet Jesus when He comes again.
Some Bible verses that will always help you:
Romans 8:28 : 'And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose'
Ephesians 3:20 : 'Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think'.
To know more on the meaning of El Shaddai please read the article EL SHADDAI.