New header image, too.
Thanks to the inimitable Miss Viktoriya for pointing out the obvious thing I totally missed: the previous header image doesn’t look like pudding, it looks like something else soft, warm, and brown.
She was kind enough to find me a new one, so enjoy.
New digs
When John Gruber is right, he’s right. And he’s right about hosting your own WordPress.
Briefly – WordPress has a gigantic attack surface. It’s far and away the most popular web application as far as installed instances, and although the developers do a fairly good job with security, the sheer popularity means that as soon as new exploits are discovered, blogs get compromised almost immediately.
It’s not that WordPress isn’t good software – I think it is – but that running it yourself means having to constantly stay on top of security issues. What if I go on vacation for 5 days and don’t have computer access? Am I going to get hacked? More importantly, are the other applications also running on my server – including Journey, which is a commercial software offering – going to get hacked?
It’s just plain not worth it. Let someone else host my blog.
So I’ve done something I’ve been thinking about for awhile: I’ve moved this blog off my own servers and onto WordPress.com. For anyone currently hosting your own WordPress installation, I highly encourage you to seriously consider it too. It’s easy to do, it migrates all your comments, and it’s free-to-extremely-cheap.
Unfortunately, they don’t let you use just any WordPress theme, so I’ve set up a new one from their (fairly good) library. I actually think this one is an improvement on my old theme.
Anyway, enjoy, and please do let me know if you see any issues with the new blog.
Moving Intercon
I was going to make a long post about this, but Chad has pretty much said everything I wanted to, and better than I could. So, first off, please go read his post. (The summary is that Intercon K, the 2011 New England Intercon, will be held at the Waltham Westin – pending finalized plans with the hotel.)
I’m very excited about having Intercon at the Westin. It’s an absolutely fantastic space, and as a GM, I’m really looking forward to making use of it. The function space at the Radisson is great for us, and I can confidently state that the space at the Westin is an improvement on it in every respect.
Even more exciting than the bigger, better function space, though, is the fact that this change lets us grow as a convention. Last year, at Intercon I, we saw the largest registration numbers for any Intercon convention in history. Not only did Intercon I break the records, it shattered them – we grew almost 50 attendees; about a fifth of the convention size! This year (not surprisingly, given the economy), the numbers are down a little, but they’re much closer to the I numbers than the H ones. Moving to the Westin will let the convention continue to grow without having to worry about capacity.
Of course, moving to a different hotel comes with some downsides, too, and Chad did a great job covering those in his post as well.
The most important one, in my opinion, is that attending Intercon K will probably end up costing you a bit more than previous Intercons have, due to the fact that we won’t be able to provide meals at the new hotel. This would have been true with any new hotel, not just the Westin – the deal we have with the Radisson is basically unheard of in the hotel world. We’re actively looking into ways to keep the costs down for our attendees as much as possible, and we already have a few ideas, but I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes by speculating here.
Finally, I just want to say that I’m immensely honored to be part of the Intercon community. I often marvel at the fact that not only do I know some of my favorite writers in the world personally, but they’ve played my games too. We have a truly amazing, participatory LARP culture here, and now we have the opportunity to expand it and share it with even more people. I won’t lie and say I’m not nervous about the changes ahead – but I know this community can come together and make Intercon K work.
A preview of things to come…
Coming in the next version of Journey…
(Click for full size.)
Introducing Journey
Introducing Journey – online surveys the way they should be. With Journey, creating a survey is simple, flexible, and hassle-free.
After seven weeks of private beta testing, Journey is open for business. I’m proud to be offering straightforward online survey creation for marketers, researchers, and anyone else who just wants answers.
Journey’s launch also marks the start of a new business venture: Sugar Pond. Sugar Pond is a software company dedicated to communication, user empowerment, and community. You can read more about what Sugar Pond stands for in our manifesto.
I really want to thank everyone who’s provided feedback, encouragement, and sage advice these past few months. I’m truly proud to know all of you, and grateful that you’ve helped me get this little project to this point.
Now, I have one more favor to ask of you all: please let people know. The best way to get the word out is to link people to this posting, or to the Journey home page, on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, or whatever else you use. If you believe Journey can be a success, please help me out by spreading the word about it.
And if you believe Journey could be a success if only I changed that one little thing, I want your honest feedback. Please, always feel free to email me at nat@sugarpond.net with your ideas, suggestions, and complaints. I want to hear from you.
10 Bad LARPs: C-Section is coming…
10 Bad LARPs: C-Section is coming. We’re planning on making our debut this winter. But in order to do that, we’ll need your help.
This time, we’re actively soliciting ideas for bad LARPs. Let’s face it, we’ve all had ideas we’ve thought might make a good 10 Bad LARP. If you’d like to submit an idea for 10 Bad LARPs: C-Section, we’d like to have it!
We’ve set up a wiki page to collect ideas. I’d link to it here, but that would probably invite the spambots, and we don’t want that. If you have a bad LARP idea, just comment on this post or send me an email.
We’re having our kickoff meeting for the game on June 21, so please try to get your ideas submitted by then. At the meeting, we’re going to go through the idea list (and possibly brainstorm some more ideas), and pick the ones that will be used in C-Section. If your idea is picked, we’ll let you know, and you’ll get credit for it in the game!
We hope you’re as excited about this game as we are, and we can’t wait to hear your awful, awful ideas.
Engaged
As of today, Viktoriya and I are officially engaged.
This is going to be a long engagement – no wedding date yet, and no plans to set one for quite some time. Since Vik is in school, and has absolutely no free time to be planning a wedding, we figured it would be best to wait on this one.
FestEvil '09 Report
I wrote a con report about FestEvil ’09. Instead of posting it here, I’m posting it in the newly-created brandeislarp LiveJournal community. Go there and read it!
Ada Lovelace Day
I hadn’t heard about Ada Lovelace Day until today, but I think it’s a great idea. Thus, I’d like to write a post to highlight my technology heroines.
Sierra On-Line was certainly the biggest single reason I got into computers and technology. They pioneered the graphic adventure game genre and published a long string of amazing games throughout the 80′s and 90′s. Notably, Sierra had a very good (for the computer games industry) gender balance among their high-profile game designers.
This is probably due in no small part to Roberta Williams, who co-founded the company with her husband Ken. Although Ken ran the business end of the company largely behind the scenes, Roberta was the public face of Sierra and the creative force behind its most successful games, including Mystery House, the King’s Quest series, Phantasmagoria, and the Laura Bow Mysteries. Without Roberta Williams’ creative vision, the modern graphical adventure game probably would never have existed.
Another of Sierra’s designers was Christy Marx, who wrote the “Conquests” series: Conquests of Camelot, a game about King Arthur, and Conquests of the Longbow, about Robin Hood. While Marx certainly wasn’t as prolific as a game designer as Williams, her takes on these often-told tales are extremely unique and creative. The Marx versions don’t shy away from portraying the characters as human beings, and highlight the religious undertones and the historical context of these stories. The games can be downloaded from her web site. In addition to her work for Sierra, Christy Marx also has designed computer and video games for a variety of other companies.
Lori Ann Cole and her husband Corey created the Quest for Glory series. These games were unique in their combination of RPG and adventure game elements; while most games attempting to combine these two genres end up resembling an RPG with some puzzles and dialogue trees, QfG plays like an adventure game with stats and combat. Another innovation in this series is the ability to bring a character from one game to the next, keeping their stats, items and abilities. The Quest for Glory games combine just the right levels of humor and seriousness, and manage to be challenging without ever becoming tedious.
But probably my favorite game designer of all time is Jane Jensen, creator of the Gabriel Knight mysteries. Jensen brought a new level of maturity in writing to the computer games field, and tackled difficult, human stories that dealt with themes of the occult and disturbing. But don’t let that description scare you off: Jensen’s games are universally fast-moving, gripping, and fun. The Gabriel Knight series, more than perhaps any other out there, makes the case for computer games as literature. And, I can’t wait to see her upcoming game.
Without the games of Sierra On-Line, I might not be in the technology field today. Although I didn’t end up working on games for a living, the works of these designers started me down my eventual career path. Similarly, a lot of my work on LARP has been influenced by these games. It’s fair to say that they are my technology heroines.
Who are your technology heroines?
Concom Minutes – 8 February 2009
Less than a month left until Intercon I! Minutes follow.
