search results for images
RPGChat is one of the other large roleplaying forums out there, and they've been around since about May, 2001. Since then, RPGChat has gone through many evolutions, and has expanded rapidly - they started with a forum, grew into a decent sized roleplaying chat, and finally removed the chat and went back to forums.
You'll immediately notice the large number of forums, which for most boards isn't an issue. In today's roleplaying world, RPGChat's index fits right in.
They've got four basic navigation options at the top of the page, which are images instead of text, which isn't very good for SEO. The four menu options are Home, Forums, Chat, and Rules. I gave each of them a shot, but it looks like only the "Home" and "Rules" link work.
I'm going to take a look at their code, because using images for links isn't horrible if you specify the right attributes. Let's have a glance:<![CDATA[<a href="http://forums.rpgchat.com/index.php">
<img src="header/but_home.jpg" border="0">
</a>]]>
Yikes! Not only does the anchor not have a title attribute, but the image doesn't have an alt attribute! Search engines won't be able to understand the context of these links, and the flow of link juice to the two working links won't be very beneficial.
I participated on these forums for a few months as the username Alighieri, for that period, I became the single most active user in their welcome forum. I posted in several other topics, but got pretty frustrated with the limitation on the length of a post (20,000 characters).
When attempting to post a profile for one of my characters, I was immediately snubbed by the limitation. This makes well-researched posts difficult to make, specifically with the citations that must be put in place for accurate references. Ultimately, I was forced to cut out portions of my character's history to fit it into the post.
After posting for a few weeks nonstop in the Welcome Forum, I headed off to the The Arena area, where turn-based fighting is largely popular. I opened a topic with a list of the top turn based fighters, placed into a neat little image and posted right into the topic. It took a few days to get any response at all, (save for a few people who contacted me over AIM) and when I did get a response, I logged in to RPGChat to find that I had been banned for "advertising on multiple occasions", much to my surprise.
However, while my visit was cut short, I met some good friends, and had some great discussions. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow any links to external sites of any kind, and also does not allow signatures, which makes it very difficult to spread the word about the topics you start there. This isn't very good for encouraging member interaction, and makes it very difficult for momentum of any sort to be gained within the community.
After speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.
I sent a request via the site's contact form, as listed at the bottom every page, which merely opened a new email to their support address, forums@rpgchat.com - I sent a couple questions in my email, and I identified who I was, but I haven't yet received a response. It'd be great if we could get an interview with an admin from RPGChat on the history of the site!
In terms of organic visitors, a search for pages on RPGChat has about 16,200 results. When digging through the pages, I noticed that only 477 pages were in the primary index, with the remainder in the supplemental index. That's scary!
Let's take a look at their search results:
As you can see from the above search, we can confirm that there is some duplicate content problems. However, from what we've seen - most of RPGChat's traffic is a result of direct referral. We can identify with the importance of defensible traffic, but organic traffic is also a high-quality method of driving laser-targeted traffic to your site, and it looks like RPGChat is seriously missing out on this.
RPGChat has a relatively active forum; 63,708 threads, 1,925,709 posts, and 59,352 "active" members. While that's only an average of about 30 posts per thread and only about 32 posts per user, they do have some great quality and style elements in their posts that you simply don't see in many other places in roleplaying forums these days. I think it would be a great move for them to deactivate a lot of their older and inactive members, and send out reminders to these users to come back and join in on the fun.
It also seemed like a consensus that the single best area on RPGChat was the Clans & Guilds forum, which most users simply called "C/G" for short. It looks like most other forums' version of a multiverse, where roleplay is freeform, and most action is player-driven with rules being defined by the status quo.
Lack of availability aside, RPGChat leaves a pretty strong impression, and if you're careful to follow their 500 word list of rules, you can likely make some friends and enjoy some great high-quality roleplay. The administration needs to do some overhauling if they're going to keep the community healthy, but for the time being - RPGChat makes for a great roleplaying destination.
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Here's some cool technical details on why your images can appear differently in different browsers or applications, despite using the same display hardware. Worth the read if you edit photographs!
As it turns out, various applications (and the libraries they use) handle four-channel images differently, some even choosing to discard some of your image data entirely. It looks like even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the methods used to handle these layers are different!
#phtotography #photoshop #design #media
Attachments
K is the New Black - The Hacker Factor Blog
I've been looking at a lot of advertisement-related images lately. (Yes, this is work related.) The issue that I've been fighting with is that many of the pictures look different depending on ...
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Here's some cool technical details on why your images can appear differently in different browsers or applications, despite using the same display hardware. Worth the read if you edit photographs!
As it turns out, various applications (and the libraries they use) handle four-channel images differently, some even choosing to discard some of your image data entirely. It looks like even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the methods used to handle these layers are different!
#phtotography #photoshop #design #media
Attachments
K is the New Black - The Hacker Factor Blog
I've been looking at a lot of advertisement-related images lately. (Yes, this is work related.) The issue that I've been fighting with is that many of the pictures look different depending on ...
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I've been using Twitter since pretty early on (and long before @oprah), and I've found it to be a superbly convenient communication tool and notification service. Even though it's still very young on the web (Twitter was founded in March of 2006) It's been the home to great ideas like the #twitterdata proposal and the publicdomain book-via-tweets project. It's also an awesome reputation management platform, and can be used to both to provide effective customer service and help distribute news and updates about your business or product, which is exactly how I use it for my online roleplaying project.
But as with the rest of the social media world, Twitter can become very complex very quickly (but I still contend that there is no social media overload) and as a result, can be difficult to manage. As a result, I use several third-party tools to help me manage and gather information that helps me do my Twitter job much more efficiently and effectively.
Splitweet
[caption id="attachment_196" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Splitweet allows you to post and monitor multiple Twitter accounts and brands."]
[/caption]
For those of us with multiple Twitter accounts (like some people who create a Twitter account for each roleplaying character they use), Splitweet is an absolute savior. This service allows you to tweet to multiple accounts at the same time, as well as combining the "stream" from each account into one page. A lot of desktop Twitter clients offer this kind of functionality, but where Splitweet truly excels is in its ability to track what it calls "brands" (more reputation management terms here): you can specify keywords and phrases that will appear in a separate feed, even if you do not follow those users. This gets us around the disastrous changes Twitter made to the @replies, and helps us keep up to date on any mentions of our site's name and any tweets relating to what it is that we do.
Sherflock
[caption id="attachment_195" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sherflock provides detailed statistics and summaries of Twitter users you are associated with."]
[/caption]
Sherflock is an absolutely awesome stat tracking machine that helps weed out the waves of spam that have been coming in since Twitter has gone mainstream. Sherflock gives a large number of statistics about each every account the either follows you or that you are following, and lets you sort and filter users based on these statistics.
Twitterfall
[caption id="attachment_194" align="alignnone" width="217" caption="Twitterfall offers a live stream of twitter updates on keywords that you specify."]
[/caption]
This tool allows you to specify any number of keywords that you wish to view on a live, moving stream of tweets. This is very useful if you are using a computer that allows you to "pin" a window on top (like Ubuntu Linux), or if you have a multiple-monitor rig, or even if you use multiple computers using the input-sharing app Synergy. You'll get a live feed of updates on any topic of your choice, which can even be updated and changed in real-time.
Using these three tools will help you maximize you Twitter performance and make the most of an already awesome service, preventing you from being inundated with the massive stream of messages that you're surely going to subscribe to.
What are your top three Twitter tools? Feel free to make a comment or write your own post, and I'll gladly append a link to this post to help everyone out!
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I would pay for the ability to have a setting in my messenger to the effect of "Don't ever convert my emoticons into images for anyone else."
I feel that emoticons carry far more weight and emotion when they're not automatically converted into images. I am greatly saddened by this forced imagination of my carefully selected typography.
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I would pay for the ability to have a setting in my messenger to the effect of "Don't ever convert my emoticons into images for anyone else."
I feel that emoticons carry far more weight and emotion when they're not automatically converted into images. I am greatly saddened by this forced imagination of my carefully selected typography.
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I would pay for the ability to have a setting in my messenger to the effect of "Don't ever convert my emoticons into images for anyone else."
I feel that emoticons carry far more weight and emotion when they're not automatically converted into images. I am greatly saddened by this forced imagination of my carefully selected typography.
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I would pay for the ability to have a setting in my messenger to the effect of "Don't ever convert my emoticons into images for anyone else."
I feel that emoticons carry far more weight and emotion when they're not automatically converted into images. I am greatly saddened by this forced imagination of my carefully selected typography.
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If the descriptions are in the EXIF data and these can be accessed for a whole folder of images, then search through many images would become efficient. Just one idea. Also, any time a technology uses a form of text-to-speech there are applications to many people, not just those who are visually impaired. Think of people who have physical considerations that reduce keyboarding, such as those with a spinal cord injury or severe arthritis. Think of those who have a learning disability or cognitive challenge. I see far more people who may benefit as this technology develops.
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possibilities are endless. Maybe a song as inspired by the image :D
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I would have to agree. I typed emoticon seems much more passionate than a tiny image which just feels...cheap.
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Little value? And now image this thing beeing able to write in a fashion able to be "read" / felt by blind people. That would be awesome.
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Or human creativity can stay one step ahead of those who wish to convert emotes into images, or worse, animations. There's got to be other ways to smile! Replace that parenthesis with a bracket!
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Here's a cool idea; a camera that produces descriptive text instead of an image.
The build is pretty sweet, and there's a novel approach to making this work. Check it out!
Attachments
Descriptive Camera
The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text de...
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Here's a cool idea; a camera that produces descriptive text instead of an image.
The build is pretty sweet, and there's a novel approach to making this work. Check it out!
Attachments
Descriptive Camera
The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text de...
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Here's a cool idea; a camera that produces descriptive text instead of an image.
The build is pretty sweet, and there's a novel approach to making this work. Check it out!
Attachments
Descriptive Camera
The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text de...
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Here's a cool idea; a camera that produces descriptive text instead of an image.
The build is pretty sweet, and there's a novel approach to making this work. Check it out!
Attachments
Descriptive Camera
The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text de...
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Ha! It looks like the latest iteration of Gtalk (inside Gmail, at least) no longer converts at least the heart ( <3 ) to an animated emoticon. Me gusta!
...but really, can't I get just one more option to let me send all my messages as pure text only, and disallow clients from converting them to images? :(
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Part of me feels this was the best outcome. Great efforts would have been made (indeed, were already being made) to tarnish his image and paint him in a crude, inaccurate light for the public. He would have been a scapegoat. Deeds would have been carried out in reaction to "criminals like Aaron Swartz." He would have suffered greatly. Now, instead, he's a martyr of sorts. He's provided a great surge, an impetus. People are stepping up. <3 Respect.
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Ha, I did -- I chose it because of Newton's quote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” While the potential irony was not lost on me when creating the image, I felt justified in choosing the Solvay Conference photo due to the unreasonable [at the time] methods utilized by many of these individuals to accomplish their scientific achievements (which I would further argue is more about understanding, rather than adapting).
Thanks for being part of an incredibly astute audience, though. :)
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Interesting, certainly a relevant application for tourists and museum visitors. I look forward to a slightly more immersive experience, where for instance ruins are overlaid with an image of what they used to look like. Also, I want to wear google glasses while I bike/run/walk and play a video game at the same time, so I'm exercising outside and experiencing a "new world" at the same time. When is that coming?? ;)
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You hate smart boards? WT? As someone that used to be a trainer I loved them. They let me do things I couldn't even think about with black board. Easy to clean, push of a button. Incorporate images. Prepare many boards with lots of information. Print out or even better dump to a file a PDF of everything done with a lesson.
There is nothing I can do with a chalk board I can't do with a smart board besides inhale chalk dust.
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I just came across an artist's work of a futuristic fantasy Tokyo that is overgrown with vegetation, and is amid reclamation by nature. Immediately, I thought that these images demanded a roleplaying game to go along with them, perhaps of the walk-through nature.
They came from a blog called Tokyo Genso (Tokyo Fantasy) - which has some altogether amazing works of art, so go check them out. :)
[gallery]
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Have you heard about Google Ripples yet? Take a look at their blog post here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-popular-posts-eye-catching.html1) Find the post you are interested in.
2) Copy its "activityID" from your address bar.
3) Append it to the following URL:
https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=Image instructions attached. What interesting things can
you learn from this tool?
Attachments
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Have you heard about Google Ripples yet? Take a look at their blog post here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-popular-posts-eye-catching.html1) Find the post you are interested in.
2) Copy its "activityID" from your address bar.
3) Append it to the following URL:
https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=Image instructions attached. What interesting things can
you learn from this tool?
Attachments
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Have you heard about Google Ripples yet? Take a look at their blog post here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-popular-posts-eye-catching.html1) Find the post you are interested in.
2) Copy its "activityID" from your address bar.
3) Append it to the following URL:
https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=Image instructions attached. What interesting things can
you learn from this tool?
Attachments
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
Have you heard about Google Ripples yet? Take a look at their blog post here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-popular-posts-eye-catching.html1) Find the post you are interested in.
2) Copy its "activityID" from your address bar.
3) Append it to the following URL:
https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=Image instructions attached. What interesting things can
you learn from this tool?
Attachments
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David, that is an excellent example. But the real problem as I see it is this device is converting apples to oranges, and that's hard/impossible to do well & consistently & for everyone. What you see with your eyes and interpret into your own internal thought process, and what you read from a description written by a program (and influenced by that programmers perspective and interpretation of the world as he perceives it) are very different things.
One person will emphasize the color hue and saturation over the geometry and spatial composition of the image. Others will focus on details like what brand names are on the shirts, what landmarks are visible or implied, etc.
The descriptions look pretty sterilized and minimal, but once again...where is the real value.
I'm willing to concede that this has value for the visually impaired to some degree, but I don't see it as a revolutionary advance. It's more like a neat gimmick than the next big thing.
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We went to the Circle of Masters tournament a while ago, and kicked some serious ass. Here's some photos that were taken at the event, with Amber, myself, and Sensei scattered throughout.
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As of today, I've changed the address of my blog from just EricMartindale.com to a new location that will contain my blog posts in a new format. Don't worry though, all your old links will still work just fine.
Why am I doing this? Well, there are a number of reasons why - not the least of which are some SEO (search engine optimization) adjustments that I'm in the process of making. However, the biggest and most important thing to you is the introduction of Eric Martindale's Lifestream, which is the newest and latest feature of EricMartindale[dot]com. This new area of the site is called a Lifestream because it will show you everything that I've been doing lately, from shared posts on Google Reader to photos from Flickr.
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How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?Researchers from
+Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up
+Robert Rice's alley.
One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity,
even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.
[1]:
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/[2]:
http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html
Attachments
Face Recognition Study - FAQ
FAQ. Face Recognition Study - FAQ. Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality. Alessandro Acquisti (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University). Ralph Gross (Heinz College, Carnegie Mel...
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How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?Researchers from
+Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up
+Robert Rice's alley.
One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity,
even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.
[1]:
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/[2]:
http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html
Attachments
Face Recognition Study - FAQ
FAQ. Face Recognition Study - FAQ. Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality. Alessandro Acquisti (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University). Ralph Gross (Heinz College, Carnegie Mel...
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?Researchers from
+Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up
+Robert Rice's alley.
One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity,
even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.
[1]:
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/[2]:
http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html
Attachments
Face Recognition Study - FAQ
FAQ. Face Recognition Study - FAQ. Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality. Alessandro Acquisti (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University). Ralph Gross (Heinz College, Carnegie Mel...
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
How would you behave in a world with no anonymity?Researchers from
+Yuriy Zubovski's alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, raise a few troubling questions about identity and privacy in a paper released at BlackHat in August [1]. They show results from a facial recognition study and hit some points about how it relates to Augmented Reality (AR), right up
+Robert Rice's alley.
One of the authors, Alessandro Acquisti, also gave a talk at USENIX shortly after the release, of which there is video [2]. He explores some fascinating examples of how the images and videos that people have posted online can be utilized for tracking identity,
even in cases where you explicitly "untag" yourself, which may people simply do not consider.
[1]:
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/[2]:
http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/acquisti/index.html
Attachments
Face Recognition Study - FAQ
FAQ. Face Recognition Study - FAQ. Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality. Alessandro Acquisti (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University). Ralph Gross (Heinz College, Carnegie Mel...
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If you notice, I currently display my Foursquare badges over in the right hand side. I'm not sure about how long I'll display them specifically, so here's a screenshot:
I recently received an email inquiring about how I accomplished this. Well, since I use Chyrp, here's how I did it:
- In includes/controller/Main.php, add the following, somewhere around line 715 (immediately after $this->context["sql_queries"] =& SQL::current()->queries;):
// BEGIN Foursquare Badges
$cURL = curl_init();
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL, "http://api.foursquare.com/v1/user.json?badges=1");
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "your@email.com:your_password_here");
$strPage = curl_exec($cURL);
curl_close($cURL);
$foursquare = json_decode($strPage);
$badges = $foursquare->user->badges;
foreach ($badges as $badge) {
$this->context['foursquare_badges'] .= '<img src="'.$badge->icon.'" title="'.$badge->description.'" />';
}
// END Foursquare Badges
- In themes/your_theme_name/content/sidebar.twig, wherever you want to display your foursquare tags, simply add:
<div>
<h1>Foursquare Badges</h1>
$foursquare_badges
</div></code>
You can display this wherever you like, in any part of your Chyrp template.
Be aware that this requires PHP's CURL module. I encourage you to enable Chyrp's caching module as well, so every page load does not incur a single API request (I have a feeling that they probably won't appreciate it). The benefit of this is that your Foursquare badges will now be output by your server, so they are both indexable by search engines and degrade very gracefully when the client doesn't have Javascript enabled (NoScript users, particularly).
Enjoy!
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So, Firefox allows you to open favorites in a sidebar - which is great for things like FriendFeed, Google Talk, Twitter, or even Facebook chat. It lets you use a good web service as what essentially becomes an extension for your browser, so you can browse your regular pages while still participating in the conversation.
I recently switched over to the social browser, Flock - with great success and elation. Flock is built from the Firefox codebase, but they are massively more social in what the browser does - drag and drop images, open media feeds, view your friends in their People and Places sidebar, among many other really cool things.
Then there's Friendfeed - which is a web service that recently took off (but I must say, I've been using long before the hype. :D) because it allows you to combine all of your social media connections (Web 2.5, if you will) and even cross-post responses between them (closer to Web 3.0, minus filtering and duplicate content issues...). After putting in a request to Flock's develpment team to start moving in this direction, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
When you bookmark something in Firefox, you can open the properties of the bookmark and hit a checkbox, "Open this link in the sidebar." However, this option is not available in Flock (by default). So let's open our trusty about:config:
Do a filter on "sidebar", and you'll find a value called "flock.favorites.loadPageInSidebar" - which is set to false by default. Right click this value, and click "toggle".
Bingo. Now you will have the checkbox on all your bookmarks that will allow you to open links in your sidebar!
Tags: flock, browser, web, sidebar, friendfeed, social media
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Running a role playing game online presents a large of amount of flexibility in the way you run the game. You no longer need individual sessions where all players are present, and there are a plethora of options as to where you are going to run it - if you want to run it in any one place.
One of the number one questions I receive relates to the medium for online RPGs. There are tons of different ways of communicating online, mainly grouped into a few categories. We have instant messenger, chats, message boards, and emails. There are a few custom services out there, but I'm going to touch on the four that I've mentioned.
On RolePlayGateway, we have a set of roleplaying forums as well as a roleplaying chat. When you're running an RPG, there are a few items you should consider when deciding where you're going to keep everything.
Forums have the benefit of being static and always available - users can post to forums at any time during the day and be sure that other users (and roleplayers) can see their message. Forums are also very flexible, they allow you to embed images and other multimedia within your posts, allowing you to share any experience with your players. However, it is post based - forums are often not the quickest way to communicate, as it is not a live feed of information like a chat.
Chats, on the other hand, have the benefit of being real time. Games can be run in chat (and instant messenger) on a moment's notice, and work best when all of the players can be available at the same time. Because it is real time, short blip-based sessions such as character conversations and interactions work extraordinarily well with chats. Players can get the chance to interject into other player's actions and statements without the worry of too much time going by. It is for this reason that the longer posts, such as those that exceed a paragraph, are often too large and unwieldy for chats - players end up waiting too long for each post, and will get bored.
Longer posts do very well on forums, where writing an individual post can take half an hour or longer to refine and perfect - just enough time for the players to go look at other games and other topics before they come back and begin formulating their response.
If you're running a game with a detailed and/or complicated storyline or characters, it is always good to post something on a forum for player reference. This lets the players have a place to communicate out of character (OOC) - such as when they won't be able to make a chat session, or when they want to discuss plans for character interaction, growth, or development. Even if your game is already on a forum - it is a good idea to create a place for OOC discussion. For chat-based games - this gives a perfect opportunity for players to jump in at the middle of a game with little trouble, as they simply need to read over the history of the game on the forum, which they can do at any point in time, and less time is needed explaining the game to the player.
Instant messenger works well when dealing with one on one sessions, such as when two characters are the only ones in an interaction or a meeting needs to be private. These interactions can be summarized or written into a cinematic format and then posted to the forum, for other players to enjoy as well. Instant messenger (as well as Private Messages) does very well at asking questions of the other players, which is convenient when you have a question about how they're playing a role or a reference they made in character.
There are also emails - many games aren't run by email anymore, but email is still a very valuable tool. RolePlayGateway like many forums offers you the ability to subscribe to topics. Subscriptions will let you receive an immediate email update whenever someone replies to the thread. This is extraordinarily helpful when there's an RPG with only a few players that can only reply every once in a while, but it requires that people, y'know, actually check their email. RolePlayGateway also has the special ability to instant message you when there's an update to a subscribed thread. All you need is a Jabber account (GMail accounts work, too) and to set up the notifications. We'll send you a message as soon as there's an update.
What methods have you used to manage your online roleplaying games? Are you a fan of forum or chat? Both? What helps you determine where you're going to hold your game? Discuss!
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Being a fighter, I've been through this weight-cutting business plenty of times. Personally, yeah it's a pain in the ass, but we're athletes and in more cases than not - our bodies should be able to handle this. It should be at our own or our managers' discretion on whether or not we are healthy enough to cut weight.
From MMA Junkie:
Cutting weight continues to be a significant part of weight-restricted sports such as MMA, wrestling and boxing. It has gone on for so long that as the old aphorism goes, "Familiarity breeds contempt."
All those athletes, coaches, promoters, sanctioning bodies and fans associated with these sports have learned to accept it, consider it part of the culture, and turn a blind eye.
They all know – even if they won't admit it – that rapid, significant weight-cutting is unhealthy and potentially deadly. Most serious wrestlers have a personal story about the perils of such weight-cutting either through first hand knowledge or vicariously via a close friend or teammate. But the desire to win continues this potentially dangerous ritual.
What for decades has consisted self-reporting and self-monitoring of weight has not worked. And "documentation" of weight by a friendly doctor has been ineffective at best.
Therefore the primary issue of weight should be removed from the combatant. Simple, clear and easily enforceable rules and guidelines should be initiated to better protect the athletes.
My suggestions are as follow:
-
All standard fight agreements must be signed at least 45 days prior to the scheduled event.
-
No fighter may enter into a fight agreement weighing greater than 10 percent over the agreed upon weight limit. For example, the agreed-upon weight is 171 pounds. Therefore, each fighter can weigh no more than 171 pounds + 10 percent (188 pounds total) to sign the fight agreement.
-
At 30 days prior to fight, neither fighter can weigh more than 5 percent over the agreed-upon weight limit. For example, the agreed-upon weight is 171 pounds. Therefore each fighter can weigh no more than 180 pounds.
-
On the official day of weigh-in, if a fighter is more than 1 percent overweight, the fight cannot take place. Since the promoter is the employer, the promoter will be fined by the sanctioning body.
-
On the official day of weigh-in, if a fighter is less than 1 percent overweight, he or she can be given additional time to make weight. If on the second weigh-in, the fighter remains overweight, a financial penalty can be levied and paid to the on-weight fighter, at his or her discretion.
-
If during a championship fight the champion is overweight greater than 1 percent at the official weigh-in, the fight will not take place and the challenger is given the belt as interim champion.
-
If during a championship fight the champion is overweight by less than 1 percent and after an opportunity cannot make weight, the fight may still go on. If the champion wins, the title will be considered vacant. If the challenger wins, he will assume the title.
-
All weigh-in dates (bout agreement day and 30-day check) will be video monitored by live computer webcam and recorded. Each camp will watch the other camp calibrate the scale and weigh in over live video webcam stream (Skype). The sanctioning body will monitor the weigh-in in a similar fashion.
Understandably, this is not a system that could be implemented quickly or easily when considering the restraints of some state commissions and some of the inconsistencies from one regulatory body to the next.
However, my goal is for this ideal guideline to serve as a basis for substantive discussion and a potential framework to better protect the safety of the athletes that participate in MMA.
So, let the name-calling begin.
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I often get asked for my Skype address, sometimes in relation to business or casual conversation. I politely decline with some degree of hand-waving about my reasons, and suggest an alternative form of communication (typically either Google Talk or Google Hangouts, depending on the context—both are built right in to Gmail!). I'd like to outline some of the reasons why I've made the decision to avoid Skype, primarily so I have something to link to when someone asks me about it.
First and foremost, we don't really know what Skype actually does. The binary (the actual program you run on your computer) is obfuscated, so attempts at disassembling it [PDF] to verify some of its strange behavior and the information it is transmitting have so far come up with very little. This is an issue, because Skype produces encrypted traffic even when you are not actively using Skype. This means we can only speculate on what information Skype is collecting about you after you've so graciously chosen to install it, and perhaps more importantly who it is sending that information to.
Quoting Salman Baset:
When a Skype client is not in a call and is running on a machine with public IP address, it has on the average 4-8 active TCP connections and atleast one UDP connection.
While connecting to external IP addresses is normal for a server/client architecture and necessary for receiving notifications, the volume of traffic and number of connections is concerning, considering the compounding issues between Skype's peer-to-peer architecture [PDF] and the "reasonable level of detection accuracy" in snooping on voice calls in Skype [PDF], despite the [purportedly] encrypted nature of the Skype protocol.
Speaking in general terms, Skype is "black box" software which has undergone no public review despite very concerning observed behavior. When new Skype malware (like Skype IMBot, of which an analysis is available, or the more recent Skype account hijacking) is released, there are very few options to protect ourselves if we've got Skype installed. On Linux, tools like AppArmor and TOMOYO exist, but without the ability to easily view the source and understand the attack (per perhaps even fix it proactively, before it occurs) we are at the mercy of Skype's new maintainers to provide a timely resolution in a reactive approach.
If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.
— Richard Stallman
In conclusion, while Skype may be convenient, it presents a series of questions that must be asked and implications to be considered before choosing it over other chat, VoIP, and video chat solutions. I can only hope that more people consider these things before doing so.
Asides
Some of the other things I found interesting, more recently than the research I've linked in this post, include
Skype's role in the Syrian conflict, in which a claim was made as follows:
A media activist in Idlib named Mohamed said a rebel informant working for the government was killed in Damascus six months ago after sending warnings to the Free Syrian Army on Skype.
“I saw this incident right in front of my eyes,” Mohamed said. “We put his info on Skype so he was arrested and killed.”
Skype (Microsoft) has also made other concerning statements after accusations of helping the U.S. Government spy on its own citizens.
Wikipedia also lists a large number of known flaws in Skype, which I've chosen to avoid duplicating in this post.
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I am drooling over WolframAlpha Pro: http://www.wolframalpha.com/pro/ [actual announcement attached]
"Computational knowledge engine" WolframAlpha [1] just announced a new offering aiming at power users of their already amazing data science toolkit. I'm
very impressed with the features they've chosen to add, including
image processing and
3D plot export. Maybe I'm just being a huge nerd, but I think this'll be
great for generating assets for presentations and demos. :)
I already use WolframAlpha for quickly plotting relationships in certain algorithms, or referencing certain datasets. It's great for checking on specs like display densities [2], calculating a transfer time (while automatically cross-referencing network specs!) [3] or even looking for obscure computing metrics [4]. It can help you calculate chemical reactions [5], or even plot a protein structure. [6]
My favorite day-to-day application is quick and dirty regression, for visualizing trends in my data [7], but it's still cool to play with n-gram decomposition [8].
Google hasn't even come close to this level of utility, even with innovations like Google Squared [9] (which was sadly shuttered last year... [10]) and the addition of function plotting to their universal search earlier this year [11]. They've been rolling in more and more tidbits like this, but I don't know that a company as large as Google can keep up with the delta, even with again-CEO
+Larry Page's war on cruft [12] freeing up resources for projects like this.
It's priced at only $4.99 per month (or $2.99 for students, which I am not -- but I'll happily pay the premium at this price point!), right up my alley as building something comparable for local use (or even acquiring an existing software package) would be prohibitively expensive and moreover, complex.
Have you used WolframAlpha? If so, what for?[1]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/[2]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.5+megapixel+300dpi+display[3]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=data+transfer+time+10GB%2C+802.11n[4]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+fast+was+the+processor+on+the+Atari+400%3F[5]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Al+%2B+O2+-%3E+Al2O3[6]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=myoglobin[7]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=quadratic+fit+%7B10.1%2C1.2%7D%2C%7B12.6%2C+2.8%7D%2C%7B14.8%2C7.6%7D%2C%7B16.0%2C12.8%7D%2C%7B17.5%2C15.1%7D[8]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=n-grams+%22the+google+plus+community+keeps+me+smiling+throughout+the+day%22[9]:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8047076.stm[10]:
http://searchengineland.com/google-squared-news-timeline-get-added-to-googles-chopping-block-90549[11]:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/12/googles-graphing-calculator.html[12]:
http://goo.gl/ay4I0
Attachments
Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Announcing Wolfram|Alpha Pro
Today’s introduction of Wolfram|Alpha Pro gives you fundamentally new and remarkable capabilities like: data input, file upload, image input, data download, CDF interactivity, extra computation time, ...
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
I am drooling over WolframAlpha Pro: http://www.wolframalpha.com/pro/ [actual announcement attached]
"Computational knowledge engine" WolframAlpha [1] just announced a new offering aiming at power users of their already amazing data science toolkit. I'm
very impressed with the features they've chosen to add, including
image processing and
3D plot export. Maybe I'm just being a huge nerd, but I think this'll be
great for generating assets for presentations and demos. :)
I already use WolframAlpha for quickly plotting relationships in certain algorithms, or referencing certain datasets. It's great for checking on specs like display densities [2], calculating a transfer time (while automatically cross-referencing network specs!) [3] or even looking for obscure computing metrics [4]. It can help you calculate chemical reactions [5], or even plot a protein structure. [6]
My favorite day-to-day application is quick and dirty regression, for visualizing trends in my data [7], but it's still cool to play with n-gram decomposition [8].
Google hasn't even come close to this level of utility, even with innovations like Google Squared [9] (which was sadly shuttered last year... [10]) and the addition of function plotting to their universal search earlier this year [11]. They've been rolling in more and more tidbits like this, but I don't know that a company as large as Google can keep up with the delta, even with again-CEO
+Larry Page's war on cruft [12] freeing up resources for projects like this.
It's priced at only $4.99 per month (or $2.99 for students, which I am not -- but I'll happily pay the premium at this price point!), right up my alley as building something comparable for local use (or even acquiring an existing software package) would be prohibitively expensive and moreover, complex.
Have you used WolframAlpha? If so, what for?[1]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/[2]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.5+megapixel+300dpi+display[3]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=data+transfer+time+10GB%2C+802.11n[4]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+fast+was+the+processor+on+the+Atari+400%3F[5]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Al+%2B+O2+-%3E+Al2O3[6]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=myoglobin[7]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=quadratic+fit+%7B10.1%2C1.2%7D%2C%7B12.6%2C+2.8%7D%2C%7B14.8%2C7.6%7D%2C%7B16.0%2C12.8%7D%2C%7B17.5%2C15.1%7D[8]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=n-grams+%22the+google+plus+community+keeps+me+smiling+throughout+the+day%22[9]:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8047076.stm[10]:
http://searchengineland.com/google-squared-news-timeline-get-added-to-googles-chopping-block-90549[11]:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/12/googles-graphing-calculator.html[12]:
http://goo.gl/ay4I0
Attachments
Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Announcing Wolfram|Alpha Pro
Today’s introduction of Wolfram|Alpha Pro gives you fundamentally new and remarkable capabilities like: data input, file upload, image input, data download, CDF interactivity, extra computation time, ...
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
I am drooling over WolframAlpha Pro: http://www.wolframalpha.com/pro/ [actual announcement attached]
"Computational knowledge engine" WolframAlpha [1] just announced a new offering aiming at power users of their already amazing data science toolkit. I'm
very impressed with the features they've chosen to add, including
image processing and
3D plot export. Maybe I'm just being a huge nerd, but I think this'll be
great for generating assets for presentations and demos. :)
I already use WolframAlpha for quickly plotting relationships in certain algorithms, or referencing certain datasets. It's great for checking on specs like display densities [2], calculating a transfer time (while automatically cross-referencing network specs!) [3] or even looking for obscure computing metrics [4]. It can help you calculate chemical reactions [5], or even plot a protein structure. [6]
My favorite day-to-day application is quick and dirty regression, for visualizing trends in my data [7], but it's still cool to play with n-gram decomposition [8].
Google hasn't even come close to this level of utility, even with innovations like Google Squared [9] (which was sadly shuttered last year... [10]) and the addition of function plotting to their universal search earlier this year [11]. They've been rolling in more and more tidbits like this, but I don't know that a company as large as Google can keep up with the delta, even with again-CEO
+Larry Page's war on cruft [12] freeing up resources for projects like this.
It's priced at only $4.99 per month (or $2.99 for students, which I am not -- but I'll happily pay the premium at this price point!), right up my alley as building something comparable for local use (or even acquiring an existing software package) would be prohibitively expensive and moreover, complex.
Have you used WolframAlpha? If so, what for?[1]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/[2]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.5+megapixel+300dpi+display[3]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=data+transfer+time+10GB%2C+802.11n[4]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+fast+was+the+processor+on+the+Atari+400%3F[5]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Al+%2B+O2+-%3E+Al2O3[6]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=myoglobin[7]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=quadratic+fit+%7B10.1%2C1.2%7D%2C%7B12.6%2C+2.8%7D%2C%7B14.8%2C7.6%7D%2C%7B16.0%2C12.8%7D%2C%7B17.5%2C15.1%7D[8]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=n-grams+%22the+google+plus+community+keeps+me+smiling+throughout+the+day%22[9]:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8047076.stm[10]:
http://searchengineland.com/google-squared-news-timeline-get-added-to-googles-chopping-block-90549[11]:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/12/googles-graphing-calculator.html[12]:
http://goo.gl/ay4I0
Attachments
Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Announcing Wolfram|Alpha Pro
Today’s introduction of Wolfram|Alpha Pro gives you fundamentally new and remarkable capabilities like: data input, file upload, image input, data download, CDF interactivity, extra computation time, ...
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
I am drooling over WolframAlpha Pro: http://www.wolframalpha.com/pro/ [actual announcement attached]
"Computational knowledge engine" WolframAlpha [1] just announced a new offering aiming at power users of their already amazing data science toolkit. I'm
very impressed with the features they've chosen to add, including
image processing and
3D plot export. Maybe I'm just being a huge nerd, but I think this'll be
great for generating assets for presentations and demos. :)
I already use WolframAlpha for quickly plotting relationships in certain algorithms, or referencing certain datasets. It's great for checking on specs like display densities [2], calculating a transfer time (while automatically cross-referencing network specs!) [3] or even looking for obscure computing metrics [4]. It can help you calculate chemical reactions [5], or even plot a protein structure. [6]
My favorite day-to-day application is quick and dirty regression, for visualizing trends in my data [7], but it's still cool to play with n-gram decomposition [8].
Google hasn't even come close to this level of utility, even with innovations like Google Squared [9] (which was sadly shuttered last year... [10]) and the addition of function plotting to their universal search earlier this year [11]. They've been rolling in more and more tidbits like this, but I don't know that a company as large as Google can keep up with the delta, even with again-CEO
+Larry Page's war on cruft [12] freeing up resources for projects like this.
It's priced at only $4.99 per month (or $2.99 for students, which I am not -- but I'll happily pay the premium at this price point!), right up my alley as building something comparable for local use (or even acquiring an existing software package) would be prohibitively expensive and moreover, complex.
Have you used WolframAlpha? If so, what for?[1]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/[2]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.5+megapixel+300dpi+display[3]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=data+transfer+time+10GB%2C+802.11n[4]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+fast+was+the+processor+on+the+Atari+400%3F[5]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Al+%2B+O2+-%3E+Al2O3[6]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=myoglobin[7]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=quadratic+fit+%7B10.1%2C1.2%7D%2C%7B12.6%2C+2.8%7D%2C%7B14.8%2C7.6%7D%2C%7B16.0%2C12.8%7D%2C%7B17.5%2C15.1%7D[8]:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=n-grams+%22the+google+plus+community+keeps+me+smiling+throughout+the+day%22[9]:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8047076.stm[10]:
http://searchengineland.com/google-squared-news-timeline-get-added-to-googles-chopping-block-90549[11]:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/12/googles-graphing-calculator.html[12]:
http://goo.gl/ay4I0
Attachments
Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Announcing Wolfram|Alpha Pro
Today’s introduction of Wolfram|Alpha Pro gives you fundamentally new and remarkable capabilities like: data input, file upload, image input, data download, CDF interactivity, extra computation time, ...
Replies are automatically detected from social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. To add a comment, include a direct link to this post in your message and it'll show up here within a few minutes.
There's been a lot of active discussion about the state of AOL's directory project, DMOZ. There have been many attempts to unseat the directory project from its position as the most authoritative listing resource, such as the Yahoo Directory. Many of these attempts have fallen by the wayside, as Rand Fiskin points out, but none have remained more controversial than DMOZ. More recently, Chris Crum's post on WebProNews about his lack of respect for DMOZ has stirred up a hornet's nest of DMOZ criticism, including a particular post claiming DMOZ is a waste of time.
I forwarded a lot of this on to Philip Nicolcev, known by username as "frug", who is the editor of several roleplay-oriented categories on DMOZ. He responded to me directly with a highly insightful email, and I was fortunate enough to receive his permission to share its contents.
I've been editing the pbp category at DMOZ for what... 4 years now? About that. This article is a big whiny complaint which misses the mark. They are both correct and sadly mistaken.
Yes, dmoz is outdated and yes, it fails because of attitude problems, but not silly allegations of 'corruption' or people who are bitter because they didn't get listed. We don't list everything, I don't list even half of the submissions I get, and anyone who has been an administrator or an editor for a similar type of project knows better than to take these kinds of complaints seriously.
One thing they say is definitely correct: Apply once carefully following their rules if you wish and then, as Will suggested, forget about them.
This is exactly the approach that should be modeled for any directory, regardless of its state or condition. When you are submitting a link to a directory, you are being offered the privilege to be listed as a resource by the owners and management of that directory. They are not obligated to list your link, let alone review it in a timely fashion--but this would be genuinely appreciated and would reflect on the directory's position as a "good" resource.
DMOZ is the primary source for Google's Directory, and you must respect the opinion of such a large and successful company. It's obvious that the idea behind an open directory like DMOZ is good, but where they fail is in execution. More on that later.
He continues:
That is what you should do. Apply once and forget about it, don't claim anybody is corrupt because whether you believe my opinion or not, there's no corruption. Nobody cares enough about dmoz anymore for it to be valuable for extortion. Don't be ridiculous. Furthermore if you were to speak to some of the senior editors you'd discover that they are pretty damn uptight, even obsessive.
The problems with dmoz are, in my opinion, twofold. First off, you have the dated trashy look of the website which is a relic of the 1990's. It's not user friendly, it doesn't entice anyone to go browsing, and it hasn't adapted or added features that would help people understand the structure of the directory or find what they're looking for. The editor forums still use phpBB2, and you should see the editing panel. You wouldn't believe how dated this stuff is. Frankly it has needed an overhaul for years now.
I largely agree with him. The phpBB team deprecated the phpBB2 branch at the beginning of this year, ending support for the outdated platform. AOL would do well to do a complete overhaul of the site's design now that "Web 2.0" has come and gone (and I could reference posts all day on that) - and AOL has completely missed their opportunity to latch on and ride the wave.
Philip finishes his correspondance with the frightening truth that has been plaguing many post-Web2.0 sites and services:
The second problem, attitude, is partially the cause of the first problem. It's a stagnant atmosphere where nothing gets done and nobody gets listened to. They would rather leave a directory as a cluttered mess of garbage than risk breaking its structure by overhauling it. Fixing my category took me about two years before I had approval to restructure it, and I'm in a small niche category nobody pays much attention to. Since becoming an editor I have deleted about 60% of the outdated links listed. Had I not joined, they'd still be there cluttering things up with linkspam geocities pages from 10 years ago.
So yeah, dmoz is failing, but not because of corruption or because some guy didn't get what he wanted. And, honestly, if the author of this article was applying to dmoz just to 'test how fair it was' then I'm glad they rejected him. Somehow they made the right decision because he's wasting their time.
And that's the exact problem - the DMOZ community has completely stagnated, which has resulted in the puddle of goop that the directory has become. In my personal opinion, I think that AOL could do a lot better job at community management (all reputation management aside) by setting up a more rigid structure of responsibility. The editors need to be held responsible for a timely review specified by their superiors, and there needs to be cross-checking of the editor's work by other qualified editors.
Is this another example of AOL's purchases being mismanaged and ultimately being forgotten, such as what many people claim is the case with ex-Nullsoft product WinAmp? Perhaps, but I think that remains to be seen. After all, even our favored Google took a questionable amount of time to convert phone-consolidation service GrandCentral to the new Google Voice after its 2007 acquisition. DMOZ was in fact originally a Netscape project, which then-strong AOL acquired in 1998. Since that acquisition, little has changed.
All said and done, DMOZ needs some love if it's going to survive as anything more than a relic of trust and authority in the Web 2.0 bubble. As Philip points out, it has both good and bad traits and deserves further attention, but it needs to be attention in (and from) the right direction. The questions remain; where has AOL been? What can be done about the editors (or lack thereof)? How can DMOZ be improved?
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After speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.
