• Chuck is saved!

    Hours Categories Watching
    Comments 21 Comments

     Every TV season, we watch a few episodes of as many of the interesting shows as we can manage. This usually means a mix of stuff, with a few genre shows thrown in. This time, it meant a whole lot of genre shows and nothing else. After a few showings, we ditched Reaper and Moonlight (sorry, Kira). Journeyman was on the bubble, because frankly, the poor hero seems like fate’s football, and it’s hard to fall in love with a show that offers no hope for the future. And Bionic Woman is a narrative mess — major characters (and showrunners?) coming and leaving by revolving door.

    Top two shows? Unquestionably Pushing Daisies and Chuck. The former is almost too stylized to be watchable week after week — we had trouble believing that the pilot could be sustained, but yes, it could! I suspect that watching a season on DVD might rot your teeth.

    Of course, with the writer’s strike, many of the new shows are at real risk of failing to build sufficient audience, followed by cancellation. (Rumor has it that Journeyman may not even air the last episode it already has in the can). Lucky for us, NBC is ordering more episodes of Chuck, which makes us very happy. This show clearly has actual geeks in the writing room; there’s usually at least one deep nerd culture reference per episode which you know can’t have been faked.

  • Game Developers Choice Awards

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 4 Comments

    I am now on the advisory committee for the Game Developers Choice Awards, so I wanted to mention that this year’s nominations for three key awards are open until November 30th, to qualified industry professionals. The three awards are, in Gamasutra’s words:

    • The Ambassador Award honors an individual (or group of individuals) who has helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games to help further the art.
    • The Pioneer Award celebrates those individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history, paving the way for the myriad developers who followed them.
    • The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the career and achievements of a developer who has made an indelible impact on the craft of game development.

  • A better version of October

    Hours Categories Music
    Comments 3 Comments

    It was bugging the crap out of me that I posted that ugly version of “October.” So here’s a much nicer version.

    Someone asked about how I miked stuff last time… This one was recorded with the ATM41HE pointed at the 12th fret from around 4 inches away, and the AT4033a/SM standing around three feet away, then the two signals mixed and panned apart from each other. This was a bit of an experiment. It provided a lot more “air” space in the recording than in some of the other ones I have posted. Not sure if I like it that way or not — it’s not like the room where I record has a nice warm tone or anything. In fact, there’s a big ol’ double-wide mirrored closet door, so usually I get slapback.

    While I was at it, I wrote a new piece in this tuning too, which you can hear me whistling a snatch of at the start. 🙂 But you’ll have to wait until Sunday for that one — called “November,” of course.