With all of the charity marathons, bike rides, and 3-day walks that are held throughout the year all over the world, it seemed that the less athletically inclined among us could do nothing but donate some cash and cheer on our more outdoorsy friends as they raised money to combat this disease or fight that injustice. Fret no longer, my paler and rounder friends! October 17th marks Sarcastic Gamer’s 2nd Annual Extra Life, a 24-hour gaming marathon to fund pediatric cancer research and treatment. The idea is that participants will play their favorite video games for 24 hours straight to raise money for the Texas Children’s Cancer Center. As I believe this to be well within my skill-set to accomplish, I have decided to participate in this very worthy endeavor. If you feel compelled to help out the cause (for as little as $1 an hour), please visit my donation page at the Texas Children’s Hospital’s site.

Now, the run-up to any charity marathon always includes the obligatory training regimen, and this one will be no different. Therefore, in the weeks to come I will be posting about the various workouts, drills, and practice sessions I will be undergoing, ranging from simple thumb flexes to more advanced cross-training with boardgames.

If you have any suggestions or helpful tips, feel free to leave comments, and I thank you for your support!

Twitter and Facebook are both down (along with LiveJournal and perhaps others) due to a suspected denial-of-service attack so I’m kickin’ it old school by actually posting something on my blog. I know I said I’d “do a better job of posting here” but social networks provide so much more immediate gratification that they have been enough to satisfy my need to share stuff. I do want to post longer thoughts on my blog but I’ll have to try to find a good way to do it without just rehashing what I’ve already said on Twitter and/or Facebook.

In the mean time, please to enjoy a great British tea ad that is sure to put a smile on your face:

(Here’s the original comedy sketch on which the ad was based.)

Apparently people are looking at my blog (go fig), so I just wanted to post a quick note about whatall’s been going on since my last post:

- My brother David and I went went to New York for about 24 hours in the beginning of June where we met the Totally Rad Show (TRS) guys, walked around Times Square, went to the Top of the Rock, and visited the American Museum of Natural History.

- We also went to California for almost two weeks to visit family, attend Comic-Con (with a live TRS show and meetup), and generally be tourists. Oh, and there was an earthquake while we were at Disneyland.

- Did I mention the live TRS show? I did? Well did I tell you that a re-created version of a montage that I had made was shown to “warm up” the audience? That’s right, my work has been screened at Comic-Con. It’s no big thing

- Um, I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival for the first time in years and shot a little bit of video there.

As you can see, not a whole lot happened. I mostly use Twitter and Facebook to relay the more mundane happenings of my life (and, frankly, it’s all mundane) and to post funny or interesting things I find. However, I will repeat my promise that I will try to do a better job of posting here. Call it New Year’s Resolution #1.

2009, here I come!

My friend Keaven recently posted about his growing experiences with what he terms “the micro-blog craze,” specifically his success with Ping.fm which allows a user to update multiple social networks with one message. This prompted me to relate my usage of social networks in general.

I have been using Twitter regularly now for more than two months, and I love it. Despite its frequent outages as it grows in popularity (remember that even Digg had “scaling issues” early on), Twitter is an amazingly unnecessary and yet completely addictive form of communication that when I’m not at my computer I think about all those “tweets” (Twitter messages) that I’m not seeing. But let’s take a step back and explain what Twitter is to those of you who might not know. Twitter bills itself as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Essentially it is a mini- (or micro- or nano-) blogging tool which allows you to post a short message (under 140 characters) via web or text message and allows your “followers” to choose how they receive your messages, again via web or text message. Twitter also has a powerful API which has spawned a whole host of third-party applications.
Continue reading ‘my social network rundown’

I am a huge fan of the content that Revision3 puts out. Although I may not watch every show they produce/distribute, I think some of the best “TV” actually comes from this internet company, with such examples as The Totally Rad Show, Diggnation, Tekzilla, iFanboy, and popSiren. I also frequent their forums to interact with the community of viewers. This weekend, however, I was thwarted in my many attempts to access their site; I was not alone. It turns out that, over the weekend, Revision3 was the target of a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack which severely crippled their servers. That, alone, is really not that newsworthy since these attacks happen constantly all over the web for a variety of reasons. What makes this example special is who perpetrated the attack and the suspected reasons behind why they would do such a thing.

In a lengthy and incredibly well-written blog post on their website, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback details exactly what this DoS was, how it happened, and why it brought down their server. But he also goes on to describe how the evidence the attackers left behind led them to a subsidiary of Artistdirect called MediaDefender. MediaDefender is a company that, as ars technica points out, intentionally poisons peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic in a purported effort to fight piracy, and their clients have included Sony, Universal Music, the RIAA, and the MPAA. Now, Revision3 uses the Bittorrent P2P protocol to distribute its large volume of high-definition content (namely its shows) manageably and efficiently to its consumers. MediaOffender, ahem, MediaDefender had been injecting torrents into Revision3’s tracking server for months until the back door was found and Revision3 deauthorized non-Revision3 torrents. This caused MediaDouchefender, dammit, MediaDefender’s servers to attack Revision3’s servers by pinging them 8000 times every second, effectively bringing Revision3 to a crashing halt. It is interesting to note here how Louderback phrases this: “Revision3 suffered measurable harm to its business….” This certainly sounds like someone is laying groundwork for a lawsuit. Additionally, the FBI is investigating the incident so hopefully there will be repercussions for such an incredibly reprehensible and entirely indefensible attack on a business by an organization, funded by competing media interests, whose tactic to “fight piracy” is to undermine undeniably legal technology. I…am…so…angry…

Edit:
Here’s more of my feelings in the form of a comment (currently awaiting moderation) I left on Molly Wood’s Culture of Ownership blog:

I think there’s a little piece of the story that many people may be missing so let me quote from MediaDouchefenders’ website: “This last year, we have been leveraging our anti-piracy technology to market and promote on various Peer-to-Peer Networks.” My guess is that they not only put decoy torrents on Rev3’s network, but they have also likely been injecting torrents to “market and promote” their old media clients by hijacking/attacking their direct competition in new media. I also do not think it is coincidence that Revision3 was attacked given the founders’ connection to Digg, and we all know how much the AACS LA consortium (including MediaOffender client Sony) loved Digg after that encryption key was released. I don’t know. Maybe I’m thinking too hard, but that’s just how I see things.