A Tree Falling in the Forest

I guess doom and gloom stories get more attention than happy stories. From personal experience, I can tell you, it is easier to write an angry rant than a happy smiley one. At least it is more fun. Maybe this is why Jeetil Patel and Wagner James Au decided to predict the end of the game business last week. Mr. Patel chooses not to recognize diversification, so he says game companies must eat each other to survive - "This would imply that publishers need to gain share cycle-to-cycle to achieve similar levels of profitability." Mr. Au's story rose to number 1 on gametab when he chose to compare a month's GTA IV sales to several years of San Andreas sales to tell us the market is just not what it used to be. Mr. Au is right, it was a much better world when Presto made The Journeyman Project for USD 175k and sold it direct for USD 99. It was even better when Jordan Mechner made Karateka for a negligible amount of money in his bedroom and Broderbund sold through 500k. Mayb...

I've been using Nike + for a couple of years and this morning I ran the last fourteen miles to pass the 3,000 mile mark. Just a bit after my 40th birthday I started running for the first time in my life. I thought it would be easy. Pick up a pair of shoes, put on a pair of shorts, and go. I was wrong. After the first few steps I was winded, and by the end of the first quarter mile I thought my head was going to explode. I didn't use an MP3 player the first few weeks, and then I realized, they are good for running. I know, it takes me a while to figure things out. Eventually I was able to make it a mile without throwing up and then even further without my chest feeling like an alien was trying to burst free. A little while into the journey, I found podcasts and started listening to a ton of different stuff, ranging from NPR and BBC to Dawn and Drew (I highly recommend Dawn and Drew and The Bugle put out by John Oliver and Andy Saltzman.)  A bit after that, Apple rele...