And by “we”, I mean me.
And by “moved”, I mean to my brand-spanking-new blog.
And now I’m wondering just exactly what the search engines are going to think of my reference to spanking. (Good thing this isn’t Twitter, I guess — I’d be in for an influx of pornbots, for sure.)
I mean, I’m not picky about my readers, but I’d sure hate for anybody to be disappointed!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
My Own Personal Beatlemania
If you’ll forgive the expression, The Beatles: Rock Band is, well… totally fab.
We finally cracked open our copy yesterday, and both immediately fell in love. The graphics are just beautiful. The gameplay is awesome, as you get to follow along with the history of the band. And the music is, of course, simply the best there ever was.
The most interesting part to me is the addition of harmonies, although it’s difficult to play. Otherwise, I’m doing pretty well with the vocals, due to a combination of my unfortunate tendency to sing male vocals better than female anyway, as well as the fact that I’ve been singing along with these songs for, well... we don’t need to go into exactly how long, now, do we?
EAToo is enjoying the drums as usual, and is more willing to sing than he normally is, because this time he knows all the words. We’re also both eager to try out the bass part — apparently, according to the difficulty levels, George Harrison was even more of a genius than either of us realized.
I’m also eager to get into the downloadable content. By the end of November, the remainder of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (my all-time favorite), will be available as DLC. DLC releases have tentatively been scheduled through the end of the year.
I’m planning to post a more detailed and technical review over at Suite101.com later today, and I’ll add the link to that when I do.
We finally cracked open our copy yesterday, and both immediately fell in love. The graphics are just beautiful. The gameplay is awesome, as you get to follow along with the history of the band. And the music is, of course, simply the best there ever was.
The most interesting part to me is the addition of harmonies, although it’s difficult to play. Otherwise, I’m doing pretty well with the vocals, due to a combination of my unfortunate tendency to sing male vocals better than female anyway, as well as the fact that I’ve been singing along with these songs for, well... we don’t need to go into exactly how long, now, do we?
EAToo is enjoying the drums as usual, and is more willing to sing than he normally is, because this time he knows all the words. We’re also both eager to try out the bass part — apparently, according to the difficulty levels, George Harrison was even more of a genius than either of us realized.
I’m also eager to get into the downloadable content. By the end of November, the remainder of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (my all-time favorite), will be available as DLC. DLC releases have tentatively been scheduled through the end of the year.
I’m planning to post a more detailed and technical review over at Suite101.com later today, and I’ll add the link to that when I do.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Suite 101 Is a Blast!
Sure, I haven’t been blogging. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. In fact, I just finished my first writing “challenge” at Suite101.com. The challenge was “Pump It Up: 14 Articles in 14 Days”.
The challenge was a bit daunting... it’s a lot of work to write that many pieces, especially when you’re juggling your writing with a full-time job and other responsibilities. But, armed with inspiration from a recent vacation and the new television season (Finally! Can I get an “amen”?), I put my mind to it and got it done. In fact, last night was the first night I’ve taken off from writing since I started the challenge. And it really felt odd not to stay up writing, although I certainly needed the sleep at that point!
I can’t take all the credit. My husband has been very kind in terms of reading all my stuff, finding the occasional typo, and not minding too much when I disappear for hours to write. I also need to thank Suite101 for being located in the Pacific Time Zone — that extra couple of hours before “midnight” definitely helped me stay on track!
Writing for Suite101 has been great. While I also want to get back to the more informal style of blogging, I’m really enjoying the structure the website provides me in terms of style. It makes the writing more of a challenge; writing as a “puzzle” that I have to put together, just so, is far more interesting to me. Additionally, it makes me think out my opinions on things and develop them further than, say, the “Squeeeee!” that was all I had right after I saw the season premiere of Dollhouse.
And, I might add that the people of Suite101 have been wonderful. A special thank you to Cindy McGlynn, who has been the most patient editor a girl could ask for and has never made me feel stupid for asking stupid questions.
So, if you get a minute, drop by Suite101 and check out the content. Not just my pieces — although I’d certainly appreciate it — but all of the other writers there, too. There’s a lot of great work over there.
The challenge was a bit daunting... it’s a lot of work to write that many pieces, especially when you’re juggling your writing with a full-time job and other responsibilities. But, armed with inspiration from a recent vacation and the new television season (Finally! Can I get an “amen”?), I put my mind to it and got it done. In fact, last night was the first night I’ve taken off from writing since I started the challenge. And it really felt odd not to stay up writing, although I certainly needed the sleep at that point!
I can’t take all the credit. My husband has been very kind in terms of reading all my stuff, finding the occasional typo, and not minding too much when I disappear for hours to write. I also need to thank Suite101 for being located in the Pacific Time Zone — that extra couple of hours before “midnight” definitely helped me stay on track!
Writing for Suite101 has been great. While I also want to get back to the more informal style of blogging, I’m really enjoying the structure the website provides me in terms of style. It makes the writing more of a challenge; writing as a “puzzle” that I have to put together, just so, is far more interesting to me. Additionally, it makes me think out my opinions on things and develop them further than, say, the “Squeeeee!” that was all I had right after I saw the season premiere of Dollhouse.
And, I might add that the people of Suite101 have been wonderful. A special thank you to Cindy McGlynn, who has been the most patient editor a girl could ask for and has never made me feel stupid for asking stupid questions.
So, if you get a minute, drop by Suite101 and check out the content. Not just my pieces — although I’d certainly appreciate it — but all of the other writers there, too. There’s a lot of great work over there.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
More... of Me!
So... you’re thinking you’ve been disappointed that I haven’t posted in a while? You really, really want more of me? Well, more of my writing, anyway?
Well, you’re in luck! There are two other ways you can keep up with me.
First, check me out on Twitter. My username is @moodyredhead. There you can read all the articulate wittiness I can stuff into 140-character-long, grammatically inferior chunks. Food, pop culture — I even get political occasionally, which I’ve tried to avoid here. I’m excited to have reached (and now surpassed!) Twitterlibrium today. Come follow me and help work on getting to a milliWheaton!
If you’d like to read something a bit longer, I’ve also begun freelancing as a contributing writer for Canadian online magazine Suite101.com. And by “begun”, I mean that I’ve only got one article up so far. But I’m working on more, so keep checking out my page there!
I probably won’t have time to write long posts over here, although I will check in to keep you updated on my other projects, and maybe to write a bit about things I decided not to submit to Suite101.
Y’all come see me!
Well, you’re in luck! There are two other ways you can keep up with me.
First, check me out on Twitter. My username is @moodyredhead. There you can read all the articulate wittiness I can stuff into 140-character-long, grammatically inferior chunks. Food, pop culture — I even get political occasionally, which I’ve tried to avoid here. I’m excited to have reached (and now surpassed!) Twitterlibrium today. Come follow me and help work on getting to a milliWheaton!
If you’d like to read something a bit longer, I’ve also begun freelancing as a contributing writer for Canadian online magazine Suite101.com. And by “begun”, I mean that I’ve only got one article up so far. But I’m working on more, so keep checking out my page there!
I probably won’t have time to write long posts over here, although I will check in to keep you updated on my other projects, and maybe to write a bit about things I decided not to submit to Suite101.
Y’all come see me!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
“Dollhouse,” “Sarah Connor” Benefit from Live+7 Ratings
Even geeks go out on Friday nights. And now, Nielsen is recognizing that.
I’ve been waiting eagerly for months for the premiere of Joss Whedon’s new show, “Dollhouse.” But my excitement was tempered when Fox banished it to 8:00 p.m. Central on Friday nights — universally known as the “Friday night death slot” where no show on Fox, save “The X-Files,” has ever thrived, almost all being cancelled within a single season. (And even “The X-Files” was moved to Sunday for the final six years of its run.) So I’ve been very conflicted the last few weeks; I love the show as much as I expected to, but as I’ve previously mentioned, Fox has a long history of disappointing me.
But there is a ray of hope. As reported today, both “Dollhouse” and its lead-in, “Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles,” have benefited greatly from the Nielsen Live+7 ratings. This system, begun in January 2006, has allowed the Nielsen system to finally catch up with DVR technology. Rather than simply reporting how many viewers watch television shows as they air live, the Live+7 ratings also report data on how many people watch a show on their digital video recorders within a week of the episode’s original air date.
The Live+7 ratings may make a huge difference in ensuring that “Dollhouse” has a future. Ratings for the pilot episode were originally considered mediocre-to-disappointing, with middling ratings despite airing against reruns. However, the Live+7 ratings showed that the viewership was actually a full 30% higher when DVR viewings were included. In fact, among shows watched on DVR, “Dollhouse” ranked 28th out of all network shows for the week. Add to that the fact that the “Dollhouse” pilot ranked #1 on iTunes and #10 in online pirating for the week, and it’s clear that the old ratings systems alone are no longer getting the job done.
This is great news for those of us who have been underrepresented in Nielsen ratings for years — those of us who lead lives that are too busy to allow us to watch television programs as they air. It’s been a long time coming, but television ratings have finally caught up to the fact that the average American household no longer spends most nights settling in early in front of the television together after a family dinner cooked at home.
And it’s great news for fans of quality television, because the Live+7 ratings may just be the best hope for extending the lives of shows that would otherwise be cancelled before their time.
I’ve been waiting eagerly for months for the premiere of Joss Whedon’s new show, “Dollhouse.” But my excitement was tempered when Fox banished it to 8:00 p.m. Central on Friday nights — universally known as the “Friday night death slot” where no show on Fox, save “The X-Files,” has ever thrived, almost all being cancelled within a single season. (And even “The X-Files” was moved to Sunday for the final six years of its run.) So I’ve been very conflicted the last few weeks; I love the show as much as I expected to, but as I’ve previously mentioned, Fox has a long history of disappointing me.
But there is a ray of hope. As reported today, both “Dollhouse” and its lead-in, “Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles,” have benefited greatly from the Nielsen Live+7 ratings. This system, begun in January 2006, has allowed the Nielsen system to finally catch up with DVR technology. Rather than simply reporting how many viewers watch television shows as they air live, the Live+7 ratings also report data on how many people watch a show on their digital video recorders within a week of the episode’s original air date.
The Live+7 ratings may make a huge difference in ensuring that “Dollhouse” has a future. Ratings for the pilot episode were originally considered mediocre-to-disappointing, with middling ratings despite airing against reruns. However, the Live+7 ratings showed that the viewership was actually a full 30% higher when DVR viewings were included. In fact, among shows watched on DVR, “Dollhouse” ranked 28th out of all network shows for the week. Add to that the fact that the “Dollhouse” pilot ranked #1 on iTunes and #10 in online pirating for the week, and it’s clear that the old ratings systems alone are no longer getting the job done.
This is great news for those of us who have been underrepresented in Nielsen ratings for years — those of us who lead lives that are too busy to allow us to watch television programs as they air. It’s been a long time coming, but television ratings have finally caught up to the fact that the average American household no longer spends most nights settling in early in front of the television together after a family dinner cooked at home.
And it’s great news for fans of quality television, because the Live+7 ratings may just be the best hope for extending the lives of shows that would otherwise be cancelled before their time.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
