Let us not underestimate that last sentence. This is an important step for the gaming community, not just for the Apple users but for all PC gamers. What Am I talking about? Competition. Having games created for and released only on one PC platform inevitably hurts the market as a whole. Think of how the console market would look like if the only one available was a Playstation. Now imagine if that one console maker released an update that gave you a bloated unusable interface and then forced all it’s game developers to create games for the platform because it was the only way to use new features.
The point I’m trying to make here is that we have choice and a competitive market with consoles. This isn’t even about games, it’s about people being able to use the system they feel most comfortable with.

The Apple platform is now as good as any PC for gaming, gone are the architecture differences of decades past. It’s about time game developers saw this market for the potential it has, but it’s up to us as gamers to help support Valve and any other companies that create games natively for the Mac. Supporting Valve now is an integral part of making this work. Why? Because you’ll not be finding any other large studios games on the Apple Steam platform for a while, at least I think. My guess is that the large publishers will be looking to Valves sales of it’s own Steam based games before making any decisions about bringing their ported or porting/creating games for the platform.

For the good of PC gaming itself, that is why we need to support Steam on Macs.

If you’ve not caught any of the hubbub on BoingBoing or seen any of the teaser images head over to the article Gallery: Valve tease Steam/Half-Life/Left 4 Dead for Macs, in style for a look see.

Update: There is an interesting article and discussion at rockspapershotgun.com where they also point out a list of already ported Mac games. Quite a few in that list so we may see more than just Valve games at launch, however I still think the big publishers will be looking at Steam sales to decide whether to make an Apple push themselves or not.

Personally this just helps the decision Aaryn and I made about staying with tap water, estrogen and all, solidify itself as the right choice. Of course living in California means we do keep bottled water in the house and car as part of our earthquake readiness kits, but we usually keep it until a few months before its use by date drink it and then buy more (don’t forget to get extra for the kitties!). Day to day we just use filtered tap.

I’m re-posting the infographic here with permission, but please feel free to head over to the source instead;

Dangerous Juggling Stunts (Part 2 Extreme Fire)
Things on fire are great, things being juggled while on fire awesome! Though I’d liked to have seen more unicycle action ^_^

Head over to the YouTube page to comment and rate!

Dangerous Juggling Stunts (Part 3 The Chainsaw)
Yes you read that correctly, a freaking chainsaw. I’ve no idea were you’d go from there though, maybe riding a tiger juggling flaming chainsaws?

Head over to the YouTube page to comment and rate!

Awesome stuff all round again from Nick. Please head over to www.nickpikejuggler.com if you’d like to get info and watch more juggling and show videos, you’ll also be able to checkout where his next gig is in your area!

I’m going to embed the video below for ease of viewing, but if you like what you see head over to www.nickpikejuggler.com to watch more videos, you’ll also be able to checkout where his next gig is in your area!

I don’t want to give anything away but: knives and broken glass aren’t the only crazy things planned!

Head over to the YouTube page to comment and rate!

Team Meerkat, the 4 of us, start the Extra Life event at 8am PST (that’s 4pm GMT in the afternoon for you euros) on Saturday, and will continue to play games online for a full 24 hours until 8am (4pm GMT) on Sunday.

There are a few ways you can keep in touch with what we are doing and make sure we’re actually playing games, not goofing off;

Firstly, we will be streaming as much of the gameplay from the event as possible via two streams. We’ll also record the start, finish and any ’special’ moments for repeat viewing.

You can view the live steam from my computer here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/team-meerkat-live-reishi

You can view the live stream from Alik’s computer here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/team-meerkat-extra-life-event

We will also be making an appearance on MAD-Radio twice. Our first appearance will be at the start of the 24 hours to get things underway. The second appearance will be on Sunday, so you can hear how much we are hurting with only a few hours to go.

You can listen to the shows live at;
iTunes/VLC/Winamp – http://mad-radio.sytes.net:88/listen.pls
Windows Media Player – http://mad-radio.sytes.net:88

You can also follow our progress on twitter @teammeerkat

It’s going to be fun!

Update: The team raised a total of $577 for Extra Life 09
Good going team, I hope to see everyone again next year to raise even more!

Why am I moving to a new URL?
For a while now I’ve been trying to get http://www.paulwest.com, I already own http://www.paulanthonywest.com and http://www.paulanthonybrianwest.com which both point here.  I’m not rich and I’ve got other projects that need money injection, add to that the fact I’ve not ever got a reply about it either way.  So I officially quit stalking it and will take my personal branding in another direction (post about that soon).

I’ll update here once the switch over is done.

UPDATE: The move is done and all links in place, everything should be working fine now.  Had a few issues earlier this evening when I was a total nab trying to run php5 code on php4 settings, but that was easily fixed.
I’ll be posting some more articles I have backlogged this week and if I don’t get too busy with other things you may even see a re-brand!

Now before I get “you’re not even an American” comments. No I’m not, however my wife is, my cats and all my possessions are in the US and I consider it my home, I feel I have the right to comment. So there.

I have said all along, since the beginning of this whole economic debacle, that, if companies are going under because they either are a) already in debt or b) have horribly bad management, that we should let them go.  Some companies are so tightly entwined within the country that their demise would cause catastrophic meltdown, yes. But these are a very small minority. And that’s a whole other issue.
Why should we let them go under? Simple and already stated: they were either already failing or were terribly managed. That is the type of company we do not need.

So if we’re not saving the old, what do we do?

Save the new.
Think about the future and the people who’ll live in it. Work with them, listen to them, help them. Most importantly don’t alienate them. If the new coming through just see old out of date systems, systems that wont embrace them or help their new ideas flourish, we’ll lose them.
That means we need more money to technology, science, space and to keep those resources ‘in-house’.  That also means biting the bullet by taking some of that money you were going to use to prop up failing business and giving it to people with ideas.
The old systems don’t work, I’ve seen many examples of that in my own lifetime – and I’m only thirty.  So if they don’t work, stop listening to the people who say they need fixing. Start listening to the people who give you new, imaginative, ideas.

Improve infrastructure.
Providing for new and future businesses is one thing, but what about the huge manufacturing worker base we have out of work?  The administration should, as was done in the depression, start and start quickly to improve existing infrastructure and build new better projects for future generations.
These new public projects should, as far as is possible, be only staffed by skilled out of work people. The sheer amount of manufacturing jobs lost over the last year shows just how much of a workforce is available to such projects. And from some of the events over the last few years it’s clear that the US could do with an infrastructure update. Hell the US is one place that does need a high speed link right across it. I’m not even going to go into what that would do to slow the coastal migration.

Moving swiftly back to my main point: Obama made sense.
He talked about creating jobs, my guess is those will come from public projects. More importantly he talked about money for technology and science projects. Such projects should help provide for the countries future, while keeping its upcoming talent within the US.

The thing America, and all countries of this planet, has to do now is think about the future. Where do we go and what do we do. Forget about fixing old antiquated systems. Let the chaff fall away and build a better system.

Evolution does this all the time.

Visiting Dad while we both have time off work has it’s advantages – Tiger Woods golf – and it’s disadvantages – boring Friday afternoons. So, in a effort to lift the lethargy I decide there are far too many uneaten pears in the house, and that they deserve the honor of being even tastier.

You’ll need.

• 200g of Brown sugar
• 30g of Corn flour
• 1/2 a Teaspoon of nutmeg
• 15ml of Lemon juice
• 30ml of Water
• 450g of Peeled pureed pears
• 400g of Peeled sliced pears
• 9inch Pie crust

Step one – Firstly combine the sugar, nutmeg and cornflour in a medium sized pan. Set that aside.

Step two – Peel and cube the 450g of pears for pureeing, then add those to the blender, along with the 15g of lemon juice and 30g of water. Blend until you get a nice liquid.

Step three – Peel and slice the 400g of topping pears. I recommend about 5mm slices. But then I’m a control freak. Set those aside.

Step four – Place the pan over a medium heat. Begin stirring and then add your puree mixture. It is important to constantly stir the mixture now for 5 minutes or until it comes to your desired thickness.

Step five – Pour all but 1/2 a cup of the mixture into the pie crust, arrange the sliced pears on top of this mixture. Push down gently if needed.

Step six – Take that 1/2 a cup of mixture you set aside and use either a basting brush or spoon to gently cover the top of the pie with the glaze.

Step seven – Add the pie to the fridge for at least 3 hours – I recommend over night – to cool and fix the mixture.  For best results serve chilled.

Notes

Thickening – We originally used only 15g of corn flour, but we weren’t getting the thickness we needed. So in went another 15g, which did the job. Remember though if you’re going to add corn flour to an already wet mixture to add it to a little water in a cup first. If you don’t, you’ll end up a lumpy mess!

Pear topping – I recommend you peel and slice the pears that you’ll use for the topping before you start cooking the mixture. As once that starts everything will move fairly quickly and you don’t want your glaze to sit there cooling while you chop!

Pie crust – Just a quick note that while I’m sure a sweet crust would work just as well, we actually used a savory crust. Savory crusts are usually a little more low profile.

The final result

Lots of people find adverts on websites intrusive and distracting and if done badly can lead to that user not coming back to the site in question. But the truth is for a lot of sites that Ad revenue is a way for them to continue their projects and keep the content they supply to you free. We’re unlikely to see a shift away from Ad supported content anytime soon. The question is what can we do to stop our users feeling like force fed chickens.

You could of course go the route of some companies – which I don’t condone by the way – whereby they charge the user to view their content Ad free or just to view their content period – I’m looking at you Experts Exchange. All internet content and information as a whole should be free and that’s not just for the Utopians that’s for the good of society people. Anyway that’s a whole other post, so moving on. While I believe users shouldn’t be forced to pay for content I do recognize the need for revenue generation for projects to evolve and continue.

Now while there are a number of ways to monetize a website or web-project by far the easiest is via Adverts. The problem for me is when revenue generation via Adverts takes over the content that is being displayed. I’m not going to name shame or link to sites here because there are websites all over the place that have an Advert as their main first focus – 728×90 Ads as a top banner for instance – and you probably view many daily.

One thing I’d like to try on a larger more commercial scale is the ability for the user, your target audience, to tidy up their experience via Ad Minimizing. One example – if you haven’t done it already – is at the top of this page. The 468×60 Ad up there can be Minimized for 10 minutes. That means for 10 minutes you will not see an ad in that location. Sure, to this site that doesn’t mean much in terms of space gained. But think about those sites where a large Ad bar takes up the top of the page, one you usually have to keep scrolling past to get to the content you want. For a user the gains are intimidate.

Now lets talk about the ramifications to advertisers and revenue. The way I see it – from both my own browsing and talking to colleagues – is it’ll change nothing. Except in the rare occasion where a site is paid for Ad Views over Ad Clicks. How do I justify this? Well the first time you, as a user, visits a page you are likely to notice and respond – whatever that response is – to an Advert. After that first view it doesn’t really matter if that Ad changes, the truth is a user will blank those spaces out in their mind. You can argue left and right about ‘well if the Ad is eye catching enough the user…’ NO it’ll likely catch the users attention yes, but for the wrong reason: it’ll piss them off.

Giving the user the ability to Minimize an Ad will help alienated users as you’re giving them more control over the content they want to see. Should – it needs testing – actually up click-through rates because you’re still getting your first visit hit for the Ad shown PLUS a much bigger second, third, forth… hit because after the time is up the Ad will reappear and grab the users attention again.

To any “10 minutes is too long, no one would see a second ad” questions. I don’t believe it is. Leaving out the fact that many people have windows open for longer than this while they read other content, do work, make tea etc… If you can’t get someone to stay on your site for more than 10 minutes you either don’t have enough content or you’re not supplying content people want to see. With the move towards user generated content more user interaction and better content are required to keep people around. Is it too much to ask, as a user, to have some way to tidy up their experience?

I’m going to leave it there for my points – for now. But I’d love to hear your opinion as a user on whether a way to Minimize Ads is something you’d want to use and/or like to see on the websites you visit.

At first view yes it boggles my mind as to why a populus would be forward thinking enough to vote in a black president and then backward thinking enough not to give another minority the right to marry.

But then you just need to look at the tactics that were used to convince people allowing gay marriage was a bad idea – at least in California.  Now I don’t know all the ins and outs of Californian politics – yet – as I’ve only just moved there but I thought they were the state that stood at the forefront of equal rights.

The trouble as I see it isn’t that people are against gay marriage but that they were brainwashed into believing things that would not happen. For instance that schools would have to teach children about gay marriage, when in fact all Californian schools are allowed to choose their own curriculum. For one group of political marketeers out there this was a huge win for them as they effectively diverted attention away from the issue at hand.

You can see from figures taken both times this went to the polls that a larger percentage of people we’re for gay marriage this time and had it not been for the misinformation of the vote yes on prop 8 campaign that it would have failed. The implications of prop 8 passing are far and wide and I feel for everyone involved. My wife and I were both behind you all and will be again until you have the same rights as the rest of us.

I think these final words taken from the vote no on prop 8 campaign website say it the best.

Sadly, fueled by misinformation, distortions and lies, millions of voters went to the polls yesterday and said YES to bigotry, YES to discrimination, YES to second-class status for same-sex couples.