YouTube Videos Longer than 15 Minutes Approved December 9, 2010

When uploading the intel video earlier today, I got a notice from YouTube, and after doing some research I noticed others got a similar notice as well that my videos can now surpass the current 15 minute time limit.  This is fantastic news for me as I’m used to having to upload as many as four videos for certain topics just to fit the 15 minute guideline (which really is quite antiquated).

Unfortunately, YouTube did not provide me with updated guidelines on what my account is capable of, or what I did to earn this distinctive honor.  My YouTube account has existed for around three years, and I’ve had a few scrapes with their copyright people (mostly because some of the clips had music incorrectly flagged by the lawsuit happy net nannies).  As of today I have sixty videos uploaded, 59 when I got the notice.

In short, I have no idea why YouTube did this for my account.  Others are posting similar messages of surprise on their various accounts as well.  What did we do, YouTube?

Well on the plus side, you all can now enjoy a broader spectrum of videos now that I don’t have to work around the time limit.  Expect more short films, different series types, and other possibilities!

A Wind of Changes Coming December 2, 2010

After the influx of readers I got this past week, a lot of comments that I got back from many of the readers addressed a similar concern.  That is, the lack of professionalism in this site.  Now, when I started this site back in March of this year, professionalism wasn’t as much of a concern for me as other concerns.  My attitude towards that had to do with the fact I don’t write for a larger website, and I was perfectly happy keeping the persona of an outsider.  This site is my own, I operate it by myself for no pay, no perks, and no appreciation.

However, I believed once I started to get more regular readers and possibly some developer support I would have to step up and make this site more professional in order to be taken seriously by my fellow gaming journalists.  This would espessially be important if I wanted to use this site as credentials for wider distribution, E3, or a journalist position in a larger site.

Starting Monday the site is going to recieve a content makeover.  This will include updates for the “about me” section, the site mission statement (you can see it on the sidebar) and how I carry myself from now on.  Rest assured my currently existing editorials will remain the same and you can still expect a regular stream of news, videos and editorials.

Thank You Kotaku November 30, 2010

Kotaku posed up an “editorial” today on the exact same subject I covered about three weeks ago, only I did a much better job.  When I say I did a much better job I mean that I actually had an article about the topic they covered and they simply just took a similar (but inferior) title and asked their commenters to contribute.

I contributed to the discussion, as in I contributed the link to the very article I wrote three weeks ago detailing what they claimed to detail, exactly what was real and what was fantasy between the initial Kinect announcement video (back when it was called Project Natal) and the Kinect that Microsoft released this month.

My site has recieved a tremendous amount of hits and my article has gotten a ton of positive support since then.  I can’t tell you all who have visited the site and those who promised to bookmark and home page it how much I appreciate that.  Enjoy the site guys, it’s safer here.

Conquering the Dragon’s Lair Challenge November 29, 2010

A good friend of mine wants me to take a road trip up to New Hampshire with him within the next few months.  The destination is the Funspot and American Classic Arcade Museum.  The place has plenty of information on it online, including a whole list of the classic games they have at it.

What immediatly drew me to the place is wikipedia listed Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace as games they have to play among the dozens of other classic games at their disposal.  I LOVE these games, but I have never once played the original arcade versions of either.  All of my experience playing these games have come from their respective iPhone and Blu-Ray Disc versions.  That said, while I haven’t played either of the games since Dragon’s Lair iPhone broke after the release of iOS 4.0

After the popularity of my recent Laserdisc article, and the fact I seem to succeed so well whenever I just make a random promise and try to make good on it (like the successful week of editorials) I have decided to spend the next few weeks training my mind and my body to play Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace to perfection.  My goal will be to beat the entire game on just one credit!

I will post up my self appointed rules later on, probably on a Vlog or something.

Of course there will be plenty of pictures and video taken if we go.  The place is listed in Guiness as biggest arcade in the world.  I’m really exited about this, I dusted off my Dragon’s Lair Blu-Ray and tonight after just 4 plays I was able to get through the whole game with just two lives lost.  That said I was pretty rusty when I first started playing again last night, requiring at least a half-dozen continues.  I do remember the sequences, I’m just really rusty.  Space Ace is going to be a lot harder, it has longer sequences and they will randomly flip.  Back in April I could beat the game on the highest difficulty, but I tried one playthrough last night on the iPhone on the easiest difficulty and was traumatized by how bad I had gotten.

The arcade doesn’t have Dragon’s Lair II, and that’s fine, since I’ve never trained myself on Dragon’s Lair II.  I learn on the iPhone versions and Digital Leisure has not yet released Dragon’s Lair II to iPhone (although they’ve been promising it for a year now).

Week of Editorials Coming November 21, 2010

Even though the time it takes for me to produce a video has decreased tremendously, the time it takes to upload a video has increased exponentially.  It is still taking me literally half a day to upload one single part of a video up on YouTube, and if the video fails I’ll have to wait until the next day.

But I’m not deterred, and I’m not only skilled in making YouTube videos.  I’m also one hell of a writer.  So I’m throwing my hat in the ring for this upcoming week.  I have a bunch of stuff I have written up and I want the world to read them.  Starting Monday, there will be a whole new editorial on a whole new subject each day.  I have a ton of ideas and unfortunately only a few of them have been actually written down.

So stay with me will you?

Slight Site Update November 19, 2010

I’m noticing some modifications are in place for the tools I use to update and manage the site.  I wish with those updates came the needed updates to the settings and themes I use for what you guys are seeing, but I guess that is just not to be (yet).

Until then I noticed the color system for the site was just simply not working on things like the calendar function, so I changed it.  Hopefully now you can see the site a bit better.

What’s With the Slow Updates? November 14, 2010

My apologies for the slow upload of a regular amount of content to the site.  I can assure you it is entirely YouTube’s fault.  I have a steady pipeline of about four or so more videos ready to upload, as well as at least three more in the process of being edited.  However, the bottleneck on this appears to be uploading these 2 gb 1080p files to YouTube, which individually can take about half a day a piece and in one or two cases longer to encode.

The solution to this would be just record, edit, and upload everything in 720p and be done with it, but I’d like to think that my site guests deserve better than that, espessially since the problem is over once I can get them online.

We Have a Guest Contributer September 7, 2010

I recently spoke to a person who was interested in contributing to our site.  He and I have known each other for well over ten years, and his knowledge of gaming goes back a very long way.  Before I was even born, he had the era’s consoles.  When I was a child wishing he could have a computer, this guy was playing games like Privateer and Dark Forces.  Now it seems that gaming just hasn’t had the same interest for him that it once did, and he’s been out of the game for a very long time.

He goes by the name of Anakronos, he is the self described “Retired Gamer”, and we are very happy to have him on the site.

My recent article on what makes a game considered multi-platform brought back the inner gaming spark in him, and brought him out of his gaming exile to post his thoughts as an outside on his experiences and where he believes gaming is going, and why he currently wants no part of it.  He is abrasive and he takes no prisoners, I guess the retired have no reason to pull their punches.

Expect to hear more from him soon!

Welcome, New Arrivals August 13, 2010

My recent top ten video has become a huge bang.  My site traffic has increased by 100x.  Welcome to everyone who is visiting the site for the first time.  There’s plenty of news and content here, and you can be sure there will be plenty more to come!

YouTube Ups Video Limit to 15 Minutes July 30, 2010

This is not exactly gaming related news, but defiantly site related news.  Due to bandwidth, storage space, and cross compatibility, I use YouTube‘s service to post my site related videos, and embed them over here when applicable.  I do this because I can get away with having streaming videos and I don’t have to pay extra to host content on the site.

The downside is that all my short films (like “Small Town Geek Bar“) have to be made with their completely pointless time limits in place.  No video of mine could be longer than 10 minutes and 59 seconds.  This really stifled my creativity and left me quite peeved, but since they are the only streaming service that supports iPhone natively, (dailymotion works too but only with an extra app) I had to play by their rules.

Well YouTube relented slightly today.  While every other video streaming service supports unlimited time, YouTube has upped its time limit from 10:59 to 15 minutes.  This will allow my vlogs and shorts to be longer.  On a side note, my HD video camera works just fine and edits just fine.  I plan to shoot a new vlog pretty soon.