GSN ratings chatter

It's a lazy Saturday morning, so I'll just crosspost some crosstalk from the GSN Internet board. The gang and I chat about Baggage, Dancing With the Stars, and other profundities...

Other poster: Wednesday Baggage - 194K (Harvey Feud, anyone?)

To give Jerry a bit of credit, the Wednesday and Thursday first-runs averaged 259K. A long way from the 500K and 600K glory days, though.

Another poster: 259K is still poor for new episodes of anything (except Dancing With the Stars).

There are no new episodes of DWTS on GSN. The new eps on ABC do a lot better than 259K. Like 18 million or so (wink). If GSN could get the truly new episodes of Dancing With the Stars instead of ABC, this network's problems would be a lot more manageable.

Yet another poster: And the ambient temperature of Hell would decrease to -159.86° Fahrenheit. Do you really think that GSN would be willing to fork over the heavy license fees that would be required to air a first run episode [of Dancing With the Stars]?

Oh jeeze, that comment was what's known as humor. That's why I deadpanned the bit about the network's problems being a "lot more manageable" if truly first-run DWTS ever showed up on GSN. Of course, that's not gonna happen in anything approaching the present universe.

GTOPG: Oh, that pass; Pens Win 5-3 (and some non-Pens items)

By Finesse (follow me on Twitter)

There are a lot of guys in the NHL who can rush the puck into the offensive zone on a power play.  And there are a lot of guys who can make tape-to-tape cross ice passes.  And there are even a lot of guys who can catch those passes on their strong-side and bury it in one smooth motion.

But when your team has the three best guys at doing each of those things, you get this.



It's not the most beautiful goal of the season, but it is illustrative of what having a healthy Sidney Crosby can do.  Look at the 4 Buffalo players in that clip.  They're either mesmerized or paralyzed by Sid and he's not even in a scoring position.  They know he's going to pass.  Sid knows he's going to pass.  Ryan Miller knows he's going to pass.  Still, they can't do anything about it.

And that's what the other 7 Eastern Conference playoff teams are going to be thinking in two weeks.  They could play their best hockey.  They could get all-world goaltending.  They could have a perfect game-plan.  But there's a good chance it will all be for nothing because of one simple truth.  They can't do anything about this.

More thoughts on the Pens and much more after the jump...

- This game is why we weren't that bothered by the back-to-back losses to the Islanders.  Those Isles games had the feel of a Mystery, Alaska game.  The Pens were the big bad Rangers.  The Islanders were the pesky young kids who just lost their virginity.  The Pens didn't want to be there and were only playing because someone told them they had to.  They expected to win, but looked a little frustrated when the clearly overmatched opponent tried just a little too hard for what should have been an exhibition.

"IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN EXHIBITION!!!"

- We've come a long way with Matt Niskanen.  What a welcome addition back to the lineup.

In non-Penguins news...

- The Caps get their best player back tonight as Nick Backstrom returns from a concussion.  We hope that they lose, of course, but this is good news.

- Pitt won the CBI tournament, the equivalent of hitting the Mega Match number last night and getting $2.  It's easy to make fun of that tournament, but we'll leave that to someone else.  Jamie Dixon did the right thing by accepting this invite and then coaching it as if it was the NCAA tournament.  The fans clearly bailed on Pitt this year.  Dixon didn't.

This is what college basketball coaches should look like, and most of them do.

- Sean Payton is appealing his season long suspension.  I will be rooting for him, mostly because I don't care at all about bounties but also because Washington county's own Roger Goodell is becoming a dictator.  He probably drinks his own urine for energy.  Here's a really interesting story about Goodell's hypocritical decision to penalize the Cowboys and Redskins for breaking no rules.

- Jason Whitlock writes like Ron Cook if Ron Cook boasted about "speaking truth to power" (Ron Cook boasts about "dictating non sequiturs to his assistant") but this column about Kobe Bryant makes a lot of sense.

- Let's just start the playoffs already.  Go Pens.

A "Vulture Capitalist" Private Equity Card Auction Game Thing [In the Lab]

I've been playing No Thanks a lot lately. Also played Amun Re earlier last week. Empyrean, Inc. has been stuck in my brain for a while, too. Then I woke up at 2am and somehow synthesized them into a bizarro "vulture capitalist" auction card game loosely themed around private equity firms like Bain Capital. Also, birds in business suits.

Just like No Thanks, the gameplay on a single deck of cards in the middle of the table. Each player begins with a certain number of chips, let's say 10. The goal of the game is to create a diverse portfolio of companies representing a variety of industries.

On your turn, reveal the top card. This newly revealed card represents a company that you own. The card card lists which industries the company represents, sort of like the resources from planets Empyrean, Inc. The card also shows a track of incrementally increasing costs that you must pay to buy this company, just like Amun Re's region auction cards. Most start with a minimum price of 1, but get increasingly higher.

If you want to keep this company, simply take the card. If you're interested in selling the company, say so and put your meeple in the space indicating your minimum price. The other players then take turns placing a meeple on the price they're willing to pay for that company. The highest bidder takes the card and pays you their chips. If no one offered to meet your minimum price, then you simply take the card.

There is a separate sideboard listing all the industries in the game and their current market value. After a sale, raise the value of each industry by one increment if the sale price was higher than that industry's current market value. If the sale price was lower, then lower that industry's market value by one increment.

Final scoring is based on how many complete sets of each industry you have in your portfolio. A complete set is one of each industry. You also get bonus points if you have the most of a particular industry, but those bonus points are based on that industry's current market value. There may also be role cards that give you additional bonus points.

A note on art direction and theme. My wife is waaaay turned off by the idea of playing a predatory speculator. We discussed some rethemes, but none quite fit the mechanics presented here.

So, we thought it best to pursue the "vulture" or bird theme all the way. Each player is a different bird in a business suit: Legal Eagle, Cockadeal, Canary Cash, Plunder Parrot, and similar names for pigeon, kukoo, raven, vulture, penguin, ostrich, albatross, and owl. Each with its own thematic bonus. All the companies would be bird brand puns like "Re-bock" and "Micro-squack." All the industries would instead be commodities useful for birds: Sticks, Seeds, Bugs, Trinkets, Territory, and Eggs. We might think of better commodities later.

That new theme might be soft enough to make the game more approachable.

UPDATE: More bird companies!

Merrill Finch
Olympeckus
Chirps Ahoy
Aviacom
BlackbirdBerry
Starclucks
Starbawks
Heron Davidson
Clucka-Cola
Pheasanto
Buckardi
Red Gull
Beakstone
JP Morgan Cheep
Trader Blue Jay's
Baskin Robin
Boston Martlet
Thrush Delivery
Polly-Want-A-Cracker Barrel
J.C. Penguins
Peck-si Cola
Wal-Martin
Magpie Fae
General Motmot
Victoria's Egret
Buzzards of the Coast
Preen Ronin
Steve Quackson
Fantasy Fowl
Loon Labs
Nintendodo
Pluckstation
Feath-Ex
CrestCo
Pinfeathers & Beyond
Gaggle

The Hunger Games is a great movie for kids

[This post was originally published at Forbes.com on 26th March 2012]

That's my opinion having just taken my 11 year old son to see it. And if I am to read the blogosphere, it is a controversial opinion to hold. Some, including here at Forbes, see it as potentially causing reduced civility amongst kids. Others see it as pure escapism for teens with little teach them or improve their understanding of the world. I have read the first book and now seen the movie and I disagree.

Just in case you missed it, The Hunger Games involves a future society where, as a result of the outcome of an earlier suppressed rebellion, each year, each of 12 ruled districts offers up two 12-18 year olds as tribute to basically play a game of Survivor. The twist is that there is no tribal council or votes but instead the kids just kill each other until one is left standing. To be sure, this is not the sort of movie that we have come to associate as kid friendly these days. But to hold that view is to opt for a sheltered view of what our kids should be exposed to.

My son is actually quite a sensitive soul. When trailers for horror movies come on, he covers his ears and shields his eyes. So I was somewhat surprised when I learned that last year he had read The Hunger Games and enjoyed it. Why I asked? He said, "it made you think."

Cover of The Hunger Games

And it is from that perspective that I approached the book and then the movie. Right from the start the movie opens, not with the game, but with its anticipation. All of the kids are put in the position of facing uncertainty as to whether they would be offered as tribute for the game. It taxes them so much so that the lead character proclaims she will never have children in that world. It is this feature more than the game itself that teaches kids, especially amongst the more privileged in our society -- of which my son is one -- to think about the uncertainty that many less well off both here and throughout the world live. It may not beThe Hunger Games that taxes them but the fear of becoming ill without adequate health insurance or of losing one's home to a financial crisis. Studies show that this has great harmful implications for the welfare of adults. Think about what it does to children. The Hunger Games forces the reader to experience that fact of many people's lives even if dressed up in a fictional world.

The game itself brings forward another thought: what would you do? The disturbing thing about The Hunger Games but also its most plausible aspect is how easily most of the tributes buy into the game and are comfortable with killing others to save their own lives. To be sure, not all of them are alike but there is little thought in the moment given to the notion of combat or murder. How often in discussing the news or past historical wars have your children asked you how people come to kill one another? The Hunger Gamespaints a picture of how the situation rather than the person can matter. This is what social psychologists have taught us (think of the famous Milgram or Stanford prison experiments). Here, it is presented in fictional form and it is powerful. To us, it provoked a discussion of precisely that and made our children step back and think about how the situation can define their actions and the actions of others. This is not an easy subject to broach but The Hunger Games gives us the context.

Finally, there is the question of plausibility. In The Hunger Games, most players are coerced but some volunteer. Interestingly, they are from the apparently richer districts even though there is a prize of incredible riches for the victor. That provokes thoughts about whether people would volunteer for this sort of game in today's world. This is also the context upon which you can broach the subject of Kony2012 with your kids. The most salient part of that movement is the notion of stolen children who are made to fight (think abou that people who believe The Hunger Games is far removed from reality). But there have also been times in history where kids fought without coercion. In many respects, this is all about the plausibility of the economics of the movie. The point is that the very subject of how far removed the movie is from reality is one that the movie can stimulate. 

In my mind, the controversy surrounding The Hunger Games reflects a steady move towards a more sheltered existence for our children. I will freely admit that I might have hesitated about taking my son to see the movie had he not already discovered the book. And he saw it and enjoyed it and was not traumatised by the experience. The situation that took the choice out of our hands allowed him to broaden his own horizons without the cost of parental deliberation.

And what age is appropriate? That depends on the kid. Given knowledge my son's reaction, I would not hesitate in letting him see the movie had he been a year or two younger. Beyond that, the benefits I have suggested above in terms of a broader discussion of the world would probably be lost. But truth be told, apart from all the killing, the kids in this movie or the book are far less mean or cruel than children in the school playground. It is easy to get distract by adult classifications of trauma that may loom less large than those children actually experience.

Malifaux Guild Exorcist

Got a bunch of Malifaux "Guild" miniatures to paint on commission. The commission also includes resin "graveyard" bases which I will paint separately once I'm done with the miniatures. The customer will attach the models onto the bases himself so that nothing breaks during the shipping back to him.

Some of the models will be painted a bit darker than the Wyrd original paintjobs, especially the Judge and the Death Marshalls. There will be a Black/White theme with details in red and green.

Here's the first miniature painted up, the Exorcist.

Record Wet March

 NEWS FLASH: 7.71 inches in Portland (KPDX) at 10 AM, with 15 hours remaining in March 2012, makes this the wettest March in the historical record going back 73 years to 1940. The previous wettest March had been 1957 with 7.52 inches.

The complaints have become a crescendo.  Our Gortex jackets are hopelessly saturated and basements are getting sodden.  For many, it's just too much.   After a relatively dry February, March has been very wet month, and record breaking in some locations.

Probably the most anomalous precipitation has been over eastern Washington, where a some locations have received their  RECORD March precipitation.   Take Spokane, where they established a new  monthly record (4.26")...and they are not done yet.  This record is particularly noteworthy since observations there go back to 1881! But wait, more March monthly record's were also broken throughout eastern WA and Idaho, at locations such as Pullman, WA; Cour D'Alene, ID; and many more (see graphic, courtesy of the Spokane, NWS Office)

Yesterday, a number of western Washington observing sites experienced record rainfall for the date.  Here are some examples listed by the Seattle NWS office:

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 1.08 INCHES WAS SET AT SEATTLE-TACOMA WA
AIRPORT YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.92 SET IN 2010.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 1.04 INCHES WAS SET AT SEATTLE WA WFO
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.66 SET IN 2010.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 1.98 INCHES WAS SET AT OLYMPIA WA AIRPORT
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 1.38 SET IN 2010.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 1.8 INCHES WAS SET AT QUILLAYUTE WA AIRPORT
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 1.37 SET IN 2011.

So far this month Quillayute, on the Washington coast, has received 20 inches of rain (19.93 inches to be exact).  Most western Washington locations have received roughly double their normal amounts for March.

Another way to look at the current situation is this map of the percentage of normal of precipitation over the past 30 days.  Much of eastern Washington is amazing with totals of 200-300% of normal.

Well, what about the future?   Well, if you want dry weather, don't read any further.

Here is the predicted precipitation over the next 72 h.  Much of the coast will get 2-3 inches, with the Olympics and SW BC mountains getting 3-6 inches.  Best bet for dry weather?  Eastern Washington around the Columbia River in the vicinity of the Tri-Cities. 

Later Monday and early Tuesday should be particularly wet as a well-defined atmospheric river of moisture from the subtropics heads right for us.  Here is the water vapor integrated through the vertical column for late Monday morning---the river of moisture is heading straight for us!

Let me remind all of you about supporting public radio and particularly the radio station I do the weather on: KPLU.  KPLU has been a wonderful new home for my weekly weather segment--far better than a past radio station I won't mention--the one with an ENDLESS pledge break.  Please support KPLU if you listen to their excellent programming.

 

Finally, in many parts of the country folks love to tell jokes about why the chicken crossed the road.....

In our part of the country, because of our unique meteorological conditions, our humor is somewhat different, with the chicken replaced by something else:

Hip hopping through the squares

We've seen revivals of Figure It Out and (maybe) Name That Tune and (maybe) 100K Pyramid. Now MTV2 gets into the act with a hip hop version of Hollywood Squares, called (you guessed it) Hip Hop Squares. The press release is short on gameplay details, so I have no clue how close the new version will stick to the classic rules.

About all the release says is that the show will be more party than game show, which sounds vaguely depressing. New York radio guy Peter Rosenberg hosts. The release runs off a long list of celebs who will occupy the squares. Some of them are even hip hop artists. Then there's a football player and some guy from Jackass and the hip hop god knows who else. I don't think Whoopi Goldberg is anywhere to be found, though.

Have to fess up that I've never been a huge Squares fan, in any version. Too much scripting for my, er, unscripted tastes. I assume that the celebs on this new version will also be given their lines, if we'll really gonna "party." Otherwise, they just might natter on forever and ruin the whole party atmosphere. The show debuts May 22.

Fridaygram: Mandela’s memory, Shuttle farewell, wine surprise

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

This week the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory launched its online multimedia archive. This site features a large collection of documents, photos, and videos of and about Mandela, including private letters and diaries covering all periods of his life. The archive is built on Google App Engine and is supported by a grant from the Google Cultural Institute.

Last week we posted about an amazing ride-along video of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster. Now, as a coda to that, take a look at these words and photos from the Space Shuttle decommissioning process. In their retirement, the Shuttles will eventually go on public display, now that they have completed their service in space.

Finally, if you find yourself relaxing this weekend with a glass of wine, ponder for a moment how you could use that wine to turn ordinary metal into a superconductor. Then go ahead and drink up.


Once a week we post a Fridaygram, featuring cool stuff that has little to do with developer announcements. Each Fridaygram item must pass only one test: it has to be interesting to us nerds.

How hot (or not) are the Pens heading into the playoffs?

By Finesse (follow me on Twitter)

The impetus for this is nothing other than curiosity.

In 2008-09, Dan Bylsma took over for Michel Therrien for the final 25 games of the season.  He lost his first game 3-2 in a shootout to the Islanders (first game Finesse and Artistry watched together -- birth of GTOG) but over the course of those 25 games he went 18-3-4, collecting 40 out of a possible 50 points.

The Pens have 5 games remaining.  In their previous 20, they are 15-4-1, for 31 out of a possible 40 points.  The Pens can match the '08-09 pace if they get 9 of 10 points over the final 5 games (4-0-1).

What does this mean?  Probably nothing, but it helps put in context the last two games against the Islanders.  The Pens looked really bad and clearly have some lingering issues that need to be addressed before the playoffs.  But even if the Pens just get 6 of the remaining 10 points, they'll enter the playoffs just shy of their scorching 2009 pace.

Good teams have bad games, and the Pens have had three stinkers recently.  But it's hardly a sinking ship.  The Islanders are a pesky team that when they try hard, get a few bounces, and Al Montaya doesn't melt down, can win a few games.  It's arguable that they'd win the Southeast division.  We can forgive the Pens for overlooking them (twice).

Tonight is a different story.  Pens are going into a hostile road environment against the hottest team in the league.  If the Pens win in regulation, it increases the Caps chances of making the playoffs by 12.3% to something close to 67%.  So we're thinking maybe Sid goes 5-hole for the win in a shootout.

Why Disney would like you to subscribe to vacations

[This post was originally published at Forbes.com on 25th March 2012.]

"I'm only here for the Fast Passes." That is what I unashamedly told the consultant trying to pitch us on Disney's Vacation Club. We had been at

Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World Resort (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Walt Disney World and while we were waiting for something such as children cycling through a bathroom run, we had wondered what all of the "enjoy your vacation for 70% off, ask us how" posters were all about. Standing right there was an appropriately uniformed person to ask them how. He said lots of stuff but I wasn't really paying attention. But then he said, if you'd like to hear all the details, it will take about an hour but in return Disney will give you enough Fast Passes for the day. From then, I was all ears (pun intended).

A Fast Pass is Disney's ingenious method of allowing theme park visitors to spend less time in queues. They usually work by turning up to a popular ride, grabbing a pass which then gives you an hour window to queue skip at some time later in the day. You can only hold one of these at a time so they have to be used sparingly.

But the Fast Passes on offer here were not of that variety. They could be used right away. And there were enough of them that we would be free of queues for a day. It didn't take me long to work out that that would save us a couple of hours in queuing. So I'd happily trade-off hearing a sales pitch on the Disney Vacation Club for that any day. I may even get a blog post out of it.

To that end, despite my clear and transparent motivations for being at the pitch, I paid attention. At our scheduled time, we were brought the Disney Vacation Club installation at Walt Disney World. This was a large facility that was part of the Saratoga Springs Resort. We were led to a consultation room with its appropriately Disney styling and we were given the deal. Here's what it was. Instead of paying for vacations -- specifically accommodation -- as we currently did, when we booked them, we could pay for them in advance. For either a one time payment or a 'mortgage' over 10 years (or it turns out anything in between), we would get 50 years of holidays. Yes, 50! For we who were currently involved in heavy planning of our activities over the next 50 hours, this was quite an adjustment in time horizon.

Now you might say that this just sounds like a 'time share.' A traditional time share is where you buy a 1/52nd share in a property somewhere and you are required to vacation during a specific week each year. For those, more popular weeks carry higher payments but you do get some real estate in the process. This has never been too appealing a notion to us as we never found a place we would be happy with to vacation every year and there just seemed to be too many things that may change our minds even if we did.

The Disney Vacation Club is 'time share' like in that you get 'time' and you are 'sharing' but that is about it. Instead, while legally you are buying a share of a property, in actuality, Disney has set up an organized market over the top of it that allows you to vacation at some 200 possible locations (near as I can count) at any time of the year you want. Now, it is subject to availability but when you are encouraged to book several months in advance, that isn't an issue. And there is a 'rate of exchange' based on your primary buy-in. What that means is that you purchase points and Disney assigns different redemption amounts for points at different properties and at different times of the year. Want to vacation at more deluxe accommodations, buy more points. Want longer vacations, buy more points. In economic terms, you are paying for the rights to a certain amount of vacation quantity/quality at Disney resorts.

But it is even better than that. First, if in one year, you don't want to do that, you can bank the points and have a longer vacation next year. Second, if you are impatient and want a longer vacation this year, you can borrow from next year's allotment. Third, this isn't tied to you. You can gift vacations to friends and family and indeed, leave the future vacations to your children and perhaps your children's children. If it is at a Disney resort they get all the resort privileges too. Finally, you aren't confined to Disney resorts. Disney has done deals with others so that you can choose places to go all over the world. To be sure, the redemption rates are higher for those but if you want to go to Australia, paying in advance in this way isn't going to cause you a dilemma.

What about the financials? Now I won't go into the details as that borders on financial advice that I am not in a position to give. But the demonstration of the costs and benefits was crystal clear in the pitch and stood up to my probing questions. If you are the sort of person who pays full price for vacations, you can, indeed, save 70 percent on accommodation but probably only if being a Club member turns you into the person who would plan for vacations and take advantage of discounts. Instead, for us, I believed it would have saved us 50 percent on what we paid for this year. That means that the Disney Vacation Club would pay for itself in 7 to 9 visits. Although it also would save me the days of planning for a vacation and researching options. Once you bought it, there'd be no reason to stress over that anymore. All that said, if you want to learn more about that I recommend this grumpy blog post from 2007.

What I would say is that the financing option offered by Disney wasn't too attractive at 12.5% APR for we Australians. That said, there was apparently no credit check required for non-US and non-Canadian citizens. For Disney you can't exactly make a few payments and run off with the property so they don't act as if you can. That was refreshing. I had never seen a financial option where foreigners were treated better.

Finally, your points can be resold to anyone (with a few minor restrictions). But it has to be officiated by Disney and they have a 'right of first refusal' to buy the points back at the price you may have negotiated. This is probably done to stop people trading just for individual year vacations but if you were a Club member you would probably appreciate Disney's oversight on asset value depreciation. It can't exactly hurt. You either resell the rights to whomever you have negotiated with or to Disney.

As I sat there listening to this, it all seemed too good to be true. What were Disney getting out of this? The consultant told us that Disney were doing this because their customers asked for it. That I didn't doubt. And then he went on to tell us that Disney weren't really getting anything out of it and that is why they made it work so flexibly. As I sat there in the considerable Disney Vacation Club installation, I doubted that. But I'd get no help from the consultant. I'd have to work that one out for myself.

So here goes. The first place my keen economist senses takes me is to tax. Is there some tax advantage to all of this? The answer is, probably yes. When you stay in a hotel or resort in Florida, Florida charges a whole lot of taxes for that accommodation. But when you buy into Disney Vacation Club you are buying real estate. That may involve some taxes but they appeared to be far less than the 12 or 13% tax that was running in Orlando.

But taxes weren't getting us the whole way. If our vacation accommodation costs were halved, the real value had to be greater than that for Disney to get their cut.

The second place I looked was in capital budgeting. Disney build resorts. They are high quality and expensive. So they face an issue of forecasting demand. If you can get people to buy in early, you get those capital costs funded upfront. That sounds attractive but remember, it is more costly for me to get money to pay for Disney's capital costs than it is for Disney. So that is a negative. But if Disney can improve the risk profile of their investments because some demand is assured, then that does get them something. But something tells me that this wasn't going to be a huge benefit.

The third clue is that accommodation costs are just a part of what we spend on a holiday. You might want to stay a few more days but here Disney will allow that for a 25% discount (which is about as good as it gets). There are airfares but Disney don't share in that. More importantly, there is food and activities. At Disney resorts these are considerable. There are park fees, food and Disney paraphernalia. Of course, if you were to come every year, you'd likely economize on these. Now Disney could, of course, discount its own accommodation to encourage more visitors and this stream of cash (you know, they way movie theatres try to encourage popcorn sales by getting more people through the door). But lower priced accommodations, may screen for the cash constrained. Instead, if you have customers who have paid in advance for their accommodation, they may be more liberal in their spending; especially, if they are friends and family who didn't have to fork out for that at all.

In the end, taxes, capital planning and extra spending, all could explain part of the value but my guess is that there was something else. I went so far as to read the contract about all this which was the most beautifully clear legal document I have ever read. Two pages, no fine print. From my examination, there didn't appear to be anything sinister hidden there and a good search of what was written on the web didn't uncover any broad disgruntlement. Instead, we have 20 years of the program, 145,000 odd club members (encompassing perhaps up to half a million people) and Disney Vacation Club sales points at regularly spaced as bathroom facilities at Disney theme parks and hotels. All that points to Disney and its customers getting something from all this even if I couldn't quite parse it during my own vacation time. To add to all this, Disney gives you it all back in taking the pitch.

And what did the children do while we were listening to all this? Disney, of course, had that covered. There was a big activity center and the kids happily played for an hour and when we came to pick them up with "Let's go to the Magic Kingdom" they all said (even the 13 year old!) "do we have to?" Well, yes, but not before they were parcelled out the door with an ice cream sundae.

I came for the Fast Passes but the pitch was worth hearing even if you weren't writing a post about it. It will cost you at most an hour which you make up for in reduced queuing and your kids will be more than happy for the fun.

Localize your apps and content more easily – new formats in Translator Toolkit

By Chris Yang, Product Manager and Haidong Shao, Software Engineer, Translator Toolkit

Cross-posted with the Google Open Source Blog and the Google Translate Blog

At Google, we put a lot of energy into helping localize the world's information to make it more useful to more people. It's not just about localizing our own products – we want to provide tools that make it easy for translators and developers around the world to localize their own apps and content. Google Translator Toolkit is our online translation tool for amateur and professional translators -- it’s built on Google Translate and supports more than 100,000 language pairs.

This week, the Translator Toolkit team has launched support for four new translation-related file formats:

• Android Resource (.xml)
• Application Resource Bundle (.arb)
• Chrome Extension (.json)
• GNU gettext-based (.po)

With these new file formats, you can use Translator Toolkit to localize your apps and other products and content much more quickly and easily.

For example, to translate your Android application, go into the res/values directory and upload strings.xml into Translator Toolkit -- Translator Toolkit will now automatically translate it. You can then share your translations with amateur or professional translators, who can localize the text using Translator Toolkit’s WYSIWYG online editor.

When you’re finished, you can export your translated application and store it in a locale-specific directory in Android. Voilà -- easy localization! 翻译起来太方便了!

In addition, we’ve made the Translator Toolkit interface more intuitive for these new file formats so users can translate faster and more accurately. For example, you can turn on ‘Customized colors’ so translators can annotate the edited segments, ‘Number of characters in the segment’ to make sure the text doesn’t run too long (very important for mobile devices), and ‘Synchronized scrolling’ so you can scroll the original and translated text at the same time, which makes navigation much easier.

With these new file formats and UI features, along with the file formats we already support (.aea, .srt, .html), we hope Translator Toolkit can help you reach more users around the world.

When you’re ready, give Google Translator Toolkit a try and suggest any improvements you’d like to see so we can work on making it even better.


Chris Yang and Haidong Shao are on the Google Translation Toolkit team.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

GTOPG: Crosby resuscitated by cotton balls; Pens lose 5-3

By GTOG Staff (follow Artistry and Finesse on Twitter)

You are going to have some FF games over the course of an 82 game regular season. Even the best of teams will look so out of sorts, so frustratingly incapable of competing with even non-playoff teams, that you, the fan, no matter how dedicated you may be or how consistently you may blog, will Fast Forward through that mother f****er. You just never want to see an FF game on March 29th. And that's what happened last night, folks. An FF game with only a week to go in the regular season.

This almost sucked super hard.

Much more after the jump...

- After the game, James Neal noted that the Pens just need to "find our game." We're not sure the continual line shuffling by Dan Bylsma is helping anyone find anything. We do understand and approve of how Bylsma arrived at the combinations he put out last night: Crosby between his familiar mates, Kunitz and Dupuis, Geno between Neal and Sullivan, the reunited Staal line with Cooke and Kennedy, and the ever-dependable Craig Adams unit with Arron Asham and Tangradi/Vitale/Park. It's what we've been calling for all along. And we also understand why it's taken so long: Sid wasn't ready to play 20 minutes a night, and now he is. But now that we're here, the Penguins need some consistency up front over the next week.

Not chhappy when team lose.

- Nor are we overly worried about a defense that's missing Niskanen and Letang. It's a flawed unit that plays an aggressive style, which leads to a lot of chances, but that's been the case all throughout a stellar second half. So why the late season meltdown? What's changed? That's what worries us a little.

- Maybe it's the grind of playing 64 games this year or maybe it's the pressure of knowing that he's had incompetent backup help for most of the season, but Marc-Andre Fleury has stunk the past two games.  He picked game 75 of his 8th season in the league to debut the "Flower Dive-Move" whereby he lunges forward like a kamikaze pilot at an opposing forward on yet another breakaway with no discernable purpose other than hurling his body at a 200+ pound man coming at him at 30mph.  Let's just say he hasn't perfected this move yet.

This one too.

- If Brent Johnson starts tonight against Buffalo, it's a huge start for him.  Thiessen has shown that he can't cut it, at least not yet.  BJ was awesome last year but has been abhorrent so far this season.  If his performance tonight confirms that the Pens have nothing of value behind Fleury in net, it's a rough psychological blow for this team.  And not because we don't think Fleury will be good in the playoffs -- he will be because he's a championship goalie.  But it's because of the "what-if" factor.  What if Fleury has to miss a game?  Or, more realistically, what if he just doesn't have it one night and gives up 3 early goals and has to be yanked?  The Pens have the offensive firepower to come back from big deficits, but not if Brent Johnson is stopping 87% of the shots he faces.  S**t happens in the playoffs.

- Sadly, Tyler Kennedy looked like the best Penguin on the ice last night.  He was flying.  Equally as sad, although not unexpected, Tyler Kennedy did not score any goals and missed a wide open net.

- Eric Tangradi has 1 point in 23 games this year (SPOILER ALERT: it's not a goal).  The Pens are good enough that they have the luxury of giving him ice time throughout the regular season to continue to develop into a power forward who does not score any goals.  But it's crunch time, and it's time for the Men to step up.  And there's one Man in particular who needs to be on the ice more.

We know women who would marry him based on this picture alone.

- Speaking of men, Pascal Dupuis is arguably our favorite player.  His goal was tremendous on every level.  He dislodged an Islander from the puck with a muscular check, causing a turnover that was corralled by the Prime Minister.  The Prime Minister hit Craig Adams in choppy-stride.  Adams, besieged by several less manly men, feathered a soft pass to Dupuis that was like a velvety blanket (covered in ketchup stains).  Dupuis accepted the pass and in one motion threw a spear through Al Montaya's heart.  He now has a 12-game point streak.

- If the Pens don't win the Cup this year, our retrospective on the season will be titled, "If only Steve Sullivan could shoot."

- If the Islanders ever get into the playoffs, how many shorthanded goals will Michael Grabner score?  Can you win the Conn Smythe if you score 8 shorthanded goals in the first round but your team loses in 5 games?

- But if there's one thing to smile about this morning, it's this.  At least you aren't Ken Melani.  (But if you are Ken Melani, thanks for reading and make sure to follow Artistry and Finesse on Twitter).

How Daniel Got his Robot Back: The Story of the Sandstorm License

For many months, I've promised the story of Happy Birthday, Robot! and its license to Sandstorm, but each time I think it's over, it takes another strange turn. So, here's an overview of the story so far: I licensed HBR to Sandstorm. I got an advance on royalties. Sandstorm fell silent for many months. I heard third-hand that they ceased business operations. Now, we're going through formal steps to get my license back. If you want more detail, read on!


Origin of Happy Birthday, Robot!
I made a fun, family-friendly little storytelling game that seemed to have broad appeal. Folks on the internet liked it and I ran a couple successful playtests at Dreamation 2010. I ran a Kickstarter in 2010 to publish it as my first commercial product. It was one of the very early Kickstarter successes out of the indie RPG community.


Evil Hat's Partnership
Before launching the Kickstarter, I consulted with more experienced people about self-publishing and the costs therein. One of those people was Fred Hicks from Evil Hat Productions. He was so encouraging of Happy Birthday, Robot! that he wanted to take on the publishing responsibilities off my hands. We came to an agreement and now Evil Hat sells HBR books through its website.


Sandstorm's License
At some point, HBR caught the attention of Sandstorm. At the time, in late 2010, they were buying licenses to publish games in a variety of genres through several different studio imprints. I got legal counsel from Tim Koppang. After several months of email negotiations, we came to an agreement. Evil Hat would keep selling HBR books, but Sandstorm would use their license to create a boxed set. I got an advance on royalties and didn't hear much from them after that. I sent one email in late 2011 to the president of the company, but I got an auto-response stating that he had resigned and now the marketing director is the primary contact. Emails were still sporadic after that. Mainly, I was just curious about how successful they had been with pitching a boxed set at ToyFair and other shows. You can see the prototype above.


Sandstorm's Disappearance
I caught a mention of Sandstorm's collapse in an article about Catalyst Labs' experience with them. I emailed Sandstorm for more information, but all emails to their domain got bounced back. Their website was no longer active. Tim Koppang found that they still had a business registration in Washington state. We sent a certified letter to their listed address notifying them that I would be taking back my license, per the terms of the contract. That letter was returned with a note from the post office stating "No Such Street."


HBR Today
Today, you can still get Happy Birthday, Robot! from Evil Hat Productions. Thankfully, that has never changed. As for getting in touch with Sandstorm, I have another address in my records, listed on an old sales sheet. The strange thing is that the sale sheet's address is exactly the same as their registered address, except in a different town and zip code. Same street and number, different town and zip code. Very strange. We're going to try to contact them at this alternate address, but we're assuming that this letter is just a formality. As far as I can tell, I have the license to Happy Birthday, Robot!

What happened to Sandstorm?
Questions still remain. I still don't know the circumstances of Sandstorm's collapse. No one willing to talk has the whole story. Did they buy too many licenses? Did they spend too much too fast? If you can find some information, I'd love to see it. I'm just curious at this point and it might be a cautionary tale for others.

All in all, I am very lucky if this is the worst burn story I get. Sandstorm offered a good advance with reasonable terms for me and for Evil Hat. I had wise counsel from Tim Koppang. Now, I get to keep my license and now I'm free to use the IP however I wish. That's a happy ending in my book.

Back to World of Tanks

Picked up World of Tanks again during the week. WOW- first thing that happened was that I had to download something like 1.7GB to start up the game. I also noticed quite a few changes.

Basically what drove me away from the game was that the game was so badly balanced that it became really boring and pointless to play once you reached tier 3-5.
It's also a game that pretty much requires your cash to be fully playable and I'm not going to fork over more money since the H35 tank which I had bought as a premium had been removed and is now available in a separate French tank tech-tree (really - a French tech tree???). Tried out the D1 and H35, read that the tanks in the French arsenal are impossible to advance with in the tiers beyond Tier 2 so I won't bother. Had decent amounts of fun with the D1

I also noticed that picking up where I left with my StuG (tier 5) and Hetzer (tier 4) is pretty much pointless. I played like 10 games and could not hurt shit, got instakilled in every game as well. So screw that. Read that it doesn't really get any better in the upper direction as everyone plays premium tier 8-10 tanks.

No, not going to tear my hair out. I went back to my most played tier, tier 2. The only tier of the game which is balanced, where you can damage all enemy tanks and you yourself can be damaged by all tanks. Where weapons, armor and speed class have a logical balance and where the matchmaker never makes you face anything more than 1 level beneath or above your tier. Usually I have been playing with a 100% maxed BT-2, but recently I noticed the Panzer 35t had a very cool auto cannon which must be new (?), so I upgraded it with that and have been enjoying playing with this new weapon since. They seem to have changed the autocannon from firing a burst to allowing the player to fire full auto which is a great feeling when you tear someone else up.

Some things that would improve this game a LOT:

Keep the tier balance of tier 1-2 throughout the game. This would make battles meaningful and less frustrating. Every time you get a new tank for the next tier you suck ass. You upgrade it and what happens? You get matched against even better tanks and you suck ass again. I understand that the business model might be to frustrate players so much that they spend money to jump straight to the high tier tanks - but it really is a shame that we can't have fun Shermans vs Pz IV battles because of the tier bullshit.

Also get rid of this silly "blueprint" tanks that never existed.

Second thing that would be fun is if games could be divided into nations and periods. Like Early War Allies vs German tanks.

Now I just use the game as a infrequent pastime, but this game has been out for a good while. It should really include more game modes than the capture the base deathmatch by now.

Just throw in the generic Multiplayer modes like Domination and Free-For-All. This game also needs more maps. It feels like this is going nowhere in those two areas.

I did see that they are working on something called "World of Planes" which honestly has me more interested than tank battles. However I will not hold my hopes high if they just duplicate everything that they did in WoT. At least there won't be artillery in the sky.

Thinking hard

Never understood why Deal or No Deal is sometimes called the world's dumbest game show. Okay, at one level I can see the point. All the contestants seem to do is pick suitcases at random.

But every time I watch the show, as I just did on GSN, my brain goes into overdrive calculating expected values, wipeout odds, and possible next offers. It's not like trivia where I know it or not. I gotta think my way through this game.

You might say that Deal or No Deal is a game for actuaries by actuaries. I guess I can say it now - my boss at my previous actuarial job was a consultant for the show. He would advise the producers on probabilities and expected payouts when they had ideas for new wrinkles in the gameplay.

Which all makes that silly U.K. investigation of the show as a trivial gambling vehicle seem even sillier. The show is about calculated risk, and calculating the risk is no trivial task.