#me finding the information I needed from a 2008 forum post

[owlphaace]

Absolutely fuck people who use discord servers as forums

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 194

Questions Concerning Robots That "Care": Part 2

... and these robots that "care" invite some questions

Considered only as machines meant to assist overburdened nurses with their care of older people, the types of humanoid robots just described might initially be categorized simply as useful new tools. We have reasons to wonder, though, how long those who will be interacting regularly with these life-like robots can be expected to perceive them merely as tools. So-called "animaloid" robots, such as the robotic dog AIBO that was marketed in recent years by the Sony Corporation, admittedly represent a somewhat different class of robotic artifact than the more complex contemporary humanoids such as ASIMO. Nevertheless, empirical studies of human-robot interaction even with AIBO have uncovered some relevant thought-provoking surprises. Not long ago, for example, numerous online postings by owners of AIBO began appearing on Internet forums. One study of these postings noted the following confession by an AIBO owner:

The other day I proved to myself that I do indeed treat him as if he were alive, because I was getting changed to go out, and [AIBO] was in the room, but before I got changed I stuck him in a corner so he didn't see me! (Friedman, Kahn, and Hagman 2003, 278)

Regardless of whether this posted confession was altogether truthful, its expressed thought of needing modesty in this case clearly alerts us to the potential psychological potency of human interaction with such machines. Abrahamic religions, through their shared accounts of the Garden of Eden, have long recognized appropriateness of modesty between even the primordial man and woman – but application of that sentiment to our dealings with a battery-operated dog suggests how plastic human notions of personhood might be!

For that matter, professional testimony of such plasticity for the specific case of humanoid robots is available in a frequently-quoted set of observations by Professor Sherry Turkle, Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of her MIT colleagues, widely-recognized roboticist Rodney Brooks, is among the many people who have cited Turkle's report of her first encounter with his experimental humanoid robot, Cog; note carefully Sherry's candid description of the experience:

Cog "noticed" me soon after I entered its room. Its head turned to follow me and I was embarrassed to note that this made me happy. I found myself competing with another visitor for its attention. At one point, I felt sure that Cog's eyes had "caught" my own. My visit left me shaken – not by anything that Cog was able to accomplish but by my own reaction to "him." For years whenever I had heard Rodney Brooks speak about his robotic "creatures," I had always been careful to mentally put quotation marks around the word. But now, with Cog, I had found the quotation marks had disappeared. Despite myself and despite my continuing skepticism about this research project, I had behaved as though in the presence of another being. (Brooks 2003, 149)

Professor Turkle's testimony is consistent with an entire literature of contemporary research in human-robot interaction that suggests a deep human predisposition progressively to accept as peers various machines that convincingly mimic human appearance and autonomous behavior. Her reference to discovering herself behaving as though she were "in the presence of another being" points, in turn, toward some questions that invite our reflection.

First, one might inquire whether (and why) it could matter that humans seem so inclined to regard convincingly humanoid machines as peers. For some people, it apparently does not matter. From his perspective as a practicing Zen Buddhist, for example, robotics engineer Masahiro Mori has argued against insisting upon any profound distinction between persons and robots, noting that there "must also be buddha-nature in the machines and robots that my colleagues and I make" (Mori 1999, 174). In contrast, though, a pilot study has suggested that Abrahamic theistic belief in creation of individual human souls by a personal deity may be related to disapproval of human-robot interaction "with life-like personal robots that requires human acceptance of the robots at intimate levels" (Metzler and Lewis 2008, 22). This finding resonates with a respected voice in modern Christian theology. Paul Tillich, in Volume Three of his monumental Systematic Theology, addresses "objects that are produced by the technical act," warning that "by virtue of producing and directing mere things" one can lose one's "character as an independent self" and "become a thing" (74). Again, Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber, widely remembered for his distinction between "I – Thou" and "I – It" relations, issues a similar warning in I and Thou:

And in all the seriousness of truth, hear this: without It man cannot live.

But he who lives with It alone is not a man. (34)

Apparently, we have reasons to expect that individuals belonging to Abrahamic religious traditions may especially feel troubled when they find themselves treating humanoid machines as though they were peers.

Within the Abrahamic religious family, after all, human beings historically have been regarded as spiritually special, and understood as belonging to a category fundamentally different from any technological artifacts that they might construct for amusement, or as tools. Anglican priest (and physicist) John Polkinghorne has emphasized significance of "the mystery of the human person," which involves "our embodied nature, embedded in the physical world but transcending a merely reductive physicality" (Polkinghorne 1998, 80). Both the mystery and the transcendence that Polkinghorne mentions are punctuated clearly, as well, in the Holy Qur'an: And they will ask thee of the Spirit. SAY: The Spirit proceedeth at my Lord's command: but of knowledge, only a little to you is given (The Night Journey – Sura 17:85). The theistic perspective of this family of religions tends to link the human person, as a free moral agent, with a spiritual level of reality that is not completely expressible in terms of everyday (macro-level) entities such as rocks and trees – and machines.

It may be pertinent at this point to inquire whether the spiritual level of reality envisioned by these religious faiths might arguably be represented even in current science. To be sure, the robotic and AI technologies upon which we have focused in this essay are discussed almost entirely nowadays with so-called "macro-level" accounts of discrete, individualized entities. Computer scientists typically view all "information processing" executed by contemporary computers as reducible to operations of the celebrated Turing Machine formalism, which imagines an abstract machine successively "reading" well-defined symbols (0 or 1) on an external tape, comparing them with its current internal "state," and then implementing clearly prescribed (albeit possibly null) changes on the tape and its own internal state. Physicists working with quantum mechanics, however, have discovered a quite different level of reality that requires a so-called "quantum-level" description. The description is expressed mathematically in terms of complex numbers (incorporating an imaginary unit equal to the square root of negative one) and it explores a reality in which individualized entities of the macro-level (this table, that book, etc.) simply are no longer present. An atom may be understood to contain four electrons, but – in principle – one cannot select and track, say, the changing locations over time of a specific individual electron among the four. Pondering this strange new reality, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has argued (via his Shadows of the Mind) that human consciousness cannot be modeled in terms of the Turing Machine formalism, requiring, instead, the resources of an advanced quantum physics. If the emerging technology of "quantum computers" eventually could yield a machine consistent with Roger Penrose's understanding of how the human brain operates when we experience consciousness, future robots incorporating such computers might open possibilities for exciting new dialogue between religion and science.

Under present circumstances, though, we can discern the outlines of potential difficulties in the not-so-distant future. Specifically, elderly members of the Abrahamic faiths may find themselves increasingly conflicted in responding to robotic "caregivers." On one hand, following natural predispositions, they will be inclined to accept the machines as caregivers (dropping the skeptical quotation marks, as Professor Turkle did during her encounter with Cog). At the same time, they may retain their religious worldviews and resist accepting the machines as persons. Will they feel authentically comforted, then, by machines programmed to display "artificial empathy"? Will they discover resolution of their conflict in the following conjecture by noted roboticist Hans Moravec?

So, it may be appropriate to say "God" has granted a soul to a machine when the machine is accepted as a real person by a wide human community. (Moravec 1999, 77)

Indeed, in perhaps the next ten years or so, how will people be using quotation marks to distinguish what they consider authentic from mere "make-believe"? Will they be describing new robot nurses as persons – or as "persons"? Will they decide that the machines care for people – or "care" for people? Will the artifacts be considered capable of moral behavior – or "moral" behavior? Will some older people still understand the granting of souls to be determined by God – or by "God"?

For some of us, these already are important questions.

[ihavethoughtsplural]

Blood and Chocolate: An Adaptation in Name Only

Section 0 - Introduction

Preamble: In 2007, a supernatural romance thriller based on a young adult novel was released to theaters.  It was a Romeo and Juliet inspired story revolving around the forbidden love between a human and a misunderstood monster and the dangers they face.  

No, it wasn’t Twilight.  That came out in 2008.  It was Blood and Chocolate.  

Despite the apparent similarities between the two films, the differences are more interesting.  Twilight, adapted from an incredibly popular book went on to become a huge box office success and inescapable cultural phenomenon.  

Blood and Chocolate did not.  It was a critical and commercial failure, and even fans of the book hated it.  In fact, though it has been mostly forgotten in the wake of Twilight and its imitators, its one major legacy is as a legendarily bad adaptation.  But why?  Is that fair? Does the movie still have merits despite this?  In the following series of posts, I am going to be exploring these questions.

Bona Fides: You might be wondering why I feel like I can speak with any sort of authority on this subject.  Well, I have a history with this book and movie.  I first read the book in late middle school and was immediately obsessed.  And, yes, I mean obsessed; I have had an unhealthy fascination with this novel since I picked it up from my local library.  Years later, I now own two copies of the book, one of which has been read to shreds.

Additionally, I have been writing fanfiction for the Blood and Chocolate fandom for over 10 years now at an embarrassingly slow pace.  (Seriously, my current WIP, Lucky, has been unfinished for waaaaay too long, and I desperately need to get off my ass and upload the next chapter already).  As a result, I basically know the text backward and forward. I know Vivian’s zodiac sign, I can make convincing arguments about the “real” locations of Riverview and Gaskill State Park, and I will defend my many headcanons to anyone who wants to hear them (Spoiler alert: Nobody wants to hear them.  The fandom is dying, if not dead). When the adaptation was announced, I remember scouring news articles and forums for all the information I could find.  I speculated with other fans about casting choices and the adaptation changes.  I wasn’t naïve on that last point – making the book into a movie would absolutely necessitate some major story and character changes.  But I had faith.   And then more details came out.  We found out about the location change, the new plot, the casting choices. 

(Olivier Martinez playing a 24-year-old welder? Yeah.  Sure.)  

But I had hope!   And then the trailer came out.   In a way, it was a good thing.  For one, it introduced me to Within Temptation, still one of my favorite bands of all time.  For another, it allowed me to mourn the adaptation that I had hoped for, and prepared me for the movie we were going to get.  There’s a prophecy now? Glowy transformations? Tradition dictates swapping out wives every 7 years?  And then the title “Blood and Chocolate” plopped onto the screen like a warm turd.   I’m not stupid – I know that the title is a hard sell.  I know that it looks ridiculous at first glance, and Annette Curtis Klause spends almost the entire novel justifying that title choice.  The trailer?  Doesn’t even try.   So, I was ready.  I was aware going in that the movie was not going to be like the book in more than a superficial sense.  Still, I had to see it.  I took a friend with me to the theater, knowing that I would need moral support to get through it.  And then it started.  And as it dragged on, I sank deeper and deeper into my seat, embarrassed that this, THIS was the movie I was watching.  I had spent money to be in that theater.  I would have to be seen leaving it.  People would know that I had been there. Despite the mortifying ordeal of having watched Blood and Chocolate, I recognized that there were enjoyable parts. I even went on to buy the DVD – it sits on a shelf with its sister camp-fests The Room, Showgirls, Valley of the Dolls and, now, Cats.

Precipitating Event:  Last week, I rewatched the adaptation for the first time in several years and came to a realization: I have mellowed since 2007.  The healing effects of time have allowed me to genuinely appreciate parts of the movie that used to piss me off to no end.  In fact, with this distance from the embarrassment of that theater showing, I might be able to fairly critique it.  And really, if I don’t do it, who will?  Nobody, aside from Hugh Dancy stans, seem to care about this movie.  Well, Hugh Dancy stans and me.

(He’s adorable!  Please don’t come for me!)

Goals: My aims for this project are as follows:  I wish to express my thoughts about the original book, the real adaptation challenges, and the adaptation itself.  For who?  I don’t know. As time passes, it feels like the fandom is moving on, and I’m the one stubborn asshole squatting in the ruins. So, come along if you’re interested in me shouting at clouds.  This is: Blood and Chocolate – An Adaptation in Name Only

Next: Section 1 - The Book

[lydiawoodie]

Wealthy Affiliate Review My Advice: Dont Buy

I was issued an affiliate link for Wealthy Affiliate because they automatically issue you one upon enrollment. However, it’s not listed on this article, because I don’t recommend Wealthy Affiliate. Of course, you are your own master, and you’re free to enroll away, but I only want to promote products I believe in, so there’s no link here from me!

There’s nothing revolutionary or informative in Wealthy Affiilate. I’m not mad that I signed up, as I only spent $19 and I did get a little value. The videos are well-made, and I don’t feel like it’s a scam. There’s just a bunch of filler and common sense rolled into this program. If you’re a complete newbie, you may find the material helpful, but there are better information sources out there than Wealthy Affiliate.

[As a note: I will add my recommendation for a similar program here when I find a good one.]

What is Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate is a training program run by Greg Kononenko. I follow him on YouTube under his alias, Caffeinated Blogger, and in July 2020 I decided to sign up for Wealthy Affiliate and give it a try. The membership was $19 for the first month, with a reoccurring charge of $49/month (or $495 for the year) if I wished to continue.

Wealthy Affiliate is basically boot camp for building a niche website. There are several video tutorials broken down into bite-sized lessons showing a few basics of WordPress, SEO, and affiliate marketing. There are explanations about how to build your webpage, how to grow your site, and how to monetize it. There are also a variety of tools for content, including access to a royalty-free photograph database and a keyword search tool (Jaaxy Lite). However, the explanations about building, growing, and monetizing your site are not very in-depth. Any Google or YouTube search will get you better info. And royalty-free images are easy to find. Wealthy Affiliate just pulls them from three free sites. I’m also skeptical about the value of keyword search tools.

Is Wealthy Affiliate Worth It?

Building niche websites isn’t particularly complicated, and I wouldn’t say that I learned a whole lot of new information from Wealthy Affiliate. And I also wouldn’t say that the the program’s information on building a niche website is even close to comprehensive. It’s a starting point. That’s it.

The nicest thing I have to say about Wealthy Affiliate is that they’ve done a good job at building a forum and a community of others who are attempting to build a niche site. It can be good to have accountability partners if you find that sort-of thing helpful. I’m not into social media. I also prefer lectures to group discussions, so the forums were not attractive to me personally.

When I googled other people’s reviews of Wealthy Affiliate, it led me to believe that Greg Kononenko purchased this program from someone else. This review lists Carson Lim and Kyle Louadon as the owners, and there was a lot of talk about how dated the program is.

I wouldn’t say that Wealthy Affiliate is dated, as much as it’s just completely basic. The program teaches the nuts and bolts of building a niche website. Choose niche, buy domain, post content. I don’t think a course is necessary for this. And there were helpful hints about WordPress plugins to add, but the material was actually in a couple different places and it was far from comprehensive.

Who Should Use Wealthy Affiliate?

If I had a loved one who wanted some hand holding while building a site, I would write them a quick list of how to set up a blog. If I didn’t like them very much, I guess that I would recommend Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is very basic. There are ten lessons per category and at the end of each lesson is a checklist. The system provides ample opportunity for help from others on the forum if you’re nervous about website creation, but I didn’t find a whole lot of cutting edge information in this course. It was okay for webpage set up, but the tricks on Greg’s YouTube channel don’t show up in Wealthy Affiliate.

The premise of Wealthy Affiliate is to put up a quality website, optimize the backend for SEO, add blog posts three times per week, and after three months you’ll start seeing results. After one year, you’ll like the results. And after five years, you’ll be crushing it. It is a very long game, and this is SEO at it’s most basic. It’s safe and should be Google update-proof. If you don’t have any experience in these elements, Wealthy Affiliate could potentially be helpful for you.

Thoughts on Solo Build It! (SBI!), a Wealthy Affiliate Competitor

Wealthy Affiliate reminded me of a program I tried over a decade ago, called Site Build It! I Googled to see if they were still around, and saw they’ve changed their name to Solo Build It! They also have a second product called SBI! for WP — Solo Build It! for WordPress. Admittedly, I haven’t tried SBI! for more than a decade, but I’m guessing the premise hasn’t changed. It’s a strategy identical to Wealthy Affiliate’s — niche website creation and a long-range plan for building SEO and site authority.

What I did not like about SBI! was that they wanted me to host my site with them indefinitely. What I saw in 2008 were the outdated websites they were teaching people to create. Their current website says they’ve been around for over 20 years, which makes sense in hindsight. In 2008 they were teaching me how to build a website meant for 2002. However, it looks like they’ve adjusted to the times with their new product, SBI! for WP. I did not order this product, but I’m guessing it‘s be very similar to Wealthy Affiliate and allows you to build your site and leave the platform, as WordPress can be hosted anywhere.

SBI!’s price point begins close to WA’s starting price point at $19.99 per month. However, it looks like a cheaper option year after year if you opt to stay with them. It’s $199 for the first year and $299 for each additional year. Wealthy Affiliate is priced at $495 per year, but they offer incentives to knock 50% off of this price, so I’m guessing they’re competitive. Again, I haven’t tried SBI! in over a decade, which is a lifetime ago in Internet years. When I tried previously, I didn’t fully commit and attempt to build a site in their platform. Instead, I consumed their video content and canceled after my trial ended. But comparing what I saw in SBI! then to what I see in WA now, I’d recommend Wealthy Affiliate if I had to choose one.

Wealthy Affiliate at least teaches you how to build a site with them then move it to your own domain. SBI! taught me how to build a site with them and then rely on them for hosting indefinitely. Building your site in someone else’s platform — Wealthy Affiliate or SBI! — is a waste of time. It adds a layer of dependency that doesn’t need to be there. WordPress is easy and initiative. You can figure it out if you just start trying.

Final Thoughts on Wealthy Affiliate

My final thought is a NO! Google a YouTube video about creating a WordPress blog in Elementor. Spend a couple hours watching and applying your knowledge. You’ll learn more from this than you’d learn in Wealthy Affiliate.

from https://bunnybanks.com/wealthy-affiliate-review-my-advice-dont-buy/

from Bunny Banks - Blog https://bunnybanks.weebly.com/blog/wealthy-affiliate-review-my-advice-dont-buy via IFTTT

[muslims-and-exmuslims]

Ex-Muslim Letters: Ex-Muslim Neurosurgeon from the Middle East

Image courtesy: Anna Remarchuk

Anonymous Asked: hello, I am an ex-muslim living now in middle east, I am a neurosurgeon, I have been an atheist since 2008, in the closet, trying to survive, now the problem is that my “colleagues” and people around me have rumors, they confronted me and I denied, Now I have been living in hell for the past years, they are trying to kick me out of my job, I am having a legal battle for that, then harassment and my car was damaged, my life is in danger, I am thinking about asylum in EU, I speak EN and FR, HELP

Answer (from @rayhana):

Dear Ex-Muslim Neurosurgeon,

Thank you so much for your message. If you are based in the Middle East, it is highly likely you are in a country where leaving Islam is punishable by death under blasphemy law. In such a circumstance, if a legal proceeding in your existing country of residence is brought against you and if it is proven that you have left the Islamic religion, there is a risk a criminal charge might be brought against you.

There are several dimensions to if a criminal charge can be brought against an Ex-Muslim in your country: 1) losing your job, 2) unable to find future employment suitable to your competency/salary expectation, 3) risk to your life (incl., threat of prison sentence, violence/abuse from Islamist hardliners in your community) 4) risk to your family members if they support you, 5) financial risk: your bank accounts being suspended to prevent you from traveling.

I take it you are a working professional. Do you have families? Children? Do you have assets, e.g. land, house? If all these answers are yes, you need not only to look after your own safety but your family and take steps to not lose control of your hard-earned income, wealth to confiscation.

The legal battle on top of the rumor of you being an Ex-Muslim makes things complicated. If this was just a rumor, the sensible next steps would have been finding ways to prevent the spread of rumors, maintaining a low profile and meanwhile finding routes to a safe place to relocate in the long run. With legal battle looming over you, you need to act FAST.

If I were you, I would consider my priorities as follows - but I must caution you that only you know your experience so you should challenge any advice any provide and double check with a professional source who can take responsibility for solid advice:

Financial security: If you have significant lifetime savings (for yourself, your children), speak to a reliable financial adviser on options if your bank account is suspended by your government in the Middle East and you are unable to withdraw money for food, rent, travel, etc. It might be worth withdrawing some money as cash and secure your valuables, such as gold, which you can convert/sell at a later time. I will do some research on what support on this is already there as public information to help you and post them as a separate guide.

Overseas Travel: Do you or your family have any existing visa? Is there a country in the EU where you can travel temporarily? From my memory, the lead organisation that supports prisoners or dissents facing legal challenge in the ME is Amnesty International. Can you try reaching out to someone within Amnesty requesting some guidance as they specialise in your area of needs. Other two places might be the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch. If I were you, I would do this ASAP and quickly apply for a visa and book direct flights to a chosen safer destination.

Personal safety: You mentioned your car has been damaged. It is important that you maintain caution if you are followed using public transport. Please avoid traveling solitary and in less crowded/closed alleys. There are some guidance you can find on dealing with real-life safety and online safety on this blog. There are communities such as reddit/exmuslims where you can get some voice of support and tips - be careful about not revealing your identity on any online forum due to personal safety.

Preparing for asylum: You mention you can speak French and English. This is very good. I would suggest you research considering asylum in France, Canada or the UK. You must retain all the evidence of any threat, bullying or harassment you have received from Islamist hardliners at your work or community. Other documents you must have should include all professional/academic certificates, medical records, passport, birth certificate, bank statements and any other legal document if you have owner of valuable assets. You can consider contacting the EU legal service and request them if they can steer you towards any public guidance on laws governing your human rights and how you can seek asylum in the EU.

Your situation is complicated and it is worth, for others like you, to continue thinking what further support can be made available for you on this blog so I’ll continue working on collating information in the next couple of weeks but since this blog has less people to manage, speed will be very slow. But if you have an urgent question, write me and I will try to prioritise it asap.

I wish you lots of courage.

Rayhana

[loadcali890]

Ventura Guitar Serial Number Lookup

Beautiful old vintage Ventura Bruno V14 guitar. Looking at other similar models on e-bay, I GEUSS it to be 60's-70's but I do not know. Serial number is 74725, could be made in Japan but I do not know! This guitar includes chipboard case, has warm aged tone, the vibe of old guitar. Ventura was a brand of stringed instruments imported from Japan by C. Bruno and Company during the 1960s and 1970s. Bruno was bought by Kaman in the early 1980s, after which the brand disappeared. Some of the Ventura guitars were knock-offs of the Martin line, such as the Ventura V-35 appearing similar to the Martin D-35, and the Ventura V. Good luck and happy Ventura hunting! Re: Ventura Guitar 14:51 on Saturday, June 5, 2004. (David Woodson) Posted by Archived posts. I have a 'Bruno' Ventura Classic gut string that I bought from C&S Music in Fort Worth,Texas in 1965-66. It has a nice classic tone but that is all I know about it.

GENERAL VINTAGE GUITAR RESOURCES:

Vintage Guitar Magazine - this is Vintage Guitar 101 and all neophytes are advised to start here. Of course, my favorite part is Michael Wright's 'Different Strummer' column, which covers the history of all those wild, wacky off-brand instruments in elaborate detail. VG has also published several of my own articles over the years, some of which can be found on this site.

The Blue Book - if you're serious about buying and selling used guitars, the Blue Book provides the most detailed pricing, dating and identification info. Much of it is available online for free.

GuitarHQ - a nice all-around mainstream vintage guitar site. All the standard Gibson and Fender type stuff, plus some other interesting odds and ends.

ProjectGuitar.com- where the Internet goes to work on guitars! All about guitar maintenance and repair.

MIMF - the Musical Instrument Makers Forum is a goldmine of information about materials, construction and repair techniques, including a gallery of unique custom built guitars that range from inept to incredible. If you need professional advice about repairing your old guitar, this is the place to ask.

Stewart-McDonald - a good source for replacement guitar parts and repair tools to keep your junker running. Also check out WD and Allparts. I'm not sponsored by or affiliated with these or any other manufacturer or retailer, but I'm often asked to recommend good parts sources.Well, here you go.

Ampage - a nice info source for amp schematics and other guitar electronics.

GuitarElectronics.com - lots of wiring diagrams.

Dr. Duck's Dating Service - an excellent resource, lots of serial numbers for many brands of guitars.

OTHER 'JUNK GUITAR' SITES:

Cheesy Guitars - a true kindred spirit, Meatex Z has created a wonderful site dedicated to all those unplayable Russian and Eastern European guitars. He was also nice enough to give me credit for naming his site and helping him out with information initially. We were originally going to do this project together, but decided that two sites are better than one. Go visit Meatex and tell him Big Beat says 'hi'.

SovietGuitars.com - this cool Russian language page for fans of Soviet era instruments is rapidly becoming an important resource.

Vintaxe.com - an excellent site about some of the lesser known vintage guitars produced in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Lots of pictures and vintage catalog scans, including some of mine that I have shared with them.

My Rare Guitars - a nice collection of cheesy offbeat axes by a very hip collector and dealer. Vintage Normas, Ekos and Dominos galore, plus some great modern reissues.

Fetish Guitars - a fabulous site about Eko, Wandre, Galanti and other Italian guitars of the 60's. Both visually stunning and very informative, it is an absolute marvel.

Lordbizarre's Electric Guitar & Amp Museum - The name says it all. This collector from Belgium has put some seriously weird axes on display for your viewing pleasure.

Cheap Trashy Weird Old Guitars - cool name, and certainly the right spirit! A small but impressive collection of Egmonds, Wilsons, Musimas and even something called a Horugel.

21 Frets - I just love it when somebody takes totally trashed Hagstroms and Melody Makers and restores them from trash to flash. This site chronicles some really cool restoration projects.

Gudok - a Russian site that showcases 'the weapons of the proletariat', old Soviet guitars such as the Tonika, the Formanta and the Solo-II.

Hendrix Room - a Japanese site with a neat collection of totally off-the-wall 60's guitars with names like Youngtone and Melodier.

Animal Charme - dedicated to all those pointy headstock axes of the 80's, this is the home of the shred and heavy metal guitar!

Pointy Guitars - more 80's pointy guitar madness!

Guitare Collection - A wacky French site that showcases some totally bizarre Euro junk guitars, even including a couple from Russia.

Rockin' Hollowbody Guitars - a great forum for people of the thinline and archtop persuasion. If it's got F-holes, you'll find all about it right here.

Vintage Guitars - this Swedish dealer has a photo gallery with lots of Goyas, Hagstroms, Levins and other oddball Scandinavian beauties.

Vermona - here's a German page about those amps and synths, so familiar to professional Russian musicians of the 70's and 80's. Never mind Fender, Vox and Marshall, everyone behind the Iron curtain knew that the best amps were made by Vermona. This factory also produced the famous Weltmeister accordions and the Ionika electric organ. To many older Russians, 'Ionika' is still synonymous with 'keyboard'. See the old Vermona amps HERE and the original Ionika HERE.

VINTAGE GUITAR INFO BY BRAND:

Ampeg - Vintage Ampeg Scroll Basses Aria - Guitar Gallery Burns - Burns Guitar Museum Carvin - Carvin Museum Danelectro - Danoguitars Egmond - Egmond Guitars Eko - Fetish Guitars, My Rare Guitars Framus - Vintage Framus Futurama - Futurama Story Grazioso - Palka.com Galanti - Fetish Guitars Goya - Goya Guitars Hagstrom - Hagstrom USA, Hagstrom Canada, Hagstrom UK Official Hagstrom Site Harmony - Broadway Music Co., Unofficial Harmony Page, Harmony Thumbs, Hillman Guitars Heartfield - Heartfield Central Hofner - Guitar HQ, Hofner Club Guitars, Vintage Hofner, Hofner Hounds Hopf - Hopf Guitars Hoyer - Hoyer Guitars Ibanez - Ibanez Vintage Page, Vintage Ibanez Museum, Ibanez Vintage, Ibanez Collector's World Jolana - Jolana Info, My Jolana Kramer - Kramer Krazy, Kramermaniaxe, Vintage Kramer Music Man - Unofficial Music Man Guitar Page Ovation - Ovation Fan Club, Ovation Tribute Page Shergold - Shergold Guitars Silvertone - Vintage Silvertone Starfield - Unofficial Starfield Guitar Site Teisco - Teisco Twangers Tel-Ray - Unofficial Tel-Ray Page Tokai - Tokai Registry Univox - Univox Page Vantage - Guitar Gallery Ventura - Unofficial Ventura Guitar Page Vermona - Vermona Vox - Vox Showroom Watkins - Watkins Guitars Westbury - Westbury Guitars Westone - Westone Guitars

Ventura Guitar Serial Number Lookup Serial

MISCELLANEOUS OTHER LINKS:

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: I bought this Ventura in 1980 at H & H music in Houston and I was just wondering what it is worth. It has a classical body style, not the dreadnought. The action is low and has an adjustable truss rod. The serial number is 60505 and the model # is V-200B. Does anyone out there have an accurate answer? Thank you for your time and effort in responding to this e-mail inquiry.

Have a great day.I ALSO HAVE A MATCHING PAIR OF V-11 BRUNO & V-15 12 STRING FROM MEMORIAL MUSIC JUST PRIOR TO H & H. THEY TOURED WITH BUFFETT IN 74-78 THROUGH CARIB/PROVO SOUTH & NORTH FLORIDA. NO ONE WILL VALUE THEM @ MORE THAN PURCHASE PRICE. : I bought this Ventura in 1980 at H & H music in Houston and I was just wondering what it is worth.

It has a classical body style, not the dreadnought. The action is low and has an adjustable truss rod. The serial number is 60505 and the model # is V-200B. Does anyone out there have an accurate answer? Thank you for your time and effort in responding to this e-mail inquiry.

Have a great day.I have a Ventura Bruno V-12 I paid $110 for in 1972 at Hauschild's music in Victoria, TX. Don't know if they are still around as the owner was up in years then. I have heard they were made in Japan but I dont know this for sure.

Guitar ID and AppraisalThere are many reasons for determining the precise age of your used guitar. The most important one is probably pricing the instrument appropriately when you’re looking to sell it. Prices for certain vintage models vary by thousands of dollars depending on whether it’s a 1963, for example, or a 1964.

You’ll also need to know exactly what your guitar is worth for insurance purposes.One of the most valuable and often overlooked resources to help you identify and appraise guitars is your local used instrument dealer. It’s so important to establish a working relationship with these folks. While it may be tempting to call every store in the area in order to save a few dollars when you’re shopping for something, developing a loyalty to one or two shops pays off when you need service that goes beyond a simple purchase.

While most shops charge a fee for an official appraisal, it may take an experienced retailer only a second to realize that your old Epiphone is actually a Nova 390, produced from 1976 to 1980 in the company’s short-lived Japanese factory. The shop employee may be glad to look up the approximate value of your ax in a book and give you an opinion about what it’s worth. But if you randomly drop by a store that you’ve never been to before and ask for this kind of help, they might not take the time to look carefully at what you’ve got.LEARNING THE HISTORYIf you want to educate yourself to identify guitars, the first step is to become familiar with the histories of some of the larger companies.

In recent years, more and more books providing information on the major guitar manufacturers have become available, and they’re a great place to start. There are some basic questions to ask.

When did the company start building guitars? Where were the guitars manufactured? Did the company move in the course of its existence, and did it move its production overseas? Did the model in question change drastically during the years of production?

For example, Gibson’s J-200 started out with rosewood back and sides and fairly standard X-bracing in the late 1930s. It was changed to maple back and sides (except for a few rosewood examples) and a double-X bracing pattern in the ’50s. Yet another double-X bracing pattern was used during the ’70s, and then a more Martin-like scalloped X-bracing was adopted when the model was reintroduced in the late ’80s. These are all differences that would be difficult for the uneducated eye to notice, yet they drastically affect the guitar’s sound and value.At the very least, these books will identify the time period during which the guitar in question was produced, basic information that will, for example, keep you from paying a premium for a '1960s Martin HD-28' (you’ll know that this model wasn’t introduced until 1976). Sometimes you can narrow down even further the time period in which your guitar was built because of a certain distinguishing feature. For example, a volute or scroll at the back of a Gibson headstock usually indicates that the instrument was built between 1974 and 1981 (although some appeared as early as 1969).Another thing that the trained eye will immediately be able to pick up on is whether an instrument was built in the U.S.

Or imported from one of the many low-end Asian manufacturers. When I worked in retail, a customer once walked in with a Ventura archtop for sale.

Convinced that he had a guitar that was built in the U.S. In the ’50s, he stormed out after I told him what I’d be able to offer him for it. Even if I hadn’t known that Venturas were made in Japan during the ’70s (which was confirmed by a quick look in the Vintage Guitar Price Guide), I knew as soon as he opened the case. It was mostly the guitar’s thick finish that gave it away, complete with lacquered neck-to-body joints and drips through the f-holes. The wimpy hardware was another dead giveaway that this guitar was neither domestically made, as he thought, nor a high-quality import. The best place to gain this kind of familiarity is at your local music store’s used-and-cheap section; the more guitars you inspect, the more experienced you’ll be.One of the biggest roadblocks in identifying a guitar can often be the serial number.

These numbers are frequently inconsistent or missing from reference books. In many cases, a serial number by itself is about as useful as a phone number with a missing digit. Few companies have consistently used the same system of numbering during their entire existence (Martin is among those that have). For example, Gibson began using an eight-digit number in 1977.

The first and fifth digits indicated the year of production (8XXX2XXX meant it was built in 1982). If you tried to apply this formula to a serial number on an older Gibson, or even a newer vintage reissue (which sometimes use 'vintage' serial numbers) you’d be making a big mistake.REFERENCE BOOKSSo, how does one go about accurately identifying a used instrument? Probably the publication most often referred to is Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars. Written by George Gruhn (of Gruhn Guitars in Nashville) and Walter Carter, the guide is a must-have for identifying older American-made guitars. Organized into brands, general information, serial numbers, specific features, and model designations, the book identifies most major-brand guitars of the past and offers meticulous descriptions and a wealth of helpful photos. It offers little or no information on smaller makers, budget instrument makers, and recent entries into the guitar market.Although designed to give approximate values for vintage instruments, the Vintage Guitar Price Guide is also quite useful in identifying instruments. While it doesn’t describe each model’s features in detail, it does provide a company history for most of the makers included.

The book’s many photos can be very helpful, and the general listings, which include many off-brands, are among the most complete available. As with all price guides, the dollar amounts shown are to be taken with a grain of salt, but having even a vague idea of an instrument’s value will make you a more savvy buyer or seller.Another excellent resource is the Blue Book of Guitars. This hefty book probably represents the most complete compilation of information on guitars that have not yet reached vintage status.

Ventura Guitar Serial Number Lookup

Ventura Guitars Models

It’s one of the few books that lists instruments made by companies such as Kay and J.B. Player and by individual luthiers such as Dave Maize and Steve Klein. Besides retail price information, the book includes brief descriptions of most companies and models listed, as well as a unique section on grading the condition of an instrument. In a color section, a variety of guitars are pictured front and back, showing a range of possible conditions-from 20 percent (poor) to 100 percent (new).You can also join guitar-related newsgroups on the Internet, but beware of advice from uneducated participants posing as guitar experts. Of particular interest to acoustic guitarists are rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic, rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz, and rec.music.classical.guitar.

Find Guitar By Serial Number

You might also check out rec.music.makers.guitar and alt.guitar.These resources and the others in the Acoustic Guitar Owner's Manual should help you on your way to becoming a guitar expert. All you need is hours and hours of paging through every available book on the subject, countless weekends spent at guitar shops and vintage instrument shows, a careful examination of all of your picking buddies’ axes, and (let’s face it) the purchase of a lemon or two.Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, October 1998, No. 70.Toll Free 877-712-4747.

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Lenovo L197 Wide Monitor Driver

Lenovo L197 Wide Monitor Driver Update

Lenovo L197 Wide Monitor Driver Install

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in: Featured, Heading Out On Your Own, Money & Career, Networking, Professional Skills

Brett & Kate McKay • August 9, 2012 • Last updated: September 23, 2020

Managing Your Online Reputation

This article series is now available as a professionally formatted, distraction free paperback or ebook to read offline at your leisure.

All the basic life skills we’ve covered so far in this series have been things that your dad, and even your granddad, had to learn when he left home for the first time too.

But today’s young man faces a new challenge that Pops never encountered: managing his online reputation.

Despite the nascent nature of this skill, I truly believe it’s one of the most important things we’ll talk about in this series. As the line between the offline and online world gets increasingly blurry, your online reputation is your reputation. Before you meet your freshman roommate, before you pick up a date, before you shake the hand of a potential employer…you better believe they’ve already Googled you, already formed a first, first impression about you, your interests, and what kind of person you are. Thus, if you’re not careful and conscious about the content you create online, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot in all areas of your life.

Heading Out on Your Own…And Into a Fishbowl World

Leaving for college or another kind of adventure after high school has long been an exciting and heady time. It’s an age where you’re experimenting with ideas and values, testing new freedoms, meeting new people, and often changing your mind about who you are and what you want out of life. One week you feel one way, and the next you feel another. During this process you often make mistakes, and do bone-headed things that twenty years later will still make you wonder, “What was I thinking?”

Just a decade ago, only you, and a few of your closest friends, would have held the memory of those crazy and sometimes cringe-worthy moments. The only record of them could be found by digging up a private photo album or journal.

Today…it’s a whole new ball game.

Now, everything you do and say can potentially become part of your permanent and public record. Everybody’s got a smartphone and can snap a picture of you anywhere, anytime and post it online. And things that go up online about you and from you can remain there forever. Mistakes you made when you were just 19 can haunt you for the rest of your life. Being a young man used to mean you could entirely reinvent yourself by moving to a new place and making new friends, but now your online reputation will follow you wherever you go.

I don’t mean to sound all doom and gloom about it. But that’s the sobering reality of living in the Internet Age, and it doesn’t help to bury one’s head in the sand and try to whatever that reality away. It absolutely doesn’t mean that college can’t still be the fun, spontaneous experience it’s always been; it just means you need to take a conscious, proactive approach to taking responsibility for what parts of that experience end up online and in the public eye.

Why Is Proactively Managing Your Online Reputation So Important?

One of the greatest things about the internet is that it is a giant pot that people can both add to and take from. This puts the most enormous wealth of knowledge in human history right at our fingertips and provides an endless amount of inspiration that can be added onto and “remixed.”

The downside of the big internet pot, is that the moment you put something into the pot, you pretty much lose all control over it. Many viral embarrassments have started out as something someone just wanted to share with a few good friends. But those friends shared it with their friends, who shared it with their friends…on and on until it ended up on Tosh.O.

There are essentially no guaranteed take backs when it comes to what you put online. You can erase your Facebook status, blog post, comment, tweet, or video, but someone else may very well have already shared it, copied it, taken a screenshot of it, or downloaded the video and reposted it somewhere else. How websites looked on a certain date in time are captured and archived on sites like the WayBack Machine (take a look at AoM circa 2008!). Emails that you thought you deleted forever can still sometimes be retrieved, and just because you deleted an email doesn’t mean the person you sent it to didn’t archive it. If someone else wants to post something of yours, you may not be able to get them to take it down without suing.

All of which is to say, pretty every piece of digital content you create can potentially exist forever. And this digital record can be accessed by any of the 250 million internet users in the US, not to mention the 2 billion online all over the world.

What’s on that record can have a big impact on both your personal and professional life.

Your college’s admissions office may have Googled you when they looked over your application. As soon as your freshman roommate knew you’d be bunking with him, he Googled you. When you network with someone at a party and tell them about your great idea, they’ll Google you later. And 81% of singles say they Google or check the Facebook page of someone before meeting him or her for a date.

Even though only 7% of Americans think their online reputation influences hiring decisions, in reality, 75% of US companies have made an online screening a formal part of the hiring process, 85% of recruiters and HR professionals say that having a positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions, and 70% of recruiters say they have rejected candidates based on something they found about them online. And since those numbers come from a study done in 2009, they’re undoubtedly even higher now.

What kinds of online discoveries cause recruiters and HR personnel to push your resume to the trash? This chart shows the most common red flags employers look for:

As you can see, it’s not just content you create that employers are checking out, it’s stuff your friends and colleagues post too. Be careful who you associate with.

Some young folks may be tempted to respond by saying, “Well, if a company is going to reject me for posting pictures of my drunken revelry, I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.” But that’s pretty short-sighted. I’d venture to say that these companies aren’t rejecting candidates so much because they like to drink or swear, but rather that their willingness to show off these behaviors publicly shows a lack of judgment and wisdom. Not at all an unreasonable assumption.

The information that new friends and potential employers can find about you online may not even be true. Some people will try to verify it, some will not. And what they see will often come without any context – maybe you were being funny, maybe it’s an inside joke, but they won’t know that, they’ll simply make immediate judgments about what they find. This is why when it comes to managing your online reputation, you must be both proactive and defensive — deleting anything inappropriate,  wisely choosing the digital content you create, and purposefully creating positive content about yourself.

Self-Reflect Before You Self-Reveal

“Young people in particular often self-reveal before they self-reflect. There is no eraser button today for youthful indiscretion.” –James Steyer

There are some practical ways to manage your online reputation, and we’ll get to them in a moment. But the first step in taking responsibility for your online presence is creating a mindset for how you want to approach your online life.

Matt Ivester, the author of lol..OMG! (despite the silly-sounding title, this is actually a great book, with solid advice from the guy who learned about online reputation management firsthand from his misadventures in founding Juicycampus.com), suggests three questions to ask yourself before you put something online:

1. Why are you doing this?

Why? This is the most important question of all, and one that unfortunately usually goes unasked and uncontemplated.

Today’s colleges are welcoming the first “digital natives:” they’ve never known a time when the internet wasn’t a huge part of their lives. And even for those who are old enough to have used encyclopedias for elementary-school research papers, interacting and participating online has become so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine that life was ever any other way. This is just how things are, and we do what everyone else is doing, so much so that we hardly ever ask why we are doing those things.  Once we do start asking why, the answers are surprisingly hard to come up with and articulate.

Why do you update your status or share a link on Facebook? Do you want to share news? Are you bored? Do you want to be thought clever? Are you trying to make someone else jealous? Do you want to see if people feel the same way as you? Why?

Why do you care how many likes or upvotes something you submit on Facebook or Reddit gets? Is it confirmation that you shared something with value? Why?

Why do you leave comments on blog posts? Do you want the author of the blog to know that you appreciated the article? Do you think you have the insight to add that might help another reader? Do you want the author to know how and why they are wrong? Why? What do you hope to accomplish? Do you think it will change their mind? Is it because the psychological angst you feel when you think someone is wrong needs to be discharged? Why?

Why do you participate in online forums? Does it provide a feeling of camaraderie? Do you like to hear others’ opinions? Why do you respond when you think those opinions are wrong? Why do you care what a stranger thinks about you? Why?

When you ponder the why behind creating any kind of online content, from a status update to a YouTube video, you may come up with a reason that you find satisfactory and worthwhile. Or you may find that your motivation is hard to make sense of and decide it’s not worth your time. Either way, by asking why, you’ll become what Ivester calls “a conscious creator of content.”

2. Is now the right time?

The internet creates a perfect storm for impulse control: at the same time that it actively solicits impulsive communication and make satisfying those impulses incredibly easy, it makes taking back the results of those impulses incredibly difficult; it’s easy to hit “send” or “submit,” and quite hard to un-send and un-submit something.

Facebook asks, “What’s on your mind?” while Twitter wants to know “What’s happening?” They owe their existence to people’s desire to share their thoughts, videos, and photographs – and they need to be constantly fed to survive and grow and make money. And blogs (including ours) want to engage readers and build community and so ask for comments. The internet is set up to encourage you to share whatever thought crosses your mind, and taking that thought from your cranium to the walls and screens of the digital world only takes a few clicks.

But just because you can share your thoughts on impulse doesn’t mean you should. Not only because you probably haven’t thought through the why behind wanting to share first, but because strong impulses are usually born from strong emotions: anger, depression, and grief, or from chemically-altered states (like being drunk). When you spout off and share personal feelings while emotional or trashed, you will likely come to regret it once those strong emotions fade or you sober up.

The best thing to do when you feel you’re dealing with an impulse to put something online that you might regret later, is just to sit on it. The internet creates a false sense of immediacy, giving you an overwhelming feeling that you have to respond now. But what you’ll find is that something that felt super urgent and mega important to say in the moment, will seem totally pointless when you wake up the next morning.

One method I use to thwart impulsive responses is to imagine myself living before the internet. If I feel a burning urge to tell the author of an article what a chucklehead he is, I think of reading a magazine in the 80s, and how I would have had no outlet to express my opinion about it besides writing up a letter to the editor or talking to my wife or close friends about it. Or if something annoys me and I want to rant about it on Facebook, I think of a time before Facebook when I would have had no choice but to keep my rant to myself. It makes me realize that just as sharing whatever crosses your mind wasn’t necessary then, it’s not necessary now. The fine-folks of the 80s, while they made some questionable fashion-choices, weren’t any less happy than we are now that we’re able to shout what we’re feeling and thinking to everyone 24/7.

3. How controversial do you want to be?

The younger generation  (including those my age) was raised with a lot of rhetoric about how special and unique they are, how important it is to be “authentic,” and that it’s good to be “transparent.” This can lead folks to throw caution to wind about what they share online because, “I’m just trying to be me! And if other people don’t like it, they can bite me!”

But just because you can now display your opinions and personality to a greater number of people than ever before, doesn’t mean you should, or that the more you share, the more authentic you are. Going back to my suggestion of thinking about life before the internet, people used to only be able to share their quirks with a close circle of family and friends, and they weren’t any less themselves than we are (actually they were probably more themselves since they didn’t get instant feedback on all of their quirks).

Examining the meaning of authenticity isn’t within the purview of this post (although it will be a future series), but suffice it to say for now that the ideal for many of the great men of the past was not transparency, but sprezzatura – only revealing themselves to others slowly as a relationship of trust developed. You may want to “be yourself” by trumpeting your religious, social, and political beliefs online every chance you get, but if those meme’s you keep flooding Facebook with is the only thing new acquaintances know about you, they may decide they don’t want to get to know you before they even do — they’ll miss the complexity of your character that would have shown through over time…that you’re both a liberal and a rabid gun owner, or a fervent Christian and a scientist, or a zealous vegetarian and a Marine.

The three questions above can go a long way to helping you judiciously choose what and what not to post online. A final question to consider is what the general public might think of the content if for some reason what you post went viral or you were suddenly thrust into national prominence. Would it embarrass your family? What impression would a stranger have of it? You and your friends might think it’s funny, but would others find it offensive? You never know who’s going to see your post, what’s going to be dug up on you later, and who might be looking at your phone.

How to Manage Your Online Reputation

Managing your online reputation involves both deleting content you don’t want out there and creating content you do. Follow the steps below that Ivester and others have suggested, and complete each step right after you read it. This is the kind of thing that’s easy to put off indefinitely. Do it now.

1. Google yourself.

Before you can know what actions to take to manage your online reputation, you need to know what’s already out there. To do this, first deactivate Google’s customized search – when you typically do a Google search, the results Google brings up are based on things like your location, what you’ve clicked on before, and things your friends like. But you want to see what would come up if someone else searched for you. Here’s how to take off the customized search feature.

If you have a common name like “Rob Smith,” then search for your name with a qualifier like, “Rob Smith St. Louis,” or “Rob Smith Tulane University.”

After you look at Google’s results for you, check out other search engines like Bing and Yahoo as well.

When you look at the results that come up for your name, try to imagine what conclusions someone might reach about you if they had no other context for that content, and knew nothing else about you.

2. Try to remove content that you don’t want showing up in search results anymore.

After you do a search for yourself, it’s time to try to delete things that showed up that you’d rather not have out there anymore. Maybe you signed up for an internet forum with your real name. Maybe you left a comment on a blog post under your real name. Maybe you wrote a review or a blog post that you now feel is too controversial. Some of these things you can delete yourself.

If you can’t delete something yourself, like a blog post comment on another person’s blog, then try to contact the owner of the site to see if they will remove it for you. They may or may not, but the nicer you are about it, the greater the chance of them helping you, so make your request as civil and appreciative as possible.

If you can’t find the contact information for the site owner, try the site WHOis. Website registrars are required to publish the contact information for the person who registered the domain. Oftentimes when you look up a site on WHOis, you’ll find that the owner has decided to keep their direct contact information private and have instead given a proxy email address. Either way, your email will end up in the same place.

Understand that even if you’re successful at removing the offending content from a site, it may take a few days or even weeks before it’s reflected in search engine results. Also, understand that the offending item really hasn’t “gone away.” There’s a chance that it has been archived on the WayBack Machine. Remember, what’s put on the internet stays on the internet forever.

Moving forward, be extremely judicious when using your real name online.

3. Proactively create a positive first impression online.

Your best bet in managing your online reputation is proactively creating positive content about yourself that pushes the bad stuff off of the first few pages of search engines. Set up accounts with large social networking sites that typically rank high on Google and other search engines. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ profiles are often on the first page when you look up someone’s name. Set up accounts with them and post stuff that you’d be proud to have your name associated with.

The best thing you can do to ensure positive stuff associated with your name is at the top of search results is to start a blog and update it regularly. If you can, try to secure a domain name with your given name for your blog. What should you write about on your blog? You can publish your resume (redacting phone numbers and addresses, of course), write posts sharing insights in an expertise you might have, or use it to create a portfolio of your work if you’re a freelancer. Whatever it is, make sure it’s stuff you want associated with your name.

Cross-link your blog and all your social networking profiles together: put your link to Facebook and Twitter on your blog, a link to your LinkedIn profile and blog on your Facebook account, and so on.

Even if you don’t plan on using Twitter or Google+ or even putting anything on your blog, it doesn’t hurt to have your name registered with those accounts and domain. You don’t want some Joe Schmo mucking up your good name with a bunch of crazy online antics.

4. Adjust privacy settings on Facebook and clean up your Facebook Profile.

To ensure that potential employers or love interests only see the best of you when they look you up on Facebook, make the following adjustments:

First, take a look at how your profile page looks to the public. If you see any information visible that you don’t want strangers to see, make a note of it.

To change what’s visible on your profile page, click “About.”

Click “Edit” on the next page.  On each segment select “Friends” if you don’t want anybody who’s not your FB friend to see a particular piece of information. For networking reasons, I’ve left my job and school information visible to the public.

Visit the Facebook Privacy Settings page and adjust all your privacy settings so only your friends can see photos and status updates you make.

On the privacy settings page, update what your friends can share about you under “Timeline and Tagging.” Enable the ability to review and approve posts or photos that you are tagged in before they’re published on your Timeline. You can also disable Facebook’s tag suggestion when your friends upload photos that look like you. You don’t want your name tagged in an unflattering photo or post.

While you’re on the privacy settings page, limit who can see posts from the past. Even if you used to post everything publicly, this will retroactively make those posts private.

Review the photos that you’re tagged in and untag yourself from any unflattering photos. While you’re at it, you might ask your friend to remove the photo if it’s something you don’t want out there. Even if you’re not tagged in the pic, it could come back to haunt you.

Leave groups and unlike pages that may be seen as controversial…or just dumb. At least set the privacy settings on them so only your FB friends can see the pages you like.  how.

5. Be more conscious of what you share and whom you share it with on Facebook.

Ask the three questions we covered above before posting something on Facebook. That will save you a lot of grief.

Also, take into account if what you’re about to share is appropriate and relevant to ALL your Facebook friends. You don’t need to share your weekend plans with your old boss and former professors. In real life, you adjust what you talk about depending on your company — do the same on Facebook. Create lists on Facebook for close family/friends, acquaintances, professional colleagues, people that are the same religion as you, people you enjoy talking politics with, etc. Before posting something, ask yourself if this is something all your friends would be interested in or is better for a specific list of your friends. And even if you’re only posting for a list of close friends, still keep in mind what others would think if that status or photo got shared with people outside the list. It could happen.

6. Create strong passwords for your accounts.

If the recent story of tech writer Mat Honan’s online life being completely demolished by hackers doesn’t motivate you to strengthen your online security, then I don’t know what will. Create strong passwords for all your accounts and change them every six months. A strong password is at least 8 characters long and includes at least one special character (&!#) and both upper and lower case letters. Your passwords shouldn’t be the same for all your accounts. To manage all your passwords, use an app like LastPass.

To reduce the chance of getting hacked, enable two step authentication. Here’s how to do it on Google (if you use Gmail) and Facebook.

7. Use passwords on your laptop and mobile devices. 

An unattended laptop or mobile device provides a devilish opportunity for friends or random strangers to mess with your online life. I know several people who had to do a lot of scrambling to recover from an offensive tweet sent from an unattended iPhone by a mischievous friend. Avoid that. Enable password protection on all your mobile devices.

8. Set up a Google Alert for your name. 

Keep your finger on the pulse of what’s said about you on the web by setting up a Google Alert for yor name.  Just enter your name as a search query and Google Alert will email you a digest once a week (or daily if you want) of all the new content that’s hit the web with your name in it.

Conclusion

The internet is an amazing educational, social, and networking tool — you just need to use it wisely. Using it too little can be just as damaging to your personal and professional life as using it too much. Be a “conscious content creator” and use sound wisdom and judgement in deciding where you personally want to draw the line between your public and private life.

Any other tips on managing your online reputation? Share them with us in the comments (only after asking yourself why you’re commenting and making sure it’s the right time, of course)!

 

Related Articles

Going Undercover: How to Protect Your Privacy Online

Being a Gentleman in the Age of the Internet: 6 Ways to Bring Civility Online

Escape the Algorithm!

3 Ways You Should Never Start an Online Comment

16 Ways to Support the Art of Manliness in 2016

How to Support and Follow the Art of Manliness

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[ella-shura]

evaluation

This essay will evaluate how a public figure uses social media site Twitter to communicate with their audience. The public figure this essay will focus on is singer songwriter Shura (@weareshura on Twitter). Shura has 41.7K followers on twitter on the date this essay was produced. Although Shura has achieved her celebrity status by being a talented singer, she has significantly less followers than many micro-celebrities, such as Camden Scott (@cammiescott) who is an American Youtuber with 188.8K followers on Twitter. This essay will look at how although Shura has achieved her celebrity status, she manages her social media as an attributed celebrity may manage theirs. Shura is an openly gay woman which creates interesting niche that other celebrities may not have, she makes a lot of effort to make this a topc of discussion on her twitter, so much so that she uses her sexuality as her brand, calling herself ‘The Lesbian Pope’. 

Aleksandra Denton, publicly known as Shura, is a 28 year old, London based, singer, songwriter and record producer. In August 2019, she released her second album titled ‘Forevher’ which Pitchfork managazine described as “First and foremost, about queer women’ (Pitchfork.com, 2019). Shura’s sexuality is at the forefront of her music, her personal life and her self-identified brand and we see a lot of discussion around it on her social media accounts. During the time of monitoring her social media use (January 2020-March 2020), it had been five months since Shura had released Forevher, when visiting her Twitter page there is still a lot of promotional content for the album - for example her pinned tweet - which announces that Forevher has been released. However, because it has been a number of months since the release, the majority of the material on her profile has nothing to do with the album and is in fact just documenting her daily life. During the months of monitoring, Shura released a single titled ‘Elevator Girl’ allowing us to also assess how she deals with promoting a new project on her social media. Shura uses both Instagram and Twitter in equal measure, however tends to use Twitter to communicate with fans much more. According to Stever, G.S (2013) “celebrities used Twitter to communicate both with other celebrities and with members of the public or fans about their work as well as personal likes and dislikes, conveying information that revealed personal activities that are not typically shared in other forums”. This is an accurate depiction of how Shura uses her Twitter account, with particular emphasis on communicating with fans about personal matters; mainly regarding her sexuality. Baym, N.K. (2014, p224) suggests that “an audience on Twitter is not the same as an audience of listeners” they also interview Hoyem, a popular Norwegian artist who does not use Twitter as much as he says he can “count on earning a living from his music”. With over 700,000 monthly listeners on Spotify yet only 41,700 followers on twitter, why is it still so important for Shura to use twitter to maintain her brand and her relationship with her audience?

Although Shura does not perfectly fit the popular definition of a micro-celebrity due to achieving her celebrity status primarily through her talents in the music field, she still very much uses her social media to develop and maintain her audience (Senft, 2008). 

Marwick & Boyd (2011) suggest that there are numerous techniques in micro-celebritydom, all of which Shura uses on her Twitter account. Firstly there is the technique of “ongoing maintenance of the fanbase”. This is done simply by Shura being active on social media. Although only a small sample of tweets were collected and analysed on the blog posts, Shura tweets something almost every day, this allows her to maintain her fan base by connecting with them on a daily basis, even if this is just by liking a tweet or replying with a simple emoji.

Another technique they suggest is “performed intimacy”. An example of this on Shura’s Twitter can be seen in the blog post relating to the tweet from 18/02. In this tweet, Shura discusses her struggles with mental health, a very personal subject, with a very wide audience. Then, she publicly discusses alternative therapies with one of her followers who recommended she tries CBT. This is an example of performed intimacy because mental health and anxiety is, for many, a personal subject which is discussed with loved ones or medical professionals; yet Shura discussed this with a fan on Twitter.

Another technique that is suggested by Marwick and Boyd is “authenticity and access”. Shura’s authenticity is clearly illustrated in the blog post containing tweets with anecdotes of her friend’s sexual experience. In this tweet Shura announces “I love lesbians”, she never attempts to hide her sexuality or be anyone but her true, genuine self. 

 However, Marwick and Boyd say that a micro-celebrity’s self presentation is “carefully constructed to be consumed by others”. This is where Shura deviates from the suggested micro-celebrity techniques. From assessing Shura’s tweets, it’s fair to suggest that she uses twitter as a place to engage in casual conversation with followers, whether they are fans of her music or not. And in fact, her brand is created by tweeting things that don’t seem overly constructed and make her appear to be a friendly, down to earth person such as the “me, also me” tweet from 1st February. 

According to Baym, N.K (2014, pg224) artists have to make choices about how to interact with their fans, depending on who they think those fans are and what they are interested in. Shura’s primary audience is made up of queer womxn. When scrolling through her followers list we can see many of them with a rainbow flag emoji in their username or bio, which is a popular way for queer people to identify this fact on their social media sites. It is clear that Shura has a firm understanding of her fanbase and the kind of content that they want to see and interact with, she is likely aware that a lot of her fans like her because she is so openly gay. Because of this, many of her tweets are focused on things that have particularly gay representation for example, she made a lot of tweets expressing how much she enjoyed a new lesbian film ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’. This generated a lot of discussion between her and her fans about how much they also enjoyed the film. Tweeting about things that are completely separate to her music but still relatable to her followers is an excellent way to create a two way relationship with her followers whether they enjoy her music or not.

In conclusion, Shura uses Twitter very effectively to communicate with fans and followers, embracing the need to transition to an online platform to interact with her audience. 

However, it could be argued that shura has in fact taken advantage of the ease of two way communication on Twitter and is using it as a replacement for face to face interactions with fans. In the chapter written by Baym, N.K, they mention numerous artists who have used twitter to facilitate in-person interactions such as Billy Bragg who has used Twitter to find and join local protesters whilst on tour. There is no evidence on Shura’s Twitter that she makes any effort to meet with fans face to face. She should be conscious that although Twitter is a useful tool to interact with fans, it should not be used as a replacement for real life, in person conversation. Some may also suggest that Shura perhaps tweets too much. Shura’s Twitter following currently sits at 41.7 thousands accounts, this is a significant number of followers, however it’s not uncommon for someone in her field to gain upwards of 300,000 followers for example, Clairo who is also a solo female performer. By replying to fans so abundantly now, she may be unnecessarily adding pressure to herself to reply to fans. If the fans she currently has now expect Shura to reply, because that’s what she has always done, it may have a detrimental impact on her relationship with fans when it is simply not possible to reply to all of the tweets. Is the rate she is tweeting and replying to fans now sustainable if and when her audience grows?

References 

 Baym, N. (2019) ‘The Perils and Pleasures of Tweeting with Fans’ Weller, K., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Mahrt, M., & Puschmann, C. (Eds.). (2014). Twitter and society (Digital Formations, 89). New York: P. Lang. Last accessed: 02/04/2020 available online: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-47764-2

Cliff, A (2019) Shura Forevher. pitchfork.com. Last accessed: 02/04/2020. available online: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/shura-forevher/

Marwick, A. and boyd, d. (2011) To see and be seen: celebrity practice on Twitter. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 17(2) 139–158. Last accessed 02/04\2020. available online:https://journals-sagepub-com.mmu.idm.oclc.org/doi/pdf/10.1177/1354856510394539

RUBERG, B. (2019). #nohomo: Homophobic Twitter Hashtags, Straight Masculinity, and Networks of Queer Disavowal. In De Kosnik A. & Feldman K. (Eds.), #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (pp. 218-234). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Last accessed: 02/04/2020, available online: www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv9md.17

Senft, T. M. (2013) Microcelebrity and the Branded Self. In J. Hartley, J. Burgess and A. Bruns (eds.), A Companion to New Media Dynamics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell

Stever, Gayle & Lawson, Kevin. (2013). Twitter as a Way for Celebrities to Communicate with Fans: Implications for the Study of Parasocial Interaction. Last accessed: 02/04/2020. Available online: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gayle_Stever/publication/263257850_Twitter_as_a_Way_for_Celebrities_to_Communicate_with_Fans_Implications_for_the_Study_of_Parasocial_Interaction/links/00b4953a44862a8747000000/Twitter-as-a-Way-for-Celebrities-to-Communicate-with-Fans-Implications-for-the-Study-of-Parasocial-Interaction.pdf?origin=publication_detail

[wheresanne]

Five Questions about Korea on Quora by the Korea-Curious

Welcome to the Quora Questions Series, where I answer five random, recent questions related to South Korea from Quora, the Q&A forum website. 

In the last post, I answered questions about Korean milk, Korea becoming so rich, k-pop group GFriend, vaccines needed in Korea, and what a woman tourist should wear in Korea. 

This week, I found five more questions about a possible bridge ever connecting Korea and Japan, if visiting Busan is worth it, cheap and healthy Korean food, the importance of blood types, and renting an oppa.

Below are five questions from Quora in January 2020. (You can click on the questions respectively to see what other Quorans had to say.)

The first question from Quora is about connecting a bridge between South Korea and Japan. 

Question 1: Should Japan and South Korea connect by a bridge?

The distance between South Korea and Japan is nearly 1,000 kilometers. I don’t think both countries would want it or there’s little demand need for it. Years ago, there were talks about connecting Kyushu, Japan to Busan, South Korea via 40-kilometer undersea tunnel (My Source: “Japan-Korea Tunnel could generate billions in revenue, analyst says” UPI).

“The Japan-Korea Undersea Tunnel has been discussed intermittently for decades but became a serious consideration in 2008, when 10 Japanese lawmakers set up a committee to pursue the project.”

Other than UPI, other sources written in English are limited. 

The second question is about the delicious, healthy, and cheap food you can find in South Korea.

Q2: What are cheap and healthy foods in South Korea?

First, the answer isn’t fruit because fruit is quite expensive (compared to the Philippines or the USA) in Korean supermarkets. 

Most food and meals taste great with rice. The first cheap, healthy food to pop up in my mind is kimbab: a rice roll with vegetables wrapped up in seaweed laver paper, found in most convenience stores and ‘minute food’ restaurants for 3,000 won. It’s especially healthy and cheap for students.

Seriously, most Korean foods are super healthy and delicious. You can eat a really delicious meal for nearly 7 to 10,000 won on average. Check out my #school-lunch photos.

The third question is about blood types and personality types in South Korea.

Q3: Why is blood type important in South Korea?

What’s your blood type? Do you know? In South Korea, each blood type might have its own distinct personality characteristics (My Source: “Blood Type Personality in Korea: What It Says about You” KoreanClass101). 

A형은 성실하고 예민한 것 같아요.

e-i-hyeong-eun seong-sil-ha-go ye-min-han geot ga-ta-yo

“People with type A blood are earnest and sensitive.”

B형은 창의적이고 낙관적인 것 같아요.

B-hyeong-eun-chang-ui-jeo-gi-go-nak-gwan-jeo-in geot ga-ta-yo

“People with blood type B are creative and optimistic.”

O형은 외향적이고 타고난 리더예요.

O-hyeong-eun-chang-ui-jeo-gi-go-ta-go-nan ri-deo-ye-yo

“People with type O are outgoing and natural leaders.”

AB형은 합리적이고 재능이 있어요.

AB-hyeong-eun-ham-ni-jeo-gi-go jae-neung-i it-eo-yo

“People with type AB are rational and talented.”

The next question from Quora’s forum site is about traveling to Busan.

Q4: Is Busan in South Korea worth visiting?

I think Busan is beautiful and worth it! Busan is the second most popular city in Korea, well known for its beaches. Busan has Haeundae Beach, Gwangalli Beach, Songdo Beach, just to name the most popular ones. 

Busan has great street food, seafood markets, and it’s easy to navigate around with the subway system and busses,  learn history by seeing the colorful houses in the Gamcheon Culture Village (부산 감천문화마을), and lastly, a fun night-life scene.

Many visitors and locals also enjoy “the most beautiful temple in Korea” is Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, where you can see the peaceful temple next to the sea. 

The last question is about renting a guy “oppa” to hang out with.

Q5. Can you rent an Oppa in South Korea?

First, “오빠” o-ppa is used by females to call or address a guy older than her, it means “older brother.” 

There’s an app you can use to rent an oppa, and then spend the day with the guy, just hanging out, walking around, having a conversation, and maybe having a coffee together only as friends (My Source: “We rented a Korean 'Oppa'” AsianBoss).

Hope this information was useful! 

What questions or comments do you have about South Korea? 

You can read previous posts from the Quora Questions Series here. If you found any mistakes in this, please contact me! Thank you for reading!

[judgesabo]

In Infinite Finality

So this is going to be my first non-Homestuck post here. I usually try to keep to that theme so people know what they’re getting and not get bogged down by politics or whatever else. But this is rather important to me personally, and we likely won’t get a better time to address it, so I’ll make the effort. This isn’t a theory post or anything though, it’s just a goodbye to a company I once knew.

For those not in the loop, or reading this after the fact, today Marc Laidlaw released his genderbent “fanfiction” of what he had planned Half Life 2: Episode 3, which can be read here. Marc Laidlaw was a lead writer for the entire Half Life series at Valve until he left the company last year in 2016, so this can essentially be taken as a leaked story for what they had planned back in 2007 when the last game came out.

Communication with Valve over the course of this period has been infamous. Episode 3 was originally planned to be released back in 2007 back when this entire process began, yet a decade later we have heard only two major bits of information on it, the first being a leak by an anonymous source of some out dated concept art back in 2012, and the second being this. From today. Valve doesn’t even seem to even recognize the existence of Half Life fans anymore, not even to simply confirm that it isn’t happening.

It’s painful to see what remains to this day as one of my favorite franchises lost and forgotten.

To really get this across though, I’d like to remember better days.

I distinctly recall as a kid watching my dad play the original Half Life. I think it was the first shooter I ever saw, and it astounded me. I didn’t really “get” the entire concept back then, nor did I remember the title, but the idea that there was a game where I could walk around as this person and save the world from an alien invasion stuck with me.

But by the time I was old enough to really play video games, new things had come out and I paid attention to those instead.

Then when Half Life 2 came out, I found my way into a physical copy of it. I didn’t know what this “Steam” thing was that it wanted me to download to play it, so I put it off. I still have it; it’s in my hands right now.

In the summer of 2008, this changed. While I was at camp, a friend told me about this cool game called Portal. He described it to me as being filled with action, puzzles, clever writing, unique gameplay, set in an interesting world... it hit all my checkmarks. While I couldn’t play it directly at the time, I could find the Flash version, and just like he said, it was mind bending. It reshaped how I had to think about space, to be “thinking with portals,” and the thought that there was something out there that was this but in 3D was astounding.

I eventually got Portal only to find it was everything he described to me and more. Not only was is superbly written, but the more I dug into it, the more I would uncover. Little secrets were hidden throughout the world, and if you were clever you could find this giant backstory to the series, about the mysterious Ratman or Cave Johnson, or find the history of this company as it tried desperately to get funding in competition against Black Mesa.

So naturally, hearing about this Black Mesa place, I needed to play Half Life, and my expectations were blown away yet again. Fast, fun gameplay, a story of epic proportions, and more mysterious forces seemingly beyond human comprehension. It made you feel like a hero.

Among this I found act fan communities creating whole new projects like Freeman’s Mind, which remains one of my favorite channels to this day. And then there were spin offs of that as well. I found fanart, music, and theories, and not to mention Black Mesa Source as a ground up remake of the original game simply created out of the love of the fanbase. Just like with Portal, the more I would dig the more I would uncover, revealing this elaborate and well constructed universe to explore. The more I would try out, the more impressed I’d be. Not to mention other games like Team Fortress 2 to start and just enjoy playing with friends. And to top it all off was Steam, a platform most famous for simply throwing these games at you with deals, not only for Valve’s own games with groupings like the Orange Box, but all games.

Valve, to me, was this cornucopia of creativity and excellent game design. In my eyes they could do no wrong, and while Valve Time was already infamous back then, there was so much to already explore, I could wait. Half Life 2 Episode 3 was in the works, Portal was a success beyond anything even Valve had planned for, and the future was bright. Left 4 Dead 2 released somewhere in there as well, but I didn’t pay it much mind.

My patience was rewarded in March 2010, less than two years later, when Portal quietly received an update adding radios to each level, providing clues that the community I had come to know was quickly unfolding into a whole new story, and a sequel was on its way. It was disheartening that we still hadn’t received any news on Episode 3, but my favorite game was getting a sequel! How could I not be happy? Besides, Portal had originally just been the tag along to apologize for Episode 2 being late. I knew that if we waited long enough, Valve would present us with a finely polished product which would surpass our expectations. They would regularly interact with their communities and clearly loved making the games just as much as we did playing them. Valve would count to 3 eventually.

Portal 2 faced some delays (more of that infamous Valve Time, haha), but it did eventually come out the next year and it was... good. It was a good game. It went through a lot of the old ground Portal had. Didn’t offer much new. The tone had changed. Things that had previous been in the background were brought to the foreground, and when I digged into it I found significantly less despite it being the bigger and more richly detailed game. Some parts didn’t really make sense. But it was alright, and had a lot of clever moments, and most people I talked to seemed to love it even more than the original, which frankly confused me. I’d like to talk about these differences in more detail in a separate post later, but for now Zero Punctuation hit a lot of the issues.

So I continued to wait, started watching E3 just for the chance that we would once again get news, that the dramatic cliffhanger we were left with would be addressed, or at least to get a sign that some more of that patented Valve creativity was still at work. People began to stop talking about Episode 3 and instead talked of Half Life 3 as the big title in the works. After all, the entire point of the episodic structure was for these short games to come out quickly. Valve had even suggested that they would be coming out on a monthly basis, but haha, classic Valve Time, it took years instead. We still had their promises to go off of.

I still remembered warnings from Doug Lombardi that Episode 3 would come out even later than Episode 2 did, Gabe Newell talking about how they might add a deaf character, about how the next Half Life would return to the darker roots missing in Portal 2, of bits of code in other minor releases by Valve making explicit reference to Episode 3 assets, Gabe Newell coming out to meet “protesters” hoping for some news, discussions of “Ricochet 2″ talked about openly, and Gabe shown working at a forge on a crowbar, saying how it took time. In 2012, like a breath of fresh air, some concept art apparently from back in 2008 was even leaked, showing that there was indeed actual work done by Valve showing that it wasn’t just all lies. A multitude of little pieces to let us know that it was still alive, that hope was not dead, the list of which has disappeared from Valve’s dead forums but can be found here on the wiki. Sure Valve seemed focused on that DOTA 2 game, but who really cared about that. Just another joke on them not being able to count to 3, haha.

Things became worse. Calls for Communication weren’t answered. Any kind of discussion by Valve at all became further and further apart, and what was there was abandoning what we were promised. Talk about abandoning single player games entirely were common, and Gabe even seemed dismissive of putting out more Half Life sequels and making bizarre claims like how Valve would be breaking new ground by focusing on multiplayer because there’d never been commercially successful multiplayer games before. Source 2 eventually came out (can’t count to 3, haha), but all the attention was focused on that DOTA 2 game which was still around and getting regular updates and news. Valve started focusing on hardware, trying to play catch up with their competition, making a big deal about releasing a normal controller, or working with other non-Valve groups to develop VR hardware.

The Know releases a video claiming that an anonymous inside source from Valve officially confirmed Half Life 3 as dead, with Valve too scared to release a new game to meet the insanely high expectations as well as some other problems, but Marc Laidlaw dismissed Valve ever being scared. Then old talent that had been with Valve from the beginning like Doug Lombardi and Marc began leaving, the few creative masterminds we still knew were there, gone.

Years pass in complete silence. The 10th anniversary of Episode 3′s announcement comes and goes in complete silence. And what we do hear isn’t much better. In AMA’s even as early as last January, and we still get the same line from Gaben, still joking about the number 3 and refusing to confirm or deny whether anything will come from the series, refusing to give closure one way or another, and even stating how Valve just loves to troll fans by making t-shirts and posters of Half Life 3.

Instead of the game we were promised or a new IP, Valve has now stooped to copying others, and we get a fucking card game for Dota 2, something not even fans of Dota 2 wanted.

And now, out of nowhere, we have this, a look into what might have been. And it doesn’t come from Valve, but from a man we once loved who’s moved on, and seems to despair at how things turned out.

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.

This is simultaneously the most news we’ve heard about Half Life 2 and also the most disheartening. It’s a stab at an old wound long scabbed over, a reminder that the talent we used to adore was real and not just the stuff of myth and legend.

The comparison I look around and see people making is one of death, that this is the final nail on the coffin, and this is the only burial that our good friends at Black Mesa and in the Resistance will ever receive. I’ve made that comparison myself already.

But now that I sit here and write this out, that I look over everything, I don’t think that’s the right answer.

Marc even followed up with a tweet pointing out that an old, unused script is not a sign that nothing will ever come out. And he’s right. Valve may indeed release something one day. Valve still lives and breathes, and is making tons of money through Steam.

Instead, the more apt analogy is that of someone suffering from Alzheimer's. A deeply loved relative has fallen ill and has slowly become a shadow of their former self, making occasional references to the glory days as we smile, nod, and pat their hand. What happened today was a brief moment of clarity breaking through their mind, and getting a chance to talk to them as they once were in their prime, and the moment quickly passes away again.

It’s a reminder of what was lost, and that no matter what they do now, the Valve I knew is gone forever. The talent behind what we knew and loved have left, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone to replace them. No matter what happens now, the cake was a lie. And I want to be wrong so very badly. Even now I can look around and see them walking around the corner, just like their old self, and going on some new adventure.

But here we are. And seeing how quickly the community latched onto this, onto anything proves that I’m not alone.

I wish Valve nothing but the best. Even for their stupid card game.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.87 / Top Of The Pops LPs archivist & blogger Terry Wilson with Mark Watkins.

MW : Tell me about your background...

TW : I grew up in Aylesbury, and from as early as I can remember, I loved music - and it was these very Top of the Pops LPs which were the earliest I had, bought for me as presents when I was four or five, and spun on an old mono Dansette. Little did I know, the LPs were being pressed in a small plant five minutes from where I lived (I found that out about forty years later!).

I guess Top of the Pops started me on the road to what would become quite a serious record collecting habit, and a love of music generally. I went on to play in a number of unsuccessful bands, before taking up music writing (plug: Tamla Motown - The Stories Behind The UK Singles). I'm now 50, and live in Sussex with my wife and child, and although I completed my Top of the Pops vinyl collection years ago, I still splash out on the odd rarity or overseas pressing when I see it. The overseas ones especially fascinate me, although I'm no longer able fill my home with records, like I did in my bachelor days.

MW : When & why did you set up your Top of the Pops website?

TW : The project started around 1999, and I knew nothing about web design at that point. I'd started collecting the series (as an adult, that is - my childhood LPs were long gone), but this was when the internet was still in its infancy - nothing like we have today. For example, there was no such thing as a Top of the Pops LP discography, so I had no idea how many I needed, what the catalogue numbers were, or what the LP sleeves looked like. 

The website project actually began as an Excel spreadsheet, where I started listing the volume numbers, catalogue numbers and so on. A few of the albums had gotten into the LP charts back in the 1970s, so the relevant chart books were consulted and provided a few more snippets - that's how hard it was to find anything out before the internet, young people. That listing gradually expanded to the point where I thought I'd try my hand at making a website, which was a steep learning curve for me. I guess it went online around 2005.

MW : How have you developed the site since its beginnings?

TW : The first site I made was quite different to the current one. The technology was much more clunky, and the pages were all out of line. It wasn't great, but at least gave me a grounding in web design, so I knew what I needed to do. I made the decision around 2008 to re-invent it using a different host, whose layouts I much preferred, and that's where it still lives today. From my perspective, the website was more than just a space to write up and organise the discography; it was also a forum for research. I've lost count of the number of kind people who've contacted me through the site, and given me information, photos and even records over the years.

A Russian collector, for example, used to send me Top of the Pops records from the old Soviet Union, pressed on flexi-disc and coloured vinyl - I'd never even have known about them otherwise. Plus, every new discovery meant a new page for the site, and whole new sections came into being - it has expanded to the point where it's now quite vast. It's because of the size of the site that I started a blog (http://copycatcovers.blogspot.com) where I could flag up new discoveries which might otherwise not get noticed - not just Top of the Pops, but across the whole genre of what I call copycat cover versions.

MW : How do you store and maintain all your vinyl?

TW : I'd love to say I have a dedicated room with security cameras and temperature control - but in reality I store my collection in a humble way on ordinary shelves.

I used to have them in a series of proper LP cases, but they became unwieldy, so I took them out again. Just having them stacked vertically away from undue heat or humidity is all the care they need. The more precious ones are in heavy-duty protective covers, but I don't go to great lengths to look after them, or treat them like precious jewels. 

They rarely encounter a record deck, though, as I got together with a few fellow collectors some years back, and between us we digitised the whole set - so the vinyl can stay safely inside the sleeves while I listen to MP3s. The rarer tape editions in my collection are less hardy than the vinyl, so they are housed in protective cases and kept in a safe place.

MW : What are your views on these kinds of LPs - in the sense that they were once seen as cheap and cheesy - until The Mike Flowers Pops lounge music revival in 1995…

TW : There's a part of me that sees them exactly as you describe - cheap and cheesy - but there's another part of me, which I guess is the dominant voice in my head, which sees them as creative fun. It's important to remember these are not compilation albums. The making of them required a band to go into a studio, red light running against the clock, and capture track after track after track - and in this way, the original 'Top of the Poppers' group recorded around 70 full LPs in ten years - by any measure, that's dedicated musicianship, arranging and singing. I can't think of any band in history with such a prolific work rate. I once wrote a tongue-in-cheek article in which I argued these were the most important albums ever made, and by the end of it, I'd almost convinced myself! Two of them even made Number 1 in the UK album charts. That's two more than Frank Zappa, The Velvet Underground, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, etc…

MW : Do you search charity shops and similar for these albums? Your best finds? Any missing?

TW : My UK collection is essentially complete, and has been for a few years - so I no longer hunt them down. For better or worse, I'm past the point where I still find anything I need in charity shops. Overseas releases are a different matter. I buy them when I can, but I probably have more missing than I will ever know. (To my knowledge, I am the only person who's ever researched them.) 

When I was buying the UK albums, charity shops and car boot sales were my main source, and I frequented them religiously - there was Ebay, of course, but it costs a lot more to have an LP posted to you than to chance upon it for 25p in a charity shop - so I held out and gradually finished the set. My best find was probably Volume 90 - I'd never seen it, and I was killing time in a town in West Sussex when I had a rummage in a junk shop and found it for pennies. Back then, Ebay was around, but the number of sellers was a fraction of what it is today. On the very rare occasions something like Volume 90 or Volume 91 turned up, they would command prices in the £100 bracket - and that's no exaggeration. (I thereby learned I was not the only one collecting them!) 

But most of my truly astonishing finds have been via the internet. I'll never forget discovering one of the LPs had been issued in Argentina, and I bought it immediately. When it arrived, I slipped it out the sleeve to find it was pressed on starburst multi-coloured vinyl. Amazing! And still it goes on - just last year I chanced upon a UK release, a double album of disco tracks by The Poppers, which I'd never even heard of! You never know what will show up next.

MW : Tell me about some of the famous (now) but not famous (then) musicians who started their careers off doing Top of the Pops cover versions...

TW : It would be great to say a succession of stellar names cut their recording teeth on these Top of the Pops albums, but in truth, there aren't that many examples. Those who know about the cover version sub-industry (and Top of the Pops was only one LP series among many) immediately think of Elton John. He did record a good number of anonymous cover versions in the late-1960s for labels like Avenue, Marble Arch and Music For Pleasure, but only one for Top of the Pops - ‘Snake In The Grass’, issued on Volume 5 (which is, consequently, worth a few pounds). 

It's frustrating that the session men and women are largely unknown to this day, but a couple more famous names can be confirmed. Tina Charles, for example, who had success with her hit, ‘I Love To Love’, can be heard singing ‘Stand By Your Man’ on Volume 45, while well-known singer Laura Lee performs ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ on Volume 36. We might also mention Elvis Costello's dad, Ross McManus, who sang on more than one LP - including the same Volume 5 which Elton was on. Rumours that David Bowie appears on some are probably not true, but who really knows?

MW : What are your favorite album covers...why?

TW : It may seem paradoxical, but I've never really been a fan of the album covers. There are many collectors of the 'cheesecake' sleeve genre, but I'm not one of them. Mostly, I find them amusing, with the ridiculous poses and whacky clothing - they are sometimes described accusingly as soft porn, but I think that's taking them too seriously. Maybe they were considered more shocking back in the day, but there's one in particular, Volume 8 - in which the model sports a fur bikini! Can you think of a more absurd garment?

I like the quasi-psychedelic cover of Volume 16 but my favourite is probably the ultra-hideous Volume 22 - one of the ones I had when I was a kid. That's famous actress, Nicola Austin, in what can only be described as a roll-neck leotard, capped off with matching sailing hat! We should give a shout-out to Bill Graham, a designer for Pickwick Records, who came up with the iconic sleeve design in 1968. Even into the mid-1980s, when models like Sam Fox and Linda Lusardi were by then appearing on the covers, the design was essentially unchanged. He came up with a classic.

MW : What are your long term plans for the site / collection?

TW : The site continues to grow, every time another record comes to my attention. One area I never did get into was reviews of the LPs. I would have, but a fellow enthusiast, called Tim Joseph, has been preparing a book about them for years, and I didn't want to tread on his toes, so to speak. It's something I might do one day though. As for my collection, I don't know what will become of it! I have some bona-fide rarities in my possession - autographed sleeves, advance promo copies, a genuine gold disc award, and numerous overseas pressings, one of which accidentally includes a real hit recording by Elton - don't ask me how that happened, but so far as I am aware, the album is unknown to his fans and collectors. If they found out about it, they might make me some handsome offers! But who, besides, me, would really want the rest of it?

I doubt I will ever sell my collection, so I guess I'll keep it until I shuffle off this mortal coil, then what will become of it, I don't know. I could offer it to a museum, but I fear they would die laughing! In a sense, I feel I've done my bit in preserving the LP series by photographing, cataloguing and documenting it all - at one point I actually lent some records back to Pickwick so they could make digital versions of some they couldn't locate - and so they were my copies, loaded up globally to iTunes. It's a honour for me, and that's reward enough.

MW : Away from the website, what are your other interests?

TW : I've always had many interests to pursue - I have what's sometimes called the collector's gene. 

So when I'm not mulling the small print of old record sleeves, I might be cataloguing every Aston Villa football card ever printed, or compiling a collection of every King George VI postage stamp. 

I tend to go for ambitious projects - all or nothing - so when I wrote my Tamla Motown book, for example, I researched and wrote up every single 45 they ever released - a mammoth task which had to be squeezed between building websites, playing football, playing in a band - and also, a full-time job (Special mention here to my patient wife!). I've always had in interest in writing. I used to work as a journalist and edited a few magazines. 

These days, much of my spare time is consumed with mixing and remixing music on pc. It's great fun, and the technology is so freely available, anyone can do it.

MW : What's to see and do in the area you live in?

TW : I grew up in the countryside, and moved down to Brighton in my 20s. It's a place I still love - so much going on all the time with bands, nightlife, festivals and so on - but one way or another, I've ended up back in a village.

Life here is quiet, and the village is a bit other-worldly - which is fine - but very different from the pace of city life. Cars will actually pull up to a stop in the middle of the road, if someone's waiting to cross! 

The village has its own events - an annual village day, a dedicated fireworks society and various arts’ groups, which I take a passing interest in. Fortunately, there's also a choice of good pubs.

MW : How do you intend to spend the summer holidays?

TW : I have no plans yet for the coming summer - which is leaving it late, to say the least. I quite like the idea of getting a last-minute deal and flying off to who-knows-where, but I'm not sure what we'll do. I get bored easily and like to have things to do and see, whereas my wife likes to lay in the hot sun and do nothing. So, we find things which work for both of us. Last year we headed down to Cornwall to a seaside resort and went out on a few adventures, so it worked for both of us. This year, who knows?

http://topofthepopslps.weebly.com/

(c) Mark Watkins / May 2019

[topicprinter]

I have a confession to make: I’m a podcast addict.Every day when I wake up, I sit down to a podcast with my cup of coffee. When I drive, walk my dog, do chores, or work out — podcasts are always there.Every month I listen to about 120 hours of podcasts. I have been a podcast addict for about 2 years.I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked on having the ability to be a fly on the wall in a room with some of the most amazing, exclusive, and successful people in the world.Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, James Altucher, Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Ramit Sethi, Ray Edwards, John Carlton, Tim Ferriss, Noah Kagan, and on and on…Podcasting gives me access to people, every day, who I could never hope to afford to see once. (Especially one on one, if at all.)These giants have SO MUCH to teach, that of course I come away from every interview with countless takeaways…But for every trick here, or hack there that I have been able to take away from these podcasts — there is an even more important single lesson that I have heard repeated over, and over, and over.A lesson that is present in almost every one of these people’s stories.Your expectations for success, are messed up.I think we can all see that the social media “influencer” culture has definitely taken over the conversation about entrepreneurship.Search “entrepreneur” on Instagram or Twitter and you’ll find literally thousands of messages being projected about what a successful business owner has to look like.You start a business, “just hustle” and “grind it out” for a year, and boom: Huge mansions, yachts, fancy cars, Rolexes, stacks of cash…Except the people making these messages are renting boats to take pictures of and photoshop quotes over. They’re renting expensive watches and clothes to pose with. They’re hiring models to pose with them. They withdraw money to take pictures with and then put it right back in the bank just to create the illusion of the lifestyle they’re trying to sell you.The people creating these messages are also lying to you, they are also trying to hide all the effort that people who actually own the Porches, the Mercedes, the boats, the mansions actually went through to get that stuff.The one lesson that keeps coming back in every single podcast I’ve EVER listened to is this:Except to WORK for 4 or 5 years before you see ANY REWARD from your business.In a moment, we’re going to explore some examples together. I am going to prove this to you to be true by looking at the stories of famous, successful, experienced people like Joe Pulizzi, and Pat Flynn, and Gary Vaynerchuk who still took 3, 4, 5 or more years to build their business.Most of the people you are looking at today as “overnight successes” have been working on their businesses since at least the early 2000’s. It’s 2017.Building a business is NOT working on a company for a year, and then being able to afford to go skiing in Aspen whenever you want on your private jet.Across thousands of hours of interviews with entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that the consistent pattern of success (aside from having multiple failures — because pretty much nobody works in the first business they started anymore, even if that first business got them some acclaim) is taking all profits and reinvesting them back into the business for, usually, at least 3 years. 3–5 years was the range I heard the most often for these HUGELY SUCCESSFUL people to take one business to the level of “success” we see them at now.You’re not going to build the next Facebook. You’re not going to work for 6 months or one year and then be set. You’re not going to be able to put in 4 hours of work per week and materialize Rolexes out of thin air (sorry, Tim! Although the point of his book title was missed! It’s not about doing 4 hours of work per week total, it’s more about doing 4 hours of work per week that you don’t like). You’re not going to be able to afford to buy yourself expensive things for a VERY LONG TIME.The truth about being an entrepreneur is that it’s not sexy.That’s what I’ve learned from these interviews. We’ll go into the individual ways being an entrepreneur was unsexy for each of the following examples, but they all have their own version of “entrepreneur hell” that they had to go through (for 3, 4, or 5+ years!!!) BEFORE achieving anything resembling the concept of “success” on Instagram, or in your own mind.When you look at Pat today and see he is generating $100k monthly revenue, it can seem crazy intimidating.For anybody who doesn’t know Pat’s story, he went to college and graduated with a degree in architecture around the early 2000’s. To become an architect, you take a special certification test called the LEED exam.Pat got his start in 2007/2008 by creating a website for the LEED exam. It was a studying website where he would upload his notes, blog about his own journey studying for the exam, and eventually he started selling study-aids for the LEED exam.He was able to build that niche website into a good source of revenue for him, and that was his first experience with online marketing. Jump to today and he is one of the most well known business podcasters, has grown his original niche site even larger, and has a few other projects that he generates his income from.But when you’re looking at people today, you are not seeing who they are when they started.“Um okay, he’s still making $8k per month there…”Yeah I know. But here’s what you need to remember: Pat is not saying that he made $8,000 right out of the gate.He’s saying that he makes $8,000 with that website at that point in time, and that is marking him starting his new (at the time) blog “Smart Passive Income” about that topic (online marketing).He posted about making that over one year after creating the website.“Okay kind of against your 4 year narrative..” HANG ON.Ahem, so what did that year look like while he was trying to build the site?Did he just create the website in a week, slap it up online, and have Google send him droves of people who loved his study guide so much that it rocketed him to the top of the dog pile?NO!Creating the site took 2 months. Initially, because it looked nice but there was hardly any content on it.Pat was spending about 2 hours every night for 2 months studying for this LEED exam, creating the website on Wordpress (he said about 80% of his effort in this time period was learning Wordpress), and packaging up LEED information for his posts.But then he had a rude awakening when he took a practice LEED exam with his coworkers and failed miserably…So, what did he do?He tripled the time spent on this.He then transitioned to spending 4, 5, or more hours per day on this project around June of 2007. Either studying LEED information, or learning more about Wordpress to create extremely detailed charts, tables, reference sheets, for him to look back on. He even created his own sample questions, acronyms, and other lessons.He was working on this during work (lunch break), after work, on the weekends, in the morning, late at night — all the time.I know that some of his time spent was studying, but you need to realize that all of his time spent is towards the creation of this LEED Exam site that generated him $8k/month by October of 2008.How could he make such helpful information without the hours and hours he spent studying for the LEED exam, right?When he wasn’t working on studying or creating the website, he spent a lot of time doing something else that helped his LEED exam site…He would socialize on architect forums online. He was asking his own questions, answering other people’s questions by linking them back to his website, and overall spending a lot of time building relationships with his market.Pat Flynn does not even quantify these hours (he does mention them, but obviously can’t tally them up and account for how much of his time was spent doing just this — which is the main factor in ALL of the traffic that goes to his LEED exam site, the main factor in his SEO ranking for the site) when talking about the time spent building his LEED exam niche site.Well, 2008 rolls around and in March Pat passed his LEED exam with flying colors! He got a promotion, a raise from ~$36k to $60k, until…In May of 2008, when he was downsized from his firm.After calling around to other local architecture firms and being unable to find a job (even an entry level job), he decided to take another path…That’s when he decided to turn down the path of online entrepreneur full time.And on the surface, it appears that between May of 2008 and October of 2008 that Pat Flynn was able to build his website to a point where it generated $8,000 in one month.But in May of 2008, Pat already had hundreds if not thousands of visitors (on some days) already going to his website. This was extremely targeted traffic coming from almost ONE YEAR of backlinking allllllllllll over niche architecture forums (and remember, he doesn’t count any of the time spent doing that, like numerically, really at all in his coming up story).And while he does mention that he “read some books and took some courses to streamline the learning process”, he glosses over the fact that he spent literally thousands of dollars on his education. It could have been $500, but I find it hard to believe that Pat didn’t opt to go for the more expensive ~$3,000 package that comes with coaching, templates, and other things…And you know what? That doesn’t take anything away from his success.I am also not trying to imply that he hides this to be deceptive, or anything like that. I love Pat and he is an amazing resource!My point is that a LOT of people leave out these details in their success stories. When you are successful, it seems like the first thing you forget the insane quantity of time it took you to get there.Then look at his journey from then to now. He’s been working on Smart Passive Income for over eight years to grow it to this level.I know that it’s so, so easy to go to Smart Passive Income and say to yourself “Wow he’s doing $100k/m now, and he started at $8k — why aren’t my results like that?” And reading his blog while extremely helpful, unfortunately still doesn’t give you the full idea of the work you’re going to have to put it “behind the scenes” because how could it?Joe Pulizzi is the granddaddy of content marketing.In 2001 he developed one of the first done-for-you content marketing services for Penton available for sale.In addition to literally inventing the term “content marketing” (previously called “custom publishing”), he’s written 4 incredible books on the subject (with a 5th on the way) and has been the recipient of MANY marketing awards in his life.In April of 2007, Joe founded the Content Marketing Institute — the biggest content marketing conference for enterprise firms, marketers, and SMBs which is now valued at $17.6m.Did he go out and buy himself a Rolex after year 1? 2?How long did it take this industry TITIAN to build Content Marketing Institute to a level where it could support himself and his family?Joe says it took him 3 ½ years before he knew he wouldn’t need a job.Building a Million(s) dollar revenue business does not happen in 6 months, or one year, or two. For most people it doesn’t even happen in 3 years.For most people, it doesn’t happen at all. Adjust your expectations to this.Gary Vaynerchuk was brought into his dad’s liquor store at 14 years old as a shelf stocker for under $8/hr. He worked there from the ages of 14–18.He hated it.He was in the basement for hours and hours, refilling ice, schlepping heavy crates around the store.He would have much rather been out selling baseball cards, his side hustle back in the day.One day Gary realized that some people collect wine, just like his friends (and customers) collect baseball cards — and that marks the first time Gary was actually interested in his dad’s business.Gary is the master as far as scaling is concerned. Outside of his pillars about self-awareness, daytrading attention — his biggest messages are around using the websites people are paying attention to so you can build relationships with them.His two main claims to fame are growing his father’s company (WineLibrary) to a $65m business and taking his own company (VaynerMedia) to $100m.So Gary was still working at WineLibrary with his father at 18. When he was 18, he used the internet for the first time in his friend’s dorm room at Mount Ida College.At 20, he created the first Ecommerce wine business in America for $15,000 (in 1996). WineLibrary was a $3m business at that point (it also had a different name).So Gary attributes the majority of WineLibrary’s growth to 2 events: Launching the .com, and launching WineLibraryTV.How many years did it take for Gary to launch WineLibrary.com, until he scaled the business to $65m?Two years? Three years?Try five years.How was Gary able to build his dad’s company to $65m?Five years of not buying new things. Never taking a vacation. Working every single weekend until… Well, still! Working 10, 12, 16 hour days. Not buying himself a new car (he drove a Jeep Cherokee well into growing the second company, VaynerMedia).“You don’t know a single person who is successful and hasn’t worked hard for it” — Gary VaynerchukHow about VaynerMedia? Surely that was a faster home-run…You’re right. It IS amazing that he built a $100m company from scratch.You know Gary has been building his personal brand for a VERY long time. Well before there was a VaynerMedia, there was just an AskGaryVee show. Where his personality and charisma — mixed with literally thousands of hours of giving free advice (there are thousands of hours of footage, and if you watch DailyVee you know how long it takes to make these videos and this content) — allowed him to grow a following of millions.He’s also written 4 New York Times best-selling books, the first being released in 2009.So surely the journey to a $100m business was quick and easy with THAT huge of a foundation to start with. Right?Do you think it took him three years? Four years? Five?Try eight.Building a business is not easy. Even with millions of followers, and several NYT best selling books it takes 4, 5, or more years to build a mature business.There are two other entrepreneur's stories here (and it looks prettier too). If you enjoy my writing, I would appreciate a share :) If you want to get updates on when my articles come out, there is also an email form at the bottom of the article!

[ladyakahiko]

So something happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been searching for the correct words to use to express it.  I have a very busy week ahead of me and I’d like to get this all out of my mind so I can focus on the tasks ahead.  However, before I get into this, a little backstory is necessary.  This is going to be VERY long, so bear with me.

Summer of 2008--I was taking a biology class at my local community college.  There was a quiet guy who sat in the back of the room, looking rather awkward.  Sometimes he didn’t have partners for his labs.  I honestly felt kind of bad for him, so I made an effort to reach out and have a conversation when our class went on a field trip to Kensington Park.  Nothing major, just little niceties and general small talk.  I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.

Fast forward to winter of 2009--our group of friends in community college always spent time hanging out in hallway next to one of the auditoriums in the main student building.  We had our laptops out and we were planning a huge spring break trip to Canada (because we were all at least 19 but not yet 21 and wanted to go there to drink).  Many people also hung out in this area, it was a popular spot for all the nerdy gamers.  While planning the trip and asking who was in, lo and behold the guy from my summer biology class comes up and says “I would be interested, here’s my number.”  None of us really hung out with him that much, aside from the random rounds of Super Nintendo (we had TVs from the A/V department hooked up back there) or some Settlers of Catan.  We thought it was a little creepy that he invited himself on such flimsy terms, so we didn’t call him.

Moving ahead again, to the fall of 2009.  Many people from our central group of friends at community college transferred out to Western Michigan University.  Some ended up coming the same semester as me, others waited until later.  I was really excited and enjoying my orientation with new friends, when suddenly I see him--community college guy.  He greets me, saying “wow, we’re both here, what a coincidence, huh?”  I kind of nod in agreement, but feel slightly creeped out nonetheless.

This time let’s go a little further forward, to spring of 2012.  There was a big group of us nerds who all always spent time in the main floor lounge of our dorm building.  Community college guy was among them, but I didn’t think anything of it.  He enjoyed playing Magic: the Gathering which we often were playing, so it just seemed natural for him to be around.  But right before the end of the school year, I had a crush on one of my good friends from this group.  Long story short, we liked each other, things got complicated, other girls entered the picture and there was a big dramatic night at one of the local clubs that we were all out dancing at.  The next morning, I get a text from community college guy, saying: “well now that (crush) is out of the way, would you consider dating me?”  I was extremely pissed off by his tactless attempt to pick me up THE DAY AFTER something so horrible happened.  I told him no and firmly expressed my shock and anger, but he comes back with “but we both came out to Western Michigan from our community college!  Did you ever think that maybe it’s fate?”  I nearly threw up, and worried about what exactly his intentions were for coming to WMU in the first place...

A few months later in the summer of 2012, he asks me out again.  I’m feeling very exhausted by his attempts so I say, “fine.  One date.”  Thinking that if I act like an uninterested bitch the whole time, maybe he’ll get the message and finally leave me alone.  He responds back, “okay, when can you drive to (town) to meet me?”  I still lived in our college town to work over the summer, he went home.  He asked me out and then expected ME to drive nearly two hours to come meet him.  I was furious and told him there was no way I was going to do that.  In retrospect, caving in and saying yes that one time was probably a disastrous idea...

Go forward one more year to spring of 2013.  College graduation ceremony, we made it!  I’m there with my best bro Stephen, and we see (guy) in the crowd too so we invite him to join us.  We all joke around through the ceremony and make fun off our exes who also happened to be graduating on the same day.  After the ceremony we go back to our old dorm building to take pictures together.  (Guy)’s parents are beaming and seem overly excited to be taking pictures with me in them... I think nothing of it though and just focus on my post-graduation plans.

Move on to the fall of 2014.  I’m in Japan!  I made it!  My childhood dreams were finally coming true.  I posted information about applying for the JET program and other ALT dispatch companies for any friends who might be interested in the program.  (Guy) shows interest, asks me a few questions, and to proofread his application essay.  It was pretty terrible and I didn’t have time to fix every little thing, I figured he didn’t really have much of a chance of getting here to Japan anyway since he didn’t study anything remotely related to education or Japan in his university days.  I gave him what help I could and was not at all surprised when he didn’t get an interview.

Not long after this, I’m planning my trip home for Christmas 2014.  (Guy) begins to message me asking when I’ll be free during my visit.  I say that I have many people to see in Kansas and in Michigan, so I probably won’t have time to see him (a gentle way of saying that he’s not high enough on my priority list to get time with me).  He then continues on, he wants to know the dates I’ll be home, when I’ll be visiting Kalamazoo, when I’ll be in my hometown, etc.  He’s REALLY pushing to see me.  Finally, I just lose it and send him a very strongly worded message about how I’m not interested in him, how I’ve said no multiple times, and that will never change.  I then blocked him on every social media outlet we were connected on.

When I’m actually home for Christmas 2014, he calls my US phone on several occasions to try to reach me.  His number was still saved so I ignored it each time.  At the end of this trip I was finally able to permanently deactivate that phone so he couldn’t contact me anymore.

Move ahead to some time in 2015--he makes a new Facebook account and tries to add me.  I immediately block him and report the account to Facebook for harassment.  Of course Facebook does absolutely nothing.  I tell mutual friends who are connected to him to keep an eye on him and let me know if he posts anything creepy related to me or Japan.

In late 2015/early 2016 my best bro tips me off to the fact that (Guy) is still trying to apply to be an ALT in Japan.  I freak out and contact my inner circle of friends in Japan and let them know the story, and ask them if they would have my back if this guy ever showed up.  Most of my friends thought I was overreacting and just told me some BS things to calm me down.  I could feel how annoyed they were with me, and I was frustrated that they didn’t seem to take my worries seriously.

Now this.  This photo.  A screenshot from a few weeks ago, when I looked at my phone for the first time that morning and saw (Guy)’s name there.  Shocked didn’t even begin to cover it.  Before I blocked both accounts, I looked at his Facebook page to see that he is STILL attempting to apply as an ALT, with a caption “I will apply every year if I have to!”

I’m at a loss of what to do.  This has been going on for NINE YEARS.  No one seems to take me seriously when I express how scared and worried I am.  Everyone assumes “oh there’s an ocean in the way and he can’t possibly get accepted to Japan anyway.”  But what if he does?  He’s not giving up on this.  I have nightmares sometimes about meeting him at an ALT welcome event in my region, and in the dreams I just always freeze.  I don’t know what to do.

Saying “no” didn’t work.  Going across the world didn’t work.  Will this even stop when I’m married?  Is marking myself as the “territory” of another man the only way to stop (Guy) from pursuing me?  Or will he wait around in the shadows, hoping that my relationships go sour so he can spring in the next day again?

I have so much good going for me in my life in Japan, I don’t want it to be sullied by this worry anymore.  There’s seemingly nothing I can do because he’s not physically stalking me, and online forums only tell me to “go talk to the person.”  I can’t go the JET office or any other ALT companies and tell them not to let someone into the country.  I’m powerless to stop him from finding me if he gets to Japan.

By posting this, all I want is for my fears to be warranted.  I want someone to take me seriously.  I know there’s probably no way for me to wave a magic wand and make this all go away, but on days when I’m worried or when I have another new Facebook account of his staring me in the face, I just want someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me that I’m okay.  Tell me that I’m not alone in this.  Just offer me a hug and a shoulder and a place to take refuge.  That’s all I want, and all I need <3

[clientsearch]

First Post: A summary and what we have as of 5/13/17

In an attempt to segregate the actual findings from fake finds and common knowledge, this blog has been created by two members of the Finobe/Nobelium Staff Team. Our names are Davi and Whimee. If you’re interested in the search like we are, spread the word! Share this blog with your friends. Publicity will eventually reach that special someone who miraculously has the old clients.

Today, I’m going to be going over what we have so far. This post is meant for showing everyone what’s fake and what isn’t, and to calm down the public so people don’t continue losing their minds over something that was discovered a while back.

The clients we have so far

Currently, the public has access to every ROBLOX client from 2008 to the current year. You can download them all in a zip on Mediafire here, but if you only want to download one of them or download them all unzipped, they’re on this google drive folder here.

You are able to download any client from 2009 - Present through ROBLOX using this method: 

Take this link: setup.roblox.com/version-hash-file.zip

Replace the hash and file with the correct hash/file

An entire list of roblox versions can be found on this github repository, these are needed to complete the link presented above me. 

https://github.com/Anaminus/roblox-data/blob/master/versions

Now I’m sure you’re all aware of the 2007 installer that’s floating around. It is real, but it is incomplete. The installer is only capable of extracting the roblox.cab file into the correct directories on your computer. It holds nothing related to the client. Nevertheless, it’s still worth checking out, and you can download it from archive.org here. If you would rather not download it, you can check out this video I made last year in which i present the installer.

https://youtu.be/aPJ1_TZOHiM

Recently, there have been a number of forum threads and videos created surrounding the search for the old clients. 

This thread dates all the way back to the Spring of 2012. A user requested the client from 2006/2007, and someone actually delivered. The link to it is dead though, but luckily the user who posted it is still active on that website. Making an account and attempting to contact the user “Windows XP” will be worth a try. We haven’t done it yet.

*****************

UPDATE-From user Nate.

'I would just like to clear one thing up. First of all, in the first post there was a mention of a 2007 client that had a dead link on BetaArchive. FYI, you can still download the freaking .exe setup using BetaArchive. And I was disappointed, because when I downloaded the setup, it was just a regular mid 08 client. Nothing special here, boys.' 

*****************

A thread posted this year on LostMediaWiki requests the same thing, though nothing new has cropped up on it. We aren’t going to post everything from it here, so this thread is worth checking out for getting the contact information of a ROBLOX developer who worked on one of the earliest versions of the client, the link to the ROBLOX patent filed in 2005 and countless images/videos. After mid-page 4, the thread is no longer worth reading.

This video made by myself was meant to gain as much publicity as possible. The only thing from this video’s comment section that is worth reading is the pinned comment by Plausibly and it’s replies.

FAKES

There are many many fake clients out there today, with YouTube videos on them gaining a lot of undeserved attention. Instead of linking you to all of these pages, I’m simply going to reiterate the fact that AS OF MAY 13, 2017, THE ONLY CLIENTS THE PUBLIC IS AWARE OF AND CAN ACCESS ARE 2008 - PRESENT. The fake clients are more than likely simply a modified 2008 client. If you believe you actually have an earlier version of a client though, please e-mail us at finobeofficial@gmail.com with a copy of the client either directly included within the e-mail or linked to a file sharing site where it’s been uploaded.

[epochxp]

How to Get Miniature Gaming Mileage Out of Old Role-Playing Games!

1st Edition box cover | Amazon.co.uk 

I have been a wargamer since 1983 and a role player since 1985, and the truth is, no game was as formative to my gaming “zeitgeist” as it were, as was Twilight:2000. Why is this so? Because first, the timing of the game was excellent. The Cold War was in full swing, and Ronald Reagan was hell-bent on beating the Soviets, and it seemed to many, damned the cost. With movies like Threads, The Day After, and Testament being made, it seemed NATO and the Warsaw Pact might very well come to blows. 

Or at least it did to this 10-year-old growing up in Gaithersburg, MD, which is a stone’s throw from Washington DC. Maybe it was my subconscious need to make sense of it all. Maybe I wanted to play something other than sword and sandal RPGs. I just wasn’t that into that sort of thing? Well, come one day, I was reading Analog magazine, and I read a review of Twilight:2000. I was hooked. I got the game as a birthday present that next summer and collected pretty much everything that came out for the game until GDW folded up shop in 1993, but here I was, plenty of books and a fertile ground of ideas…what to do with it, right?

I was fortunate in that the game has had something of a bias towards miniatures since the beginning. In fact, a set of Twilight:2000 miniatures rules were published in Challenge Issue 25, which was GDW’s house magazine for its RPGs. (The rules had a very proto-Command Decision feel and could be its predecessor.)

US Army Vehicle Guide Cover | Amazon.com

Furthermore, the game had an official line of miniatures (by Grenadier Miniatures, long OOP), but if you look hard at convention flea markets (bring and buys to our British cousins), you’ll still find from time to time a supply of the figures usually in lots of 6 or 8 packs of figures. The miniatures themselves are a bit smallish compared to some 20mm lines (Britannia comes to mind), but they’ll fit in well with some others, like Ehliem, and they have some nice poses and sculpts. 

Jason Weiser, “500 Miles..” 

And if that wasn’t enough? GDW published the US Army Vehicle Guide, which had an entire section, and black and white pictorial on just how to use Roco and Roskopf vehicles with your figures (not to mention how to make conversions of some of the harder to find stuff). Dated stuff today, but the pictures are a real bit of inspiration on how a gaming table for Twilight:2000 should look.

So, this all inspired the beginnings of my blog. I’d done some stuff for Twilight:2000 before, on the late, lamented Guild Wargamers forum. (which was a real boon for all things 20mm) and I wanted to write a blog to tell those small group of souls that “Good Luck, You’re Not Alone” in this crazy subset of a subset of a hobby, and with all this Cold War Gone Hot nostalgia going around (Down in front, Team Yankee!), I thought, “perfect time for a blog, right?”

So thus, “500 Miles to the German Border” was born. I was prolific my first year and wrote a wargaming-focused analysis on everything that could be of use to the Twilight: 2000 gamer. I think my best stuff has been my writeups of the various role-playing modules as suitable miniature wargaming scenario material, but I have found my blog being quoted in a lot of places, including The Miniatures Page, and even some Twilight:2000 role-playing pages as they mine it back for ideas.

This is just my own experience, really, but honestly? There’re tons of older RPGs out there, collecting dust and not being played, but they’re chock full of ideas that await the application of your favorite miniatures rules sets(s). But the best advice I can give is the following.

Pick a single game and stick with it: It really works best this way. Focusing on Twilight: 2000 has let me do a lot with the game and let me reexamine an old favorite in a new light. I mean, I didn’t realize that Allegheny Uprising could probably take the cake as “grimmest     adventure I’ve ever read”. This is especially true when you’re searching     the module for miniature gaming ideas, and they’re all grim. And readers     like knowing what to expect from each blog entry.

2. Be flexible: It’s more important you stick with the spirit of the game than the letter. I will admit I have had to fudge here and there (the canon color plates in the Vehicle Guides versus the RL schemes that probably would have been used in my vehicle color schemes articles is a good example).

Respect the Copyright: You’re playing in someone else’s sandbox, so be a good net citizen and don’t be posting PDFs online or such. If you must quote, use citations. And always credit photos if you can. I know that’s not always possible but get in the habit of doing so. 

Listen to feedback: Sometimes, comments can really be a big help. My figure review articles, for example, have been nothing but improved due to the assistance some posters have provided (especially the 28mm article, which is a scale I know little to nothing about).

Know your audience: My audience, for example, is going to want all sorts of tutorials, news on where to get neat stuff to improve on that Twilight: 2000 look on the table, and plain inspiration anywhere you can get it. When I am not writing on a topic myself, I am recruiting contributors, and I have two part-time contributors already! 

So, what does all this mean for the miniatures gamer who is looking to crack open a “dead” RPG for inspiration? Well, there’s a fertile ground out there. You’d be surprised what you can find, and honestly, a few throwaway sentences buried in an adventure can be the basis of a great scenario or two for the tabletop. 

And that’s the final point, do something that makes you want to write about it. Blog writing for miniature wargaming should never be a chore. And be consistent, if not prolific, once or twice a month for a posting schedule is pretty good and will keep your fans satisfied for the most part. And do not be afraid to ask your audience occasionally what they’d like to see. You’d be surprised as to what they might come up with. 

So, how is this Not Another Third World War?

As you’ve read from the sidebar, Twilight: 2000 wasn’t a game that posited the usual what I call “Soviet Sunday Drive to the Rhine.” Instead, the Warsaw Pact was on the defensive for most of the game’s background (which can make for some interesting games for all those 6mm types, as all the vehicle guides have HELPFUL information on TOEs). Also, with the end of the Cold War, there are tons of declassified materials you can mine for orders of battle, scenario ideas, and a whole host of other things. (And EpochXperience can help you with that, we’ve got a lot of archival experience!)

By the time 2000 rolls around, you have a background that has some of the bells and whistles left, but not all. What’s striking and fun is the dichotomy. Horse Cav with GPMG and ATGM, MBTs running on hooch and different uniforms even within the same unit. And you can steal ideas from Mad Max, Day After, or dare I say it? Threads? (There is a certain traffic warden that would look awesome in 20mm, and Ehliem makes a nice figure that would make a great starting point. Crooked Dice also makes him in 28mm!). All of this is a historical zeitgeist of the 1980s, where we were pretty convinced the Cold War was going to end with a bang and not a whimper. It left a big impression on my life.

Figures by Ehliem | Jason Weiser, “500 Miles…”

What’s also nice? If you like infantry heavy games? This milieu is for you. As I said before, there’s some ironmongery, but not a lot. And for the modelers? The fact there is fewer vehicles and heavy weapons means you can let your imaginations run riot and really personalize your AFVs and other vehicles, as the “gypsy caravan” look is very, very in Twilight: 2000. 

So, there is a rich tapestry out there for a 35-year-old RPG and plenty of 15 and 20mm figures out there to paint up for it. Why not give it a try?

About Twilight: 2000

Twilight:2000 burst onto the scene in November 1984 in a period of high tension during the Cold War. It took a then likely East-West confrontation and turned it into good RPG fodder, with some historical allegory to the Thirty Years War (with Poland standing in for Germany). 

The game’s initial background posited a Soviet invasion of China after escalating border tensions in the then-future of 1995. This distracted the Soviet Union, and West Germany, in cooperation with East Germany, moved to kick the Soviets out of East Germany by force of arms. This naturally went badly, and expanded into a Third World War that pulled NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The second edition of the game was printed in 1990 and changed the flashpoint to German/Polish border issues in Western Poland and ethnic Germans in Silesia, and the 2.2 edition of the game was published in 1993, just before GDW folded and changed the timeline again, this time positing a successful hardliner coup in 1991.

 The game, while a bit dated, still has something of a following and was even an attempt to bring the game back as Twilight: 2013 in 2008, to mixed reviews, and the game still has a small but fanatically loyal fanbase as the story of soldiers lost, far from home in a post-apocalyptic landscape has had something of an appeal since the story of Xenophon.

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At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.

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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)