iPowerWeb - "Server 01"

As you can see, I got rid of the useless calendar feature on this blog. On top of its uselessness, it really outs the lazy blog poster. In its place is the goofy treated pic of my mug. Personally, the more I look at it, I don’t like it. It might have to go soon. Comments?

I’ve been going over my web stats in my spare time over the last couple of days, something I used to do more often when I was working for myself. I am just shocked by how bad web stat spoiling by spam robots has increased. I need to spend a little time looking for a solution.

I can’t believe it helps that my hosting service is using a dated cPanel host management application. Speaking of my hosting service…my host is iPowerWeb and overall, I couldn’t be more displeased. When I first start using iPowerWeb in 2000 or so, it was fast, up-to-date and the customer service was instantaneous and good.

Within the last 2 years, if I wait any less than 15 minutes on hold for a customer service rep., it’s a good day. This past weekend this site was down for over 12 hours. I waited on hold for the usual 20 minutes to hear, “oh, you are on ‘server 01’, ‘server 01’ is down due to a hardware issue, they are working on it.”

Knowing that I am on server ‘01’ gives me a real bad feeling. So this would mean I am on the oldest server in the place right? And I can start to expect hardware issues more and more frequently? I can’t wait. I would switch in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for all the BS of migrating the domain to another host and recreating mySql databases, MT blog installs, emails, and the multitude of other tweaks that I have forgotten that I did that will cause me to lose a day of my life chasing. I think I am better off pushing iPowerWeb to migrate me off of ‘server 01’ to a newer box. Hey iPower, migrate me to another server with all my settings in place and I will remove this post. ;-)

Serious Game Development a Reality

We are moving into serious games development at work. Exciting stuff. I was initially cautious given the limited develpment resources available in the higher education environment. That said, with the recent creation and opening of the GRID LAB, the Aestetics Technology Lab, local companies such as Odyssey Interactive and developing strategic partnership with Minerva Games (formerly known as Cyberlore Studios) the real capacity and for serious games development is in place. These dev resources along with the content and SME resources available from the university have made serious games development a reality.

Just this week I organized a couple training sessions for specific individuals and organizations around campus on a tool called Mission Builder by Minerva. It allows for rapid non-linear conversation creation and integration into an existing game engine. With this app, which is still in Beta, we can more rapidly develop compex conversations to meet any learning outcome that can be acheived via simulated conversation in a game environment. It rocks.

Essentially, you can move your characters from conception into a mapping environment like this:

and from here, build the conversation into your game:

This particular game is an example that we used to train on for training floor sales associates on customer service in a retail environment.

Weekly Highlights

Here are the highlights from this week

This is why Keith Richards is great:

http://www.newstoday.com/keith-chop.php

This is why people from Brooklyn are great:

http://www.keeseys.com/radio/starbucks.wmv

I discovered this site a couple of weeks ago. I like their approach. Apparently, my friend Eric did to. Note RUDEcast #2. I'm "The Guy from Ohio"

http://www.rudeconsultants.com

Oh yeah, I stumbled across the source tapes of my audition with Lenny Kravitz from a few years ago. So close. "I coulda been a condender"

http://www.keeseys.com/radio/audition-with-lenny-kravitz.mp3