Something that I've always been nervous about, is whether or not Bytesize is a turnoff to the general public. Namely, the fact that it plays by default when you visit the front page.

The player is programmed to remember your settings, so if you hit the STOP button and leave, the player will no longer auto-play. A lot of general internet users probably never figure that out, though.

So it makes me wonder... Are there a lot of people who come to the NG front page, get bombarded with audio, and simply leave rather than stick around? Does anyone know of any examples of this happening to people? Please share... I'm looking for some real serious feedback, since the result could be dramatic for bytesize - defaulting to OFF means a lot of people will never enjoy all the cartoons there. Also, maybe some people take MORE interest in NG after being forced to watch a sample of what goes on here. It's hard to get feedback here on NG, because everyone who posts here is obviously a fan of the site, and not someone who left. :)

Thoughts?

Abner came by last night for a progress-check on the upcoming NG store overhaul. Oldschool NG fans may remember Abner as the guy who created the original Shotgun Man sketch for Assassin.

Funny side story... Back in college, Abner and I had started work on a Shotgun Man cartoon, which was to become a series on NG. Each episode revolved around Shotgun Man getting angry in routine everyday situations, the result being a massive bloodbath. Abner drew characters and backgrounds on paper and I "inked and colored" (yeah, traced) them in Flash. We never finished an episode, though. It's a shame, it would have been great.

Since the days when we were college roommates, Abner took an interest in programming, namely, the same sort of programming Ross and liljim do. We figured that since a store system wouldn't tie in much with the rest of NG, it would be a good opportunity to throw a third programmer into the mix.

Progress is coming along well! It's hard to say how far we are from launch (just assume it will never launch - then we can't disappoint you), but I'm excited with how far it has already come.

I'm scrambling to get Castle Crashers done, so that's pretty much gonna be my life story for the coming months. What can I say, console games are BIG projects... Too big.

General team status check...

Ross - finishing up the new system for viewing individual user reviews, as well as new review mod tools.
liljim - working on the post-redesign multi-author system.
Jeff - in the final stretch (?) of Tankmen 2.
Stamper - prepping product shots for the store and a million other oppressive odd jobs
MindChamber - working on Pixel Puncher art and starting an epic cartoon
Tim - setting up secure server for store, trying to solve our AOL problem for <= $2000 a month
Mike - working on Castle Crashers on-line multiplayer (with Josh from Team Behemoth) and BSP code

The AOL problem is that AOL isn't giving Cogent (our bandwidth provider) proper access to their users... So NG runs INSANELY SLOW for AOL users. I wish I could tell everyone to just STOP USING AOL because it's a piece of shit scam of an ISP, but unfortunately a lot of people want to keep using it, so we have to pay a ton of money to set up an alternate high bandwidth route for AOL users.

Ok back to work.

This past weekend was the first weekend in a while that April and I were able to just hang out without going to weddings or without me going away on some trip. To honor the occasion, I decided to make a CD to listen to in the car! It's really a CD for April to listen to in her car, but it hasn't left my car yet. The mix features:

1. Interpol - Pioneer to the Falls
2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy
3. Spoon - Don't You Evah
4. Mark ROnson featuring Lily Allen - Oh My God (remake of a Kaiser Chiefs song)
5. M.I.A. - Boyz
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Rockers to Swallow
7. Lily Allen - Alfie (CSS Remix)
8. Devo - Watch Us Work It (new Devo song!)
9. The Futureheads - Hounds of Love (New Mix)
10. The Shins - Sea Legs
11. Beck - Girl
12. Interpol - The Lighthouse

Now due to the beautiful weather and good vibes, the two Interpol songs and "Down Boy" felt a bit too glum for the general mood. Also, as much as I love The Shins, Sea Legs wasn't quite fitting in. I don't know if it's the song, or because I've had it for a few months and it wasn't feeling as fresh. The Beck song wasn't new either, but it was new to my MP3 collection, so that made it fun for me. The rest of the songs were perfect for the weekend... If you want to re-create my weekend of driving around, burn that list to disc and give it a try. Today it was raining, so the Interpol songs fit the mood better. I need to reconfigure the mix a bit but I doubt I'll get around to it.

I value the importance of mixing good songs with good times, because then you can hear the songs later and remember the good times you had. I was pretty happy with the CD I put together for our wedding cocktail hour. For the reception, it's important to play familiar songs and not be all pretentious, but cocktail hour is a great opportunity to play stuff people may be less familiar with and just set a general vibe. This was my cocktail hour mix:

1. Norah Jones & Wax Poetic - Angels (Thievery Corporation remix)
2. The Clash - Rock the Casbah
3. New Order - Age of Consent
4. Goldfrapp (Ooh La La)
5. Gang of Four - At Home He's a Tourist
6. Liars - Mr Your on Fire Mr.
7. Pete Bjorn and John - Young Folks
8. Stigmato Inc - Reality Check
9. DJ Cam - Success (Thievery Corporation Remix)
10. GOldfrapp - Fly Me Away (The Naughty Remix)
11. New Order - Ceremony
12. Federico Aubele - Postales
13. Willie Bob - Spanish Grease (Dorfmeister Con Madrid De Los Austrias Muga Reserve Mix)
14. New Order - Temptation (7" Edit)
15. Bloc Party - Banquet
16. Goldfrapp - Number 1
17. Klaxons - Golden Skans
18. DJ Krush - On the Dub-ble

For our first dance, we picked "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack - Single Mix", by Liars. The single mix is more "peppy" than the regular version.

If you haven't heard some of these, you should be able to buy most of them on iTunes. Check 'em out. :)

I can't believe I never saw this before. At least, I don't remember ever seeing it.

This time of the year always seems to be hectic...

July 17th - Launched the site redesign.
July 22nd - Flew to San Diego for Comic-Con
July 30th - Flew back to Philly
July 31st - August 2nd - Caught up on over 2,000 emails and PMs.
August 3rd - Flew to Las Vegas for best friend Andy's bachelor party
August 6th - Flew back.
August 7th - 10th: Built three area levels for VS mode in Castle Crashers, as well as an arena battle menu system, with an expanded character roster and arena select.

I need to have the VS mode arenas ready and "well tested" before I fly out to Seattle on August 23rd for the Penny Arcade Expo, where we will be running some VS battle competitions and giving out prizes!

Tonight is Andy's rehearsal dinner and tomorrow is the wedding.

Everything is on track, EXCEPT for prizes! I have yet to announce the Best of July (expect that on Monday), and we still haven't sent out prize packs for the Best of June, Rock out winners (for best songs) and the Transformers Collab. I have a feeling we aren't getting the prizes they had offered to supply us with (I blame Stamper), but we'll probably go out and buy a bunch of TF toys. We can get better ones anyway, and I doubt anyone really wanted the soundtrack that much.

The Castle Crashers arenas should be a lot of fun. The first features standard fighting, but the second and third mix things up. In the second arena, you only have a bow and arrow and a bunch of pillars to hind behind. Players run around and collect power-ups, which make them run faster while shooting arrows further and faster as well. It becomes a crazy shootout as players get more and more powerful.

In the third arena, players only have shovels, and must dig around looking for a special power up that allows them to pummel and terrorize their opponents. I might change this to a treasure hunt with gems, and make a fourth arena that deals with defenseless players seeking ultimate power, I haven't decided yet.

I gotta head out to that rehearsal dinner! And I'm behind on PMs again. :(

I'm completely disgusted with Sirius Satellite Radio at the moment.

So several (many?) months ago, I stopped getting reception in my car. Weeks later, the same happened with April's car. It turns out, the Sirius antenna is a total piece of crap that tends to break within the first year (as noted in the reviews on Amazon, where it has a one star rating).

To make matters more annoying, Best Buy says they haven't had the antenna in stock for months. I finally gave in and ordered the antennas on-line from Amazon, but a month later, I have received notice that they are unable to obtain the antennas and have cancelled the order.

Meanwhile, April and I continue to pay a monthly subscription, which I really need to get refunded. To think I still own stock in this company. :(

OMG this movie makes me so sad. It makes me want to go home.

Big thanks to everyone who visited us at Comic-Con! It was a lot of fun and turnout keeps growing every year.

Our return flight ran late and the baggage claim took forever, so I didn't get home until 2am last night. Comic-Con might seem like a vacation, but it's a pretty grueling week - setting up a booth, standing in front of it for nine hours, then drinking for the rest of the night. Yeah it's a lot of fun, but it wears you out. At the end of each day, I would walk back to the hotel, give April a late-night call, sleep for 5-6 hours and start all over.

I had just started adjusting to Pacific time by the end, so now it's 2am EST / 11pm PST and I'm having a hard time falling asleep. It was never hard to fall asleep during Comic-Con; I shut down the moment I closed my eyes. Now I'm thinking about all the things I need to catch up on, the nearly 2,000 emails and PMs that I didn't already get through today. I think about how I need to get back to work on Castle Crashers, but I don't know what to do about all the emails and PMs, all of which I do read through. Not to mention I'm wasting my time writing this.

So I'm watching Current TV and I just noticed they changed "Google Current" to "InfoMania", thus removing the Google association. I wonder if Google wasn't comfortable associating themselves with political topics. On an unrelated note, Newgrounds has been blocked by the entire country of China. They apparently do that to a lot of sites, but it sucks nonetheless. Artists from China can't submit their stuff here without going through a proxie now. They also can't respond back and defend their government when I say it's COMPLETELY STUPID! They should focus their efforts on making sure competitors in the 2008 Olympics don't have to wear face masks from all the smog, rather than worry about what people say on the Internet.

I should go to bed.

So when Dan and I hang out, we tend to talk about future game ideas. Here's one that I'll share, since the chances of making it are pretty slim. It would be a Wii game called Monster Jerkoff. The story is, angry monsters are invading your village, and you gotta grab their dicks and jerk them off with the Wiimote to calm their rage.

Picture scary Resident Evil IV graphics, where the monsters have beady eyes and scary gnarled teeth.

So if you jerk a monster off too hard, he might knock you down on the ground... At which point he walks up to deliver a death stomp to your face. As he lifts his leg, you have a short window to point, click and start jerking on his dick. This would totally save your ass from certain death.

Thoughts?

Tim and I arrived in San Diego last night around midnight and had a quick meeting with John and Dan at the Behemoth office before packing it in at the hotel here in Little Italy. The air outside was cool, but the non-air conditioned hotel room still managed to be hot.

I wake up at 5:44am - partly due to excitement but also because it's 8:44am on the east coast, which is way past when I normally get up nowadays. I've been on a jogging kick lately, so I attach my iPod and go to it. I start my routine with a jog AWAY from downtown, towards the airport and the neighborhood under its noisy flight path. This is a redevelopment district, so it's always fun to see what pops up. There are a variety of art galleries and boutique shops that somehow manage to stay in business despite not having any customers or local foot traffic. I like to imagine the shop owners come in when they're tired of sitting by the pool. Rather than run a business to make a living, maybe they do it to make themselves more interesting at coctail parties. A few of the galleries from last year are vacant, but new ones have sprung up. It's dead silent this early in the morning.

My jog loops around towards the waterfront, back past the hotel and in the direction of downtown. Interpol's "Heinrich Maneuver" kicks in on my iPod with, "How are things on the west coast?", which seems appropriate, like I'm in a movie. I pass Broadway and the outdoor mall with Jamba Juice (my favorite quick morning stop in San Diego) but don't stop because I still have a good bit of jogging in me. I go to where downtown dead-ends into the convention center (aka Mecca) and jog up the trail towards the Omni Hotel, where I've stayed with April during two previous Comic-Cons (she used up all her vacation days on the honeymoon this year).

From there, I loop back around and weave through the Gaslamp district, looking for changes since last year. I'm devastated to find that Bassam, my favorite local coffee shop, is vacant and available for lease. It looks like the Starbucks across the street finally won. It wasn't enough that another Starbucks was two blocks away, they had to make sure Bassam didn't stand a chance. During the Alien Hominid crunch, I would make nightly trips to Bassam for their chai latte. Sometimes I would go to Borders and listen to CDs while sipping my chai, picking out new music to fill those lonely late-night coding sessions.

Jogging back towards the hotel, I finally stop at Jamba Juice for a wheat grass shot (for old time's sake) and protein smoothie. I try to jog with my smoothie but ended up walking most the way back. The streets are still really quiet this time of day, mostly just me and the people who keep the sidewalks clean. I was caught off-guard by the sound of pounding club music - apparently 4th and B had some all-night rave that was still going into the early morning hours.

Returning to Little Italy, I pass a new gelato spot and a place called Intelligent Design, but not in the Biblical sense. I toss my cup in the trash and do one last sprint for the hotel. I figure if I don't make a post about something this morning, I'll be too busy to do it later today. :)