Black thumbnail

The Missile Command thing is one of the finest creative works I have made this decade. It's grown even more on me. I was listening to just the audio while getting groceries the other night and was durn right pleased with myself.

On the down side, I'm not sure I'll be able to top it with future Jmac's Arcade episodes. I fear they won't be nearly as poignant, anyway. I have more ideas of things to talk about and I hope they will amuse, but I doubt they'll affect like this one does.

Working with Google Video for this project has been a little frustrating. The video's thumbnail is black, and (after two emails) Google support sez they can't or won't change it. This actually sucks: compared to the Scramble video, which gets dozens of views a day from (I assume) people stumbling across it randomly and maybe passing the link around a little, the Missile Command one often gets no views, or one or two at most. I think this is entirely the fault of the thumbnail.

Maybe I should just put these on YouTube instead. Was using Google coz I like Google, and I have to use them for The Gameshelf, whose episodes are too long for YouTube. Of course, they may just moosh into each other soon anyway... meh.

Attn xymotik

It is imperative you look at this: http://boingboing.net/images/1ff127c9mv3.png

(Yes, this was on Boing Boing earlier.)

A good week.

Friday I got all things straightened out with work setup, I think, in terms of both technology and HR. I know how to submit my invoices, and my workstation PC is now equipped with sudo and VPN access. The sandbox environment purrs along happily, waiting for me to do something. And I will, next Wednesday, the first day of what I expect to be many WedThuFri work-weeks there.

I can drop the coy façade and announce that the company is, o shocker, ITA Software. Due to the NDA - still a novelty for me - I'm going to play it safe and just not blog about the actual stuff I do there. It isn't all that interesting anyway. I reserve the right to decouple something I learned about programming or design from the reason of why I learned it, and write about that.

I will feel free to write about stuff besides actual work at work, too. Started to do that here but I'll save it for later.

And, yes, I billed for the time I did spend there this past week, and will submit my first invoice on Tuesday. I will walk there. It is a nice walk!

---

Today switched back to Volity time and I made good use of it, building the subscription-purchase webpage. Then I built a filing cabinet that's been in a flat-pack box in the kitchen for 10 months while watching a lot of TV and attempting to import all the video from Wednesday's Gameshelf shoot. My camera is gunked up, or something; lots of read errors that have nothing to do with the tape. I gotta learn how to clean it. (Tried just blowing on it. Not enough.)

My major Volity for tomorrow is to write a refunds policy (we have one sketched out, after lots of thought and discussion) and then set up a Google Checkout account. All hail Google

---

The deposit I mailed last Friday hasn't posted yet, but the one I mailed the next day has. Sadly, it was 5 percent the size of the earlier one. Checks continue to bounce; I'm in deep trouble. I will need to pull the lever on my credit card that squirts money into my bank account at a 982823% interest rate. Actually I would have done it already but I can't figure out how it do it on the MBNA website (maybe you can't, I dunno) so I'll have to talk to human on the phone about it and I hate that so I haven't yet.