Neopoleon Techie Thoughts

That Wired Article - What Rory Thinks about Fred Vogelstein

2007-03-29T00:15:00Z

[Update: It looks like people don't understand why I was so pissed. The short version is that, yes, the general tone of the article is positive, but a lot of it isn't true. It's irritating when you're close to something and you know just how messed up the reporting is. But what really pissed me off wasn't the article - it was the PR document follow-up in which Chris Anderson and Fred blew something grossly out of proportion and treated it like something huge, which it wasn't. It wound up on slashdot, in the C9 forums, on blogs - people are getting angry mail - it's just messed up. There's already enough FUD - now we've got this huge magazine piling on, and they're making shit up. And people are buying it! There's no skepticism - just acceptance. It's just stupid. So, it pissed me off, and I feel totally justified. If you have any questions, feel free to either leave a comment or send me an email.]

I'm sad today. There's so much to do, and I have almost no time to write, yet there are so many things to write about.

For example, there's the Wired article that Fred Vogelstein wrote about Channel 9 and transparency at Microsoft.

I've been searching for the right words. The proper mix of tact and message. Being close to Jeff, being part of the team, and having watched this story unfold, I'm a touch irritated at the aftermath of the article (or, more precisely, one person's error that's been spun into a debacle).

Simply put, we've gotten spanked because we have PR people helping us deal with the press. It's been presented in such a way as to portray us as a bunch of manipulative bastards, which we most certainly aren't.

There's a traffic jam in my head. Too many thoughts about this - about Fred's follow up post, about Chris Anderson's take, about the Slashdot article, about Jeff's interview with Fred (a slooooooow Fred Vogelstein)... too much. Just too bloody much.

Fortunately, I found a video on the internets that does a fantastic job of getting my reaction across (safe for work if you turn the volume down).

This one's for you, Fred :)

And it continues - Scoble manages to go lower by trashing Microsoft MVPs

2007-03-20T04:29:19Z

So far I've gotten mostly positive responses about telling Scoble that he was wrong to have slammed Microsoft in the way he did. It feels as though I'm not the only one getting fed up with the way this guy goes about trying to get more inbound links.

Tonight, I went through the comments of the post in question, trying to get a feeling for where most people stood. I didn't read the comments before - I simply responded to the post. I was so pissed off that I didn't wait.

What I found was that things just got stranger and stranger. It's to the point that I can't make much sense of him.

And, yeah, I realize that this is going to make it look like I'm trying to conduct a Scoble Attack-a-thon, but, seriously, I don't feel good knowing that this guy is recognized by many members of the media to be representative of geeks.

It's been a long time since I've written several tech related posts in a row. I want to get my site away from that - post some comics and other crap - but I can't do that until I get some of this off my chest.

While I found many comments from Scoble and his readers that seemed totally insane to me, I had to stop at comment 163 because, despite the stiff competition, it somehow managed to stand out above the others:

What gets online is reality to most people. It’s what bloggers have to work with. I have lots of MVPs who read me. If my facts are wrong, I’m sure they’ll point it out (and, you seem to be the first, which is totally shocking to tell the truth — it’s almost like the group agrees that they were cheerleading).

I wonder how the various Microsoft MVPs feel about being lumped together as "cheerleaders" simply because Scoble has decided that their silence makes them complicit.

Robert - didn't it occur to you that a possible reason the MVPs were quiet is that they have better things to do than read your blog? I know you've been quoted in Time, and I think that's awesome, but tons of people are quoted in Time in each issue. There have been plenty of issues. There have been plenty of quotes, and most of them will be forgotten. Being quoted in Time (or any other publication) is not a metric by which we should be expected to judge the value of your opinions.

I was on a shitty reality show on A&E. Does that make me more of an authority on anything? Not really.

But, here you are, in one paragraph, managing to offend even further. Before, you went after Microsoft. Now it's the MVPs. Either that, or you're trying to piss some people off. If that's the case, it's working.

What in the hell do you mean by "What gets online is reality to most people"?

Half the people on this planet have never used a phone, let alone get online (to say nothing of the extent to which you are unknown to the rest of the world).

OK. I realize I'm not just angry, but I'm starting to sound angry as well. That's not cool, but people need to understand how to read your tabloid blog.

Very quick lesson in critical thinking: That Scoble appears to be confident in his claims is not a reason to believe those claims.

It doesn't take long to debunk this garbage.

Next, we have "I have lots of MVPs who read me."

What does that mean? How much is "lots"? How many MVPs come in a "lots"?

Another quick lesson in critical thinking: For every vague claim made by Scoble, there's a corollary. For example, a corollary of "I have lots of MVPs who read me" might be "There are lots of MVPs who don't read me." It's important to note how these two claims compliment each other. Very simply, the word "lots" is so equivocal that it can be taken to represent any portion of a whole.

Finally, we have the last sentence, which I found the most insulting: "If my facts are wrong, I’m sure they’ll point it out (and, you seem to be the first, which is totally shocking to tell the truth — it’s almost like the group agrees that they were cheerleading)."

Where to begin? For one, I love the statement, "If my facts are wrong..."

If they're wrong, then they aren't facts.

Then we have this incredibly egotistical assumption: "...I'm sure they'll point it out..."

Are we supposed to think that, because you're sure they'll point it out, it's true?

What makes you so sure? Even if every single comment for that post came from a different MVP, there would still be "lots" left over who didn't comment. If that had happened, your "facts" still wouldn't have been anything more than circumstantial.

Lastly, and best of all, "...and, you seem to be the first, which is totally shocking to tell the truth - it's almost like the group agrees that they were cheerleading..."

W.T.F.

Did you read that, MVPs (I'm sure there are "lots" who read me)? You've all become cheerleaders simply by not reading Scoble's blog.

There was much more content similar to this. The guy is making outlandish claims based on inference based on a lack of information from which to infer. I don't think it gets any sleazier.

This is the guy who was quoted by Time. This is the guy who thinks he represents you.

Think about that.

Scoble - You missed the point

2007-03-18T23:04:56Z

I just wrote a post about how Scoble ought to consider the performance of his own company before he goes around trashing the performance of others.

In it, I pointed out that PodTech (and this is according to what Scoble wrote himself), isn't exactly cost-effective.

I said this just so he'd have an understanding of what it's like to have your company trashed by some know-it-all blogger who doesn't actually know it all.

He left me a comment that I feel is worthy of its own post. I'd respond in my comments section, but this is something I'd like everybody to see.

And if you wonder I care about what Scoble says, it's because, right or wrong, he has a lot of influence, and the last thing I want to see is someone take what he says about the company I work for (or any company for that matter - whether it's Microsoft or one of our competitors, there are (believe it or not) real, live people behind the products and services he's always slamming, evidently not caring how it affects their lives).

I'll respond to his comment point by point.

I love ironies!

As you'll see, nothing about my post was ironic.

Rory, go ask Jeff Sandquist how many millions of dollars have been spent on Channel 9 and Channel 10.

Now, can you prove that they make money for Microsoft?

Evangelism at Microsoft isn't about creating profit. As you know (or at least I'd hope you knew this while at MS), we're a "cost center."

For anyone who doesn't know, a cost center at Microsoft is a division that's not expected to turn a profit. The last team I worked on was a cost center.

The reason Microsoft spends money on teams that don't directly produce cash is simple: Customer satisfaction.

The reason I went all over, giving four hour talks to audiences in three different countries, being on the road for weeks or months at a time, was to provide customer satisfaction. That's it. It was a "thank you" from Microsoft. That's why the talks were free, and that's why we gave away so much stuff.

We weren't expected to bring in new customers, or to convert anyone. My team was there to show our customers some of the nifty bits of code they could write with the software of ours they purchased. We understand that our stuff isn't free, and we're thankful people are buying it.

Channels 9 and 10 are also cost centers. We aren't expected to provide any sales leads. In the case of 9, it's all about giving the outside world a peek inside the company so that they can see we aren't evil.

Microsoft has an image problem - due to mistakes we make, but also due to people like you who seem to live for the chance to ream us in public every chance you get - and it's worth it to show everybody what's really going on.

As for the millions you refer to, we can do that because a company like Microsoft can afford to have cost centers.

When your entire company is a cost center, Robert, it's very different.

(How does it feel to wake up to a post trashing your work? Now you know how everybody else feels.)

I discovered the long-form video at Microsoft where we built up to 4.3 million unique visitors a month with NO PR, NO advertising, NO real support from the company at large.

Right.

You discovered it.

I imagine you also co-invented the internet with Al Gore.

As for the "long-form video" (that's such a bloggy name), I'm working on moving the interviews back into the 15 minute range.

I don't know if you've figured this out yet, but video is very demanding on a customer. Unlike audio, video can't just be put in the background and enjoyed passively. Sure, you can listen to the audio accompanying the video, but in many cases you also wind up losing a good portion of the content by doing so.

The solution, then, to give our visitors a chance to enjoy shorter videos without feeling the pressure to watch longer ones, is one I believe will greatly benefit the site in the future.

In other words, if you really did "discover" the "long-form video," then I suppose I have only you to blame.

Sit down with Jeff sometime and ask how we did that. You work for him, you should understand what Channel 9's power was -- the long-form video.

The market has changed. You of all people should realize that. Where the "long-form video" (I put it in quotes because I couldn't possibly take myself seriously otherwise) may have been useful back when there weren't tons of such sites, it just doesn't make sense anymore to do it on a regular basis. Charles has his Going Deep show, and it makes sense there. But, for the daily videos, I think it's insane to make people sit down and watch an hour of video. It's also arrogant. You're assuming that this person has nothing better to do than watch your videos all day.

Not cool.

If they had been edited no one would have paid any attention to them. How do I know that? Cause Microsoft had LOTs of video editors over at studios. Editors don't add value in a world where people want to listen to conversations.

Oh, good god. The Robert Scoble assertion-How Do I know?-explanation thing might work on the sycophants who'd do anything for a chance to be in your presence and agree with everything you're saying, but it doesn't take much critical thinking to see the flaws in what you're saying.

Telling me that nobody would have paid any attention to edited Channel 9 videos because nobody pays attention to Microsoft Studios video content is an absurd argument.

Hey - know what else Microsoft Studios videos had, other than editing?

Videos!

Know what else?

People!

Know what else?

Sound!

I could go on like this until it gets more ridiculous than it is, but you're buying your own hype.

Even Star Wars had editing, and it's just a tad more popular than Channel 9.

Tell you what - following your logic, I'm going to start editing videos for Channel 9 because more people know and care about Star Wars than they do about PodTech.

And bandwidth is the least of our concerns when it comes to money flowing out (several hosting companies have offered us free hosting, by the way and if I need free hosting I can always go to Google or Soapbox).

There's no such thing as "free" hosting. There's always a cost. Especially where a site like yours is concerned.

If cost weren't an issue, then why the sponsorship? Why worry about money at all?

In your own writing, you discussed how much it was costing to host the videos, and how you were losing on every viewing. After that, it doesn't do much good to say that bandwidth isn't much of a concern.

And my video traffic is doubling every few weeks.

Sorry. I can't imagine what this is doing to your bandwidth bill (doubling, perhaps, but I don't want to make any assumptions).

Also, I don't know precisely what you mean by "every few weeks," but, regardless of the metric, yours is a relatively new site, and you should expect to be growing quickly. Your name is well known, and you've used that to build an audience.

To calm any fears you might have about costs skyrocketing, I hope to console you by saying that you'll eventually reach a saturation point. There are only so many people in the world who want to watch the videos made by geeks.

Did I ever say we'll never be able to make money? We have 30 corporate clients at PodTech. You only have one. Oh, search Google for "demo of the year." Who do you see?

Uh... did I ever say that you said that you'll never be able to make money? No.

As for the rest of the paragraph, I'm surprised you'd engage in this kind of chest-beating.

You're Robert Scoble! The all powerful! The all knowing!

(All the same, congrats on the "demo of the year" search - I didn't test it, but I expect it's an amazing experience.)

Me. Talking about Microsoft.

That's the problem with your formulaic hatchet job. You don't understand this industry. You don't even understand why you have a job working for Channel 9.

My, you're getting nasty. All this because I simply called you out about writing your name in piss all over our work and our company.

Whatever you are now, you are in part because you had the "formulaic hatchet job" I have now. If it's the job and not the person that makes the difference, then we're the same (which you should find very flattering).

So, why do I have a job working for Channel 9? I'd love to know.

I thought I took the job because it's something I wanted to do, but if you know better than I why I have the job I have, then, by all means, explain to me my motives.

You also shouldn't be so quick to assume that I don't understand this industry. The fact is, I went from a total nobody to having your job in less than three years. I'm also quite a bit younger than you are. I'd say I've done fairly well.

I'm guessing that, if you think you're in a position to tell other people that they don't understand the industry, that you believe you understand it. This doesn't surprise me since you probably also believe you created it, or have changed it, or whatever.

If you've changed it in any way, it's been by showing people that trashing companies - yours and others - you'll gain a lot of notoriety.

And that's about it.

Notoriety.

Not respect. Not success. Not the experience with which to be able to determine whether or not others understand an industry.

Ahh, the old Microsoft culture is seeping out from underneath the rug again. "If you aren't with us, you're against us and must be rooted out like all evil." That worked back when Microsoft was the only game in town and everyone needed to feed at the Microsoft trough. That is no longer true.

Dude. Seriously. You ought to think twice before signing your name to comments.

In my last post, I suggested that you're not in a position to say how a company can or can't make it. I didn't do it because I thought you were being an asshole (although we shouldn't cross that off the list). I did it because you have trashed so much in the industry (especially Microsoft), yet you haven't demonstrated that you can do any more than speculate.

Given how well known you are, I wasn't just going to sit by and watch as you spewed this crap. Your words have real effects. You might not be able to see your audience, but it's there. After you write something such as what you wrote Friday, you do damage to Microsoft's reputation. And don't even think of turning this around by saying we did this to ourselves. Until you can prove that what you're saying is true and take it beyond bad sensationalist blogging, your opinion, although influential, holds little weight with me.

And it has nothing to do with me thinking that anybody who opposes Microsoft must be "rooted out like evil."

That's your argument. That's your opinion. Hell, maybe that's even how you conducted yourself while here.

But don't assume I share your point of view.

What value have you added to Microsoft? I haven't seen you ship either. At least I shipped 600 videos while I was there and built an audience from nothing to 4.3 million a month in two years.

Kettle meet pot. Pot meet kettle.

Your ego really has no limits.

I'm not another company or person for you to attack. If you want to write a post about me, go ahead. I'll happily engage you in whatever argument you'd like to pick, and it'll a nice chance to spank you in public. You deserve it for every other company and person to which you've done the same.

I understand that you've shipped 600 videos. That's great. I don't know what you're trying to prove given that I've only been there since November, and you were there for two years.

Finally, you didn't build that audience on your own. There are plenty of people here who remember you and your attitude - the way you'd take credit for other people's ideas and efforts. The way internal discussions from mailing lists had a way of popping up on your site in a modified form, where you'd take credit for the thought, or for starting the "conversation." How you had wallpapered your office with articles about... you!

But I should apologize. It seems you aren't used to receiving what you dish out.

You see, I'm not in this to build incoming links, or to go to some blog award party. I'm not trying to build the Empire of Rory, or to take credit for things other people have done.

I just want to do a good job.

Because of that, I'm not at all worried about falling out of favor with you. I'm not worried about losing the huge influx of visitors I get from each Scoble link (I sometimes get tens of referrals).

In other words, you're going to have to do better if you want to convince me of anything.

So far, all you've done is show that you seem to think you shouldn't be treated as you treat others.

What a f***ing mess

2007-03-18T18:50:00Z

Maybe I'm grumpy because I woke up this morning feeling like crap, but I somehow wound up over at Scoble's blog, which I don't actually read anymore on account of how formulaic it is, and I found this fantastic and lovely bit of writing.

I have no problem with people saying that there's a problem with Microsoft Product This or That. I'll argue, and I'll either win or lose, but it's someone's right to say it.

It's when someone turns it into a profession that it starts to bother me.

Check this out:

Microsoft isn’t going away. Don’t get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn’t winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where’s the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo’s Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That’s how you win.

Am I the only one who finds this little speech to be both:

1. Very much of the Scoble Formula

and

2. A bit ironic

I'll explain.

The Scoble Formula, if you haven't figured it out yet (after how many years?) is very complicated. It involves several different separate and unchanging types of writing. The one we see in his most recent Microsoft is teh Sucks post can be described with this (appropriately) rambling summation:

Make an "edgy" claim that makes it look like I'm taking a huge risk. Set it up by making it appear as though I'm not partisan by throwing my target company a little bone. Then move to Phase Two in which I proceed to kick the company in the stomach repeatedly. This part does not require any justification. Just some anger and opinion. Heh, I shouldn't make my attack too precise anyway, as it makes me vulnerable. Nope, just start with Sort-of-Compliment, move on to Establishment-of-Vague-Attack, proceed to the Kick-Blindly mode, and finish with Authoritative-Statement. Provided my readers trust me and don't want to do any research, this ought to work. Heh. On a slow news day, I'll just attack my own company. Or, I would if I still worked for the corporation I'm angry with today (tomorrow it'll me another - by always placing the attention on the object of my anger, I provide very little surface area for attack on my own efforts).

Yeah. Not complicated.

The guy has turned into The Sun of bloggers. On a slow news day, he'll slap a big glossy photo of Bat Boy on the cover to increase sales.

That's the formulaic bit, then. I lost interest because there's only so much bashing of every tech company in existence (who'll it be tomorrow?) I can take. Something well thought out with a reasoned argument? I can take that, but it doesn't sell subscriptions.

Now, the ironic bit... and I'll admit before I begin that I'm only writing about this because I'm pissed. Scoble has taken his visibility and used it to become a bully. He bashes everybody - not just Microsoft - and gets rewarded for it. As a result, we have these huge flare-ups that start the situations for which I've titled this post. Then, a couple weeks later, he'll write an apology or a retraction (what a f***ing mess). What'll people remember, though? You can debunk Bat Boy all you want - people still want to read about him.

Onto the irony.

Scoble has just lectured us on "how [to] win."

There's some very basic research one ought to do whenever encountering such a claim. It's hard, and it takes time, but it's the way we avoid making a mess of people's lives (yes - there are people working over at Windows Live, and they do feel it when you openly trash their work).

One question you should ask - inspired by one of Ezra Pound's guidelines for gauging the relevance of literary criticism - is this:

Has the person who is making the claim ever produced anything of equal or greater value?

In this case, given that Robert is telling us how to win, let's take the above question and fill in the blanks:

Has Robert Scoble produced a work of equal or greater value than Microsoft?

Not exactly.

Take a look at PodTech.

Yeah, I know it's a new company and that's part of the reason they're losing dough, but couldn't someone have done the homework to figure out that online video distribution is probably one of the lowest margin business opportunities available?

Scoble has written about the problems they're dealing with over at PodTech. About how, even with their commercial sponsor, they can't even break even, and don't see a time, based on their current model, when that will happen.

Every video watched is another hit to the pocketbook. The bandwidth required to serve the kind of content they provide is far more expensive than most people would ever suspect. I don't know what they're paying, and I don't know what kind of deals with may have been able to work out with their hosting company, but it's quite possible that they're blowing tens of thousands, if not much more, just on serving those videos.

There's also the cost of travel. The cameraman Scoble hired for approximately twelve minutes. The limo. The hotels. The gear. The design. The staff. The rest.

I'm not saying they won't ever turn a profit. If they can get enough of an audience that they can demand more from their sponsors, they might do all right. But I've seen how online distribution of audio/video works and what it costs.

I have some doubts about the extent to which they researched these costs.

Scoble isn't a businessman. He takes his check from his boss. That's how it's been for years and years. He's talked to people from plenty of startups, yeah, but that's not the same as doing it.

Nobody consulted me - and nobody should have - but if they had, I would have said to do audio, or even just images with text. A typical news site, but with the Scoble brand. Whatever I may be feeling about him this morning, I'm not going to deny that his name is worth something in this industry.

My guess is that Scoble and co wanted to "get in" on the growing popularity of niche video news sites. The difference is that, when you take a look at what some of the other more successful sites are doing, Scoble's videos are too long (in terms of the bandwidth it takes to serve them up). If you don't have gobs of dough in the bank, then every minute is important. By not editing out the boring bits, the videos are going up as-is, gigantic and all.

I suspect there might even be a nice pit in the center of the PodTech offices into which staff members are paid to shovel money and then light it on fire.

He's telling us how to succeed?

And poeple are listening?

What a f***ing mess.

Microsoft Research TechFest

2007-03-06T20:48:45Z

Since moving into the condo, my life has been taken over by doing all the little things one must do just after moving into a place. It's driving me insane, but I keep telling myself that it'll be worth it. That ripping out the carpet, painting the walls, and installing hardwood floors will be worth the headache. I'm sure I'm right, as I am about most things in life, but we'll see.

Fortunately, though, I'm not dead or gone or anything. I've been writing a lot, but haven't been hitting the "Post" button. I don't know why. I guess I've just wanted a little peace and quiet as I get my new life in order. I'll eventually post the stuff I haven't been sharing, but not before I've written four more posts (yes - I have it all planned out).

One of the benefits of not being dead or gone or anything is that the appearance of being dead, or the belief that one has taken off, is probably often due to the sheer quantity of exciting stuff someone's doing.

In my case, aside from the condo, it's Microsoft Research TechFest. It's a small convention meant to show the outside world a piece of MSR.

I've just posted the first in a series of videos I'm doing on the convention. There'll be many more, and they're all going to be freaky cool (if you're a geek, anyway). The stuff these people do is bloody effing amazing. I wanted to hug everybody I met. The work they're doing really could change life for the better, and that's one of the promises of computing that's only been half delivered. Life has gotten profoundly more complex with the rise of computers, and that's not really a good thing. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm often frustrated by the difficulty of some tasks, the time required, and so on when it comes to computers (of any kind - Windows, OS X, *nix, phones, and so on). The work being done at MSR, in my opinion, is the stuff that could take all this cruft, trim the fat, and repair the damaged goods that modern personal computing has become. It's a problem to which nobody is immune. Yeah, some things are easier now than they were years back, but this industry is driven by change and flashy-flashy more than it is by progress.

I'll be back to write more about this, as I've been writing a very long post in my head about MSR and its role in fixing the planet, but right now, I've gotta run and get back to TechFest.

In the meantime, check out my first TechFest video on Channel 9. I'm going to put out tons more this week, so keep your peepers on the C9 home page.

It's going to be fun.

Tah.

Simple Genius

2007-02-10T00:34:59Z

I can't talk about it yet. I mean, I can't say a bloody thing.

But I can say that I was there, in the room, when my officemate, Erik Porter, told me one of his latest ideas (he's turned into an idea factory for the past couple months, and it's been amazing to watch).

I wish I could go into detail. Or even just say what it is.

All I can tell you is that, if it works, it's going to affect the lives of every single dev using Visual Studio on the entire freaking planet.

He just left for the weekend, taking his ideas with him, and I'm sitting in the office, staring at his empty chair with a reverential awe. I'm thinking about sitting in it to see if I start coming up with ideas. I mean, what if it is just the chair?

Anyway, the process has already begun. He had the idea, he talked to the right people, and he's going to try to make it happen.

And that's just one of his inventions.

It's so strange. When I sat down for the first time across from him last October, I just saw this quiet coder. He had headphones on, and we didn't talk a whole lot.

But then, after a few weeks, something changed. The guy came alive, and his brain started shooting these ideas out left and right, any one of which could bring him great success.

I don't know if any of you get to sit across from someone who comes up with great ideas as casually as the rest of us tie our shoes (that doesn't apply to me, actually, as I have, without any deviation from the pattern, been purchasing laceless shoes for the past five years), but it's an inspiring thing.

Yeah.

Wow.

Also, I'll be writing normal posts again soon - it's just been an insane week (for everybody on the team - we're all ready to scream) - but I wanted to stop for a moment and mark the place in time when I realized that Erik Porter wasn't only smart, but that part of his brain is a brilliant idea factory, and that the guy's a bloody genius. It might be a year or two, but you will hear more about Erik Porter (and, if you haven't noticed, I'm trying to get as much search engine goodness as I can by constantly repeating the name Erik Porter for when the net realizes his importance).

If I sound happy, by the way, it's because I love this job, and my team has become a second family to me. I never would have expected that.

Jeff did a good job when he threw us all together, and I feel, as always, that I'm the luckiest bastard on the planet for having landed here.

Now, carry on.

There's work to do :)

XNA - Restoring the Intimacy and Fun of Game Development

2006-12-12T07:03:58Z

I have this image in my head of game development the way it used to be. The image is the result of years of my brain distorting a photo I once saw of Scott Adams (the game designer - not the cartoonist). What I have left in my head tells me that it was either the late 70s or the early 80s. He was a white man with a big white man's afro. He wore glasses of the nerdiest possible type. They were thick and square, and very likely not manufactured by Prada.

From what I can tell, and this might be my brain romanticizing the image, Scott is sitting in front of an early PC, and he's up in an attic. Or down in a basement. I can't tell which, but the walls are made of that old school wood paneling that so many people find offensive, but which I find warm and evocative of thoughts of my childhood, back when wood paneling was everywhere, along with shag carpeting and big ugly American cars like the El Camino.

I love this image of Scott. He's alone, except for the photographer, and busily writing one of his many text adventure games. Looking at him and his operation, one gets the feeling that he sold his wares through the ads in the back of an enthusiast magazine, or at meetings of local computer clubs. He was a pioneer, working on a frontier that had yet to be trampled by big business. He was the club show before there was enough of an audience to fill an arena.

I have another image in my head of game development, but this time, it's very different. It's of a team on the scale of a major motion picture production, slaving away into the night, underpaid, overworked, miserable, and uninspired. They're working on a game that has a commercial tie-in. Maybe a movie. Maybe a toy.

They're slaving away at their machines, each person contributing a bit of sweat here and there to someone else's ambitious vision. They don't see their families for months, they're sick from stress, their relationships are suffering, and they're miserable. It's a very different scene from Scott's world. It's crowded and full of grumpy people. This is the arena show where people are passing out from exhaustion, the lines are long, and the food is terrible.

Scott was in control of his own vision from start to finish. He crafted the story. He crafted the code. He wrote the prose that drew images in the mind of the player. He was everything to his projects.

Sadly, the world in which Scott lived disappeared years ago. Video game budgets now rival those of Hollywood special effects ridden blockbusters. If you get to work on a game nowadays, you're lucky if you get to be the animator of some minor character's mouth movements. And, after you've done that for several years, you'll drop out of the game, totally burned out, and the corporation will replace you with another eager newcomer who, like you, won't command a large salary. He or she will enter the industry for the love of the craft, and leave the industry wanting nothing more than a quiet job operating the deep fryer at a fast food restaurant.

Rather bleak, eh? Yeah. It is.

But, over the past few months, some of us have been watching a technology called "XNA" creep into the scene.

XNA, if you haven't heard of it, is bloody amazing. It's basically a platform upon which hobbyist (and even professional) game developers can easily build games. Not only that, but these games can then be transferred to an Xbox 360 and run.

I'm guessing that more than a few of you are probably reacting with a "So what?" kind of attitude. And, to be honest, if you haven't followed console game development much, then that would be a perfectly normal position to take. But, this is different. Very, very different.

There have been attempts before, made by other gaming companies, to provide the casual developer with SDK's with which to produce console games. The sad thing is that these SDK's were poorly documented and a royal freaking pain in the ass to use. Bluntly stated, your entire game was a workaround. From the people I've talked to who have dabbled in these kits, I've been led to believe that dev work like this is about as fun and intuitive as climbing Mount Everest with nothing but one of your nipples. A really, really strong nipple. In other words, it wasn't fun, unless your idea of fun happened to be climbing tall, cold mountains, using but a single nipple (your own, of course - you couldn't use somebody else's nipple for the task).

That's why I'm very happy to be working at Microsoft right now.

XNA is a way of climbing Mount Everest with a proper toolkit, a bunch of friends, and no nippleage required.

And it is going to be big.

If you look at trends among the modern console gamer, you can see that there is a lot of attention paid to the "homebrew" scene. Kids will go out, blow $250 on a Sony PSP, and then use some existing tools to run things like MAME and various media players. It's funny, really. Spending almost $300 on a device so that you can play Pac-Man on it.

No big loss, though, for those of you who own a PSP. I bought mine with high hopes, but have yet to find a single game I really like (whereas my Nintendo DS Lite has made me a very happy mobile gamer).

One big problem with the Sony PSP homebrew scene (or the homebrew scene for any device) is that the manufacturer of the device either intentionally, or accidentally as a byproduct of software interacting with unexpected hacks and modifications, renders the device unusable for homebrew at best, and destroys the device at worst. There's a constant push and pull between the homebrew scene and the console manufacturers. The homebrew kids are mad because they want to run whatever software they'd like on the devices. The console makers are mad because they don't want to have to deal with all the technical and legal ramifications of people fiddling with their devices (would Ford honor your vehicle warranty if you decided to replace your car's drivetrain just for kicks? No - that's your answer - Ford wouldn't).

In XNA, Microsoft is creating a sort of compromise. Actually, it's much better than a compromise - it's an acceptance and understanding that people buy consoles and then want to run custom software on them. There's no way around it. You either provide these people with a means by which they can have their fun, or you leave your product wide open for exploitation on the black market (and the kind-of-gray market, too).

This is a big deal. The reason console makers don't want people running their own software on consoles is that nearly every modern console produced is hole into which the manufacturer shovels money by the ton. To get the consoles out to customers at a reasonable price, the manufacturer takes a hit on the cost of the hardware, hoping to make up for the loss by taking a cut of game sales. It's a big bet, and it's the sort of thing that leaves executives chewing their fingernails. In this light, it's not so hard to see why the big bad corporations want to stamp out your homebrew scene. They are, especially in Sony's case now, just trying to survive.

That's where the beauty of the XNA model comes in.

XNA Studio is available for free. With it, you get a world class IDE and a platform (based on a version of the .NET Compact Framework) against which to code. You also have model importers so that you don't have to write a bunch of nasty model loading code, and other sorts of helpers. Best of all, it's managed code and highly performant.

That's a pretty good deal for free.

Then, if you'd like to be able to develop on your 360, you pay $99, and you are now able to deploy your binaries to your console and see your own game running on a 360. I think that's pretty effing cool.

And these are Microsoft tools. The critics can say what they like, but we do a good job with dev tools. I know there are alternatives, and you're welcome to enjoy them, but our stuff, you have to admit, is pretty hot. Even if you can't tell your Java and open source friends that you like our stuff, you still know, deep down, that it's nice.

So, that's the good story for the developers. Cheap access to console development using high quality tools unlike anything ever released, all at a low price and using the same technology (.NET) you're familiar with from desktop and server work.

Now, where things get really exciting, is from the consumer perspective.

Right now, no matter which console you buy, there's going to be a commercial edge to every game you get. That's fine - a good thing in many cases. Big budgets and top talent can produce (and has produced) amazing work. Mind-boggingly complex, beautiful, unbelievable work.

The problem, as the homebrew scene has known for so long, is that it has traditionally been your only legitimate option. You have this great console, but you can only play the games on it which are released by the corporations with big budgets.

There's something missing there. This is still the arena show. There's no intimacy - not for the developers, and not for the consumers. Everything feels too perfect and polished. There's a charm in things which are imperfect. When Sting was still with the Police, he used to lay down several vocal takes side by side. It was obvious, because he didn't do a good job of repeating himself. He was always a little off in timing, and just barely acceptably out of tune. It reminded you that you were listening to a human. Compared to the sterility of today's music, all of it produced in extremely expensive and highly technological studios, the older stuff was warm. It had some ineffable quality to it that just made it more approachable and comforting. Even the sound of dust and imperfections picked up by the needle of a record player. That made a difference.

I'm pretty sure - not positive - but pretty sure that XNA is the club show. It's going to be a haven for amateurs and hobbyists. What they produce will probably be very imperfect. It definitely won't be as advanced as the work done by large studios. You won't find Gears of War, for example, popping up in the XNA hobbyist scene, but that's a good thing. Games like Gears of War are great, but people want something else, too. Games that are more accessible - simpler. Games that don't consume your life for hours on end. Casual games, weird games, and so on.

For me, it's going to dramatically raise the value of my 360. Now, in addition to all the stuff I can buy and access through Xbox Live Marketplace, I'm also going to have access to all the work produced by enthusiasts. I'll even be able to modify the stuff - play with it. For the first time in the history of the console, there is going to be a community of legitimate homebrew developers. They're going to bring back the club show and the fun that goes with it.

Some of them will get picked up by big game companies. Others will stand their ground and continue to do projects for the love of it. I have no doubt that there will eventually be a graveyard of abandoned games, much like 99% of the apps up on SourceForge, but the remaining games are going to be so special and unique that it'll be worth it.

I mean, think about it. With XNA, some crazy seventeen year old coder can now come up with whatever weird LSD-induced visions of gameplay he wants. I predict that we're going to see games that are so innovative and unique that entirely new genres will spring up.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who would disagree with me, but think about where today's big games came from. They didn't start in the game laboratories of Sony, Rare, and Bungie. They started in someone's garage, attic, or basement, and changed the world through shareware distribution. This makes sense, as innovation really can't begin in big corporate conference rooms. If EA or some other game company is going to pump millions into the production of a title, they aren't going to choose the risky game that seems different from the rest. Rather, they're going to stick with formula, and pump out variations based on that formula until all commercially produced games fit comfortably inside a handful of genres, and they all resemble each other as though part of the same genetic pool.

A hobbyist doesn't have to take on that same risk. A teenager who's experimenting doesn't have an executive staff to which he is accountable. And, best of all, it can just be you, XNA, and the code. A single person can, realistically, produce an entire game, start to finish, using XNA.

Even better, people like me who might want to make games without getting too caught up in the details can work with some of the other tools that are being built on top of XNA like Phrogram and Torque X. Both of these tools provide abstractions over XNA, making it even more accessible than it already is.

The reason I'm writing about all this tonight is that I just got back from the XNA Game Studio Express launch event. I saw some things being done that make it look as though even I, a guy who's traditionally just stuck to business apps, could make a game. I was a bit more than impressed, and I'll be putting a video of some encounters with various smarties in the industry up on Channel 9 - hopefully by the end of the week.

I even ran into George Clingerman - one of my old friends from the Portland nerd scene. He was up here because he runs a rather large, rather popular XNA site called "XNA Development: Dame Development for the masses". I got a lot of good interviews with him, some other XNA people, and even a spot with Major Nelson.

All in all, it was an inspiring evening. I was a little tired and thought about not going, thinking that I might rather go home and crash, but I'm glad I didn't.

A lot of what I saw tonight, in addition to work I had seen previously, has led me to believe that XNA is going to be a wildly popular technology, and that it's going to bring back a bit of that romanticized vision of the past I have.

With XNA, modern hobbyists, just like Scott Adams, will be able to grow their hair out, wear geeky glasses, and code by themselves in the attic or the basement, doing what they love, and not having to deal with the stress and scale of commercial development.

XNA is going to completely change the hobbyist game developer scene, and the change is going to be for the better.

New Job - New Boss - New Happy

2006-12-11T22:50:53Z

[Note: This post is quite long. In it, I talk about my first position at Microsoft. I talk about why I loved it. I also talk about what I didn't like at all about it - especially near the end. Finally, I talk about the transition from "the field" (working for Microsoft, but outside of Redmond) to working on campus (the mothership). It might be an interesting read for those of you who wonder what life is like at Microsoft. I get asked about MS all the time, so I assume quite a few of you are curious. I hope, then, that you'll excuse the length. I simply tried to be thorough. I won't be hurt if you choose to skip this post and just go outside for a smoke instead.]

When Paul Murphy decided that he was going to try and hire me to come work at Microsoft, he got a few phone calls.

They were, in the corporate world, the rough equivalent of having a brick thrown through your window with a note tied to it. Some people didn't think it was a good idea to hire Rory Blyth. He's a bad guy. He's a troublemaker. He stirs up controversy. He writes about sex and God. He'll ruin you and your team. There will be a great plague. Fish will fall from the sky, and the ground will give way beneath you.

I'd like to point out the obvious, which is that those people were quite off the mark. To be a snotty little erudite snob for just a moment, I'm going to discuss something that most bloggers don't know. It's something many people in the corporate world don't know, either. Really, it's a bit of knowledge that is only relevant to people who decide they want to live a creative life that's exposed to the public.

What I'm talking about is persona.

The concept of having a persona is one of the things that separates most bloggers from people one would actually consider writers. Bloggers choose to use the medium to deliver information. Spelling isn't terribly important. Phrasing doesn't matter. Style is something almost none consider. Blogging is about the medium and about playing the ass-kissing "Oh, please, link to me" game.

I hate that game.

Someone who wants to write, on the other hand, tends to look at things a little differently.

I like to write. I love the craft. I enjoy working with style and metaphor, language and phrasing. I enjoy a nice rhythm. I just happen to be using blog software to get my messages across.

I also happen to use a persona.

For a writer, especially where non-fiction is concerned (or at least nonishly-fiction), a persona is like a mask one wears while writing. It's a second life, based on the real one the writer is leading, but slightly modified to make things more interesting, more fun, more compelling, and so on. Real life can be a little dull. Imagine telling someone about your trip to the grocery store without any embellishment. It would be as boring as the list of items to purchase you brought with you to the store.

Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact.

Yawn.

These softies, then, who thought Paul shouldn't hire me, didn't understand that most of what I write here is based on a persona. It's not a guy I've sketched out in detail. I don't have his bio sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, listing his favorite ice-cream flavor, his favorite color, or any other qualities one might think of when creating a character sketch.

My persona is just a slightly less inhibited version of myself. It really is me, but it's also a choice - it's a thing I can switch on and off. And that's what the anti-Rory softies didn't understand.

The position I was to take was going to put me in front of thousands and thousands of Microsoft customers. Sometimes I would be in a room with them, and sometimes I'd just contact them through the web. Either way, there would be no buffer between me and the hordes of developers to whom I was to be speaking.

One of the things that makes Paul a unique and valuable manager is that he can see things like persona. I don't know if he consciously knew that I present myself as a bit of a bastard online, but I suspect that he "got it" even though he didn't articulate it to himself. In other words, he knew I was trustworthy - that I could play nicely in front of customers and refrain from engaging them in the voice of my web personality.

And here we are. Or, actually, here I am. Two and a half years into the let's-see-if-we-can-take-this-creative-nut-and-put-him-in-a-corporate-position-without-driving-him-crazy-and-without-him-driving-us-crazy experiment. I like to think the experiment is turning out well. Certainly much better than my detractors ever would have thought.

A year into my job, I started to write a post. It was titled, "One Year at Microsoft - Some Thoughts." I got about five thousand words into it and realized I wasn't even half done. I had barely gotten started. There was just too much to tell. Even if I were to drop my usual storyteller mode and deliver just my impressions in the form of a list, it would have gone on for pages and pages. In the end, I gave up. The post is still sitting on my hard drive. And there it shall sit for the rest of eternity.

A couple months after I started that post, Paul told me during a conversation we were having over the phone that he was strongly considering taking a job in England. He worked there at some time in the past, and he wanted to go back. I couldn't blame him, as I loved the time I spent living in England as well. To this day, I can't imagine a better city in which to live than London.

Not much later, Paul took the job and left. When that happened, there was a major restructuring of my team. Managers were swapped out, our general manager (the person who watches over our division) took a job at Microsoft in Japan, and our VP was replaced with a guy from IBM.

It was a whole new world, and my only ally had moved on.

Paul protected me. He hired me for my "out of the box" thinking, and wanted to make it possible for me to go wild and try every crazy idea I could to reach out to customers. I like to think we worked well together. He was the conservative manager, and I was the insane employee. We complemented each other. It was great. And, when other people in the company wanted me fired for whatever stunt I had pulled some week or another, Paul sheltered me. Nothing got through. He kept me free to do my work, and the results were rather impressive. I won't detail any numbers here, but it's safe to say I gave Microsoft much more than they expected.

When Paul left, though, there wasn't anyone immediately available to take his place. I was suddenly managerless, and it was then that I realized just how much Paul had done for me. Looking back, he was an amazing guy. Like I said, he was conservative, but he also had the two best qualities anyone in his position could: An open mind combined with a healthy skepticism. He happily listened to whatever ideas I threw his way, but he questioned everything, and only allowed the good ideas through.

Without Paul, I was untethered. And, because of the distributed nature of the team (we were spread out across the US), I felt out of touch.

About four months went by like that. I did my job as well as I could, but I no longer had a partner. Nobody to protect and shield me from the red tape that straps creative people down at every corporation in the world. Even worse, I started to get the idea that a lot of people on the team actually didn't like me. And, even worse than that, my suspicions were confirmed by a couple friends. It turned out that there were people on the team who didn't think I belonged there. That, despite my top-notch performance (we were ranked against each other, and I was regularly at, or near, the top), I wasn't a "good fit". One of the reasons, I was disgusted to learn, was that there were a few male employees who didn't care for me because they thought I was gay.

I'm quite used to people thinking that. The well dressed guy in the corner wearing a fine fragrance very well could be gay.

Of course, that's no reason to dislike the guy. At least not for me. For them, it meant fear that they might have to room with me during one of our team's quarterly meetings. We met in person every several months, usually in Vegas or Texas, and we sometimes had to share hotel rooms because of budgetary reasons.

Can you imagine how awful it would have been to have roomed with me? The guy who might be gay? I mean, a gay guy. If he's willing to possibly be gay, then what kind of morals could he possibly have? Will he come onto me? Will he try to sleep with me? Will he take off his shirt to reveal a shaved chest and stuffed brassiere?

The horror.

Those were not ideal conditions. I continued to do my work, but I noticed more and more that some employees (you know who you are) treated me with what I will euphemistically call a "confrontational tolerance". They didn't want me there, but had to accept me. Gay or not, I was a colleague.

After a few months of that, though, it got old. Comments were being made about my homosexuality (which doesn't exist, mind you). People I had never worked with were telling their managers that I was a bad employee - that I didn't "do anything" (a ridiculous charge considering I was rated at the top of my team in terms of performance). It got to the point that I had to spend more time defending myself against baseless accusations than I did doing my actual job.

That sucks.

And that's when I started looking for something else. I loved getting to fly around the country and give talks to audiences. It was challenging. I regularly woke up in towns that were entirely foreign to me, and all the things I took for granted at home - food, shelter, etc. - were things I had to work to find. It forced my brain open. I felt alive. But that feeling gradually dissipated as I heard more and more about what people were saying about me.

It was time to go. Really time to go. I had a few friends, but it seemed like, with Paul out of the picture, the anti-Rory sentiments were increasing. I honestly had no idea why, other than that I had heard from a few different sources that the sexuality thing was an issue. On top of that, my new manager and I simply didn't get along. This isn't to say that he's a bad guy or that I'm a bad employee - it's just that, sometimes in life, you meet people with whom you are so incompatible that accord can only be reached as the result of long and unpleasant negotiations packed with compromises. That sort of thing is fine every once in a while, but when that's the way you and your manager communicate, it's a strong hint that things aren't going to turn out well.

And they didn't. Just before coming to Channel 9, I seriously considered leaving Microsoft. I looked online to find out what I could sell my car for. I called Ameritrade and asked what I'd have to do to pull money out of my retirement account in the event that I had to live on it. I wondered about whose couch I could sleep on until I found another gig.

That's the point I was at. I was basically ready to give everything up, go homeless, and spend the rest of my life sleeping on a park bench, spending my days spare changing, getting drunk on canned heat.

Then Jeff called.

Scoble had recently left Channel 9, and they needed someone to come along and fill the position, if not his shoes.

Jeff called me "brother" when we spoke. "Hey, brother," was his way of starting a phone conversation. Hearing those words started the process of undoing my dream of being a barnacle on the boat of society (hey - I'm running out of metaphors - give me a break). Before the conversation had gone anywhere, he was already treating me like a human being.

It was nice. I got all glow-y.

Channel 9, as many, but not all, of you know, is probably one of the stranger Microsoft products. It's a team of all the weirdoes and rebels who didn't fit in anywhere else. I think of it as the Mad Max version of Microsoft. Jeff thinks of it as Microsoft 2.0. I think he's right.

Meeting the team proved to me that Jeff wasn't the only respectful, kind, intelligent person around. Everybody here is like that. It's almost as though Jeff has intentionally put together a team of good, talented people. I know it's unheard of, but he did it.

My partner in content creation is Charles Torre. He's a tall, olive skinned man. Very handsome. Debonair.

(OK - maybe it's not so difficult to see why people thought I was gay. But whatever. I know a good looking person when I see one - it's possible to find the pleasant things in a man's face without being attracted to him.)

He speaks his mind. He believes in what he's doing. He works his ass off, and he gave me a lot of his time in the beginning, showing me how the whole show worked.

There are so many great people on the team, actually, that I'd have to write a post on each to cover his or her positive attributes.

It's strange, really. Since my arrival, Jeff has treated me with the same respect he showed during the interview process. He's kind, he pays attention to what's going on, and he knows when to take things seriously. There's a time and place for being political and behaving in a professional manner, and then there's a time and place for running off to the Ms. Pac-Man arcade game we have on our floor.

A couple weeks ago, to give you an idea of what life is like on this team, I was feeling down. I had a lot of crap to deal with in my personal life (none of which I've written about), and it was getting me seriously depressed. My professional life had never been better, but my personal life was becoming almost impossible to manage.

So, what does Jeff do? He invites me over to his house on Saturday to just hang out, play video games, eat some food, and decompress. In roughly two months, these people have become my extended family. My office has become my home. I'm currently renting out a room in some guy's house. That's where I sleep - where I brush my teeth. But it's not where I live.

I come into the office on weekends. Sometimes I come in because I feel like working, and sometimes I come in just because I like it. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. It's not uncommon to show up on a Saturday or Sunday to find a teammate who's also just hanging out (or working - whatever).

We also have access to building 21. Building 21 is very important. That's because building 21 has a room with a projector in it, an Xbox 360, a bunch of controllers, and about fifty beanbags. It's awesome. There are so many ways to combat stress around here that, for the first time in years, I feel like things are actually kind of normal. Yeah, I've got my personal problems. Yeah, I've got some health issues right now. Yeah, I live in a house that's so dirty I'm afraid to let my bare feet touch the floor.

But I'm happy.

When interviewing for the position, I had to meet with many people. One of them was Steve Cellini. You might not know him, but we were introduced back when I was co-hosting .NET Rocks. On that particular episode, I was fixated on the subject of the artificial fat-replacement called "Olestra" and its tendency to cause anal leakage when eaten in large quantities. Throughout that episode, I made references to anal leakage, never even considering for a second that I might one day sit in this man's office for an interview.

It was also considered the most important interview of the day. Steve is the general manager of this org, and that's a pretty big deal. So, I was a little surprised when I entered his office, not remembering that I had interviewed him, to see that he had a devilish little smile on his face.

I sat down. He looked at me. He clasped his hands together behind his head, slowly peered up at the ceiling, and then waited what I am sure was the scientifically correct amount of time for such a pause, and then, totally deadpan, said, "So... anal... leakage."

I was stunned. Everything came back to me. The interview, the leakage, the strangeness of it all. And this was a guy who could make or break my chances at getting the job.

Fortunately, he was just screwing with my head. We briefly discussed anal leakage and then moved on. At one point, I said, "If I don't get this job, then I'm going to leave Microsoft and become a Starbucks barista. That's how badly I want it."

I was serious. Except for the barista part. My plan, as I noted earlier, was to become homeless. I just wanted it to look like I had a good work ethic. Quitting to work for Starbucks, even though it doesn't pay much, is at least a job. Being homeless, on the other hand, is most likely not something one would describe as a vocation.

Now I'm here. Editing video on a new Dell XPS. Even the story of getting the laptop is amazing.

Get this - Jeff asked me what kind of laptop I needed. I told him. And then I got it.

It was that simple.

In the past, it seemed like there was a strange management rule in place which dictated that an employee should always receive only a fraction of what he requests. This is, of course, because employees are just bent on sucking money out of the corporation with their lazy, drug-abusing selves (between the mistrust and drug tests in many corporations, I think this is the message we're supposed to be receiving).

You know how it goes. You need a good dev box, and you describe your needs. A couple weeks later, you get exactly what you asked for, but with half the RAM, a 5400 RPM hard drive, a lesser video card, and no second monitor. It's like you're being punished because you asked for the equipment you needed to get your work done. The shame.

Not so here.

Simply put, this is another dream job. My last job began as a dream job, but slowly turned into a nightmare.

I'm really hoping the same thing doesn't happen here.

My New Blog

2006-12-09T03:48:41Z

I finally went and did it.

Before I explain what I did, let me advance a little offer for anyone who might be interested.

I've been running Neopoleon on the Community Server platform for some time now, but I haven't really taken full advantage of that. For those of you who don't know, the software allows me to host, like, a bajillion blogs. Right now, I'm only hosting...

...two.

So, if you like Neopoleon, and if you'd like to get a start blogging, and if you'd like to do it here, then let me know - we can chat about it and see if it'd be a good fit.

Anyway, back to this "My New Blog" business.

Over the past several years, my main blog has gone from being a tech blog to something almost entirely personal. With that change, my audience has changed as well. It seems like most of the people who come here are perfectly happy reading some guy's personal blog.

But, I missed tech blogging. I haven't been doing it, though, because I didn't want to mix the tech with the personal stuff. It'd just confuse everybody in the end. The techies would be complaining that I was writing too many stories about some girl, while the "personal" people would be complaining that they don't know what in the hell a "SQL Server" is or why they should care.

So, I've created a second blog here at Neopoleon. It's my tech blog. I'm getting back into tech blogging.

You can get an idea of what kind of stuff I'll be writing about if you head over to this blog's home page and check out the category list on the right.

All Neopoleon posts will be aggregated to the main landing page, while the two blogs each have their own spots (if you don't want it all - if you just want tech stuff or if you just want personal stuff).

Here's the URL to my personal blog: http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo

And the URL to the tech blog: http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/tech

Each blog has its own RSS feed to which you can subscribe (if that's your kind of thing).

If you would like to get everything through a feed, then just use the one that's on the main Neopoleon page.

Confused? Hope not.

In short:

For both blogs: http://neopoleon.com

For personal blog: http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo

For tech blog: http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/tech

With that out of the way, expect to see a mix of personal and technical content on the main page from here on out, and remember that, if you don't want to see both blogs, you don't have to - just navigate to each blog's home page. I'll be updating the Neopoleon landing page to make this clearer.

And now, back to it...