things i know | thingsiknow.net

Monk on Hulu

2008-09-06T19:44:03Z

Hulu recently used this image in its dynamic lead to promote the awesome USA Network show, Monk. It pretty much conveys the idea of the show in one well-executed photograph.

PAX Highlights (or, Watch Out Because Here Come the Name Dropping Bombs)

2008-08-31T12:41:20Z

Survived an awesomely epic night out with @nickchester, @jonathan_ross , @colettebennett , other non-twittering Dtoiders, and Jeremy and Rohan from GameTrailers. Jager shots were involved.

Got an airbrushed Brothers in Arms tattoo because their hired soldier actor flirted with me. And also because the alternate booth activity was shaving my head, which, though it has indeed been a summer of major hair changes, would've ultimately resulted in lots of tears and regret.

Played a ton of Fallout 3 from the confines of the super awesome airstream. Inside, Nuka Cola, potentially genuine antique LIFE magazines, and later, Adam Sessler, who took over my miserable meanderings inside Megaton -- I think I was in the middle of a pretty shady transaction with the resident drug dealer at that point.

Met and chatted and geeked out with @shawnimals, who is so fantastically fun in person. Also got (adorably) assaulted multiple times by the Ninjatown ninja and wee devil. They are bigger in person than you'd expect.

Replaced @mtvmultiplayers' Patrick Klepek as the youngest at the dinner table. A round of "How young were you when you went to your first E3?" occurred with Brad Shoemaker and Shane Bettenhausen chiming in.

Shared my career goals with @GarnettLee, who was immensely supportive. He also carried my heels for me when I could no longer walk in them *new Favorite Person Evar alert*. And yes, I am still that silly girl who wears heels to things like E3 and PAX.

Had a conversation with Fallout 3's Todd Howard and Pete Hines which started off tame enough but eventually degenerated into a mildly racist but hilarious discussion about the group of Asian chicks who walked into the hotel bar after us. Said conversation will not, in fact, be repeated.

Snuck into a session of Left 4 Dead an hour before my scheduled appointment. Got the title for Most Zombies Killed at the end of the first mission, and would've also gotten the Shrieked Loudest And Most Frequently title had there been one. Those things are scary motherfuckers when they jump on you.

Made my podcast debut with @xav and @kylehorner on Big Download's Bigcast! We managed to stay on topic... for the most part. Listen to me giggle way too much.

Rocked Blondie's "Call Me" with @gamingangels on vocals, GamerVixens' Julia on bass and @kittychix on lead guitar (I was on drum duty). That's right, all girl band. Many phone cameras were whipped out because we were just that hot.

Left early evening, missing both the TRS and 1Up meet-and-eats. Tears were shed.

Mexico with Lana, Papa Limon

2008-08-16T06:28:45Z

6-day vacation at a beautiful Las Gaviotas beachfront house. Photoset here.

Only in Mexico #1: Kids riding outside SUV on bumpy mountain road. Hilarious video here.

Only in Mexico #2: Giant Silver Balls on Metal Elephant Statue.

Socialthing! First Impressions

2008-08-06T05:42:06Z

What's this?

Socialthing! is a lifestreaming web application that lets you pull in updates/news from your profiles on lots of major social networking sites ranging from Twitter to Digg to Facebook, even Guitar Hero Community. AOL just bought it last week. No clue yet on what they intend to do with it.

How does it work?

• Get an account (invite code 'CNET' working for the indefinite future), plug in usernames/passwords for all your social networking accounts. Socialthing! scans those friend networks and aggregates all the updates from those networks.

Yay!

• Great as a one-stop friend overview. If you have friends that only use Facebook, friends that only use Twitter, friends that only upload Flickr photos, you can see them all in one place. None of them need to have a Socialthing! account in order for you to do this.
• You can choose to group by friend or by timeline. The former is cool because it seems that people who are actually on Socialthing! will have all their various site updates in one box.
• Useful interface. Clicking on a friend's name creates a new tab just for their updates. Really great if Socialthing! has multiple types of updates for them. These tabs are saved each session - so if you've opened up multiple friend tabs, they'll be there when you revisit the site (unless you log out, or quit the application).

Boo!

• Timeline feature not that useful, since St! seems to update in blocks, meaning you'll see a ton of Facebook updates at once, and then a ton of Twitter updates.
• You'll only see people's updates if you're already friends with them on X social network. IE, if my buddy Sam has a Flickr account that mine is not 'friends' with, it won't show up in updates, no matter how good of friends we are on Facebook/Twitter.
• No 'profile' pages. Socialthing! seems like more of a personal tool than a "Check out all of my sites" tool. I can't show people my profile on Socialthing! where they can see all my services. In fact, it's kind of difficult to tell which of the friends in my timeline actually use Socialthing!
• Have to click an 'update' button in order to see new updates, even though it gives you a notification. Probably so that the view doesn't jump when you're reading something at the bottom, but it'd be nice to have an auto-update option.

FriendFeed Comparison

• Socialthing! pulls in all the friends you've already added on the separate networks. With Friendfeed, you have to manually find/add Friendfeed profiles -- so while I can read all Laurent Courtines' (AOL Games Community Manager) various feeds (including ones such as Google reader, which I don't currently use).
• Friendfeed lets you post updates from Friendfeed. Those updates can reside only on FF or can be propagated throughout Twitter and the like. Socialthing! only posts on behalf of your existing services. Which again shows the de-emphasis on having Socialthing! be at the center of your online persona, but is good if you don't want Twitter followers to miss out on an update.

So?

So it's interesting. I see more Facebook updates than I do on a regular basis. I'm still not a fan of FriendFeed (too much noise, too much clutter) but Socialthing! isn't quick enough on updating that I will switch over just now. It's great to have all your friends from your ten million networks automatically show up, but then again, I could just use XYZ external client or an RSS feed to accomplish pretty much the same. Hopefully AOL will do something great with it -- then we can hijack the service and use it on GameDaily. :) [I think I'm becoming a company gal... ]

Clip Reel: CNN's Show and Tell - Women in Gaming

2008-07-24T06:01:47Z

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

So last week during E3, CNN had Libe hosting a short segment on Women in Gaming. I ended up in the background of a lot of the b-roll on the Rock Band segment. I'm the chick on the bass guitar (in case it wasn't painfully obvious).

Also, that's my heel you see on the 1-second drum pedal shot at 1:30. That's how I rock.

Funny Shit Happens on Twitter When Facebook is Down

2008-07-23T04:09:55Z

Facebook is a bit sloshy this evening -- users are being passed back and forth between facebook.com and new.facebook.com like a drunk chick at a party. A quick search of 'facebook' on Summize brought up some pretty hilarious tweets.

ursonate: facebook, she is broke
iii_riz_iii: Facebook needs to be un-broke.

A lot of people seemed concerned with their Scrabble games.

samismail: Getting infinite looping errors at Facebook so can't play my damn Scrabble moves. Not cool.
trypd: facebook doesn't seem to want to work for me. and i was doing such an awesome job at losing at scramble
GayBard: Eek! I can't get into Facebook and I have a game of Scrabulous hanging in the balance!

Then there were the truly lost.

mastertaxton: Facebook has failed me. Redirected between new and old Facebook for eternity. *sigh* And I had just written a really long wall post. T_T
garycope: Me without my facebook is like me without my Starbucks ... it's about to get really ugly up in 'herr
mcwm: isn't sure what to do on internet without the facebook. NB: Internet no longer has an article, but websites should; a grammatical meme!

And my fave.

ericduh: facebook is hard.

Oh Zuckerberg, stop toying with our hearts. At least come up with a good FailWhale?

E3 Says it Loves Us But Our Therapist Thinks It's an Abusive Relationship

2008-07-22T23:03:53Z

This was originally going to be a Best/Worst of E3 2008 post, but I ended up contributing to the GameDaily one anyway, so that went out the window. I'm responsible for these Bests: Resident Evil 5, Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Worsts: You're in the Movies, Wii MotionPlus.

Instead, here's a gem of a quote from Chris Grant from when I was driving him and the Joystiqs around LA last week.

"Bungie and Microsoft are like the couple that always argues, and everyone knows it. But then one day he slaps her, in public, and everyone is like, 'Whoa, did that really just happen?'"
- Joystiq Editor-in-Chief Chris Grant, on the Bungie snub during Microsoft's E3 2008 Conference.

Quicksilver + Summize/Twitter Search = Instant Microblogging Trends

2008-07-21T01:22:32Z

[Updated] Clarified a few points to help out anyone who was having trouble. Points: 1) Make sure you have the Web Search module installed. 2) Check your 'target' panel to make sure it's empty. Thanks, @lightmanx5!

Quicksilver, as many have said before me, is one of those Mac OS X tools that is hard to describe, but also hard to live without once you've gotten used to. It's an application launcher, but also a hotkey binder, a web search, a system search, a music controller, a note taker -- all depending on how extensible you want it to be. If you're a Mac user and haven't given it a chance yet, I recommend you do so - it increases my productivity tenfold.

In any case, for those who have already discovered its awesomeness, here's one more cool thing that you can get Quicksilver to do: instant Summize/Twitter Search (by the way, Twitter acquiring Summize was by the far the smartest thing they've done in the last few months).

I've had a hotkey set up for searching Google since I started using Quicksilver (mine is Shift-Command-1), and I use it all the time for quick queries. And recently, I've been using Summize to track people talking about E3 on Twitter. What's the next logical step? Set up Quicksilver to query Twitter for trends! Yay!

Step 1: Install Quicksilver
Download latest version here. There are great sites to help you get started in the tutorials section. For this setup, you'll need to install the Web Search plugin, as well!

Step 2: Set Up Query Bookmark
Quicksilver responds to links prefixed with 'qss-'. If you look at the search results URL for any Twitter search, it looks something like this: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=robinyang ('robinyang' being our search example).

So take one of those URLs and bookmark it in a web browser. It doesn't need to be accessible through the bookmarks bar or menu; I hide it in a folder I use just for Quicksilver queries. Then change the name to something like "twitter search" and change the url address to this:

qss-http://search.twitter.com/search?q=***

The *** tells Quicksilver that this is where your search term should go in the URL. If you've done everything right so far, you should be able to click on that bookmark and invoke a Quicksilver panel for Twitter search. Type a search term, and it should lead you to the Twitter search results page. Awesome yet? Moving on...

Step 3: Set Up Quicksilver Trigger
Bring up the Quicksilver triggers panel by hitting your usual Quicksilver invoke key, then Command-' (that's an apostrophe). Click the (+) button to add a new hotkey assignment. Navigate to the bookmark you just created by typing "twitter search" (or whatever you named your bookmark). If you can't find it, check that you have the Web Search module installed. The Action panel should default to 'Search for Text on Web.' Make sure the Target panel says "Type to Search" (select the box and hit Command-X to get rid of any extraneous text, including the text icon!). Just one more step to go!

Step 4: Set Up Hotkey
Select your new trigger (it should be labeled "qss-http://search.twitter.com/search?q=***") and click the (I) Info button. Alternately, double-click 'None' in the Trigger column. Hit the 'Edit' button to set up a new hotkey combo for this trigger. I'm using Shift-Command-2 since my Google search is Shift-Command-1. And voila! That should be it.

Want More?
Here is a list of more web search URLs that you can set up with Quicksilver triggers and hotkeys. Spread the word. :)

Post-E3 Link Roundup

2008-07-18T19:59:56Z

Features

Hands-On: Flower: The follow-up to 2007's flOw makes interesting strides, but we're still waiting for something more.

Eyes-On: inFamous: Sucker Punch's new action adventure is more impressive than screenshots and trailers can show.

Hands-On: Rock Band II: Rock Band's second tour is one we can't wait for.

Hands-On: Flock: We don't know what, exactly, makes assorted spherical farm animals so gosh darn cute. Whatever it is, we like it.

Hands-On: Mirror's Edge: DICE's sleek new first person adventure game turns heads... and corners.

Hands-On: LEGO Batman: The Dark Knight snaps into his LEGO debut.

Twitterati

Crashed a Gears of War 2 party with @batgirl. Played Rock Band 2 for hours with @nickchester. Ran into @russ_fischer like, everywhere. Brief encounter pre-concert with @majornelson. Finally met @gamingangel, even though she was lame and totally ditched the party. Drove @chrisgrant and his band of jolly Joystiq-ers around. Was about to open for The Who with @tiffchow but everyone rushed to get good seats. Argued with @GarnettLee about Flower but then hugged and made up. High-fived @HarmonixSean more times than I can recall. Caught @ncroal with phones in both hands on multiple occasions (see proof below).

Photos

N'Gai on the phone while everyone else was partying.
N'Gai on the phone AT THE WHO CONCERT. Geoff Keighley looks on.
GameDaily takes over Microsoft Press Conference.
Robin and Libe at El Compadre (with Rockstar Games' Steve Hahnel and Bruce Dugan hanging out in the background).
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos chugging a Heineken while still managing to get 100% on his expert guitar solo.
THE WHO. THE FRIGGIN WHO.
Duffy performs at Microsoft Presser.
Robin performs headbang at Rock Band suite party, or is the girl from The Grudge.

Numbers From E3, Part One

2008-07-16T07:33:58Z

Real meals in last 48 hours: 1.5
Drinks: fartoomanytocount
Correct to incorrect driving ratio: 0.4
Parties crashed: 2
Twitter friends -> real people: 5
VG 'names' met: 3
Rock Band songs sung: 5
Songs drummed: 2
Songs bassed: 2

Robin's First E3 (or, Potentially Everyone Else's Last E3)

2008-07-13T04:28:08Z

I'll be covering the Electronic Entertainment Expo in LA for the next week. It's a lot of games, a lot of press conferences, and hopefully some degree of parties, too.

What I'll be doing:
• Live-twittering the big press conferences.
• Checking out my assigned games (Rock Band, Lego Batman).
• Wearing a t-shirt with this badass graphic.
• Meeting up with some games writers from Twitter.
• Hanging with GameDaily staffers, who rarely get to work in the same room.
• Having a great time on [Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft/EA]'s dime.

Check my Twitter page for all the live updates, sightings, photos, and more. Check our Guide to E3 page and main site for breaking news.

See you on the flip side!

Freshening Up the Brand

2008-06-28T06:40:13Z

This is the summer of making rash decisions (and actually following through).

I decided last night around midnight that the old robinyang.com was way too ... old... and frou frou. and overdone.

So I threw out the old code and put together a brand new one-pager (okay two, if you count the alternate view) by... oh, 1am. Most of the time was spent writing the copy.

It's fun, it's snappy, it's sweet, it's bright and it's straightforward. No bullshit, no fancy graphics (maybe one fancy graphic later. We'll talk.), just links and confirmation that X, Y and Z Google results for "robin yang" actually refer to me.

Check it out here: robinyang.com.

Next, sprucing up this place a bit. Thinking about adding comments again. Definitely need to add pagination.

Summer Story

2008-06-23T07:19:30Z

let's get out of here, he said. you and me. let's just go.

i smiled (maybe laughed, even) but i didn't reply. what do you say when a life-changing possibility presents itself like that? if you were in a movie, you'd flutter your eyelashes and say something smart and sweet. where to?

anywhere, he'd say. anywhere we want.

this being the crushing dullness of reality, i said nothing of the sort. it was a joke, anyhow. and, admittedly, i was caught off guard in a major sort of way. hey man, what's going on?

you're awesome, you know that? i love that you just get out there and like, do your thing.

love?

i got hung up on that. it's a word that all at once thrills and calms.

it was dusk and getting darker by the minute, but on a summer night in southern california, you don't need a jacket. so there we stood in the middle of the plaza, t-shirts and skirts.

you keep on making the music and i'll keep on rocking, i said. clever, i thought. don't be cutesy, don't be a girl. be 'awesome' and casual and keep your cool. people like that in a conversation buddy.

rock on, he said. hi-fived me, and excused himself to a new group who had just walked over.

back up here. *record scratches* that was it?

well next time, you say. next time you'll look up with a glint in your eye and say let's do it. and it wouldn't be some carefree conversation starter.

would you be missed? probably. it'd be fifteen minutes, twenty tops, before one of you got a phone call or text.

maybe you'd only make it to the parking lot before the excitement of leaving it all and just going for it got lost in the fumbling of car keys.

maybe.

--

i don't really know what kind of line to end this story with. a message about romance? about taking chances? overanalysis of friendly chats?

it's about summer. it's about time, and choices, and connections and letting things in to fill up your life and give you a little something to dream about. that's how you start.

Firefox 3 and the Mac (Second, er... Third Chances)

2008-06-17T20:00:28Z

I've never particularly liked using Firefox on a Mac. To be honest, I really only use it for the DownThemAll! extension, which is a perfectly silly reason. Maybe it's because I've been too lazy to import my Safari bookmarks. Most likely it's because I've never gotten comfortable with the graphical user interface - even themes designed to look like the metal/brushed metal/unified metal "Mac style" didn't seem quite right.

So when I read that Firefox 3 was going to have 'native' skins for each operating system, I thought "Hey, maybe I'll give it another chance. Maybe it's changed. Maybe it'll keep its promises this time. Maybe I won't get my heart broken... again."

It's just not meant to be. Here's a look at the navigation bars in Firefox and Safari (this area being where interface differs the most - in-line forms, submit buttons, and other features on webpages aren't too much of a concern).

Tab bar in Firefox 3 [Mac]

Tab bar in Safari 3 [Mac]

Part of the problem seems stem from the fact that I'm still running 10.4 instead of 10.5 - there's a distinct color difference where the Firefox navigation bar meets the Mac window bar. Leopard isn't that old. There are plenty of Mac users out there that haven't upgraded yet. I don't know if the solution necessarily means separate skins for each Mac OS, but it means less familiarity - even if it's a somewhat tiny detail.

The other part is something that Alexis at Design vs Art talked about this morning: the treatment of tabs.

The tab metaphor works with browsers (and in other areas as well) because everyone knows the physical implementation - the file folder. We know what it means and how it works - the label on the tab of a file folder shows us what's inside, and when we access that tab, we reveal its content. It's simple enough and it works easily in design.

What Alexis noticed was that in the Mac OS 'native' FF3, tabs aren't attached to their windows, but rather, they are attached to the bookmark/navigation bar. This breaks the metaphor. It's no longer intuitive that a 'tab' in a browser works the same way as a tab on a physical file folder.

Here's the thing, though. Safari has upside-down tabs as well. They too 'belong' to the navigation/bookmark bar instead of the appropriate content. And while there has been some discussion of the issue, it's certainly never been a point of contention for me. I've never opened up Safari and thought to myself, "You know what. I love Safari, but these goddamn upside down tabs drive me bonkers. I sure hope it's fixed in Safari 4."

Upper: Firefox tab closeup. Lower: Safari tab closeup.

Which is not to say that's true for Firefox 3. The issue here with the tabs is way more noticeable because there's more depth to them. The bookmarks bar is 'puffy' and there's actually a shadow cast on all the inactive tabs. In addition, the Firefox tabs are distinct from one another - there's 3 pixels in between each tab, as well as between the tab and a few pixels between the bottom of the tab and the top of the webpage area. Safari's tabs sit right against each other, and there's a smaller gap between the tab bar and the webpage.

It's just a few pixels, but the attention that Firefox's tabs draw to their... um... 'tabbiness' by casting shadows and distinct separation makes it all the more jarring that tabs are actually attached to the top bar instead of the content it's referring to.

Firefox 3 isn't ugly. But those few small details are inconsistent enough with the carefully tuned Mac UI that it still feels 'wrong' to use it. Maybe I'm just picky, but I don't know if I can really get used to Firefox on a Mac.

What's this mean? It means that for now, for me, Firefox is still my secondary browser, fired up only when I come across some service that doesn't support Safari, or to test out sites with the Web Developer plugin. Like (some?) relationships, it's never completely over. I'm not going to just let it go - but at the same time, Firefox doesn't add enough to my life that I need to make it a central part of my browsing habits.

Now Featured on TwentySomething.Alltop.com

2008-06-17T06:58:39Z

Thanks Guy Kawasaki for getting my feed on Alltop.com! If nothing else, it'll encourage me to post more frequently - with meatier content. :)

If you're unfamiliar with it, Alltop is a news site to end all news sites. It grabs headlines from news outlets to personal blogs and compiles them in a single page for each category. For example, http://gaming.alltop.com/ lists all the latest headlines from a ton of gaming websites (GameDaily's on there, too!) And http://twentysomething.alltop.com/ (where I've been listed) features blogs written by us kids in our twenties.

It's a site for people who don't like/know RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Maybe your mom doesn't know how to use Google Reader. Maybe you just want all your sports news in one place.

The ones I check daily:
LifeHacks
Men
Gaming
Social Media

and now,
TwentySomething