Tag Archives: AWESOME!!!

BEST MARKETING EMAIL EVAR

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So, a while back, I shelled out $5 for comedian Louis C.K.’s “Live at the Beacon Theater” standup video. He made a button of money, and gave a lot of it away to charity and the people that helped him produce it. Professionally and business-wise, he’s a really decent guy (I only qualify that because I don’t know him personally).

Part of that signup was an agreement that, on a rare occasion, he is allowed to contact me. Well, I finally got an e-mail from him, letting me know about some recent stuff he put up.

But wow. It’s just… this is the best marketing e-mail I’ve ever read. I read through the whole thing, twice even. It just DRIPS authenticity. When I read this, I can actually hear his voice in my head reading it to me. And you know what? It really makes me want to buy his stuff, and makes me HAPPY that I am on his mailing list. This is someone who took 10 or 15 minutes (maybe 20 or 30, he might be a really slow typist, or may have been dictating) to actually compose the e-mail himself. Even though he doesn’t know me personally, I feel more connected to him in our anomymous glory-hole consumer/vendor relationship than I have with most other products.

One thing in particular was his note about:

I’m giving you this long and boring explaination because, as most of you know, I release about an hour or more of new standup material every year and folks can count on seeing a new show every year. This is old material, so I don’t want to be a dick and pretend it isn’t.

The closing paragraph is hilarious, as well. Give it a read. And go buy his shit.

(Full text of e-mail after the jump)

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Euro-Gaming in Linux [Linux FTW]

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A “euro-game”, also known as a “German-style board game” are

are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction, and physical components, which are frequently wooden player tokens or markers. The games emphasize strategy, downplay luck and conflict, lean towards economic rather than military themes, and usually keep all the players in the game until it ends.

The most well-known example of this would be Klaus Teuber’s Settlers of Catan.

Where western / American-style board games tend to focus more on direct competition, zero-sum arrangements, and frequently combat themes, German-style games instead focus on empire-building, strategizing, and often economic themes. If American-style games are “during the war”, German-style are “before and after”. There is player interaction, of course, but it’s frequently circumstantial or coincidental. The publishers “Rio Grande Games” and “Mayfair Games” are both terrific sources (as are many games that win the annual Spiel de Jahres award)

In any case – they are a variety of games that have become quite popular here in America over the past decade. My friendly gaming group frequents many of these.

Over the past year, I have discovered several computer-based editions of these games that can either be played online (against other people) or locally (against computer AI) — the best part is that they have Linux-based versions! The games I’ll cover here, along with how to set them up and where to find more information on playing them, are:

  • Settlers of Catan
  • Race for the Galaxy
  • San Juan
  • Dominion / Puerto Rico / Carcasonne / others

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This Video is Full of Win

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Some of you may remember the game “Super Mario World” for the Super Nintendo, way back in the 1990′s. (If you don’t, and you own a Wii, you can download it for ~700 Wii points on the Wii Shopping channel! I recommend, it’s a fun game. :) )

Anyways — there are some people that have created custom levels for it, using their computers. One of the inevitable consequences was the creation of some levels that required absolutely no player interaction at all; The player is moved through the level using the game’s physics engine. While that may sound boring, it is quite entertaining to watch. Sort of like those old Rube Goldberg machines.

This video that I found today (on Boingboing, I think…) takes that automation to the next level. Not only does it do a PHENOMENAL amount of zero-player-interaction automation, but the creators have synchronized it with some fast-paced foreign electronic music. You have to see it to believe it.