New Clarinet Sonata Published

My publisher, BRS Music, has posted my new clarinet sonata for sale on their website, here: http://www.brsmusic.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=204

New Action Track "Mayhem"

Here's a pretty furious action score that I was working on recently. It's up on Cue Pop if anyone is looking for some dark / industrial driven fight sequence music. Might work for horror too.

http://www.cuepop.com/details.asp?LibraryID=2283#

(the "play" button on CuePop is the small green arrow in the mid upper right)

New World Music Track

I had a fun time yesterday putting together some "world" music.

The creepy background noises are from extended techniques on a gong. Its amazing the weird noises you can get. Other special effects include a synth-xylophone in a super high register, with an echo effect to create the "raindrops" background effect.

Noah Potter - Forgotten Eden

Grand Tournament Las Vegas

Looking forward to this event in a few weeks. I need to "finalize" my strategy to take advantage of the new rules changes. I think mainly I'm just going to go to have a good time rather than to be truly competitive: next year the gloves come off :D

Just Web-Published My Clarinet Sonata

I just put up a web page featuring my clarinet sonata, with both the score, parts and recording. I'm hoping to use Google advertising to drive some traffic to the page, and maybe follow up by contacting some prominent clarinetists.

The piece was a lot of fun to play & perform. I like to think that it strikes a nice balance of being modern but also accessible and enjoyable.

Nothing in particular

I figure it’s a more authentic blogging experience if I let my entire audience disappear between blog updates. What can you do.

So, while waiting rabidly for the next democratic primary elections, I started using face book more regularly. Specifically there’s this one game called Knighthood, which is really fascinating. It’s like playing Nobunaga’s ambition but with real people as vassals. I’m really impressed with how it uses a social network as a platform. Its almost the next step for those ancient Bulletin Board based games like trade wars, but with a much larger audience. They’ve got a great viral model, in that you must invite friends in order to get any where. I worry that this fact makes it too much like a pyramid scheme rather than a game. What chance to late arrivals have?

In other news, I think I’m going to check out the Warhammer 40k grand tournament in Los Vegas this year. It looks like a good excuse to drag the wife to Vegas. We’ve been looking to see some of the cirque shows, and also play some more video poker.

Second Day in Tokyo

We got up at 4:30 to trek over to the famous Tsuigi (pronounced Skee-jee apparently) fish market in Tokyo. The streets were practically deserted as we walked over to our subway station. The key reason to go this early is the Tuna auction. Unfortunately, we had heard that due to a variety of mishaps involving some clueless tourists disrupting the auction, we would not be allowed into the actual auction event itself. We had no clarification as to what those mishaps were specifically – maybe someone decided to grab a 500lb tuna and run, who knows. Aside from that, we had no idea what to expect.

On the ride there, a decal on the subway door puzzled us. As best as we could tell, it suggested that in case of raccoon attack, we should drop flash-bombs and run for it. However, it was to be a raccoon-free commute this morning, lucky for us. The smell of fish guided us in the right direction out of the subway once we arrived. The market is a huge warehouse, with barrel-front motorized platforms careening at high speed down the narrow walk-ways. The endless variety of fish and seafood is stored in rectangular Styrofoam casings.

The scale is mind boggling – from the enormous tuna slabs being hacked open with swords to individual store owners filling wicker baskets of the freshest catch. We were greeted with bemused smiles from some of the shopkeepers, as they weaved around us to plop still flopping flounders into tanks of water for shipping, or stabbed a struggling snapper to fill an order. We saw scallops in their large triangular shells, as well as octopus and squid lined up like sardines. Some of the stalls had tasting samples for serious buyers. The whole thing was a sort of macabre aquarium, with everything you can imagine having been fished out of the ocean present.

Outside of the market, there was a smaller row of shops and eating places. There were several empty Sushi restaurants, as well as one with a 45 minute wait outside. Ardelle suggested that we follow the crowd, and we did. We stumbled upon perhaps the best Sushi bar in the world, “Dai Wa”. My extremely limited Japanese vocabulary gets me nowhere – it is self evident that we need a table for two before I get a chance to say so. However, sinister phase two of the waitress’ dialog was incomprehensible. Fortunately, the Sushi chef spoke English and invited us to enjoy a “set”. The focus seems to be slightly less on presentation than I expected. The Nigiri was set down with no plate on a lacquer counter in front of you. The chef brushed each mouth watering slice with soy sauce before serving. The Uni, sea urchin, was indescribably better than in the States. I commented that the fish we were eating probably had moved in a more or less direct line from boat to plate since it was caught.

Last Week's Concert

As many of you know, I premiered my Clarinet Sonata last week at Fulton Recital Hall in Chicago. Many thanks to Charlie for all of his hard work learning the thing, it was a great experience all around.

The recording is available at my website.

New Music added to website

I added a computer-rendition of my Clarinet Sonata to my web page today. Also, a dance for flute and piano that I wrote for my wife's birthday last year. The link to that site is in the title here.

I will be performing the clarinet sonata on the 31st of May at 12:00 at Godspeed Hall on the University of Chicago Campus, for any interested.

A Pre-Show Obstacle Course

So the GSB’s year end extravaganza “Follies” was last week. I played piano for my friend Kathryn who was singing homage to Milton Freidman set to the tune of “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”. The performance was a lot of fun. I got to reconnect with some classmates who I hadn’t seen in a while. At any rate, I feel that most people didn’t fully appreciate what was involved in preparing for the act. I don’t mean 25 years of piano study or hours of practice. I mean getting the piano onto the frikkin’ stage.

So the piano at Mandel hall is this gorgeous concert grand. Unfortunately, despite the wheeled undercarriage, this beast doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. Indeed, it floats into place with all the grace and elegance of a slow-motion Hippopotamus on ice skates. We didn’t have any sort of stage crew for Follies, so I had to recruit whomever was standing nearby before our act to help move the thing into place. So the challenge, which recalls a LEAD Outdoor Experience exercise from o-week, is to maneuver the piano from its shaded hiding spot backstage through to its appointed spot stage left. Standing in the way of this are:

• a 12’ hanging video projection screen which is being watched by the audience, so that everyone would notice if you hit it by accident.
  
• a row of 4 chairs from the “Oompa Loompa” skit (don’t ask) placed directly between the piano and the stage
  
• a thick backstage curtain, draped over an orchestral percussion set (yes, really)
  
• the main stage curtain
  
• a motley assortment of audio and lighting cables
  
• a special floor that is apparently traction-free for shoes while being quite resistant to pianos
  

You have exactly 45 seconds to move the piano into position before the spotlight turns on. Ready, Set, Go!

Who’s paw prints are these?

As some of you may now, we’re right now in the process of selling our condo. We’ll be living in a museum for the next few weeks as open houses begin. Of course, the kitchen appliances are always spotless, the spices always organized alphabetically and the hallway mirrors always windexed, so there wasn’t much work involved there. However, our new bedroom door needed to be repainted.

Fortunately, we still had the original paint cans from the move-in period. This sidestepped the entire debate over the precise “eggshell” finish we needed, and enabled us to cut right to the chase, the actual painting. I was in the middle of putting a second coat on the back of the door, and the paint lid was on the floor face up next to me.

Suddenly, in a bounding blur of grey fur one of our two cats came prancing through the doorway. I did a quick double take as the white paw prints starting trailing from the doorway to our bed. My effort to leap after the cat only encouraged her to jump onto the bed. There were four white kitty prints on our brown sheets by the time I caught her. Cici (the cat) wasn’t amused with the “get the white acrylic paint out of my back paws” process which ensued.

TDH Part 7: Early Raiding

As we last left the story, TDH was just beginning to raid regularly with the two other guilds Poison Arrow and Deadbanger’s Ball. (“Raiding” involves game content that is difficult enough to require 40 (in those days) players) Molten Core was the holy grail of raiding at this point, and daring to set foot in it was audacious in a way that probably can’t be explained unless you were there. In terms of how raiding effects a guild, I had an opportunity to learn directly from PA’s leadership, which was obviously quite experienced in guild management. I want to talk here first about what the raids were like, and then on the effects that the three-way guild alliance had on the participating guilds.

To raid in these early days of WOW, you needed first to get 40 people together and coordinated at the correct time. Some guilds form around the idea of raiding exclusively. These guilds have stringent regulations, but mainly, they self-select for people who want to raid. If you get these sorts of people together it doesn’t really matter what your attendance requirements are per se, because the crowd has self-selected. In any event, we had some significant difficulty rounding up the requisite number of players. Just look at the basic question: If you played WOW and wanted to raid why on earth would you join a rag tag band of people doing it for the first time instead of an established guild that could provide quick rewards? Since individual skill had little to no bearing on raid results, with group experience IMHO being the decisive factor, successful & proven groups drew the recruits.

Poison Arrow started the guild alliance in order to begin working on Molten Core. They didn’t have enough players at the start, so the alliance was a necessity for them (and for us). We had about 5-8 regular Two Dollar Horde players show up for the Thursday night raids, with the bulk provided by PA and another 10 or so from DB. The early raids were grueling experiences. My own perspective was that you would spend hours just waiting around, only to die because someone else didn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing. I found it grueling, unpleasant and unrewarding from a loot perspective.

Poison Arrow had an interesting approach to minimizing the sort of drama that until this point had been rife in TDH. They had one guild officer, Rapscallion, who’s role was to basically be a complete hard ass. This was an example of what I had already been learning – a successful organization has got to rigorously enforce its rules. A person who’s not afraid to do that is invaluable. PA was also very strict about not allowing its members to raid with other guilds, thus crafting a sense of cohesion. PA was a living example of many of the lessons I’d been picking up in guild management.

PA, the strongest guild organizationally speaking of the three, began to attract players from the other two guilds. Indeed, I think it may have been part of PA’s leadership plan to siphon off players from the alliance guilds. This has been my constant experience with guild alliances – players will flow towards the guild that better serves their interest. Most of the time that interest is the ready availability of in game loot, though the defectors most often don’t perceive that themselves. That’s another story that I’ll get to later.

Deadbanger’s Ball suffered the most from this steady attrition of players to PA, indeed the guild was largely destroyed as a result. How TDH managed to survive, is not completely clear. I think the people who stayed at that point were largely a result of my own personal network from PvP games – hence TDH players tended to be a little more boisterous and a little more competitive than PA players. Two key events were taking place at about this time that I think helped make TDH endure: one, I had started leading competitive teams of “Alterac Valley” games, and hence had a strong in game personal network of players from that. And two, the appearance of a new 20 man raiding instance, Zul Gurub, gave us an opportunity to start raiding for ourselves without PA.

By the time the “guild alliance” fell apart TDH was strong enough to survive. More on that next time, where I’ll talk some about the Alterac Valley teams.

Cross-Town Signals

So, my friend Tony dropped by the other day. He brought by a collection of his new comic book series "Jack of Fables", which I read in one sitting. Great stuff, I highly reccomend it. Toto (from the wizard of Oz) gets mauled by a tiger in one of the funnier scenes.

So anyway, the real point is that Tony lives in view of our condo from his building. We spent a few minutes while he was over trying to figure out exactly which window belonged to whom.

Tonight, after an exchange of phone calls, we agreed to send a signal at exactly 10:15. I'd flash our living room lights on and off slowly three times, and wait for the counter signal. There's something wierdly compelling about the experience of sending out a secret signal. My wife and I turned out all our lights at the appointed time and flashed the living room track lighting thrice. Behold, a single blinking lamp in the upper right corner of an apartment building across the way. Signal received. Counter signal sent and received. If only we had bothered to think of "sinister phase 2".

We've decided we need to get some Aldus lamps and confuse the hell out of our neighboors. I note that very few of the nearby buildings (if any) are in a position to see *both* the signal and counter signals.

Back from Ski Trip

So, I learned to ski last week which was a big step . I didn't break anything either, which was another big step. (or both were big slides rather depending on how you look at it) Never having gone before, but having heard numerous horror stories about ski injuries, I had it in my mind that ski slopes must have gigantic animatronic trees that pop out directly in front of you or something - but no. There is merely the fear of hurtling head long down a mountain side and that’s about it.

After four days of practice I even made it down a blue at my wife’s urging. I only spent a small amount of that attempt face-first in the snow. There were even pictures to prove it. The only pictures of last year's snowboarding attempts are of me sitting down on the board in the snow, which was pretty representative of the entire experience. I had a hard time understanding the purpose of the snow board: it seemed to be a transportation device that was only capable of moving you about a foot and a half in a random direction and then dumping you off.

I also had a chance to go snowshoeing which was also a blast. The fun part is that your feet randomly sink about two feet into the snow whenever you step "just so". Though no moose were encountered directly, the promise of moose sighting kept us poised and alert.

We got stuck in the Salt Lake City airport for about 12 hours on the tail end, which was the only downside. Somone in a nearby airport lounge chair was playing some sort of electronic phone game that went "Bee---oop---oop" every ten seconds or so. I couldn't see who it was directly though because there were about 10 people stooped over their phones, and it would have looked wierd to wander around attempting to triangulate the sound. I suppose that in some version of Hell, everyone else is given a little beeping electronic toy except for you. "Bee---oop---oop".

Buzz starting to build about virtual currencies

Clearly, virtual currencies are indeed where the industry is heading. I wonder how long it will be for someone to take the leap from doing this just within the context of a video game to actually creating "legitimate" currency.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070207/zenke_01.shtml
(link in title)

More interesting press re: Second Life

An interesting article on CNN talks about real life car companies tyring to sell cars in Second Life.

It looks like GM is making a few mistakes getting into this space. I'm interested that they chose such a low price for the cars - you'd think part of the point of playing in this virtual space is brand awareness for them. "So cheap that anyone can have one" is probably not the image GM is going for. This would have been a perfect venue to showcase some interesting "concept cars". Its also interesting that they are going for total customization by the user/owner: of course, this has no relation whatsoever to the actual experience of owning or buying a car.

On another note, whomever does Second Life's marketing is doing a really good job of getting their name out in the press. Business Week and CNN have been talking about this quite regularly. Given the first mover and network advantages of the space, might Second Life be the start of the first truly usable VR internet?

"Local" webvertising?

We had an interesting speaker in my Pricing class yesterday. He contrasted Google's use of auctions for advertising (Bidding for AdSense Keywords) with traditional media buy patterns (TV, Print, Radio etc.)Since online ads are measured in clicks (a viewer action) rather than impressions as in traditional media, companies ROI on advertising money is much easier to quantify. One of the speaker's "thoughts for the future" was the idea that local advertising would play a bigger and bigger part of overall internet ad revenue. Will it?

On one hand, the potential for selling ads on Google Maps or other map-it sites is clear. Restaurants might pay to appear on the map while someone was searching for driving directions towards a theater for example. As a map becomes less and less useful the more ads are placed on it, Google might manage this map space in an auction style as well. Provided that Google, or whomever, can provide some simple way to facilitate these media buys from local companies this strategy makes a lot of sense.

The problem I see with the "local" concept is that I'm not sure it applies very well to the internet beyond the "map software" space. While the web in many ways is much more "precisely targeted" than traditional media, the one area where old media is better targeted is by location. It is much easier to reach residents of a particular city block by placing an ad on the side of a bus shelter than it is by using the internet. I think one shouldn't discount the power of traditional media just yet: It has become one of a set of tools rather than the only available tool.

Welcome to "World 2.0"?

It looks like Microsoft is going ahead and creating a virtual currency as I described in my previous post:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/features/microsoftpoints.htm

These points will be the currency of choice for buying Zune songs, and also for buying maps and extras for Xbox live.

If anyone has the power to pull this off, it's Microsoft. My prediction is that this is the start of an era in which the corporation eclipses the power of the state in a variety of formal ways such as currency, virtual and non-virtual security, market making, etc. Indeed, due to the trans-national nature of internet transactions, its allready private companies that are providing transaction security, rather than the court system of a state. Interesting stuff IMHO.

Property Rights in Virtual Economies

A friend in school brought up a game called Second Life to me yesterday. I'd read an article about it in business week a few months ago, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. The basic premise of the game is that players in a virtual world have ownership rights to the property and IP that they create in the game. The company backs this policy by supporting an exchange rate between virtual in-game currency and US dollars. This enables players to "cash out" when they quit the game, and also to run businesses selling virtual real estate. (Pretend Estate?)

So what exactly is "virtual" about all of this? Second-Life land plots have rents and a fairly liquid selling market if Business Week is to be believed. Since the US dollar isn't backed by gold (needless to say), in my eyes a video game currency is just as "real" a currency. This has all sorts of interesting implications. Whereas in the past a "theme park buck" was mainly a way to get you to overpay for services, here a company actually has the ability to *Print Money* (again, antiquated verbiage) backed by nothing more than their user experience and IP.

Some interesting business models that derive from this phenomenon:

1. "Free" MMORPG

Currently, games like World of Warcraft make their money by charging a monthly subscription fee. The company leaves a ton of consumer surplus value on the table in this scenario. People are paying to maintain access to an investment that they have made in virtual objects. In Warcraft, this investment can amount to hundreds or thousands of US Dollars in gear and experience, not to mention the value to the player of their in-game social network. Think about it: The player pays $19 monthly to have access to goods and services that they value at *more* than $2,000. How could the company claim more of this value?

Consider a MMORPG that is free for players to play. The company creates and controls a market for the in-game value that these players create. The value of controlling that market, of embracing the market forces created by your user base, is far greater than the value to be gained from subscription fees (I can't imagine that most consumers would be willing to pay $100/mo to play warcraft)

2. Non-Game Currencies

What if Google created the Google Dollar? What about the Microsoft Franc? Current thinking in military strategy and popular social science describes the declining power of "the state" compared with non-state actors. (Al Quaeda to over-use an example)What if companies begin to supplant the role of the state in issuing and backing currencies?

3. Hedge Funds and Market-Making Opportunities

What if you had a hedge fund that specialized in trading virtual (game) assets? Could you approach Blizzard with the idea of making a market to trade Warcraft gear and characters in an official, controlled manor?

TDH Part 6: What Defines "Rif-Raf" in WoW

As we last left our guild, we had survived our first exposure with "drama". We had also just begun to implement some more rigorous recruiting standards. Though draconian, we felt that the stringent dual criteria of being able to type in at least broken English while also being a mammal would ensure a higher standard of recruit. In all seriousness, we were indeed starting to quality control a little better. As I would soon learn, weather or not someone could get along with me was not always the best indication of if they would fit in the guild or not: The organization had developed a culture that wasn't a carbon copy of my own personality.

I recruited a friendly player named Tikatu into the guild. I had seen him around the server often and we had gotten to chatting occasionally. He had an off-color sense of humor, to say the least. This didn't really bother me at all, (at one point in college I'd gotten into a "most offensive concept" competition, which will remain unwritten) but other people were not so understanding. We were left with a situation in which he would push the limits of what I found objectionable in guild chat. If he went to far, I would remind him that there were women and children present. This in turn created a running "family chat" gag.

unfortunately, what this meant for people who had a lower tolerance for juvenile humor, was that they were almost always being exposed to more than they would like to deal with. In retrospect, clearly my comfort zone was both higher and lower than other guild members.

Now, a guild is a very fluid environment compared to say, a job. People have a sense of social obligation to stay, but not any sort of enduring financial commitment. This means that as soon as players are pushed out of their comfort zone, be in emotionally or whatever, they will leave the guild.

Since I tolerated Tikatu's off-color humor, I inadvertently selected away from those who did not. Several more people left, including the remainder of the original Everquest crowd. For many people, it is easier to just leave and start over than to even bother addressing the issue of another's behavior.

I never wanted to be in charge of censoring other people's behavior or speech. What I didn't realize at the time, is that rather than trying to censor someone, I should have enacted policies never to recruit them in the first place. I would rather have been in a guild with the people who left than with the behavior problem that drove them out. Part of being a leader in this environment meant "protecting" people who were too timid or unwilling to confront others.

Everyone always starts their first new organization thinking that they are somehow different than everything else. Just like dotcoms thought they were a new breed of company, new guilds think that they are the only people to get it. The founders usually have some great vision that you can get by just by being nice to everyone. Reality is not so simple. The fact of the matter is that if you as a leader don't make the tough choices of who to recruit *and who to exclude*, those choices will be made for you. You cannot maintain a guild, and I suspect most social organizations, without an element of exclusion.