I've also been trying to get a lot of the smaller pending projects off of my plate - ordering shirts for Educational Gaming Commons, creating support posters for the Digital Commons locations at the campuses, and working up some generic Penn State screen savers for the machines in the computer labs. I got the first two done and have been making headway on the third. Then I can concentrate on doing signs and more promotional materials for EGC as that space gets built over in Findlay.

I had an interesting conversation with Jamie Oberdick regarding revamping the TLT Talks. We have been wanting to get these back up and running, but we also want to expand them to get an audience outside of TLT. We were discussing how April is going to be our "Symposium month" on the TLT site. Essentially, every day's posted content will be related to our Symposium in some way. That led to us thinking that it would be great to have Jeff Swain give a talk at the end of March that would be about the Symposium. I remembered something that Jamie was doing in the previous version of the TLT newsletter that he called "7 Questions" where he would interview a staff member and ask them seven questions that would then be included in the newsletter in podcast form. So I was thinking that perhaps we could spotlight Jeff on the TLT site at the beginning of the month. We would give a little demographic info on him, but the spotlight would mostly be that he is the chair of this year's Symposium and include some info about the event. The spotlight on Jeff would also include a notice that he would be giving a TLT Talk at the end of the month regarding the Symposium. We could have people be able to sign up to attend the TLT Talk through the site, so we would know going in how many people are planning to come. We need to iron out some details, but this could work very nicely.

Now, I have been aware of the iTunes App Store since it launched, but I have to admit that my interest in it wasn't all that great. I guess that was because I really didn't use any of the other features of my iPod to begin with, so I didn't really think it was worth browsing through a bunch of other applications I would never use. Plus, I really didn't think that there would be anything worthwhile that you didn't have to pay for, so it just didn't really seem like there was much of a point. Then I discovered that I could get Instant Messenger on my iPod for free. And it works really well. That led me to downloading the Facebook app. Also for free. Pretty cool, and I was actually using them kind of frequently. I mean, how cool was it to be sitting at Champs having a drink and updating my Facebook page (ok, it's not really that cool, but I liked that I could do it). After months of using these apps, I found the one that has made me fall in love with the iTunes App Store.

I have always been a solitaire junky (weird I know), and when I saw a free solitaire game, I figured I would give it a shot. Honestly, it's nothing fancy. It looks good and offers 5 games, but I pretty much only play the Klondike Deal 3 game. What has me hooked, though, is that it keeps stats. I can't even tell you how much I like that. Being a sports fan, I am obsessed with stats. I seriously can't stop playing the damn thing. I really think part of this is because two of the stats it keeps are an average per game score and a total running score. Basically, you start a game at minus 52 points, and you get 3 points for every card you can move into the Ace area. So, currently, my average per game score is minus 17 and my total running score is minus 5,503. It sounds bad, but Klondike 3 Deal is pretty tough. I win about 12% of the time.

Anyway, my love for the solitaire app (it's called Sol Free, by the way, in case anyone is interested in downloading it) has led me to see what other cool apps I can find for free. I found a really cool touch football game called FingerFB that is a take off on the old paper football game I used to play with my brother as a kid. The one where you and another person would sit at a table and each take turns pushing the football to try and get it to come to rest with part of it off the edge of the table. If you could do that, you scored a touchdown. Then you could try an extra point by finger kicking it through goal posts that the other player makes with his hands. Well, this app is just like that old game. And it has the football look like a football that you can slide with your finger on an actual football field. And when you score a touchdown, you can try for an extra point by swiping your finger as well. The cool thing is that it changes the angle of the goal posts, so you have to account for direction and power. It's a really fun app. You can play a one player game against the iPod, or you can play two people over wi-fi. And yes, it keeps track of scores and margins of victory which you can actually track online to see how you stack up against other players. Very cool indeed.

So I have started digging into the apps store. I am still just downloading the free stuff, but some of the pay apps have caught my eye. And the prices vary too with none of them seeming unreasonable. So far, in addition to the ones I have already mentioned, I have a college football app that lets me keep track of schedules and scores, a blackjack app, an air hockey app, and a flashlight app (all of these are free apps). Now the flashlight app I downloaded just because it looked fun. All it does is make the whole iPod screen emanate a color (you can choose what color you want) that you can use as a light in the dark. I never thought I would use it. However, just last night I came home to my apartment after watching the Super Bowl, and when I flicked on the light switch a fuse popped. It was pitch black, but I had my iPod with me so I fired up the flashlight app (it's called Flashlight) and it worked like a charm.

The other thing I really like about the App Store is that the apps aren't just games. That was another preconceived notion I had - that all the apps would be games. Well, I have a good number of video games. I didn't want to play what I considered would be watered down games based on the fact that there is no controller other than touching the screen with your finger or moving the iPod itself. How fun would that be? Just another reason why I wasn't interested in the App Store. I think I was wrong about the quality of the games, but I seem to be more interested in the non-gaming apps anyway. There's some great content in there, and I'm glad I'm finally experiencing it.

We've also sent out the general registration announcement for the Symposium, and Jeff and I have already received several phone calls and emails from faculty inquiring about the event. The announcement will hit the all-campus Faculty/Staff newswire on Penn State Live this Thursday, so I expect a surge in registration soon after. As of 1/30, I believe we had about 160 people registered. That doesn't include the 4 or 5 of us who are listed as "instructors" and can't register on SemReg. We had a record number of proposal submissions this year, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if we also have a record number of registrants.

The Symposium print campaign is trying something new. Last year we made posters of our "faculty profiles" photos. These were mounted and laminated on foam board and then hung out in the hallway between the 210 and 202 side of Rider Building. The tools at my disposal for hanging the posters was very low-tech... thumb tacks. I tried to use clear ones so that they wouldn't show up as easily, but when I ran out of clear ones I had to resort to white ones (the wall was white so I figured they would blend in). Suffice it to say that while it didn't look horrible, it didn't quite pull off that professional look I was going for. So as we start to make posters for the print portion of this year's marketing campaign, we are running into the same issue. Dave made 4 very sharp posters that he had mounted on board and laminated, but he was struggling with how to hang them on the wall. If there is one thing I have learned about Dave is that he is incredibly resourceful. He found something on the internet called Wallhogs. Wallhogs are large posters than can be printed on vinyl and attached to a wall using something called Photo-Tex that, in the words of Wallhogs themselves, is a "reusable adhesive backing that can be used indoor or outdoor on nearly any surface." These are very similar to Fatheads, which I have seen advertised on TV. So we ordered one to try it out, and it should be here tomorrow or Wednesday.

Speaking of Dave, this leads me to something that I didn't expect to happen when I started doing these weekly reflections. I subscribe to many of my co-workers' blogs, and I read many of their posts, but I have hardly ever commented. However, now that most of the staff are writing weekly reflections, I find myself not only commenting on those posts, but on many of their other posts as well. Dave is one person whose blog I have commented on frequently in the last week. I didn't expect that to happen because I have a hard enough time writing posts to my own blog. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't find it easy. I started this particular post on Friday, 1/23, but it won't get posted until Monday, 1/26 because I keep going back and rewriting it. I can't help it. I know people have told me to treat writing a blog as a stream of consciousness type of thing, but I just can't do it. At least not yet. So it takes me forever to write a post.

So I say to myself that I should just write one post a week for now, and that it'll be no big deal. Heck, I really should be able to get 4 or 5 written. Yet here I am with just the one post. But something is happening. Even though I have only written one post a week on my own blog, I am doing more writing in general because I am really getting into reading and commenting on my co-workers' spaces. Oh, I'll spend more time than I should writing and rewriting my comments, but I'm writing. And it is inspiring me to write more and share my ideas. I am still daunted by the fact that I can't just write what I am thinking at the moment and let it go; that I have to go back and analyze it and go over it again and again. However, I really find it gratifying to comment to my co-workers, and my hope is to have them comment to me. I just hope they find what I have to say as interesting as I find their stuff.

The article where I read this story mentions that sales of real guitars have increased during the same time frame. I actually mentioned to my brother months ago that I would like to learn how to play the guitar (I don't think this desire was directly a result of my playing Guitar Hero, but I know that playing GH didn't hurt), and, what do you know, for Christmas he got me a super sweet Ibanez electric guitar. The thing is just gorgeous! Sadly, I think it is going to be a while before I am able to play anything on it that doesn't sound like huge chunks of metal scraping together.

Not only are sales of instruments increasing, but artists who songs appear on the game have seen increases in download sales and inspired renewed interest from consumers. To quote the article from Edge, "first-week sales of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith tripled the the first-week sales of the band's previous album." That is truly amazing.

I have always been a video game junkie. My friends have always said that video games are "my drug." Well, as we see the power of these games and how they are becoming a driving force in other forms of entertainment and artistry, I like to look back and think that I was onto something for all of those years. Was I really just a junkie, or was I a visionary? Ok, I guess it's fair to say that the people making the games were the visionaries, but I was definitely on board for the ride.