Things By Mike

Making progress on the Second Impulse site

Mike — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:28:18 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous post, thanks to a friend of mine who manages them, I’ve been granted the webmaster/designer roll for the band Second Impulse of Baltimore. The layout of the site has changed, but now it’s near completion. We hope to launch tomorrow. So far the band is thrilled with the work I’ve done, which makes me very happy face.

SI is a great band who has actually been around since 2005. Sadly they’ve never really taken very good advantage of all the internet has to offer. My friend and I aim to change that. Aside from creating the website, I’ve been helping with creating artist profiles for Second Impulse on as many indie music sites as I can find, like Purevolume, Unsigned.com, etc. I also have a few other tricks up my sleeve yet.

Here’s a screenshot of the latest layout. Still keeping it simple, but widening things about it.

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Crazy Cloud Over Moscow

Mike — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:12:15 +0000

If you haven’t seen this amazing cloud footage from Moscow yet, it’s worth a gander. Of course many are already claiming it was created by aliens. I would guess it’s most likely just a strange weather occurrence. Aliens would be cool though.

Got me a new gig

Mike — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:05:49 +0000

So I have a friend in Baltimore that manages a great hard rock band named Second Impulse. They need a quick website to be online by the end of this month, so naturally my friend got in touch with me knowing I’m capable. It turns out there’s a good chance I’ll be doing the CD artwork for Second Impulse as well as websites for other bands in the Baltimore area as well. It’s always nice to have connections ;D

For now it seems we’re probably going to be using the following layout or at least something pretty similar. In the future we may do something more elaborate, but this should be fine for the time being.

Halo 3 Related Auction Benefits Charity for Children

Mike — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:03:00 +0000

My website, Grifballhub.com is auctioning off a replica of the N0. 14 Anti-tank Mine, more commonly referred to as the assault bomb from the Halo series, to benefit pediatric cancer research. The auction can be found here, on Ebay. The auction ends at 9:42 p.m. EST on Friday, October 12.

The replica was created by Rooster Teeth community member and GrifballHub editor, CaptainR3dbeard. It has been signed by Rooster Teeth staff Gus, Geoff, Burnie, Ben and Joel as well as Bungie and Grifball.com staff members.

You can see more photos here, including various Rooster Teeth folks holding the replica bomb.

100% of the proceeds will be donated to Extra Life – a 24-hour charity gaming marathon aimed at raising money to fight pediatric cancer. If you’d simply like to donate to Extra Life regardless of the auction, please visit the GrifballHub Extra Life Campaign.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact Goose, Bobby or any member of the GrifballHub.com staff.

PAX09 Halo 3 ODST Gameplay

Mike — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:57:09 +0000

Earlier this month, staff members of my website GrifballHub.com made the trek to Seattle, WA to participate in the first ever grifball discussion panel. While there though, they certainly couldn’t leave without getting an early look at the latest Halo experience from Bungie, ODST. Here’s some footage they captured at PAX.

Tomorrow I’ll feature some gameplay footage they captured of Left 4 Dead 2.

PAX09 Left 4 Dead 2 Gameplay Footage

Mike — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:57:19 +0000

As mentioned in my last post, here is the footage of Left 4 Dead 2 captured by staff members of my website GrifballHub.com while at PAX earlier this month. The video features a short interview with one of the developers of the game, named Kim.

Get featured on XBOX Live and receive disturbing hate mail

Mike — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:05:25 +0000

If you have an XBOX 360 and use it for online gaming, you’ve probably seen the gamer spotlights in the dashboard. It’s something I’ve personally thought was pretty cool. Myself and members of my GrifballHub website have even been researching the possibilities of being featured. After reading this recent story over on Destructoid though, I may have second thoughts about it.

Apparently once you’re in the spotlight you can expect to receive some pretty offensive and disturbing hate mail – both written, spoken and video. A female gamer who was recently featured said, “I did receive a lot of negative comments after my spotlight. A lot of them were because I am a girl. Also there were a lot of inappropriate sexual comments.” Worse than that, apparently some of the offenders decided to take it even further than that, using their XBOX video cameras to send her “naked crotch shots”. That’s pretty sick.

If you’re like me and having been considering the idea of trying to become one of the spotlighted gamers on XBOX Live, you might want to reconsider.

How’s it going blog?

Mike — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:43:34 +0000

So I quite honestly have not posted anything here in what seems like forever. I’ve been quite busy with my other site, GrifballHub. A lot has been going on with it and it’s starting to consume more and more of my time.

Aside from just trying to build it into a solid, popular and successful site, I’ve been busy with various projects, one of which is a video presentation which will be shown at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle. Members of my website along with the founder of Rooster Teeth and Red vs Blue will be hosting the first ever grifball panel. It will be an hour long session featuring several speakers and the video which I’ve been working on putting together. After PAX, the video will also be available for viewing on GrifballHub. I will probably post it here as well.

It seems this fall I may very likely become the person in charge of creating game video highlights for Grifball.com. In order to do it properly, I just recently ordered a high def video capture device from Hauppauge, which will be arriving on Monday. Can’t wait to get my hands on it and start using it.

I’m going to try and do my best to post here occasionally though, even if it’s just talking about what I’ve been up to on my other sites.

That does not compute

Mike — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:08:33 +0000

If you’ve heard of the company known as Rooster Teeth, you probably know them for their ridiculously popular web series called Red vs Blue. What you may not know is that they also create some pretty fantastic live action short films as well. They just recently released one, which has quickly become my favorite of all the shorts they’ve done.

The film includes some adult language, so if you’re sensitive to four letter words, you may want to cover your ears.

By the way, the video game screenshot you see the bald guy working on in the middle of the other two talking is actually one I sent to them. Rooster Teeth is working on producing a Grifball desktop theme for purchase in the XBOX 360 marketplace and accepted submissions from people in the Grifball community. At least one of the shots I submitted will be used. That’s the one you see in this short film.

Pup and Friends – Sample of a monthly video highlight series I create

Mike — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:40:43 +0000

Each month over at GrifballHub, I put together a video which is part of a series entitled Pup and Friends. Each features grifball highlights submitted from members of the grifball community, played during double XP matchmaking weekend, which occurs every month in Halo 3. This is the latest video I put together.