This picture is a bigger deal than it seems

Excuse the crappy photo quality. Despite the lack of Instagram filtering or other color, this is actually the future calling.

What you see here is my laptop, connected to my TV, running a full-screen video. Nothing big there. The image on screen is a big deal, however.

YouTube fans will recognize the face on screen as Harley Morenstein, aka the Sauce Boss, looking stern like usual. He's acting now in a YouTube-based video series, Video Game High School. (As the shot implies, he's the principal.) 

He's also one of a zillion Internet celebrities now appearing in what's called a "feature-length web series" with Hollywood-level production values. In 3 episodes, I've spotted one of the 5 Second Films guys, two members of Wong Fu Productions, the aforementioned Sauce Boss - and that's just the ones I know.

The series also takes video game culture for granted. It's hard to get what's going on unless you're a veteran gamer - lingo is tossed around more easily than technobabble was in The Social Network's hacking scene:

It's better still if you ever played pro: it takes a special kind of nerd to appreciate the sentimentality of throwing away your first, oldest, hardiest, clankiest gaming keyboard. VGHS's details are fantastic, down to the college-esque posters in the backgrounds. One special event is scheduled for "Miyamoto Hall," if you look closely. 

To sum all that up, high-quality stuff that speaks to me is now being made by experienced creators. Freddie Wong, the director of the VGHS operation, is just ahead of a curve that will inspire others to follow in his footsteps. There will be more good stuff for me (and you!) to watch, in this format, in the future.

It was with that in mind that BlakeyTV was created. The Internet generation, the Me Generation, the Millenials, whatever you want to call us - we're nearly 30 and we're watching stuff in new ways. I want my videos, played endlessly, with no other intrusions.*

Compare that to attempts by the entertainment establishment to "connect" to nerds, whether a GameStop-sponsored gaming show on Spike, or anything on G4, or even The Big Bang Theory. Wong, a USC film student who paid attention in school, and made a lot of videos, is killing it. He's making undisclosed sums of money on YouTube, meaning that he really will have followers in his footsteps. 

Even if I do love what Hollywood makes from time to time, I don't want to pay a cable company $100 a month just for The Colbert Report and Game of Thrones. 

When Hollywood decides to converse with the tech world, all words seem to go in one ear and out the other. Ari Emanuel, the feisty Hollywood super-agent who inspired the Entourage character Ari Gold, showed up at the tech-oriented D10 conference and proceeded to fill the room with hubris. 

Emanuel asked Josh Topolsky, in ignorance of tech blogs' existence, who he was with. He responded, in ignorance of Sean Parker's stance on converting pirates, with "Nope" to the idea that cord-cutters could just pay $5 an episode for Game of Thrones without getting cable or HBO. He insisted, in ignorance of Google's new YouTube copyright-violator scanning technology, that Google adapt its child porn-detecting tech to also pick up copyrighted content. He pitched the debate in terms of Northern California vs Southern California - the nerds (who, he intimated, steal content) versus the content creators. After noticing that his appearance wasn't well-received online, his olive branch still laid claim to the digital distribution of whatever Hollywood makes.

If Emanuel were ever to read something I've written I'd make it this direct suggestion to him: 

You're a middleman. The talent may go through you in Southern California to get things done, but that's not how things get done in Northern California. The Hollywood-caliber talent, in my generation, is using Northern California to make their living in a new economy. You're a famously strong man. Adapt or die. 

Postscript
I actually enjoyed my own site this weekend - I came straight home from work, plugged in, clicked and laid down on my bed and started watching until bedtime. It's a huge motivator to work on the site some more, such as allowing people to make their own channels, but I can't decide whether to code it myself as the learning exercise it started as (at the cost of LOTS of time, which I don't have as a Japanese employee), or to use TaskRabbit to farm out the work for a couple hundred bucks and call it an investment. I'd love to hear what you think.

I'm glad I didn't get a social gaming job

People are willing to play complete garbage that they get absolutely nothing from. There are no memories there to tell their kids about. Like when you're 60-years-old and your grandkids are asking you about the games you played when you were young, are you going to say you played Farmville for months and months and wasted hundreds of hours of your life playing it? I think deep down most people know how counter-intuitive that is. I would much rather have a really quality short experience than waste my time on something that's okay.
-Edmund McMillen, Super Meat Boy designer

Other indie quotes can be found in this IGN piece.

A few more photos from life in Japan

Yes, I know, it’s taken me forever to upload all these pictures I’ve been promising. 

What you won’t see here:
-My 60 hours a week at the office, which actually dominates my life and is my top priority most of the time

What you will see here:
-The lovely Mayumi and Chie making mass quantities of takoyaki (fried dough balls with little bits of octopus). Rio was also there but out of frame preparing a, hmmm, surprise.
-The view from my balcony, both by night and by day. I’m cheating: this is the view off to one side, not straight out. But, it is the view I get from sitting in my little outdoor chair and drinking wine.
-A quick tour of Shinagawa Shrine, my local Shinto shrine. It’s one of the stops on a Tokyo pilgrimage route for luck (as denoted by the little statue guy with the drum). It’s a wonderful place and provides a great view for Shinagawa, the ward I live in.
-Hanami (cherry blossom parties) as experienced at Ueno Park with the excellent guidance of Hiro (shown here pulling a My Drunk Kitchen and concocting some sort of crazy sandwich). The park is lit at night, meaning the cherry blossoms were still visible by lantern light. Truly gorgeous.
-One of the first Subaru BRZ’s out in Japan. I already posted this for the car geeks on Facebook, but this car is truly remarkable from the driver’s seat. It’s going to be a hit.
-The shotengai (shop-lined street) in my neighborhood when set up for a festival. Lots of local craft goods and fried food to be eaten. Good times.
-A rather silly clothing encounter in Shibuya

Japanese security can be lacking

Japan may be a little too trusting on security issues. (I use "security" in the IT sense here: keeping the bad guys from doing things they shouldn't do.) At my local 7-11, when buying a beer, I was caught off guard when the typical mumbling cashier pointed to the LCD screen facing me and mumbled something I don't usually hear in the everyday convenience store cashier transaction. I still don't know what was said, but the idea was clearly to direct my attention to the screen.

The LCD, whose screen space is typically 80% ads / 20% running total, was replaced with a big dialog box with big red text.

After a paragraph of typical Japanese, lengthy, indirect politeness, the screen gets uncharacteristically direct. The text in red bluntly asks, "Are you at least 20 years of age?"

Putting aside the surprising issue of just asking someone if they're legal, there's an even bigger problem.

There's only one answer: "Yes."

Just a couple shots

Hello from Tokyo!

I'm still in the process of settling in, but here are a couple shots
to show everyone what my neighborhood is like.

The cherry blossom at sunset is at the bottom of my building, but the
other two are from Shinagawa Shrine, which is the big neighborhood
Shinto shrine.

The shrine grounds are at the top of a big staircase, so once you get
up there the view can be impressive.

It'd be nice if you could hear what I heard: mostly silence. This is a
big city but the bright lights are a ways off. I live in a
*neighborhood* and the only dominant noise at that height is the odd
passing train.

It's nice here.