After a hell of a morning, I definitely needed to relax with this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website. Continue reading “Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “Repairs” (spoilers!)”
[You] know what’s … rare? A guy who can write excellent code in several disparate languages, manage multiple different server installs, administrate databases, and configure office firewalls. All while being motivated to do “tedious” work and manage his own projects while not caring about his work/life balance and being solely focused on the job.
That’s not a unicorn, it’s something more like a deity, and it doesn’t actually exist. There is no one out there who can realistically meet that job description. What they will get instead is a jack of all trades who has mastered very few or none of them, and who will have to scramble like crazy just to meet the base requirements of the job, let alone excel at them. You know why? Because as they readily admit, it’s a job that should require four people. You get what you pay for, guys.
and
You don’t want that job. There is no upside to taking it. You’ll be worked like a dog and paid like shit while you’re doing it, while Khoo, Krahulik, and Holkins continue cashing their trade show checks.
Robert Khoo is a brilliant businessman, and such businessmen excel by finding the sucker and exploiting him or her.
Don’t be that sucker.
—Web designer and writer Christopher Buecheler lays it out to the potential applicants for a job working at Penny Arcade.
When my husband first expressed his outrage over the job posting, I didn’t think too much of it; however, reading this, I understand his anger a little better. At the same time, however, I doubt that any of the people who currently have full-time jobs (like their first employee Mike Fehlauer or most recent new hire Jamie Dillon) there are being terribly exploited.
So, my advice to any and all of the applicants out there when if they’re called in to a final interview where they start talking salary is to ask what the top person is taking home, and then maybe increase that by 50% or so. Because for a web-based company, if your electronic infrastructure breaks down, you definitely don’t want to be underpaying the guy or gal you’ve hired to maintain it.
As a side note, wouldn’t it be ironic if stories from their current web and Internet infrastructure team started appearing in The Trenches?
Want to get excited about a new thing, but aren’t completely up to date on the fandom and don’t mind spoilers? We here at Geeking Out About are happy to help provide you with everything you need in order to stay current with your geeky passions in our new column, “Pop Culture Catch-Up.”
X-Men: First Class
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, and more
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some sexual content including brief partial nudity and language
When I first saw the X-Men: Days of Future Past trailer, I expressed a ton of confusion about it, and was told that I needed to see X-Men: First Class to really understand what’s going on. I was a little reluctant at first, but upon remembering that my local library has DVDs you can rent, I immediately requested it.
See, while I saw and loved X-Men when it came out in 2000, the two subsequent sequels left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. However, with the help of some friends who were kind enough to let me know that First Class was a much better movie than X-Men: The Last Stand I dove into this viewing of the DVD with much pleasure. Continue reading “Pop Culture Catch-Up: X-Men: First Class (spoilers)”
In the olden days, producers knew what visual effects were. Now they’ve gotten into this methodology where they’ll hire a middleman – a visual effects supervisor, and this person works for the producing studio. They’re middle managers. And when you go into a review with one of them, there’s this weird sort of competition that happens. It’s a game called ‘Find What’s Wrong With This Shot’. And there’s always going to be something wrong, because everything’s subjective. And you can micromanage it down to a pixel, and that happens all the time. We’re doing it digitally, so there’s no pressure to save on film costs or whatever, so it’s not unusual to go through 500 revisions of the same shot, moving pixels around and scrutinizing this or that. That’s not how you manage artists. You encourage artists, and then you’ll get – you know – art. If your idea of managing artists is just pointing out what’s wrong and making them fix it over and over again, you end up with artists who just stand around asking “OK lady, where do you want this sofa? You want it over there? No? Fine. You want it over there? I don’t give a fuck. I’ll put it wherever you want it.” It’s creative mismanagement, it’s part of the whole corporate modality. The fish stinks from the head on down. Back on Star Wars, Robocop, we never thought about what was wrong with a shot. We just thought about how to make it better.
—Legendary visual effects artist Phil Tippett wants many visual effects supervisors to get out of his office and go back where they came from.
Be sure to check out the rest of his AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit right now!
An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss and Paul & Storm
November 14, 2013
Amsterdam Bar and Hall
Saint Paul, MN
Performed by Patrick Rothfuss, Paul and Storm
When we moved to Minnesota this year, my husband and I made a deal with each other: If there was a live event that sounded interesting and the ticket price was reasonable, we’d try to go. After all, what better way is there to learn how to navigate your new metro area than attending great shows in great venues?
Both individually and together, we’ve seen musical comedy duo Paul and Storm perform many times, and they always put on a good show. Money’s been a little problematic for us recently, though, so I made a decree that if we were going to see them perform again, there would have to be a real good and compelling reason. So when we learned that the next leg of their shows would not only swing through the Midwest but also bring fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss along for the ride, we snapped up the tickets quicker than you could say, “When’s Book Three coming out?”
This is not because we’re particularly strong Rothfuss fans. In fact, until that night, we’d never bought any of his books before. However, judging from the set that he did at w00tstock 5.0 this year, I knew that I’d love to hear what Rothfuss could do with a smaller audience and whether or not he’d be reading snippets from the new book. (A person can always dream!)
Suffice to say, neither my husband nor I were disappointed. Continue reading “You Had to Be There: “An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss and Paul & Storm” in St. Paul, Minneapolis”
Beware of the spoilers in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website. Continue reading “Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “The Well” (spoilers!)”
See that picture up there? The girl in the purple cheongsam wielding the double-bladed lightsaber? That’s me as Darth Shampoo—an irreverent take on a character from the Ranma 1/2 franchise—the first cosplay costume I would ever do. That picture was taken during the second Anime Expo I ever attended back in 2000; since then, while I’ve worn outlandish outfits to conventions, I’ve only cosplayed one other time at an anime or other genre convention.
However, I’ve always appreciated the art and artistry of people who do choose to go to conventions and dress up as their favorite characters for an entire weekend. In the several years since I started going to genre conventions, I’ve watched the fandom cosplay community grow and change in part due to the Internet and rise of dedicated forums and social media as well as the change in conventions themselves.
Nowadays, instead of waking up and hoping to see your picture in the galleries of the now defunct A Fan’s View website run by Kevin Lillard, a cosplayer attending a convention can hope that their picture made it into cosplay galleries of national media outlets like Business Insider, websites for internationally funded cable channels like BBC America, or even your local Fox affiliate station such as this one in Salt Lake City, Utah.
And then, of course, there’s the reality TV series called “Heroes of Cosplay.” Continue reading “Trisha’s Take: Four ways I would fix the second season of “Heroes of Cosplay””
It’s been a great year for fans of Doctor Who (aka Whovians) as the series approaches its special 50th anniversary episode. After Peter Capaldi (“The Thick of It,” In the Loop) was revealed as the newest incarnation of the Doctor and the announcement that the anniversary episode would be simulcast in theaters and select television stations around the world, we’re just a week or so away from fangirls and fanboys exploding with glee.
However, just to whet the audience appetites, the BBC released a mini-episode which is a prequel to the “Night of the Doctor.” And even if you’re not a rabid Whovian, there’s enough in the short to make even me lament the fact that I don’t have cable TV anymore. Click the jump to watch. Continue reading “Trisha’s Video of the Day: “The Night of the Doctor” prequel short”
Watch before you read on, for spoilers abound abound in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website. Continue reading “Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “The Hub” (spoilers!)”
After a one-week delay, spoilers abound abound in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website. Continue reading “Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “F.Z.Z.T.″ (spoilers!)”