Emailed high score reports update

I've been having a lot of problems lately with the emailed score reports. And the problems, for once, aren't really my fault. Fact is, if you have a bot that sends people emails, you'll be accused of being a spammer. This is despite the fact that:

1. There are no ads in the emailed reports (not even ads for my own products).

2. The system is entirely opt-in.

3. The default is to NOT receive emails, and you have to check the "send me daily reports" box to get reports.

Still, I get complaints from people that I'm spamming them, and my IP address seems to come and go on the "this is a spammer domain" lists.

I long-considered removing the emailed reports entirely with the motivation that they're more trouble than they're worth. But I'm going with a bit of a simpler solution for now. . .

I cleaned house.

That's right. All 338 of you who previously received emailed reports have had your daily emails shut off. If you want to continue to receive the daily emails, then you can head over to the account manager, click the "Edit Existing Account" tab, and turn your emails back on.

Given my number of daily players, I figure the large majority of those 338 emails were getting automatically filtered into trash cans anyway. This way the few of you who still want emails can get 'em, and I won't have to tangle with the "you're a spammer" crowd for a couple more years.

I hope.

Haiku Contest Results!

Sorry about the delay. I wisely scheduled my book-contest smack-dab in the middle of "Adobe Week", in which I'm writing and/or posting a dozen reviews of Adobe CS4 or related products to Gamedev.

I'm late in announcing, but I'm done now. Here were my judging criteria. . .

It must have a real 5-7-5 syllable count. If you don't know what a syllable is, your loss. I had to dump some good ones because you monkeys don't know how to count.

As a purely rhythmic point, it must have a tangible pause at the end of each line. An actual punctuation mark isn't necessary, but there must be some kind of break in the rhythm. If you do something like this. . .

I want the orange
book on my bookshelf right now.
Send it to me now.
That doesn't really count because the second line is just an uninterrupted continuation of the first line, thus making it a 12-5 haiku rather than a 5-7-5. Haiku is all about perfection in flow and meter, not just filling a syllable count.

Some of the syllables were a judgement call. Can "business" be pronounced with three syllables? Can "Australia" be pronounced with four? I tended to go with my American-Illinois-Iowa-Arkansas-Texas mumble as the final judge.

"Oranges" has three syllables, not two. My contest, my pronunciation.

Cleverness gets my attention.


All that being said, here are my winners, culled from my blog on Gamedev and the mirror of the blog on blogspot.



On the "cleverness gets my attention" front, I'm giving the blue book to this bit of coded haiku from gamedev user Ezbez. It would've been cooler if it actually compiled, but I'll keep that in mind for a later haiku contest.

while IAmWaiting():
for blueBook in myMailBox:
print "Yippee!!"; exit()
For the orange winner, I have this lilting piece of weepiness from blogger user Michael. Extra literacy-points for the rhyme and the correct spelling of "teem".

In all of our dreams;
Visions of orange books teem;
All are deserving.
Hope you enjoyed the contest. I'm sure there'll be more books to give away, and I'll find new and interesting ways to get rid of 'em. Thanks!

Free book giveaway number two

Yeah, that's right. It's time for another book giveaway.

This time I'm making it simple. I'm giving away a copy of Beginning Game Programming: A Gamedev.net Collection (the orange book) AND Business and Production: A Gamedev.net Collection (the blue book). There'll be two winners, one blue and one orange.

This contest is inspired by my lack of heartening that our books have been burning up the sales charts for a month now, and they've thus-far garnered exactly ZERO Amazon reviews. I've gotten some very positive emailed reviews from the book's chapter-contributors, both on the quality of their own material as well as the selection and editing of material that Drew and I did for the rest of the book.

But without reviews, you don't get eyeballs.

And the upshot of that is that the books aren't achieving the great heights of "Joe The Plumber's" ghostwritten masterpiece I Have Nothing To Say, So Please Point Cameras At Me. And I know the gamedev books deserve a better fate than that, so I'm handing out two copies to people willing to abide by the following two rules. . .

1. Please have a US address. I know this upsets you non-US readers, but it costs $2 to send a book in the US. Outside the US, it generally costs the price of the book itself, I have to fill out a customs form at the post office, and it can take weeks to arrive.

2. You agree to read and review the book on Amazon. I'm not requiring you to give it five stars because that would be unethical. Just remember who your buddy is :)

If you fit the following two prerequisites, just post a haiku in the comments (on gamedev or blogspot). The haiku should contain the word "blue" or "orange" so I know which book you're trying to win. If I like your haiku best, I'll send the book to you.

If you don't remember haiku, it's a three line poem consisting of five, seven, and five syllables, like the following. . .

I like to write games,
while juggling oranges.
Send me a danged book.

Something like this would be an attempt to get the orange book, as it has the word "orange" in the haiku. Get it?

So if you're in the US, you wanna review a book for Amazon, and you know what a "syllable" is, post a haiku in the comments. One entry per person please.

And keep an eye on the comments. I suspect more people will be voting orange than blue, so blue entries will have a better chance. Hint hint.



I'll pick a winner on Friday sometime after Drew's gamedev blog roundup. So now get writing!


(disclaimer: This contest isn't sponsored by the publisher but by me personally. That should be obvious, but you never know.)