The Do’s and Don’ts of Kickstarter – A Backer’s POV

  By Tom B. | June 5, 2013 - 7:50 pm | ,
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Well, this has taken longer than I was hoping or planning on to get done. But I have only myself to blame, since I started it 3 different times (besides this one) and kept writing about things I didn’t want to say. I am hoping this time I have narrowed things down enough that I won’t be starting this again and saying I had tried 4 times.

As I mentioned in my last post about Kickstarter, I have never started a project on any crowd sourcing site. I have only backed projects, mostly on Kickstarter. The numbers since that post have changed somewhat. I have now backed 35 projects in 2013, and overall have received 65 complete rewards, 6 partial rewards, and have 35 rewards that are past due. And have backed 20 unsuccessful projects. I’m always disappointed when that number increases.

While I don’t know what it is like to actually create and run a Kickstarter project, I have tons of experience with what does and doesn’t appeal to backers. At least backers like me, other people obviously have other tastes. So let’s take a look at them.

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A Personal Look at Kickstarter

  By Tom B. | April 26, 2013 - 9:30 am | ,
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Lots of noise around the interwebs these days about crowdsourcing, especially in the subcategory of crowdfunding. It isn’t exactly a new thing, in fact it is an extremely old (For American values of old anyway.) way of getting things done. Barn raisings are an age old form of crowdsourcing, that is still practiced today. The only thing that has really changed is what is being worked on and the number of people that can contribute.

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Marian Call is Really Something Fierce

  By Tom B. | November 11, 2012 - 7:01 pm |
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As I have mentioned before here, I am a fan of singer/songwriter Marian Call (@mariancall). I first reviewed two of her albums back in March of 2009. They were the only ones she had out at the time, and they really stuck with me. Then I reviewed Something Fierce, her third album, in February of this year. (Ignore the first few paragraphs, do down, read about and stream the album.) And not long after, I finally got to see her in concert over a couple of days in Atlanta, GA. I also got to see her sing in Cleveland, OH, on August 26, backed by Seth Boyer (@sethboyer), with some help from a young group named Lumpia (@LumpiaBand). (I am going to get a review of the concert and some pictures up eventually. I hope.)

Ms. Call has had an incredibly busy year. Besides her full tour schedule around North America, mostly driving everywhere, she set up and ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign, with a second website that is still in use for promoting the re-release of her Something Fierce album. Fans can go to the Adventure Quest website and find a daily quest to complete leading up to the album’s release on November 13. It is a bit late in the game, but you can still participate, as long as you get everything done by the 13th.

Some of the quests are not too difficult, like the first one at The Insomnia Radio Network, or the second at either If My Thought-Dreams Could Be Seen, Anansi’s Web, or Whedonopolis. Then there are some real challenges, at least for me, like using ? for commenting on the Album Premiere page at American Songwriter. But even if you don’t want to give the quest a try, you should check out Something Fierce. As time has passed, my opinion of it has only grown.

A Nerd on Social Media

  By Tom B. | April 1, 2012 - 2:50 pm | , ,
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Obviously I am not trying to be consistent on how often I write here. Not because of a lack of things to say. On the contrary, I think of a lot I feel like writing here. But I generally do that while working, and they tend to frown on writing a blog while driving an 18 wheeler. Pure prejudice really. Plenty of people write their blogs while working, but me, not allowed. Such is life.

So I think of things to write, but remembering them when I have stopped moving and unloading and loading and doing paperwork, with the occasional meal and sleep thrown in, has not worked out too well. And when I do remember what I was thinking about, I am not always ready to write that particular entry at that particular time. It isn’t like I am a professional, getting paid and needing to meet a deadline. Even my most popular posts get maybe a couple of dozen hits before disappearing, so I am really doing this for myself.

For this one, the nerd in the title is me, as if you couldn’t guess. I have been one all my life, not by choice, but by whatever combination of genetics and environment brings it on. In some ways a typical one, poor eyesight, constantly reading, especially SF and Fantasy, extremely poor social skills, if you could call them social at all. In other ways, not so much. Ran track, varsity cross country, varsity wrestler. But it was a small school, we all had to wear more than one hat, and you couldn’t expect someone on the basketball team to take the nerd role, they were all cool.

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A Weekend In Atlanta, GA

  By Tom B. | March 11, 2012 - 9:49 am | ,
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So something else has occurred in my life to write about. I got to do something I haven’t done in quite a long while, visit a new place and explore for a while. The place obviously is Atlanta, GA. I not only got to go there, I had 48 hours to look around and see what was there. That might not sound like much, but for a truck driver, it is a lot. There have been many times I didn’t get that much time at my home for a weekend.

The weekend was both wonderful, and not so wonderful, well actually parts were outright bad. But I can say, only one of the bad parts was the fault of anything actually associated with Atlanta, and I could have avoided that if I had planned better.

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Blowing Off the Dust with Music

  By Tom B. | February 12, 2012 - 9:30 pm | ,
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Wow, almost 2 1/2 years since I posted anything here. Makes me wonder why I have kept the back-end stuff all up to date. But if I hadn’t I would have had to do it all when I decided to write this. Not that many folks will see it, but a few of you might.

And what is it that is motivating me to once again take a chance on making a fool of myself by trying to string together words coherently? Music. Some of the best music I have heard. Ever.

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Dealing with Spam: Plugins and Outside Services

  By Tom B. | October 26, 2009 - 10:00 am | ,
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This post is part of my Ramblings on WordPress Plugins»

While I have not been writing many posts here, I have been keeping up with the behind the scenes maintenance stuff. Keeping WordPress updated, dealing with spam buildup, updating plugins, dealing with spam buildup, updating themes, dealing with spam buildup, figuring out how to run PHP5 on this blog, and finally, dealing with spam buildup.

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How Shiny Is It? COH Issue 16 Reflections

  By Tom B. | October 15, 2009 - 7:16 pm |
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This post is part of my Ramblings on Games»

It has been over a month since my post about the upcoming move of Issue 16: Power Spectrum to the live servers. And just short of a month since the actual release. I thought I would talk about how things look at this point, since the Issue was very large and anticipated by so many players.

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Oooo Shiny! City Of Heroes: Issue 16 Power Spectrum

  By Tom B. | September 13, 2009 - 5:13 pm |
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This post is part of my Ramblings on Games»

With the pre-release download and the warning on the forums about an upcoming freespec (Free power respecification for all characters, for those who don’t speak the COH dialect of English.) it looks like Issue 16: Power Spectrum is just about ready to hit the live servers.  It hit Open Beta on the Test server on August 26, so this is about right in the usual schedule. Having played with it for a little while in Closed Beta and more so in Open, I can say it is a lot of fun.

I spent most of my time either checking out the new colorization and/or animation choices or a couple of the new powersets that were moved around. I also spent a little bit of time looking at the new difficulty system that was added, but not that much.

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Open Letter to the President

  By Tom B. | August 31, 2009 - 7:21 pm | ,
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This post is part of my Ramblings on Politics»

So I was reading news again today. It was fairly depressing, which is not too unusual unfortunately. But I saw this article on the Huffington Post and was inspired to write one of my periodical letters to the White House. I know the President never actually sees anything I write, but I figure someone adds up the numbers of supporters and/or commenters about various things, so I can at least make my opinion known.

Then I thought, well, I can also let my opinion be known other places, so here is my latest missive to the man in the Oval Office.

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