I’m watching more and more Science channel all the time these days.  In the past week or so I’ve seen two shows on Synesthesia. Here’s the definition of Synesthesia from Wikipedia:”Synesthesia is a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway”

So for example, when James Wannerton hear’s sounds, he tastes foods.  So like if you say wipe, he tastes marmite.  Here’s a quote from James describing his condition  “Whenever I hear, read, or articulate (inner speech) words or word sounds, I experience an immediate and involuntary taste sensation on my tongue. These very specific taste associations never change and have remained the same for as long as I can remember.”

Does that mean that James can have someone slowly say the words for his favorite drink and favorite foods and really be able to enjoy that?  Or does it work differently, and that would not be a pleasant situation for him? Could he make up words that combine other words and combine tastes in his mouth?  Or does one come distinctly before and after the next?One of the shows had a clip of him riding on the bus and being out in public. 

There is an awful lot of random chatter out there in the real world.  It seems like the constant bombardment of random tastes would drive him crazy.  Wouldn’t he be better off with headphones of some sort?  Or with some way to minimize the auditory input from others around him?

Wild stuff, I’m going to learn more and I’ll post what I find.

UPDATE:  I sent an email which eventually was forwarded to James Wannerton, and I was given his email address which I chose not to use since he did not give it to me himself.  I sent him many questions that I had so I hope one day he has some time and will email me back.

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Since I do a lot of online gaming and video watching online, it really bothers me when I read that Comcast will cap customers Internet usage starting October 1, 2008.

All customers will now have a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account.  This is the equivalent of 50 million emails in one month, or watching 124 standard-edition movies online.

At a glance it doesn’t look that bad.  They say 99% of us will not hit the new threshold so we have nothing to worry about.I see a different picture.  Recently I downloaded the game Warhammer Online as I was lucky enough to get into the beta.  The game is currently 12 gigabyte’s in size.  That’s not close to the 250 gigabyte threshold, so at a glance no worries.

But I remember the days of owning a 300 baud modem.  And a 1200 baud modem.  And my first 52k modem.  And who back then would have ever thought we’d be talking about a 250 gigabyte bandwidth ceiling?  Not many of us, even now the number seems unobtainable.  However history paints a completely different picture.I can see our future now. Once games and movies and whatever other bandwidth eaters businesses can come up with start knocking on that 250 gigabyte threshold, I bet we’ll suddenly see new options once again. 

Here, I’ll write their draft ad:

“New Tier for our Super Duper Extreme Customers!(tm) - 500 gigabytes monthly for just double the price!  Or 750 for triple!  You’ll never need more bandwidth then this, I mean who would?!”

And that in turn will condition us all and make us ready for the next step in tiered pricing.  Because by then we’ll be used to it.  If Comcast were to leave our bandwidth uncapped as it is, there is no room for them to charge us more, later, when we need it.What does Comcast have to say about customers that exceed the 250 gigabyte threshold?  Well, they obviously need to be investigated.”‘If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast’s Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use,’ according to the company’s updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use”

Source .

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I stopped blogging on WARDojo (WAAAAAGGH!) until the NDA is lifted. I may add a post or two but I expect the NDA to be lifted any day now. All I can say at this point, is there is a closed beta and I am in it. Open beta players start downloading the game August 15th, and the gave goes live September 18th. Sweet.

Last week Thord from the BlogHerald.com sent me an email interview asking questions about the concepts and fundamentals of WarhammerBlogs.com. It was my first official online interview and it was pretty cool. You can check it out here.

We’ve started serious work on our newest project and I think we have some really great concepts this time. BlogsForGamers.com is officially in development and we are working hard on it. We hope to retrofit some of our new concepts back into WarhammerBlogs once we’re done that will really give our bloggers many new theme options.

Can’t wait to share it with you, we’ll have some official news going out once we’re ready to go live.

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Cryptic, the studio making the Star Trek Online MMO, is giving away five lifetime subscriptions to the game. So if you are interested in the Star Trek Online MMO and even have the slightest chance of playing, go signup now for a chance to save yourself from possibly years of monthly fees.

“To enter, all you have to do is register as a member of the Star Trek Online community by 11:59 p.m. PDT on August 17, 2008, and click the sweepstakes link. The winners will be chosen at random on or about August 25, 2008, and will be notified by e-mail and/or overnight mail on or about August 28.

Five Winners Will Receive:

• Retail copy of Star Trek Online
• Lifetime subscription to Star Trek Online”

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Beth pointed this out for me, how nice of her. Thanks Amazon.

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If you Google “Kevin Bane” one of the top links that has come up for years is Moby Games. Moby Games keeps track of many game developers and the games they worked on, and they have me listed on there from my time working at Microprose.

I was surfing Moby Games again today and it’s cool to remember the crazy days back in QA. We worked so many hours, many days from ~8:30am until around 11pm that night. So much overtime that you really didn’t have a life outside of Microprose. Weekends, holidays, not too much of that existed for us. I’d go to work, go home late that night, go to sleep, wake up and go right back to work.

The list of games I worked on is longer then the list at Moby Games so I thought I’d list them all here:

1. Magic: The Gathering
2. Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers
3. Magic: The Gathering - Spells of the Ancients
4. Civilization II: Fantastic Worlds
5. Civilization II: Multiplayer Gold Edition
6. M1 Tank Platoon II
7. X-Com Interceptor
8. Addiction Pinball
9. European Air War
10. Klingons

Being in the credits was one of the carrots Microprose used to keep us all working hard, so unfortunately the credits never truly showed everyone that worked on the game. Anything to keep us working overtime and trying harder.Most people I met at Microprose have moved on from gaming.

Matt Bittman is following music wherever it takes him, Joe Lease is working in IT, Alan Denham has been working at Day 1 Studios and have been for the past ten years. I haven’t heard from anyone else from Microprose in quite some time so I’m not sure what they’re all up to.

And as you can see from the image above, Microprose has moved on and is now a consumer electronics company selling Digital Television Receivers/Recorders. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

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I spent the day working on the press release for WarhammerBlogs and it looks like everything is finally ready to go. The press release that will go out via PRWeb next Tuesday.

I wanted it to go out today, but if you take the basic $80 package you have to plan your press release two days in advance and it will be released at 12:01am that day. If you want to specify a different time to send your press release, you have to upgrade to the $140 package.So, just to see what the basic package gets us, I’m going with the $80 basic package.

Next time we’ll change up the time and see if we get significantly different results then just letting the press release go at midnight.Once this goes out we’re going to start sending the press release out to all of the gaming and mmorpg news sites.

Not to mention Warhammer Online looks like it will be going into open beta within the next month. Many people are also speculating September 23rd as the release date, as all of the retailers have slowly changed to the 23rd. That would be awesome, I’m really looking forward to playing Warhammer and getting some great bloggers on WarhammerBlogs.com

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This piece is titled Faerie Familiars and was created by Bryon Wackwitz.

I became friends with Bryon Wackwitz back when I first started selling Magic The Gathering cards. I met him at a convention and we got along like long lost friends. He is a really nice guy and an amazing artist and I have a lot of great memories of hanging out with him.Bryon created art for many Werewolf: The Apocalypse books, Ars Magica, Deadlands: The Weird West, Magic The Gathering and many other projects.

He created about 20 or so cards for MTG, from Legends through Alliances.He gave me the above piece in trade for me picking him up and behind his ride back and forth from a convention. I’d have picked him up anyway, but this piece is breathtaking and there was no way I was going to refuse such an incredible gift.My wife is going to pick out a frame for it and it will be on the wall soon. I’ll put up another picture once it’s “live”.

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Are you interested in setting up a WPMU blog network? Do you have questions that haven’t been answered on the forums? Your next stop should be WPMUTutorials.comHere you can check out a great list of active WPMU blog networks, learn the basics, or check out the best plugins to use with your blog network.

Personally I used her list of blog networks to check out what others were doing with their networks and to find out just who my competition would be. It was a great research tool and I highly recommend you do the same.WPMUTutorials.com is maintained by “Andrea_r”.

As you start to do research on WPMU blog networks and finding answers to your questions, you’re bound to see her name popping up just about everywhere. She’s an incredible person and we never could have completed our blog network without her.

You can find her on twitter as “andrea_r”. Imagine that.So if you are starting your own WPMU blog network and have questions, head on over to WPMUTutorials.com. 

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