Stop SOPA and PIPA: To quote an old NRA slogan. If you OUTLAW web sites, only OUTLAWS will have Web Sites.
(Jeff Fulton)
Even our Book Publisher is against SOPA and PIPA
O'Reilly, (our book publisher) is one of the many companies with intellectual property that would supposedly be "saved" by massively under-thought and over-protective SOPA and PIPA online Intellectual property bills, is going dark today (along with Wikipedia, and many other web sites) in protest over the bills. This means that we will lose an entire day of revenue from on-line book sales when HTML5 is at its hottest point. And guess what? It's worth to try and make a point to stop these bills.
These supposed protections would allow a nameless faceless government agency to kill any web site and take away all of its revenue if it is found to even have a single link to any site that might have some sort of copyright infringement.
This is NOT the way to stop piracy. Apple, Netflix, Amazon (and others) have shown great ways to stem the tide of piracy - by keeping prices reasonable, selection plentiful and not screwing customers (ok Netflix, I'm giving you a little credit from BEFORE summer 2011, but you seem to be coming around again).
STOP SOPA and PIPA! This is coming from someone who makes his living off of his own intellectual property and the legal uses of other's (for contract development purposes).
To quote an old NRA slogan. "If you OUTLAW web sites, only OUTLAWS will have Web Sites."
HTML5 Canvas Game: Tic Tac Pro Quack The Glass – Goes Gold
8bitrocket in conjunction with Producto Studios and in association with TicTacDontion.com is proud to announce the launch of our HTML5 Canvas only game targeted to work on ANY HTML5 browser platform (mobile or desktop).
8bitrocket and Producto Studios did all of the game programming in HTML5 and TicTacDonation.com provided the game and asset design.
The game can be accessed by giving a $5 donation to a worthy cause (see web site for details).
Here are screen shots of the game. It was completed entirely in Flash first, then the assets were exported and code re-designed from AS3 to Javascript and the Canvas. There are some browers compatibility problems (especially with sound), but overall it was a very successful engineering effort.
Quack The Glass Title Page- HTML5 Canvas Text is tricky, so I left 3 lines for them to fill in as needed
Touch (finger) and browser (mouse) movement is slightly different, so they need to be both need to be handled properly.
It wouldn't be an 8bitrocket or Producto game production if we didn't find some place to add in particles effects to replace the delivered canned animations of feathers and glass breaking.
What the hell are you running from?
When I was in 5th grade I started to run. I ran with a friend named Richie and we would circle the play ground of our Manhattan Beach grammar school 20 or 30 times per recess. I was never interested in running as a competition, just as something to do. Living in a small house full of two punk rock sisters, a twin brother, and parents on the verge of nervous breakdowns, running was my way of forgetting everything else and just letting my brain relax and be free. I didn't compete in many organized running competitions until I was in high school where I chose cross country and track mostly because it was a way to both get out of regular "geek PE" and to hang out with lots of cute girls in shorts
Steve, Phil Covert and I Training on the Mira Costa track well before it became an all-weather version.
It also turned out that I wasn't half bad at it. My twin brother, Steve, and I both did pretty well in both track and cross country competitions (not great, but pretty good) up until our junior year when we decided to that being punk rock (what ever the late 80's version of punk rock was) was clearly more fun than running around a track or up too many hills. During our two "competition" years, I never really fully committed to the sport. I never ate right, never trained too hard, and never really studied the science of hard core running. I just did it and didn't think too much about it. One day in 1986, a guy on the football team asked me a question that I just could not answer. He asked, "What the hell are you running from?".
Steve and I resting from a workout. Look at those SHORTS!!
That question stuck with me because I didn't have an answer. In Junior year, both Steve and I got caught up what amounted to 80's counter culture (music, computers, amateur film making, etc) and stopped running and competing altogether. As we amassed new friends and girl friends, soaked up new ideas and pursued new interests, running just became something that I used to do. My guess is that at 16 I had figured out what my 16 year old self wanted to be and do and I had nothing to run away from.
It would not be until 2003 until I started running again. In 2001, I was married and had a great job and had nothing to run away from. But, in January of that year our first son was born early and died the same day. I was broken. After a few months I started working out at the gym and feverishly. I gained 20 pounds of muscle in a year, but was not doing any running workouts (I was playing soccer regularly though). I took on a personal trainer who gave me a great set of core/weight exercises, but also told me that I needed to add some good cardio into routine. I felt great that I had been able to gain a lot of muscle mass, I just didn't get any sort of "high" or relief from my inner most pressures and thoughts doing just weights. So, I started running again. For the first time since I was 16, I was running like a mad man. It's not like I had done no cardio exercise as I was playing in a soccer league at this time, but even moderate success at the "beautiful game" was not enough to get me out of my "funk" (as my dad would have called it). This was 2003 and as I started running again I started to feel all of the pressures lift off my shoulders and float above me while I was on the road. This "high" was so intense that I did it as often and for as long as I could.
I was certainly running away from something - my job, the pressure of trying to become a father, etc. I needed my brain to be completely clear and running gave me that chance. I bought my first heart rate monitor and started to really chart my running progress. Competing completely against myself and not entering into any competitions I would run 8 to 10 miles at a time 5 or 6 days a week. My mile splits were getting lower and lower and by the time my current 6 year old was born in 2005 I was able to run at a 7:15 mile pace for 8 miles. My heart rate would "red-line" for much of this running time, and I had no idea what kind of damage this was doing to my entire body.
I would do some weight workouts, but mostly I would just put on the shoes, the HRM, throw on the latest Green Day or Foo Fighters album (into my pre-iPod MP3 player) and just GO!
It turned out that this type of training was doing wonders for my resting heart rate and blood pressure (a nurse once took my pulse during this period and asked me if I was actually alive because my resting HRM was under 50, with a 110/60 BP). The problem was, I was damaging my ankles, knees, and lungs in ways I never imagined. A visit to the doctor for a bad cough turned out to be a revelation. She said that I had damaged my lungs by running at too fast of a pace for too long (and too many days in a row) and had classic runner's musculature (not good) in my legs. What she was trying to tell me was that all of the running and no cross style training was actually doing damage to my entire body. She asked me "Why do you run so much?". She might as well have been asking "what the hell are you running from?"
Wow, that question again. I was prescribed a series of drugs and treatments for exercise induced asthma and told not to exercise my heart rate above 155 for 6 months. This made running (to get to the high especially) almost impossible. Along with the birth of my second son in 2008, I basically had lowered my mileage from 40+ miles a week to less than 10. It took a toll on my body as well and even though I continued to work out with weights and do lower impact cardio I was gaining weight and not feeling satisfied with my workouts at all. The damage to my lungs started to show in ways that I never imagined. In 2008 I got pneumonia for the first time in 32 years. I had not had any sort of lung infection since I was 6 years old. The interesting thing was that the damage I did to my lungs helped allow the bacterial infection to take hold, but the expanded lung capacity I had gained from years of running allowed me to pass breathing test after breathing test. It also turned what the doctors called "a very serious lung infection that normally would result in hospitalization" into a case of walking pneumonia. I was told to not do anything strenuous with my lungs for 3 months and to get a lot of rest (not easy with a second baby on the way and a wife on bed rest, while taking care of a 3 year old and a shitty job with a maniacal boss)
I was caught in a catch 22. Running, which had helped me get away from my internal problems was also the cause of my health decline. I actually had to run away from running to get healthy again.
I never fully stopped running or training, but my heart (and lungs) just wasn't in it. I would only train a couple times a week at most and could tell that my entire body was suffering because of it. My corporate slave job was making me eat worse and fall into a depressive state. Slowly, over time, my lungs started to improve, my breathing got better and my constant coughing was replaced with slight wheeze. I knew that I had to get back to being healthy and happy the right way because I now had a growing family to protect and provide for.
When I finally quit that corporate job in 2010 and took a physical for private life insurance I got some bad news. While my 2005 physical and blood came back excellent (save the lung problems), my 2010 blood work showed elevated cholesterol levels. I consulted a doctor who took some tests and said that while I might have damaged my lungs years earlier, my actual breathing and lung capacity was "off the charts" for a 40 year old and said that running again, along with a set of cross training would be the best option for me. I started both and was doing pretty well until early in 2011 when I began my "hell job" that took me to San Francisco and back for weeks at at time and had me working 80 hour weeks minimum. My work outs declined and so did my health. I had to get back to my target physical activity (and weight - 190lbs), but I needed to do it the right way. I researched cross training as a way to prepare for running races and found that there was some evidence to prove that just like with Tri-athletes, various types of physical activity can have positive effects on one another.
June 1 of this year my dad passed away after having been very healthy just 6 month before. He had been a runner when I was younger and when he stopped his daily jogs in about 2006, his heath started to deteriorate rapidly. His passing hit me really hard. I had not had time to spend with him before he died because of the hours I was working, and I had become more angry with my two sons, and was not able to spend much time with them. I decided that everything in my life had to change for the better. I quit my shit job, started up a new business with a friend, and began to create a new work out routine that would not result in damaging my body more than it helped it. This included only 2 runs a week, but added in circuit training, bike/spin training, a heavy weight workout at least once per week. I started out by running a few miles at a time (3-5) 2 times a week, then searched out classes at the gym to fulfill my other training needs. Finally, 5 weeks ago, I was able to start my 5 day a week training regime:
Day 1: 8 mile run
Day 2: Rest
Day 3: Circuit training + cycle
Day 4: Heavy Weights
Day 5: Circuit training + cycle
Day 6: 8 mile run
Day 7: Rest
The cross training between runs keeps my endurance up and creates a more rhobust musculature that is NOT like the classic runner (bad knees, crumpled ankles, etc). This enables me to keep my running to two days a week and not over train in any one area. Then, I do two 8 mile runs, separated by a single day. The second run is always the best and my body responds by letting me go faster but keeps my heart rate at a decent pace. Even with the cross training, the two runs are the real highlight of my week (exercise wise). I throw on the iPod, put on the Garmin GPS HRM and get lost in my run (highs and lows) for about 1:30 and it feels awesome!
I have already dropped 7 pounds (but added needed leg muscle) and am starting to get my mile split times below 9 minutes average for an 8 mile run. People always ask me if I am training to compete in something, and really I have no idea how to answer. I might start running races to see how I do. Unlike in times passed when I ran to get away from things, I don't have anything to really run away from these days. Yes, there are pressures running your own business, etc, but I don't feel the weight of an entire 17 floor corporate building on my shoulders any more and that goes along way to keeping me at peace (for the most part). That is why I feel so much more fulfilled and satisfied when I run now. So maybe, in time, I will feel like entering some competitions, who knows?
"What the hell am I running from?"
The answer is not profound, but simple. I am not running from anything. I am running (and training in general) for myself. I run to prove that I can do it and to hopefully live a longer and happier life than the path I was on. I do it for the high that comes with the run, for the pain that comes afterward, but especially to keep my self healthy so I can enjoy my young boys and see them grow up to be men. Hopefully they will want to run with their dad some day, but if not, I hope they find what ever it is they need to do to relieve the pressures of their lives in a healthy, happy way.
8bitrocket 5 Year Anniversary : Throwing Up the Past and Top-10 Of Everything We could Think Of
Today is our 5 year anniversary. It's been a roller-coaster-ride-kinda-year here at 8bitrocket Towers, with many ups and downs, sharp turns and thrills, but at the end of the ride, we just feel like throwing up.
When we started 5 years ago, there were almost no sites talking about making games in Flash. We got a lot of traffic from game making tutorials (Blitting!). There were also very few indie game developer blogs at the time. For a while, Simon Carless at Gamasutra.com picked-up our feed and spread many of our stories around the world (Mid-Core Gaming Anyone?).
We played with being a game portal, general news site, retro game site, and finally settled on what we are now: whatever *this* is. There is no real way to define 8bitrocket.com except to say that it is a reflection of 8bitsteve and 8bitjeff and everything we love about games and game development, writing about game development and life itself. We've mostly tried to keep it positive. sure, we got snarky a few times with Mochi Flash games, social games, and few other things, but we tried to keep it on the "positive and constructive feedback" side as much as possible. We decided early-on that if we were going to review things, they would be things we "loved". That is is why most of the reviews you see here are for books and games that we like.
As a summary of the past 5 years, here are some top-10 lists that relate to the site. Thanks for helping us make this what it *is*, whatever that may be.
Top 10 Pieces Of Content (all are tutorials)
10. Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #3: Bitmap Collision Detection (26, 433 page views)
9. Tutorial: Preloading Actionscript 3 (AS3) Games in Flash CS3 27,877 page views)
8. Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #2: Asynchronous key detection for arcade games. (32, 226 page views)
7. Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 1 (33, 641 page views)
6. Tutorial: AS3. The basics of tile sheet animation (or blitting). (35,662 page views)
5. Tutorial: AS3 Basics – How to use library sounds in AS3 (42,556 page views)
4. Creating Custom Events In Flash AS3 (ActionScript 3) (44, 576 page views)
3. Tutorial : Creating an Optimized AS3 Game Timer Loop (45, 077 page views)
2. Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #1: Tile Maps, XML, and bitmapData (58, 629 page views)
1. Actionscript 3: Tutorial – BitmapData rotation with a matrix (66,028 page views)
Top 10 Editorial Pieces (non tutorial)
10. An 8-bit road less traveled: Great Atari 800 Games Part I (2,559 page views)
9. SFXR: Completely awesome Sound FX Generator For Games (2,640 page views)
8. Free Flash Game Development Tool Kit (2,898 page views)
7. Review: Pinball Hall Of Fame:Williams Collection for the Wii (2,918 page views)
6. A Comprehensive List Of Documentaries/TV/Shows/Movies About Video Game and Computer History (3,311 page views)
5. Good Game Code vs, Optimized Game Code (3,983 page views)
4. iMac Gaming: Playing Fallout 3 With A Boot Camp Partition (4,781 page views).
3. Mid-Core Gamer Manifesto (5,708 page views)
2. Hot Wheels Spin City Game Goes Live! (7,676 page views)
1. Am I A Mid-Core Gamer? (9,535 page views)
Top 10 8bitrocket Games
10. ... + palindromes+...plus (57,285 plays)
9. 8bitrocket Zamboozal Pokerdice (59,002 plays)
8. Daphnie's Balloon Castle! (116,629 plays)
7. 8bitrocket Space Eggs (116,668 plays)
6. 8bitrocket Home Computer Wars (208,239 plays)
5. Jack's Beach Blitz (228,114 plays)
4. 8bitrocket Retro Blaster! (653,308 plays)
3. ...palindromes... (701,538 plays)
2. 8bitrocket Mission Leprechaun (822,659 plays)
1. 8bitrocket Pumpkinman (2,423,507 plays)
Top-10 Commeters On Disqus
New Forum Redux
A couple notes about the new forums.
1. the permissions have been updated so registered users can post in all forums
2. Registering requires admin approval now, as the "human spam bots" are causing issues.
-8bitsteve
New Forums To Focus On HTML5 Game And App Development (with Flash and Corona too)
We've had a lot of requests to start a forum for HTML5 Game and App developers. Since we use HTML5, Flash, Corona, and other tech too, we decided to try a new forum for all that stuff too.
This is really just a fresh install of PHP BB with some topics created, but please go over and register so we can get this party started.
http://www.8bitrocket.com/phpbb/index.php
Thanks,
8bitsteve
(P.S. The old WordPress forums will be killed off, so you will need to re-register...sorry.)
8bitrocket Blows The Roof Off DevCon5! :)
Well, maybe the roof stayed on, but our presentations were a quite bit more successful than we imagined. We've received tons of feedback, and it's all been great. Maybe we should do this kind thing more often...
We met some awesome people and had a great time spending some book royalties on a fine dinner and breakfast. Also, we each "won" a new Blackberry Playbook for demonstrating and HTML5 app running on the device. It was such a great experience that we believe this one single day went a long way to repair all of the mental damage that the rest of 2011 dumped on top of us.
Here are couple quotes that the conference coordinators (Bonnie and Carl) send over to us from people who attended:
DevCon5: New Tweets / Responses about their experience:
- envii enVii@DevConFive very well organized, my favorite session was from Steve+Jeff @8bitrocket and really enjoyed Kiran's keynote @phegaro
- TinaTranT Tina Tran@8bitrocket Dear Jeff & Steve, Really enjoying your session - my fave @devconfive. Lively & fun, even though I know crap all about canvas.
- Lounge9 DouG Molidor learning a lot from the two sessions
@8bitrocket is hosting on#HTML5 canvas at#DevCon5
We also met with a slew of really cool, people ,some of which emailed us after, some of whom gave us their cards, took ours and the discount cards for the book.
Rick from tothepointdesignstudio.com
Nader from omegamobile.com
Eric from Ubiquitous Entertainment
Robert from Web Mobi
Shannon from Intel (who was really interested in our Barbie and Mattel stories)
Bill Turner
...and so many more genuinely nice people who took our cards and had such mice things to say.
Thanks to to Bonnie Kravis and Carl Ford for inviting us and for their amazing hospitality . Also, special thanks to Steve's wife Dawn, who suggested we participate, worked hard to motivate Steve to go, and acted as a our top negotiator with Bonnie and Carl.
Below are some images of a just a few of the HTML5 demos we discussed:
Atari 2600 Game Match 3
Asteroids
Atari 2600 Fireworks Show
1945
DevCon5 Santa Clara Live Blog
7:59 : 8bitsteve: Sending last Skype messages to colleagues at Electrotank. Finished the presentation last night. Actually, 2 presentations. Spent tons of free time in past 2 weeks creating demos for the conference. My actual fear right now: no one will show-up.
9:10 : 8bitsteve :Just arrived at the gate for flight that leaves in 20 minutes...and the plane is not here yet. New fear: We will not arrive on time
9:50:8bitsteve : In the air on time.. Whew. I suddenly wish I could access wi-fi on the plane. I look over the presentation we built. It comes in 2 parts. 124 slides. 30 demos. 5 game demos created specifically for the conference. I hope it's enough
11:10: 8bitsteve: Sitting in the lobby of the Santa Clara TechMart. Yahoo is down the street. Blackberry is here. They are offering a playbook to anyone who can make an app and put it up in their store today. I might have a few! We don't go on until 2:00, so there is a bit of time to relax...
11:45:8bitsteve: Sitting in the same room we will be presenting in later (good call jeff), to gauge the crowd and room dynamics. Looks informal and workman-like. Good, that is my sweet-spot.
11:48:8bitsteve :WebMobi presentation. these guys have a cloud layer that helps expose your existing web apps to mobile platforms. It looks useful.
12:25: 8bitsteve: WebMobi demo over. They had about 10 slides and two short demos. We might have too much content.
12:53:8bitsteve: Computer set-up, presentation is up and tested. It looks like we will have a lot to cover and the audience is no-nonsense technical, which is ideal.
I've been thinking a bit about Santa Clara. We used to visit Santa Clara when were little. My mom's brother lived here with his wife and 9 kids. We came at least three times. It was a wonderful feeling to have relatives that lived far away, whom we could after a long car ride visit.
1:15:8bitsteve: Just ate lunch. We found out that we can "win" a Blackberry Playbook simply by showing the RIM guys an HTML5 app working on one . We have dozens of those! Hopefully we'll get a chance to do it.
1:45:8bitsteve: Getting ready to start. Jeff just found a set of cards that give people discounts on our book. I hope they are still valid! The guy who runs DevCon5 told us he can introduce us to an author who write for R-Tech. That could be useful.
3:15:8bitsteve : Okay! The first section went really well! People seemed to enjoy it, and talking came really easy for me. I was not nervous at all. The 60 slides appeared to be enough too. We don't have many slides for the next one, so I hope it goes as well.
5:00 : 8bitsteve :Whew! Amazing! There were a lot of questions, but still, it worked great. I had no idea how much fun this would be. Jeff and I played off each other in a way that helped move everythiung along and clarify things. There were probably a few people who did not enjoy it, but heck, it was fun! Met some great people too! Always a bonus.
5:30: 8bitsteve: Bonnie and Carl, the people who run the conference told us we were a "hit"! and invited us back to the next one in April. It was so much fun, I'm not I could miss it.
Still in Santa Clara, and the memories are flooding back. When we stayed with our cousins in 1975, they took us to Frontierland (or was it FrontierVille?), the Winchester Mystery House (it scared the living crap out of me), and into San Francisco to meet my mom's estranged Father (grandpa Sil) for the first and last time. I don't recall grandpa Sil, but I do recall the ice cream cone my uncle bought for me after we left. Why is that what I remember? It was always great to be with our cousins. They were "family" yet they lived 100's of miles away and did all kinds of cool things. Visiting them was like walking into a different world.
5:45: 8bitsteve : the Blackberry Rim guys loved that we had dozens of HTML5 apps to test on their machines. Both Jeff and I left with shiny new Playbook in hand. Not a bad at all.
6:30 : 8bitsteve: Back in San Jose at the Fairmont hotel. There is a downtown Christmas festival going on and I'm dying for hamburger. The bellman suggested McMormick And Schmick. The HTML5 Canvas book royalties are paying, so that sounds good to me!
9:05 : 8bitsteve : Back in out room at the Fairmont. What a great day. I turned out far better than I expected. I think I could really get into this "speaking" thing. It was very enjoyable.
I had some final thoughts about Santa Clara too. My uncle does not live here any longer. There was an accident in the late 1970's and his wife and one of my cousins were killed. After that, we never made any family visits up here any longer. Well, we did make one visit but not with out entire family: in 1984 my uncle paid for my mom and my brother and I to ride Am Track from LA to San Jose, but it was a weird trip. The big house that was once filled with 9 kids felt empty and broken. After we left my uncle and his youngest son soon took off in van on a wanderlust tour of the USA that lasted several years until they settled in Nevada. We saw them many times, but we never visited them, instead they came to us. I never realized how much the old family visits to Santa Clara meant to me until I came back here today for the first time in more than 25 years. I guess all I can say is this: hold on to those family moments as long as you can, because you never know when they will just slip away.
The People You Will Meet At Your Garage Sale
Garage Sale People (originally written in 2004)
What better way to meet the neighbors than to have a garage sale. Actually we called it a “yard sale”, and by neighbors I mean the cheapest freaks I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet. To be honest, the immediate people to the left and right of our house are quite nice, and they came by to wish us luck and shoot the shit for a little while. Most of the people you will attract to a garage or yard sale aren’t actually your neighbors, but seemingly professionals from outside “your” area. They are professional at being cheap bastards, and quite a bizarre lot.
On Friday night we spent a few hours preparing our goods (read old crap) for sale. We wanted to be very prepared because we had not efficiently readied our merchandise, advertising and signs advertising and signs for our previous attempt at a garage sale (1999)
We put an ad in the Penny Saver, we put up a few signs, went to the bank and got lots of ones and fives for making change. We priced everything very low. Relatively new videos and books – 25 cents to 1 dollar. Old, used crap, 10 to 50 cents. Nice pairs of jeans and shirts, 2 dollars. Etc. Everything was priced to GO!
While preparing these items, we met the first of the “garage sale people”.
The Really Fucking EARLY BIRD
The Really Early Bird doesn’t just come a little early in the morning, she (or he) comes a full DAY early. By experience, she knows that you will be home, preparing in the evening before the sale, so she comes a knocking. This type of buyer is cheap, and discerning, but knows she is early. So, she doesn’t haggle. Her job in life is to get the first look through your old crap because she hasn’t bought anything new in 50 years. What might be a couple (10 – 20) years old to you, is freaking brand new to her. Don’t give in, she will continue to terrorize all garage sale proprietors a full day early unless she is stopped NOW!
The EARLY BIRD
These people wait in their cars, camped out to get their hooks on your goods as you are putting them out for sale. They know this is very busy time for you, so they use the cunning they learned as “Carney-folk” to out-whit items from your inventory. If your house or garage door is open while you are carting items to your sale area, they will meander in and start making outrageous offers for your furniture, pets, TVs, and computers. They obviously think that everything must have a price. Sorry, but a $3.00 offer for my new Lap Top ain’t gonna get much play here. To avoid these people, turn your sprinkler system on 30 minutes before your sale is to begin, and leave it on.
The Haggler
The haggler is usually a short, balding man. He will come in any number of versions, but out here, he is usually and older latino or really old white dude. He wants all of your electronic items, CDs, videogames, and other expensive trinkets, and he is NOT willing to pay for them. The haggler will be the first customer to really piss you off, because he will blatantly act as if the $2.00 you have priced the almost new CD player is and outrageous insult to the buying public. The haggler will collect up and arm or box load of your most expensive items and then offer you $5.00 for the whole lot. The more you tell him “no” the angrier you seem to get. He will just act like he can’t hear you and keep repeating with outrageously low price. Keep a hose handy to spray him down if needed.
The Scammer
Watch what type of cars your customers drive up in. The scammer will usually drive up in an expensive car and then “only have $3.00” when it comes time to purchase. The scammer will sometimes come with his “mom”. Mom will be an old lady, dressed in an old country black garment. She will know very little English, but can somehow read enough to pick out the most expensive collectible item at your sale. She will be feeble, her hands will shake, and her little black purse will contain only a few old coins from a country that no longer exists. If you look closely though, her son will have brought her there in a brand new pickup, loaded down with an incredible amount of nice, new items that she has “purchased” with her old country collection of shells and ½ pence coins, and lint. Have the hose ready for these people – and put it on full blast.
Cheap neighbor
The cheap neighbor will show up late to your sale. It will be hot out and you will be dying to get rid of your items or suffer the long drag back inside or to the Goodwill drop off center. The cheap neighbor will feign disinterest early in the morning, but she will hit you up for cheap or free items right about noon. She must be stopped. Tell her that the neighborhood cat pissed on all of the items and that she would not want them. If the neighborhood cat DID piss on all of the items, then surely, it is best to let her have as many of them as she wants. In no cat pee is available, “accidentally” turn the sprinkler system on. It might ruin some of the items, but at least SHE won’t get them
Smart young people
Smart, young people, are the people that civilized garage sales were made for. They will come about 10 AM, pick out what they want quickly, pay you in relatively new cash (American bills, not shells and lint), very politely thank you, and then leave. They wont haggle, scam, or be cheap. They are as embarrassed to be at a garage sale as you are to be having one. I wish the world was made up of these patrons. Only one of these showed up, and god bless her, if she hadn't brightened up my day I would a drug out the hose and hit them all full blast as the walked up to longingly ogle my once played copy of the 1999 Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Video.
Who Cares! Well, actually, Producto Studios and The Who Do!
who cares!
8bitrocket in conjunction Producto Studios is proud to be a small part to a big cause. Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant, and Dave Grohl rocked an amazing fundraiser to benefit the UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen Cancer Program and Producto rocked the website design. Long time “bandmate” of Producto’s Simon Hinchliffe designed the site and print collateral. http://www.uclahealth.org/site.cfm?id=535 .
Over $2M was raised for the UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen Cancer Programs, UCLA's Early Childhood Program for Autism (ECPHP) and K9 connection!
Big thank you to Jordan Kaplan at Douglas Emmett , Rebecca Rothstein, Tina Choe at Jet Blue and Becky Mancuso at UCLA for letting us contribute our skills.
The Who Cares. And Producto does too.