Heading to PAX East!

The time has come, we’re currently sitting in the Richmond airport getting ready to board our plane to Boston for PAX East! 

For those of you who haven’t been following, PAX East is a massive gaming convention put on by the guys from Penny Arcade.  It regularly lists among one of the largest gaming conventions in the US.  This year is unique though, for the first time they are brining PAX to the East Coast (hince the name PAX East.)  Even though this is the first year in Boston the convention is totally sold out (has been for about a week or so) and they are expecting there to be about 20,000 people per day.

From what I’ve read on various forums it’s looking to be a show of Epic proportions, just think about NVIDIA with an 80 foot tall screen, playing Battlefield Bad Company 2…in 3D…yeah, that kind of epic!  It’s going to be a great time though and a great chance to meet other gamers and see some great games. 

Ok, I’m gonna cut this one short now, we should be boarding our plane shortly, but hopefully I’ll get a chance to update some more once we get to Boston.

~C

Podcasts and Flickr

So for those of you who haven’t been reading this blog, I do a fair amount of IT type work for the Charlottesville Toy Lift Charity.  It’s a great group and I have tons of fun working with them.  After last years Toy Lift I realized how the group was not taking advantage of all the social media outlets that exist in the world.  While they do have a Facebook, Twitter, and Blog accounts, they are very rarely updated and besides me updating my Facebook account there wasn’t any social media coverage of the Toy Lift.  It was after that I decided this had to change.  I’ve seen social media do much for so many companies (my company included), so I’ve been trying to figure out how not only to ensure all of the social media pages that currently exist get updated on a regular basis, but I also want to start a podcast for the Toy Lift, with at least monthly updates and “behind the scenes” material on what goes into planning and getting the toy lift together.

This is where I’m stumped.  I’ve done some research into setting up podcasts and seen various recommendations on what audio editing software to use but the one thing I haven’t really been able to find is how to get your podcast listed in the iTunes store.  So it’s to the great and all knowing blogsphere I turn.  Any information anyone can provide would be a great help! 

As for the other part of of the title, Flickr, we have a large number of pictures from last-years Toy Lift and what I would like to do is have a page on our site that would basically pull X number of random pictures from the flickr feed and display them on our website.  This way, each time a user refreshes their page, or comes back to view the page again, he/she will see a new set of pictures pulled from the correct Flickr gallery.  For this one I’m not really sure it’s possible.  I’ve only done a VERY small amount of research into this and the best thing I’ve seen is using a tool provided by Flickr that allows a slideshow on a 3rd party website.  Honestly I’m not really tied to Flickr, I just gravitated towards it 1) it’s popular and 2) it’s free (free is always good.)  So again, oh great and powerful blogsphere, if any of you have any knowledge about the above, please let me know…thanks!

On another, completely unrelated note, PAX East is this month and I’m getting SUPER excited about it!  I got my trading cards a few weeks ago and they look awesome!  Should be getting the PAX badges here in the next week or so and then we’ll be totally ready for the greatest gaming show on the East Coast. 

Ok, I think that’s about it from me, more later on!

~C