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Lights. Camera. VICTORY.

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Some of you may remember my post about Clear Skies, the machinima creation of Ian Chisholm that combined the Eve-Online and Source engines to create a “space western.” For those who don’t remember, you may want to read it to get yourself in the machinima mood.

Why, you may ask? Just click on the image below:

That’s right, for all of you creative types addicted to World of Warcraft, today is the start of the World of Warcraft Machinima Contest! Here’s your chance to put your talents to the test in a contest against other talented machinima artists. Top prize of an XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition laptop!

Machinima has come a long way in the past few years, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what gets submitted. With an XPS M1730 and an Alienware Area-51 up for grabs, the competition should prove to be pretty fierce. Drop by the Web site, check out the forum, and craft your winning entry!

To get you even more into the mood, I bring you The Ballad of the Noob:

Posted in Events, Gaming, Laptops | No Comments »

Dell Summer Rocks Tour: Next Stop … Outside Lands Festival

Friday, August 15th, 2008

After a highly successful first run at Lollapalooza, and most recently a stop at the Virgin Music Festival, the Dell Summer Rocks Tour and Dell Dome head out west to the first ever Outside Lands Festival. The festival runs Aug. 22-24 in San Francisco at the world-famous Golden Gate Park.

With two festivals now behind us, we have collected quite a few videos and pictures from the events. Come check out the action from the festivals and within the Dell Dome via the following links:

Regular tour updates will of course be posted on the Dell Summer Rocks Web site, however there is now an even easier way to stay on top of the action!

Introducing the Dell Summer Rocks Widget:

Content from events will be dynamically uploaded to the widget during the festival, so make sure to add this widget to your blog, social networking and/or iGoogle home page. Share with your friends and family, then stay tuned in as the tour continues to rock across the country!

Posted in Events, Music, Social Media | No Comments »

Cyber Sisterhood Weekly Reads From ‘Round the Web

Friday, August 15th, 2008

Here are a few posts we spotted this past week that you might like. Feel free to share anything you think might be of interest.

Techmamas is looking for votes for the Moms Who Tech SXSW panel. My vote is in!

Are you interested in A Cheaper Way to Make Cell Phone Calls? Bizzy Women thinks it is in our future.

Here is a fun one - The Top 10 Geek Girls of TV!

Have a great weekend!

Posted in Cell Phones, Cyber Sisterhood, Events | No Comments »

My Weekend at the M Festival in the UK

Friday, August 15th, 2008

I woke-up early last Friday, keen to travel to the M Festival and the WCG UK Nationals, the International competitive gaming event. I left my house around 7 a.m. and arrived at the venue for 9 a.m. Having tackled security and dropped my greetings to a few people, I set up and waited for the rest of the team to arrive and prepared myself for a good weekend.

Team Dignitas, which is sponsored by Dell, arrived in staggered stages throughout the day, coming from five different countries and all over the UK. After we said our hellos, I settled down and watched the results of the Command and Conquer tournament come in as I mentally prepared for my own matches, which would be played on Saturday.

In between matches, I found myself on the EA stand meeting Gemma Atkinson, who has a part in their new video game Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. She will be playing a Military Officer Lt Eva McKenna. I had a photo taken with her and a poster signed!

Luckily for me I was able to get in there before the masses came to follow my footsteps. I then sat down, with the EA staff, watching her sign poster after poster. Then to my surprise, I have a tap on my shoulder asking if I could move my stuff so he could sit down… It was Marcus Bent — last season’s English Premier League football player. So, I’ve been hanging out with the superstars!

Saturday was a really busy day. In the morning had to play the winner bracket Semi-Final and then the winner bracket Final and then the Grand Final in the afternoon. I practiced for a bit and awaited my opponents to message me. The Semi-Finals I won 2-0 and the Final 2-0 and I was on course to the Grand Final to defend my UK championship for the second year running. I had two interviews before the final, one with xleague.tv and the 2nd with Radio1.

I got on stage, confident, willing and hungry to win. I had come from the winners bracket so I only had to win one map, which was completed within 8 minutes and another trip to WCG was secured! That evening, I chilled out, and caught up with lots of different people and enjoyed myself as my job was complete.

On Sunday I was feeling reasonably confident, having just won the UK championships for the second year running. I was looking forward to be playing on the EA stand where they had set-up “Play Apollo @ Red Alert3.” I had about an hour there, playing two different four-player fight for alls! Basically, I was being tag-teamed by three people at once! Luckily for me, I had worked on this game in the Alpha stages in Los Angeles RTS Studios and therefore knew what I was doing and took down both games as the winner. It was great fun and we had a good handful of players and crowd watching us play.

Later on I took the stage once again for the World Cyber Games winners presentation and the “Team UK” picture. I had the honour to hold our European Cyber Games championship trophy, which we won earlier in the year!

Overall I had a fantastic weekend at the M Festival, glad that the gaming industry in the UK is growing support and improving all the time. I went there on a mission and came back a winner.

Posted in Events, Gaming | No Comments »

QuakeCon’s Over, But Extreme Gaming Tour Trucks On!

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

While I was at QuakeCon I spent a fair bit of my time in the Extreme Gaming Tour truck sponsored by Dell and Intel, hanging out with the ladies from PMS and checking out all of the cool equipment loaded with the latest games while the DJ pumped out the tunes. Midway through the conference, Amber “Athena Twin” Dalton from PMS took me on a tour of the truck for the camera, and I wanted to share the video with all of you.

A word of warning, though: I shot this video without the benefit of a noise cancelling microphone, and the DJ was pumping out tunes at loud volumes. It may be hard at times to hear her, but on the plus side, you can really get a feel for what it was like to actually be there!

Dell Extreme Gaming Tour Bus Walkthrough

This video only gives a quick glimpse at what’s in this truck, so be sure to check it out in person if you can!

The bus will be at GenCon in Indianapolis today through Sunday, then will travel to the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver on Aug. 23-24, and will hit the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle after that. For more tour dates, check the schedule here!

Posted in Events, Gaming, Video, Vlogs | No Comments »

A Closer Look at Clan PMS

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Earlier today, Winnie Wong wrote a wonderful post about the upsurge of women in the gaming world. It’s true: men in games are finding more and more often that the uber opponent who has their number in the gaming arena just happens to be a member of the Cyber Sisterhood. The appeal of games has now reached a point where people from all walks of life can enjoy virtually slaying each other. It certainly is a welcome change!

While at QuakeCon this year, Ryan B from Dell Sales Chat and I caught up with some of the most notorious ladies in the online arena: Clan PMS. They graciously agreed to talk to us on camera about gaming, women in gaming, their clan, and the reaction of gamers to getting pwned by a lady. (For the curious, yes, this interview was filmed in the Extreme Gaming Tour truck.)

PMS CLAN Interview “Pro Girl Gaming”

If you’re interested in joining PMS or their brother clan, H2O, you can apply here:

http://www.pmsclan.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=1233

If not, remember that when you see a PMS or H2O tag online, you’re meeting someone from one of the most formidable gaming clans online! It was truly a pleasure having the chance to work with these ladies and gentlemen. They truly impress!

I’d like to once again thank the ladies from PMS for graciously agreeing to the interview!

Posted in Events, Gaming | No Comments »

Dell Summer Rocks Tour Multimedia: Lollapalooza 2008

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Lollapalooza has come and gone. However, memories of the event and the Dell Dome are still fresh in the minds of all who experienced it. I know I’m not speaking only for myself when I say that next year’s event cannot come quickly enough. So if you were fortunate enough to attend Lollapalooza this year and want to reminisce or, if you just want to see some of the action from the event, check out the updated Dell Summer Rocks Lollapalooza page which features band interviews and action photos within the Dell Dome.

USA Today’s Pop Candy has a nice recap of the event including a blurb about our resident artist Mike Ming, whose work can be found not only in the Dell Summer Rocks Tour Dome, but on our customized Dell 1525 laptop computers as well. Summer is full of colors, and Designed for Dell has all the customized features one would want to make your personal laptop or desktop computer as colorful as you are. Make sure you check out the latest offerings from Dell and pick one up that fits your style and needs.

If you have pictures from the Dell Dome at Lollapalooza and want to share the love with friends and others with Flickr, please make sure to tag your photos with “DellSummerRocks” and upload your pictures today. I’ve already uploaded some of my shots and will continue to add more as the Dell Summer Rocks Tour continues.

Posted in Events, Music, Social Media | No Comments »

Will the Olympics Melt the Internet?

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

That’s the headline atop Tom Steinert-Threlkeld’s ZDNet column today. He’s quoting a well-placed source as saying we’re about to find whether the Internet can, or will, break down under the strain of all that video streaming from Beijing starting tomorrow. So what are the odds? Check it out here.

Posted in Connectivity, Eclectica, Events | 2 Comments »

Join Team Dignitas Live on WebCam at the M Festival Tomorrow

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Tomorrow I will be attending the Multiplay i34 LAN, or as it is now also known the M Festival, at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry. This will be my first event since returning home to the UK from Los Angeles after winning the Championship Gaming Series World Final with my Birmingham Salvo team. Looking out of the window now I wish we had the LA weather for this event but I am not staying in a tent unlike some of the 2,000 participants.

Seven of my Birmingham Salvo team will be at this event competing and 24 of my Team Dignitas players will also be there competing. The Dell-sponsored Team Dignitas will be competing in several tournaments including Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament and a few others. This is also a World Cyber Games qualifying event so several Dignitas players will be trying to grab a spot in the UK National team for the final in Germany this November.

Team Dignitas will be competing in Counter Strike 1.6, Warcraft III, Command & Conquer and on console Virtual Fighter and Halo 3. Defending UK and World Champion Shaun Clark will start the defense of his world title in Command & Conquer also. The team will have a live webcam on during the event and this can be viewed on the team’s Web site.

I am looking forward to this event as it will be the largest in the UK ever and there will be lots of things to do including exhibitors, tournaments, paintball and off-road driving.

Posted in Events, Gaming | No Comments »

On Camera From QuakeCon: Movie Director Mike Pasley

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Now that I’ve returned from the field, I’ve had a chance to look through all of the footage I gathered at this year’s QuakeCon. As promised, this will be one of several posts over the next few days where I show some of the highlights. There was just so much to see and do at the conference it was difficult to tear myself away to do anything more than empty my camera and answer a few e-mails. It was that jam packed!

The first video I’d like to drop is a quick three-minute interview with Mike Pasley, the director of Frag. I had run into him on the walkway between the exhibition hall and the hotel on Thursday when he briefly told me about the movie. A movie about the professionals in the gaming world and the counter-culture that spawned them intrigued me greatly, being a hardcore gamer myself. I had to drop by his booth in the exhibition hall and talk to him for a bit.

The following was caught on camera:

I had a chance to speak with Mike a couple of days later, and it was evident that he was knowledgeable and passionate about the professional gaming industry, and that this movie was a labor of love. He admitted that as the filming progressed, the story unfolded from what the team initially had in mind into a brutally honest portrayal of the professional gaming industry as a whole. The end result is a dynamic look into a world that most people don’t even know exists, and the injustices that remain so prevalent there.

Thank you, Mike, for spending the time to share your experiences with me both on and off the camera. It was truly an eye opener, and I can’t recommend the movie enough to anyone who wants to know what’s really going on in the world of professional gaming.

Those of you in Toronto have a chance to catch Mike and crew at the Fan Expo later this month.

Posted in Events, Gaming, Vlogs | 5 Comments »

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