Short.am
Short.am provides a big opportunity for earning money by shortening links. It is a rapidly growing URL Shortening Service. You simply need to sign up and start shrinking links. You can share the shortened links across the web, on your webpage, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Short.am provides detailed statistics and easy-to-use API.
It even provides add-ons and plugins so that you can monetize your WordPress site. The minimum payout is $5 before you will be paid. It pays users via PayPal or Payoneer. It has the best market payout rates, offering unparalleled revenue. Short.am also run a referral program wherein you can earn 20% extra commission for life.CPMlink
CPMlink is one of the most legit URL shortener sites.You can sign up for free.It works like other shortener sites.You just have to shorten your link and paste that link into the internet.When someone will click on your link.
You will get some amount of that click.It pays around $5 for every 1000 views.They offer 10% commission as the referral program.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.The payment is then sent to your PayPal, Payza or Skrill account daily after requesting it.- The payout for 1000 views-$5
- Minimum payout-$5
- Referral commission-10%
- Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
- Payment time-daily
Ouo.io
Ouo.io is one of the fastest growing URL Shortener Service. Its pretty domain name is helpful in generating more clicks than other URL Shortener Services, and so you get a good opportunity for earning more money out of your shortened link. Ouo.io comes with several advanced features as well as customization options.
With Ouo.io you can earn up to $8 per 1000 views. It also counts multiple views from same IP or person. With Ouo.io is becomes easy to earn money using its URL Shortener Service. The minimum payout is $5. Your earnings are automatically credited to your PayPal or Payoneer account on 1st or 15th of the month.- Payout for every 1000 views-$5
- Minimum payout-$5
- Referral commission-20%
- Payout time-1st and 15th date of the month
- Payout options-PayPal and Payza
Linkbucks
Linkbucks is another best and one of the most popular sites for shortening URLs and earning money. It boasts of high Google Page Rank as well as very high Alexa rankings. Linkbucks is paying $0.5 to $7 per 1000 views, and it depends on country to country.
The minimum payout is $10, and payment method is PayPal. It also provides the opportunity of referral earnings wherein you can earn 20% commission for a lifetime. Linkbucks runs advertising programs as well.- The payout for 1000 views-$3-9
- Minimum payout-$10
- Referral commission-20%
- Payment options-PayPal,Payza,and Payoneer
- Payment-on the daily basis
Clk.sh
Clk.sh is a newly launched trusted link shortener network, it is a sister site of shrinkearn.com. I like ClkSh because it accepts multiple views from same visitors. If any one searching for Top and best url shortener service then i recommend this url shortener to our users. Clk.sh accepts advertisers and publishers from all over the world. It offers an opportunity to all its publishers to earn money and advertisers will get their targeted audience for cheapest rate. While writing ClkSh was offering up to $8 per 1000 visits and its minimum cpm rate is $1.4. Like Shrinkearn, Shorte.st url shorteners Clk.sh also offers some best features to all its users, including Good customer support, multiple views counting, decent cpm rates, good referral rate, multiple tools, quick payments etc. ClkSh offers 30% referral commission to its publishers. It uses 6 payment methods to all its users.- Payout for 1000 Views: Upto $8
- Minimum Withdrawal: $5
- Referral Commission: 30%
- Payment Methods: PayPal, Payza, Skrill etc.
- Payment Time: Daily
Cut-win
Cut-win is a new URL shortener website.It is paying at the time and you can trust it.You just have to sign up for an account and then you can shorten your URL and put that URL anywhere.You can paste it into your site, blog or even social media networking sites.It pays high CPM rate.
You can earn $10 for 1000 views.You can earn 22% commission through the referral system.The most important thing is that you can withdraw your amount when it reaches $1.- The payout for 1000 views-$10
- Minimum payout-$1
- Referral commission-22%
- Payment methods-PayPal, Payza, Bitcoin, Skrill, Western Union and Moneygram etc.
- Payment time-daily
Adf.ly
Adf.ly is the oldest and one of the most trusted URL Shortener Service for making money by shrinking your links. Adf.ly provides you an opportunity to earn up to $5 per 1000 views. However, the earnings depend upon the demographics of users who go on to click the shortened link by Adf.ly.
It offers a very comprehensive reporting system for tracking the performance of your each shortened URL. The minimum payout is kept low, and it is $5. It pays on 10th of every month. You can receive your earnings via PayPal, Payza, or AlertPay. Adf.ly also runs a referral program wherein you can earn a flat 20% commission for each referral for a lifetime.Wi.cr
Wi.cr is also one of the 30 highest paying URL sites.You can earn through shortening links.When someone will click on your link.You will be paid.They offer $7 for 1000 views.Minimum payout is $5.
You can earn through its referral program.When someone will open the account through your link you will get 10% commission.Payment option is PayPal.- Payout for 1000 views-$7
- Minimum payout-$5
- Referral commission-10%
- Payout method-Paypal
- Payout time-daily
BIT-URL
It is a new URL shortener website.Its CPM rate is good.You can sign up for free and shorten your URL and that shortener URL can be paste on your websites, blogs or social media networking sites.bit-url.com pays $8.10 for 1000 views.
You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $3.bit-url.com offers 20% commission for your referral link.Payment methods are PayPal, Payza, Payeer, and Flexy etc.- The payout for 1000 views-$8.10
- Minimum payout-$3
- Referral commission-20%
- Payment methods- Paypal, Payza, and Payeer
- Payment time-daily
Short.pe
Short.pe is one of the most trusted sites from our top 30 highest paying URL shorteners.It pays on time.intrusting thing is that same visitor can click on your shorten link multiple times.You can earn by sign up and shorten your long URL.You just have to paste that URL to somewhere.
You can paste it into your website, blog, or social media networking sites.They offer $5 for every 1000 views.You can also earn 20% referral commission from this site.Their minimum payout amount is only $1.You can withdraw from Paypal, Payza, and Payoneer.- The payout for 1000 views-$5
- Minimum payout-$1
- Referral commission-20% for lifetime
- Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Payoneer
- Payment time-on daily basis
LINK.TL
LINK.TL is one of the best and highest URL shortener website.It pays up to $16 for every 1000 views.You just have to sign up for free.You can earn by shortening your long URL into short and you can paste that URL into your website, blogs or social media networking sites, like facebook, twitter, and google plus etc.
One of the best thing about this site is its referral system.They offer 10% referral commission.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.- Payout for 1000 views-$16
- Minimum payout-$5
- Referral commission-10%
- Payout methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
- Payment time-daily basis
Friday, March 29, 2019
11 Best Highest Paying URL Shortener Sites to Make Money Online
Motivation
I wrote in an earlier post on why I design games, but recently I took a moment to think about what motivates me to work on a particular design over another one. It's true that most designers are never short of game ideas. I have computer files and 3-ring binders full of them, but since my job (not as a game designer) and family take priority, I only have a limited amount of free time to work on them. So how do I decide which one to develop further?
I think that a concept's originality is what mainly drives me to block out all the other ideas and focus for a few weeks. It could be a mechanism that I have not seen before, or it could be a theme that is particularly fascinating to me. My latest game, Nieuw Amsterdam, kept me focused for some time due to its theme and my desire to do justice to it.
But I think that the most important motivation for me is the feedback I receive from others. When playtesters react positively to a new game design, it is easy for me to get excited about it too. And this does not stop when I find the right publisher.
I just signed a contract, for example, for a design that I had not worked on for some time. I had received negative feedback after pitching it to a publisher several years ago (although they made a quick judgement without ever playtesting it), and I decided to shelve it for awhile after that. While I was getting my prototypes ready for Essen this year, however, I pulled it out again and included it with my portfolio. It turned out to be my most-requested prototype from the publishers I visited (also from first impressions, without having played the game), and not long afterwards, I received a contract offer. The publisher had some great ideas to improve the game, and now I'm motivated to help develop it further, knowing that it will soon be on the market.
On the other hand, another game design that I successfully pitched during Essen did not fare so well, and I received the two prototypes back that each publisher had tested. The game needed more development, they said. It wasn't easy to read their criiticism at first, especially after I felt that I had given it my „all." But after playing the game again with my own group, I see where they are coming from and I now have some ideas on how to overhall the design. I'm motivated to work on it again. When I get negative feedback, it's the challenge that motivates me.
It turns out that any kind of feedback can motivate me to focus on a design for a time, whether positive or negative. It stems from the challenge to make the prototype better, and the belief that there is potential there.
It turns out that any kind of feedback can motivate me to focus on a design for a time, whether positive or negative. It stems from the challenge to make the prototype better, and the belief that there is potential there.
And it is encouraging to know that, with a little more persistance, hard work and patience, I can get this game published too. Experience has taught me that, and success is the best motivation.
Choices, Consequences And The Ability To Plan
This article goes over why it is so important for choices to matter in a game and how it all has to do with planning. If a user perceives that their actions have no consequences, you remove a core component of engagement - the ability to plan.
Say you are playing a game like The Walking Dead, or any other interactive movie, and you are faced with the choice whether or not to help someone who is hurt. You decide that you want to help the person, after which you never see them again for the rest of the game. Reloading a save and playing through the scenario you find out that if you chose not to help, the same thing plays out. Simply put: in this case, your choice really has no consequences.
While the scenario is made up, it presents a very typical situation that opinions are heavily divided on. Some people are totally okay with it for various reasons. But others will argue that this lack of consequences ruins the entire experience, as your choices doesn't really matter. It's really easy to say that people who feel this way are simply playing the game the wrong way or are not properly immersed. However, I think it's really important to investigate this reaction further as it gets us closer to some fundamental problems of narrative games.
The argument from people who get annoyed by these non-choices goes something like this: if every branch leads back to the same path, then you really don't have any say in how the game plays out. You are not playing a game, you are only pretending that you are. It's like when you are playing a split-screen game and notice you've been watching the wrong side. The feeling of play is just an illusion. Nobody would tolerate a Super Mario where a pre-written script - not the player's skill - determines whether or not they survive a jump, so why tolerate games where all choices lead to the same conclusion?
One could counter that by saying the intention is to put you into a hard position and the game is about your varied emotional reactions as you ponder the different choices. It isn't about affecting how the game plays out - it is about making an emotional journey. If you require the game to show you the consequences of your actions, you are not immersed in the game's story - you are simply trying to optimize a system. This might sometimes be the case, but I also think this line of thinking is missing what the actual problem is: the failure of the player's mental model.
Let's start by breaking down the problem. A mental model, as explained in this previous post, is how the player perceives the game's world and their role in it. As you are playing a game, you slowly build a mental model of the various objects and systems that make up the game and attach various attributes to them. At first a box might just be a piece of the background, but as you learn you can destroy it in order to gain items, attributes are added. The object gains complexity. The reverse can also happen. For instance, when you first see a character you might think that you are able to speak to it and therefore label it with various attributes you know that humans usually have. But when you find out that the character is really just a piece of the background without any sort of agency, most of those attributes are lost.
Your mental model of a game is something that is continually revised as you are playing, and it is something that always happens, no matter what the game is. In fact, this is a process that is a core part of any medium, including books and films. So, obviously, when you are playing an interactive movie game, you are not simply reacting to a direct stream of information. You are answering questions based on your mental model.
Take my "will you help your hurt companion?" scenario from above. The knowledge you take into account about that choice is not just what is currently projected at you from the TV screen. It is a combination of everything you have gone through up to this point, along with a bunch of personal knowledge and biases. Even basic concepts like "hurt" and "companion" aren't just created in this moment. They are ideas that the game has spent a lot of time building up, be that for good or bad, from the very moment you started playing.
When you are faced with the hypothetical scene of a hurt companion, you are not just dealing with an animated image on a screen. You are dealing with a whole world constructed in your mind. This is what your choice will be based around. While it might objectively seem that everyone is reacting to the same scenario, they may in fact be dealing with quite different setups.
So when someone gets annoyed by the lack of consequences, it is not necessarily the direct consequences that are missing. The issue is that they have constructed a mental around a real person in need, along with that person's future actions. So when it becomes apparent that the game doesn't simulate that as part of its own model, the player's mental model is broken and it feels like a big let down. Remember that we don't play the game that is on the screen, we the play game as we perceive it in our heads. So when it turns out that your imagined world is fake, it has a huge impact.
It gets even worse once we take into the fact that planning is fundamental to a sense of gameplay. As explained in a previous post, engaging gameplay is largely fueled by the ability to make plans. The way this works is that the player first simulates a course of action using their mental model, and then tries to execute that in the game. This is a continuous process and "planning and executing the plan" is basically the same as playing. Interactive movies normally don't have a lot of gameplay and it is really only in the choice moments that the player gets to take part in any actual play. Hence, when the choices turn out to have no consequences, it becomes clear that planning is impossible. In turn, this means that any meaningful play is impossible and the experience feels fundamentally broken.
As an example, take this experience I had with Heavy Rain:
As I outlined in the previous blog on the SSM framework it is incredibly important to keep track of how systems and story help form a mental model in the player's mind. For instance, if you start your game saying "your actions will have consequences", that will immediately start filling up your player's imagination with all sort of ideas and concepts. Even how pre-release PR is presented can affect this. All of these then become things that lay groundwork for how the game is modeled in the player's head and it is vitally important to make sure this mental model remains stable over the course of the game.
Say you are playing a game like The Walking Dead, or any other interactive movie, and you are faced with the choice whether or not to help someone who is hurt. You decide that you want to help the person, after which you never see them again for the rest of the game. Reloading a save and playing through the scenario you find out that if you chose not to help, the same thing plays out. Simply put: in this case, your choice really has no consequences.
While the scenario is made up, it presents a very typical situation that opinions are heavily divided on. Some people are totally okay with it for various reasons. But others will argue that this lack of consequences ruins the entire experience, as your choices doesn't really matter. It's really easy to say that people who feel this way are simply playing the game the wrong way or are not properly immersed. However, I think it's really important to investigate this reaction further as it gets us closer to some fundamental problems of narrative games.
The argument from people who get annoyed by these non-choices goes something like this: if every branch leads back to the same path, then you really don't have any say in how the game plays out. You are not playing a game, you are only pretending that you are. It's like when you are playing a split-screen game and notice you've been watching the wrong side. The feeling of play is just an illusion. Nobody would tolerate a Super Mario where a pre-written script - not the player's skill - determines whether or not they survive a jump, so why tolerate games where all choices lead to the same conclusion?
One could counter that by saying the intention is to put you into a hard position and the game is about your varied emotional reactions as you ponder the different choices. It isn't about affecting how the game plays out - it is about making an emotional journey. If you require the game to show you the consequences of your actions, you are not immersed in the game's story - you are simply trying to optimize a system. This might sometimes be the case, but I also think this line of thinking is missing what the actual problem is: the failure of the player's mental model.
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Let's start by breaking down the problem. A mental model, as explained in this previous post, is how the player perceives the game's world and their role in it. As you are playing a game, you slowly build a mental model of the various objects and systems that make up the game and attach various attributes to them. At first a box might just be a piece of the background, but as you learn you can destroy it in order to gain items, attributes are added. The object gains complexity. The reverse can also happen. For instance, when you first see a character you might think that you are able to speak to it and therefore label it with various attributes you know that humans usually have. But when you find out that the character is really just a piece of the background without any sort of agency, most of those attributes are lost.
Your mental model of a game is something that is continually revised as you are playing, and it is something that always happens, no matter what the game is. In fact, this is a process that is a core part of any medium, including books and films. So, obviously, when you are playing an interactive movie game, you are not simply reacting to a direct stream of information. You are answering questions based on your mental model.
Take my "will you help your hurt companion?" scenario from above. The knowledge you take into account about that choice is not just what is currently projected at you from the TV screen. It is a combination of everything you have gone through up to this point, along with a bunch of personal knowledge and biases. Even basic concepts like "hurt" and "companion" aren't just created in this moment. They are ideas that the game has spent a lot of time building up, be that for good or bad, from the very moment you started playing.
When you are faced with the hypothetical scene of a hurt companion, you are not just dealing with an animated image on a screen. You are dealing with a whole world constructed in your mind. This is what your choice will be based around. While it might objectively seem that everyone is reacting to the same scenario, they may in fact be dealing with quite different setups.
So when someone gets annoyed by the lack of consequences, it is not necessarily the direct consequences that are missing. The issue is that they have constructed a mental around a real person in need, along with that person's future actions. So when it becomes apparent that the game doesn't simulate that as part of its own model, the player's mental model is broken and it feels like a big let down. Remember that we don't play the game that is on the screen, we the play game as we perceive it in our heads. So when it turns out that your imagined world is fake, it has a huge impact.
It gets even worse once we take into the fact that planning is fundamental to a sense of gameplay. As explained in a previous post, engaging gameplay is largely fueled by the ability to make plans. The way this works is that the player first simulates a course of action using their mental model, and then tries to execute that in the game. This is a continuous process and "planning and executing the plan" is basically the same as playing. Interactive movies normally don't have a lot of gameplay and it is really only in the choice moments that the player gets to take part in any actual play. Hence, when the choices turn out to have no consequences, it becomes clear that planning is impossible. In turn, this means that any meaningful play is impossible and the experience feels fundamentally broken.
As an example, take this experience I had with Heavy Rain:
[...] one scene I had made a plan of actions: to first bandage an unconscious person and then to poke around in his stuff. There really was nothing hindering me from doing so but instead the game removed my ability to interact directly after caring for the person. The game interpreted me wanting to help the guy as I also did not want to poke around, thinking that they two were mutually exclusive actions. Of course I thought otherwise and considered it no problem at all to do some poking afterward.I think that people to complain the loudest about the lack of consequences are extra sensitive to situations like this. But, as I said, this is not due to lack of consequences per se, but due to the impact it has on the consistency of their mental model and sense of play. It is really important to note that this is not due to some sort of lack in immersion or ability to roleplay. On the contrary, as I have described above, many of the issues arise because they mentally simulate the game's world and characters very vividly.
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So the problem that we are faced with is really not a lack of consequences. It is because the underlying systems of the game are not able to simulate the mental model for a subset of players. One way of mending this is of course to add more consequences, but that is not a sustainable solution. Additional branches increase exponentially, and it quickly becomes impossible to cover every single possible outcome. Instead it is much better to focus on crafting more robust mental models. Sure, this might entail adding consequences to choices, but that is just a possible solution - it is not the end goal.
One of the main things to have in mind is consistency. Remember that as someone is playing a game, they are building up a mental simulation for how things are supposed to work. If you provide information that certain events are possible when they are in fact not, you are running the risk of breaking the player's mental model. You either need to remove this sort of information or to make sure that they never take part in situations where these sort of events feel like a valid option.
However, the most important thing to keep in mind is the ability to plan. A major reason why the lack of consequences can feel so bad is because these consequences were part of the player's gameplay plans. So when it becomes apparent that they don't exist, the whole concept of play breaks down. In all fairness, this might be OK for certain genres. If the goal is to simply to make an interactive movie, then losing a subset of player might be fair. But if the goal is to make proper interactive storytelling, then this is of paramount importance - planning must be part of the core experience.
That doesn't mean that every choice is something the player needs to base their plans on. But in that case then there need to be other things that lie on a similar time scale and which are possible to predict and incorporate into plans. I think that one way around this problem is to have a more system-focused feature that runs alongside the more fuzzy narrative choices. When the players make choices, their mental model will have the best predictive skills around this more abstract system, and play revolves mostly around this. Then when more narrative choices are presented they will feel more game-like and part of the a solid simulation, despite not really having any consequences.
A simple and good example is the choices you have to make in Papers, Please. This game is driven by a type of survival simulation where you need to gain credits (though doing proper passport check) in order to keep your family live. Entwined into this are choices about who you will allow into the country. Many of these don't have any far reaching consequences, but that that doesn't really matter because your ability to plan is still satisfied. But despite that, these choices still feel interesting and can have an emotional effect.
This sort of approach relies on combining several elements in order to produce the feeling of something that might not actually be there. This is something that is used in a wide range of applications, from how we view images on a TV, to how films can create drama through cuts. We don't always have to have solve problems straight on, but often the best way is to split the problem into many and to solve each problem on its own. The combined effect will then seem like a solution to the original problem. This is a technique that is super important for not just this, but many other narrative problems. I will write a blog post later on that goes into more details.
Once you have a game that is consistent and that has some sort of planning apart from the more narrative choices, the probability of satisfying the people will be greatly improved. And not only that, your narrative experience will improve over all, for all players, not just a subset. In this case I think it is fair to view these extra sensitive people as canaries in a cave, something that is first to react on a much bigger issue.
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This blog post by no means presents the solution to end all problems with choices and consequences. But hopefully it will give a new way of thinking about the problem and some basic directions for finding a solution. I don't think we will ever find a perfect way of dealing with choices, but the better informed we are at underlying causes, the better experiences we can provide.
Thoughts On Super Mario Run: Remix 10 And The Nature Of Rewards
#Nintendo #gamedev #indiedev #SuperMarioRun
In September of 2017, Nintendo released an update to Mario Run which, amongst other things, introduced players to a new way to play, dubbed Remix 10.
Louard's game design sounding board and home of the Pro's and Con's reviews.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Inconsistency Of Commodity Experiences
When I look out the window of my store, I'm reminded of a story. I accompanied a friend to buy a new BMW at the dealership across the street. He did a Euro delivery deal and walked away with a date to pick up his new car in Munich. I went with him on that trip and it was a wonderful time and the car was fantastic. My own BMW, a higher end model with lots of problems, was costing me a fortune. I went to that same dealer, met with the same salesman and requested the identical car, with the identical deal. Nope.
The salesman insisted I pay another $700 for a delivery fee that wasn't required on European Delivery. But what about my friends deal? Nope. Can't have it for that price. To give you an idea of how car dealerships work, each dealer gets an allocation of cars each year, say 100, and they need to maximize the profit on each of those vehicles, which is why there's so much haggling and an attempt to get you to pay full price in a market segment where almost nobody pays full price. It's the poster child for dumpster fire retail. European Delivery, offered by a handful of manufacturers, is outside the dealer allocation, so they can sell as many of those cars as they want and it's essentially "free" money. Turning me down for $700 was turning down free money, in my mind at least.
I drove over to another dealer and I swear I've never seen a car dealer so overjoyed to work with me. I handed him a complete deal, with all the details, for an imaginary car in a foreign country and he would make $1,000 for his efforts that day. He would never see me again. I swore I would never step foot in that first dealer and it left a bad taste in my mouth. It's a taste I encounter daily, just by looking through my store window at that same dealership across the street.
What's the relevance of this story? We sold a box of Magic the Gathering: Ultimate Masters to a customer. The clerk was unclear on the price, as it has been like shifting sands with us. This product was in fact, allocated, meaning, in theory at least, we are only getting so many and we needed to maximize profit based on market conditions. Even though the price was clearly stated in our point of sale system, the clerk sold it for 10% off.
Later, his buddy came into the store, and asked for an Ultimate Masters box like his buddy bought, with no sales tax. Pfft. That wasn't going to happen. No sales tax? That sounds like his buddy went to a competitor. We rang him up and he was rightfully upset his box was 10% more expensive than his friends. He was angry, he swore he would never be back and said some mean things, and I lost a customer. He probably went and told all his friends as well. Nine friends more than likely. Or maybe he'll write a blog post.
There's two ways to lose a customer, one is treating them poorly through bad customer service. The other way is the irritation and anger that comes from inconsistency of experience. It's why people give in and just go to McDonalds even though the independent burger joint is often better. It's not always better, just often. Often is the enemy of consistent experience, and McDonalds may be kind of mediocre, but it's always mediocre in its consistent mediocrity. In any case, there is often a sliding scale of bulk CCG product, but there is only one game where we have this chaos of allocations and commodity pricing, Magic: The Gathering.
The shifting scale of commodity pricing and allocations adds a level of unprofessionalism to the game trade. It makes us all car dealers, makes everything negotiable in the eyes of customers, and lowers overall customer service. Every retailer thrives for consistency of experience. Wizards of the Coast believes these allocated products are a type of halo product that accentuates the brand, and they incentive their entire retailer marketing scheme so retailers chase these allocated products. The joke is they only care about "butts in seats," with their WPN program, but as retailers, we chase butts in seats in order to get these commoditized products. Everything about that program is designed to devalue the product while spreading the reach of Wizards of the Coast. It's great for them, but a terrible, inconsistent experience for everyone else. The halo has morphed into horns, trampling consistency of experience, and I think it's time to be discarded.
The salesman insisted I pay another $700 for a delivery fee that wasn't required on European Delivery. But what about my friends deal? Nope. Can't have it for that price. To give you an idea of how car dealerships work, each dealer gets an allocation of cars each year, say 100, and they need to maximize the profit on each of those vehicles, which is why there's so much haggling and an attempt to get you to pay full price in a market segment where almost nobody pays full price. It's the poster child for dumpster fire retail. European Delivery, offered by a handful of manufacturers, is outside the dealer allocation, so they can sell as many of those cars as they want and it's essentially "free" money. Turning me down for $700 was turning down free money, in my mind at least.
I drove over to another dealer and I swear I've never seen a car dealer so overjoyed to work with me. I handed him a complete deal, with all the details, for an imaginary car in a foreign country and he would make $1,000 for his efforts that day. He would never see me again. I swore I would never step foot in that first dealer and it left a bad taste in my mouth. It's a taste I encounter daily, just by looking through my store window at that same dealership across the street.
Driving through France in my perfectly configured dream car (I ended up really hating it)
What's the relevance of this story? We sold a box of Magic the Gathering: Ultimate Masters to a customer. The clerk was unclear on the price, as it has been like shifting sands with us. This product was in fact, allocated, meaning, in theory at least, we are only getting so many and we needed to maximize profit based on market conditions. Even though the price was clearly stated in our point of sale system, the clerk sold it for 10% off.
Later, his buddy came into the store, and asked for an Ultimate Masters box like his buddy bought, with no sales tax. Pfft. That wasn't going to happen. No sales tax? That sounds like his buddy went to a competitor. We rang him up and he was rightfully upset his box was 10% more expensive than his friends. He was angry, he swore he would never be back and said some mean things, and I lost a customer. He probably went and told all his friends as well. Nine friends more than likely. Or maybe he'll write a blog post.
Too much ketchup on your burger? Not at McDonalds.
There's two ways to lose a customer, one is treating them poorly through bad customer service. The other way is the irritation and anger that comes from inconsistency of experience. It's why people give in and just go to McDonalds even though the independent burger joint is often better. It's not always better, just often. Often is the enemy of consistent experience, and McDonalds may be kind of mediocre, but it's always mediocre in its consistent mediocrity. In any case, there is often a sliding scale of bulk CCG product, but there is only one game where we have this chaos of allocations and commodity pricing, Magic: The Gathering.
The shifting scale of commodity pricing and allocations adds a level of unprofessionalism to the game trade. It makes us all car dealers, makes everything negotiable in the eyes of customers, and lowers overall customer service. Every retailer thrives for consistency of experience. Wizards of the Coast believes these allocated products are a type of halo product that accentuates the brand, and they incentive their entire retailer marketing scheme so retailers chase these allocated products. The joke is they only care about "butts in seats," with their WPN program, but as retailers, we chase butts in seats in order to get these commoditized products. Everything about that program is designed to devalue the product while spreading the reach of Wizards of the Coast. It's great for them, but a terrible, inconsistent experience for everyone else. The halo has morphed into horns, trampling consistency of experience, and I think it's time to be discarded.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Apologies For Lapses In Posts - Resolutions! (Monday Musings 72)
It's been so very, very long since I last posted, so I want to apologize. This is a good time to review my New Year's Resolutions, and definitely one of them is to post weekly - which I was pretty consistent with last year.
The reasons are that I enjoy blogging, and it'll "force" me to think about pertinent topics to write about, which can also help with figuring out streaming topics.
Resolutions can be kept if we troubleshoot and remove foreseeable obstacles that can get in the way of resolutions.
The major obstacle with weekly postings, is not having a set schedule to sit down and write. As I'm not working on Mondays, it makes the most sense, after exercising, chores, and breakfast, to write my post on Mondays.
There's a possibility that I'll be working on Mondays, so the other free day I have is Friday, as the alternative option. I didn't know that Blogspot can automate the exact time to post, so Friday is a perfectly viable alternative.
My other resolution, I've been rather consistent, which is getting up as soon as the alarm clock rings, which I was never able to do since day 1, until recently.
I changed my alarm clock to an earlier time (from 7:00 AM to 6:30 AM) which will give me the time to exercise before work. I noticed my mind shuts down around 8 PM (I'm not a night owl), so why not go to bed earlier and get up earlier in the morning, during the hours where I truly enjoy activities?
Thanks to my Twitch buddy, who inspired me to pop out of bed as soon as the alarm clock rings, I've been more or less successful in doing so. He mentioned that he'd get up at 5:00 AM, exercise and do his chores, and has a couple of hours before he heads off to work to have fun. I was very motivated, because I would like to get everything out of the way as soon as possible, so the rest of the day, after work, I'll have free time until heading to bed!
I was surprised because last week, I actually exercised before work (the first time in decades), and today, despite not streaming, I also exercised!
In other words, I've been streaming in part because it forced me to exercise, but now I have internal motivation to exercise thanks to my Twitch friend! I very much enjoy streaming, but I now have more freedom to chose to stream or not (in the past, the major reason to stream is because it forces me to exercise). If I get burned out from streaming (which can very well happen), I won't feel guilt that I'm not taking care of my health.
In this way, I can truly evaluate Twitch streaming as a hobby I want to keep or not, and if I no longer enjoy it, I can leave streaming behind without feeling remorse.
What are your resolutions, and have you kept them? If you have, I'd love to hear about your troubleshooting.
The How of Happiness Review
The reasons are that I enjoy blogging, and it'll "force" me to think about pertinent topics to write about, which can also help with figuring out streaming topics.
Resolutions can be kept if we troubleshoot and remove foreseeable obstacles that can get in the way of resolutions.
The major obstacle with weekly postings, is not having a set schedule to sit down and write. As I'm not working on Mondays, it makes the most sense, after exercising, chores, and breakfast, to write my post on Mondays.
There's a possibility that I'll be working on Mondays, so the other free day I have is Friday, as the alternative option. I didn't know that Blogspot can automate the exact time to post, so Friday is a perfectly viable alternative.
My other resolution, I've been rather consistent, which is getting up as soon as the alarm clock rings, which I was never able to do since day 1, until recently.
I changed my alarm clock to an earlier time (from 7:00 AM to 6:30 AM) which will give me the time to exercise before work. I noticed my mind shuts down around 8 PM (I'm not a night owl), so why not go to bed earlier and get up earlier in the morning, during the hours where I truly enjoy activities?
Thanks to my Twitch buddy, who inspired me to pop out of bed as soon as the alarm clock rings, I've been more or less successful in doing so. He mentioned that he'd get up at 5:00 AM, exercise and do his chores, and has a couple of hours before he heads off to work to have fun. I was very motivated, because I would like to get everything out of the way as soon as possible, so the rest of the day, after work, I'll have free time until heading to bed!
I was surprised because last week, I actually exercised before work (the first time in decades), and today, despite not streaming, I also exercised!
In other words, I've been streaming in part because it forced me to exercise, but now I have internal motivation to exercise thanks to my Twitch friend! I very much enjoy streaming, but I now have more freedom to chose to stream or not (in the past, the major reason to stream is because it forces me to exercise). If I get burned out from streaming (which can very well happen), I won't feel guilt that I'm not taking care of my health.
In this way, I can truly evaluate Twitch streaming as a hobby I want to keep or not, and if I no longer enjoy it, I can leave streaming behind without feeling remorse.
What are your resolutions, and have you kept them? If you have, I'd love to hear about your troubleshooting.
The How of Happiness Review
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Some Advice For Journalists Writing About Artificial Intelligence
Dear Journalists,
I'd like to offer some advice on how to write better and more truthfully when you write articles about artificial intelligence. The reason I'm writing this is that there are a whole lot of very bad articles on AI (news articles and public interest articles) being published in newspapers and magazines. Some of them are utter nonsense, bordering on misinformation, some of them capture the gist of what goes on but are riddled with misunderstandings. No, I will not provide examples, but anyone working in AI and following the news can provide plenty. There are of course also many good articles about AI, but the good/bad ratio could certainly be improved.
First off, I understand. You're writing about an extremely fast-moving field full of jargon and enthusiastic people with grand visions. Given all this excitement, there must be plenty to write about, but you don't know much (or even anything) about the field. You probably know as little about AI as I know about, say, tannery. But where tannery evolves only very slowly and involves very concrete materials and mechanics, AI moves at breakneck speed and few of those words that get thrown around seem to refer to anything you can touch or see. There's a feeling that you need to write about the latest developments NOW before they are superseded, but it's hard to see where to even begin to decipher the strange things those AI researchers say. And of course you want to write something readable, and clickable, and you don't have much time. It can't be easy.
So here's a few things to keep in mind, and some concrete recommendations, for more critical and higher-quality reporting on AI. Some of this is based on my experience with being interviewed by journalists of varying technical proficiency, and with varying inclination to buy the story I was trying to sell them. Yes, we're all trying to sell something, even we curmudgeons in the ivory tower are trying to sell you something. More about this below.
Keep in mind: AI is a big field, and very diverse in terms of topics and methods used. (True, it's not as diverse as it should be in some other senses.) The main AI conferences (such as IJCAI, AAAI, ICML and NIPS) have thousands of attendees, and most of them only understand a small part of what goes on in the conference. When I go to one of these conferences, I can perhaps follow maybe 20% of the talks and get something out of them. While I might be a bit dim myself, it's rare to find anyone who can keep up to date with sub-fields as diverse as constraint propagation, deep learning and stochastic search.
Recommendation: Do not assume that researchers you talk to knows "what's going on right now in AI". Even more importantly, if someone says they know what's going on right now in AI, assume that they only know a small part of the big picture. Double-check with someone working in another field of AI.
Keep in mind: There is no such thing as "an artificial intelligence". AI is a collection of methods and ideas for building software that can do some of the things that humans can do with their brains. Researchers and developers develop new AI methods (and use existing AI methods) to build software (and sometimes also hardware) that can do something impressive, such as playing a game or drawing pictures of cats. However, you can safely assume that the same system cannot both play games and draw pictures of cats. In fact, no AI-based system that I've ever heard of can do more than a few different tasks. Even when the same researchers develop systems for different tasks based on the same idea, they will build different software systems. When journalists write that "Company X's AI could already drive a car, but it can now also write a poem", they obscure the fact that these are different systems and make it seem like there are machines with general intelligence out there. There are not.
Recommendation: Don't use the term "an AI" or "an artificial intelligence". Always ask what the limitations of a system is. Ask if it really is the same neural network that can play both Space Invaders and Montezuma's Revenge (hint: it isn't).
Keep in mind: AI is an old field, and few ideas are truly new. The current, awesome but a tad over-hyped, advances in deep learning have their roots in neural network research from the 1980s and 1990s, and that research in turn was based on ideas and experiments from all the way back in the 1940s. In many cases, cutting edge research consists of minor variations and improvements on methods that were devised before the researchers doing these advances were born. Backpropagation, the algorithm powering most of today's deep learning, is several decades old and was invented independently by multiple individuals. When IBM's Deep Blue computer won over Garry Kasparov and showed that computers could play Chess better than humans, the very core of the software was the Minimax algorithm, first implemented by Alan Turing in the 1940s. Turing, one of the fathers of both artificial intelligence and the wider field of computer science, also wrote the paper "On Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which was published in 1950. While that paper is most famous for introducing what is now called the Turing Test, it also contains the seeds of many of the key ideas in artificial intelligence.
Recommendations: Read Turing's 1950 paper. It's surprisingly easy and enjoyable to read, free from mathematical notation, and any technical terms can easily be glossed over. Marvel at how many of the key ideas of artificial intelligence were already in place, if only in embryonic form. When writing stories about exciting new developments, also consult an AI researcher that is old, or at least middle aged. Someone who was doing AI research before it was cool, or perhaps even before it was uncool, and so has seen a full cycle of AI hype. Chances are that person can tell you about which old idea this new advance is a (slight?) improvement on.
Keep in mind: Researchers always have something to sell. Obviously, those working in some kind of startup are looking to increase the valuation of their company and their chances of investment or acquisition. Those working in academia are looking for talk invitations, citations, promotions and so on. Those working in a large company will want to create interest in some product which might or might not be related to their actual results.
Recommendations: Don't believe the hype. Approach another researcher, who the people you're writing about did not forward you to, and ask if that person believes their claims.
Keep in mind: Much of "artificial intelligence" is actually human ingenuity. There's a reason why researchers and developers specialize in applications of AI to specific domains, such as robotics, games or translation: when building a system to solve a problem, lots of knowledge about the actual problem ("domain knowledge") is included in the system. This might take the role of providing special inputs to the system, using specially prepared training data, hand-coding parts of the system or even reformulating the problem so as to make it easier.
Recommendation: A good way of understanding which part of an "AI solution" are automatic and which are due to niftily encoded human domain knowledge is to ask how this system would work on a slightly different problem.
I'd better stop writing here, as this text probably already sounds far too grumpy. Look, I'm not grumpy, I'm barely even old. And I don't want to give the impression that there isn't a lot of exciting progress in AI these days. In fact, there are enough genuine advances to report on that we don't need to pad out the reporting with derivate research that's being sold as new. Let's all try to be honest, critical and accurate, shall we?
I'd like to offer some advice on how to write better and more truthfully when you write articles about artificial intelligence. The reason I'm writing this is that there are a whole lot of very bad articles on AI (news articles and public interest articles) being published in newspapers and magazines. Some of them are utter nonsense, bordering on misinformation, some of them capture the gist of what goes on but are riddled with misunderstandings. No, I will not provide examples, but anyone working in AI and following the news can provide plenty. There are of course also many good articles about AI, but the good/bad ratio could certainly be improved.
First off, I understand. You're writing about an extremely fast-moving field full of jargon and enthusiastic people with grand visions. Given all this excitement, there must be plenty to write about, but you don't know much (or even anything) about the field. You probably know as little about AI as I know about, say, tannery. But where tannery evolves only very slowly and involves very concrete materials and mechanics, AI moves at breakneck speed and few of those words that get thrown around seem to refer to anything you can touch or see. There's a feeling that you need to write about the latest developments NOW before they are superseded, but it's hard to see where to even begin to decipher the strange things those AI researchers say. And of course you want to write something readable, and clickable, and you don't have much time. It can't be easy.
So here's a few things to keep in mind, and some concrete recommendations, for more critical and higher-quality reporting on AI. Some of this is based on my experience with being interviewed by journalists of varying technical proficiency, and with varying inclination to buy the story I was trying to sell them. Yes, we're all trying to sell something, even we curmudgeons in the ivory tower are trying to sell you something. More about this below.
Keep in mind: AI is a big field, and very diverse in terms of topics and methods used. (True, it's not as diverse as it should be in some other senses.) The main AI conferences (such as IJCAI, AAAI, ICML and NIPS) have thousands of attendees, and most of them only understand a small part of what goes on in the conference. When I go to one of these conferences, I can perhaps follow maybe 20% of the talks and get something out of them. While I might be a bit dim myself, it's rare to find anyone who can keep up to date with sub-fields as diverse as constraint propagation, deep learning and stochastic search.
Recommendation: Do not assume that researchers you talk to knows "what's going on right now in AI". Even more importantly, if someone says they know what's going on right now in AI, assume that they only know a small part of the big picture. Double-check with someone working in another field of AI.
Keep in mind: There is no such thing as "an artificial intelligence". AI is a collection of methods and ideas for building software that can do some of the things that humans can do with their brains. Researchers and developers develop new AI methods (and use existing AI methods) to build software (and sometimes also hardware) that can do something impressive, such as playing a game or drawing pictures of cats. However, you can safely assume that the same system cannot both play games and draw pictures of cats. In fact, no AI-based system that I've ever heard of can do more than a few different tasks. Even when the same researchers develop systems for different tasks based on the same idea, they will build different software systems. When journalists write that "Company X's AI could already drive a car, but it can now also write a poem", they obscure the fact that these are different systems and make it seem like there are machines with general intelligence out there. There are not.
Recommendation: Don't use the term "an AI" or "an artificial intelligence". Always ask what the limitations of a system is. Ask if it really is the same neural network that can play both Space Invaders and Montezuma's Revenge (hint: it isn't).
Keep in mind: AI is an old field, and few ideas are truly new. The current, awesome but a tad over-hyped, advances in deep learning have their roots in neural network research from the 1980s and 1990s, and that research in turn was based on ideas and experiments from all the way back in the 1940s. In many cases, cutting edge research consists of minor variations and improvements on methods that were devised before the researchers doing these advances were born. Backpropagation, the algorithm powering most of today's deep learning, is several decades old and was invented independently by multiple individuals. When IBM's Deep Blue computer won over Garry Kasparov and showed that computers could play Chess better than humans, the very core of the software was the Minimax algorithm, first implemented by Alan Turing in the 1940s. Turing, one of the fathers of both artificial intelligence and the wider field of computer science, also wrote the paper "On Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which was published in 1950. While that paper is most famous for introducing what is now called the Turing Test, it also contains the seeds of many of the key ideas in artificial intelligence.
Recommendations: Read Turing's 1950 paper. It's surprisingly easy and enjoyable to read, free from mathematical notation, and any technical terms can easily be glossed over. Marvel at how many of the key ideas of artificial intelligence were already in place, if only in embryonic form. When writing stories about exciting new developments, also consult an AI researcher that is old, or at least middle aged. Someone who was doing AI research before it was cool, or perhaps even before it was uncool, and so has seen a full cycle of AI hype. Chances are that person can tell you about which old idea this new advance is a (slight?) improvement on.
Keep in mind: Researchers always have something to sell. Obviously, those working in some kind of startup are looking to increase the valuation of their company and their chances of investment or acquisition. Those working in academia are looking for talk invitations, citations, promotions and so on. Those working in a large company will want to create interest in some product which might or might not be related to their actual results.
Recommendations: Don't believe the hype. Approach another researcher, who the people you're writing about did not forward you to, and ask if that person believes their claims.
Keep in mind: Much of "artificial intelligence" is actually human ingenuity. There's a reason why researchers and developers specialize in applications of AI to specific domains, such as robotics, games or translation: when building a system to solve a problem, lots of knowledge about the actual problem ("domain knowledge") is included in the system. This might take the role of providing special inputs to the system, using specially prepared training data, hand-coding parts of the system or even reformulating the problem so as to make it easier.
Recommendation: A good way of understanding which part of an "AI solution" are automatic and which are due to niftily encoded human domain knowledge is to ask how this system would work on a slightly different problem.
I'd better stop writing here, as this text probably already sounds far too grumpy. Look, I'm not grumpy, I'm barely even old. And I don't want to give the impression that there isn't a lot of exciting progress in AI these days. In fact, there are enough genuine advances to report on that we don't need to pad out the reporting with derivate research that's being sold as new. Let's all try to be honest, critical and accurate, shall we?
Behind The Scenes: A Snapshot Of Some Current Research
I thought it'd be fun to give a little view of some research that I'm currently working on.
Just about a year ago, when I hosted the North American Conference on Video Game Music (NACVGM) at the University of Michigan, I made a presentation about video game piano transcriptions. I titled the talk "There's no question you'll be popular after performing these in front of your friends: the pedagogy and performance of piano transcriptions of video game music." The title is a line from the beginning of a Zelda collection and I thought that was perfect. In this presentation, I discuss the variety of piano material and how the game audio is adapted to work well in a linear format for live performances. In doing this presentation, I also became the first person to perform on a traditional instrument live at NACVGM, though others before me had made music on game systems.
As I say at the end of the talk, I was planning to have a studio of pianists to have lessons and study video game piano music with me in the coming year. That's this academic year, and I'm in the midst of that research. Although it's a lot of extra work to have five piano students and a studio class on top of my normal teaching schedule, I've learned a lot and am hoping in upcoming years to publish about my experience, my students' experience, and about the repertoire. My hope is that if more teachers of piano knew about this material, they would incorporate it into their teaching. One outcome that's already clear to me is that this sort of material will attract students who would not otherwise be interested in studying piano.
The year is going so well. I have a variety of students to help explore the repertoire from a beginner who had never had piano lessons before (though he could read music as a violinist) to a student who could easily have been a piano major if he'd desired it to a doctoral student who helps me with researching the pedagogy of these collections and other aspects like how to program a piano recital of all video game music. My studio had our first concert at the University of Michigan Museum of Art a few weeks ago as a midway project and Peter Smith took some great pictures from the event, including this one of the studio just after we finished.
As far as I know, this is the first collegiate studio of pianists working on video game music. Pretty cool! Although only one of them, the DMA student, is planning to go into the profession, I'm delighted to have inspired the others to revisit their piano playing and hope they'll stay with it through life.
There are some other upcoming events that are exciting too. Video Game Pianist, Dr. Martin Leung, will be coming in about 10 days to give lessons to my students, and speak to the piano majors at U-M as well as other students about his career and how the internet has changed the modern musician's career. He's also playing a concert and I'll be joining him for a few duets he's arranged-- they're hard!
This concert is free and open to the public if you're in the Michigan area.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2375425089412635/
https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/events/event/?id=12185
We have an end of semester recital planned as well, April 13th. So it's a busy few months. Meanwhile, my students are keeping journals about their practice and work and have formal interviews that I'll be able to study through as I'm working on publications I hope will come out of this year.
Since I started this project, I learned of another pianist who is doing research in this area, from Tarleton State University, Dr. Leslie Spotz. She gave a recital after a sabbatical researching video game piano transcriptions the day after my studio recital at the UMMA. So cool to realize you're not alone in interests and what you're researching!
That said, I bet there are more folks out there in a similar case. Do you use video game music in your studio teaching? I'd love to hear about it if so, and especially if you're a pianist. What works well? What doesn't? How long have you done it? I welcome any comments or chance to connect about this.
Just about a year ago, when I hosted the North American Conference on Video Game Music (NACVGM) at the University of Michigan, I made a presentation about video game piano transcriptions. I titled the talk "There's no question you'll be popular after performing these in front of your friends: the pedagogy and performance of piano transcriptions of video game music." The title is a line from the beginning of a Zelda collection and I thought that was perfect. In this presentation, I discuss the variety of piano material and how the game audio is adapted to work well in a linear format for live performances. In doing this presentation, I also became the first person to perform on a traditional instrument live at NACVGM, though others before me had made music on game systems.
As I say at the end of the talk, I was planning to have a studio of pianists to have lessons and study video game piano music with me in the coming year. That's this academic year, and I'm in the midst of that research. Although it's a lot of extra work to have five piano students and a studio class on top of my normal teaching schedule, I've learned a lot and am hoping in upcoming years to publish about my experience, my students' experience, and about the repertoire. My hope is that if more teachers of piano knew about this material, they would incorporate it into their teaching. One outcome that's already clear to me is that this sort of material will attract students who would not otherwise be interested in studying piano.
The year is going so well. I have a variety of students to help explore the repertoire from a beginner who had never had piano lessons before (though he could read music as a violinist) to a student who could easily have been a piano major if he'd desired it to a doctoral student who helps me with researching the pedagogy of these collections and other aspects like how to program a piano recital of all video game music. My studio had our first concert at the University of Michigan Museum of Art a few weeks ago as a midway project and Peter Smith took some great pictures from the event, including this one of the studio just after we finished.
As far as I know, this is the first collegiate studio of pianists working on video game music. Pretty cool! Although only one of them, the DMA student, is planning to go into the profession, I'm delighted to have inspired the others to revisit their piano playing and hope they'll stay with it through life.
There are some other upcoming events that are exciting too. Video Game Pianist, Dr. Martin Leung, will be coming in about 10 days to give lessons to my students, and speak to the piano majors at U-M as well as other students about his career and how the internet has changed the modern musician's career. He's also playing a concert and I'll be joining him for a few duets he's arranged-- they're hard!
This concert is free and open to the public if you're in the Michigan area.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2375425089412635/
https://smtd.umich.edu/performances-events/events/event/?id=12185
We have an end of semester recital planned as well, April 13th. So it's a busy few months. Meanwhile, my students are keeping journals about their practice and work and have formal interviews that I'll be able to study through as I'm working on publications I hope will come out of this year.
Since I started this project, I learned of another pianist who is doing research in this area, from Tarleton State University, Dr. Leslie Spotz. She gave a recital after a sabbatical researching video game piano transcriptions the day after my studio recital at the UMMA. So cool to realize you're not alone in interests and what you're researching!
That said, I bet there are more folks out there in a similar case. Do you use video game music in your studio teaching? I'd love to hear about it if so, and especially if you're a pianist. What works well? What doesn't? How long have you done it? I welcome any comments or chance to connect about this.
Making Awesome Paper Counters The Simple Way
Why go to Mordor when one can make paper counters? |
For this project, I used my current Dwarf set. I happen to like Dwarfs; plus the set is small compared to something like the Orcs and Goblins set, which will be the Dwarfs enemy for my upcoming game. It took me about an hour to gather the supplies and cut out all the counters.
Supplies Needed:
- Sharp hobby knife
- Metal straight edge
- Cutting mat
- Comic book backing boards
- Christmas wrapping paper
- 3M Super77 Multi-purpose Adhesive
Super-Simple Instructions Over-Explained
1. Print the counters on a nice laser printer, preferably at work for free. ;-)
2. Get a couple comic book "backing boards." These are the stiff boards, usually glossy on one side, that comic collectors use to protect comic books that are stored in comic book bags. Since we collect comic books, we literally have a box of old, discarded backing boards from comics we placed in better bags and boards. I had several "Golden Age" boards, which are larger ( 7.5" x 10.5") and fit an entire counter sheet with just a bit of trimming. "Silver Age" boards (7" x 10.5") and "Current" boards (6.75" x 10.5") also work but an entire sheet won't fit in one go. No need to buy an entire pack of boards. Ask at your local comic shop if they have any scrap backing boards they plan on tossing. I bet they do. Or simple order a pack of BCW Golden Age boards at Amazon for $11.
3. Get some cheap wrapping paper. If your family is anything like mine, throwing away left over partial-rolls of Christmas wrapping paper is against the law, or at least immoral. We always seem to have piles of the rolls cluttering the closet, which drives me batty. But I digress... For this project, I use the scrap wrapping paper to protect my work area from the later steps. Use the white side up. Newspaper would probably work also, but getting rid of all that Santa Kitty and Star Wars wrapping paper is a bonus in my book. (I mean, we usually only pay $1-$2 a roll. It's not like we're saving the scrap rolls as an investment! BTW we actually have a roll of that kitty wrap in the photo! I think we buy it every single year! Sigh.)
4. Get a can of 3M Super77 Multi-purpose Adhesive. This is the best spray glue out there, or so I've been told. I've been using it for decades. It isn't cheap, so use a 40% off coupon for Michaels or Hobby Lobby.
5. Trim the counter sheets to fit the comic backing boards.
6. Cut a large piece of the wrapping paper and place it white-side up to protect your table space. Replace it every time you do Step 7 and 8 for a new sheet. Trust me on this one.:-)
7. Place the counter sheet in the center of the wrapping paper, the counter sheet's print-side facing down.
8. Follow Super77's instructions and spray the entire back side of the counter sheet. Watch out for overspray because it feels like this stuff can go everywhere once it hits the air!
9. Carefully place the glue-side of the counter sheet onto the backing board and smooth it out. The glue dries quickly and will be permanent.
10. Cut out the counters with a sharp hobby knife and metal straight edge.
11. Get ready for war!
Saturday, March 23, 2019
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