Felicia Day

I’m going to use the longer posting capabilities (on here and Google+ which DOES NOT have RSS haha) to express my irritation about people removing RSS as a way to subscribe to websites.

Basically I’ve noticed a huge trend not only in websites moving away from RSS to Twitter and FB, but REMOVING IT COMPLETELY! Personally, I feel like this is NOT a good move for people who provide content to stay in touch with consumers. Why?

-Twitter has no good way to filter information sources and brands from friends. Lists are really not useable, I don’t think a lot of people use them, and the UI has them buried so it’s a pain in the ass to get to them. People are HIGHLY selective about who they follow, and they’re not gonna throw a dozen small blogs in with their best friends’ updates or the experience of using the service become greatly diminished.

-Facebook is a mess for trying to sort “likes” and pages, I don’t see how having a MASSIVE unwieldy feed of constant centralized updates helps ANYONE disseminate information. I would say you could check 5-6 Facebook pages a day MAX for blogs you like who have pages there. That’s a far cry from the 200+ blogs I check every day in about an hour.

RSS is a way to consume a LOT of information very quickly, and STORE it in nice categories if you miss it. So I can catch up with a small blog’s output at the end of the week and, if I so choose, read EVERY article easily in one sitting. You think on Friday I’m gonna go browse that same site’s Twitter feed on their page (digging through all the messy @ replies) and see what they did that week?! Or go to their Facebook page that is littered with contests? No way dude, I’m too busy for that!

I feel like small blogs cut their own throat by taking away the RSS capability. I give this analogy a lot, but social media outlets are INFO COLANDERS! 5% of your followers will see anything you post, and that’s probably only within 20 minutes of posting. That’s the way it is and it’s gonna only get worse. Apart from email lists, RSS is the best way you can collect stuff across the internet to read quickly, and I am so irritated when that choice is taken from me.
/rant

This week’s episode of Dragon Age: Redemption is one of my favorites, and I wanted to host a Q&A session for you guys who have been watching! So, tomorrow from 7PM to 8PM Pacific time I invite you to join me for a voice chat that Typefrag.com has set up using Ventrilo servers! Here’s a BUNCH of info!

http://typefrag.com/dragonage/

You gamers will be familiar with Ventrilo so you’ll have no problem (Typefrag has setup like a super channel where we’ll be able to have a larger party than usual). If you’re new to Ventrilo, don’t worry, just follow the link to the landing page for the chat and there are simple instructions there. It doesn’t cost anything, and the Typefrag team have their customer support staff ready via phone and chat available to help you get connected. There’s no cost to participate in this chat. If you want to learn more about Ventrilo chat ahead of time, here’s a link that tells you all you need to know (it’s really easy!)
http://typefrag.com/support/ventrilo-tutorials/

If you would like to ask a question during the chat, you can type that you want to ask a question in the text chat window and one of the moderators will put you in a queue. When it’s your turn you will be able to ask your question in voice chat. We’ll even be giving away some cool Dragon Age stuff like T-shirts and licensed Darkspawn Greatsword letter openers from Epic Weapons. Here’s to new stuff!

Episode 3 is here! Please rate and thumbs up! I really hope you guys are enjoying the party-building aspect of the show, as a gamer it was my intention to mimic the game in this way, so we end up with a full party by the end of the show (who do you think is the next party member? Guess!)

I love LOVE Masam Holden as Josmael in this. He is mean to be a level 1 mage, so if you think about his character with that idea, his actions are true to form. His eyes are just AMAZING though, so even though he does some newbie things, you can’t help but believe his love towards Fina, and motivation for leaving his people to save her.

As a fun BTS fact, the cave sequence was shot in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, where the old show Batman shot the bat cave! It’s literally the ONLY cave in the LA area, so, by default, we had to arrange to shoot there. It was super fun to play in,@gregaronowitz built the altar at one end and all the CGI with the mask was done by Flash Film works, the CGI SFX company who went WAY out of their way for the production (they were supposed to do 30 shots, ended up at 121 for the show! :O)

Ok that chat thing will be TOMORROW night now, gonna post info this evening so you can participate. It is using a different service than I’ve ever used before so I’m super psyched!

Episode 2 is posted!

I really like this episode because it brings Cairn and Tallis together for the first time.  Cairn (Adam Rayner) is SO GOOD with his Good-Aligned/Pretention outrage, haha.  Also I felt quite bad that I had to literally SIT on Greg Collins (Brom) for a few hours to get these shots at the bottom of the hill, but he was such an amazing sport, he’s worked on TONS of shows from Transformers to The Office, and his attitude on a bare-bones web series was a game as on any set.  He also did ALL his own stunts, and never complained about the long hours.  Love LOVE him.  Hope I can work with him another day and NOT kill him at the end (because he gets killed in every show he does practically, haha.)

One of my favorite shots of the whole series is the wide of the Dalish camp when Cairn walks up.  Greg Aronowitz and his team literally took the game from video to reality with this set, it really looks SO much like the game, I couldn’t believe it. (MANY volunteers helped build these wagons as well, so thank you all!).  The glow on the Phylactery was a great touch that director Peter Winther had the VFX team do, and it really adds to the veracity, small touch of magic that makes other magic in the show seem less abrupt.

We meet the character Josmael, a level 1 mage so to speak, in the camp.  Masam Holden is an amazing actor and musician and brought the love-lorn character to life in a believable way.  Also in this episode is Iris Klein as the Dalish elf matriarch, Maerwynn.  She is actually my acting instructor from years ago, and when I thought of people I knew who were also elf-ish, she was #1.   If you are in LA and want to take Meisner technique you should look no further.

Alright, next episode more characters (and FIGHTING) stay tuned!