When I exported it was running "version":"007" in the JSON export. I didn't even look, but it was running a pre 1.0 verison of Ghost for over SEVEN YEARS! Well it appears lots has changed in those seven years, including the export JSON schema, so my backup isn't valid.

I tried to do some local installs to install an older version to find where I could migrate, but ran into some NodeJS incompatiblity issues as the Ghost 1.0 used NodeJS v6 and NodeJS is currently on v15. So yeah, things have changed.

So I'm having to go back and cut/paste every post back in by hand. So expect some errors, but I'll get it all back up here soon enough.

But hopefully this just means I'll start to post again at some normal frequency.

PAX Prime West is back and I figured with the influx of travels visiting to the great city of Seattle, I figured I'd write some tips on how to survive PAX as well as how to enjoy everything that Seattle has to offer.

Weather

Seattle has had a VERY dry and warm summer and this weekend is going to be no different. With temperatures getting into the mid to high 80's!

• Have Water
• Wear antiperspirant/deodorant
• Be comfortable

Getting Around

Seattle has a number of ways to get around in the city. Metro the bus system can typically get you anyplace you want to go and if you are just going north and south, then Sound Transit Light Rail is totally an option as well. Note that they did close the Convention Center stop in the tunnel for the train, so you would need to get off at Westlake Center which is just a couple blocks away.

Ride Share! Seattle has Uber and Lyft. Both are great in the city. I'm sure there will also be promotional codes around the city.

Notice any bright green or orange bikes around? You can use those via Limebike or Spin. Just sign up on your phone, unlock the bike and ride away. Just leave it on the street when you are done.

Food & Drinks

Seattle has TONS of great places to eat that aren't the Subway in the Convention Center. Venture out a little and check out some of the following places.

McMenamins Six Arms

Just a couple blocks up Pike Street you will find McMenamins Six Arms known for the craft brew and good burgers and TATOR TOTS!!

Kizuki

Even though it is going to be hot, a good bowl of ramen is worth it! It will be busy, but worth it.

Great State Burger

Walk a couple extra blocks and get a tasty burger and shake from Great State Burger. Should also be far enough away from the convention to have a nice break.

Neon Boots

Get crunked at Neon Boots. Cheap beer. Bright neon lighting. Take a selfie in the bathroom, #neonboots.

Linda's Tavern

One of the last great dive bars in Capitol Hill, Linda's is known for their strong pours, tall boys and brunch. Get some drinks on Friday night and wake up on Saturday morning and get some pancakes before heading back to PAX.

Sizzle Pie & Dark Bar

What happens when you take pizza, have vegan-friendly options, name everything straight from a metal record and place it above a goth night club? You get Sizzle Pie & Dark Bar. They have all your normal types of pizza, but I would suggest getting the Gold Ring. So good!

Dick's Drive-In

Need to sober up or have a couple bucks in your pocket, then Dick's Drive-In is worth checking out. Simple basic burger. No substitutions here. Get a Dick's Deluxe, Fries and a shake. Hits the spot for sure!

Marination Ma Kai

A quick trip on the Seattle Water Taxi will take you to West Seattle and near Marination Ma Kai. With amazing food, a huge outdoor deck (remember it is going to be mid-80s!) and one of the best views of Seattle, it would be worth the field trip!

Places to go!

You are in Seattle. Go out and see a little of Seattle! There is more to do here than PAX.

Seattle Pinball Museum

Head down into the International District and find the Seattle Pinball Museum. Play as many games as you want for $15.

Alki Beach

Take the Seattle Water Taxi across Elliot Bay to West Seattle. Walk on the beach, have some ice cream, sit in the grass and watch the water. This would be a great place to take a break from everything happening at PAX.

Columbia Tower Sky View

Take three elevators up to the tallest building in Seattle for amazing 270-degree views of the entire area.

Those are just a small list of places to go and things to see in Seattle. Venture out a bit and enjoy EVERYTHING that Seattle has to offer when you are visiting for PAX.

Not working in games has really allowed me to just play them for fun, which has been very rewarding and lets me be more critical. It also means I didn't play nearly as many games as years past (I've got other things to do!). Let's take a look at what I thought was cool!

DOOM

The original DOOM started FPS and the new DOOM takes that amazing formula and brings it into 2016. The game is flawless in almost every fashion. It ignores almost every modern FPS mechanic and feels like a time warp. Relentless at every moment without becoming frustrating, amazing graphics, multiple paths, hidden areas and floaty speed that brings back the best of memories.

INSIDE

INSIDE is probably one of the best single ride games ever created. Even with it being easily finished in just a couple hours, it grabs hold of you for every minute you are holding the controller. Sparse at every moment with no direct story other than what you fill in yourself, INSIDE is one of the best well-directed games ever.

UNCHARTED 4: A THIEF'S END

Naughty Dog is simply amazing. They continue to one up themselves, which I can't think of any other developer in the world who is able to produce such quality time and time again. Uncharted 4 hits on every single note giving a thrilling end to the Uncharted Franchise with what could be one of the best games of this generation.

FORZA HORIZON 3

Microsoft has really been raising the bar with the Forza franchise with each and every release and Forza Horizon 3 from Playground Games hits it out the park. Breathtaking at every turn with a buttery smooth 60 FPS, technically Forza Horizon 3 doesn't seem possible. The open-ended gameplay returns with more areas to explore and more car types to jump into. It is the type of game you can easily lose time in.

OFFWORLD TRADING COMPANY

Challenging is the only way to describe Offworld Trading Company. I have never played a game that has caught my attention and forced me to become a better player than Offworld Trading Company. Throw those RTS tactics of the past behind, because they won't work here and the moment you learn the reward is so sweet.

DEUS EX GO

Mobile games continue to get better and better each year and Eidos Montreal has another hit on their hand with Deus Ex Go. Their Go franchise including Tomb Raider Go and Hitman Go are excellent and Deus Ex Go raises the bar once again. The perfect game for a flight, on the bus or before bed.

Pretty solid year in movies. Some fun blockbusters, some great hidden gems and a couple surprises.

Hell or High Water

From the writer of Sicaro (one of my favorites of 2015, Hell or High Water is a classic slow burn heist and revenge movie in the same vein as No Country for Old Men. The movie doesn't attempt to become any bigger than it needs to with clear motivation for each and every shot and scene. Jeff Bridges gives an excellent portrayal of a Texas Ranger on the hunt, but the movie really lands with an amazing performance by the underrated Ben Foster and to this point Chris Pine's best performance on film.

Arrival

Arrival is an excellent story about human nature with the flashy gloss of a sci-fi epic. From the first trailers, some might have expected more blockbuster, but Arrival keeps its focus on its multifaceted story that unveils itself as you watch it. Don't let the sci-fi and aliens fool you as Arrival is so much more than that. Amy Adams is amazing as always, with the rest of the cast including Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker providing a solid foundation for the film. Denis Villeneuve is setting himself up to be one of the best directors in movies today with previous films including Prisoners and Sicario and the upcoming Blade Runner 2049 in 2017.

The Nice Guys

I LOVE Shane Black movies and The Nice Guys is perfect Shane Black movie. A career as a writer Predator, The Monster Squad, Lethal Weapon 1/2 and The Hunt for Red October and as a director Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3 (yeah! I liked Iron Man 3) Black has established himself as the master of the 'buddy film' with incredible dialog and wit. The Nice Guys is no different with the perfect setting of the later 1970's and the at first odd pairing of Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling for a comedy, but each pull off each of their roles perfectly, especially Gosling. Additional Angourie Rice who plays Gosling's daughter steals every scene she is in. The Nice Guys is a throwback to the comedies of the early 1980's that held nothing back by having no taboos, which only makes the film even better! The Nice Guys also has the trademark Christmas scene in every Shane Black film.

Green Room

Green Room is hard to watch. Take warning, it is a rough film that is unsettling to watch, but those that can make it through it will be rewarded with a movie that will keep you on the edge the entire time. After the incredible Blue Ruin, director Jeremy Saulnier, crafts a tragic escape mixed with in a brutal horror thriller in Green Room. The cast including Anton Yelchin, in one of his last movies and Imogen Poots are excellent, but Patrick Stewart is incredible in his portrayal of a cold Neo-Nazi leader. Again Green Room isn't for everyone, but still an excellent thriller!

Kubo and the Two Strings

Laika has a great history and I have enjoyed all their films but Kubo and the Two Strings is just amazing. Visually the film is breathtaking with Laika's signature style and aesthetic in full effect. The story is entertaining for everyone who watches. A truly heartwarming story. Also has an amazing cover While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Regina Spektor.

10 Cloverfield Lane

You either love or hate 10 Cloverfield Lane. I try to leave the name behind and just look at it as a film on its own and it is a great character suspense film with a great performance from John Goodman. Forget the name and just enjoy the film.

Midnight Special

Movies about super powers have quickly become pretty standard fare, but rarely do you have a film that tries to place the supernatural in the world we live in and how people would actually react to someone having extraordinary powers. Midnight Special does just that. From Jeff Nichols who is quickly becoming one of the best young directors in film. The film's tone is balanced by great performances from Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst and Adam Driver.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One is the Star Wars movie I've wanted since I was a teenager. A movie that doesn't shy away from the fact that the universe is in a WAR. While the pacing has some issues, the characters are fun, entertaining, and it is fun to see Star Wars in a dark, dirty light. I'm excited to see more Star Wars Stories (Han Solo is next).

Deadpool

X-Men movies have been fun, but never have they been that great (X-Men Apocalypse being a trainwreck), but who would have thought that the merc with the mouth would be the best mutant film Fox ever created? Deadpool hit on every aspect of just a good film with excellent writing, great use of the source material and a story that actually breaks out of the tired superhero mold, it is really a romantic comedy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the sequel hits the high mark, but I have faith in Reynolds and team.

Now that I work for a music company (go check out Napster), I have been listening to a lot more music. Here are some of my favorites for 2016!

Albums

Anderson .Paak - Malibu

Stranger Things - Vol 1 & 2

Warpaint - Heads Up

Margo Price\tMidwest Farmer's Daughter

David Bowie - Darkstar

Singles

Tove Lo - Cool Girl

Bishop Briggs - The Way I Do

MØ - Drum

The Kills - Do It To Death

M83 - Go! featuring Mai Lan

DJ Shadow - Nobody Speaks featuring Run the Jewels

The Lumineers - Ophelia

Judah & the Lion - Take It All Back 2.0

Anderson .Paak - Come Down

Phantogram - You Don't Get Me High Anymore

I'm always trying out new community platforms, so I figured I'd try out Flarum, which is from the developer of esoTalk. It is a very clean and clutter free forums, but very much in an alpha state. If you are interested in trying it out, here is a guide how to install it on Digital Ocean.

Create Droplet

Select LEMP on 14.04 with at least 1 GB of RAM as the Composer install script won't run on 512 MB. Once created login to your new droplet by running ssh root@ip address in terminal.

Create Database

Now that you are connected via terminal, you have to create a database for Flarum. Since we created a LAMP mySQL is already installed.

Run cat /etc/motd.tail to get your mySQL root password which was created with the LAMP image.

Now we can log to mySQL and create the DB.

1. mysql -uroot -p
2. mysql> CREATE DATABASE flarum;
3. mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON flarum.* TO 'flarum'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strongpassword';
4. FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
5. \\q

Note: Make sure you replace strongpassword with a password of your own. PasswordGenerator is an fast and strong password generator.

Installing Flarum

Now that we have a database, we can install Flarum.

First we have to install Composer which will install all the required libraries and dependencies for Flarum.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Create a folder for Flarum to live
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/nginx/html/flarum

Run Flarum Composer Script
cd /usr/share/nginx/html/flarum composer create-project flarum/flarum . --stability=beta

Flarum is now installed, but we have to setup URL rewriting for it to work correctly.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Add the following in location /

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;

Now copy this after the } in location /

      try_files $uri $uri/ /flarum/index.php?$args;
 location /flarum/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /flarum/index.php?$query_string; }
 location /flarum/api { try_files $uri $uri/ /flarum/api.php?$query_string; }
 location /flarum/admin { try_files $uri $uri/ /flarum/admin.php?$query_string; }
}

Reload nginx

service nginx restart

Flarum is now ready to setup in the web interface, just go to http://ip address/flarum. It will ask you to fill in the database information from above and create an admin user. Once that is complete you are done and ready to start trying Flarum.

Hopefully this makes it as easy as possible to setup and give Flarum a try. It is a very neat piece of software and hopefully the team will continue making improvements and feature updates.

Daylight was a fun project, but had its challenges because we were pretty limited in content and resources when we needed to deliver a trailer. Having been watching a lot of Hitchcock I figured I'd do something along the lines of an invisible cut and have the camera pan through walls ending by showing off the more supernatural aspects to the game and the sting with the cell phone ringing. I work with a level artist to setup the shot and we worked out the pacing with the audio director who created custom music. Once we had the matinee sequence locked down we just had to do a frame render dump to get sequence frames and then assemble and edit in After Effects. While not a complicated trailer, I think we were able to finish it in just a couple days.

The first Blacklight Retribution trailer I created was for the Playstation 4 announcement. We were invited to the GDC showcase and wanted to make sure we had an asset, so we knocked this one out. It was largely built on B-Roll footage with action transitions built in After Effects. Audio provided the polish level that really amped it up.

The second Blacklight Retribution Trailer for E3 2013 was probably the most complex trailer we built while I was at Zombie. This trailer had a lot going on including custom animations in Unreal and camera tracking in After Effects to give the 3D space text. To get the HRV effect we had to be creative with lots of composite layers to show off the weapon transitions.

One of the assets that I built back at Microsoft was a Games with Gold promotional video. I built all the motion graphics in After Effects including the gold dust background and transitions with Trapcode Particular. Editing was pretty straight forward with a solid script with voice talent of Kristina Horner.

I was lucky enough to attend Gamescom 2015 to help with the re-announcement of Quantum Break. Since I was there for the entire length of the convention I figured it would be fun to do a booth tour. With help from my co-worker Kieffer, we walked around the Xbox booth checking out everything that it had to offer including Forza, Scalebound, Quantum Break and Rare Replay. I do have to say that the German Event staff was so nice. Editing was pretty straight forward with simple motion graphics lower thirds and info popups created in After Effects. It is interesting editing yourself.

This next video was actually a team effort as I got to work with the amazing video department in the larger game organization. We worked on a show sheet, what were the themes we wanted to go after, type of people we are interested in talking with and then spend a good four hours walking around the floor at PAX Prime talking with people. It was great to collaborate with such a talented team and the final video ended up great!

It has been extremely rewarding to be able to create assets like this. Getting your hands dirty and learning how to get an idea in your head to actually materialize on screen was extremely rewarding, but also being able to work with a variety of great people. I'll talk about the video series including Blacklight Patch Minute and Killer Instinct's Combo Break in another post since those were their own beast. I hope to continue to be able to create more assets like this in the future.

Need to send a newsletter and want to save some money, then Sendy might be a solid option for you.

I wrote about Sendy a couple months and was very impressed with what it offered for the price, but all my information was based off of outside sources. Recently I was able to put Sendy through a handful of campaigns and it handled it all with ease. I figured I'd actually write the positives and negatives of the platform as well as the cost and compare to other email marketing platforms.

Requirments

Sendy does have some requirements, but they are pretty straight forward.

• Websever that can run PHP and MySQL and host images.
• Amazon AWS Account.
• Basic Knowledge of HTML.

Server Setup

As said in the earlier article, Sendy is a php application that you run on a web server similar to Wordpress. The actual install is fairly painless for anyone who has done any work on their own website. Installation would typical take someone 15 to 20 minutes. Only issues might some CRON jobs and some specific htaccess settings. Nothing too complicated, but not turn key yet. The load is very minimal, so the machine that actually runs Sendy can probably run on the same server as your website or a cheap VPS like Digital Ocean.

The other requirement is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account, specifically Simple Email Service (SES). This is painless. Just go to the website. Sign up for an account. Amazon does a great job making it as easy as possible. Once you get your AWS account setup you will have to go back to Sendy to link the two with your AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

List Setup

Once you have Sendy setup on your webserver you have to get your list setup. This can be done one of two ways. If you already have a list, you can simply just import it as a CVS from Excel. Or if you are starting from scratch you can add a simple HTML form to your website to allow people to sign up. The list can be setup to accept custom fields if you want to track additional information such as country. The whole process is simple and painless.

Once have your list setup I would recommend going back over to AWS and request an increase to your send limit to 10% higher than what your current list is. This can be one of the more frustrating parts of using Sendy with SES depending on the size of your lists. New accounts start with 10,000 emails sent every 24 hours, which sounds like a lot, but having worked with lists well over 100,000 and some reaching over 500,000, it is a pain to start with so little. Opening a ticket at the beginning will get the ball rolling. Much like other email platforms you do have to prime the pump if you will. Having your limit increased may take a couple business days and perhaps even a successful campaign to show good business practices. The last thing SES wants is their platform used for SPAM or malicious emails.

Email Setup

This is probably the weakest part of Sendy if you compare it to full featured offerings like Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Emma and countless others. Sendy is HTML. There really isn't drag and drop template system where you quickly end up with a pretty looking email. You have to build it in HTML. There is a fair amount of trial and error involved. Getting your email to look good and the identical on popular platforms is difficult and that is where those other packages excel. While you can replicate all of that in Sendy, there just isn't a magic button to do it. If you have some basic HTML knowledge and willing to do some editing, Sendy will get the job done.

Luckily for anyone wanting to use Sendy there are some great resources out there to help you get off on the right foot. For those wanting something free there are some excellent free templates/frameworks available by ZURB, Email on Acid, Litmus and Green Village. All full responsive templates so your email will work on all modern devices and browsers. This takes some of the really difficult part out of building the HTML from scratch and allows you to work on content. Even with a solid template I would suggest making some minor tweaks to the templates above such as rehosting any attached images, perhaps even making your own with the same dimensions as the examples, and change the background color of various parts of the email. Even with a great template, it is best to a little work to personalize it to your business.

Once you get your HTML setup then there are a couple more steps you want to make sure you do before moving forward. First make sure all images are using http and not https. It seems that mobile email clients do not like https and will not display any images. Optimize your images for the best quality for the file size. I work in video games so my banners have artwork and screenshots which work well for JPEG at around 60% to 80%. Anything with text or vector graphics is best to save as PNG. Also check the width of your email and that your images aren't larger than it. No need to have a 2000 pixel wide image if the max width of your email is only 640 pixels.

Email Marketing does have laws and the last thing you wont to do is get into trouble. Be sure to add the correct [unsubscribe] links to your email. Having an unsubscribe button is required by law in most countries. Even though being fined is remote, it is best to add it in there as well as the postal address of the company sending it to be 100% compliant with CAN-SPAM.

Testing the Email

Once you have your HTML all setup it is just a simple cut and paste into the WYSIWYG editor in Sendy. I typically pass the HTML through Premailer to check for any broken links and CSS errors. Once you get it in Sendy you can quickly send a test email to an email address. This is one place where Sendy can be a pain is test emails count as sends on SES. It might now sound like a lot, but when your sends are limited earlier on (more on that later) it can add up. Make sure you open the mail in various browsers, mobile email clients, and tablets if you have them handy.

If you can spare some money I'd suggest checking out an email test service such as Litmus or Email on Acid. Both will test your email on over 45 different configurations and send you the results after the test is complete, which takes about 10 minutes. Having an email that works on all devices and platform is extremely important to not be marked as spam, so it might be worth investing in a test like this especially if your HTML is rusty. Pro Penny Pinching Tip, use the 7 day trial to lock down and test your template and then just change text and header images after that.

Sending The Email

Now all the hard work is complete, now is the time you really sweat bullets. Sending to your entire list! Just select which list you want to send too and click send, twice. Sendy is smart enough to give you an additional "Are you REALLY sure..." confirmation. Well done Sendy developers.

Once you click send Sendy contact SES on Amazon to send the emails out starting at five emails per second, which can increase as you build your reputation on SES (the account I use is at 28 emails per second). One issue I ran into was Sendy timed out to SES during a campaign. You can setup CRON job check if Sendy has timed out or if you are monitoring your campaign you can simply just click Resume. On my first campaign with Sendy I was simply checking on results and noticed that it didn't complete. This was frustrating since it was hours after I started the send and successful email campaigns are typically sent in a specific window during the day. So watch for the timeout or have your web administrator setup the CRON job.

Campaign Report

Sendy does a great job with results. While they aren't animated and as flashy as others out there, it gives you the information you need opens, clicks, bounces, complaints and countries. Results are realtime, so once you send your campaign you will start getting results immediately. Everything you need to display the success of your campaign. Reports can be easily saved as PDF to share with others via email. You can even setup viewing accounts in Sendy and give it to other members of your team.

The simplicity of the Campaign Report is a great strength of Sendy, as it isn't cluttered or over done. While the limited amount of interactivity is great, it would also be nice if you could simply save each of them as a PNG. This is a very minor issue to an overall solid reporting package.

Cost

This is where Sendy really shines, its cost. Using other platforms I had to make a business case and really build a schedule for each campaign as getting a bill for over $500 a month adds up quickly. Sendy is a flat site license of $69 and SES cost is $0.10 per thousand emails sent. Even taking into the site license for Sendy and VPS server into account, the savings is significant. I've checked the prices from a fair amount of other email systems. Using the idea of 1 email a month to 100,000 users you can see the savings by using Sendy and SES.

I recently sent two campaigns with my bill being $17.40 + $5 for that months VPS bill. For $22.40 I was able to reach my entire subscribed list with two emails on the product!

Quirks & Missing

Sendy isn't 100% without its problems and quirks. As stated above, you have to do a fair amount of the work yourself in creating your email campaign. Email rendering is quirky! Seriously! Something that works on Gmail in Firefox doesn't in Chrome and don't get me started on mobile viewing. While this is more of an issue related to the HTML you write or template you use, Sendy doesn't come with these things or a robust drag & drop system.

Small issues such as the sending timeout can catch you off guard and other issues such as making sure you have AllowOverride All on your .htaccess. Majority of these things are well documented by Sendy, but they aren't part of the normal setup. Double checking your setup and running tests is key to being successful.

One place where Sendy could improve would be the addition of an A/B test. It would be a huge benefit to be able to set up two different emails to 30% of your users. The remaining users would receive the email triggered by a specific criteria in a specific time, example highest open rate in first six hours or highest click through rate. While you could do this in Sendy via some creative ways, it would be nice to have it built in in future versions.

Closing

Email is one of those lost costs in that while extremely important, it rarely gets added to the budget. By the time it becomes important asking for $5,000 or more a year to send emails can be quite challenging, especially for smaller companies. Even with Sendy's quirks and minor limitations, the savings is worth it. If you plan on having email campaigns being part of your marketing, I would highly suggest at least investigating Sendy. No matter the size of your business, you will end up saving money with Sendy and be able to reallocate that money or even better try to get it in a bonus!