by Matt | Jul 5, 2011 | Paintball
Paintball, as I’ve mentioned a few times, is incredibly fun. It’s a great way to spend an afternoon/weekend and can really get the adrenaline going. It also has several problem which are leading to it’s decline, or at the very least, stagnation as a “sport”.
The first major issue paintball has is it’s marketing. Years ago it was billed as an ultimate extreme sport. People actually shoot at each other. You can’t get much more intense than that. Somewhere along the way they decided that not enough younger players were interested, so they tried to market paintball for kids, church groups and younger players in general. It worked, to a degree, and the “rental” and recreational fields took off. Unfortunately, there’s not any visible translation between playing on a Saturday afternoon with a church group and playing it “on a team, as a sport”. There’s no one at the field “recruiting”, no one offering information on leagues, no one talking to parents about how much fun it is. There’s little to no cross over. They effectively killed the “sport” and made it recreational only, which leads us to the second problem…
If something is “recreational” and you “rent” equipment, you’re going to treat it in your mind like any other activity where you do the same. Bowling come to mind as the best example of this. A long standing sport with very very low “professional” appeal. The number of professional bowlers, especially young ones, compared to something like baseball or football participation is minute. That’s why you’ve seen a tremendous drop in the appeal of bowling alleys except for the occasional 8 year old’s birthday party. Bowling has done everything is can to appeal to younger audiences (black light bowling, crazy music, pizza parties, etc) all while dying a slow death as an industry. That’s because when you “rent” something, you don’t care about it. You don’t care about your bowling shoes, you don’t care about the bowling balls, you don’t care about the sport. You’re there for 1-2hrs, you have a slice of pizza, you go home. How many of you have a nice pair of bowling shoes? How many of you have a really nice bowling ball? Exactly. When something is “recreational”, it means, in your head, something that I will stop caring about when I leave. By setting up paintball as a “birthday party activity”, you just made the entire group of young kids not care about it. Or, even if they do care about it, the entry barrier is too high for them to maintain interest on their own. A football you buy once and can play with it forever. A case of paintballs might as well be a case of Skittles. Once they’re gone, they’re gone, and the fun is over.
That leads us to the last problem. Money. Paintball is not a cheap sport. I really enjoy it, but that’s why I only play once a month, in the months that it’s enjoyable (ie: not 106°F) to do so. Renting equipment is $40 a day. That’s affordable. Buying a “good” entry level gun, hopper, air tank, mask, outfit, that will probably run you a couple hundred bucks, if not more. That doesn’t include paint. Paint is $60-80 a box. A box has 2000 balls in it. 2000 lasts me about half a day. I need $120 in paint to play a full day. That’s expensive if you’re a kid. So, you get a lot of rich kids playing paintball on the weekends. They didn’t work for their gear, they’re not paying the bill, and they don’t give a crap about it as a “sport” and they don’t care about any rules. They show up with a $1000 gun, 3 cases of paint and zero trigger control. I can’t count how many times I’ve been “bonus balled” (being hit after you’ve indicated you’re out) by someone under the age of 16. The ref isn’t paying attention, the kids have the guns set on full auto, no one cares. Huge problem. The younger kids that might have been interested in playing it more often are now completely sworn off it. No one likes coming home with a body covered in welts. And I’m not saying that because it hurts or because I personally don’t like getting hit, I’ve been hit on bare skin, it’s not that bad. I’m saying this because my 14 year old cousin doesn’t want to go again after he played with us a couple months ago because some asshole lit him up on full-auto.
So, what I’m trying to say is is that paintball has a serious problem. It’s either “recreational” or it’s a sport. If you want it to be recreational, and that’s fine, but then everyone on the field has to have the same equipment, or at least the same limits on their equipment. No one should be firing 30 balls a second. You wouldn’t let a MLB player hit with an aluminum bat, you shouldn’t let someone with an Ego 11 play with kids with rental equipment. Same difference. Or, make entry into the sport less imposing. The price of paint is retardedly high, that needs to change right off the bat, but the price of mid-level gear should also drop. They should set up “little league” style leagues, have coaches, PRACTICE, etc. The cost of an entire kit should be less than the cost of a baseball helmet, glove and bat and cases of paint should be donated or given away for next to nothing to coaches and leagues. That’s the only way to make it a very real “sport” again.
It’s that or it will continue to be played only by rich assholes and their kids and it will completely kill the game. Completely.
This has been a PSA from your friendly neighborhood grumpy old person.
by Matt | Jul 4, 2011 | Friends and Family
Visiting the inlaws is like a surgical air-strike. Quick, painful and a lot of collateral damage.
by Matt | Jun 28, 2011 | Personal
On a complete and total whim, I’ve recently become interested in collecting baseball cards again. When I was growing up, comic books were my collection of choice and I amassed a good 1000+ collection of them, mostly small imprints and independent labels like Image and Dark Horse with the occasional run of X-Men sprinkled in for good measure. I actually have a few rather rare comics, a couple variant covers, a couple signed comics, and lots and lots of “Issue #1” of dozens of titles. I pretty much have everything Jim Lee did between 1990-2000.
Baseball cards were something I also collected, but just in the periphery of my free time. My father, the year I was born, decided it was a good idea to purchase the entire factory set of Topps cards from that year. That was a tradition he kept up for a number of years until I was able to continue it myself. I believe I have 1980-1990 factory sets from Topps somewhere in my closet. That was about as deep as my collection got. Topps was for the sets and then I’d grab random packs, usually of Upper Deck, whenever I found them.
I gave up on both collections mid-high school and never really looked back. Money was tight and hobbies are the first things to go whenever that happens.
Having talked with my friend Sam at length about baseball and cards over mexican food one night, it seemed that the “sport” of card collecting had really been taken to the next level. Topps “purchased” the rights to the entirety of Major League Baseball and is now the only company allowed to make cards featuring teams and logos. The MLBPA signed a deal with Upper Deck to use player names, but names only, which make for some kinda boring cards. So Topps is really the only game in town.
That said, at least Topps offers a variety of cards. Actually it’s a over-variety of cards. They have, give or take, 20 different lines of cards. They range from a couple dollars a pack for normal “base set” cards to $150+ a PACK for things like “Topps Triple Threads” which feature actual pieces of cloth jersey or bat IN the card. They’ve also taken signatures to the next level. They get players to sign hundreds and hundreds of cards, some regular, some special cards, some really rare 1-0f-1 type stuff.
The collecting almost isn’t about the player cards any more. It’s more about the crazy extra stuff. Cards with pieces of stuff in them, cards with signatures, cards with holograms or special printing, cards with dye-cuts or minatures, etc, etc. Then there’s extra special lines like “Gypsy Queens” or “Allen & Ginter” which are throw back designs with special features or artwork. It was actually the Allen & Ginter set that caught my eye as something to collect.
The A&G cards feature retro designs, water-color-ish portraits and special signature inserts. A “hobby” box runs about $90 and features 12 packs and a guarantee of a certain amount of the aforementioned “cool stuff”. That’s right in my wheel-house.
So, I decided to take the plunge. My goal is to collect just basic player card sets, of just the Red Sox, for 2004 through the current year and beyond. If I happen to run across some of the cooler cards along the way I’ll pick them up, but I’d be happy with just the commons at the moment. I just received my first set off an ebay purchase. The entire 2010 Red Sox team set of A&G cards.
I like’em 🙂
by Matt | Jun 20, 2011 | Personal, Tech, Web
Being a big fan of desktop customization in general, and a self-proclaimed Photoshop wizard, it was really only a matter of time before I started making things for GeekTool, the roll your own Mac info widget thingy. I’ve been using GeekTool for probably a year or so now, mostly on my desktop at work. It’s a handy way to keep track of the weather, the time, the day of the week, etc. The “time” was always kinda basic and bland. It’s really just a text display and unless you have a ton of fonts, there’s really not much in the way of customizing you can do to it. And the “minimalistic text” thing gets kinda boring after a while. So, since it’s good to flex the creative juices every once in a while, and since I had just finished creating a set of Photoshop Styles for another project, I figured I may as well used them. So, I present to you, FlipClock for GeekTool.
It’s a fairly simple set up, but I thought maybe someone else might find it interesting. The clock is four pieces. The background layer, the background of the flip digits, a script to grab the time, then the “bar” graphic overlay on top. The font I’m using is regular old Helvetica since it’s spacing is consistent, but it should work equally well with other equidistant spaced fonts.
In GeekTool, just make a layer sandwhich. First, and an image layer with the background. Then a second image layer with the digit background. Then the included time script. Then the bar image on top.
Also available on the downloads page.
Enjoy. 🙂
PS: I do realize there are multiple widgets, scripts, programs, etc for displaying a “flip clock”, as well as at least one other for GeekTool. There’s nothing wrong with those others, I just like mine better.
by Matt | Jun 17, 2011 | Photo of the Day, Work
Having done a quick photographic favor for a friend, they felt the need to repay me. I had told them that actual money was out of the question and that I wouldn’t accept it. I had helped out a friend and that was good enough for me. They felt the need to repay my kindness in Single Malts. This I find to be a completely acceptable form of currency. So, all future clients take note: Scotch, single malt and over 15 years old, is reasonable payment for services rendered. That is all.
PS: In case you’re interested in the Scotch itself, it’s a Glen Moray, 16yr. There’s a pretty accurate review on DrinkHacker, who gives it an A-. They’re also correct in that it’s not widely available in the US. Personal review once I crack it open 🙂
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