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The last time out they built the Hobbit holes and structures like most movie sets. They were temporary, not functional past the time the crew needed them to work. This time out they made a deal with the landowner to make this site an official and long lasting attraction for fans of the movies.

Forty-Four Hobbit holes were built to be permanent, with retaining walls, waterproofed roofs, etc. The stone bridge was constructed with a steel superstructure covered with real stone cladding. The Green Dragon is the most impressive of them all because it was built with a functioning fireplace, plumbing, water pipes and the works.

Hennah said the plans were to actually turn The Green Dragon into a real, working pub, but that’s all on the landowners at this point, I believe. I can picture many a geek wedding happening in Matamata, vows under the Party Tree and reception at The Green Dragon. Ah, geek love!

While they did remove a lot of set dressing meaning props like chairs, ladders and various odds and ends the Hobbit holes will remain and all can be entered safely. They even left the curtains in the windows.

Take anything AICN with half a grain of salt, but if this is true, actual hobbit houses.

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§100 · November 22, 2011 · Shares · (No comments) ·


GameSetWatch A Decade Of Xbox.

That exchange between Bill Gates and The Rock in the early 2000s, as artificial and cheesy as it was, did exhibit one thing: Microsoft, at a high level within its corporate structure, knew what kind of audience it was going for. You can see evidence of this with the early Bungie acquisition, the early publisher partnerships for launch titles, the specifications of the Xbox hardware itself, and the celebrities that it paid to pump up the console. Maybe Microsoft was playing heavily off of gamer cliches, but its strategy worked, attracting the 18-34 year-old male demographic.

It’s not a strategy that all game developers should take, aiming for the “hardcore audience.” But when you’re a console maker, it’s about defining the audience, listening to it, and configuring all-important developer relationships to suit those market demands.

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§95 · November 20, 2011 · Shares · (No comments) · Tags:


NFL to Earl Bennett: You wear orange shoes, you get thrown out – Shutdown Corner – NFL Blog – Yahoo! Sports.

A blatant, intentional helmet-to-helmet hit won’t get a guy thrown out. You can cut the knees of an engaged blocker all day long, and you probably won’t even be penalized. You can do whatever it was that Jerome Simpson did, and you’re good to go. Wrong color shoes, though? You are not welcome on our field, sir.

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§93 · November 20, 2011 · Shares · (No comments) ·


Twitter / @HubSpot: Come on over! RT @jobsathu ….

Come on over! RT @jobsathubspot: If you hate florescent lighting, cubicles, spreadsheets, and jerks; come work @HubSpot:…

I’ve been biting my tongue on the whole HubSpot thing, but at least three of those things are pretty common there, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with them.

Come on, guys. Set the correct expectations and you’ll get people who fit the culture better than I did. Keep blowing them and you’ll attract the wrong people for the wrong reasons (that’s me!)–or worse yet, disappoint the right people for the wrong reasons.

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§87 · November 17, 2011 · Shares · (No comments) ·


Andy Baio: Think You Can Hide, Anonymous Blogger? Two Words: Google Analytics | Epicenter | Wired.com.

Last month, an anonymous blogger popped up on WordPress and Twitter, aiming a giant flamethrower at Mac-friendly writers like John Gruber, Marco Arment and MG Siegler. As he unleashed wave after wave of spittle-flecked rage at “Apple puppets” and “Cupertino douchebags,” I was reminded again of John Gabriel’s theory about the effects of online anonymity.

Out of curiosity, I tried to see who the mystery blogger was.

He was using all the ordinary precautions for hiding his identity — hiding personal info in the domain record, using a different IP address from his other sites, and scrubbing any shared resources from his WordPress install.

Nonetheless, I found his other blog in under a minute — a thoughtful site about technology and local politics, detailing his full name, employer, photo, and family information. He worked for the local government, and if exposed, his anonymous blog could have cost him his job.

I didn’t identify him publicly, but let him quietly know that he wasn’t as anonymous as he thought he was. He stopped blogging that evening, and deleted the blog a week later.

So, how did I do it? The unlucky blogger slipped up and was ratted out by an unlikely source: Google Analytics.

tl;dr version: Reverse lookup of GA ID.

Why would anyone blogging anonymously care about analytics?

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§85 · November 16, 2011 · Shares · (No comments) ·