Zero.

I think one of the problems with the series was that they never really spent adequate time on explaining and developing the Ancients. They end up just coming off as a bunch of arrogant brats and we're left to fill in the blanks of what they did.

There's a reason making the Stargate program public was always such a huge deal in the series. One of the SG1 movies that will never be made was going to deal with the ramifications of it happening. Needless to say, at least at the beginning, nothing good would come of it and it would just make Cheyenne Mountain a huge target for basically everyone in the world.

Who said anything about Facebook?

Everyone will be really sad when they realize that Formspring shutting down wasn't the April Fool's joke, but Formspring staying up was. #wompwomp

http://zombo.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj0GNjvHii8

It was a cloudy night,
or so it looked to me,
I felt so lost,
I couldn't say why.
I needed strength to change my mind
but those ghosts stick to me like glue, hating life,
believing I was no good

It was a darkness all my own
a song played on the radio,
but it went straight to my heart
I carried it with me
until the darkness was gone...

It was a cloudy night,
or so it looked to me,
I felt so lost,
I couldn't say why
I built this cloud to live in,
It was a bunch of lies in my mind.
the world wants me to believe it
so I had to change my mind.

It was a darkness all my own
a song played on the radio,
but it went straight to my heart
I carried it with me
until the darkness was gone...

I built this cloud I can break it
The world can’t change how I feel
Because I know it’s a lie
My heart is real

Gone...

Play

That Formspring is shutting down in a few days.




























































j/k it's still happening. Resume crying, nerds.

That's what the blog post says. I haven't worked at Formspring in over half a year, though, so you'd be better off asking someone else.

I pay like $10/yr for the domain name. Flavors.me is free (and I actually got a free upgrade to their pro service years ago thanks to @mikepreuss). Sooooo, I barely remember it even exists most of the time.

And now I'm not updating it out of spite. GOOD JOB.

I was born on Easter. You could say that me and J-Dawg are inextricably intertwined.

HOW CAN YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE FOR 23 YEARS AND NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT?! ARE YOU PLANNING ON JUST LETTING ME DIE WHEN I GET THERE?

So's your face. If I really cared, I'd update it, don't you think?

I haven't unpacked my mic, so this has tremendous amounts of clipping. This is the song "Gravity's Temptation" by Marathon.

Keep your chins up, Formspringers!

http://snd.sc/XvIVdJ

This is honestly not an easy question to answer on a number of levels (like, where to begin and what can and can't I say).

First and foremost, what made Formspring as successful as it was were the people. That includes not just the team behind the site, who were for the most part all amazing and intelligent people, but also our core users. Having the userbase we had was a huge part in raising the money we were able to raise. And those users disappearing is probably a primary reason why the funding stopped.

That aside, while we had a lot of money, our operation costs were pretty astronomical. This was partially a result of the insane number of users we had, and partially because of engineering decisions (whether good or bad). I think we probably took a little too long to remedy some of the higher-cost processes that were involved in running the site. But believe you me when I say that it's actually pretty difficult to just show a bunch of numbers on a website when you have 30 million users to process data for.

Obviously at some point, we added ads to the site. I don't have a ton of insight into how successful or not they were compared to what we had hoped, but they did generate some revenue, which helped buoy the site for another few months. I wasn't really around for the end times, but I do believe that a good chunk of the last few months was spent scaling down some of these processes to cut costs even further in hopes of bringing down the costs to a level at which the site could run on just ad revenue alone. I don't know for sure how successful that was, but even if they were able to, the continued decline in usage meant the revenue was always decreasing, too, which means that at some point it was bound to just not be enough.

There's a lot more going on here as to why usage declined and why certain areas of revenue generation went mostly unexplored, etc, etc. And there were a lot of positive things that were done in those fields, too. But ultimately it was just unfortunately fighting a losing battle. It just costs too much to maintain a site for this many users on ad revenue alone.

You can always try asking @pims for more details, since he was around longer than I was. Though I don't know if he would willingly go into any more specifics or if it's revealing a bit too much.

I haven't been an employee since July, so I missed pretty much all of this and I have little-to-no insight into what went on towards the end. I can say, at the very least, that Ade is someone who will never compromise his vision for this site, and I imagine that played a role in whatever what on. Selling a product rarely ends with its continued existence, is the sad fact. Usually selling a company just results in the buyer acquiring the talent behind the product, or the users that used the product, and not really the product itself. This question might be best directed to Ade or @pims, but I'm willing to bet they can't really share much info into what went on since it's a pretty sensitive topic.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

Bad Religion's new album "True North" is probably their best in the last decade and one of their top 5. Pretty impressive for a bunch of dudes who've been playing together for 35 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh36qMUxhF0

Every day's the same routine of endless chores and boring details
And you know you're waiting for the perfect condition for your ship to set sail

But of course the climate's always changing
Clining to the past has got you straining
Comes the recognition now you're on a mission that is born to fail
(Leave it!)

Brothers say goodbye
Sisters don't you cry
All embrace the times
Wade into the changing tide

Searching for philosophy of life can be a drag on the soul
Nowadays we pick and choose the pieces from other people's wisdom of old

But of course the climate's always changing
Clinging to the past has got you straining
Realizing all your most cherished beliefs are subject to rot and mold
(come on!)

Brothers say goodbye
Sisters don't you cry
All embrace the times
Wade into the changing tide

Play

Oh yeah, you guys can also find me in these places:

http://www.rdio.com/people/chrisbarmonde/
http://www.last.fm/user/RazorCrusade

http://storytime.me/ (If I ever get back to writing...)
http://horse-estories.tumblr.com/
http://dinosaurwhiteboardcomics.tumblr.com/
http://bestcatpictures.tumblr.com/