Tv Series: The Gamechanger

I have been thinking about tv series theory a lot lately and I am sort of setting up my own theories doing so. Things are still shaping up and they just need time. However, I decided that I would start of with sharing some of the terminology I have been coming that has already shaped up.

One of the most important things that has been wandering in my mind is the gamechanger. It is about something that changes the premise, goal or the means to the goal the series is taking. Perhaps I will be able to make this into something more quantifiable later on, but for now it's a rather abstract and it requires a lot of feeling. However, let me get into some examples.

Star Trek: Enterprise has a Gamechanger at the end of season 2, when a ship of exploration goes to war. The actual game changer is the event in which the Xindi attack.

Chuck has a Gamechanger when the events leading to the Intersect 2.0 (I find this one hard to pin down, though. I think there's more going on than just a game changer as well).

Battlestar Gallactica had a gamechanger just about every midseason finale and every season finale.

Other series, don't have a gamechanger.

The Gamechanger is the event that leads to changes in the series. However, the event itself is not what makes it a gamechanger. The fact that after that things do change, is what makes it a gamechangers. It can also be hard to say whether something will be a gamechanger until the events following it are shown.
A good example would be the death of a character. For one show, this might mean that the whole dynamic of the show changes, while in another little might change at all. In the latter case, it isn't a gamechanger while in the first case it is.

Also, while a gamechanger is usually planned, it can also just happen. The loss of a cast member (for any reason) can be an unplanned gamechanger (think 8 Simple Rules). It is hard to think of a different way a gamechanger can be unplanned, but I am pretty sure that there is one out there.

There are multiple reasons that the gamechanger focuses on the event causing the change rather than the changes themselves. One reason is that this is not at all about a gradual change. Instead, it's about a sudden change in the series, which is caused by something. Another is that gamechanger itself is usually a big event in the series and already drops its hints even before you can be sure it is going to be a gamechanger. Of course the way in which I started thinking about it also plays its role.

So, this was tv series theory installment one. I hope you liked it. For me, thinking about certain events as gamechangers really changed the way I looked at some finales.

Series Premiere, Season Premiere

One of the pages I still get a lot of trafic on this site from is the one with the caveman debugging post. It turns out that people come across the term and wonder what it is, and googling it actually leads right to my blog at the top of the results. Wow.

Well, today is going to be a post in a similar vain. This time about the name for the first episode of a tv series or just the first of a season.
I have used several terms for this, but most just don't sound too well. "Beginner" and "Opener" just don't do the trick for me. We have finale on the one hand and together with the first episode of a season it makes one of the aspects of tv series that particularly interest me.

I knew I had heard a good term for it once, but I couldn't remember. So yesterday, I did some googling. Well, I ended up not finding it through googling, but through navigating my way through wikipedia. And there it was, in an article marked as bad because it didn't cite source: Premiere.

This word has one very important quality. Even if people have never heard of the term before, they will quickly enough understand what you mean with it. That is, in my opinion it's strongest quality. Of course, it's also important that it just sounds good and that it fills what in my opinion was a niche.

What I would like to do is propose the terms "Series Premiere" and "Season Premiere" when talking about tv series. And what I am going to do about it, is just use them. And I urge you to do the same. And to spread the word, of course.

So: Premiere it is!

Just a single System

Today I am writing about a thing that - as a programmer - I feel I should keep reminding myself of. Basically, that is that this is just a single system.

Writing this was inspired by a comment on a flash game I saw earlier today. The commenter was saying how the game didn't work for him, and then said that as a programmer, he knew that something serious was up and he continued to say how there was something wrong with the memory management.

Now, don't get me wrong, I program myself as well and I know how the line of thought goes all too well. However, I do feel there was something wrong with it. Namely, the commenter was sitting behind a single system (or computer, I just like the word system more in this context) and from there making comments about the entire thing. However, every system (computer) is different and the programmer could not ever have tested every single system out there.

I'm not saying there was or wasn't anything wrong with that game, but I do want to remind myself that "This is just a single system" and thus remind me that even if it doesn't work here, it might work elsewhere.

This should also be applied the other way around. When you make something, don't just run it on one computer and assume it is going to do the exact same thing everywhere. Every system is different and this is only a single system. Try it on a few more systems (try to get other people to try it as well, they often have systems that differ from yours than your desktop and laptop differ) and never be surprised if it still does something else on another system entirely.

Alright, that's all I wanted to say.

Conley Woods shows us how to play Magic

I'm watching the Magic World Championship at this very moment. If Wizards has its way - which they might have, considering they are the ones making this game - it will be the last of its kind (the plan for next year is no more than a joke), but I am not here to talk about that. Maybe I'll talk about it some other time, but maybe I won't.

What I am here to talk about is how Conley was playing in the Quarter finals, as that was just truly amazing. Really, I think that was one of the most amazing moments in the game ever, and I have watched some of the most awesome games (even if not live).

So how did things go? Well, it was best out of five, and the first two were down without a chance for Wescoe who was his opponent. Then, Wescoe took the next two without leaving Woods a chance. And then it all came down to the last game. Which was the amazing game.

Basically, Wescoe was just taking the game. It may not have been as smoothly as in the first two, but there was a point where I doubt there was more than a handful people all over the world who hadn't written off Conley. However, he made some awesome plays and two turns and a little luck (in the lack of relevance in his opponent's cards) he was actually the one who had won. I suppose you should have seen the thing. I'll update with a link once they have it up, so you can. And you should!

Update 18-12-2015: Here I am, 4 years later, rereading the post and realizing I forgot to add that link... Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXQmu_OXIzM