Ben Paddon

Blog

  • Give Us The Details For The Account You Don’t Have

    This morning I received the following email:

    *** NOTICE OF FINAL WARNING **

    Account Action: 3 Hour Suspension

    Account Offense: Violation of EULA and Terms of Service – Transfer of Account Ownership

    Details: An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. In accordance with EULA section 4, Paragraph B, listed below:

    World of Warcraft -> Legal -> End User License Agreement

    and Section 8 of the Terms of Use:

    Blizzard Entertainment -> Legal -> Terms of Use

    A 3-hour probationary suspension is pending on this account, awaiting confirmation from a specialist. A final warning has been issued. The investigation will be continued by the Account Administration team to determine the any further suspensions. If the account in question is found in violation of the EULA and Terms of Use, further action will be taken. Be aware that any additional inappropriate actions may result in the permanent closure of the account.

    Thank you for respecting our position on this matter.

    =========================================================
    ** We request that you verify your legitimate ownership of the account here:

    (https://us.battle.net/login/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fbattle.net%2Faccount%2Findex.html)
    =========================================================

    Any disputes or questions concerning this account action can only be addressed by Account Administration. To learn more about how Account Administration is able to assist you, please visit us at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowaa/.

    Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

    Please visit the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p) and (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/termsofuse.shtml) for further information.

    Regards,

    Billing & Account Administration
    Blizzard Entertainment
    http://www.blizzard.com/support/accountadmin/

    This is odd because I don’t have a World of Warcraft account. Okay, no, technically I do have a WoW account, but it was a 15-day trial account on the European servers and I only played it for three days. Why would I be trying to sell that account?

    The answer: I’m not. This is a phishing email. That long link that they want me to click, the one for the site that they want me to go to to verify my details? Yeah, that URL isn’t where the link actually takes you to (and, in the interests of security, I’ve changed the link on the information above – you’re all smart people and I know you wouldn’t fall for a scam like this, but better to be safe than sorry).

    I don’t usually bother sharing this sort of email with you, but as this is the first WoW-related phishing message I’ve received I figured it was worth sharing. It’s interesting how the game has become so incredibly mainstream that scam artists (and I’m loathe to use the word “artist” to describe someone who tries to scam money out of others) can mass-send emails like this.

    Extraordinary.

  • A Day In The Life Of An Extra

    On Friday the wonderful people at Cut Above Casting told me I’d once again been booked as an Extra on Fox’s “Glee” on Monday, and gave me instructions to call the casting line on Saturday to find out what my call time was. I did this, and was slightly annoyed to find it was 7am. Fortunately it was at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, which is remarkably easy for my to get to, even without a car. All I have to do is hop on my bike, cycle down to the North Hollywood Metro Station, get the train to Hollywood & Vine, then cycle down to Paramount from there. It’s a doddle.

    Unfortunately it’s a doddle that requires me getting up at around 4am in the morning, using only my iPhone alarm (which has a tendency to not go off at all). My Dad suggested using my laptop as an alarm clock and that’s exactly what I did, but I hadn’t used it that way before and I didn’t want to hedge my bets, so on Sunday night I went onto one of the three forums I usually visit and posted this lovely message:

    Can someone call or Skype me at around 12:30pm BST?

    That’s 4:30am my time. My Skype handle is Squirminator2k, and all Skype calls are routed to my mobile phone if I’m not currently signed in.

    I trust none of you will, uh, abuse this power.

    I went to bed at around 10:30pm. My brain, being what it is (which is my brain, a buzzing, whirring, processing machine designed to come up wth brilliant ideas at inconvenient hours of the night), started buzzing and whirring and coming up with brilliant ideas at inconvenient hours of the night. 1am rolled by and I figured I’m not going to get any sleep under my own strength, so I popped a small blue sleeping tablet.

    After a few minutes I started to feel very, very heavy. And then everything started melting…

    Please Stand By...

    Alarms went off at 4am. I turned off one and hit Snooze on the other. I hit Snooze again at 4:09am, 4:18am, and 4:27am, wondering why whoever designed alarm clocks thought it would be a great idea to use nine-minute snooze intervals.

    At 4:30am my phone rang. The display informed me that the incoming call was coming from somebody named “Ben Paddon”. That struck me as a bit odd so I answered the phone…

    “Hello?”
    “Hello, it’s Marleen!”
    “Oh, hi!”
    “[Something I didn’t really hear because I hadn’t woken up yet.]”
    “I’m up!”
    “[Something to the effect of ‘Oh, good.’]”
    “Thank you!”
    “[Something that might have been ‘You’re welcome.’]”
    “Bye!”
    “Bye!”

    I decided to get out of bed, a decision I made again at 4:36am when my alarm let me know that I’d somehow fallen asleep after that incredibly engaging phonecall. I jumped out of bed, had a very brief shower, brushed my teeth, moisturized, threw on some clothes, and packed a change of clothing incase Wardrobe thought that the clothing I’d picked myself at 4:48am in the morning with all the lights turned off and my senses still trying to work out why I’m not dreaming about Captain Kirk wrestling a gorilla in a Very Special Episode of Blossom were somehow not good enough for them.

    By 5:05am I was ready to go. I put on my iPod, electing to listen to MC Frontalot on the way to the station, and sch-schoomed on my bike towards North Hollywood. I got there at around 5:50, and I was eventually on a moving train at about 6:10. At 6:20 the train arrived at Hollywood & Vine, and at 6:35 I was at Paramount Studios.

    I approached the gate silently cursing for cheating myself out of half an hour’s extra sleep. Turns out that I shouldn’t have been cursing myself at all – Security couldn’t find a visitor’s pass for me. I began to panic – I did remember to call the casting agency back and confirm I was coming, didn’t I? Oh Glod, what if I didn’t? What if I’m not confirmed for today? Did I cycle all the way down here for nothing?

    At this point another regular Extra, Caleb, walked into the gate, and security couldn’t find him on the system either. Caleb said he’d definitely confirmed, and my worry began to wane a little. Then the security guard gave me the second best news I had all day:

    “Sorry guys. Our system crashed last night and I guess it’s still down. You guys just go on in.”

    “But, the turnstile isn’t turnstiling.”

    “Just push it halfway and slide through. You guys are pretty skinny.”

    People, Monday would have been a great day for you to sneak onto Paramount’s set.

    I got into Extras Holding at 6:50, which is where they keep the Extras when they’re not in use, and signed in. This was it – I’d made sure I would get there on time, and I was prepared for a day of standing around on set, pretending to talk, or drink, or walk, or whaveer. It was going to be fantast–

    Please Stand By...

    We spent most of the day sat in holding, which at one point moved from the backstage area we were in to Glee’s High School Hallway sets. I think we were only used for three shots. We spent the majority of the twelve hour day sat in holding. I’d brought my laptop, so Paramount essentially paid me to play Worms Armageddon, and to occasionally check my Facebook profile. Just like every other employee I’ve had, then.

    It was, in all honesty, great to be back on set. Being an Extra is sometimes an incredibly thankless job – you get yelled at, you get shepherded around like livestock, you get simple instructions repeated to you six or seven times because sometimes an AD will assume that each and every Extra on set is a gibbering moron with all the mental power of a Cornish Pasty. But working on Glee is a completely different experience. The crew really seem to care about the Extras. They’ll chat with us, they’ll have fun, and they try to make our time on set as comfortable and as easy as possible. The cast are brilliant, too – I had a couple of conversations with the awesome Josh Sussman, during which I was trying to work out whether he was naturally kind of skittish or if he was just very in-character.

    Glee probably isn’t the sort of show I’d want to watch (although I won’t know until the pilot airs on May 19th – for all I know it could be brilliant), but it’s definitely the sort of show I want to work on, and to keep working on. Everybody’s focused on their work, but they’re clever enough to want to have a good time while they do it. If only every production could be this fun.

  • Ficlet: Booze For Thought

    Here’s today’s over-a-year-old ficlet. Enjoy!

    Booze For Thought

    “Your problem,” said Jake, “Is that y’dunno ‘ow to communicate.”

    Rich’s smile faded from his face. “What? That’s bollocks.”

    “Nah, nah, fink ‘bout it. Ever’ girl you’ve ever dated, right, ever’ girl up sayin’ you never click wivver, y’know? S’like… s’like you’re not open enuff wiv’m.”

    “You,” smiled Rich, “Are quite clearly drunk.”

    “Th’drink’s got bug’rall t’do wivvit.”

    “The drink has everything to do with it, from where I’m sitting. I can communicate! I do! It’s not my fault that the girls I’ve been out with have the emotional depth of a Politician. I can communicate. They can’t.”

    “B’locks.”

    “Nor can you, apparently. How many of those have you had?”

    “Dunno. Lots… lost count af’er th’first… first seven or so.”

    “Right, give me your keys.”

    As Rich helped his friend into the back seat of his car, he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe Jake, in his drunken stupor, was right. He’d have plenty of time to think about it tomorrow, while he was cleaning the vomit out of the back seat.

    Commentary…

    Nothing really insightful here – I just like the irony of someone who is having trouble stringing together a complete sentence telling another person that they’re incapable of communicating. Glod knows where the relationship stuff keeps coming from, though. I’m sure someone else can read whatever they like into that.

    In Retrospect…

    Again, this is a ficlet I like from start to finish. These fellas strike me as a prototypical “Mark and Seb”.

  • Ficlet: To Serve Man

    I realise I’ve not been keeping up my “post an old ficlet a day” routine, so here we go again.

    To Serve Man

    The kettle begins to whistle, and before the sound has a chance to pick up any real volume the droid lifts it off the small gas heater and pours hot water into the teacup, then uses the remaining contents to fill up a hot water bottle. It stirs the contents of the teacup, then carefully picks it up in one hand, takes the hot water bottle in the other, and wanders out of the kitchen, down the long dark hall, towards the lounge.

    The glow of the roaring fireplace illuminates the room. The power had been cut long ago, but its master hadn’t objected. It walks to the chair where his Master lays, places the hot water bottle under the blanket, then sets down the teacup, and takes away the old cup which is still full of what is now very cold tea.

    It then carries on with its duties – mopping floors, cleaning surfaces, and scrubbing a bath its master hasn’t used in weeks. It is, after all, only fulfilling its primary function. It doesn’t occur to the simple thing that its Master will not be getting up again.

    Commentary…

    This is by no means a new idea, but I enjoyed writing it. The title comes from the short story by Damon Knight, which is about something completely different. Not sure what else I can say, really. It was interesting writing in the present tense.

    In Retrospect…

    This is one of those rare ficlets that I think is virtually perfect. It is perhaps a little too on-the-nose at the end, but such is the nature of ficlets.

  • Beaten To The Finish Line

    Because Science Fiction is, as Kris Straub describes it in the foreword to Jump Leads Volume 1, a “thousand-limbed, vein-husked blood sac, its million hearts pumping away,” it’s all too easy to come up with an idea that someone else has already thought of. There is simply far too much scifi out there for one man to reasonably sit down and process all by himself and no matter how hard you try to avoid it you will invariably wind up doing something that’s already been done before.

    Interestingly enough, however, I’ve experienced this in the reverse. There have so far been two occasions where I’ve come up with an idea for Jump Leads that has later been developed somewhere else – Doctor Who, one of the shows that inspired Jump Leads’ creation in the first place…

    The original draft of Issue #2, “It Came From Space!“, was originally a lot more… well, boring. The Flurry arrives on a dilapidated space station. The power is failing, the hull is buckling, and to make matters worse the entire station is beginning a slow descent into a sun. The episode revolved entirely around Meaney deciding he’s capable of saving the station, coordinating with the crew (Anderson, Lloyd and Tudyk) to try and save it. They fail, and the station plummets into the sun only to discover that it’s not a sun at all – it’s a wormhole.

    I didn’t enjoy writing this version of the story, to be honest. The threat didn’t seem tangible enough to work and the ending was lazy and uninteresting. So, at the end of 2006, I scrapped this version (originally called “Pressure Cooker”, and later “Here Comes The Sun”) and began working on what would become the story as you’ve (hopefully) read it. Six months later, the BBC airs an episode of Doctor Who called “42“, in which the TARDIS arrives on a spaceship which is making a slow descent into a sun. Also of interest is the film “Sunshine“, which came out the same year.

    There was another Jump Leads story which I started writing in 2007 but later abandoned (although I like the idea, so I may come back to it). Meaney and Llewellyn arrive at the Library, a Lead facility containing books from every corner of the Multiverse. If a book existed somewhere in the infinite span of reality, it could be found there (rather like the Discworld’s L-Space, only much more physical). Strangely, despite the gargantuan size of the Library, it’s suspiciously empty. The facility has been long-abandoned, and is now home to a race of jaguar/gorilla hybrid creatures who prey upon whatever they can find there.

    It was an interesting idea but I felt that I’d already done the “running away from a monster” idea in ICFS!, and what’s more I’d done it better than I planned to here. Just as well really, because the idea of a ruddy great big library infested with strange, carnivorous creatures would pop up in the brilliant Doctor Who series four two-parter, “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead“. It was much better-executed, too. Gotta love Steven Moffat.

    This sort of thing happens in scifi all the time. Any number of scifi serials have done the “mysterious clone of principle character” storyline, for instance, with recent webcomic examples being Starslip and Good Ship Chronicles. It just goes to show you that no matter how great you think your idea is, someone has likely already beaten you to it.

  • Weathering Heights

    I <3 LA

    I just fixed the Weather app on my dock. I needn’t have bothered, really – I live in LA.

  • Positive Jump Leads press

    I just posted a long and slightly lazy review of Red Dwarf: Back To Earth, which aired in the UK over the Easter weekend, over on the Jump Leads site. Also, while I’m here, how about I throw you you a link to a very positive review of Jump Leads Issue #3: Trojan Horse?

  • An open letter to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

    Dear SCEE UK Press team,

    Congratulations on the announcement of a new SOCOM game for your PlayStation Portable console. I’m sure you’re very pleased to have greenlit yet another title in the remarkably popular military tactical warfare series.

    Might I suggest, however, that regardless of just how much you may well be swelling with pride, it probably isn’t necessary to send me no less than eight identical emails in the space of a few hours informing me of the announcement. Especially when I’ve expressed virtually no interest in this game or, indeed, any other game in the SOCOM series.

    Thank you for your time.

    With regards,
    Ben Paddon