IAmA
r/IAmA
Greetings, Portal Masters! I am Dan Gerstein (proof!), joined by Paul Reiche u/preiche3, Fred Ford u/FredditFordit, Ken Ford u/FKenFord, and Robert Leyland u/RLeyland. We were all developers on Toys for Bob’s Skylanders games before we even knew that was going to be the name of the game. Together, we started making toys out of clay and used a pretend portal made of a ripped up Wii remote. We eventually went on to develop the games you know: Spyro’s Adventure, Giants, Trap Team, and Imaginators.
Paul Reiche and Fred Ford were the original co-founders of Toys for Bob in 1989, leading as heads of the studio through the Skylanders series. Ken Ford worked with them for nearly as long and developed art tools for Skylanders. Robert Leyland was our in-house mad scientist and electrical engineer, working on the hardware used in our toys and portal. I was a design lead on Skylanders, responsible for the in-game interactions with the portal and design needs for my teammates who created characters and levels.
In 2016, I departed Toys for Bob to explore other career interests. In 2017, after Skylanders wound down, Paul and Fred decided to leave studio management and return to hands-on development. Last year, Paul, Fred, Ken, and I re-joined to form our new studio, Pistol Shrimp, with the goal of creating something that embodied the spirit that drove us when working on Skylanders. We love our game, we love our fans, and we want to have fun creating something for them. We also enjoy our unique way of working and tools, which encourage experimentation and were part of how Skylanders came to be.
We’re currently working on a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters, which, despite coming 20 years before Skylanders, actually shares a lot in common with it! I stream live design of our game twice a week, and our in-development design tools are freely available to the public. I will also be doing a few special streams in the coming Sundays just for all of you where I’ll play through some of the Skylanders games live, tell stories from development, and answer any more questions viewers might have. I think I’ve convinced Robert to join me too. It’s going to be a blast!
All of us still love Skylanders and are excited to talk about what it was like to create. We are here to answer your questions, tell stories, and just have fun. Ask us anything, and we’ll be responding actively from about 1pm to about 5pm PT today.
AMA being conducted in r/Skylanders at https://www.reddit.com/r/skylanders/comments/x0v98h/we_are_some_of_the_creators_of_skyladers_spyros/
Hi Reddit, IamA snake photographer from Cape Town, South Africa - I relocate wild snakes found in people’s homes back to nature, I train people on snake identification and first aid for snakebite via the African Snakebite Institute, and I photograph snakes as a hobby.
PROOF: https://i.imgur.com/QRrAXZs.jpg
You can see my photography here: r/wvzphotos
Several of my photos were used in the newly revised and published "A Complete Guide to the Snakes of Southern Africa": https://www.africansnakebiteinstitute.com/book
I also helped develop a free app that provides information about snakes, spiders, and scorpions in Southern Africa, and has been downloaded more than 200,000 times: https://snakebiteapp.co.za/
The work I do is all about conservation, and with every callout / training session I also try to educate the public about the importance of citizen science - helping researchers collect data via apps like iNaturalist.
Unfortunately there are a multitude of myths & misconcepts about snakes out there, so feel free to Ask Me Anything about snakes, snakebite, and snake safety! I'm out in the field looking for things to photograph today so I'll answer questions throughout the day as I can.
My knowledge is focused mainly on Southern African species, but I’ll try to answer questions about exotics as well as I can.
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You can see photos & videos of my relocations here:
I have worked in infosec for 30 years and have seen it all. Ask me anything about malware, hackers, organized online crime gangs, privacy, or cyberwar. Also feel free to ask me about my new book, «If It’s Smart, It’s Vulnerable». We can also discuss pinball playing techniques.
EDIT: Thanks all! Gotta go, have a nice weekend everyone. As a takeaway, here's a video of a recent talk I gave about the cyberwar in Ukraine.
PS. For those who are into podcasts, here's an episode of the Cyber Security Sauna podcast where I discuss my new book.
Hello, mystery enthusiasts and puppet fans! We're the team behind Fogtown, a new take on Sherlock Holmes made through the medium of finger puppets.
Fogtown blends old-fashioned puppeteering with cutting-edge virtual production tech. We film our puppets in front of large screens with realtime 3D environments in the Unreal Engine — the same way The Mandalorian is made, but on a micro scale.
We're neck-deep in crafting a pilot episode of Fogtown as well as a short choose-your-own-adventure game. We're working with some incredible voice actors, including Stephen Russell (Garrett from the Thief games, as well as probably most of your favorite characters from Skyrim and Fallout 3 & 4) and Rizwan Manji (Ray Butani in Schitt's Creek and Jamil the janitor in Peacemaker). Our videogame project is an FMV throwback, featuring actors like Dean Erickson (who's last and only other game role was playing Gabriel Knight in The Beast Within / GK2) Paul Morgan Stetler (the star of Phantasmagoria 2), Lenval Brown (Disco Elysium's narrator) and Rupert Booth (Contradiction)!
Here's a video that shows off what we're aiming for. You can visit our website for much more info about Fogtown. Oh, and we've been posting new videos every single weekday on our YouTube channel to promote our ongoing fundraising that closes August 30th!
We're here to answer questions about Fogtown, puppetry, virtual production, or other projects we've made (last year, our director made a finger puppet show about a Reddit argument that this site seem to enjoy quite a bit). Ask us anything!
(Currently present are series creator directors Sean Parker & Austin Hillebrecht and co-writer Devon Rawlings. Stay tuned for the appearance of possible special guests from our cast.)
The Puppets: https://imgur.com/qvUSxHn
Proof: Here's my proof!
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EDIT: Looks like things are winding down, thank you everyone for participating today! We had a blast making silly puppet videos. Yes, even for the mean questions. We'll keep monitoring this account for a bit so feel free to send in latecomer questions over the next few days and we'll do our best to answer them all.
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I am a licensed grade 4 operator (highest)! I am here to answer any questions about water treatment and drinking water! I have done one in the past but with recent events and the pandemic things are a little different and it's always fun to educate the public on what we do!
proof: https://imgur.com/a/QKvJZqT also I have done one in the past and was privately verified as well
Edit: holy crap this blew up bigger than last time thank you for the silver! I'm trying to get to everyone! Shameless twitch plug since I am way underpaid according to everyone twitch.tv/darkerdjks
EDIT: That's all the time I have for questions today! You can find me on Twitter (@CQuintanaDC) where my dms are open if you have more questions.
PROOF: https://i.redd.it/uix5cs7rwqj91.jpg
My work focuses on oversight of predatory colleges and how students pay for higher education. I have found an evidently fake university that evaded federal and state oversight which resulted in the Education Department stripping the school's accreditor of federal recognition. And I previously revealed a well-known student loan expert was actually the creation of a student loan refinancing company.
These days I have been writing extensively about student loan debt cancellation, how much it will cost and who it will benefit. I have also written about the debt the Department of Education has already wiped out, and what borrowers should know about available relief programs.
Related Links:
Feds strip authority of college accreditor behind ITT Tech, fake university: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/08/19/feds-deny-appeal-accreditor-behind-itt-tech-seemingly-fake-college/7842043001/
Is student loan forgiveness fair to those without college degrees? Americans remain divided over costs: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/07/19/student-loan-forgiveness-fair-poll/10061005002/
Free college or federal student loans? These alternatives could help solve student debt crisis: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/05/22/student-loan-forgiveness-free-college-biden-options/9665884002/
Want student loan forgiveness? Millions of jobs qualify for updated program — and yours might be one of them: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/02/23/student-loan-forgiveness-expansion/6817734001/
How the student loan payment pause changed people’s lives: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/education/2022/03/29/student-loan-payment-pause-biden-forgiveness/6925296001/
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