TGIF (and a marathon update)

It’s Friday night, and instead of going out and raising hell, I’m thinking of hitting the hay and sawing logs. Don’t worry — I haven’t suddenly retired from life. I’m giving my body some much-needed sleep in preparation for My First Marathon.

That’s right, tomorrow morning I’m hopping on the Surfliner and cruising down south for the San Diego Rock-and-Roll Marathon. I’m running with South Orange County Team In Training, raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

I’ve been training for this event since the beginning of February, and it’s finally here. I’m really looking forward to the marathon. It winds it’s way through beautiful San Diego, including Balboa Park, downtown and Mission Bay. And there are 26 stages along the way with live bands to entertain and keep our feet moving.

The flip side of this is that I’ll be offline until sometime Monday night. I’ll post updates via Twitter, but otherwise it will be quiet here.

If you’d like to support my fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, it’s not too late! I’m just a few hundred dollars away from my goal of $2,800! I’ll run the 26.2 miles — you help me meet my fundraising goal, ok? The easiest way to contribute is online, but you can also mail in a check. All the details are on my fundraising page.

Want to follow my marathon progress? The race starts at 6:30 am on Sunday, June 3rd. They will be publishing times at the 5k, 10k, half-marathon and finish line — all in real time. Look me up on race day at www.rnrmarathon.com. I’ll be about three hours behind the Kenyans.

Now you’re probably thinking to yourself… “How the hell am I going to keep myself from getting bored while Jeff is gone?” Try Desktop Tower Defense. DTD is an addictive, free Flash-based game that will keep you busy for hours. And there’s an interesting lesson behind it’s development.

DTD developer Paul Preece had never developed anything in Flash before. He was inspired by a friend’s project and took the plunge, using simple, hand-scrawled graphics. His website, www.handdrawngames.com launched in March, and Preece says his only publicity was submitting the site to StumbleUpon.com. The games addictive simplicity and group scoring gave it a viral quality, and soon he was generating 20 million page views a month. With most of the revenue coming from Google Adsense, he is generating in the high five-figures per month.

Preece realized that the popularity of Desktop Tower Defense cannot last forever. But he figures if he can produce one or two new games a month — something he feels is reasonable — he will have a sustainable business model.

I love those home-grown success stories. Read all the details over at GigaOm.com. Oh, and see if you can beat my high score — just add your score to the “BigBlueBall” group.

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