I've only ever played 'God of War' while we were shooting it. I've seen a lot of the videos, but while we were shooting 'God of War,' they had a green room for the actors to hang out in, and they always had the newest game on the big screen. So we'd sit there playing 'God of War' to get us into the mood.

Honestly, in the music business, it's all about being cool or being the newest thing or being the 'It' person, and I've tried really hard to be what is expected of me or what would be advantageous to my career, and I just reached the point where I said, 'No, I'm an emotional loser. I can't pretend to not care.'

I think that I identify with Philadelphia for a lot of reasons. Without even thinking about it, I called myself 'Philly's Constant Hitmaker' when I first got a MySpace, before I had any real hits. It was kind of just a funny slogan, basically lifted from the Rolling Stones' first album, 'England's Newest Hit Makers.'

I was doing commentary for the BBC and had exhibition work but if you're not winning you are not earning as much. And when you're seen as a successful sportsman, people assume you're earning a good living. There was pressure on me to have the newest car, a more expensive holiday. It was all about keeping up appearances.

UC Merced is the University of California's newest campus and lies among farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley, 2 1/2 hours east of San Francisco and not far from where I spent most of my childhood. It's a part of California that has suffered deeply from the recession with high unemployment and a skyrocketing home foreclosure rate.

I would describe Hyperledger as a tremendous opportunity for collaboration for firms that range from gigantic commercial concerns all the way to the smallest, newest startups. It's a community of great intellectual depth and great commercial breadth, and as such, I think the opportunity to be part of that is a unique and enriching experience.

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