Going Dark Against SOPA/PIPA
Politics are a big part of my life and I enjoy being socially active in causes I believe in and against causes I think would be damaging. Recently the House (SOPA) and Senate (PIPA) have been discussing two bills for to strengthen anti-piracy laws by wrecking the way the internet works and providing almost unregulated power to intellectual property owners. While I agree that piracy is a huge concern, as the industry I work in can be hit hard by piracy, but the way that SOPA/PIPA go about solving the problem is all wrong.
These bills have the ability to cause catastrophic damage to the way we currently use the internet today and could potentially stop progress and innovation. If either SOPA or PIPA were law these sites would have been closed or gone bankrupt before becoming part of our lives today.
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- MySpace
- eBay
- Craigslist
- Twitpic
- WordPress.com
- and countless others.
Amazon S3 and WordPress
As I stated in a previous post, I moved all my images, theme files, and js files over to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service or S3. The process was fairly simple with the right mixture of WordPress plugins. I’ll give you a basic guide on how I moved everything over to S3.
First things first, S3 is just storage. When creating your ‘bucket’ (we will talk about that in a bit), you select the location in which it will be stored. S3 isn’t a content delivery network (CDN), but Amazon does offer that with Cloudfront. Even though this isn’t a CDN, it will probably speed up your website as well as reduce burden on your web host, only costing you a couple cents a month (depending on your audience).
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Retro Gaming Art Show
Tonight I got to check out some talented Seattle artists at Retro Gaming Night at The Piranha Shop. With over 30 artist participating there were all types of styles to pick from. The selection in games was great, Mario, Donkey Kong, Punch-Out!, Ghost ‘n Goblins, Battletoads, Dragon’s Lair, and more. Some amazing items all which made my pocket book hurt as there were a couple I would have loved to own. Here are some photos from the show.
2011 in Review: Games
Continuing with my 2011 in Review posts, this time with my favorite games of 2011. I’ve been quite bad this year as I really didn’t pick up many of the games you will see on others lists including Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3, and I have a nice stack of games waiting to be played including RAGE, Resistance 3, Batman: Arkham City, and some others. Out of the games I did play this year, here are the ones that made lasting impressions.
The king is back and DICE and EA have returned with an amazing return to Battlefield with Battlefield 3. Packed with a strong single player and amazing multiple experience, it just brings back great memories of Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2.
Orcs Must Die is the perfect game for me these days. Quick and addictive fun. Robot Entertainment have perfectly combined a tower defense game with a great feel of an action game. For those that like to plan and place traps you have that, and for those that just want to kill Orcs, you have that. The comical nature of trap development just makes you want to be more creative. Well done Robot!
I’m getting older, but blowing up stuff never gets old. The good people at Avalanche Studios have created just the game for that with Renegade Ops. This game combines two of my childhood favorites in Jackal and the Strike Series. Take your vehicle and blow shit up, that simple. Big huge explosions! Great looking graphics, and just fun to play.
What can I say about Uncharted 3 that hasn’t already been said. Go play it. It is great. Well done Naughty Dog, can’t wait to play The Last of Us.
Dead Space 2 was great. Perhaps a little more action heavy over suspense, but beggars can’t be choosers. Everything about it is polished and well designed. I’m looking forward to what they do with Dead Space 3.
It is very rare that I finish a game in just a couple days, but Portal 2 had me hooked. Smart, creative, funny, and just darn right great from start to finish. The only thing that could have made Portal 2 better is Valve to finally upgrade their streaming technology. LOADING…
I remember seeing Deus Ex: Human Revolution years ago at GDC and was blown away by the art direction that they were going after. I followed the game and it didn’t disappoint. Amazing in every regard, thrilled to see what Eidos Montreal does with Thief 4.
Microsoft Arc = Returned
So a couple weeks ago I picked up the Microsoft Arc Keyboard. I liked the overall design, but I had a difficult time typing with it. Something about the pressure of the keys and the space bar was causing everything I type to be in a big block of text. I took it back to Best Buy today and picked up the Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000, which is a standard keyboard with a slight curve and a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000. I had the Wireless Mouse 5000, but I broke the receiver while cleaning my computer, so it was a nice bonus to get that mouse again. I am pretty happy having a new fancy keyboard that I can type on again. Also the performance of the Arc with games wasn’t that great. Just too small for a crazy FPS.
Microsoft Arc Wireless Keyboard
I picked up a Microsoft Arc Wireless Keyboard today at Best Buy while picking up MLB: The Show 10 today. Total impulse buy and so far so good. It is very tiny! Reminds me of my netbook keyboard, but with a slight curve. It feels pretty nice to type on, but I am making a fair amount of mistakes since changing from my good ol’ Microsoft Curve 2000, which has been my favorite keyboard for a couple years now. Check out the photos which will give you an idea of how small this keyboard is!!
Testing from WP 2.0 on the iPhone
I installed WordPress 2.0 for the iPhone and so far no major issues. It is pretty standard but does the job!
LTTP: Battlestar Galatica
Living without cable makes you do many things, including catch up on television shows you never paid attention too. I finally decided to check out Battlestar Galactica this weekend, starting with the mini-series and then onto Season 1 and the start of Season 2. I love something with a sci-fi theme, and BSG holds up pretty well. The characters are pretty good, the story is pretty strong, and the interrelationships between characters has pulled me in. I hope it keeps up and stays strong. Don’t spoil it for me!
Spring Cleaning, New Theme, and probably some broken links
I have been fooling around with various themes, wanting to change up the page a bit. I am still modifying on a local version of the site here at home, but I decided to change the theme on the live site. I have been reading Smashing Magazine a lot, which is an amazing site that everyone should check out. I have gotten some good ideas from there, and hope to use some of that great information here on the site. One of the bad thing about all these changes is links might start breaking, as well as other items. I hope to clean everything up and keep the site updated. Keep posted for updates.
Back to the Future Marathon
With all the snow the local Blockbust had almost everything rented, so I fired up Comcast OnDemand and combed around to see the entire Back to the Future Trilogy in HD. I have seen these movies countless times over the years, but not all three in a single night. They are fairly silly, but I have to give the writers credit for paying attention to detail. Christopher Lloyd is insane in this role, and I really can’t imagine Marty being Eric Stoltz at all.