Slow Servers…
So I have noticed for the last month or so that my host server has just been getting slower and slower. I am going to start investigating about getting a new host. I have never really been that happy with Globat, and there are a lot of great deals out there right now for host providers. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I am lazy…
So I really haven’t been good about updating the good ol’ blog of recently. I just forget or don’t have anything interesting to say. But in good news I do have some new videos to share with everyone and will have those up shortly for you to enjoy.
Hymns Van vs Ice. Ice wins.
Seattle is currently having some of the coldest weather in the last couple years and it is the week Hymns decides to come to town. On the way to my place they had a battle of black ice vs the van and as you can see in the photo the black ice won. The van slide into a ditch about half a mile from my apartment where they were going to crash while in Seattle. Thankfully everyone was alright outside of being very cold waiting for the tow truck and somewhat shaken from sliding off the road, and the van sustained no long term damage.
Mew and Kasabian on Monday
So I am going to see Mew and Kasabian at Neumo’s on Monday. I am pretty excited about seeing Mew since I have been listening to the album for the last couple days. I haven’t listened to a lot of Kasabian, but the little I have sounds alright. Kasabian is the headliner, so I can eat Belgian-style to kill time if needed. I’ll take lots of photos.
FLV Player now install! Videos in posts now!
After some major testing I finally got FLV Player working on my site. My first video, which really was only a test video is the Rayman: Raving Rabbids. I personally find it really funny. But I will add other content soon enough. Enjoy.
FireStats added
Now I can see that no one ever reads my blog. Prove me wrong people. FireStats is a pretty sweet plugin for WordPress. Some great information in there.
Server Problems
So the site is moving dog slow right now for some reason. I am looking into doing a backup and then flushing out MySQL and starting a new. Hopefully everything will work out.
iTunes 7 released
So Apple released iTunes 7 today, which they way is the largest revision in a while for iTunes. It has some neat new things like integrated iPod updating and preferences, which is a nice touch. I do have to say that the ID3 tags in iTunes 7 are a little picky. I never had any problems with ID3 tags until iTunes 7, but that just took some time to get all worked out. One of the major updates is Coverflow, which was previously a plugin for iTunes but Apple thought it was so cool that they bought it from the developer. Coverflow if you haven’t seen it displays your album covers and you can flip through them. It is a nice effect and fun to browse around in. To make Coverflow a great experience they also added the ability for all your albums without covers to automatically download from the iTunes Store if the album is online. Pretty neat stuff. Now one of the major problems with iTunes is memory, as in it takes up a whole bunch. I was fooling around with it and it got up to 200 MB, which is just batshit insane for a music player. The sacrifices you make if you have an iPod.
I finally bought a new Cell Phone
!@(uploads/2006/09/slvr_l7.jpg:C450)So I have had problems with my old Motorola v400 for months now. The speaker has totally died and I have been using the speaker phone part. I looked into upgrading my phone via my provider Cingular, and it would have been $200 out of pocket with a 2 year contract extension, which I found shocking. That was with the upgrade discount, which is a joke. So I looked into getting an unlocked phone. First place I found selling unlocked phones was NewEgg, which I was shocked about. They had the Motorola SLVR L7 for $185, which cheaper then going through Cingular. So I went to eBay and picked one up new for $150, which I thought was a great deal. So I’m excited about my new phone.
PAX Impressions and some Photos
So I got back from the Penny Aracde Expo and I had a pretty good time even though I was there for a short period of time. One thing is for sure I hate the Meydenbauer Center. The multiple floor layout just isn’t very fun to navigate around especially when you have hundreds of gamers sitting on the floor playing the Mario Kart on DS against each other. Just a pain. But now to the good things, Penny Arcade brings some really great people from the industry to talk to the fans and give some insight and have fun with the fans. This is really nice compared to E3 where you just can’t get anything done, GDC where you want to impress, and Gamefest/Xfest/DevStation which is just different them all of them. It is nice to let the guard down, and have some fun which PAX is a great place for that to happen.
I was only able to attend one panel today, which was Forums, Blogs and Fanbois: The Role of Community and PR in the Game Industry, which had Frankie from Bungie, Jenny from ArenaNet, Chris from Foundation 9/Backbone on the panel and moderated by my pal Brian. It was an excellent session with some great opinions on how important it is in having communication with your fans of any level, especially the hardcore fans. There were some excellent questions in the planned questions, but some of the questions during open Q&A were pretty good as well, many asking how a smaller site get content without having hits. Jen had a great answer in that it comes down to passion for doing it and building that trust with fans out there, as well as there is always things to talk about and content all around. I wish I was on the panel, I would have responded that the 1up Yours podcast really doesn’t break any scoops that the main site hasn’t already reported on, it is just a repeat of what the main site has already talked about. So content is plentiful online.
I really enjoyed the talk and wish I could spend hours talking with the panel on how they feel having a strong community can change the outlook and popularity of a game long term.
I took some photos, there are a couple of Frankie, the entire panel, Brian, a pirate, and some girls who had some strong feelings for Frankie.
{ gallery [PAX] }