Another Week in Warhammer Online

I spent almost all of my gaming time last weekend in Warhammer Online – and it was great fun!  Unfortunately due to server mergers I wasn’t able to move my higher level characters over to an existing server – due to the fact that I already had characters there, so I’m not too sure what to do there.  I think there might be an option to move them to a different destination that the one they picked, but I’m not sure. 

So for the remainder of the week, I’ve been spending my game-time in Warhammer, and it’s been a lot of fun.  Of course, my characters are still pretty low level, so they’re still in the “fun tiers” that make up T1 and T2.  To be honest though, back on my old server where I played some T3 and T4, I didn’t find those tiers “not fun.”  It’ll be interesting to see what changes have been made in those areas. 

I found it interesting that new characters now all start in the same zone.  However, you can travel back to the old “newbie” zones and complete the quests there for faction and levelling goodness.   Just last night I took my new Chosen over to the Dark Elf lands to work on some faction building over there and to level up a bit more in preparation for the craziness that is Nordland open PvP.  It’s shaping up that this coming weekend I’ll probably be goofing around in Nordland and also over in T2 with my Squig Herder, who is quickly approaching ”mount level” (He’ll get a dire wolf to ride at Level 20).

I hope your week has been great so far, and that as the weekend approaches, things will just get better! Enjoy!

A New Week, and a New Month

Here it is February and I’m already a little bit behind.  So without further ado, here are the January stats and roll up.

Most popular:

1. “Home Page” – I think WP has changed some kind of measurement, ‘cuz I don’t recall this ever being in my stats before… Anyways it garnered 233 Hits
2. Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with 136
3. ScreenShots with 86
4. EVE 2009 with 65
5. EVE Multibox Mining rounds out the “Top 5″ with 63

January this year was significantly more busy than last year with 886 visits compared with only 353 last year.  Last year at this time I was very busy in EVE and not much else, as far as gaming goes.

As far as gaming goes this month, I was pretty busy and didn’t get a lot of quality time in on my gaming.  I did do some Dragon Age, and kept up my training queues in EVE.  I tried to get back into LOTRO for a couple of weeks before unsubscribing… Again…  And just over the last weekend I re-sub’d to WAR and have been loving it all over again.  I think it will be my “go to game” for February – we’ll see how long the affair lasts this time.

Back in January last year I made some informal predictions and plans for the year, let’s see how I did…

1. No new MMO subs.  – TRUE, I didn’t try any new MMO’s in 2009 – not Aion, not whatever
2. Progress on my own gaming universe; Templars of Ra. – TRUE, I used this year’s NaNoWriMo to work on my first novel set in this universe.
3. Digitizing Photos and other “Family History” work – FALSE, I don’t think I did any work on this.
4. Make some game Mods. FALSE, I didn’t even start on making any gaming mods.
5. Total Redesign of my web-domains. TRUE & FALSE, I did install some new templates and started redesigning two of my three domains.  Hopefully I will find time to finish this work sometime in 2010.
6. Move into a house. FALSE, no raises at work, in fact I’m trying to dodge layoffs, so this is on indefinite hold.
7. Build a new gaming rig. FALSE, with the questionable job forecast, I can’t rationalize spending this kind of money right now, maybe later in 2010 if things start stabilizing.

I think that’s about all of them. So not a great record, but at least I got some things right

I hope your first month of 2010 was amazing, and that Feb. shapes up into something grand for you as well! Enjoy!

Gaming Lull

I’ve kind of been in an inactive gaming state for the last few weeks.  I’m not sure how or why that happened, but I have been very busy at work and arriving home so exhausted I just want to go to bed.  So that’s part of it.  And I haven’t even been cruising the web that much, it just seems I’m not having as much fun sitting in front of the computer when I get home as I used to. 

The gaming icons try to look as inviting on the desktop as possible, there’s LoTRO’s little gold ring, and EVE’s moniker, along with AO’s stylized “A” and Warhammer’s coat of arms, but nothing really tempts me to click on them.  I think about clicking on them, and then think to myself that I’d rather be doing something else.  I dunno what else I’d rather be doing, I just know it’s not gaming…

I even tried looking through my piles of games in CD jewel cases and those black DVD boxes, and none of their brightly colored, awesomely illustrated cover art could get much more of a “meh, it was fun, but I’m not up for that right now…”  I think I’ve hit that crappy wall where people keep telling themselves that they want something different without knowing how or what they want to be different.

Along those lines, I keep thinking I should take the plunge with Star Trek Online, if just for the new experience.  But is it really new?  Maybe I’ve become too jaded with all of the various MMO’s I’ve played in the past – so much so that nothing out there will ever capture my imagination the way my first, or even my 2nd and third entry into the MMO gaming space held for me. I hope that’s not the case.

So that means I don’t have any plans, gaming wise, for the weekend.  I guess it’s a good thing the Super Bowl is on, but I really don’t give a hoot about either of the teams playing – if one of the teams isn’t from West of the Rockies (CA, AZ, or WA)., it ain’t worth watching as far as I’m concerned.

I hope you’ve got a little more direction and fun lined up for your weekend – Enjoy!

Key Web (re)Design Objectives

I’ve been working in the web development/coding sector for about seven years or so and I’ve noticed a few recurrent issues that  crop up when creating or redesigning a website:

1. Ease of Use.  Including navigation and readability.  ADA tags/formatting and other helpful tags.  Including the ability to adjust the font size as well. Adherence to information mapping guidelines and “the crow memory” rule I learned way back in high school psychology (basically that people tend to get flustered/confused if more than 7-10 items are presented to them at one time). 
2. Consistency of Presentation. This idea supports ease of use by presenting a predictable and consistent interface throughout the site. This practice also reinforces information transference.  Techniques, such as consistent information mapping, will aid in information retention by “chunking” related design/content objects together.
3. Aesthetically Pleasing. A site that holds interest and is pleasing to look at assists in holding the visitors’ interest longer and encourages them to be regular, repeat visitors.
4. Easy to Maintain. Content should be easy to add/update. If it’s perceived to be too hard to keep the website up-to-date and “fresh” by the appointed staff/admins, the site ends up stagnant – or worse, abandoned.
5. Dynamic.  New and interesting content should be posted on a regular basis in order to retain visitors’ interest and to keep the site fresh. Information on the front page should change weekly (at a minimum).  In order to successfully accomplish this, item 4 (easy to maintain) must be in place.  New content keeps visitors coming back to your site to find out what’s new and news with your site/organization.

I’d be curious to know what other common themes web developers have noticed during their various development cycles.

A Note on “Crow Memory:”

Crow memory was a test to see how many things crows could actually track numerically in their heads.  Using various testing methods, they found that crows could count to and remember up to three items, after that they seemed to just consider items as a group of “many.”  If the tester put out three items, then covered them with a blanket, took two items out – the crow knew there was another item to be removed.  However, doing the same experiment with 5 items and removing four, the crow assumed all items had been removed.  Of course this may all be anecdotal, but it’s the lesson my high school psych. teacher used, and I’ve retained it ever since, some 25+ years later.

“Web 2.0″ vs. “The Web”

So I’ve worked in the web development business since 2003, and have been online using “the ‘net” since before “the web” was even around – and I’m sorry Al, you did not invent the internet, nor the web so please quit taking full credit for something you barely participated in.  

Anyways, in my travels and travails one term keeps popping up: Web two-point-oh.  Which is just silly to me.  As a developer, I’ve used these supposed “2.0″ technologies since the get go, and as far as I’m concerned they’re just part of “the web.”  Nothing special, really.  The only reason these “2.0″ tools weren’t implemented at the birth of the web was that most people at that time were on very slow dial-up and database servers were pretty darn slow – or prohibitively expensive. 

Many, if not all 2.0 features are heavily dependent upon fast, reliable internet and db transactions. It also requires a user base somewhat familiar with web-tech.  Show someone that’s never been on the web a Facebook page and you’re more likely to get a “what’s the point” answer as a “wow, that’s cool” answer.  And who hasn’t been on the web before?  Many, you might even say “Legion.”  I’m talking about senior citizens. 

As an example, my Mom has been on dial-up for over 10-years.  She never goes out “on the web.”  It’s too slow and frustrating to load, so she would login just long enough to get & respond to her emails and then log out.  So this year for Christmas me and my sister went in on a new laptop for Mom and a high-speed internet connection.  With a few e-mailed “exercises” that I sent to introduce her to “the web,” she’s now a webizen and can look things up on Google, YouTube, Amazon, etc.  Things she not only couldn’t do but wouldn’t do before due to the slow & unreliable connectivity she had with dial-up.

So what does this all have to do with “Web 2.0″ vs. “The Web?”  The other day I was “phone screened” for a web development position and one of the questions asked was how well versed I was in “Web 2.0?”  For some reason I drew a blank – even though “Web 2.0″ is practically the only type of development I do, to me it’s all just a part of ”web development,” not some made up vague term that can mean anything from social networking, to cross-server communication, to simple form scripts. 

To me, “Web 2.0″ has always had a negative “buzzword” connotation, and I’ve always avoided using the nebulous term. To me since it’s not only incredibly overused, but also ill-defined.  What exactly and succinctly, does Web 2.0 mean? Nobody seems to be able to answer this question sufficiently, in my opinion.

Hopefully I did well enough on the rest of the screening to warrant an in-person interview where I can redeem myself.  Otherwise I’m half-tempted to send off a quick note about the various techniques and solutions that I’ve used in my career that might fall under the very diffuse umbrella that calls itself “Web 2.0.”  Should I “just wait” or should I send the note with my “better” answer? That is the question…

I hope all is going well in your world and that all your endeavors bring success, Enjoy!

Weekend Report

I was one of the “lucky ones” that had Monday off this week, so I was able to enjoy a long weekend.  I didn’t do too much gaming, although I did peek in on both AO and EVE.  In AO, I’m still coming up to speed on creating implants that I can actually use – it’s a fine balance between the quality of materials you use to make the implant and whether you have the stats to actually use/implant the item after it’s built.

I also spent a lot of time messing around with my jukebox application and trying various streaming technologies – of which none really did what I wanted, so I think I’ll have to figure that one out myself (i.e. code my own). I tried Shoutcast and Vibe, but neither do what I want.  I’ve also looked at Icecast and SAM, but I haven’t actually tried them out yet.

I actually think I may be able to hack Yahoo’s Media Player API in order to do what I want.  I did play around with it for awhile, but the documentation – what little there is – is woefully inadequate.  Basically a list of classes, functions, and modules without any clues as to how to get them to work together… And they appear to be written in JavaScript, which kind of makes sense, since the client needs to be somewhat in control of the situation and not the server-side.

The basic issue is appending to the “play list.”  I’ve tried various play list formats (RSS, M3U, XSPF, etc), and I’m able to append to the various play lists without any issue there.  The issue is getting the player to recognize that the play list has changed – normally it doesn’t, since it reads the list when it first starts playing and does NOT “poll” the list for changes. 

If you “refresh” the playlist on the player (using various methods), it will see the new additions, but it will also stat playing the whole list over again.  Basically, I want the “active” playlist to be dynamically controlled by the web client, without having to “re-start” the player every time the list changes.  Sounds like streaming, right? 

However most of the streaming suites I’ve looked at either have their own (bloated) clients without any other API’s (that I can find) in order to make a simple, custom web front-end to interface with the streaming server. Oh well, I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to find some kind of solution eventually… YMP is so far looking like the best shot, but we’ll see.

I also tried making my jukebox site “prettier.”  The way it is now it looks like a giant Excel spreadsheet, with some navigation at the top to jump to artists alphabetically.  But I wanted to make something that more resembles an actual jukebox, so I’ve got the CSS done to make a tri-column, two-row presentation of the information, each “cell” containing the cover art and song list.

Anyways, it still needs A LOT of work, but I do like where it’s heading now.  Basically the functionality is 90% there, and the aesthetics are about 20% done.  So hopefully I’ll have both completed sometime this year – It’s just a “spare-time” kind of fun project, so no rush on it, and I only work on it occasionally, so that’s that.

On top of all that, I also had a router failure in my LAN, so that was fun.  I’m currently using a really old DLink that I had laying around as a replacement, but it’s definitely been sluggish compared to my other one – and of course I forgot to configure it properly for my web server, so I can’t get to it from outside the LAN for now.  I’ll probably be picking up one of these today (or something similar). I’d prefer to find one that includes an addressable USB port – we’ll see. [NOTE:  I ended up splurging and getting the next model up.]

I hope y’all had a great weekend, and that this week develops into something great! Enjoy!

Midwinter Nostalgia – Anarchy Online

So this weekend I downloaded (again) Anarchy Online.  I used to play AO quite a lot “way back when,” and with the perpetually “Coming Soon” graphics update, I thought I’d take another peek in and see how things were going.  I was esp. glad to see that I could sign up for Shadowlands for $5 a month, since I think the SL Newbie zone has a FAR better layout and design to (re)introduce players to the fairly complex gameplay that is AO.  The other very nice touch with AO (and I remember them doing this back when I first joined) is that after you’ve bee in-game for awhile, a mentor will show up and ask you if you have any questions or if you need help figuring things out. This mentor is an actual person, not just an NPC, so it’s a very nice and personal touch that makes AO stand out from the crowd.

Anyways, I’ve been playing an Engineer since I’m a pet-class freak   My last stint in AO I played a Metaphysicist, so I wanted a little change of pace.  The early leveling seems to be going much faster than it used to – pretty much par for the course there, I believe all older MMO’s have made this kind of adjustment.  Now I’m trying to remember how to make implants and make sure the ones I do make I can actually use.  I accidentally bought a bot that was a couple levels above me, which wouldn’t be a problem if I had ‘toon fitted with the appropriate implants – oy! What a wonderfully complicated game!  I hope the graphics update is much closer to the “sooner” side of the spectrum than “later.”

Hope your week is going swimmingly, keep warm! and Enjoy!

Crazy Busy – Does it ever let up?

Well it has been super busy, which seems to have become my “norm state,” and I’m not too happy about it   Oh well, it makes the time fly by, but I’m getting to the age where I don’t necessarily find that to be a good thing

I did do one new thing this week.  Actually it’s a pretty old thing, but that’s neither here nor there – I downloaded Anarchy Online (again) and used their $5/month “Shadowlands” subscription model (since I actually like the Shadowlands’ newbie zone).  I started up a Metaphysicist, since that’s what I used to play way back “in the day.”  But I found that I’m going to have to do some research on how the skills work again and what to train when etc.  I might also roll up an engineer and a ‘crat, since I like “pet-classes” and I remember having quite a bit of fun the last time I played those classes.  

I’ve also been peeking in on LOTRO and keeping up my EVE training. But not much new going on in either of those worlds for me right now… 

In other news, I’ve actually been working on an Enochian web-site that creates the various enochain tables “on-the-fly” and allows the user to re-size the graphics somewhat so that they can create custom sized print-outs.  It’s almost complete, but I need to write up a few instructions for how to use the controls and set up the printer in order to get the print outs to look correct.  Some of the table coloring is using CSS “background colors,” which normally do NOT print, unless you tell the printer to do so.

Anyways, that’s about all that’s going on, I hope the new year has been treating you well!  Enjoy!

New Month, New Year, New Decade

Well, I survived the New Year and I hope you did too!  2009 was the second full calendar year for the blog, and it has been doing far better than I thought it would since it’s just the meandering thoughts of some middle-aged gamer. It’s definitely been interesting and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon, short of some kind of emergency or epiphany of some kind. 

So let get right into December’s wrap up of the stats.  A very cool thing happened in December, I got a new “Busiest Day” for the blog back on December 22, with 301 views that day – due to my article about making your own Enochain Tables. Thus dethroning a day back in November 2007 when I blogged about Hellgate London’s “mini game.”  This helped to bring December up to my second best all-time month for views, at 1,566 – with Nov. ‘07 still holding onto its #1 crown of 2,054 views.

Top Posts For December were:

1. Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with 145 views, far ahead of any other article
2. ScreenShots with 62 views, mainly for my EVE Screenies
3. EVE Multibox Mining with 49 views, and I may want to run an updated article about this now that I have much more experience doing this
4. EVE 2009 with 40 views
5. Side quests – Dragon Age with 37 views

2009 Stats

1. Gardening Bug with 1,335 views, honestly I think it comes up in Google because some of the plants mentioned in the article are wildly popular, and people land here somewhat by mistake – oh well, maybe it will expose them to something new
2. Enochian Tablets… Building Your Own with 994 views, This article has suddenly been gaining momentum over the past couple of months, and I would bet it becomes my number one viewed article by next year – unless I come up with something else wonderfully spectacular, LOL
3. ScreenShots with 970 views, Everybody loves pictures – esp. when most of them are really cool spaceships!

After that there’s a huge drop-off in views to number 4 at only 427 views, which has to do with EVE Missions. In fact there’s a group of four EVE related articles in the range of 300-400 views each, and if I totalled them together it adds up to 1332 views for those EVE articles.

Over the course of the year I had a total of 10,050 views. That’s WAY up from the previous year’s 3,870.  So I’m pretty happy about that, but sets the bar at 20,100 for 2010. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the momentum.

As for gaming in the coming year, for the short term it looks like my “Big 3″ are going to remain my “go-to” games: EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Warhammer; Age of Reckoning. I’m sure I will dabble in Star Trek.  The only other games I’m closely watching aren’t likely to make it out this year; GW2 and D3. (In fact, I think both have already been officially pushed to 2011 ).

And according to “The Singularity” author, Ray Kurzweil (inventer of the most advanced keyboard ever! among other things), we should see AI “for reals” late in this decade. So that should be quite exciting, or scary, or both   “You shall be assimilated!” Oh wait, that part doesn’t happen until sometime between 2030 and 2050…

I hope 2010 finds us all in better circumstances than before – Enjoy!

10K Views this year!

As of sometime late last night the blog crossed a milestone. I had over 10K views in a year!  This is the second full year of the blog, and last year I barely scrimped up ~3.5K views, so I’m pretty happy about getting over 10K this year.

Not much else going on this week – I’m hoping to actually re-do some of my Enochian Tablet graphics to look nicer and to create sets with the letters on the boards (both English and Enochian).  I’m even thinking I might be able to do it programatically through PHP logic and CSS overlays – we’ll see - I may have to use some kind of MySQL as well to associate the English/Enochain letters.  Probably a bit  ambitious, but it could be fun.

I hope the new year finds you well and comfortable, Enjoy!