06.09.08

Policy Update: Trackbacks

Posted in Rants, Site News at 6:44 am

Due to an inordinate amount of trackback spam coming very close to getting through the comment filters, I’ve decided to disable trackbacks along all posts. This shouldn’t affect most of you but unfortunately it means that anyone who links to any of my posts won’t get an automatic link-back. It’s not necessary, it’s one of those nice-to-have features, but when the amount of “trackback awaiting approval” messages coming in starts to outnumber the real, important e-mail I need, that’s when I take action.

Catch you all later, then.

06.04.08

Balancing Act

Posted in Site News, Writing at 5:39 am

So, I’m working on getting a post together, but I’ve been… well, what I’ve been doing lately isn’t worth talking about and what I’m doing in terms of games and anime gets shown on the LJ. Just hold out for a little while longer, please.

Though I can say that writing has resumed on the Blueberries draft.

05.26.08

The Enemy’s Gate

Posted in Site News, Writing at 7:03 am

Good morning, everyone. I hope that, for those of you who have today off, you’re enjoying the day of rest and are duly reflective of the sacrifices made by the military to bring us this day of peace.

Today is a weird day for the blog. I don’t want to say that anything is over, per se, but I do want to indicate some news that might trouble you. As of today, I’m no longer doing weekday or daily updates to the blog or LJ. Updates will return to their random, unpredictable, pre-2007 schedule. I will try to get at least one or two posts in a week, though, across both sites; whether or not I manage that remains to be seen.

Why I’m ceasing the regular schedule is a valid question, but unfortunately it doesn’t have a single, all-encompassing answer. The biggest reason is that I don’t think the blog is well-served by having single-line “nothing to report today!” posts for weeks at a time when the world is kicking my ass, and venting about it on the blog– while it certainly would be entertaining and cathartic– would probably be extremely counterproductive. I lucked out last year in that the jobs I worked at for the majority of the year allowed me enough free time to write for the blog over lunch; that’s not been the case since about, oh, March.

More than that, I’m not thrilled that I went to so much trouble to set up this month’s Essay Week only to have forces beyond my control destroy its purpose. I had meant for it to be a point where I would have everything under control so that I could concentrate on the novel draft; that kinda didn’t work out, as you know. Still, in the end, I did have some good luck with games, so I don’t think May went nearly as poorly as April did.

As it stands, I’m thinking that I might do this: The two sites will still have segregated content for now, and I’ll try to update both sites once per week or more. Any monthly or special-occasion posts will continue to be made as per usual; I’m trying to relax more here until June, so you might see more Game Clear notices here before the Game and Anime reports go up on the LJ next week. Who knows; perhaps after summer’s over, I’ll be able to go back to daily or semi-daily updates. We’ll see.

Anyway, I want to talk briefly about the other reason this is happening now. I tend to push myself, as you all know; this past week I managed to finish three games by Sunday morning, and the thought that consumed me for most of Sunday afternoon was, “All right, how can I make this four?” I had, at the time, completely forgotten that my goal was to clear three games. I was ignoring the fact that there were a couple of games I wanted to play, which I knew I would not be able to finish over the weekend’s remains, in favor of starting a new game that would be sufficiently short. In the end I decided to call it a good weekend, see Indy, and start watching through Season 2 of Veronica Mars. All were excellent ideas (though VM was certainly one of the highlights). I have a few loose ends to tie up today, but overall I can relax and not stress myself further before I go to work, where other people will do that for me.

Still, writing this has eased me a little bit. Writing has always been very good for my state of mind. I hope that this explains the sudden and uncharacteristic relative silence out of this blog for the foreseeable future to a sufficient degree as to ease your mind as well.

I’ll catch you all… eventually.

05.21.08

Strange Irony

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Site News at 8:46 pm

I want to make brief mention of my enjoyment of Wii Fit, We Ski, and Penny Arcade, yet Twitter is down. I recognized this fact, internalized it, and calmly went about other business. Then I decided that I wanted to complain that Twitter is down, but did not feel the need to post a full entry on it. So I opened up Twitterriffic and stared at it for a good ten seconds before it really sank in. It was one of those weird “the phone isn’t working, so I can’t call the phone company to come and fix the phone” moments. Which leads me to believe that I ought to finally quit Twitter.

As long as I’ve got you here, then, let it be known that We Ski is pure liquid awesome pressed on a disc.

05.20.08

D’oh

Posted in Bailout, Gaming, Movies, Site News at 7:36 pm

Okay. It appears that in my rush to get through TWEWY– and believe me, it was a rush– I forgot that I wrote up a post over lunch. So instead of that post– which was about Iron Man– you get this, and the Game Clear notice that’s about to go up. I really am sorry, folks; I’m not usually one to space on this sort of thing, but as work is calming down (proof of this being that I really did get the post prepared over lunch) I should be getting more verbose very soon. Let’s just stick the Iron Man post on Thursday and see what I work out for tomorrow– I’m thinking I might watch NCIS now that the DVR’s built up a good buffer, but we shall see, huh?

Game Clear notice imminent…

05.16.08

Party Lines

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 5:28 pm

……..right, so I’ve finally overused the excuse of “no time to write”. Fine.

Today’s my birthday, so you get no post just yet. This was a rough week, and today’s celebration(s!) took the majority of the day. Over the weekend I’ll collect my thoughts and relax. So until then.

05.14.08

Rebound

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 6:13 pm

Yeah. Long story short: don’t expect any long entries this week. Hopefully over the weekend I can relax and get my thoughts together for something substantial here.

On an unrelated note, I wish the best of luck to the folks I know who are making some changes. You, as always, know who you are, and also as always know that you’re in my thoughts.

05.12.08

Bounce

Posted in Bailout, Site News at 6:48 pm

Sorry for the false restart today, folks. I got a little overwhelmed at work over the past week and a half, and have needed as much relaxation time as I can get. That kinda meant losing myself in my current games list, so unfortunately there’s nothing for me to write about right now. If all goes well there might be a piece up at Netjak soon, but that’s about all I can promise for this week. Beyond that, I’ll do what I can.

Incidentally, absolutely no writing got done last week and that seriously pisses me off since that was the entire point of Essay Week this time around.

05.03.08

Peace Out

Posted in Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News at 6:01 am

Well, folks, by the time you guys see this, I’ll be offline. I expect to see it through to the end, though if there’s an abject emergency– say, someone’s body parts are no longer all present and accounted for– give me a call. I hope nothing like that happens. Anyway, I’ll post on Sunday morning to let you know how it went.

Ciao.

05.01.08

A Day Off

Posted in Rants, Site News at 5:05 am

(Incidentally, since the upgrade of WordPress last week I’d noticed that the cut mechanism I used had kinda disappeared. What’s worse is that I couldn’t find the plugin I’d used before– its site still existed but the link gave a 404. So, I found a different one, hacked it to my purposes, and there we go, good as new. If you see any other weirdness, please let me know.)

I’ve made mention over the past week or so about a phenomenon known as Shutdown Day, which this year falls on this coming Saturday, May 3rd. According to the site, the project’s goal is to see how people’s lives are deeply intertwined with the technology they rely on on a daily basis, and to see if individuals can thrive without the high-tech tools we’ve come to take more or less for granted. While I think it’s an admirable goal, and I am participating, ( their reasons are not my own… » )

So, Saturday, I’ll probably have an automated post up saying I’m offline, and I likely won’t be answering e-mails or messages. I’ll take phone calls but only if they’re absolute, complete and total end-of-the-world emergencies. No net, no television, no movies, no music. Nothing going on beyond some reading and writing. As scary as it sounds to me– because, despite my protests, I’m very much aware of how much I lean on my tech gear– I’m really looking forward to it, mostly for the peace involved in it.

When I was in school, and this is something I just recently realized, I liked sitting in my back yard and reading. The sound of the wind in the trees was something I didn’t notice back then, but I remember now. Every time I get back to my parents’ house in the summer, I listen for that sound. When I’m at my house, over the summer, I sometimes hear it. Hopefully if the weather cooperates on Saturday– it’s set for a possible rainstorm– I’ll be able to hear that sound that brings me such calmness. Even if it does rain, that will be fine too– I love the sound of rain, too.

Besides. Computers aren’t the only things that need rebooting once in a while.