Posting is probably going to slow down/come to a complete stop for a while.
That’s what I’d usually say, except for I’ve got a bunch of pre-written posts lined up for the next couple weeks. Thank goodness for WordPress!
So yeah, business as usual. Some things you read may be out-of-date though, as I wrote the bulk of October’s posts in September.
I love WordPress and all, because it really facilitates managing this blog. Every post is sorted and categorized and easily searchable. Updating takes only as long as I need to write and do a quick once-over for typos (though maybe I should be doing two…) because I don’t have to worry about doing any of that HTML business anymore. It’s wonderfully easy.
Maybe even too easy.
See, I’ve noticed a trend in my blogging lately, and it’s not a good one. WordPress gives me the ability to write up a post and set a date for it to go live. So I just pop it in there and forget about it. Only, sometimes I schedule a post that I’m not quite done with. I intend to go back to it, but occasionally forget and then it shows up incomplete, and that’s just plain bad.
Only twice has an entry gone live with the body text unfinished, and I’m trying really hard to remember to set them as drafts when I’m not done writing. The problem there is that I have a rather massive amount of drafts piling up that I’ve all but abandoned. The sad truth is that these will likely never see the light of day.
The more common thing I do is write up the entirety a post and then leave any image-related work to a later date because while I do generally like the fruits of my labor, making banners and finding suitable images can be a pain in the butt. I could just as easily stop posting images along with the stuff I write, but I like to at least have something there to add a splash of colour and be more visually appealing than just black words on a white background.
All that said, I guess my point is just that I want to say sorry if you’ve been experiencing posts that are clearly still under construction. I’ll try to be less lazy from now on.
You know, maybe that post title is a little too harsh. I don’t really do filler these days, so it’s not like I need to poke fun at it the way I used to back when basically every post was filler.
As for the subject at hand, I wanted to take a moment to check in and talk about how the Year of Nintendo 64 is going. It’s largely a personal project, so it’s not like I’m taking notes and sharing this stuff with everyone I know. I’m not even committed to writing a full article about every game I play. That said, I still want to sort of chart a course for the rest of the year here, as a reminder to keep me on task, if nothing else.
I spent January rounding up a few new games that I’ll be mixing into the lineup of games that I already own. Truth be told, I didn’t actually own enough “beatable” 64 games to get me through the year, so making some acquisitions was a must. I reserve the right to change this at any time, but here’s the breakdown of what I’ll be playing each month:
As you can see, I’ve come up slightly short. I do have a few other games that I could pop in there, but they’re either so short (Pokémon Snap) or I’ve played them recently enough (Banjo-Tooie) that I don’t feel like they’re a good fit for the project. They may still get some play, but they won’t be the main games. What really differentiates them? Nothing, I guess. My goal is one a month, I suppose that doesn’t mean I couldn’t play two in a month.
You know what? Nuts to it. I’mma pop some quarterly titles in there, because it’s an excuse to make another list. I know that the first quarter is almost up, but I just completed Super Mario 64 DS, and I’m willing to count that. Maybe I’ll play the original again anyway.
There we go. Now if only I had social media’d this thing it might be more than me just concocting a weird excuse to play old games. I guess it’s still not too late, but I mean, we’re already in March. The hype phase is over. Whatever. My compulsion is to put words on a page, not to try to force people to read those words.
I hope you like Dark Souls, because I sure do. Also I’ve already written out enough weekly “journal entries” to get us through the month, so you’re going to be reading about it at least for the rest of the year. It’s funny, because I didn’t really like it at first, but now I’m totally enthralled with it and it’s pretty much on my mind all the time. Kind of like what happened with Shadow of the Colossus, only Dark Souls is not a game I can just casually clear in a weekend.
So that’s happening. I’ve also had an article ready to post for like a full month now, but I keep neglecting to do a banner for it so it continues wallow in Draft status.
Also I’ll be doing a Top X Video Games 2013 type of feature soon (probably in January), because I know those are what people come here for.
That’s all. Just a status update today. I have nothing else to say.
I learned the hard way this morning, that my body will no longer tolerate me eating like a young man. Back in the day, I used to pack away as much of whatever I wanted, and all would be good. I might get full after a while, but hey, full is good.
Last night, I ate two polish sausage hot dogs, half a thing of fries, a few peanut butter cookies, and a big ol’ root beer. This sounds like a standard meal for me, and I figured it would be as much. But this morning I woke up with the absolute worst feeling in the pit of my stomach. Also I was still burping out the smell of hot dogs. It was a horrible, disgusting morning.
I look back now, and shudder to think of the disaster I averted by opting to not get that third hot dog.
All this to say… there’s not a lot going on. Who would have thought that my entire schtick was buying silly crap and then writing about it? Turns out that I don’t actually do anything interesting, I just used to make the “most” of my disposable income. I’m sitting here, racking my brain for something I’m interested enough to write about at length, but I’m at a total loss. So stories about hot dog burps are the best you’re gonna get right now.
I suppose I could start playing Fallout: New Vegas and regale you with tall tales about my further adventures in post-apocalyptic America, but there are just so many other games I’d rather be playing right now (and honestly I think I’d rather go back to Skyrim before starting New Vegas). Also, I feel like I’m falling back into the habit of only writing about video games, and I really want to pull back away from that. Yes, video games are pretty much all I do, but I’d sure like to be able to at least pretend for a while that I have other interests.
I was poking around the site today, just lookin’ at stuff, and noticed that the Features page is full of content, but there aren’t any actual links to that content. So I went and made all the Steve Articles and GameFAQs submissions available to read. and I do recommend that you check out those Steve Articles. They’re pretty surreal, and a nice reminder of an age long ago when other people would occasionally contribute to the site.
I was going to go ahead and link all the Chat Radios, but they’re stuck in some really ugly pages. I’m not too sure if I want to leave them as-is or go through the trouble of converting them into a nicer template. If you want to read them as they are, just follow this link. They’re also recommended reads, as they’re pretty funny.
As for the CD Archive? Well, I refuse to give up on it, but I’m certainly not going to bother updating it anytime soon. I haven’t linked in the pages that exist yet, but I guess I could go do that now. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.
That’s it for today. Just admin stuff. Tomorrow I’ll make a post about video games! But I’ll warn you now, it’s gonna be more of a diary entry for me than anything else.
I just wrote 1600 words about chips. Glob help us all.
And because I can’t justify that as a blog post, here’s a preview image I drew.
I’m also kind of excited about Halloween.
So you may have noticed that there’s something different about this here blog. New glasses? A haircut? Nope! I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to the Weaver II theme, which is fairly close to the old theme, Weaver.
Well, I suppose the sequel should look kinda similar.
Anyway, I’ve also gone and painted the site in autumny leaf colours. Which was my original intent when I logged in today. The theme change just kind of happened as a side effect. I’m not sure about some of the specific colour choices, but I love the overall fall motif. If you can point out a change or two that might enhance it further, please don’t hesitate to leave a suggestion in the comments. I’m still tweaking things here and there, so it’s not like you’d be raining on my parade or anything.
While I was all mucking about with the visual options, I also managed to fart out a little article. I still need to proof it, and it should be up on Wednesday at the latest. Spoilers: it’s a short album review, so don’t get too excited.
I’ve been trying to focus on writing articles lately, and I think it’s been working out well enough. I published five of the things in just under a month, and I don’t feel like quality even took a hit for the increased pace. Not that I’d set the quality bar very high to begin with.
That said, I think that the article blitz is over. There are still a few in the works, in various states of completion, but I don’t have any sort of set time frame for finishing and launching them. I’ll probably write a thing about Picross e2 next week, since that’ll likely be what I do this weekend. Will there be enough material for a whole second article? Who knows? Not I.
Anyway, the reason I logged into WordPress is mostly to put into words my bewilderment at my own incompetence. What incompetence, you ask? My total inability to fish in Animal Crossing: New Leaf with the sound turned off. Weird, I know. As someone who has endlessly talked up how much time he spends fishing in that game, it’s striking to me how bad I am at it without the audio cue.
If you’ve never played Animal Crossing, here’s how it works: You equip a fishing rod, walk up to the water, and press the A button to cast. If there’s a fish swimming around (represented by a black shadow), it may notice your lure and start nibbling at it. It’ll swim up to the lure up to five times, making little “tick” sound effects, each time with a random chance of actually biting. When a fish does bite, your bobber is pulled underwater and a big “bloop” sound effect plays. Depending on the rarity of the fish, you have about second or less to press the A button again to land the fish.
Sounds really easy, but you’ve gotta have a pretty good reflex, especially with the rarer fish. The problem, it seems, is that while I can generally land fish pretty well while the sound is turned on, I just can’t do it without the audio cue. I was playing on the bus this morning while listening to Retronauts and couldn’t catch a fish to save my life. Compounding the issue were the facts that it was early in the morning and raining, which are both conditions that rarer fish will appear under. So not only was I unable to catch anything more than a few worthless barbel steed, but I was most likely missing out on some rare catches too (rare fish usually sell for lots of cash).
Oh well. It’s mostly just interesting (to me) that I respond faster to aural than visual cues. I would never have thought this, because my hearing isn’t exactly great to begin with. And that ends my little ramble for today.
Hey I totally haven’t even thought to mention that I’m now on the Twitter. Yep. I still think it’s pretty stupid, but I’ve officially joined the legion of twits.
Please follow me @TheRyanDS
It’s mostly a way to push articles and anything I upload to YouTube, but I do occasionally tweet some unique stuff. Nothing really worth seeing, but just stupid thoughts that I feel an unusual need to share. I suppose that’s pretty much the point though, so I guess I’m right at home there.
