Fancy Pants

Just kidding. I have pretty regular pants on right now. But look at this website! It’s pretty fancy now!

Um, yeah. I decided to move over to WordPress because it’s easier. If you visited during the course of the day, you may have seen this space filled with all sorts of sweary words, because figuring everything out (without reading any documentation) was a little tough. But it’s all good now!

Now there’s just the matter of moving stuff over. I doubt it’s gonna happen though. 6 years later I still haven’t moved all the Angelfire content to my own webspace. Oh well. We’ll see. For now though, just enjoy the article I uploaded below this post (assuming you’re on the home page).

All aboard the Learning Train!


This is broken now that I’ve moved to WordPress! Now come back in a few hours and see if that greeting has changed. I made up (re: stole) a dealie that makes it change based on the time of day. Hopefully it works right.

The point of this exercise -aside from seeing how little function you can get from as many lines of code as possible- is to play with JavaScript a bit today. The code I used is really not complicated at all, but it took me almost half an hour to get that greeting to the point where it would show up on the page. I don’t much care for JavaScript; I cannot foresee any reason why I would use it. Alas, to learn XSLT properly, one must also know XML. And to learn XML, a firm grasp on JavaScript is highly recommended. So today I’m learning about JavaScript. It’s going slowly.

I don’t really think that it’s useless or anything. It’s just like, I’m reading and there’s these cool things you can do but then I turn around and realize that there’s no reason to. Sure I could put a self-updating time stamp on the site, but why bother? You’re probably reading this on a computer, and the time and date are right there on the bottom-right corner of your screen. I can do algebra on my page with JavaScript, but I cannot imagine any situation where it would be useful. Even if/else is just if/then’s dropout cousin for webpage content. I’d make stuff up just for the sake of learning it, but really, that would amount to making homework for myself. Mind you, I’m in the JavaScript tutorial equivalent of kindergarten, so maybe there’s better stuff beyond the horizon.

Let it all out

I’ve been up all night learning how to integrate XML into my website. The short version is that I don’t think it’s going to work.

The long answer is a little more complicated. XML will work fine for my article pages. The only thing that it’ll inconvenience is the little “related” tab I have on the navi bar, but I barely fill that out properly anyway. I still have a long way to go before I really understand this stuff, but it seems like it will not work at all for the blog. Essentially, all that goes in the XML files is the body text, and HTML tags don’t work there, so I can’t type up a post in my blog.xml and call it good. I’d have to go add a new set of tags to the xsl file too, and that makes the process slightly more complicated than the copy-paste-replace routine I do now.

But maybe I’m missing something? It doesn’t look like it, but I still have a lot of reading to do. I managed to mock up a new xsl index page, and I did it all through trial and error. Just took an example page, and started figuring out how it worked. That’s exactly the same way I learned to do HTML (which is why my coding skills are so limited).

In any case, I’ll be using XML for my upcoming project. It’s still a week or so from launch, which means I’m way behind, but I’ll have plenty of time to work on it next weekend. Hopefully it works well. For now though, bed.

It’s been such a long time

*ACHOO*

Augh, this place is absolutely covered in dust! I know I kind of abandoned it, but the maid’s been on payroll all this time. Did she think I wouldn’t pop in every now and again to see if it’s keeping up? Oh, she is so getting fired!

Poor housekeeping aside, I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I’ve been getting all nostalgic about how I used to love this site back in the day, and I’ve been considering coming back to it, if only for myself. Well of course it would be for myself. I mean, why would anyone still be checking for updates? I miss writing. I miss being creative. I miss having an outlet to bitch about all the things I dislike without anyone to make me feel bad about my opinions. Maybe I should blog again.

I also have a lot (well, a couple hours a week) more free time on my hands these days, and once I’ve caught up on my video game backlog (which has grown to an epic size) there will be nothing to do but blog. And play old games again. Because I have no more money for games. But that’s another story.

Anyway, yeah, I think I’m gonna come back to blogging. I just hate not having a written record of what’s going on in my life and my mind, and diaries are for little girls. So blog I shall!

Ooh baby, I’m a fool for you

So! Hard drive enclosure get! Also it was fairly cheap. I was expecting $70-$100, got it for $45. Which is still more than I’d like to pay for a glorified cable into my computer, but whatever. The new compy is now set up to feed on the delicious informations held within the old hard drive, so I’ve got access to all my old crap.

That said, I think that in keeping with the spirit of moving old stuff to a new system, I should really get on with moving all the old website stuff over from Angelfire. I beleive I said I was going to start doing that some months ago, and kind of forgot. Or got overwhelmed. There’s a lot more to go than I’d expected, so it’s going to be quite a task, but it needs to get done. And just moving the stuff over isn’t so bad, but updating the layouts and making sure all the links are live is a huge pain. Makes me wish I was coding this site in something more efficient than bare-bones HTML. Oh well!

Yeah, that’s about all. I moved a couple articles over tonight. Not enough that I’m ready to make that second “Ryan’s Favourite Articles” post though. That’ll be next week maybe?

Money’s not an issue

So I got me a new compy, and it’s quite slick. Not a a top-of-the-line model, mind you, but more than good enough to suit my needs. Those needs being running a crap-ass blog and playing Borderlands. Also Portal sometimes, but mostly Borderlands.

The (very temporary) downside to all this is that not everything is quite in place yet and I currently do not have access to my old hard drive. This means it’s gonna be about a week or so until I’m back at peak efficiency. Of course peak efficiency isn’t much more than what I’ve got going now, it basically just means I have my entire music library to listen to whilst I blog, as opposed to the… (let me see here)… three CDs I’ve bothered to rip again.

In any case, here’s a picture of the new beast. Though really, it’s less than half the size of the last machine, so “beast” probably isn’t the right word. Also it’s a jillion times quieter too, so I can leave it on and stuff downloading overnight. Uh, nothing that I’m not supposed to be downloading, of course.

Look at all that space! I actually have a desk now! Also I can move my mouse! Hooray!

But cheering aside, I was going to go to work on moving more old articles over from the Angelfire mess, but then realized I no longer had access to the files! Silly me. Oh well, I’ll be uploading flashy new versions of stuff in less than a week’s time, so stay tuned. Also, that Dove deodorant is totally not mine. I use the manly stuff. For men.

That kind of love

Here’s a shocker: I’ve updated the long-neglected CD archive section of the site. Yeah, thought I’d given up on it, didn’t you? I’ll admit it was (and still is) a monumental task, but I’m feeling like it’s time to git ‘r done!

Ahem.

You can go here to find out more. Gold letters are ones that are recently updated. Yes there is only one currently; it’s been a long, slow process, and I don’t plan to increase speed too much. I do hope to have at least all currently available letter updated and three more done by the end of the year though. Remind me about that in November too please, cause I’m damn sure gonna forget.

So yeah. Mostly I just didn’t want that condom dispenser label to be the first thing people saw anymore. And that kinda failed because this post wasn’t nearly meaty enough. Oh, irony!

Love me like you’re gonna die

So things are getting better around here. I think I’ve finally got Torrential Equilibrium back to where it was pre-crash. Not that I’d been adding much lately, but the archive of old stuff is still all there for you to browse. I’ll take this opportunity to point out some of my personal favourite articles for you, in case you’re newish and need somewhere to start. Me, I just like going back to some of the better ones and appreciating how much love I used to put into this site. Maybe they’re not the most eloquent or best written articles, but they all hold a special place in my heart for one reason or another.

Nintendo Surprise – Unbeknownst to us at the time, this would start a long-running chain of surprise bag articles. Also, it’s summertime and I’m getting all nostalgic about that particular summer, like I always do.

Animal Crossing – It’s not really new games journalism, per se, but it is an article about a game that isn’t a true review. More of a short story written with the help of a video game. Oh fuck, I wrote a fanfic and didn’t even realize it.

World’s biggest McDonald’s – Maybe this is outdated now, but it was the biggest in 2004. And it had both an F-Zero arcade machine and a Bill Cosby standee. I hope it hasn’t changed a bit.

Dick Turtle surprise bag – Dick turtle is kind of a celebrity here at TE. I know I scour every dollar store I see in hopes of one day meeting him again. The day I do will be commemorated with a parade and fireworks. And cheerleaders.

Mickey’s Ultimate Challenge – I honestly believe this is one of the best articles on the site. It’s not often that I’m proud of my work, but I think this one is really great.

Makin’ pancakes with Shadowman – Another one I really love. There are lots of food-related articles on the site, and this is the standout one for me. Mostly because it was something I could just have fun and be creative with, as opposed to the others which were mostly reviews with lots of fluff.

Chat Radio – Of all my featurettes, Chat Radio is my favourite. It’s too bad that it can sometimes be boring and hard to understand. It’s the format’s fault. I really hope to do another one soon. That or get with the times and make a podcast.

So actually, looking back through the archives, there’s a lot of stuff in there that I really like. Almost wish I had more drive to create more crazy stuff like this. It’s just a shame I don’t do anything out of the ordinary anymore. I can only justify so many game reviews in a row. Anyway, back to my point, consider this “Ryan’s favourite articles Part 1” because I’m definitely gonna have to point out more, but all in one blog post seems excessive. Maybe next week or something. Oh! And now I have an even better idea! But I’ll keep it a secret for now…

I like your beard

You may have noticed that everything was blown up here for most of May. You may not have. I’m suspecting most are in the second category. Anyway, yeah. Host exploded in the most awful way, and only now are the pieces being picked up. I’ll slowly be restoring the blog and articles portion, but Coozy For Hire, well it doesn’t look like it’ll be quite as easy to pick up where we left off over there. For now, all we’ve got here on TE is this index page and the 404. I’m lazy, what can I say? But things should be back to normal around next week. And by that, I mean all the old content will be back and I won’t be posting anything new for weeks at a time.

I must say though, that it was nice to have a real excuse for not paying any attention to my website. Like a little vacation from feeling bad about not working on my little pet project.

You can see anything you want

Okay. Looking back, I only published three articles last year. Ouch. All-time low there. Well, four, technically, but I’ve only gotten to putting up the article version of the 23 Days of Materialism 09, even though it was written and posted in it’s entirety last year. So that one could go either way. The worst part is that I had planned to write twice as many, but they take so long to research and write that it’s really hard to put aside the time to actually do them.

So what I’m thinking here, is that maybe from now on I need to concentrate on writing shorter, more focused pieces. I used to be really proud of my word counts, but in complete honesty, a really embarassing portion of those huge counts are padding. I’m like a JRPG developer, adding in a bunch of extra fluff to justify that “70 hours of gameplay!” bullet point on the box.

You know what I mean. So yeah. So my new year’s resolution (which I just came up with this morning) is to write at least 10 articles this year. Not that anyone reads them or anything. Which begs the question of why I even bother. Well, hits are decent right now, but last year’s have taken quite a dip from 2008’s numbers, which is a bit different from the comic, which peaked in 07 and is spiraling downwards as we put up more and more filler each week.

On an interesting note, the highest concentration of hits for this site come from Facebook users.

So yeah. I’m hoping that 2010 will be a good year for my websites. Of course, that’s what I hoped last January and then things just went to Hell. It doesn’t bode well that my first post of the year is thirteen days in, either. Oh well. Fingers crossed!