2009 is ending...as is the decade...

...I've been a bad bloggist because it's difficult for me to devote time and energy to this blog when so many other things are going on. In my current day-to-day structure, if I'm attending class full-time, I do not have time to blog, ever. I have a wife, son, job, real writing, and I'm into games and sports, so this blog is easily cast aside, which sucks. I want to do this M-F, but it's just not working out w/ my school aspirations.

I'll try to find a way to change that. I'd toyed with the idea of writing several posts at a time over the weekend, but the fact is that there are other ways I'd like to spend my weekend. I may give that another shot, but we'll see.

Either way, since I have no classes for the next month, I'm back.

It's an exciting time to be me, though. I've got some things cooking, on a few different professional fronts, as well as some collaborative work that may happen, and I'm pretty pumped. I'm also pleased to report that sales of my book have increased with the holiday season, which shocked me quite a bit. I guess that some feel that Christmas is the best time to read about God betraying man. Who knows? Either way, thanks, and GO BUY ANOTHER NOW!!! It's available in both book form ($15) and ebook ($1.25).

I don't have a ton of time today, but I wanted to remind people that I wrote a reasonably decent novel, and Tony and I have a couple podcasts coming up. We're recording the first one next weekend, the day after Xmas. We'll do a little 'what's new?' followed by a ton of discussion about the best games of 2009, and close with the best games of the 00s (the 'aughts,' as we're supposed to call this clusterfuck of a decade.) We are soliciting nominations, so please, either leave 'em in the comments of this post or any next week, or hit me up with 'em on Twitter!

The day after New Year, we'll be recording a 2010 preview, and I'm asking for the same info, though not just yet.

Anyway, I'll be back with a lot more next week, but lemme know what were your best games of 2009 were, as well as what were your best of the 2000s!

-Blaine

It's time to fuck off

Sorry about not posting yesterday, but until you cats start mailing me cash, I need to yield my time to my actual 'job' job. I was running all over campus all day yesterday, so time was rather pinched. It was good to actually move around a lot and get a bit of a work-out.

Anyway, I've also been devoting a lot of time to prepping for tomorrow's podcast. We'll be rampaging through all the non-shit games from Tokyo Game Show, and very generously sharing our unfiltered opinions. We'll be taking any requests for games to include until Saturday evening.

I am horribly tired right now, so I'm not going to post a ton today. It's been a brutally busy week, and I've been running myself ragged.

So, what's been going on? Well, I had some really tough exams Monday & Wednesday, I was sick Tuesday, then ran my ass off for work yesterday. I've also not been sleeping much, and dieting does weird things to my brain. If I sound like I'm whining, I'm not, and you're retarded. I'm just trying give a proper context for my utter inability to post 5 times in a week.

Anyway, I need to stop trying so hard to make a point of enjoying myself each day, and just sleep more. I'll feel much better, physically, each day if I can do that.

Blah. Time to get the hell over it.

Anyway, I'll post either Saturday or Sunday on here, when the podcast is up.

So, in the meantime, please let me know what games ya wanna hear about.

Also, Monday is 'Manly Monday' again, so hit me up with any man advice, love advice, anything pertaining to being a man or about your man. I'm here for you. Kinda.

For now, I'm going to wrap up my work day, then crawl into a hole at home for a few hours before going out with some of my bandmates. Should be an interesting evening. We'll be @ the Pink Galleon @ Olive & Fee-Fee tonight if anyone wants to come out and stand near us while we consume alcohol.

-Blaine

Techie Tuesday #1

I had a few different versions of today's post I was working on and kicking around, but then Adam, in his comment yesterday, asked me what RSS is. It dawned me then that I'm one of the only people I know who use RSS, and this is a great thing to share with anyone who uses the internet as a news and info-gathering source.

First, what is RSS?

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication.' Basically, it's a way to deliver new content to 'subscribers' of sites. Every site worth a shit offers a means of aggregating their updates nowadays.

For example, when pearljam.com updates, the new item on the site shows up in my Google Reader. Instead of having to waste an hour or more 'surfing' the net, hitting all my regular sites, I just comb through my Google Reader and get caught up on what I care about.

Okay, so what is Google Reader?

Google Reader is my preferred RSS reader. It acts as a hub for all your feeds, and lets you organize them as you'd like. It can also be accessed through your phone, or you can use Prism (or a little know-how) to make it its own pseudo-stand-alone app on your machine.

There's some other more advanced 'sharing' stuff you can do with G-Reader, but we'll save that for another post. Seriously, it's one of my favorite web-apps out there.

Fine. So how do I go about adding feeds to my Google Reader?

First, log into Google Reader with your Google account, and make sure your login is cool.

Then, start hitting your favorite sites. Like this one.

Let's pretend you have excellent taste, and want to know the moment I update my blog.

To do this, scroll down to just above my graveyard of embedded shit (the ESPN scores, XBox Live Gamercard, etc.) and look for 'Subscribe to: Posts (Atom), then click on it. It should flip to a page either asking what kind of app you want to use to subscribe to this feed, or it'll take you to a Google page asking if you want this in your Reader or Google home page. You want it in your Reader.

If for some reason you don't get either of those, you can right-click on the Atom link and 'save target as,' then paste that directly into Google Reader by clicking on 'Add a subscription' in the top left of the page.

Additionally, a lotta sites, like this one, will show this symbol in the URL bar:

If you click on that, it'll either have the same functionality as the above, or it'll give you a few choices as to what kind of subscription you want. I always default to the highest version of RSS, if possible, or Atom.

Okay, that's all done, so now what?

We'll talk more in the future about the deeper features of Google Reader, but know that you can create embeddable objects (like I have) for your blogs and pages that show your latest 'shared' items (sharing is located at the bottom of each item in your feed), you can network w/ folks who have similar tastes using the 'like' option at the bottom of each feed item (which you can use to push your own shit), and you can customize and organize your news any way you want. I break mine into sub-categories, but usually tackle the whole mess (I have about 200 unique feeds in mine) twice a day in chronological order.

Among my favorite feeds:

Laurance's blog

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Rams blog

Ars Technica (techie stuff)

Bernie Miklasz's blog

Bioware blog

Bird Land

Iris's blog

Cody's gaming blog

Jorge Garcia's blog

EFF

ESPN - MLB

Felicia Day's blog

Gamasutra (game industry news)

Jeff Green's blog

Hot Stove League (Cardinals blog)

Jono Bacon's blog (Ubuntu)

Mozilla Labs

Penny Arcade

rwnin infosec blog

slashdot

STL Sports Nation

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Cardinals' coverage

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Mizzou coverage

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Rams' coverage

Stop All Monsters

Hollywood Reporter - Film

Hollywood Reporter - TV

1UP Gaming News

The Onion

Tipsheet

Ubuntu News

Untitled Podcast: Collector's Edition

Aaand, that's probably way more than enough.


In Other News

- don't forget that Tony and I are returning to the mics these next two weekends, to record two new episodes of Untitled Podcast: Collector's Edition. We'll be rapping about Tokyo Game Show this weekend and doing a full-on Holiday Preview the following weekend. Have any games you just gotta hear about? Drop 'em here!

- tonight is the season finale for Warehouse 13, which has undergone an amazing transformation. It started out as one of the worst shows I'd ever seen, but I hung in there because of the concept, and was rewarded by some dramatic improvements to the show. I wanted nothing more than the two leads to die slowly at first, but after about 5 or 6 episodes, I stopped hating them, and I actually kinda liked them a bit. Now, it's actually a really fun show, and I urge you to go back and give it a shot.

- still loving the new Pearl Jam, Backspacer. If you stupidly walked away from them a few years ago because they had expanded beyond what your tiny mind can handle, give them a listen now.

- tomorrow is Writing Wednesday, and I'll be talking about how to come back to that piece that ya started in earnest, then never quite got back to. It happens to all of us, but I have a few tricks for getting that spark and drive back. I'm also taking any and all writing-related questions, so post 'em in the comments if ya got 'em!

Lemme know about anything you wanna hear about in:

Manly Mondays
Techie Tuesdays
Writing Wednesdays
Thopical Thursdays (current events, sorta)
Fuck-Off Fridays

I'm taking any and all advice questions or topic suggestions, so HIT ME!

-Blaine

Whoah.

I've been busy. My 'real' job has taken over my life the last few weeks, but things should be slowly settling down, and I'll get back to my goal of 3-5 posts per week.

I'll be talking about the three corporations that have fucked me over, and I'll be posting documents to back up my accusations, so that will be fun.

I'll be talking about the holiday preview podcast Tony and I will be doing in September.

I'll be talking about the new Mass Effect DLC, assuming it ever actually works w/ the Steam version of the game.

I'll be talking about my continued journey down the dark path of the MBA.

I'll be talking a bit about what's been stalling me in regards to the book, and what my future plans are for the series.

Also, if you're one of the three getting a free book from me, they have not yet been ordered. I apologize for that, but I have my reasons. They'll be ordered in a week. If you have the sense to live here in St. Louis, then you'll get in two weeks. If you live elsewhere, you'll see it in about three weeks. In the meantime, why not tide yourself over with the $1.25 ebook?

I'm going to try and get a 'real' post up before the weekend.

So, to anyone who's read the book or is reading it: what do you think? Do you have any questions? How would you describe it?

-Blaine