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Now that Blogging 101 over at The Daily Post has wrapped up, it’s time to take a quick look at my resulting posts. Here’s a short list of what I think of as the “highlights.” In no particular order, but numbered, nonetheless:

  1. Take…a red shirt – I didn’t really get any responses on office shenanigans, but I’m sure there are more interesting ones that the one I posted out there.
  2. Salad Days – Lamenting the trouble I had getting my brothers to play games with me.
  3. We all want a hero – I commented on another’s post, and had a bit of a conversation as a result.
  4. Valuable Data – I really enjoyed thinking about a “what if” situation that also tells a bit about myself.

I don’t create lists often, but it’s nice to go over some posts to quickly review, so this might happen again, from time to time. I’m doing my best to fit the theme of the Countdown Challenge here. You’ll probably see better efforts there.

 

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The past 30 days has gone pretty quickly, I must admit. In between work and extracurricular time, I’ve been participating in Blogging 101. At first I had intended to take part to simply motivate myself to post more often. I think, however, that it kind of did a bit more. It got the gears turning, and I now, at the end, just created a bit of an editorial calendar of things I’d like to work on through the end of the year (30 more days).

The first is to post a bit more activity from one of my other fun activities, Saberguild. Also on the calendar is a game review, which is a bit scary because I’ve never written a lot about how I feel about any particular thing and I used to hate book reports in grade school, so this’ll be interesting. Last, but not least, I might try a few challenges, starting with the weekly photo posting challenge, the One Word Photo Challenge.I want to take, and post more photos as well, so I’m challenging myself to do that more. Having a goal is helpful and sometimes tricky. I mainly wanted to achieve something, though.

All this should hopefully lead into the next phase of learning and growing in the new year. Here’s to a fun month had, and to come!

 

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Is there a period in your own personal life that you think of as the good old days? Tell us a story about those innocent and/or exciting times (or lack thereof).

Salad Days | The Daily Post

That question got me to thinking about some of my earliest gaming memories. Was it really better before online gaming came along? Some gamers lament that things were simpler then, especially since playing with friends meant everybody on the same couch in front of a TV. For me, it was not that simple, or even always that much fun.

My brothers and I were indeed lucky to game together during one of the most well-known time periods; the days of the Atari 2600. Our collection grew pretty sizeable over the years, due in small part to the fact that an uncle also had some games as well. But, I digress a bit. The experience of playing games is what I’m remembering. That was not terrible, but it was not as ideal as I would have liked. For one thing, I was the eldest of 3, and it was sometimes tricky to convince the other 2 to play with me, especially on competitive games, of which there were many, as I, due to a bit of an age gap, was usually better, and would often win (in games that had winning conditions, like sports titles). The loser would sometimes just plain quit playing, leaving me to play alone for a while.

I grew less and less willing to want to play video games with them, and didn’t really see that getting better over the years, even through the golden age of the NES and later systems. It really wasn’t until Xbox came along that it started to get a bit better. I think more gaming with the 3 of us able to play together helped, and online play made it possible to play even separated by distance. I still think it’s better now, even though I’m mostly solitary gaming again, but now, I have friends who I can connect with online sometimes, and sometimes those sessions are hugely fun. Even though I do play in a well-known MMO, I do not fall heavily on either the solo adventurer side or always grouped raider. I just flow as the situation demands it and I think that I’m better able to deal either way.

This is all to hopefully say, it wasn’t, for me, “the good old days,” but that doesn’t mean it was all bad, and it’s definitely not terrible now. I’m going to keep on gaming and having adventures.

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“Where’s My Super Suit?”

 

That line from The Incredibles totally caught my eye in the WordPress Reader, so I stopped, and gave it a read. It then further drew me in since I’d heard some of the rumblings while I was wandering around the Anaheim Convention Center area during this most recent Blizzcon conference. There was a rumor circulating a bit that the just-announced new game in the works, Overwatch, was just the remnants of the scrapped Titan project. Now, since I had heard otherise, from a person who had friends on the Overwatch team, I felt the need to pipe up and comment. You can check out my comment at the linked article above, or you can jump to the comment, and the reply by the author by visiting this link.

 

There’s not been official word yet on what happened to Titan, and I believe it will be quite some time before there is. What, dear reader, do you think? Let me know by commenting or posting.

 

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…to Blizzcon! The first (and, sadly, only) time I went was waaaaay back in 2008.

 

Blizzcon badge and swag
Blizzcon ’08 badge and some of the swag

 

It was a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I was not yet a convention veteran, felt super awkward even trying to meet up with guildies (which didn’t work out) or even people who play WoW on my realm (found a few, and it was fun!). It was the first time I got a chance to see Video Games Live, live (it was awesome!!!) There’s actually a lot more going on there as we, such as pro-gaming tournaments, and art exhibits (Blizzard has some very talented artists) and panels for each game currently available, or in development. There’s quite a bit on the plate this year, so I’m lucky to have gotten a physical ticket this year (watched the stream all other years since).

Here’s a taste of what I’m looking forward to this time:

I’m probably still too shy to personally thank the game developers for all their work, so, perhaps one of them will see this post, but, if not, maybe I’ll be able to muster the courage to do so if I run into any in one of the halls (they tend to roam around when not busy). Blizzard’s games have long been some of my favorites, and I do hope that continues for a long time.

For now, I’m getting ready to pick up my badge. Hoping to run into old (and new) friends soon.

 

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eBay listing, November 4, 2214:

 

Vintage Laptop Hard Disk 500GB

 

That’s the likely listing heading, when it goes up for sale online for lovers of old techknowldgy in 2214. What the buyer will find on it, will likely be of interest to a historian of culture and technology. There’s a few things that might stand out from the mundane data that most disks contain. Examples:

 

  • A folder for an old massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, which was released 210 years ago and was very successful for its era.
  • transcripts from text-based chat software. A relic of pre-telepathic communications.
  • A relatively small Music folder. Unsurprising, as the era of storing personal media files locally was on the decline with increasing cloud-based storage gaining popularity.
  • The remaining used space (the drive is 75% full) is taken up by the other application software, mostly prouctivity and software development applications, and a few otheer notable games such as the sandbox of Minecraft, and even the first popular game library managers (Steam, and Battle.net).
  • Last, but not least is the operating system itself (Mac OS X, a flavor of the ancient UNIX family of software which was popular with not just academics, but this one had many creatives using it as well).

This drive is in surprisingly good condition, considering drives of its kind had a useful operating lifetime of roughly 10-20 years, depending on usage and environment. This one sems to have seen light usage before being taken out, likely to use a much higher capacity drive, or even one with no moving parts. The drive was only powered on after being recovered from a “time capsule” to check its usability and contents. A real collector’s item, but there’s still no reserve because it’s value speaks for itself. Thanks for checking this listing out!

—END LISTING-

 

I’m participating in Blogging 101. Here’s today’s prompt:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/buyers-beware/