Webcomics, Blogs, Forums, and Thyme

I posted the other day about the webcomic "W.o.G.". Finding it reminded me just of how many webcomics are out there that I'd like to read and how many I realistically have time for. Sure, there's a lot of garbage out there (not just with webcomics but websites, blogs, etc.); "Sturgeon's Law" or whatever the commonly-used bastardization says is very true - 99% of everything is crap. But given the sheer volume of material out on the Net, that 1% of good stuff - even once you discount what is good but you have no interest in - is staggering.

Currently, the webcomics I follow include: W.o.G., PVP Online, Penny Arcade, xkcd, Atland, Order of the Stick, and Something Positive. I could follow more, and I'd like to, such as Looking for Group, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, User Friendly, and Least I Could Do (and maybe Sluggy Freelance, which I gave up on some years ago), not to mention ones that I can't recall.

Doesn't seem like much, but then there's the blogs (or "blog-like" news sites). In my current "Daily Sites" folder in Firefox or RSS feed I have Slashdot, Techland, RPG Blog II, Robot Viking, io9, Lifehacker, Tabletop Gaming News, and some others. Blogs like Gnome Stew, Grognardia, Chatty DM, Dungeon Mastering, and others await in my "Review" folder for me to determine if I should add them to my regular rotation.

And then there's the forums. Really, the only one I regularly visit is ENWorld and there I mostly lurk. If I had time to post more, I'd probably stick with commenting on blogs since the noise-to-signal ratio tends to be lower (which is why I rarely step foot into the WotC forums). But there are some I wouldn't mind spending more time at - the forums at Goodman Games, Necromancer Games, or RPGSite come to mind. Though I can safely say that won't be happening.

Mailing lists ("listservs" and the like) I gave up on years ago. Well, except for the TableSmith Yahoo group. And a couple others than one of my alternate accounts are subscribed to. As for Usenet, that one I can safely say I'm done with. The same old tired arguments reverberating around the same echo chambers fostered by the same stagnating participants - yeah, I don't need that any more.

One thing I don't get (from the gaming parts of the Web) - I see some folks out there prolifically posting on their own blogs, posting in forums, commenting on other blogs...where do these people find the time? With some of these folks, I have to wonder how much time they spend talking about gaming and how much time they actually spend gaming. Theory versus practice, and all that.

Oh, well. Not sure what my point was here, other than pointing out that while there's orders of magnitude of crap on the Internet, there's a ton of good stuff out there. And I lament not being able to absorb it all :)

Update Metapost

Earlier I'd said that this blog would be moving to Drupal, then (when I dropped Drupal in favor of Joomla...who makes up these names, anyway?) I said it was temporarily moving back here. For now, I've decided to make the move back to Blogger permanent. Originally, the plan was to consolidate everything on my website into one CMS (Content Management System), but I've since found that Joomla doesn't quite support blogging as well as Drupal did. Or maybe it does but I haven't found how to get that set up. In any case, I figure that most people who want to comment on blog posts will likely not want to have to deal with creating a Joomla account on my site, especially if they already have a Blogger account.

Everything else from the old site - Mythosa, TableSmith, the miniatures gallery, etc. - will be contained within the new system (and some of those pages are already "in use"). But for the foreseeable future, the blog will remain here.

Awesome Fiddlin' (or Violinin')

Check this out.

(Thanks to Damn Cool Pics).

We're Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

Unwisely I've switched over to the "new" version of Blogger. Since it's Google, it's naturally a beta. Unfortunately, I'm running into a number of problems with the beta so there may be some issues with this blog for awhile. Please bear with me as I try to get this working properly.

UPDATE: OK, apparently the main problem was with one of my settings, pointing to the archive URL. Never needed it before...but things seem to be working now. The addition of labels is very nice (and long overdue); I'm in the process of going back and removing my "Keywords" and applying Blogger labels.

Have I Mentioned How Much I Hate Spammers?

Now the f--kers are trying to spam the comments here. I know comment spamming is nothing new, but now it's extra-important because they're trying to do it to me.

Today's incident is actually the second time I've gotten blog-spam, but the first didn't upset me as much because it was a real blog about fishing or hiking or something. I wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn't realize that what he was doing was reprehensible because he was new to the Internets or something. But this one was for cheap stocks or some crap that I get in e-mail all the time.

I really, really, really hate spammers and want them to die painfully. I mean, really. WTF are you people thinking? More importantly, who the hell is actually buying from spammers such that they have an incentive to continue doing this? Spammers need to be rounded up and exterminated, but the people buying their crap need to be beaten severely, too.

Making the Blog Titles More Meaningful

From this point forward my plan is to both categorize the blog entries (via each entry's title) as well as make them more meaningful. The categorization is to make things a little easier to...well, categorize, while the titles are intended to help a reader decide if the post is worth reading. Pretty self-explanatory stuff, really. This is something I should have done awhile ago; in some cases I've been doing the equivalent of sending an e-mail with the subject line of "Hi!" (for me, that usually is recognized as spam).

Categorization might be easier with another content management tool (like MoveableType maybe?), but I don't have time right now to mess with that. Blogger works fine for now.

Thanks to some fellow RPG bloggers

While vanity-searching on Technorati, I ran across this post at RPG Blog. Very cool (and a nice blog; I'll have to add a link to my blogroll...after I add a blogroll...).

A long-overdue "thanks" to Brother Bones after I found this post on his blog after following the link in one of his comments in an earlier post. His blog reminds me that I really should do more with this one than I'm doing. Not in the realm of politics - nothing wrong with that, I just think there's plenty out there without me jumping in...and I really don't have time to respond to the people who will inevitably disagree with me, particularly since (when I'm really in a argumentative mood) I back up my position with facts and logic rather than emotion and feelings. Unfortunately, that takes time and the effort is generally wasted, particularly when too many people don't want to actually listen and consider an opposing viewpoint. They just want to attack people that disagree with them.

On the other hand, generating controversy would generate traffic...

E-Mailing Blog Entries

This is a test post, to see how this works...

Edit: Cool - it worked! Yeah, I'm behind the times when it comes to the "blogosphere". I was just thinking the other day how it would be more convenient at times to e-mail blog entries, and now I see that it's a common feature. Good to know that other people think like me...

Changed the Template

The other one was...unattractive. Let's see what this looks like.

Edit: Hmm...I like it! Though I might want a different background...

Out of touch for awhile

In case anyone actually reads this, I'll be out-of-town from September 26th to October 2nd. So, if you send me any messages, I won't be able to respond to them until October 3rd. That includes registrations for TableSmith eXpress (i.e.; I handle those manually, it's not an automated process).

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes anyone. See you in October!

Long Time No Post

I really need to get off my backside and post more. Of course, I complained about that a month ago, and it didn't do a lot of good, so I guess I'm going to have to resort to threats of violence. I'm not sure how I'll respond to that, but I'll do my best to coerce myself to comply.

WTF?

Anyway, I've uploaded the latest issue of the Mythosa Chronicle to the World page. It was actually done a few days ago, I just haven't gotten around to updating the site until today. Due to time constraints, the majority of it is re-prints from articles I'd already posted, though the piece on weapon groups (from UA) for religious classes is new. Eventually, I'll run out of articles from the World page and have to stock the Chronicle with new material. Expect shorter issues in the future...

I finished Doom 3 a couple of weeks ago. Amazing game. I was turned off a bit by the "Guardian" (if you've played the game you know what I'm talking about), as I felt it took away from the feel of the overall game. In retrospect, I believe I approached the encounter wrong, so that may be partly to blame. Outside of that, though, an excellent playing experience. I hope Half-Life 2 can match up.

I'm also looking forward for Fable for the Xbox. It's supposed to come out this month, though with many features removed from the original design. Still sounds pretty good, and I've seen it compared favorably with Knights of the Old Republic, which is good news (KotOR is in my top five favorite electronic games, along with - in no particular order - Morrowind, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, and C&C: Generals).

My plan is to start posting here regularly, if for no other reason than writing practice. Not sure what I'll be discussing, though I'll try to keep it at least tangentially related to gaming. And non-political. I'd really love to post some of my opinions about the current goings-on (going-ons?), but I don't want to turn this into yet another soapbox. It's nice to have a few havens away from the constant tide of partisanship.

Villages and Other Animals

Another post! Finally!

I remember when I found Blogger, and thought "Hey, this is exactly what I'm looking for! I can update my website frequently and have it auto-archived as well." I guess "frequently" is a relative term... Of course, I've always intended to use this blog primarily to post gaming-related stuff, rather than as a soapbox to rant about life's problems, politics, etc. We all get plenty of that everywhere else (especially politics). I do have lots of gaming-related thoughts, but I need to find the time to write them down. More, at least...

Speaking of gaming, a word of advice to PDF publishers - go easy on the Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro effects for your products' covers, particularly with funky stylings for your titles. It's cool that you can do shiny, beveled text so easy, but going overboard takes away from the attractiveness of the cover. I may be guilty of that myself, but I'm trying to get better. At least no one is using the "Page Curl" effect (as far as I've seen).

So, we saw The Village tonight. Remind me to avoid late-night shows on opening night; we did that with another movie recently (don't recall which), and apparently those are the biggest magnets for people who like talking throughout the movie as well as those who haven't figured out how to switch their cellphone to "vibrate". Or turn the damn thing off - I seriously doubt you're going to get a vital call in the middle of a movie. I'm pretty laissez-faire in general, but I fully endorse cellphone blockers in movie theatres (not in the lobbies, but in the theatres themselves). I really wish people would have more consideration for others, but it's obvious they don't. So, the Iron Gauntlet of Justice must come down...

But, I digress. I have to say I enjoyed the movie, and there were a number of scenes that Shymalan...Shyamalan...um...M. Night did quite well. Two that come to mind are the one with Noah and Lucius (you know what I'm talking about), and the one with Ivy towards the end (I think you know what I mean...I'm trying not to put any spoilers in). I also may have noticed a very subtle but - if my suspicions are correct - very cool characteristic of the town elders. The ending, like all his movies, had a twist (there were a few twists in the movie, actually), but I can't say I liked that part. I figured it out about half-way through the film, but I had hoped that what I suspected wouldn't be how the movie ended, though in fact that's what happened. It seemed too contrived. I'm sure exactly why, but I'll try to explain below (the text is white so highlight it if you want, but if you don't want the movie to be spoiled, wait until after you see it).
[Edit: Apparently my background is not quite white, so you can kind of see it if you look hard - try not to! You've been warned!]










I hated the fact that the village was actually in the modern world (though I like that they explained away how no one saw planes flying overhead). But, ironically, I thought it would have been much more sensical if this hippy commune had been started in the late 1940's, after World War II. I.e.; some of the founders were veterans who were horrified at what they saw in Germany or feared what would transpire after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This would have put the "present" in the 70's or 80's, and maybe would have been too circuitous for modern audiences. I guess just the idea that the world of the 70's was too much for these people doesn't seem as plausible to me as something as epic as World War II. Doesn't make sense, I realize, but that's me. I also am aware of the "9/11 overtones" that people attribute to the movie as well. Doesn't change my opinion.

In any case, it was still worth seeing. I liked it better than Signs, though I still like that movie, too. Sixth Sense is probably his best film yet, though I didn't see that until after I'd found out its secret, so my opinion is based on hindsight.

In other news, a web update is coming on Sunday. I could do it right now, but I don't want to put out the August issue of the Chronicle before August.

Keywords: weblog, PDF, movies

Articles Here or There...

With the advent of this blog, I'm wondering whether to keep the Articles page on my site or whether to transfer that stuff over here.

Actually, what might make more sense is to leave that page along, and transfer anything of value here over there. It would be easier to find something in particular that way rather than combing the blog archives...

Blah, Blah, Friggin' Blah

Can you say "bandwagon"?

Actually, this sort of thing was what I originally had in mind for the Random Thoughts page on the Articles page. But it was too much of a hassle dealing directly with the HTML, the archiving, etc. I also didn't want a weblog on some service site. Then, of course, I discovered you could use Blogger to publish the blog to your own site.

So, here 'tis. I may make the layout look like the rest of the site when I get more time; I played with that for a bit, but it wasn't quite working for me. In the future, postings on the homepage of Mythosa.net will be site updates, and any additional "stuff" I feel like talking about will be here.