With the upcoming release of WordPress 2.7, I'm considering redesigning the look of this blog - especially if the current theme fails to be compatible.
The official release of 2.7 will be in 5 days (on December 10th), but I'll probably change over to Release Candidate 1 before that, at which point I will disable themes and plug-ins so as to determine which will work and which will not without affecting the uptime of the site too much. So if Marty Blog goes "vanilla" and reverts back to the default WordPress theme for a while in the coming days, don't worry - it's just Marty tinkerin' with the new WordPress.
It's funny how these sorts of things grow on you - a few years ago I had neither the time nor the interest in maintaining a blog. When I finally came around and felt it might be an interesting endeavor, I entered into it a bit timidly, and spent lots of time trying to figure out which software would be the most versatile, and the easiest to use. WordPress had a nice, clean look to it, and looking over the feature list and stumbling upon many sites that used it helped push me over the edge to try it out.
It turned out that my investigating paid off - and I've been enjoying WordPress for over a year now. The number of updates and the quality of the plug-ins available has always impressed me, and I hope that I can say the same moving forward into the big changes with version 2.7 over the coming weeks.
If you're interested in blogging, I recommend giving WordPress a shot. You'll probably like it!
Clichéd as it is, let me start this with a few definitions:
Mundane-adjective
2. common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative.
Uninteresting-adjective
1. arousing no interest or attention or curiosity or excitement.
Stupid-adjective
2. characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless.
Mundane, uninteresting, and stupid. These three words perfectly describe one of the newest internet cesspools, Twitter.
If you took MySpace, dropped it into a special machine designed to wring out everything but the superficiality, narcissism, and lust for attention, and then you took what was left, put it into some bullets, and then fired them at the internet with an automatic machine gun, you'd have Twitter. And probably a few dead bystanders.
For anyone out there who is not familiar with Twitter, it's a lot like having a blog, except instead of taking the time to think about and actually write a cohesive collection of sentences, your updates consist of one-liners and simple thoughts. To better illustrate my description, here are some example Twitter entries:
"its already 10:30???!?!? when did that happen??"
I dunno, maybe while you were sitting there posting stuff on Twitter?
"Speaking of food.....lunchtime!"
Nobody was speaking of food.
"At the hospital waiting on Labor and Delivery."
It really sounds like you've got more important things to do than Twitter.
"Why do I hear windchimes in the office?"
I dunno, but you should get that checked out.
"confused by backpack"
Average Twitter user.
"I can't stop eating DORITOS!!! mmmmmm"
Perhaps the first advertisement on Twitter?
"i started a juice fast yesterday... i now think my stomach is eating itself!"
Yes, that rare feeling us humans call "hunger".
Twitter users call these small messages "tweets." I refuse to do that.
There's a reason why I don't speak aloud every little random thought that goes through my head, let alone post them in my blog. It's because, like everyone else, most everything I think about throughout the day (and most of the stuff I do, for that matter) isn't interesting enough to share with people. And the same goes for everyone else, regardless of who you are.
Nobody cares if you're eating Doritos. Nobody cares about your momentary confusing over a backpack. Nobody cares if you hear windchimes in your office. These things are not important.
And yet, thanks to Twitter, the internet is bombarded with a constant stream of similar garbage. I honestly can't think of a bigger waste of time - sitting around posting and reading things on Twitter makes a full day of World of Warcraft seem like an exceedingly productive thing to do. It gives a bad (worse) name to social networking on the internet, and cheapens somewhat more legitimate outlets of information, like blogging.
Twitter annoys me worse than lolcats, and I think that given the chance, I would purge every memory of its existence from the collective consciousness of mankind. If you use Twitter, please just stop. You're ruining the internet for everyone.
In all my excitement over the Spore Creature Creator and trying to fit my game playing/creating time into the remainder of the day, I nearly forgot that Valve had announced a Team Fortress 2 update, along with the release of a new character vignette!
Meet the Sniper is another brilliant clip introducing the playable character classes from TF2, this time, quite obviously, for the sniper. The short video follows the sniper around his "workplace" as he guns down and machetes enemies, drives his truck, and... talks on the phone with parents (who, by the sniper's own admittance, don't like his job).
The camping scene and the ending are also fantastic, but I won't ruin it for you - watch it for yourself, below.
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, these videos are the result of a fantastic promotional campaign for Team Fortress 2 by Valve. They shine with the kind of polish that can only be obtained via confidence and respect for one's work and considering how great of a game Team Fortress 2 is, and continues to be with each class update, Valve has a lot to be proud of.
I've yet to play the updated flame-thrower, but I'll be sure to report back here when I do.
And for one last note - don't forget to download Firefox 3 if you haven't already. It's hardly been 24 hours since its launch, and the new browser has already been downloaded over 7 million times! That number seems a bit bloated, but - wow! Congratulations to Mozilla - there's no doubt their little browser is a big hit.
Despite my having a girlfriend, a job, working on the Reflect Games website update, helping a buddy with his new blog, considering entering the 3rd YoYo Games competition, trying to finish GTA4, and various other real-world obligations, I've also started putting in a little bit of time on World of Warcraft again.
In my defense, it wasn't an idea entirely my own. My brother, Spencer, had a lot to do with it. He's just as addicted to games as I am, and his boredom led him to persuade me to play some WoW with him again.
"I'm thinking about playing WoW again," he mentioned to me one day. "I want to start a new character on a friend's server."
Being bored with my pre-GTA library of games, I expressed some interest. Soon, we had a plan set; we'd blaze through the game as the fantastic duo of warrior and priest. I'd beat the hell out of monsters while my brother made sure my health level was maintained. This is surely a strong combination of might against just about any type of foe... well, except one. Computer hardware failure.
Spencer's computer seems to be suffering from either a bad power supply or a heating problem, as best I can tell. After getting our characters rolling up into the bulk of the game, his computer began crashing WoW every few minutes. He's re-installed the game multiple times, and I've torn his computer apart and re-assmbled it, but the problem persists. He's due for a hardware upgrade though, so when that day eventually comes, the adventures of Ismashya and Autzen will continue. In the meantime, however, I was left with an active WoW account, and not much else to do.
I started an alternate character (a hunter) and began the game anew. After only a week I had leveled to 42, and already had my first mount. But leveling began to take longer, and I started looking upon the higher levels with envy. Every visit to a capital city reminded me that there was an entire world of upper-tier players riding around on their flying mounts, making ridiculous amounts of gold, doing player-vs-player activities, and raiding the high level dungeons.
I tried playing some of the battlegrounds (special PVP raid battles) with my hunter, and while I had fun and got a taste of the party the higher level players were having, it wasn't the same. I had to wait over 30 minutes to get into matches sometimes, and finding others to quest with was virtually impossible. Azeroth is a big place, and with most people on the server playing upper level characters, I was left to fend mostly for myself.
So did I persevere? Did my lonely hunter (and mountain lion pet) conquer all and become one of the elite of Warcraft?
Of course not!
Instead, I dusted off my long-dead level 69 paladin, grinded to level 70, and began partaking in all the upper-tier goodness a guild-less player can. I got my flying mount. I've battled the battlegrounds (with players who have alarmingly large amounts of health compared to me). I made over 1000 gold over the weekend. And I've started trying my hand at some of the daily quests.
I'm sure I'll get bored of it again eventually... especially if my brother can't get his computer running soon. But for now, I'm having some fun with it, and I'm still spending plenty of time with my girlfriend, on my own projects, Grand Theft Auto 4, and everything else, so I see no harm in it.
In the meantime, if you run into a companionless paladin (whose name reminds you of bite-size pizza) mining the earth of the Outland or getting slaughtered in Eye of the Storm, it might just be me.
Every now and then something annoys me so much that I just have to say something about it. File this under that heading.
Let's say that one day, sometime in the future, a hostile alien race came to Earth and decided to destroy the entire planet. Except in the midst of all the explosions and such, they reconsidered, and now you are the only person - nay, the only thing - left from the original Earth. The alien race, not having taken the time to study Earth before destroying it, relies on you to tell them all about the earth so they can recreate it exactly as it was (or at least, exactly as you remember it). What would you tell them? What would you make better, or worse?
One thing that I wouldn't tell them about is "lolcats." I would take the opportunity to strike them from the history and from the collective consciousness of the world without a second's hesitation.
And now, I can practically hear the thoughts of people who would be greatly distressed by this... "OMG! I'm on ur blogs, rightin complaintz!" or "WTF! I can has hates for u!"
Hate all you want - I wouldn't tell the evil space aliens about lolcats. No sir. If I see another picture of a cat within close approximation of a computer (or game console), overlayed with unintelligible graffiti, it'll be too soon. Lolcats are stupid. The end.
