Of Interest

It Still Makes Me Giggle

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been blogging, or why you do it. When you see something posted about yourself some place else with a link back to your site – you get a little excited. It’s no different with me, either. I may not be one of the best writers out there (I know I’m not, that should read) and I know I’m not as popular as a lot of them, either. I don’t have any visions of grandeur nor do I have articles that spawn comments as often as those I read, but when I come across something posted like this on the VGplayer site, I still get excited.

Of course, it was written a little bit ago, and I didn’t notice it until now since I’m a little lax in checking for links back to my site.

Speaking of which – I’ve added a whole lot more links down the mmo blog section. Anyone I link there is someone I actually read on a daily basis (and some times more then once) and a good portion are people I know in game (typically by me stalking them). I love the friendships I’ve made, and I’ve had a lot of fun discovering other people who write about the games that I enjoy so much.

So keep up the good work, everyone.

Playstation Home

I’ve been reading a bit about Playstation Home, with a new PS3 in the house and me not exactly being a huge fan of the typical console game this looks like something I may be interested in. Although I’m not interested in paying even more money to obtain ‘cool’ items, so that will be out for me. Here’s a brief overview from wikipedia:

Photographs and video released by Sony show Home users meeting in a plaza/town square type of area. They also show users in their own apartments with their own choice of decor and furnishings. Users can also invite other users to their apartments.

In the world outside of the player houses, players can meet and chat with other community-members. One can invite their friends, hang out and communicate via voice chat, or normal text chat, listen to music, play a game or exchange content. People who enter each other’s “home” (called a “HomeSpace”) can stream the host’s music and videos from their HDD. Videos are viewed via virtual Sony TVs, such as the BRAVIA. Photographs can be viewed via a virtual picture frame.

Every user has a private apartment space that they can modify and change over time. The basic apartment is free and will offer users lots of options for customization and personalization. In the future, Sony will provide tools that will enable users to have an even greater ability to create their own Home spaces and content.

At time of release, the user’s “home” will be streamed from their own PlayStation 3, meaning that if the user logs out of Home, then access to this user’s apartment no longer exists until the user logs on again. According to Sony, they are looking for new ways to get around this issue.

The world of PlayStation Home will not only consist of players’ houses, but there will also be arcade-games that can be played, as well as games like pool billiards and bowling.

Of course it’s not a video game, per say. But it’s enough to interest me. I’ve always been a huge fan of any sim-like game. Unfortunately I don’t own any of them any more since my baby brother swiped my Sims2 CD’s .. or whatever the 3D game was called when it came out. I love decorating and building homes (dur, that’s fairly obvious based on my obsession with Mmo housing). I’m so oblivious when it comes to games in general that I don’t even know of any (free) sim-like based games. I’m sure I’ve read of a few and just blocked it from my mind.

 

In any case, I’m looking forward to it being released. Things like this that don’t require groups for anything, where I can dress an avatar up and make a home and decorate it. No smushing of mobs, no running around half a world. I may not be into car racing games, or fps (first person shooter) or well, anything really. But I’ll always love the sims and anything that emulates that sort of game. I wonder if it’s a girl thing..

Shameless Art Plug


A shameless plug for some of my art work I’ve got over at DeviantART. Who says all I do is game! This Christmas I was given my first ever SLR digital camera, an Olympus E-410, and I love it. I’m typically a pen and ink sort of artist as is apparent by some of my earlier pieces, but recently switched away from traditional art to delve more into photography. I’m still meandering my way through the phone book sized manual, but am having a blast with it in the mean time.

Ideally, I’d like the bit of code up above to go into one of my side bars in my wordpress template, but I use widgets, and have no idea how to go about that. I’m not a web designer, though it’s always one of those ‘things’ I’d love to teach myself. Speaking of teaching myself – I’ll be (hopefully) getting into HDR and tone mapping here in photography shortly. Should lead to some interesting pictures.

600th post.. (or so)

I decided to take a look at how many posts I had on the blog now, since I’ve had it for quite some time –

Low and behold, I’ve hit (and past) my 600th post, standing at 615. Hopefully people have enjoyed reading, and if not, oh well. I enjoy writing and that’s good enough for me. Here’s to many more.

Other points of interest? 615 posts, 1,109 comments, and protected from 7,961 bits of spam.

Go-Go Akismet.

Where Are They Now?

I was thinking last night about all the people I’ve gotten to know in an online sense over the years. There’s been a lot of them. However, over time and years as people move on from games they lose touch with one another. I spend a lot of time (well, not a lot, but some) thinking to myself “I wonder where so and so is now.. I wonder what they’re up to. I wonder if they’re still gaming”. So I thought about it a little more. Does anyone know if there’s a site out there that would perhaps let you find people who you used to game with? Let me explain a little more.

I’m thinking a data base type site, where you’d input what games you played, during what years. Your character names, and server names. Maybe guild names if you wanted to get into even more details. An email address where you could be reached as well. Have this data base open for others to search. So you could search by game, by server, by guild, whatever. If you wanted to see if anyone was still around who you used to play EQ1 with WAY back when, this would be the place to look. Of course getting people to actually sign up and input their information is always the hard part.

The reason I’m thinking of this in particular is there’s so many varieties of game now. It’s always funny when you ‘run into’ someone you used to play with long ago. Or interesting to see where people are ‘playing now’ 10 years later. To see if they’re even still around. A name you’d recognize from back in the day. Surely I’m not the only one who’s run into people in a game who leave some sort of an impression.

For example, personally speaking. There was this one bard. His name was Twinkletoes. It may have even been Twinkletoez, I can’t quite recall. Used to play on EQ1, and I’d gotten to know Him fairly well. He dyed their gear bright pink and green and blue, it was atrocious. He was funny, but over time decided to give up EQ1. He even let me use their account and I created my cleric there, Eltheria. I can’t remember why he kept the account open specifically, but I know he was apart of the floods in Louisiana, and I remember being worried for him. Shortly after that incident I never heard from him again. From time to time I wonder what happened to him, and I wish there was a way to check in (on willing participants of course) and see how folks are doing. There was the guy who told me he was some famous guitar player (and lied about that might I add, I found out later) who I met in EQ1, and all the old guilds I used to belong to. I don’t remember their names but I’m sure if I could search and see it, it would strike a note.

Then again maybe this is just some foolish idea, or, maybe it’s already out there some where and I just haven’t checked hard enough. I know there are places like eq2faces and what have you, but is there an area that encompasses all games out there (or a majority at least) where you can search for folks who used to play particular games? If you’ve heard of one let me know so I can check it out! What I mean specifically, is to be able to search for someone who you played with in EQ1, and then find out that they’re actually in your new guild in EQ2 and you didn’t even know it. Or perhaps the guild leader of your Vanguard guild is actually the same person who used to gank you all those days ago in WoW. That sort of thing.

Nomadic Gamer