Archive for July, 2004

Well now, it seems that certain things are going fairly well. Sure it is raining outside and I am hungy but there are more important issues at hand – for instance, last night I burned Book of Vegans: Blair Wiccan II and the original Blair Wiccan Projectto a special boxset style DVD featuring all 3 commentaries. The only thing that was left off was the Blair Wiccan Project commentary, deleted scenes and outtakes which I shall try to find today.

Even above that though is the development on Frinks. This new web portal will take over from M World / Rawice as the central portal for Worfolk Online like MSN is to Microsoft and drawing all Worfolk Online’s content together, in one place with static type content to maximize our traffic from search engines. The news and weather sections are already complete.

Worfolk News is also getting a make over so that it can have a white background rather than the bright orange one it has covering the entire page at the moment. I would like to see Worfolk News in Google News some time this summer so I think as well as plenty of news we need a site that looks presentable. I want to launch that some time in August.

Tommorow after all is August – which means that from tommorow, posts on Nerd Federation will be archived under August 2004, instead of July 2004 . We will have ourselfs a real archive! I think it is an exciting day for all of us.

I think, to a certain extent, I am waiting for the inevitable. When will we get bored of posting on Nerd Federation and simply go off and do something else? Although the word “we” is probably a bit strong. Other than my posts, the total count for everyone else numbers up to the high about of one. Still, maybe more life will be pumped in if the forums ever return.

Still I would like to think Nerd Federation can keep going for a while. If it can be sustained for a month or two, at least then it cannot be classed as a phase, it will be more of a long term project. But the most important thing is the archives building up as each new month adds a link to the list on the left of the homepage. And isn’t having a cool archives list what all websites are about.

Sustainabilty is a big issue for my web development at the moment, though. My new Michelle Branch Planet website will hopefully begin to gain traffic thanks to several new bits of information being published each day. However this constant updating needs to be sustained if I am to make the site really popular.

It is the same for Maze Radio also. I can see nobody else is really that bothered so there is little chance the show can be made daily. But weekly is the very limit of what we need if the site is to ever become popular. And considering they are only 15 minute shows I’m not sure that will be enough. I need a new project, TV Forge perhaps.

Well well, it is only 15 minutes until the new series of Law & Order that has been totally ruined by a new theme tune, opening sequence and random changing of cast. Oh well at least I can catch the last 15 minutes of Friends on E4 plus 1. Meh, I am still longing for the next episode of One Tree Hill but that is still 6 days away! How can anyone wait that long? I haven’t felt this way since the O.C.

So anyway my plan for today was to head into Crossgates and search for some recordable media. But as my order didn’t get dispatched until quite late it was too late by then and I didn’t want to go until it had been. Still it has now so hopefully it will arrive tommorow and I can spend the afternoon getting the media. That or sleeping, sleeping is good too.

Ok, what else can I complain about? I am working on Frinks yet again with Frinks mark 5 the versions just keep coming hu? I am moving Frinks and Worfolk Online over to a new server although I am having problems making remote connections to the server. Plus I still need some of my databases restored on the old server. Bah!

I have been searching for some ways to get RSS feeds. After ignoring the technology for quite a while, I finally decided I should delve into the world of RSS, I am a nerd after alll. So I headed off to a number of sources including SitePoint and CNet to get some information, software and other such things that I would need.

Having tried one though I destroyed Firefox with it refusing to open when I tried to run the application. Not the best start. I was also going to try the Firefox favourites type plugin although it is only available for 0.7 and 0.8. I am running 0.9 so I didn’t want to risk it. My third alternative was Sharp Reader or something, which required the .net framework which has never ended well when I previously installed it.

The reason I really got started with it as I noticed Yahoo Groups were now offering RSS feeds. I had noticed it before but now I actually wanted to use them to allow me to get access to all the latest Michelle Branch news and discussions for my new site, Branch Planet.

Still, I am sure a solution will randomly turn up. I was tempted by the one that is intergrated with Outlook Express although I always find that place depressing and can never keep on top of all the emails I get.

Stuff is happening. Stuff is going on. So the only real thing to do is to talk through it on Nerd Federation. My experiances with Firefox continue, I noticed that even when I backspace, the scroll bar on this editing page extends. Also, when I close a tab it jumps to the one on the right rather than the one on the left. I also miss the new tab button on the left of the tab row.

But anyway so there are things set in motion. Last night I managed to get hold of a .asf converted to mp3 so now I can convert the radio stations from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to mp3 and listen to them outside of the game! Last night and this morning (now in fact) I am listening to VCPR and I also plan to listen to K Chat. Talk radio stations rule :D.

Also today is the date of a gathering. Hopefully we can finally get some Maze Radio done today and last night, myself and Ceon were also exploring the possibility of doing a new movie. We need to find someway to fund it though so if you have a spare grand ;). We will give you an advanced copy and everything.

Also hopefully my DVD rewriter will be ordered this morning. It has a 5 day order on demand from eBuyer.com where I am getting it from then so it is probably going to be a week or two before it appears. Still I need the time to save up for money to buy some DVD+R’s anyway lol.

Hurray! After finishing up with the Cherry Popper Ice Cream Factory I completed another asset and so unlocked the final missions. I had done it before, I got up to 104 deliveries one time but nobody told me to get out of the van so I didn’t realise and got myself busted. Oh well I did it, so anyway the final missions were unlocked – cap the collectors and keep your friends close…

So after stopping off at sunshine autos (it’s the one place that seems to provide a hiding place inside) I drove up to the mansion and headed inside. After the cut sequence I began to chase down the collectors and ran them over somewhere near Washington Beach. I then headed to the bridge to stop the next two and took them out near the Malibu. Then the final ones were taken out on the bridge to downtown. Mission complete.

So back to sunshine autos and heading back to my mansion. I pulled out that big rail gun thing and gunned a load of matia down, followed by Lance and finally Sunny. I noticed some cool limo’s outside but by the time I had answered all the phone calls and saved they were gone. Anyway I am missing a large chunk out here. The credits went on for ages and I couldn’t skip them. I presume everyone was in the same situation.

Anyway so the ending sequence was really good I thought, it was edging on emo which I liked. I can see why people can live out their fantasies as it really dragged me into the storyline and I can see how other people could be too. Is there any recorded news of inspired violence? Comments people!

To conclude, the game is finished pretty much the only other things I have to do is finish off the film studio and sunshine autos and do stuff like the minor details as I only have about 8 hidden packages lol. Anyway, I might do them I will probably try but I finished the main bit and thats the most important thing. So yay!

It’s the site you have all been waiting for. I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, I think I did in the addictions post where I said I would keep you posted. Well consider yourselves posted as here is the latest update – the site is now officially open. Check it out at BranchPlanet.com. Hmm, this editor doesn’t work so well with Firefox when it comes to inserting URLs.

Anyway the site is basically going to be a news portal, that way I can update it like every day which should bring plenty of visitors in or so I hope. The great thing about doing a niche site like a fansite or a site about Chinese / Albanian hamster hybrids is that you can really make a good site, maybe even the best site on the subject as there isn’t the huge competition. That is my aim here.

Hopefully the site should get crawled pretty soon. Google Visited Gamer Forge within 24 hours of submission, possibly due to the link from Worfolk Online’s homepage which I have given to Branch Planet too so if it is that, the robots should be hoping along nicely.

Oh well I guess only time will tell for what will happen to the site. The most important thing is that whatever happens, it should provide some material for some new posts on Nerd Federation. I am still chasing down the old forum database so hopefully, I will recover that soon. Of course, that is a completely unrelated topic but that is what Nerd Federation is about.

I finally did it – after Beonex crapped out on me again (occasionally it loses all my settings) I decided to set Firefox as the default browser. There are some things I am not happy about though. So I decided to hop along to Nerd Federation and have a moan about them – oh when will the perfect browser come along?

So anyway first of all, I don’t have my little task bar icon to open up windows anymore. Therefore I had to enable quicklaunch and delete everything on it so now all I have is show desktop and Firefox. My task bar space is valuable though, I often end up with a scroll bar on the task bar if I am not careful and that just gets annoying.

Anyway as for Firefox, my impression is that it is a lot more like Internet Explorer than Beonex. The rich text editor used for message posting and editing here on Nerd Federation works in Firefox which I am pleased about although as I type the horizonal scroll bar keeps extending for some reason. Still at least I don’t have to switch back to Internet Explorer to post messages.

Hopefully also this will rid me of the problem where I keep getting signed out. Although if it is a problem on all browsers then I will be out of luck there. Back on about how Firefox is more similar to Internet Explorer than Beonex anyway I noticed that Firefox uses the system default font, in my case Times New Roman which sucked as Beonex used Arial as the default font which was great.

Also the forms in Firefox are like the new Windows XP ones. Beonex had the classic styled ones which I really liked. I think browsers should make it switchable and they should also make the default font switchable. I am sure I will have more revolations as time goes on – I haven’t tried favourite icons yet but I am hoping Firefox picks them up from the meta tag as I really liked that with Beonex.

Hmm, I have quite a bit to talk about tommorow – and by quite a bit I mean one post about my new website. But until then I will leave you wondering. As what I really want to talk about here is what I class as my favourite songs of all time. I would post lyrics links too but that would take too much effort. It is easier to just plug Lyrics Burger here.

For a long time now, my favourite song has been Lagwagon – Kids in America. A song that has been covered many times. Lagwagon’s version actually being one of the covers. But anyway that still holds true. There are several other songs that I really like though.

Offspring – Gone Away is a fantastic song. There are some that have never left my playlist and Gone Away is one of them along with Kids in America and also Smashing Pumpkins – Mayonaise. All the other Smashing Pumpkins songs are too upbeat – the band is suppose to be down and depressing and they do upbeat songs, what is wrong with them?

Alien Ant Farm are also a cool band and I have addicited to Glow for quite a while although my favourite list pick from Alien Ant Farm has to be Smooth Criminal. Yep, it’s yet another cover for my list but they really did some cool stuff for the video. I was also thinking about Nickelback but I couldn’t name one song I really like – they are all awesome!

Ok, so here is my list:

1. Lagwagon – Kids in America
2. Offspring – Gone Awy
3. Smashing Pumpkins – Mayonaise
4. Alien Ant Farm – Smooth Criminal
5. Metallica – Nothing Else Matters

Bah, I typed out a huge blog, well actually not that long but anyway because this site keeps logging me out, everything was lost! It really sucks. Now I have to type everything out again and I have half forgotten what I was on about earlier. Most of the originality and flair from the text will be lost for this post – providing this post makes it at all.

So anyway, Iron Cheesecake has a new movie! After over 7 months of waiting, the Iron Cheesecake machine is back in production, rolling out some new movies. Or even if I do not make any more for a while after this one – one movie. Still it’s worth the enjoyment providing your part of the ‘in’ crowd. If not then simply know that Carl, who is a member of Nerd Federation although yet to post, is really an android built by myself.

While we are on the subject of Carl, it’s worth nothing that he nicknamed him 4 megs earlier this month. That is because of the way that computer memory (ram) works is that it has several layers. The bottom one which loads the operating system is called conventional memory which all computers have around 500k of. But when I built Carl, I designed him to have 4 megs of conventional memory – hence the nickname 4 megs :D.

As for Iron Cheesecake it is still pulling in traffic from search engines as well as getting regularly crawled. I looked up loads of statistics earler but they are now lost which again sucks. But anyway, in conclusion – there is a new movie on Iron Cheesecake so be happy :).