Category Archives: Internet

Separating the blog from the blogger

Posted on March 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

As you probably already know, I’ve been messing around with Twitter for almost four years now. While I like to post my blog updates through my main account, “social networking wisdom” suggests that I set up a separate Twitter page for Player 1′s Diary in order to build “brand recognition” and hopefully boost traffic, just as I’ve tried to do by adding Facebook and Google+ pages. It took long enough, but Facebook actually let me shorten my URL to use as part of their page – it’s a lot easier to remember than the gobbledygook numbers I have to deal with when copying and pasting Google+ URLs. Twitter’s easy like that, too – just post http://twitter.com/(yourusername) and you’re good to go.

I tried the separate main Twitter/blog Twitter thing with RMNFB a year or so ago, but couldn’t figure out how to keep the two accounts separate until I learned how to use Tweetdeck (I used to send most of my tweets through the Twitter website, and it’s not exactly easy to switch from my main account to my sub without mixing up my passwords), and eventually abandoned the sub because I’d still been tweeting about my blog articles under my main account anyway. Now that I’m a lot more social media savvy, I’m pretty confident that I won’t make the same mistakes again.

You can read all of my P1D updates over at @player1diary, and the Facebook or Google+ pages are still open to anyone who wants to follow.

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Posted in Blog, Internet

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SOPA/PIPA? On MY Internet? I don’t think so

Posted on January 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

You’re not going to get me to change my avatar for 12 hours just to prove a point. Nor will you convince me to place a small ribbon on my avatar to promote a cause – especially those little tiny ones that can only be seen in the corners; honestly, what’s the point? And don’t even think that I’ll ever “black out” or otherwise shut down my site for any reason that isn’t technical. But I will say this:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its sister bill, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA, not to be confused with Princess Kate’s sorta-hot sister) are a joke. That anyone would suggest internet piracy can be easily squashed by zapping the websites of supposed violators is so laughable on its face that it doesn’t even deserve consideration. Sure, it may swat a few flies here or there, but the financial (not to mention psychological) cost of trying to monitor the ENTIRE INTERNET to ensure no copyrighted material is posted illegally, is far too great to be worth it.

Therefore, while I’m perfectly aware that the use of my avatar (and the many I’ve had before it) could be grounds for my website to be blown to smithereens, never to be seen again, I stand firm in my opposition to SOPA, PIPA, and any legislation like it. This isn’t just an American thing – it’s an Internet thing, and this will potentially negatively affect everyone.

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Posted in Internet, Life

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A chain in the butt

Posted on September 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

I often wonder why people still choose to believe in, and spread around chain letters in this day and age when the Internet allows for easy and fast fact-checking. I’ve seen this one pop up from four different Facebook friends of mine, regarding a supposed plan to start charging users to continue to use the service after all of the changes made to the profiles and news feeds over the last few months.

A sample Facebook chain letter (source: snopes.com)

A variation of a chain letter being circulated on Facebook. (Screenshot taken from snopes.com)

This is the sample that I’ve seen floating around, except written in ALL CAPS for emphasis. Now let’s look at this letter’s claims one-by-one, shall we? Continue reading →

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Posted in Internet

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Revisionist history

Posted on September 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

If this blog were still under the Red Mage Needs Food Badly domain, today would have been its fourth anniversary.

…at least, as far as having the blog on my own domain is concerned.

I’d totally forgotten about the few short months in 2006 when I had RMNFB on Blogger, and I’ll forgive anyone else for not remembering, because nobody read it back then, either…at least until Facebook opened up its site to the masses and I could do a better job at self-promotion.

And now that I think about it, that wasn’t even the original name of my first blog after departing from my Sky Tower Games website. Here’s a look (through the Wayback Machine) at double//slash, the blog I started when I had taken my leave from the RPG Maker community, but still had connections to most of my old STG fans (a link to the forums is surprisingly still active, but frozen in time).

Dating back to the grand-opening of double//slash on August 4, 2004, I’ve been “solo” as a web designer/blogger for a little more than 7 years. Interesting…

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Posted in Blog, Internet

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Red, white and blue all over

Posted on September 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

My “where were you on 9/11/01″ moment:

I was just leaving a difficult art history class, and students were gathered around the TVs in the hallway (I think Good Morning America was on at the time), shocked and horrified out of their minds after seeing what happened. I remember being paranoid about low-flying planes throughout the rest of the day, as Penn State’s Harrisburg Campus is only a few miles away from an airport. I’m kinda embarrassed about it now that I look back on that day, but I think I’ve gotten over that fear. I had friends living in and/or going to school in New York back then, but fortunately, none of them were in the city when the towers fell.

I’m assuming that Upper Darby High School postponing its flea market until next week is somehow linked to this year being the 10th anniversary of that event. My mom and dad found out about this after coming away from another flea market up at Delaware County Community College, which was packed, undeterred (or perhaps even motivated) by the various 9/11 tributes in the area.

I was able to come away with a full starter deck of Pokémon trading cards – the Emerging Powers Toxic Tricks deck, which is full of Psychic- and Fire-type Pokémon from the Black and White versions, including Darmanitan and Gothitelle, a couple of my favorites. The lady who sold them told me that the box contained a code that lets you use that deck online. I don’t know anybody in my area who plays the Pokémon card game, so I went ahead and used the online code to try to win a battle in the Trainer Challenge (which I did). I needed the practice, anyway. Theme decks aren’t really my thing, but I don’t have enough virtual cards to mix-and-match yet.

I also got T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which is supposed to be one of the best retellings of the King Arthur mythos. It starts out with the “sword in the stone” legend, and that’s really the one story that most people think of when they hear of King Arthur, anyway. Now that I’ve finished reading Pokémon Adventures Vol. 1, I can devote some time to reading it this week.

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Posted in Internet, Literature, Manga, Shopping

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