Shattered Reality

I just switched from Helio to T-Mobile 10 days ago. Maybe I’ll write more about my overall experience with Helio later, but the reason for the switch wans’t exactly voluntary. Helio recently merged with Virgin Mobile, which I thought to be great news (although I’ll miss the Helio name) because it would bring much-needed mainstream support to the company, among other things. Unfortunately, approximately two weeks prior to the public announcement of the merger, their service took a fast nose-dive, so bad that I could no longer make calls in my house (used to get around 80% of full reception), my text messages would constantly fail, and my 3G connection was intermittent at best. The phone I picked up with T-Mobile is the BlackBerry Curve. It has wi-fi, but no GPS. Oh well, otherwise I love it. Next stop? Android.

Just moved this site over to Media Temple. Let me know if there are any issues.

Here’s something I haven’t done in a while: talked about video games. Erich convinced me to pick up WoW?????? two months ago, and, while I’ve been more or less enjoying it, it definitely doesn’t feel like it has that “hold” potential where I won’t get bored with it soon.

An upcoming game that never really held my attention but is starting to now is Age of Conan. I like the unique classes and the potential that’s there, but I don’t know how I feel about not being able to craft until later in the game. The game looks a little bland in regards to everything appearing to be in a desert setting (kind of reminds me of Tabula Rasa in that sense). AoC does have the potential to really do well with its player-run cities, but those can be hit-or-miss. I’m still hopeful, though. If I pick it up, I’ll probably end up with the collector’s edition like I usually do- I’m a sucker for art books and in-game bonus items.

MMO’s aside, I have a slew of other games I’ve yet to finish: Doom 3, Final Fantasy III DS, Bioshock, Tony Hawk Project 8, Overlord, Dead Rising, Lego Star Wars II, and others I’m sure.

I just found out about a Firefox Add-on called ScribeFire thanks to Firefox 3’s Add-on recommendations. ScribeFire opens a pane at the bottom of your browser (or a new tab or window) allowing you to create a post to one of a number of blogging services, with the ability to edit multiple blogs and switch between them instantly. Check out their getting started page to learn more.

On top of full post writing and editing, you can open up your del.icio.us bookmarks in the pane and add the current page or search your existing bookmarks. Now, I never get hooked into del.icio.us, preferring ma.gnolia, but there are still so few tools and add-ons available for it that I may go back to my old del.icio.us account. Then again I don’t really use either all that much, so maybe not. ma.gnolia just looks so much nicer.

I just enabled Akismet so let me know if there’s anything goofy with the comments.

Ben Heck recently wrapped up his work on the first Playstaion 3 laptop (I’d link to his site but their new server seems to be down). This baby features a 17″ LCD screen, capable of 720p resolution with a HDMI-DVI connection; built-in keyboard and speakers; and weighs in at 16 pounds. I want one. (I wonder what kind of heat this behemoth will produce.)

Following the link above, Engadget will soon be auctioning off the one-on-a-kind model for charity. Ben Heck also created the Xbox 360 Laptop, and, something I just learned, a Wii Laptop! I’m always impressed by how clean and “natural” his creations come looking. He also has a book out titled Hacking Video Game Consoles that I’d like to pick up some day.

Forgive the lack of posts lately; since March I’ve been very tied up. At the beginning of last month I had all 4 wisdom teeth pulled; the surgery went well (local anesthetics) and the recovery went even smoother. After playing catch up from that, two weeks ago I came down with bronchitis, and I’m still suffering the remnants of the cough.

Busy things in store for this spring:

• Updates to my No Spam plugin (and one or two new ones, too!)
• Launch of wedding photography business
• Personal photography portfolio site
• Possible migration of this blog to Left Right Designs as posts lean more towards a technical nature
• …and much more!

Just updated to Wordpress version 2.3.3 due to a security vulnerability in Wordpress. You shouldn’t notice anything, but let me know if something broke in the process.

I wanted to make fun of the site and the people who take it waaaay too seriously, so I put up something that was different than most of the photos there. I get a kick out of the results. Turns out to be hot all you have to do is something different; women love rebels. Epic.

Just.. wow. Some of the rag-doll animations looked too “rag doll-ish”, but it’s still unfinished and everything else is beautiful.