Hiatus

I've started to update my Livejournal regularly (finally!) as opposed to this. So if anyone reads this, my Livejournal blog is at http://godlesswanderer.livejournal.com

If you have a Livejournal account, feel free to add me. If not, get one then add me :).

How to Kill Your Brand

I think pwnt sums it up pretty nicely.

StumbleUpon

I've recently downloaded the Firefox extension StumbleUpon. For people that have never heard of StumbleUpon it's an add on/extension that can be installed into Firefox or IE that shows you websites according to your interests (which you set when you register) when you click the 'Stumble!' button.
So, I thought I'd post some cool sites that I've found.

Name: Blogmusik
URL: http://www.blogmusik.net
Description: Blogmusik is essentially a free online ipod. You can type an artist into the search bar at the bottom of the ipod and it'll bring up all songs they have in their database by that artist. They give you the option to save songs into a playlist so you don't have to constantly search them but you have to be registered to use the save feature. It's fairly basic in terms of other features, you can change the volume and set a song to repeat but there isn't really anything that stands out.
I should also say, the sound quality isn't all that good. It's not terrible but it's noticeable.

Name: TypeNow Themed Fonts
URL: http://www.typenow.net/themed.htm
Description: A huge list of 305 famous fonts which you can download for free. They include fonts from Robocop, Terminator, Yahoo!, Danzig, Def Leppard, Atari, Half Life, Ferrari and tons more.

Name: 25 Reasons to Smoke Marijuana
URL: http://questionthemark.org/2006/12/22/25-reasons-to-smoke-marijuana.aspx
Decription: This website presents 25 very good reasons to smoke marijuana. The writer has even provided links for some of the reasons to prove their credibility.
Before you ask, yes I have done it a few times.

Name: Project Censored
URL: http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm
Description: This website shows you the top 25 news stories that didn't make the news. Not surprisingly a lot of them involve the USA in some way.

Name: Demockratees
URL: http://www.demockratees.com/
Description: A great website for buying politically themed clothing. Most relate to America in some way but you could probably wear them in any English speaking country and people will understand it.

Name: List of Unusual Deaths
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths
Description: Quite a long list of unusual deaths, ranging from ancient times to the present day.

I'll add more as I find them.

False Identification

There are a few people on websites and forums registered under the name Godlesswanderer that aren't me. This entry shows a couple of them.
Posted over at my Livejournal because the pictures won't show properly here.

http://godlesswanderer.livejournal.com/25053.html

Popular?

After (but not as a result of) my recent rant about Digg I managed to get a story into the 'popular' section. It didn't quite make it to the front page though. It seems that it needs to get a lot of diggs within minutes of it becoming popular for it to get to the front page. The lowest amount of diggs on the front page that I've seen is about 90-ish, while mine was no where near with 35.
At the moment, it's slowly creeping up (39 at the time of writing this) but it's way past it's chance to get on the front page.

While watching the digg labs stack for upcoming stories I noticed someone else who was also frustrated with never getting a story to the front page. He had come up with an idea which he thought would get himself to the front page. He gave out his mobile phone number (which will work up until the 29^th) for people to call or text and say whatever they wanted.
I personally thought this would go up to the front page as quick as anything. It shows all the signs of a last desperate attempt, destined to be answered by the digg users. But unfortunately it didn't happen, at the moment it's stuck around the 23 mark and I can't see it getting any higher.

Going by the rate at which the diggs came in for my story, it seems that digging goes in two stages.

1. First you have to get out of the upcoming stories, that happens anywhere between 30 and 60 diggs.
   
2. Once you do that you're at the bottom of the popular stories, which means it's even harder to get diggs. As all of the very popular stories are getting dugg a lot and not many people take any notice of the least popular ones.
   

The second stage is where mine failed. It's more or less like the first stage but on the bigger scale. There are so many stories in the popular section, it's very hard to get people to notice it.
It seems like the best times to submit a story is between 4pm and 2am (GMT). The reason being that the majority of digg users are in Canada and the US, and at those times people are just getting back from work/school and the first thing they'll do is turn on the computer and check digg.

The only problem with submitting at that time is there will be a lot more users submitting stories so you'll need to make sure what you're submitting is something people WILL be interested in. If it's something people MIGHT be interested in, the chances that it'll become popular are very slim and the chances of it appearing on the front page are even worse (obviously).

I've just realised this has turned into a guide of sorts. If anyone wants to take it as a guide, go for it. If this helps people then I'll know my frustration brought about results.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed

Guess what...

Yep, there's another Star Wars game coming out. And as you may have already guessed, it's called Star Wars: Force Unleashed.
I've seen a couple videos and it looks absolutely amazing. Enemy AI is supposed to be incredibly sophisticated, having stuff like self preservation and so on. You can see this in the AI tech demo. Stormtroopers will do things like grab onto beams or ledges if they're falling off, and if a storm trooper falls past another they'll try to grab onto each other to.
It's supposedly coming out in November this year.

Keep in mind that these videos are tech demos, so they're not necessarily what it'll look like in the end.

Tech Video and possible release date: http://www.younewb.com/2007/02/11/star-wars-force-unleashed-to-come-out-november-2007/
AI tech demo: http://gamedrift.com/articles.php?a=265
Material reactions tech demo: http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=42397

Although it's older, the material tech demo is the most interesting. I don't think I've seen any game that does material reactions so well.

If anyone knows how I embed videos from GameTrailers, tell me. I can't seem to find anywhere that'll tell me.

Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft

John August, the screenwriter who wrote three of the Tim Burton movies, writes about what he took from the game and applied in real life. And also about why he had to stop playing it at all.

read more | digg story

This is a pretty interesting article by John August (screenwriter and director) about what he has learnt from playing World of Warcraft and how it relates to and helps him improve on his daily life.
It just goes to show that video games to have some kind of standing in helping people deal with certain things. Whether it be dealing with the outside world by hiding away from it, or giving you ideas on how to improve your life.

I personally think people should think about games in the latter way more often. I havn't until now but I'm going to try to start.

Surprises

If you havn't checked this out before now, you really are missing out. Alex Albrecht (from Diggnation) has released a song, and it rocks! Well, I say released, he's posted it on MySpace.
I honestly wasn't expecting his song to be so good (no offence Alex), but it really is very good. He's funny, he can act, who knew he could sing too?

You can check out the song here and if you just want to check out his general page, that's here.

For anyone that doesn't know Alex Albrecht, I recommend you check out Diggnation, it's possibly the best podcast ever. Really. I'm not just saying that.

Cold Footsies

 

As you can see, it did actually snow last night. It actually snowed half an hour before they said but I'm not complaining.
I don't think you can tell from the pictures but there's about 5 inches of snow. I don't actually know how many inches there are but my parents say it's about 5 inches and they grew up using inches so I'm trusting their judgement.
This is the most snow I've seen for a while. It kind of sucks that I've got no one to go and mess about in it with. Most people I know are at college or already out

Aaaanyway, enjoy!

Full size versions of these pictures can be seen at the my photos section on my Flickr account.

Digg Tantrum

There's some things about Digg that have been annoying me recently. I really don't get how to get stories on the front page. I mean, I submit 

a cool/funny/interesting video/game/article/and it never gets any more than about 5 diggs.  The highest I got once was 24, that was before stories could get on the front page for about 15 
diggs, so it never got much attention. Even when whatever I'm submitting has had something similar on the front page, it never gets there.

For example, there was a video that made it to the front page earlier today which basically showed a cool drum solo by some jazz drummer about 40/50 years ago.
By chance, the night before I had been watching an 8 minute Neil Peart* drum solo. It was better and longer than the story submitted
to the front page so I submitted it, hoping to get some people to see it and get 
some diggs. Guess how many diggs it got...



Just one. Yup, all it got was the automatic digg I gave it by submitting the story.

It seems that to get stories to the front page you'd have to either have a lot of digg friends who will see what you've submitted and check it out or you'd have to be constantly scanning tech sites for recent news. Most likely both.

Another thing I've noticed. I've seen people digging stories/comments from Kevin Rose which seem like they're digging him just because of who he is. I mean, it's not like they're going to get anything from sucking up to him. Chances are he'll never add anyone else (assuming he's got a few people added). This sucking up can also be seen in people's diggs of comments in his submissions. 
For example, I posted a comment on one of Kevin's recent submissions saying that I didn't think the website was that useful. Which is my honest opinion of the particular website. Because of this I was dugg down for disagreeing with Kevin. If kind of defeats the purpose of having a comments system if all the good comments (i.e. comments agreeing with Kevin) get through and all the bad ones (i.e. comments disagreeing with him) get dugg down until they are hidden.
I'm all for digging down because people are insulting others or just generally being asses but digging down because of someone's opinion isn't right.

Don't get me wrong, I love Digg and I love all of its features. I visit the site every day and I'm constantly refreshing the page for new stories.
I've even recently started watching diggnation and I'm in love with the show and the hosts (Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose).
So this isn't a rant because I have something against digg or the members in general. It's just a rant so I can get some pent up anger out of my system and point out some of digg's flaws. Those of you that read my Livejournal will know what anger I'm talking about.

* For people that don't know, Neil Peart is the drummer for the progressive rock band Rush. He's won several awards for jazz drumming and he is viewed as one of the most important and influential drummers alive today.

P.S. Sorry about the spacing/alignment issues, it's nothing I can control.

AMAZING Neil Peart Drum Solo

I saw the previous drum solo video that made it to the front page and felt I had to submit this. An amazing drum solo performed by the one and only Neil Peart. This guy is possibly the best drummer in existence.

read more | digg story

Hey oooooh!

 

Woooooo! Snow! *does a merry jig*

This entry is just to say that depending on how much snow there is I may take some more pictures. So get ready for a picture post, i.e. one with mainly pictures.
Hopefully there's going to be a lot of snow judging by that satellite picture grabbed from the BBC Weather site.

Entry mirrored at my LiveJournal

Articulation

For anyone that reads my LiveJournal who may be reading this, you're probably thinking that I've abandoned LiveJournal completely.
Truth is, I have... partially.
What I'm doing is having posting things about current events and whatnot (i.e. things my LiveJournal readers won't be interested in) here and posting things that are more personal (i.e. things I'd like only my close friends to know) in my LiveJournal.

Got it so far? Good.

My main reason behind this is I need somewhere where people will hear me. I sometimes develop certain views about some things and sometimes I want them to be heard. Before now I didn't have anywhere to create such posts, but now I do.

To be honest I'm not sure if this will work or if I will end up sticking to this. I will most likely go back to only using LiveJournal but we'll see.