Games, Geeky Things, and General Musings
Just for reference… it took this long to make a post not only because of my other duties, but because Sky Broadband, my Internet Service Provider, couldn’t seem to login properly to the blog for me to see the editor in its normal state.
That’s really sucky.
Boy, am I rusty.
I have not had a good update on Games and Geekery in a few months, so here are some updates on my end.
The first update is a job-related one. In addition to my work for MMORPG.com as a columnist, I’m also a news writer for a Rappler.com. I do mostly tech news, which is nice. I hope to one day branch out though, if they keep me on after my probationary period.
With regard to gaming, I’m trying to strike a balance with work, play, and other leisure activities. If I can fit some exercise in there, that’d be excellent.
As for the blog… well, Games and Geekery is not going away, and I should focus on improving my home base, so to speak. I will slowly work on adding more content and redoing the blogroll as a separate page over the weekend.
I’ve also updated my blog guidelines to reflect the potential for ad-based guest posts on the site, primarily to pay for hosting. As such, these should be few and far between.
More than anything else, I love writing. I cherish knowing my words mean something, and I hope to continue doing that no matter what happens.
*hugs everyone on the Internet*
-Victor
Those of you who know or follow me on Twitter or on this blog have some idea that I used to write for a little-known games website back in the day. Ever since that time, I’ve always wanted to get back into paid writing related to video games, and I finally have that opportunity.
Later, at 9 am EST, I’ll have my first official full-named byline under a video game column for MMORPG.com (It’s funny how I’ve never actually used my full name on an online article since I started writing). I’ll be taking over the writing of their Devil’s Advocate column from here on out, and I hope it’ll be a long-running column with them.
With the Devil’s Advocate column, I have an opportunity to expose people to unpopular or otherwise unrepresented points of view. The first column, which I wrote some three odd weeks ago, will talk about regional restrictions as it pertains to video games, specifically SWTOR, in the hopes that people can understand different sides of the discussion related to regional restrictions.
I’ll be monitoring comments for the first hour or so prior to my doing some work, so if you leave a comment during that time, I’ll do my best to get back to you.
Of course, I’ll still be writing here, but I do hope you’ll check out the MMORPG.com column as well.
If you’ve reached this site through a post or, by some godly providence Google is linking these posts now, then congratulations! You’re now on the new home of Games and Geekery.
Now, before any celebration can really commence, it must be noted that there’s still a process of ongoing fixing that I have to do to get Games and Geekery formally ready. This includes writing new About and Contact Pages, recreating the blogroll, and seeing what I can do to make Games and Geekery essentially better.
To that end, I do not want to go through using this site alone, so I asked a friend of mine here in the Philippines who loves toys and tabletop gaming to help out and post when he likes. We’re still ironing out details, but he seems to like the idea of a place to write, since he used to write with me on the old gaming news blog I worked for from 2006 to 2008.
As for plans, well, I’m hoping to round out Games and Geekery with folks who want to discuss console games a bit better, or who have other general interests that fall into the geeky line of thought. While I set up a form for that purpose (boy, that’s a lot of different extra pages), feel free to email me a [email protected] for information, if you’re looking for a place to write.
Sometimes, you know that even a good thing like a humble little blog has to end. It’s been 460 posts since I started this blog, and I’m proud to have done so many things and started discussions on particular topics of interest to me and other folks.
That said, it’s time to move on to better things, and it’s time to say farewell to the blog that was once known as Victor Stillwater’s Blog of Games and Geekery.
Beginning today, until the time that I can’t find anything else to write about and I’ve lost all my friends in the blogosphere and twitterverse, you will have to find Victor Stillwater on a different part of the web, and that’s on https://www.gamesandgeekery.com, otherwise known more succinctly as just plain Games and Geekery.
I’m not leaving the things I love so easily, and I thought that, by buying my own domain, part of a long-standing dream I’ve had, I could grow as a person and take care of and be responsible for something that is wholly and completely my own.
With the help of Arkenor, Geek Goddess, and Stargrace, I’ve been able to work on the beginnings of a new site, though I’ve yet to find time to completely change everything accordingly to fit the needs of a new site. Call this a soft opening or a weird beginning; either way, I’m staying put, and writing what I can, and I hope you can add my new site as Games and Geekery on your individual pages.
As for what’s up next? Give me another hour or so, and I should have some new content up on the new site that might interest you folks. Cheers!
UPDATE: Over on Twitter, Arkenor reminded me that I’m the only person who can see the actual emails of people who comment on the blog, making most of this post utterly useless.
That said, feel free to ignore this post. *headdesk, followed by a facepalm*
Hi folks. It’s Victor Stillwater here with another bit of an update regarding commenting.
I just wanted to make an announcement regarding commenting again for those who haven’t read previous entries on the blog.
Now, all comments pass through me, and generally, I approve all the non-spam looking ones. There are, however, exceptions to this, and I do it more or less to make sure spam doesn’t come through or people don’t get fired.
What am I talking about? Basically, I look at the email addresses attached to the user names on comments, and if I find that a specific comment’s email address is remotely connected to a place of work or business, I don’t approve the comment. This is to prevent potential spam from coming in from an email address I’ve never heard of, or to prevent people from getting reprimanded at work for using company resources to post on blogs.
To that end, please be careful what email address you’re logging in from. Better yet, make a Google, Yahoo, or Windows Live email account for personal use with a clearly non-spam looking email name.
These and other additional notes will be added to the blog rules and commenting guidelines page of the blog.
Thank you.
Some of you might have noticed that not all of your comments pop up immediately on the entries I’ve posted, even if you’re the same person. There’s a reason for that.
Basically, the filter on WordPress keeps a comment for me to view and approve or deny if there’s a different email attached to it. For instance, if the email you used on comment 1 is [email protected], and on your second comment, you have the same username but instead use [email protected], then I have to approve it first.
Thing is, because I don’t know if the second email used is a spammer/impersonator or not, I’m hesitant to put otherwise normal comments on the site because that might allow a spammer to keep posting here without issues.
To put everything down simply, please remember to keep your online persona when commenting the same, which means using a specific username and email address for every comment, to ensure that your comments come through, and also to ensure that you’re not a spammer. Thank you.
Pitrelli of Kill That Cheerleader alerted me to this just a few moments ago, so I want to send out some apologies now for anyone who was affected by it.
I was doing some cleaning up of the categories from my newbie days on this site, and was basically adding and removing categories as needed to sort of make it easier for people to search for specific entries. Pitrelli told me that apparently, my RSS feed was affected as well, bumping up articles whose categories I edited back into circulation on the feed reader.
If anyone else has this problem, I want to say sorry for the inconvenience. It was not my intention to bork your feedreaders with older musings.
Moving forward though, I’m happy to say that thanks to some teaching from Elandarex, the category system has been streamlined somewhat, with some categories (such as console gaming titles) being turned into tags instead so as not to clutter the category system. MMOs will still have their own separate categories but, as a sort of redundancy, also have tags should, in the future, there be too many categories in that sphere. Prolific game series (Final Fantasy, Fallout, Resident Evil and Street Fighter so far) will have their own categories, but will have all iterations of the games in that particular category.
Once again, thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy reading the entries here as much as Elandarex and I enjoy writing them. Cheers.
This is the 200th post since I started using this blog. A lot has happened: a transfer from Blogspot to WordPress, the creation of a Twitter account, a whole lot of content, guest blogs, a second writer (Hi Elandarex!) and, more recently, a short-term burst of new readers thanks to SOE’s Town Crier.
Most importantly, I feel that the biggest reason why I keep on blogging everything from gaming news to MMO happenings is because I’ve made a ton of friends through this whole process. It feels good to know that there are people out there who play the same things and think about the same things I do, and do so with a healthy respect for living life outside the game.
Of course, I’m still learning to balance living life on the computer and in the real world, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.
Thank you to everyone who has opted to read Games and Geekery, whether it be just a single sentence, or an entire slew of articles. This is a big part of my life at present, and I’m hoping that it remains so for the rest of my days. Cheers!
Picture Source: Alex Sims
Over here in the Philippines, it’s actually Monday already. While most people are at work, I’m doing something I love, which is working to make this humble blog a more exciting place.
To that end, there are, again, some new changes over here on Games and Geekery that you might want to know about. The most obvious one is, of course, the switch to a new theme. It has more space, and had almost all of the previous functions of the theme I was originally using, which made it a great fit for the blog.
Of course, since this is a free WordPress blog, it will probably look a bit similar from what already exists out in the blogosphere. To combat that, Elandarex used his wonderful Photoshop skills to create a new header for the site. This one has a very obvious retro theme, but we’re experimenting with different ideas to see if we can come up with a couple of headers that we can change every few months or so to spice things up.
Lastly, there’s one other change I’ve implemented here as a result of bringing Elandarex into Games and Geekery. From today onwards, I am accepting guest submissions regarding video games and other forms of geekery (a very broad statement for a reason) from other writers who may wish to get their thoughts out but do not necessarily want to maintain a blog of their own.
The backstory for this is simple: a friend of mine on Twitter wanted to repost something he wrote on the genre-specific topic of gaming, but didn’t find it to be a perfect fit for his personal blog. I offered my space and, well, the rest will be history once I put up the post. Expect the post to be up once I get some last minute details regarding the write-up.
In the meantime, if you find any bugs or weird looking shenanigans on the blog, please let me know so I can take a look at it and fix it if possible. Cheers!
Image Source: To Whom It May Concern