Asides
Bloglines purge
I’ve been going through my Bloglines subscriptions and have purged it of 100+ feeds. I removed a lot of gaming blogs that were either not being regularly updated or simply didn’t have the content I was looking for. I noticed that a lot of the stuff these blogs were posting was simply regurgitated news bits that I could find elsewhere (Kotaku and Joystiq). I was looking for more from gaming blogs. These guys didn’t make the cut. It’s not that they were bad, it just wasn’t what I was looking for.
That being said, I’ve already been replenishing my feeds with new bloggers that, if you’re not reading already, I suggest you check them out. They include:
Matt Brett, who has done a little bit of everything including playing video games, of course. Really like his
Amber Night is a blogger who falls into the category of both gamer and game designer. Always a thoughtful read.
A group of guys from uber game-news site Evil Avatar have started Toy Bane, which is a great read as well.
I’ve been reading it for a while, but in case you aren’t, Michael Zenke’s MMOG Nation is a great place for MMO commentary. (That’s Zonk from Slashdot Games, but you already knew that)
I also had a hiccup with Damned Machines feed, it wasn’t getting updated and I thought they had gone AWOL. Glad to see there still blogging with their razor sharp (jaded?) wit.
There has also been a return of a couple bloggers whose return has made me happy. Both Adam LaMosca and Jeff Freeman are back in the game. Glad to have you back.
Lots of good stuff out there for your consumption.
Related Posts:
I Heart Bloglines
New Kids on the Block (#1)
New Kids on my Block (#2)
New Kids on my Block, Part #3 (BlogExplosion-style)
I still Heart Bloglines
What he said
I was going to mention this, but Josh already has, probably better than I could have anyway.
Playing with WordPress
I’ve been meaning to play with some new WordPress Toys, I just haven’t gotten around to it until now. They’re pretty slick.
For starters, I’ve just installed the most excellent WordPress Widgets. The k2 theme will support them shortly, but here’s the quick and dirty changes you can make yourself. I haven’t completely moved all my sidebar content over, but that’s on my to-do list.
Next are two excellent Flickr plug-ins I’m dying to try out. The first is a WordPress Flickr Album which uses your Flickr Sets and presents them in a gallery on your site. I’m more interested in this plug-in for my family blog, but I’m using BM as a guinea pig. It also implements the writer’s Flickr Post Bar which makes inserting Flickr images into blog posts a cinch.
While I have Google Ads on the site, I don’t really push them too much and wonder how much good they do anyway. I saw this little snippet of code from Michael that will hide the ads from regular readers (read: commenters). I guess that makes me feel better about having them. I’ll be adding it shortly.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I can’t say it enough — WordPress is awesome.
Update: Whoops. I broke something and a bunch of my posts were updated and picked up by the RSS feed. Sorry about that.
Haven’t we had enough?
I’m not a big fan of the internet April Fools Day shenanigans. They haven’t been funny for a long time (even though Josh got me last year). Being away from the computer insulated me from all this. That’s a good thing. I’m tired of them. It appears I’m not the only one.
We need a quota on these things. I mean seriously!
I still heart Bloglines
If I’d actually been paying attention to the Blogline News feed, I would have known about this sooner, but Bloglines has been slowly adding features. Elliott mentioned that the icons had received a face lift and as I was editing my subscriptions tonight, I noticed they had implemented drag and drop with their folders. A nice touch. There haven’t been a ton of enhancements on the outside, but for a free service, Bloglines is still my RSS feed reader of choice. I’m in the progress of pruning my subscriptions, there’s just too many to keep track of. The drag and drop and other features are quite helpful.
On the topic of feeds, I’ve updated my Feedburner feed to also integrate my del.icio.us bookmarks (which currently aren’t many) and my newly opened Buttonmashing Flickr account. You can grab the feed here:
Click here if you want to import it directly into Bloglines:
Making babies and the level 60 grind
Only the unbeliever could find the parallels. Observe.
As usual, sex shows us that it is more then the meaning of life, it is also a playbook for creating content.
Phat loot = babies. I totally agree.
He’s back…
Adam (render) is back with a new blog! Render was definitely one of my favorite blogs and I’m glad to see he’s back at it. He’s been doing stuff for Gamers With Jobs, which has been top notch, but I’m looking forward to reading what else he has to say.
Welcome back, Adam!
I’m level 31
… and 365 days till my 0% to my next level.
I’ve gone from “just being thirty” to now being “in my thirties.”
It’s a strange feeling.
Oldschool Revolution
Innocence is dead. Let the revolution begin. (It’s for the fanboys)