buttonmashing

Mashing buttons since 1984

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k2 0.9

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I’m finally making the transition to K2 0.9, which was released last week. Things will look hairy during the transition.

This message will self-destruct in 24 18 hours (I hope)

Update: So far things have gone pretty swimmingly. The two coolest additions that I’ve made (so far) are the Sidebar Modules (which will be mostly transparent to the reader) and the Subscribe to Comments.

The SBM plug-in makes adding, editing, and removing content on the sidebar much easier, including the ability to choose which modules show up on the main page and what modules show up on individual post pages (like this one) and static pages (like the Carnival HQ).

The Subscribe to Comments plug-in is quite nifty. After commenting on a post, you can check the little “notify me” box and you’ll get an email anytime someone else comments on a post you’ve commented on. Very cool and very handy.

I should wrap up the rest of the tweaks, time permitting, before the weekend.

Buttonmashing.com turns 2!

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candles.jpgHelp me blow out the candles on buttonmashing.com’s second birthday cake! It’s hard for me to believe that another year has passed, but two years ago to the day buttonmashing.com went live.

A lot has happened in the past year, both here at Buttonmashing and in the gaming community as a whole. Some highlights:

  • The GTA Hot Cofee scandal (which will not go away!)
  • My blogger validation came as I obtained a “stalker” (who is really just a friend that wanted me to discover Harry Potter)
  • I noticed a lot of posts trying to refute all the crap that Jack Thompson spewed. I’m particularly fond of this one, which also helped on a poor gamer to convince his mom to get him Resident Evil 4 and helped another lost soul with his homework.
  • The 360 was launched on the world, and I didn’t get one. Poor me.
  • A whole year of Carnivals, including one held at Slashdot Games.

A crazy year, indeed. Thanks again to all you who’ve stuck around through the thick and thin, to all the Carnies, and to everyone who’s ever read/commented on/linked something here at buttonmashing.com. I appreciate all the feedback. It’s been a great two years. Here’s to another great year.

Before I blow out the candles, I should probably make a wish… (DS Lite… DS Lite… DS Lite…)

House Cleaning

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Things might get a little wonky around here, I’m going to be tinkering under the WordPress hood. I’d like to update the look of my site with a more appropriate banner and color scheme. I’ve also got a backlog of posts that I need to tag. I hope it doesn’t make the feed go screwy. I apologize in advance if it does.

I’m also going to upgrade to the most recent WordPress install and update any plugins that may have been updated.

We’ll get to our regular scheduled program shortly.

A milestone

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Over the weekend, buttonmashing.com received its 100,000th hit! May not be much, but I was pretty happy about it.

Onward to the next 100k!

Wow.

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Amazing. I am so thoroughly impressed with WordPress right now, I’m at a loss for words to adequately praise it. I just imported nine months of Blogger posts without a hitch. Setting up WordPress has been simple thus far. Now that I’ve got my posts imported, I’m gonna make sure everything looks okay before I move on. We’ll move on from there.

Update 1: Man, it just keeps getting better. Using Bloglines export feature (export to OPML file) I have now imported all my links from Bloglines. I still need to organize them and there doesn’t seem to be an immediately easy way to use Bloglines to update my links, but I’m sure someone out there has solved that problem, too. This is good stuff!

Update 2: Well, the links are organized. Next it categorizing all my old posts. I may put that off until later. Perhaps I’ll try a plug-in or two.

Update 3 (2/24): The process of converting my old Blogger posts continues tonight, I will make sure all of them are all categorized and edited for grammatical errors. Then it’s on to themes and plugins!

Update 3 (2/26): Posts have all be categorized and I’ve been looking at various plugins and themes. This is seriously great stuff, I can’t believe how seamless and easy it’s all been. Kudos to the guys and WordPress.

New and improved!

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After fighting with mySQL for the first time (surprisingly painless after I realized what I was doing) we have a new version of buttonmashing. It’s late, so I’ll be going to bed now, but I’ll be trying all the cool WordPress widgets later, starting with the import of my Blogger posts. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m sleepy.

New blogging software?

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I’ve been thinking about the managment side of my blog recently. I have been mostly happy with Blogger.com. I’ve been a member for a long time, and I really haven’t had a problem with it, but I think I’m ready to move on to new blogging software. Something with a little more flexibility and new challenges. I’ve been looking at WordPress, Moveable Type, and others. Right now I’m leaning toward WordPress. Most of the bloggers I read use it, it’s FREE (definitely the biggest bonus), and it seems well supported.

What advice to you, my fellow bloggers, recommend? Are you satisfied with your current software? Am I biting off more than I can chew? I am technically competent but I’ve never dealt with anything on the web-server side of things, outside of ftp’ing images and other files. I have programming skills, but I don’t have skillz.

Anyway, look for some possible changes in the next couple of days here. If nothing else, I’m gonna mash some buttons and we’ll see what we end up with. Thanks for any help/advice you can offer.

Back in business!

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Our friendly Time Warner tech came over this afternoon to reconnect us to the virtual world of broadband and cable TV, just in time for Monk. Whatta guy! It’s been strange being disconnected from the internet at home. I still my work access, so I was able to follow my blogroll on Bloglines (I have a convert in Jeff Freeman, my first convert. I’m working on more) but being detached from ButtonMashing was good.

It was good because the move has been a big change for the family and I was able to attend to more important things, like hooking up the washer and dryer, and not have to worry if I’ll miss a big gaming story. I love doing the blogging thing and I love doing the gaming thing, but this past week had presented me with some more valuable ways to spend my time, so I’ve been enjoying my time away.

But I did miss it, all the same, and it feels good to be back. I’ve still got non-gaming things to take up my time (like making mortgage payments) but I can also have some gaming time, too. All in moderation. So the Button Masher has made a return to the video game blogging world, and he’s all the better for it.

Moving shop

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Well, after I hit “Publish Post” on this quick post, I will be packing up all things gaming and computing into boxes. Tomorrow, I will be loading them into a Budget Rental Moving Truck and moving my family about 2 miles down the road to our new home. I will be incommunicado until at least Friday, when Time Warner comes by to jack me back into the net. Until then, I am looking forward to the evenings disconnected from the world of blogging and reconnected with what matters most, video games. (Okay, okay, family matters most, video games second most).

The time down will give me a chance to actually play games instead of blabbering about them here. If you miss me, there’s plenty of other good stuff going on in the gaming blogosphere, I’m sure you’ll make do.

Until then, good gaming.

ButtonMashing.com is evolving

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There have been some minor cosmetic and content changes being made here at Button Mashing. The first change I made was the removal of my Blogroll. There’s nothing terribly wrong with the service, I just felt I had more control over my links by coding them myself. I know Bloglines has a similar service but I haven’t tried that out yet. I’ve also added a third category of blogs I’m linking to, video game blogs I’ve recently discovered. There’s also a link for non-gaming blogs, which will range from tech/gizmo/gadget blogs to blogs of friends, etc.

In addition to my weekly review of the world of gaming blogs, I’m also going to highlight some of the new gaming blogs I come across. Hopefully this will be a way to make more people aware of new/up-and-coming gaming blogs. Hopefully they will garner some new readers (and vice-versa) with all that huge traffic I’ll generate for them (uh huh, right).

This site is primarily dedicated to my gaming experiences (and thoughts) but I am also interested in the blogging phenomenon in general, so I also plan to comment on that as I see fit. I read this post over at render, where he mentions he’s thinking about commenting on things non-gaming, i.e. movies, books, websites, etc. I would love to see that. I have mentioned such things here, from time to time. It adds variety and flavor to a blog that has a single dedication. I don’t expect this blog to become a day-to-day journal of my goings-on at work, or as a dad or husband, but my family is inextricably tied to the rest of my life that it’s hard to separate the two. In addition, my opinion on such things as “I, Robot” (thoroughly enjoyed it, it didn’t try hard to be something it’s not) or what’s in heavy rotation on my iPod (“Shimmer” by Fuel, “Great Expectations” by Jurassic 5, others) adds a certain credence to what I say on gaming topics.

In scholastic terms, ButtonMashing.com is majoring in video gaming, minoring in blogs, and taking a handful of humanities courses.