TwiddleGeek

It seems like everything has fallen into place for the upcoming move to San Diego. Great job, good place to live, got everything packed… but, this might mean some changes to TwiddleGeek. Aside from just having less time to game, I’m no longer going to be gaming using a capture card through my PC. That simply means no more screencaps. Which isn’t to say the site is going to go under in a few weeks, there may just be a few changes.

I can see a few methods of still getting screens. First would be hooking the console up to a capture card temporarily and taking a few, as SpaceKitty did in her Mario Galaxy post. Frankly, that’s too much hassle. Secondly is simply grabbing some stock company-published screens for each game. There’s certainly no shortage. That could work, though it loses a bit of the personal touch and the fun of making a gallery of neat screens. The other option is to simply go with all text posts. This would perhaps enable more posts to be made, but I tend to think graphics add a lot of pop.

I’ll figure something out, I just haven’t decided quite yet. If anything there’ll still be plenty of reviews being published. I simply enjoy blogging about a game in a more freeform style while playing it and after finishing it than a review typically allows for. Also, most of my avatars and mobile themes come from screencaps… obviously that’ll become more difficult, but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

I want to pass along my joy and thanks that TwiddleGeek’s skins, wallpapers, and avatars have now passed 10,000 downloads. Just five months after releasing my first Winamp skin as a side project to the anime and gaming posts on the site, you’ve all helped to make the effort a great success. The Winamp section has been very successful with two skins achieving over 1,000 downloads each, but the real surprise to me has been the wallpaper section. My Gundam 00 Setsuna wallpaper is the single most downloaded item on the site, and the section is very close to overtaking Winamp skins in total downloads.

Mobile walls and avatars have been more popular than I thought they might be. I’m glad to see people are interested in the content. Despite the simplicity, I like offering up various avatars just for fun. They’re quick, they’re easy, and I enjoy them. I certainly plan to make more Winamp skins some day soon — I just need to sit down and make it happen one of these days. I’m not so much worried about quantity as I am having fun making them, however. 4, 40, or 400… so long as it’s still fun, I’ll keep making them. If you want more great skins right now, SpaceKitty has over 150 for you.

Heading to California, I figured it would be easier to have a laptop with me rather than dragging my aging desktop down that way. Best Buy had a great special on the Acer Extensa 5420, and now I’m a proud mobile user. Honestly, for personal use I don’t think desktops make as much sense as they used to. In this age of $500 laptops, being tied down to one location is quite unnecessary. Laptops offer not only the freedom of taking your work with you, but much less noise and increasingly comparable performance. Unless you’re a gamer, a laptop can fit most needs these days. A big advantage to desktops, however, is still the ability to fix and upgrade it part by part.

The Acer came with Vista Home Ultimate pre-installed, which I was prepared to give a decent try despite the horrible word of mouth. I’m quite glad I did, as after a few days of playing around with it I’m never going back to XP. Aside from the fact that Aero Glass looks stunning, a Windows power-user can tweak many things in Vista to be incredibly functional and handy. For example, you can turn on a feature that makes typing in Windows Explorer (folder view, not IE) automatically go to the search bar. And with a few tweaks, the search bar offers a real-time filtering of the displayed folder’s contents and, optionally, that of the sub-folders.

Another great time saver makes use of a key I never thought I’d use: The Windows key. Previously, if you had asked me what the most useless key on a keyboard was, this would have even beaten out runner-ups such as Scroll Lock and Pause / Break. What makes it so great now? Simple: The start menu’s search bar. Again, more like a filtering than a search, I can now launch Photoshop by simply pressing: Win - PHO - enter. Even niftier, I can type: Win - C:\Some Folder\ and see it displayed right there on the start menu. From there I can even run files or and open it in Windows Explorer. I’ll never have to use a 3rd party app like Find And Run Robot again.

Overall the Extensa has had an incredible bang for the buck. The screen is a beautiful 1280×800 wide, easily twice as bright as my aging LCD, and the system is very responsive even in power saver mode. It’s so bright and so responsive, this afternoon I accidentally had it in Power Saver (which sets brightness to 10% and limits processor power to 50%) for hours before I even noticed. It’ll get about 2.5 hours in this mode, which is fairly standard. I’ve lamented to SpaceKitty that I wish laptop battery life wasn’t so abysmal in general. I’m not sure if Acer makes a 12cell for this model or not, but I do know any replacement battery is fairly hard to come by.

It’s been a busy month so far as I’ve started my job hunting for San Diego about a month (at least) ahead of schedule. Probably a good thing too, because there’s always so much to take care of. Apart from getting my portfolio ready, perfecting my resume, cover letters, keeping track of follow-ups, and the general trials of job hunting — I’ve also got the issue of moving some 2,000 miles to deal with.

I’ve searched high and low to find the best method of moving, and in the end it seems like just leaving my stuff behind and flying out there is the best bet. I can simply rebuy the important stuff for cheaper than I can move it. That said, trying to get an entire apartment worth of possessions down to two checked 50 lbs bags and one carry-on is quite a challenge. Even so, it’s a good feeling to be able to separate from the vast majority of one’s possessions and start fresh.

So far as job hunting and apartment hunting goes, Craigslist has been by far my most useful resource. Sites like Monster.com have surprisingly few listings even for a place as big as San Diego, and what is listed usually requires a Ph.D, 15 year membership in MENSA, and at least one working theory on quantum computing you’re applying to IT. Craigslist is much more practical and down to Earth so far as the listings go, and there are a lot of em — I just pray I see some results soon.