TwiddleGeek

Seems like the Wallpaper section of the site is off to a good start. Sure, it’s not raking in the downloads, but it’s getting some, and that’s more than I expected right off the bat. From your guys’ search queries, it seems you’d really like some Gundam 00 wallpapers — so I’ll see if I can get on that. I’ve debated with SpaceKitty about whether or not I should keep mobile wallpapers and desktop wallpapers unique, but she had the good point that some people like them to match. So, I’ll probably be sharing the content between them where applicable.

My Xenosaga III skin Also Sprach has seen 1,000 downloads now. Thanks a lot everyone for supporting something I decided to try my hand at without knowing if it would work out or not. Just by downloading one of my skins or wallpapers you guys make me a bit happier. I’d love to make more and I will some day, but I’m not as good at it as SpaceKitty so it takes me quite a bit of time. That’s time I just haven’t spent yet.

Nothing terribly new in my personal life this week, just counting down the days until I see SpaceKitty again. I won a free copy of Hellgate: London from the guys over at Evil Avatar… so sooner or later look for a write-up of that to appear around the site. It’s a digital distribution copy, and I know a lot of you guys think this kind of thing is the future, but give me a hard copy on DVD any day. Even at 10 megabit a second, that’s 1.2 megabytes a second, the 6.8GB file took over an hour and a half to download. Another hour or so to decrypt on my 2ghz machine, another hour or so to unpack, and another hour or so to install. Frankly, that’s ridiculous.

Just finished up the His Dark Materials series with The Amber Spyglass, and I’m glad I started reading it. It plodded on a bit in the beginning and got a little heavy handed with the messages at the end, but overall I sincerely enjoyed the lengthy reads and memorable characters. There were flaws, sure, and I’m not a huge fan of the ending honestly… but I think the books will stick in my mind far longer than merely seeing the movie would have.

I did some more work on the site and added up a wallpaper section, this time for desktop wallpapers. Honestly I don’t have a lot of skill for these, but maybe I’ll get better at it over time. I like what I’ve got there, and they seem to be in high demand… so I might as well try my hand at it. I realize my menu is getting rather crowded up there though, I might see what I can do about that. Some cascading menus sure would be nice, but difficult. I’ve looked into the subject once before without much success.

I also realize that the more I add to the site, the more my work becomes divided among all of it. But that’s the pessimistic view, the optimist in me says that while each individual section may get updated less, it gives me more options to update with depending on what I feel like working on. It increases the chance that visitors will find something they like, and generally just makes the site a better representation of my hobbies. Ideally I would follow an update schedule, but I can’t see that happening. Life tends to get in the way too often and I don’t want to be tied down to my site. I’m not gonna follow it, but general guidelines and an ideal update schedule would be:

* Anime / Gaming post - Whenever
* Off Topic post - Weekly
* Mobile wallpapers - Biweekly
* Desktop wallpapers - Biweekly
* Winamp Skins - Monthly

Another December, and while I hate to see the snow and ice return, there’s always some joy to be had in the lights and various decorations around the town. The snow can indeed be pretty as well, but as said, less so when you have to deal with it every day. My holiday season just got a lot better however since I found out SpaceKitty is coming down from California to spend the New Years. It’ll be a quiet celebration with some dinner, perhaps taking in the local festival of lights, and probably some fun out in the snow. Short of being back in San Diego, I can’t imagine a better way to spend the occasion.

Finished up The Subtle Knife and now I’m on to The Amber Spyglass. Subtle Knife ended as action packed as it began, I think it will be my favorite book of the series. Thankfully Amber Spyglass is quite lengthy, so there should be plenty of room to finish the story properly. I have to say, I’m already wondering how the movie will possibly do this series justice. Having rewatched the trailer after finishing the book however, I believe they’re going to make a very good attempt at it.

The first of the new Futurama movies are out, and while I haven’t watched it yet, I will soon. SpaceKitty is a huge fan of the series and has already seen, she says good things about it. I’m glad to see more episodes of the series, but the lackluster return of Family Guy often makes me wonder if these shows ought to simply stay dead. We’ll see, I guess. Reminds me that I really ought to check out the Serenity book after finishing up a few other picks, some day soon.

I’m glad I started reading the His Dark Materials series, but boy does it ever start slow. Pretty much the entire first book, The Golden Compass, is just introduction. Although it’s not a bad read, nothing terribly exciting happens until the end of it. On it’s own, it would be a terribly disappointing book with a lot of wasted potential. Imagine if you will the entire first book of Harry Potter introducing Harry and the cast, the concept of magic, and the world of wizards only to end right as he reaches Hogwarts. That’s pretty much how reading The Golden Compass goes.

Thankfully the book that follows, The Subtle Knife, jumps straight into the action. The new character that’s introduced is actually a great addition, and previous characters who return to the story benefit from already having so much groundwork laid out. Actually, for as much time as the author spends carefully explaining everything about the world in the first book, the second throws the reader straight into the unknown. His writing style seems to shift a fair deal between the two books, though maybe he’s simply hitting his stride here. Either way, I’m quite enjoying The Subtle Knife so far.

In other news, I’ve re-added some tag clouds to the sidebar since the side speed issues are long past us with the new host. The tags are pulled from WordPress’ built in systems in 2.3, so hopefully they’re fairly quick. The search cloud still uses the excellent Cloud of Google plug-in, which now thankfully has a previously suggested improvement of limiting the number of keywords it pulls, rather than parsing the whole database. Both look good and provide useful information, but are also great for SEO.

And finally it’s expected to snow tonight… flurries on Thanksgiving. I’ll be glad to leave the Midwest behind. I know a lot of people love the idea of a “white Christmas”, but it’s an entirely different matter when you’ve got to live and work in the stuff, defrost your car, and shovel your way out every morning. The salt on the roads rusts our cars, the black ice causes accidents, and the wind is biting cold. I could never see snow again and be quite happy for it. — Unless it involves skiing with SpaceKitty, perhaps.