TwiddleGeek

After suffering with Dreamhost the entire first year of TwiddleGeek, we’ve finally moved over to new servers on HostGator. The difference should be night and day, pages are loading in a fraction of a second that took several seconds over on Dreamhost. Frankly DH was such a hassle it often times wasn’t worth the trouble to update. I can’t imagine how many visitors I lost due to the loading times.

The downside is the moving process wasn’t exactly smooth. I’ve lost pretty much every single image on the site. We’re talking over 3,000 screens. I still have the files, but the database was totally screwed in the moving process. Gallery2 was a pain in the neck anyway, so I’ve decided to just junk it and use WordPress’s built in file capabilities with a nice LightBox plugin. This should be all but identical to you, the end-user, but it saves me several steps for every single image I have to upload to the site.

So while I’m rebuilding things, I’m doing what I can to improve and streamline them along the way. Updates are likely going to be on a weekly basis or so for awhile, the days of daily updates are long past and well over. In just seven days I’ll be traveling to California, spending time with Spacekitty. Maybe I’ll post up some pictures, but don’t expect any updates until awhile after I get back.

These are fun. Haven’t been updating as much as usual lately due to a few factors, namely job hunting and planning what could be one of the more important trips of my life. I’m not one to apologize for lack of updates. There has, however, been a 40% drop in hits for the first time since the site launch… It could be related, or it could just be the whim of Google. Either way, the site gets by.

The trouble with running a site like this can be that updating as I play or watch an anime gets tiresome. Watching a 24~ minute episode takes nearly twice as much time after taking screens and writing. The end results are nice, sure, but sometimes you just want to watch the show. *shrug* Less formal updates are always an option of course.

But, the site goes on under the simple theme of cool images and blogging. Loss of traffic or not, I’m still pulling in more hits than any of my previous sites and far surpassing my initial expectations. That’s good enough for me. In other news, if you’re a WordPress user, go take a look at SpaceKitty’s new WordPress theme section.

For once my days off were actually on the weekend, though they were quite hard fought to keep. Having worked a 12 hour shift at the start of the week, then an 18 hour shift the next day, missed a cookout with the family, worked the 4th of July night, and worked 6 days in a row, I wasn’t about to give up this weekend. Not this time. I really need a new job… but the site goes on.

You’ve probably seen the Transformers review posted earlier. Boy that movie sucked. I want to say it again. I mean, it had it’s moments… but overall? It was terrible. The script couldn’t have been any more corny, nor the cast any worse contrived to fit into every last ridiculous cliche. I really hate to be a downer on “fun” popcorn flick movies — God knows I love stupid movies — but the sheer length of this one makes it hard to stomach. What should have been an epic action flick turned out to be a very bad teenage romantic comedy with giant robots thrown in.

On the gaming front I’ve basically just been finishing up Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. I don’t want to say too much about it since I’ll be writing up a review shortly, but let me just say this game is the best example of Wii controls ever. I’m completely convinced of this control scheme after playing through RE4. It is indeed the closest thing to mouse-look we’ll ever see on a console, and without the need for a solid surface like a mouse would need. Important for couch players, and people who generally just like to kick back while playing, like me.

E3 is just around the corner, or what’s left of it anyway. We’ll have to see if there’s anything left to be excited about, but it feels like a national holiday has been canceled. Yes, it was a crazy mess of fans, flair, and babes… but dang if it wasn’t FUN. It was like a gaming party once a year that the whole industry could get together and celebrate. Unfortunately the organizers and press like to pretend they’re professionals, so now we’ve got a “business and media summit” being held in private hotels. Ridiculous. We all know the best business events at E3 were behind closed doors anyway — private events at a private event. So long E3, you’ll be missed. Your death came so suddenly I don’t think much of the community has registered the loss yet.

Every time I have a few days off I mean to make my way to this neglected, underused section of the site and post a lil’ somethin-somethin. Sadly, it rarely happens. All the game and anime shots go to the front page, the reviews have their own section, little tidbits and goodies can go into the sidebar Asides, so what does that leave for here?

Well, the original thought was just more off the wall things that come along. The Asides took care of much of that problem though, so now this place has been more delegated to articles such as the Consoles on the PC article that gets a lot of hits. In fact, I may just change this section from Off-Topic to Articles. I just think Off-Topic has a less stuffy sound to it and it doesn’t require it to be gaming related… which would need a fair bit of clean-up. Perhaps it’s something to be looked into though.

At the (frequent) suggestion of SpaceKitty I’ve taken to finishing games completely before moving on, playing one title at a time.

360 - Tomb Raider Legend
GCN - Alien Hominid
GCN - Chibi Robo
NDS - Pokemon Pearl
NDS - Puzzle Quest
Wii - Red Steel
Wii - Trauma Center
Wii - WarioWare: Smooth Moves

All these were finished just recently. I try to toss up a review after I’m done with a title and post some screens along the way, since this is after all a blog of anime and gaming. So many sites say they’re a gaming blog, but all that boils down to is gaming news that you can get anywhere else. Here, I want to blog the actual gaming experience. The cool screens, those “Wow!” moments had while playing. I try to be rather positive about games overall, focusing on what I like about them rather than what I don’t. Anyone can rag on a game, I’d rather know what’s good about it.

Next up for me is Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, and Zelda Wind Waker. There’s a ton of 360 games I’m looking forward to playing as well including Dirt, The Darkness, and especially Overlord, with games like Devil May Cry 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4 later on. Then the Wii has it’s big three coming soon, Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, and Smash Bros Brawl. You PS3 fans out there have Metal Gear Solid 4 to look forward to, but I’ll keep waiting for it to hit the 360. I’m likely to own a PS3 some day, but that day isn’t any time soon. They need some exclusive titles, a massive price drop, and the type of JRPG goodness that defined the Playstation 1 and 2. Right now the PS3 is little more than an expensive Xbox 360.