Aapis's Blogs

Maybe I'm just picky, or anal, or whatever, but I find the news posts here somewhat lacking in content. I don't mean to trash the news team at all, the info you guys post is awesome, but most of the time it's just one sentence and a link to the actual post on another site. Honestly, someone could just write a simple PHP script that does that in like 5 minutes. I, personally, would prefer if the news was more of an article type thing (like the source articles are) where the poster offered some sort of opinion or other interesting tid bit to make it more worth reading. Not that the current news posts aren't worth reading, but they could be much better.

Just my two cents.

So what's been going on with me recently? Well, school for one. I don't have much time for many extra-curricular activities anymore, so I had to stop visiting a bunch of websites I used to frequent for the time being. If you think it's sad that that's what I do for fun, you must realize that I have to live on my computer for school. Seriously. So now I limit myself to this website and all the projects I've got going on right now, namely my (recently updated) website and my school project (that I have yet to start writing code for..)

So there's school, that thing that used to be a social life that I don't really have anymore, and sleep. That's my life. Week after week, month after month, until April when I will be finished my 2nd year programming project. Since we graduate this year, they decided it would be fun to make us pick our own impossible project idea, then make us do it. Weeee. At the end, there's a "show and tell" sort of thing with a bunch of industry professionals that are hiring (the goal of this program being to get a job, after all). So that's nuts, and now that January is gone I've only got essentially 2 solid months to create my own blog software. Fun.

And to top it all off, I have a date next week with someone who's WAY out of my league. This is itself good, but doesn't help my stress level any.

Not only that, but as a result of the event mentioned in the above paragraph (sentence[s]?), I now have to learn how to drive in like.. a week. Yes, that's right, I'm 21 and I've never driven before. Lolololololo, fail, u suk, etc.

Fuck my life.

..and I lost everything. Thanks to my lack of backups, I have only the things on my web server(s) and what little exists on my external drive. All my important school work, including a project due tomorrow, were all wiped clean. Not only that, but 2 years of planning and other documents regarding my personal websites that I will never see again. You think I remember what was in those documents? Hell no.

I guess the old saying is true, you don't know what you've got until it's gone..

On the plus side, I did get a bigger HD to replace the fried one. On the downside, everything sucks forever.

So I recently transitioned my site to using a database, rather than a flat file news posting system, and all was going great!

Until 30 minutes ago.

I can write this entire post that you're reading now, and I will get an error telling me that something fucked up. However, if I write "slnfkjsdnfljksnfgldfkmglkdfmngjdnfkgjndf hi hi sldfnslkdfmlskdmflksdmf" it will post like normal.

WTF MYSQL.

This is exactly why I never use databases, because I can't fucking deal with MySQL's shit. Or it can't deal with mine, either way it pisses me off that I can't figure it out.

So I emailed my personal PHP tech support, and am now awaiting a response. Until then:

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

So we know how great this site is, but I think we have a problem getting the message out there. Now I'm sure ӝspot's SEO skills are top notch, and I have seen a ton of new members since buggering off in November, but this site is fairly unique and I don't feel it's getting it's fair share of attention.

This could have everything to do with the SEO or it could have everything to do with something else all together. Many users here are active or former members of deviantART who might not have the time to dedicate to this site right now, but I think that should change. NR doesn't need dA for it's popularity. We have something unique here, something that I'm sure many people out there are interested in. Yes, this is technically just a beta release of the site, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a live and fully (for the most part) functioning social network. Yes, there are flaws, but I challenge you to find a website out there today without any flaws at all. You won't find one, I guarantee it.

Acknowledging this, we must now decide what to do with our situation. 1264 members (at the time this was posted) is a dismal amount for any website, especially one that is so well backed and supported (trust me). This is not to say that the staff have been failing in their duties, far from it in fact. There can only be so much a handful of people can do to boost the popularity when there are hundreds of members right now who could be doing twice the advertising the entire staff team could be doing. Think of as though we are citizens of the fabled city El Dorado (aka the city of gold). Now lets pretend that nobody knows what gold is, and has no interest in coming to visit us because to them we are just another city. We have to educate people as to why our gold is so valuable, we have to show them what they are missing and lead them to enlightenment (so to speak).

What does this mean for us regular Joe's and Jane's? It's time we brought in some new blood to spice the place up. Leave the development team to their duties, since this site isn't technically released yet they have more than enough work to do as it is. For every 1 user each one of us brings in, our community gains strength and resolve. I, for one, think we can do much better than we've done so far, so lets think for a second what we can do for this site that goes beyond just posting comments and pictures.

So I have, <em>had</em> rather, a green thumb, and no this has nothing to do with plants. I have no sense of time so of course I'm going to completely forget about St. Patty's day, so when my buddy's girlfriend phones us asking what kind of beer we like we were only a little bit confused. So she shows up half an hour later with 2 six packs and some green food colouring, only then did it all come together. So we drink for a bit, I get my green beer (which I thought would taste funny, but it doesn't), and all is well. That is, until I decide that I suck at Resident Evil 5, then it all comes crashing down.

So he, my buddy who I'm gaming with at the time, attacks my thumb with food colouring.

Odd coloured limbs aside things are not great. School is tough, especially since I can't find the effort to give more than 1 shit about 1/3rd of my courses, mostly because I've decided that I don't need to know how to make pretty 3D models to put into video games in order to become a better web developer. I might have a job lined up this summer working with my sister's boyfriend doing web design projects, but I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. Hell, I'm not sure what I'm doing with my future at all yet.

On the plus side, now that both I and my friend have good quality mountain bikes <em>finally</em>! Last summer I bought a Norco Sasquatch (here's a low quality shot of it), and this year he bought a KHS.. something. Now we're set to hit the mountains again, last time we went was in Italy (or France? It was right on the border, I forget), but that time we were riding EXTREMELY HIGH QUALITY Kona's, with full suspension and the works so I hope we'll do alright. So if I suddenly fall off the face of the earth again in about 4 months, you'll know where I went.

Anywho, it's good to be back. How are things here?

So, what have I been doing for the past.. month? Who cares? You do, silly, that's why you're here!

Lets see, first off I rolled out a new version of my site that I've had on the "to do" list for the past 5 months or so, granted I was out of the country for one of those months, and that turned out to be pretty easy. Problem is, once I get rolling I don't stop, if I can get rolling to being with that is. So that took about 3 weeks, but for now I'm done updating it. When you're looking at the backend code for something for long enough, eventually you start thinking "why am I still doing this?!".

Then there's school, I've got two absolutely retarded projects that I hate for one of my classes that I would seriously rather do high school Math again than this pointless crap. It's a graphic design class, and I'm definitely not a graphic designer. I'm not an artist, I'm a web designer. Talk to a "real" artist for 5 minutes and you'll know the difference. They're very intense, very strange and see everything 10000 different ways, and I just can't do that. Needless to say, this course is a prerequisite for the next semester of my course, so I intend to simply do my best to pass and that's it. Actually trying gives me a headache, literally.

Then there's deviantART. I'm very addicted to that community, especially it's forums. I do believe I have an actual addiction to being a forum whore, and apparently saying that is the first step to recovery.. so lets hope it works. The "goal" is to get 10,000 posts, I don't know why I want 10k posts, but for some reason I can barely get anything else done until I get to that point. I used to envy and respect those with 5 digit post counts, but now I realize it's not everything I thought it would be. That said, I am at just over 9000 now, so it shouldn't take too long for this stupid addiction to end.

And then there's video games. I blame Xbox Live, really. I achieved 705 gamerscore playing Fable 2 offline (because I couldn't connect to Live for some reason), had beat the entire campaign and won most of the achievements too. Then I recovered my account, and it deleted everything. I still had my game, and all the saves, but every achievement was gone. That pissed me off, so I made another game this past weekend (long weekend woot!) and beat it again just so I could get all the achievements back. I think I'm back up to 600-ish, and I'm at the point where you get Reaver through his "back passage" to the ship, so that's another 100 right there. I don't know why that pissed me off, but I found creating an evil character was very good for the anger this whole fiasco caused me.

Lastly, there's life. My friends, some of whom are also in school as well, are always wanting to get together and go for drinks (or to play GoW2). I really, really hate to blow them off, it makes me feel like a bad friend, but I am dead serious when I say that I need my beauty sleep. I'm not a morning person, and have sworn at (subconsciously I might add!) and broken alarm clocks in the past that have woken me up prematurely. Fortunately there's coffee, but not until I get to school.

I know, I know, text wall. But that's too bad.

Aapis 2.0 has a new symbol. And it's sexier than the omega symbol.

I am one of the developers now, my job involves the front end of the site (that is, what you're looking at right now), to make it look good and to make everybody happy. I can't do anything else, so don't ask.

Peace y'all!

Just jokes. Tis only I who suck at Halo.. well, I wasn't bad at 1 or 2, but 3 blew me away with how insanely good some players are. I'm not bad really, you can see my Halo stats here, but all the rank and skill were achieved in months past. I don't have 'it' anymore, and that makes me sad.

Then it is kind of funny when you're playing some guys who are way better than you, and you're sucking a lot, then suddenly you turn it around somehow and end up winning the game for the team out of the blue. Makes me laugh, but it almost never happens.

So how about you? Are you one of the "General" types? Or are you a spurty player like me?

I clicked the "join our team" link, and now ӝspot has emailed me a couple times about some stuff regarding the site and where I could fit in. Anyways, I hope some day soon to be chosen to work for this fine website and help bring it from the more or less obscure to the wildly popular (think Facebook-style popular).

Gamers are powerful in the realm of the Internetz

The thing people the world over fail to recognize is that gamers are by nature a social group. In the beginnings of online gaming when DOOM was being played on telenet and other pre-internet type servers it was all about playing together and being together in a group. No better example today is World of Warcraft's raiding and guild system that brings not only a social aspect, but also another feature gamers crave: recognition. Levels and ranks are the back bone of most online multiplayer games nowadays, even going back 10 years I remember playing Myth: The Fallen Lords (Google it) online and it had a ranking system ahead of it's day (at the time).

What does this have to do with us? Well playing together naturally translates into discussing and interacting together, hence our existence on this site. Being a relatively small start-up website I believe in the enormous potential the site has to become a giant in the industry. Seeing the experience the administration has already running massive scale operations you know the site won't be mismanaged or forgotten any time soon.

In the mean time..

Distract yourself with this:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net

I'm new. I play video games. I design websites. I go to school. I go to work.

I hope you enjoyed that.