Out with the Old

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Some things have been runnin’ on this web server for a long time and have been in use by hundreds of people for a few years now. When I added WordPress to this site on October 18th and changed my .htaccess file to serve content from the blog I inadvertently cut off the long time users of the DDO Crafting Helper.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played DDO and the Crafting Helper has long been outdated. I’m afraid this evening, in preparation for the future of RandoJones.com, I’ve archived it – likely with permanence – along with every other file on the server. If anyone is interested in hosting it or recreating it themselves on their own server I may be able to provide the data, HTML/CSS, and .NET class library for the mini-site (or perhaps even the Visual Studio project files if I still have them). If you are interested, please send inquiries to DDOCrafting at RandoJones.

DDO was great and the advancements Turbine made in the engine that was originally created to run Asheron’s Call 2 (and that now runs Lord of the Rings Online) made the world of Eberron a very beautiful place to explore. I managed to make it to the top and had many successful adventures with my level 20 Ranger and it was a grand time. Building a character around the Deepwood Sniper ability was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, DDO seemed to succumb to the same design philosophy that befell Asheron’s Call 2: the “Fun-on-Rails” policy, as I called it boiled down essentially to this: “You’ll have fun how we tell you to have fun.” Of course, this led to a lot of not-fun going on. Overall, though, even with DDO’s faults it was still a fun game. I even logged on as a non-subscriber (since it’s now “free-to-play, pay-to-win” more or less) a year or so later to see what all had changed and I was still happy to wander around and visit some of the old hunting grounds (that were open to a non-paying customer).

Ahh, the good ole days… Hey, Will, if you’re still out there – send me an email some time, friend! It’s been a while…

Linktastic Chain of Discovery

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I was listening to the soundtrack for Trine this morning at work and I began to wonder what instruments were used therein. First I looked up “autoharp”, because I thought that’s what I’d heard. Anyway, the Wikipedia entry for autoharp has a link for the Zither, which I followed.

Not knowing what a zither sounds like I next did a Google video search for “zither”. This ultimately lead me to the video “Only Girl (in the World)… on ZITHER?!?!” by Jake Bruene. As silly as Mr. Bruene’s physical performance is, the cover of Rihanna’s song was pretty good. I’m amazed this “simple” instrument of ancient origin could be used to make such a groovy piece. The other videos documenting his “epic battle” with, I assume, fellow student Kurt Hugo Schneider are worth watching.

After watching several turns of Bruene and Schneider’s musical duel of the century I watched Bruene’s cover of LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” – which was also a great video. I’ve heard the phrase “Everyday I’m Shufflin’” through memes, so I finally Google searched that as well finding the LMFAO music video for “Party Rock Anthem” in the process. The parody of the classic zombie movie where everyone in the world has become “infected” with dance was hilarious. I thought the part where Redfoo suddenly starts dancing after witnessing the horror of the conversion of one of the last uninfected survivors to be especially funny. Party Rock Anthem went quadruple platinum in the U.S. and octuple platinum in Australia – no small feat.

A momentary deviation from the topic here at the end of this chain: the instrument in the Trine soundtrack I was looking for was the harpsichord.

I wish I had musical talent. Maybe if I learned to play something I wouldn’t be too bad. I do have a distinct lack of creativity, though, so I don’t know if I’d ever produce anything original.

o hai!

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I can has WordPress blog?

Yes. Yes, I can… has.

I’m so not motivated to do anything custom for this site right now. So I decided to ask Mr. Hart’s advice. WordPress was his recommendation. So here we are – out with the old, in with the new.

Not that installing WordPress will help me with my other issue: knowing what to talk about. I don’t feel like I’ll be able to contribute anything to the Intarwebs – there are already so many cyber-outlets for putting your whatevers out there (e.g.: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook) and I certainly don’t want to become (in)famous for something stupid.

The last thing I need is to use this blog to simply vent my frustrations about the world, though perhaps I might be able to do it in a manner interesting enough to warrant a following. Maybe I’ll start a web comic or any one of the other score of harebrained and transient ideas that keep coming to mind. We’ll see.

Maybe I should take the “30-day challenge” as Mr. Hart did and work into it that way. I don’t know. I’ll think about it.

Meanwhile, here’s a link to I Can Has Cheezburger.