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All Ad’d up and ready to go November 28, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Blogs, Entertainment, Fun, Gaming, Internets, Scraps , add a comment

So I’ve now got the google ads back up on the blog and also on Malarky. Before they were under another account rather than my own because I was under 18 but now that I’m legally an adult I’m allowed to earn money on my website. Woop.

My main concern with this little venture is the time it’ll take for traffic to really pick up, it was a long time after starting Durka that others outside of people I knew actually used the site. Word of mouth is a great propogator for something like this but it what it really takes is people searching deep into search engines for a site that they can actually play on. It’s this that really got visitors to it before and eventually caused it to somewhat explode in terms of popularity. Explode relatively that is.

I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to poke this along or whether it simply is a case of watching, waiting and hoping. Of course, please do tell your friends, it’s the caring sharing thing to do. With that I’m going to be over and out.

Bringing Durka Back November 27, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Fun, Gaming, Internets, School, Work , add a comment

It’s been my plan for a while to relaunch my old filter avoiding website tehdurka.info. As my most sucessful website ever, it’s demise was quite unfortunate. At the point of taking it down it had received over 400,000 hits during it’s lifespan, not massive on internet scale but certainly something for me. Of course, if it ever did get especially popular I would probably run into trouble anyway due to it appearing on the radar of school and workplace filtering technology. A few thousand hits a day was quite enough for me.

I can’t entirely remember why I shut it down, probably to do with the hassle of juggling free providers to keep my costs down to a minimum. In order not to run up massive bandwidth costs (my host, nearlyfreespeech.net, operates on a pay-what-you-use system with a high level of transparacy in their operation, I would reccomend them for anyone needing a cheap place to host a low bandwidth/storage site) I will be using free web hosting providers wherever I can, a slightly dubious practice but if they’ll let me hotlink then hotlink I shall. Most are very limited in terms of both space and bandwidth so it’s quite a bother juggling it all. But I’ll do it again, to keep myself occupied.

My new incarnation of Durka is named Malarky and is currently hosted as part of this website. Depending on what happens, I may give it it’s own subdomain or possibly get some unlimited bandwidth hosting for it. Of course, that’s a point where it gets worryingly popular and could possibly fail because of it. There’s also issues of copyright on the games I’m hosting, I have a very open takedown policy and I think most game makers are mostly interested in people playing their game rather than making money but I’m sure there are some out there who only want their game on a specific site and I’ll respect that provided that I’m aware. There are of course lots of ways for flash games to make money irrespective of what website is hosting them, mochi ads for one.

Hopefully my good faith will keep me clear of any trouble, and it should improve my programming skills as a by product which is always positive. So, if you’re in need of entertainment at school or work (obviously not during a lesson, wouldn’t want to ruin your education) then head on over to Malarky and get playing. I will be adding lots more games over the coming weeks to get it back up to the level that Durka had when I shut her down.

Opium Toad Updates November 26, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Life, Music, Opium Toad, Ramble , add a comment

It’s been a while since I posted about anything really. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve started again, I guess because I can’t help feeling it’s pointless to just have this sitting around here doing nothing.

I don’t think I ever really explained what happened with the band after I returned.

Not that long before I came back, our singer abruptly left, leaving us with rather a huge gap and feeling as if we were back at square one. In a way, that was kinda true except that our experience in song writing had gone a long way. But without a singer we were certainly in trouble. After exhausting possibilities elsewhere we looked inward for vocals. I’d always liked the idea of singing but I don’t think I ever could have done it before going to the US.

It’s strange to me in a way that singing is so much scarier than being on stage with any other instrument but for some reason the voice feels like something that is judged much more readily by others than anything else. Perhaps it’s because everyone has a voice, everyone can do their own level of singing, so there’s an even greater chance people with see themself as better than you.

My voice, it’s not really anything special. My only real boost is the fact that actually how well a person can sing doesn’t seem to be the biggest factor in how sucessful bands and artists are. It depends more on other elements. A lot of bands get around having the best vocals technically by simply playing to their strengths and the style of the music. I’ve always dreamed of playing as the front man to a band, guitar and vocals. Now I have a shot at that actually happening.

So from deciding I would be doing vocals, we started writing again, this time with me sitting around with pen and paper whilst the rest of the band played our new songs over and over as I wrote lyrics. At first it was quite hard, learning to see where lyrics should go and what melody feels best for them is a skill that certainly takes time to develop, but it’s one that I’ve known I had a bit of for a very long time. I’ve always liked to improvise over music and have sung my own tunes since I was little.

It’s taken us a few months but we are now at a point where we have a 30 minute live set that we’re comfortable to play and are actively looking for gigs. Our next one falls on Sunday December 13th at the Grange Hall in Radcliffe-on-Trent, which is where we’re all based out of, nice to have such a local gig. Unfortunately it’s an extremely packed show, we’ve been told a total of 14 bands are playing which limits our time (and presumably most of everyone else’s) to 15 minutes. So we’re looking for other stuff in December. We played our first gig as we are earlier this month at a pub in Southwell, it was a nice place, 30 minute set with 2 other bands (originally 3 but one had to drop out due to lacking a drummer).

Ideally we’d probably be playing every couple of weeks but whether we can achieve that is yet to be seen, it’s quite a task. So alongside looking to play we’re also full steam ahead in the writing department. We’re in the position of having enough potential material to fill an album but we’re obviously taking things one step at a time. I’d like to go it at on our own, but that’s the enterprise side of me kicking in. I do want to run my own business in the future, work for myself. All the number crunching and looking at statistics for sales would give me such a kick. It’s one of the reasons I think I probably should be an accountant.

The complication and expense is a problem but really at the moment we’re just going forward in the ways that we can, with a goal of getting our music to as many ears as possible. Who knows if many people will like it, but surely someone will, and if we can find that someone then I’ll be a happy person.

We’re going to be getting an EP together pretty soon, when we do I’m gonna be getting it out for free onto the web wherever I can just trying to get as many people to listen to it as possible. I’m trying to do as much as I can to work on back end stuff as well, just to keep myself busy in these crappy boredom times. I should probably post about that. So look out for a heavily understocked merchandise shop coming to an Opium Toad website near you…!

Anonymity and Assholes November 25, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Gaming, Internets, World of Warcraft , add a comment

There’s no doubt that the reason why the internet is so rife with trolling and abuse of people is the factor of anonymity. It gives people a chance to say what they could never say in the real world due to their knowledge of the consequences. It’s one of those things that is often cited as why the internet is bad for human empathy and communication. I’ve never really agreed with this. The fact is that every single group of people in the world has within it assholes, and people often use that fact to attempt to degregate and entire group of people. I’ve done it myself in the past, before I realised how utterly stupid such a thing is.

But that’s not really why I’m writing here, I’m writing because of a small but quite heart warming encounter I had whilst playing World of Warcraft (yeah, I resubscribed).

Earlier this year when I played for a couple of months I was keen to try out the Death Knight class, I’d been saving the gname I wanted for my gnome (because quite clearly gnomes are the most badass choice for a Death Knight) for a while, using my wee Grillywiggin as a banker until finally I could create his level 55 form. I had good fun with the starting Death Knight quests, I really like the way Blizzard handled it. But that’s not really the point, the point is that because I have a level 58 that I want to continue playing I have to get my professions going. I went for herbalism and inscription as this is the perfect shot to be try out the new profession.

Leveling herbalism means a lot of wandering around in low leveled areas, I’d already hit Westfall and the surround areas and was at about the level of the Wetlands so I was wandering around there whilst simultaneously playing some battlegrounds (it’s a lot of fun as a Death Knight and I’m usually top of the charts).

As I was doing this I took a herb from right next a level 20-something paladin who was fighting something of the local wildlife. Right as I was taking it I realised he was probably fighting that creature in order to get it but my herbing autopilot had just taken over. It hadn’t been my intention to take from the guy, I hate it when the same thing happens to me. My thoughts about what had happened were confirmed when he whispered me a few seconds later, just calling me a loser. This rather lame attempt at insult was deserved in a way, so I made note of his name.

Later, on my banker, I sent him an apology letter, complete with 1g to hopefully make up for it. I was really touched to recieve a reply the next day, returning the money and telling me not to worry about it as well as good luck for my herbalism levelling. It just goes to show that actually even people who would call someone a loser and call it a day there are actually just as human as anyone else underneath and will actually respond very well to honest apology.

So I’d urge anyone out there, any time you do something that you know was wrong accidentally, take a minute to say sorry and just see what happens. It might just make your day.