This is especially true for websites which add a huge leaderboard ad to the very top of the website before their head content, thus pushing their entire website down by about 100 pixels. Or those that have an annoying ad placed right in the middle of their site’s main content, like halfway through a news post, breaking up the flow of the article.

The main unfortunate side-effect of this mass-blocking is that non-intrusive advertising gets blacked out also. Now I’m not a complete Nazi towards online advertising, I don’t mind the banner ads, small boxes etc. that sit off to the side or the bottom of the site, especially when the site owner puts them there knowing full well that they are most likely to only get revenue from impressions as opposed to clicks.

Nor do I mind advertising that isn’t completely corporate driven, this particular example being Project Wonderful. They are one ad network I’ve expressly allowed to show in my filters, along with a bunch of other sites I either don’t mind supporting, that I know don’t have intrusive advertising, or (unfortunately) that don’t work when you turn off the ads – several site video players are notorious for that.

I know several site owners who do expressly ask – and always in an off-the-cuff sort of passing mention, never specifically pushing people to do so – to whitelist their site in AdBlock for the revenue, and in most cases I’m cool with that particularly if I’m an avid reader and like what they’re doing. Sites/comics like Real Life Comics, Nerd Junkies, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things I keep AdBlock off as I both enjoy their content and they don’t run intrusive advertising.

One aspect that I really hate though, is when people specifically ask for ad clicks. Especially when it’s always against the ToS of whatever ad network you’re in to game the system in any way or to ask people to submit invalid clicks.

AdBlock and YouTube

You may be starting to call out things such as “You’re stealing from site owners”, “People depend on that revenue” etc. Yea, I’m well aware of that. You might also call me a hypocrite for the fact that I have a small 180×150 ad in my sidebar, or the fact that I do submit some of my YouTube videos for revenue sharing and do enable the pre-roll ads for longer ones. To those critics I will say this: Why don’t you just block them? If you do, then it’s pretty much even on possible denied revenue.

I’m not one of those WingsofRedemption or FPSKyle (aka FPSRussia back before he got massively YouTube famous and was still doing game commentaries) people blocking their videos from being viewed on mobile devices since mobile YouTube doesn’t (yet) support advertising. Nor do I go around chopping very long videos up into small 10-minute chunks – even if it means cutting off in the middle of a sentence – solely to increase views and ad impressions (*cough* MW2Joe’s Q&A sessions *cough*).

If you’re serving up ads yourself though, you also need to keep an eye out. Especially if you’re someone who comes across and not having enough money – this being the Internet, people will do stupid things even if they think it’s in their best interests to do whatever to help by say, clicking your ads on your partnered YouTube channel over and over to try earn you money. Monitoring your CTR is something you need to do at least once a day so that you can report the invalid clicks and not have your ad account shut down for what they would see as gaming the system…

3840×1080

Alright, in all seriousness I’m not one for having New Year resolutions. That and the screen resolution joke is made way too much. Although it would be nice to have a second 1080p monitor just so that my secondary can match the size of my primary…

Anyway, I’m not going to label this as a resolution as such, but I will try to make sure that I blog just a bit more this year. I will also look into streaming a lot more on Twitch, I’ve been lacking in that aspect a fair bit.

Some of the things I hope to achieve this year, in no particular order:

• Get a YouTube partnership.
• Upgrade my PC rig – ideally once the LGA-2011 components start coming out.
• Attend almost all the anime cons, depending on timeframe.
• Get a smartphone and start posting tweets and pictures on-the-go.

Not much else I can really think of at present. I suppose that’s good because if I do think or anything else after this, it just goes to show that it really doesn’t work as a resolution at all if I can’t remember it after only two days!

Ah well, at least it makes for cheap Christmas presents for those I know who use Steam, which is pretty much Avy and… Yea.

So, the “funky” thing that Steam are doing with the sale this year is by playing around by giving everyone gifts via the Steam Inventory system. Using objectives (á la the Summer Sale with its prize tickets), you will either earn gifts or lumps of coal. There are a wide variety of gifts you can receive. One little bit of a “fuck you” though are coupons for however much of whatever, but for the most part they can’t be redeemed until AFTER the sale, and most of them are worthless considering the discount on the coupon is less than the discount offered during the sale. Oh, and they also don’t work for anything released after the sale, either.

So, the other thing is a lump of coal. However, here’s where it gets a bit interesting. You can craft seven lumps of coal into a gift (whether it’s random or chosen, who knows), or you can keep all your coal and each lump grants you an extra entry into the overall sweepstakes where the winners will win FUCKING EVERYTHING ON STEAM. There’s also some wishlist grants (50 x Top 10, 100 x Top 5) and 1k Valve Complete Packs too, but meh.

So anyway, I’ll be updating this post during the sale with my progress with the objectives and what crap gifts, or coal I earned. Yay…

Day 1 – December 19th

Objectives - Day 1 - December 19th

Steam: Check your inventory – you’ve got a gift!

The day’s freebie. It’s not yet determined whether the gift you get when you visit your Inventory is the achievement’s gift or a free gift for nothing, as the achievement description says that you will get another gift for checking what gift you got…

• Earned: A coupon for 25% off any Valve title

Bloody useless. I already own everything Valve. Literally, I added the Valve Complete Pack to my cart just to see and I was told “You already own everything in this package.”

Update: Dec 20th @ 6pm

Seems buying the Bunch of Heroes 4-pack has managed to force my Steam Inventory to refresh. Seems I earned a lump of coal. I am assuming it is from this achievement and not Orcs.

• Earned: A coupon for 25% off any Valve title; A lump of coal (Total: 1)

Update: Dec 23rd @ 9pm

Gave ThoughtsOfGlought the Valve voucher to get the trade objective. Inventories were getting hammered at the time so to make it quick and easy, I just gave him the most useless thing I had.

• Earned: A coupon for 25% off any Valve title Nothing; A lump of coal (Total: 1)

Orcs Must Die: Deck the Halls

Basically, complete the very first level of the game with the very first trap you earn in the game for completing the first level, and nothing else. Yes, you do have to backtrack to do it. No, you can’t earn it on your first go at the first level as you need to have the Arrow Trap owned and selected for it to count.

• Earned: A coupon for 25% off any bitComposer title.

I have no idea who these guys are. A quick check of the applicable games also shows that I won’t use it. Especially not if they’re all at least half-off during the sale.

EDGE: Snowblind

Played: Dec 21st, finished 5:30pm

So apparently this one requires you to find hidden switches on certain levels. Seems simple enough, especially as they’re in the first main level, first bonus level, and sixth extended level. Bonus levels annoyingly make you join the game’s Steam group though…

One big irk I have about this game is the lack of decent analogue control. I assumed that by having my 360 thumbstick only partway pushed that the cube would only move partially, making the “edging” mechanic of the game possible. Instead, you seem to go at full speed, regardless of how much or little input you give! Also, the game is angled at 45°, but there’s no support for using your thumbstick at 45° angles. I can understand the binding of your choice of NW or NE to “up” for a D-pad or the keyboard, but for a controller with a thumbstick, it makes no sense. Related Steam thread.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 3)

Bunch of Heroes: Holiday Survivor

TBD

Day 2 – December 20th

Objectives - Day 2 - December 20th

Dungeons of Dreadmor: Diggle Nog!

So, according to a nice post on the Steam forums, the way to go about this is to:

1. Get a Porta-Still (start as Alchemist to get one)
2. Get a Diggle Egg from killing a Diggle.
3. Buy some grog from the vending machine
4. Get some Aqua Vitae (start as Alchemist to get one)
5. Use Porta-Still to craft it (Last item in the third tab)

Yes, I did buy the game because it was just over €1. That and for the objective. I was honestly not expecting to basically play D&D. Like, I was expecting an RPG, but I wasn’t expecting a real RPG…

So, I eventually managed to get this one on my fourth attempt after dying from various method the first three times (the third time, I was killed by the first monster…) I blame not doing the tutorials first.

• Earned: A lump of coal. (Total: 2)

Wheeee… </sarcasm>

Spiral Knights: Son of a Nutcracker!

TBD

Psychonauts: Holiday Dinner

TBD

Tropico 4: Megalopolis

Played: Dec 23rd, finished 5:30am

Reach a population of 1000. Doesn’t sound all that hard, right? OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU ARE SO WRONG. To get to 1000 pop took me about 7-8 hours in a sandbox game set to the longest length of time possible (1950-2000) on one of the easy maps, and even then I only got it in October 1998. Cutting it a bit fine…

Never mind the fact the game seems to despise my graphics card. Had to endure the display driver recovering about… 60+ times, and actually witnessed my graphics card peaking at temps of 85°. Which when you consider it’s “normal” temperatures are 55-60°…

• Earned: A lump of coal. (Total: 6)

Really…? Really?!?! Fuck you Steam…

Day 3 – December 21st

Objectives - Day 3 - December 21st

Steam: Join the 2011 Holiday Group

Doesn’t really need explaining does it. Join a special Steam-created group, get spammed with notifications from the group for a couple weeks, get a free gift.

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off of Supreme Commander 2.

Lads, I really don’t want to be given an incentive to get into SupCom…

Update: Dec 26th @ 2:18

Traded the coupon for a piece of coal to someone from boards

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off of Supreme Commander 2. A lump of coal (Total: 12)

Defense Grid: The Awakening

Not much I can say about this really. Pick the Adrenaline version of the third map. Build lots of towers and… hold the speed-up key.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 4)

Day 4 – December 22nd

Objectives - Day 4 - 22nd December

DEFCON: Merry Christmas

Mmmm, nuking Santa… There’s not really much of a strategy per-se to getting this, just nuke the bejaysus out of everywhere come DEFCON 1 and hope Santa’s in your blast radius

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 5)

I guess it’s karma that one!

Rise of Immortals: Supporter

I don’t mind some “freebies” in all this, and I don’t necessarily mind having to play a Free to Play game, but please, don’t make us have to play online multiplayer…

TBD

Day 5 – December 23rd

Objectives - Day 5 - 23rd December

Steam: Get what you want – trade!

It’d be an alright freebie to get – simply trading coal for coal. Finally got it after 1am when the inventories and trading system were back up and working. Traded with Glought by throwing my 25% off Valve coupon at him, since it was useless to me

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total:

Frozen Synapse: Now I Have A Machine Gun. Ho Ho Ho.

Win an “Instant Skirmish” with ONLY your machine gunner alive. So you have to win a 1-vs-the rest scenario. Which is a pain considering Instant Skirmish always gives you a machine gunner, rocketeer, and shotgunner vs. the AI with two machine gunners and two rocketeers.

Yea, great team balance there…

Anyway, here’s how I did it. Not I made my shotgunner stand there and get killed since in a previous game where it was 2-on-1 like that against an assault rifle, my shotgunner actually managed to kill the last guy. Yay for the game win, boo for no achievement.

PS: While doing that recording, I somehow unlocked “The 4th Wall” achievement

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off Toki Tori

That’s actually pretty shit considering the game’s €4.50, and on sale for the same discount. Why didn’t they just give the game itself?

AudioSurf: Candy Stripe

You mean I can’t play my usual Ninja Mono? Fuck you… Anyway, fill a column with red/white/red/white/red. Pointman works best! I made two here, but you just need the one

Audiosurf: Candy Stripe

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 7)

I probably would have preferred to earn a Candy Cane in TF2…

Fate of the World: Let it Glow

Achieved: Dec 30th, finished 3am

Mmmm, Global Thermonuclear War… So I followed this little step-by-step on the SPUF. Set Japan to research energy, unlock blue everywhere, spread CCS once researched, commit everywhere to nuclear, then fuck up their stability, and sit back.

I got it in 2065 once the Middle East decided to nuke the fuck out of themselves. And that lost me the game but won me the achievement

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 20)

I find it ironic that a game about energy crises, depletion of resources, global warming etc. gave me coal

Greed Corp: Walking in a winter wonderland

1v1 local battle against a hotseat opponent, first map I chose was one with only 1 starting tile each, it was snowy, set the “opponent” to self-destruct. Win!

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 21)

I wasn’t aware those harvesters harvested coal…

Day 6 – December 24th

Objectives - Day 6 - 24th December

And Yet It Moves: Shawn White

In Chapter Two, there are many points where a branch you’re on will snap off and you can “surf” the branch. I don’t know exactly what the in-game distance requirements are, so I somehow managed to get it within the first few branches, so it mustn’t be all that tough.

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off of STORM: Frontline Nation

The fuck is this…? It’s already half off during the sale, but at least this makes the coupon worth something decent (€15) compared to the others…

CrimeCraft GangWars: Snow Ballin’

More F2P game stuff which requires you to actually play the game for a bit beforehand… FFS.

Jamestown: With Your Nose So Bright…

Played: Dec 26th, finished 1am

To get the Charge ship, you have to earn 8,000 in-game currency by completing levels. Then it’s as easy as buying the Charge ship, and beating a level using that ship as Player 1 (which is red).

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 11)

Think Steam is trying to tell me something…

Hard Reset: Blizzard

Played: Dec 29th, finished midnight

Shoot enough of the electricity thingies, make the little enemy thingies run into it. Rinse and repeat until achievement.

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off of From Dust

I’m still never going to buy/play it after the DRM fiasco it originally had.

Day 7 – December 25th

Objectives - Day 7 - 25th December

Steam: Have 10 items on your wishlist

Well, that was easy. My wishlist has had more than 10 things on it since… summer of 2010? Well, whenever they first introduced the wishlist function!

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 9)

Well, having earned both this and the KF achievement at the same time, I have to guess which came with which achievement!

Killing Floor: A Bloody Christmas Carol

This achievement came out with the Twisted Christmas Event 2011 just very recently! It’s a relatively easy achievement to get, as long as you’re playing normally and just kill stuff!

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off of Wings of Prey

Oh good lord, no thanks. I never liked flight games. Even Air Superiority in BF1943 was a pain…

Atom Zombie Smasher: KringleJammer

So, KringleJammer is a mini-game, where you have control of a chopper gun and basically just need to keep shooting waves of zombies. Just takes a while is all. Beat seven waves, whoop-de-doo.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 10)

Better than a coupon, I guess.

Day 8 – December 26th

Objectives - Day 8 - 26th December

Rusty Hearts: All I Want for Christmas is Sewers

Another shit F2P game gets an objective. But the worst part about this one is that the game is apparently region-locked, so some people will have no chance at getting it! Ireland’s not restricted, but I still don’t think I’ll be playing it…

Beat Hazard: Survive Christmas 10

Played: Dec 27th, finished 3pm

I’m not sure what I can really say about this other than, OH DEAR GOD MY EYES! That and I really hate Christmas radio. It probably wouldn’t be as bad if it wasn’t for the fact that radio stations insist on playing holiday-related songs all during the holiday… I think I lucked out on this one with the song choice. Despite getting death surrounded by big boss snake twice in his only appearance, I then got the star-shaped snake three times in a row, which definitely helped last over 13 minutes!

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 14)

That was more effort than was required.

Rock of Ages: Snowball War

So, this is as simple as winning any level after switching to the snowball ball. It’s under Settings somewhere where you can customise your character and ball.

• Earned: A coupon for 75% off of Torchlight

I guess that’s not too bad given Torchlight is only 50% off during this sale!

Bastion: Ride the Wind

TBD

Worms Reloaded: 12 Days of Winterval

A similar tactic as with the “Summer of ’69″ objective from the Summer sale can be employed: Teleport a worm hight enough so that the fall damage deals the exact amount of damage! Got it on my third go

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 13)

Still not crafting this stuff.

Day 9 – December 27th

Objectives - Day 9 - 27th December

Steam: Write a recommendation

Seriously, why do they always make you have to write a NEW recommendation for the objectives? I recommend stuff all the time on Steam…

Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 16)

Cities in Motion: Winter Wonder

Achieved: Dec 18th

Seriously, if you can’t transport 1000 passengers in just one of November, December or January, you aren’t playing the game right. Even on the smallest maps (except for Tutorial Town), 1000 in a month is piss-easy, even in your first year.

Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 15)

Day 10 – December 28th

Objectives - Day 10 - 28th December

Team Fortress 2: Valve Gift Grab 2011 – TF2

Achieved: Dec 16th

If you play TF2 at all and haven’t yet earned this achievement, then shame on you.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 17)

I always knew those gifts were crooked…

Sanctum: Festivus for the rest of us

Another grind-y one, probably because the rate in which Walkers with Santa hats appear isn’t as high as you’d like.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 18)

Killing stuff with Santa hats never gives you anything nice

Day 11 – December 29th

Objectives - Day 11 - 29th December

Steam: Link your Facebook account

Achieved: Whenever the fuck they asked you to do it as an objective before.

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off GRID

SERIOUSLY?!?!?! I ALREADY OWN THE FUCKING GAME ON BOTH PC AND CONSOLE!!!

Left 4 Dead 2: Valve Gift Grab 2011 – L4D2

Thankfully you can avoid having to actually play Versus properly if you just open up console, enter map (whatever map) versus until you get to be a survivor, and then just play normally, picking up gifts from dead Specials.

Annoyingly though, the game will auto-shut down after a few minutes since you’re the only human player, but just reload from console. Also the gifts seem to not obey the laws of friction; I was on Death Toll, and had to chase one all the way back to the starting point from the first bridge because it kept sliding!

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 19)

But, but, but, the Special Infected weren’t wearing any hats!

The Binding of Isaac: A Gift From Krampus

Played: 30th Dec, finished 7:45pm

So, under normal circumstances this achievement can be a serious pain to get, according to the SPUF.

Also according to the SPUF, there is a one-step method which requires you to make a single file edit. Given I’m not up to spending huge amounts of time for tedious objectives (and having never played the game before!), I took the easy route.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 24)

Suppose that’s what I get…

Day 11 – December 30th

Objectives - Day 12 - 30th December

Day of Defeat: Source: Valve Gift Grab 2011 – DoD:S

Local server, suicide outside of spawn (Panzerschreck/Bazooka helps!). Piss easy.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 22)

inb4 tomorrow they have CS:S

SpaceChem: Polar Expedition

Play the game until you beat the second last level on the second planet (There’s Something in the Fishcake). If you’ve already played past there, annoyingly it doesn’t automatically retroactively award itself, but just fast-forward through your saved solution to re-complete the level and it’s yours.

• Earned: World Basketball Manager 2010

Seriously, what the fuck is that shit. I’d have much rathered coal… Shit like that is exactly why I’m not crafting my current coal stash either. I value the possibility of my Top 5/10 wishlist much higher.

Flight Control HD: Snowball

OH GOD IT’S LIKE FLYING RYANAIR.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 23)

Typical of Ryanair to give coal, cheapskates…

Universe Sandbox: Snowball Earth

Played: 31st Dec, finished 3am

You know, condemning Earth to an icy future is not as fun as barrelling it straight into the middle of the Sun…

• Earned: A coupon for 25% off any Sega title

I wonder if this is Earth trying to pay me a ransom to stop fucking with the planet? Doubt it…

Puzzle Agent 2: Christmas Tree Census

Played: 1st Jan, finished 4pm

You spend about $97,000 every time you submit a puzzle answer, so just submit three answers!

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 28)

So now you know where your tax money is going!

Super Meat Boy: The Golden Gift!

Fuck. This. Achievement.

Day 12 – December 31st

Objectives - Day 13 - 31st December

Steam: Turn on Steam Guard

Achieved: Whenever the hell Steam Guard first became available in a beta client.

It took a while for this to actually register as completed, seeing as I turned it on the second it originally became available in a Steam client beta.

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 25)

Counter-Strike: Source: Valve Gift Grab 2011 – CS:S

WHAT DID I BLOODY WELL TELL YOU!

• Earned: A coupon for 50% off any Valve title

Oh Valve, y u troll me.

BIT.TRIP BEAT: JINGLE.BELLS

Ugh, I really don’t like this game. It’s like playing Breakout with your head tilted 90 degrees. It’s just baffling with the stuff moving right-to-left and you having to move up and down…

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 26)

Magicka: Ice Age

Magicka is very hard to get the hang of. It’s movement controls on keyboard/mouse suck; and it’s spell selecting controls on 360 also suck. Why can’t there be a good combination of the two. Why can’t you move with WASD…

• Earned: A lump of coal (Total: 27)

Ice makes coal?

Trine: Winter Secrets

Upon finishing the campaign, scrolling the credits and returning to the main menu, the campaign time counter read 5 hours, 46 minutes. Five and a half hours for a campaign on the hardest difficulty possible is really not great at all, even more so when you consider how much time you have to use up replaying certain parts again based on how badly you do at it and how much you die.

Bearing that in mind, this would probably indicate that running through the campaign on the easiest difficulty would probably take no more than three hours. For such a high-profile game, this is woefully short. Something that a member of my stream chat mentioned about it:

It’s an interactive action movie disguised as an FPS war simulator.

In fact, the campaign is probably something that’s better made as an action movie. Not that I want to or expect to see a movie tie-in, but if it were to happen, it’d probably do well.

If you have several hours to waste watching the recordings, you can do so. Each recording is two hours long, since that’s what TwitchTV caps each recording video at. Please note that the audio desyncs as the stream goes on, it’s a known XSplit bug that is fixed in newer versions that the one I’m using, but I can’t use those versions as it breaks support for my Blackmagic Intensity Pro.

Friday night started out a bit disastrous when I realised that there was probably going to be a lack of games equipment available – and compounded a bit more when we heard the news that our Guest Liaison was involved in a car accident that put his car out of commission – but all managed to eventually get back on track following a quick trip home to Dunboyne to pick up things, as well as a quick purchase of some new TVs in town!

I had to go back home as I had gone in that morning with just myself, my laptop, and a few small things I could fit in my bag, which turned out to be socks+jocks, my LAN switch, and chargers. So when I heard about the accident, this meant I had to leg it onto the next bus/train home to pick up the rest of my things and equipment (including extra clothes, costume, Xbox, monitor, games and other stuff) I was going to bring and ferry them over in a taxi. So I managed to lose of a couple of the early opening hours on Friday, but the other Games guy Conor, and our assistant Sairus (who might I add is a bloody machine at all of this!) covered things brilliantly.

One of the very few decent images of me from the weekend...

The rest of the weekend worked grand, with the only niggling issue being that my Keyblades had still been in an International Hub in Coventry on Friday morning. I only found out that they weren’t when I checked the tracking during the middle of the day on Saturday to find it had updated during the night to show that they had arrived in Dublin mid-Friday. Annoyingly I had found this out after 1pm when the delivery office in Dunshaughlin had already closed for Saturday. So unfortunately, there was no panicked phone call home to say “Go Dunshaughlin, get package, bring to Helix, kthnxbai”.

Another fact was that as I was working most of the weekend, to wear the wig I had got for my cosplay would have been a very bad idea. The heat in the games room alone was… well, suffice to say it was rather toasty and you could have probably cooked some eggs and sausages on top of the consoles. This explains why I looked rather half-assed for most of the weekend, and also why I’m definitely going to have everything sorted out and looking proper at Akumakon in January.

One thing that still baffles me a bit about conventions are the drink-fests, especially on Saturday night. I swear it took about an hour from the first time the bar announced they were closing to the time everyone actually left campus. 20 minutes to clear the bar, another 20 to leave the Hub, and the final 20 to get to the Ballymun Road. Being one of the few non-drinkers, it is a bit perplexing, but still can be fun nonetheless. Until random photos start happening that is.

Don't ask, and I won't answer.

Sunday was probably the real testing sort of day, primarily as it consisted of mayhem, nerves, exertion and… well, it’s hard to describe. Combining having to go back out on-stage for another closing ceremony games awards ceremony, with the long-lasting fear of last year where I utterly froze and choked up just trying to say stuff… In the end though it wasn’t as bad, particularly as I had to rescue Conor from reading out the slightly cryptic page of winners after he had started to screw them up. I can definitely say one thing though – the bright lights of the Theatre do help the public speaking as they blind you so much you can’t see half the crowd!

And then there was the rush of putting Games Soc’s equipment away since they couldn’t arrive to help do so, which was not helped by the Helix staff practically heaving out the last few stragglers in the room by 6pm (even though we weren’t set to close until 7.30pm) and then what I can only assume was them making the volunteers there move all equipment out of the room and into the foyer…

Yea, I had a couple of run-ins with the Helix staff over the weekend with regards to closing times, but apparently no-one else had any problems, so I guess they just need to work with us a bit better in the future with regards to timings and whatnot.

Anyway, I’m off back to trying to find any pictures of me that may have floated up on the Internet somewhere. I always need to go see how shit I look in them…

I know I’d given stick about it before, especially the oval variant of it – but I tell you now, I can’t wait for the new Dallara IR12 to come in next year, with all of its advances in safety designed to offer increased driver protection, and to stop them flipping over, especially following wheel-to-wheel contact.

Dallara IR12 "Oval"

As you probably know, I interact on Facebook through two primary methods: my own personal profile, and my Page. I initially made my page after a few… instances where people who were following me for all of my gaming and YouTube related stuff started getting a little too keen on my profile on Facebook. This then spurred me to create a second Twitter account and a Facebook page to handle the people who only knew me from my dealings on the Internet.

At that point, it was the best course of action since I didn’t want to start opening up my personal profile and everything I might say, to people I didn’t really fully know or trust enough. Of course, that’s not to say that everything I post is completely private, in fact most of the time I will post the same thing to my main Twitter and my Facebook profile simultaneously with TweetDeck, but it helps to have that individual post privacy selector on Facebook to keep things only to people who I know.

However, not long after that I started to realise that gaming and YouTube related stuff actually constituted quite an amount of my overall activities, and as such my personal Twitter has a lot less going on now than it used to. It kinda shows in my gaming Twitter as I’ve made over 1500 Tweets from that account since I started it in December last year while my main account has dropped from around 300 Tweets a month to just 100 a month.

So, this new subscribe functionality on Facebook is making me think about whether I should delete my secondary accounts and use just the one once again. Everyone could continue to follow me on Twitter, and those who I don’t fully know could just subscribe to my Facebook rather than having to add me as a friend. This would then enable a fair bit more functionality that I’ve had to stop using recently, or find a workaround for, since some Facebook tools don’t work with Pages, including YouTube Autoshare, Raptr’s connections, and others.

The main benefactors from this change that I know would be higher-profile YouTubers who are well-known for who they are, rather than their online persona. Two who immediately come to my mind would be Jory Caron and Jonny Paula from the old “Is It a Good Idea to Microwave This?” YouTube show, but it could also be of use to some other smaller people like MegaGWolf, and to some extent (and I can’t believe I’m actually saying her name) ssskinner.

Right now I’m still debating what to do. The main things I have against merging them would be the fact that my second accounts are already too well-established to really just pull the plug on them, and they are helping me to keep my two “audiences” separate.

I suppose it’s something that would have to be thought of over the next while, I’d say it would all depend on the uptake of the new subscription functionality.

Firstly, FRAPS is a CPU hog. It does a lot of processing to get your game recorded, converted, compressed and saved. It’s about 40% or so on my Core i5-750 (OC’d to 3.2Ghz), which is a fairly hefty chunk. Because of this, it tends to drag down the framerate of the game I’m playing all the way down to 30, even though I’m telling it to record at 60. However, the end result is good, albeit at a rate of 4GB for about two minutes. All those individual files are quite annoying for editing purposes, and which the audio mixing it offers is helpful, it can be annoying having to set levels before recording to ensure the game doesn’t completely drown out my microphone.

Dxtory on the other hand, from what I can tell, is a hard drive hog. And not just space-wise, it also demands a lot out of the write speed of your hard drive. For me, this isn’t good, as tests showed that my recording hard drives – which are both WD Caviar Green 1.5TB 7200rpm – only manage about 50MB/s. This seems to be enough for FRAPS, but for Dxtory on “out-of-the-box” settings, it was worthless given my 1080p screen size. Given the multitude of options available, I ended up having to fiddle around for a while to come up with my current solution, which offers good recording quality, while maintaining that I can still play the game at normal speed with no slowdown:

Dxtory codec, medium (YUV420) quality, uncompressed, 30FPS, RawCap spread over two hard drives both running 50Mb/s.

The upsides to this setup:

• No game slowdown. Well, I mean minimal slowdown. Normal FPS in the test I did was 120, while recording it was between 60-80, while only recording at 30. FRAPS would reduce my FPS to 30 no matter what.
• No large amount of individual 4GB files. This was something that irked me about FRAPS, especially as when I used Xfire in the past ages ago, even it could record into one large file. Although separate files does have it’s benefits when you happen to have a power-cut during recording…
• Separate audio tracks in the file for game sound and my microphone, meaning no need to play about with levels before recording, it can be done in post editing.
• The ability to use it as a virtual camera to stream with, at a better framerate than XSplit Gamesource offers.

Another major downside, to me, compared to FRAPS is the inability to record the dekstop. This is a big thing for me given that I play a fair amount of emulated GBA and DS games. It’s also a good backup for when I’m playing a game that isn’t DirectX or OpenGL, like Rollercoaster Tycoon.

This pretty much means I’ll be using both programs in the future, both for different purposes.

But, if you’ve come here looking for my opinion of which of the two to take, solely for game recording purposes, I’d take Dxtory. It may be more expensive at ¥3,600 (converted to €33.50 when I bought it) as opposed to €27 (I bought it at $37 ages ago), but the increase in functionality is very worth it. However, do make sure that you have a fairly decent hard drive, and ideally have several hard drives available to record onto.

Upon the page loading, I noticed that it had been given a little facelift, with a nice fresher-looking login screen.

After getting in, I noticed a myriad of new links on the left-hand side, and one which piqued my interest long enough to delay me sending my text for a while, was this “My Usage” tab. Inside was basically a breakdown of all my calls and texts, similar to what you would get on a bill. It definitely reaffirmed the fact that I don’t actually use my phone very much!

However, I began to notice the charges in my usage history were not adding up too well with the advertised 29c a minute anytime to any network or landline plan I’m supposedly on.

Looking through this history, firstly I was confused by all the ex-VAT numbers. All the text charges worked out (€0.0992 = 12c with VAT), all of the call charges did not. Particularly the two and three second calls – where I hit voicemail and hung up immediately (I don’t do voicemail) – in which I was charged 10c on both occasions.

So, it was off to Twitter (@Meteor_Mobile) and it was confirmed that I am apparently charged a 9c connection fee for every single chargeable call.

Nine fucking cent? Particularly when the call per minute is only 29c, a text is only 12c, and I get charged it every single time I connect, even if it’s straight to voicemail? That’s a lot of bollocks right there.

And yet a Google search for this indicates that all three major networks charge this connection fee for their PAYG customers, and Meteor had only increased the charge from 5c just a few months ago!

This is a load of bullshit, in the future I’m just going to continue to send texts since it’s only 3c more than the connection fee, and I’ll probably be able to say more than I can in 6 seconds on the phone!

NGame, flagged...?

When the bloody fuck did that happen? I had been watching the site without any problems 3 hours before that and got nothing in my way. A quick look on Twitter shows that other had been experiencing the issue too. Since I have faith in Avast, I went ahead anyway and had no issues at all.

I will point out that at this point in time, the Safe Browsing diagnostic page for NGame was completely clean, nothing mentioned.

Fast-forward to about an hour ago, and…

Say wha?

Jesus, where the hell did that come from. But on further reading I notice something else – IT’S CLAIMING MY SITE IS INFECTED NOW TOO?!?!?!

Sure enough, I go to visit my own website, and I’m greeted by the exact same big red error page. And the diagnostic for me:

...for fuck's sake.

Upon checking my Google Webmaster Tools, I was told that the page on my site in which I embed my NGame channel page was what had caused my site to be flagged also – bearing in mind they said nothing about just the physical stream video itself on my homepage – so I went to go file for a malware review after privatisation of that page until this issue blows over…

EXCEPT THERE’S NO FUCKING LINK ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND.

As they claim: “Very rarely, it can take up to a day for malware warnings (and links to the malware review request form) to be visible in Webmaster Tools after your search has been flagged in search results. If you don’t see a warning in Webmaster Tools, but your site is flagged, please check back later.”

Searching around for other instance like this show that this is the complete opposite of “very rare”, rather it’s more of a “happens all the fucking time”.

Moral of the story? Google is shit. Go disable this stuff in Options -> Under the Bonnet -> Privacy -> Uncheck “Enable phishing and malware protection”. And then go download Avast, which has been a hell of a lot more use than this browser “feature” has.

Not much has really gone on over the past few weeks. I’m still making my YouTube videos, doing a lot of streaming over on NGame, and getting pissed and annoyed with a few people as always. The NASCAR, F1 and IndyCars have also sucked away a fair few hours.

More recently however, there has also been a couple of cases of conflict in areas.

Aspies

Over on one of the many forums I regular, it was noticed that there was a member on the forums who seemed to have quite a bone to pick with a few people with regards to having an opinion on things. I really can’t remember what sparked it at this stage.

A few threads later, and after a temp forum ban iirc, another brawl brewed between herself and a couple of people, during which I noticed that she claimed to have Asperger’s. Upon noticing this, I took it upon myself to try and use that common ground to try and reason with her and to try and figure out what was upsetting her and causing all this conflict.

Nope. Got my attempts at calming thrown right fucking back in my face.

It was then in that same reply that to me pretty much read out like she used her Asperger’s as a defence whenever things go wrong. This pissed me off to no end. I can understand people with Asperger’s having trouble communicating and getting things across, especially as it took me the best part of primary and secondary school to get around several of my issues when it came to anger management, social interaction and the like. But using it as a shield so that after you cause havoc, you can hide behind it and feel untouchable? That’s just fucking wrong.

Edit @ 2011-11-08 00:03 - Just to add more to this, this is the same person who says:

Why are boards.ie moderators some of the most corrupt individuals on earth? The site is a joke and seems to do little to improve it’s reputation. You may as well call the “Dispute resolution” forum “Forum where you get to be shouted at by a SECOND mod”. I am deadly serious, they are some of the most disgusting people I have met online who do nothing but abuse their power and defend each other.

A quick browse of the DR forum, I seem oddly drawn to this thread!

Comment Trolling

So, I had a video up recently which has a bit of a questionable motive about someone I had had a few problems with recently; when not too long after it going up, I started receiving a ton of spam from people who really didn’t grasp the full extent of the situation.

I’m not sure what these people are thinking, but it is obvious that they don’t understand the full extent of the situation, are are attempting to use my mental health issues as ammunition against me. I really don’t know where the hell they all came from, especially as only a few weeks ago I would have considered most of them to be alright people, but now they are seriously turning into asshats.

Donation Streams

The whole donation stream aspect is also complete bullshit to me. Why the hell are people, like UltraJMan, who make videos and play games for the Internet looking for their viewers to foot their bills by sending them money to buy new equipment or whatnot? I paid for all of my equipment out of my own pocket: my 360, my PC, my Intensity Pro, FRAPS, XSplit, everything; and I don’t even get all that much a week. Yet people who work for ages – or in same cases, don’t seem to work at all – are looking for money from the everyday viewers.

I wouldn’t take so much offense to this if it was maybe $100 every year or so with a small amount from loads of people. But no, they can earn from $500 up to $1000 for all of this. And sometimes they do it at least twice a year! I mean, just check JMan’s last donation stream he did with someone else, where they gleaned $1130 from their viewers, and they even specifically state that they money is going straight to them! I’m sorry, but that is just the epitome of laziness. If you want money for your videos, get a partnership with Machinima or something (like raocow recently did) and earn your money that way, don’t suck the wallets of everyone who watches you. It’s not a full-time job until a proper contract is signed, don’t work to rule or for a bounty provided by everyone else.

I’m done ranting here, I’m off to play some video games, and stream and make videos for the Internet for no reward other than self-esteem and experience.

Thus begins the rather large thought process.

So firstly, obviously, how would you make Steel? Thinking back to a few older games I played which had Steel as a commodity involved – Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and Railroad Tycoon II – it is made using equal parts of Coal and Iron. So that makes that part easy: one Iron Ingot and one piece of Coal (real Coal, not Charcoal). But now there’s the issue with making it. Since crafting them together is a little unrealistic and it requires smelting, this would need a new “double furnace” or something to be able to smelt the two things together. So that takes care of creation, for the most part.

Now, since Steel requires Iron to create, this should place Steel between Iron and Diamond on the resource scale, which is probably needed given the current tool uses scale of Iron @ 251, compared to Diamond @ 1562. However, this brings up the next problem of the fact that at the current recipe of Iron + Coal, Steel is very easy to upgrade to immediately upon finding Iron (although Iron in itself is still possible to get quite early). Thus, the recipe would possibly need to be made more expensive to dictate the difference in durability/damage.

As such, perhaps the Coal part of the recipe – which is the “cheapest” and easiest to acquire – should be made more expensive. This brings to mind the possibility of adding another recipe, to turn Coal into Coke (as in the fuel type, not the drink). Perhaps crafting 8 Coal in a box fashion, or even just all 9 blocks to create one piece of Coke. Thus, Steel would now require an Iron Ingot and a piece of Coke (8-9 Coal).

However, this to me still does not seem expensive enough, so perhaps the smelting in the double furnace should require more fuel than normal, possibly requiring eight or sixteen heat cycles to create that piece of Steel? This would then make Steel require a lot of time and effort to make, but the results would be worth it.

In short:

• Flint and Steel requires 1 Flint and 1 Steel.
• Double furnace for smelting stuff together.
• 8-9 Coal can be crafted into Coke.
• Iron + Coke need smelting in a double furnace, requiring 1-2 bits of Coal as fuel, to create one Steel Ingot.
• Steel lies above Iron in the durability table, but still leave a nominal gap to Diamond.

Or maybe just toss out the whole idea, leaving everything as it is, and just add Bauxite Ore to create Aluminium?

Firstly, I should give a big shout-out to ThoughtsOfGlought and IrradiatedGamer for hooking me up with the game after winning a contest they were holding for a pre-order copy of Portal 2. And also I get to hopefully enjoy Glought dying a lot in VVVVVV soon

The game itself is brilliant, very well made, great story, and actually lasts for quite a while when you compare it to the original Portal. Overall, you get three distinct environments in which the puzzles take place, and I’d have to say that each one is about the length of the original Portal testchambers – and only the testchambers.

To put a time on the length of the game, I’d say six hours is a good figure for the story length, based on my stream video containing pretty much the entire game bar the first while lasting five and a half hours, and also the timespan between me getting the first story achievement, and the last one was 5h32m. Although that timeframe did include a couple of puzzles that well and truly had be stumped for a while, I must say.

Co-op I haven’t had much of a chance to dive into yet. Both myself and MegaGWolf played the single player from launch and were pretty damn tired afterwards, but we completed the first “intro” part of co-op, and the first set of testchambers proper – before G had to get ready for work, and I had to go to bed (after having had three hours of sleep and running on a bottle of Mountain Dew).

One thing that some people may say about it – seeing as it is released to retail on 360 and PS3 as well – is that the PC version is pretty much a console port. I would normally disagree with that, but seeing as they did screw up in where you’re manually saving the game and it advises you to “not turn off your console“, I’m on the fence about that.

Overall, it is a great game, but I do have one major bone to pick about it: the price. Full retail price of €50 for something as short and kinda unreplayable as Portal 2 is a bit of a rip-off. As with Portal 1, once you’ve gone through the game and have an idea of how to do the puzzles, future playthroughs aren’t exactly the same. This may seem a little biased considering I got Portal 1 on PC for free (special Steam offer to all); and Portal: Still Alive on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200 MS Points (€15) which had even more content that the regular Portal – but I think maybe something like €30-€35 would have been the most fair price for the game. I pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2 back in the day and that too was €50, and I do kinda regret it considering how much I haven’t really played it, how similar it was to L4D1, and also the fact it dropped in price to €30 within a few months of launch…

Anyway, I’m not going to spoil any of the game for you, go play it for yourself if you haven’t already.

Link to my NGame recording: http://www.ngame.tv/thechrisd/thechrisdsrandomgamingstream24787

PS: If you bought it on 360 or PS3, SHAME ON YOU!!! VALVE GAMES ARE SACRED THINGS THAT SHOULD ONLY BE PLAYED ON A PC WITH A KEYBOARD AND MOUSE!!!
(I know it seems rich seeing as I bought Portal 1 on 360, but I hadn’t otherwise paid for Portal before. And the extra content…)

• Rocking the boat (15)
  Finish ahead of your senior team-mate in your first season with a new team
• Crushing victory (20)
  Outclass your team mate at each race, over one season
• Consistency is the key (25)
  Score a point in every round of a season

Maybe after I finish it completely – and I finish up doing my Let’s Play of Pokémon Black – I might do a Let’s Play of one of my future seasons in the game on a harder difficulty, which should ideally offset the fact I’ll be in a much faster car, particularly as I have both Force India and BMW Sauber interested in my services for next year

FUCKING EMOLGA

Emolga (Japanese: エモンガ Emonga) is a dual-type Electric/Flying Pokémon introduced in Generation V.

Emolga is a rodent-like Pokémon, primarily white in coloration, that most resembles a flying squirrel. It possesses facial features similar to Pachirisu’s, such as its eyes, tiny nose, and yellow cheek patches. Its ears, positioned at the top of its head, are rounded in shape and black in coloration, with yellow and white sections of coloration in the inside of its ears. Emolga sports a vaguely hood-like patterning of black around its head, with a spiky extension of the pattern above its face. Emolga possesses winglike, yellow-colored flaps connected to its three-fingered arms. Its feet are white-colored and fairly small and its black-colored tail is in a jagged shape.

Similar to Pikachu, Emolga can store electricity on its electric sacs located on its cheeks. When threatened, it releases this electricity to fend off other Pokémon. Emolga lives in the treetops and glides from tree to tree using its cape-like patagium, sometimes discharging its electricity.

This fucking thing. Oh my god, THIS FUCKING THING.

Emolga is the worst possible thing to come out of Pokémon in Generation V. It’s Electric/Flying dual typing gives it immunity to it’s primary weakness: Ground; and instead replaces it with a weakness to Rock and Ice. Normally this is fine, as the only other Pokémon with this typing are either legendary (Zapdos, Thundurus), or only acquired the typing in Gen V and aren’t available in Unova anyway (Fan Rotom).

However the primary problem with this thing is the fact that it appears so early in the game, and when it does start to appear, it appears in force. Through a combination of it’s 103 base Speed, Static ability, and early access to Double Team; this is the most annoying Pokémon you will come up against, especially if you lack the necessary tools to be able to dispatch it.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that Emolga appears prominently in the Electric-type Gym of Unova, in Nimbasa City. It is the 4th Gym of the region, which differs to the other Electric Gyms in Vermilion (3rd), Mauville (3rd), and Sunyshore (8th).

Another part is the lack of availability of Electric-types in general in Unova. At that point in the game only Blitzle/Zebstrika and Emolga are available, and as such the Gym also features only those two evolutionary lines. The other Electric-types of the region: Tynamo/Eelektrik/Eelektross, Joltik/Galvantula and Stunfisk all appear after the 5th Gym.

And finally, the lack of viable counters. The Ice-type does not come into play until the next town, which you cannot access before the 4th Gym battle. As for the Rock-type, there are a few more options, but unless you already have them, it may be too “out of the way” to bother with. Pokémon-wise, there are Roggenrola/Boldore/Gigalith or Dwebble/Crustle. Both have a high physical Attack and Defense, but suffer with a lack of Special Defense, opening them up to Volt Switch. Also, their lower Speed means getting an attack off before a Double Team is nigh impossible.

As well as that, the available moves aren’t great either. Smack Down is the best as it renders them vulnerable to Ground, but requires that it actually hits, which may be a pain given Double Team. Rock Slide requires a higher level, and has less accuracy, as does Rock Tomb from TM39 found in the desert.

In general, these fucking things were designed to make you tear your hair out, swear profusely at your DS, and to rage-eject the game cartridge before running it over with your car. Add to this the annoying strategy they employ with the Gym Leader (Double Team, then Aerial Ace in case you try the same, and Volt Change to GTFO to Zebstrika when the going gets too tough).

FUCKING EMOLGAS.

PS: On my Facebook page, you can find an album of images with other people’s expressions of anger, with regards to these little rodents. Also, feel free to express your anger at these things in the comments, or rant on Twitter with the hashtag #fuckingemolgas.

Been spending most of my time working on more videos for my YouTube channel. Hopefully all this effort will pay off soon, as right now I feel like I’m putting a ton more work in that several high-profile YouTubers who dapple in the same subject areas as I do, who are still more popular and gaining even more views and subs every day, whereas I’m sitting here just hoping that even a few hundred people will watch it.

While I thankfully haven’t had to rely much on the bus service since the train line opened – which by the way has always been pretty much on time, no sudden cancellations, or instance of just plain not operating – I did hear quite a few horror stories, including numerous tweets from Elly and George over the snowy period in which DB were too scared to send the 25B’s to Adamstown – i.e. their only bus service – as well as other stories on Boards of buses not turning up for an hour, 39A’s stopping in the City Centre for no reason and no notice to passengers, and some routes just not running at all owing to a lack of passengers.

Yesterday, I had the misfortune to fall foul to an instance of a bus just plain not bothering to run at all. The plan was to leave the village on the 1402 departure of the 270 to get into the Blanch Centre for about half two, in absolutely plenty of time to meet up with a few friends in Leisureplex for 3 (off topic a bit, but since when has the Plex been free entry? I’m surprised they’ve stopped being bloody gits in that sense…). All seemed grand, so out of the house about half one, down to the village for a quarter to, into Spar for about five minutes for lunch, and then across to the terminus by ten to.

Now it was a bloody cold day, and I hadn’t exactly tried to dress for the weather as: 1. There was to be a lot of physical activity with my friends when I got there; 2. I wasn’t exactly planning on having to wait on a bus that long; 3. It wasn’t really all that long of a walk from the bus stops to the places I needed to go to.

Two o’clock comes and goes with no sign of an arriving bus. As does 1405, 1410, 1415… At this point it’s started to shower slightly, so I trudge down to the second bus stop on the route since it actually has a bus shelter – and on the way not even a bus waiting in the set down area on the way into the village. 1420, 1425… And now arrives a normal 70 – obviously the 1330 departure from town. But wait, still no 270, which was supposed to have left the Centre at 1332 and been back there for 1432 to leave again? Fuck’s sake…

1435, the normal 70 is leaving the village, and given how close we’re getting to the meeting time, I have no choice but to get it down to the very end of Littlepace, then walk through to Huntstown to wait for a 39 to drop me down to the Centre.

And yet, on the way back home after all of this, the 1832 from the Centre was running no problems, having been in the set down area at the Centre since about 1820.

I am going to e-mail DB to complain about this, but in reality, what sort of thing is that going to accomplish? Are they going to reprimand the driver? Nope. Are they going to apologise? Doubt it. Are they going to possibly blame me? Maybe. Are they going to bin it? Almost guaranteed.

A slight rewrite of the About page was done as well, the Stream page has been updated to my current Livestream channel, and I should hopefully soon be working on the Videos section a bit more as I believe I’ve found a good WordPress plugin for it.

Might still jiggle stuff around a bit, knowing my tendencies to never be happy with the way my site looks. Thankfully I’m not this anal with the bear’s site…

Campaign for the bear for Best Newcomer…?

Over the past year or so, I’ve had two main personas that have manifested – my own: that is to say, me the blogger, Twitter addict, boards.ie semi-lurker; and a more gaming-centric one: so that’d be my YouTube channel, Raptr, TrueAchievements, UKCS, Xbox and the like. Recently though I’ve started to feel that these two main personas have started to mix in with each other, and that’s not really something I want.

To put it into more detail… Well, I was following a crap-ton of gaming/YouTube related accounts on Twitter, and my own tweets were getting filled with YouTube tweets, gaming stuff and the like that I really don’t think those who follow me really cared about all that much. On Facebook, I was starting to get friend requests from people who followed my YouTube, thus I had to set my privacy so that only friends of friends can request me.

I feel that now with a separate Twitter account and Facebook page, then I can be the massive gaming/YouTube nerd I want to be, and those who actually want to listen to that stuff can read it there. This way my YouTube subscribers and gaming acquaintances can go follow my ramblings on either (or both!) sites without having all of my random banal rants getting in their way, and also my normal feed can be a lot more true to me.

This whole thing is not a new trend. I know plenty of YouTubers who have a separate FB fan page for people to follow them on. Chuggaaconroy, SuperSkarmory, FPS Russia, the guys from Is It a Good Idea to Microwave This; and more all have separate FB pages, so that their video fans can keep up with them there, while their personal profiles can stay true to their personal lives, family and friends. Yes, I’m nowhere near as popular as them, so I may be jumping the gun a bit with creating it at this stage with only 500 subscribers, but at this stage, I’d rather make things perfectly clear, rather than having to try do this at a later stage having already had everything mix together too much (a perfect example of that would be Jonny Paula and Jory Caron from the Microwave show – they hit the 5k friend cap simply because they were so popular, so an FB page made perfect sense).

This last bit is in direct response to Samm’s tweet:

What would you think of someone who made his/her own fanpage on social media? What about someone who “liked” him/herself?

I needed to “like” myself to do a few connection thing with the page so it would work. But I guess if that makes me seem really sad, then fine…