Ca9ine.com

"He’s young. He’ll probably walk again But he’ll stay scared — Won’t..."

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:16:32 +0200

“

He’s young.
He’ll probably walk again

But he’ll stay scared —
Won’t you, punk?

”

- Batman,
After crippling a criminal.

The Dark Knight Returns

Norvard WebMedia (dot com)

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:38:21 +0200

Since the launch of Grant McMaster’s new website, I’ve come to realize an update of Norvard WebMedia’s website is long overdue. I have to fix this, and I have to fix it quite promptly I think.

People seem to be somewhat curious of the little “Created By” logo in the footer in his website, as I notice a lot of link juice coming my way, which of course is good for business, but not as good as it could be if the business had a refreshed site high-fiving their eyeballs. A holding page with some fancy styled text just won’t do in the long run.

However, I wonder: how much effort should I put into it? Should I go all-in and create one of these fancy looking “HEY, LOOK WHAT I CAN DO” sites, or just keep it simple, clean, elegant and straight to the point? I’m leaning towards the latter. I’m not saying I should slack off in terms of effort, I’m just saying not to overdo it.

The thing is, I like doing my own thing when I can. I try to distance myself from the “everyday” website design, so I try to create designs that I’d enjoy visiting myself. Like Google’s stuff; it’s simple, clean and effectively brings you straight to the point.

It’s Easter, so I have close to a week of free time on my hands, so I think I’ll be able to cook up something to at least get me started.

I Made Something

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:54:19 +0200

I was asked to create the new official author profile website for author and published novelist Grant McMaster. A task I accepted with pleasure.

The website as a whole is complete, and it launched yesterday.
Some features included in the design is still inactive, as per Grant’s request. He wishes to keep things very simple for now, displaying only a clean front page, his published works page and his profile page which includes a Russian translated version.

Grant McMaster is the first non-Russian author to write a novel for the Metro 2033 franchise; Metro 2033: Britannia

I’m quite sure I will be asked to further assist with the website until all the features intended for it is active and in effect, which I of course will assist in doing.

Find Grant McMaster’s new and improved website at mcmaster.eu

Out With The Old, In With The New

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:13:27 +0100

I wrote this a couple of days ago. Now I have fulfilled the prophecy of the final sentence of the craptop saga: ”I might just as well acquire a netbook…”

Yeah, no more LOUDNESS, and way more power (…of the battery kind)! No more actively working out just to be fit enough lift the thing! And lastly, no more strung neck from stretching over the laptop display just to look my wife in the ~~(evil)~~ eye.

I finally got my netbook. I treated myself to an Asus Eee. “Treated” isn’t the proper wording though, I got it dirt cheap. My boss took in 4-5 of these things about a year ago, but the last one just wouldn’t move, so I approached him and offered to take it off his hands for a shamefully low price. He accepted the offer. I win.

But, it’s white. It’s super white. I feel like a little girl. I win..?

Where Do I Begin?

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:55:00 +0100

My project Feed The Gamer is already live, it’s been live for a good while in its current state and it’s already a household name. It’s recognized and has been approached by Shacknews among others to feature their content. It’s running smoothly now, and seeing a lot of traffic and returning traffic.

It’s time to launch Feed The Gamer to new heights. Now, how do I do that?
Like any other business, one of the goals are obviously monetizing the business. Sure, that can and is being done by publishing ads, but for that to generate the money needed, Feed The Gamer needs even more readers and visitors.

More readers and visitors; that’s the key to a successful website. And to keep a website interesting, it needs constant work and perhaps renewal and new features from time to time. More prolific original content is also very much a factor of success.

So, it all boils down to a need for more writers/journalists to provide the original content, and programmers to do the necessary work under the hood. The ones with a firm belief in Feed The Gamer and its potential, combined with a willingness to work for it for nothing more than gratitude and recognition at first, they are the hardest ones to come by.

If you think you fit, contact me.

Tempted By Drupal

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:31:00 +0100

I love Drupal. I’ve worked with it several times, and I still run a Drupal site.
Earlier today when browsing around the web, I happened to come across a discussion about Drupal, so I thought I’d go check out the latest Drupal 7 version. I headed over to drupal.org and downloaded the latest stable version.

After installing and setting it all up, I was very tempted and began thinking about maybe porting Feed The Gamer, that currently runs on Wordpress, over to Drupal. This will be one hell of a job, and not something I’m about to venture into straight away, but I might some time in the future.

The thing is: Drupal has a lot of what I need for Feed The Gamer already built in, while I have to rely on certain plugins and hacks for Wordpress to do the same. And, as those of you familiar with it, the more plugins, the more unstable a Wordpress site can get.

We’ll see what Wordpress can come up with, they might still convince me to stay with them. My main concern is the load that Wordpress can have on a server.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I still love Wordpress equally, but let’s put it like this:
I love Feed The Gamer more.

I’m very much tempted, but I have to give this a long and hard think.
Planning will be key, and it won’t be easy.

"There will be no DK2!"

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:46:02 +0100

“There will be no DK2!”

- John Romero, co-founder of id Software, co-creator of DOOM.

Because Daikatana happened…

Customer Greeting (Photo by ca9ine)

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:33:01 +0100

Customer Greeting (Photo by ca9ine)

"I’m a hardcore gamer and would never let you down by designing a crappy title."

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:25:57 +0100

“I’m a hardcore gamer and would never let you down by designing a crappy title.”

- John Romero, co-founder of id Software, co-creator of DOOM.

Then Daikatana happened…

Old Crap, New Life?

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:42:05 +0100

I recently dug up and blew the dust off my old laptop. It hasn’t been used for almost 2 years, but hey, I created Feed The Gamer on it, while sitting in the kitchen smoking way too many cigarettes, so I thought I’d fire it up to see if it would still run: Yup, it still does. The battery is crap, though. It only lasts about 5 minutes. If that.

Anyway, after a few hours of cleaning up all all the old crap on it, downloading about 2 years worth of updates for everything I’ve installed and decided to keep, it’s now running smoothly. When using it again today, I started to wonder why I stopped using it in the first place. A laptop is a brilliant thing for just checking mail, reading news and updating my Twitter and Facebook, not to mention the blog and my websites. And I love typing on this laptop’s keyboard. It’s perfect!

But, as much as I love this good ol’ trusty laptop for easy interweb access and a quick work fix, the thing is a little too big, it’s EXTREMELY LOUD(!) as in motherfraggin’ LOUD and the battery life, as mentioned, sucks. There’s no point in buying a fresh battery either, I might just as well acquire a netbook or something similar instead for the same price.

The Drunk Caller

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 01:49:00 +0100

I’m good friends with EiKON Games and The Return Fire Podcast founder Mike.
So, last night I sat listening on the live recording of the show, and I was hanging out in their IRC channel, all while drinking ~~some~~ a lot of beer and some Dooley’s.

Mike and co. go about their usual business, chatting about recent events and releases in the gaming world, when they decide to have the listeners call in.
So, I did. While being not sober on ~~some~~ a lot of beer and Dooley’s.

Here’s The Return Fire Podcast, episode 39 - Wasps Knees

More Optimization Needed

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:19:02 +0100

The increase in Feed The Gamer’s readers and subscribers hasn’t come to a halt yet. It’s almost becoming a problem now, albeit a luxury problem.

The servers are being absolutely hammered at times, and all the resources are being maxed out on the server resulting in crashes and errors, so I’ll probably need to combine another upgrade with the acquiring of a Code-Ninja to come on board and help out with some deeper optimization within the core.

I’ve taken every optimization step I can think of to reduce the stress: caching, minifying, hardcoding and asynchronous loading, which have all helped very much considering how snappy the website now functions, and how much reduction there’s been to the entry processes. But still there’s a great deal more that can be done when someone with some ninja coding skills takes a look at other areas that are out of my knowledge and experience. Help is wanted!

If you’re reading this, and you’re a fan of Feed The Gamer, and you’ve got the ninja skills I’m looking for, don’t hesitate to get in touch for a chat. I’m easy to find.

Heavy Load

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:06:38 +0100

Feed The Gamer’s user numbers have exploded in the last 4 days.
We’ve seen a doubling in traffic, and way more social media interaction.

However, as awesome as that may be, more concerns emerge in my head as I’ve also noticed the the load on the server’s memory and database connections are maxing out what the site can take. What’s more worrying, I don’t know what’s causing it, I don’t know the source, nor do I know where to begin to look for the source of what I think is a bottleneck somewhere. Not yet, anyway.

I’ve begun the process of hardcoding a lot of stuff that I know is making a lot of unnecessary calls to the database just to output the same I’m now hardcoding in. As far as I can tell so far, it’s helped take the load of the server a little. Now I just need to optimize some of the scripts, and start stripping out code that’s been kept for future use, but hasn’t been used yet. And I’m not even sure most of it would ever be used.

The site is cached and compressed. Almost a full 80% compression by gzip, so that’s most likely not an issue I need to worry much about.

I probably shouldn’t worry so much, though.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I always find a way.

I’ll find the culprit(s) eventually.

Revising the Facebook Page

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:55:50 +0100

Next up for Feed The Gamer is to totally revise the Facebook page.
So far we’ve gone through the extremely tiresome and tedious process of deleting every single aggregated feed ever published on the page.

The plan is to develop a better page, and point the main focus to our original stories, rather than the aggregated feed. On a social media outlet, the aggregated feed will be so overwhelming it will just be considered spam. We’ll of course include the feeds and headlines somehow, but just not spammed on the wall. Besides, we have the main Twitter account taking care of the aggregated feed.

Now comes the designing (as much as Facebook allows you to, that is), testing and approving of some new designs, where one will hopefully make the cut.

The Two

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:34:00 +0100

As you may or may not know,
I created, own and run the gaming news site Feed The Gamer.

I’ve got some names on board as writers, which gives the site some serious leverage.

Grant McMaster, author of Metro 2033: Britannia, and Luke Dicken, a Games AI researcher and contributor to #AltDevBlogADay.

Feed The Gamer started out as a tiny blog, built by myself, for myself.
It was just an idea that came to mind, as I couldn’t find what I was looking for around the interwebs. So I simply decided to create what I couldn’t find.

A few weeks passed after I made the site live, and I started noticing more and more traffic. I thought to myself that as long as you do something right, there’s always going to be someone around to take notice and visit the site from time to time. Little did I know however, that the traffic would increase so much that I had to start working on the site close to every available hour, just to keep up with what I started seeing as demand.

More and more traffic, and more and more emails. Emails stating, demanding even, that Feed The Gamer needed something more. So I started writing the odd original article for the site myself. But, I found myself again needing to spend every hour keeping up with maintaining, structuring and even writing to keep the wheels turning. I went to Twitter, and asked for help. Which brings me to my mentioning of the two writers above.

Luke came along and brought his own style and thoughts to the table. He gave Feed The Gamer the lift it needed, and he gave the readers what they demanded. After his joining as writer, it’s safe to say that he helped Feed The Gamer establish a household name. Without going deeper into details, I’ll leave it at saying that Luke proved to be more than I could ever hope for.

Grant came along a few months later, a close personal friend for many years since before Feed The Gamer was even an idea. After finishing his novel Metro 2033: Britannia, he shared an interest in writing for Feed The Gamer and I immediately grabbed the opportunity welcoming him on board. That decision was golden as Grant’s article and reviews are still to date among the most read collection of words on Feed The Gamer.

So, why share this?
Well, that’s easy: I have a lot to thank these two for.

If it wasn’t for their involvement then I don’t believe my little project would have reached the level it has today, or should I say: so far?

Thank guys. I owe you.

Afterthought

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:57:40 +0100

Feed The Gamer’s move was a success.
Now I can stop worrying, and rather relax and move everything else over all in good time. There’s no rush.

The Norvard WebMedia website will be transferred soon, as well as Ca9ine.com and a few other sites I’ve built and still maintain.

Speaking of Ca9ine.com, it looks like I can really get used to this Tumblr thing.
I’ve made the blog my own, and I think I’m all done with the design. I’ll probably end up with a “Latest Tweet” thing on it, though. I can never seem to settle without one of those on any personal site I build.

The customizing is still a bitch, though. I haven’t gotten used to that yet, and I’m not sure I ever will. I really hope the Tumblr guys can develop some kind of dashboard editor, or at least give us an option to open an editor in a new window or something, because the tiny sidebar thing that pops out just won’t do!

Oh! And Tumblr, I want empty paragraphs! Or at least double linebreaks!
Stop removing them from the HTML as I write!

That is all.

Who-hoo! (Photo by ca9ine)

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:56:27 +0100

Who-hoo! (Photo by ca9ine)

The Waiting Game

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:33:03 +0100

I’ve decided to move all the Norvard WebMedia web assets to a new host.

Feed The Gamer has outgrown the current host, and the site is getting slower and slower, which is very bad as the reader base is getting bigger and bigger.
The current host just can’t handle the traffic. So it was time to move on.

Now the waiting game starts.
Everything has been moved, but we still need to wait for the domain transfer, and the nameserver changes. This is killing me!
I’m trying as best I can to plan ahead, to have as little downtime as possible, but I fear Feed The Gamer’s constant aggregation and updates will be impacted for at least a full day, if not several days.

On top of all this, the database, which is of a conciderable size, may be a bit of a hassle to transfer.

Wish me luck.

Worn Playground (Photo by ca9ine)

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:27:27 +0100

Worn Playground (Photo by ca9ine)

Storm (Photo by ca9ine)

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:25:41 +0100

Storm (Photo by ca9ine)