This pretty much means that I’m going to spend a lot of time in Guild Wars (GW), hunting for treasure and also collecting copious amounts of grog, go me!  On a related notw, I’ve also gotten myself a second account, which works out cheaper than buying 4 more character slots, especially given that I got Guild Wars Prophecies (Prophecies) for 99p, after my Reward Card discount, which was quite nice indeed.  I coincidentally, by sheer luck managed to get a copy of Eye of The North cheap (second hand with an intact code) off Amazon so I can bring my characters up North and get them reserved for Guild Wars 2 (GW2).  Unfortunately, this means I’m only limited to the entire Tyria continent, which is by no means a bad thing, but I tend to like exploring the whole world.  All that said though, I’ll most likely get the other campaigns over the next while, when they are cheap enough.  I’m working on a few different title tracks for all the characters over two accounts at present, most notably Survivor (as the name suggests, it means you are not to die), of which I have 4 characters over all 3 campaigns marked for.  I also have a couple of characters going for Defender of Ascalon (reaching L20 in the starting area).  Before I continue, I’d like to reassure readers that this isn’t just going to be about GW, I just want to mention it now, as I’ve never really mentioned it before and it ties in nicely with the grog and loot collecting!  Anyway, with that aside, I’ve been working on all of this for quite a while now, though the second account only has been around the past month.  Still, there’s plenty to keep me going till GW2 comes out.  Coincidentally, if anyone ever wants to ever hang out on GW, let me know and we can do so.

Staying with MMORPGs a bit, and Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) has gone Free to Play in the USA, with the European edition following eventually.  There’s a delay with the European patch which you can google if you’re interested in it.  Alternatively, you could always try the USA edition, but I’m not on there, and I’m honestly in two minds about going there, even if I have an account.  I also have a Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) account which I haven’t really played yet either, due to updating issues, though the software is fully updated now so maybe I’ll give it a try.  I may end up having to setup a page specifically for my social networking/gaming/profile stuff so I don’t need to constantly mention it in a post.  But in order to do that I need to possibly remove a page, or be creative with the title (as well as rearranging other page titles!).  Same deal for LOTRO (Europe) applies for GW and Star Trek Online (STO), which I’ve started to get back into.  I also have plans to form a Fellowship in LOTRO and already have a guild in GW, if anyone wants to join.  As for sTO, I’m not sure what’s going on there as of yet, as my friends may be setting up a fleet, so I’d be inclined to join them if that is the case.  Coincidentally, any game clans/guilds/etc that I form are actually global ones, in the sense that they encompass the membership of all my websites and the ones I’ve a high involvement with.  This saves a logistical nightmare later and also means that the clan can be of a decent size.  There’s an official site up through GamerDNA, but it needs tweaking first.  As for my sites, I’ve decided to have a few changes.  First of all, I’m gonna be bringing out a site called the Techie Guild (TG), which will deal with a lot of techy (non-gaming stuff) and is coincidentally the parent site of the Gamed Up project.  I also decided that the TG is the best place for a support and tech wiki, though beyond the support section, I’m unsure of what that’ll entail as of yet.  I also think that it will reduce the burden on my planned IT support site in that I can just put all the paid services on there with the Techie Guild providing free support.

Granted, I may potentially lose money by offering free support, but some of the money I get will be through ads, plus there’s always someone who isn’t able to follow instructions (for whatever reason that might be), so there can be a service offered there… that’s the plan anyway.  Other than that, I’ve learnt that HTC are bringing out 2 new Desire models, the Desire HD and Desire Z.  First thing that struck me is that the Z version has a keyboard (obviously), which harks back to the G1 days… though some of the journalists online appeared to have forgotten that HTC did the G1!  Anyway, the nmajor difference between the HD and Z is that the HD has a 1GHz processor and 768MB of memory, whereas the Z has 800MHz and 512MB of memory.  They both have 1.5GB storage and are expandable (naturally).  That kind of puts a possible dent in my plans to aquire a Desire, although that said, it may benefit me because that means the original ones should go down in price and they are much better than a Tattoo anyway!  On a related note, I think I’ve actually become rather attached to the Androis OS now, not least because I have a secure place for all my contacts now as well, without having to pay anything extra.  I also managed to get rid of all my old phones cluttering things up, and between the ones I sold to CEX, and the ones I sold to Mazuma and Top Dollar Mobile, I made about… £150 quid, plus I managed to get rid of some of the boxes, apart from a couple of Nokia ones, which are used for the accessories and manuals.  Apparantly, people actually buy the boxes, which I was aware of, but didn’t do a lot about.   I may need to consider selling off the boxes in the near future instead of recycling them, if they make a few quid…. I certainly need any money I can get!

Continuing the gadgets theme, my old laptop has kinda died now, as the graphics card seems to have died, which is great.  I’m estimating a 200 quid repair cost as well, which isn’t good.  While I decide what to do with it, I purchased an Acer 8935G with a 3 year extended warranty (once bitten twice shy).  You’d think I’d have gone for another brand, but really, the laptop at least lasted a year and a half before deciding to mess up, and I think I may be able to get it fixed for less than 200 quid, if I’m lucky.  Either way, I’m pretty impressed with what I got with it, even if it has 2 things I bought separately built into it this time (BlueTooth and a TV reciever).  What particularly impresses me though is the inclusion of a Blu Ray recorder and also a quad core CPU.  It coincidentally is able to do the virtualisation for XP Mode on Windows 7, even though MS dropped the requirement.  I’m assuming though that with it, things run a little more smoothly.  It also has 2 x 500GB HDDs which is quite nice as well,though I learnt that this one needs 3 DVDs to back stuff up with this time!  That’s quite a few, to be honest and I’d much prefer just having it on a BluRay Disc, but those are pretty expensive at present, so sadly not an option.  Still, I expect that this computer will serve me for about 3 years before it comes to a replacement; the Quad core and Blu Ray drive have at least ensured that.  So long as it plays the games I want it to, I’ll be happy.

As for my two desktops, I’ve finally hooked up my KVM switch, so now I can switch between the two with ease andthough I can’t use the mouse or keyboard yet due to the fact it doesn’t like USB.  Additionally, I need to sort out the hard drives I’m going to put into the desktop too though I see little reason to upgrade the motherboard, given that I only have DDR1 RAM at my disposal at present.  I do eventually plan to upgrade my desktop as well, but not for another year yet.  I want to get it upgraded to 7 Home Premium 64 though and stick Ultimate 64 on the laptop as it can take it.  Given I was going to put Windows 7 on the laptop, I decided t keep the “new” Vista interface to prepare to use 7, although I need to sort out the drivers and how I’m going to reinstall everything, given I need to make a list of the drivers I need.  What is made easier though is the fact my desktop has internet access, so the process will be a lot simpler than I think.  Still, I think I’m going to have a major geekgasm when I see Guild Wars running at full resolution.  Oddly enough, I can now transfer some of my platinum on my main account to the character on my alternate account and I can also get myself past the gate, so score!  Admittedly though, I’m going to have to keep the alt character out of harm’s way as she needs to be kept alive for survivor.  At the very least though, I can complete all the quests for her now so that’s a good thing.  Both characters are rangers, as a point of interest, though my main is male going for Defender and staying in the starting area, and my other is female and going for Survivor and will eventually leave the area.

The cash boost will be very much appriciated too.  Given that she’s leaving though, I may actually just give all the flowers and collector stuff to my main character so I can get him an equipment pack.  This means I’d have a lot more storage as a result.  Oh, the possibilities.  One last thing before I stop writing though… I also started on Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms which is essentially Heroes of Might & Magic crossed with Lord of Ultima, which I think is a good thing.  I certainly enjoy it more than LoU anyway, which wasn’t a bad game but the Heroes of Might & Magic series was always a great one.  If you happen to be there or are interested in playing, let me know and we can chat or I can invite you to my alliance.  I really need to sort out the clan site soon though.  The Gamed Up Site is still in the planning stages as I need to rethink the design I had for it an experiment with it.  I also have a few more site ideas, but I’ll reveal more about those in time and also when I have everything else out of the way first.

I also paid Maplins a visit as well and got some books on robotics, soldering and electronics, as well as a book on oscilloscopes, which sparked my interest since I studied at Greenwich.  I also got another set of LED Safety Glasses (which are gonna be modded, leaving the first ones I bought intact) and also an Audiophile 2496 audio card, which I was hoping to use for helping me with music composition at a later date, although it would be more nice just to have something professional to use with MIDI.  The problem is however that it needs audio cables, and while I do have them, I don’t have the space for them, so I’m either going to have to locate an external version of the card or make the space.  It’s occurred to me that I have also lost my reciept so I need to goo looking for it, damn.  That aside, I may have to just accept that this may be the best card for my price range (I don’t want to pay a lot more to be honest) and get a Game Port to USB adaptor, which to be honest may not be a bad idea, seeing as they’re cheap enough at 8 quid each!  I really only wanted that expensive card for the built-in MIDI port, and considering I can have a decent audio card with a cheaper separate bit, it may be best off just going down this route.  I have too many game controllers that require Game Ports to just drop the idea; I didn’t realise till much later that I had no MIDI port on my soundcard!  Another bonus as well is that it has some composing software with it, as well as some loops, so that’ll help me some more.

I think I could do with regorganising my PC both inside and outside, as there’s cables everywhere!  I have also been considering moving my router downstairs as well, so I can free up some space on my storage cabinet.  On that note as well, I should consider getting myself a printer server so I can use the printer with the network.  It might also be in my best interests to get an Ethernet-over-Power adaptor as well as although my desktop will have a wireless card in it, I will most likely want to wire it up too!  And if I don’t use it on the PC, it was going to be used on the PS3 as the wireless is notoriously unreliable on it, although that may be due to the fact that it doesn’t like AES encryption for some reason.  Perhaps this will be rectified in another update, but for now it’s damn annoying!  I phased out 802.11b and WEP in my network, due to both security and practicality issues… the majority of my devices are G compatible, and use WPA/WPA2 although my laptop is N, but I dunno if it’s been standardised yet, not that it’ll be beneficial to me, to be honest as most of my devices are G.  I was going to use a USB stick as an AP (access point) for my older DS games as it seems that the DS games only support B and WEP which I think is rather silly, but I can’t do a lot about it to be honest… oh well.  Moving my router downstairs would allow me to wire up my PS2 and PS3, thus bypassing the need for wireless.  Although I don’t know why I’d put my PS2 online as I’ve got no games that support the feature!  I prefer wireless (despite the insecurity of it), seeing as it means that I don’t have as many wires about and it keeps the place tidier.

Something tells me though that when I do decide to move the router, I’m going to have immense fun rearranging the place, seeing as I want to make the wires look as inconspicious as possible.  I already have a wire untangled from when I wired up my laptop (in my bedroom) to the router in the study although that just barely reached and I had to move the router as it was a foot short!  It was 3 foot short for if I wanted it on my lap in bed so I had to switch to the wireless again, after I worked out why it ouldn’t connect!  It is nice to know that I’ve learnt more about networking and computer hardware over the past few years so I know more or less what I’m doing now!  I’m best off doing all this when I return home though as the PC will be off, though I’m thinking it’ll be worth the extra hassle of moving stuff around.  The only problem is though that the router has a tendancy to reboot itself every now and again.  The other problem is that I’d have to remember to install the network card or use my laptop till I do install it in my desktop!  And while I think about it, I want another bookcase in my living room for additional storage of things although I’d only need a half-height one this time around.  That said though, the more I think about it, the more I think I might need to do some  interior redesign to be able to store stuff better.  Moving the router and my NAS drive certainly would be a few steps in the right direction, although I’m not 100% sure of where to keep them.  Either way, I think all my wires definitely need tidying up;  I could put 2 of my PC speakers on the wall behind my screen to make a tiny bit of space as well.  It does look like this will require quite a bit of thought.

The ultimate aim is to make a bit more space than I have now, or rather additional space.  It’s times like these make me wish I owned my own place as opposed to renting as it’ll be a pain having to restore everything in the future.  But enough about my living space (I do want to eventually show off some pics of the place later when I’ve organised it more), I’m going to talk more about my DC3 idea.  For those of you new to the DC concept, and also what happened to the first two, I need to talk about it some more…

The DiggerCast (DC) was a podcast that had kind of random beginnings.  Back in 2005 or 2006, my friend Sean and I were on Skype, where he was testing his audio equipment and we were testing the recording function.  I suggested we try out a podcast, and the DiggerCast was born.  I registered the domain diggercast.com and Sean hosted the site on his space.  He also produced the first podcast as well, though unfortunately we never did any more after that.  Also the original, undedited content is no longer existant. , which is a shame but it was too large to keep.  Phase II, as I referred to it as was to be revival with a new member of the team, Mark (from thelongmile.net) joining us.  We managed to record some semi-rough drafts for the series, but again it didn’t take off, despite all the hype I was giving about the releaunch.

It was between the first and second phases that I renamed the DiggerCast to the NotCast, as the domain was unable to be registered, as I let it lapse by accident.  Anyway, I subsequently re-aquired and renamed the NotCast back to the DiggerCast and I’ll be keeping the domain for the forseeable future.   Anyway, those Phase 2 attempts will be uploaded on the new site when I get that up after I return from Ireland and after the next blog entry meaning anytime between the 15th and the 28th.  The 3rd attempt is perhaps the most ambitious version of the project, and maybe the final one if it doesn’t work out.  This means I’m being both ambitious and cautious at the same time, and making sure the concept and premise are both rock solid.  This means that the official recording won’t be starting till sometime in the next year.  There’s also the fact that there’s going to be some content that needs to be put on the site first and this is where many people will be needed to help.  Essentially, the concept of this phase of the DiggerCast is thatthere will be a few blogs, he first one being the main site itself, which will have a forum plugin and also a social bookmarking plugin.

This will mean then that as opposed to getting stuff to talk about from the likes of Slashdot, Digg.com and similar sites (as was the case with the 2nd phase), we get stuff from the site proper and talk about the top 5 or 10 links posted by the users.  The format of the podcast will most likely be a 30 minute podcast about the top content for the past two weeks, though the podcast will always be two weeks behind the site content.  I’m still trying to work out the nitty grity of it all, but what will happen is the following:

Let’s say that each month has 28 days for simplicity…. not that I’m sure if this is going to be simple to explain or not!  Anyway, say we have to talk about content from the 1st-14th of the month in the podcast.  The podcast wouldn’t be released till the 28th of the month, though thinking about it maybe I can shift it to the 21st.  The idea essentially being that we get 1-2 weeks to read up on the content and associated comments, discuss it amongst ourselves a little, write it all down, then also do recording and production on the podcast.  This could possibly be done over a single week, although I’m still trying to sort out the finer points, especially in the interests of being consistant with having a podcast at a regular frequency.  Another alternative is that once a month, the podcast gets posted, at the end of the first week of each month, which summarises last month’s content and about 5 weeks of comments.  The only problem there is that we’d possibly have to do it for an hour, or just focus on the top 5 or 6 posts for the month so it can be fir into half an hour.  Bleh, so much to think about and decide!

Anyway, why I need people’s help is that I would ask you to sign up to this site when it’s released to the world officially, but only if the idea interests you.  I’m not forcing you to sign up if it doesn’t interest you, especially as the content of the podcast is based upon what users contribute to the site and it’s all well and good having lots of users, but if hardly any of them post it won’t work too well.  In this case it’s quality over quantity.  If you have any friends that may be interested as well, you can point them to the site to see what they think of it.  Perhaps the idea has been done before, but I’d like to try it out for myself.  Even if you don’t want to sign up to the site, I’d appriciate suggestions as to what I could do with the format or recommended software for using this with.  At the moment, I plan to use WPMU with a forum plugin, a social bookmarking plugin and also a podcasting plugin.  For the podcast itself, I’d be using Prettymay Call Recorder, Skype and Audacity.  The idea is still in flux atm, and I haven’t worked out some of the finer details, or how to summarise the concept, so I’m just doing a brain dump in here.  Again, I’d appriciate any suggestions or comments on the idea and if you have any questions, ask away as it might help me to focus better.

I’ll stop talking about this idea for now, as I think I’ve said enough about it for now.  I’ll reveal the name for the site in a follow-up entry, but seeing as I was supposed to post this yesterday, I’m gonna pick up the pace.  I want to mention as well that I got a good deal at Game for Lord Of The Rings Online Vols. 1 & 2, along with a 60 day game time card.  I got them both for 25 quid, which is cool.  I’ve been wanting to play LOTRO for quite a while, so this is a great time for me to try it.  I might actually report on it at a later stage as well when I get to grips with it.  I’m also reordering my blog a bit too, as there’s some blogs that I list that haven’t been updated in a while and also a few things that are redundant which I’ve not even fully looked into.  I’m also aware that this blog is a bit of a melting pot of my ideas and thoughts and everything else put into the one place, which isn;t necessarily a bad thing, but I feel I could do with some better segregation in the new future.  Something tells me that I won’t get it till at least the next year, when my games blog is up and running.  There will certainly be a reduction of categories and tags when I’ve finished with revamping the blog, as well as also checking out the links.  I’m also going to work out how to use the trackbacks properly as well and start linking people’s blog entries.  I’m relatively new to proper blogging, so I’m bound to have a few rough patches here and there.  One thing I do need to look at though is moving stuff from my Blogger blog to here, and stuff from my GameTrailers blog to my games blog.  I also intend to have a paranormal-type blog as well where I’ll muse about paranormal stuff and anything I’ve done in relation to rhat field.  Keep in mind that the frequency will be semi-regular, much like what I plan my Project and Experiment blog to be.  Still, it might be worth a look if you’re into things that go bump in the night.

It’s funny that with a lot of these things I’m doing, I’m seemingly spreading myself thin, when the actual fact of the matter, I’m essentially just streamlining and regulating my posts so there’s consistancy behind them.  I do admit I have a lot of free time at the moment, but I am gonna start occupying myself more over the next year.  I’m also, finally going to the gym, although I will miss out on about a week of it due to going to Ireland, but when I return it’ll be a bit easier to do, apart from at Christmas.  I’ll be glad when I streamline this blog a bit better though, as it means that I won’t have as many huge posts to worry about as my average post seems to run up to about 3-4000 words!  I seem to have a lot to say, that said.  If I could focus this tendancy to write 2000+ words into my academic work, I’d be doing well!  I may have to consider the 1 post a week method in the new year, so I can average out the words making sure there’s less to read, and slowing down my rambling.  It is just as well that I separate stuff with paragraphs as I write as reading this without paragraphs would be a nightmare!

I’m gonna finish off here, and continue the once every two weeks posting until February next year, where I’ll reevaluate things.  It’s going to take me some time to settle into the patterns of writing, to be honest.  I will also try to keep things a little less verbose in the future, as well as starting to include links and publishing on time!  I am thinking that once a week may become a more viable option though, especially given my short memory!  Well, thinks can only improve, especially when I’ve nailed this blog down.  In the grand scheme of things though, a blog is one of the easier sites to manage; I kept this blog simple as all I needed it for was writing mainly, although my Twitter and Flickr are linked into them for practical purposes.  Rome wasn’t built in a day though, so I can’t expect to see instant improvement.  In the future, I’ll try to make the blog more about my opinions on stuff, with some links to read, as opposed to what I’m working on.  I may actually make a blog for that on my secondary site, so I can talk about stuff there in a bit more detail, as it seems that I talk about what I’m working on more than anything else when that’s not what this blog is supposed to be about mainly… I think I’ll need to think about things a lot, to be honest.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’d appriciate your comments on the DiggerCast 3 project, as well as suggestions for it (how many times have I asked that now?) as I want to start seeing what I could do to make the site as good as it could be, although requirements do change given it’s a dynamic project.  Keep in mind that I may not be able to implement the suggestion right away, or even for the DC, though it may fit in elsewhere.  I’ll inform you of this though.

Lastly, I was gonna try out AION, although it seems that it’s been released now, soI can’t do a first impression of the beta, meaning that I have to purchase the full copy, dammit. Apparantly it’s not terribly good though, but I’ve not been given reasons as to why at the moment… however, I’m kinda wary of spending 35-45 quid on a game that may not be all that good. Again, more research is required into it. I may just buy it to test it out, although I’m wary of a monthly fee. I’m still playing Guild Wars due to its lack of monthly fee and I recently got back into Second Life because I finally got my account unlocked, so w00t!

Er, anyhow… I’ll update with a larger post next time, covering one of the above topics. I’ll more than likely try out AION anyway, so I can see what it’s like, but that impressions thing is going to be shunted to my games blog, which I’ll be getting up between now and the end of the year. I have other projects that need more immediate attention first, so the sooner they get sorted, the sooner my games blog will be up. I also hope to have a podcast started within that timeframe too, so watch this space for updates.

But for now, that’s all folks.