“The Worst Party Ever”

The party referenced in today’s article, 10 Ways to Enjoy Your 19th Birthday, was a damn awesome affair if I may say so myself, despite the mess, my sister arriving home pre-party having been told twenty times not to come home – culminating in me breaking one of my drumsticks in immense rage -, and making an idiot out of myself many times over.

Photos will eventually crop up on Flickr. They’re already floating about on my Facebook, along with a bunch some other people have taken which I need to steal from them – including the most smug picture of me I have ever seen, which I love – but I tend not to want to give my other-website-profiles out to complete strangers.

Oh, and it wasn’t actually The Worst Party Ever actually; Willow’s album have christened it “Nick’s Actually Very Good Party”, and Kirst’s have named it “Nick’s Unworst Party Ever”. This led to Hayley telling me the next morning that I even failed at throwing the worst party ever. I am slightly ashamed.

The guestlist, as it just sounds like a fest of women: Me, Alex, Will, Hayley, Kirst, Jenni and Willow.

Site stuff, then real life stuff

First and foremost, I forgot to talk about this previously when I discussed upcoming site updates; when I update the site in CSS in December – assuming I do, as I hope to be able to – I will be implementing skins next year, which will be very nice and lovely if you don’t like the current design but would like me to do a tonne of work on alternate designs just to make you feel happy and such.

The September update will also see some ad pages thrown into the mix. There won’t be too many, but I’ll be adding them in various hotspots just between pages, to help get some attention and cover hosting fees – though my AdSense stuff has served over 13,000 page views, the click-through rate is 0.11%; thus I have currently accrued less than $4. This does not cover the $10ish (£4.99) monthly hosting fee. Thankfully, I will bless you with text very big and obvious that will allow you to skip ads to head to the content you’re wanting.

September will also see a brand new, more serious comic series, and will likely separate most of the Halo-themed comics from the Boring Comics series. No update schedule yet, but I’m working on the story and I think two updates per week will be likely. It will reduce Boring Comics to a once-per-week update cycle, though I may add an extra day for the comic so production doesn’t slow down horribly on the middle child.

Also; as I said, July got over 4,800 hits in total. August, in its first 20 days, has matched this and so I expect to surpass 6,000 hits this month.

In reference to yesterday’s post; I was told by the owner of HBO, the site featured in Boring Comics #13, that he found it funny, so though Monday’s offering did not please, Wednesday’s offering got a laugh from the man, so at that, I am pleased with myself. The Wednesday comic, perhaps in light of a positive remark from HBO’s Louis Wu, is now this month’s most viewed in a single day, too, so I now know I can either write crap or write gold to draw in views, though nothing in between. Oddly, this is not helpful.

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Just lately I wish I hadn’t adopted the Xbox 360 when I did.

Obviously, I love the console and though it has seen a red ring of death and had to be replaced by the wonderfully quick Microsoft staff, it’s one of my favourites things. It’s given me hours of fun over my host of games, provided me a fantastic Xbox Live experience far surpassing that of the original Xbox and a tonne of great features.

Still, when I bought it, it was £279.99 – though I got it in a £299.99 deal with two games and an extra controller (which broke earlier this year, incidentally) – and was, as I bought it at the end of 2006, the 20GB model lacking a HDMI port.

Nowadays, you can snag an Elite – a better looking black version of the 360 for less than this, and it not only has an HDMI port, but a hard drive six times bigger than my own. Not only that, but you can get the model I own, albeit with the added HDMI port, and now a 60GB hard drive for £179.99. This is £100 less than what I paid, and it is a substantially better deal, both due to decreased cost and spectacular improvements.

This, of course, does not affect you, as you don’t care that I’m jealous of all the people buying 360s right now and heading into the future. I just wanted to complain.

I downloaded the ten-day trial of World of Warcraft after almost two years of delaying it. I, unfortunately, like it, though I’m hoping I get bored by the end of the trial, as I’d rather not spend £8.99 a month on a game that I may become hopelessly addicted to as so many others have. I’ll post my server at some point, and if you don’t mind hanging with a low-level character (currently I’m level 7) in Goldshire or areas around there, post a comment and I’ll hook you up with my details.

My Sea Monkeys tank arrived yesterday, and in roughly eight hours I’ll be putting the eggs in. So that’s cool. Tsubasa Chronicle volume 4 didn’t arrive, though, so I’m hoping the bastard shows up today. If you would like to please me, feel free to check out my Amazon wishlist, where you could, if you are so kind, snag me a copy of volume 5 of Tsubasa Chronicle, thus stopping me from having to wait a month or so before I buy it. You can also buy me a copy of the first volume of Great Teacher Onizuka, which I’m told is funny, or perhaps even a copy of Tomb Raider: Anniversary on the 360 for me to play after I’ve puzzled my way through Tomb Raider: Legend.

Alternatively, if you don’t like buying things for other people but you do like buying things for yourself, look no further than the Boring Internet store, where you can currently score yourself a pillow depicting the Queen’s true identity, or a wonderful set of coasters topped with the happiest seagull in the world.

This post has a fucking tonne of tags.

Climbing the leaderboards

So today, whilst trying to best the score of 50,000,000 points on Pacifism mode in Geometry Wars 2 someone on my friends list has got – which I am doubting is physically possible, as I am the king of Geometry Wars and its sequel on my friends list and Pacifism is the only mode I am being beaten on, by 20,000,000 points – I got incredibly annoyed with my inability to score higher than 12,000,000 and headed on to Deadline mode.

Deadline mode is typical Geometry Wars, but you have a three minute time limit to get the highest score you can. You can die as many times as you like, but the game becomes easier as you die, limiting your scoring.

My high score had been about 3,500,000. But today, I got an awesome game and got a score over 12,000,000 in those three minutes. Checking the leaderboards, I discovered I’d peaked at position #449 – the highest I’ve ever been in a Geometry Wars scoreboard before! Incredibly proud as I was, I tried to play a few more games to best it, but failed.

When I gave up and signed off, about 15 minutes later, I’d dropped 3 positions to #452. Inevitably, as more people get the game – which you should if you have a 360, by the way – I’ll drop further, but I’m hoping to beat that score at some point and move on up. My next target is above position #400. How long do you think it will take?

HELL YEA- aww shit.

The HELL YEAH? Geometry Wars Evolved 2, on Xbox 360. Download it from Xbox Live Arcade now, because it’s insanely fucking intense. I will be reviewing it for the site (also, expect a review of It Ate Billy On Christmas sometime too) at some point in the near future. Possibly.

The aww shit? Firefox screwed up and went and wiped all my favourites. Admittedly, there weren’t that many, and of them, I visited even fewer. But it is quite annoying and I will need to spend like two or three minutes getting them back myself.

Also, my Converses came, and unlike the last pair of shoes I bought from that site, they fit perfectly, so no need to spend them back due to dodgy sizing. Yay!

In an effort to stop my trousers from being destroyed, having finally given up with my previous worn-out pair that I spend most of the time in, I’ve pinned up the bottoms of each leg. Unfortunately, my dwindling supply of safety pins is now limited to just three gigantic and unslightly pins, and the tiniest things imaginable, barely visible to the human eye. Due to the abundance of these micro-sized ones, I am using those. Sadly, unable to actually hold material together very well, they pop open quite often.

Please buy me some new safety pins, someone. Or, if not, just buy me something off my Amazon wishlist, linked on the website.

Money, money, money.

So today I ordered a new pair of trainers, since the pair of Vans I bought last year are falling apart so much it’s about time to retire them. Though, obviously, I won’t actually be giving them up until their ‘functionality’ ceases – that is to say, whilst wearing them and doing something, one of them rips itself in two.

I’m trying to save as much money in a savings account as possible right now, so I tried to find the cheapest pair of shoes I liked. I ended up picking out a pair of Converses, which are fairly similar to my current pair of Vans, and decided to order those. They were over 30% off too, so I was only having to pay £24.95 for them.

Fortunately, I also received a 15% off voucher code in my e-mail from them, and though normally I don’t read their newsletters, I did and discovered this wondrous code. So, including the tiny postage fee (£1.95), I’ve got a brand new pair of shoes coming – probably tomorrow, if they ship today as they promise – for £22.31.

This pleases me.

I would also like to bring to your attention this site; it’s a reward site that pays you for searching with them. Once you’ve earnt £20 (the equivalent of about 940 searches by my estimations) you can enter payment details and they’ll send you the money via that method.

Today, after just a month of use, I passed £20, so soon I’ll have myself a nice deposit in my bank. As this, too, pleases me, I’d invite you to sign up to it via the link above and use it as often as possible. You’ll benefit me, as I’ll get a bonus for each search you make (not taken out of your own money, obviously) and you’ll also benefit yourself – who couldn’t do with an extra £20 a month?