Listen to me complain

Anyone reading X-Con will notice that chapter 4, though massively long (stupidly long, methinks), was split only into 4 parts – though these were longer than normal. That’s to conserve bandwidth and so I don’t have to spend forever doing formatting for what’s not actually my own content. When I hunt for something else to put on the site that’s not my own content, basic HTML formatting ability may well be necessary before I accept it. Perhaps cruel, but adding tags won’t take long, and I’ll still take the arduous task of formatting the pages, breaking chapters into pieces and sorting out all the links to different parts.

Next week I’ll post a list of final features for the September update – which should hopefully be going live in about 2 weeks. Hopefully. As usual, don’t hold me to anything.

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Sadly, I am still job-hunting after 3 full weeks of it. I’ve only heard back from 2 places – one to let me know the position was filled (ignoring the fact that I applied to two jobs within their company) and the other to arrange a job interview, only to shoot me down after the interview because I’m not pushy enough for a sales position. Well then! I guess I may be a bastard online but I’m still too nice in real life.

I finally surpassed 4000 gamerpoints on Xbox Live, so I’m pretty happy about that. I’m slowly whittling away at the slew of Halo 3 achievements (perhaps the only game, other than Guitar Hero 2, that has successfully pleased me enough to continue to pick it up after almost a year of owning it). Apart from some campaign scoring achievements, there are now exclusively online ones left. Which is a bit shit, really, but I’ll do what I can to get the fuckers.

On Monday I’ll post this month’s stats. They’re looking good. Exceptionally good. Like, so good I now consider the site a moderate success and have added information on it to my CV. Without including the web address, obviously – no one is going to want to employ me, seeing the crap that comes out of my head.

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.

Real life things

Here is the promised update about things in real life you don’t care about much.

Last Tuesday I ordered Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the 360. It took a week, but this Tuesday it arrived. I played two songs of Easy mode but because I’ve been playing GH2 for a year, it was too boring and I amped it up to Medium – and that was still too boring for the most part. I completed it in about 6 hours or so, unlocking a few achievements, and I’m now progressing through Hard and Expert mode simultaneously and working on getting 5 stars on the last 3 or 4 songs in the Medium tour.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Tomb Raider: Legends, also for the 360. Only £7.99, too. I’ve played about 45 minutes so far, and I do quite like the game – I haven’t played a Tomb Raider game since the very first one on the original Playstation.

That said, I’ve been getting stuck on the puzzles. I also got scared to death when I rounded a corner and a jaguar bounded out of a temple thing at me. I hate this, and when it happened I thought, “Shit, this isn’t meant to be a scary game!” Anyone who saw my reading list on the old version of the site will know that I read a tonne of horror books; that said, though, I hate being scared by something visually, whether it’s something horrifyingly gruesome or something that jumps out and surprises you – the first jaguar in Bolivia on Tomb Raider: Legend being the latter case.

Today I’m off to get my exam results. I’ll add them to the bottom of this post when I get home and then update the site to show this blogpost is live in its final(ish, in case I notice spelling errors later) format.

Oh, and I’m getting a kitten soon.

Update: Exam results:

Computing: C

Physics: C

Chemistry: D

Drama: D

Anyone wishing to congratulate me; my Amazon wishlist can be found here.

Update 2: Stuart has been kind enough to allow a 4th chapter of X-Con to be released on the site; thus, this has become a kind of X-Con Month, every available Wednesday taken up with a chapter of X-Con. He’s also told me the release date of the novel is August 27th. It will be available in hardback, will be 287 pages long and for the first two weeks after release, it will be available for £9.99. After that, it’ll cost you £11.99.

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.