Crimson Crux

I know, I know…it’s been almost a month since my last blog post. Too much offline ‘happenings’ and writings. In the meantime:

Arrrr, Dvorak and Colemak layouts, stand aside. This be th’ starboard keyboard fer someone who calls hisself th’ Corsarius.

(Via Ioannus de Verani.)

Whatever my friends might tell you, consider me a thrifty person. Most of my freelancing salaries end up in the bank (which then almost always get spent for family/household bills), for I rarely dish out more than 20% of my income on personal ‘luxuries’. If I do splurge, it will be on books, and lots of it.

But of course, there’s always an exception to the rule.

Last Monday, a package literally greeted me at my room/home office’s doorstep. It had arrived from Paizo Publishing in Bellevue, Washington, and inside were about $160 worth of Dungeons & Dragons goodies.

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This video game article over at SomethingAwful.com supplied me with a couple of laughs that I desperately need in these times of, uh, impenetrable darkness. Heh.

My favorites:

Valve - “Step on it, boys, we’ve got a deadline to meet!”

PopCap - “Here’s an original idea.”

GameSpot - “I’m giving the game a 9 because it was fun as hell. Innovation is great and all, but we play it up way too much.”

Sony - “It sure feels good to be on top of the console industry.”

I’ll be adding one:

Blizzard - “Let’s prioritize the StarCraft universe, who needs WoW’s billions, anyway?”

Read the rest here.

Last week, I requested a free catalog from AirplaneShop.com, a site I regularly visit, being a collector of miniature aircraft models. The site offers tons of great models, many of which are sold at discounted prices (50%!). Still, I haven’t made a single purchase.

I just might, very soon.

To my pleasant surprise, the free catalog arrived just this morning. A surprise, because I really didn’t expect them to send me a free magazine halfway around the world from New Jersey. Add to that the fact that the site footer reads “Copyright 2004″, which I took as a sign of stagnation or even company death.

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While aimlessly wandering around YouTube, I came across this three-minute gem from Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. It plays to the tune of Electric Six’s Danger! High Voltage, which has suddenly found its way into my playlist.

Funny video + funky song = a great way to kill your time. Enjoy!

Fire in the disco! Fire in the Taco Bell! Oops, couldn’t resist…! In any case: Electric Six Danger! High Voltage lyrics.

One of my all-time favorite games, Rome: Total War definitely has its quirks. The picture above says it all. Now, this bug had me also thinking, Costner’s Waterworld might be due for another video game version, this time in 3D!

These past days, I’ve once again turned to PC games to help relieve stress. A few bugs of the amusing type (such as this, as opposed to the gameplay-ruining, insanity-inducing ones) certainly go a long way in stress management.

However, even with rare but bizarre graphical glitches, RTW remains a fine game for the ages. If you’ve been visiting this blog since its Blogspot days (highly unlikely!), you’d remember I gave RTW’s expansion, Barbarian Expansion a highly positive game review.

Enough talk — I’m off to crushing the Senate and the People of Rome, as well as their lap dog Houses! (Yeah, I’m against ‘em this time around, playing as the Macedonians — a ‘non-playable’ faction made playable by a quick game file hack, hehe.)

Never laid your hands on the famed notebook known as the moleskine? Or looking to add another to your collection?

Here’s a great chance to win one, courtesy of Pinoycentric.com. All you’ve got to do is join their newly-launched weekly “Ika Nga” Cartoon Caption Contest. For one well thought out blurb of text, you get a moleskine — sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Thanks to Sir Armand Frasco of Pinoycentric.com for the email!

For the better part (if not all) of my youth, I’ve been a poor suitor of girls. As some of my friends told me, “you’ve got the looks but not the moves”, which is unfortunate.

But thanks to Google, I can indulge in the illusion that I’m improving in the wooing department. Last month’s check of my Google Sitemaps account (just before Valentine’s) revealed that Slip of the Pen, more specifically this old essay of mine was number 1 for the search phrase “steps in courting a girl” (without the quotation marks).

Pretty neat, and pretty nonsensical, too! It’s certainly one of my most amusing “accidental SEO results”. For some reason, this blog gets “tame” search engine referrals (laptops, iPod, etc.) while my lit/writing blog gets the absurd (many of which are even downright pornographic!).

After several months with Google Adsense, I finally received my first cheque yesterday, straight from Dublin, Ireland (Google’s European HQ). Nothing spectacular with the amount, but the first time is always sweet, hehe.

While not enough to buy certain gadgets and gizmos I’m eyeing right now (read: Nintendo Wii), the Adsense funds will at least cover my domain and webhosting expenses for the year. I’m hoping Text Link Ads will deliver even a little bit of goodness next month!

While writing some posts for a Dungeons and Dragons Online site a few weeks back, I chanced upon a highly entertaining webcomics by the name of DDO1Liners. Highly entertaining, that is, if you:

• Are a fantasy geek,
• Have played D&D or any similar RPG systems,
• Have played the DDO MMORPG or any similar online games, or
• Have a sibling whose endless ‘dice rolls’ and ‘dungeon delvings’ with his/her friends at your house have somehow ingrained the terminology and lingo into your otherwise innocent brain.

Needless to say, those items can overlap! Anyway, I found myself going through every strip in their archives, which I don’t usually do with other webcomics. (more…)