Marty Blog Theme Update

Marty Blog Update 2

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve changed out the theme for Marty Blog again – but this time I feel like I’m really giving it the proper attention it deserves, with something a little more unique, and a lot better to look at.

The new theme is very loosely based on the excellent PrimePress WordPress theme by Ravi Varma. It also makes use of QuadGrunged, an awesome set of Photoshop brushes by env1ro.

There are still a few quirks I’m working out, like getting the search page functional again and adding a few of the widgets that I had added manually in the last iteration. I’m also considering changing out the header image, or having it be randomly switched out or something;  it’s a work in progress, I suppose.  Overall, I really like the direction I’ve taken the theme, and I hope that everyone out there who drops in to read the blog likes it too!

If you encounter any odd problems with it, have questions, praise, or just feel like posting a comment on a website, drop me a line below. Thanks for reading!

Apologies for the Absence

Time

Has it really been over a week since I’ve posted here?  Well, my apologies for the delay – it’s been a busy time for me over the last week, and I just haven’t been able to find the time to write anything.  I’ve meant to though, so hopefully I’ll be getting back on track with this post.  In the interest of everyone’s time, here’s a quick list of everything I’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks that has contributed, in one way or another, to my lag in blog posts:

  • Met my brother at a bar and watched my dad play music for a few hours; I also saw a woman drop a cake straight onto the floor of a bar
  • Took a trip to San Francisco for my work, got halfway there, and then realized my boss had texted me the night before to tell me the trip was off
  • Worked on a game that you might just see on TV someday (hopefully!)
  • Took another trip to San Francisco for my work, and was nearly late to the meeting because I followed my own directions wrong
  • Worked on a redesign for my blog, scrapped it, then started working on it again
  • Fixed a long-standing server bug in the Reflect system (thanks for the help, Matt!)
  • Worked on a redesign for Reflect Games, scrapped it, then started working on it again
  • Watched the two hour long season premiere for Lost, and the hour long preview before it
  • Finished Fallout 3 (goody-two-shoes style)
  • Went home to see my dad before he had to have a minor procedure done at the hospital (he’s doing fine now, thankfully)
  • Played some quality Team Fortress 2 with Yourself (alltalk servers are basically Skype on steroids, eh?)
  • Finished Prince of Persia (need to play it again for achievements)
  • Got my previous landlord to drop a bogus move-out bill after catching their cheating, and exposing it to them
  • Released a Windows Vista / Windows 7 compatible version of Linked
  • Began learning Visual Basic all over again
  • Watched a few classic episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with my mom
  • Rediscovered my love for Joe Frank (an awesome radio show)
  • Bought World of Goo on Steam
  • Almost finished reading Lord of the Rings (I’m on page 947 now!)
  • And probably a lot more stuff that I can’t remember right now, due to the ever-growing fatigue I’m feeling from writing such a long list!

Anyway, you probably get the idea – I’ve been a bit busy.  I’ll try to get back on th blog a bit more this week though…  I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to talk about, but which I just haven’t had the time to organize into coherent sentences yet.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read my sparse posts – I appreciate it!

Image courtesy of Time.com

Vacation: Over

Suitcase

The inevitable end of my holiday vacation has arrived.  Actually it arrived yesterday, since that was my first day back at work after a New Year’s four-day weekend, but I was feeling too lazy to post anything.  Technically, I guess my brain was still in holiday mode, so maybe it is right to say that my vacation ended today.  In any case, it’s the new year, I’m back on the blog, and I’ve got a lot of gameage to talk about.

I had a great Christmas at home – it was nice to spend an extended amount of time with my family, play (and lose horribly) at Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, and other non-electronic games.  We watched movies, and sat around talking and joking with each other.  I had a lot of fun hanging out with my mom, dad, and brother.  And later on, after Christmas was over, I had another fun holiday weekend spent with my girlfriend.  This included an awesome birthday (I’m 27 now, yikes!) with a nice dinner with my parents, a lunch the next day with just my girlfriend, a trip to the theater to see Yes Man (which was hilarious), and lots of cake and presents.  So maybe you can understand why I’ve neglected the blog lately!

Like many people out there, I’ve also been sucked into playing a lot of games lately, since I got a few of them for Christmas.  My mom and dad got me Fallout 3 and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, and my brother got me Prince of Persia, so I’ve had my hands full.  Of the three, I think my favorite is Banjo-Kazooie, since you can build just about any kind of vehicle you want, and thus, play the game just about any way you want, but I am enjoying all three for their own merits.  Fallout 3 is proving to be the time sink that is par the course for Bethesda games, and Prince of Persia has been a surprisingly fresh and fun experience, akin to the Sands of Time game, though with less frustration (so far).

I’ll write more about each game individually in the coming week as I continue to play through them, but for now I just wanted to drop a note to let everyone know how things are going for me.  Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season!

Oh, and I’ll be raffling off the copy of Half-Life 2 + HL2: Episode 1 again soon – so stay tuned!

Image courtesy of BoRev.net

Marty Blog Big 100: Post & Win

Mass Effect

I know, I know – this technically isn’t my 100th post.  Well, no matter – I’ve been busy with things, and haven’t had time to lead up to 100 before my holiday vacation, so I’ll make an exception and we’ll do the raffle at post 95.  It is a good time to be charitable, after all.

I am happy to say that Marty Blog is still going strong into the final weeks of 2008, and I am pleased with the way the year has gone for the blog.  I’ve been able to (semi) consistently post here about things that I care about and find interesting.  I’ve had a great time talking about these things with members of the GMC and Reflect Communities here.  And I’ve even moved past the default theme (and hopefully will move past my current theme with something better in 2009).  In short, it’s been a fun year, and I look forward to a continuation of that for the next.

Anyway, enough of the formal stuff – you’re probably reading this because you want in on the commemorative raffle, and frankly, I don’t blame you.  So here goes!

To help celebrate the continuation of Marty Blog, and to give back to everyone who’s helped make the blog fun for me, I’ve put together another little raffle – Marty Blog’s second Post & Win!

What can you win?

The grand prize for the raffle is a brand new (digital) copy of BioWare’s awesomely fun action-RPG, Mass Effect!  If you’ve already got a copy of Mass Effect, or if it’s not really your thing, I’ll also let you sub in any other single game of equal or lesser value ($30) that’s currently on SteamHere’s the list.

Additionally, second and third prize winners will be chosen, and each will be able to choose from any single game currently on Steam for $15 or less and $5 or less respectively.  Steam’s catalog has grown impressively since the last raffle, and there are some great new games available now, so there should be something for just about everyone there, for each prize value.

Finally, I’ve got a spare copy of Half-Life 2 + HL2: Episode 1 just sitting in my Steam account, ready to be gifted.  If you’re interested in that as well, say so in your post, and once the winners have been chosen I’ll take all the losers (you’re all winners to me…  really) and do one final drawing for this lovely prize.  This one is non-negotiable because it’s actually just an extra copy I have.

Note: Many of the games on Steam, including Mass Effect and Half-Life 2, are rated Mature by the ESRB, and may contain violence or sex.  I have no way of verifying people’s age, so I will assume that if you enter the raffle, you are 18 or older, or you have your parent’s permission to play games of this nature.

How do you enter?

Simply post a comment below (make sure to enter an email address I can contact you with in the appropriate area of the comment form).  Feel free to post suggestions, criticism, long manifestos of support and encouragement, dear John letters, requests for personal advice, announcements about the sentry gun you just built, or whatever else you can think of.  Everything is welcome!

Your name will only be entered into the raffle once, no matter how many comments you leave, and registered users of the site who comment will have a slightly higher chance of being chosen.

Entrants must have a Steam account, or must be willing to register for one if they win.  Steam is free, it’s a great service, and I am happy to promote it.  If you win and I am unable to award you your prize within a reasonable amount of time, the item will be re-raffled.  Apologies to anyone who lives outside of the U.S. or who doesn’t have access to Steam or it’s catalog of games.

Attempts at entering your name into the raffle more than once (or any other kind of cheating) will result in your name, and all aliases thought to be associated with you, removed from the drawing.  And of course, Marty Blog reserves all rights to make the final decision on the validity of any entry.

Entries close at the end of the holiday weekendSunday, December 28th at 11:59 PM PST – so be sure to make your comment before then!  Winners will be announced the following day.  I wanted to have winners announced before then, but I figured I’d give everyone out there a chance to enter, and of course, I’d also like to give myself some time off over the next few days.  Win / win.

Thanks again to everyone out there who reads Marty Blog now and then.  I truly appreciate your visits to this site, and I hope that the site remains fun and enjoyable to you as we move into the future!  And yes, I know I recycled that from my previous Post & Win, but I think it’s still very applicable.  I hope you all have happy holidays this season!

WordPress 2.7 Looming

Team Fortress 2

With the upcoming release of WordPress 2.7, I’m considering redesigning the look of this blog – especially if the current theme fails to be compatible.

The official release of 2.7 will be in 5 days (on December 10th), but I’ll probably change over to Release Candidate 1 before that, at which point I will disable themes and plug-ins so as to determine which will work and which will not without affecting the upstime of the site too much.  So if Marty Blog goes “vanilla” and reverts back to the default WordPress theme for a while in the coming days, don’t worry – it’s just Marty tinkerin’ with the new WordPress.

It’s funny how these sorts of things grow on you – a few years ago I had neither the time nor the interest in maintaining a blog.  When I finally came around and felt it might be an interesting endeavor, I entered into it a bit timidly, and spent lots of time trying to figure out which software would be the most versatile, and the easiest to use.  WordPress had a nice, clean look to it, and looking over the feature list and stumbling upon many sites that used it helped push me over the edge to try it out.

It turned out that my investigating paid off – and I’ve been enjoying WordPress for over a year now.  The amount of updates and the quality of the plug-ins available has always impressed me, and I hope that I can say the same moving forward into the big changes with version 2.7 over the coming weeks.

If you’re interested in blogging, I recommend giving WordPress a shot.  You’ll probably like it!