YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE CHOSEN ONE!
Everything, now I have seen!
Monthly Archive for May, 2007
StarCraft II Unveiled!
On May 19 th. 2007 in SEOUL, South Korea Blizzard Entertainment announced their upcoming title, Starcraft 2! This is exactly what everyone was expecting because if is the only Blizzard title that has not been updated since its initial release.
New features at this early stage are to include:
* Tightly balanced competitive real-time strategy gameplay that recaptures and improves on the magic of the original game
* New units and gameplay mechanics that further distinguish the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races
* An all-new 3D engine that supports fast-paced play with realistic physics, massive units, and massive army sizes
* A groundbreaking single-player campaign that continues the epic StarCraft story
* A powerful map editor that puts the tools used by the game’s designers into the hands of players
From the press release the folks at blizzard are selling this game to the masses as:
Designed to be the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game, StarCraft II will feature the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard’s signature approach to game balance. Each race will be further distinguished from the others, with several new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that will be making a reappearance in the game. StarCraft II will also feature a custom 3D-graphics engine with realistic physics and the ability to render several large, highly detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultaneously.
“With StarCraft II, we’ll be able to do everything we wanted to do with the original StarCraft and more,†stated Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We recognize that expectations are high following the long-running popularity of the original game, but we plan to meet those expectations and deliver an engaging, action-packed, competitive experience that StarCraft players and strategy gamers worldwide will enjoy.â€
StarCraft II will include a unique single-player campaign, as well as fast-paced online play through an upgraded version of Blizzard’s renowned online gaming service, Battle.net®. In addition, the game will come with a powerful, full-featured map editor that will put the same tools used by Blizzard’s designers into the hands of players.
Blizzard is developing StarCraft II for simultaneous release on the Windows® and Macintosh® PC platforms. Further information about the game, including details on the single-player, multiplayer, and map-editor features, as well as system requirements, pricing, and availability, will be announced in the months ahead. To learn more about StarCraft II, please visit the official website at www.starcraft2.com.
I finding it somehow fitting that this was announced in South Korea because it is well known to be the home of the most devout fans of the game! This game consumed more time of my early teens that I would like to admit (I pre-ordered it and I have a T-Shirt . . .) and I would love to play it when I find the time so I cannot wait until I get a chance to play the beta or purchase my own copy! We don’t really know much about the game at this point but what is know lives over at the official site but below I have some files of the live demo, some trailers, and a sideshow of all official images that I have been able to find to date so enjoy. 
StarCraft 2 ‘Debut’ trailer
If you can’t get the flash to work I have the movie hosted here.
StarCraft 2 ‘Artwork’ trailer
If you can’t get the flash to work I have the movie hosted here.
StarCraft 2 Live Stage Demo
I’m working on getting a copy of this file as well in case you can’t get flash to work but Blizzard has not released it officially yet like the other two.
Finally, here are some screenshots, artwork, and desktop wallpapers
Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
Note: This will not work in IE until I have time to apply these tweaks
A few days ago I took some time after work to update my copy of Wordpress to version 2.2 as it has finally reached the stable release stage. The release has been code named Getz in honor of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. There are some new features to mention and rather than rephrase them I will let Matt explain them from the announcement post. Here are the main features with this release:
Goodies:
WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.
A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.
Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.
The post also stats that they have added “dozens of UI and accessibility improvements, ranging from more concise wording around options and links to things like a view and preview link above the content box when you’re editing a post or page.”
There are also some features added for the development community which are also mentioned in the post:
Developer Features
A new set of WordPress-specific XML-RPC APIs that allow for editing pages, setting categories, and much more.
We now use jQuery for a number of internal functions, and hope to transition all of our JS to use it. (We still need volunteers for this.)
Comment feeds now support multiple formats, including Atom.
Our internal mail functions now use phpMailer, which allows for things like SMTP support.
You can now set database collation and character set in your config file.
You can also hardcode your site and WP URL in the config file, overriding the values in the DB.
Finally we’ve increased the inline documentation of a number of functions inside of WP, which should help you navigate those parts of the code.
Usually, I do not have any difficulties with updating my installation of Wordpress but the decision to include Wordpress Widgets as a core ability of the code base created some serious problems for me. I use K2 for my theme and they use Sidebar Modules (SBM) instead of the widgets from . Since these are two completely different approaches to the same idea, namely being able to rearrange the position of content on the Wordpress sidebar with dragging and dropping boxes around in the administrative interface.
K2 completely refused to render and pretty much was non functional after the upgrading. I did some digging on the K2 home page an luck was with me as there is already a temporary fix avaliable. After applying the fix I was able to restore the normal functionality that I expected but I came across another problem
I was able to resolve the issue after snagging a copy of the nightly builds of K2. Not everything was bad though as I have been able to fix several issues with my archives page. If any other K2 users are still having problems please feel free to contact me by leaving a comment or by using my contact form.
Some Background
A few weeks ago ReviewMe released a new version of their advertiser’s and at first it did not give it a whole lot of thought. A few days later I checked into the new marketplace and it still gives 100% control over what reviews that they choose to place onto their blogs but it does give advertisers some additional control over the review opportunities that they offer, their Blog post says it much better though:
Advertisers get to set up the information they would like reviewed, the number of reviews they would like to receive and how much they would like to spend per review. The minimum review price is $10. Advertisers now have the flexibility of purchasing reviews off top blogs individually or creating campaigns for many relevant bloggers to blog about!
After the launch I logged into my account and saw an offer to review a blog called Reality Wired Review which is the blog run by someone called James who has some very insightful articles on AdSense optimization and apparently he puts what he writes about into practice as he use his earnings from Google to purchase a brand new 2007 Toyota Tunra. I have never made anything close to that amount of money but I am thankful to the continued support of Toshiba Computers via my account at Text Link Ads. I did decide to take him up on his $5 offer to review his site and thus we arrive at this entry. 
So, without further backstory we move onto the Reality Wired Review!
The Main Event
The blog itself is mainly about tech related news and events with the occasional sprinkling of random musing and life happenings. The blog is much more focused than mine but I think that is good thing as he had managed to do pretty well on just ad revenue but I tend to get distracted by shiny things and ramble too much.
I admit that I have not had a chance to read through every entry he has ever posted but so far he puts a lot of time into his posts and seems to have a pretty decent understanding of how to use ad revenue to help finance your and hopefully one day escape your day job. But I think James sums his Blog up the best by his tag line “Make Money Online and Escape the Cube!”
Disclaimer Just in case I wasn’t clear James is promising to pay me $5 for reviewing his site and placing at least 1 link back to his site: Reality Wired Review.
I’m playing around with WP-Cache again now that it plays nice with the fantastic Bad Behavior plugin. Its running now and I do not see any of the issues that plagued me before and it actually seems to be working! My computer is ancient but pages seem to be loading slightly faster in that latest versions of IE and FF (i could be imagining things though). Am I crazy or are pages loading faster for anyone else?
As always let me know if you see anything break.
