By now, everyone is, of course, quite sick of seeing the buxom ads deployed to entice new players for Evony. Being rather burnt out on everything else available on the market, I've been giving it a try. No, there isn't any comely wench in-game, of any sort, that I've found. But, it is free, after all, right..? Right?

Except they nerfed medals...

You can play for free until you get out of newbie-mode by trying to advance beyond Knight, which requires these medals, see?

After listening to some of the other podcasts that are out there, I decided that the time has come for me to give it a try.

I recently downloaded Audacity, which offers voice-activated recording features and accepts the line-in that is currently carrying the mic from an old over-the-ear gaming headset I had sitting around. I have to increase the Gain quite a bit to hear myself after recording through such a low-end mic, but it gets the job done.

In order to run a podcast, however, you need more than just a few mp3's.

In about two hours, I worked out a way to run podcasts from Xaraya using only Xarpages, a new articles pubtype and a couple of templates. Continue reading to see the actual templates and get started setting up your own podcast using Xaraya!

While it may be crass and narcissistic to refer to yourself directly in the third person, you can bypass social mores by indirectly referring to yourself through use of the proverbial "we".

By emphasizing group solidarity, regardless of it's actual existence, you can safely distribute responsiblity for your statements. This is done through the simple expedient of substituting "we" for "I" in your statements.

Just when we thought that the nation was finally headed in the right direction, California no longer supports gay marriage. California.

Apparently, while everyone else was focused on making sure that Obama got elected, the religious right used the shift in focus to as a sabotage opportunity:

"Yes side sent certified letters to major donors threatening to "out" them in a press release unless they also contributed to the marriage ban."

In retribution, the "No" side is fighting back, and they are slinging the "Yes" side's own tactics right back at them. I guess nobody told the fundamentalists anything about living in "glass houses" should they decide to throw stones...

FF3 FTW. Usually...

I was trying to look up the original video of Steve Ballmer going off about developers and sueting through his shirt in the process, but YouTube is featuring an ad for it's own new "Live" service that is poorly deployed and redirects my FF3 to a page with just that ad on it.

Way to go YouTube; I was looking for a reason to choose between you and Googles video search. Now I have one. =P

What happens when the inbred nature of the internet gets into bed with new and media? They feed on each other. Right now you can see it happening as Slashdot virtually erupts a stream of meta-data traffic over an article about sniffering browser history without javascript, and references to the NINE YEAR OLD bug that continues to remain exploitable, as obvious references in the comments will tell you, quite hillariously:

What is the sound of a billion souls crying out in the dark "how did I get here?"

What does it mean to get "Slashdotted"?

If you have been online for a decent amount of time, you probably know about the news site for geeks called Slashdot.

From this, you may surmise that getting "Slashdotted" involves getting your site linked to in an article on Slashdot, resulting in a significant increase in your site traffic.

You would be correct. Very correct.

You may also surmise that this increase in traffic results in a corresponding increase in sales/leads/etc.

Many popular fantasy novels portray characters traveling through some medieval city who stop for a quick bite to eat and purchase a meat pie from some street vendor.

A meat pie?

Wasn't sure how I felt about that, especially in light of half-remembered comments about kidney-pie, none positive.

But then I found out that we have a meat pie place here in Austin, and I've been burning with curiosity ever since. You'd think they would have sold the damn things at RenFest, but I don't recall seeing them.

Introducing Boomerang's Gourmet Veggie & Meat Pies. 

I found an incredibly cool graph illustrating the anticipated future trend of computing, gaming, movies and artificial intelligence. They graph things between Best, Worst and Base Case scenarios, showing a range of just how pleasant or unpleasant things could become. Regardless, it is all inspiring from a technology perspective. Some truly great ideas are listed across the graph; things that I had not previously considered and that the industries affected may not have either. Virtual cinema attendance was one idea that struck me as obvious in retrospect, but predicting the last human produced film and game on such short notice (10 years from now?) is not something that ever occurred to me.

No matter who you are, there is bound to be a few things that spark your interest. I will be using the graph as a repeated inspirational exercise going forward; it's just that cool.

I normally respond to questions about who I'm voting for by snidely explaining that I was preparing to vote with my feet. I have long felt that my one single vote was of zero consequence and that the process was pointless. This was all before I had a chance to see things like the movie Recount, which is geared to point out that we do indeed have idiots in charge. The smart people all operate behind the scenes.

And now, as if to prove that the story told in Recount was most definitely not fiction, CNN brings us news of voting mismanagement both recent and historic.

So, now you have proof that your vote really doesn't count anymore.