A New Year, A New Start

Whenever the New Year comes around it’s like a breath of fresh air for me usually. This year though at first it seemed like it wasn’t going to be like that at all. But since last week my eyes have been open wider and now I can clearly see that this is going to be a good year, even if it originally was a rocky start.

It’s taken me a few days to get my New Years Resolution together, probably longer then it should have. But I feel really good about this list, and I’m ready for a New Year and a New Start. I’ve come up with two list’s, one  that’s serious and one that is just for fun. Both have a mini description for each. I decided to do a Serious and Fun List just because there are things that can definitely happen and things that most likely will not happen or might but not with in the year.

Serious New Years List

1. Be More Out Going – I’ve been more out going then I have in the past. Maybe it’s because I’ve realized I’m older and I’m no longer tied down to not being able to go anywhere like clubs, etc.  But I’m really looking to trying to go to new places and experiencing new adventures.

2. Loosen Up – Probably one of my biggest downfalls/downsides to me. I’m learning to do this very slowly and with the help of my friends it’s slowly becoming a reality.

3. Return to my original weight -  I used to weigh somewhere between 150 – 170 after highschool though I packed on a good 20 lbs. Now I may look like I’m in shape but I really am not. So I’m cutting back on the soda, chips and well basically anything that’s junk food or not exactly healthy and am going to work towards this goal.

4. Save Up Money – Ok so when it comes to saving up money I’m pretty bad with it. But as the end of College nears for me at Raritan Valley for next Spring I really need to save. Especially if I plan on attending Full Sail University.

5. Car Almost Completely Paid Off – I would say pay off car but it’s not exactly possible right now. I work and go to college and I just don’t make enough to get it paid off by next year. Who knows maybe that will change. But at least I want to get it down to the point where I at least shave off a year or two.

6.  Higher Grades – I did really well this Semester and I’m glad I did. But this Spring I really want to shoot for A’s and B’s only. I got 2 B+’s, a B and a C+. Now I want to cut that C+ out and turn it into either an A or B and I want to turn those B+’s into A’s.

7.  Get My Band into The Studio – We’ve been together for about 2 years now, with members coming and going. Last year we finally were settled in with a complete line up and we couldn’t be happier. We’ve got about 7 songs maybe a bit more written and it would just be really nice to get in the studio to record and replace our horrible demos on our myspace.

8.  Blog Name and Domain Name – I need a blog name and have been trying to figure out what it should be for the longest time. Once I get it I want to move from wordpress.com to a hosted server with my own domain name and my own wordpress installation so I can install plugins.

9. Be a Better Mixxer – Ok I love mixx I really do. But some times I just need to take a break from it and go back to digg. There are times when the content on mixx is awesome and then other times not so much. I can however help make mixx become even more of a better place for great content if I stick by it’s side and contribute more.

10. Finish my Card Game – I’ve put a Card Game I’ve been working on since last Spring on hold for the longest time. Friends and Family love the concept, and how it plays but it’s no where near complete. So picking up where I left off and continue play testing is essential for me to finish it by next year.

For Fun New Years List

1. Dinner with Taylor Swift – Yes yes I like Taylor Swift and she is Gorgeous. It would be pretty kick ass if  I could chill with her and grab dinner. One thing I can’t understand though is why guys would be afraid to date her just because she’d write a song about them. Seriously guys wake the hell up, who cares if she wrote a song about you? People express their feeling/emotions in different ways, she just happens to do it through music.

2. WingSuit Jump – This seems like a lot of fun and if you don’t know what it is feel free to look it up. Unfortunately you need at least 200 jumps before you can do this with an instructor and at least 500 with out. Looks like I’ll be doing a lot of jumping in the mean time before I can do this. So till then it’s in my For Fun List.

3. Go to Japan – Japan has some of the coolest tech I’ve seen on the net. Plus one of my friends lives there so I’d get to see them as well. Ok ok friend first then insanely cool tech/gadgets that isn’t available in the states.

4. Get an Android Powered Phone  – This either will never happen or won’t happen for a long time. But my contract is up next December. If an Android Powered phone came to Verizon by that time I’d get one. Again though this is probably unlikely since Verizon likes total control over their phones.

5. Go Surfing – I love surfing but unfortunately I think I out grew my board plus it’s damaged. I need a new one but sadly I can’t afford it. So this means no Surfing for me this Summer. For now this remains on my For Fun List, but hey ya never know things could change!

Well now that I have bored you all with that, I shall go back to twittering, and my other social networks that I use while I am online at work.

I have Blogger’s Block

I’m not going to lie I find it really hard to write on here lately. I find myself backspacing every single time I start a post and then when I finally do have something, I usually end up deleting it or I just stare at the blank page. In general I’m not quite sure what to write about when I start a post.

I have “Blogger’s Block” according to Reem Abeidoh in her post “6 Ways to Break Out of Blogger’s Block“. For those of you who don’t know who she is, she is a fellow mixxer and a co-host on the popular Audio Podcast Social Blend. The six things she recommended are great. In fact I’m even using one of them right now to write this and another I almost used last week!

If any of you who are friends with me on facebook you’ll remember that I had updated my status saying I was going to free write and then post about what I wrote down. Unfortunately as you all know I never got a chance to do that because I delayed and didn’t make time to do so. After reading Reem’s post on “Blogger’s Block” I saw how much easier it would have been  if I just took the time to write things down, instead of keeping it in my mind. It’s also rather even more ironic really because my Game Development Professor last year encouraged us to buy a small pocket notepad to write down any Game Design Ideas that come to us so we don’t forget. Look’s like I’ll be going back to doing just that and making the time for it!

The rest of the recommendations she made like reading other blogs and sharing my own opinion on the topic at hand, or writing my thoughts on a particular book that is outside of my expertise, conversations with other people, etc are other great suggestion. These certainly will help with becoming a better writer, it also allows your readers to get involved.

I would totally do the interviewing thing, but my mic on my laptop is semi broken. You can barely hear me or anything for that matter. It’s almost as if it’s muffled. The second thing is I don’t know anyone that is worth interviewing. Ok that’s a lie, I could very well interview the people at mixx. But that’s been done how many times already? If I want more viewers and more comments I need quality content and something new. Not the traditional humbug  stuff.

With that said I shall be ending this here. Blogger’s Block is starting to kick in again and I don’t have much to say anymore. Check out Reems blog post if your having trouble with blogging.

Zune Support is Awful

I’ve noticed that my blog is starting to get less hits and no comments which is now making me rethink about the content I post, and what I talk about. I’m not sure what direction I’m going to go with my blog. It’s to early to tell so until then. Here’s what I’ve been dealing with the past 24 hrs.

I accidentally deleted my Windows Live ID that was associated with my
zune tag. I quickly went and re-registered my email account so it was
a Window Live ID again, but unfortunately the zune.net website prompts
me with the registration form. Which has now shown me that my zune tag
is no longer associated with it.

I called up technical support because there was nothing about this on
the zune website. After explaining to her  two or three times there
was no credit card associated with the account, I finally suggested
looking up my zune tag to find it. They pulled the account up, gave
them the email address I was using again as they asked for it and then
was put on hold for a good 10 – 15 minutes while they continued
looking information up on my issue.

When they came back they explained to me that they escalated it to
Level 2 Technicians and they had told her to tell me to wait for 24
hrs and if I still couldn’t log in to call back.

So let’s break this down a bit.

1. Accidentally deleted my Windows Live ID Association that my gmail
account was using.

2. Can no longer access my zune social card or anything even though my
profile still exists.

3. Logging in prompts me with the registration form.

4. Tech Support told me to wait 24 hrs and try again. If I still had
issues to call back.

This didn’t sound right to me so I decided to call back later on. I
call back later in the evening and explain everything to the 2nd
technician. The technician put’s me on hold and looks up the
information. He then comes back to tell me that they can’t make any
changes to my account because they don’t have authorization or the
tools to do it and that the work around is to create a new account. I
told him that I had no problems with creating a new one as long as
they can delete my old one because I don’t want my zune social profile
to be lingering around on the net. He told me that they can’t do that
either as they don’t have authorization or the tools to do so. After
hanging up I decided to call back 5 minutes later to ask for a
Supervisor. The third technician told me the same exact thing the
other tech told me and after requesting again if a Supervisor or
higher up could do it she told me that they only have the same tools
and have no authorization to do what I’m requesting either. After
thanking them I hung up, sent some one I know an email who used to
work as a Level 2 technician for them last year to see if they could
give me some advice on what I could do.

I was told to ask for Level 2 Support when I called in and that they
would file a ticket (if they couldn’t solve it) which would escalate
it to Level 3 at headquarters where research is done to solve any
issues. If they found a solution they would let Level 2 Support know
and have them contact me. If not they would point me in the right
direction to some one who possibly could. I did everything he said in
the message back to me when calling in for the fourth time. The
technician told me what I already knew from yesterday and I asked for
Level 2 support again. They went on to tell me they couldn’t just pass
me on to Level 2 and that they needed approval. I tell them that is
fine and I’m put on hold. After waiting for at least 5 – 10 minutes  I
hear two dial tones followed by “Please wait” being repeated for 3
minutes with short pauses between them. I start thinking that I’m
being passed on and things are moving forward. I couldn’t have been
more wrong. The technician who put me on hold picks up, tells me they
were denied authorization to pass me on to Level 2 because they would
just tell me the same thing and then went on to repeat what I already
knew about creating a new account.

So here I am unable to get access to an account that is still active,
which is still showing my zune social profile with my picture, first
name, last name, city and state. And yet zune support can’t delete my
account or even give me access back to it. How is it that XBOX 360 and
XBOX Live Support can provide top notch service, modify accounts and
delete them but yet at zune they can’t? This is something that should
have been thought about a long time ago. At this point I don’t even
want the account anymore, I want it deleted. What is it going to take
to get this done?

It shouldn’t be such a hassle to recover an account that is
still active, yet even delete one.

Mixx Apology: A small inside look to Super Mixxers

Two days ago I wrote a blog post titled “Do You Hear Me Mixx?!”. There were some valid points I made and a whole lot of information that I had wrong. Do to my post I made Mixx look like an unwelcoming place, made it look like that the people behind Mixx don’t care, and slammed everyone behind Mixx which was really unfair to them.  Though yes that entry brought some attention to the issue at hand, it also really brought negative attention to Mixx it’s self and Google Alerts manage to pick that entry up and send it out. Even though CyberPhoenix had his Super Mixxer status revoked, I went about this entirely in the wrong way.

With that said I want to give my sincerest apology to the Mixx Team. It was wrong of me to post such an entry with out having my facts straight and I really should have come to you guys first. Myself and many others truly do appreciate all the hard work you guys put into the site and all of the new features you guys implement. I’m sorry if I made you guys feel like that myself or others didn’t in any way. So I’d like to take this opportunity after having a discussion with Kerry about some of the things that were false and misinformed about and make things right. But I also would like to take this opportunity to apologize to a user on Mixx that was mentioned in that post.

CyberPhoenix I know you and I have our difference’s a lot of them in fact. While I don’t think I did anything wrong just calling you out in the post, I do know for a fact I did not handle it properly. I shouldn’t have gone and just blatantly down vote every submission you made to try to make a point and that I should have only down voted the ones that didn’t have an appropriate title or description. Instead I should have just reported your comments, contacted the Mixx Team to discuss the issue, and left it at that. I hope you can forgive me for my actions of yesterday, and again mean while we don’t see eye to eye on the Microsoft issue, I do know that we both think and agree that Linux is a great Operating System.

So let’s clear some things up, I will be taking excerpts out of my previous post to clear the big issues at hand. Then following that I want to talk about the inside look behind Super Mixxers.

For the past 7 -8 months I and many others have been reporting this one specific member. We’ve reported him for revenge voting, hateful comments, spam submissions and spam comments.

This statement I made turn out to be absolutely false. Yes Brian and I did some reporting in the past. But the actual reporting of CyberPhoenix by a ton of other users apparently didn’t occur until my last blog post. He also was not reported non-stop like I had previously believed.

If digg banned him, you guys should be doing so as well as he is not contributing in any way and I’m sure he was banned for the same reasons for what he’s doing over here.

This statement should have never been made. If Mixx was to ban him because digg did, then many of the users like Greg who came over from digg for example would have been banned by Mixx.

After having him banned for about 2 days all of a sudden he was let back on to the site.

This information here really needs to be cleaned up once and for all. Yes for months I was under the impression that he was banned for two days. It turned out he was not after all. I’m not sure what happened those past two days as Brian and I did see the “Sorry never heard of the guy” error message. It could have just been a slight hiccup in the system. But I want to make it clear the CyberPhoenix was NEVER banned!

I believe those were the biggest faults in my previous entry. Again every one needs to know that the Mixx Team DOES listen! When they say they are, they aren’t lying. Just please trust me on this even when they don’t say anything about the issue you blogged about or sent a bug report on. They are working on it!

A perfect example of this would be my blog post back in February titled “Dealing with Spam on Mixx: Spam is a No No”. I had listed several issues that I saw on the site and the Mixx Team patched/fixed them with in a 7 day period and others took a bit longer to fix but were patched/fixed by July and one just recently. So remember they are listening! You may not see the results immediately but they are working diligently! We just need to be patient. If you are wondering what issues these were here is the list Kerry typed up:

1.  Use report this (we removed the limits for supermixxer to report bad content to us)
2.  Don’t send Mixx mail to 100s of people (its now impossible to do this unless you resurrect a previous thread)
3.  Need a “report this” link on email  (we now allow people to limit site mail to getting mail from people YOU are following –in other words, people you chose to communicate with)
4. Block user link in Report This form–at least I think that is the suggestion (this is a good one and something that we have not done, but we now offer the ability to block a user, and you don’t even see their comments)

Like I keep saying they are listening! Just be patient! If you blogged or sent feedback or something and want to know if they will be working on it. You can send them an email and ask. I’m sure they will gladly respond, but do keep in mind that other requests and features may take priority over yours. So again remember patience is key!

A small inside look to Super Mixxers

Well here is the topic everyone has been waiting for. While talking to Kerry the other day I asked her about Super Mixxers. I wanted to know mainly about the decision making of revoking the status, but what I got was an inside look so to speak on Super Mixxers. Being one I find it honestly rather interesting about what I had found out. Also please bare in mind that this is the first time anyone will really be getting the inside look. No one has really asked about it, and Kerry was more then happy to answer my question with out revealing numbers or anything of that sort.

So before I begin let me take a step back and just cover what exactly a Super Mixxer is. There are some people that read my blog and don’t use Mixx so I think it’s important that they have an understanding of what one is.

A Super Mixxer is some one who is given “Special Abilities” that other users don’t have. A Super Mixxer can flag a story as Breaking News, mark duplicate submissions or similar articles as related, and endorse a site if the content is great and meet’s their expectations of quality content I guess you could put it as. I want to clarify that Super Mixxers are NOT moderators of any sort. They simply have more features that’s all. I would look at Super Mixxers as Advanced Members on a website or forum. You know the sites that offer certain features to their valued and quality users.

Now with that out of the way let’s truly begin. To put it in Kerry’s own words the Super Mixxer status is an automatic thing. You simply have to be a member for a certain amount of days, achieve a certain amount of karma points with another time frame without getting “in trouble”. But not only that you also do need a diversity score related to your comments and source of submission. What does Kerry mean by getting in trouble you ask? This means having items removed for spam, bad comments or submitting too fast. The best way to tell if your in trouble is if you have a CAPTCHA appearing during your submits. If you see this take a step back and try to figure out what your doing wrong. If you don’t know contact the mixx team at feedback@mixx.com they will gladly answer your question and tell you what’s up. Don’t be shy they wont bite!

So how does Mixx go about a misbehaving Super Mixxer? It’s rather simple honestly.

1. They usually warn the user that is in trouble. The Mixx Team feels if they were good enough to make it through the fairly-high bar, that a warning usually solves the problem right away and the user corrects their behavior.

2. They also consider context as well. Let me quote Kerry on this as she explains it best.

” Don’t know if you are a football watcher, but I swear it seems like every time, the refs see the 2nd punch thrown and the guy who was retaliating is the one thrown out, but hte guy who starts it walks scot free.  We want to make sure that we don’t do that on Mixx. That we understand the context of what the conversation is before we just go banning.  We have a lot of back-and-forth on Middle East politics. Drop in the middle of one of these conversations and you might be like ‘DAMN how can these people still be on the system?” but do the research and you realize their are faults on both sides and that there are actually people who enjoy the conversations, even if they get heated. So understanding the context is important. “

3. If the user is out of bounds then they revoke the Super Mixxer status and let them continue on. Mixx likes to give their users the oppurtunity to prove themselves. If they stay on good behavior or “keep their noses clean” as Kerry put it the Super Mixxer status and badge returns. However if they don’t the status and badge will not come back. Also Kerry stated that if they continue to get VALID reports then they will boot them like they boot others.

So I hope this gives everyone some insight on Super Mixxers, how you become a Super Mixxer, what are the signs to your status being revoked and much more. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact the Mixx Team. They are pretty much an open book and will answer any questions you have.

Again the email to contact them is feedback@mixx.com, and they will get back to you as soon as possible usually with in minutes. I also want to thank the Mixx Team for being very understanding and professional about what happened the other day. Thank You Kerry, Kori, Will, and Chris for being very professional, you guys rock!

::Edit::

Submitted to Mixx. Please feel free to vote it up.

http://www.mixx.com/stories/1889420/mixx_apology_a_small_inside_look_to_super_mixxers_standardsdt

Do You Hear Me Mixx?!

Mixx and company I really want to start off and tell you guys how much I love everything you do to make Mixx possible. Your work is astounding and greatly appreciated, but I have just one little problem.

For the past 7 -8 months I and many others have been reporting this one specific member. We’ve reported him for revenge voting, hateful comments, spam submissions and spam comments. Yep I think you guys know who I’m talking about.

CyberPhoenix

http://www.mixx.com/users/cyberphoenix/

What happened?!

Now I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. Months ago, we reported this guy and he eventually got banned. It took some time because we understand everyone deserve some time to shape up. After having him banned for about 2 days all of a sudden he was let back on to the site. I’d like to quote the Joker from The Dark Knight. “What happened?! Did your balls drop off?! ” It’s like one day you have no problem with getting rid of him. Now you guys wont even touch him.

I say this all in a comical way of course. But still there is truth behind this. You had no problems with doing so in the past and now you won’t.

So my question to you guys is why?! Mixx did just fine with out him for those two days and I’m sure Mixx would still be functioning and having the same quality content today from others. I really wish I didn’t miss the night Kerry was on Social Blend because I really want to know what the hell is going on.

He’s been reported non-stop since that day and for whatever reason he is still not being banned for pure violation TOS and the Agreements he accepted to signing up. How come when other users are blatantly doing the same thing and we report them,  they are removed immediately? But with CyberPhoenix he sticks around? I know I’ve just started to report him again recently. But come on I know he’s been reported non-stop by Brian and other people as well.

A Super Mixxer Still?!

Also why the hell is he a Super Mixxer?! If I’m not mistaken but if you violate any of the TOS, abuse your Super Mixxer Powers, etc isn’t this ability suppose to be revoked?! He’s clearly proved he should not have this ability. He marks unrelated topics as related and he marks his stories as “Breaking News” when they clearly aren’t. It’s sickening to see this continue.

One Spam Comment Removed. Are you listening?!

I know you guys are listening to us. Today some one on your side removed his spam comment after myself and many others reported it and asked for it to be removed. Please don’t stop there. Delete his other comments as well. He leaves spam comments on unrelated topics as proven below

“He does that ALL the time. He posted like a 200 line comment spamming one of my submissions that had nothing to do with my post. My post was an article criticizing KDE4, Mixx seems to ignore his comments and reports against them…same goes for his stories“

Source: http://mixxingbowl.com/forums/index.php/topic,749.msg12695.html

Do You Hear Me Mixx?! This user needs to go! Do You Hear DarkNemesis and everyone else?! They are sick of him! We know you listen, now let’s take it up a notch and get rid of another user that does not belong here.

Spam on Mixx is a No No

Remember my helpful article on spam?

Yeah this one right here

http://standardsdt.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/dealing-with-spam-on-mixx-spam-is-a-no-no/

Remember it?! If not take a good read for why this community cannot tolerate anyone like him. We can only do so much with reporting. But us the community need you guys to take action against people like him.

This user used to be on digg. Do a google search for CyberPhoenix and you’ll find his profile from digg will show up as a cache on either the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page. Now if you try visiting http://digg.com/users/cyberphoenix his account no longer exists. If digg banned him, you guys should be doing so as well as he is not contributing in any way and I’m sure he was banned for the same reasons for what he’s doing over here.

I’ve Declared War against CyberPhoenix

In the end I’m declaring war against this user if you guys aren’t removing him. I’m reporting every single piece of crap he submits, every comment he leaves, down vote every submission he makes till my fingers are bleeding. And even still then I will be clicking away and typing away. I’ve reached my limit with this user. So I ask Brian, Greg, Joe, Julie, Honest_Ape, DarkNemesis618, gbarberi and all fellow mixxers to start reporting the hell out of this user if he is not removed. I also ask for other mixx users to stand up and inform the staff and everyone if he has revenge voted you, left you spam comments, has been hateful, etc.

CyberPhoenix you better watch out cause I’m about to make your life a living hell.

Mixx I love you, but…

Mixx I love you dearly, but it’s time something is done. And I’m doing something about it since our requests for him to be banned aren’t being listened to. I will no longer stay quiet and I will make this guys life a living hell if I have to. I know the rules and TOS of mixx and I will stay with in them. But this has gone on far enough and I’m starting to feel like our requests for reporting him and requesting him to be banned are going ignored like digg ignores it’s users. Please for mine, yours and everyone else’s sake just hit the ban button and be done with him.

If Chris, Kerry or some one wants to talk to me about this please feel free to contact me. But I’m done with this BS, and I will do whatever is possible in my power to make this user go away, even if it means I have to be vocal about it.

Sincerely,

Dave Tarantula
http://mixx.com/users/standardsdt

::Edit::

If you agree with any of this at all vote it up here at mixx. Many thanks go out to loup.dargent for submitting this!

http://www.mixx.com/stories/1875450/do_you_hear_me_mixx_standardsdt

Check Out DarkNemesis681’s post on this issue and more at

http://blog.darkernemesis.com/archives/2008/08/Come-On-Mixx/

If you also agree with what he has to say, vote it up here at mixx. Again many thanks go out to loup.dargent for submitting this!

http://www.mixx.com/stories/1875570/darker_nemesis_come_on_mixx

Dying my hair and Back in the Mixx!

As many of you might know by now I’ve decided to dye my hair. Two of my friends accompanied me in the decision of what color. For the longest time I have wanted to, just I wasn’t sure what color. Last week I noticed two or three days in a row when leaving work that my hair look brownish/redish in the rearview mirror the way the sun hit my hair. So I told my friends this saying I liked the color. We headed out grabbed coffee, and then went to drug fair to see what they had.

The closest thing we found after my friends told me to get on my knees to compared the sample’s to my hair, was Very Rich Auburn (66 Warmer). My friends informed me that it would look really good if I spiked my hair again, but with short spikes. Here is an image or well similar image to what the box looks like. There’s some slight differences maybe the one I’m purchasing is just an updated design.

http://a1061.g.akamai.net/7/1061/5412/home/www.walgreens.com/dbimagecache/283935.jpg

Let me know what you guys think. Am I crazy for doing this? Think it would look bad? Let me know your opinions! I’ll still get it done either way but still it’s nice to hear everyones point of view.

In other news I’m starting to get back involved at mixx.com the social media website and the mixxingbowl. After a short but small fight with another member who I am friends with I started becoming active again. I actually planned on coming back before that thanks to SilentJay74. We talked for a bit on facebookjust catching up and then something kind of just clicked.

Mixx is awesome and looking forward to providing more great content to everyone. If you don’t know what Mixx is here is how the people behind mixx describe their site/service.

“Mixx is your link to the web content that really matters. There’s a lot of information out there and, let’s face it, you don’t have all day to find the good stuff (if you do, we’re totally jealous). And who knows better than you what informs you, what makes you think, what makes you laugh? So why should some faceless editor get to decide what’s important?

But now you’re in charge. You find it; we’ll Mixx it. Use YourMixx to tailor the content categories, tags, specific users and groups, and we’ll deliver the top-rated content as chosen by you and people who share your passions. So go ahead and whip up your own version of the web. Just tell us how you like it Mixxed and we’ll deliver the best the web has to offer—morning, noon and night.“

So head on over to mixx.com and check it out!

Oh and for all of you spammers out there who are on Mixx, watch your back. Just a reminder to everyone about why Spam on Mixx is not a good thing, here is the post from a few months ago that I wrote on the topic. You can check it out here.

Remember for those of you in NJ and live in, near, around or even far away from Morristown. There is the Party on The Green this Saturday. Check out the video below for more info!

Mario Kart Wii Impressions

So I’m taking some time out of my busy schedule (which is probably a big mistake) to quickly write about Mario Kart Wi.

After for about a year and maybe even a little more Mario Kart Wii was finally released on Sunday April 27th. The game got little to no coverage at all and it’s a shame that it didn’t too. The game definitely goes back it’s traditional roots of the N64 Mario Kart. It’s packed with plenty of new and old maps from the previous titles, even including DS, GBA, and SNES Versions/Titles. There are a few new characters and of course you’re traditional but it appears they took out a few in favor of some of the new ones.  There are some new weapons and unfortunately they removed the Item Stealing Boo. Why this was done I’m not quite sure but there is probably a number of reasons for this that I can think of.

The menu has changed a lot compared previous versions. While in a race you can’t just press start (+) and choose “Restart/Retry” like in previous versions. You can only choose “Quit” and “Continue”, this was probably most likely done to prevent everyone from being sore losers and to play the game like it was meant to be played. Choosing Quit will obviously bring you back to the main menu and you will have to start all over. In multiplayer they took out the same option but also the “Change Character” option. This in my opinion was a bad move. But hey I don’t work for Nintendo so I have no say in what goes into the game, plus I wouldn’t know why it was taken out. I’m sure they have good reason’s and I could make a few guesses why but nothing concrete.

Online play is fantastic and 10x better then SSBB. It usually takes less then 5 minutes to connect with other players and if you do not successfully connect or people drop out well you get taken back to the menu where you choose if you want to play regional or worldwide. I felt that they could have just simply put you back into search mode but I guess they wanted to give you the option of trying worldwide for example if regional didn’t work. I didn’t get a chance to try out the Mario Kart Wii Region Boards yet but the nice thing is you can access it from the Wii Channel with out a disc. Installation of the chanel takes only seconds. Nintendo got it right this time around for the online play. Now they need to implement this on they’re other upcoming games. Oh and might I mention that it’s lag free?

The Wii Wheel is great and definitely gives you a different playing experience. It’s quite easy to master but it does have it’s qwerk’s at times. For example when you go around a turn and you press B to slide some times the Wheel registers the action as sliding in the opposite direction of the turn. Luckily you can pull out of it by simply letting go of B. The power slide now has two options which are Automatic and Manual. Automatic does the slides automatically for you but you lose the ability to get that extra boost, mean while Manual you press B when going into the turn and you get the Mini Boost if you hold the slide long enough.

As mentioned before there are new characters introduced into the game. One example would be “Baby Peach”. I don’t recall there ever being a “Baby Peach” in the series but hey maybe there will be a new game featuring her in the story in the future. The new characters are all unlockable especially the “Cups” unlike in the N64 version and Double Dash if I remember correctly. Some of the original Characters must be unlocked as well. The AI can be a pain though, I’ve been in First and got bombarded by Banana’s, Shell’s, the Squid Ink all in one shot, even when I fall back to 3rd just so I don’t get hit by the damn Blue Spike Shell.

The soundtrack is nice and it’s catchy, but it can be repetitive. I mean it is Mario Kart but hearing the same tracks over and over again can get tire some. The Battle Mode has been changed to Team Based and you keep getting new balloons till time runs out. You’re goal is to hit has many players you can with items to score points before time runs out. There is also a Coin Collection mode the differs from that. I haven’t gotten the chance to try this out yet  but if anyone is familiar with the multiplayer on Mario 64 DS with the coin collection I believe it might be very similar however with Karts and Motorcycles.

The Bikes are very well balanced and are very easy to use. I was concerned about this when they were frst announced them but they were implemented very well into the game. For now I’m sticking with the Karts in Multiplayer but I’m slowly making my way over to the Bikes. Tricks have been implemented to both the Karts and the Bikes. Each controller is different but once a trick as been activated when launching off a jump, you’re character does a small move in the air and then once he/she hits the grand they get a speed boost.

I’ve pretty much covered the basics of Mario Kart Wii. Anything I missed or would like to know more about let me know and I will post an update. I highly reccommend this game and anyone who had doubts about picking it up shouldn’t as it will keep you entertained for hours with friends, family, online play or even by yourself.

Wildwood Days

Finally a new blog post! Things have been super crazy the past week with college. Everything is in pretty much crunch time right now and professors are starting to load a ton of work on to our shoulders for the next 3 weeks. So I’ve finally found some time out of my busy schedule to blog. So I figured why not write about my plans for Wildwood?

As I’ve written before on my old blog every summer my friends and I have made it a point to “go down the Shore” as we like to call it here in Jersey. This location happens to be Wildwood as it’s one of the best beaches at the Jersey Shore and it has the best boardwalk. Actually the good old and famous Wildwood Boardwalk. I grew up there during the summers when I was a child so I figured that my friends who have or even’t haven’t been there should share the memories I had.

Everything is still up in the air at the moment. There’s so much planning to do such as where were going to stay for the weekend, who’s coming, money, etc. I’m shooting for June as thats the last month I have to use my comp day. But it may look like it will be July or even August at the latest.

Things have changed so much down there since I was a child and since we sold our place down there. Most of the familiar motels/hotels are now gone and have been replaced with condo’s. There was one near our place that we went into all the time because they had a small gift shop where you could buy snacks, drinks, and kites. Oh and they had 3 arcade machines as well if I remember correctly. Now it’s gone though no more snacks, drinks, kites or anything of that sort. Sure you could go to a Wal-Mart, or an Eckerd/Rite Aid but you’ll be paying top dollar at those stores. Where as this place everything was reasonably priced.  The Board Walk has changed a lot too. The piers with all of the rides now have a new ticketing/wrist band system for rides. I would beg my parents to get the wrist band because it would get me on all of the rides and of course one Go Kart ride. Now a days it’s this plastic wrist band with what appears to be bar codes and they no longer apply to Go Karts. But hey they still work on all of the rides! But most of all what has changed is it appears Coca Cola bought out or made some kind of deal with the Morey’s. Everything such as the Tram cars are now branded Coca Cola and no longer have the signature bright yellow paint or the constant “WAAAWAWAAATCCHCH THE TRAM CAR PLEEAAASSSE!!!” when the drivers would hit the button repeatedly. Now it’s painted red, Coca Cola logo’s and “WATCH THE TRAM CAR PLEASE”. The Tram cars weren’t broken it was just the way they got peoples attention and boy it did. Everyone would stop walking and watch them pass by. Now a days barely anyone does. They also now do the fireworks display and are done every Friday night. That’s cool and all but I always saw them as being special. Something that only happened on holidays and special occasions. Now it appears they’ve lost the meaning of that. And finally the one thing I didn’t like that they changed was the roller coaster titled “The Great Nor’ Eastern”. The original color was Bright Pink and you could see it for miles. It was like a landmark and I loved seeing it coming over the bridge, and seeing it from our place when I was kid. Now it’s painted White with changing color lights, and this year they completely changed the hanging cars, and renamed it “Fly The Great Nor’ Eastern”.

However a lot of good has come out of this transformation too! They built a new convention center right on the boardwalk, new street lights, sidewalks, etc. Ok well not a lot but still those are some benefits but the demolition of most hotels/motels, Coca Cola,  and what not was a bit much.

So this summer I hope everything goes well and that everyone I invite can come. I absolutely love it down there and I can’t wait to share the beauty and experience with every one.

GrooveShark Rocks!

I’ve been trying out GrooveShark for the past few months. It’s been more of off and on but still enough to get a feel for the service. At first I was skeptical but the service is definitely amazing and it has great potential. The website is easy to navigate and it’s extremely easy to find music, on top of that a great feature they provide is a friends list. I haven’t dove into this too much just yet so I can’t quite comment on what it exactly does. However I’m assuming it allows you see what your friends are listening to and it allows you to listen to their library of music as well.

What is really interesting though is how they go about paying the artist. You as the user download the GrooveShark Application called SharkByte and it searches for all audio files on your computer and uploads them. Then if some one finds that song, they purchase it for 99 cents, and then artist gets paid for you sharing their music. But it gets better not only do they get paid but you earn some money and so does GrooveShark. At the moment the software you download doesn’t do much and only uploads your audio files, but it is my understanding it will do more soon.

One downside however is you cannot listen to music from the site with out the application installed on your computer. I emailed their support team about this recommending that the user should be able to listen to music from the site with out the application. With in about a week I got a response saying the following:

“Hey David,

Thanks for the feedback!

The user relations team has been in Austin for SXSW this past couple of weeks, so I apologize for the delay in our response.

In response to your suggestion, we have a new feature coming out in late April that should address your issue.

Thanks again for the response, and don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions or comments!

–
Nathan Thompson
Editor/Marketing/User Relations”

It amazes me that there is also another company out there that cares about it’s users just like Mixx does! So something is coming in about a month to solve this and hopefully it will work the way I’m expecting it too. GrooveShark has a ways to go but it has a lot of potential. It’s currenly in Private Beta so if anyone wants an invite to check it out let me know!

Ya see I told ya guys this would be a positive entry!

Why do I keep going back to digg?

Today mixx announced a new feature called “Breaking News” where if your a “Super Mixxer” you can move a story thats news breaking to the front page so everyone can see it before it gets old. Then when it hits a certain amount of votes it gets moved to the Popular Category.

Well a user submitted the story on digg and it got about “61 diggs”. I made a comment on the digg submission saying the following:

” Congrats to the Mixx guys on this! Another reason why Mixx is 10x better then digg.

Friendlier Community, A staff that cares and responds to it’s users, Suggestions taken Seriously, Open mindedness, First to have a photo section before digg, working comment system w/ nested comments coming soon, more interesting and new content that usually hits mixx first, related categories, tagable submissions, Super Mixxers, no autoburies, no bury brigades, no hidden moderators and now another great feature that no one including digg has ever done.

So explain to me why digg is so great. Oh you say cause krose runs it? Yeah umm nice try…. “

I was originally voted up at least 4 times but then the bury brigade came around and voted me down. I then got a comment response from a user saying the following:

“then why the fuck are you still here?”

I’ve been told by Honest_Ape to leave digg behind but for some reason, I find the need to always go back to see what submissions are worthy of Mixx, see how bad the flaming has gotten over there, and make a response to some ones comment if I find it necessary. You can read the rest of the comments here that were made on the article, which proves that the diggers feel threatened by mixx, don’t want a friendly community, etc. It probably didn’t help with me taking a stab at the guy and calling him an “ass hat” and that made me look like a hypocrite but hey what can I say I’m only human and I make mistakes.

I really should just let digg go as Honest_Ape suggested and just keep my eye on teamxbox, gamespot, engadget, etc. This community is hard to get respect in and hopefully people will start taking Mixx more seriously. Let’s see what next year brings, I’m sure things will be much different and maybe just maybe the users that are trash talking Mixx will swallow theirs words.

I also hope that these “diggers” will understand that the staff behind Mixx does not hate digg! Chris McGill has even stated that he doesn’t hate the site. Hopefully I can move away from that site 100% and focus on Mixx as I have a good rep there anyways and a very good following of people who think I submit quality content which I’m grateful for.

Well tomorrows another day and hopefully my next submission will be a brighter and happier one. Mixx on everyone!