Sideshow & Syrana

You may have noticed that the internet has been just a little quieter the past few days.

And you are right.  I’ve been a bit absent from much of anything related to the internet since Tuesday.

You see…this game that I’ve been anxiously awaiting has been released.  It’s very important for me to moonlight as a detective and catch the Origami Killer.

I’m closing in on him too… I think.

I hope.

Anywho, first playthrough should be complete soon, then I might hit up a second one this weekend.

We’ll see, because I have to play nice and let Sideshow get some time in too.  (And not spoil things.  It’s really hard for me to keep quiet ’round him, but I’m doing it so far!)

Expect clear skies with scattered tweets and posts next week.

In the meantime, if you would like some Sideshow & Syrana-y goodness…

We got the opportunity to hang with the /2 Podcast crew last Friday and it was a blast!  Sideshow and I let loose on Episode 26.  Or at least, I let loose after I stopped trying to censor myself and remembered /2 is full of mature language, hehe.

This week I offer you some gaming, writing, and movie link love.  Enjoy!

Do you want to be a writer? Then check out this job posting for the position of being an unpublished writer.  (A fantastic guest post from Tami!)

Also, if you haven’t been to Tami’s site… just… go.  I starred several of her posts, but really I  need to star her whole blog.  So instead of linking every wonderful post – I am just going to urge you to head on over there!

Mutant Reviews From Hell have a list of the 10 romantic comedies worth watching.  Personally, I usually don’t watch many of those, but this is a good list.  And it has one of my favorite movies on there!

Check out Polygamerous Episode 12: Russell and the Mothman! Not only was it a fun show, there’s this awesome interview I did with CCP Games…

Darcy and Russell had the opportunity to talk with CCP Manifest (PR Associate) and CCP Jasonitas (Content Team) from CCP Games, the developer of EVE Online.  They provided us with some great information regarding the unique sandbox game world of New Eden as well as some of the challenges of running the universe on a single shard.  CCP Manifest and CCP Jasonitas discussed their current roles and how they got started with CCP Games.  CCP Jasonitas shared which mission he wrote is his favorite, and what their favorite aspect of the game is.  We also took a look at the relationship between the developers and the player community, especially in regards to the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), which gives elected players a chance to meet face-to-face with developers to discuss issues, concerns, and suggestions.  We lightly touched upon the highly anticipated Incarna expansion and the console MMOFPS DUST 514 which are currently in development.  Of course, we confirmed they have been Polygamerized as well.  Oh! And we even asked CCP Jasonitas about the Mothman.

Also! Make sure to listen in to Slash 2 Podcast this Friday at 7pm CST, where Sideshow and I join them for an evening.

Euripedes of Critical QQ reminds us that gaming is a hobby and ponders why it isn’t always viewed that way by outsiders and even some insiders.

Miss Medicina shows us her geeky nerd side.  Or is it nerdy geek side?

I love a good song parody, and there’s one about the new dungeon finder tool set over at Kill Ten Rats.

Speaking of Kill Ten Rats … Ravious has been working with Massively on how bloggers can build relationships with community managers.  I found it pretty informative – check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Formspring.me is still relatively new and I thought I’d share why I think it can be valuable to use.  I know several people aren’t interested in it or don’t really know what it is.  Even if you don’t end up using if for yourself, maybe this post will at least help reveal some of its appeal.

Ease Of Use

Formspring.me is not particularly amazing in terms of it’s look or innovation.  However, it is easy to use.  Signing up is pretty straight forward.  After you sign up, you can choose to connect it to other social media networks (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr).  Once you do this, you are able to let your followers and friends know about your link.

You can also choose which networks (if any) you want to send out per question. There are check boxes allowing you to be selective.  Contrary to popular (negative) belief, using formspring.me does not equal auto spam of every question.  While I still stand by my rant the other day, I personally choose to only tweet a few questions and answers sporadically (but even that can annoy some people). (continue reading…)

It is now time to reveal who I’ve been admiring over the weekend as part of the Secret Admirer project.  I will also include how I concluded who my secret admirer was…

Capturing My Admiration

My attention and affection was directed at Miss Jaedia of Lazy Sniper.  It was almost like a cruel twist of fate to match this warlock up with a hunter.

Here are the notes of adoration I left for her – filled with tiny clues as to who I was:

And gazing upon your huge… walls of text.

It’s not quite spring yet, but some of us bloggers are getting twitterpated and signing up to secretly admire another blogger.

This will be interesting… oh yes, it shall be.

P.S. I like chocolate.

P.P.S. And souls.

First part of this is… full of superawesomeSyrana-y goodness.

• Syrana received some in character mail over at Diabolical Minds.  She has now shared her thoughts on Sylvanas and Thrall.  She will be expressing her (not mine – HER… ok a little bit of mine) opinions of the faction leaders over a series of posts.
• Polygamerous celebrated its 10th episode this week! This show was a lot of fun – you don’t want to miss it.
• Syrana takes another step up the ladder towards becoming a professional last minute guest.  Check out TNB’s 75th episode: Need More Guest as I join Fimlys and Nibuca to talk about the latest WoW news.  I had a blast, again.  Anytime you need me, you know where to find me.

The second part is… making up for the lack of TLC Thursday posts and bringing you up-to-date on posts I starred in my reader as excellente.  (Of course, this does not mean I am caught up on my reading… this is merely an array of posts I’ve wanted to include in TLC Thursday for… um.. since the last one was posted! And… you’ve probably seen these already, but I still love to give my, um, love.)

• Player Versus Developer has an interesting and thought provoking post about the differences of difficulty and how they scale than in say, Mario, versus the difficulty of Wrath of the Lich King.
• The 7th Annual Women in Games Conference is coming up in March.  I wish it was near where I live.
• The ever amazing Pike illustrates a great Weezer song – WoW style.
• Talented Tami (I know she likes alliteration ) shares the secrets of writing in a guest post over at Too Many Annas.
• Miss Medicina wrote us a prescription on how to make it through the least favorite random dungeon.
• Arioch uses a great analogy for the various levels of ‘core when it comes to playin’ WoW.

Psst – there were actually more, but I had to make a cut off.  Bad Syrana shouldn’t compile links more than a month old in a links -OMG GO READ- post.  (I still <3 you though.)

Just a reminder that tonight we’ll be recording our 10th episode of Polygamerous live!  We have a special guest joining us – Nicole Spagnuolo from Ladies of Leet.

Join us in the chatroom and the live recording on Mondays at 8pm PST.  If you can’t join us live, that’s ok! Go to the Polygamerous site to listen to the show or download us off iTunes or Zune.

Even if you have subscribed to the show on iTunes,  you’ll want to keep an eye on the blog for special announcements, game reviews, and other fun stuff!

Image courtesy of Robbert van der Steeg @ Flickr

You ever notice how weird time is? The amount of time in a day is the same… every day.  But some days time seems to drag and other days it flies by.

I definitely find this crazy “fast flying” time to be the case when I take vacation days.  Especially those vacation days where you don’t actually leave the house.

I had some time off over this last week, and I had all these plans of things to do during that time.

All these things I wanted to tackle could be boiled down to 3 main categories:

1. Spend time with Sideshow
2. Play games
3. Write blog posts and maybe get a bit ahead of myself!

…I can tell you 2 outta 3 ain’t bad.

Of course I got to spend time with Sideshow.  Besides it being our birthday, we like to … well, play games together. (continue reading…)

There was a large response for free blog topics in December.  I have to applaud the bravery of those willing to participate and write a blog post based upon something that sprang from my brain.  In case you haven’t had the opportunity to go and check out these posts, I wanted to compile a special links post for your reading pleasure.  (And I hope to goodness I didn’t miss adding anyone to the list that participated!)

Samodean of Massive Nerd

Tami of Tami Moore

Brajana of Mend Pet

Cait of A Delicate Poof

Jaedia of The Lazy Sniper

Deyndor of Swift Retribution

Nim of Ankh=Life

Tartdarling of PW: Bubble

Kaethir of A Bear In The Trees

Windsoar of Jaded Alt

Valgav of Casual Addict

Jong of Forbearance

Amazingly there were over 1800 keyword searches that reached us here at S&S.  Those 1800+ words/phrases brought around 3000 people here.  But just what were they looking for?

Well, here is a look at the more amusing ones.  The practical ones are no fun and made sense.

In no particular order….

(continue reading…)