Using the power of python, I wrote a site scraping script that generates a feed of LiveJournal blogs that are members of the irishgaming LiveJournal blog i.e. an RSS feed of the friends page. It’s updated three times a day (which seems to be good enough for the rate of posts) but any post that doesn’t have comments enabled can’t be included (because the site scraping script can’t generate a permalink for that post). The link to it is here on Planet Irish Gaming and it’s included in the big feed. It’s pretty nifty.

I continued with my script-hacking and created a script that “fixes” the feed from irishgaming.com. There are some technical problems with their feed so that I couldn’t include it in Planet Irish Gaming. As far as I know, they were not going to get fixed any time soon. My script fixes them and generates a valid feed so now I can include the feed. Yea! :) 

Ah scratch that. I just checked both feeds and they have totally the wrong date. *hack* *test* *debug* *fix* … an hour later… fixed. It seems individual items in both of these new feeds were picking up the latest date rather than the last date the item was added. Should be working fine now.

Because I added the “fixed” feed from irishgaming.com to Planet, I saw this morning that they have added “ads” to irishgaming.com. So I guess I shouldn’t really have been worried about adding ads to the irishgamingwiki.com - not that it’s earned me much (if anything).

If you’ve been using the big feed from Planet Irish Gaming, you’ll know that it gets very busy. Quite a large number of posts per day. Mostly polite drivel from forums around the place, so much so I barely scan the feed. I thought that normal users might find it overwhelming. Well, thanks to the power of Wordpress, you can just grab a feed without forums (I’ve even added this feed link to the frontpage of Planet Irish Gaming) and that includes the new friends feed from livejournal so it’s pretty digestible.

Still though, even doing that, there isn’t really that much genuine roleplaying or gaming news in there. There isn’t really that much genuine Irish roleplaying and gaming content to be honest. The thought had occurred to me that I add a new category to the site (and hence a new feed) that contains only items that actually pertain to roleplaying and gaming. What I could do is add a “vote” like link to the other feeds and if an item gets a few votes it gets automatically added to this category, much like digg.com or reddit.com. However this would require users to interact with the site on some level and I’m not sure the effort I’d have to put in to implement this feature would pay off in terms of people using it. Anyone got any opinions on this?

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

Option 6

Option 7

Option 8

(poll after the cut)

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Inspired by the relaunch of IrishGaming.com v2 by Nick last month, I
decided to give Irish Roleplaying and Gaming Wiki [1] a big spring
clean (not a relaunch). I’ve changed hosts, upgrade the software,
gotten rid of all the spam and other malicious edits, re-did the
front-page (more to do there) and allowed file uploads. I hope people
take a moment to have a look and see if anything important to them is
up to date.

I have also updated Planet Irish Gaming [2], brand new spanking
software, tons of Irish Gaming sites, its actually very busy compared
to the old planet. There are also features to create a post directly
to the feed and the ability to submit new feeds.

During my spring cleaning, I found a number of articles about groups
and websites of which I have no idea of the state of them:

http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/SaneSpotting
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/DU_Gamers
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Gamers_Realm
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/White_Elephant
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/D15_Gamers
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Fabled_Games
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/STOCS
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Red_Branch_Guild
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Vaticon</a>
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Forgotten_Legacy

Anyone able to give an update on their state or current
web-location/presence of these things?

Also the http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Convention_Calender has died
a death quite a while back. Is there another resource that’s actively
used? I know there was one for a while on the IGA/Gaelcon site but
that seems to have disappeared.

[1] http://IrishGamingWiki.com
[2] http://IrishGamingWiki.com/planet

Someone has since updated the Convention Calender, which is cool. There is a lot of work still to do on the wiki, but for the moment I’m content to watch over it and if someone starts the initiative, I’ll help and finish it. For example, I’d like to have “templates” for conventions, retailers, groups and organizations. Right now they are all done sort of ad-hoc and the current status of a lot of them, I don’t know.

Anyway, if any of the readers of this blog know of something on the wiki they might care about, please take a moment to update it or even better if you know something about the Irish Gaming and Roleplaying community that <i>isn’t</i> on the wiki, please feel free to add it! And if you have any feedback, you can drop a comment here, or on igaming or the wiki itself. Those three methods are the best way to get a message to me about the wiki.

I hope people do because I’m certainly feeling guilty about letting it languish over the last good while. I couldn’t update the MediaWiki software without a bit of effort on my part and it got spammed heavily. But recently I did do an update and finally cleared out the spam and blocked users and IPs. (If spammers continue to be a problem, I’ll look at better spam-fighting techniques). The administrative and backend parts of the Wiki need some love, certainly some work on the webpage look and feel, updates to the RSS feed, etc. I even have a logo designed at home that I haven’t scanned in yet.

I haven’t set aside time to do this necessary work. I haven’t had the motivation at all. I did recently update and tidy up Planet Irish Gaming as I was briefly inspired after IrishGaming.com was kind of re-launched (IrishGaming.com has nothing to do with me in any way). But beyond that, my motivation is still waning. I’ve even been tempted to find someone or group who would be willing to take over the wiki because there is a lot of cool info captured there. No-one has shown any interest to me about it up until now and I haven’t see any group I’d trust with it (things for Irish Gaming have a tendency to appear and disappear with frequency online).

So what is my big plan? Change host for the IrishGamingWiki.com and stick Google AdSense advertisements in the side bar.  That’s it.

If you’ve just shrugged your shoulders and thought “so what?”, I’d agree with you. I have AdSense ads running on my thedeadone.net and, to be honest, the income generated so far would indicate to me that it probably won’t cover the cost of hosting the website over a year (even though hosting it is relatively cheap).

However, payback in nearly any form is a great motivator. Certainly, while working on TDOMF, which is completely free, donations, gifts and ad revenue that I have received have been great motivators (though peoples’ feedback is by far the most rewarding). Without it, I don’t think I would have continued to support and extend TDOMF so far (and to think that came originally from the failed Game Crafter’s Guild of Ireland website). So hopefull I’ll be more motivated to put effort into maintaining it and doing work on it.

Anyway, comments, feedback, criticism welcome but name-calling will have you tarred!

I woke up this morning, physically worse than I went to bed. Nose is clogged up and running, my head is aching and I had to get up twice during the night to take care of the baby so I had a distrubed sleep. But at the back of my mind, I was working through some system-design aspects of Lost Heroes RPG, unrelated to the writing I finished last night. I was getting thoughts and ideas and spent much of my work morning, writing up notes, when I should have been coding.

I finished V for Vandetta last week for the first time. (Not as good as Watchman, but still excellent. I’m spooked by the futuristic vision of Britian that the English government are so deseperatly trying to make happen… like this “for your own protection”). There was an article at the back of the graphic novel by Alan Moore about his creative process for V for Vandetta and he described the experince of knowing that you have something but you need to get at it and work it to get there. Waking up with those thoughts about the system design of Lost Heroes RPG was exactly that, my subconsiousness saying, “hey, you got something here so get off your arse and finished it.” It’s not mind-blowing and my subconsiousness failed to convince that I have something amazing, but at least I’m going to keep working on it.

It seems to be a slow process and the current volume seems gigantic compared to previous revisions. Maybe I should start putting pieces of it up as I go though I had hoped to get someone to read over it before I put it online. The website is certainly sitting there, waiting to be setup.

The second was that our main desktop computer stopped working. There is a light on the motherboard, but the fan doesn’t start, it doesn’t boot, no lights on the front etc. Now I normally write using my laptop, but the desktop computer is used a lot by my wife and with out last night, she was left restless. So ended up catching up on lots of our recorded TV.

But the best (and final) reason is that I got two new books. A gift from an anonymous Internet person for my free Wordpress plugin: tdomf. Both Alan Moore Graphic Novels: V for Vendetta and Watchmen. I’m not a comic person at all, but I have a few graphic novels (including all the sandman volumes).  And Watchmen is good, so I ended up spending the evening getting completely engrossed in it. 

I needed a short break from writing anyway. The bit I’m working on for Lost Heroes RPG currently was digging into my brain a bit and there was one night last week I couldn’t fall asleep, because I knew I’d have nightmares and I kept waking myself up (I lucid dream occasionally and can pull myself out of a dream when I need to… the really scare dreams are those that won’t let you wake up… but then there are other techniques to use). Is that a good thing that I have scary dreams about what I’m writing? Not even sure the writing in Lost Heroes is that good even. I’m desperate to get it finished and put it online. It seems to keep growing, the more I cut out, the bigger the rest of it gets.

Hmm… I just watched the trailer for the Watchmen movie. I haven’t finished reading Watchmen but I was able to recognise each scene that was shown in the trailer. What I found odd about the trailer was the feel of the presented scenes and the order they decided to present them in: it made Watchmen look more “action-packed” and “classic superhero saving the world” than how I’m actually find Watchmen which is more like “Taxidriver” for the superhero genre. But then trailers are made to sell a movie to people who may know very little about the original source… so it probably is misrepresenting it a bit. Not that I’m too pushed, chances of me seeing it in the cinema? Slim to none.

It’s the first time I’ve tried roleplaying with Alice. She enjoys stories but as long as they came from books (especially with pictures). But to see her react to the story was brilliant! I didn’t use dice, just played by ear and told her a story where the rabbit’s carrots were taken and Alice the Rabbit had to find out where they went. But it was all the little touches she brought to it that made it.

When the “King and Queen” rabbit asked her to go outside of the burrow to see what had happen to the carrots, Alice hopped out of the bed and hopped around her room grabbing anything that might look like a carrot and threw them onto the bed (where the other rabbits were).

When she sneaked into the Farmer’s house and into the kitchen where the Farmer was a sleep, I asked her what she wanted to do next, she whispered to me “I can’t talk Daddy, the Farmer might wake up!”

It was full of those little moments where she brought her own touches to it! I was surprised it went so well. The only thing is, it’s not a replacement for a bedtime story. She was so awake afterwards, I had to read her a normal story as well to get her to calm down!

Of course, that doesn’t particularly sound impressive but I only realised today that I have managed to spend at least 10 minutes (if not up to an hour) writing every evening, after the kids are in bed, since coming back from my holidays in August. That’s pretty good going. I haven’t watched much TV, played much Wii or done much blogging because of it, but I don’t think that’s a great loss. TBH I felt last night I was justified in not actually doing any writing. A bronchitis and a fever are a good excuse aren’t they? 

Which means my long-time “secret” project Lost Heroes RPG is moving forward. I didn’t think it’d be this big (in terms of volume), I’m only writing up the setting. But once I’ve completed the setting, I’ll be making available for everyone to read. Hopefully writing up the rules and traits sections won’t be as long.

I think I’ve gone about it all screwy on this project because from the last few batches of new roleplaying games I’ve bought, they’ve gone for tight set of rules and small (or slight) setting. And here I am writing up this behemoth. In fact, looking at the volume in those games, I could split it into four-six separate games with the same set of rules, but we’ll see how far I get with this mythic-sized version.

I’m thoroughly enjoying it regardless. The great thing about it for me is that I keep finding myself coming up with stories and characters so easily after each large bit of writing. In my head I have a number of complete-plotted short stories and material for two novels… so even if my RPG barely gets noticed, I think I’ll find a good use for it. I’ll probably put together at least one or two short stories.

Anyway, I’m signing off so I can do some more writing!

PS. All this writing has made me forget to mention that I’ve setup the Monster FudgeRPG Feed blog. This is a blog that aggregates loads of feeds from blogs, forums, wikis and mailing lists about Fudge RPG system. Stuff every day in the feed. Since the demise of the FudgeList (and therefore the badly-named River-of-Fudge feed), I need something that pulled in all those existing blogs and forums.

Looks like we may finally shake off that “Drudge” misconception! Ann Dupius of Grey Ghosts setup this yahoo community: fudgecommunity and it’s been busy ever since. A lot of Fudge projects came out of the wood work and I even end up revealing some of my “secret project” LH, which is cool because I’m planning to get it out there in a free-ish format soon anyway. There is certainly a lot more openiness and sharing and I do hope it lasts. One of the best things though was that Ann spent several days online in the “official” chat and it connected a lot of the members, made the list a lot more personable.

If this is what killing off the FudgeList did to the community, then I wish they had done it earlier!

Unfortunately my wife comes down with the flu the next week and is pretty bad this week too. So I haven’t actually managed to attend any games! Arg. But hopefully there is next week…