It's like, you know, Illarterate, but, like, a blog
Most of my recent creative output has gone into creating some more of these video game vlogs/reviews for Hindleyak’s Retro Yakking.
Whilst doing that, I’ve also been catching up with uploading some of these YouTube vids to blip.tv, which could be seen as a more finalised, sanitised and ‘professional’ channel containing the better pieces. Here’s the latest of these, a video review of the Mega Drive classic Premier Manager.
More info here.
Posted in Work.
– January 31, 2010
For your viewing delectation, here’s a recut version of a DIY-style video game review from last November. The babbling at the beginning is gone, replaced by some cheesy and suitably stereotypical title cards. Cool, eh?
Posted in Work.
– January 22, 2010
Well, it hasn’t really been away, but this week sees some big things going on over at the Nonsensical Encyclopedia. For the uninitiated, Illogicopedia is a wiki project, a website to which literally anyone can add their own stuff. This may be in the form of witty one liners or jokes, but the bulk of the site consists of creative splurges formatted just like those pages at Wikipedia. Pretty mint, eh? Well, I would say that.
On to these big things I started telling you about, then. January has seen an explosion (or at least a small increase) in activity at the site, prompting renewed fervour for article writing and just general mucking about without the admins consent. Nah, don’t worry, they ain’t gonna ban you or anything… as long as you don’t go all Gordon Ramsay on them and start questioning their legitimacy and such. See, I happen to know them personally and although they’re a little but insane they aren’t bad people looking to knock you down a peg or two.
This increased interest in the site has led me to take a hammer to the front page, instating a long-awaited modified landing pad for the Big Cheeses’ helicopters. Not really, on our wages they couldn’t afford a second hand bicycle from Hindley car boot. Hopefully this rejig will lead to even bigger ‘n’ better things, such as world domination or at the very least a slap on the back from some bloke in the pub. Which isn’t really likely, since I don’t think anybody in the Fox and Chicken would have even heard of the Internet.
Nevertheless, the Illogiblog has seen an upsurge in contributions and there’s actually the feeling that people care about the place again. Not that it was ever missing, but at least there’s a general collective community spirit beginning to appear once more.
Contribute to the Illogicopedia. Go on, you’ll like it.
Posted in Wikis.
– January 18, 2010
This weekend sees the unofficial launch of my new project, Harry Yack’s News Network.
Said blog will contain the usual news stories and opinion pieces you see over at Retro Yakking only in an ad-free and more aesthetically pleasing manner. I’ve got some big ideas for YNN, which is effectively just a parody of generic news outlets including BBC News and especially The Daily Mail. The name is a play on CNN, the American news channel, and also that news programme off Family Guy. You know the one I’m talking about.
Content-wise, it won’t be too much different from the stuff going on at Retro Yakking – the only difference is that news will be brought to you live from a new home on the interwebs. Well, kind of new, because it’ll be hosted at the same server as Illarterate until further notice, but I hope it’ll grow large enough to move to yaknews.co.uk or something similar. We’ll see what happens with that.
It’s all a bit ramshackle at the moment, with only one or two stories to tide you over for now. Hopefully things will begin to pad out sooner or later, though, and I won’t keep abandoning it like I do with certain other projects. But what can you do, eh? You try and get motivated enough to update four blogs all the time. 
Anyhow, I plan to start sharing my time between RY and YNN and take a more loose approach to the former. Perhaps.
Posted in Blogging.
– December 13, 2009
Yak’s News Network
Today.com gets a bad press
Some time ago, the company laid off a rather large section of its most popular and active writers, leading to numerous speculations over their ultimate motives. Well, I am here, at the risk of being lambasted or even losing my Today.com account, to put the record straight and say to these people — in the nicest possible way — what the heck did you expect?
Now, I am quite fortunate (?!) to have been screwed over in the past by certain web hosts by virtue of neglecting to read the small print, blundering blindly forward without a care in the world, and am not one of the said bloggers laid off by Today. At least not yet. I’d like to think, however, that my (bad) experiences have given me a little bit of insight about how the business works – you scratch my back, I scratch yours; you get nothing for nothing and any other such cliche you could care to mention.
When you sign up to Today.com, you enter into an agreement that basically means you represent Today.com by the very fact your blog is hosted under their name on their server. If you violate the Terms of Service, you can expect to be notified and perhaps even warned, just like in the real life workplace.
Continued…
Posted in Blogging, Comment.
Tagged with blogging, Today.com.
2 comments
By hindleyite – November 25, 2009