Month: December 2013

If you put Zero Charisma (which I mentioned earlier) on your list of movies to watch during the holiday downtime, consider adding Lloyd the Conqueror and making it a dorky double feature. Where Zero Charisma centred around table-top role-playing gaming, Lloyd the Conqueror is about LARPing: Live-Action Role Playing. Grown-ass adults bashing each other with foam swords. Take a look at the trailer:

You might recognize some of the faces: Brian Posehn as the Gandalf-esque character who owns the local gaming store and who teaches our young heroes to excel at LARPing, Mike “Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys” Smith as the villain, “the Darth Vader of LARPing”, and Evan “Kelly from Degrassi: The Next Generation” Williams as Lloyd, whose Faustian deal requires him to participate in a LARPing tournament in order to pass his class at Southern Alberta Community College.

Where Zero Charisma is aiming right at the people who both played D&D and went to SxSW Interactive, Lloyd the Conqueror is going for the people who both played Warhammer and watch Trailer Park Boys. It’s lower-brow, has bit of obvious Canadiana thrown in, and not afraid to get silly. It’s also going to annoy any  of your friends who are into LARPing, which depending on your point of view, may be a bonus.

Click the photo above to read the review.

I love James O. Thatch’s Amazon review for the 36-pack of Kleenex. They may be facial tissues, but they help clean up so much more!

A mother’s struggle

I want to start this off by thanking Kleenex for selling these in 36-packs. I’ve put it on subscription, and if they want to start selling a 72-pack, sign me up. I have three reasons for needing this much Kleenex, and their names are Liam, Samuel and Hank.

This is how it goes in this house. First the Kleenex disappears. Then the toilet paper. Then they go for fabrics. And you don’t want it to get there, unless you’re ready to invest in a five gallon drum of Fabreeze.

This used to be a good Christian home. But it’s not about moral judgment anymore. I’m way beyond that. I’m in survival mode. If I don’t supply absorbent paper products, I’m going to find my dish towels hidden in the basement, stiff as aluminum. The other day, I almost cut my hand on a sock. I am sorry to speak so frankly, but with three teenage boys, a woman has got to be practical.

The funny part is, they think they’re being sneaky, with their 45 minute showers and sudden need for “privacy”, as if I’m going to walk in on them journaling. They slink around the house like unfixed cats, while I try to announce my location at all times. No one needs to ask me to knock anymore. I knock on the walls. I practically wear a cow bell. I’m not looking to catch anyone by surprise, believe me. I’m just trying to get through this.

The other day my husband was watching me unload the groceries, and he asks me, all sweetness and light, “Honey, what’re you doing with all that Kleenex?”

I about knocked him off his chair.

Also worth reading: Thatch’s Amazon reviews for cardamom and that $40,000 Samsung TV. His prank reviews have even landed him on CBS This Morning.

Found via AcidCow. Click the photo to see the source.

I think that “artificial” is also the wrong answer; its opposite is natural. “Copy” or “derived” would be better choices.

“Post-2007 Android“, “Shia LeBoeuf“, and “Margaret Wente” should also be considered acceptable answers.

Click the screenshot to play the game.

I found this new game, Zeno of Elea, by way of Andy Baio, who says “I can’t wait to play!”. I’m actually way too busy to get caught up in yet another game, but what can I say? They’re my Achilles’ heel.

If you try out the game and don’t “get” it, this may help.

Found via CatsMob.

I’m sure that reflectoporn has always been a problem for manga readers on Japanese subways, but in the age of tablets with their bright, backlit screens, it’s so much easier to unintentionally share those unrealistically-endowed (and shiny!) drawings with your fellow passengers.

I had a little problem with the text of my posts not showing up in my technology blog, Global Nerdy, earlier today. After trying the fixes I was aware of, I’d run out of ideas and decided to file a support ticket with my host, PressHarbor. Within an hour, they’d identified the problem: the “ShareThis” plug-in that I’d updated earlier this morning seemed to be incompatible with WordPress 3.8. They disabled it, confirmed that it was the culprit, and emailed me to tell me that my blog was back in business.

That’s what I like about PressHarbor: they’re not just a web host, they’re a full-service WordPress host. They maintain the WordPress installations, make the necessary patches, tune the databases, and all those little things that you need to do to keep a WordPress installation running at its best so that I don’t have to. Better still, during the few times I’ve had to file a support ticket, they’ve been quick and helpful.

The other great thing about PressHarbor is that they’ve been able to handle it when one of my blogs — either The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century or Global Nerdy — has a hit. Recently, my post about how terrible Millennials are in the workplace, despite having been posted without much fanfare back in June, started getting pageviews by the boatload near the end of November. I ended up getting nearly a million hits last month, with nearly 150,000 on Friday, November 22nd alone:

I’ve been with hosting services that would’ve melted under the click-rage-fueled deluge of visits by huffy twenty-somethings and the people who don’t think highly of them, but PressHarbor kept ticking along, smoothly switching into high gear without a hiccup. I just sat back, watched StatCounter climb, and enjoyed as my AdSense revenues literally paid the November rent on a two-bedroom Toronto apartment. (Annoying millennials is profitable, apparently.)

Yes, social media is still useful, since it pretty much guarantees that what you post will be seen as long as at least one other person is in your network. However, for long-term findability, Googlejuice, making money from ads and other things, and just plain old control over your content and how it’s formatted, nothing beats a blog. And in my experience with blog hosting, nothing beats PressHarbor. If you rely on your blogs like I do, you need PressHarbor. Drop ’em a line, and tell them Joey sent you.

Full disclosure: No, PressHarbor didn’t ask me to promote them. In fact, they have no idea I’m doing this. I’ve just been so pleased with them over the past month for being great at what they do.

It all started with a tweet, and from that tweet came on of Toronto’s best annual charity events, HoHoTO. And it’s taking place again this year: tonight, in fact, at The Mod Club!

Since its inception in 2008 by a group of techies and marketing folk in Toronto, HoHoTO has thrown one of the best holiday parties and raised nearly CDN$300,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank. If you’re looking for a good time tonight and want to support a good cause in the process, there’s still time to get tickets.