Archive | Personal

Find Your Inter(net)-icon and Socialize It

Jun/24 in Hot Web Topics, Personal

I have spent some time on finding the right icon and picture for me to use across all the social networks that I am apart of.  Some people might thing it is silly to spend any time on this, however I think it is important to use a graphic that people can easily associate with you.

For example, look at Chris Pirillo and his icon.  If you are a follower of him and what he does, you know when you see this icon:

Chris's Head as an Icon   Chris's Head as... Well, a Head!

That he is associated with it.  No matter if you follow him on his web site, his Twitter page, his Facebook page, you know to associate that with him.  Others have done this too.  BlueFur.com, a Canadian based web host uses their blue monster as their Twitter icon too.

BlueFur.com's Web Site  BlueFur.com's Twitter Page and Icon

Here are a few more tips about the process that you might find useful:

  • Pick something that is unique about yourself or your company
  • Try to use something that is easily recognizable
  • Don’t be afraid to have a little fun with it

With that said, here is what I have currently decided to go with…

My New Social Icon!

I had to update my look, since I cut my hair off – plus I threw my own favicons from my various site in for good measure. 

So as you can see – you might want to give a little more thought when it comes to picking the right picture you want to use across all the web pages you wish to frequent, especially if you want to build a brand around your name or business.

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Going Retro with the FC Twin Game Console

Feb/12 in Personal, Video Games

FC Twin - Play NES and SNES Games

About a week ago, I picked up the FC Twin.  Now, what is it?  In a nutshell it plays both old classic NES and SNES games.  I have a good collection of old Super Nintendo games to play, and I picked up a few more old Nintendo games on eBay to check it out.  Overall, it is a pretty nice machine – if you don’t pay too much for it.

First, I will give you my complaints.

Not all games will work with it correctly.  Wikipedia has a list of a few games that you will have trouble with.  I found on Contra 3, the bullets for the guns disappear every so often.  It is also pretty ghetto when you pick it up for the first time.  You expect it to have a little more “bulk” to it, but honestly feels like a couple of pieces of plastic slapped together. 

Now, moving to the positives about the FC Twin, I really liked that this is two systems in one.  Also, it comes with you standard red, white and yellow A/V cable, so no worrying about screwing an adapter on an off my HDTV.  The controllers were a little stiff – but the system does work with the classic SNES controllers if you have a few laying around.

You can usually find these best on eBay, if you are interested in picking one up for yourself.  When push comes to shove, it is a nice alternative – however I am still going to go hunting for both an old Nintendo and Super Nintendo. FC Twin just doesn’t recapture that Nintendo vibe very well. Call me nostalgic. I would give the system three freaky Mitchelaneous thumbs up out of five.

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Make Your Own Wii Sports or Link’s Crossbow Training Case

Jan/30 in Personal, Video Games

I might be a little late with this, as many posts about it are from a few years back – however I just made a couple of neat boxes for both Wii Sports and Link’s Crossbow Training.  What, these games didn’t come with boxes?  No.  We got cardboard sleeves to keep them in – which doesn’t exactly make for a visually appealing lineup on your game shelf.

Now the first thing you need to do is get some fresh from the factory, empty game boxes for the Wii.  You could use an old DVD case if you didn’t mind the black box.  I do have a better solution though.  Go get the boxes directly from Nintendo!  You can order them from store.nintendo.com. 

I got the set of 5, cause you never know when an extra game case might come in handy. 

Now for the covers, turn to TheCoverProject.net.  They have tons of game covers going all the way back to Atari 2600.  Here are the ones you need though for our arts and crafts project here:

Wii Sports DVD Case Link's Crossbow Training DVD Case

Download the Wii Case Covers:

Print them, cut them out and slip them in.  Now you can ditch (or store away) those ugly cardboard sleeves that came with the games and give them their own boxes. 

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Got Myself a New Toy

Jan/27 in Personal, Video Games

Got my new toy in yesterday, a PS3.  Don’t worry Wii – I won’t forget about you either. :D

My New Toy - PS3

Overall, I like it thus far – it is the 80 GB version, and was easy to setup and mess with.  Thus far, I think the Wii has a better store (or at least classic games).

Damn thing also attracts dust and fingerprints like crazy.

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Look Back at Super Mario 64

Jan/18 in Personal, Video Games

super-mario-64

Looking through some of my past registered games on Nintendo’s web site, I figured – why not post my thoughts about some of my favorites and not so favorite purchases?  Today I’ll tell you about a game that probably needs no introduction, Super Mario 64.  Back in the day, I could play this game for hours and hours on end.  So, I figured – why not relive a part of my childhood and pick it up on the Wii’s Virtual Console?

The story is simple, you are Mario – Princess Peach has been kidnapped, and you have to beat the snot out of Bowser. Why mess with a formula that works?

Everything I loved and hated about this game is still there.  Of course, you never remember the things you hated until you play it again, so let me start there.  I hate the “collect the hidden 6 red coin” challenge.  Doesn’t Mario have anything better to do than to look for oddly colored coins?  Makes me feel more like he has got Attention Deficit Disorder rather than being an Italian man on a mission.

Now that I have that out of the way, the rest of the game is still pretty fun to play.  You get to go free roaming over a number of different stages, complete all the missions you need to until you can fight Bowser.

Get stuck?  There are a number of walkthroughs online that should help you get back on track.

Between the classic controller and the GameCube controller, I liked using the classic controller more.  Either one will work though.  Overall, I would highly recommend purchasing Super Mario 64 if you are looking for a new Wii Virtual Console game this weekend. 

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Bizarre Mistyped Domain Issues – AT&T’s Fault?

Jan/17 in Personal

Resolved! via Reese in the Comments…

I think you have engaged in a classic example of overthink. URLs are resolved right -to-left. In other words, xyz.com.com is requesting the subdomain xyz of “com” of the .com TLD. If you pop com.com into WHOIS you will likely discover it too is owned by cNet.

I hadn’t even thought about that. Many thanks to Reese for the solution!

The Original Post

I have spent the last few hours troubleshooting a really odd problem.  To kind of get my thoughts in order on what I have done and could do, I thought I would spell everything out here.  The problem is that whenever I enter any domain name and put the extension twice (like mitchkeeler.com.com) it redirects me to a search.com search page for it instead of giving me the normal error message.

To give you a little more information ahead of time, my DSL provider is AT&T (or Yahoo! AT&T to be more specific).

Here is where I would be redirected for that:

http://domainhelp.search.com/search?q=mitchkeeler&d=mitchkeeler.com.com

I always use Firefox, so first thing I checked was the other browsers I have installed right now.  Both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 7 gave me the same results.

So then I thought, well maybe I have some sort of odd malware or virus on my PC.  So I tested another PC, running Windows XP and it gave the same problem.  So I thought, maybe it could be a Windows problem or it had spread to that machine?  So I turned on my laptop – which is running Kubuntu – and it gave me the same result.

Going out on a limb, I wanted to try something different – so I fired up my PlayStation Portable and tried to recreate the problem it it’s browser.  It sent me to the same result.

So now, you would think – well, there is a problem with the router or the connection from AT&T, right?  So I unplugged my PC from the router, hooked the DSL line up directly to my PC (taking the router out of the mix) and I still was given then stupid domainhelp.search.com page.

Now I decided to do a traceroute to the badly typed domain to see how it was redirecting.  That traced back to cNet, which owns the search.com domain name.

That is where I am at now, and I am kinda out of options on where to look next.  If you have any ideas, let me know!  Would love to hear ‘em.

Update: Also posted about the problem here on broadbandreports.com!

Bonus!  Bad Live Chat Support from Yahoo! AT&T DSL!

As a bonus – for those of you still checking in on this issue, here is my chat transcript with a Yahoo! AT&T DSL support member:

Mickey: How can I help you?

Mitch: Hello, I noticed that when I mistype a domain name such as adding an extra .com at the end, I am now being redirect to domainhelp.search.com

Mitch: Instead of getting and error page

Mickey: That is normal.

Mitch: When did this redirection start?

Mickey: Well, when did you try to put an extra domain?

Mitch: Well, just noticed it today, for example if I type in google.com.com by mistake I am taken here: http://domainhelp.search.com/search?q=google&d=google.com.com

Mickey: Just do not put any weird domain if you do not want to be directed.

Mitch: But, just to confirm – this is a “service” provided by AT&T, correct?

Mickey: All ISP do that.

Mitch: Alright, thanks you for your time.

:lol:

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Cue Sports – Pool Revolution

Jan/16 in Personal, Video Games

Pool Revolution The most recent WiiWare game I have downloaded for my Wii is CueSports – Pool Revolution. 

Now true, some of the WiiWare games have been disappointments, and others have been jewels in the ruff – so downloading anything is sort of like a crap shoot.  However, I have to say CueSports – Pool Revolution might sound like it would be a crappy game, but it is however pretty fun (and cheaper than a pool table).

Once you get your Wii-motes in hand, you can play 9-ball, 8-ball, snooker, and “rotation” pool with up to 4 people (or all by yourself, against the computer).  You can also change the look of the tables and your balls.  Yes, I said it – you can customize your balls.  The music also changes a little depending on which table you select, however it gets a little monotonous after a while.

Pool + Elevator Music = Better Have a MP3 Player Handy

Getting into the actual gameplay, you can rotate yourself around the cue ball, or get an overhead view of the table to help you get your shot lined up.  To shoot, you hold the A button, bring your Wii remote backward and then shove it forwards.  You can also hit the minus button to bring up a power gauge, but where is the fun in that?

The other features, online mode and the puzzles are a nice addition too. 

It only costs around 500 points, so give it a shot if you are looking for a budget pool game.  I shall file CueSports – Pool Revolution in the category of fun games I can quickly play when I have a few free minutes.  Give it a shot!

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This Year’s Christmas Desk-orations

Dec/23 in Personal

Here are a few of the desk-orations I have done this year around to get myself into the holiday spirit.  Let me know what you think!

Robo Snowman

X-mas '08 Desk Decorations

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Mitch in Print During 2008

Dec/22 in Personal, Web Hosting

This year, I set a new record for myself – I made it into print four times!  Now in this digital era, that might not seem like much.  Heck, it might even be a step backwards.  However, holding a magazine with an article you have written inside it still something that gets me all excited.

Here are all the issues of Ping! Zine that I have made an appearance in this year:

+ Download Issue 26 of Ping! Zine (.pdf)

+ Download Issue 27 of Ping! Zine (.pdf)

+ Download Issue 28 of Ping! Zine (.pdf)

+ Download Issue 30 of Ping! Zine (.pdf)

Hopefully they’ll have me back next year too.  If you have never heard of Ping! Zine before, it is a web hosting magazine for web hosting professionals and fans.  One of the two biggest out there in the hosting industry to date.

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Mitch’s Top 10 Video Game Themes

Dec/16 in Hot Web Topics, Personal

Not so much these days, but years ago the music in games were much better.  I miss those days, of getting certain video game themes stuck in my head.  Maybe it is more nostalgia than not – but I don’t care.  Here are my top 10 favorite video game themes of all time…

Ridley’s Theme from Super Smash Bros Brawl (and Metroid)

Pit’s Theme from Kid Icarus

Continue Reading →

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