TheRogerDodger.com

2008 Presidental Election

11/4/2008 2:13:12 PM

Ooops! I'm back!

9/29/2008 2:07:29 PM

I'm back after a bit of a hiccup in service. Not the provider's fault, but my fault. Whatever, I'm back and hoping to throw down some more posts.

I joined a flag football team for a season. I'm playing back-up QB and starting free safety. We had a scrimmage this past Saturday which turned out to be a nightmare for my team. Lack of organization, etc. I played pretty well though. One interception and 3 knockdowns. I was pleased. As QB, I threw the lone TD pass. Cheers to that!

I bought Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Xbox 360 this weekend as well. It's definitely a play through once and then take it back to GameStop, but it's fun so far. Interesting story. Would have liked to play as Darth Vader the majority of the game, but no go on that.

Age of Conan

5/27/2008 2:36:30 PM

I started playing Age of Conan (AoC) Saturday afternoon and immediately became hooked. I haven't been this hooked on an MMO since Star Wars Galaxies.

Overall, the game is very well done. There are the obvious bugs and performance issues, but that's expected from the launch of MMOs. These bugs will be ironed out eventually.

A few annoyances.

If you're in trouble by a gank squad, you can simply choose another instance and zone there. That's carebear and I'd love to see that fixed. At least prevent instance zoning while in combat.
The mini map SUCKS. If you're grouped, each member is a little dot on the already too small map. If my group wasn't on teamspeak, managing the group would have simply been impossible. Also, quest updated icons are crappy as well, but you quickly become accustomed to the suck.
The updater is epic slow. Takes about 2 minutes before the patcher finds out that you're completely up-to-date.
Lag is a major problem in the zone after Noob-land. I had to bring down my video settings a bit more than before.

A few things I liked.

Combat is the best of any MMO I've seen in both PvP and PvE. Cutting some dude's head off just never gets old.
Leveling is fast. I bought the game on Saturday and reached level 20 last night and I still had time to jet ski. There are so many quests available that grinding on mobs alone to level is simply a waste of time.
While in the Noob zone, there is a single player version of the game available which is called the "Destiny Quest". This was well put together and probably gave me 7-8 levels of XP.
Mounts are absolutely epic. I saw a dude with a Mammoth mount and was flinging other toons around like rag dolls.
Once out of noob-land, you'd think the number of quests would reduce, but it's quite the opposite. Most people I've seen have leveled from 20-30 in just a few hours.

My jQuery Plugin : Aspect Ratio

5/13/2008 12:59:37 AM

I was tasked with creating a simple "Picture Viewer" control that simply rotates, maximizes images for viewing. Pretty simple. I needed to handle Aspect Ratio for images within the viewing frame. So I created a nice little jQuery Aspect Ratio plugin. I threw it out onto the jQuery web site where maybe everyone else can find it useful.

jQuery : Aspect Ratio Plugin

If you've found it useful (or found bugs) do let me know. :)

Cheers!

Search Box working

5/11/2008 2:59:10 AM

But the RSS feeds are still down. I'll get them back up soon.

Everything is broken!!!!

5/6/2008 2:04:14 PM

Not really, but the RSS feeds and the Search box functionality are current screwed up. I probably jacked up something while coding at 2am. I'll fix 'em when I have a moment. Just be patient!!!!

Cheers!

RSS Feeds down

4/29/2008 3:27:23 PM

The RSS Feeds are down and probably because I updated them at 2 in the morning while I was half asleep. I'll look at them later tonight after some Grand Theft Auto 4. :)

Video Games, MMORPGs and Xbox 360

4/28/2008 12:10:03 PM

I have to say that I'm probably an above average gamer...maybe just average. I don't spend day in and day out playing video games, but I do spend some evenings playing some Xbox 360. I use to play Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) religiously. Unfortunately, I've found that you must invest huge blocks of time to get the full enjoyment of these games.

I tried World of Warcraft, but I simply do not have the time to invest. Maybe someday when I'm filthy rich and can force other people to work for me, I'll go back to one of these two games. Probably not SWG.

I practically sold my soul to become a Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies. Back in 2004, I spent a good 6 months building my Jedi. Six months of my life... gone. I remember spending (wasting) my entire month of December in '04 grinding away experience points to build my Jedi.

"I don't have time for Christmas holidays, can't you see I'm working on my JEDI!?"

Anyone from the Bloodfin (or any) server out there that can relate!?

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the new Grand Theft Auto 4 that's being released tomorrow. I'll most likely wait until Wednesday to purchase it at Target. I get $10 off and another $10 gift card and NO ONE buys the game there so it's always in stock. GameStop is nice, but they always act like you can't purchase the game from anyone except them. For instance...

I forgot to pre-order Rainbow 6 : Vegas 2 and thought I could just go up to GameStop and see if they ordered more copies of the game besides what was pre-ordered. I ask them if they have a copy and they said only for pre-orderers. I thought to myself that someone like Best Buy would have copies so I said, "oh, it's cool I'll find a copy". They were in complete denial saying, "Good luck man, you'll probaby never find a copy until 2 or 3 weeks from now." I drove to Target... there were a good 30 copies and they gave me a $10 gift card for purchasing the game with them. GameStop is nice to you, but only if you pre-order games with them. Just go to Target.

I've been a big fan of the comic "Ctrl+Alt+Del" and I really love today's comic. I'll most definitely be playing Grand Theft Auto 4 this week and wasting away more of my life. :) Blast you Xbox!

Performance Improvements with Caching

4/26/2008 11:43:00 AM

Instead of simply regurgitating ANOTHER .net caching tutorial, I decided just to link to a good one.

ASP.NET Caching

It's a good one, trust me. I've implemented caching on this web site yesterday (along with a few other improvements) and I've already noticed a massive improvement in performance compared to previously. Why I didn't do this before is beyond me.

Caching, to some degree, should be considered and implemented during the design phase. I didn't do this, but lucky for me, caching was easily implemented with OutputCaching in .NET and my blog site didn't seem to mind.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the improvements. I'm actually running out of ideas. Anyone got any ideas of what improvements I can make or features they would like to see?

As a parting gift, I'd like to present the Anonymous comment poster of "My Top 10 Heaviest Songs of All Time" this...

Cannibal Corpse is most definitely for the loss.

RSS Feeds again

4/22/2008 11:10:00 AM

I realize that I didn't put the actual blog entry into the RSS feed. I'll do that like...tonight. :)