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Returning to Normal!

April 27, 2013 by 6 Comments

Whew! What a long two weeks.  I’m so glad to be back in SoCal where the weather is amazing and life is just so much more laid back.

I’m really sorry for the lack of posts and general activity on our blog and forums.  Taking finals, graduating from college, hunting for jobs, picking up and moving my life several states away, and really just trying to settle down has been a real time-sucker.  All of that is just about over!  I plan to unpack my desktop today, and maybe even find a few spare minutes to play something.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I’m away from my computer for several days I feel like I lose track of what’s happening in the world.  Fill me in! Has anything big happened out there? What are you up to?  In all honesty I’m sitting on my couch right now touching my laptop for the first time, so I haven’t even checked Camelot Unchained’s kickstarter numbers or been to any of the news sites to see what’s been going on.

Look for a post either tonight or tomorrow. I promise to inspire you, fill your minds with thought provoking ideas, and have you questioning your own gaming beliefs in no time — or maybe I’ll just give you something to read.  Either way, it’s great to be back!

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Conglomoblog: Minecraft, SWTOR, Job Hunting

April 16, 2013 by 11 Comments

Life has been crazy lately.  I spend more time working on campus to finish up the last of my finals (graduating in a week!) in one day than I do sleeping and playing games.  I apologize for the lack of updates around here, but it will improve in just a matter of days.  After that, until I can find a job (Which I am actively looking for — anyone want a marketing guru?) I’ll have plenty of free time.

I’m also bound by a few NDAs right now.  If not for forced silence, I’d have quite a bit to share about a few games.  I want to talk about Marvel Heroes, for example, which is an action RPG set in the Marvel universe, but I can’t just yet.

To kill what very little free time I have, which has mostly been extremely late at night (read: after 10pm), I’ve been playing Minecraft again.  Our community has another server set up, and we’re playing a mod compilation called ‘Feed the Beast’.  It’s neat, challenging compared to Tekkit, and a lot of fun to hop in and build.  There’s something about building, tinkering, and letting my creative (or lack thereof) manifest itself in a game.  Why can’t more games be a blank canvas like Minecraft? So simple, so fun.

Let’s see, what else am I up to lately?  I played a 30 minutes of SWTOR tonight. A friend of mine is playing again just to kill some time and play some battlegrounds.  I had fun playing the single-player game 1-50.  The game is quite charming looking once you get past the low level armor that looks like it’s painted on.  Animations are extremely smooth.  I love what they did with the interface changes.  I hate the F2P crap, but it’s free. As I continue to play, I’ll refine my thoughts and keep you posted.

That’s all for now! Things will pick up again very soon.

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6-Year Anniversary: New and Improved Server

February 8, 2013 by 20 Comments

We should be completely up and running on a brand new server!  We’ve transitioned off of shared hosting and onto our own server, giving us the power and speed to grow.  Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog started back in February 2007.  Exactly six years ago we began creating unique content based on our opinions and experiences with video games and the industry — time sure has flown by!  It’s fitting now that we’re trying to do whatever it takes to bring our readers (that’s you) the best experience possible.

You should notice the site feels ‘snappier’, ‘quicker’, ‘faster’, and hopefully never goes down or gets suspended again.  During this transition phase, if you notice any issues, errors, and problems with the site, I ask that you bring them to our attention immediately.

Upgrading has come at a cost.  We had the luxury of locking in at a great shared hosting price when we started with our previous host 6 years ago.  Unfortunately, our costs have increased by nearly 14x as a result of the move.  Luckily, I had the idea to begin placing ads on our site to cover costs.  I believe everything happens for a reason; without these ads we would not be able to afford a new server, and would likely have had to go dark.  We would also like to thank our generous donators for helping us maintain all of our services.  You guys have helped us through the tough months with your generosity — you’re absolutely awesome people.

Moving forward, we hope to develop new ways to bring in money to cover costs and fund projects for the blog.  Some of you have suggested we begin merchandising, others think hosting a minecraft server (which we can do now) and charging a premium for in-game services would bring in revenue.  We’re thinking hard about ways to provide value, and we welcome your ideas.

Thank you for being readers of our blog!

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Cronjobs are serious business

January 8, 2013 by

Sorry for the big nasty account suspension message today.  Our host suspended our account to “protect the server” since we were sending too many “cronjobs” through wordpress.  I won’t pretend to know what the heck that is all about, but I guess it has something to do with either the size of our site or how it is optimized.

If anyone has any experience with this topic, I welcome your input.  I also welcome all of you to let me know if you encounter errors, slow load times, or issues with the site.  I followed a few steps to add a custom cronjob schedule, and I disabled automated cronjobs.  Hopefully that begins to solve the issue so our host won’t suspend us again.

That’s all for now!  I’ll be writing up a blog post later on something gaming related, but I wanted to let you all know the status of our issue.

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