The Recycle Bin

It has been a while since I went hells blazing, stuffs to the wall crazy, so I figured it was time …

There And Back Again
I spent last week in Calgary, which explains why the site experienced a severe slowdown. Thursday and Friday marked the first time in over 150+ days (8 months) that I did not post something. That was a hell of a run; I suppose it had to end sooner or later.

Flying sucks. Everything stinks about flying from the airport parking experience, to get a boarding-pass, to security, to sitting next to overweight folks that have no business buying a single seat. It all makes for a crap experience. For this trip I had to go from Atlanta to Salt Lake City to Calgary, and returned via Minneapolis/St. Paul to Atlanta. Four different airplanes; 2000 sky miles. Glad to be home.

Now Drinking
I am sort of a homebody; I am not much for traveling unless it is with my wife. With three kids, that is just not something that occurs frequently these days. When I do travel, it is almost exclusively for work. If I had to pick a favorite part about traveling, it would have to be having the opportunity to sample different local beers. While I was in Calgary, I was able to enjoy 4-5 different beers, my favorite of which of Big Rock Honey Brown Lager. The Big Rock Black Amber Ale was a very close second.

New on Blu
While I was out of town, two new Blu-rays arrived – Never Ending Story and Clash of the Titans. Unfortunately it looks like both movies received absolutely nothing in the way of extras, which is extremely disappointing. We watched Never Ending Story for family night tonight. My youngest son was really into it, although he did not know what was going on except there was a really bad wolf. My oldest was pretty much soured on the whole “making him watch another stupid movie” routine. Thankfully my middle boy decided the movie was pretty good, even if he tried to play it off as a ho-hum experience.

Gaming Backlog
MLB 10: The Show arrived earlier in the week, but I have not had a chance to crack it open yet. I have not even come close to finishing Heavy Rain, and of course WKC:I is also uncompleted. FFXIII arrives next week, so I better get going. Or get eBay’ing.

I should have plenty of comments on these games over the next few days. Something video gaming related to make you stand up and clap your hands. Sorry; I think you get the point.

While I was in Canada, all hell broke loose in PS3 land. I guess I should be thankful for small favors. Non event for me, but from the best I can tell, there are some seriously pissed folks out there. Time heals all wounds? This too will pass.

Chrony In Action
Today was truly a blessed day; 60 or so degrees. Sunny, blue skies. I was finally able to get my Chrony setup for a few rounds from the Beeman R1 .22 Long and my Beeman R7. The good news is that I was able to get the shots to register. This was a huge improvement over my first experience, which was a non starter. I still do not know what I am doing, but it looks like my R1 is blazing at around 713.85 FPS while the R7 was cracking at 574.75 FPS. As the weather turns nicer, there will be a whole lot more of this for your airgun reading pleasure. I just hope the weather holds so I can break out the Chrony again and see how the Marauder fares.

Bring on Sunday!

I am traveling to Calgary for business; will be back to regular posting action starting Saturday. Check back daily for some articles to help you pass the time. Yes, I have several articles lined up, coming your way in my absence. Most likely I am going to miss a few days of posting, but that cannot be helped.

Happy March! Welcome madness; it’s almost here.

This weekend I am offering up another round of site maintenance for your viewing pleasure. Several upgrades are in the works, and should be appearing throughout the weekend.

Tags Away
With the upgrade to Wordpress 2.9.2, I can introduce tags, or more importantly, Clouds of Tags. Calvert Games has amassed over 2000 articles in its current database; there are literally 1000s more that were left behind in previous incarnations of the site. Archiving those into Wordpress is a job for another day.

I have probably only put tags on 15% of the articles. I will slowly work my way through the archive, tagging as time permits; watch the cloud change over time.

I had to make a few decisions on what to tag, and what tags to create. First, the primary focus of the site (see Site Focus below) is videogames so generic entries such as Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Racing pertain to videogames. Some games such as WKC:I, MLB: The Show, OOTP, and Madden (to name a few) get their own tags. Second, some specific real life sporting topics that I enjoy writing about have been given their own tags. UGA, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta Braves all get their own tags, while there are also some broader range sports tags to cover NFL and NCAA Football. There is a method to the madness.

Check out the new Tags Cloud on the side-nav; when it actually appears. For an example of tags in action, check out the White Knight Chronicles: International (WKC:I) tag.

Site Focus – Airguns, Videogames, Sports …
And don’t forget the beer! Let’s be honest; Calvert Games lost its direction over the last 18 months. While the focus was primarily videogames, the site did go in directions that did not make a lot of sense. Over first two months of 2010 I am attempting to remedy the situation.

If you have noticed, this year the site has been extremely focused on videogames and sports coverage. I intend to continue to cover videogames in earnest, from my own unique perspective as a contrarian gamer. For me videogames are a hobby, a family activity, and a great stress release. Videogames will remain (or return as) Calvert Games primary focus.

Sports, primarily diatribes and commentary on the Falcons, Braves, UGA, and U.S. Soccer will also remain a staple.

Like it or not, adult airguns coverage will remain; I will keep anything over the top as opt-in have-to-click-to-see-it. However I am considering moving airguns coverage to a sub-domain. Maybe. For me airguns are another great stress relief, so once the weather is nice, look for more airgun coverage.

Stuffs (yes the ‘s’ is intentional) will remain a staple because there is always a place for off topic coverage. You just are not going to see as much of it as you have in the past. I am still going to write about beer, because I have to be me.

Some Categories will go away. For example, Birdwatching (WTF was I thinking) is now a tag; if I happen to write about birding, it will be designated as Stuffs, and as I just said, much less Stuffs than in the past. Same for Chronicles; at one point in time, under the old format, these types of articles made sense, but not anymore.

I haven’t decided yet what to do with D&D coverage. My intentions were sound; just not sure if it distracts too much from the main focus of Calvert Games – videogames and sports coverage.

Popular and Random Posts
I have added a new popular posts widget on the side-nav. Unfortunately it does not grandfather in any of the past history, so going forward articles showing up in this section are either really popular (linked from other sites) or search engines have decided to prominently display Calvert Games articles in their search results.

I am also looking at adding a “random post of the day” – after all, there are 2000+ articles on the site. While I may be biased, some of them are pretty damn good.

Ads and Other Nonsense
The Google Ad space (aka Sell Out) has not made a triumphant return. I think it will at some point. Maybe next weekend. Or a paypal solicitation space for beer money; have to pay the rent somehow.

Happy Saturday!

The weather this weekend has been absolutely wonderful – upper 60s and blue skies on Saturday and Sunday. We spent most of our free time outdoors – throwing footballs, practicing soccer, riding bikes, going on long walks, and cleaning up the year. You get the picture. It would have been a perfect weekend for shooting the airguns – the R1, R1 Carbine, R7, and the Marauder – however I never had the chance. Not that I am complaining that there were always kids in my shooting range; maybe next weekend.

Auto Club 500 Fontana
I am watching the closing stages of the race [50 laps left] as I write this entry; rain looms. I only watched the opening laps and this last part of the race. As mentioned above, the weather is too nice to stay inside. Fontana has never been one of my favorite tracks; just wish some of my drivers (Gordon, JPM, Junior, Smoke) where closer to the front. On the occasional look-ins, Gordon has been up front some, but it looks like he has a wounded engine.

Gaming Update
Are you kidding? With this weather? When I was not working on the site upgrade Friday and Saturday night, I was not in front of the TV. I did get in a couple of hours of White Knight Chronicles: International, which I continue to find a lot of fun. From a mechanics point of view, it is actually more interesting as you gain more skill points and build combinations.

Heavy Rain is coming on Tuesday (Feb. 23), followed by MLB 10: The Show (Mar. 2), and Final Fantasy XIII (Mar. 9). Needless to say, I have no idea how I will get in all these games, but I am going to try.

I am considering eBay’ing Madden 10 because I have not played it in a week, football season is over, and I would like to capitalize on something to put towards Madden 11. This is always a challenge – trying to hit the perfect moment to still get something for the game before the upcoming version makes the current version worthless. I am not sure if I am ready to throw Madden 10 away; it’s the best Madden in years and Madden Ultimate Team is a lot of fun. However I have not played it in two weeks, and with a slew of incoming games, my Madden opportunities are probably slim.

I’m actually having the same debate with FIFA 10. Unlike Madden, I have not gotten my money’s worth out of FIFA. The World Cup version will be here in April. I need to do some research to see what sort of gameplay upgrades the new version would offer over FIFA 10. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

More Site Stuffs – Green is Back!
I know I am biased; I love the new theme. I think it is the perfect complement to the original Calvert Games brand, without being overly done. It has taken a long time [calendar and actual weekend work] to get it back to this point. I think it was worth the effort.

As I mentioned yesterday, I still have some maintenance I need to do before I put a ribbon on this puppy and call it clean. I continued to polish the site today, and I have a few other items I would like to touch-up this week. I would also like to add in a few more plugins and widgets; nothing too over the top … just enough to make the site a more dynamic experience.

I have been playing around with a lot of different WordPress themes the last 12 or so hours, and finally found one that I think will stick. It is different than the old 3 column layout, but I think it is nice and crisp. The design is fairly simple and easy to modify. I think I will stick with this one for a while, and continue making it Calvert Games branded.

For those that are interested, I will post a change log at the end of the upgrade.

*****
Update 1 [afternoon]: I am continuing to play around with themes and colors; I think this one will work.

Update 2 [night] Change Log …

• Upgraded from WordPress 2.2 to 2.9.2
• Added new theme – Arjuna X – with color modification to give the site a Calvert Games flavor
• Introduced new “AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button” plugin for those of you that enjoy social networking. Earlier in the day I had a Google Buzz plugin, but for now it has been removed.
• Added Google XML Site Map plugin (to allow for better search engine indexing)

There is still some work in front of me. WordPress 2.9.2 includes Tags; I need to see how to best utilize them with all the previous historical content.

I also would like to re-introduce GoogleAds. I am going to research some additional widgets/plugins to make for a more dynamic site.  The site still needs more Calvert Games branding, but I am happy with the initial results.

Yea me! I just upgraded from Word Press 2.2 to 2.9, which is a pretty substantial upgrade to [knock on wood] not experience any issues with the upgrade process.

For those of you that are interested, I followed these fairly simple upgrade instructions. Of course, like a good company man, I did a backup, made sure I had my shell access working, and then started the ftp for the updated files.

I have only done initial tests, but everything seems to be working correctly, included the current theme. I figured that puppy was going to die a painful upgrade death.

It looks like a couple of my plugins may not be working, but no worries, as I was planning to add some new ones anyway.

You may see some more wackiness and the like as I continue some improvements over the weekend, but the major stuff is out of the way. Happy days!

I plan to perform some much needed site maintenance over the weekend. Hopefully most of this will be transparent to the masses. Starting tonight you may see some error messages, strange behavior, and otherwise stuff that may make you scratch your head.

You need not worry. While maintenance on this site has long been neglected, I am in the opening throes of moving from the Recycle Bin (call in CG 3.0) back into the realm of Calvert Games. Yes, CG 3.5 is calling. Maybe.

And all the choir girls said hell yes…

I have been posting and posting and posting, for a long time. Maybe too long; maybe not long enough. For better or worse, I have thrown up daily content for something akin to 7+ months, which is a pretty nice achievement, but I am going to have to end this run sooner or later. But not today.

I considered not posting today. It would have been a good day to end my streak because the 6 hour marathon called the 2010 Daytona 500 was rather draining. So it would have been easily excusable. The Daytona 500 had a great ending, so I figured I had to at least go down swinging. Congrats to Jamie McMurray.

Sunday Gaming
I got in some quality time with Out of the Park Baseball 10 (recently joined an online league), and of course continued my assault on the surprising good White Knight Chronicles: International.

I am sitting at the auxiliary kitchen bar watching it snow. The kids have already got fill of the cold, wet stuff, so I am indulging on an Ultra Amber (or two) looking for some entertainment value on the web; legitimate of course!

This eweek article pretty much pisses on Apple’s iPad parade.

Steve Jobs said the iPad was revolutionary during the iPad announcement. But further inspection reveals that it’s really nothing more than a larger iPod Touch. More importantly, it’s competing in a space where several products, including those from Dell and HP, might provide a better tablet experience. Of course, Apple doesn’t want users to know about the competition. But they might be surprised to learn that when it comes to tablets, the iPad isn’t necessarily the best offering

It was not like I was planning on getting one anyway. It will be interesting to see how these things sell. Apple has a very loyal fan base, but it is hard to imagine them taking the bait on this one.

The Columbus area is expecting snow Friday: 1-2 inches of accumulation. The city will shut down – grocery stores will be raided, schools will be closed, and non essential employees will not have to report to their places of employment.

It is funny watching the panic and chaos. Yesterday my wife went to the grocery store – a planned mid-week milk and produce run. Big mistake. In anticipation of Friday’s snow, the parking lot of full, with bread and milk was flying off the shelves. Classic – have to make sure you have bread and milk on Friday before the snow melts on Saturday.

Of course we are not equipped for snow and icy roads. The city probably has a couple of dump trucks filled with sand, so if the roads become hazardous, it should make for great drama for the local media.

Come on Frosty! My how we have missed ya!

I thought it would be interesting to do a quick recap of January. From a gaming perspective, I lost my soul months ago, so longtime readers can appreciate that content provided for your viewing pleasure has been all over the map. Ah, but the winds of change are blowing, and the Recycle Bin (dare I say Calvert Games) is once again featuring a healthy dose of gaming.

For January 2010, the score reads (63 articles**):

• 19 video game (30%)
• 33 sports (52%)
• 11 stuffs (17%)
• 2 D&D (3%)

**Percentage breakdown totals 102% – 1 article was categorized as sports and stuffs; 1 article was categorized as sports and videogames.

You may ask how this compares to Calvert Games historical averages. I am glad you did! Calvert Games has maintained its current format since August 2004, which is a span of 66 months. During that time 1975 articles have been written, which amounts to almost 30 articles per month, or an amazing one article per day. Take my breath away!

As with the January monthly percentages, the “lifetime” totals are calculated based on category counts applied to total articles, which slightly skews the results higher than the expected 100%. In other words, there are ~100 articles that are in multiple categories.

All-Time (current format as of August 2004):

• Stuffs 39%
• Sports 33%
• Videogames 30%
• Miscellaneous 4%***

***Miscellaneous contains Airguns (61), Birdwatching (5), Chronicles (7 – which are really Videogame related articles), and D&D (8) articles.

Here are a few random links for your viewing pleasure that I came across while surfing the web this morning. As I heard on SportingNews radio, legitimate web surfing; in other words it is too early on Sunday morning to be looking for some T&A.

After the affair ends …
A reminder for married folks to be careful who they jilt after the sex factor comes to an end.

YaVaughnie Wilkins posted the signs after she learned that her lover, Charles E. Phillips — president and director of the tech conglomerate Oracle Corporation and a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board — had reconciled with his wife, the New York Post reported.

The billboards — there are three in New York and one apiece in Atlanta and San Francisco, where Phillips lives — may have cost Wilkins up to $250,000, at an estimated $50,000 each.

After the billboards surfaced, Phillips fessed up to his longtime affair through a spokesman on Thursday.

The again this one probably only applies to rich folks. I am sure Tiger can relate.

Miranda Kerr
OK, so I lied about not having enough coffee to look for T&A, but by golly wow is Miranda beautiful! I did come across this one while taking in my daily dose of morning Fox news; we can chalk this up as legitimate.

Cheers to beer in a can!
I had no idea that canned beer has been around for 75 years! It’s nice to learn something new before 7AM.

Team US F1 looks not so American
While I am excited about the prospects of a U.S. based F1 team, I am disappointed to learn that the first driver announced is not an American.

AUTOSPORT reports that former grand prix ace Carlos Reutemann, a close friend of US F1 boss Peter Windsor and now a leading politician in Argentina, has been instrumental in putting the funding package together for Lopez, who will receive a degree of government backing alongside other Argentinian sponsors.

I have nothing at all against Jose Maria Lopez; I hope he shows well for US F1, but it sort of sucks that an American could not put together a funding package. Then again, Lopez has the full backing of the Argentina government! Maybe President Obama and his socialist agenda should considering jumping into racing. Why not inject some cash into NASCAR, IRL, and US F1?

Happy NFL Championship Sunday!

Last month my wife of 16 years gave me the Bloom County Complete Library Volume 1 as part of an anniversary present. Bloom County is my all-time favorite comic strip. While I have had various paperback versions of this classic strip, there is something special about this new hardback version that is a complete blast from the past.

Of course the humor is not for everyone; if you are easily offended you need not crack open this great tomb. Of course I now have Volume 2 on preorder, but April is a long way away!

It has been a while since I posted a “Now Reading” post, so I thought it would be a fun diversion. Back in December I finished up The Icewind Dale Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. It was a solid read for heroic swords and sorcery fiction based on Dungeons and Dragons; really the Forgotten Realms setting. I am not going to pretend to be a fiction critic; remember this is just a fun diversion type of post.

With that said, I thought the pacing was very uneven. The trilogy started off fine, hooked me in the middle, and became too unbelievable (if I can use that adjective to describe fiction) towards the end. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but the conclusion to the dragon fight in the underdark-ish dwarf citadel was just too much. To make matters worse, I really had to slog my way through the very last bit in the astral plane (or whatever it was). Thankfully there was not too much of this nonsense; Mr. Salvatore must have realized that he was up against some sort of page count.

As I said, I enjoyed The Icewind Dale Trilogy enough to take up some of the other Drizzt books. I thought the characters were interesting, and certainly the sights and sounds of the Forgotten Realms were captivating. Well, maybe not captivating, but certainly enjoyable.

I just started Robert E. Howard’s Kull Exile of Atlantis. I have read some of Howard’s Conan works, but never any Kull stories. Obviously Kull came first, I have to assume that Conan and Kull are fairly interchangeable as sword and sorcery characters for all but the most diehard Robert E. Howard fans.

I am only about 40 pages in, but so far am enjoying the tales. I have to admit that I can only take so much of this type of fiction in one sitting, much less over the course of a book. Last spring when I was reading The Essential Conan, as much as I enjoyed the various Conan stories, I never made it through the last few in the book.

One of my “New Year’s Resolution” was to drinking better beer. I enjoy beer with the best of them, but a lot of times I lapse into the cheap(er) stuff. This year I am going to try to go with more premium brews; sort of a quality of quantity deal. Maybe; that assume I am not a drunkard and do not guzzle, which would be a good idea if for no other reason than to keep the wallet (somewhat) full(er).

I am going to cheat a little. The three entries featured here were given to me as a Christmas present. Yes, my family knows I am a would-be drunkard; or at least a beer whore! They at least know how to buy me a Christmas present that I will actually enjoy!

Listed in reverse order of preference …

Tyskie Gronie Grand Prix Poland – This Polish beer features a 5.60% AVB. Tyskie Gronie Grand Prix is listed as a pale European lager, but I have definitely had better. Then again I have had worse. I was trying to find something to say about this one, but it is really not very distinctive. It does have some sort of bitterness too it, and I enjoy a little bitter here and there, but I really cannot put my finger on the source. Let’s call this one a nice freebie, but not one that I will turn to on purpose in the future.

Peroni Nastro Azzurro – Let’s call this one the Pabst Blue Ribbon of Italian beer. I have had Peroni before, but not sure I have every come across the Nastro Azzurro variety. I don’t think PBR and this Peroni have anything in common; I am sure PBR is much cheaper by the dozen! Nastro Azzurro seems like a typical pale European lager, which is not a bad thing, but I am not sure that it is one that I would specifically seek out in the future. The 5.1% AVB would work nicely on a hot summer day.

Pilsner Urquell – This Czech lager has a “light” beer-ish 4.4% AVB. Pilsner Urquell is surprising light and crisp; a refreshing brew. I had a few of these on a trip to London, but my Christmas six-pack was my first experience with it in the U.S. I think dry is the overwhelming characteristic that best describes this one. Assuming the price is decent; I think Pilsner Urquell will become a summer staple in my beer rotation.