By now, everyone is, of course, quite sick of seeing the buxom ads deployed to entice new players for Evony. Being rather burnt out on everything else available on the market, I've been giving it a try. No, there isn't any comely wench in-game, of any sort, that I've found. But, it is free, after all, right..? Right?

Except they nerfed medals...

You can play for free until you get out of newbie-mode by trying to advance beyond Knight, which requires these medals, see?

too evident to be doubted.

What happens when the inbred nature of the internet gets into bed with new and media? They feed on each other. Right now you can see it happening as Slashdot virtually erupts a stream of meta-data traffic over an article about sniffer browser history without javascript, and references to the NINE YEAR OLD bug that continues to remain exploitable, as obvious references in the comments will tell you, quite hillariously:

Since the market has become virtually flooded with fantasy MMO's, the focus of the gaming community is beginning to move towards the sci-fi end of the spectrum. For years, EVE Online has dominated the sci-fi MMO market, remaining viable for years with a growing loyal fan-base while other aspiring sci-fi MMO's flared briefly before fading away.

However, EVE Online is not a game for everyone, heavily featuring PvP action. I've personally tried playing twice only to have the experience ruined by bored griefers with too much virtual artillery. As a result, I have been on the watch for something new to play, specifically in this genre.

Reviewing the unreleased games that are anticipated, I have selected three that appear to be worth investing some time in, once they are available.

After the jump, I will cover the primary features of interest for each game, detailing exactly why it is worth looking into. In expected order of release, they are Jumpgate Evolution, Earthrise and Infinity.

Over the years, various people have scoffed at my aspirations of political involvement. Astrologically, I am a Leo, and I fulfill that stereotype quite well, if I do say so. Leo's are typically attributed with leadership skills and a strong inclination to use them. I am no exception. I was a supervisor almost as soon as I was hired on in many of the jobs that I have held over the years. Let's say that I just... have a tendency to take over.

As of this month, I am now officially a member of the Xaraya PMC (Project Management Committee), the body responsible for maintaining and supporting the Xaraya platform and it's developer communitee. Together with Marty Vance and Chris Powis, we will be responsible for ensuring that Xaraya continues to be the most viable web platform available.

Xaraya is free and Open Source software (FOSS) licensed under the GPL. 

Stay tuned for details about the Xaraya PMC and what it will be doing to start building the community. Not all of the developers have to work on the code; some of them have to work on the bigger picture.

It is my privilege and pleasure to serve alongside my fellow committee members. I look forward to posting here about my many successes with inspiring other leadership within the Xaraya community. This incredible tool is available to give web developers what they will find missing in any other FOSS platform on the market today. Welcome home and thank you for voting!

After listening to some of the other podcasts that are out there, I decided that the time has come for me to give it a try.

I recently downloaded Audacit, which offers voice-activated recording features and accepts the line-in that is currently carrying the mic from an old over-the-ear gaming headset I had sitting around. I have to increase the Gain quite a bit to hear myself after recording through such a low-end mic, but it gets the job done.

In order to run a podcast, however, you need more than just a few mp3's.

In about two hours, I worked out a way to run podcasts from Xaraya using only Xarpages, a new articles pubtype and a couple of templates. Continue reading to see the actual templates and get started setting up your own podcast using Xaraya!

A while back, I posted about how I was using Ping.fm to cross-publish my articles from Xaraya to my various social networking profiles.

I had been experimenting with direct use of the various API's made available by Facebook/MySpace/etc., but it was becoming a long and arduous process.

Then I discovered Ping.fm and have been using it ever since.

However, I was not able to publish the code snippets that I used to accomplish this for you, my readers... until now.

What does it mean to get "Slashdotted"?

If you have been online for a decent amount of time, you probably know about the news site for geeks called Slashdot.

From this, you may surmise that getting "Slashdotted" involves getting your site linked to in an article on Slashdot, resulting in a significant increase in your site traffic.

You would be correct. Very correct.

You may also surmise that this increase in traffic results in a corresponding increase in sales/leads/etc.

While it may be crass and narcissistic to refer to yourself directly in the third person, you can bypass social mores by indirectly referring to yourself through use of the proverbial "we".

By emphasizing group solidarity, regardless of it's actual existence, you can safely distribute responsiblity for your statements. This is done through the simple expedient of substituting "we" for "I" in your statements.

"We are not interested in what you are offering..."

"We would prefer to go out for seafood than for italian..."

"We are not comfortable with this situation..."

When you represent as just yourself, you leave yourself open to having your opinion marginalized. When you represent as some ambiguous group, you will get a lot less resistance.

Just be careful not to get too carried away and only use this when needed. Otherwise, you risk sounding like a weirdo when you tell your barista that "We would like a large latte".

And be prepared for when you get challenged with "who is this 'we' you are talking about?".

I always respond with: "me and the mouse in my pocket..."

Many popular fantasy novels portray characters traveling through some medieval city who stop for a quick bite to eat and purchase a meat pie from some street vendor.

A meat pie?

Wasn't sure how I felt about that, especially in light of half-remembered comments about kidney-pie, none positive.

But then I found out that we have a meat pie place here in Austin, and I've been burning with curiosity ever since. You'd think they would have sold the damn things at RenFest, but I don't recall seeing them.

Introducing Boomerang's Gourmet Veggie & Meat Pies. 

You could build a truck that ran on biodiesel, contained biodiesel processing equipment, pulled a biodiesel tank, and also sold coffee. It could drive around collecting grounds until it was full, at which point it would drive to a biodiesel consumer community to sell it all before going on another round.

Custom built coffee ground collection containers could be dropped off at each cafe on an established route.

FTA...