I’ve spent the better part of the last month trying to sift through the backlog of fake comments, crank trackbacks and other useless cruft in my old Movable Type installation, and then deal with an aborted attempt at upgrading to MT 4.2. I tried to support the technology that got this place started, but not being able to recover old templates or even successfully import old entries tends to put a damper on things. It did not go well, to the point where I completely fucked over my old installation and had to completely rebuild the site. Needless to say I never want to use Movable Type again. Instead I turned to WordPress, and set up an installation of version 2.6.2 – which took all of 10 minutes including importing. WordPress has changed a lot since I last used it; for the better, thankfully. I think a relaunch of toase.net deserved some new software anyway.

Some notes about the site, in general: all of the old links to the MT archives will still work from the new WordPress posts, but they will show the old design until I find way to have the new WordPress dynamic archive linking back to itself cleanly. The old MT archives will eventually disasppear, but for now I’m leaving it alone because Google has already catalogued all of the pages and it’s still a great way for people to find this place. And I assure you I am working on any glitches that appear in my customized theme.

I can’t wait to start writing here again. Welcome back!

Lots of things have changed since the original March 2008 target. Though the most pertinent was the acquisition of a new gaming rig. It’s time to play catch up instead of nights of aimless surfing and wordless ponderings on what has happened to this hobby during my extended hiatus.

Things are in the works: new weblogging software, a new design, and new content.

Stay tuned.

Each time I think about updating, something else comes up and I forget about this place. I even wondered if I should just take it down and archive it, tucked away in yet another silo of life experiences. But once again I couldn’t.

I’m not doing much gaming anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write about games. I love games. I tried convincing myself none of it matters anymore since I’m a parent and should begin the long painful process of growing up, but it’s a total fucking lie and I know it. I had my inspiration, I just lost it for a little while.

I still have so much more to say, just no time to put it onto paper. I hope to change that very soon, thanks to a renewed desire to write again.

For those of you that are still coming here, um…thanks? Though I really thought I’d have alienated everyone by now.

Take care, and I hope to see you in March.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I should probably specify that I haven’t played a console or PC game in seven months. I’ve gamed on my Treo 650 and my video iPod. I spent all of 15 minutes with Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. But does it count?

To be honest, I don’t really miss it all that much. Life is busy with the little one, and I now know that time actually can pass faster. Changing responsibilities at work and at home has left me with very little spare time, and even less of a desire to sit at my computer and have to install and learn a game, and possibly squeeze in a play session. It doesn’t feel right.

Nevertheless, I keep coming back to this place and looking at the last time I updated it. While I like writing for the Cultural Gutter, I don’t really consider those “updates” in the purest sense, because I’m writing for someone else. After two more articles I will no longer be writing there anyway.

I recently felt the urge to write about games like I used to, but I haven’t played any that provide suitable inspiration. Well, except perhaps MoonFighter, a devilishly enjoyable exercise in navigating extremely basic physics. It is on my Treo.

I missed the holiday season, and the post-holiday season. My sister and her finance have a Wii that I haven’t touched yet (but desperately want to). Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is on Xbox Live Arcade. Computer Games Magazine has died a premature death and I never submitted a feature. I don’t recognize the shelves of my local electronics retailers anymore. I have no idea what games people are talking about. The only newsworthy item I can relate to is the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which made me laugh because I had written a preview for the game to be posted on my site in 2003. It has been getting decent reviews. I may even play it.

I don’t want to abandon Tales of a Scorched Earth completely, but I’m having trouble approaching what I’m going to do with it. I always said I prefer writing substance than linking and quoting, and that’s not going to change. I have also come to the realization that I liked writing about games more than I did playing them, because it is a form of entertainment that is still emerging and being shaped more by the people that play them than the media that reports on it. I have also come to the understanding that this is an integral part of my life, and harder than I thought to separate myself from. I hope to be returning within the next few weeks as my life approaches a semblance of equilibrium.

One thing I’ve learned from doing more reading than writing in the past seven months: bad writing isn’t just a boil on the ass of game journalism. It is everywhere and it is inescapable. Good criticism is mostly forgotten or buried under the piles of readable, yet completely innocuous commentary that people are paid for. As ridiculous as it sounds, weblogs are still providing better entertainment be they inane or thought-provoking. As much as I hate the idea of them, they are a fair reflection of society at large. They are unconventional, they are brutal, they are sometimes (?) completely misinformed – but they approach the sort of verisimilitude you would expect from a crowd of like minded individuals. At least one thing hasn’t changed.

So over the next couple of weeks if you find an article or review you swore wasn’t there the last time you checked, you’re probably right. To everyone who’s still reading, thanks for being patient.

I thought that upgrading to Blacklist 2.x would be enough, but in the past 48 hours my site has been hit an unusual amount of times – all of them trying to post comment spam. Movable Type’s automatic moderation of irregular comments is fine, but it’s becoming impossible to keep up. Waking up to a stack of about 200 new comments that have to be added to my spam blacklist and then deleted is not something I want to keep doing. I’m sure my webhost isn’t too happy about absorbing this excess traffic either.

I am hoping that this is only an interim fix, as Jay Allen posted on the MT development blog, and a more robust solution is developed. Movable Type is an excellent piece of software, and after seeing 3.0 I have no plans on switching. Like Windows is the target of viruses, the large install base of Movable Type is clearly the ripest target for the craven propagators of comment spam.

The process was pretty easy, and took just over half an hour to get things up and running again. I would recommended it for anyone still running 2.661. SixApart’s licensing scheme isn’t as draconian as some would make it seem; as long as you’re still running your single-author non-commercial blog you can get the full version for free. Most importantly, though, the deluge of comment spam I have recieved was finally put to rest by an up to date version of Jay Allen’s most excellent MT-Blacklist plugin, an invaluable application in the face of even the most cleverly written, iron-clad URL exclusions.