I read through the first couple lessons in the book I bought this afternoon. I am noticing some things about this site now I never noticed before, like the spelling and grammar checker. I also figured out how to change my email, as the email for this blog died some couple years ago now. I had forgotten how cool WordPress is when it comes to blogging platforms.

I bought the book for a reason actually. I am thinking about setting up a blog on a domain I own myself so I can do subversive things like sell advertising and stuff. I haven’t made any money on all my blog posts, and the money I have made from writing is nothing compared to what is possible. I figured I’d hook up here today and do some things like write a post and check out some of the features of the free blog. You learn things by doing them.

I made a start today on setting up a business for myself in the online publishing sector. The $15 I spent on a book has already shown some return in that it got me doing something with WordPress for a change. This blog gets a few visitors every day, so it’s a good place to start on my new project. I still have to sort out things like registering a domain name and setting up hosting, but I can find out about that from online sources. The book is nice to have as a reference and to clue me in on the basics of running a site on this platform. I am going to study WordPress and then use it to make a future for myself.

I keep another blog now that is my personal journal. I have it on Blogger and it gets maybe one or ten page views a day. So far I haven’t found what it takes to get thousands of visitors a day to read any blog posts I make. I suppose if I had a subject and some actual knowledge about it, that would be something. What I have posted here is mainly things I have read about online. Some of what I write is personal experience and opinion, which oddly seems to get a lot of visits. For now, I am going to let this blog coast and just do some cleaning up and get rid of things that may be confusing. I should probably do some deleting of posts that don’t serve any purpose, but that’s something for later. For today, weeding out some confusion will have to suffice.

Destiny Games is a small shop, and they have a lot of new and used games. I looked over the rack of Xbox games, and they had a lot of interesting titles for decent prices. After I found some games I wanted to buy, I took the cases up to the counter. The clerk got the discs and showed the surface to me so I could see there were no scratches. I got a bunch of games for under $20, and put the place on my list of shops to buy from.

A few days later I went back to this shop, coming in off Lilly Road to bypass traffic. I got some more games and talked to one of the guys there about their website, which I hadn’t been able to access. Their webmaster told me all about how the site was hosted, and how they are redesigning it.  It was interesting to talk to somebody who knows about web design. I got some more good games, and they all worked fine. I will probably go back later this week and see if they have anything new.

I used to buy games at Game Stop, but they quit selling the old games a couple years ago. They also don’t have many PC games there. I haven’t looked over Destiny’s selection of PC games, but they do carry some. They also sell game systems, controllers, and other accessories. The shop also advertises repairs on their website. If you live in the Plymouth-Canton area of Michigan, this is a good place to find the old games not carried by the big-name chains. A lot of the games are selling for less than they do online, and you don’t have to pay shipping. This is probably where I will be looking for games for the time being.

Materia Magica is played with a client program. You can use the Java client available on the game website to log in and create an account and character. A better client with more features is Zmud, but it costs money. If you are technically inclined like me, you can use Pueblo UE, which is available for free on sourceforge at that link. You will need to pick a character name and make a password. A name generator is available once you log in to character creation. You will want to read some of the instructions on the game website to find out how to connect. Basically, if you are using a third-party client, you will need to give the client the URL of the game, the port number to connect to (listed on the Materia Magica site), the character name, and the password.

Perhaps more people would play this game if it were simpler to get started. It is fairly simple with the Java client on the website, but that client lacks a lot of the features of a proper MUD client. To play the game you type in direction commands, like n, s, e, or w, then hit enter. To do things like look at a room, you type “look” and hit enter. This brings up a text description of the room. To fight monsters, you type “kill (monster name)” and it attacks in rounds. There are no graphics in this game, just lots of text that can be repetitive to read.

Perhaps the best feature of this game is that you can play it on any computer, as there are no graphics requirements. You also might meet some other people. As in life, some people are decent, and some are idiots. You can talk to people anywhere by sending them tells, as in “tell (character name) message” and they can respond, as long as they are not sleeping. The game has a lot of lore, and there are many different locations to explore. There is a quest system where you do tasks and get rewards, and there are trainers where you can learn new skills.

Text games have been around since the start of computer gaming. If you like to type and read, this might be something that interests you. You can check out the website and see if it’s interesting. Once you have a character you can also participate in the social network they run, with a player profile, log, and friends. For a text game, Materia Magica is one of the best. If you enjoy fantasy role playing games, this might be something to entertain you for a while.

I haven’t checked this blog in a couple weeks. There were six comments waiting to be approved. I’ve been getting 50-100 page views here a day fairly consistently. So now there’s a link in the blogroll to my commercial work. You can check it out here at My Helium.com Site if you want to take a look. I will be writing there for the coming months and see what I can make out of that site. I enjoy writing and have been reading books about freelancing. If I got paid $2 a word for everything I’ve written on the net, I’d be better off than I am. For now, I’m going to see if a simple link does anything for my popularity. Can’t hurt to try.