Legally Bland

Turn and face the strange changes suckers! Actually, there may not be any changes, but there may be major changes. I’m being forced from my currently free hosting plan into a paid (albeit very inexpensive) plan with the same provider. I’ll actually have loads more storage and bandwidth available, both of which will probably never be fully utilized due to the underwhelming nature of this blog.

My question to you, faithful reader, is should I take this opportunity to rename the site? I’ve been toying with the idea for a while as I’ve never truly been satisfied with “artificallyimportant.” I could just let sleeping dogs lie, but I’ve got another domain available to me with the purchase of this new hosting plan. I’m also planning on switching the blog over to WordPress soon which would result in a slight redesign of the site. I couldn’t think of a better time to rebrand than now. What do you kids think? Any objections? Any inspired ideas for the new site address?

Also, let’s here it for cheese! Am I right?!

I’d love to hear from anyone and everyone, and that includes the (supposedly) hundreds of viewers that visit here daily and never comment. Who are you mysterious interlopers anyway?

So, not only did I decide (or re-decide) to get a Wii at launch, but I decided to totally geek out and actually camp over night at Target to get my hands on the console. Mark was up for the adventure too, so luckily I had someone to share the experience with. The short version of the story is that the camping sucked and the system rocks. I slept on the sidewalk in a sleeping bag in 30 degree weather, and somehow I was still able to smile when I opened that box the next morning. In fact I’ve been smiling ever since, and that pretty much sums up why I love Nintendo.

This guy wins everything as far as I’m concerned.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koqeSXJtvvo]

Today is Shigeru Miyamoto’s 55th birthday. If you don’t know who Miyamoto is, then you probably don’t love video games. He’s the enigmatic creator of the Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda franchises (among others). Whether you’re a Nintendo fanboy, detractor, or just fall somewhere in between, you have to admit that Miyamoto is one of the most talented and successful game designers ever. If you’ve ever played a video game, chances are you’ve played one that owes at least something in part to this guy. So happy birthday Shiggy!

I took the time today to look over my web stats for this blog (something I rarely do), and I noticed an alarming statistic regarding my readers. Well, it’s really only alarming in relation to all of the tangential information I throw up here on a weekly basis, but still, “alarming” sounded more exciting.

I noticed that a good chunk of you (about 15%) are still using Internet Explorer for your browser. Presumably you have some logical reason for doing this, but I’ve been unable to come up with any logical reason why anyone would still choose this browser over Firefox. With the recently released version 2, there are even more reasons to switch over.

There are plenty of sites out there that extol the virtues of Firefox, so I’ll leave that to them, but here are a few of my reasons for choosing it over IE:

Open source
Open source software is just better for everyone involved. More eyes on the code make for a much more stable and extensible application.

Tabbed Browsing
Yeah, IE 7 finally has it, but it took how many years for Microsoft to see that users need this feature. A browser without tabs is like a sandwich without miracle whip (unless you don’t like Miracle Whip, in which case you should substitute your favorite condiment)

Standards compliant
If you’ve ever tried to get a web page to look good on every browser for every platform, then you know how badly Microsoft screwed the pooch on this one.

Modern Downloads manager
And by modern, I mean you can do more than just cancel a download. I can just hear Gob Bluth now, c’mon!

Etcetera
Security is leaps and bounds above IE, thousands of free, useful plugins for extending functionality, better pop-up blocking, speed and responsiveness, the list goes on and on.

I’m not just picking on Windows users here either. Most Mac users never make it out of Safari country. Safari is a decent browser and I gave it every chance to win me over, but I eventually dumped it from my home machines in favor of Firefox, and I haven’t looked back since.

Alright, I’m done geeking out now. I promise to get back to more useless information in my next post.

- Branden “Hot Tub” Coker