A Role Playing Games Blog
Blogging
Let the music play!
0Today I replaced the Yahoo Music Player by a WordPress plugin called WordPress Audio Player that uses a small flash player to play mp3 files embedded in my post. And while I was looking for some free music to showcase the plugin, I stumbled upon Jamondo.com, a site which host music licensed under Creative Commons or similar licenses.
And this site has proven as a great source of music you can freely use in your blog, podcast etc. as long as you abide to the rules set in the license.
The music I embedded into this post is by Olivier Renouard, a french artist, that has created some beautiful fantasy themed songs. The music may not be perfectly suited for use while roleplaying but his music can be very inspirational while you are blogging or planning your campaigns.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The song above is part of his album “Magical and Fantasy Musics“, that you can download for free from Jamondo.com.
Trouble with Internet Explorer
4Some people have told me that my blog produces error messages in Internet Explorer and sometimes they can not even access the site. This is probably related to one of the plugins I use since the error appears directly after the first few sidebar widgets are rendered. I am currently trying to find out what causes the problem and I would appreciate any help in that endeavour. If you have had the same problem with a WordPress blog before, please let me know.
In the meantime, if you use IE, why not check out one of those other browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome? They are all free, more secure and faster than Internet Explorer and they are much more standard compliant. I currently use Google’s Chrome browser.
Update: It seems only the outdated versions of Internet Explorer is affected, Internet Explorer 7 works fine.
Fun with Wordle
1While I was sitting in my office, drinking coffee and waiting for inspiration, I played around with Wordle. Wordle is a free service that creates word clouds out of RSS feeds, texts or del.icio.us tags. The following image is a word cloud I created from my blog’s RSS feed. Enjoy!
Please note: Images of Wordles are licensed 
.
Listen to this blog!
1
Following into the footsteps of Dice Monkey I added an Odiogo “Listen Button” to my blog’s sidebar. Odiogo is a service that provides an audio version of your regular feed. The text-to-speech technology used is quite decent, so it turns your RSS feed almost into a podcast. You can also subscribe to this podcast using iTunes, so your readers can listen to your posts while communiting to work for example.
The WordPress plugin that is used by Odiogo also adds a “listen now” button to each post, which allows your users to listen to your posts while reading the site.
For more details on how to set up Odiogo for your blog, check out Odiogo.com.
Technorati = FAIL
5January 27, 2009
Recently I added a few new features to my site. One addition was a Technorati widget that should show my blogs authority, sites that link to me, Technorati tags and more. Alas this widget had several problem. At first it fails to load regularly and even when it loads my authority stays zero, although it says four on the Technorati site. I then found a much simpler widget that should only show a nice graphic of the current blog authority. This also doesn’t work and only shows a simple HTML link to my profile page. *sigh*
When I check out my Technorati profile page I notice that although the information about sites that linked to my blog is fairly up to date, the most recent entry in the “Latest posts” category is 109 days old!!! From my current standpoint Technorati seems to be severely broken. I have tried to “ping” manually but this hasn’t helped much.
So, what’s wrong with Technorati? Have other bloggers noticed the same faulty behaviour or is it just me? Any help or advice would be appreciated! And while you are at it, check out blog.beetlebum.de. It’s a german cartoon blog created by the artist who created the cool artwork above.
Canned Meat
10November 13, 2008
I am currently trying to fend of an unending onslaught of spam comments on this blog. When I woke up this morning there were 17 new comments to be approved and they were all spam. And over the last few hours I had to delete a few more spam comments. Since comments are vital to any blog (at least in my humble opinion), I will not restrict anyone from posting his thoughts, BUT there is always the possibility that I delete someone’s post by mistake. If you notice something like that, please let me know via the contact form on the About page.
By the way, what do my fellow bloggers do to ward off spam? And have you too noticed an increase in spam comments too?
UPDATE: I added “Simple Trackback Validation” and “Peter’s Anti-Spam” to the blog and deactivated Akismet again. Thanks to ChattyDM for the recommendations.
Feed the Reader
6October 8, 2008
No, this post is not about RPGs, but about blogs, the RPG Bloggers Network and feed readers. I’ve noticed that the vast majority of my readers are referred to my blog by our network’s main site. And only a few have subscribed to my RSS feed. So, why should you subscribe?
- You won’t miss any articles
When you check out rpgbloggers.com irregularly you probably miss most of the articles. When I go to our network’s main site I usually skim through the topmost articles and check out if there are any new posts in the “featured” category. If it’s a very active day in the network a lot of interesting posts have probably been pushed to the second page already. - But I’ve already subscribed to the RPG Bloggers Network Feed! Why should I add yours too?
Reading the rpgbloggers.com feed is like drinking from the firehose. When you subscribe to my feed and the feeds of other RPG blogs you like, you not only get the full posts in most cases, you also get to read posts that are NOT related to roleplaying games. Some of the network’s members write about a lot of other interesting things that you’ll miss, when you just read the rpgbloggers.com feed. - But don’t I need an expensive feed reader software?
No, of course not. Although they are quite a few commercial feed readers there are a lot of free alternatives. There are several web-based feed-readers available. You can for example use Google Reader or Bloglines. Or you can add a feed to you personalized Google page or to your NetVibes page. If you prefer a desktop application, use FeedReader3 or search on your favorite search engine for “Free feedreader”. Or, if you use the Opera browser, you can use the excellent built-in feed reader!
I hope I have you convinced by now. So, what’s the next step? Subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed using the method of your choice! If you need the feed’s adress it’s
http://www.stargazersworld.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2
If you have any more questions to this topic, feel free to ask! Post your thoughts in the comment section below!
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