January 11, 2010 | Random Update Posty Time!

… the above is possibly the best title I’ve ever devised. Add that somewhere to your ledger, if you’d like.

1. Battlestar Weékeéheé

The above is a nod to my friend, Shannon/Taser/Doubletap, who kept on referring me by this name whenever she was up in Vancouver.

So, the website is finally back online. Getting all the logistics into place for moving the server took time out of Shane’s and my life, not to mention all the technical obstacles that popped up during our arduous server move. As you can imagine, this endeavor was the largest (and longest) move that we’ve ever made. It isn’t for the feint of heart, and Shane (who did most of the IT heavy lifting), is a trooper. If it weren’t for him, I would have swan-dived off the roof.

All the while we were down, people came forward and offered their assistance. (One of them, in particular, I would like to make a special mention of as they are responsible for our new home when MediaTemple didn’t pan out, but I’m leaving that for its own blog in a more official venue.) Some of them freaked out, which is something that concerns me a bit, but I took the time to assure them that it was a server move that took longer than expected.

I continue to be humbled by the appreciation that people have for the website, and the server move not only cuts costs, but also results in a more powerful server that can handle all the requests that people make on it.

Did you know that the Wiki has over 2,000 unique visitors an hour? That’s with the show no longer being on the air, by the way, which explains why my jaw sort of hits the ground a bit.

During our peak, we had well over 300,000-400,000 unique visitors a month, if not more. The site is tremendously popular and I am honored to have been the guy who began something that’s attracted talent from across the world. At the risk of gushing, it’s really something when a website gets you the opportunity to help create history, particularly with the Battlestar auctions that happened in 2009.

And, as you might be aware, the Wiki has always been the slowest every time an episode airs. Sometimes, the servers crashed. And that sucked, for everyone. Now that we have a powerful server at an economical price, I think we’ve achieved balance there where it won’t crash and burn everytime the Wiki addicts want to look up something.

It will be interesting for me to see what Caprica holds, particularly for the website. I hope the show is of great quality and is around for a while.

Exciting.

2. Mass Effect

On the gaming front, I’m working my way through the first Mass Effect, and I am really digging the game so far. For some reason, I find myself more attracted to Mass Effect than I am to something like Dragon Age: Origins. I seem to have a better handle on leveling my characters, modifying my equipment, affecting the story the way I think it should be played out, and I’m just having fun with it. Given some of what I’ve seen in the game so far, I suspect that there are some Mass Effect programmers and writers who are fans of BSG and Farscape.

With that, I’m really looking forward to Mass Effect 2 based on my experience in this game.

While I know that these RPGs are from the same company and everything has the same basic concept—bionic powers being indistinguishable to magic spells and the same basic general character classes, for instance—I’ve found that I respond better to the science fiction setting. Perhaps because I’ve always found science fiction far more interesting (and with more possibilities) than a realm run by wizards, ogres, dragons and the like. This isn’t a knock against fantasy, since fantasy and science fiction have always been intertwined, but science fiction has its advantages. Particularly if it is well executed. I would go as so far to say that science fiction brings fantasy into the realm of the galactic universe, as opposed to the mystical one. Or one is an extension of the other.

Needless to say, I’m of a few different minds on this…

3. Moving Blah-Log

Keeping up with my blogging has been a bit of a chore for me. However, persistence is key, and I’m chugging along. Some of the blah-logs are probably boring, but it’s a cross-section of what limited interests I do have in this pitiful little life of mine.

One of the things I’ll be doing is moving my blah-log to the MT server that my company (FrakMedia!) has, since I’m consolidating things. Right now, I have three different hosts for various sites, and I want to reduce that number. Same with domain names. I have some domains through 1&1, one through resell.biz (that’s JoeBeaudoin.net) and GoDaddy. Goal is to get all the domains over to GoDaddy within the next few weeks. JoeBeaudoin.net is being migrated now and should be transferred by the 12th, and once that is done, I can implement all the necessary DNS changes and move this blah-log over.

Yes, that was fun to know wasn’t it?

Until tomorrow, good night and good luck.