Realm of the Shadow Redux

Many of you know that I am one of the founders of a gaming community called the United Federation of Players. It has traditionally been a group of online gamers that enjoy First Person Shooters or FPS games. Our game of choice has been Novalogic’s Delta Force 2 (c. 1999) and other Novalogic games that came out in the same genre of entertainment. Unfortunately, due to a number of choices made by Novalogic, the gaming community that supported DF2 has diminished significantly from well over 2000 players at any one time per day (in it’s busiest period) to now around 75 players at a time per day. Some of this is due to the newer generation of FPS games with higher graphics and larger personnel abilities and some of it is the lack of support and juggling of servers that Novalogic has done in the last year or so. Novalogic refuses to market to it’s lower end game platforms and prefers to focus on the newer games that have come out in the last year or so, and who can blame them, after all they have to look at the bottom line (dollar wise that is).

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Tags: Fun, Uncategorized by shadowchaser
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It’s February in Illinois and time to get serious about planning a small garden in our backyard. Our area for this garden is quite small but I believe that with enough planning we can make the most of our space. Our space is about 10′ X 18′ beside the shed in the backyard. It gets around 10 hours of sunlight during the peak summer months. I’m planning on using newsprint for the mulch to help keep the weeds down this year. I’m also hoping to utilize some ideas from the sites listed below such as companion planting to maximize my garden space. I will also be using Google Sketch Up to plan my garden with.

Now to the various help sites:

• Companion Planting – Secrets of Organic Gardening
• The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening and Mel Bartholomew, Originator and Author
• Backyard Gardener, Your Gardening Source with Garden Tips
• The Guerrilla Gardening Homepage
• Frugal Gardening – Simple ways to save money while you garden
• No Dig Gardens are the quickest easiest method to get growing!
• Sara\’s Superb Herbs

Once you have perused the above listed sites please take the time to vote in my poll as to which you found to be most helpful. If you have any other suggestion please feel free to leave a comment and I may incorporate your suggestions into my next post on this subject.

Poll Answers

Tags: Fun, Uncategorized, food by shadowchaser
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Some of you may already know that I’m a part of Spark People which is a site to facilitate people to lose weight and meet other personal goals. As such I’ve found myself trying to change my dietary habits and eat a healthier and more appropriate menu. This site I’ve listed below has many links t hat will help to explain methods of eating that will lead to weight loss but it does not simply stop there. It also tells you more than just the same old droll of calories and fat intake, it takes the time to explain why we eat in the way we do (stress factors, overeating, and other influences as well) so we can better understand and modify our eating habits. It also gives some alternatives and tools to help us to change our bad habits. If you are interested in losing weight I highly recommend both Spark People and the Managing Your Weight page. If you decide to join Spark People then please place me down as your referral as I get points for it. Points don’t really mean anything but it is always nice to get something for things that you do and tends to lend an aspect of “earning” something. Here’s the link to the Managing Your Weight page:

Managing Your Weight

Tags: Family, Uncategorized, food by shadowchaser
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