Sorry it’s been so long since I last have posted. I’ve been super busy with studies however now I have started a new blog over at http://www.Cr.eate.in . This blog is more design focused over this one because it’s what I am now looking to get into.

I am still undecided as to what to do with this blog, I may continue it or sell the domain, etc.

If you have any questions/suggestions please email me or leave a comment. I will be mainly posting at Cr.eate.in now but I’m still the same person!

Cheers,
Matt

Winamp doesn’t notify you of duplicate entries or missing files in a playlist. You only spot it if playing a non-existent entry doesn’t work and if a song plays more than once when you are playing the playlist in shuffle OFF mode.
However, Winamp offers the option to remove duplicate entries and missing files from your playlist, which is lesser known but quite nifty.

From the playlist editor, select “Remove Missing Files from Playlist” and/or “Remove Duplicate Entries”
in the playlist menu. The keyboard shortcut to remove missing files is ALT+DELETE and to remove duplicate entries is SHIFT+DELETE. And you are done! Enjoy a clean no-repeat collection of your favorite songs

The hard part was learning what to do, there are no real great guides around on the net so this is a nice little guide of what I have learnt so far from reading the site and forums.

To Start…

First you install the toolbar add-on which is your ‘control panel’ for the game. From here you deploy mines, crates, light posts and even portals.

Explanation of the toolbar

 (Click picture for larger version!)

You will notice a few things on the toolbar.

•  The first is a “P” this is a mini menu on the toolbar to navigate around.
• The Eye can pause your session so you no longer accumulate points, are at risk of mines or see crates.
• Next is your username. Click this to go to your page on PMOG.
• After that is the experience bar. It shows from what level you are to what level you are going to.
• The next item is your 3 associations. (I will explain more about them later). You have a Primary, Secondary and Tertiary association.
• Next is your light posts. You drop these on sites to create mission links out of.
• The circle looking thing are portals. Drop these on a site so when another PMOG player goes to that site a pop-up comes up showing your portal.
• Next is crates, you can gift items to people using crates and build a nice reputation.
• Here is the dangerous stuff. Mines. Drop these on websites so when someone visits them they get blown up by a mine they lose armor or Datapoints.
• This is your armor, it can protect you from mines. Each piece can sustain 5 hits from mines.
• Next, your datapoints. You accumulate these from visiting other websites. You get 2 per each website you visit.
• Lastly, an IM service. You can send a message to another PMOG player however it costs 1 DP.

Associations

Every player is assigned to an association after a while of playing the game. You get 3. A primary, secondary or tertiary. Once you reach level 5 you can only buy things that apply to each of those associations from the shop so they become important at a higher level. There are currently 7 associations with 2 more coming.

• Shoat - The ‘noob’ class which you are assigned to when you sign up. Use your tools to get into a more specific association
• Benefactors - These guys are the kind crate droppers who leave crates all over the web filled with goodies for other PMOGions to find.
• Seers - These leave portals all over the web to transport you to other wonderful sites.
• Destroyers - The mean ones, these guys leave mines everywhere, your only source of protection currently is armor!
• Pathmakers - These guys drop light posts around the web and create missions for others to do.
• Vigilantes - The arch enemy of destroyers. These guys attach St Nicks to destroyers so when they try deploy a mine it fails.
• Bedouins - These guys specialize in armor. They can take some blasts and still survive!
  ————
• Riverters - This is a still in devlopment class. These guys create walls on websites so they cannot be mine’d by others.
• Granadiers - The exact opposite of Riverters, these guys blow holes through the walls of sites.

Badges

There are a range of badges that you can qualify for from playing the game and visiting certain websites. Attaining badges are another sub objective of PMOG and add that little bit more of fun to it. Here is a list of all the badges and how to get them.

Final Note

This is a quick final note because no where says this! You don’t have to save the points you earn to level up, you can spend them and your point requirement to level does not go up!

So this is my little guide! If anyone thinks I have left out something (I probably have ) please leave a comment or email me so I can add it. If there are any typos or wrong information again, please email me or leave a comment. Also if you would like an invite to PMOG email or comment here!

Thanks, hoped this helped!
Matt.

A video blog, sometimes shortened to vlog, is a blog whose medium is video.

This is purely my personal observation, and based on it, my personal opinion that not many bloggers are using videos on their blogs in the right way they should.

From a few recent blog reviews that I did at Inspirit, (like the blog reviews for Game Posts dot Net and for Poker Blog) I have seen that many bloggers tend to add videos to their blog posts without adding a textual description about them. I have stressed this point (particularly in the above 2 blog-reviews that I linked to) that its a healthy practice to add a small textual description about the contents of the video, in the blog post. This is just so useful for people who might be interested in your stuff but reside in areas that have broadband connections that are just too far from anything that can be called fast!

So, what I suggest you should do when adding a video to your blog post is:

• Introduce the subject of your video in a sentence or two.
• Embed the video.
• Add some details about what tools did you use in the video.
• Brief, what are you trying to convey in the video and why should the visitors watch it.

Also, adding a textual description gives you a chance to target specific keywords related to your blog post that might get you better ranking in Search Engines and thus increase your traffic and maybe subscribers also, if your content is worth it.

What is your view-point on this issue? Take a minute to drop a comment and share your opinions and ideas.

While money is a considerable matter with the choice of software for domestic or commercial use, in my humble opinion, proprietary software are cutting their own roots with idiot (:humble:) stuff they are doing.

I bought a new laptop with Microsoft Vista Home Premium pre-installed last year. With a good enough configuration of 2 GB DDR2 667MHz RAM, 120 GB hard disk supported on an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.67 GHz processor, Windows Vista does no better than the Windows 98 installed on my old 128MB, 20GB HDD Pentium III desktop, in terms of speed & utility. I never bought Microsoft Vista for the eye-candy over Windows XP that I was using. I am quite comfortable with navigating through plain menus rather than those bubbly buttons that do nothing better. You re-arrange some options, add some animations and change the interface so that it eats up your hardware. Do you call that an update? I’d use some avatar of Linux with free Open Source Utilities instead of buying such lame updates from Microsoft!

Okay! so you believe me, Microsoft is Silly… But do you know Microsoft Word 2007 is still sillier!

I upgraded my Office XP to Microsoft Office in the same (:stupid:) rush under which I upgraded to Microsoft Vista.

And this is the stupidest Word Processor I have ever used in my life. Try copying some text from a website and then open Microsoft Word 2007 to paste it (CTRL +V). You won’t be able to paste in anything from anywhere unless you have Word 2007 already open! A feature that is even available with Notepad!

Moving to Open Office tonight! Microsoft products would have been so much better if they were Open Source too!

Thanks,
Abhinav Sood

[Click the Image to Enlarge]

Please DIGG this post so it gets noticed by the Digg developers and lets see if we can get a change happening for the better. Your support in this issue will be greatly appreciated by all of the Digg community.

Thanks,
Matt.

I wish Abhinav the best in all his postings with us on AnotherPointlessBlog.com and I’m sure you guys will love him, he has a vast knowledge of the tech world and is sure to write fantastic articles!

Welcome Abhinav!

Cheers,
Matt.

1.  Vent your thoughts outside your niche
2. Get opinions and feedback
3. Get noticed
4. Drive traffic and readers to your own blog
5. Social networking
6. Improve yourself
7. It is fun

At this time I would only require around 1 post a week which isn’t much to enjoy those 7 benefits. I would set you up an account, from there you can type up your article and leave it there for me to proofread. You will get full credit for your work! So, if you’re interested please email me and we can work something out. Its also great if you just want to do 1 post out of the blue, I’m open to that too! Thanks for this and good luck to all applicants

Cheers,
Matt.

P.S The blog is not going into co-ownership. I’m still going to be the main blogger.

101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle - This is a great general post of 101 great ways or styles of posting to get you going. Every time I’m stuck for Ideas this is my first destination which helps me branch out onto other ideas.

23 Great Ideas for Blog Posts - This is another list of ‘kick start’ ideas to help you get started. Once the ball gets rolling it is easy to post away, sometimes we just need that little push. This is another one of the first destinations to get the right idea.

Social Networking - If you are stuck for ideas, go stumbling until you find a site which has something that appeals to you, something that makes you want to research further into and eventually something you would like to blog about. You can also try other popular social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, Sphinn and even Technorati.

Blog about the popular -  This is largely the same as the news source however, this is online news. Online news is a whole new world and wealth of information compared to “real world” news. All those 16 sites have what is currently popular in the online world and people love to read about controversial and new information.

Battling Bloggers Block - Read thus HUGE post on how to battle bloggers block and see what  Darren Rowse does to accomplish this over at ProBlogger.net. With over 25 in depth tips on how to become a better writer, this is well worth the sit down and read!

Now that you’ve got all your ideas and tips formulating in your mind WRITE THEM DOWN! I personally have a draft post where I just stick my ideas in and go rummaging in there for a blog post. The hardest part about blogging is finding ideas. If you liked this post please don’t forget to subscribe and come back some time. Thanks for taking the time to read my little list.

Thanks,
Matt.

The Start

The first thing we need to do is to choose a good blogging platform. I use WordPress and this is generally the preferred choice among bloggers. Although I have never used Blogger myself I have heard good things about it and it is definately worth a look as well. Both offer free hosting on their servers however, if you grab your own space on a server then WordPress is the way to go. If you would like some free space for your blog I co-own Koncept Webmasters which offers free hosting for those willing!

Note: For the duration of this guide I am going to focus on WordPress because that is the blogging platform I have come to know and love.

Customization

Once you have WordPress setup (if you are installing it on your own server, just download the files from here and follow the instructions included) you can get into the fun part of making your blog great. The first thing to do would be find a suitable theme or style for your genre of blog. You can simply Google WordPress Themes in or go to the WordPress site and find hundreds.

The next step: Plugins, same as before, you can Google in WordPress Plugins or go to the WordPress site to find hundreds of plugins. Plugins require a little more time and effort than themes to find. There are many different plugins and you want as many as you can to help you without overloading or cluttering your blog. I use an Adsense Plugin, All in one SEO Pack, CommentLuv, FeedBurner, Gregarious, Subscribe Remind, WassUp and finally WP Lightbox 2. All these plugins help me run my blog effectively and are very general plugins that almost any blog can use. If you click the individual links you can go to the creators homepage and read about them.

Publicise

Now we have our blog looking smashing with fantastic plugins, the next step is to publicise, and do it well. Sign up to services like Feedburner, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Digg, Blog Engage, Digital Point, Blog Catalog, etc. You can also work on getting some subtle yet effective advertisement regimes. Adsense, EntreCard and ADSDAQ are the companies I use.

Content

…and you’re done! Just keep writing quality content and eventually visitors will come. I know for me it’s being a long and daunting process, but I’m not giving up and my traffic is dramatically increasing every month. I’m no blogging expert, but this is working pretty well for me. The most important rule of blogging is to ALWAYS write quality content and don’t feel pressured to write so often as to produce terrible posts. Good luck all you bloggers out there! As always please comment and subscribe

Thanks,
Matt.

 P.S I’m Australian so Publicise is spelt with an ’s’