website • QSF5

19 Feb 2017

Checkpoint: What Is This Blog Edition

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

This website (or blog if you so inclined) is reaching its tenth year. It started as a place that covered video games and technology but slowly evolved into my own space where I’m analyzing my own life and divulging more and more of my personal life. The last couple of months, this site became more of a space for me to vent than a place to share thoughts on my hobbies. I’ve considered making these types of posts private but I haven’t expressed anything compromising and don’t mind sharing. I may change my mind later on but they will remain public for now.

I was going to check in with the latest revelations in my life but there’s not much to share. I just got dumped again (twice in February now) but there’s not much to learn from that. I have a long list of women who I dumped or dumped me on my contact list and I’m not sure what to do with it all.

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I’m making good headway with Yakuza 0. I haven’t progressed the story for the past week but I’ve checked out plenty of side content. Plenty of weird and wonderful side content.

9 Oct 2016

Checkpoint: A Little Website Update Q3 2016

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

You may have noticed but if you didn’t, I’d like to highlight the fact that this website is now encrypted via Let’s Encrypt‘s free SSL. Through SiteGround, it was easy as pie to enable SSL. If all goes well with this site in the next week or so, I’m considering enabling it for GameDealsCanada.

The only thing keeping me from enabling Let’s Encrypt right now is the relatively shaky ground GameDealsCanada is operating on. Wordfence, Cloudflare and other issues make administrating that site an annoyance. I’m receiving a lot of 500 errors when trying to access certain areas of the WordPress admin page. There has to be a way to perform a health check on WordPress sites right?

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Dragon Quest VII is comfort food in game form and Overwatch is just a ritual at this point. There’s no letting up on the latter and with the impending Halloween seasonal event, I can see myself and the GAF folks that I play with pour in more time.

3 Jan 2016

Checkpoint: New Host 2016 Edition

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

After 7+ years of running this website, I finally decided to take the hosting responsibilities in my own hands. I moved over to SiteGround (that’s an affiliate). Why SiteGround? I saw a few recommendations over in a Reddit thread and they were running a sale. I tried to look for some professional reviews but that was a fruitless exercise. Every website I ran into was either incomplete or woefully compromised with affiliate links.

I was with HostGator and BlueHost before that so I wanted to find something different. SiteGround looked like they had their shop in order. I was swayed by some of their features like the ability to instantly create a staging site. I migrated this site by myself and initiated a domain transfer. The site transfer highlighted my need for more upload speed but went well. The domain transfer took a bit longer than I wanted but it was within the estimated time. Both were relatively painless.

I’ve used SiteGround’s live chat at least four times and all four times I was disconnected prematurely. I decided to use their ticketing system instead which was surprisingly responsive. I received answers to my inquiries within 30 minutes.

As for GameDealsCanada.com? I took SiteGround’s offer for a free site transfer which was completed within the day. I’ve initiated the domain transfer as well which I hope will be completed by this coming Thursday.

So far so good with SiteGround. Let’s hope the next two years will be equally as smooth.

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I’m still chipping away at Xenoblade Chronicles 3D. I’m not enjoying it very much but I see the end of this long journey and I intend to finish it.

I finished Life is Strange and came away pleasantly surprised by the game. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of adventure titles.

31 Aug 2014

Checkpoint: New AnandTech Edition

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

It’s the end of an era.

With Anand Lai Shimpi retiring from tech publishing and leaving the website he built nearly 18 years ago, I thought it would be fitting to reflect and show my appreciation for the tech site.

Years ago when I was learning to build my own PCs, sites like AnandTech were common. Tech sites analyzing and critiquing computer hardware were a dime a dozen. AnandTech, The Tech Report, Tom’s Hardware and HardOCP were amongst the most popular. But even back then, AnandTech and The Tech Report were always vying for top spot in my books.

As time wore on and computers became more and more of a commodity, tech sites began to fade away. The appetite for higher end computer hardware became increasingly niche and you had to stand out in order to survive. AnandTech doubled down on their analysis and deep dives into technology and I appreciated it more and more.

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