Hey Gnome, why are you hidden down there?

BigBearButt has given me the shaft and put out a blogger challenge.

Ohh, where he's looking for a juicy short story?

Yeah, slender hope I can write anything either considered short or even a story.

Gnome, you are the star of this blog!

You need to carry the torch for all of us us in this challenge!

Pffft, just because I'm vain, doesn't mean I can meet every challenge.

True, best to admit defeat now and pretend we never had this chat.

Screw him.. I wonder if he has admitted defeat yet?

Ohh.. BBB admit defeat?

Yeah, he's trying a Fire Mage...

and that Pyroblast kick is a #$%^&!

Let’s just see who admits defeat…

Damn him.. link to this post, no.. link to that post… bahhh

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/03/21/defeat-a-short-story/

I don’t know when the last time was I looked at my blogroll.

To be honest, I don’t know when the 1st time was that I did a cleanse, maybe today was the 1st time, whatever the case it was a little soul destroying.

My mother was 87 when she died. There were times when the subject of her friends would come up, often in relation to her moving somewhere more manageable, maybe closer to her friends.

It was times like these that her eyes would gloss over, the tears welling in her eyes.

Her friends of course were gone.  The world moves on, time passes, lives end and of course, relative to this post, blogs stop.

Often they just stop.

One of the hard parts about cleansing the blogroll was checking each blog.

There were a couple of bloggers that appeared to have just stopped on their “best post”. They are posts I remember well, even years down the track, posts I a confident received links from WoWInsider, they were just that good.

But… that was it… stopped… gone… but yet, still on my blog roll.

Bring Out Your Dead.

I wouldn’t have looked at the blogroll for a while to come if it wasn’t for Daraiste asking me the other day.

What will happen when you stop blogging… will your posts still be there?

I wasn’t sure what she meant and when I pressed her she responded with...

I have been hunting through your blogroll, looking for good things & Priestly things to read… but many of the links are dead ends.

It turns out that WordPress looks after their dead well, well at least the WordPress hosted blogs.

I’m guessing that Google culls their inactive Blogger blogs occasionally.

Many self-hosted blogs either just cease to exist, or get taken over by completely WoW-non-related sites.. most of which look nefarious of purpose, some are in some Asian font, but I suspect are also not quite right.

For the record.. when I decide not to continue to pay for gnomeaggedon.net, gnomeaggedon.wordpress.com will remain.

A fitting end.

So, I needed to cleanse my blogroll, but I needed to do it in such a way as to respect those, so many of those, that blogged before me and along side of me.

Ironically, Daraiste is a funeral director in real life, so that kind of inspired me.

Rather than removing all trace of those blogs and bloggers, I created new categories in my blog roll.. a kind of blog cemetery with categories of Gone but not forgotten.

So the job is done, I have buried my friends but ensured the have headstones to be remembered by.

Lest We Forget.

New Growth

Australia has a lot of bushfires, devastating bushfires.

When the ashes have cooled, there is no way to imagine that it will ever recover.

Some short time later though, new growth appears amongst the charred ruins of what was.  What grows is similar, yet different to what was.

It is the same in the blogging world, there is new growth amongst the ruins of the old. Some old blogs remain, surrounded by smaller blogs reaching for the sky.

Each provides support for the other, the older blogs providing strong foundations and protection for the fledgling blogs, the newer blogs inspiring the older ones giving them the strength to remain strong and tall.

It appears I now have room on my blogroll for those of you not yet there.  The ground is clearer, and visibility will be greater.

If you wish to have your WoW blog on my blogroll, then drop me a line and I will add it.

The Regrowth

The other things I have done is update and modify my BattleGnome page.  I had been haphazzardly throwing links to my Battleground & PvP oriented posts up there.  I have now categorized them, so hopefully those of you considering entering the BGs find it easier to find my thoughts on my experiences.

I have also consolidated my mental health posts and included some others from the past week. Mental health is a topic very dear to my heart and mind, so it seems appropriate that people find these sorts of resources more easily on my new HealthyGnome page.

On that note, I think it’s time for me to go dig a few more graves… I think this time I will make them Horde graves and scatter them around the battlegrounds.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/03/11/bring-out-your-dead/

Klep (and others for that matter) questioned my tone the other day and my reply was that I wrote in my voice. I knew what I meant but was grasping for ways to illustrate my point.

That was until Monday while listening to a 2 hour long Joe Rogan Experience podcast when the subject of Bill Hicks came up.

Taking a dump

For those of you unaware of Bill Hicks he was a comedian from the U.S. bible belt with decidedly un-bible belt material.

One of the things they touched on in the podcast was Bill’s ability to clear the audience from a room.

Where some comedians would be pleasantly funny enough to maintain a room, others mediocre, but not so bad as to encourage you to leave your seat (pfft, it will be over soon), Bill cleared rooms.

You either loved or hated Bill’s style, his subject matter and his perspective.

The example in the podcast was him performing to a room of about 200 people. About 1/2 way through a 2 minute simulation of him “taking a dump” (there is a short version off the joke in the YouTube clip above), the majority of people got up and left the room.

What was left was about 50 audience and a handful of comedians laughing their heads off.

He was left with his true audience, his true believers. People to whom he didn’t have to make apologies, people that loved what he did.

Really there is only one comparison you can make between Bill and I (except that you may find either or both of us offensive).

He spoke with his voice.

I write with my voice.

I’m not alone in this, hopefully the majority of us that blog are writing in our voice, not a voice that panders to our perceived notion of what our readers want to read.

You start pandering to what you think your audience wants and you are left with nothing but Australian politics.

Boobs

Rivs is a writer that I have at times been in heated disagreement with. Many people find the pictures of semi-naked women that begin most of his posts offensive. I on the other hand squirm knowing he’s catching my attention with shemales (not there’s anything wrong with that). To be honest, I prefer that to scary real life shots of him…

However you feel about Rivs, he writes, he posts, in his voice. At the end of the day, while we may disagree on somethings, many things, I love his blogging voice and so I read him, skipping the odd post or statement because we have had those discussions in the past and agreed to disagree.

There have been many others that write in what I think of as a strong and occasionally unpalatable voice, Megan and Jong come immediately to mind, but there are many others.

I loved them too… I dearly loved them and will miss them till I am rolling in my grave burning from the fires of hell.

It’s not all about content

As a general rule I don’t care so much about the topic of a post. Guides may have me flick past, raid updates usually leave me dead bored, achievement post, even blog milestone posts often leave me hitting delete in my feed reader, even from my very favorite of bloggers.

What counts to me is the voice with which the post is written. I know I have often received comments along the lines of…

I don’t have a Mage, I hate the alliance (particularly Gnomes), I don’t PvP, in fact we have absolutely nothing in common. I read you because I like the way you write.

It’s the same for me when reading other’s posts.

• Too me wishy-washy is worse than badly written.
• Passive will make the most exciting moment for you, the most dull for me.

Writing from my black heart

Navimie is trying to tell me I write from my brain, but I know that while my brain may guide my fingers to type, it’s my heart that forms the words to be written.

I have spoken recently of LinkLove and LinkHate. Not of LinkLike and LinkDisagree. This is because I am passionate, my voice is passionate. It’s full of love and joy for all that is or could be good in the world, or it is filled with what pisses me off.

I’m not passive-aggressive in my writing. If I have a beef with you, you will know, here on the front page of my blog, not in the back rooms of twitter. But then it’s the same if I love you.

So when I speak of hate, I don’t mean hatred, I mean a strong passion of and maybe for disagreement. I mean I don’t take a maybe-yeah or a maybe-no position. If I say yes, I mean yes. If I say no, well you know how that turns out.

I know I clear feed readers. I know that there are people out there that dislike my voice, dislike my posts.

I also know that there are some, maybe only a few when all is said and done, that come to hear my voice whether it’s about my soggy cornflakes or destroying the Horde (my enemies, replace with yours).

Choice

In this world of choices, where for many the decision to get out of bed in the morning is the most daunting choice around, we all, you and I, have the choice whether to read or not read what another writes.

• You may choose to read me, or not.
• You may choose to agree with me, or not.
• You may choose to comment, to blog post a retort, or neither of the above.
• You may choose to love or to hate me, for one post or for all.

They are your choices, just as it is my choice to post in my voice.

I love Klep, we have been friends for a long time. Whether I have truly offended him or not. Whether he now hates me, or not. Whether he continues to read me, or not, we will both be true to ourselves for we have spoken and made choices.

The same is true for every reader that ever has or ever will pass by the Home of the Gnome.

Remember folks, my door is always open, either going or coming, it’s your choice (even the choice of slamming it on the way out).

Bill Hicks.

If you want to know more about Bill Hicks then a good place to start is The American: the Bill Hicks Story.

I cried through this more than I did through E.T. despite recent suggestions that E.T. and I might be involved in some kind of conspiracy, which may or may not involve some very reasonably priced Real Estate.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/03/06/my-voice-your-voice-bill-hicks/

or alternatively…

It’s my party and I’ll write if I want to…

So apparently these days it’s inappropriate to celebrate achievements…

No Battlemaster!

Don’t celebrate Battlemaster because a lot of people don’t PvP, which is unfair on them and might discourage them from entering the Battlegrounds. Hell, even those that do love Battlegrounds might get discouraged when you provide them with a role model and encouragement.

No Safety Dance!

Don’t celebrate raiding achievements, because some people don’t raid, and many of those that do raid, can’t dance. We don’t want them being discouraged from participating in something they aren’t trying to achieve.

No Fishing!

No fishing, because we all know everyone hates fishing. Let’s just stop there.

No Level 10!

No leveling, because some people don’t want to level, they want to roleplay. Celebrating leveling achievements puts undue pressure on people that never intended to reach max level.  No, they wanted to roleplay and now I have spoilt it by forcing them to reach for max level, raid, BG and whatever else it is that people do when they reach max level. (What do people do when they reach max level?)

No naked Gnomes!

No naked Gnomes because:

1. No one will ever be as well proportioned (with extra serves in some places), nor smexy, nor downright charming as Gnomeaggedon
2. You have to be a Mage to be able to service all your adoring fans

I mean that excludes an entire faction.. not to mention the inferior Alliance races… nope..if you aren’t rolling a Gnome Mage, go play SWTOR.

Fuck Charity and Awareness!

No writing awareness posts especially if they are linked to charities.  That would like raise awareness, get people thinking, save lives, raise money, save lives… and for god sake, DON’T GET LINKED BY WOWINSIDER, because that would raise awareness with thousands of people, and god knows we want all those people with mental illness, and their loved ones to go die in a fire!

I loved you well Megan... better than Jong!

And for crying out loud… NO LINKING TO FRIENDS who share a common spirit for your blog topics.  We all know that is just gratuitous linking just so you can watch your hit counter rise by one or two a day, for a couple of days.

Don’t do it… you might make life long friends around the world.

Friends that leave you heartbroken for days when they give up blogging.

Friends that inspire you to write one more post, write one better post, hell they might inspire you to write ONE POST.

I get spam!

I get lots of spam… 127,317 spam at this moment in time.

That’s without including phrases like: Gnome Sex, jelly wrestling lawn mowers, Viagra makes my Gnome sing, teenage troll baiters, Big Sexy Bear Butts, I keep tropical fish in my underpants, Azeroth sex tours.

Now, if I was to include those kind of phrases in my posts, then my stats would truly go through the roof… Ohh look at that…

Big numbers mean jack shit!

I mean, it isn’t like I write posts that people want to read… not like I would take the time to research and write a series of posts that people wanted to read, not like they still want to read them even though they are 3 years out of date.

If I did, then I guess that would be my fault for not writing nice posts, great pieces of literary work.

Hell, I got 51% as my final high school english result.

You know what I did.. I went out and celebrated like I had no intention of living until 18.  I got 51%… even my teacher was dancing for joy… because let’s face it, we thought I’d be lucky to get out of high school in 3 final years, let alone get into university after one attempt.

Who the hell would have thought I would have gone on to write over 800 blog posts.

Who would have thought I would write something, anything, that some one, let alone more than one, would enjoy reading.

I started writing because I was better than Larisa

Yeah.. me, better than a blogger writing in a second language.

Apparently by day 3, when I started post number 3 with this…

Yep, it’s only day 3 and it looks like I am scratching for things to write about.

I had already drawn Larisa‘s attention.

That was the beginning of a beautiful long lasting friendship – but I didn’t know it then.

Of course she is a significantly better writer than me.

She was receiving significantly more subscriptions and page views that me (with the exception of the odd spike maybe).

You think I was envious?

Hell yeah!

But I never let that stand in the way of our friendship.

I never let that get me down, on the contrary, it encouraged me to write and write and write.

I engaged in my beloved WoW blogging community. I sang with them, I sparred with them, I wrote with them, I invaded their personal blog spaces, I promoted their blogs, especially the new ones… Larisa and I were constantly on the lookout for new bloggers to bring them to the communities attention.

Yes occasionally I heard about the gold bloggers and their 35 million subscriptions and their 2 million view per day… did I give a shit?

Why the hell would I?

I was, and am, here to write for myself 1st, and my community 2nd.

Engaged

7,104 comments… close to 1/2 of those are mine.

I strive to respond to every comment that gets written on my blog, because  those people who read my bullshit are very important to me.

I don’t always succeed, I certainly don’t keep up with other bloggers these days… but then that is why it is important to be engaged with the community.  If I see a pingback to someone I do read, if I see a link(love) from someone I read, I will follow that link. I hunger for good writing, so if someone I love and respect as a writer identifies someone they love and respect, I am going to have a look.

The lover of my lover is my friend!

I am only back writing because two people continued to engage with me long after I had subconsciously given up writing.  One of those is my most loyal of readers, Prelimar, the other is Big Bear Butt. Both contacted me to ensure I was OK.

They are not the acts of people that read a page hit hunter. They are the acts of people that know I care about what gets written and they would be satisfied with the smell of an oily rag.

What the hell did I write?

I wrote a bunch of Warlock (Pfft) twinking guides.  They weren’t to seek page hits, they were to consolidate my planning and execution of my goal.  I considered that if it took me months to collate the information, then some one might appreciate it all in one place.

I wrote a stupid April Fools post.. even the title is stupid… 9,960 reads worth of stupid… should I feel bad?

I wrote a stupid post about stupid Drop Bears and Gnomes… my fault that there are people that want to know what the worlds most dangerous creature is (and I stand by the fact that it’s a Gnome Mage)?

OMG, I have 4,567 reads of my blog roll… How freaking shameless of me to half arsedly maintain a list of the bloggers of the community that would have benefited by getting read when they possibly wouldn’t have for any other reason!

Ohh yeah.. and 2,566 people that cared that I cared about Warlock souls… even though all they wanted to do was kill Mages.

But seriously, the worst crime committed of all… I caught the eye of WoW Insider, on several occasions, the last of which was my completely shameless, completely self serving, action of suggesting WoWInsider might like to follow up on the (last count – and I know there are more that are still joining in) 263 Blogs that were tagged.

The other mistake I made

The other mistake I made was making friends and engaging in the community.

No I don’t know why Rohan has linked to me since basically day one.  I don’t know why I continue to get hits from Blessing of Kings, but I do.

I know why I get referrals from the others though, because I engage in the community.

Is it a mark of my success as a blogger

FUCK YEAH!

Does it invalidate any other bloggers that aren’t getting the referrals?

OF COURSE NOT!

But don’t come bitching to me about how your 99% university english is getting ignored if you don’t engage in the community… what do you want us to do.. write your posts for you and the *shock horror* do the forbidden link to you?

Do referrals really matter?

Yes and No.

Over 4 years, BBB has sent 2,582 readers to me.. of which probably 2,000 are himself so he can hit *refresh* *refresh* *refresh*.

2,582 readers… if you ever wanted evidence that it doesn’t matter how big a blogger it is that refers to you, then there it is. 2,582 pages views… after that, I stood or fell on my own.

I’m still standing baby!

What matters, if you really want your posts to be read (and let’s get honest now… the only reason you would cry about someone else’s page hits, is because that is what you crave, not writing quality posts, not looking after your 15 readers.. you want the page hits) is two things.

1. Write good shit (or at least shit that people want to consume)
2. Get noticed.. and yes, that may involve making friends with people… god forbid you make friends with people and get page views!

Pull your finger out!

Seriously.. what the hell is your problem?

OMG some people will be intimidated and stop writing because they see you have people that WANT to read you

You think I started the Sixth Meme so I could get Page hits?

You think I asked WoW Insider to write an article about all the bloggers in the community participating the meme SO I COULD GET PAGE HITS?

You think I offered up the opportunity to write hate posts to me, about me, SO I COULD GET PAGE HITS?

SO I COULD GET READERS?

Seriously… go have a good look at yourself in the mirror and decide if you are the solution, or the problem.

Good chance that by the time you read this post I will have reached 500,000 page views

Yes, 127,317+ of them are spammers, trying to get a link on a post that people are reading.

THAT PEOPLE ARE READING!

Congratulations!

Congratulations Big Bear Butt

Congratulations Big Bear Butt on 2,000,000+ page views, I can only dream that one day (with the 500k spam included) I have had the opportunity to expose my Gnome parts and writing to that many people.

You are a long standing hero of the WoW blogging community, and no one should take your achievement away from you.

If I had a party and some wowser caused me to call it off, I would be pissed… in fact that is part of the reason for this post… it is my party, it is our party, and I will write what and if I want to!

Congratulations Cynwise

Congratulations Cynwise on your 10^6 page views, you are a truly awesome blogger who has stretched yourself across multiple blogs and really achieved amazing writing and friendships within the WoW Blogosphere. You deserve many more, and I promise I will hit refresh on your pages more often, cause I can’t stand the wait between posts, nor the excellent comments your garner from the community.

Congratu-Fucking-lations to me

If Stephen Fry likes to insert a word inside a word, then so do I.

Now… START WRITING THE HATE POSTS!

Folks, let’s be clear about one thing…

If there is a need for hate to flow, let it flow to ME.

Oestrus started an intelligent discussion on a worthwhile topic, which I have responded to in the manner to which I have become accustomed, but there is not need for others to stoop to my level.

Let’s keep it civil… well more level than a 40 something year old Gnome can.

Discussion is good… enjoy!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/03/03/96-spam-4-ham/

It’s something I have been meaning to say for ages, but I never knew how to approach the topic.

I have been blessed today, as one of the 25% of my regular commenter demographic (spammers) has dropped by to just say it out loud.

Disclaimer: The opinions of this commenter in no way reflects the opinion of this blog author towards my other 75% of my readers.

It does pretty much reflect my opinion of the other cohabitants of my spam comment folder.

Pffft come here, insult my commenter and expect me to approve your comment?

I guess I have for worse reasons…

I bet they got paid better money for writing that comment than I do for writing posts.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/02/28/youse-arr-all-brain-dead-commenters/

The Meme has passed, so what now?

I say fight, but you may feel better with love. From a blogging perspective it’s all the same to me.

I was chatting with The Godmother and decodingdragons the other night on twitter about what comes next.

Memes Shit Me.

(I know, ironic… but I bet I’m not alone)

The Godmother suggested there was more space for more memes, but I disagree (and in so doing, I am meeting the requirements of this post).

For me link love and link “hate” are much better meme surrogates. It is significantly more interesting, to write and to read (especially for the non-blogger), yet allows us to pepper our posts with a selection of links to bloggers old and new that may agree or disagree with our views.

Don’t expect me to read

I guess I must at this point declare my lack of interest in reading blogs, any blogs really. At one point in time I would try my best to churn through 60 blog posts a day. While it was interesting it contributed to blogging burnout. If I don’t have time to write a post, then taking the time to read 60 others is really quite insane.

These days I might read the odd post once in a while. I am more likely to stroll by old lovers of my lover such as BigBearButt than hunt for new blogs. Even much adored blogs such as Pugnacious Priest only get a look in if I am specifically directed there. It’s nothing personal of course, and I know PP reads me just as infrequently.

The thing that gets me reading beyond any post is a creatively placed link. Whether it is a link of love or a link of hate, I the initial post already has me by the balls, I am likely to drag my lazy body over to the linked blog just to see where the inspiration was derived from.

Don’t write a comment when you could write a post.

This has been a rule that I have blogged by for a long time. In fact, it was such a comment that kicked my arse into gear this time around.

You see comments get lost amongst blog posts that are lost amongst blogs that are lost.

As a general rule, if you a commenting on a post that is older than 24 hours, you can assume that the only person that will ever read the comment is the post’s author.

However, if you write a post in response to a post, it is irrelevant how old the original post is. It could be a 4 year old post, a 4 minute old post, as soon as you address it from a post of your own it gains new life as well as new readers. Consider that if it is worth you commenting on it, it is worth other people reading it.

Irritate your fellow bloggers until they have to scratch the itch.

I am an irritant. I work hard at being not quite right. Sometimes I turn that pain on other bloggers. For those that know me, they know this is an opportunity to bite, to write.

Know that I am not a hater, so if you ever find yourself at the end of a disagreeable post, that it is a sign of affection. Maybe not for your point of view, but you are entitled to that so long as you remember I am right, probably more for the flavour of your writing.

Hug your fellow bloggers until the group hug is formed.

Alternatively give that Bear a hug that he can’t get away from. Does some other blogger inspire you? Have you found a secret little blog only known to the author and their keyboard treading cats? Let us know, let us join in the mutual admiration of others writing. Let us inspire then to write one more post.

Let’s face it, all of you that joined into the Sixth conversation now feel like writing one more post… admit it. People came back from months of hiatus purely to post a screenshot… bullshit, they were looking for an excuse, for inspiration, for the touch of love that can only be felt through link love.

The hugging can go on long way after the linkage of course… I found myself dropping Larísa a line last night… some links are never broken.

Pick sides, throw stones.

Some of the most exciting times in my blog writing (and reading) have been where one person manages to totally piss of someone else. Friends gather around to support each side, some play devils advocate, and the stones start flying.

These pitched battles would last a week, fill twitter, fill comments, fill feed readers. Yes, feathers would get ruffled occasionally, but if there is one way to draw a community together, it’s conflict.

Remember it’s an art, it’s not personal.

How can conflict draw a community together? At some point, someone (maybe several), will blow the whistle and the game will be over. Combatants will come together and shake hands, maybe agree to disagree, but everyone returns to their blogs having read multiple posts by multiple people with divergent views, which in turn inspires new, fresh, exciting writing.

Find someone to love and love them until you start to resemble each other.

You all know of my love for Bear, but he wasn’t my first or only love.

Before Bear there was the Mage blogging community.

Yes, there was once a vibrant extended Mage blogging community. There were Mage wars between the specs, between the factions, between the playstyles. All of it from love. We bled over into the outside world often, Mages love to pull aggro and Mage bloggers are no different.

We loved each other, we loved every new Mage blogger discovery. We loved, we linked and we wrote.

Find someone to hate and hate them until they are your friend.

Haters may hate, but sometimes through heated discussion comes learning and maybe even love.

Just because someone holds diametrically opposed views to you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t link to them, no I would suggest that makes it even more important and worthwhile.

If a meme is primarily about link love, you can do it without the meme.

When you write a post and it includes less than two outgoing links, reread

it before you post it. Who can you link to continue the tale? Who can you introduce to the blogging world that may be sitting on their 10th post and grand total of 9 reads, just wishing that one other person would appreciate their style.

Wherever possible, when you link to another blogger, link to their posts (rather than their blog homepage). WordPress in particular is great at ping/trackbacks. This alerts the author to your attention and gives their readers a chance to follow the murky trail back to you.

Get in Fimlys’ Face

If you haven’t as yet, make sure you drop in for the odd (sometimes very odd) TwistedNether Live Blogcast. Fim & HydRAWR have been doing that shit for years now, get into the chat room and give Fim some grief for me.

Don’t forget to say Five! as you go.

Headphones vs. Speakers

Last night on the train, after a few EOM drinks, I found myself listening to some music I have loved for a good 20 years. I’m pretty sure I was mumbling away to the songs at the volume of a full shout, but I so wanted to pull the headphones out and let everyone on the train appreciate my wonderful taste in music.  Who doesn’t want to listen to Hole of my Love, or You’re Suss!, or even The boy who lost his jocks on Flinders Street Station?

OK, maybe most of you, but I know a while back when I posted the whole Love Planet album on Facebook, I was doing it to share, for those that remember, are still nursing bruises 20 years later. I shared, I “took off the headphones”.

That is the thing about link love.  You can leave your headphones in, keep the post pretty much to yourself, or you can ramp the speakers up to 11, and share the joy of blogging, of your post, with others. It will make them aware of your presence, it will make your readers aware of their presence, and it will lead lazy blog readers like myself around to see what other people think about those things I love.

Challenge: Find one of my old posts from the 830 odd posts I have written and choose to agree or disagree with it. Compare life during TBC with life pre-MoP. Hate me, go on, hate me – ill love you for it!

There is one condition, with the exception of the initial link back to my inspirational post, all other links have to go outward and include at least two other people to involve.

I don’t have to be your muse, it could be anyone, but dear students, this is your writing homework for today.

Ohhh, you don’t have to do this… Memes are like chain letters threatening you 99 years bad luck if you don’t participate. No one likes that shit. Join in if you will, go about your business otherwise.

Response

1. Big Bear Butt Blogger » Inspiration and Transformation (The 2 million page hit Bear)
   
2. Hypercriticism – [WoW] Guides ruined raiding? (This mage me think again… arrggh thinking.)
   
3. The Mage Conspiracy Document « Tome of the Ancient (I laughed till I cried)
4. The Sisterhood of Kia<< In Which Kia Gets Tagged (It may be a Sixth post, but it ticks the link love boxes)
5. Martha.net: Oceanfront Property on the Sea of Rains (Another unofficial response – but right on the money)
6. The Daily Frostwolf: PVP ranting and unfair Mods
7. double DING! (while celebrating two milestones)

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/02/24/so-what-now/

double DING!

Me! Me!

Of course I wasn’t going to respond, because I set the rules and there was nothing in them about posting twice…

Then it occurred to me that nearly everyone else changed the rules as they went along, and…

It will drive Navimie crazy if she has to go full circle to me in her flow chart, and…

It will take Martha down an additional level of her tree, and …

I am generally a pain in the arse and I hate to disappoint.

Before I go any further, while Navimie has given up on the flow chart (at the 60 hour mark), Martha is giving you one more day to make your Sixth post before she stops updating it… go… go… go…

as of this morning, Martha says…

I haven’t done today’s update yet, but here are the stats from yesterday:
289 tags were made
203 blogs were tagged
14 people posted, but didn’t tag anyone
47 people posted and tagged others
7 people posted and tagged all of their readers
The tree is currently 9 tags deep

…So there are 135 blogs that have yet to post and Good Gravy what was I thinking! O_o;; (I think I’m going to give up around Wednesday and declare it Too Big To Continue™.)

But on the good side, now I have lots of new blogs to read!

So where did I go?

Without making too many promises about being here for the long term, or being consistent, or even being remotely humorous, I have to hang around long enough for Bear to forgive me for making him work for me.

Anyway, over the last twelve months I have been silly busy at work, 8 days a week, 25 hours a day. I’ve had to keep a bottle under my desk for… well, let’s not go there…

For a while there I was playing a fair bit of WoW, but that was because I was chained to my desk monitoring things for 24-48 hour stretches, but I could squeeze out BGs (and check back in on work while waiting for mates to gear, queues to pop, and of course, for the Spirit Healer to Rez.)

I was also repeatedly wiping on a real world raid boss, in my backyard, all of my backyard. Let me assure you, the trash is worse than the main boss, it’s name being cooch grass (or satan’s grass as I call it). After 2 years of trying to compost it, I finally admit defeat. Five foot high, still growing, pulling my fence down… it’s a nightmare.

... 5.5 years ago...

Most importantly I have been constantly entertained and educated by the little fella, or the not-so-little-fella, as he is now.

... 2 months ago...

We went to the beach for New Years and fun was had from the moment of arrival, until we walked back through the door to home.

... 2 months ago...

He’s started at “big” school, just a few weeks back and I think he’s liking it. This 1st month he only does four days a week, but he is now complaining about the extra day with Dad, he wants to be at school full time.

... 3 weeks ago...

So it’s been interesting times in the home of the Gnome, but its good to be back, back with the old names, meeting the new names.

I even got to do a few WSG’s with Pugnacious Priest last night (see, one of my meme dreams came true!).

Oh.. btw… I got a clean sweep this meme around… 6 for 6!

So before I lay this meme to rest for another 3 years, go check on Martha’s tree, make sure you are on there, if not, get on there… You have 24 hours!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/02/21/and-on-the-seventh-day/

Larísa’s post the other day (just shows how long ago this post was drafted) got me thinking about the cyclical nature of WoW blogs. I know I was meant to be thinking about what Wolfshead had written and Larísa’s dismay at this, but the problem was, I have seen it before.

Rewriting, Rewording, Rehashing, Reblogging Re:WoW

I’ve been blogging about WoW for 2.5 years, closer to 3, close enough to half the life of the game. I know there are many out there that have blogged since day one, before in fact.

What I write here won’t stop any of us writing, nor force us to change our topic of choice, but to ignore it would be silly.

Of course blogging is more like Twitter than Larisa may ever realize.

Twitter is like a stream of consciousness that the reader drops in and out of. Tweets prior or post that brief moment may as well not exist. So even though you may encounter something tweeted a million times before, if it’s the 1st time you see the tweet, it’s new, fresh, exciting.

Some might even consider the same with schoolyard jokes, and they go back decades… Maybe centuries.

Q: What’s brown and sticky?

When a little kid sprouts a joke you last heard 30 years before hand, the 1st thought you have is “is that joke still around?”. Of course the kid is cackling like and insane Gnome Fire Mage, because the joke is new, fresh, exciting.

A: A Stick

So let’s see, what is rewritten, reworded, rehashed, rebloged, Re:WoW

Hello… Goodbye… Hello…

Saresa is the Grand Mistress of this, the teary, sometimes pointed farewell, followed reasonably soon by a hello post plus a few more, just enough to reignite your passion, then farewell once more.

Still, I will forgive Saresa most things, even her unfortunate choice of class and pray she will return for one more encore.

The new blogger is something else, especially with the story of what has intervened in their posting schedule between their first post and second (yes, I do this occasionally, but try to make it a blog post in it’s own right).

Euripedes once posted on how annoying the apology post is and true to his word has become silent without explanation. While I worry, I respect one less “I’ve been busy” post (and he is back with a suitable tale of woe)

Q: Why was six afraid of seven?

How to level profession or class

Everyone has one tucked away somewhere, I have a series. Pick this herb, do this quest.

For those that have been there done that, they are a quick “mark as read”, for those that haven’t they are a limitless mining node of information and occasionally passion.

Of course even the most jaded veteran reaches the point where an alt is better than quitting, then the search is on for every post that can be collated into the future of the alt.

How to make money

Gawd, if I had a copper for every gold making post, a gold for every gold making blog, then I would never have to farm or visit the AH again.

Just when it seems every avenue for gold making has been exhausted, along comes another post, another post, another…

How to make more money.

Yeah, just when you were sitting comfortably on 50,000 gold, a post and/or a blog comes along that makes it perfectly clear that you are worthless without at least 999,999,999 gold… on each toon.

But god forbid you spend a copper!

A: Because seven eight nine!

WoW is awesome because…

Well I guess because it is.

I doubt there are many blogs that find their birth in “WoW sucks”. Sure there are some (What?!? My Mage Sucks! is back and writing!), but most of us bloggers start the whole process due to the overwhelming joy we experience and our need to share that with people that understand the joy.

Our real world companions may never know our passion, but there is an audience of potentially millions (but in reality hundreds or thousands) that can read and experience our joy through our words because they are so familiar. Many of those readers go on to become bloggers in their own right.

WoW sucks because…

Q: What did the duck say when he bought lipstick?

Heh, because it does. For some of us more than others, sometimes more than others.

Some people have one big “Blizzard fucked it all” post a week after an expansion release. Others have a series of them as an expansion draws to a close.

My class is the best because

Mages are FULL STOP!

Occasionally Warlocks drop by to disagree, but then they are the new QQ class.

Every class blogger loves their class to the extreme that they will research and write about it for more hours in a week than they probably work (especially if they are writing from work)

So expect the “My class is best” posts… Often followed by the…

My class is nerfed.

When you invest so much into a class, any change, even one that will reduce the OP and increase the interest is a nerf.

Even Druids cry about sensible nerfs to CC which will allow them what they always claimed they wanted, a proper fight with a Mage.

Their class is OP

After running around the Arena for 15 minutes chasing a stinking Resto Druid in cat form all I can say is “they are OP!”.

A: Put it on my bill.

Maybe it’s a bit of talent envy. Maybe it’s a bit of “If they can have my evocate, why can’t my mana gem return health as well?”

Sometimes it isn’t about feeling nerfed, wanting a buff, sometimes it’s just about not wanting others to have more fun than us (of course if we just stopped our bitching and enjoyed our class it wouldn’t matter)

This instance/raid is too hard

… and I don’t pay $15 per month to have to think.

If I can’t beat the game in 24 hours like all those cast off consoles in the corner of the room, I want nerfs and I want them now!

This instance/raid is too easy

Q: What goes Oh, Oh, Oh?

Meh, I could have taken the time to enjoy the quest text, but I steamrolled my way to the top only to discover you made the instance for the majority… not for me!

Screw your bell curve distributions, if it isn’t impossible it isn’t worth playing.

My achievement

Guilty?

Who me?

Some achievements are worth sharing, others make a nice image to break the Bearwall ™, sometimes they deserve a guide.

Rarely is the “I got an achievement”, of itself, worthy of a post.

But hell, it’s your blog, if you want to regale me with tales of your daily chores, like my mother did for 40 years (I got off light, I pity my siblings 60 years of chore tales), then go right ahead.

If it’s the only thing you ever post, I probably won’t hang around long, but if we have “that relationship” I will probably be /cheering for you from my desk (a real cheer would be far too unseemly).

A: Santa walking backwards

All PuGs suck

Many do and sometimes it comes in waves, the biggest wave in memory came from the introduction of LFD.

Bad PuGs (or bad players, or opinionated players or sub-optimized player) are easy targets and frequent enough to give bloggers fodder.

At the end of the day, WoW blogs are personal web logs, so it’s only natural that a blogger will use their own “personal space” to vent, to unload on relatively anonymous targets in posts that every reader can relate to.

Battleground players suck

A personal favorite, something I haven’t had much cause to complain about lately. Believe it or not most PuG BGs I have been in lately have been well played.

Throw in a holiday achievement involving the BGs and the wowblogsphere runs with blood. Lovers of PvP want the achievement gone so they can play BGs in a competitive manner they love. BG shunners cry about the unfairness of being forced into an aspect of the game for an optional achievement and being ganked by PvP lovers that can’t believe their luck at being handed a plate full of bunnies for honor kills.

Either way, blood flows, tears flow and it is as regular as the holiday calendar.

He/She/It is a loot whore

Q: What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep (still one of my all time favorites)

Random PuGs, guildies, friends, lovers, BoPs, BoEs, crafting mats… Loot Ninja’ing whores the lot of them.

We’ve all got a story and the stories never end. Occasionally spurred on by a change in interface, crafting or BoP status, there are a million of these out there waiting to be told.

My guild sucks/rools

My guild sucks. There is no drama, they hand out epics purely because you are there, they join in events they have no real interest in purely to make the numbers and maintain the sickening positive attitude that prevails in our guild.

Screw you Streakers!

That is bound to change right, at which point I can unload in my personal space, destroy friendships and make them rue the day they invited a blogger into their midst.

Guilds can be the inspiration of awesomely good and bad encounters.

Ha! Even Armaggedon’s Coming had frequent disputes between it’s two primary guildies (Gnomeaggedon and Squidly). That was a source of quite a few posts.

A: A wooly jumper

My guild broke up/I just joined a new guild.

The future is bright…

… WTF happened there?

Bloggers, often guild leaders as well, suffer very publicly for a guild split. They also share their newfound joy at a new Guild membership (not that I would ever do that with Streakers).

Of course, just like the Hello… Goodbye blogger posts, many Guild posts are a rollercoaster of /ginvite, /gkick and /gquit (you know they now have a confirmation dialog now to stop all those accidental /gquits?)

Gnomeaggedon is OP!

Q: What has four wheels and flies?

I don’t think I really need to add much to this. If I’m not stating this blatantly obvious fact, then there are a league of bloggers more than happy to do so.

Personally I approve of any blog post that supports this statement of fact.

WoW mechanics suck

Mechanics come in all shapes and sizes (some even display plumbers cracks). Often one person’s awesome mechanic is another’s nightmare.

Whether it’s a class, profession or boss mechanic there are always opportunities to write 1,000 words about how it is killing puppies in their sleep and how Blizzard should have known this 30 years ago.

WoW mechanic is broken

Worse than the “bad mechanic” is the good mechanic gone wrong. Whether it’s food summoning portals that DC you or resetting bosses, there is always more mileage in a bitching blog post that a simple big report on the official forums.

A: A garbage truck.

WoW mechanic is broken (and here is how to take advantage of it)

Ohh what?

The Horde will DC purely by mousing over that Fish Feast?

Bloody hell, better write a blog post about putting one down in the middle of EotS.

If there is something to be gained by abusing a Blizzard mistake (especially when it is already destroying all your game time), then best to tell the world.

Blog begins: I’m a noob writing for noobs.

My dog has no nose

Many, most (?), WoW blogs start from the desire to share noobish learnings to help people avoid the mistakes we gave taken to gain our wisdom.

It isn’t patronizing, it’s a true desire to share, from one noob to another, knowledge and experience to help those starting at level one all the way to the end game.

Blog ends: I’m 1337 writing for 1337’5 not for scrubs.

I don’t know what happens, but somewhere down the line many (not all by any stretch of the imagination) switch from bring shepherds to power crazed dictators.

Do what I say or fuck off!

I need to point out that I have avoided this transformation by virtue of always being an elitist arsehole.

How does it smell?

I’m right, your wrong

Yeah, so great that you hold a view and have the confidence to share it, but wake up to yourself… I’m right, your wrong, L2P!, your mum!

God help us if we ever reach a position were everyone’s opinion was accepted for what it is, an individual’s opinion.

Meh, who am I kidding, disrespect of another’s opinion is the perfect starting point for any post.

My bank is filled with…

Has it happened this quarter?

Maybe just before Cataclysm.

The post where we share screenshots and lists of our blog contents, like we open our personal diary and reveal our soul through those useless trinkets kept for no sensible reason.

Awful!

My pets/mounts are…

More sharing, or keeping up with the Jones’ or maybe just showing the love for another aspect in the multidimensional game we call WoW. Some care not for raiding unless it leads to a new pet or mount.

• My latest acquisition
• My favorite little buddy
• My next goal
• OMFG! A sparkling pony? WTF!

They are all variants on the same theme.

How to blog

L2B nub!

Hehe, nah really.

Sometimes the L2B post is a “you are doing it all wrong post”, but more often it is an extremely useful post (or series) that helps the experiences or starts the newbie.

It was such a series by Matticus all those years ago that prompted me to click the 1/2 dozen required buttons at WordPress and start blogging.

There are gems in every one of them for new and old bloggers alike.

Without these posts I think the WoW blogging community would be several shades duller (the world, my world at least, would be bland without Matt’s inspirational posts which got me started), without fresh meat to inspire and entertain.

Same magic, different post

So while in the case of Wolfshead (and many like him) it might be same shit, difference expansion, in most cases is the same magic, presented in a new and entertaining way by a different entertaining writer and for many readers it may well be the first time the topic has ever been addressed.

While it makes sense to start at post 1 and traverse the 553 and counting posts at DardandDroids web comic, you would have to be completely bonkers (or Prelimar or a spam bot) to start at my 1st post and read to here.

Why would you bother anyway… In this marvelous stream of thought that is the blogging community, you are bound to encounter a similar topic to my 784 and counting posts, written better, possibly by someone with a fresher perspective than mine.

If you are a new reader or blogger, don’t fear you will read or write the same thing at some point – revel in it, it’s a sign of a healthy community.

If you are a veteran reader or writer, don’t shy from the same old magic, there is always someone waiting for your unique perspective!

Gnomer and Out!

One-one was a racehorse.
Two-two was one too.
One day One-one won one race.
And Two-two won one too.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2011/04/06/rewriting-rewording-rehashing-reblogging-rewow/

Well my today, your tomorrow.

Whenever the 6th falls for you.

So I am hoping you can all help me out.

You see I am not so good with words… Oh I can spew hundreds, nay thousands of them into a blog post without any difficulty, however there is nothing pretty about it.

Therefore I need your help…

Write Krizzly some prose (I think that’s something like literary), or a Limerick, a haiku, or, I don’t know…

He’s one of those literary types.. so I know he loves it… something about Steam-Punk-Fu?

Any Fu is Good Foo?

So. write it in the comments below, so when Krizzly wakes up for his birthday, he’s got a big birthday card waiting for him.

Krizzlybear, Krizzlybear, Krizzlybear,
You change my days to happiness, from despair,
You stand up for Frost
So we know all is not lost,
Happy birthday to you Krizzlybear!

Gnomer and Out

PS: you know how I know it’s Krizzlybear’s birthday today?

I share the birthday with him.

Last year I pipped him with my post, so this year the post is just for him!

The major difference between Kriz & I (apart from separate hemispheres) is about 20 years… yet he looks so young!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Just a short one, because as instructed, I have put my feet up and I am in the process of knocking over a few Dwarven ales.

Still, considering the last couple of posts about achievements, I can’t let this one slip through.

I’m not sure whether I should be thanking:

• The 300,000 of you that visited once… or
• The 1 of you that visited 300,000 times… or
• The 299,999 attempts by spammers + the  one of you that dropped by.

Whoever I need to thank, and I’m sure you know who you are…

THANKS!

Gnomer and Out!

PS: I don’t do it for the hits.. and I have long since stopped publishing these things, but I just couldn’t help myself, because you know what day I hit 300k?

Yep the same day I knocked over Loremaster & Explorer.

Thanks for coming!