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I’m trying to wrap my head around the #indieweb approach, and thinking about how it could be applied to my site, and more importantly, I’m trying to figure out how I would want it to work for me:

  • If I post a short post type (<280 chars), it automatically gets syndicated fully to Twitter, including any attached media. Micro.blog would also be good.

  • Any interactions with that Tweet are reflected on the original post.

  • “Pure” indieweb philosphy would have me reply to any/all tweets from my site, but I’m not sure I want to go there.

  • Other social media “silos” should similarly interact with the site in a push or pull manner as appropriate – e.g. if I post to Instagram, the photo should be converted into a new post on my site, with the file rehosted.

  • The site should essentially be the “hub” for everything I post online, including a “profile” of sorts.

  • Microformats and POSH should be a given.

  • Longer posts should still be first-class citizens.

  • Post titles are completely optional and the tools involved should handle this gracefully.

  • Different post types should have distinct/appropriate visual styling.

Oh, and all of this should work as easily and seamlessly as possible on iOS (my primary platform)

Right now, I’m trying to get this setup using WordPress with several of the recommended IndieWeb plugins and recommendations, but so far I’m struggling to get things “just so.” The site definitely feels very rough around the edges. I’m not tied to this current approach though. Ideally I’d like to stick with tools/languages I know, and not need to spend weeks configuring things.

In an ideal world, I could have integrated the IndieWeb tooling/approach into my existing blog, which is powered by Jekyll – but this currently fails my “easy to do on iOS” test, which is the main reason I’ve not blogged there in around six months.

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Games Workshop have released a new website for the upcoming new version of Necromunda. Digging through the website gives plenty of new information about the game:

  • The main boxset contains a game board with 3D barricades and accessories, for new players to play on
  • Pre-order date is November 11th
  • A supplemental book called “Gang War” will be released alongside the boxed game. This contains the “advanced rules” for playing Necromunda on a table filled with terrain, just like “old-school” Necromunda.

In addition, there are 5 new videos linked from the site which aren’t yet publically available on the Warhammer TV YouTube channel. These videos give a quick overview of the game, plus a look at the new models included with the game:

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I’ve been using the own-brand Element Games Kolinsky Sable brushes for a while now, and I have nothing but really good things to say about them. For the money they are fantastic. Winsor and Newton Series 7’s are usually seen as the “gold standard” brushes for miniature painting (obviously it’s one of those subjective things) — I think the Element Games brushes are easily as good as the W&N’s I’ve used over the years. At £19 for the set of 3, it’s hard to argue against the value, either.

Don’t just take my word for it: multiple Slayer Sword winner David Soper likes them too. Interestingly, he found them to be “stiff” compared to the Series 7’s… I had the opposite experience in that mine were “softer” – particularly the “Regiment” brush – which has become my new go-to brush for most tasks.

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I caught the first trailer for the new Marvel’s Inhumans TV series. The whole thing looked so stiff, awkward, and sterile. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but based purely on the trailer I have zero desire to watch the show. Marvel’s movies and Netflix series (mostly) manage to feel somewhat anchored to the “real world” despite how fantastical the plot or setup might be… but Inhumans had none of that quality on show.

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Having just spent faaaar too long to get a sample Liquid code block to not be parsed by Jekyll, I thought I better make note of this, for my own benefit:

When posting Liquid code, make use of the raw tag. Which I can’t seem to post an example of using, because it creates some sort of Inception effect or something…

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If you step back and think about it, Games Workshop produce a staggering amount of new products not only per year, but per month. It’s something I don’t think they get enough credit for.

New models across multiple game systems and ranges. New boxed games. New source material for those games. New paints and other “hobby products.” New novels, novella’s, short stories, and audio dramas. A new issue of White Dwarf. Not all of these categories will get something every month, but many will get several.

That’s impressive, no matter how you feel about GW.

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I’ve not written much here since the start of the year. I’d started off with such good intentions. This isn’t one of those “sorry I haven’t been posting” blog posts, so don’t worry. I don’t apologise for it… it is what it is.

What’s happened is my brain has been mainly filled with three things the last few months: work, politics, and hobby. I don’t want to write about politics, not really, though it’s definitely something I could provide a running commentary on (this might please my Twitter followers most, if I were move politics to here). Work… well it’s work – I’ve been doing my best to keep it at the office, as it’s been very intense of late. There’s been a few very interesting technical challenges I could write about, but I can’t go into some of the specifics necessary, due to the nature of what I do. Plus, normally by the time I get home I don’t want to sit in front of a computer again. So that’s left hobby, and I havehad a whole other blog for that… although I’ve been concentrating on the practical side of the hobby for once, so haven’t been writing much there either.

So in short, we’re in one of my regular “blogging takes a backseat” phases. You should be used to them by now! I do still feel “the pull” to write, and regularly feel like I should be writing here more (as opposed to venting on Twitter), it’s just not happening for a variety of reasons.

C’est la vie.

To paraphrase Good Ol’ JR: “business will eventually pick up.”

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The algorithm-driven Instagram feed was rolled out a while ago, but it’s only recently I’ve noticed much of a difference. Unfortunately the difference, particularly in the last couple of weeks, has been increasingly negative. So much so I really wish there was a way to opt-out!

Basically it comes down to I’m not seeing what I want to see at the time I want to see it, often leading me to just close the app after scrolling down a little bit. So as a way of “increasing engagement” it utterly fails.

A trivial example: I follow WWE on Instagram. Every Monday and Tuesday night, they post 6-12 photos from the goings on at Monday Night Raw, and Smackdown Live. Every Tuesday/Wednesday morning, I would like to open up Instagram and be able to scroll through to see what happened. This used to work, but some time in the last few weeks it changed so these photos show up randomly in my feed over the next 2-4 days – after I’ve already got the information from other sources, and definitely past the point I want the photos to show up at the top. The photos never show in chronological order, and never show as a batch of more than 1-2 at a time.

For the accounts I follow who aren’t “brands” (i.e. friends, shared interest accounts, etc), often it’s the people I like or comment on the least who appear near the top, and often the most trite, uninteresting photos they’ve posted. Why show me the video of a friend’s baby’s adorable first laugh, another friend’s stunning macro photography, or a popular post from an interest account, when 4 out of 6 of the photos at the top of my feed are meme nonsense? With the other 2 being drinks/food from someone’s night out 3 days ago?

Is it just me? I don’t think so, but maybe it’s just particularly bad on my feed? What’re your experiences with Instagram lately?

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Hunter Walk with a neat idea for dealing with Twitter trolls I’ve not seen suggested anywhere else:

Basically the concept that when an @name is inserted into the tweet, it becomes targeted, the difference between just expressing an opinion about a person and the desire for that person to see the opinion. For example imagine these two tweets:

“Hunter Walk is an asshole” vs “@hunterwalk is an asshole”

The former doesn’t appear in my mentions. The latter does. I never see the first unless I’m actively searching for my name on Twitter. The latter does regardless of my desire to interact with the sender. Accordingly, once an @name is included, the standard for harassment should be lower, because intent can be assumed.

Source: Twitter Trolls Should Lose Ability To Include @Names in Tweets | Hunter Walk

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A new boxed game from Games Workshop, coming end of October/start of November, in the same style as Betrayal at Calth. New stuff includes plastic MKIII Marines, Tartaros-pattern Terminators, Legio Custodes, a couple of characters, and possibly more.

I’ve been looking forward to this release since I first heard about it back in March, so it’s great to finally get the confirmation it’s real.

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Preamble: I’ve jumped back into WoW over the last couple of months. I’ve had an on-mostly-off relationship with the game over the last few years (since the end of Wrath of the Liche King, really), but the early promise of Legion brought me back.

I spent the time up until the launch 2 weeks ago getting acclimated to the game and all the changes I’d missed. I powered through Warlords of Draenor (WoD) in a few sessions, just through quest content (the massive amounts of rested XP helped a tonne!) then set about getting my professions up to max-level.

Professions in WoD very, very easy to level-up. I had both primary professions, and all secondary professions except Fishing maxed-out within a weekend1. If anything, I felt a bit underwhelmed by how easy it was. Between the Garrison and Auction House, it took very little time and money to gather everything needed to craft enough stacks of whatever recipe gave the most skill-ups2. Gathering professions didn’t take much effort either.

Professions in Legion are almost nothing like in WoD. In some ways it’s welcome; recipes have different levels of proficiency (1-3), which adds more interest to them. I haven’t found any recipes yet awarding multiple skill levels. There’s profession-related quest content – often to unlock a better proficiency – and even some of the new World Quests are profession-specific.

It’s just a shame that there’s one fundamental flaw: most of the progression is locked behind Dungeons. Take Alchemy as the prime example: after unlocking Legion Alchemy, you get 3 recipes with 1 or 2 more available from a vendor. These will give you a handful of skill levels at most. Beyond that, you have quests which require you to run dungeons to unlock more recipes. You have to run all of the dungeons in Legion, enter a busy free-for-all PVP area, and even complete a WoD Raid to unlock everything in Legion Alchemy. Other professions are similar.

I absolutely don’t mind having to work for progressing in professions, but this is disappointing. Gating them behind Reputations would have made much more sense to me, or some other mechanic which didn’t force players into LFG/LFR… The new World Quests are another decent candidate. In my experience most players in dungeons are just looking to speed-run bosses for gear upgrades and if you’re not OK with that they’ll make your life hell until you quit, or just /kick you outright.

It’s always been the case that the most lucrative recipes were acquired through dungeons… but these were optional/rare recipes, and mainly of interest to people looking to make serious gold on the Auction House, or needed to get it to help their competetive raid team. Levelling up your professions never needed these “high-end” recipes.

I stopped regularly running dungeons years ago because I had too many bad experiences with groups who were rude/intolerant of players “not as skilled” as they were/just plain assholes3. Since then, I’ve dipped in with ever more reluctance. I have zero desire or patience – let alone time – to deal with that again, and have zero faith it’s improved any. I’m sure I’m not the only player who feels like this, judging by posts on the Battle.Net forums and elsewhere.

For players like me, who have long turned away from the group aspects of WoW, professions are the end-game content4. Locking the means to meaningfully progress professions behind dungeons basically locks them away from us, unless we’re prepared to hold our noses and deal with aspects of the game we don’t necessarily enjoy.

It’s still early days for Legion, and even though I’ve hit 110 on my main, there’s still a tonne of other content I can play, for now. And other characters. I’m just hoping Blizzard do something to make the professions a bit more accessible in a future patch. They’ve achieved their intent to make them more interesting, I’m just not convinced they achieved the “fun” bit.

  1. Most of this was just travel time while levelling Archeology. ↩
  2. This was new to me – certain recipes giving more than 1 level at a time. ↩
  3. At first, LFG was a blessing compared to trying to organise a group through chat. Unfortunately it made it impossible to weed-out the bad-eggs before starting a dungeon. My feelings on WoW Dungeons are a topic for another time. ↩
  4. Alongside Reputations, exploring, lore, and Achievements. ↩
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If – like me – you were eying up the Volkite Weapon Kits from Forge World as a means of expanding the Betrayal At Calth box set, but we’re dismayed to find them sold out and “no longer available” (as opposed to “Temporarily out of stock”), then fear not!

Forge World have your back, according to a reply I got when I asked about the missing kits:

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Not only will the weapons coming back in an improved form, but other kits will be getting a refresh, along with new accessory packs.

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I’ve been using iCloud Photo Library (iCPL) for the last few months, basically since the day it went to Public Beta. It was one of the features I was most excited about for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. The idea is fantastic – all your photos available on all your (Apple) devices, and it’s integrated with what is probably your most frquently used camera, so new photos are automatically added.

When it works, it’s seamless and brilliant, and I can’t say enough good things about it… but this morning I turned it off on my iPhone and won’t be switching it back on any time soon.

Here are the two major problems I’ve had with it:

1. It causes (most) apps accessing the photo library to run extremely slow

Anytime I open an app which wants to access the photo library, that app tends to hang for a few seconds. This is easiest to see in something like Instagram, where if you go to add a picture, the icon in the bottom left which lets you select an existing image will show as blank for several seconds while it loads the first thumbnails. I’ve seen similar behaviour in the stock Camera app, and numerous image editors.

2. It absolutely destroys my mobile data allowance

I have a 4GB data allowance on my 4G data plan. When I have iCloud Photo Library enabled on my iPhone – even after syncing the entire library over WiFi before leaving the house – within a couple of days I will get a text message from my network telling me I’ve only got 200MB of my allowance left. This happens even after disallowing the Photos app from using mobile data, so it’s obviously some other process running in the background. To be clear: without iCloud Photo Library turned off, I have never been close enough to my data cap to trigger a warning; with it turned on, I use up my entire allowance within a few days.

This morning, in the space of 2 hours
This morning, in the space of just 2 hours

The first problem of slowness has improved with the iOS 9 public betas, but #2 is still happening. A lot. It’s probably cost me upwards of £60 in increased mobile phone bills over the last few months. And this is before we get to other issues, including: either iCPL/the new Photos app screwing up the metadata on a whole bunch of photos1; occaisional sync conflicts2; problems caused by turning it off because of the other issues3.

By and large, I get the impression I’m the outlier. For most people, iCloud Photo Library works without issue and they’re happy with it. Hopefully it’s the same for you! But for me it just doesn’t work reliably enough without some serious downsides.

What’s your experience of iCloud Photo Library been like? Let me know!

  1. I found this one out when I tried importing my library into Google Photos and Dropbox for redundancy. Roughly 2500 photos no longer have any date information associated with them, so both services sort them into the day they were uploaded, completely ruining any logical grouping. ↩
  2. In iOS 8, if I quickly edited a new picture on your device, while it synced to your other devices, one of two things would happen; 1: only the edit would sync, or 2: your edit would be discarded when the sync finished. ↩
  3. What should happen is your iCPL photos are removed from the device, apart from the Camera Roll pictures on the device previously. Except, it usually turns into a crap-shoot as to which photos are kept. And sometimes, despite removing all these photos, the storage space isn’t freed up afterwards. Which is awesome when you only have a 16GB device. ↩
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Never, ever pre-order games. That’s the general rule, especially given such recent debacles as the PC version of Arkham Knight.

But as with every rule, there are exceptions. The final entry in the Starcraft 2 series is – for me – one of them. Within 20 minutes of learning the pre-order for the digital editions was live, I had the deluxe edition ordered.

Starcraft is one of those rare gaming series I hold dear; I played the original on my very first PC, fell in love with the story, then had to wait over a decade until Starcraft 2 came along. When the first part, Wings of Liberty, arrived 12 years after Starcraft 1, I fell in love all over again, and all fears about how splitting up the game into 3 would work out. The 3 year wait for Heart of the Swarm was agonising — I loved the story being told so much I just wanted more!

Now we’re nearing the end, at last. The final chapter in the Starcraft saga will arrive sometime between now and March, and I can’t wait.

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I have none, because we haven’t seen enough full information – in context – to make any informed opinions.

And neither have you. I get it, change is scary. But stop whining on the internet about AoS before you have all the information. Please? It’ll make the transition much more pleasant for you, me, and everyone else.

I’m flabbergasted by how quickly it all went from “ok, this looks like it could be fun and interesting,” to “ZOMG! The sky is falling! F-you GW! This is the most ridiculous and crappy game EEEEHHHVVAR!”

And it hasn’t even been officially revealed yet. Careful; your knee is jerking so hard you might do yourself an injury.

I do have one final, parting thought to leave you with:

If you want a balanced, tournament-friendly (and 1st-party supported!) Fantasy massed-battle game that plays like a “Warhammer 9th” – basically what everyone complaining the loudest seems to be lamenting Age of Sigmar is not – then I humbly suggest you go check out Kings of War. 2nd Edition is right around the corner, with the beta rules available for free download. A number of Warhammer Fantasy armies port over to KoW with little-to-no modification or need to buy new models. It’s fast, deceptively simple, fun, well written, and actively supported. If you’re up in arms about AoS, it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.