Wednesday, September 27th, 2000
Forums email problem, Move completed, GGN Correction
Forums email problem
As many people have pointed out, the forums had a problem in the SMTP send routine.
The problem was, the forums server no longer has an SMTP server on it! Apparently, it
was removed after Telefragged made some changes.
The fix? All forums mail is being routed through a different SMTP server on Telefragged's network.
Move completed
I was forced to move somewhat unexpectedly on Monday. I moved across town from where I lived in
on the south side of Lansing, MI, to a friends house towards the center of town.
The bad news: The phone connections in this house (or at least in the part I live in) suck, and
I can't get a stable connection above 28.8 kbps.
GGN Correction
On Sunday, I reported that Global Gaming News only covered
"Role Playing Games, Action-Adventure, Survival-Horror, Fighting, and derivatives there of."
The part I referenced only dealt with the Fan Art section. The site itself covers all console games.
(Powerlord)
Sunday, Septembed 24th, 2000
A new gaming news site opened early this morning. Named Global Gaming News,
it covers "Role Playing Games, Action-Adventure, Survival-Horror, Fighting, and derivatives there of."
It boasts 17 staff members scattered around the globe, some of which have previous experience at RPGamer.
The site is run by former RPGamer staff member
Mark Jordan, and
has been in the design and planning stages for several months prior to opening.
Project Majestic Mix is having a vote for
what Logos will appear on the Project Majestic Mix
CD Case. There are 4 art categories: Front Cover, Back Cover, Inside Cover (under disc),
and the Disc Cover. Each person can vote for 3 entries for each category.
There is one important thing to note: You can only vote for one entry on the form, so once you vote the
first time, go back to the page and vote again. Do the same after the second time.
(Powerlord)
Friday, September 22nd, 2000
Amber "MissSchala" Ritchie leaves the Video Game Music scene
Amber "MissSchala" Ritchie leaves the Video Game Music scene
Amber Ritchie, known on IRC as MissSchala, announced her intentions to leave the Video
Game Music scene yesterday, September 21st. This comes as a complete surprise, as
Ms. Ritchie was recently hired by RPGamer for their
music position. Ms. Ritchie is also the owner of
RPGStuff, a website devoted to
RPG Video Game Music.
When hearing about the vacancy at RPGamer's music section, Mark Jordan said
"AHAHAHHAHA RPGAMERS MUSIC NEVER RECOVEREDHEHNBNJKBA."
As for Amber, we wish her luck...
(Powerlord)
Wednesday, September 20th, 2000
As surprising as this turn of events sounds, it didn't surprise me in the least...
I had the following clues:
- An anonymous source was interviewed for a position at Zophar's Domain. They were only interviewed by SwampGas.
- When Bender quit, I sent Bender the following email message and BCCed it to Zophar:
From: Ross Bemrose (Powerlord)
To: bender@zophar.net
BCC: zophar@voicenet.com
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 3:49 AM
Subject: Zophar's Domain -- What's going on?
Are they having a big reorganization on Zophar's Domain, or what? I've heard some nasty rumours...
I've also heard rumors of Zophar having disappeared, and SwampGas running the show... X_X
(The Rumor about Zophar disappearing was put there because Zophar hadn't been around recently
and the fact that the prior interview was done solely by SwampGas)
- A certain sentence from Zophar's reply:
I don't think I've disappeared just yet, but the rumours about a reorganization are, to some point, true.
-
A little excerpt from #music on Espernet on Saturday, September 9th around 5:18am EDT.
[05:18] <Powerlord> <virt> are you staying with the 'camp? <virt> er the 'cult? <Lycia> I quit the "scene" <virt> it doesn't do much for me either. <virt> i'm just at zd so i can correct people's grammar. :)
... [skip a few irrelavent entries] ...
[05:18] <virt> powerlord, do with it what you will, you [censored] weasel :D i think sam knows my intentions well enough.
... [skip a few irrelavent entries] ...
[05:19] <Powerlord> You may have just confirmed one of my suspicions
Now this one is a no brainer. virt has no concerns about Zophar, only Sam (SwampGas). As you can see
from my last line, I considered this a confirmation of my earlier suspicions.
(Powerlord)
Tuesday, September 19th, 2000
Square's Harp FF Prelude
Square's Harp FF Prelude
Square has a midi of the Final Fantasy Prelude Harps on their
PlayOnline site.
Give it a listen. :)
Update:
According to PlayOnline's Website
Copyright Statement and Usage Restrictions states:
The copying, processing, distribution and republishing of any of the works posted on this
website, including all image, animated, music, voice and text data, as well as Square products,
by private individuals, groups or corporations whether for profit or not without permission is
expressly forbidden in all circumstances.
This means that you can not distribute or edit the music from their site in any way, shape, or form.
...so if you were hoping to use that file on your web page, or upload it here (whether or not you edited it),
you might as well forget it.
This means that we can not have it in our file archive. I'm going to do a quick
sweep of new-files right now. If anyone uploads that file after this point, don't expect us to
be too pleased about it (This is a warning that if you upload it (or any variation of it),
you may lose uploading privileges).
(Powerlord)
Monday, September 18th, 2000
I haven't vanished!, New RPGamer music person, RMX-3
I haven't vanished!
Contrary to popular belief, I haven't vanished. Then again, I'm only online
nights these days (My work schedule has changed, I no longer do overnights)
which I find a pain. If you want to know why I'm only online at night,
check my Opinions page and look up
the one title "My Brother". I know at least one person who reads this site will
find it interesting (Hi Mom!).
New RPGamer music person
Well, well, well. RPGamer's last music editor, JD, left RPGamer to join up
with the GIA. We wish him the best of luck.
The new RPGamer music editor is none other than Amber Ritchie (AKA MissSchala) from
RPGStuff, as well as once working
here on the Game Music Quiz.
On a related note, RPGamer has been losing a lot of staff recently... is something
going on over there? You can read my take on it on my Opinions page,
titles "What goes on behind the scene of a Gaming News site?".
RMX-3
The RMX-3 Midi Remix competition is going on over at VGMidi. It is held in the same manner as the
X-MIDI competitions that Mark Jordan held at RPGamer.
(Powerlord)
Thursday, August 17th, 2000
New VGMusic.com Staff Members
New VGMusic.com Staff Members
Let's welcome the new staff members of VGMusic.com (yeah
I know I'm welcoming myself): Mark Jansen and Pong64. We
are both experienced at sequencing video game music. Our main
job is to manage the new-files section. You can find our updates
on the Archive Updates page.
If you find any errors on our updates, please contact Mark Jansen
(gargos@vgmusic.com) or Pong64
(pong64@vgmusic.com).
Thank you,
(Mark Jansen)
Thursday, August 10th, 2000
Japanese Section Dismantling Completed
Japanese Section Dismantling Completed
The Japanese section is now completely dismantled! As stated before, the
Japanese game songs are now located in the US equivalent system pages
with "(Japan)" tags. The project took much longer to complete due to
there being 20 times more songs than I anticipated.
(Mike Newman)
Thursday, August 3rd, 2000
New Java-Free IRC Chat Client Online
New Java-Free IRC Chat Client Online
You are invited to chat in the official Videogame Music Archive
chatroom #vgma on irc.esper.net using our new java-free
IRC chat client at http://chat.vgmusic.com/
It uses PHP script. Very fun to use, especially if you are behind
a firewall and can only get HTTP to work.
(Mike Newman)
Friday, July 21st, 2000
Give Me a Late Birthday Present, Japanese Section - Part 2
Give Me a Late Birthday Present
Yesterday (July 20, 31st anniversary of man landing on the moon too!)
I completed my 21st orbit around the sun. In honor
of my birthday, I would appeciate if you visited the
Hunger Site in order
to make this world a better place. :-)
Japanese Section Taking Longer to Dismantle
I'm continuing to work on dismantling the
Japanese section.
Its taking longer than I previously thought, but its progressively
getting done.
(Mike Newman)
Friday, July 14th, 2000
A New Contest
A New Contest
For the next month or so, Game Music Network,
Cloud's Villa, and
VGMusic will be sponsoring a
contest in where you can win stuff! Of course, it's not going to be a simple drop your e-mail
and hope to win type of contest. You'll have to work for it! The contest involves writing a
review for a Game Music CD. For more information please visit
the Rules and Requirements page.
(Powerlord)
Tuesday, July 11th, 2000
Farewell to Japanese Section, Hello to Many New Sections!
Farewell to Japanese Section (but not the songs!)
We have started breaking up of the Japanese section. Japanese games will now appear in the
regular sections (American sections really :P ) with the tag "(Japan)" after the song title.
This redistribution should be done by the end of the week. My mini-updates will
be put on hold while I help work on this new task. Overall, we found the Japanese
section to be redundant and especially tedious to update since it doesn't use our
current file listing CGI scripts (everything hand to be done manually, which is
not fun with a 500-plus file directory).
Hello to Many New Sections!
In an effort to clean up lots of old songs sitting in the
new-files directory, I
have created many new archive sections, including:
Atair Jaguar,
ColecoVision,
Atari Computers,
Amiga,
and
Amstrad CPC.
Some of those sections had been previously setup, but strangely had zero files in them.
We are always glad to add new sections, as long as we get some good songs for them.
(Mike Newman)
Saturday, July 8th, 2000
After a little bit of trouble and me having to go to work before I finished configuring it,
we finally have WWWThreads 5.0.8 up and running. All user accounts were cleared during the
upgrade, so everyone using the old system MUST create a new account.
Thanks to the cookies from the old forums system, WWWThreads will great all former users with
the line "Welcome, <nick>. You have 0 messages." yet will
not recognize you. Simply click New User and create an account. Then click Login, wait
for it to say "Incorrect Login", wait for it to take you "back" to the login screen
and fill in the Login name and password you just registered. This sets a new cookie to
overwrite the old one.
(Powerlord)
Thursday, July 6th, 2000
2,000,000 revisited, VGMusic Forums to be reset & upgraded
2,000,000 revisited
I should have posted this as soon as I received it from Peach.
The 2,000,000th person to visit our front page was Kevin Phoenix
from Ultimate Edition.
Here's the screenshot.
We are going to be installing WWWThreads Pro 5.0.8 sometime
in the near future. However, before we install it, we are going to be clearing the database we
are currently using for WWWThreads 3.5. This is to ensure best performance and to clear our overly large
user database.
We're upgrading to get rid of some of the problems we have been experiencing lately, such as the inability
to send private messages, and in some cases, the inability to log in. This new version also has a utility to
delete accounts that haven't been used in over 90 days. That should be to our advantage, since our current forums
system DOES NOT have that ability.
(Powerlord)
Wednesday, July 5th, 2000
Videogames.com Article, Mini-Updates, Redmond Here I Come!
Videogames.com Article
Got this news tid-bit from Zophar.net:
Videogames.com has an article on
what one of their writers has picked as the
Top 10 Video Game Soundtracks
of all time. Nice to see them covering video game music, but that list is impossible to truly make,
unless you have listened and played every video game out there.
Mini-Updates
I corrected Powerlord's comment below about my free time status. I actually am only
working a part-time job this summer at the
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.
So I'll try my best to contribute to the website during my spare time this summer.
I have started to do some "mini-updates". I'm trying to pick the easiest and/or oldest
files to deal with.
Trip to the Great Northwest
At the end of August, I will be taking a trip to Oregon and Washington state.
During part of my trip, I will be near Redmond, Washington, home to such
companies as Microsoft and
Nintendo of America. I was wondering
if there are any official tours or museums at either company? Or, if you work
there, could you give me an unofficial tour? :)
(Mike Newman)
Sunday, July 2nd, 2000
Archive Status
Archive Status
Here's whats been having in the last month:
-
Chiba has decided to leave VGMusic.com following the results of the Ultima-Eternity competition.
-
We have asked The Kat to step down from the Database Developer position. Mike and I are talking
over this project.
-
We didn't collect enough information from the Applications to single out any specific people.
That means we're going to recollect applications, this time feeding them into the database
so we can get a better output format. We have to go and create a new question set and
create the database table yet. I would do it now, but I don't have a lot of time at the moment
(and a headache to boot).
-
Peach has a new full-time job or so I hear. Congratulations, Peach.
-
39ster is off to the US to visit Laura. He won't have site access until he comes back in late July/early August.
How does this affect staff availability?
-
Powerlord - Works part-time (overnights)
-
Peach - Works full-time
-
Mike Newman - Works part-time,
classes part-time
-
Kalrac - Works part-time, classes part-time (This information is more of a guess)
-
39ster - Away until August
I don't want to repeat the original applications fiasco, so this time, the applications form
will be sending information to the database and we will use a custom retrieval system for them.
The original applications form mixed up the variables so that each application had the information
in a different order, which is part of the reason it took us this long to look through them.
(Powerlord)
