Roy Tang

This is a follow up to “Blogs of Yesteryear”. This is the remainder of my blogroll from 2004/2005. I feel like the second half is less interesting than the first half, but I figured I might as well go through them as well.

geekiness

I think the blogs under this session are about general geeky topics.

• Absurd Genius - looks this was a tech and gaming-focused blog that featured a web portal for the PSP browser. But I couldn’t find anymore information about the author. It was formerly hosted on base2.org, but that domain doesn’t seem to have any content now.
• Forever Geek - this was a blog that covered a lot of geeky topics - tech, anime, gadgets, games, etc. It’s still around! I no longer follow them though, mainly because that’s not really the sort of site I follow anymore.
• kuro5hin - this was a slashdot-like discussion site that was a bit popular back in the day. According to Wikipedia, the site was taken down permanently in 2016. Kuro5hin was owned by Rusty Foster, who now writes a newsletter, Today in Tabs, one of the newsletters I follow.

gaming

I followed a lot of gaming sites back in the day. I no longer follow these, mostly because I’m not interested anymore in having 100% gaming feeds in my feedreader.

• game girl advance - a gaming blog with all women writers. Back then most of the people writing about games were male (I think), so following a site like this one helped diversify your POVs. The site is still up, but the last update is from 2015.
• GameDevBlog - this is a blog by game developer Jamie Fristrom. I think I followed this site after I read an interesting article he wrote about implementing web-swinging in the 2004 videogame Spider-man 2. His site is still up and updated as recently as last October!
• Games from Within - this was another game developer’s blog (in case it isn’t obvious, it is/was one of my interests). The site is still up, last post is from 2018. (Annoyingly, it’s one of those sites that doesn’t show the post date on the listing screens.)
• RPGamer - a gaming site focused on computer/console RPGs. This and RPGFan were my main source of RPG news back in the day. RPGamer is still up and going strong. (The site even still has the same dragon logo and font!)
• These Damned Machines Are Killing Me - another gaming focused blog, this one was short-lived, looks like it wasn’t updated past 2007, after which the site went down. The URL currently redirects to a site called Furious Games, not sure if related.
• 3rd World Game Designer - this was a blog by Gabby Dizon, a game designer from the Philippines! (I’m always interested in local content). The site is no longer accessible and the domain is parked. I think I found the author on Twitter, but he seems to be a crypto guy now or some such.

comics

I still read webcomics these days, though not as much, and almost never through a feed reader (most of the time.) Related: Webcomics I Like, 2006 Edition.

• PvPonline - this was a webcomic about the employees at a gaming publication, it was quite popular back in the day. The site is still up and the author recently rebooted/time-skipped the story. I currently follow the author on Twitter and catch up on it whenever I see him update.
• Penny Arcade - one of the longest-running mostly-gaming-focused webcomics (and one of the most well-known). The site is still going strong after all these years, sporting largely the same color scheme. I get updates because I follow the artist on Twitter.
• Comics: Foxtrot - one of my favorite slice of life strips, I have a few of the books. It stopped being released as a daily a while back, and the author now only releases a new comic every Sunday, I think. Once again, I am following the artist on twitter. (Starting to see a pattern here.)
• Comics: Sinfest - it started out as a dark humor strip about this guy Slick who tries to hit on a girl named Monique and just kept expanding and expanding its scope, covering topics such as politics, patriarchy, religion, that kind of stuff. It’s still running but I mostly lost interest when he tended to do arcs that ran really long. I much preferred his silly, standalone strips like this one about Apples and Oranges. Here’s another one that I liked.
• Dilbert - this famous strip is of course still running (currently at Dilbert.com), although the author has in recent years come out as Trump supporter with many bad takes. I still read the strip, mostly because it comes with our daily newspaper. (On paper! We still have those!)
• Real life comics - this was a semi-autobiographical slice-of-life comic about a guy named Greg. I had stopped following it for a while because of reasons, but last year I found out that (a) it was still going strong; and (b) the author recently came out as as trans. The strip is still running!
• Comics: Calvin and Hobbes - the quintessential comic about a little kid and his tiger. I’m not sure why I bothered following this one, since the author stopped drawing the strip in 1995. I believe that I have already read every single strip of C&H, so there’s no reason to follow it now.
• Websnark - this was a commentary blog about stuff on the internet, mostly webcomics. I don’t remember following it for too long, probably lost interest at some point. The domain currently has nothing.

lifehacks

These are blogs I followed about self-improvement, productivity, that kind of stuff.

• Working Smart - looks like this was a blog from a guy who was head of a Christian publishing company. I guess I followed him because he sometimes published about topics like getting things done, communication, tech, gadgets, and blogging. I don’t remember following him for very long, so I imagine I lost interest quickly. The site is no longer accessible and he no longer seems to be blogging.
• Steve Pavlina’s Blog - this is a guy who became well-known as a self-help author and motivational speaker. He often wrote about personal development. I’m not really into that kind of content anymore so I no longer follow him. He still writes at stevepavlina.com.
• 43 Folders - a site about “tricks, hacks and other cool stuff”, named after the number of manila folders in a tickler file. The site is still around, but the last update is from 2011. I’m currently following the author on twitter, he no longer seems to be blogging and is more of a podcaster now.

feed readers

According to the old site, my feeds back then were powered by an app called Bloglines. Wikipedia says Bloglines became unavailable in 2015, but presumably I stopped using it in 2007 when I switched to a different app called Newshutch. At the time, I was complaining that Google Reader, released in 2007, was “slow as molasses”! I eventually did migrate to Google Reader and was a faithful user until it was killed off in 2013. (In hindsight, this was more recent than I thought it was!)

what about now?

I follow a mostly different set of blogs now. There’s a blogroll, but it’s a touch out of date and could use some updating. Maybe sometime soon. Looking over the list, it seems I prefer not to follow single-topic blogs anymore and enjoy slice-of-life blogs where people talk about their day-to-day pursuits on a personal level (instead of say, writing as a general-purpose article for any reader). Feel free to send me blogs or blogrolls you recommend, I will gladly spend an hour or so scrolling through a blogroll and clicking through links and checking out blogs!