Justin Germino Ramblings

I am in the middle of the campaign for Blizzard’s Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void and I can say it doesn’t take much for me to remember why I love Blizzard as a gaming company and what makes the Starcraft universe so special to me. I first played Starcraft when it released and I remember taking a whole week off work back then just to play the game day and night falling in with the story of Raynor, Kerrigan, Tassadar and others. I named my cat at the time Tassadar who kind of looked like a Protoss in the face to me, and the story and campaign while borrowed from other Sci-Fi genre was backed by amazing visuals and the same real time strategy style which made Warcraft so popular.

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Blizzard always had a knack for CGI between missions and creating compelling characters you care about and follow on their journey, Starcraft always had a hold of me, more so than World of Warcraft which was ironic given my D&D history and love of fantasy, I just never did “feel the MMO” like I did traditional RPG games.

So far I am most impressed with Legacy of the Void and am enjoying the game very much, if you were a Starcraft 2 fan then picking up the final chapter is well worth it and you won’t be disappointed.

If there is one thing that I can say for certain is that life is about expecting the unexpected and that you will be faced with challenges and decisions that you may never think you will ever have to face or could ever face. This is where people learn who they really are and find where their strengths and weaknesses lie and while many make it through most of life’s tests intact, there are others who stumble and falter and the tests lead to decisions and mistakes that have devastating consequences. The thing about being human is that we are not living some pre-programmed existence like a worker bee whose genetic programming is to do a single function for the hive cluster. We are individuals and operate individually off of our own experiences, thoughts, trauma, learned behaviors and modeled behaviors we see and think are the acceptable norm.

Learning, Loving, and above all else showing compassion and respect to all others is the key to redemption if you find yourself in one of those situations where the road forked and you went left instead of right. Though the road may be broken and you may never end up making amends or achieving full redemption you can at least leverage mistakes to change course and do the right thing going forward. Some consequences are severe enough you can’t undo or recover from them, you have to pick up and move on and improve in every way possible.

It is all too easy to give up and walk away from consequences, hide from them, drown them out or simply ignore and delay accepting accountability and the changes that are needed. This is the time to rise up and become the strongest, bravest and most determined person you have ever become in your life. The time to walk the right road after you may have ended up in circles, where you started or simply in the wrong location.

Carry your burden, while some would say you need to forgive yourself and love yourself, don’t do this too quickly. Acknowledge and accept the burden that comes with mistakes and then find the path to redemption and even if there isn’t a clear one, find the path on how you can at least try. Is it really so hard for one to simply look at every person they encounter every day and simply have empathy and compassion for each other soul struggling to make it through this harsh life?

So I had switched most of my smaller blogs over to InMotion Web Hosting back in March 2015 and haven’t really looked back.  InMotion hosting provided me a seamless way to transition my sites over, and in fact I was so busy that I didn’t have time to migrate my sites away from my previous hosting provider so InMotion Hosting literally copied everything from my old host to my new InMotion hosting for me and when it was all done my site was up and running flawlessly on my new hosting provider.

Now, they copied not only the WordPress theme, database and plugins, but they also transported over years worth of upload files, the ones you add when uploading images and media to posts so I had media and image files between 2009 and 2015 that was all transported and uploaded too.  They do all of this for free for the 1st site you want transferred, and only charge a relatively reasonable cost for migrating additional sites.  I found it to be well worth the extra fee because if it saved you 4-5 hours of time yourself migrating your site, this to me was worth the cost, time was worth more to me.

You get CPanel which I always prefer to make things easier too, the Paper Lantern theme for me is preferable as it is always easier to search and find the function you are looking for in CPanel than the traditional X3 interface.

Of course you also get a couple of great advertising starter deals when you sign up and start hosting with InMotion as well. Not only do you get $100 in AdWords credit, but you also get Bing/Yahoo credit, Amazon Product ad credit and listing on YP.com.

You get access to all your normal reports and analytics from the web host dashboard as well.  But with Unlimited bandwidth and disk space you don’t have to worry about having to pay more just because you are storing more media files in your uploads folder, or have traffic spikes that use more bandwidth.

If you host video or audio files on your WordPress site itself and don’t use a cloud streaming service for your rich media, you will appreciate the unlimited disk and bandwidth space.  I have a much more expensive hosting provider for my main site due to needing more CPU/RAM needs than a shared hosting plan and I don’t get unlimited disk space and it gets costly.

InMotion hosting is also incredible stable and the uptime has been very good, better than my previous Bluehost or HostMonster plans in the past.  I also can tell you with all plans being hosted on SSD drives, you get better pageload and hosting speeds than you do and this is especially true if you leverage disk based caching like W3 Total Cache does when configured.

InMotion Hosting after 9 months of using it for 5 of my WordPress blogs gets my thumbs up, I have only had to open a single trouble ticket with the company in 9 months (since my original tickets to get my sites migrated). Opening a single trouble ticket in 9 months is actually a very long time, I had to open 2-3 on my main site in that length of time with a hosting provider that costs 4x as much per month.

For those who need more power than a shared plan, InMotion Hosting has pretty decent VPS hosting plans as well which give you more RAM for the price than most other hosting provider plans do.  Overall if you get less than 7k visits per day on your site, then you may be able to be supported just fine on shared hosting leveraging either Incapsula, Cloudflare and W3 Total Cache.

Fallout 4 is the Holiday game that both my kids and I wanted and will be consuming most of our free time over the next upcoming weeks.  I had been a Fallout fan since the original with the turn based strategy combat still being my preference.  This is why when I play Fallout 4 I still tend to use VATS and get near turn based strategy with targeting attacks, rather than playing it like an FPS completely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O6WV9xAAzA

Just can’t through frag grenades or do some other stuff with VATS.  I found some of the comical critical hits like when blowing someones head off and it becomes a severed head that floats off of the body rather than a head that explodes as seen in the video.

The game is fun, engaging and there is a ton of open world stuff to explore.  Perk up and play!

Man you would think the end of times was coming the way my kids were desperate about getting “Day 1” release games on the day they released. Waiting until Christmas was “too long” and the game would already age, with thousands of vids and walkthroughs online already.  This is what parents face now in this generation of social media and online video, where consumerism and all the marketing and sharing behind it make it that much harder for parents to try and teach their kids that “rewards” and “gifts” are not instant.  If it isn’t a Birthday or special occasion it is imperative that they learn luxuries and wants must be earned through hard work, reward system or sometimes simply saving and avoiding the urge to spend anything you do earn immediately.

As someone who telecommutes and gets gadgets sent to me all the time to review for Dragon Blogger, I can honestly tell you this is much harder in my house than in most perhaps.  The fact my kids see me get games, products and stuff all the time to do reviews makes it seem to them like I get all the cool and great stuff immediately without having to wait, delay or save up.  Realistically this is another part time job, reviewing products and it is something that I negotiate services for.  It gets explained but not always understood or accepted.

Also, not even I could negotiate a free copy of Fallout 4 to review, so I am having to wait until Christmas forcing myself to delay to set an example for my kids that we can’t always get what we want even on the day it releases.  Even though I could afford to buy it for myself, I decided to bite the bullet and set an example with this one.  It would be too much of a tease to play a game I wanted as much as them, and they would be forced to wait.  Sure I could put the “I work and earn money, and can afford to get it for myself” item but this would not be setting an ideal example, and I am willing to wait with them and show them that I can wait too just like they can.

Things are just so different from when I was a kid, there was so few new releases and toys compared to how much stuff gets constantly released now.  I used to spend allowance as soon as I got it just like they do, but I was more patient in waiting for occasions to get gifts.  Of course there was no YouTube, Twitch and other endless channels to cram what I wanted down my throat and “show me” how much I was missing out partaking in this awesome game or activity.  Instead you usually heard about the kid or two in school who got it already and asked how it was and listened in awe, or if they were particularly cruel used to tease and tell you how great it is and spoil it.

Of course, I still have the mindset that I don’t like to watch game play period, I like playing a game and experience it with no prior knowledge or video.  I read reviews only for issues or severe failures in a game like Aliens: Colonial Marines I may have wasted my money on if I didn’t do the research to see how bad the game actually ended up being.  But I particularly am not fond of Let’s Play or video game walk throughs as it ruins the story and immersion for me, my kids however are all about watching the gameplay and this makes them want the games more, and with sandbox games this lets them create their own stories and adventures.  But I don’t think this has the same benefit with campaigns and closed games, where the story is fixed and if you watched it before, it isn’t new and therefore you have no excitement value when you are seeing something already seen.

Either way, patience is something sorely needed in a generation wanting instant gratification and we fight the good fight, but always hope our kids can learn to tell the difference between needs and wants, and develop the hard working ethic to get rewarded only after doing the work and putting in the effort to provide the benefits.

Share with me your stories on how much you struggle teaching kids to wait and the difference between want and need!

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Man, nothing like doing a long recording and finding that there is a problem with the mic audio, I didn’t want to waste the video for this Mechanical Keyboard from Havit that I am reviewing for DragonBlogger.com so I just wound up using it as a blooper.  I will end up having to re-record the entire video anyway, but I do love this mechanical keyboard though my family complains how loud the keys are when I pound away on them at 95 Words Per Minute

In all seriousness, if you do any sort of video blogging (vlogging) or video it is a good idea to always take the time to do a quick 30 second check, stop (make sure your sound and levels are right) then proceed to start doing the official recording. A quick 30 second check could have spared me some time!

Silent Review of the HAVIT Mechanical Gaming Keyboard!

Had a bit of fun playing Lt. Morales with a skin pack last weekend!

Minecraft is an incredible game that brings out creativity, teamwork and simply exploration play that really engages kids in ways I haven’t seen with other online games.  One of the best things about this is that kids create their own world and literally can do whatever their imagination can come up with, this can be simply playing the game on Survival or Operators can do some amazingly complex rules and create Survivor Games or other type of PvP arenas.

However, I really need to find a more kid friendly server for my 8 year old Oliver to play and after playing on dozens of servers online the mix of bad language and older kids just didn’t bring him the experience playing with other kids around his age that we really wanted.  Hence I decided to purchase an official Minecraft Realms server and my son who is 8 is running it as OP.

This will be an application based Minecraft Realms server, that is only for kids between 6 and 12 who want to play, explore, create and not have to deal with older teenagers, trolls or harsh language.  Now, at 8 years old there still may be some PvP and battling as they tend to sometimes have competitions with friends, they have been friendly to younger players.   The other thing to help enforce only kids play is voice, my kids play via Skype so they can talk to each other while playing, this gives them real time communication and learning to talk and engage each other but also this helps ensure that they are actually all playing with kids instead of risking an adult impersonating a kid.

If you are looking for a Kid Friendly Minecraft Realms server and want your son or daughter to be invited to have some good times playing Minecraft in a friendly atmosphere with other kids who are between 7 and 12, then feel free to fill out an application.  If accepted you will receive an invite to the Minecraft Realms server, and be given the Skype username of Oliver who is the Moderator and Admin.

Apply for Access to Kid Friendly Minecraft Realms Server

I will personally overlook and audit all applications, this is a mission to keep things kid friendly and safe for the kids who just want to play and keep to a younger audience.

-Justin Germino

You probably have seen all the reports about the success of Windows 10 already having more installs than every other Linux distro just based on the free upgrades. With over 14 million installs and very few, though some problems report Microsoft is likely going to have an OS that will finally eat and expand upon a larger user base than Windows 7, Windows 8 and possibly even the former Windows XP.  There is however a caveat to everyone who gets their free upgrade and that is the fact that Microsoft isn’t making money by giving away free upgrades.  They are making money now on your data that is being shared as a result of the free upgrades.

Windows 10 more so than any previous OS and with Cortana ties into their Windows Online Services, to have the functions work fully you need to be connected to a Windows Live / Xbox Live account and this is where data gets stored, tracked, consumed and shared for the same purpose that one would see with any service including Google, Facebook or others and that is to serve you better and more targeted ads.  To build more information for the big data engines to make sure you are presented with the stuff more likely to get you to click and buy.

The privacy settings by default, Wi-Sense and more are simply ways to subsidize and offset the fact that they are giving away the OS.  Do I see at some point in the future targeted popups on your Windows 10 OS like the free editions of Office applications or a Ad supported Kindle Fire?  Maybe, Maybe not.

Of course it makes a lot of sense to have a single OS, Microsoft says Windows 10 will be the last Windows Upgrade and version, meaning all future updates will just continue to update the existing Windows 10 adding features, functions, bug fixes…etc.  Though you still can use an offline user account in Windows 10 you lose access to many of the features like Cortana that depend on the Windows Live account.

So far the biggest issue that I have with Windows 10 is the removal of Recent Places from the Save As menu, it makes it harder if you frequently like to put files in your recent folders to do this.  Frequent Folders isn’t the same and not as good, and I can’t find a permanent work around to this so is just something to get used to unless Microsoft fixes it.

Overall though I do like Windows 10, disabled a lot of security features, including the Wi-Sense which is where Windows would automatically connect to common public trusted networks (trusted) being the key word here as in it isn’t you trusting it, it was a partnership deal where Microsoft says it’s trusted.  So this is worth disabling and this video tutorial shows you how to do that.

Have you upgraded to Windows 10 yet?  What are your favorite things so far, or what do you hate about it? Share your story!

Had several issues on this site and most of my smaller sites that were traced back to a misconfiguration of my .htaccess file which most likely was caused by a WordPress plugin that updated it.

The error I saw in my errors file for Apache was Either all Options must start with + or -, or no Option may [closed]

In digging through my .htaccess file I found this line:

Options ExecCGI Includes IncludesNOEXEC SymLinksIfOwnerMatch -Indexes

And this was the line barfing, it said basically every OPTIONS has to have +, – in front or none of them can.

This must be something different with later Apache release or something as this file was untouched for months, but either way it was a simple fix.  Just moving Options -Indexes to a separate line without it being part of the same line resolved the problem and I was able to have the issue resolved.

Meanwhile, I had some issues with PHP and ION Cube Loader which is required for my Author hReview plugin so I had to have that setup which require a support ticket to InMotion hosting as they don’t allow you to check the module in PHP Configuration, but they were fairly quick to just load the Option and get this site back up and running again.

Overall I haven’t found the reason for the change, but suspect it may be related to Wordfence Security plugin which occasionally can update the .htaccess file I think, this seems like something the plugin would do and it was recently updated though I can’t prove it caused the issue.