Before Karajan dies, I have to find him.
Why I Switched My Hosting from WordPress.com
You may have noticed, in the past few weeks, that my site has been looking a little weird. That it’s had a few visual hiccups in terms of how it looks and is presented. (If you’re only reading everything I write on Patreon, you probably haven’t noticed). That’s because I’ve switched my web hosting from WordPress.com to Bluehost, and I feel it’s worth mentioning why.
A smaller reason why is, honestly, it’s slightly cheaper. I was paying about $300+ a year for my hosting through WordPress.com, in order to get a plan that allowed for advertising (in an attempt to finally reach my Google Adsense payment threshold). I’m paying about $250-ish a year with Bluehost, so that’s significantly less expensive.
The larger reason is that the person who runs WordPress.com, Matt Mullenweg, has been, frankly, acting like a git. He’s been harassing hosting providers and alienating plugin authors. It’s been involved enough that TechCrunch had to write an explainer article. In short, he’s he kind of git that, candidly, is causing problems for the WordPress platform as a whole – to enough of a degree where I can sincerely see WordPress forking, the way that OpenOffice forked to LibreOffice. If that happens, and the fork comes, if I’m still on WordPress.com for hosting, I can’t go either way. So, I’m off WordPress.com, and am now on Bluehost on the foreseeable future.
As a quick note – this has broken Email Subscriptions. In the interim, I’d recommend using RSS, or following my BlueSky or Mastodon accounts.
Book Review: Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
Reviewing something like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is a tricky proposition. On the one hand, it’s a book by an acclaimed scientist – and more significantly one of the eminent science writers and presenters of the 20th Century. It’s also a companion volume to one of what is considered to be one of the best science television series of all time. Hard stop. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to say that any particular author or work is above criticism or discussion – and I’ll admit we don’t talk about the book the way we talk about the TV show – so I’m going to give it a shot anyway.
Continue readingInspired by a recent video by ProZD, I give 5 older anime that I’d love to see get a new take.
Fate-uary has come back around again, and it’s time to take a look at Fate/Zero, the prequel to Fate/Stay Night.
Book Review: The Ghibliotheque Guide to Anime
It’s been a while since I read a nonfiction book about anime. A couple of years ago, I read Anime: A History by Johnathan Clements and found it enjoyable (though admittedly, I never got around to doing a prose review here—just a video review). Well, I’ve ended up coming across another overview book on Anime—this time from the hosts of the Ghibliotheque podcast, appropriately titled The Ghibliotheque Guide to Anime, so I figured it was worth a read.
Continue readingThere’s a video game that kinda adapts the Forged in the Dark/Powered by the Apocalypse game mechanics into a PC RPG – let’s talk about that.
Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen Part 5: Kaboom!
This session we finished up the first chapter, along with moving into a little bit of the next with some role-play.
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Video Game Review: Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Playing the first Xenoblade Chronicles game was an interesting experience, especially after having played some of its sequel before it. It end up giving me some new context on how the series has progressed, how the sequel improved on its predecessor – and some ways in which the predecessor was better. Now that I’ve beaten the game in my Let’s Play, it’s time to give my thoughts.
Continue readingIt’s time for a book vlog for the month – this time a urban fantasy YA novel from a Nigerian-American author, Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Anime Review: Majestic Prince
At the end of 2024, having missed the submission date for regular Anime Secret Santa, I decided to take part in AniList’s Secret Santa event (my AniList profile is here, by the way). The show I ended up getting in my pick was Majestic Prince – a show that had ended up on my watchlist anyway due to it showing up early in Super Robot Wars 30. So, after finishing my rewatch of season 3 of Thunderbolt Fantasy for the Anime Explorations Podcast, I moved on to this.
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